Golden Raspberry Awards

The Golden Raspberry Awards (also known as the Razzies and Razzie Awards) is a parody award show honoring the worst of cinematic failures. Co-founded by UCLA film graduates and film industry veterans John J. B. Wilson and Mo Murphy, the Razzie Awards' satirical annual ceremony is predated by its progenitor, the Academy Awards, by five decades. The term raspberry is used in its irreverent sense, as in "blowing a raspberry". The statuette is a golf ball-sized raspberry atop a Super 8mm film reel atop a 35-millimeter film core with brown wood shelf paper glued and wrapped around it—sitting atop a jar lid spray-painted gold. The Golden Raspberry Foundation has claimed that the award "encourages well-known filmmakers and top-notch performers to own their bad."
The first Golden Raspberry Awards ceremony was held on March 31, 1981, in John J. B. Wilson's living-room alcove in Hollywood, to honor the perceived worst films of the 1980 film season. Sylvester Stallone has the most Razzies, with 12.
American publicist John J. B. Wilson had been seeing a 99-cent double feature of Can't Stop the Music and Xanadu and thought in his drive home that those movies deserved awards for their low quality, and subsequently started thinking of all the other films that disappointed him in 1980, particularly as he had watched hundreds of productions in his job making trailers. So, the following year, in the potluck parties he usually held at his home in Hollywood on the night of the Academy Awards, after the 53rd Academy Awards had completed for the evening, Wilson passed ballots regarding the worst in film to the attendees, and invited his friends to give random award presentations in his living room. Wilson stood at a lectern made of cardboard in a tacky tuxedo, with a foam ball attached to a broomstick as a fake microphone, and announced Can't Stop the Music as the first Golden Raspberry Award Winner for Worst Picture. The impromptu ceremony was a success and the following week a press release about his event was picked up by a few local newspapers, including a mention in the Los Angeles Daily News with the headline: "Take These Envelopes, Please".
Approximately three dozen people came to the 1st Golden Raspberry Awards. The 2nd Golden Raspberry Awards had double the attendance, and the 3rd awards ceremony had doubled that number. By the 4th Golden Raspberry Awards ceremony, CNN and two major wire services covered the event. Wilson realized that by scheduling the Golden Raspberry Awards prior to the Academy Awards, the ceremony would get more press coverage: "We finally figured out you couldn't compete with the Oscars on Oscar night, but if you went the night before, when the press from all over the world are here and they are looking for something to do, it could well catch on," he said to BBC News.
In 2022, a dedicated award category, Worst Bruce Willis Performance in a 2021 Movie, was created after Bruce Willis starred in a number of poorly received low-budget films. On March 30 of that year, Willis's family announced that he had been diagnosed with aphasia. The Golden Raspberry Awards subsequently retracted the award category, saying it was inappropriate to award a Golden Raspberry to someone whose performance was affected by a medical condition. At the same time, the Awards retroactively retracted their 1980 Worst Actress nomination of Shelley Duvall in The Shining, stating "We have since discovered that Duvall's performance was impacted by Stanley Kubrick's treatment of her throughout the production". In 2023, following backlash for nominating 12-year-old Ryan Kiera Armstrong for Worst Actress, the Golden Raspberry Awards rescinded the nomination and said individuals under age 18 would no longer be nominated. The Razzies themselves later won the category for the blunder.
Members of the Golden Raspberry Award Organization pay for membership, and number 650 from 19 countries. After three editions held during Wilson's potluck Oscar parties, Wilson realized that by scheduling the Golden Raspberry Awards prior to the Academy Awards, the ceremony would get more press coverage, and the fourth edition happened at Los Angeles' Third Street Elementary School. The ceremonies have generally been scheduled in this way, with both nominations and awards revealed in the day before the Academy Awards, ever since, with only two exceptions; the 32nd Golden Raspberry Awards had the nominees announced the day before the Academy Award nominees, but the ceremony took place on April 1, April Fool's Day. In 2020, there were plans for the milestone 40th Golden Raspberry Awards to be celebrated with a bigger, televised ceremony in March, but the ceremonies were cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, with the winners revealed online.
Paul Verhoeven was the first person to go to the ceremony to receive his awards for the movie Showgirls. Other recipients who have accepted their Golden Raspberry Award include Tom Green (Worst Actor/Worst Director), Halle Berry and Sandra Bullock (Worst Actress), Michael Ferris and J. D. Shapiro (Worst Screenplay), Alan Menken, Dinesh D'Souza, and Fifty Shades of Grey producers Dana Brunetti and Michael De Luca.
Several people and/or films have received Razzie nominations while simultaneously receiving award nominations and other cultural honors from different organizations, sometimes for the same work or role.
Three people have won both a Razzie and an Oscar the same weekend: composer Alan Menken in 1993, screenwriter Brian Helgeland in 1997, and actress Sandra Bullock in 2010, though all three won for different films (e.g., Helgeland won a Razzie for The Postman and an Oscar for L.A. Confidential). Three actors have received Oscar and Razzie acting nominations for the same role: James Coco (Only When I Laugh), Amy Irving (Yentl), and Glenn Close (Hillbilly Elegy).
19 Worst Picture nominees have been nominated for an Oscar (with only four of them "winning" the Worst Picture Razzie), with Pearl Harbor being the only film in 2002 that won in any Oscars category: Best Sound Editing.
Disney's The Hunchback of Notre Dame became the first, and so far, only animated film to be nominated for an Oscar and a Razzie. The film was nominated for Worst Written Film Grossing Over $100 Million at the 17th ceremony, but it was also nominated for Academy Award for Best Original Musical or Comedy Score at the 69th Academy Awards.
Blonde became the first NC-17 rated film to be nominated for an Oscar and a Razzie. The film was nominated for the most Razzies with eight at the 43rd ceremony: winning only two (including Worst Picture and Worst Screenplay), while the film's main star Ana de Armas was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress at the 95th Academy Awards.
As of 2024, 77 films have been nominated for both an Oscar and a Razzie.
Newsies was nominated for Worst Picture at the 1993 ceremony, and Alan Menken won Worst Original Song for "High Times, Hard Times". The 2011 stage adaptation, which did not include "High Times, Hard Times", was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Musical, and Menken won Best Original Score.
Current Awards
Retired
Special categories have also been introduced for specific years. Such special awards include:
Every decade-closing ceremony includes an award for the worst actors and movies of the decade—though the 2000 ceremony put the actors as worst of the 20th century instead. Special prizes for the 25th anniversary of the Razzies awards were also given out in 2005.
The Razzie Redeemer Award is presented to a former nominee or winner who has subsequently made a comeback from critical or commercial failure. The award was introduced in 2014. Winners include Ben Affleck, Sylvester Stallone, Mel Gibson, "A Safe Hollywood-Haven", Melissa McCarthy, Eddie Murphy, Will Smith, Colin Farrell, Pamela Anderson and Fran Drescher.
This award has been given five times, to Ronald Reagan in 1981, to Linda Blair in 1983, to Irwin Allen in 1985, to "Bruce the Rubber Shark" from Jaws in 1987, and to director Uwe Boll in 2009 who received this for his achievement as "Germany's answer to Ed Wood".
This is a special award given by Razzie Award Governor John J. B. Wilson to an individual whose achievements are not covered by the Razzies' other categories. It was awarded in 2003 to Travis Payne for "Distinguished Under-Achievement in Choreography" in the film From Justin to Kelly. It would again be awarded in 2021 to the year 2020 for "The Worst Calendar Year EVER!"
This award is given to movies with particularly high budgets that bombed at the box office. It was awarded in 2015 to United Passions, to Misconduct in 2016, in 2017 to CHiPs and in 2018 to Billionaire Boys Club.
The Razzies have received criticism, including from news sources such as IndieWire and The Daily Telegraph, for several issues, including that members of the Golden Raspberry Foundation are not required to watch the nominated films. The awards follow a different set of rules than the invitation-only Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences does. Critics take issue with the Razzies picking "easy targets" and critically panned mainstream films instead of those perceived as less popular but more deserving of notice, and continuing to appeal to celebrities, seemingly for publicity and attention.
Sam Adams of IndieWire has said the Razzies are "like hecklers hurling insults at comedians or a concertgoer yelling out 'Whoo!' during a quiet song, they're not-so-secretly crying out to be noticed. The Razzies, properly enough, avoid pouncing on the little guy; they don't trash no-budget indies no one has seen for having bad lighting or terrible sound". Robbie Collin of The Daily Telegraph wrote, however, that "the Razzies' ongoing failure to train its sights on anything but the most obvious targets means it grows more tired and redundant by the year". CraveOnline's William Bibbiani stated that the Razzies follow "a cheap shot of pranksterism", and "with only a handful of exceptions, the Razzies have only seen fit to nominate the most infamous movies of the year, and not necessarily the worst." In 2018, Scott Meslow, writing for GQ, accused the Razzies of being "pretty lazy, very sexist, and a little racist" in their choices, reiterating criticism that voters were overreliant on films already widely perceived as notorious, and further asserting they disproportionally nominated films directed by and starring Tyler Perry and films marketed towards women.
In 2021, Liam Gaughan of the Dallas Observer wrote, "It’s easy to find fault in any awards nominations, be it Oscars or Razzies, but the greater issue that the Razzies face is that making fun of bad movies is no longer original. Film criticism, essays and satire all live in abundance on the internet, from both established publications and non-professionals." Daniel Cook Johnson of MovieWeb echoed a similar sentiment, writing, "Wilson and Murphy's insulting event may have been a wonderfully snarky and skewering enterprise back in the '80s when there was much less film criticism and audience reactions to recent movies. But now, there's little reason for such an invalid vehicle, and the retirement option should be recognized before their relevance and shaky reputation are completely gone."
The Razzies have also seen significant criticism from both within the industry and its own voting body for including underage actors and actresses in their ballots and nominations, with many noting the outcome of their careers and later personal and legal issues. Among those who were nominated or won include Aileen Quinn (at age 11) for Annie (winner), Gary Coleman (at age 14) for On the Right Track in 1982, Macaulay Culkin (at age 14) for Getting Even with Dad, The Pagemaster, and Richie Rich in 1995, Jake Lloyd (at age 11) for Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace, Jaden Smith (age 15) for After Earth (winner), and Ryan Kiera Armstrong (at age 12) for Firestarter. Maddie Ziegler, though 18 years old when nominated, won Worst Supporting Actress for Music, released in 2021, for a role she played at 14 years old during filming in 2017. After backlash in 2023, the Razzies announced they would no longer nominate individuals under age 18.