As enjoyable as movies are, the winter award-show whirl is hardly worth watching anymore.
Starlets parade around the red carpet; Joan Rivers shows off her baffling new plastic surgery; Brangelina … exists … and then the actual awards ceremony drags on for a mind-boggling amount of time.
This year’s Golden Globes, Oscar’s less classy cousin, usually doesn’t amount to much.
“The Social Network” was the “big winner of the night” with a whopping four Globes, Robert DeNiro won a lifetime achievement award (presumably for his tour-de-force turn in “Little Fockers”) and “Boardwalk Empire” robbed “Mad Men” of a few statues. Yet this year’s awards show was different from past ones. The real winner of the night was Ricky Gervais.
Everyone knows who Ricky Gervais is: chubby, brash, the creator of the hallowed British “The Office.” If you draw a blank in terms of what Gervais has been up to lately, you’d be forgiven. Gervais has been popping up in scene-stealing comedy bits at awards shows for a while now — his stunt at the 2008 Emmys, where he demanded that Steve Carrell relinquish his award will always be hilarious — and gave a solid performance hosting last year’s Globes. At the 2010 awards, Gervais was provocative without really shocking anyone, and pulled off enough Mel Gibson jokes to be invited back to host the Globes in 2011.
Gervais is responsible for a few funny-yet-unremarkable movies — “Ghost Town” and “The Invention of Lying” to name a few. He created “Extras,” a fantastic comedy show that has sadly since ended and currently has an animated TV show on HBO based on his podcast series. Gervais is a high-profile comedy star, certainly, but he’s never been one of the main players in American comedy.
However, things may very well change after his merciless performance at the 2011 Globes, which has received more buzz lately than all the Globe winners combined. This year, Gervais wasn’t content with simply lobbing Paul McCartney jokes to the audience. Instead, Gervais took full advantage of his free hosting reins and brutally skewered, well, everyone.
He made fun of the “Sex And The City” ladies/Cher/Bruce Willis for their age, Jorge Garcia for his weight, Charlie Sheen for his drinking, Robert Downey Jr. for his drug use, unnamed “famous scientologists” for being gay, Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie for agreeing to make ‘The Tourist,” Tim Allen for being Tim Allen and the list goes on. It was a night full of stone-cold reaction shots of the Globes’ celebrity audience, who let out collective groans at Gervais’s jabs.
Robert Downey Jr. successfully summed up Gervais’s performance when he took the stage to present an award, saying, “Aside from the fact that it’s been hugely mean-spirited, with mildly sinister undertones, I’d say the vibe of the show is pretty good so far, wouldn’t you?”
Downey Jr. was completely correct. Gervais’s performance was squirm-worthy, petty, politically incorrect and at times even cruel. Looking at the impact it will have on his career, it was also surprisingly astute. Instead of replicating his funny-yet-unremarkable 2010 hosting turn, he went for the Globes’ jugular in a fearless performance. Ricky successfully pissed off half of Hollywood, cementing his status as a renegade comedian.
Supposedly, Golden Globes executives have commented that Gervais crossed the line, magazines are predicting that he’ll never host an awards show again and the head of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association stated that he wouldn’t jump to qualify any of Gervais’s future movies for the awards. But after Gervais’s hosting stunt, he doesn’t need them or any other uptight Hollywood players outraged by his performance. It was a brilliant and buzzworthy career move that will ensure his survival in the industry for years to come.
mmcdermott@theeagleonline.com
