(Filed: 17/01/2004) 
 

How the world warmed to the Globes

I have marked my ballot, sealed it in an envelope and dropped it in a Federal Express collection box for delivery to Ernst and Young, the Los Angeles accountants who tally the votes for the Golden Globe awards. Whether or not my choices coincide with those of my 89 fellow voters in the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, I won't know until the winners are announced at the awards ceremony on January 25.

The Golden Globes evening has long been known as a giant party: a star-filled, champagne and cocktail-fuelled orgy of back-patting and table-hopping where the world's leading actors, actresses and directors relish the informality of an event where there is always a feeling that anything can happen. In previous years Jack Nicholson mooned the audience, Renée Zellweger was in the ladies' room when she should have been picking up her Golden Globe and Ving Rhames insisted on passing his trophy on to Jack Lemmon because, he said, he was more deserving of it.

The star turnout far surpasses that for the Oscars, partly because of its reputation as a zany, let-your-hair-down evening and partly because the Globes ceremony hands out more awards – there are separate categories for best drama and best comedy or musical – and embraces television, too.

But in recent years the Globes have also come to be viewed as a vital part of the film industry, second in importance only to the Oscars and having a great impact on a film's financial success.

As Miramax co-chairman Harvey Weinstein says: "A successful awards season can mean the difference between a movie grossing $5 million and grossing $20 million."

Veteran publicist Tony Angellotti believes the Golden Globes have become a major force over the past decade. "The Golden Globes are one big, huge promotion for the motion picture industry," he said. "Also, the Globes act as a benchmark and launching pad for the awards season and bring to the attention of a whole lot of people who vote for other awards films that they did not see."

In the past the Globes have proved to be a fairly reliable forecaster for the Oscars, and only once in the past decade has there been a best picture Globe winner that did not win the Oscar: 1996, when Babe and Sense and Sensibility won Golden Globes but Braveheart took home the Oscar.

The ceremony will be of particular significance this year because, due to a calendar shuffle, the Globes will be handed out only two days before the Oscar nominations are announced and will certainly influence the 6,000 Academy voters' final choices.

This year's Golden Globes ceremony will be the 61st hosted by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, a group of journalists – of which, for the past seven years I have been one – who were fortunate that their predecessors who founded the organisation doggedly persevered with the Globes despite setbacks, derision and accusations of corruption.

Although everybody now knows of the Golden Globes, not many are familiar with the background and the organisation behind it. There is no mystery. The Hollywood Foreign Press Association was founded in the early 1940s by a group of Los Angeles-based foreign journalists in an attempt to gain more clout with the studios and make it easier to get access to stars. Today it has 90 members from 55 countries, most of whom are working journalists, with the odd retired schoolteacher and engineer left over from the days when conditions of entry were not so strict. Now only bona fide journalists are admitted.

In the early years of the Golden Globes, few nominees bothered to attend the ceremony and the association had to fend off charges of "selling" Globes to those who provided the best gifts or laid on the best parties. The association gained a reputation as being freeloaders who, as one journalist put it, "would sell their votes for a vodka and tonic and cross the Alps for a hot dog".

Although it happened more than 20 years ago, the association is still dogged by the Pia Zadora fiasco, when she was voted most promising newcomer after members had been flown to Las Vegas and wined and dined by her casino-owner husband Meshulam Riklis. And it was rumoured to be no coincidence that Sharon Stone won the best actress award in 1995 for Casino shortly after she sent every member of the association an expensive money clip and a hand-written note.

But since NBC began televising the Globes in 1996, the rules have tightened up. Members must now sign an agreement that they will not receive valuable gifts, and, four years ago when Sharon Stone drew attention to her performance in The Muse by sending everyone a £250 watch, the gifts were immediately returned.

Even invitations to parties are strictly vetted, and if they are seen to be aimed at influencing Golden Globe votes, they are declined.

To avoid any accusations of collusion or corruption, voting is done under the aegis of Ernst and Young, which this year mailed out the nomination ballots to every member on December 5. 

Each member listed his or her top five nominees in every category and the ballots were then returned by Ernst and Young by December 15. The nominees were announced on December 18 to a packed ballroom at the Beverly Hilton Hotel. There were no big surprises this year apart from welcome recognition for The Office and Ricky Gervais and a slew of nominations for the turgid two-part television series Angels in America.

During the year, like all entertainment journalists, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association members are deluged with T-shirts, baseball caps and promotional items which usually end up in car boot sales or as gifts to the children of friends; but the real benefit of being a Golden Globe voter comes from the willingness with which studios and publicists offer up their stars for interviews.

In the weeks leading up to the nominations, stars who would never be available the rest of the year are suddenly sitting down for interviews to promote their new film, and screenings of the films become lavish affairs. In early December Christmas cards started arriving from Sophia Loren, Rob Lowe and other celebrities I had never met who had a film or television show eligible for Globe consideration.

This year some of us received telephone calls from Harvey Weinstein who was not, he assured us, promoting his own films but was calling on behalf of his brother Bob's production Bad Santa. The film was not nominated.

Some filmmakers are more subtle. Writer-director Richard Curtis, whose Love Actually has received two nominations – for best comedy and best screenplay – adopted the reverse strategy of praising the merits of another. In a letter to every member of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, he thanked them for the nominations and took a jab at his British critics. "Over here in England I've had some sternly cynical reviews and therefore got very used to the idea that this film was for crowds not critics," he wrote.

He added in a PS: "Also so thrilled about Ricky Gervais and The Office – if it's a choice between him and me on the night, definitely pick him – he'll make a much funnier speech." For that, both Curtis and Gervais got my vote.