Introducing: the Hollywood Party Planning Committee

This week NBC announced it would not be airing the 2022 Golden Globe Awards. This was a major blow to the Globes’ governing body, the infamous Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA), since, as the Los Angeles Times exposed in a February piece ahead of this year’s ceremony, the HFPA makes its living wining and dining movie stars almost exclusively from that television money. Without that money and broadcast TV platform, what is the HFPA? A cabal of journalists, give or take, no one knows with, as the L.A. Times also reported, next to no diversity and, per Scarlett Johansson, pervasive sexism. Tom Cruise, meanwhile, announced he would be returning his three Golden Globes in protest. And while that, like NBC choosing to pull the plug not after the L.A. Times story but after the broadcast, might be mere virtue signaling, well, I enjoy envisioning Tom’s Golden Globes sitting outside the Beverly Hilton - because who knows where the HFPA is headquartered - waiting to be brushed away by a street cleaner. Whether this is truly the end of the HFPA or if, after some cosmetic reform, the industry and/or NBC sign back up for more is TBD. 

Cinema Romantico, of course, must stipulate that it has always been a staunch supporter of The Golden Globes. Not, to be exceptionally clear, the HFPA or even the awards they hand out. No, I have long enjoyed the Globes simply as the boozy soiree they are, a glorified cocktail party of movie stars that happens to be on TV, the (un)official, as I have said ad nauseam, Hollywood Office Christmas Party. And that’s why this week’s overdue events brought me a moment of clarity. Why does Hollywood need the HFPA to hold its (un)official Office Christmas Party? It’s Hollywood! It’s an official organization, right there on 1 Hollywood Rd Hollywood, CA! They can do this themselves! It’s time to seize the means of party-planning production! As such, I have drawn up the first ever Hollywood Party Planning committee. We (they) have eight months.  

Introducing: the Hollywood Party Planning Committee

Committee Chair: Tom Hanks & Rita Wilson 

Event Coordinators: Anna Kendrick, Stanley Tucci 

Creative Committee: Maya Rudolph, Gabrielle Union, Awkwafina, Joseph Gordon-Levitt

Public Relations Coordinator: Sandra Bullock

Treasurer: Lisa Kudrow