Golden Globe Night. Surprises, Upsets, and then... Catastrophe
Monday, January 7, 2019 at 1:20AM by Nathaniel R
It all started out so well. Beautiful stars were begowned bejewelled and even some of the men took fashion risks. Sandra Oh and Andy Samberg were quippy and fun without overdoing it (the magic of good but unobtrusive hosting). Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper were thrown at us early on to whet our appetite for big A Star is Born wins later on. Oh how young and naive we then were at 8 PM EST...
Idris Elba was charming as an obviously proud father to Miss Golden Globe. Ben Whishaw won for A Very British Scandal and highly praised Hugh Grant's wonderful performance (Hugh Grant has been doing his best work in years this decade but can't seem to win prizes or even be nominated for them all that often). Regina King, looking absolutely smashing in a tight blue gown, took Best Supporting Actress, ending the threat of Amy Adams steamrolling the televised shows for Vice. Reaction shots of Sandra Oh's parents always charmed throughout the show especially during her historic Best Actress in a Drama Series wins. The Globes even went way out of character in kind ways like honoring a final season instead of a debut season, or picking a seasoned actress instead of a pop star for once.
Two career tributes to Jeff Bridges and Carol Burnett were wonderful examples of watching Hollywood honor its own and watching movie and tv stars be FANS as the legends took the stage. It reminded us painfully of what we lost when Oscar demoted their Honorary Awards to a non-televised tradition.
So many highlights, really.
There were ill omens for the finale of this Golden Globes night early on, though, if we're being honest. Too many winners dully read lists of names (don't people realize that these shows are televised and the bulk of the audience doesn't know the names and doesn't care, unless you personalize it in some way. You will never ever ever make a clip reel of memorable acceptance speeches if what you're doing is reading names. Worst yet, nobody will even remember that you won!). Too few speeches felt personal or even political. Green Book won screenplay.
It was in the last half of the night that everything got a bit crazy, first with utter elation and then an awful mood crash. A hour or so into the show I was nursing a pounding tension headache from my chair, rolling a tennis ball underneath my neck to get a knot out. The headache suddenly went away and I honestly don't know if it was the tennis ball trick that cured me or Olivia Colman calling Emma Stone and Rachel Weisz "my bitches" to their obvious delight, and ours at home. The evening's joy peaked with a surprise win for Glenn Close in Best Actress. Generally pop stars acting is catnip to the Globes but they passed on Lady Gaga for the legendary thespian. (Surprise, the long coronation we kept hinting at can finally commence). If Close wins the Oscar, we'll all look back at Close's tearful inspiring speech here as the moment that clinched it for her; no boring list of names, just passion, message, specificity, and gratitude -- what a concept for an acceptance speech!
If we'd only known how bipolar the night would then become.
To close out the show both Best Picture prizes went to divisive movies. Curiously both are film which have been accused of having their true stories of queer musicians diluted or significantly fictionalized by the people doing the telling (former bandmates in the case of Bohemian Rhapsody and the family of an employee in the case of Green Book). Stranger still, neither are runaway successes in the usual areas that win you Best Picture prizes. Green Book wasn't the box office sleeper success people (including me) predicted it would be in theaters which generally fuels awards campaigns for "crowd pleasers" and it was roundly attacked for being reductive about its take on race relations. Bohemian Rhapsody was a huge hit, which never hurts, but it had terrible reviews (which usually means you're dead in the water for winning prizes) and a troubled production history. It also had a director no one dared name in their thank you speeches, due to repeated allegations that he's a sexual predator. The industry in the room, many wearing Time's Up pins or bracelets, applauded and presumably hit the after parties. A strangely sour finale, that, at the end of what is typically the most "fun" night of the awards season.
MORE GOLDEN GLOBE COVERAGE:
- How did Sandra Oh & Andy Samberg do?
- Globe-to-Oscar Stats
- Fashions Pt 1
- Fashions Pt 2
- Team Reactions: Fantasy Tables and Other Silliness
- The Presenters Ranked
- On Glenn Close's Acceptance Speech
- Dr Don Shirley vs Freddie Mercury
- Fun Globe Tweets
THE COMPLETE LIST OF WINNERS
MOTION PICTURES
Bill Murray announcing Green Book
Best Picture, Drama: "Bohemian Rhapsody"
Best Picture, Musical or Comedy: “Green Book”
Best Director: Alfonso Cuarón, “Roma”
Best Actress, Drama: Glenn Close, “The Wife”
Best Actor, Drama: Rami Malek, “Bohemian Rhapsody”
Best Actress, Musical or Comedy: Olivia Colman, “The Favourite”
Best Actor, Musical or Comedy: Christian Bale, “Vice”
Best Actress in a Supporting Role: Regina King, “If Beale Street Could Talk”
Best Actor in a Supporting Role: Mahershala Ali, “Green Book”
Best Screenplay, Motion Picture: Nick Vallelonga, Brian Currie and Peter Farrelly, “Green Book”
Best Motion Picture, Animated: “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse”
Best Motion Picture, Foreign Language: “Roma”
Best Original Score, Motion Picture: Justin Hurwitz, “First Man”
Best Original Song, Motion Picture: “Shallow” — “A Star Is Born”
TELEVISION
Best Television Series, Drama: “The Americans,” FX
Best Actress in a Series, Drama: Sandra Oh, “Killing Eve”
Best Actor in a Series, Drama: Richard Madden, “Bodyguard”
Best Series, Musical or Comedy: “The Kominsky Method,” Netflix
Best Actress in a Series, Musical or Comedy: Rachel Brosnahan, “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel”
Best Actor in a Series, Musical or Comedy: Michael Douglas, “The Kominsky Method”
Best Limited Series:“The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story,” FX
Best Actress in a Limited Series: Patricia Arquette, “Escape at Dannemora”
Best Actor in a Limited Series: Darren Criss, “The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story”
Best Actress in a Supporting Role: Patricia Clarkson, “Sharp Objects”
Best Actor in a Supporting Role: Ben Whishaw, “A Very English Scandal”
Reader Comments (72)
Sasha Stone, supposed feminist champion, spent approximately five months last year trying to persuade film twitter that Lady Bird was beloved because everyone was hot for Greta Gerwig. She's awful.
I was so happy for Wishaw, King, and Coleman! All well-deserved awards! I haven't seen A Star is Born (I know, I know) or Bohemian Rhapsody but the idea that a movie that villanizes and sanitizes queer characters won best drama is so upsetting. I am shocked it won. Seriously, what the hell??
Orrin, the problem with BOHEMIAN, in a nutshell, was how creepy it made casual sex and cruising in bars seem. It seemed like he was entering Dracula's castle like he was going into that gay bar looking for sex. This is often the litmus test. Can you convey that it's actually FUN to prowl for sex in big city gay public spaces, or do you make it seem seedy and creepy? If the latter, then the people engaging in it come across as tragic and self-hating.
I think bohemian Rhapsody is actually benefiting from the troubled set. Everyone expected it to be dud with audiences and critics after all the problems on set. They were right about the critics, but it ends up being a massive hit. Sometimes low expectations can really help a film succeed. I’m still holding out hope that all the talk about the HFPA loving BR more than most is true and it won’t make much of a splash at Oscars. I still don’t think Malek is gonna win on Oscar night
Orrin makes great points about Green Book. As with Driving Miss Daisy, this film gets a lot of criticism for what kind of film it is. Driving Miss Daisy contains two unbelievable performances, and is a terrific film. Is it better than Do the Right Thing? No, I've never had it in my own top 5 of 89, but it's lovely.
Green Book not as good but it's a shame that people hate it in the way that they do.
As far as Bohemian Rhapsody, I also agree that it has suffered unfairly, much like A Beautiful Mind. It also happened with The Hurricane. There os no basis for some of the kinds of criticism it has received.
Of course, a ton of people have written quite thoughtfully and objectively on it, and the near consensus is that it's really bad. Bad like worse than Bird Box bad. I cant speak on that, but its criticism is starkly different than the criticism Green Book is receiving.
In what world was Regina King's dress blue?
^^About as much as A Star Is Born being a musical lol.
Not a musical.
Would have been fascinating to see how the votes would have played out if Green Book was up against Black Panther, BlackKKlansman, and Beale Street. Did Green Book get placed in Comedy on purpose because there was no way it stood a chance of winning votes as a movie about race in that company? The ability to self-select genres is as much of a category fraud as the one that allows leads to be campaigned as supporting characters.
Dan H.-Thanks for the response. I think the problem with the film is that it wasn't particularly good either. I also feel like if you liked Queen, you wouldn't like this movie because you would have weighed it against what you know about the band and/or likely wouldn't have learned anything new. I knew nothing about the personalities themselves so I found it most illuminating. Also, I felt the running time compressed too much and not in a good way (a film like Argo, in contrast, compressed a real life event very well).
As for what you're saying about whether the film was properly respectful of the community, I feel like that's a minor con when considering the great pros of the film: It shows such a mutli-dimensional view of a rock star who succeeded as a queer character in a primarily straight domain, it showed the struggle for self-acceptance in a very romantic gay storyline.
I think if we amplify every person's minor quibble with every film that's edgey in subject matter, whether LGBT, POC, etc--they might also think what's the point of making these films (or at the very least listening to criticism about these films). Wouldn't you rather a film about Freddy Mercury be made with a gay director (however imperfect his private life may be) with the cooperation of his band mates for accuracy?
Is Linda Cardellini the surprise nomination this year? She got so much love / airtime last night.
Orrin - having the band members involved is two-sided (as it always is when people contribute to the telling of their own stories). It CAN lead to more accuracy OR it can lead to, let's just say, very convenient versions of what happened. How they want it to be remembered by others is not necessarily the way it was.
That's why I'm always dubious when the attitude toward a biopic is like "it has the cooperation of the family so that means it'll be great!" or "it doesn't have the cooperation of the family so it'll just be made-up fluff!" Both CAN be true, but not necessarily.
Orrin - they're not good is what's wrong with them.
The worst thing about Bohemian Rhapsody winning is that it's overshadowing how bullshit it is that Green Book also won. We've been laughing at the Academy for 30 years that they gave BP to Driving Miss Daisy the year they snubbed Do the Right Thing, now here we are poised to watch them do the same damn thing all over again but this time with something like a half dozen better movies from black filmmakers to overlook instead of just one.
Maybe you should stop laughing at Driving Miss Daisy?
Green Book is very good, and any criticism like the one above is like those reviews Yelp says are irrelevant. If it's irrelevant on Yelp then damn.
Samberg and Oh were pretty awful as hosts. That was no show highlight. Far too earnest and strained for this kind of loose setting. Samberg could have probably done what little he did by himself. Or Poehler and Rudolph who stole the show. Hell, even Jim Carrey did that in a "bit" without even trying.
George I am putting Cardellini in that 5th spot along with King, Adams, Weisz and Stone for my predictions, If she has a good publicist / pr person they need to work their behinds off in Hollywood this week after all the love she got during those acceptance speeches.
I'm happy for Close. She should have one more than one Oscar by now
Alrighty! Now let's get "Sunset Boulevard" musical greenlit! Don't really care about so-so "The Wife," but that speech and THREE standing ovations spoke volumes. Work the overdue narrative for your unfortunate Oscar snubs to lesser actresses and undisputed body of work, win the Oscar, and then jumpstart your career just like Streep and Lange did!!!
Close won the night. Colman and Malek were great, too.
Burnett = Timeless!!
Great night. Close, Colman, Malek, "Roma", Cuaron!
Even "Bohemian Rhapsody" beating those two horrible movies, "BlacKkKlansman" and "A Star is Born"! (Though "If Beale Street" should have won, obviously)
Globes are awesome!
Just out of curiosity. I don't know much about Freddy Mercury. Is it possible voters don't know either, regardless of his depiction in BR? Maybe they're voting on his status as a legend rather than how the story was written, specifically his character? Not everybody is overly familiar with Mercury's lifestyle or Queen's history, and these awards could be a tribute to him and the band in some way.
I know I could be wayyyyyyy off base here, but I thought I'd throw it out there anyway.
Hard to agree with the love for Beale Street, given the love story.