Indie Spirit Awards Leaps Right on the ‘Everything Everywhere All at Once’ Bandwagon
thewrap.comShould we care about an awards show whose host tells us at the beginning of the show that awards shows are dead and nobody watched the nominated films?That was the gauntlet thrown down by Hasan Minhaj at the beginning of Saturday’s Film Independent Spirit Awards in a monologue that did not pull punches in its acerbic look at Hollywood.
But voters did their best to say “not so fast, buddy” by giving a slew of awards to the film that was watched by more people than any other nominee, “Everything Everywhere All at Once.” The film has made more than $100 million at the box office and seems to be on an unstoppable roll through next weekend’s Oscar ceremony.
That made it a clear leader going into an afternoon ceremony that has developed a taste for the most high-profile and most Oscar-likely nominees.Once upon a time — say, 30 years ago or so — the Spirit Awards specialized on indie alternatives to the Oscars’ mainstream choices: “Sex, Lies and Videotape” instead of “Driving Miss Daisy,” “Pulp Fiction” instead of “Forrest Gump,” “Fargo” instead “The English Patient,” “Lost in Translation” instead of “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King” …But beginning in 2011, when “The Artist” became the first Spirit Award winner in 25 years to also win the Best Picture Oscar (the first and only other one being “Platoon” in 1986), the Spirit Awards have gone for the Oscar winner (“12 Years a Slave,” “Birdman,” “Spotlight,” “Moonlight,” “Nomadland”) or the closest thing they could find (“Silver Lining Playbook,” “Get Out,” “The Lost Daughter”).
This year, even though the nominees also included fellow Oscar contenders “Women Talking” and “Tár,” “Everything Everywhere” was clearly the movie with all the Oscar heat going into the Spirit.
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