AI was the biggest loser at the 2024 Film Independent Spirit Awards

The annual indie film and television awards show in Santa Monica gave top prizes to Past Lives, Beef and American Fiction. Reporting from the blue carpet, Kevin E G Perry was just glad to find all the winners were real live humans

Lily Gladstone, honorary chair of the 2024 Film Independent Spirit Awards (Getty Images)

Would you rather watch a film made by a human or a machine? After a week when social media has become clogged with clips from Open AI’s new model, which can produce scarily realistic movies from a simple prompt, it was a relief to head to the Film Independent Spirit Awards.

Here on the beach by Santa Monica pier was a celebration of the sort of creativity, ingenuity and originality that only a human with a camera, a dream and a maxed-out credit card can produce. The sense of battle lines being drawn was summed up by host Aidy Bryant, of Saturday Night Live, who joked in her opening monologue: “Under this tent, there are great writers, visionary directors and legendary actors, or as an anonymous executive might say: worthless little content pigs who should be replaced by computers.”

On the show’s signature blue carpet before the ceremony kicked off, Daniel Garber, who went on to win Best Editing for his work on climate apocalypse thriller How To Blow Up A Pipeline, told The Independent that the industry is in a state of upheaval. “AI and the labour disputes that have occurred over the past year, and may continue this year, are signs that we’re learning to make film in a different way,” said Garber.

Beside him, Pipeline director Daniel Goldhaber added that storytelling isn’t just a form of entertainment or distraction - it’s fundamental to how we build human societies and culture. “I fear that corporate media companies are going to essentially try to replace human labour with something that they see as a zero cost endeavour, but that doesn’t mean that what comes out the other end is going to be quality, or valuable,” said Goldhaber. “Ultimately, it will likely be damaging to our culture. I think it’s incumbent on all of us to do what we can to protect not just this medium, but human storytelling in general.”

Jeffrey Wright holds the award for Best Lead Performance for ‘American Fiction’ during the Film Independent Spirit Awards 39th annual ceremony (AFP via Getty Images)

Boots Riley, who was nominated for Best New Scripted Television Series for the surreal superhero series I’m A Virgo, knows a thing or two about fighting to protect humanity in the face of capitalist groupthink. He told The Independent that the success of his radical 2018 comedy Sorry To Bother You helped get the show made, but he’s even prouder of the way the film has helped motivate and inspire labour actions over the past year. “During some of the strike wave stuff [last year], people were sending me messages saying: ‘We were having a hard time getting people to be okay with striking, we showed them Sorry To Bother You and then people voted to strike,” explained Riley. “I can’t ask for more from a piece of art.”

The importance of real-life humans getting together to tell a story was reiterated by the day’s biggest winners. Nick Offerman, who won Best Supporting Television Performance for his guest appearance in The Last of Us, was one of many to speak about the “medicinal” power of great art to provide a salve for society’s wounds. In his victory speech he called out “homophobic hate”, joking that when people ask him why he had to make a gay story, he responds: “We say, ‘Because you ask questions like that.’ It’s not a gay story. It’s a love story, you asshole.” Afterward, he added that it was the sort of story that mainstream studios can be averse to telling. “When you get outside of corporate fear, corporate thinking, and your narrative is not determined by capitalism, you stand a much better chance of delivering medicine,” said Offerman.

Several winners bristled at the idea that the stories they had chosen to tell could only be applied to one subset of humanity. Cord Jefferson, who took home Best Screenplay and saw Jeffrey Wright win Best Lead Performance for literary race satire American Fiction, explained after his win: “One of the themes of the film is how stereotypical a lot of depictions of Black life are, so if people can see that Black people are human beings, with all the same problems that human beings have, that’s one of the things I wanted to portray.”

That sentiment was echoed by Steven Yeun, one of the winners of Best Scripted Series for Beef (which also saw Ali Wong win Best Lead Performance In A Scripted Series). When the cast were asked backstage why he thinks Asian characters have enjoyed greater screen time in recent years, Yeun took the mic and shot back at the premise of the question. “If anything, with Beef we were just trying to demonstrate that humans are humans are humans,” said Yeun. “Maybe the things that separate us - that we should celebrate - are not there to remind us that we’re absolutely different. We’re actually so incredibly alike. We’re just trying to do human shit.”

Two of the biggest awards of the afternoon went to Celine Song, who won Best Director and Best Feature for Past Lives - not bad given the film represents her directorial film debut. Asked what advice she’d give aspiring directors hoping to emulate her impressive feat, Song paid tribute to the producers and actors who stood behind her. “I would say: Work with people that you love, like the people onstage here,” she said. “It comes down to having to see these people everyday on set, and to know that they have your back and you have theirs. At the end of the day it’s about who you surround yourself with, and I feel so lucky and happy because Past Lives couldn’t exist without these people here who pushed me every step of the way, and believed in us. We believed in this movie together, and that’s how Past Lives was able to exist.” Even in 2024, there are some things a computer just can’t replicate.