The only reason to watch the “70th Annual Golden Globe Awards” Sunday night will be to see Tina Fey and Amy Poehler play off each other. This unbeatable comic team, whose chemistry reached its zenith on “Saturday Night Live” when they spoofed Sarah Palin and Hillary Clinton during the 2008 presidential election, will be reunited to introduce presenters and hopefully skewer those who think this ungodly award, voted on by “journalists” who gladly accept gifts from desperate studio execs, actually means something.
The promos for the show, which airs on NBC, offer great promise. Fey and Poehler glammed up in shiny evening wear, declare that they are looking forward to giving Daniel Day-Lewis an acting award for his performance in . . . “Avatar.”
Day-Lewis, of course, is nominated for his work in Steven Spielberg’s “Lincoln.”
Fey also says that she’d like to win Best Picture, “especially since I didn’t really make a movie this year.”
Actually, Fey and Poehler are both nominated this year, in the same category: Best Lead Actress in a Comedy Series. But Poehler, according to the NBC promo, thinks the presence of TV stars is not so impressive at the Globes.
“The beautiful people of film rub shoulders with the horrible, disgusting people of television,” she says.
After several outings by Ricky Gervais, finding the right hosts to shepherd the Globes through hours of predictable winners and fatuous speeches was a challenge for executive producer Barry Adelman of Dick Clark Productions.
“Ricky did a wonderful job, put the show on a whole different level,” he says. “We asked ourselves: Who’s next? And guess what? Tina and Amy were at the top of our list. We never got to the third or fourth people because both said yes immediately.”
As the awkward pairing of former Oscar hosts Anne Hathaway and James Franco proved, having two hosts can be a tricky proposition, but Brad Adgate of Horizon Media thinks Fey and Poehler are a known quantity.
“This is a smart move. They are longtime NBC personalities. Having them on together only helps the network,” he says. “And viewers see them as friends. There’s a lot of mutual admiration. They can play off each other. It will help sustain the show through the dry patches.”
The Globes might also serve to position Fey and Poehler as comedic leading ladies who should really have their own series. With Fey’s “30 Rock” winding down at the end of January and Poehler’s “Parks and Recreation” debuting at mid-season, Adgate thinks a smart television producer such as Lorne Michaels would seize the opportunity to create a show that showcases their camaraderie.
“When ‘30 Rock’ ceases production, I could see them doing a project. It could be a movie; it could be a series,” he says. “ ‘Laverne & Shirley.’ They could even tour as a comedy team the way Conan O’Brien did between his tenure at NBC and TBS. Maybe bring back the variety show. They’re multitalented.”
“These two are going to be working together throughout their careers,” says Adelman.