Get Out wins big at Independent Spirit Awards

While tonight may see the great and the good gather in Hollywood for the 90^th Academy Awards ceremony (that’s the Oscars to you and me), it wasn’t the only awards show in town this weekend.

As is tradition, the night before the big ceremony the less formal Independent Spirit Awards took place to honouri films and the people who made them (with the bigger studio films no nominated), and it was quite a night for Get Out director Jordan Peele.

Nabbing the Best Director and Best Feature prizes for his debut solo feature, Peele is now in a decent position for the Oscars – for the last few years, the Independent Spirit Best Feature has gone on to win Best Picture – and his win was hugely popular with the audience.

Biggest applause of #spiritawards so far goes to @JordanPeele for directing #GetOut 👏 pic.twitter.com/6JqC8LFGFH

— Carly Mallenbaum (@ThatGirlCarly) March 4, 2018

“Our truths are the most powerful weapons we have against the lies in this world,” Peele said in his acceptance speech.

“We believed that because this is a movie that no one had seen before, we knew it had to exist.”

And while many of the other awards went to the usual suspects – Frances McDormand continued her run of Best Actor wins, accompanied by unbeatable supporting actors Sam Rockwell and Allison Janney in their own categories – there was also a bit of a twist in the Best Actor prize, which went to Call Me By Your Name’s Timothée Chalamet (who had co-star Armie Hammer on FaceTime during the ceremony).

Timothée Chalamet FaceTiming a shirtless Armie Hammer at the Indie Spirit Awards….the Oscars could never pic.twitter.com/PKS2Eabp8y

— Aaron Michael (@subsahaaron) March 3, 2018

While he’s also nominated for the Academy Award in the same category, this is Chalamet’s first big win in the awards season thus far. If he did win the Oscar, he’d be the youngest ever Best Actor recipient but if not, he did at least spent a night being teased for his name and dress sense.

.@RealChalamet cracks up at the #SpiritAwards while @mulaney jokes that his wife has a crush on him “and it hurts my feelings” pic.twitter.com/gFS2QycL5Z

— Carly Mallenbaum (@ThatGirlCarly) March 3, 2018

And if all that wasn’t enough, the night was made even greater with a special performance from Brooklyn Nine-Nine’s Andy Samberg, where he played The Breakfast Club’s Judd Nelson (yes, really) singing a special version of Don’t You Forget About Me.

Best part of the Spirit Awards so far: Andy Samberg performs “Don’t You Forget About Me” as Judd Nelson, changing lyrics to tell indie darlings not to go Hollywood on us. Prepare to LOL. pic.twitter.com/n0UsJY4hZo

— Scott Feinberg (@ScottFeinberg) March 3, 2018

In the song Samberg begged the guests like Saoirse Ronan, Greta Gerwig and Kumail Nanjiani to keep making independent film, dodging the lucrative offers of major studios and warning off superheroes from trying to make off with Ethan Hawke.

“Don’t you forget about us, Saoirse don’t leave, don’t put your face upon a bus,” he crooned. “Timothée Chalamet, if you stay indie, we’ll pronounce it the pretentious way. Jordan and Kumail don’t go and fall for the seductive dancin’ of the studios.”

He concluded: “The moral of the story is go make that f—in’ money, say ta ta, ta ta Greta, ta ta Greta, have fun directing Lady Godzilla!”

Beat THAT, Oscars. A full list of the winners can be read below.

The 90^th Academy Awards can be watched on Sky Cinema early tomorrow morning