The Film Independent Spirit Awards are supposed to be loose, fun and low-pressure, but in recent years the show has labored in the shadow of something big and tension-filled: the Academy Awards.
That’s because the Spirit Awards, which once went 24 years without ever having the same best picture winner as the Oscars, and 26 years with only one duplicate winner, has in the last five years gotten positively Oscar-happy.
“The Artist” won the top prize at the Spirit Awards in 2011, and then the next day won Best Picture at the Oscars. “12 Years a Slave” did the same thing two years later, and then “Birdman” the next year, and then “Spotlight” the next. Over those three years, two-thirds of the Spirits’ acting winners also turned into Oscar winners.
But when the loose indie Saturday at the beach turns into an audition for the shiny shindig across town on Sunday, it adds a note of tension and portent to an event that was supposed to be more sendup than tryout.
This year, though, may be a little easier for nominees and guests in the Spirit Awards tent on Santa Monica Beach to not obsess about the Oscars. Because “La La Land” cost too much money to qualify for the Spirits, it’s unlikely that the streak of duplicate Spirit-Oscar winners could reach a fourth consecutive year.
But “Moonlight” and “Manchester by the Sea” are Spirit and Oscar nominees, as are Casey Affleck and Viggo Mortensen, Isabelle Huppert and Ruth Negga and Natalie Portman, and four of the five screenplay nominees.
Saturday figures to be a triumph for “Moonlight,” unless “Manchester” pulls off an upset or two, and for its writer-director Barry Jenkins. But its victories are likely to feel similar to the wins three years ago for David O. Russell’s “Silver Linings Playbook,” when everybody in the tent pretty much knew that the film would lose at the Oscars the next day to the Spirit-ineligible “Argo.”
And maybe that’ll let people relax and enjoy the Spirit Awards for what they are: a daytime-casual awards show that nominates some big movie stars and some people you’ve never heard of, and salutes a few movies that are making a lot of money and a few movies that aren’t making any money.
The small blue-ribbon panels that nominate at the Spirit Awards can be deliciously idiosyncratic — witness this year’s supporting-female category, in which the nominees are Edwina Findley in “Free In Deed,” Paulina Garcia in “Little Men,” Lily Gladstone in “Certain Women” Riley Keough in “American Honey” and Molly Shannon in “Other People.”
(Those five films have a combined gross of a little more than $3 million. The five films with supporting-actress Oscar nominees have a combined gross of a little more than $300 million.)
But the final voting can be anything but idiosyncratic; it’s open to anyone who pays for a Film Independent membership, which means that winners tend toward the mainstream even when nominees veer toward the indie.
But in a good year the show can be loose and fun, as it was last year when Kate McKinnon and Kumail Nanjiani proved to be the best Spirit Awards hosts in years. This year’s hosts are Nick Kroll and John Mulaney — and judging by their Twitter feeds, politics may raise its ugly head at some point in the afternoon.
If you’re looking to make predictions, “Moonlight” is the safe bet. And in the acting categories, here’s a stat: In the 16 years and 64 acting winners since 2000, an actor or actress who wasn’t nominated for an Academy award has only beaten an Oscar nominee three times: Zhang Ziyi over Marcia Gay Harden in 2000, Shailene Woodley over Janet McTeer in 2011 and John Hawkes over Bradley Cooper in 2012.
That’s good news for Lucas Hedges in supporting actor, Casey Affleck or Viggo Mortensen in lead actor and Isabelle Huppert, Ruth Negga or Natalie Portman in lead actress.
The live broadcast will begin at 2p.m.PT/5p.m. ET on IFC — though if history is any indication, they’ll already have handed out a couple of awards before the cameras go on.