This year, the Golden Globes were full of viral moments, memorable fashion and controversial quips from host Ricky Gervais. The annual awards show is probably the most important day on the calendar for the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA), the small group of journalists who have been planning the show and choosing the nominees and winners since the first Golden Globe awards in 1944.
Here, HFPA President Lorenzo Soria let DuJour in on the plans this prestigious group has for the remaining 364 days of the year—especially while awards season is still in full swing.
Lorenzo Soria
What’s next for you now that the Golden Globes are over?
I’m not preparing for next year; we are still recovering from a few days ago. For us at the Hollywood Foreign Press, the Golden Globes is the most important event that we have and is what we are known for, but that’s really one day of the year. We organize about six or seven hundred press conferences a year. We have John Travolta [coming up.] After that, we have Mick Jagger and Martin Scorsese for this new series called Vinyl. So to do that, we need to organize and get it together.
What else does the HFPA do during the year?
At the beginning of the year, we gave a donation of $2 million to California State University, Northridge for capital improvements and for an endowment for scholarships. [This was] on top of another over $2 million that we gave throughout 2015. So, now, we start the process of looking at our grants applications and what we’re going to do and how we’re going to distribute money in the months to come. Some of my colleagues are leaving for Sundance Film Festival in a few days. I am and I continue working as a journalist for my publications in Italy, the weekly L’Espresso and the daily La Stampa. [This morning] I was writing about the [Oscar] nominations. So, obviously awards season is a time of the year in which I am busy as a writer, but I am going to go to some of the award shows and I’m going to be both attending and covering. So that’s going to be a part of my life in the next few weeks.
You’ve been attending the Globes for 26 years. Do you have one favorite moment?
I’ll tell you one thing. I’ve been involved for many, many years with security and being also in charge of the red carpet and making sure that everyone has to be in the room by five sharp when the show starts. The directors know that Harrison Ford has to be in that chair and Will Smith is over there and Brad Pitt at that other table. We cannot allow any of them to be late or stuck on the red carpet. My greatest joy is when—at ten minutes to five or four minutes to five—everybody is in and everybody is sitting. That’s one of my satisfactions and one of the things that I enjoy doing.
