We watched the Independent Spirit awards the other night and were not exactly blown away by them, not just because of how predictable they were (come on, it’s not like we were expecting a whole lot of shocks at the Oscars last night, either), but also because, well, it didn’t seem very independent.

The truth is, we’ve had a certain opinion about what independent film really is for some time (perhaps you recall our four part series on it last fall), and the award ceremony really brought that home. We remember when the awards weren’t just a rehash of the Oscar nominations, and the prizes went to actors and films that the mainstream audience might not get to see. Sure, some of the nominees were from those films — to wit: Maria Bello in “Downloading Nancy,” which was in theaters last year for about eight minutes — but the winners were about as groundbreaking and different from what we saw last night as … well, nothing, because they were pretty much the same.

Jeff Bridges and Mo’Nique both won, Gabourey Sidibe and Woody Harrelson, as well, but only because Sandra Bullock, Meryl Streep and Christoph Waltz weren’t eligible. Lee Daniels took home the director prize and best movie for “Precious,” but only because, well, we know about “Avatar,” but Kathryn Bigelow and “The Hurt Locker” were nominated for a couple of awards last year (when the movie played Sundance, and was thus eligible a year before it was for the Oscars).

In past years, John Waters hosted the show (for four or five years straight, as we remember it), but this year it was Eddie Izzard. It doesn’t get much more indie than Waters, and these days, our boy Eddie has hit a pretty high level of mainstream fame. The fact that he clearly mailed it in the other night made the event seem like just another ho hum evening. In fact, the funniest thing that happened all night was Ben Stiller talking about how he’s not really an indie filmmaker anymore and hasn’t made an indie film since the late 90s, which is the last time there really was any independent film at all, which clearly hit a little too close to home for a good number of people in the audience. The thing is, though, Mr. Stiller hit the nail firmly on the head.

The point we’re making is that usually the show is interesting and thought provoking, but this was just kind of an inert and dressed down copy of a bigger award show, like maybe the one we saw last night at the Kodak Theater. One could actually take that a step further, which we shall now do, and say it’s analogous to what independent film has become. The smaller, more interesting movies that used to be so commonplace have been, for the most part, replaced by the same kind of lowest common denominator crowd-pleasing nonsense the studios put out. Don’t get us wrong, a good deal of that nonsense is quite entertaining, but in a world where the Academy has really gone out of its way to recognize the smaller and more interesting pieces that do see the light of day, do we even need this kind of smaller, equally self-congratulatory pap anymore?

Probably not, but that won’t stop anyone from continuing. We creative people, we live for that kind of stuff.