Golden Globes Tarnished

LOS ANGELES -- When the Golden Globe nominations are announced later this month, few people will know that the power behind the picks is a group called the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, or HFPA.


Fewer still will know that most of its 88 active members are not full-time journalists, but part-time freelancers for publications in places such as Lithuania and Bangladesh, and include a college professor, a retired engineer and a man who runs an "auto referral service.


Yet this small group wields an extraordinary kind of power. Since the awards ceremony started being televised regularly in the late 1980s, it has become a major publicity tool for Hollywood studios.


Furthermore, the Globes, which are awarded in January, have become a kind of advance team for the bigger, brassier Oscars.


But while the Academy Awards are selected by more than 5,000 voting members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the Globes are picked by a few dozen movie lovers who enjoy an endless stream of gifts and perks from studios.


Members don't have to work too hard at their journalism. Four articles a year are required -- be they long, cogent analyses or short blurbs taken from transcripts of press conferences with movie stars -- to maintain active membership in the HFPA.


Yet few representatives of major foreign publications, such as The Times of London or Le Monde in France, are admitted to the group.


The HFPA's cozy relationship with the studios and stars it confers awards on, and the dubious journalistic credentials of many of its members, have been an open secret in Hollywood for years. But few are willing to talk about it on the record.


The studios are loath to jeopardize the marketing tool they have found in the Golden Globes, while actors, directors and producers are afraid of jeopardizing their chances at winning.


But judging from internal documents and interviews, the system is at best a mutual admiration society. At worst, according to critics, it's another way in which the public is fooled -- into believing that a Golden Globe is a symbol of real merit, and that it is bestowed by qualified, impartial critics without fear or favor.


"This is a racket that does more harm than good,'' says Howard Suber, co-chair of the film production program at the University of California at Los Angeles. "There are millions of people who watch and think this is something other than a corrupt little band. They think it means something, and of course it doesn't.''


Some members of the HFPA are well-respected foreign entertainment journalists, such as Alessandra Venezia who writes for Italy's weekly Panorama and the daily L'Unita, and Scott Orlin who writes for Germany's Cinema magazine.


But at least 30 of the 88 listed in the HFPA's membership book are freelance writers for obscure publications in such minuscule markets for U.S. films as Lithuania, Bangladesh and Egypt.


"The HFPA has about 25 very good, important journalists -- wonderful, good writers,'' says Mirjana Van Blaricom, HFPA president in 1992 and 1993. The rest, she says, "may write four or even five articles [a year]. I don't think that makes them journalists.''


Studio publicists support Van Blaricom's contention that fewer than half of the HFPA's members generally attend the screenings and news conferences set up for them.


Those who do go to news conferences are treated with unusual deference; movie stars must pose for photographs with every member of the association after the question-and-answer period. It is one of the group's "requirements,'' publicists say.


In 1993, director Rob Reiner said there was something "unkosher'' about this. "Sure I want to promote my movie, but I don't want to waste my time with people who are just pushing for a photo op,'' The New York Times quoted him as saying. Still, he has since given two press conferences to the HFPA.


The personal photo sessions are done so that members can prove to their editors that they did not fabricate their interviews with movie stars, the group says. But no one is required to provide clippings to show that the interviews were later published.


In Hollywood, many say the Golden Globe Awards are but a symptom of the collaborative relationship between the media and the entertainment industry, in which journalists are not independent arbiters but are considered part of the promotional process. And that is doubly true for the HFPA.


"If there is a problem with the HFPA, it's because it is a mirror image of how Hollywood treats the press,'' says Michael Bygrave, a veteran entertainment writer for London's Sunday Times and The Daily Telegraph. "It is the fault of the industry, which has never, and will never, admit that the press has any role as an independent force or watchdog. They regard the press like rich people regard their butlers -- they do everything they can to manipulate and control it.''


But Suber, the film professor, believes there is something more subversive at work: the willing participation of a network and the major studios in a gilded charade.


"The corruption is the network that puts it on and presents it as major event. The corruption comes from the studios that help make it a major event by turning out the stars,'' he observes. "For some pipsqueak band of 88 stringers who don't represent anything [to hold the awards]," he says, "is damaging to any kind of fair assessment of the importance of film.''


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