The folks who award the Golden Globes aren’t as uptight as the Oscar crowd—good box office and pretty faces carry more weight at the Globes than political correctness and dignified careers. So when the nominations come out, as they did yesterday, they’re not to be read so much as bellwethers for Oscar than what Hollywood really thinks. What, then, do we think of the stiffing of Judd Apatow in yesterday’s list?
Despite the huge year Apatow had with “Knocked Up” and “Superbad,” both celebrations of rampant adolescent sexuality, neither those films, he, nor any of his actors, got a mention in the Globe nominations. Okay, so it’s hard to point to any singular performances (though I’d have thought Apatow’s wife, Leslie Mann, would have snared a supporting actress nom for her hyped-up housewife in “Knocked Up”) but register Hollywood as down on bongs and breasts, even if, as in “Knocked Up,” the message is fundamentally pro-family and pro-marriage. To add insult to injury, “Juno,” commonly being referred to as the female “Knocked Up,” promptly got multiple nominations before half the country has heard of it.
Cross-dressing, however, is fine, even when the filmmaker is gloriously anti- … well, anti-any old fashioned American value you can name. John Travolta was nominated for his “Norbert”-esque Edna Turnblad in John Waters’s “Hairspray.” To prove it’s a trend, Cate Blanchett, too, got noticed for her turn as Bob Dylan in “I’m Not There.” Oh, well, Judd, you know where the bar is set now—and I’m dying to see your gender-bending movie.
posted December 15, 2007 at 3:42 pm
Comedy generally doesn’t fare well at awards time.