2009 Independent Spirit Awards Winners
Filed under: Awards, Newsstand, Cinematical Indie
The Independent Spirit Awards were presented this afternoon inside a giant white tent in beautiful Santa Monica, California. Darren Aronofsky's The Wrestler led the way, taking home three Spirits for Best Feature, Best Male Lead (Mickey Rourke) and Best Cinematography (Maryse Alberti). Accepting the award for Best Feature, Aronofsky said that while "working on special effects for a space movie," he realized that he loved working with actors most of all, and dedicated the award to his cast.
Melissa Leo won Best Female Lead for her work in Frozen River, while James Franco was awarded Best Supporting Male for Milk and Penelope Cruz was named Best Supporting Female for Vicky Cristina Barcelona. In somewhat of a surprise, Tom McCarthy won Best Director for The Visitor.
Rourke gave the most entertaining speech of the show, broadcast life on IFC, first kissing Aronofsky on the lips before proceeding to the stage and paying tribute to actor Eric Roberts ("he deserves a second chance"), dedicating his award to his recently deceased dog Loki, crediting actress Marisa Tomei ("not many girls can climb the pole"), and encouraging director Aronofsky to embrace being called "a mean son of a b****."
As you'd expect, our friends at indieWIRE have been providing comprehensive coverage. You can also take a tour through our collection of Spirit Awards photos, take a look at all the nominees, or go behind the scenes and see how one voter made his selections.
After the jump: a complete list of the winners.
Best Feature
The Wrestler
Producers: Darren Aronofsky, Scott Franklin
Best Director
Thomas McCarthy, The Visitor
Best First Feature
Synecdoche, New York
Director: Charlie Kaufman
Producers: Anthony Bregman, Spike Jonze, Charlie Kaufman, Sidney Kimmel
John Cassavetes Award (Given to the best feature made for under $500,000)
In Search of a Midnight Kiss
Writer/Director: Alex Holdridge
Producers: Seth Caplan and Scoot McNairy
Best First Screenplay
Dustin Lance Black, Milk
Best Screenplay
Woody Allen, Vicky Cristina Barcelona
Best Female Lead
Melissa Leo, Frozen River
Best Male Lead
Mickey Rourke, The Wrestler
Best Supporting Female
Penelope Cruz, Vicky Cristina Barcelona
Best Supporting Male
James Franco, Milk
Best Cinematography
Maryse Alberti, The Wrestler
Best Documentary
Man on Wire
Director: James Marsh
Best Foreign Film
The Class (France)
Director: Laurent Cantet
Robert Altman Award (Given to one film's director, casting director and ensemble cast)
Synecdoche, New York
Director: Charlie Kaufman
Casting Director: Jeanne McCarthy
Ensemble Cast: Hope Davis, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Catherine Keener, Samantha Morton, Tom Noonan, Dianne Wiest, Michelle Williams
Someone to Watch Award
Lynn Shelton, My Effortless Brilliance
Truer Than Fiction Award
Margaret Brown, The Order of Myths
Producers Award
Heather Rae, Frozen River and Ibid
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
2-21-2009 @ 7:35PM
Cufford said...
Mickey's acceptance speech was pure Rourke. Loved it!
Go Mickey...on to the Oscar tomorrow!
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2-21-2009 @ 8:44PM
Harless said...
Happy to see "In search of the Midnight Kiss" get some recognition. That is a great, low-budget film. I got to see it twice in theaters and enjoyed it both times. I would recommend it to anyone who like dialogue driven, character pieces, but say that visually this movie is stunning. To paraphrase someone I can't remember, they made Los Angeles at night look like Paris. And that's hard to do.
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2-21-2009 @ 8:53PM
Cufford said...
And congratulations to Cinematical for being one of the only popular movie blogs that actually cared enough to offer timely coverage of this most significant event...while other big blogs were probably off drinking somewhere!
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2-21-2009 @ 9:04PM
Cufford said...
PS: FSR, FS, /Film and even AICN, totally silent this evening on these industry heavyweight awards. Kind of says a lot about those sites.
Thank you Cinematical for actually caring about this event enough to report on it in a timely fashion...which is what the Internet is supposed to be about in this instant information age.
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2-22-2009 @ 4:09PM
Mikey M said...
Thank god someone else other than Ledger won for Supporting Actor.
And yes, Wrestler deserves the awards it received.
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2-23-2009 @ 11:49AM
David Musto said...
It was nice to see an awards show without massive amounts of pretense and politics. The winners appeared genuinely thankful and proud to be a part of indie cinema. The fact that The Wrestler won for best cinematography is perhaps the most telling that the Spirit Awards recognize real substance. The Wrestler was grainy and as low-fi a film that you can have but that style was chosen to fit the story and the character. It wasn't overly stylish like Benjamin's Butthole. Sometimes, less is not necessarily more but just right.
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