Just how The Martian was placed in the Comedy or Musical category at the 73rd Golden Globe Awards is still a mystery.
[dropcap size=small]I[/dropcap]n the wake of criticism following The Martian‘s victory as the best musical or comedy at the seventy-third Golden Globe Awards, the HFPA (Hollywood Foreign Press Association) announced this past Monday an eleven page long report that would rewrite the rules so that “dramas with comedic overtones should be entered as dramas”. In addition to this report, January 8th, 2017 was marked as the date for the seventy-fourth edition of the awards.
The producers behind The Martian aren’t the only ones who are to blame, although they were the ones to choose to run as comedy. The Hollywood Foreign Press Association were the ones who voted in The Martian as a comedy, albeit the vote was a close one and the sci-fi epic narrowly made it in by one vote. If that wasn’t enough to add controversy to the Golden Globes Award, Matt Damon was called out by Judd Apatow at the Critics’ Choice Awards which only added more fuel to the fire.
“I got Matt Damon staring at me right now,” said Judd Apatow when he was on stage. “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.”
Hopefully the Hollywood Foreign Press Association’s new rules will be able to to keep films like The Martian from dominating against weak movies like Trainwreck and entering different categories to avoid losing to film’s like The Revenant that would have most likely dominated the drama category.
