Lawsuit, awards show shine spotlight on the Hollywood Foreign Press Association
The Hollywood Foreign Press Association has been widely viewed as colorful, generally harmless, perhaps venal and not necessarily journalistically productive. But because the group puts on the Golden Globes, courting its members — there are only 87 — has become a Tinseltown pursuit.
Celebrities send them handwritten holiday cards. Studios put them up at five-star hotels. Champagne, pricey wine, signed art, cashmere blankets, slippers, stereos, cakes, headphones and speakers are among the gifts that have arrived at their doorsteps, recipients say.
The suitors — studios, production companies, strategists and publicists — are all chasing the same thing: members’ votes. Every one counts. A Golden Globe nomination, and certainly a win, is a publicity boon that can boost careers, jack up box office earnings and foreshadow an Academy Award.
Boozy, irreverent and generally jolly good fun, the Globes are the third most-watched awards show after the Grammys and the much more staid Academy Awards. The show occupies a curious place in the entertainment industry. Mocking the Globes, and
their occasionally off-thewall nominations and picks, has become an annual blood sport in the Hollywood press, and the association’s members, many of whom work for obscure outlets, are regularly painted as doddering, out of touch and faintly corrupt.
“The Golden Globes are to the Oscars what Kim Kardashian is to Kate Middleton,” Ricky Gervais, who has hosted them multiple times, said at the awards ceremony in 2012. “Bit louder. Bit trashier. Bit drunker. And more easily bought, allegedly. Nothing’s been proved.”
But on the eve of Sunday’s show, a lawsuit and a series of interviews and financial records are providing a more unsparing look at the group, which does not publicly list its roster and admits very few applicants. The
group is also coming under increased scrutiny from news organizations, including The Los Angeles Times, which recently delved into its finances; one of its findings, that the group has no
Black members, made headlines.
The latest re-examination began last year when Kjersti Flaa, a Norwegian reporter who has thrice been denied admittance to the group, and whose romantic partner is an HFPA member, sued the organization, saying that it acted as a monopoly, hogging prized interviews even though relatively few of its members actively worked as journalists. Studios went along to ingratiate themselves, she said, because of the value of the members’ votes.
Members are territorial and loathe to welcome competitors, she alleged, lobbying each other to accept or deny entry to new applicants, with little consideration for journalistic merits.
A judge threw out the majority of Flaa’s suit, but she has recently amended it, and another journalist has joined her complaint.