HFPA Dissidents Upset At NBC's Plans To Turn Golden Globes Press Conference Into 'Access Hollywood'-Style Fiasco
According to the LAT's Gold Derby blog, some scandalized members within shadowy, buffet-decimating, kudos-proffering concern the Hollywood Foreign Press Association are livid that network broadcast partner NBC, hoping to salvage something from the strike-ravaged wreckage of the Golden Globes, intend to turn Sunday's one-hour press conference announcing this year's winners into an Access Hollywood-branded farce presided over by two of dinnertime TV's most recognizable faces:
HFPA leaders caved under network pressure only when assured that the TV show would be a serious press conference produced by NBC's news division. They never thought they'd get stuck with "a puff show" with Billy Bush and Nancy O'Dell, says a source.
The Hollywood Foreign Press Association has enough trouble deflecting criticism about the freelance status of many members. It's doubtful that the group would've agreed to this plan if NBC had been clear up front, is the sentiment I understand is now coming from the HFPA camp.
"The show isn't a real press conference," a veteran TV producer tells me. "It doesn't look like [the] journalists present will be able to ask questions of Golden Globe officials. They'll be there as captives to watch Billy and Nancy read off nominees and winners in 25 award categories."
It's understandable that some HFPA members would be galled by the puffery of NBC's plans, which make a disturbing mockery of the organization's normally sacred celebration of Hollywood. If the network had any interests but its own at heart, it would have made some attempt at incorporating the solemn ritual that usually begins each Globes ceremony—the consumption of Orson Welles' transubstantiated body and blood in the form of filet mignon and stiff vodka-tonics— as a show of good faith, even if they ultimately insisted that the oppressively telegenic Bush and O'Dell serve as the officiants of the rite.