What happened to all the fun?
After 62 years -- 43 years since it was first telecast -- the Golden Globe Awards have been around long enough, in the narrow range of human memory, to seem to have existed forever. And if Hollywood still means anything in a thousand years (and if there is anyone around for them to mean something to), they will doubtless still be going strong, perhaps in whatever remains of “the star-filled International Ballroom of the Beverly Hilton Hotel.”
Broadcast Sunday night on NBC, the Globes have made their reputation -- as a television show, that is, apart from their worth as a marketing tool -- as a chance to see Hollywood folk let down their collective hair. It’s a “party,” not a ceremony. The presence of real alcohol at the tables fuels the hope that the stars will forget themselves and be real in a way they rarely, if ever, are in public view. On the surface anyway, it’s the closest Hollywood comes to creating the illusion that it’s still a place -- if it ever was -- where the stars all hang together. And yet it was for the most part a sedate, even dull affair.
That the Hollywood Foreign Press Assn., which gives out the trophies, is a small body -- some eight dozen strong -- and of sometimes questionable journalistic credentials, has been often remarked upon. (If only 96 voters, why not 36, or 16, or why not just me? Hollywood actors, come to my house, I will give you all awards, though I don’t promise much in the way of gift bags.) This is the body that once awarded a best newcomer award to Pia Zadora, a moment alluded to by former best newcomer Robin Williams in his acceptance of the Cecil B. DeMille Award for career achievement. Yet the massive audience for this event (half a billion people in 163 countries around the world, supposedly) cares no more about the mechanics behind it than they do for any other awards show. It’s all about the presentation.
The Golden Globes have opted for sleekness -- no production numbers, no lengthy film tributes, no scripted comedy between presenters -- which generally serves it well. After a terrible opening, featuring clips of arriving stars under a “Ray”-themed parody of “Hallelujah, I Love Her So” -- “Hallelujah, I Just Love the Globes” (“Halle Berry makes the cameras click / Jim Carrey is a favorite pick”), which indeed pointed out the wisdom of otherwise forgoing such details, things quickly got down to business on what Robin Williams later described as “the lovely ‘Star Trek: The Musical’ set.”
By eliminating all but big awards -- nothing to the “technical crafts” -- the broadcast is minute-for-minute proportionately more star-powered than the Oscars. It also lets the show run on time without seeming crowded. Though a few winners went rhapsodic, no one was played offstage, the awful shame of the Oscars. Not until the show had run one minute overtime, as “The Aviator” took home the night’s last award, was any winner required to say, “They’re telling me to wrap up here.”
In a brief break from the business at hand, former President Clinton appeared on a giant screen to pitch disaster relief. “The tsunami reminds us of the frailty of life,” he said. But only for a second, and then back to Hollywood.
It wasn’t until the beginning of hour three, with the appearance of Diane Keaton (without whom no awards broadcast is really complete) that the show briefly woke up. Keaton, presenting the award for best actor in a motion picture drama, as usual went her own way: “OK: Men. Men remain the mystery of my life, maybe that’s why, I don’t know, watching great actors is so damn compelling.... Watching them this year was ... like falling in love for the first time without the anxiety.” Then she began to shout the names of the nominees and the winner, Jamie Foxx. Foxx, who began with a little “What’d I Say,” kept the energy up. At a point of career transformation, he was burning with real excitement. “I wish I could take what I’m feeling right now and put it in the water system and we would all love each other a whole lot more.” Then he choked up thinking about his late grandmother.
Not long after Williams left the stage, having delivered his usual mix of attention-deficit comedy and heartfelt sentiment, fatigue was visibly setting in. Three hours is a long time to sit in formal wear under television lights, trying to remember not to pick your teeth, or yawn, or look anything but interested -- and, for the nominees, also disinterested.
