A funny thing happened on the way to a big, glitzy, mainstream pseudo-awards show.
A tribute to small, risky and unconventional films broke out.
The Palm Springs International Film Festival's Awards Gala, which took place on Saturday night at the Palm Springs Convention Center in the desert town 100 miles east of Los Angeles, is normally as slick and conservative as they come.
The host is the relentlessly perky Mary Hart, who rattles off plugs for a long list of corporate sponsors with the same zeal with which she introduces stars.
Those sponsors are ubiquitous, particularly Cartier, which brands nearly the entire Convention Center, a huge space with about 1,900 seats at tables that can go for up to $25,000 a table.
And to raise the money for the Palm Springs International Film Society -- $1.6 million from this year's gala, festival director Harold Matzner said – the festival annually assembles a star-studded lineup of big names who agree to receive awards and in the process hope to boost their Oscar chances.
There are no voters; the process is done behind closed doors, and corralling Oscar winners-to-be gives the festival bragging rights for the following year.
"I want to thank the people who decided to give me this award," said "The Artist" director Michel Hazanavicius. "I don't know who you are, but thank you."
The 2012 honorees included George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Glenn Close, Michelle Williams, Jessica Chastain, Octavia Spencer, directors Stephen Daldry and Michel Hazanavicius, composer Howard Shore, and the creative team behind "Young Adult": director Jason Reitman, writer Diablo Cody and stars Charlize Theron and Patton Oswalt.
And when that last group accepted their Vanguard Award, Oswalt – who was assigned to speak for all of them because, he said, "the Vanguard Award winners are the drunkest of all tonight" -- said they were particularly happy to receive the honor this year because of the many bold and adventurous films that were released during the year.
He mentioned his film, a black comedy with an uncompromising ending that no studio in its right mind would greenlight (except that Paramount did); Bennett Miller's "Moneyball," about a subject that is definitely not usual box-office fodder; Terrence Malick's abstract and challenging "The Tree of Life"; "The Artist," a foolhardy attempt to make a black-and-white silent film in 2011; and the sexually explicit drama "Shame."
Meanwhile, "The Artist" star Jean Dujardin called that film "a love letter from a crazy filmmaker," while Jonah Hill summed up Brad Pitt's 2011 this way: "'Moneyball' is about baseball statistics, and 'The Tree of Life' is about … I'm sorry, I've seen 'The Tree of Life' three times and I still don't know what it's about."
"Thank you Jonah, you ass," said Pitt, who then tweaked the audience that hadn't responded to the "Tree of Life" clips shown in either his or Jessica Chastain's montages.
