Spirit Awards in Search of Original Esprit

This weekend there will be two movie award shows with very similar guest lists. Hilary Swank, Chloe Sevigny, Janet McTeer, Kimberly Peirce, Spike Jonze, Richard Farnsworth, Charlie Kaufman and Alexander Payne are among those expected to attend both Saturday’s Independent Spirit Awards and Sunday’s Academy Awards.

It’s the 15th anniversary of the Spirit Awards, a milestone that has indie veterans reminiscing over the early days of the event and the independent film movement, before indie films became the toast of Hollywood. Many of the same actors and filmmakers are nominated for both the Spirit Awards and the Oscars: Swank and Sevigny for “Boys Don’t Cry,” Farnsworth in “The Straight Story,” McTeer in “Tumbleweeds,” writer Kaufman for “Being John Malkovich” and Payne for directing and writing “Election.”

So what was once a small luncheon for several dozen people in 1984 has evolved into a veritable production with pre-parties and a fancy lunch for several hundred guests in a large tent on the beach at Santa Monica. Director Steven Soderbergh, who made waves in Hollywood in 1989 with his first movie, the low-budget “sex, lies, and videotape,” recalls the Spirit Awards’ humble beginnings.

“It was very low-key and fun and there was nothing pressurized about it,” said Soderbergh, whose “Erin Brockovich” is currently the No. 1 movie in the country. “It felt very intimate--nobody felt ‘on.’ Things have to change, I guess.”

Ally Sheedy, who won the Spirit Award in 1999 as best female lead for her performance in “High Art,” said the awards ceremony was so dull last year that she tried to bring it to life with her now notorious, drawn-out, from-the-heart-thank-you speech.

“I was sitting there dying of boredom because everyone was being so sedate and respectable--it was like this mini-Oscar show where everyone showed up in Armani,” the actress said. “It was supposed to be wild and a celebration and the only person who seemed to embrace that was [director] John Waters. So I thought, forget it, I’ll liven it up.”

Still, Sheedy is grateful to the Spirit Awards for recognizing her performance and to “High Art” director Lisa Cholodenko for giving her a chance to break out of the teen brat pack mold that had come to define her.

Success, though, can be a double-edged sword; some die-hard indie veterans fondly recall when they were part of a corps of rebellious, creative free spirits eager to break away from the studio blockbuster syndrome. Some worry that as more movies and filmmakers become part of the mainstream, they will eventually lose the very voices that made them unique.

As independent films like “Boys,” “Election” and “The Blair Witch Project” continue to show their strength critically and--as with “Blair Witch”--at the box office, the lines between mainstream studio movies and independent films get fuzzy. In a town starving for new, edgy, hip ideas, being a hot indie film writer or director is now a first-class ticket to stardom.

“What you are seeing is the stretching of the envelope,” said Amir Malin, president of Artisan Entertainment, who has been involved with independent film for more than two decades. “You can no longer ghettoize art film or specialized film by saying that they will only make $5 million in major cities. There is a large and viable audience for these films today that didn’t exist 20 years ago. If it had not been for the successes of these films, we would not have been able to move indie films along.”

Today the indie film movement has spawned a new layer of festivals, publicists and distribution companies. The Independent Feature Project West, which hosts the Spirit Awards, has seen its budget triple in the last three years to $2.8 million annually. The IFP West was founded in 1980 by a handful of West Coast filmmakers--among them director Gregory Nava and writer-producer Anna Thomas--as Los Angeles’ version of the New York-based Independent Feature Project.

Today, in addition to the IFP in New York and the IFP West in Los Angeles, there is the IFP Midwest in Chicago, IFP North in Minneapolis and the IFP South in Miami. IFP West executive director Dawn Hudson says it’s good news that filmmakers like Soderbergh, Joel and Ethan Coen, Quentin Tarantino, Spike Lee and Jane Campion are now considered bankable directors who can work within the studio system.

“Our mission isn’t compromised because some films now have more notoriety,” Hudson said. “It’s still very, very hard for every new artist, every new voice, to find financing and even harder finding distribution. I wish we were obsolete. It would be a great world if all of these films were embraced by distributors and a general audience. But it’s not the case.”

Hudson noted that some of the films nominated for this year’s Spirit Awards have not even received distribution, such as “Treasure Island,” directed by first-timer Scott King, and Zeinabu Irene Davis’ “Compensation.” Other Spirit-nominated films include “The Limey,” “The Straight Story,” “Sugar Town,” “Election” and “Cookie’s Fortune.”

The success of past independent films has caught the attention of some major studios that now want a piece of the action. Take, for example, David O. Russell, who debuted with the very offbeat “Spanking the Monkey” in 1994 and went on to direct last year’s critically acclaimed Warner Bros. action adventure “Three Kings.” Or Alexander Payne, who directed the 1996 abortion satire “Citizen Ruth,” and then moved on to last year’s “Election,” released by Paramount.

Soderbergh, who also directed last year’s “Out of Sight” for Universal, said what continues to attract him is the story line, not who is putting up the money.

Days of a

‘Noble’ Struggle

“The line has gotten very blurry--if there ever was one,” said Soderbergh, whose film “The Limey” is nominated for a Spirit Award this year. “There are more studio films with this sort of outre sensibility than there was a couple of years ago. They are waking up to the fact that they can’t keep doing the same thing year after year. Studios are like a ship with a large turning radius--they can’t move very quickly but they do move. I am sensing a little wiggle room.”

With near melancholy, some independent film veterans wistfully tell of the days of a “noble” struggle. They tell of the days when Bob Shaye, founder and CEO of New Line, distributed his latest films from the trunk of his car or when IFP West board member Susan Lynch popped her own popcorn to lure people into the theaters to watch the latest indie movie or when Hudson was let go from her post with the IFP in 1990 because the group did not have the money to pay her salary.

Linda Fiorentino credits the Spirit Awards for giving exposure to John Dahl’s 1994 steamy film “The Last Seduction.” Soon after she won best actress at the Spirit Awards in 1995 for her role as the icy femme fatale, “The Last Seduction” was launched into theaters.

But Fiorentino says the success of independent films like “The Blair Witch Project,” which took in $140 million in domestic box office alone, has its downfalls.

“No longer can you say I have an art film I want to make for $3 million,” said the New York-based actress. “Now it’s ‘I want a horror film or action film and I want to pre-sell it worldwide.’ They are now looking for the next ‘Blair Witch.’ ”

Joan Chen, who is nominated this year for a Spirit Award for her directorial debut, “Xiu Xiu: The Sent Down Girl,” says she landed her next directing gig, “Autumn in New York,” starring Richard Gere and Winona Ryder, because of her critically acclaimed low-budget film.

This growing pressure to make large profits off of independent film is inevitable, Chen said.

“Ultimately this is a capitalist society and commerce rules everything,” Chen said. “I think it’s just the nature of the beast.”

Indeed, even Artisan’s Malin, who has been through the bleakest of times fighting for independent film, said nobody is in it to toil in obscurity or lose money.

“Even among those of us who have been fighting the good fight, we have always been involved in making profitable endeavors,” he said. “This is not a nonprofit, charitable business.”

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