The 2017 Film Independent Spirit Awards were held in Santa Monica, California, on Saturday afternoon, and, as expected, the show offered a preview of the Academy Awards tomorrow. Not of the awards themselves, of course—Moonlight won six awards Saturday, including Best Feature, Best Director, and Best Screenplay, making a La La Land sweep on Sunday all but inevitable—but for the rare glimpse the ceremony afforded of Hollywood’s political side.
It turns out many of the attendees have already formed opinions on the tenure of newly elected President Donald Trump and his chief adviser Steve Bannon: unfavorable opinions. Co-hosts Nick Kroll and John Mulaney gave voice to the crowd’s sentiments in their opening monologue, in which Mulaney said of Bannon, “I disagree with him.” “Steve Bannon’s so hot, he looks like if Nick Offerman drowned,” added Kroll.
After some crowd work—Ava Duverney scowling, Warren Beatty giving a thumbs-up, Samuel L. Jackson not bothering to attend the Film Independent Spirit Awards—the hosts returned to politics, addressing the president directly:
Hey, Trump! You and Robert Durst are both rich sociopaths from real estate empires, yet somehow Robert Durst is more likeable!
Harsh words. But the most telling moment in the monologue was the crowd’s reaction to this riff from Kroll: “No, conservatives, we are not in a bubble, ok? We are in a tent filled with fringe artists on a California beach—if this room leaned any further to the left, we would literally topple into the Pacific Ocean.” This drew a long round of applause from fringe artists like Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Matt Damon, as Mulaney and Kroll reassured them, “We’re liberal. We’re very liberal.” The easy, eager applause seemed to be part of the joke, coming as it did after Mulaney refered to the show as, “your day to stroke each other off.” But give the hosts credit for capturing the mood of the moment and the spirit of independent cinema by closing with this quote from director Vincent Gallo:
I don’t trust or love anyone.
Because people are so creepy.
Creepy creepy creeps.
Creeping around. Creeping here
and creeping there.
Creeping everywhere.
Truly inspiring.
