On Friday night, audiences wanting to see The Amazing Race were treated to a 3 1/2 hour act of autofellatio. The Hollywood Film Awards were aired on public television for the first time, ever. Marked as the beginning to awards season, the HFA is notorious for being an award show started by a guy with a history of giving awards to whomever wants to get free drinks and a bag of goodies. Apparently, even the Hollywood elite can’t turn down a free drink.
The HFAs, on the surface, appear to be a bastardized conglomeration of all the awards shows. Some of the award categories include: Hollywood Blockbuster Award, Hollywood Comedy Film Award, Hollywood Film Award. The former comes from the popularity contests of the Blockbuster awards, the Comedy division comes from the Golden Globes, and the non-categorized “Film” is straight up Oscars.
As the New York Post correctly reports, the HFAs are a huge joke. They share an origin with The Oogieloves, in that they were both started by a marketing executive in the hopes of cashing in. The HFAs have been cashing in for 17 years longer than The Oogieloves, but that doesn’t make them any more legitimate. The selection team is unknown, but most people know it’s just founder Carlos de Abreu selecting the movies.
The theme for the show was Outsiders. There was a documentary about the outsider agent, who was a supermensch. James Gunn and Chris Pratt commented they were Outsiders, saying the award was in support of outsiders (never mind that the movie was part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe that is flooding the market). Benedict Cumberbatch mentioned the gays and claimed the award in the name of outsiders…never mind that he’s a straight guy acting in pink face (hey, his speech was much better than Michael Douglas and Jared Leto last year). Apparently watching the same Hollywood movies as everybody else is an outsider activity, and we all want to be different right?
The most obvious reason for their broadcast is in the way the awards are presented. There is no category of suggestions. Instead, the award is announced, and we’re told who the winner is. In essence, the HFAs are all about telling us what to like. You better like Gone Girl as it took home Actor, Film, and Screenplay. You better like Top Five, even though it won’t be coming out until December.
But, the secondary reason is that Hollywood has suffered the most disastrous box office in years. The failed box office shows no sign of rising any time soon. Interstellar dropped 40% in its second week, after the first wave of viewers came back complaining about its dialogue, plot holes, and basic storytelling problems. It is said to be on track to make back its budget, domestically. In terms of domestic box office, odds are there will only be 2 films to make over $300m: Guardians of the Galaxy and The Hunger Games 3.1, the latter of which was not mentioned at the HFAs. Last year, there were 4 and the year before there were 5.
The box office is down, and the HFAs were supposed to be that shot of power into the last few months. Instead, it was an excuse for us to watch the stars get drunk.