Mr Showbiz

SANTA MONICA, CA (Reuters) — The high school satire Election won top prizes at the Independent Spirit Awards, Hollywood's annual celebration of low-budget and independent movies, held Saturday. A trio of Oscar-nominated actors also walked away with trophies.

Election nabbed the awards for Best Feature, Director, and Screenplay, while the dry comedy Being John Malkovich and gender-bending tragedy Boys Don't Cry each won two categories.

The awards, voted on by the 9,000 members of the Independent Feature Project, were handed out in a marquee on Santa Monica Beach. The event, now in its 15th year, honors provocative, low-budget films that were primarily financed outside the big studio system.

Election, which cost about $8 million to make and grossed $15 million at the domestic box office, stars Reese Witherspoon as a high schooler who ruthlessly seeks the presidency of the student body.

It was directed by Alexander Payne, who also shared the screenplay award with Jim Taylor.

"Later we'll all be co-opted into the system and become hacks, but for now there's some independent or auteurist movies being allowed to be made within the system, " Payne told reporters backstage.

The star-studded awards ceremony, attended by 1,200 people, offers a more relaxed alternative to the Oscars, which take place today. Alcohol flowed freely, and booths were on hand to provide aromatic oxygen inhalers to cellphone-toting guests gagging on the warm ocean breeze.

Election and crime drama The Limey led the field of Spirit nominees with five nominations each. The Limey went home empty-handed, as did Election acting nominees Witherspoon and Jessica Campbell.

Payne and Taylor will be competing for the adapted screenplay Oscar. Other Spirit winners/Oscar nominees were actors Richard Farnsworth, Hilary Swank, and Chloë Sevigny.

Farnsworth, a 79-year-old former stuntman, was named Best Male Lead for his role as a widower who treks cross-country on a tractor to see his ailing brother in The Straight Story.

Wielding a cane ahead of scheduled hip replacement surgery, Farnsworth said he hoped his success would pave the way for other older actors.

Swank and Sevigny won the lead and supporting actress prizes, respectively for Boys Don't Cry. The fact-based story starred Swank as doomed cross-dresser Brandon Teena, and Sevigny as his/her lover.

In her acceptance speech, Swank paid tribute to Teena "who lived life the way he wanted to, followed his heart and didn't conform, in the independent spirit way."

Sevigny said she took the Boys role after looking at pictures of Teena, and "getting a crush on him."

Rock star Michael Stipe, lead singer of R.E.M., also won an award for his capacity as one of the producers of Being John Malkovich, which was cited in the Best First Feature (over $500,000) and Best First Screenplay races.

Backstage, Stipe said he was attracted to Charlie Kaufman's screenplay because "it's not like the usual Hollywood dreck." The offbeat film stars John Cusack as a puppeteer who finds a portal into the mind of actor John Malkovich, played by himself.

Kaufman thanked Malkovich for "his spectacular portrayal of John Malkovich.

Malkovich co-producer Sandy Stern read a rejection letter from an anonymous executive at an unidentified studio who said the Malkovich script "probably would be hailed as an inspired piece of work on the planet on which it was written. Unfortunately, I do not have sufficient quantities of the medication necessary to allow this story to make sense to me.

Other winners included The Blair Witch Project for Best First Feature (under $500,000); Tumbleweeds co-star Kimberly J. Brown for Best Debut Performance; Happy, Texas co-star Steve Zahn for Best Supporting Male; Lisa Rinzler for her cinematography work on Three Seasons; and Germany's Run Lola Run for Best Foreign Film.

3/26/00