Bruce Feiler - Where God Was Born, Abraham, Walking The Bible

No Thank You
Tuesday, January 16, 2007

I watched The Golden Globes on Monday night at the home of some friends in the film and television industry. During the telecast, I was complaining about the endless litanies of Thank Yous -- not just those who voted, as well as parents, lovers, and children, but agents, lawyers, stylists, assistants, drivers, neighbors, spammers, emailers, gaffers. STOP! My hosts disagreed. Strongly. This is not a television show, they said. It's an industry award dinner, and the primary audience is people in the industry, and they like to hear the thank yous. If I were in the industry, worked on a project, and wasn't thanked, I'd be upset, too. My friend, in fact, was specifically told some time ago that she wasn't going to be thanked on a project she worked on and she was quite upset. We're lucky to be watching such an inside experience, she suggested.

I wasn't persuaded. The air time alone is incredibly valuable -- hundreds of thousands of dollars a minute -- and could be better used to promote the shows themselves, I said. In fact, I advocated a proposal I read about a few years ago: A winnter gets 30 seconds if they insist on only giving thank yous, but if they agree to forego the thanks yous and talk about something more interesting, they get 3 minutes. Brilliant! We'd all watch, rather than tuning out during the speeches.

Needless to say, I was the only one supporting this proposal. Any takers??

Labels: Pop Culture

Posted by B Feiler at 6:48 PM
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1 Comments:

dar said...: Its funny that you posted this because it reminds me of a time when my mother had taped me the Oscars. I hate the acceptance speeches as well so I fast forwarded through them and the total time to watch the whole show was only 45 minutes.; January 17, 2007 11:34:00 AM EST