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N FRIDAY, Jan. 25, Ben
Affleck was honored
with the Santa Barbara
International Film Festival’s “Modern Master” award.
On Jan. 26, Affleck and Argo coproducer Grant Heslov accepted
the Darryl F. Zanuck Award for
Outstanding Producer of Theatrical
Motion Pictures from the Producers Guild. On Jan. 27, Affleck and
his Argo castmates won Outstanding Ensemble in a Motion Picture at
the Screen Actors Guild awards, the
SAG equivalent of Best Picture.
Affleck h as been in a lot of rooms
like that over the last month. On
Jan. 10, he won the Critics’ Choice
Award for Best Director, while
Argo won Best Picture. On Jan.
13, he won those same awards at
the Golden Globes. This is to say
nothing of his recent whirlwind
weekend, nor the upcoming Directors Guild Awards (Feb. 2), BAFTA
awards (Feb. 10) and Oscars (Feb.
24), all ceremonies where Argo or
Affleck are nominated.
How many awards does one movie need? Apparently, a lot.
“Award shows are so popular because they are the gladiatorial sport
of our day,” GoldDerby.com editor
Tom O’Neil told The Huffington
Post. “Instead of big ugly lugs duel-
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BEHIND
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ling to the death in the arena, we
cast our gorgeous pop culture icons
... and let them hack away at each
other for our amusement.”
Beyond that, as O’Neil noted,
television networks and critics’
groups love awards shows “because
they get gads of star power for free.”
Indeed: It’s hard to imagine any
other scenario where big names like
It’s no wonder that
events like the SAG Awards,
which didn’t even exist
before 1995, get primetime
placement today — the
ceremony is another spoke
in the Oscar-season wheel.”
Affleck, Anne Hathaway and Daniel Day-Lewis would mingle with
members of the Broadcast Film
Critics Association or spend three
hours showing their faces on NBC.
There’s another reason awards
shows are so popular: the audience.
This year’s Golden Globes ceremony on NBC was the highest-rated
broadcast since 2007. The 2012
Academy Awards ceremony was
watched by 39.3 million viewers,
this despite the fact that only one
film, The Help, grossed more than