Golden Globes 2014: Wasted Ladies Kick Ass
“This was the beautiful mess we hoped it would be,” Tina Fey announced at the end of the Golden Globes. Amy Poehler crowed, “And I got to make out with Bono!” Both ladies were correct. It was the real American Horror Story: Coven up in here tonight, as this year’s Golden Globes bash turned into a rowdy celebrity pageant of Wasted Ladies Kicking Ass. Tina and Amy led the way, though they saved their best line for the final stretch: “And now, like a supermodel’s vagina, let’s give a warm welcome to Leonardo DiCaprio.”
Soaring highs, crushing lows: see the best & worst moments at the Golden Globes
It was definitely the female stars who made the Golden Globes spectacle a delight to behold. I mean, it’s not like anybody ever takes these awards seriously, but these ladies really didn’t give a fuck. Jacqueline Bisset redefining the art of the incoherent acceptance speech. Diane Keaton singing the Girl Scout “Make New Friends” song and reducing a room of sloshed celebs to a mortified when-does-this-end hush. Julia Louis-Dreyfus puffing an e-cig on camera. (An award-show first?) Emma Thompson breezed to the podium barefoot with her heels in one hand and a martini in the other, which just made her look like the sanest person there. Beautiful? Maybe. A mess? Definitely. Somewhere in TV heaven, Brett Somers was raising a cup to the stars.
Did we mention the free booze? Yeah. Lots of it. That’s why the stars show up. Nobody cares who wins the actual prizes, since these “globe-shaped dildos” (in Peter Travers’ immortal phrase) are given out by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, which has credibility like Leonardo has facial expressions. The real attraction of the Golden Globes is seeing the stars binge on that magic combination of alcohol refills and live cameras, which adds up to heartbreak for them but chuckles for us.
Watch Bono and Amy Poehler’s shocking Golden Globes makeout
Pohler and Fey came on strong – as they proved in this gig last year, they’re the funniest award-show hosts since Chris Rock hung it up. This year they tried to be nicer and more restrained. But their one really nasty line was a killer, as Fey called Gravity “the story of how George Clooney would rather float away in space and die than spend one more minute with a woman of his own age.” (P. Diddy really enjoyed that one.) Poehler gave a shout-out to “Masters of Sex – the degree I got from Boston College,” which set up the sweet moment later when she won an award while getting a backrub from Bono.
Jacqueline Bisset gave the first big speech of the evening and set the tone for everybody else, taking forever to stroll to the podium, pausing on the way to smooch Jon Voight, then rambling through beyond-awkward pauses and a “shit” that slipped past network censors. La Bissett hasn’t been so awesomely unhinged since she banged Andrew McCarthy in the Eighties teen-trash opus Class, which I’m pretty sure is the only teen movie that has Rob Lowe impersonating Jesus and John Cusack smoking weed. (The big punch line in Class: “We’ve all done things we’re ashamed of.” It could have been the motto for the night.)
After that, nobody was even trying to hold it together. Diddy sang a tipsy freestyle and tackled Bono on the podium, while Larry Mullen Jr. made U2 history by proving he can talk. Johnny Depp, looking tres Elton, tried to out-mumble Ben Affleck. When the teleprompter guys screwed up during Jonah Hill’s segment, he made this panicked “oh wait, literally nobody in the room isn’t ripping drunk” face. DiCaprio gave a sincere tribute to Martin Scorsese, even if he’s been to Scorsese’s career what cocaine was to Henry Hill’s.
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Jennifer Lawrence enhanced her down-to-earth charm by the way she praised David O. Russell for “unchartered humor,” and speaking of unchartered, Matthew McConaughey’s speech proved he’s still Dazed and Confused‘s Wooderson. But Jared Leto proved he was never truly Jordan Catalano. From his trying-too-hard ponytail to his dumb jokes, Leto made it more obvious than ever that Catalano was merely a ghost who inhabited some generic actor’s body for a few months and then moved on. The contrast was like watching Wooderson’s Melba Toast win a drag race against Catalano’s Red.
The Golden Globes show has a tradition of giving a lifetime achievement award to an old-timer, who comes out and makes an embarrassing, endless speech that makes everybody want to hide in the coat-check room. Except everybody knows Woody Allen doesn’t go to these things. So come on down, Diane Keaton! She did not disappoint – in fact, she was Jodie times De Niro, babbling like the Shelley Duvall stoner in Annie Hall who gushes, “Transplendent!” (All-time best movie depiction of a Rolling Stone writer, Almost Famous nonwithstanding.) The Woody montage tried to pretend crap like Hollywood Ending and Mighty Aphrodite and Bullets Over Broadway belongs on the same level as Bananas or Love and Death. By the time Diane started singing, it was like, holy shit, doctor – we don’t need that many eggs.
Beautiful mess indeed – this was the Sixteen Candles wedding scene of award shows. Will Tina and Amy do it again next year? Hope so.
Watch Tina and Amy’s opening monologue: