I didn't have a burning interest in watching the broadcast this year, and as always I recorded it and fast-forwarded through.  I watched the 3-1/2 hour broadcast a little quicker than usual -- generally it takes me about two hours, though on occasion 2-1/2 -- this time finishing in about 90 minutes.  Without going into any details, just because, well, as I said I didn't have a burning interest, I was intrigued by the results.  They weren’t all my choices, but for the most part they were perfectly defensible.  And it sure made a fascinating bit of history. 

As for the show itself, what little I saw of the banter before presenting awards I thought was fairly amusing and better then usual.  The standouts for me were James Corden and Rebel Wilson willing to be totally self-effacing on knowing the importance of special effects, Tina Fey and Will Ferrell explaining their deep understanding of movie making, and Maya Rudolph and Kristen Wiig going...well, looney, though for my taste, fun as they were, I thought it went on a bit too long since there are nominees for that category on the edge of their seats.

What I will include is the opening bit from Steven Martin and Chris Rock.  Every joke didn't work, but I found it very funny overall.  What I particularly liked about their performance is that they made no pretense about how they were “really chatting.”  It was very mannered, but intentionally so and with an effortlessness that only comedy pros can pull off.

For decades, I was on a mini-mission to get the Motion Picture Academy to open their Oscar broadcast with a particularly wonderful song that, though it had a bit of shelf-life in country music, I figured they wouldn't know.  I actually came close -- not to accomplishing my task, but having access to making the suggestion -- when my former boss at Universal Studios, Bob Rehme, was made president of the Academy.  Alas, I didn't have the contact information that would have helped and didn't make the effort -- which probably wouldn't have been too difficult, even it was before Google searches -- to track it down (hence never getting beyond being just a "mini-mission").
 
The idea time has long-since passed, since the group who sang the song, the Statler Brothers, have retired, and also some of the references in the song -- while many are still classic -- aren't all likely as impactful on today's audience.  Still, it's a very fun song, and would make an enjoyable number in the middle of the broadcast, sung by a cobbled-together quartet of movie stars singing.  Or the Statlers themselves could come out of retirement.  They did briefly a couple years ago for an event when elected into a country music Hall of Fame.
 
But no, that's not going to happen.  But it doesn't stop me from at least presenting the song on the day of the Oscar broadcast.  So, here it is -- one of the most affectionate and clever songs I've heard about movies. And it fits perfectly into the portfolio of "list" songs that the Statlers were so well-known for, over a career that began with “Flowers on the Wall, written by the group’s Lew DeWitt…who, as it happens, wrote this song, as well.
 
Indeed, the name of the song is "The Movies."

Just in time for the Oscars, we have a special edition of 3rd & Fairfax, the official podcast of the Writers Guild of America.  Recently, the WGA and Writers Guild Foundation held its 2020 Beyond Words special event.  The WGA Awards-nominated screenwriters gathered to discuss their acclaimed films, and the group included Noah Baumbach (Marriage Story), Greta Gerwig (Little Women), Steven Zaillian (The Irishman), Rian Johnson (Knives Out), and Micah Fitzerman-Blue & Noah Harpster (A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood), among others.
  

Yesterday, my oft-mentioned pal Myles Berkowitz -- who shares with me a deep love for the movie Midnight Run -- reminded me of a line in the film.  It's when the mob boss (played by Dennis Farina) tells a bookkeeper who turned witness against him (played by Charles Grodin) that he's going to kill the little guy -- and then, after he's dead, Farina snarls he's going to go to Grodin's house and kill his wife.  As New Yorker Myles noted, this is a very mob thing to do, that you don't just kill someone but also take retribution against their family.

He brought this up in connection to Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman's case, where Trump fired his brother, too, somebody who had absolutely zero to do with the Ukraine investigation and was a lawyer for the National Security Council.  But he was Alexander Vindman's family.  So, you exact revenge against him, as well.  

I'm not saying Trump is mobbed up, or perhaps just a wannabe.  Or maybe it's simply pure coincidence.  But whatever the reason, "it's a very mob thing to do."

In case anyone wasn't able to watch all of the Super Bowl today, here is replay video of how the game ended in the exciting fourth quarter.  

As I periodically note here, some days I just get worn out and don't have it in me to write anything about the Trump-created hell hole, even if it concerns the Democratic debate, or the release of private texts from Trump's personal lawyer, the henchmen he worked with and members of the administration team which underscored the threats to our nation's own ambassador and that Trump was all involved with this as a personal matter.

Quick side note:  as much as the texts suggest that the threats to Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch could conceivably have been life-threatening, and as much as I understand why they had to be treated that way, I don't think that they were, actually, threats on her life.  Never mind that the GOP Congressional candidate Robert Hyde who was communicating appears to have a history as a crass, pompous blowhard who it's hard to imagine would have contacts with Ukrainian assassins.  More to the point, given that the texts were willingly handed over to the F.B.I by Parnas himself, it seems improbable that he would do so if he was involved with a planned assassination of a U.S. official.

And a quick side note on the debate:  I watched for about a half-hour, was glad that Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders seemed to get past the silly controversy about whether or not he ever told her that a woman couldn't be elected president -- though I'm sure their supporters won't let it die -- I thought it was all very dull since the candidates seemed tense, not wanting to screw up anything just days before the election.

Okay, so those are the quick side notes.

Instead I thought I'd write about some fluffery, in this case related to the Oscar nominations.  Mind you, as I write this, I don't know what the nominations were.  I'll check them out at some point.  But I have an addendum to a very good piece that my pal Mark Evanier wrote here on his site.

The short version is that someone had written him all frenetic that Little Women had received a Best Picture nomination, but not one for Best Director, and how in the world could this injustice possibly be?!  Mark explained (at more detailed length) that a) two different groups vote for those two categories, and b) there were nine nominations for Best Picture but only five for Best Director.  So by pure math, there had to be at a minimum four directors of a Best Picture nominee who couldn't get a Best Director nomination.

At its foundation, Mark's excellent explanation is all that you needed to know to answer the question.  There was one additional point that I thought should also be addressed which I think (especially as a screenwriter) is important --

When Academy directors are voting on Best Director, they are looking obviously at the direction and the direction only.
 
When Academy members are voting are Best Picture, they are looking at the direction…and the writing -- and acting, and editing, music, costuming, production design and how it was all produced.  So, the voters are looking at two totally different things.  A film can be wonderfully directed but just not interesting on several levels.  Or be just professionally directed though no more than that, but be a wonderful experience overall
 
I always like to point out two movies, released around the same time.  The 1982 film One from the Heart was one of the most inventively-directed and well-produced movies, but so boring to audiences and flopping so hugely that Francis Ford Coppola (who financed the film himself) lost his studio.  Two years earlier, The Gods Must Be Crazy from South Africa, shot on a shoestring budget was a terribly-made, jumble of an amateurishly-made movie with disjointed jump cuts that was a total, utter, unabashed joy and such a big hit that it spawned a sequel
 

Today's guest contestant on the 'Not My Job' segment of the NPR game quiz show Wait, Wait...Don't Tell Me! is Jennifer Lee, the co-writer/co-director of Frozen and its sequel, and now Chief Creative Officer of Disney Animation.  Her interview with host Peter Sagal (for whom she has a very funny surprise) is wildly enthusiastic and great fun, full of stories and her clear pleasure at being on the show.

Yes, it's that time again.  I posted this last year -- and have, in fact, posted it annually, here and on the Huffington Post, where it initially appeared in 2007, for the past 13 years.  So, with the Golden Globes broadcast set for tomorrow night, here we go again.

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                     The PreCurse of the Golden Globes Rides Again

'​​Tis the season for awards - and that means on Sunday it was time to read and hear (repeatedly) how the Golden Globes matter because they are "precursors to the Oscars," remarkable for their mystical ability to predict the Academy Awards. Of course, if you repeat any mantra enough, people will believe almost anything But then reality rears its pesky head and gets in the way.

Indeed, the dirty little secret about the Golden Globes is that they're the biggest flim-flam scam on the American public today. Okay, other than "Mitt Romney is a far-right conservative."

(And one of the main reasons that keeps it such a "secret" is because most people don't have the slightest clue who in the world the Hollywood Foreign Press is that gives these awards. That's a little sending a congratulations gift to someone who was named "Man of the Year" and not realizing that the honor was given by an online website that sends out the certificates for $18.)

I have absolutely no idea who "won" what last night. Alas, the depth of human caring simply doesn't stretch that low. Mind you, it's not because they're just awards - hey, awards are entertainment, and can be as fun as anything. It's because the Golden Globes are to awards what a Black Hole is to French toast. There's no connection, but at least with French toast you can pour on syrup and not have human existence sucked out of the universe.

When someone said, "The show must go on," clearly the Golden Globes hadn't been invented yet.

Four years ago, I wrote about the Golden Globes, and because they keep coming back unrelentingly like a crazed zombie, I updated and edited it a year later. And now it's become a bit of an annual tradition, the same as one calls in a gardener to stop the crab grass from spreading any further. Because the foolish hype gets more out of control each year - and since if I saw someone crossing the street into an oncoming truck I'd always yell to stop - I figure it's worth revisiting that piece.

​Until recently the Globes were so comatose that even a new health care system couldn't have diagnosed them to life. But three things changed: movie studios realized they could get massive free publicity. Television recognized that if celebrities attended, people would watch anything. And actors grasped they'd get to appear on TV and receive awards. It was the Holy Trinity of PR.

Before even attempting to dismiss or defend the Golden Globes, however, it's important to understand what exactly what it is. And it starts with a bit of flim-flammery.

The Hollywood Foreign Press Association, which presents the Golden Globes, has always had only one thing going for it - an incredible-sounding name. That name comes across like A-list journalists in trenchcoats from Paris Match, Die Welt and the Neptune Gazette. In fact, however, the HFPA, while representing many fine, individual, full-time reporters, is largely comprised of stringers (part-timers whose day job is other than journalism). And many are neither foreign, nor active in the press. Membership is whimsical: some get permanent status; others are inexplicably refused even entry. (The London Times is not a member. A reporter from the renowned Le Monde has been turned down for years. Happily there is a representative from the movie hotbed of Bangladesh. Honest.)

Yes, of course, movie awards are utterly pointless to all human life forms, except the winners. It's just faflooey. Nothing more than fluff. And the Globes are the fluff on top of the fluff. But before dismissing them further, remember: around 20 million viewers tune in to the Golden Globes. If that many people are going to spend their time on Earth watching the circus, it's at least nice to know who sent in the clowns.

And that's the kicker. At last count, the Globes are voted on by just...get this...86 people. Yes, you read that correctly. 86. For comparison, the Oscars, Emmys, and Writers Guild/Directors Guild/SAG awards are each voted on by about 6,000 professionals of their respective industries.

The good news is that with only 86 people voting it cuts down on the hanging-chad problem.

Any club is entitled to give awards. But most don't get to take over three hours of prime time on national network television.

The history of the Golden Globes is peppered with so many scandals about buying awards that Frequent Shopper points should be instituted. The most famous is when Pia Zadora's then-husband gave lavish parties to the HFPA, and she won New Star of the Year - for the ridiculed disaster Butterfly. For the 2000 Awards Sharon Stone's representative sent gold watches to all then-82 voters. Only after this became a public embarrassment was the plunder returned. And Ms. Stone received a best actress nomination for The Muse.

But the big myth about the Golden Globes - indeed their one false hope to even a wisp of validity - is that they are an impeccable predictor of the Academy Awards.

(Why anyone cares about predicting the Oscars is another matter entirely.)

But the reality is - the Golden Globes as a "Precursor to the Oscars" is not only not close to true, it's worse than not close to true. Which is near-impossible.

Keep in mind that six of the 13 Globe categories are split into drama and musical-comedy - which allows for twice as many chances to be "right." Some categories have had as many as nine nominees. People watching at home eating cheese dip probably get half the Oscar winners right by pure guessing. (My mother correctly predicted Philip Seymour Hoffman's win, and she hadn't even seen Capote at the time.) Yet it's almost impressive how wrong the Globes are at "precursing."

Last year, the Golden Globes did well in all the acting categories, picking all four winners (keeping in mind that they give twice as many acting awards as the Oscars, so they have twice as many chances to be right). But they got Best Picture wrong, Best Director wrong, Best Screenplay wrong, and Best Foreign Language Picture wrong.

Going back to the year before, here are all the Golden Globe categories.

Best Picture (drama) - right
Best Picture (comedy) - wrong, not even nominated for an Oscar.
Best Actor (drama) - wrong
Best Actor (comedy) - wrong, not even nominated for an Oscar.
Best Actress (drama) - right
Best Actress (comedy) - wrong, not even nominated for an Oscar
Best Supporting Actor - right
Best Supporting Actress - wrong, not nominated for an Oscar.
Best Director - right
Best Screenplay - right, but the Oscar-winner for Original Screenplay wasn't nominated by the Golden Globes
Best Foreign Language Film - wrong
Best Animated Feature - right
Best Score - right
Best Song - wrong, not nominated for an Oscar.

It is unlikely that these results over the past two years would win your office pool. If you want to be considered a precursor, that would seem to be the minimum requirement.

And these were both pretty good years for the Golden Globes.

In 2006, the Oscar for Best Picture was Crash. The Golden Globes didn't even nominate it among their 10 finalists!

It becomes scary bad when you delve deeper. But having a limit on my Care-o-Meter, with zero interest to go back and check year-after-every-year, I decided to try an experiment. To be very clear, there is absolutely nothing even remotely scientific about it. Rather, it's the testing equivalent of throwing darts. No scientific meaning. Just picking a totally random year. But in its randomness, it has a separate meaning: it could have been any year.

I closed my eyes, pointed at the screen blindly and grabbed a year. The lucky winner was 2001. It looked good - it even had the name of a movie ("2001") about it. Alas, "lucky winner" turned out to be a contradiction.

The Globe winner in 2001 for Best Picture musical/comedy (Almost Famous) wasn't even nominated for the Oscar. The two Golden Globe winners for Best Actor were Tom Hanks and George Clooney. Swell actors, but the Oscar went to Russell Crowe (Gladiator) - and Globe-winner Clooney didn't even get an Oscar nomination.

Renee Zellwegger (Nurse Betty) won the Globe's Best Actress, musical/comedy. Alas, she didn't get nominated for an Oscar either.

It gets worse.

For supporting actress, Marcia Gay Harden won the Academy Award...but didn't even receive a Globe nomination.

In fairness, that was a random choice and therefore hardly definitive, as I said. Not proof of anything. Unfortunately, to be fair, I figured I'd at least go back one more year, and the results were as dismal. The year before, in 2000, the Golden Globes gave their two Best Actor awards to Denzel Washington and Jim Carrey - but the Oscar winner was Kevin Spacey (and Carrey wasn't nominated). Tom Cruise won the Globe for Supporting Actor - but Michel Caine got the Oscar. And remarkably, although there were nine Globe nominees for Best Original Score, their winner didn't even get nominated by the Academy, and the Oscar winner (The Red Violin) wasn't nominatedby the Globes!!

Not good as far as precursors go.

Certainly, other years may show better results. Or...okay, maybe not. But the bottom line is not whether the Golden Globes are right some years or really wrong others. It's that if you're doing to be a "precursor," if you're going to be predictive, then you have to have a steady standard that can be relied upon. Every single year. And the only thing steady about the Golden Globes is that they do not "predict" anything. Set that in granite and plant the gravestone, once and for all.

All this said, this year the Golden Globes actually do have a reason to watch. Ricky Gervais is hosting again. It's why God created the DVR and fast-forward button.

Of course, underlying all of this is that the Golden Globes or Oscars are all just awards. They have no real meaning, except to those who win. For the rest of the planet, they're just entertainment. Still, even entertainment is more substantive when we value those behind it. There's a reason TV doesn't broadcast your office pool.

Further, for as little meaning that all awards shows have (including those given out by an industry to itself), the reality is that people watch the broadcasts. And they watch them because there's a perception - as in the Emmys, Tonys, Grammys and Oscars - that the people giving the awards know what they're doing. It's a perception the Golden Globes have falsely milked for decades, scamming the public.

In the end, for those who insist on watching the Golden Globes, watch them and accept them for what they are, and you can live in blissful peace - 86 members of a shaky organization that stumbled onto a goldmine with studios and networks, and who present a lively TV kegger.

And that's why Globe winners appear so goofy on the air. Because they understand what you now know. Everyone loves a good joke.


UPDATE:

One day after writing this above, Patrick Goldstein in the L.A. Times, wrote an articleabout a story broken by The Wrap about the longtime, former publicist of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association suing the organization.

"Michael Russell, who ran press for the show for 17 years, has charged the HFPA with fraud and corrupt practices. He claims that a number of members of the organization accepted money, vacations and gifts from studios in exchange for nominating their films in addition to selling media credentials and red carpet space for gifts. He also says the HFPA accepted payment from studios and producers for lobbying other members for award nominations."

On this edition of 3rd and Fairfax, the official podcast of the Writers Guild of America, the guest is screenwriter Charles Randolph whose credits include The Big Short (for which he won an Oscar for co-writing) and Love & Other Drugs.  This week, he talks about his new film Bombshell, about the “Fox News” sex scandal that ended Roger Ailes’ career.