Ricky Gervais and his Golden Globes, by Arthur Tebbel – Pop Art #111

January 19, 2011 Arthur Tebbel 1 Comment

Dear Art,

The Golden Globes were this weekend.  It’s kind of a big deal for us to put them on.  To our credit the ceremony got the highest rating it’s gotten in several years.  That’s even with a year of movie nominees that were dramatically less popular than last year’s Avatar.  It wasn’t all good news though.  The Hollywood press has made a big deal of Ricky Gervais using his platform as host to make fun of a number of presenters and nominees.  He even made fun of the integrity of the awards themselves.  Should we ask Gervais back next year?

-Philip Berk, President, Hollywood Foreign Press Association

Phil,

I don’t watch the Golden Globes.  Because they’re really stupid.  That said, I watched Gervais’ monologue this morning because it was hilarious.  Don’t change a thing.  I get that you have to give these famous rich people awards and free drinks to get them to show up to your micro-Oscars, can they really not take a joke once they’re there?

Robert Downey Jr. seemed to have a particular beef with the way the show was going.  When he came on to present for Best Actress in a Musical or Comedy he called the show “mean-spirited” and “sinister.”  He then went into a two-minute bit in which he implied that he would have sex with all of the nominees including Emma Stone who is less than half his age.  He’s a class act.  You wouldn’t want to offend his clearly delicate sensibilities.  Have I mentioned that he’s been in prison?  He probably knows a thing or two about sinister.

I heard this week that when Laurence Olivier received a Golden Globe that the award broke in his hands during the acceptance speech.  I don’t know that I could write a joke better than that fact.  That said, I will certainly use this paragraph to try.  Your awards show is so lame it’s broadcast on a network that can’t even win one of your terribly lame awards.  Your awards show is so lame The Tourist got three nominations and True Grit got zero defying all standards of relative quality.  Your awards show’s mama is so fat I had to take a train and two buses just to get on her good side.

Seriously, no one outside of Hollywood is offended.  Actors won’t start turning down free publicity and an evening of people fawning over them because they might get made fun of for thirty seconds.  Bring him back and you’ll get even bigger ratings because of the controversy.  Or continue to be boring and have the only redeeming value of your show being the chance that an actor will accept an award completely plastered a la Cuba Gooding Jr.  Either way.