At first glance, it’s no contest. An Oscar is a much more prestigious award than a Golden Globe. Everyone agrees on that.
But I happened to be reading the list of movies which won the Golden Globe for best drama. Compare them to the movie that won the Oscar that same year. (These are, obviously, the years when different movies won.)
1950 - Golden Globe: Sunset Boulevard - Oscar: All About Eve
1951 - Golden Globe: A Place in the Sun - Oscar: An American in Paris
1953 - Golden Globe: The Robe - Oscar: From Here to Eternity
1955 - Golden Globe: East of Eden - Oscar: Marty
1958 - Golden Globe: The Defiant Ones - Oscar: Gigi
1960 - Golden Globe: Spartacus - Oscar: The Apartment
1961 - Golden Globe: The Guns of Navarone - Oscar: West Side Story
1963 - Golden Globe: The Cardinal - Oscar: Tom Jones
1964 - Golden Globe: Becket - Oscar: My Fair Lady
1965 - Golden Globe: Doctor Zhivago - Oscar: The Sound of Music
1968 - Golden Globe: The Lion in Winter - Oscar: Oliver!
1969 - Golden Globe: Anne of the Thousand Days - Oscar: Midnight Cowboy
1970 - Golden Globe: Love Story - Oscar: Patton
1973 - Golden Globe: The Exorcist - Oscar: The Sting
1974 - Golden Globe: Chinatown - Oscar: The Godfather Part II
1977 - Golden Globe: The Turning Point - Oscar: Annie Hall
1978 - Golden Globe: Midnight Express - Oscar:* The Deer Hunter*
1981 - Golden Globe: On Golden Pond - Oscar: Chariots of Fire
1982 - Golden Globe: E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial - Oscar: Gandhi
1989 - Golden Globe: Born on the Fourth of July - Oscar: Driving Miss Daisy
1991 - Golden Globe: Bugsy - Oscar: The Silence of the Lambs
1992 - Golden Globe: Scent of a Woman - Oscar: Unforgiven
1995 - Golden Globe: Sense and Sensibility - Oscar: Braveheart
1998 - Golden Globe: Saving Private Ryan - Oscar: Shakespeare in Love
2002 - Golden Globe: The Hours - Oscar: Chicago
2004 - Golden Globe: The Aviator - Oscar: Million Dollar Baby
2005 - Golden Globe: Brokeback Mountain - Oscar: Crash
2006 - Golden Globe: Babel - Oscar: The Departed
2007 - Golden Globe: Atonement - Oscar: No Country for Old Men
2009 - Golden Globe: Avatar - Oscar: The Hurt Locker
2010 - Golden Globe: The Social Network - Oscar: The King’s Speech
2011 - Golden Globe: The Descendants - Oscar: The Artist
I personally think that the Golden Globes got it right more often than not, though in many years both got it wrong. For me they especially got it right in 2005 and 2010.
They’re very different entities though. The Globe voters are a small, elite group of non-American film critics, while the Academy voters are a huge group of wildly eclectic film industry workers from all around the world. They encompass all ages and disciplines, ranging from Polish cinematographers to Australian costume designers to aged English actresses in nursing homes to experimental musicians from Iceland. And everything in between.
I console myself by knowing that just because The King’s Speech (which I liked) won over The Social Network (which I LOVED) in no way means that ALL the voters thought The Social Network was the inferior movie, just that enough of a majority chose The King’s Speech to make it win out.
It’s often done, I even do it myself sometimes, but it’s simplistic to say “The Academy” as if it were a monolithic entity of one mind. It’s simplistic to say that “The Academy” as a whole is, especially now, a stodgy group of rich, out-of-touch elites. Most are not rich. Generally, outside of the most famous actors, the most well-known directors, famous composers and the most successful producers they’re just average folks doing their jobs in an interesting industry. You have make-up artists and sound people and editors and art directors and musicians and shorts filmmakers & documentary makers who are maxing out their credit cards and struggling to pay the bills, and so on.
The older members are dying off and a younger demographic is waiting in the wings. A growing majority is not stodgy or out-of-touch, which is mostly reflected in the nominees.
Another great thing the Globe voters have that the Academy voters do not is the separation of Drama and Comedy/Musical. George Clooney would never have been nominated for O Brother, Where Art Thou? at the Oscars, whereas he (quite rightly) WON a Golden Globe for that role.
I’ll admit the Golden Globes got it right some of the time, but in 1991, they chose Bugsy over Silence of the Lambs and in 2006 Babel over The Departed. I don’t agree with those choices.
And my understanding is that the membership of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association isn’t very elite. (And I think it’s a tiny group, like less than a hundred members.)
I agree with you about those Oscar choices being better.
I meant elite in terms of rarified, not high-falutin’. It is a rarified group of voters. It isn’t as if they let just anybody and their brother in because as I understand it their numbers have always been small, under 100 (I did say small). If you could easily buy or manipulate your way in, their voter numbers would be in the hundreds or thousands by now.
Hell, anyone can buy their way in to voting for the Independent Spirit Awards (I almost got a membership a few years ago specifically to vote for Winter’s Bone and Company but I never had the extra cash) and no one ever complains about them.
As far as actual EVENT - the Golden Globes are more fun to watch - everyone has had a few drinks, the awards are nice, but everyone knows the voters were about two dozen foreign celebrity whores who just want to hobnob with Hollywood stars.
The Oscars have the real prestige and mean far more when receiving one…whereas winning a Golden Globe is just a cool thing to have on the bookshelf.
Now, that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t want to win a Golden Globe - but you might notice it is more normal to mention an actor is an Oscar winner or was an Oscar nominee, but would rarely, if ever, hear that about a Golden Globe…so there most certainly is a difference in the actual award.
Golden Globes voters can essentially be bought via junket or the opportunity to schmooze with stars; witness Harvey Weinstein, whose relentless wooing has paid him back handsomely (the best example of that was The Reader).
Still, who cares? It’s all bullshit, and the whimsy of the Globes adds to the fun, rather than subtracting from it.
IMO they kinda alternate sucking. For example, in 50, 51, 55, 60, 64, 65, 68, 69, 95, 04 and 05, the Golden Globes were the correct choice. In the other years they weren’t.
The Reader got Kate Winslet a Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress; she also got the Oscar for Best Actress. It was nominated for – but didn’t win – Golden Globes in Director and Screenplay and Best Picture; it was likewise nominated for each of those Oscars, likewise winning none.
What, exactly, does that prove in a Globes-v-Oscars contest?
In my opinion, the fact that they give out their awards the day before the Oscars discredits them. They’re basically trying to use Oscar week publicity to call attention to their claim that they’re independent - and by using this strategy, they’re disproving their claim. Real independence would be scheduling their event away from the Oscar ceremony.
The last few years their picks have looked more and more like the other awards, but not completely - last year for example it was great to see John Hawkes win.
Nonsense. Getting that many industry people in one place is logistically very challenging. They’re not under any illusion that they’re on par (in name recognition or popularity) with the Oscars, but since there is some inevitable overlap between the two ceremonies, capitalizing on the presence of all worldwide media and big Hollywood types that one weekend makes perfect sense and does nothing to undermine any “independent” standing.