The Academy Awards for the Trailer Industry

Do you love trailers? Do you shush people who talk during the movie trailers? Do you shush them during the Coke commercial too?

Well, you have your own award show, the Golden Trailer Awards, and you have your own campy and fun logo of (you guessed it) a trailer. This awards show honors the independent companies like The Ant Farm and Mojo LLC that make trailers, taking the some of the best bits (sometimes all the best bits) from an upcoming movie and turning them into a trailer teaser that will make the movie-watching-public public turn to the person sitting next to them and say, "I'd see that one."

This year the show was hosted by the incomparable Susie Essman of HBO's Curb Your Enthusiasm. Susie is the character who keeps saying, "Larry, you sorry piece of shit." And she was assisted in her hosting duties by a funny group of fellow comedians: Todd Lynn; Jim Norton; Christian Finnegan; Nick Kroll; Whitney Cummings; and Dean Edwards.

Here are the winners (from the press release): "Top winners of the night included: Best of Show: 300 (Warner Brothers, Mojo LLC), which also won the award for Best Action trailer. The Best Summer Blockbuster award went to Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Warner Brothers, Mojo LLC); Best Comedy went to Borat (Twentieth Century Fox, Trailer Park); and Best Voice-Over to Grindhouse (The Weinstein Company, The Ant Farm). The ignominious Golden Fleece Award, for a trailer that over-promises on a bad movie, went to the Diane Arbus biopic, Fur (Picturehouse, KO Creative). The Trashiest Trailer Award went to Black Sheep (IFC First Take / The Weinstein Company, The Ant Farm) about genetically mutant sheep gone bad. In the popular Summer Blockbuster category, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix bested rival nominees Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer; Live Free or Die Hard; Spider-Man 3; and Transformers. The Awards mark the official kick-off of the summer blockbuster season, and industry insiders monitor response to trailers as an indicator of how a movie will fare."

It was a fun night; Susie Essman is an utterly hysterical host even when she isn't blasting Larry David. The evening was being filmed and several times a loud voice from offstage told Susie that she needed to "do that again." And each time she did her bit again (after some expletives) and she performed naturally as if she had just thought of what she was going to say and was not reading from a teleprompter and being told to "do it again." That gal is a pro.

The only downside to my evening was when Fur won the Golden Fleece Award. I actually liked that movie. Oh well.

But overall, The Golden Trailer Awards was campy fun night, like a.....well... just like a trailer. And the presenters were all good looking; check them out below.

Whitney Cummings and Saturday Night Live's Dean Edwards

L-R: Todd Lynn, Jim Norton, Christian Finnegan, Susie Essman, Nick Kroll,
Whitney Cummings and Dean Edwards

Nick Kroll