My favorite IFP Spirit Awards moment was two years ago, watching some young, dumb AMW whose agent thought she needed some indie cred (it turned out to be Brittnay Murphy, unrecognizable to me as the loozah Jersey girl in Clueless) introdue a nominated film. She lost the teleprompter, and froze.
After a panicky moment where her plea for help took the form of a narration to no one in particular (and everyone, of course) of her own predicament, they cut away. When they cut back, she'd decided to adlib, and rambled, as wacky as all get out. Quick cutaway again. When they returned to her a final time, she'd obviously been slapped out of it by someone and turned into a pod person. Close call! If Joe Roth had ever seen--or heard of--the IFP, Murphy would never have scored the lead in Little Black Book.
Now we learn from Richard Rushfield's NY Times report on the IFP's transformation into the practically-the-Oscars, that "presenters are encouraged to ignore the scripts provided them and fumble freely." Uh-huh.
