Golden Globes backstage: Tom Hanks riffs and Ricky Gervais biffs
By Adam B. Vary
The Golden Globes are nothing if not irreverent: A small group of foreign journalists with occasionally dubious credentials ply Hollywood’s movie and TV stars with food and booze and golden, er, globes. It’s a super silly evening, and I’m gonna treat the goings on in the backstage press room in kind. For starters, I decided to wear green socks with my tux. For seconders, not ashamed to say that, upon spying the two giant tubs of iced beer available to the press, I may have snagged a bottle and threw back a few swigs. To any editors reading this, I was just “researching” what it must be liked for all those soused celebs. So forthwith, my hopefully pithy, slightly tipsy Golden Globe Awards for Backstage at the Golden Globes.
Award for Possible False Modesty
Kate Winslet. When asked if the extra sheets of paper spotted in her purse when she won Best Supporting Actress for The Reader were perhaps another speech in case she also wins Best Actress in a Drama for Revolutionary Road, Winslet demurred, stating they were just “blotting papers.…it wasn’t a second speech. I have no further expectations.” Uh-huh.
Award for Unexpectedly Not-So-Funny Non-Winner Backstage Appearance
Ricky Gervais. Example A: What was Gervais drinking on stage? “Beer, but I think somebody put a little bit of crack in it.” Har har. Example B: What was the other Holocaust joke he didn’t go with on air? “I was going to say that when I got the DVD of Schindler’s List a reviewer on the box said ‘Have a box of tissues ready,’ and I was going to say, ‘That sounds a little bit sick.’” Huh? Oh. Ewww.
Award for Liveliest Spaz
Tom Hanks. A winner for producing HBO miniseries John Adams, Hanks behaved as if he thought the backstage press was the audience at an intimate lounge in Vegas. After answering a question from a reporter he was told was on his extreme right, he asked “okay, who’s on our extreme left? Fox?!” And when his über-publicist Leslee Dart waved to him after he was done, Hanks boomed: “Leslee Dart everyone! You’ve all fought with her! You’ve all had terms dictated to you by her! And no personal questions next time!”
Award for Only Honest Answer about Possible SAG Strike
Sigourney Weaver. Many actors were asked about the impeding vote by the Screen Actors Guild to authorize a strike, and almost all of them — including the otherwise happily yappy Hanks — steadfastly said nothing of any consequence. Except Weaver: “I think it is not a great time for actors to strike. I think we need to make lots of entertainment to distract and comfort us during the next couple of years.…Let’s table the strike and work together and make some wonderful movies over the next three years and then we can all come back when the world economy is a little healthier and talk about these things.” Snap!
Award for Most Impressive Flop Sweat
Alec Baldwin. While standing with the 30 Rock cast, the winner for Best Actor in a TV Comedy was dripping so heavily he was practically his own weather system.
Award for Actual Modesty
Kate Winslet. Even though she brought a piece of paper up with her on stage when she won Best Actress for Revolutionary Road, her second Golden Globe of the night, Winslet said her speech was spontaneous. And she insisted, repeatedly, she never once thought she’d pull off the one-two win: “I thought Anne Hathaway was going to win, hands down, just no question. I really feel this is a dream. Has this happened before? This is not supposed to happen.…I was so shocked to win one. And two? It’s honestly amazing.” And yes, she did get to use those blotting papers, “but I didn’t feel they were any good though.”
Award for Living Up Perfectly To All Expectations
Mickey Rourke. The Best Actor in a Drama winner for The Wrestler epitomized his bad-boy-with-a-softie-center rep like it was a role he was hired to play. Told his acceptance speech had a lot of bleeps, he simmered back, “I am not perfect, sweetheart.” When officious female tech tried to get Rourke to stop holding the thin wire mic stand, Rourke waved her off: “I like holding it. Cool it.” After a reporter said he was out of the business for ten years, Rourke responded, “More like 14 years ago, if you want to be honest. Ten [years] sounds easy.” But then someone asked him about the dogs he paid tribute to when he won, and Rourke got all gooey, working through all their names, which he’d had etched into one of his rings. Best I could count, there was Jack the Great, his “wife” Angel, Chocolate, Mow Zone, Loki, Knee Knee and Rome. And nope, the sunglasses never came off.
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