New York, December 1 – Maria Full of Grace and Sideways were among the winners at the Independent Film Project’s Gotham Awards on Wednesday. This celebration of indie film brought in some mainstream Hollywood types like Jim Carrey, Mark Wahlberg and Kevin Bacon. Dates were hard to come by: Carrey came alone, his Spotless Mind costar Kate Winslet disappointingly cancelled; Wahlberg brought his indie film director, I Heart Huckabees’ David O. Russell; and Mario Badass Van Peebles brought his father, Melvin. Some folks were luckier; Ethan Hawke’s date was the luminous Julie Delpy, and Kevin Bacon, who seemed to have survived a severe hair product attack, brought his wife, Kyra Sedgwick. Filmmaker awardee Michael Moore couldn’t be there, but accepted by satellite from “the blue state of Michigan, where we are very blue”.

Even bluer were the unlimited Bombay Sapphire drinks the fifty-or-so handpicked “fans” slurped while shrieking whenever a car pulled up, in order to make the live broadcast on IFC channel look exciting. Of course, preselecting the seemingly random fans also avoided having really ugly people on camera. Where did they get these "fans"? One graciously explained, “Three quarters are fans recruited from TRL. The rest work at TRL.” We suspect the MTVers were interns, and tried to find out if they were paid for the evening, but it seems that standing in a Chelsea Piers parking lot, drinking, screaming and groping for autographs to hawk on e-Bay was reward enough.