January 14, 2008
The Writers Guild of America strike has decimated prime-time television and even forced some late-night talk show hosts to come up with their own jokes. But never in its 10-week duration has the labor dispute yielded as bizarre -- and, in a way, as symbolic -- an event as Sunday night's Golden Globes.
What is typically a glitzy and jokey awards dinner populated by Hollywood's top performers and executives was transformed by the strike into a cheerless news conference playing to a largely empty ballroom at the Beverly Hilton Hotel.
Rather than watch Johnny Depp, Cate Blanchett and Daniel Day-Lewis walk the red carpet and hoist their statuettes, viewers -- who could watch the lack of festivities in a number of different television iterations -- instead saw little more than entertainment news personalities quickly opening envelopes to the weakest smattering of off-screen applause from Globe voters and the publicists.
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