Robert Downey Jr... 'Giving It To All of You'
Monday, January 17, 2011 at 11:58AM I'm wondering what y'all made of this Golden Globes bit? Robert Downey Jr (or as we like to call him for brevity, RDJ) comes out to present the Best Actress in a Comedy/Musical bit which went to Annette Bening for The Kids Are All Right (Go Bening!). He begins by correctly identifying the mood of the evening as "mean spirited with strangely sinister undertones" due to Ricky Gervais comedy which would have been okay had it been a bit funnier but it just felt rude, right?
RDJ's presentation went like so.
"I consider myself a veteran of sorts and I have made somewhat of a study of this. Tell me if I'm wrong. I don't know if an actress can do her best work until I've slept with her
... Julianne.
Told her that I was working with strange new feelings that were confusing me... Angie.
Only to have her blow me off halfway through the shoot like it never happened... Annette.
Or casually mention that her boyfriend is coming for a location visit because he misses her. And what they have is real. Then have the gall to invite me to join them in a threetop for dinner? Anne! WHY?.
Now i'm not trying to creep anyone out but where is Emma?
I think I've got something for us it's kind of like a Blue Valentine thing but not age appropriate. Now, I'm not saying that my theory doesn't hold water but somehow all of these women rendered exquisite performances without a shred of help from me.
So I guess I'm just saying... if I could, I'd give it to all five of you. At once. The award. Right here center stage in front of my wife, the audience, and millions of viewers."
Kind of a complicated long joke.
Maybe it doesn't work at all if you don't have RDJ's Schmarm™. (That's smarm cut with charm) But I thought it was totally funny. Nick* correctly observes that Emma Stone actually makes the penultimate punchline work with her on-the-spot reaction shot, all good sport guilt and carnal complicity.
Your verdict?
*Related reading: Nick's live blog is a treat. As a special bonus before the show kicked off he even reviewed the Original Song contenders including a hilariously astute song swap suggestion for Mandy Moore and XTina.
Annette Bening, Emma Stone, Golden Globes, RDJ
Reader Comments (30)
RDJ's "lascivious" look towards Emma Stone and her look in return were priceless.
I thought it was wonderful. Haha. Too funny. And Ricky Gervais definitely crossed the line a few times.
I was totally on board with Ricky Gervais the whole time. I thought he was hilarious. I mean, this is basically a night of self-congratulation so it's nice to have some zest thrown in.
i was laughing my ass off... one of the best moments of the night!
with what i saw and what i understood (i'm french),i liked Gervais:this show is full of self of congratulation so be fun !
Hmmm. i get that in concept (it's full of congratulations so they can take some stingers.) but it just seemed too much to me -- Gervais's bits.
There was nothing funny about Ricky Gervais to me last night. Nothing. His bits were all just plain mean. My best friend and I both have very irreverent senses of humor, and neither one of us laughed at anything he said.
This was a great moment. I have a HUGE man-crush on RDJ and Annette, Julianne, Anne, and Angelina are goddesses.
Emma Stone has been hilarious in every movie I've seen with her. I think she has a bright future ahead of her and hopefully one day she will join her co-nominees as an Acadamy Award Nominee. Her comedic timing and brilliant line readings will get her far and will earn her an Ellen Page-style nomination. I'm predicting it now.
Emma Stone is able to crack me up with just that screenshot, perfect comic timing. I'm on the fence about Gervais, however, The Tourist jokes were totally appropriate and hilarious.
RDJ's monologue killed me. Easily the funniest moment of the night outside of Ricky Gervais bashing on The Tourist
Hilarious, and made me hope for an Emma Stone win even more. That's okay, though, because The Bening totally deserved it, too (and I liked her mention of Beatty as Most Promising Newcomer). Ricky Gervais was mean, he was brutal...and he was hilarious. Here's a question: do any of us DISAGREE with him? Maybe it seems tacky to dig at contenders when their cast and crew are right there...but he's dead-on about The Tourist. Even Jolie admitted she did the film just so she could be in Venice. Must we always be so reverent toward the stars?
Funniest moment of the night by far. How come no one ever gives RDJ a hosting gig. Gervais just felt rude to me.
Although it seemed at times more like a Friar's Club Roast, I thought Gervais was hilarious. He didn't pull punches, thank God, and irreverance is what's great about the Globes.
Eh, I find that Hollywood needs to have thicker skins. The people who had good humor about it all and were able to laugh at themselves (like Steve Carrell and Bruce Willis) came off much better than RDJ and Tom Hanks/Tim Allen, all of whom have been in countless comedies and should know something about taking a joke in stride.
And the president of the HFPA has no room to threaten not to screen ANYONE's movies given some of the dubious choices his organization nominated this year.
In conclusion, I'd trade places with anyone in that room if my only problem was having Ricky Gervais make a wise-crack about me. Ricky acquitted himself quite well as host, in my opinion, and I hope they call him again next year. Hopefully Hollywood won't take itself so seriously. Or at the very least, they'll be in the mood to laugh, being so close to the end of the world and all. ;)
Eh, I don't see how anyone can complain Gervais was rude and mean and then enjoy RDJ's total creepfest. But different strokes I guess.
"And the president of the HFPA has no room to threaten not to screen ANYONE's movies given some of the dubious choices his organization nominated this year."
I'm pretty sure that was a joke too! :-)
Come on Nate. These people are ridiculously overpaid and overpampered spoiled multizillionaires who are treated like they are world's royalty or gods or whatever and they cant take being made fun of for 20 seconds?????
We really shouldn't put this people on such a high pedestal. It wasn't that diferent than what he did last year, when he made drunk jokes on Mel Gibson and Colin Farrel, introduced Jennifer Aniston as Rachel from friends and so on.
And yes, I find it weird and contradictory to complain abou Gervais and then say that RDJ was funny.
Yeah, I agree with Amanda. If you can't take a joke, than you don't need to be on the cover of every magazine in the country, making $5 a film, and having awards thrown at you. Ricky was just keeping them all honest...
$5 was supposed to read: "$5 MILLION"...
Best of the Night (from this joke to nominees presentations to Annete winning and kissing Julianne to that marvelous speech)
Didnt find RDJ funny at all. Sorry.
Gervais was as rude as many stars who where there acting like they wanted to be anywhere else...
Don't think Ricky Gervais' jokes felt "just rude" at all, I thought they were quite gutsy and very funny. His bits about the HFPA nominating The Tourist... hilarious. And really accurate.
Downey jr.'s bit was funny as well, and I thought Bening's speech was very good (even if I don't know if it was entertaining enough as an "audition" for her hopeful Oscar speech) and wonderfully gracious in her appreciation of Julianne Moore: "Julianne - you are a class act, thank you." Bening absolutely deserved the award, but I wonder if there will come a time when Moore herself will be able to stand up there at the Globes or the Oscars (it was her Globe nom #6). She needs to get an interesting project / juicy role fast to ride on these waves of goodwill!
That was actually kinda awesome, and I usually loathe Robert Downey, Jr.
He had a better feel for the room than Ricky Gervais did, who should never be a Globes host ever again (not that he'll get another chance).
I have no problem with a host taking the opportunity to deflate the occasion a little, but neither do I think its an absolute good - it all depends on how you go about it. To do it really well - to get in the jabs but keep the room on your side (just) - is an art form. Gervaise's blunderbuss approach was brave, on some levels, but it was also tone-deaf and at times seemed pretty lazy. Cher's a hasbeen! Those Sex and the City women are getting on a bit these days! Tim Allen hasn't made many good films! What an iconoclast... At times (particularly with Cher and the Sex and the City women - undertone of misogyny much?) it felt like he was landing blows on easy targets without much wit to justify it (although the Bruce Willis/Ashton Kutcher joke was pretty funny, I thought).
Yes, these people are rich and succesful, and yes the event itself is pretty absurd and deserves ribbing, but that in itself doesn't make Gervaise some satirical hero for noting that The Tourist probably shouldn't have been nominated. And for those defending him on the grounds of taking down the stars a peg or two, I remember around the time Ghost Town came out him saying he would never have made his big-screen starring debut in a British film, because they were rubbish, and he wanted to make a Hollywood movie. So someone with the clout to pull money together in the always struggling, always mocked British film industry sold out as fast as was possible for an opportunity to get in with the people he was just mocking. I was glad when he made Cemetery Junction more recently that he seems to be putting his clout to some use back home, although I wonder how much of that is down to the American big screen not working out for him.
And frankly, anyone who cares anything for American film knows that Cher didn't even enter her prime until the eighties. The seventies? Like I said - tone deaf.
Ricky Gervais would’ve gone further but the audience early on decided not to be with him. The best moment of his opening monologue was the slight against Tom Cruise/John Travolta/Will Smith. Initially I assumed it was Cruise but then I realized Travolta’s sexuality has been in the press recently.
I should also say that looking at the three top photos of the post - of Julianne, taken by surprise and really laughing, Angie not quite believing what she's hearing, Brad getting a kick out of it, and Annette and Warren just having a good time with it - give me an oddly warm glow. They tell a story all of their own. Downey Jr's humour may or may not be appropriate, but what commenters above aren't getting is that he's probably friends or friendly acquaintances with most of these people, and so his humour is working differently - it's warmer and less hostile, even if it isn't less conceptually shocking - teasing, rather than insulting. You can see that in how people reacted. It's a humour that comes from having a sense of community with other people, a sense of fellowship, and even if from the outside we think this particular community is exclusive or self-congratulatory or crazy or problematic in any other number of ways, and even if we prefer Gervaise's relative outsider status, I think a teasing humour is maybe just a better fit for a celebration of a community, which is what the Globes are on some level. You can prick a balloon without stabbing it with a butcher's knife, you know? And Downey Jr's humour was generous - by applying it across the category, he united the actresses in a moment beyond the competition, and gave Emma Stone, a relative newcomer at this kind of thing, an 'insider' status and an opportunity to play back to him. I thought that was really nice, actually. Is it really so shocking people would prefer this kind of thing at the Globes than Gervaise's zero-sum negativity?
Tina Fey for next year, obvs.
Tom Cruise/John Travolta might be gay!??!
Ricky, stop, you're killing us...
@Laika: You make some extremely valid points.
What gets me is the hypocrasy displayed by the general public. We seem to want to consistently tear entertainers down for something we are complicit in creating -- their celebrity. Should a certain amount of ribbing be expected at these events? Most definitely. Should we be so cynical as to believe that actors deserve to be "taken down a peg" whenever possible to be reminded that they are essentially just like the rest of us? Not in my opinion. Of course, this goes to the larger issue of how we view fame in our society, but our individual perceptions of Gervais's shtick last nigt does speak to that.
I thought what was even more hilarious than RDJ's joke, was how each nominee reacted to it. Julianne was shocked, and who can blame her considering she was up first? Annette seemed to find it genuinely funny, and Anne gave that uncomfortable laughter, but Angelina was just so irked by it! Then there's Emma...priceless.
The thing that irked about Gervais: he wasn't funny. I don't care about mean-spirited because that's a fine line with comedians anyway. But e sucks as a comedian; I feel like England's pushed him harder than he's deserved and I have no idea why he was chosen. And I'm sure all this hoopla will only fuel his own ego -- and I'd get with the whole "they're all so stuck up, he was just taking the piss" line if only he didn't strike me as so egotistical himself.
But the matter is: awards bribes? Surgery? Hugh Hefner jokes? Scientology? Is it 1992? Those were some of the most tired jokes I've heard in a while. RDJ was one of the night's few saving graces, and I love Emma Stone for playing along.