The best, worst, and most surprising moments from the 39th Independent Spirit Awards

Hollywood's hippest awards show pressed on despite interruptions, giving Oscar underdogs like American Fiction and Past Lives the recognition they deserve

By Cindy White | February 26, 2024 | 3:13am

Film Features 39th Independent Spirit Awards

The best, worst, and most surprising moments from the 39th Independent Spirit Awards

Clockwise left to right: Ali Wong, the cast and crew of Past Lives, Aidy Bryant, Will Ferrell Graphic: The A.V. Club

If the stars who rolled up to the Film Independent Spirit Awards blue carpet today were any worse for the wear following last night’s SAG Awards after parties, they didn’t show it. Then again these are professional actors, and the daytime awards show held in a tent on Santa Monica beach is always equipped with open bars and plenty of promotional liquor for a little hair of the dog. So everyone was in good spirits, so to speak.

Aidy Bryant hosted this year’s ceremony, which she dubbed the “bisexual Oscars,” honoring the best of television and film created outside the studio system. She did a fine job keeping things light and moving along under some unusually challenging circumstances. Not every joke landed, but enough of them did that we can call her first awards show hosting gig a success.

As in recent years, the show was live streamed on IMDb and Film Independent’s YouTube channels, so viewers could follow along at home. If you didn’t get a chance to tune in, or you just want to relive it all, here are some of the highlights, lowlights, and surprising wins that made this year’s show a memorable one.

Best: Aidy Bryant calls Natalie Portman and other stars “stupid bitch”

This was Aidy Bryant’s first time hosting an awards show, and she addressed that right at the top. Bryant acknowledged that a hosting role can open you up to criticism and sometimes physical assault, but also that roasting the celebrities in the room is part of the gig. Her joking attempt at roasting was just to point out people in the audience and call them a “stupid bitch.” Her targets included Natalie Portman, Sterling K. Brown (aka Sterling K. Bitch), Charles Melton, and Greta Lee. They all took it with good humor, which goes to show that the person delivering the insults is what makes all the difference.

Best: Jimmy O. Yang’s response to the protests

Jimmy O. Yang, who was on hand to announce the award for Best Cinematography, was one of the few presenters to acknowledge the pro-Palestine protests going on outside. In what had to have been improvised comments, he said that they didn’t know who they were dealing with, because independent filmmakers are used to getting yelled at. “It’s actually comforting for me,” he said. “Feels like my childhood.” Another attendee who addressed the protests was writer-director Babak Ja, who received the John Cassavetes Award (given to films made for less than $1 million) for his film Fremont. “Whatever they’re saying outside, I think is more important than what I’m about to say,” he said, to applause. “I’m so inspired by what they’re saying, I forgot what I was saying.”

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Worst: Beach party bummer

We get it—this awards show is held at the beach. They make a thing about it every year. And yet someone still decided it was a good idea to have Bryant pass out beach balls, flip flops, and hot dogs in between awards (never mind that it’s currently cloudy and in the 50s in L.A.). It wasn’t a great idea to start with, but the protests outside made it even more awkward. And there was no waving that away, even with a hastily rewritten intro. “We are at the beach,” Bryant began, “and people are expressing their freedom of speech.” Dare we say the bit was more flop than flip? No, we wouldn’t go that far.

Surprising: Aidy Bryant sports a Charles Melton T-shirt

Not all of Bryant’s comedy bits were misses, though. She had several hits too, like coming out in a Charles Melton T-shirt featuring pictures of the actor in her favorite roles. Well, just the two, actually, Reggie from Riverdale and Joe from May December. It got even better when the show cut to Melton, sitting in his seat wearing a similar T-shirt, except it had pictures of Bryant in her various Saturday Night Live roles, including “screaming woman” and “a chicken in a bonnet.”

Best: Non-gendered categories

Last year, the Independent Spirit Awards was one of the first major awards shows to do away with gendered acting categories. Now they sort everyone into Best Lead Performance and Best Supporting Performance, with 10 nominees in each. While that does cut down on the amount of winners, it solves the problem of where to put nonbinary actors like Emma Corrin, who was there as a nominee for A Murder At The End Of The World, and to present the award for Best Supporting Actor in a TV series (it went to Nick Offerman for The Last Of Us). It also makes for some interesting competition, like Ali Wong and Steven Yeun, competing against each other for Beef (Wong won). This feels like where things are heading in the future, but we’re still waiting for the other awards shows to catch up.

Best: Ali Wong thanks Beef’s caterers

Ali Wong has already won a Golden Globe, an Emmy, a Critics’ Choice Award, and an Actor (that’s what the SAG Awards call their statue), among others, for her performance as Amy in Netflix’s series Beef. By now she’s probably thanked everyone she wanted to recognize in her acceptance speeches. So who’s left to acknowledge? How about the production’s caterers, Mario’s? With apologies for revealing what she claimed was a trade secret, she credited them with keeping up morale on set. The show does have a food-related title, so why not give a shout-out at this point to the food behind the scenes? We’re here for it.

Best: Keivonn Montreal Wood wins for The Last Of Us

Without looking it up, we’re pretty sure that Keivonn Montreal Wood’s win for Best Breakthrough Performance in a New Scripted Series set a record, perhaps multiple ones. Young, Black, and deaf he’s also a very good actor, whose memorable performance as Sam in The Last Of Us stood out among a seasoned cast of talented veterans. His heartfelt acceptance speech, delivered in ASL, also stood out among the winners at the event.

Best: The worst questions from Q&A sessions

When Aidy Bryant mentioned the standard industry practice of post-screening Q&A sessions, you could practically feel the audience nodding in agreement. They’ve all been through it. As she put it: “We know it, we love it, we do it, we regret it.” That was the basis for a segment parodying the kinds of questions frequently heard at such events. Nick Offerman came up to the mic to complain about the lack of bare feet and asked Bryant to remove her shoes. Jessica Williams didn’t have a question, she just wanted to state her opinion that L.A. and New York are “like, super different.” Rachel Sennott referred to an earlier bit about how people who went to NYU can’t stop themselves from mentioning it and asked Bryant to read her script. Will Ferrell really brought it home, though, gushing about a swag bag that turned out to be Bryant’s purse. Having been to a few of these interview sessions ourselves, we can verify the accuracy of this only slightly exaggerated take.

Surprising: Cord Jefferson wins for American Fiction

One of the best things about the Independent Spirit Awards is that it gives smaller films like American Fiction a chance to step out of the shadows of heavy hitters like Oppenheimer and Barbie, both of which it’s facing in the Best Adapted Screenplay category at the Oscars. Even here, though, writer-director Cord Jefferson had to overcome favorites like Past Lives and The Holdovers. The fact that he did was a nice surprise. In his acceptance speech, Jefferson talked about how much of himself he put into the movie. He also told the story of finding out that there had been a triple stabbing in the hotel where the crew was staying during the production, an experience he described as “so weird and so fun.” That’s the kind of thing you’re only going to hear at this show.

Best: Dominic Sessa gets some recognition

While his co-stars Da’Vine Joy Randolph and Paul Giamatti have been getting plenty of well deserved accolades for The Holdovers, newcomer Dominic Sessa has been mostly overlooked for his performance as troubled student Angus Tully. His costars may be more well known, but Sessa managed to hold up his third of what’s essentially a three-hander film. His win for Best Breakthrough Performance was his most likely chance to take home a major award this season, and while his win didn’t come as a surprise, it was nice to see him get some recognition.

Best: New proposed categories

Bryant gave us some more laughs with her list of new categories she proposed adding to the show. They included Most Rushed CGI, Best Sad Woman, Best Sexy Woman, Best Woman With A Certain Sad Sexiness, and Darkest Film. It’s a pretty good snapshot of the state of Hollywood at the moment. The best reaction from the crowd was for the final award, referencing the star of this awards season, Messi, the dog from Anatomy Of A Fall. Considering the enthusiastic applause, we wouldn’t be surprised to see a future award for Best Dog In A French Thriller added to the lineup one day.

Surprise: Jeffrey Wright wins for American Fiction

Not long after taking home Best Screenplay, American Fiction pulled off another surprise win, this time for Jeffrey Wright as Best Lead Actor. That honor was perhaps even more impressive than the screenplay win earlier in the show. Wright beat out strong performances by Natalie Portman, Andrew Scott, Greta Lee, Teo Yoo, and more. We don’t think it changes the calculations in terms of Wright’s Oscar chances, but he deserved it.

Best: Past Lives wins for Best Director and Best Feature Film

Finally, we come to indie darling Past Lives. Unlike last year’s favorite, Everything Everywhere All At Once, the wins here for Best Director and Best Feature FIlm are unlikely to translate to Oscar gold, but it’s a testament to the lasting appeal of the film, which premiered more than a year ago at Sundance in 2023, that it’s still in the awards conversation. It’s artistic, intimate, and deeply personal, everything that independent cinema seeks to celebrate. Celine Song’s win for her directorial debut is just the beginning of her promising career. We can’t wait to see what she does next.