There is no way to talk about the Golden Globes without becoming smaller. If you take it seriously, you’re a fool. If you’re outraged about it, you’re a humorless buffoon. If you’re outraged about the outrage then . . . what the hell are you doing with your life?Get a real hobby, or something.
But here we are. It’s not quite the elephant in the room that you can’t avoid talking about; it’s more like the bonkers, seven-level, crystal, cantilevered chocolate fountain in the foyer that somehow is incredibly wrong but at the same time fits perfectly and somehow brings together the entire decor.
From the beginning here, the LAT produced an authoritative piece on the HFPA and its associated shenanigans that even had connoisseurs of HFPA shenanigans—like the Ankler team—on the edge of their seats.
So some takeaways:
• It seems like once a generation we get these HFPA takedowns and in between, you think it doesn’t even need to be said that they are running a preposterous racket because it’s so glaringly obvious. But memories are short, or in 21st Century Hollywood’s case, memories are nonexistent, so the obvious needs to be spelled out, constantly.
• In between exposés, the HFPA keeps pumping along. After the initial round of tsk-tsking, they shrug it off, straighten the tiaras, and head right back out down to Hancock Park for egg nog and yuletide singalongs at Ted’s.
• The fact that they can shrug these off without so much as an “our bad” and keep their lucrative position in the awards firmament shows how much this awards party train has become entrenched as part of the landscape and there’s a giant industry, which includes the entire entertainment journalism trade press, devoted to keeping things humming smoothly.
• If you doubt it, check out the Twitter feeds of your favorite awards circuit reporter after the LAT piece came out and freshen up your definition of “muted response.” This from a group of people who generally spend a week in hyperventilating Tweets every time a best sound design contender swallows a spring roll in the Chateau lobby. (Not that sound designers are actually allowed into the Chateau lobby.)
• A notable exception that proves the rule: In an apparent attempt to single-handedly disprove the natural laws of irony, Variety‘s reinstated editor Claudia Eller ran an editorial entitled, “Why the Golden Globes Must Clean Up Its Act”. . . in Variety‘s special Golden Globe issue. The rest of which was, of course, devoted to nothing but how out of control and shameless this spectacle is.
But as she herself says:
Despite the HFPA’s ongoing transgressions, the Globes remain a vitally important cog in Hollywood’s awards race and are considered a bellwether of the Oscars.
A vital cog and an Oscar bellwether! We can’t just turn our back on that now, can we?
• The most shocking finding in the LAT piece: the news that the HFPA does not have a single Black member. Given who they are, you would’ve assumed that was the case until relatively recently, but you also, if you thought about it, would’ve assumed that any sane organization very very in the public eye, after the convulsions of the past few years, if they didn’t have one Black member, would hop to it to correct that. Tout suite. But they apparently didn’t. Considering why they would just shrug off that basic responsibility, one has to think that, given who they are, it’s entirely possible that the entire membership of the HFPA has no idea that the Black Lives Matter movement ever happened.
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Ankler Recommenderer
This week the Ankler is proud to recommend for your reading delights a new book which is not only a terrific, enthralling tale but written by a very close member of the Ankler’s very own family, Nicole LaPorte.
Guilty Admissions tells the story of the Varsity Blues/Rick Singer scandal, which continues to amaze, with fascinating details about how the con blossomed and took hold here in our community. But the book goes beyond just the crime to paint a jaw-dropping picture of the state of the private school-to-college hustle, showing in vivid detail how seriously off the rails the values and priorities have become here, creating a world that was waiting for a con man to come along. And unless things change (they haven’t yet), he won’t be the last.
Most of all it’s a beautifully written, captivating story that you won’t be able to put down. Do yourself a favor and be an informed citizen of our community at the same time and order it today.
The Ankler’s Got People Talking!!
Read us in the Vanity Fair Hollywood issue on Warners and Windows!
In the Washington Post, calling for Oscar’s cancellation!
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