Deadline is, only for informational purposes, posting the 2013 Golden Globes nominations held by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association with winners to be broadcast live on NBC on January 13th. I refuse to treat these nominations with any seriousness. And if you don’t want that, then for crissakes stop reading me. True, my Deadline colleagues will analyze today’s nominations. But that’s because they choose to. I won’t. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: it’s a completely meaningless awards show from a scandal-riddled organization aired by a production company desperate for money on a network praying for ratings. That’s why I opt out of analyzing the nominations every year: because the Golden Globes have zero integrity. Studios and networks who lavishly lobby the HFPA almost always score nominations. Actors win in direct correlation to their glamour quotient. By splitting dramas and comedies/musicals, and including movie and television categories on the same night, more star wattage can goose the Nielsens. And even though the entire entertainment industry ridicules the awards, it props them up because they’re a useful marketing tool for the studios and networks. Let’s not forget the year that host Ricky Gervais couldn’t resist openly loathing the HFPA and its tarnished reputation from the podium. (“I’d like to quash this ridiculous rumor going round that the only reason [The Tourist] was nominated was so the Hollywood Foreign Press could hang out with Johnny Depp and Angeline Jolie. That is rubbish. That is not the only reason. They also accepted bribes.”) At least it was a rare injection of honesty into the night.
The Hollywood Foreign Press Association isn’t as advertised. It’s actually a small motley group of 85 mostly freelancers who won’t grant membership to the real foreign journalists at the prestige media outlets across the world. The HFPA clique doesn’t want to dilute the financial bonanza it receives from the studios and networks who arrange exclusive interviews about each year’s movies and TV shows. Not only have legitimate journalists for years been attacking the Hollywood Foreign Press Association for its exclusionary membership policies and too-cozy relationship with studios and networks. But an Oscar-winning documentary director (Vikram Jayanti, in his 2004 film The Golden Globes: Hollywood’s Dirty Little Secret) has called the group a bunch of “freeloaders” who know more about hors d’oeuvres than auteurs and select winners based on “who kisses butt best”. The HFPA was even accused in a lawsuit filed by its former publicist of accepting “payola” — like taking lavish gifts from studios in exchange for nominations — and other questionable business practices. This and other lawsuits have laid bare many of the dirty little secrets behind the Golden Globes and its largely ludicrous gang of organizers.
And then there are the companies who put on the Golden Globes: NBC and Dick Clark Productions, now owned by Guggenheim Partners, which also owns The Hollywood Reporter. They could clean up the HFPA but choose not to. (In fact Guggenheim is using THR to propagandize the Globes more than ever.) The HFPA surely won’t because it pockets an estimated $30 million in broadcast fees for the awards show. Only rarely in the last eight years has the winner of one of the Golden Globe best film prizes gone on to win Best Picture at the Oscars. Then again, let’s not forget that, in 1968, the Federal Communications Commission accused the HFPA of misleading the public, alleging that Globe winners were determined by lobbying and who would show up to receive the award rather than blind poll. NBC subsequently refused to air the awards until 1974.
The only reason I can think of to tune in to the Golden Globes is for the jokes. I have no doubt that 2013′s hosts Amy Poehler and Tina Fey will be hilarious. And, over the years, Jack Nicholson has mooned the audience, Jim Carrey has talked out of his butt, Christine Lahti was locked in the bathroom, and other unscripted weirdness occurs at this intimate dinner. Including 1982′s low point when Pia Zadora’s husband bought her best “New Star Of The Year”. Perhaps Christian Bale summed it up best when he took the stage at the 2011 Golden Globes and said this about the HFPA. “I never really knew who those guys were. I’d always leave the press junkets going, ‘Who are those oddball characters in that room?’”
Editor-in-Chief Nikki Finke - tip her here.


“. . . it’s a completely meaningless awards show from a scandal-riddled organization aired by a production company desperate for money on a network praying for ratings.”
Thank you, Nikki, for taking the words out of my mouth. I couldn’t have stated this fact better myself.
It’s great to see the HFPA and its tacky show summarized so brilliantly. The one redeeming factor about this year’s GG show will probably be Fey and Poehler’s hosting.
genius.
It’s a fun night because the nominees can drink. period.
Hallelujah. Well said.
That sums-up the HFPA perfectly, Nikki.
Nikki–as with every year–your reporting on this is serious, important, and if only they gave Pulitzer’s for entertainment reporting, you should get it for this. Shame on the so called mainstreams for not exposing this.
Nikki is dead-on about the HFPA, but it’s not like she’s the only person to ever say this. Plenty of people in the “mainstreams” have openly written that the Golden Globes are a sham.
What is there to expose? Everybody on Planet Earth knows this. This story should be on DUH.com
Was Game of Thrones Season 2 ineligible this year or WTF?
Nikki
I so respect your commentary and opinion
You are fearless in your honesty
We need more like you
All the best
Thank you Nikki! Thank you for saying what every single publicist, manager, agent, studio, network and anyone involved in the lie that is the HFPA & Golden Globes has said over and over again. When will we be free of them? When will that Vanity Fair story come out? How do they get away with it?
Nothing Changes if Nothing Changes…………
But Nikki,
how do you really feel?
You’re my hero, Nikki. Seriously. Preach it, sister!
“The tongue or the pen like a sharp knife… Kills without drawing blood.”
Buddha
You’re looking for “integrity” in today’s world? Please! There is none, anywhere you look.
Today’s integrity has become “Does it make money?”. “Does it help sell?”. “Will it offend my sponsor?”. “Will it make me look good?”. “Can I get laughs at the expense of others?”. “Am I kissing the right behinds?”. “Will it hurt my future pitches?” “Can I manipulate the media?”. “Will this earn me an Award badge?” “Will my mother and agent and manager still love me?”. “Will I embarrass my children?”.”Will people think I’m anti-semitic?”
If you can do that, you qualify, because you help make today’s world go round.
Personal visibility. That’s Integrity.
If you feel so strongly about this, why not shun the awards all together? You still report on them, create posts to gain page views, so you’re even making money out of these awards. It’s all part of Hollywood, everyone knows it, and everyone goes along with it, just like you.
For me, the most comical part was the nomination of that horrible misfire Smash instead of the many great comedies on cable such as Archer and Curb Your Enthusiasm.
Hey…I like SMASH
Smash is an NBC Property and the Tarnished Globes are on NBC, there’s your connection.
Nikki, you need to release all this hostility…it’s not healthy!
Pardon the ignorance, but isn’t this (more or less) how all these awards programs (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar) work? Selecting winners based on who’s going to show up? Kissing butt the best? Spending the most on the “for your consideration” equivalent”?
I believe so, but I doubt that the other award shows are bribed to death. If the other shows have a history of bribes, it would have came out by now, but if we look at the Golden Globes, there is that history, as Nikki explained, complete with the actual foreign press being excluded from the HFPA.
I 100% agree – thanks Nikki!
Nikki, it’s called show BUSINESS. This is no different from any other reality show. This column is like all the people who are suddenly shocked to discover Storage Wars is fake.
Golden Globes in a Nutshell: Studios promote their lousy, star-driven movies (for pretty cheap, I might add), the network airs a show people watch live (instead of commercial-zapping), a weird, secretive organization gets to force stars (who are willing participants) to hang out with them, and can extort them for all kinds of goodies, and the American public gets to see glamorous people in pretty dresses having fun (often at their own expense). Hell, it beats The Bachelor. If it makes money and people watch it, what’s the down side? That’s the business we’re in — to provide programming between the commercials that there is an audience for.
On another note — the Golden Globes are the only reason a lot of quirky, overlooked TV shows got second and third seasons. I say, “Viva la Globes!”
Very well put, Nikki. However, I must say that the industry only pretends to ridicule this bunch of cretins that call themselves the HFPA , an horde of sleazy idiots that are only good for freeloading at junkets and telling their relatives they “know” angelina jolie. By “legitimizing” their fraud, the entire industry whores out and gets down to their level in exchange for yet another ridiculous stab at the grotesque awards season rat race. The day studios and filmmakers start to ignore the phony globes, they’ll earn the right to call a spade a spade. In the meantime, they’re just looking into a mirror.
Very well put, Rick. Like anything, the Golden Globes the HFPA only lives because it’s allowed to live. Something this degenerate and unethical should have died many years ago, but as long as they have all the talents and studios vying for their attention, it’s not going anywhere. What a shame…
Once the Mayans are determined to be hacks on December 21, word is they’ll be granted automatic admission into the Hollywood Foreign Press Association.
Well, if the Mayans are proved right, the HFPA won’t be granted admission to my doomsday bunker. Nominees Marion Cotillard, Jessica Chastain, and Jennifer Lawrence, however, are most welcome.
Everybody in the industry knows this already.
But every year, I face a tough time convincing regular folks about the uselessness of the HFPA. How can we change PUBLIC sentiment?
“. . . it’s a completely meaningless awards show from a scandal-riddled organization aired by a production company desperate for money on a network praying for ratings.”
So it’s like every other awards show ever?
I wish the Golden Globes had more integrity like the AMAs where Justin Bieber is the artist of the year and the closing performance is some weirdo from youtube.
But what about Entertainment Tonight and Access Hollywood and Extra TV surely they would never participate in something as fake as the Golden Globes. Those infotainment shows take this very seriously. We should all follow their lead and ignore Nikki even though she’s 100% correct. Everybody has to be happy and excited because that’s what Entertainme Allnight wants us to think. We have to pretend these are real awards.