By Erin Free
The Golden Globe Awards and its former organising body, The Hollywood Foreign Press Association – the organisation of international journalists who live and work in the US, and file stories for press outlets outside the states – have long been hotly debated and decried. Initially, they were hung with copious amounts of shit for being easily bought and open to bribes, as well as being embroiled in a number of smaller, more “niche” scandals. Lately, however, The Golden Globes (and most award ceremonies, for that matter) have been figuratively raked over the coals for their lack of diversity. In order to survive, The Hollywood Foreign Press Association did a lot of soul searching and rethinking, attempting to course-correct with last year’s Golden Globes by engaging African-American comedian Jerrod Carmichael (“I’m here ‘cause I’m Black,” he Carmichael said in his opening monologue) to host. It certainly helped to shift the perception, but even so, The Golden Globe Awards remain a fraught proposition.
But through all the controversy and questioning over the organisation that holds them, there has been one constant: the big stars have always turned up, both to attend and host. And via their daring, explosive choice of the great Ricky Gervais to host The Golden Globes on two incredible occasions, The Hollywood Foreign Press Association succeeded in creating the two best awards ceremonies ever, hands down. In fact, The Golden Globes have always been the most entertaining of the awards ceremonies, with the drinks-served, table-seating set-up and perceived lack of portent inspiring much looseness from the award winners in their speeches, with some stars delivering truly hilarious moments.
Said movie and TV stars love a chance to promote both themselves and their latest projects, and the TV numbers of The Golden Globes have always obviously outshone the dodginess that has occasionally surrounded them. Despite being allegedly fraudulent and racist, that has never stopped the big stars from turning up at The Golden Globes. The Golden Globes have also always been dissed about their voting process, even though their nominations ironically almost identically mirror those of the far more apparently revered Oscars every single year. Box office champs Barbie and Oppenheimer have dominated in the nominations at The Globes, with the category divisions into Drama and Comedy making Greta Gerwig’s pink-hued feminist treatise a far easier fit here…it will be fascinating to see how the giggly and wonderfully entertaining Barbie goes at the often-po-faced Oscars.
But like The Oscars, The Golden Globes have also been failing to click with audiences, with interest and viewing numbers falling dramatically year by year, despite a swathe of stupid moves (up to ten Best Film noms from the Oscars???!) designed to arrest the haemorrhaging in the audience. Basically, awards ceremonies are not what they used to be. Once a big prime-time event on commercial television, The Golden Globes make their smallest impact yet this year, screening in their entirety solely on the streaming platform Stan, with other news outlets providing updates and so forth. So pretty much, if you don’t subscribe to Stan, well, it’s just too bad…no Golden Globes for you this year!
In 2024, The Golden Globes continued its push for diversity by engaging Filipino-American comedian Jo Koy as host. A conversational-style comedian, Jo Koy is certainly not a big name in Australia, but he has millions of followers, and has been a staple on American stand-up stages and talk shows. An interesting but not hugely daring choice, Jo Koy certainly sees hosting The Golden Globes as a big moment. “This is everything,” Koy told Variety, which is strangely part of the staple of companies owned by the organisation that runs The Golden Globes. “You hear that a lot right now, but it means a lot for someone that looks like me. There’s a kid that’s Asian out there, or that’s half white/half Asian, any ethnicity. Being able to see this, it will indirectly inspire them. This is one of those ‘finally’ moments. I don’t want to address that when I’m on stage, but I think me just being on stage is enough.”
Jo Koy’s opening monologue was a little hit and miss, with some jokes landing nicely (“Pull out,” was his amusing advice to billionaires after watching Succession), others feeling a bit tired and obvious (isn’t the whole “there are white people everywhere” thing getting a bit played out?), and some achieving an awkward, zero-laughs response. Sadly, Koy took the tried-and-true path out of the comic weeds by proclaiming “I didn’t write all the jokes” and cowardly stating that “I wrote all the ones you’re laughing at”, which is a particularly interesting route to take considering the recent writer’s strike…if you needed any more proof that writers are the most unfairly hammered people in Hollywood, this was it. “I suck? Hey, blame the writers!” Despite apparently being all about inclusion and good vibes, Jo Koy (perhaps unintentionally) insulted, denigrated, and bullied his off-screen collaborators from the stage…um, yeah, nice…especially since you’re probably getting paid about ten times what they are.
Considering his later-on presenting work, maybe the perhaps-too-white Jim Gaffigan would have done a better job. “I can’t believe I’m here…I can’t believe I’m even in the entertainment industry. I’m from a small town in Indiana…and I’m not a paedophile,” joked the stand-up comic and actor. “Maybe that could be a category.” The inaugural Best Stand Up Comedy Performance award then provided great laughs in its nominee clips, which also suggested a host of other people (Chris Rock, Wanda Sykes, Sarah Silverman) who could have made for better Golden Globes hosts than Jo Koy. Unfortunately, Ricky Gervais wasn’t there to accept his award, which seemed to prompt a sigh of relief in the audience, who weren’t exactly uproarious in their response to the British comic genius’ win, whose viciously on-the-money skewering of them is now legendary.
The presenters were the usual mix of funny (it was great seeing the exceptionally well-dressed Jared Leto send up his wacko, serious actor, method reputation; Daniel Kaluuya, Hailee Steinfeld and Shameik Moore brilliantly delivered some hilarious “studio exec penned” banter in honour of the writers’ strike; America Ferrera and Kevin Costner were surprisingly hilarious together; Oprah banged on like she was the business as always) and forced (most of the young up and comers certainly put in the effort, but occasionally missed the mark). Will Ferell and Kristen Wiig’s dash of comic surrealism, meanwhile, was very weird but most welcome.
The acceptance speeches were mostly great. Robert Downey Jr. was very funny upon claiming his Best Male Supporting Actor (nice move on changing the names of the awards categories, by the way), noting that his praise for being “so subtle” in Oppenheimer isn’t exactly complimentary, while surprise winner Da’Vine Joy Randolph was deeply moving on her Best Supporting Female Actor win for The Holdovers, while also heading dangerously close to a wardrobe malfunction at the same time. And in what must be a first, Ayo Edebiri from TV’s The Bear very appropriately thanked her managers’ assistants for “answering her emails.”
Christopher Nolan touchingly referenced the late Heath Ledger in his very emotional Best Director acceptance for Oppenheimer, while his leading man Cillian Murphy was humble and charming when taking his Best Actor award. Paul Giamatti was great picking up his Best Male Actor award for The Holdovers, shouting out to teachers (yay!) and complaining of knee pain after getting up and down all night. “I won’t get a role in the next John Wick,” Giamatti joked. Lily Gladstone’s acceptance for Best Female Actor for Killers Of The Flower Moon was extraordinarily moving, with the brilliant Native American performer platforming America’s indigenous people, who have been horribly, horribly wronged in American cinema for many, many years, a sad fact that is not highlighted nearly enough.
As always, there was much fun to be had with seeing who was talking to who when the camera flashed to the audience before the ad breaks (speaking of which, this is no grab, but there sure look to be some good things on Stan…who knew that Tony fucking Danza was on that show Power??!) to reveal some amusing moments: Jared Leto and Nicolas Cage sitting next to each other and looking like they were at Madame Tussaud’s; Reese Witherspoon and Ryan Gosling getting intense; Jaret Leto looking friendly with Billie Eilish; Kevin Costner going full bail-up on Martin Scorsese; Timothee Chalamet and Kylie Jenner literally canoodling…go, son!; and much, much more. Oh, and Taylor Swift was there too, and looked mighty unimpressed when Jo Koy made a joke about her.
The big news of the night, however, was the solid brushing received by Barbie, with Greta Gerwig’s box office titan about a cannily created woman beaten out in the Comedy category by another film about a cannily created woman in the form of Yorgos Lanthimos’ wonderfully eccentric Poor Things, which took out Best Comedy film and Best Comedy Female Actor for Emma Stone. The wins were made even more enjoyable by Lanthimos’ excellent acceptance speech, in which he rhapsodised about his childhood hero and front row audience member Bruce Springsteen. Barbie had to make do, meanwhile, with Billie Eilish’s Best Song gong (but seriously, how did “I’m Just Ken” not win?) and the weird new award for whatever it’s called, but is basically for which flick made the most money at the box office. Just as an aside, isn’t the cash enough? Does a film really need an award for making a lot of money? Anyhoo, the other half of that stupid, social media-created Barbenheimer thing fared much better, with the nuke drama also taking out the Best Drama award along with the aforementioned gongs. Oppenheimer’s win ironically brought the decidedly non-explosive, non-earthshaking and rather flat (but occasionally entertaining) Golden Globe Awards ceremony to a close. Hopefully, next year’s will be better…first order of business, another host!
Oh, yeah…and what about the fashion? Yeah, everyone looked good, whatever…and oh, Sarah Snook and Elizabeth Debicki had well deserved wins for their TV shows Succession and The Crown, which will at least give Australia’s mainstream media something to report on tonight, along with the massive Basil Brush afforded to Margot Robbie and Barbie.
For a full list of winners and nominations, head on over to The Golden Globes.
