No. 73.5 - The Golden Globes Debrief
A quick little debriefing of The Golden Globes - they're dumb and not important and I will continue to say that until I get invited.
The Highs and Lows of The 2024 Golden Globes
I always watch The Golden Globes. Either I know they’re coming and I make plans to see them or I totally forget about them and somehow end up watching them anyway. This year I knew they were coming, so it was a very intentional watch. I even live tweeted the entire show, starting with a tweet complaining about how bad the host was!
But instead of talking about every single beat the show had, like I did on Twitter, I figured I’d select some highlights from the show for this special mini-newsletter. Included are disappointments, surprises, and totally justified wins.
The New Categories
This year The Golden Globes introduced two new categories: Best Stand-Up Special and “Cinematic and Box-Office Achievement” (whatever that means.) These two categories were obviously introduced to try to court viewers who otherwise wouldn’t watch the show.
As ill advised as the decision may be to specifically award a film that made a bunch of money (isn’t that what the money is for?), it did allow The Hollywood Foreign Press to invite Taylor Swift to the show by nominating The Eras Tour. While tha almost certainly bolstered numbers, I don’t think Marvel fans tuned into the two hour broadcast in hopes to see a Marvel movie win one sympathy award. Alas, the category just gave Barbie another opportunity to win (which it did.) We will have to wait and see if they incurred the very real wrath of Taylor Swift fans.
The Best Stand-Up Special category was far more egregious as only served to highlight comedians far from the apex of their careers. No up-and-coming comedians were included and neither were popular comedians like John Mulaney. Instead, it was a coterie of established stand-up acts who are far past their prime making jokes about young people. Some more unsavory types were nominated too, but to my horror they awarded known transphobe Ricky Gervais the first ever Golden Globe for this category. Disgusting to award a man for being “edgy” by being cruel to a persecuted group. This win gave me a really legitimate moral reason to dislike The Globes. One conciliation is that Gervais was not there to accept the award, so we didn’t have to hear him speak.
Sweeps in Television!
Several categories were dominated by three television shows. One of these shows I have written excessively about my love for, another resulted in one of my favorite illustrations I made last year, and the third I have not watched, but I have included a guest article about.
Succession won big collecting awards all night and only lost one category it was nominated for (J Smith Cameron lost to to Elizabeth Debicki, the tallest girl in the world.) After winning Best Peformance for a Lead Actor (male and female), Supporting Actor in a Television Series, and Best Drama Television Series he Succession theme song played and reminded me just how much I love the show. Perhaps the biggest moment from the show’s victories was Kieran Culkin’s excited speech where he opened with “Oh, nightmare!”, thanked the three most important women in his life, and rubbed his victory in Pedro Pascal’s face (“Suck it Pedro! Mine!”)
Beef collected three awards, Best Male and Female Performance in a Limited Series and Best Limited Series, giving Steven Yuen, Ali Wong, and Lee Sun Jin the gold they deserved. While all their speeches were lovely, I have to mention that it seemed like they were all seated in the back and each victory was followed by a considerable amount of time where they scooted between tables to cross the entire auditorium.
The Bear tied with Beef’s three wins - earning gold in the Lead categories for Musical or Comedy Series and for Best Musical or Comedy Series. These wins really cemented the fact that, man, I really should watch that show. Each episode is only thirty minutes, so it’d be pretty quick. I could be watching that instead of 30 Rock again. One of my favorite moments of the night was Ayo Edebiri’s incredibly anxious acceptance speech where she thanked assistants for answering her “crazy emails” and apologized if she forgot anyone “unless you are mean or something.” Her giddiness was felt when The Bear won for Best Musical or Comedy Series too. Maybe I don’t need to watch The Bear and I should just go watch some interviews with Ayo.
C’mon Barbie…
Aside from its victory in “Cinematic and Box-Office Achievement” and Billy Eilish taking home the gold for Best Original Song, Barbie had a pretty disappointing night.
In contested categories where I thought it stood a chance, like Supporting Actor and Screenplay, it lost to an incredibly gracious and self-aware Robert Downey Jr (my pick to take home an Oscar for the same category) and, in a surprising upset, to the only foreign film nominated for screenplay, Anatomy of a Fall. Even in categories that I assumed the film would be a shoe-in for, like Best Motion Picture (Musical or Comedy) and Best Actress (Musical or Comedy), it lost to the very film I compared it to last issue, Poor Things. In fact, every award Poor Things lost ended up going to Barbie’s summer blockbuster counterpart, Oppenheimer. Oppenheimer had the most wins of the night, taking home five trophies, firmly establishing itself as the frontrunner.
At least Barbie had a better night than Bradley Cooper, who won zero awards for Maestro. When you write, direct, and star in a film, you have way more opportunities to lose.
Welcome Victories
Outside of the overwhelming sweeps and the big blockbusters duking it out, some other wins really got me excited.
Lily Gladstone was recognized for her work in Killers of the Flower Moon. Their performance, the only truly empathetic character is the real heart of the film. Gladstone’s speech was similarly touching as it emphasized the importance of preserving indigenous culture.
I wrote last year about my disappointment with the dazzling and artistic achievement that is Across the Spider-Verse. I have been prepared for this awards season to recognize this film even though I felt lukewarm about it. So imagine my surprise when The Boy and The Heron takes home Best Animated Feature Film and Spider-Verse goes home with nothing. Its enough to make me have hope that my favorite animated film of the year may get the recognition it deserves.
Takeaways
When it comes to Awards season, it helps to know who is voting for each award. The voting body for The Golden Globes is a little over three hundred journalists. Their views don’t necessarily align with that of, say, The Screen Actors Guild or ten thousand members of the Academy of Motion Picture Sciences. Still, this pretty much starts the road to The Oscars. After this are several Guild Awards and the incredibly prescient Indie Spirit Awards. One must take all these into account when trying to forecast the odds at the Academy Awards. While The Golden Globes don’t give us a perfect picture, they give us a foundation to build off of.
Currently, my crystal ball is telling me that Barbie’s chance as a Oscar frontrunner is disappearing and Oppenheimer’s is only being solidified. I would not be surprised if Oppenheimer continues to win major awards across all categories. If it has any real competition, I would suspect that Poor Things may be a major force this season. I think a lot of younger voters are going to lean more toward Poor Things for its social message regarding gender identity while older voters will trend toward Oppenheimer’s technical achievement. I also fear I may be underestimating Anatomy of a Fall’s potential considering its surprise upset in the screenwriting category.
On a more personal note, this awards show has revealed a glaring blind spot in my 2023 moviegoing: The Holdovers. I really ought to see it as both Da'Vine Joy Randolph and Paul Giamatti’s victories really emphasized the love audiences seem to have for the film.
Stray Observations
No illustrations this mini-issue! Sorry illustration lovers!
I want to emphasize again some of the great speeches from the night here.
Saving all my other Stray Observations for the next issue! Until then, hope you’ve been having a happy new year!