Awards season can be a very fun time to be a movie fan. You wait and see if some of your favorites from the year get the same acknowledgment that you believe they richly deserve because as a fan of filmmaking, these honors do mean something.
The ugly side of the season is when you realize that some films just don’t get a fair shot and this seems to be the case for Queen & Slim, at least, according to the film’s director Melina Matsoukas. Queen & Slim has seen some high notices from critics and is performing admirably at the box office but the Hollywood Foreign Press, who make up the voters for the Golden Globes, allegedly didn’t even bother laying their eyes on the film.
Matsoukas says when she woke up on December 9 and her film didn’t receive a single Golden Globe nomination, she wasn’t surprised. Apparently she had already been warned by her team that the membership of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association comprised of about 90 international journalists who vote for the awards, had skipped multiple screenings of Queen & Slim that had been set for them. Here is what Matsoukas said about the issue:
“We held three screenings for the HFPA and almost no members attended. For me it’s reflective of their voting body. It’s not reflective of the society in which we live in or the industry as it stands today. They don’t value the stories that represent all of us, and those stories are so often disregarded and discredited, as are their filmmakers. It’s extremely discouraging. It’s extremely infuriating. And it just represents an archaic system that is full of people who don’t value us.”
The HFPA, through a representative, disputes the claim that members didn’t watch the film and said all voters had been sent screeners to watch the film at home. They claim that Queen & Slim was in the conversation amongst the membership, despite these claims.
It has been a bit of a rough week for the HFPA. When the Golden Globe nominations were announced this week, they were met with harsh criticism for not nominating a single female director in the Best Director category. The same was said about the screenwriting category as well with many on social media and int the industry alike, calling for change when it comes to nominating talent in these categories. The omissions were even more glaring because it has been a truly great year for female filmmakers.
Reportedly Universal Pictures tried to get members of the Hollywood Foreign Press to see Queen & Slim but after three different screenings, only a few HFPA voters attended. The reported number is said to be only four showed up to three of those screenings despite the strong reviews that the film received. It is possible, as previously stated, that some members watched at home via their screeners but Universal canceled a Globes press conference on November 16 due to a lack of interest on the part of the HFPA. The studio believed that there was no reason to ask the cast and crew to talk about the film since they didn’t think voters had actually seen it.
What all comes down to is Matsoukas isn’t sitting here demanding that her film receive nominations, it just seems she wishes that they would’ve at least given the film a shot in the same way they give to other films that they choose to honor in the end. A fair argument if you ask me.
