Judd Apatow has used an appearance at the Critics’ Choice awards to attack the organisers of the Golden Globes and to criticise Hollywood’s treatment of comedians and comedies during awards season. “I don’t mean to be weird about it,” he said. “But to all the dramas out there: go fuck yourselves.”
Apatow, who was at the awards to present a prize to Amy Schumer, the star of his film Trainwreck, lightheartedly mocked Oscar contenders including The Revenant and The Danish Girl. He saved the majority of his ire for Ridley Scott’s space adventure The Martian, which stars Matt Damon as an astronaut stranded on Mars. It beat Trainwreck in the best comedy or musical category at the Golden Globes last week.
“I got Matt Damon staring at me right now,” said Apatow from the podium at the Critics’ Choice awards. “After that whole ‘Golden Globe comedy’ thing. We only have one award Matt, that’s all we get. I’m like a nerd on the schoolyard and you stole my milk money. Can we just pick whatever category we want to be in? We have an Asian man in our movie – can I go foreign film now?”
The writer and director behind The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Knocked Up and This Is 40 has previously been strongly critical of the decision to pitch The Martian as a comedy for Golden Globe consideration. “Trying to dominate the comedy category when you are really a drama [that is] afraid of dramatic competition is a punk move,” he wrote on Twitter last October, after learning of the direction of The Martian’s Globes campaign.
The Hollywood Foreign Press Association, the body that organises the Globes, often faces criticism for dividing its awards into drama and comedy/musical categories, with critics suggesting the categorisation is inconsistent. Awards voters in general are widely perceived to have a bias against comedy. The last out-and-out comedy film to win the best picture Oscar was Woody Allen’s Annie Hall in 1977.
Elsewhere at the Critics’ Choice awards, Mad Max: Fury Road dominated the proceedings, winning nine awards, including best director for George Miller and a host of technical achievement prizes. Spotlight – about the Boston Globe’s uncovering of child abuse by members of the Catholic clergy – won best picture, and the best actor and actress prizes went to The Revenant star Leonardo DiCaprio and Room’s Brie Larson.
