To be honest since I received the notification I have gone through a range of different emotions. First of all, I couldn’t believe it – how does someone who grew up in, what was considered at the time, a country town in Australia end up being able to have a say in the result of one of Hollywood’s night of nights? I’m not an actor and I have only ever directed and written for TV shows and short films.
What it did make me realise though is that my love and passion for cinema has always been there. My childhood memories largely revolve around film – some of my earliest memories are my parents letting me stay up late to watch classics like Oliver Twist and The Wizard Of Oz or taking me on my first outing to a cinema to watch Bushfire Moon. Around that same time I discovered my love for genre cinema as my Primary School friends and I would get together on a Saturday night and watch whatever was ‘cool’ at the time – that introduced me to films like E.T. and The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
One of my other vivid memories from that time was being introduced to some classic films by two iconic men in Australia – Bill Collins and Ivan Hutchison. These two men used to present weekly movies that they loved on television and I can still remember watching them before and after classic movies and you could see the glint in their eyes as they talked about what they loved about the films that they were screening.
Watching those two men share their passion with their audience lit something in me and I soon realised that I too liked to tell people what I liked and disliked about movies. At first it started with me excitedly telling neighbours and family friends what movies I had just seen and then my Grandmother, Mabel Evison, started to encourage me to write down what I thought about a movie so she ‘could read it at another time.’
Apparently she wasn’t the only person that thought I had a knack for it because several years later the owner of our local video library, who had been subjected to a few years of me telling her if I liked the movies that I had been borrowing from her, asked whether or not I would be willing to write short reviews for our town’s monthly newspaper.
At the time it was just a bit of fun and I cherished every review I got to write, then a couple of years later something bigger happened the editor of a street press magazine called, Buzz Magazine, asked me to start writing reviews for them and suddenly as a teenager I found myself being invited to these strange things called media screenings – screenings where film journalists are invited to watch films before they are released to the public.
I suddenly found myself sitting in cinemas with the film journalists that I had been looking up to and admiring for years – Jim Murphy, Jim Schembri, John Bale etc.
What I found most surprising was how open the other critics were to sitting down and talking to a naïve kid not only about the films themselves but also about film journalism. It was through talking to men like that – as well as Peter Malone, Phyll Freeman, Jill Cook, Sig Anderson and Greg King that I learnt so much and soon started on a film journalism journey that has led to reviewing films on radio, television, in print and of course online.
I still don’t think I am half the film writer as any of those people and I think that is why this Golden Globes dream is so hard to fathom.
What I do know is that I am proud that the Golden Globes Committee have chosen to recognise outlets like The Phuket News, Subculture and The Book, The Film, The T-Shirt to be part of the Hollywood Foreign Press family.
I fell in love with The Phuket News from the moment that I read my first edition, ironically while in Phuket doing research for a film story, and I see it as a great honour to be able to write for a publication that I love so much… and I am excited that The Phuket News and its readers will now get to come on this Golden Globes journey with me.
To finish off what has been a very difficult article to write, I would like to thank a few people (no this isn’t a Golden Globes speech). First of all my current editors for the publications I work for – Chris Husted, Victoria Myerscough and Kris Peters, my close friends and colleagues Lee Griffiths (who is also my wife), Kyle McGrath and Harley Woods, my parents and to the legendary Ray Mooney who taught me nearly everything I know about all the ins and outs of filmmaking. And I would also like to thank you – our readers for reading our articles every week.
David Griffiths has been working as a film journalist for over 25 years. That time has seen him work in radio, television and in print. He currently hosts a film podcast called The Popcorn Conspiracy. He is also a Rotten Tomatoes accredited reviewer and is an alternate judge for the Golden Globes Awards. You can follow him at Facebook: SubcultureEntertainmentAus