Globes night: long on speeches & laughs, rough in places
By Jane Holahan
Updated Feb 19, 2007 15:40
The Globes, given out by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (whoever they might be), are seen as a precursor to the Academy Awards.
And they are usually a lot more fun to watch because, well, they have lots of alcohol flowing at all the celebrity tables.
Just ask Harrison Ford, who came out with Virginia Madsen to present an award and actually brought his drink with him. To make matters worse, he made Madsen hold the drink while he opened the envelope.
And I gotta tell you, his words sounded kind of slurry to me, as they have at a lot of award shows in recent years.
What would John Book think!
The tack-o-rama award of the night goes to Dennis Quaid, who made a crude, juvenile joke about “Brokeback Mountain,” and didn’t bother to comb his hair. Maybe Dennis was hanging with Harrison back stage.
Gwyneth Paltrow, pregnant with baby Lemon (or is it Orange?), wore the ugliest dress of the night, and Melanie Griffith won the award for the ugliest tattoo, a heart with “Antonio” in the middle of it.
And am I the only one who is sick to death of seeing all the actresses from “Desperate Housewives” enmasse, arm in arm like they are attached at the hip? I suspect the housewives are sick of it too.
But many of the winners had surprisingly funny acceptance speeches.
Geena Davis, who won for ABC’s “Commander in Chief,” in which she plays the country’s first female president, had everyone going with a precious story about how a little girl tugged on her gown earlier in the evening and told her she was dreaming of becoming president, thanks to the actress.
OK, it didn’t happen, Davis told the crowd. But it could have happened. That’s what matters — it could have happened.
Hugh Laurie, who won for his portrayal of an unlikable doctor in Fox’s “House,” proved very likable. He said there were way too many people to thank, so he wrote 170 names on slips of paper and was randomly going to choose three. He thanked the hairdresser and a wardrobe guy and then his agent, though he noted that one wasn’t in his own handwriting.
Steve Carell, who won for “The Office” on NBC, said he didn’t write an acceptance speech, but his wife wrote one for him. He then proceeded to read it, with every other thank you going to his wife, who endured great pain to have his children, gave up her own career to support him and was the most beautiful, amazing woman in the world.
The speech was so funny another winner, later in the show, thanked Steve Carell’s wife too.
The key to these funny acceptance speeches was letting the winners go on for more than a milli-second. At the Oscars, the music starts playing no matter how gripping the speech.
I know winners can be long-winded and tedious, but so what. The Globes are fun because they are a little looser and a little more off the wall.
And they wrapped up on time, precisely at 11 p.m. That’s something the Oscars rarely manage to do.
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Jane Holahan is a New Era staff writer. Her column appears every other Wednesday.
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