There is no doubt: from the opening frame of the 71st annual Golden Globe Awards, hosts Tina Fey and Amy Poehler owned it.
Awards nights are notoriously tough gigs, and few hosts seem so entirely in their happy place standing on a stage firing missiles at their colleagues and friends.
But their no-holds-barred approach to the gig seems to have paid off brilliantly, as they lurched from one savage remark to the next, all aimed at Hollywood’s gods, and all hitting their mark.
Matthew McConaughey lost 45 pounds (20 kilograms) for his role in Dallas Buyers Club, noted Fey. ” … or what actresses call ‘being in a movie’,” she then quipped.
The film adaptation of the hit play August: Osage County, Fey continues, was proof that there were still “great parts in Hollywood for Meryl Streeps over 60”.
What the Golden Globes lack in genuine critical firepower – in Hollywood, other ceremonies, such as the Screen Actors Guild Awards and the BAFTAs seem to have more clout – they make up for in fun.
They are the only sit-down dinner awards night, which means the actors – from film and television, mixing in the one room – are drinking and socialising while the awards take place, almost as an afterthought.
That’s why you sometimes end up with someone in the loo when they win (hello Christine Lahti, that’s you) or, as happened this year, presenter Emma Thompson racing on to the stage with a glass in one hand and her shoes in the other.
You also get glitches and other golden moments: Jacqueline Bisset’s “shit” and the failed attempt to bleep it, which missed by seconds, and the failed teleprompter which left Jonah Hill and Australian actress Margot Robbie at sea on stage.
“I’m not going to lie to you, right now, they put up the wrong stuff on the teleprompter,” Hill said. The pair were then handed a piece of paper from which they presented their segment.
Fey and Poehler kept the gags coming. Matt Damon, they said, was “basically a garbage person” in such stellar company.
The film Gravity, they continued, is “a story about how George Clooney would rather float away into space and die than spend one more minute with a woman his own age”.
They even kept up a tradition of roasting the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, a group of about 80-odd journalists, who vote for the Globes, noting their unusual names and sometimes fringe publications.
Among the faux journalists thanked were Jurgen Funderfinger from “Der Fundtf” magazine, Sven Candervomit from “Purple” magazine, Ni
