Writers' strike gags Hollywood awards season

They include British actors James McAvoy (nominated for Atonement) and Tom Wilkinson (Michael Clayton), as well as Marc Forster, who directed The Kite Runner and Aaron Sorkin, the celebrated television writer nominated for his screenplay for Charlie Wilson's War. "If actors can't have solidarity with writers – the people who put the words in their mouths – then who can they have solidarity with?" Mr Wilkinson told the Los Angeles Times.

The Hollywood Foreign Press Association, the ragtag association of mostly freelance journalists which runs the Globes, had hoped the strike would be over by mid-January, thus clearing the path for the divas in their finery to step down the red carpet. But those hopes were dashed last week, when the latest round of negotiations between the Writers Guild and the producers' association broke down in acrimony.

Now, the HFPA has to hope the Guild will issue a waiver – a special dispensation authorising Guild members and their sympathisers to show up to the Golden Globes, and for Guild members to help write the banter in between award announcements. Such a waiver appears unlikely at this stage.

Even if the show does go on – at the Globes, or, a month later, at the Oscars – it will still be an only truncated awards season, without much of the usual fanfare or endless rounds of publicity plugs. Prominent actors and directors won’t be able to appear on many of the usual television chat-show outlets, for the stark reason that many of those shows – Jay Leno's, David Letterman's, and others – have been off the air since the very first day of the strike.