2021 Golden Globe Award appointments were announced earlier this month, and they were completely confused: Emily In Paris, a show objectively without imagination, received two nominations while critically acclaimed I can destroy you it was entirely snubbed. Three women were nominated in the category of Best Director (Regina King, Chloé Zhao, Emerald Fennell), but the Oscar candidates of the year were led by blacks like Da 5 Bloods, Black Bottom by Ma Rainey, and Judas and the Black Messiah, received no nominations for Best Picture. None of that crazyand any sense, and the Los Angeles Times discovered why: The Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA), the non-profit organization comprised of 87 critics responsible for nominations to the Globe –none of which is black–accepts “thousands of dollars in emoluments” from the studios it awards, creating a “culture of corruption”, according to a lawsuit filed by Norwegian entertainment journalist Kjersti Flaa.
In your investigation, the Times I found that the tax exempt nonprofit organizations had been directing some of their supposedly philanthropic funds to members – and that HFPA members accepted “payment from studios and producers for representing films and lobbying other HFPA members for Golden Globe nominations and awards for those films , “according to a lawsuit filed by former HFPA adviser Michael Russell. This behavior is why Emily In Paris is suspicious: the publication found that more than 30 HFPA members were flown to France to visit the set in 2019, and to be treated with a luxurious press meeting.
From the article:
While there, Paramount Network offered the group a two-night stay at the five-star Peninsula Paris hotel, where rooms currently cost about $ 1,400 a night, and a press conference and lunch at the Musée des Arts Forains, a private museum filled with fun rides dating from 1850 where the show was filmed.
“They treated us like kings and queens,” said one member who attended the event, who also had the presence of other media outside the HFPA. (A freelance contributor to The Times also visited the show’s set and interviewed its creator, Darren Star.)
… An HFPA member says the nod to the show’s best series points to a broader credibility issue for the group. “There was a real reaction and with good reason – that program does not belong to any list of the best of 2020,” said this member, who did not attend the event. “It is an example of why many of us say that we need to change. If we keep doing this, we invite criticism and scorn ”.
Paramount and Netflix have yet to comment. Is this for sure some … promotional tactic?
Read the full report from Los Angeles Times on here.