Buzzmeter: The Golden Globes Go Even More Niche … Will It Matter?

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In the old days of the Golden Globes, before they were hauled in front of the Oyer in Terminer and sentenced to hang in the town square, there was a corrupt little game everyone played. The Globes voters were given lavish gifts and treated like royalty among celebrities and studios. There was big money involved because people actually watched the show. The prestige of winning an award could set up a contender to go all the way—except when they didn’t.

There was a downside to winning a Globe back then. It could sometimes mean the industry went the other way. They weren’t exactly respected. It was a drunk and sloppy show but it was unique in the awards game. We could always rely on weird things to happen at the Globes. Nothing really that weird happened last night. I guess unless you count the surprise win of Fernanda Torres in Best Actress (though our NextGen Oscarwatcher Scott Kernen did predict it). No, to me the show looked like every other award show, and was in keeping with the mandated conformity Hollywood now lives by. Not the Globes of old, that’s for sure. Bring back Ricky Gervais.

But winning the Globe could often be the kiss of death for directors, at least it was in the old days. The Social Network won big at the Globes but was swept away by The King’s Speech (cough cough). Avatar won big, and then The Hurt Locker dominated. It was kind of a thing for a while. The last of these before the Oyer in Terminer was 1917, which won the Globe, the PGA, and the DGA before then losing to Parasite at SAG and the Oscars.

It’s hard to believe we’ve lived through what we’ve just lived through, but we did live through it, and most of us came out unscathed. I myself was brought before the Oyer in Terminer and banished by most of Hollywood for the same weird reason. They accused me of the greatest sin known to Hollywood — that there are racists, racists everywhere. So think of me like Rebecca Nurse in Salem, the old woman of around 70 years old named a Visible Saint by the Church (I was the first “woke” blogger, after all), known throughout the land as a devout woman who raised nearly a dozen children. All it took was one screeching girl to accuse her, and eventually, she too would hang in front of the village that condemned her. People do weird things when their utopia is threatened.

Lucky for the Golden Globes, they confessed as a witch to live, and last night, they probably had what the film community wanted – they were woke and self-righteous, and the stars all returned to the party. That was the problem, as readers of this site will remember. No stars would show up. I shamed them for it, but who will listen to an old witch past her sell-by date?

And that’s really the key to this puzzle. If you are young enough not to remember the old days, you’re more accepting of how things have become. For instance, the Oscar Expert and the Brother Bro aren’t going to complain about last night’s show, I don’t think. Nor will anyone sucked inside the Penske machine (Variety, Hollywood Reporter, Deadline, Indiewire, Rolling Stone, Gold Derby), and probably not Kyle Buchanan at the New York Times or anyone at Vanity Fair, you know, the drill. They’re all on the payroll of the studios, just like I used to be. But also, they are happy to conform and go with the flow.

In other words, after I’m gone there won’t be many, if any, people around to criticize the industry in desperate need of criticism. Either way, who cares, right? Let’s get on with the show.

Let’s start with this: Do the Globes matter? They matter inside the tiny world of Oscar watching, on Film Twitter, to Netflix and other streamers who seek only to bring in subscribers, to publicists, and to streaming platforms seeking to class themselves up to draw in and hold subscribers. They also like having major filmmakers work on their platforms. It’s a win-win.

Do they matter to the broader country and world? Only in so much as they help filmmakers make movies. That’s pretty much it. In Hollywood, it all starts to feel like the card game in Sunset Boulevard. It exists as a relic, a symbolic ritual but they’ve become completely disconnected to the rest of the country and world. Wicked losing to Emilia Perez is a clear illustration that they DO NOT GIVE A DAMN. And they don’t have to. Money train keeps a-rolling and they don’t have to care about ratings anymore because they stream.

If there is a ratings bump at all it would be because Timothee Chalamet was there with Kylie Jenner. And even Timothee Chalamet didn’t win. These people exist way up their backsides, in a tiny world that isn’t connected to, nor cares about, all of us out here in the dark. And that’s something we’re going to either accept….or not.

Chalamet and Jenner went viral, as did the Demi Moore speech.

Speaking of Demi Moore, there is a good chance she’s winning the Oscar now. I had it down to Cynthia Erivo/Demi Moore and Mikey Madison, but now, after that speech, Moore is the frontrunner to win. She’ll win at SAG, and she’ll win at the Oscars. Why? Because people want to feel that high again and feel it throughout the season.

Both The Brutalist and Emilia Perez won big, and both films have an “Oscar story.” The Brutalist because it took seven years to make and because Brady Corbet refused to compromise his artistic vision. The best moment of the night was when his daughter cried in the audience. Later, Corbet could be seen taking a picture with her and Selena Gomez. It was so cute and heartwarming that it could carry this film throughout the season. I’m not kidding.

We’ll get to what this means for the Oscars in a minute, but just to close the show itself, it looked like any awards show now. It was similar to the Critics Choice with Chelsea Handler hosting. Nikki Glazer did as well as one could expect in an industry crippled by fear and ruled by mass hysteria. Her jokes were funny yet inoffensive. She was … fine. And because of that, she was over-praised on Twitter. In this industry, fine is preferable to terrible awful.

They wanted and needed something acceptable enough to keep the money train rolling down the tracks, and they achieved that goal. What they can hope for now is absolution for their sins of wealth and privilege. They got that too in the form of transgender rights, the last social justice issue that allows them to feel like they are changing the world.

We have no idea how much money was funneled from Netflix to Penske Media and no one will ever tell that story. But just so we’re clear:

Here is Emilia Perez compared to the two films it beat.

In the Drama category, I can’t criticize The Brutalist’s win. It’s a worthy winner on ambition alone. I do not think it’s a complete film, and I think winning an award now is probably not going to be good for Brady Corbet’s career. But it’s hard to argue. In my view, Conclave is the more accomplished and complete film, but considering what Corbet did, it’s hard not to be impressed.

This was my favorite moment of the night:

I mostly watched with the mute button on, to tell you the truth. There is only so much a person can take. I’ll be curious to see how much these Globes impact the Oscars, and that’s about as far as my interest extends. Now that Jay Penske owns them, it is a little hard to get excited about a snake eating its own tail. It is interesting to watch up to a point. You already know how it ends. And how it ends is that none of it matters. Not in a dramatic way, not in a “ended with a bang” or even a whimper way. Just no one cares except the people who do. The fight for relevance is over. Streaming has arrived like a Deus Ex Machina and all will be well in La La Land.

So how will this mess influence the Oscars? It’s hard to say. We only have last year to go on since that was the first time we watched the Penske machine flex its wings at the Globes, with 300 new members and “bylaws” changed, etc. Oppenheimer won everything. How did the other winners fare? Emma Stone won both, Cillian Murphy won both, Da’Vine Joy Randolph won both and Robert Downey, Jr. won both. So it was as close a match as we’ve ever seen, but then again, last year was an unusual year of consolidated opinions.

Is this the kind of year? I don’t think so. I imagine the Brutalists will struggle with the larger numbers of voters.

Globes — 300 or so.
DGA – 16,000 or so.
PGA/Oscar – 8,000 or so.
SAG – 150,000 or so.

I saw someone on Twitter draw the comparison between this year and the year Chicago won but was challenged by The Pianist. But I hate to be the bearer of bad news, except the same publicist on Chicago (Lisa Taback, who worked closely with and for Harvey Weinstein) and Emilia Perez, and that they are both musicals, that’s where the comparison ends.

But it is interesting to note that Adrien Brody is also in The Brutalist, as he was for The Pianist. There are interesting comparisons to make on that score. I will say The Brutalist is much harder to understand than The Pianist, and Chicago is 1,000 more entertaining than Emilia Perez.

But who knows. Perhaps that’s an apt comparison.

I could mount a similar comparison, putting Adrien Brody in the place of Daniel Day-Lewis for Gangs of New York. Remember, Brody won in the last minute but didn’t win the Globe. It was split between Day-Lewis and Jack Nicholson for About Schmidt.

What I realized about that last night was that none of it matters anymore. It has now completely jumped the shark. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. Think about Quiz Show when they talk about a crime without victims. It doesn’t matter if movies in movie theaters are over or if the public never sees them. Speaking of Ralph Fiennes, speaking of good movies. Speaking of movies in movie theaters. Speaking of back when the Oscars has some sort of relevance in the lives of all of us.

It will never be what it was once. But if you scroll Twitter or read the coverage and commentary all over the web today you will see how little any of it matters. They’re all content with how it is now. It is only us old timers who remember the old days when movies really did matter, and they mattered because of what they said to all of us. Now, they are niche, a tiny little world like the Tonys. That’s it. It’s done. Netflix won.

We’ll hear from SAG and DGA on Wednesday, which might completely shift the race. We’ll be putting out our predictions soon for both.

But for now, I’ll just say that I don’t plan to consider these Globes winners all that definitive until I hear from SAG. But just for the record, I think that the frontrunners are:

Best Picture — still wide open, no frontrunner
Best Actor — Adrien Brody, The Brutalist, but Ralph Fiennes for Conclave still in it (Timothee probably doesn’t win now)
Best Actress — Demi Moore, The Substance
Supporting Actress — Zoe Saldana, Emilia Perez
Supporting Actor — Kieran Culkin, A Real Pain
Original Screenplay — open
Adapted Screenplay — Conclave
Int Feature: Emilia Perez
Animated: Open (but I love that Flow won)

Until next time, folks. Just remember, it’s all over but the shouting.