Top Dogs and Underdogs Take Gothams
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
There were some spurts of confusion at Brooklyn’s Steiner Studios late Tuesday night, as the 17th annual Gotham Awards once again kicked off the year’s awards season in contentious fashion. But there were also a few moments of invigorating consensus, when the more established names in attendance pulled for the underdogs, and where the true purpose, and impact, of the Gothams — still an event positioned somewhere between the independent fringe of the studio system and the true independent filmmaker struggling to find funding and distribution — could be felt in an immediate way. Late in the evening, as the award for Best Feature was about to be announced, all one had to do was look in the direction of the table seating Pat Healy, Kene Holliday, and Craig Zobel — the stars and creator, respectively, of “Great World of Sound” — to appreciate the profound effect the Gothams can have. An hour earlier, Mr. Zobel had taken the stage to accept the award for Breakthrough Director. Here was a relatively unknown filmmaker, celebrated for a movie that few have seen, thanking a room filled with major stars. From that point forward, the stream of those offering congratulations to the “Great World” table, and seemingly talking business with Mr. Zobel, was steady.
“Isn’t this great? This night — who could have expected this? It’s awesome,” a giddy Mr. Zobel said after the ceremony. Given the lengthy road he’s traveled, from the unforgiving festival circuit to a limited run in New York City, one can hardly blame Mr. Zobel for seizing the honor and partying the night away.
But when the Gothams air on television for the first time, at 9 p.m. Tuesday on NYC TV, New Yorkers may be surprised by how little the list of winners seems to differ from what they’ll expect to see at the forthcoming Golden Globes and Academy Awards.
For “Great World of Sound” did not walk away with the Best Feature award. That trophy went to Sean Penn’s “Into the Wild,” which has quietly been gaining momentum since its September 21 debut and was welcomed with enthusiastic applause by the Gotham audience. In a poignant speech, Emile Hirsch, who stars in the film, deferred all attention to the movie’s real-life, short-lived adventurer, Christopher McCandless. “When this film came along, I was 35 pounds overweight sitting on a couch with a shaved head. I’m not anymore.”
The award for “ensemble acting” resulted in a tie between the cast of Sidney Lumet’s “Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead,” led by such stars as Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Ethan Hawke, and that of “Talk to Me,” led by Don Cheadle, Cedric the Entertainer, and Chiwetel Ejiofor.
The Gothams’ indie reputation took a further hit when the award for best documentary passed over Amir Bar-Lev’s provocative art exposé “My Kid Could Paint That,” Ricki Stern and Anne Sundberg’s searing Darfur film “The Devil Came on Horseback,” and Alex Gibney’s torture tale “Taxi to the Dark Side,” and landed instead on Michael Moore’s “Sicko.” Some polite, scattered applause greeted the announcement, but the relative silence at the Brooklyn auditorium spoke volumes.
Meanwhile, in the category of Best Film Not Playing at a Theater Near You, the award went to an excited Ronald Bronstein for his little-seen film “Frownland.” “This was my first film, and I didn’t even think of going to the industry,” Mr. Bronstein said, marveling at the honor as he stared into the sea of gathered stars.
The evening’s most inspiring, and emotional, moments accompanied two of the six special Gotham tributes. “This is precisely where I began as an independent filmmaker,” said the director Mira Nair who, along with Mayor Bloomberg, was one of the evening’s first honorees. “In those days, ‘independent’ didn’t mean studio.” Recalling her early days living in a Harlem tenement, and the day she walked down Broadway crying as she wondered how she would assemble the needed $800,000 to finance her first film, “Salaam Bombay!,” Ms. Nair credited IFP — the organizing body behind the Gothams — with teaching her how to raise money and finish the film.
The evening’s most moving moment, however, involved the film critic Roger Ebert. Handed his Gotham by the director Sidney Lumet (who received his own a standing ovation) and preceded by a video montage that began with an emotional Martin Scorsese, who credited Mr. Ebert with changing his life by organizing a special Toronto Film Festival tribute in the early 1980s, Mr. Ebert took the stage with the help of his wife, Chaz.
Unable to speak due to a battle with cancer that has led to a tracheotomy and the use of a vocal synthesizer (which Ms. Ebert said broke in the hotel room earlier in the day), Mr. Ebert let his wife do the talking. “People say that Roger likes too many movies. So what?” she said, squeezing her husband’s hand as he smiled and looked intently over the audience. Noting that the movies probably saved her husband’s life, Ms. Ebert said she was able to keep him going by constantly asking, “Who’s out there, who’s making a movie you might really want to see?”
Amid all the glamour, the tableside business chats, and the reporters scribbling down the results, Ms. Ebert’s praise of the art form was enough to render the room silent and remind us all why these awards matter in the first place.
ssnyder@nysun.com