Let’s start here by noting that genre categories at awards shows are pretty much always a game of Calvinball—and the Golden Globes more than most. As one of the prime arenas where Hollywood publicists battle to the death to try to get their movies and stars a last-ditch Oscar nomination, the Globes have been subject to a lot of genre shenanigans in the past, and specifically when it comes to separating dramas from the highly nebulous comedy/musical categories. The stand-out oddballs from the last decade of winners can be easy to pull out, just because they tend to feel really egregious. (Who can forget how hard they laughed at The Martian, or the thigh-slapping escalating murderous tensions of The Banshees Of Inisherin?) But unless there’s singing involved, the distinctions mostly just serve to highlight how really good movies can make you both laugh and feel—and how contorted thinking can get when you’re desperate to add “Golden Globe winner” to your pile of accolades.
All of this brought to you by Variety‘s regular piece pontificating on how the studios are going to try to game the system this year—and specifically allegations that Warner Bros. might try to get really daring and run Zach Cregger’s Weapons as a comedy/musical. And, look: Nobody’s going to stand here and tell you that there aren’t laughs in Weapons. Your humble Newswire writer annoyed people in his theater by dry-heaving laughter for basically the entire last three minutes of the movie, as Cregger burns down a whole film’s worth of dread by taking his steadily built-up horror rules and turning them gleefully on their head. But none of that can change how much of the film’s running time is devoted to creating that sense of dread—or is going to stop it from seeming very weird when the film about a very scared child watching his parents be forced to fork themselves in the face is tossed up alongside more traditional comedies. As always, this is all about positioning, including for categories beyond Best Picture: The Variety piece notes that the studio is likely to put Josh Brolin and Julia Garner up for the less-crowded lead acting categories, although Amy Madigan—who’s been picking up award buzz for a performance that is both goofy as hell and genuinely chilling—will have to fend for herself in Supporting land, which doesn’t distinguish by genre.
The fact, of course, is that strict genre delineations aren’t really built for a movie like Weapons. (Or Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another, also being considered for a duck out on drama—although the frequently funny DiCaprio movie at least has a better claim to running in the comedy category than some contenders.) The only real goal when running these campaigns, of course, is to win as much as you can while not producing moments where the juxtaposition between category and film is so eye-catching that it provokes comment. And, even then, it’s nothing that a few big statues and a quicker road to the Oscars can’t usually paper over.
