Because of the pandemic, the stars are distant this year, and the live Golden Globe audience is being made up of selected frontline officials. We asked our reporter Cara Buckley, who previously covered the awards season, what the scene inside the Beverly Hilton is usually like. Here’s what she told us:
Being inside the Beverly Hilton’s ballroom is like going to the celebrity zoo.
Famous people sit at tables in the front, close to the stage, and people of diminishing importance are seated in the back. When the cameras are on, no one should walk around or stand in the front area, but during commercial breaks, it’s like a stampede – people from the inner tables basically gallop toward the stage area to flatter celebrities to members of production the team takes them out again when the show returns.
That’s part of the reason why Globes are more fun than Oscars – people can actually move around and fetch food and drink, instead of being dumped on Spanx and dressed and stuck in their seats for hours on end at the Oscars .
Globes have a reputation for being quite drunk – celebrities are greeted with glasses of champagne the moment they step on the red carpet – but that obscenity has diminished over the years as the television audience has grown: something like 18 million viewers watching live. But off camera and certainly in the afterparties, there is dancing, drinking, clandestine smoking and a sense of relief because the first big show of the awards season is in the rear view mirror.
Forget the Zoom shirt; welcome to the Zoom evening dress. Also the Zoom tux.
If the red carpet at the Golden Globe was not exactly the red carpet we were used to, nor was it the revelation of the stars-in-their-pajamas-pretending-to-be-like-us-who-looked-like-us that marked the celebrity- packaged for fundraising from the pandemic past. Instead, the first of the big 2021 award shows gave us the hitherto unimaginable … domestic red carpet.
It turns out that you can only keep the Hollywood fashion industrial complex low for a while. But this time, the sight of stars in their best outfits in their social isolation seemed less like a mercenary marketing ploy (although there is obviously still some of it) than a refusal to wallow and an understanding of the value of vicarious escapism.
As Laverne Cox said during the pre-show segment, while posing in what she called “a foot zoom” – to better show off her dress – “we should have a moment”. If not now, when? Then she and the rest of the nominees and presenters went on to provide one.
Elle Fanning smiled to show off a mint green Gucci charmeuse dress with elaborate diamond straps, used “to walk from the kitchen to the living room”, because – well, “why not?” Josh Charles showed off the lapels of the Loewe-meets-Edward Scissorhands tuxedo at his London hotel, swinging them steadily at the camera. Amanda Seyfried posed in a hallway wearing crimson Oscar de la Renta to the floor with a stole inlaid with fabric flowers around her shoulders.
And so the human desire to dress was the first winner of the night.
The Hollywood Foreign Press Association, the group that presents the Golden Globes, has long been seen as colorful, although not necessarily productive from a journalistic point of view. But this year, in the race for the awards, a recently opened court case, a review of financial records and a series of interviews have placed the organization under an unusual amount of external scrutiny.
Courting the favors of the group members – there are only 87 – has become a ritualized activity in Tinseltown. A Golden Globe nomination, and certainly a victory, is a gift of publicity that can boost careers, increase box office revenue and foreshadow an Oscar. Therefore, studios, production companies, strategists and advertisers feverishly pursue members’ votes.
Celebrities send handwritten greeting cards. The studios put them in five-star hotels. Champagne, expensive wine, signed art, cashmere blankets, slippers, record players, cakes, headphones and speakers arrived at your door, the recipients say.
In 2018, NBC agreed to pay $ 60 million a year for the broadcasting rights, about three times the previous license fee. In the fiscal year ended June 2019, the tax-exempt nonprofit received about $ 55 million in cash, donated about $ 5 million to various causes, and paid more than $ 3 million in salaries and other compensation. members and staff. (For being on the association’s TV Viewing Committee, for example, he paid members $ 3,465 a month, according to internal reports.)
A recent investigation by The Los Angeles Times found, among other things, that the group has no black members – a problem the group later recognized and vowed to remedy.
Part of the renewed attention came in the wake of a lawsuit filed by Kjersti Flaa, a Norwegian reporter who was denied admission to the group three times, who claimed that the association acted as a monopoly, monopolizing valuable interviews.
A judge dismissed most of the lawsuit filed against the association, but the plaintiff changed it and resubmitted it. Gregory Goeckner, the organization’s director of operations and general legal adviser, described the allegations in the process as “lewd”. And he said that the association only pays members when they do extra work.
Meanwhile, the Golden Globe continues.
“It is a great network television program and, as such, invaluable for film campaigns that hope to dispute Oscar nominations and victories,” said Tony Angellotti, a publicist who directs award campaigns, via e-mail. “And HFPA’s record for identifying worthy films is indisputable. That’s nothing. “
The Hollywood Foreign Press Association, which puts it at the Golden Globes, likes to award its trophies to films that already have a lot of Oscar momentum, but the group’s small size – about 90 eccentric journalists who vote – leaves all categories open to one. winning shock.
In addition, there is the fact that the HFPA is also under attack after a series of recent articles exposed dual negotiation practices and an island association. There are no black voters, and this may explain the absence of any of the acclaimed black-led ensembles like “Da 5 Bloods” and “One Night in Miami” in the nominations for best drama.
Will voters respond to controversies by choosing a diverse set of worthy winners or will the usual anarchy of the Globes prevail? We asked our prize specialist, Kyle Buchanan, and he said he expected a little bit of both. Here’s what else he predicted:
– “Borat Subsequent Moviefilm” could sweep the comedy categories, with Sacha Baron Cohen and Maria Bakalova, the film’s emerging star, receiving acting trophies, as well as the film itself taking home the best comedy film.
– Drama races are more difficult to call. “The Trial of the Chicago 7” and “Nomadland” will battle for the best film and drama, with the advantage going to the court tale. For best actress in a drama, Carey Mulligan (“Promising young woman”) can wrest victory over Frances McDormand (“Nomadland”).
– But when it comes to best actor in a drama, Chadwick Boseman, nominated for his final performance in “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom”, is as close to a block as there can be. He is also a favorite for the Oscars.
When the 78th annual Golden Globe is distributed on Sunday, it will be the first major award show of the season, arriving almost two months after we would normally discover the winner of the best film.
The ceremony begins at 8 pm East, 5 pm Pacific. The ceremony’s broadcast network, NBC, has a pre-show; with Jane Lynch and Susan Kelechi Watson as hosts, starts at 7 pm East, 4 pm Pacific.
On television, NBC is the official broadcaster. Online, if you have a cable login, you can watch it at NBC.com/live. Depending on where you live, there are also Hulu + Live TV, Sling TV, AT&T TV Now, YouTube TV or FuboTV, which require subscriptions, although many offer free trials.