Erkki Kanto is a powerful figure in the entertainment industry, although this may not be immediately apparent. After all, he is a minor Finnish musician, who sings under the name Enrico Canto and sells recordings of his Broadway covers and inspirational "songs of angels" from his home in the Simi Valley, a bedroom community north of Los Angeles.
Erkki Kanto's Hollywood power does not stem from his music business, though. It is rooted in a more modest act: Every once in a while, he pens a celebrity profile for a Finnish publication. By doing so at least four times a year, he maintains his membership in the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, the organization that votes for the Golden Globes, the world's second most important movie prizes. When this year's awards are handed out on Sunday night, most viewers will not know that they are the work of Mr. Kanto and 81 other individuals, a few of whom are respectable working journalists.
The power of Mr. Kanto and his colleagues actually extends far beyond Sunday's awards. The Golden Globes are often described as a "prognosticator" of the Oscars, which take place in March; indeed, the Golden Globe winners have historically matched the major Academy Awards more often than not. This does not mean that the 84 HFPA members are imbued with some kind of collective mind-reading power. Rather, it is more likely that the 5,000 members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, a great many of whom are either too old to pay attention to all the movies or too busy to spend the time, have had their attention focused on the bright dazzle of the Golden Globes party. For some Academy members, the Globes are Coles Notes for the tricky Oscar vote.
In other words, Erkki and his friends have the power to make and break major Hollywood careers, to shift hundreds of millions in box-office revenues to one production or another, and to affect the fate of studios and entertainment conglomerates. How do they feel about this power?
"I don't really want to -- you know, I have an appointment now," Kanto said when reached at his home. "I have to be going right now." Click. Later that day, he said almost exactly the same words. Similar expressions of elusiveness came from 20 other HFPA members picked at random. "I have an appointment to go to right now," said Maria Snoeys-Lagler. "I really do not want to do this," said Hans Spurkel, when approached with the idea of a conversation with a fellow reporter.
To be fair, the HFPA members have received some pretty bad press over the years. They are routinely described as a group of fringe freelancers who are in it for the free dinners, the movie-studio freebies and the chance to have their picture taken with Sharon Stone. "They're a group of people who would cross the Alps for a hot dog," a studio executive once said. This infuriates the legitimate correspondents among the group, as well as the HFPA president, German writer Helmut Voss.
"We are not stupid," Voss said in an interview from the lavish new headquarters the HFPA recently bought with the $3-million it earns annually from the NBC broadcast. Actually, he was referring once again to Sharon Stone, who sent each of the members a $500 watch and a cellphone late last year in order to encourage them to vote for her as best actress for her performance in The Muse. Voss, who pledged to clean up the organization after NBC complained about its practices, ordered the watches sent back and the cellphone service cancelled, although members could keep the phones if they wanted. "We know that's a no-no . . . the Golden Globes are something that is absolutely wonderful to us, so this is unthinkable," he said of the watches.
Other films have this year have sent HFPA members Tiffany photo albums, leather wallets, umbrellas and raincoats, not to mention endless luxury luncheons and dinners, but these do not count as illegitimate gifts as they are not exclusive to HFPA members.
Voss, a German celebrity writer for respected publications (past HFPA presidents have included a dress-shop owner) says he is not interested in changing the composition of the HFPA to represent full-time journalists like himself. "Los Angeles is an unusual town -- most media organizations do not establish an outpost here, so they rely on these freelancers," he said.
Still, Voss has come a long way. After all, it was only seven years ago that Al Pacino bought the awards. Or something like that. His studio flew every single HFPA member to New York for an all-expenses-paid luxury junket for The Scent of a Woman, a less than stellar picture, which then went on to win three Globes including best dramatic picture and best actor for Pacino. The list of such stories is endless.
Trolling in today's HFPA membership list, it seems highly unlikely that they could be so easily corrupted. After all, a great many of them are so busy with non-journalistic day jobs that they couldn't possibly have time for a studio junket. Avik Galboa is president of the Gustav Mahler Society. Dierk Sindermann publishes a German newspaper in L.A.
Canada's representative, André Guimond, is a production designer with credits on such films as 1998's The Ghosts of Dickens' Past; he was nominated for a Genie Award in 1996 for his work on the Quebec film Eldorado. Somehow, he finds time to write occasional celebrity profiles for such newspapers as Le Soleil, La Presse and the Winnipeg Free Press. However, he declined to talk about either his journalistic work or his show-business career.
The Brazilian representative, J. Emilio Rondeau, is actually directing a feature film, a South American rock flick titled 1972 with a negotiation deal from a Disney affiliate. In the past, HFPA members have been chastised for lobbying their fellow journalists to nominate their own films for awards.
Indeed, a great many HFPA members seem to have one foot in the world of journalism and another in the very industry they're supposedly covering. In some cases, it's hard to tell which is which.
Take Elmar Biebl, a German member of the HFPA. He runs a Los Angeles company called International Media Agency, which offers services it describes as "Media Travel" and "Celebrity Services," functions that sound an awful lot like that junket that got Pacino a Golden Globe in 1993. "Let's say you are planning a lavish gala evening: You can come to us. IMA is here to make you shine -- by arranging a special appearance of a famous Hollywood star specifically for you." So says the IMA Web site, which features a photo of the bearded Biebl with his arm around Sharon Stone, taken at one of those lavish HFPA press events. In 1995, his company organized a "space celebration trip" for the movie Apollo 13, in which movie stars and media organizations came together. Apollo 13 was subsequently nominated for three Golden Globes.
"If you can't come to Hollywood, we'll bring Hollywood to you," Biebl writes. Actually, as an HFPA member, he and his colleagues will be bringing Hollywood to you at their dinner table on Sunday, served on a monogrammed silver platter. The Golden Globes will be broadcast on CTV and NBC at 8 p.m. Sunday. Star! broadcasts a one-hour live preshow with "bitch diva Joan Rivers and her accomplice [daughter]Melissa" at 6 p.m. At 7 p.m., it presents a retrospective of Joan Rivers's previous "best moments at the Golden Globes."
The Academy Wars
It's not infallible, but the Golden Globe Award for best motion picture is thought to be as good an indicator as any for a film's Oscar chances. the chart below shows the Golden Globes batting .500 over the last 10 years. The envelopes, please.
Oscar Golden Globe1989-90 Driving Miss Daisy Born on the Fourth of July 1990-91 Dances with Wolves Dances with Wolves 1991-92 The Silence of the Lambs Bugsy 1992-93 Unforgiven Scent of a Woman 1993-94 Schindler's List Schindler's List 1994-95 Forrest Gump Forrest Gump 1995-96 Braveheart Sense and Sensibility 1996-97 The English Patient The English Patient 1997-98 Titanic Titanic 1998-99 Shakespeare in Love Saving Private Ryan