WINNING a Golden Globe Award can help a movie or a performer when it comes to Oscar success. But it is no guarantee.
Michael Williams-Jones, the former CEO of United International Pictures, explains that ”for big movies, the Golden Globes confirm what’s already on everyone’s mind. With a small movie like ”Gods and Monsters” [featuring a supporting performance by Globes winner Lynn Redgrave], it can prompt people to reconsider the film or see it again.”
After Sunday’s televised awards presentation, Michael Caine is all but certain to get a nomination for best actor (for ”Little Voice”) and is less of a long shot for the actual Oscar. His amusing, self-deprecating acceptance speech should have reminded Academy voters who hadn’t already mailed in their ballots (the deadline is Friday) of the veteran star’s charm.
The Globe for best foreign-language film to Brazil’s ”Central Station” could give it the edge over the more controversial Italian Holocaust comedy ”Life Is Beautiful,” which was not among the Golden Globes nominees.
Winning three Globes may also mean that ”Shakespeare in Love” is now the only serious challenger to director Steven Spielberg’s ”Saving Private Ryan” as the Oscars’ dominating movie.
But one retired senior executive points out that box-office success plays a larger role in the Oscars than in the Golden Globes.
”You’ve got to remember that the Academy membership is quite old and tends to be traditional in its voting. So it’s seldom that a big winner is some obscure, brilliant film seen by three people.”
Nationality also counts more in the Academy Awards than it does at the Globes, which are voted on by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association. If American actresses are in a minority of the nominees – this year, Cate Blanchett of ”Elizabeth,” an Australian, and two Brits could well face off against two Americans – you can be sure that an American will win, as Helen Hunt did in 1998 for ”As Good as It Gets.”
Conversely, being ignored by the 86 all-too-easily-lobbied-or-offended Globes voters does not mean that a movie will be similarly shunned by the Academy, which has about 5,000 members.
”A Simple Plan,” with its bravura performances by Billy Bob Thornton and Bill Paxton, could still get some nominations, as could the three New Line films ignored by the Golden Globes: ”Pleasantville,” ”American History X” and ”Living Out Loud.”
Some industry insiders think a Globe can actually damage an actor’s chances. One exec told me: ”Look at Madonna. After she won a Globe [for ”Evita”], she didn’t even get nominated. If a Globe award is so wrong it makes your skin crawl, like Jim Carrey’s [for ”The Truman Show”], the Academy will turn away in disgust.”
The award given annually by the Directors Guild of America is thought by some dissenters to have better predictive value in that category than do the Globes, because the voters are at least technically part of the industry. (The Screen Actors Guild began presenting acting awards in 1995.)
Still, even if Globes voters are often suckers for movie-star glamour – it’s hard to explain otherwise their 1996 choice of Madonna for best actress in a comedy or musical for her work in ”Evita” over Frances McDormand in ”Fargo” – the Hollywood Foreign Press Association’s collective taste may well be closer to that of Academy voters than are either the awards presented by the guilds or the more highfalutin American film critics’ associations.
Academy Award nominations will be announced on Tuesday, Feb. 9.