Every time January arrives, the night scene in Hollywood suddenly becomes much brighter.
For people in Hollywood, there is an increase in various activities during these days, including visiting friends, parties, giving gifts, watching movies...
With the Oscars right around the corner, a lot of people won't be able to keep their cool anymore. For them, this period of time is the time that may bring about the most significant change in their careers.
Being able to get an Oscar award or even a nomination has a substantial impact on people.
The Oscars take place in March, but in January, people are already going crazy.
Of course, this is also because various outposts will still exist before the Oscars are announced. These small awards can often affect the final perception of the judges, which is one of the reasons why filmmakers are crazy.
The most important frontline battle in January is the Golden Globe Award. Although it is not an award comparable to the Oscars as it claims to be, it still carries a lot of weight.
Among this award, the one who gained the most this year is none other than Nicholas Levi.
Double nominations for Best Drama Film, Best Director for The Departed, and Double Nominations for Best Screenplay. At the same time, both Pitt and Bill Murray were nominated for Best Drama Actor, and Theron also won the nomination for Best Supporting Actress.
Apart from these, the film had no other nominations.
The Golden Globe Awards do not involve technical personnel. For other awards, such as Best Original Score, Levi's film cannot compete. Although his film does have good music, the music of both the movies is not original, so naturally, they don't get the nominations.
Even so, the two films received a total of eight nominations, which can be said to be an amazing achievement.
Eight Oscar nominations are nothing - there are a lot of technical awards, and good directors can always get some technical nominations. But the Golden Globe Awards are all about movies, directors, actors, and screenplays. To be able to get eight nominations is simply incredible.
Only Soderbergh can compare with Levi - and this is because, at this year's Golden Globe Awards, eight movies were nominated in the Best Drama category.
This accumulation of competition has caused many media to make various comments. They are all predicting how this competition will end this year.
"If the actors' awards this year are a competition between a group, then the director's award can be said to be a competition between two." The media made their judgment in this way.
Of course, they say this because, among the predictions for this year's various awards, the most attention-grabbing one is not the competition for best director - this is originally the battlefield between Levi and Soderbergh.
What people pay the most attention to is still a prediction for Best Actor.
Among the actors this year, many have incredibly outstanding performances.
Russell Crowe, Tom Hanks. Javier Bardem, Ed Harris, and, of course, the male protagonists in Levi's two movies cannot be ignored. Be it Bill Murray or Brad Pitt and Edward Norton, they all performed well.
With so many good actors vying for five nominations, it also caused a debate.
At this time, many people wanted to interview and ask Levi what he thought about these two movies. He brought out the three actors, so he should be the one who knows best whether these actors are better.
"I don't want to influence other people's opinions. Everyone has different opinions on acting. How they want to view this year's awards is a matter for the judges."
Levi was not interested and spoke at this time. If he said who was the best, he would definitely offend the other two, and he would not do such a thing. They have to fight for the awards themselves, and Levi doesn't want to help.
Levi refused to speak, which made the comments about the award even more confusing. What is unexpected is that even on the day of the award presentation, people's doubts are still not dispelled.
"Best Director, Ang Lee, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon!"
When the award presenter called out the name of the award winner, Levi, who was sitting below, also had a smile on his face.
The awards for the Golden Globe Awards have arrived on time. But Levi didn't expect the Golden Globe Awards to be so interesting.
This time at the Golden Globe Awards, people originally thought that the Best Director award would inevitably come between Levi and Soderbergh. The media have warmed up this competition for a long time.
Both movies are not bad, and both have many stars joining their films. It can be said that both of them have an extremely strong ability to compete for this award.
But in the end, the Golden Globe Awards awarded the award to Ang Lee.
Of course, we can't say that Ang Lee's standards are poor – the "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" shooting standards are also quite outstanding.
However, everyone knows that Ang Lee shot a foreign language film and that too a Chinese film. He will definitely not get a lot of support at the Oscars, and it is impossible to win an Oscar. Therefore, awarding the award to him is not an outpost at all. It becomes a way to avoid responsibility.
They are essentially awarding their awards to two people who will definitely not win the award, leaving the suspense until the Oscars.
This gameplay made Levi smile bitterly.
In fact, it's not just the best director, but also the best actor.
The competition for the Best Actor award was very fierce this time, but the Golden Globe Award awarded its award to Tom Hanks - in Cast Away, Hanks' acting skills are indeed outstanding. Yes, he deserves to win the award, but as for the Oscar, he won it twice in a row, making it difficult to award him another.
To award it like this is a bit speechless.
"These guys are deliberately trying to avoid attention."
The competition this time can be considered tense, which also reminded Levi of the public relations he did some time ago - it seems that the effect of his public relations is really a bit...
"You don't need me to tell you to send CDs to all the judges, right? This is what you have to do. In addition, help me hold a few private parties and invite the judges. Also, let Bruce and Leslie help me to contact them. We must take a multi-pronged approach to improve the relationship..."
Levi was busy in the Enigma Company some time ago. Of course, he is busy not shooting new movies but to attract votes.
Although the two movies this year performed well, Levi is still not sure whether he will win the award 100%. Although he asked Alexander to do it, deep down in his heart, he was still uneasy and had been paying attention to the process of canvassing votes.
In fact, the process of canvassing votes is not complicated: it is nothing more than sending some movie CDs to the judges to ensure that the judges see your film and will not exclude your movie before watching it.
Sometimes, hundreds of films compete in a year, and some judges are too lazy to watch them. Samuel Jackson once did something like letting his maid and chef watch and vote for him.
At the same time, they need to get closer to the judges, hold some parties, film viewings, etc. Invite the judges and explain the film's production concept to them in detail to ensure they can understand the movie.
If one just looks at it this way, Oscar canvassing is a very literary activity, but in fact, inviting people to a party or something also requires some small gifts. For example, a red envelope of 100,000 US dollars, or some souvenirs of similar value... These are all indispensable.
The integrity of the judges has always been very low. It is said that many pirated copies in Asia are CDs sold by the judges.
Levi's public relations also does the same thing. However, he also added some caution when doing it.
"Be careful of other people using dirty tricks. If you are tricked by others, it will be very troublesome..."
Levi has been constantly reminding Alexander to do his best in this matter.
The process of canvassing votes for the Oscars also has rules. Generally speaking, you can only say good things about yourself, you can't insult others, you can only get close to the judges, and you can't directly ask the judges to do anything.
These things are all necessary.
Of course, sometimes, someone breaks the rules. For example, when "Good Will Hunting" was competing for the best screenplay, the movie crew once revealed that Matt Damon's script was copied.
When "The Hurt Locker" competed for the Oscars, Weinstein, who strongly promoted "Inglourious Basterds," also asked someone to question the unreality of the filming of "The Hurt Locker" during the competition.
Although it was not allowed by the rules, for some people, rules are okay to break.
"Don't worry, what's there to worry about?" Alexander didn't care about Levi's worries. "With Bruce's relationship with the media, Leslie's relationship with the judges' circle, and over the years, with the connections I have accumulated in the film industry, do I need to be afraid of others playing dirty tricks?"
No matter how ruthless the dirty tricks are, if you want to use dirty tricks against Enigma Company, you have to be careful about Enigma Company's revenge. Although Enigma is not a big company, the media, TV networks, and long-term film companies such as Columbia are behind them.
Most importantly, as a director, Levi does not care about one failure, even if it fails. Once, he will have many opportunities in the future. What is the benefit of offending such a person?
"You don't have to think about anything now. All you need to do is go to various parties and tell others that you think you deserve an Oscar. Believe me, at this time, your words can have an impact on anyone."
Now, it seems that this is a bit exaggerated. These guys obviously don't want Levi to destroy everything but want to keep the suspense... The integrity of these guys is really not worthy of trust.
However, looking back at himself, Levi smiled again - at least they didn't mess around with themselves on one issue.
For Levi, the most important award has already been obtained. Theron, sitting next to Levi, is holding the trophy for Best Supporting Actress in her hand.
At least, on this issue, they are not against themselves.
*****
Thanks and kudos for my patreons
Scott DePaepe
MMMCMXCIX, or 3,999
Britanna
Marcelo Maia
Danny York
DragonEz
You can read advanced chapters on my Patreon account: https://www.patreon.com/Sayonara816.