Talk:Hollywood Foreign Press Association

Article is lacking details, criticisms and controversies
This article is lacking details, criticisms and controversies that are easy to document by citing reputable sources. Here are a few examples, all several years old. I'll get around to incorporating them into the article at some point. 67.100.123.202 (talk) 16:30, 13 December 2007 (UTC).
 * Agreed, this article need a controversy section. The has been much criticism made of the HFPA's lack of credibility.Walterego (talk) 16:36, 18 January 2011 (UTC)

"Golden Globes Group Seeks More Respect &mdash;and Money" (from 2002)

 * (http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&contentId=A9699-2002Dec18)


 * As the Globes have risen in prominence since NBC began to air them nationally in 1996, there have been calls to reform the tiny group that votes on them.
 * There have been calls to reform the tiny group that votes on them.... Gifts are now limited to bottles of champagne, flowers and movie trinkets.
 * Perhaps two dozen are working foreign journalists; a larger number are longtime members who freelance infrequently for small overseas publications. Many are Americans, many live on their pensions -- three are now in their nineties, many others in their eighties -- and struggle to produce the four yearly clippings they need to qualify as active members. A large number of HFPA members make their living at other professions, including teaching, real estate, car sales and film promotion.
 * The money raked in by the Golden Globe telecast gives HFPA members privileges unheard of in other press organizations. Each active member can take two fully paid trips to film festivals of his or her choice, annually. They receive a subscription to Variety or The Hollywood Reporter for free. The association pays air fare for studio press junkets.
 * The HFPA gets unparalleled access to movie stars and directors, with studios holding press conferences for them with every movie release. Stars are required to pose for individual photos with every member who attends.
 * The HFPA makes substantial donations to film-oriented charities.
 * Journalists who work for prominent overseas publications are frequently rejected for membership, such as Claudine Mulard, a Le Monde correspondent whose application was rejected at least three times.
 * British journalists for large publications who are based in Los Angeles say they are uninterested in joining. Duncan Campbell, correspondent for The Guardian, said, "I think it's like one of Groucho Marx's clubs. If they were willing to have me in it, I wouldn't want to join. I've always considered that joining comes at a dreadful price &mdash; your credibility."

"Golden Shutterbug" (from 2003)
An interview with the then-86-year-old HFPA member Anita Weber, still an active member
 * (http://www.filmstew.com/ShowArticle.aspx?ContentID=6711)


 * “In order to keep your membership up to date, you have to attend a certain number of meetings, submit a certain number of clippings and be cleared by Yulia Dashevsky of the Motion Picture Association of America,” explains Weber. “You don’t just get to stay if you’re not productive.” “Everyone comes in as a writer but many eventually become photographers as well, because there’s more money in photos,” Weber continues. “Some of the newer applicants want in so badly they have it in for us when they are rejected. Sometimes they apply three or four times. We can’t just take anyone.”
 * “I’m probably the fourth oldest member of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association,” says Weber during a recent interview at her spacious high-rise apartment near Farmer’s Market in Los Angeles. “Sylvia Norris (United Kingdom), who just died, was 90. Then there’s Sven Rye (Denmark), who was once the Danish vice consul in Los Angeles. He’s in a rest home facility now but is a dear, sweet, adorable man. Finally, Gloria Geale (United Kingdom) is a few months older than I.”
 * If [a film] is good, I will say so, if it’s bad, I just forget about it, because I’m not going to bite the hand that feeds me.
 * In a subtle way, publicists will always try to influence our votes,” says Weber. “We know the publicists who are guilty of this because they get so frenzied and anxious to help. Friends are friends, but we are not supposed to talk amongst ourselves about who we’re voting for.”

The truth behind the Golden Globes (from 2003)
Details, mostly but not all criticisms, from the documentary The Golden Globes: Hollywood's Dirty Little Secret
 * (http://www.cnn.com/2003/SHOWBIZ/Movies/12/12/goldenglobes.ap/)


 * Many HFPA members have "reputations more as star-struck fans and moochers than serious reporters"
 * L.A. Weekly film critic John Powers said the group's members are "essentially just bottom-feeders around the industry, who've somehow been inflated to this point where their judgment is supposed to be very, very important."
 * Each year, studios arrange elaborate meals where HFPA members can hobnob with directors and actors on films angling for Academy Awards and other movie honors. If stars and filmmakers fail to turn up for a schmooze session with the HFPA, it generally kills a movie's chances for Golden Globe nominations, which draw attention that can boost a film's Oscar prospects.
 * the Golden Globes fell into disrepute in the early 1980s for naming Pia Zadora newcomer of the year for her movie bomb Butterfly, the awards have gained some respect in recent years for honoring daring performances.
 * Hilary Swank's gender-bending role in "Boys Don't Cry" earned her an Academy Award, a prize she might not have received without an earlier Golden Globe win that caught the attention of generally more conservative Oscar voters. "Even though the Golden Globe people are by and large idiots," critic Powers says in the documentary, "they often make better choices than the Oscars."

Golden Globes: Hollywood's Dirty Little Secret
Review of the documentary
 * (http://www.thehollywoodreporter.com/thr/reviews/review_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=2048237)


 * Interviews with a cross section of the entertainment industry, including journalists, a producer, a disguised Golden Globes nominee and others, indicate it is widely known that these coveted and much-publicized awards are decided by the vote of fewer than 100 individuals, most of whom aren't full-time journalists.
 * The documentary does a decent enough job of making a case that the Golden Globes are overrated, but it falls way short in explaining why that doesn't really matter. Overrated or not, the award show churns up admirable ratings, brings out the stars and has a name that, to the general public, represents Hollywood success and glamour. Studios couldn't care less whether the awards are decided by isolated Benedictine monks in the Himalayas or angels on high, at least not since the Globes have evolved into a tremendous marketing tool. The latter point is made here but not as emphatically as it should be.

Need for expansion for balance
Does anyone else think this article needs to be expanded for balance? LA Movie Buff (talk) 06:02, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

Badly formatted text move to here
I have removed the following text from the article because it appeared to be a bad cut-and-paste job from elsewhere (leading spaces were causing every paragraph to be rendered as preformatted text). Interested editors can look this over (copyvio?) and add back the material (with proper wiki syntax) that belongs in the article. - dcljr (talk) 23:40, 11 February 2010 (UTC) The Hollywood Foreign Press Association is a group of working journalists who cover movies and movie stars for a variety of outlets, ranging from national newspapers to film titles to entertainment guides. (Screen International). Their publications include leading newspapers and magazines in Europe, Asia, Australasia and Latin America, ranging from Le Figaro in France, L'Espresso in Italy to Vogue in Germany as well as the China Times and the pan-Arabic magazine Kul Al Osra.

The group’s annual Golden Globe Awards have enabled the non-profit organization to donate more than $10.5 million in the past fifteen years to entertainment-related charities, as well as funding scholarships and other programs for future film and television professionals. In the year 2009 the donation was more than 1.2 million dollars, the largest tally ever distributed in the organization's history. (Daily Variety)

Known worldwide for its glittering Golden Globe Awards ceremony held every January and its multi-million dollar donations to charity, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association had humble origins that stemmed solely from a group of journalists' desire to efficiently and accurately cover all aspects of the world of entertainment (Who Makes the Golden Globes Go Around?).

The association was founded in the early 1940s by a group of Los Angeles-based foreign journalists in an attempt to gain more clout with the studios and make it easier to obtain access to stars. It now comprises 89 members from 55 different countries. All have to submit clippings of their work every year to justify their membership. (London Daily Telegraph)

The organization’s first awards presentation for distinguished achievements in the film industry took place in early 1944 with an informal ceremony at 20th Century Fox. There, Jennifer Jones was awarded Best Actress honors for “The Song of Bernadette,” which also won for Best Film, while Paul Lukas took home Best Actor laurels for “Watch on the Rhine.” Awards were presented in the form of scrolls.

The following year members came up with the idea of presenting winners with a golden globe encircled with a strip of motion picture film, and mounted on a pedestal.

In 2012 differing philosophies among members created a schism within the organization, resulting in a split into two separate groups -- The Hollywood Foreign Correspondents Association and the Foreign Press Association of Hollywood.. The separation ended in 1955 when the journalists reunited under the collective title “The Hollywood Foreign Press Association” with firm guidelines and requirements for membership. (Who Makes the Golden Globes Go Around?)

In 1955 the Golden Globes began honoring achievements in television as well as in film. The first honorees in the Best Television Show category that year were “Dinah Shore,” “Lucy & Desi,” “The American Comedy” and “Davy Crockett.” In 2007, The Golden Globes initiated the category “Best Animated Feature Film” and the first year nominees were “Cars,” “Happy Feet” and “Monster House.”

Today, the Golden Globes recognize achievements in 25 categories; 14 in motion pictures and 11 in television.

The Golden Globes evening has long been known as a giant party; a star-filled, champagne-and-cocktail-fuelled orgy of congratulations, back-patting and table-hopping where the world’s leading actors, actresses and directors relish the informality of an event where there is always a feeling that anything can happen.

In previous years Jack Nicholson mooned the audience, Renee Zellweger was in the ladies room when she should have been on stage picking up her Golden Globe and Ving Rhames insisted on passing his Golden Globe on to Jack Lemmon because, he said, he was more deserving of it.

But in recent years the Globes have come to be viewed not only as a riotous night out for Hollywood’s elite, but as a vital part of the film industry, second in importance only to the Oscars and having a great impact on a film’s financial success. (London Daily Telegraph).

There have been whispers that votes can be bought by expensive gifts and all a studio needs to do is throw a party at which voters can mix with the stars. That may have been so in the past, but nothing could be further from the truth now. (London Daily Telegraph).

The group has had an overhaul in credibility since it infamously awarded Pia Zadora a best newcomer Globe in 1981, a prize forever tainted because it was associated with a junket to Las Vegas paid for by a producer of the film who also happened to be Zadora’s husband. (Screen International January 14 2010)

Since NBC began televising the Globes in the mid 1990s the rules have tightened and members must now sign an agreement that they will not receive valuable gifts. Presents that were deemed too valuable, such as a Coach watch from Sharon Stone and a dvd player from Chris Rock, were immediately returned.

Even invitations to parties are strictly vetted, and if they are seen to be aimed at influencing Golden Globe votes, they are declined.

Each year HFPA members interview more than 400 actors, directors, writers and producers, as well as reporting from film sets and seeing more than 300 films. Members also attend film festivals in other countries in order to seek out interesting and innovative foreign language films and establish cultural bonds with directors, actors, jurors and fellow journalists around the world. Membership meetings are held monthly and the officers and directors are elected annually. A maximum of five journalists are admitted to the organization each year. All members are accredited by the Motion Picture Association of America.

there are no black members of the HFPA
I don't have time to update the article right now, but the recent LA times article and associated news stories showing that the HFPA has no black members and has been paying huge sums of money to its members for favorable reviews should be included here. Right now the page reads like an ad for the association. Refs:--Found5dollar (talk) 18:13, 22 February 2021 (UTC)
 * This seems like a publicity stunt for HFPA. How many members does it have? It all depends whether it said 4 or 104 members! I am extremely informed & hadn't heard of HFPA till today! Season 13 of The Real Housewives of Atlanta (season 13) has fewer than 10 cast members & they are all African-American women. I don't believe either RHOA is racially motivated, though.--2601:C4:C300:1BD0:708E:2510:279C:4124 (talk) 22:41, 1 March 2021 (UTC)


 * HFPA has 87 members.--2601:C4:C300:1BD0:708E:2510:279C:4124 (talk) 12:27, 3 March 2021 (UTC)