A sweep, and a savage monologue
‘Everything’ sets a record as show host Hasan Minhaj goes for Hollywood’s jugular.
“Let’s dream big. This is our time to do it.”
In accepting the prize for best feature at Saturday’s Film Independent Spirit Awards, “Everything Everywhere All at Once” co-director Daniel Kwan exhorted the audience of filmmakers and industry professionals to take the uncertainty of the moment in the entertainment industry and make the most of it.
“Everything Everywhere,” written and directed by Kwan and Daniel Scheinert, swept the awards with a record-breaking seven prizes, winning every category it was nominated in.
The only award it did not win was for Jamie Lee Curtis, who lost for supporting performer to her co-star Ke Huy Quan.
Previously, three films, “Moonlight,” “Sideways” and “Pulp Fiction,” have each won six Spirit Awards.
Inside the awards tent beachside near the Santa Monica Pier, tension oscillated throughout the afternoon between the earnestness and genuine emotions of the winners and a sense of despair and cynicism from presenters and host Hasan Minhaj.
“No one asked you to make the movies you made,” the comedian quipped in his opening remarks, “and honestly, no one watched them.”
Minhaj kicked off the show with a blistering monologue that took a no-holdsbarred approach to the world of independent film, including those who make them, the audiences who watch them and even the journalists who cover them.
Minhaj made special note that this year’s show was being streamed on YouTube but did not have a television outlet, having lost its longtime home of IFC.
“Let me reiterate how bad this is,” Minhaj said. “The Independent Film Channel did not want the Independent Film Awards.”
Minhaj also noted what was running on IFC in that time slot, the misbegotten 2008 Will Ferrell basketball comedy, “Semi-Pro.”
Minhaj then enjoyed an extended run of savage jokes about the industry trade website Deadline, declaring it a “journalistic piece of s—” and saying it was “half gossip, half Ezra Miller crime tracker,” prompting loud gasps from the audience.
In presenting the first award, former host Aubrey Plaza, nominated for her lead turn in “Emily the Criminal,” continued the jokes about the show’s lack of television partnership, saying it had “finally become so indie, no one can even watch it.”
Plaza then said that she thought future shows should be done without cameras and that the award itself should be a cup full of broken glass. Plaza got the audience, along with actor
and “Women Talking” producer Frances McDormand, to chant along: “Drink glass! Drink glass!”
In presenting the screenplay prize to her “Everything Everywhere” filmmakers, Curtis implored the audience to see movies in theaters, “the way they were meant to be seen.”
This was the first year in which the Spirit Awards gave out nongendered acting prizes, expanding the nominees to 10 in a single category.
Accepting an award for lead performance in a new scripted series for “Abbott Elementary,” Quinta Brunson said, “I kind of like the gender-neutral thing. It’s kind of tight.”
The awards were preceded by a cocktail reception where filmmakers, journalists, executives, some of the not-so-famous nominees and assorted folks who make the independent film world turn hung out in a converted parking lot sipping Bulleit Bourbon cocktails as the sun played peek-a-boo behind an overcast sky.
Leaders from the Sundance Film Festival mingled alongside representatives from smaller regional fests. Publicists compared their chunky loafers as topics of overheard conversation veered from whether this all feels normal yet to kids in college, health and wellness, politics, and a sense of confusion and anxiety over the future of film and television.
As she stepped off the red carpet into the reception area, filmmaker Nikyatu Jusu, who won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance in 2022 for her movie “Nanny” and would go on to win the Someone to Watch award Saturday, described what it meant to be recognized by the Spirit Awards.
“I feel like this is a family reunion of people who were snubbed by some of the bigger platforms,” Jusu said, noting filmmakers such as Ellie Foumbi for “Our Father, the Devil” and Charlotte Wells for “Aftersun.” “These are truly my tribe.”
“The Spirit Awards are special because it’s a celebration of a lot of sheer willpower — of getting s— made,” said Andrew Ahn, director of the rom-com “Fire Island,” whose writer-star Joel Kim Booster was nominated for first screenplay.
Ahn’s debut feature, “Spa Night,” won the John Cassavetes Award at the Spirits in 2017. “This was the first place that really acknowledged ‘Spa Night’ and got me into a headspace where I thought, ‘I think I can make it as a filmmaker.’ ”
Before the show, Josh Welsh, president of Film Independent, which put on the show, addressed the overlap (or lack thereof ) between Spirit Awards and Academy Awards winners.
“There are certain films when it lines up where you go, ‘This is a film that speaks to the culture today and it’s being recognized by every awards show and it’s really galvanized the moment,’ ” Welsh said.
“What I love about the Spirit Awards is the breadth of our nominations, from films like ‘Everything Everywhere’ and ‘Tár,’ which are being recognized everywhere, and we also have these films that have less high of a profile or less visibility. And if some of them show up at the Oscars, more power to them.”