GOLDEN GLOBES ARE SPINNING OUT OF CONTROL
As Tom Cruise gives back three gongs and Scarlett Johansson leads calls for a boycott, we examine the diversity row that’s igniting Hollywood
FOR almost 80 years The Golden Globe Awards have played host to Hollywood’s favourite party of the year.The Oscars may have more gravitas, but it leaves the A-listers trapped in their seats, smiles frozen, tummies rumbling, for hours at a time. The Globes, on the other hand, have traditionally provided the stars with a chance to let their hair down at a fun-filled, table-hopping, alcohol-fuelled celebration of talent. Until now. The party is over, and the Globes may be tarnished beyond repair.
This week Tom Cruise returned his three Golden Globe awards on the same day American TV giant NBC announced it would not broadcast next year’s ceremony.
The moves come amid growing controversy over a lack of diversity at the Hollywood Foreign Press Association – the 87-strong group of foreign showbusiness journalists who vote on the awards. Astonishingly, the HFPA has no black members, despite it being an organisation of international journalists literally drawn from around the world.
THIS year’s Globes, held in February, snubbed several acclaimed black-led Oscar contenders for its top award, including Judas and the Black Messiah, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, and Da 5 Bloods.
Now a chorus of outrage has exploded from Hollywood stars who often feel pressured into attending the organisation’s junkets and private screenings if they want to be nominated.
The stars’ mounting indignation has shone a harsh spotlight on the dark underbelly beneath one of Hollywood’s most glittering events.
Scarlett Johansson led the growing calls for a boycott of the Globes, raging:
“It is time that we take a step back from the HFPA.” The Black Widow star also complained that some members of the group asked “sexist questions” and made remarks “that bordered on sexual harassment”.
Mark Ruffalo, who won a Golden Globe this year as best actor in a limited TV series for I Know This Much Is True, said: “I cannot feel proud or happy about being a recipient of this award.”
And Ava DuVernay, who directed civil rights drama Selma, railed against the HFPA’s “sexist, homophobic, racist practices of exclusion, harassment and bias”.
She added: “They think folks want that pitiful trophy so much that they’ll play ball. A mistake.”
Though the HFPA is a small group – its 87 members are dwarfed by the 7,000 actors, directors, screenwriters and movie veterans who vote for the Oscars – it has gained considerable power and influence in Hollywood. The Golden Globes has come to be the last stop in the annual trophy season before the Academy Awards.
But for years there have been mutterings about the lack of substance behind the glitter and glitz seen by the public on television. Hosting the awards in 2016, Ricky Gervais dismissed the Globes as “worthless,” calling the gold-plated statuette “a little bit of metal that some nice, old, confused journalists wanted to give you in person so they could meet you and have a selfie with you”.
Stars have criticised HFPA members for acting less like journalists and more like fans, begging for photos and autographs.
Several HFPA members are not even fulltime journalists.
British star and Globe winner Gary Oldman previously branded the group “90 nobodies” and called for a boycott of their “silly game”.
The HFPA has also been criticised for demanding special treatment for its members, who are feted by studios with free trips and luxury hotels in exotic overseas locales and invited to dinners and star-studded parties.
Netflix TV show Emily in Paris, which earned middling reviews, won two Globe nominations this year.
Coincidentally, its producers had flown HFPA members from Los Angeles to Paris for a junket, putting them up at the £1,000-a-night Peninsula hotel.
The Globes have had a checkered history since their launch in 1944.
Former HFPA president Henry Gris claimed in 1958 that “certain awards are being given more or less as favours,” and in 1968 NBC axed Globes broadcasts for five years after allegations stars were being blackmailed to attend – or risk the award for which they had been voted the winner being given to another actor.
Its award choices have also been bizarre at
‘They think folks want a pitiful trophy so much that they’ll play ball. A mistake’
times: Pia Zadora was named best new star in 1982 for her performance in Butterfly, a movie that was critically panned and also earned her the Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Actress.
Yet the Globes are spectacularly lucrative: the TV rights sell for £43million, and their influence on Oscars voters is priceless… or it was.
Streaming giant Netflix, which dominated this year’s Zoom-based pandemic-era Globes, winning 10 awards, has announced it will distance itself from the event indefinitely, a move that drew support from actress and producer Reese Witherspoon. Amazon Prime and WarnerMedia also vowed to stop working with the HFPA until genuine changes are enacted. A coalition of Hollywood’s leading publicists from more than 100 agencies, representing many of the biggest stars, also vowed to withhold access to their clients unless significant reforms are undertaken.
Yet the Globes’ lack of racial diversity is far from the only criticism of the group. It is also seen as a bit of a closed shop, determined to guard its privileges from outsiders.
Norwegian journalist Kjersti Flaa sued the HFPA last year claiming she had lost income by being denied membership, accusing the group of operating as a cartel. The case was dismissed, but quickly followed by a Los Angeles Times investigation, which exposed questionable practices within the association.
Not that the Globes are alone in being criticised. The Academy Awards has been attacked for its mostly white, male voters, and since 2016 has actively increased racial and sexual diversity among its voting ranks.
Aware of its crumbling reputation, in recent years the HFPA has turned to philanthropy, handing out more than £3.5million in grants lastyear. Faced with deafening calls for a boycott of the Globes, the HFPA – which has not had a black member for 20 years – last month went into crisis mode, and came up with a series of reforms.
IT PLANS to recruit new members of colour, increase its membership by 50 per cent, set up a hotline to report conduct violations, and hire a diversity chief. The beleaguered group also expelled its former president Phil Berk after he sent an email to members calling Black Lives Matter a “racist hate movement”.
Yet the proposed reforms were quickly slammed for being too little, too slow.
Tina Tchen, president of the anti-sexism organisation Time’s Up, called the changes “window-dressing platitudes,” saying the proposal “falls far short of what is required to transform the organisation”.
The coalition of Hollywood publicists responded: “We will continue to refrain from any HFPA sanctioned events.”
Netflix, Amazon and other Hollywood giants also scorned the proposed improvements as inadequate In a statement this week, NBC said: “We continue to believe that the HFPA is committed to meaningful reform. However, change of this magnitude takes time and work, and we feel strongly that the HFPA needs time to do it right. “As such, NBC will not air the 2022 Golden Globes. Assuming the organisation executes on its plan, we are hopeful we will be in a position to air the show in January 2023.”
HFPA president Ali Sar insists the HFPA is “working diligently” to implement changes, adding: “We truly believe that our plan will drive meaningful reform and inclusion.”
But then a large cardboard box arrived at the reception desk of the HFPA offices in West Hollywood, containing the three Golden Globes it had awarded to Tom Cruise: for Magnolia in 2000, Jerry Maguire in 1997, and, in 1990, for the hit Born on the Fourth of July.
Cruise, 58, has never won an Oscar, so when he returns the three most prestigious awards on his mantlepiece, you know the Golden Globes are in trouble, and its house of cards is crashing down.
Other stars could follow suit, and the HFPA reception desk could soon be awash with rejected golden trophies.
‘Change of this magnitude takes time and work. NBC will not air the 2022 Golden Globes’