Looks like no Golden Globes or Oscars this year

Cafe Society
1

I was going to just put this in the Awards Season thread, but this is big news for those who follow such things, so I thought it deserves a thread of its own.

With the Writers Guild of America strike going on, no member of the sister union Screen Actors Guild will cross a picket line, so no one will dare show their face at either event, as a nominee, a presenter or just to provide wattage. No TV stars. No movie stars. No up-n-comers. No nobody. I’m an awards show junkie and awards season slut, but I’m very happy about this. The writers are in the right, dammit and picket lines are serious business. Anyone who crosses the WGA picket lines will find themselves on a massive shit list, a bad thing in the close-knit movie/TV industry. And Guild members have long memories.

From Variety:

A lesser show, the Broadcast Film Critics Association (BFCA, more commonly known as the “Critics Choice Awards”) is also in trouble.

From The Carpetbagger (I don’t have a link):

However, good news for those who want to see something this awards season, waivers have been granted for the Screen Actors Guild Awards on January 27, and the Independent Spirit Awards on February 23, so those will go on as planned and it looks like they’ll take the place of the Golden Globes and the Oscars this year.

2

I find most of these awards shows unbearable anyway – especially the cornball bantering by the presenters. I don’t think the the Golden Globes would be any great loss. It will be interesting to see if it affects the Academy Awards but I don’t think it will. No way are these people going to put principles ahead Oscar night.

3

So are they still going to give out the Oscars just without a ceremony?

This is the year the Coens take best director so I was really hoping they’d find a way to give out the awards.

4

The only thing better than the cancellation of a back-patting, ego-boosting, fashion show dressed up as an acting awards ceremony is the cancellation of all nine hundred of the damned things.

5

Oh yeah they will. SAG and the other Hollywood Guilds takes picket lines VERY seriously, and just like the Globes, just about everyone , if not everyone, who’ll be nominated is a member of one of the 12 Guilds. No one who’s a member of any Guild would want to see anyone cross their pickets lines if they were on strike, so they’ll not cross the WGA picket lines. Count on it. Your cynical view of Hollywood actors notwithstanding, they’re going to back the writers, no matter how much it hurts to not be a part of the Big Night.

Unless the strike ends first (unlikely) then the Academy Awards WILL be affected. Deeply. The actors won’t show up. The directors won’t show up. The cinematographers won’t show up. None of the other artistic people (costumes, makeup, sound, editing, art directors) will show up. The host won’t show up. The unionized backstage people (probably) won’t show up. Who’d be there besides publicists and possibly D-list “celebrities” who are too stupid to know better? A red carpet with only Kathy Griffen and Sally Kirkland? Oooh.

drm, I don’t know what they’ll do. The Oscar nominations will come out, and the Oscars will be awarded, but with no one to present them and no one to accept them, what’s the point in having a televised event? AMPAS might just have to announce the winners in a press release. The next few weeks will be very interesting. The Golden Globes are to be presented on the 13th of this month, so in a little over a week, we’ll know how THAT went. Lots of people are freaking out.

I’ll admit to a bit of gown-watching, but honestly, the main reason I like awards and awards shows is that beyond all the fun celebrity hoopla, it really is all about movies, and 2007 was a damn fine year for movies, so a lot of great films are nominated for the Globes and will be nominated for Oscars. It’s a shame those people won’t have their day in the sun, but it’s not the writer’s fault. I too would like to see the Coen Brothers get up on stage to accept the Picture, Director and other awards…if the Oscars were happening, I’d be especially looking forward to the Editing category, in hopes that it would be awarded to “Roderick Jaynes” just so I could see Ethan and Joel get up on stage. Has anyone who’s used a pseudonym won an Oscar since Dalton Trumbo? I don’t know.

However, these guys are so publicity-shy and laid back that I’ll bet they’re hoping and praying the strike won’t end so they don’t have to get up multiple times in front of millions of people. Some people will be like the Coens and sigh in relief (like Daniel Day-Lewis, an almost certain Best Actor winner and a very shy guy), while others will be banging their heads against the wall in frustration, like the first-time nominees Diablo Cody, who wrote Juno, Amy Ryan from Gone Baby Gone, Casey Affleck from The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, Marion Cotilliard from La Vie En Rose, and others.

I also can’t help think about poor sound mixer Kevin O’Connell, who’s been nominated 19 times in the Sound category and has never won. He has two chances to be nominated this year, for Spider-Man 3 and for Transformers. If he were nominated, and if he did finally win on the 20th try, it’d be a damn shame he couldn’t get the standing ovation he would get and deserves just for hanging in there. I never thought I’d say this because I really like the guy, but I hope Kevin loses again.

neutron star, whatever. I happen to like movies, and the one thing the awards do above anything else is bring attention to movies. Some don’t need the attention, but many do. Lots of people won’t have heard of several of the nominated films until Golden Globe/Oscar night. Many of those films are worth knowing about.

6

I love movies, too. I just can’t stand the awards shows and wonder why they need six million of them. I’ll concede your point about them sometimes giving press to otherwise overlooked indie films, but that’s pretty much the only good thing about them, IMHO.

7

I’m sure thay can find a Z-grade comedian to compere one of those awards shows. Of course, without an army of script monkeys it’ll be like

I really liked that sports event I saw other day … go team!!

for three hours

8

I was actually kind of hoping that there would be a very sedate Academy Awards this year. No complicated uninteresting 5-hour ceremony. Just get up, say the nominees, give the award, and the acceptance speech. They could have blown through them in a few hours and made their point at the same time.

Ah well, no great loss on the Golden Pay Offs… er… Globes.

9

Interesting. My cooking club usually gets together on Golden Globe and Oscar nights for several hours of eating and cattiness. WHAT WILL WE DO THIS YEAR???

:smiley:

10

This is a damn shame. I like the award shows and looked forward to seeing the Coen’s day in the sun.

11

SAG/AFTRA is standing with us on this one. Heck, they’re basically walking out in June if we’re still waiting on our contract…

It’s an interesting situation. It’s also bound to get really entertaining in the next few weeks as the Maus Haus (Disney) starts to feel the pressure regarding their Cash Cows for 2008 - neither of them are ready for shooting and it’s really grinding their gears.

Elly, WGAe
Strike Captain, 10 weeks on strike as of Monday next…

12

I don’t understand why Letterman gets a deal with the WGA but they won’t give the same deal to awards shows that are essentially a one time deal per award? The award shows don’t really need that much writing and they are a medium that honors everyone in the TV and film industries, down to the crew. It seems to me a slap in the face to all the other guilds for the writers guild to say no to the awards shows.

13

Letterman’s company, Worldwide Pants, negotiated an agreement with the WGA. The agreement is an independent agreement, much like the one we are attempting to negotiate with all the Networks: it covers our basic contracts, our internet demands, our residuals, everything that we’re trying to negotiate with the AMPTP. The WGA is allowed to negotiate individually with Networks, Production Companies or the Association (AMPTP) as a whole. Some Networks or Prod Cos may get sick of the association’s greed or refusal to negotiate and need to strike a deal with us… and they may choose to break off and negotiate with us directly. They can (and we can) do that. This is what happened with Letterman’s company, Worldwide Pants. Letterman is a WGA member, himself, and is rabidly Pro-Union.

The Award Shows, while pro-industry, come with a looooong history of being pro-Company more than pro-union. So there’s a big… rift. Of sorts. In a big way. The Networks applied for a waiver with the WGA – a one-event deal: A “Can we get you to do this, as an exception to the strike rules and not consider this a struck event?” kind of thing.

We said no.

The three award shows (Golden Globes, Oscars and People’s Choice) said that they’d go on without writers – the first two live, the third taped – but then the actors started to say that they would likely simply not show.

During the last strike, the Oscars and Golden Globes were fairly low key events. This time around, the stakes are even higher. The actors are just as fed up as we are, especially over the residuals and Internet issues…

14

That sucks. I like watching the Oscars.

I’m really not up on all the nuances of what is going on, so can someone explain to me *why *it is the actors/directors/whomever wouldn’t go to the Oscars if they were to be held without being written? So there won’t be long comedy pieces or montages, but why can’t they show up just to present & accept the awards? How is that crossing a picket line if they didn’t use writers to write the show?

15

They’ll make a deal for the Oscars. No matter what Equipoise says, the actors won’t put their fashionable little “cause” ahead of their annual circle jerk. The actors are going to tire quickly of this little “backing the writers” fad and want to get back in front of cameras. Actors are attention junkies and junkies need their fix.

16

I used to be a member and, at times, a shop steward in the CWA (Communications Workers of America, Locals 6310 and 6320). I worked on outside plant. If I was sent to work on telephone company equipment at at location that was being struck and picketed, I would not go in. The picketers were NOT members of my union, but union members are expected to respect the picket lines of other unions. They’d do it for us, too. There were also occasions where I’d be sent to work at a location being struck and picketed, but there was a designated entrance that was NOT being picketed. I would be instructed to use that entrance. (I can’t tell you why the striking union did not picket all entrances, but there you go.) My bosses at the phone company knew the rules, and operated accordingly.

I suspect that the actors, as members of the Screen Actors Guild, are respecting the job action of the writers. And, the actors would expect the writers to show the same respect, if the situation were reversed.

Something along the lines of “gentlemen, we must hang together…otherwise, we shall surely hang separately”.

17

This one thing – killing awards programs – justifies the strike in and of itself. :stuck_out_tongue:

Also, did you notice that this year there were none of those drecky end-of-year retrospective recaps of highlites and lowlites?

Thank you writers, your commitment has given us a year off from this standard annual garbage.

18

Honestly, I don’t think television has gotten any worse without the writers. I think the lack of any drop in quality is going to hurt them more than help them. There are only a handful of scripted shows that are any good anyway and we’re starting to find out that the loss of new dreck is no loss at all. Certainly the loss of a few awful awards shows and retrospective shows is a gift for the viewers.

19

Psst, Diogenes most of the shows you’re watching have been written by guild members, before they went on strike- check out elenfairs previous thread if you want to know how many episodes are left of shows you follow, before they run out.

20

I’m not a moron. I know what a rerun is. I know that some new eps were already in the can or on the page. I don’t think I’ve watched any freshly scripted shows, nor do I think I’ve watch anything scripted by non-guild members. What I meant was that I don’t the the UNscripted shows are any worse than the scripted, that most scripted shows are garbage anyway, and that the overall quality of television has not suffered much without new episodes of lousy sitcoms or endless permutations of Law & Order.