Golden Globes news conference a quick and painless way to give out awards

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif -- What a weird, weird night it was at the Golden Globes.

Instead of a traditional ceremony with its glittering stars and boozy dinner, there was a breathless, half-hour news conference.

Instead of presenters, we heard from a gaggle of glossy entertainment reporters from competing TV shows.

And instead of winners taking the stage with teary-eyed, long-winded thank yous, there were some polite applause from journalists and awkward attempts by everyone involved to make sense of the stripped-down situation the writers strike had created.

Oh, and there were winners, too, though they aren't really the story here because they ended up being so predictable.

"Atonement," the sweeping historical romance which went into the night with a leading seven nominations, won the biggest of all, best drama. (It also won the award for Dario Marianelli's inventive score.) The critically acclaimed "Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street," based on Stephen Sondheim's revered Broadway production, took home the top prize in the musical or comedy category, as did its star, Johnny Depp.

They were among four films with two winners apiece -- nothing even vaguely approached dominance on this night.

"No Country for Old Men" earned Javier Bardem a supporting-actor prize for his riveting turn as a serial killer and a screenplay prize for the Coen brothers. "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" earned director Julian Schnabel an award and won the foreign-language category.

Other films with multiple nominations were shut out: "Charlie Wilson's War" with five and "Juno" and "Hairspray" with three each.

But that was the easy part. The hard part was figuring out how to announce the winners with the threat of striking writers picketing outside on Wilshire Boulevard and celebrities refusing to show up.

Before this bare-bones conference began, reporters killed time by interviewing each other, with KTLA's Sam Rubin asking whether this would be the worst Golden Globes ever. Actually, the fact that nobody had a clue what it would be like made things a little more intriguing, a little more unpredictable. Any pundit could have chosen Bardem -- he's tremendous in the role, and has long been the front-runner.

Once the show began, the presenters tried to straddle the line between dazzling and deadly serious. The first winner was supporting actress Cate Blanchett as one of several performers playing Bob Dylan in "I'm Not There." A giant black-and-white photo of Blanchett in sunglasses and wild hair appeared on a screen behind "The Insider" co-host Lara Spencer, who read off the first few names.

"Well-deserved," Spencer said afterward, trying to figure out the right tone to strike. Later she said with a laugh: "All of us announcing the winners tonight are not major movie stars, in case you didn't notice."

"I want to thank my agents," Mary Hart of "Entertainment Tonight" joked perkily once she took the stage. She announced the nominees and winners with the same inflection as if it were teleprompter copy about Britney Spears' latest meltdown.

"And yes," she added later, "I yearn for the days of Jack Nicholson mooning the Golden Globes, Christine Lahti getting locked in the bathroom, but we have that next year."

Others, like E!'s Giuliana Rancic, took a stand on the strike.

"I never thought in my wildest dreams I'd be up here," Rancic said before announcing another batch of winners. "I support the WGA, not because without the strike there'd be no way I'd ever be standing up here at the Golden Globes presenting. ... Next year I hope it's extremely different from this year."

Jim Moret of "Inside Edition" took a moment to applaud Jorge Camara, president of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association which gives out the Globes, for pulling together some sort of show.

"We are all very mindful of the unusual circumstances surrounding tonight's awards," Moret said. (Later he deadpanned: "Notice the acceptance speeches are very short tonight.") And Dayna Devon from "Extra" suggested that Camara should be negotiating the writers guild contract because if he could amass representatives from all the competing infotainment shows on the same stage, he could do anything.

"Rest assured," Camara promised as he wrapped up the news conference, "the Golden Globe Awards will be back, bigger and better than ever."

But maybe smaller is better. Whether or not he intended it, under these extraordinary circumstances, Camara set a template for an efficient way to run an awards: short, sweet, to the point, and onto the champagne celebration afterward.