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David Poland

By David Poland poland@moviecitynews.com

What happened to the Indie Spirit Awards?

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20 Responses to “What happened to the Indie Spirit Awards?”

  1. Richard Nash says:

    I hope Sasha Cohen wins it. His acceptance speech would be worth the price of admission.
    I wonder if he accepts as Borat.

  2. qwiggles says:

    My favourite part of the Goldstein article is when Karen Dubin says, “Besides, I hate this welfare-ish mentality of rewarding low-budget films.” Yowza!

  3. Your just mad HALF NELSON cleaned up šŸ˜‰

  4. James Leer says:

    How is Pan’s Labyrinth “surprisingly American”?

  5. bob giovaneli says:

    Ahhhh, not only are the very deserving FOUR EYED MONSTERS and WRISTCUTTERS: A LOVE STORY worthy of a national awards stage….
    …but the Oscar/Globe worthy film out now, SWEET LAND,(“Best First Feature” & “Best Actress”) can now get some well-deserved attention from the industry members and exhibitors who are missing out on this gem, and hopefully more theaters will ensue, and the proverbial ball will start rolling.
    I don’t work for the film, or the distributor. I just have been aching for this film to hit the public the way I know it can: in a big way.
    93% positive, if not stellar, reviews so far on rottentomatoes.com tell the tale. And if its playing near you (check out the city rollout, and the trailer, @ http://www.sweetlandmovie.com), you owe it to yourself to see it on a bigger screen than your home TV. (One quibble: shoulda gotten a cinematography nod too.)

  6. ASD says:

    I don’t know Dave, the ISA’s have long been considered the kiss of death when it comes to being an Oscar pre-cursor, maybe they’ve just begun to accept their fate as being their own unique entity that’s not groveling for Oscar attention and would rather support legitimate American independent filmmaking. There are dozens of award shows this year that will be feting Whitaker for LKoS and O’Toole for Venus. An Indie Spirit win really would have little impact in either direction of the ultimate goal is an Oscar, so really what’s the harm in excluding them in favor of someone who could actually benefit from a nomination other than being perceived as irrelevant by you?
    I’m glad there are a lot of people scratching their heads this evening, because if the question being asked is “what the heck is American Gun? or who’s in Wristcutters?” that means a lot more people will be searching out the films, either on DVD for the former or perhaps forcing a distributor to pick up the latter.
    And is there a stranger, happier accident than veteran character-actor Raymond J. Barry competing against James Bond and the 1-2 punch of the Little Miss Sunshine guys for Steel City, a film which has barely been seen since it premiered at Sundance back in January. No politics, no courting celebrity. Just a great performance in an independent film. That’s reason enough to be pleased.

  7. EDouglas says:

    Where the fuck is Maggie Gyllenhaal for Sherrybaby? Ridiculous that she’s not the frontrunner.

  8. EDouglas says:

    And where’s Brick for that matter? Or Hard Candy?

  9. bob giovaneli says:

    Oh shit….BRICK!!! Best screenplay, damn it!
    That wouldn’t have been too much to ask, now would it?

  10. David Poland says:

    Brick was double nominated last year

  11. jeffmcm says:

    They can nominate movies before they have distribution?

  12. Doesn’t this awards ceremony get it’s nominees from Festival appearances? Brick was shown at a festival so it was eligable? That’s what I figured.
    “I hope Sasha Cohen wins it.”
    WTF?
    All I have to say is: YAY! Seriously, all these awards bodies looking like one big homogenised orgy involving the same 6 movies and the same 6 performances and everything else is tiresome.
    Yes, it means that the ISA won’t mean jack shit in the general scheme of things, but it also means that they’ve got more personality than other awards bodies and that’s to be admired.
    Stop being such a sourpuss, Dave.

  13. David Lynch and Laura Dern are receiving a Special Destinction Award. šŸ™‚

  14. theremin says:

    I couldn’t be more pleased for Wristcutters and Four Eyed Monsters. (I believe I mentined them in the comments for the best movie nominations from last year.) I was especially surprised that they had the good sense to nominate FEM for best cinematography.

  15. hcat says:

    Brick was shown at Sundance in 05 and bought by Focus a few weeks after that. They just sat on it for a year because the rest of their slate was so crowded.

  16. Bruno Packer says:

    The Pan’s Laberynth “surprise” is surprise in deed as the funding for that film was mainly Spanish, with Spanish crew, and an entirely Spanish cast.
    When the Mexican Academy chose it as the official submission, the competitors were outraged, because in deed it is more a Spanish film that a Mexican one.
    Cannot think how it qualified for the ISA. No way the movie is American.

  17. EthanG says:

    Extremely happy for Shareeka Epps and Ryan Gosling. Pretty sad for Quinceinera, and Why We Fight missing out on the doc. category.
    Strangest omission:
    Thank You For Smoking (or does it not qualify?)
    Dissapointed that the following low budget foreigns all with a high distribution couldnt be recognized:
    The Proposition, Last King of Scotland, House of Sand
    And was The Queen really more expensive than the Painted Veil???
    Lastly Im saddened A Scanner Darkly got no props.

  18. EDouglas says:

    “David Lynch and Laura Dern are receiving a Special Destinction Award. :)”
    Most Interesting Use of a Cow in Marketing?

  19. If it is for that WOULD YOU DENY THEM?!?
    Didn’t think so.

  20. steandric says:

    I don’t get it. How come the over $30 mil The Painted Veil was qualified to get Edward Norton and Ron Nyswaner nominated? Can someone explain why?

Quote Unquotesee all »

It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” ā€” some novel, you know?

So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.

And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it ā€” I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.

There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.

I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury ā€” he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” ā€” and I’d forgot who he was.

So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging ā€” I was with her at that moment ā€” she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.

But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy namedā€”” “Yeah, sure ā€” you want his phone number?”

My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher

“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that Iā€™m on the phone with you now, after all thatā€™s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didnā€™t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. Thereā€™s not a case of that. He wasnā€™t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had ā€” if that were what the accusation involved ā€” the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. Iā€™m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, ā€œYou know, itā€™s not this, itā€™s thatā€? Because ā€” let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. TimesĀ piece, thatā€™s what it lacked. Thatā€™s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.

~ David Simon