Hollywood’s blue-collar infrastructure is going to take a beating this weekend , maybe to the tune of $80 million, the Associate Press reports.
With the Golden Globes, the town’s famously party-hearty awards show, now reduced to a glorified news conference because of the writers’ strike, the couriers who deliver elaborate floral displays to winners, the waiters who keep their glasses filled with champagne, and the drivers who shepherd the drunks home after late-night parties will be sitting idly by on what is ordinarily one of their most lucrative nights.
“Business has dropped, dramatically,” said Chris Heltai, owner of Home James, a service that drives celebrities and Hollywood executives home from events after they’ve had too much to drink.
He said his company had signed contracts this year with the sponsors of six major after-parties Sunday night.
“They all got canceled,” Heltai said, adding that he will have just a skeleton crew working on what is normally one of his two busiest nights of the year (the other is Academy Awards night). He expects to lose as much as $10,000.
Last year, half of the cast of NBC’s “Heroes” waited in line for an hour to get into the InStyle Warner Bros. bash, which attracted more than 1,000 people.
