January is typically a celebratory time in Hollywood, with A-listers attending awards ceremonies like the Golden Globes while campaigning for Oscar nominations. But as fires continue to ravage Los Angeles, one call to curtail the celebrating came from Jean Smart, the “Hacks” star who won a Globe for best actress in a television comedy on Sunday night.
“With ALL due respect during Hollywood’s season of celebration,” Smart wrote on Instagram, “I hope any of the networks televising the upcoming awards will seriously consider NOT televising them and donating the revenue they would have gathered to victims of the fires and the firefighters.”
Already, the awards-season calendar has been slightly reshuffled as a response to the fires: The Critics Choice Awards, set to be televised this Sunday, were pushed back two weeks, while the announcement of the Oscar nominations was pushed back from Jan. 17 to Jan. 19. Nominations set to be unveiled this week by the producers, writers and cinematographers guilds were also delayed several days. (The Screen Actors Guild went ahead with its nominations on Wednesday but opted not to televise them as planned. The Directors Guild nominations were announced via news release as usual.)
But could the continuing disaster affect the Oscars telecast, which is set for March 2?
Though the Academy Awards have never been outright canceled, current events have sometimes forced a postponement. The first instance came in 1938, when the ceremony was moved back a week because of immense flooding in Los Angeles. In 1968, the assassination of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. led to a two-day show delay, while the 1981 shooting of President Ronald Reagan pushed the show back one day. The most significant postponement affected the 2021 Oscars ceremony, which was moved from its planned February date to April because of the Covid pandemic.
In addition to the Oscars and Critics Choice Awards, forthcoming televised ceremonies include the Independent Spirit Awards (Feb. 22) and SAG Awards (Feb. 23). Still, any calls to cancel them may be contested: The profits those shows generate from ad revenue would be lost, and the cancellation would affect crew members who have already been hit hard by a recent downturn in productions based in Los Angeles. Ancillary workers who serve the shows, like wait staff and florists, could also be affected, and some of the smaller movies are counting on the awards-show spotlight to generate box office interest.
In any case, these conversations may be premature: The fires are still ongoing and no one is certain what state Los Angeles will be in when they end. Sources within the academy are said to be sizing up the situation on a day-by-day basis.
