The Golden Globes have nothing to do with Amy Adams' cleavage -- or anything else, truth be told

By Steve Evans

Three days later and the entertainment media is still babbling about the Golden Globes ceremony. Yawn.

The Golden Globes are a waste of time, unless you’re up for an award and want a complimentary night on the town. Nominees go to the ceremony because there’s an open bar and free dinner involved, and they get their collective asses kissed, which feeds those egos. The steady flow of liquor traditionally translates into much amusement; the Internet is rife with videos of Jack Nicholson and Elizabeth Taylor getting roaring drunk and having themselves a big time during the Golden Globes festivities. The Globes might afford some networking/schmoozing opportunities, as well, for stars looking for their next project.

Through inspired PR and relentless self-aggrandizement, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, which chooses Golden Globe winners, has built itself into a perception of worth that simply belies the reality. I doubt if many people watching the awards know the first thing about the organization behind them.

It is this: the HFPA consists of less than 90 members who vote on these awards. They are foreign journalists who live in Southern California and write about the film industry for entertainment media in the far-flung corners of the world. That’s right, 90 people whose combined worldwide readership, by the way, is smaller than the population of the United States. At least 20 percent smaller. This information is readily available on the HFPA website. It doesn't take much digging to realize the Golden Globes are the most over-inflated event of movie awards season.

Yes, fewer than 90 people. That’s hardly a reliable barometer of artistic merit.

For a simple comparison, there are 6,000 members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which of course awards the Oscars in March.

Aside from the occasional entertainment of watching Hollywood royalty get silly drunk at the Golden Globes ceremony, I cannot imagine any intelligent person giving a damn about this bloated event.

I mention all this solely because it’s boring to see the fuss being made over an organization hardly deserving of the attention.

The fun-loving hipsters at HitFix have compiled a video slide-show of great drunken moments at the Golden Globes through the years, good for a free laff.

Cinema Uprising copyright © 2014 by Steve Evans. All rights reserved.

Backstage at the Golden Globes

By Steve Evans

Every year Hollywood royalty strut the red carpet outside the Beverly Hilton Hotel, where the Hollywood Foreign Press Association awards the Golden Gobes.

The HFPA does this in January to beat the Academy Awards in February, since passing out Golden Globes after the Oscars would be even more irrelevant than passing them out at all.

It's a little-known fact that a mere 90 people are voting members of the HFPA. They would have you believe that this minuscule gathering of opinion is a barometer of quality in the cinema and on television, since they also dish out TV awards each year. In reality, the awards ceremony gives HFPA members an opportunity to rub elbows with the likes of Leonardo DiCaprio and the Kardashian sisters, whose names I cannot be bothered to look up right now. HFPA members take lots of pictures posing with celebrities and send these digital images back to their respective publications in some 55 nations, where the magazines and newspapers publish them to a fawning audience. This annual activity also helps mollify the editors and publishers at the home office, who might otherwise grouse about the high cost of their correspondents living large in L.A.

They also distribute some philanthropy as a result of revenues generated from televising the show, “more than $12 million in the past seventeen years to entertainment-related charities, as well as funding scholarships and other programs for future film and television professionals,” according to the HFPA website.

But the principal reason so many stars turn out for the event – and one of the main reasons you may want to watch it – is the open bar that flows continuously from well before the ceremony to some indeterminate time thereafter. A crowded ballroom of celebrities drinking heavily makes things a bit loose and funky. You may find it amusing. The Academy Awards are a dry affair, figuratively and literally, but at the Golden Globes movie and TV stars get down.

Here’s a clip of Liz Taylor high as a monkey and presenting the Golden Globe (or in her words, “the Golden Glow”) for Best Drama in 2000:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGT-NUBNTZc

Comedian Ricky Gervais returns this year to host the Globes. He’s one of the funniest comics working today, but the herpity-derp expressions on the drunken faces of his targets will provide far more hilarity come show time. Check those reaction shots when Gervais gets rolling. He was so acerbic last year, he wasn't invited back -- until the producers saw the Nielsen ratings.

So that is the “why” behind the Golden Globes. As for the when, you can watch the awards Jan. 15 on NBC. Show starts at 8 p.m. Eastern.

Above all, keep an eye on Jack Nicholson.

Cinema Uprising © 2012 by Steve Evans. All rights reserved.