03/23/2001

By Chris Vognar / The Dallas Morning News

It was just four years ago that all the Oscar buzz revolved around the blurring line between Hollywood and independent films. Four of 1996's five best-picture nominees – Fargo, Secrets & Lies, Shine and the eventual winner, The English Patient – were considered indie productions. The only major victory for a big Hollywood movie was Cuba's Gooding's "show me the money'' turn in Jerry Maguire.

The next three years told a slightly different story, though that pesky line remained blurry. 1997's mega-budget Titanic sank the competition just one year after the alleged year of the little guy. 1998's winner, Shakespeare in Love, was technically an indie – but it was only as small as Miramax's Oscar campaign budget. Last year, American Beauty belonged to that netherworld of DreamWorks, an anomalous Hollywood player in that an actual artist calls many of the shots.

Which brings us to this year's race, in which that dividing line continues to shift in and out of focus.

One side of the equation is clear enough: A big night for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon would be a high-flying triumph for the indie world, especially given the scope of its two biggest competitors, Gladiator and Traffic. The product of Good Machine, a stalwart, 10-year-old independent production company based in New York, it would also be the first foreign-language film to win the best-picture award. With its record-setting grosses, a Directors Guild award for Ang Lee and 10 Oscar nominations, don't count it out.

The other best indie bet is probably Kenneth Lonergan's original screenplay for You Can Count On Me, whose best actress nominee, Laura Linney, will likely be crushed by the Julia Roberts machine. Most discussion of this film focuses on Lonergan and Linney (and the snubbed Mark Ruffalo), and it's reasonable to expect honors for the one with more than a snowball's chance in Los Angeles.

Other contenders include Pollock's Marcia Gay Harden (supporting actress) and Ed Harris (actor), Billy Elliot director Stephen Daldry (see snowball above), and Before Night Falls actor Javier Bardem (deserving but not likely to win).

Then there's the guy who best represents the malleability of indie-Hollywood barriers. A few years ago, the idea of Steven Soderbergh grabbing double Oscar nominations seemed as likely as a re-release of the director's under-appreciated Kafka. He could certainly dabble in Hollywood, as evidenced by his stylish Elmore Leonard adaptation, Out of Sight. But 1999's The Limey was about as Hollywood as Last Year at Marienbad, and there was little reason to expect his leap to the big time (other than his iconoclastic versatility, which is rarely an industry asset).

But here he is, the academy's Golden Boy, battling himself for the big kahuna. Rather than stick to small budgets and low visibility, he decided to try playing with the big boys. He's now a Hollywood filmmaker in the vein of Francis Ford Coppola, a guy whose very presence immediately makes the industry less vapid.

And so a Soderbergh win, for either Traffic or Erin Brockovich, would seem to be a victory for everyone. For Hollywood, it would mean a shot of artistic integrity that the suits and focus groups might have trouble ignoring. For the independent world, it would mean high honors for a favorite son, whose growing clout could easily lead to green lights for smaller, quirkier productions in the future. Just imagine a major studio opening up the bank vaults for Schizopolis 2: The Madness Continues.

In other words, don't expect that little line in the sand to get any clearer. Especially not with a twice-nominated maverick hard at work kicking it into the ocean.