Third in a sequence of interviews with people who work to create the Golden Globes present.
Rick Pizante, senior VP of manufacturing for the Golden Globes, typically has to inform individuals, “I’m not a magician, I’m a producer.”
Nevertheless, individuals who work with him may protest that he IS a magician. Pizante is one in all many individuals who work arduous to make the Golden Globes telecast appear easy. The “get together of the 12 months” takes place on the Beverly Hilton Jan. 5, 2025. The January 2024 ceremony was his initiation into the challenges. Since he’s executed it earlier than, this 12 months ought to be straightforward, proper?
Effectively, no.
For the upcoming ceremony, the workforce has added a number of days of planning to the manufacturing schedule due to all of the resort’s development.
The added six days to the load-in course of will value $50,000 a day in stage labor and redirecting belongings. “It’s been an incredible problem to get this present reined in, with the price range we’ve been given.”
However Pizante is just not complaining. Jay Penske, head of DCP and exec producer of the present, “brings out the most effective in you,” he says. “Jay has a robust aesthetic, a imaginative and prescient for what he needs this present to be.”
Many people who find themselves the pinnacle of manufacturing discover their job is continuously to be “the ‘no’ man” or girl.
“However I by no means wish to be the one who says ‘No you may’t do that.’ ‘No’ is just not an possibility,” he says.
Apart from main planning, “We now have to provide you with backup plans as a result of there are such a lot of variables, issues you may’t plan for, just like the climate and individuals who arrive late. It’s important to suppose in your toes.”
“I contemplate myself a normal. I don’t must be a five-star normal, however we have to win the battles.”
Apart from coordinating the work of his unit, he offers with the Beverly Hills Guests Bureau, Metropolis Council, Unified Faculty District, hearth marshals and police departments, to replace them on the adjustments required every year. Pizante additionally offers with any considerations of the Hilton executives, and distributors — the businesses that offer lighting tools, audio, digital camera leases, set-building, and so on.
Past considerations about sensible points like visitors and security, Beverly Hills is a group and may be very protecting of its picture.
Pizante has been working at Dick Clark Prods. since September 2023, saying “I’ve at all times needed to work on the Globes.”
In 2016 he interviewed for the job when it opened, however the firm went with another person. Seven years later, DCP posted the job once more and this time he obtained it. “I’ve at all times been freelance and by no means labored for an organization till now.”
Pizante was born in Hollywood Presbyterian and graduated from Beverly Hills Excessive — his senior promenade was on the Hilton.
After graduating from UCLA, he discovered an advert in Selection for Brown-Kraft business-management firm. Whereas working, he began volunteering as a runner-intern. He did a number of awards reveals, discuss, sport reveals, political conventions, virtually each facet of TV, he says, besides scripted tv.
“I preferred the stress of dwell tv, and the place you at all times want a contingency plan, which is important to the method.”
After a few years in freelance TV work, he discovered a job excellent for him; it’s not work many individuals can do.
His duties at DCP embrace engaged on all reveals, together with “New Yr’s Rockin’ Eve,” the American Music Awards, Billboard Music Awards, Nation Music Awards and Streamy Awards and, in fact, the Golden Globes.
The job sounds exhausting, however he says, “You’re solely pretty much as good because the individuals who help you. And we’ve got a number of good individuals. I don’t just like the phrase ‘workforce,’ as a result of it insinuates competitors; I like ‘unit’ higher since you’re all one, working towards a standard aim.
“It’s an incredible problem to get the present reined in — and it’s all going to vary subsequent 12 months.”
That’s as a result of the continuing Hilton development would require one other rethink of arrivals and pink carpet. A number of weeks earlier than the 2025 ceremony, he says, “We’re already drawing up plans for subsequent 12 months.”
So sure, it’ll require his abilities as a producer — and as a magician.