Winning awards is all well and good, but does it deliver cold, hard cash or prove an artistic stimulant?
ANOTHER YEAR, another string of snot-riddled speeches, frock-watching, shortlists and long faces. That’s right folks, it’s awards season, and 2009 has already kicked off with the Golden Globes and an early win for the Irish, thanks to Colin Farrell and Gabriel Byrne. On accepting his Golden Globe win for best actor in a comedy, Farrell quipped that “they must have done the counting in Florida” before strolling off stage with a 24-carat gold-plated gong and our national pride in his hands.
There’s a lot more at stake than national pride when it comes to awards, however, given that a win, and even a nomination, can translate fairly quickly into cold, hard cash. Take an Oscar, for example, which Glen Hansard and Markéta Irglová won last year. The coveted statuette itself is tough to pawn, given that the Academy insists recipients sign an agreement to not sell their Oscars without first offering them to the Academy for a measly $1 a pop. Yet everybody knows the true value of an Oscar lies in the exposure, the Hollywood seal of approval that can make a big box-office difference to those who capitalise on their wins.
For Hansard, the winning song, Falling Slowly, gave him the Oscar bounce required to put his name on the international map, and he was quick to follow it with a tour of the US, while an appearance on The Simpsons and a Broadway musical version of the film Once are also on the way.
The Oscars and the Golden Globes can translate into an exponential growth in profile and earning potential for winners, but our home-grown film awards should not be discounted either, according to film maker Lenny Abrahamson. He won three separate best director awards at the Irish Film and Television Awards (Iftas) for his films Adam and Paul and Garage, and his TV show Prosperity, and has been nominated alongside Danny Boyle and Stephen Daldry for best director in the 2009 London Evening Standard Film Awards.
“If you win an Oscar as best director, it catapults you into a whole different level of potential projects,” admits Abrahamson. “To a lesser extent, other prizes have the same effect. People do pay attention to them.” As Abrahamson sees it, awards are useful in helping to propel a director to the attention of those in the industry in a position to fund the next project. “There are so many people trying to get opportunities as film-makers, that anything that marks you out, like an award, becomes another filtering mechanism.”
The news of the London Evening Standard nominations, which included three for Garage, came the day before the announcement of the Choice Music Prize shortlist, which, for all the controversy generated over past awardees, puts its money where its mouth is with a €10,000 cheque for the winners.
It’s an immediate and tangible fillip for the acts involved, and that’s before the rise in profile is taken into account. “We got some publicity, we played some quality venues abroad, more people were checking out our music and the few shows that we put on while we were writing our next record all sold out,” recalls Cormac Brady from last year’s winners, Super Extra Bonus Party. “It was a positive experience, but if you pushed me to say something negative it would be that I’m completely and utterly sick of talking about it.”
He’s not the only one with awards fatigue. Without denying the lift she got from her Man Booker prize win in 2007 for The Gathering, writer Anne Enright describes her relief when she got to pass the mantle at the award ceremony last October to the 2008 winner.
“I had such a good time,” she recalls. “I had the glass of champagne that I had put off 12 months beforehand. I actually ate the food, and talked to everyone and laughed a lot and went home. And it was great to have it over and done with.”
For Enright, an award such as the Man Booker does not always have a positive effect on the winner. “I think it depends to a considerable amount on what stage you’re at in your career,” she says. “Success and failure are the enemies of talent. Failure will kill a writer quite slowly, but success will do it very fast.”
The immediate financial benefits – the Booker award is worth a staggering £50,000 (€55,685) – are undeniable, as is the boost it can give to book sales, though awards can be an unwelcome distraction, as Enright recalls. “You can’t work for six weeks before the awards, and then if you win you can’t work for six months.”
And if you lose? “You need a bit of time to get over it,” admits Sebastian Barry, who was twice shortlisted for the Man Booker prize, though has yet to win.
The feeling of the big awards night is one he likens to a boxing match. “You see all the beautiful ladies dressed up and the guys, and the ring, and your head is the thing being hit,” he says. “But you are privileged to be in that position and you take the knocks.”
The knock of being denied the Man Booker was alleviated by winning the Costa Novel Award earlier this month, which automatically shortlists him for the overall Costa Award, to be announced on January 27th. This puts Barry into the ring again, and the whole process recommences. Yet while he acknowledges the benefits of awards, which have boosted the sales of his book, especially when he became the Man Booker favourite in the run up to last year’s competition, it’s not what makes him most proud.
“I’ve been proud as punch that it has been on the bestseller list in Ireland since October, because that means my fellow citizens are getting out there and picking it up. That’s the real award,” he says. “It’s a shame you can’t get that award without getting an award.”
Diary Dates
Costa Awards
January 27th
Bafta awards
February 8th
Ifta awards
February 14th
The Oscars
February 22nd
The Irish Times Theatre Awards
March 1st
Choice Music Prize
March 4th
Impac Award
June 11th
Booker Prize
October 6th