The Golden Globes are on Sunday night, giving us our yearly chance to drink along (in spirit) with famous people. It’s a night when the bold-faced names in Hollywood get to loosen up and laugh at themselves (albeit not too hard), aided by their friends from Moet & Chandon. Naturally, all of that social lubrication means we get a pretty wacky three-hour awards show (rather than the increasingly stuffy and overwrought Oscars). Here are a few memorable moments of craziness from Golden Globes past.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OXatKGvDi4Y]
James Cameron Speaks in Tongues
James Cameron beating Kathryn Bigelow for Best Director is laughable enough — even he expected his ex-wife to win, which he admits in his speech. But then he goes on to speak in the fake language that he made up for his CGI version of Ferngully, proving that James Cameron secretly expected himself to win that dumb award.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmRhE8xBHpI]
Christine Lahti Pees, Celebrities Are Just Like Us
When Christine Lahti won an award for her role on Chicago Hope, she happened to be in the bathroom. Considering how much these actors drink, I’m shocked this was the first time this sort of thing happened. But what’s amazing is not how hilarious the moment was for Lahti, who graciously laughed about it once she got on stage, but rather how everyone else seemed so panicked that no one stopped Robin Williams from getting on stage to do casually racist impressions.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IttY3N00uc0]
Renee Zellweger Pees Too, You Guys
It’s fun to imagine that future Oscar winner Renee Zellweger was so jealous of the attention Christine Lahti got for being in the bathroom while winning a Golden Globe that she had a sit-down with her manager that went something like this: “Look, Nancy, I’m going to go ‘fix my makeup’ or whatever when my category is called JUST IN CASE, because I’d really like to make a splash as America’s Sweetheart.”
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5N0DTH2wPTo]
Ving Rhames Gives His Award to Jack Lemmon
Hey, how uncomfortable is it to see Jack Lemmon so gleefully accept the Golden Globe that rightfully went to a sobbing black man? In retrospect, this is a pretty awkward moment.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGT-NUBNTZc]
Elizabeth Taylor Learns How Envelopes Work
Do you still say the title of that silly Russell Crowe film in a high-pitched, champagne-soaked voice? “Glaaaaaaaaadiatorrrrrrrrrr!” Me too!
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQjyLgELAAc]
Bette Midler
Bette Midler, the epitome of class, accepted her Golden Globe for The Rose by quoting Joan Crawford’s classic line (“How about these couple of Golden Globes?”) before felating her statue.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M0JbP9MaVyQ]
Ricky Gervais, the High School Bully of Hollywood
Thank goodness we don’t have to suffer through the indignity of listening to this man’s stupid jokes anymore. (You know you can block famous people on Twitter, right? It’s life-changing! If only you could block people in real life.) But let’s remember why his two-time hosting gig ended with Gervais being generally despised in Hollywood: he went after one of their own in a terrible, ninth-grade-bullying sort of way.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=efYg0vQyPGA]
Jodie Foster Comes Out, Kinda, or Maybe Not
Ahh, Jodie. Are you a lesbian? Do you want to tell us? Do we care? Her speech last year launched a thousand think-pieces, but a year later it comes across more as the ramblings of a person who has been in the public eye all her life, rather than anything coherent worth parsing.