Stroking the Ego

You know what I've noticed lately, more than ever before? Hollywood is always patting itself on the back. A couple of weeks ago, we had the Golden Globes, where the top muckety mucks congratulate themselves for making a bunch of movies that, for the most part, The Fly has never heard of. I'd probably heard of less than half of the movies that were nominated. I was glad that Reese Witherspoon and Joaquin Phoenix won awards for their work in Walk the Line, I was even glad to see Sports Night alum Felicity Huffman win an award (even if it was for some transvestite movie that I had, again, never heard of). Okay, Hollywood needs to pat itself on the back and feel good about itself? Whatever.

What did I see advertised last night on the television machine? The Screen Actors Guild Awards. So giving awards to a collection of trashy art house garbage that nobody saw wasn't enough; now they're going to do it again, three weeks later? And then we'll have the Academy Awards, another chance for the industry heavies to congratulate the "working class" actors; not for making movies that the public loved, or movies that the public appreciated or agreed with, but for their own subjective set of criteria.

Hell, I'll be surprised if the SAG Awards don't take it upon themselves to give Sean Penn a special humanitarian award for attending a rally of angry, anti-American Iranians and attempting to rescue Hurricane Katrina "victims" with a leaky rowboat and a red plastic cup.

Let me put it this way: if I'm the one making accusations of undeserved egotism, you know it's serious.