Last weekend, while I was out for a coffee, I overheard a young couple in the middle of an emotional argument.
I’m a professional writer, so when I say “overheard” what I mean is, I leaned as closely to them as I could without drawing attention to myself, to get every word. Most screenwriters I know – the successful ones, anyway – will go to almost any length to “overhear” someone else’s conversation if it seems interesting enough.
When your pay cheque depends on your ability to conjure up new scenarios and fresh-sounding dialogue, respecting other people’s privacy is a politeness you can’t afford. We’re always on the lookout for bits and pieces of real life to steal.
This particular couple was clearly in the throes of one of those end-of-the-romance conversations. He was plaintive. He kept asking: “What do you want me to do? What do you want me to say?” She was having none of it. “You should know,” she kept saying. “It should be obvious.”
And then she delivered the fatal blow: “What I cannot believe,” she said in a low and outraged voice, “is that you were so insensitive during my birthday week!’
“Birthday week?” I thought to myself. Birthdays, at least as far as I’ve been aware, were celebrated on or around the actual birth date itself. Your friends or family buy you dinner or throw you a small party – the younger you are the more elaborate these things can be – but what everyone accepts, I have always assumed, is that these celebrations are limited to a few hours. One day at the most. After that, it’s over and the birthday person returns to regular status.
Now, apparently, there’s a movement afoot to spread out the celebrations to encompass an entire week. This unfortunate development was clearly inspired by Hollywood.
When I started in the entertainment business – which, despite what my grouchy and dyspeptic disposition may indicate, was not that long ago – there were two, maybe three, important dates to remember: the Oscars, the Emmys and the Grammys.
The Emmy Awards – sort of like the Oscars but for television – were given out each autumn. The Grammys – sort of like the Emmys but for music – were given out sometime in the winter. The Oscar ceremonies themselves were usually held sometime in March.
That was all you needed to know about entertainment industry awards.
Gradually, though, those three ceremonies were crowded with new ones. The Golden Globes, handed out by a rather shady-sounding organisation called The Hollywood Foreign Press Association, were until rather recently dismissed as a low-rent, downscale Oscars-lite. The first year I attended, the ceremony was broadcast on a small, local Los Angeles television station. Many of the movie-star nominees didn’t even bother to show up. Now, as everyone knows, the Golden Globes are a powerhouse part of what we call “awards season”, which is a term no one could have predicted a few years ago, much like “birthday week”.
Awards season in Hollywood now includes the Oscars (obviously) as well as the Golden Globes, the Grammy Awards, the Screen Actors Guild Awards, the Writers Guild Awards, the Directors Guild Awards, the Producers Guild Awards, the People’s Choice Awards and – I’m not kidding – awards for PR and casting.
All of these ceremonies – and more, I’m sure, as I’m only listing the ones I’ve been invited to – are crammed into the eight short weeks between the first of the year and the end of February. Only the sad little Emmys, lonely and solitary, holds out: they are still held in the autumn, as the new television season kicks into gear.
One of the key reasons that awards season has exploded in offerings is because of the weather. As I type these words, the temperature in Los Angeles is a sunny 27 degrees Celsius. In New York, I’m told, it’s a frigid and rainy -6. That provides sufficient motivation for the various New York-based entertainment industry personnel -- producers, PR flak, lawyers, casting directors, hedge-fund financiers – to invent new awards and new ceremonies and more expense-account-approved reasons to decamp to Los Angeles for January and February.
The other explanation for awards season is more psychological. Hollywood, it will come as no shock, is in love with itself. If it could – and it can, by the way – it would keep the awards flowing all year. There have yet to be awards given out for publicity, tax avoidance, happy marriage simulation or outlandish plastic surgery. Give them a few weeks, and the marketing geniuses who guide the awards industry will come up with enough ways for Hollywood to celebrate itself that they’ll have to come up with a brand-new term.
We’ll call it “awards year” or “the continuous self-celebration” and I’m pretty sure I know a young lady who will adopt the term with relish. “How could you be so insensitive,” she’ll ask her next, baffled boyfriend, “during my birthday year?”
Rob Long is a writer and producer in Hollywood
On Twitter: @rcbl
