By Michael Buckley
15 Jan 2006

Born in Texas, Wright received a bachelor’s degree from Yale and an MFA from NYU. He’s taught playwriting at NYU and Princeton, and always stressed to his students the art of storytelling. “I’m a big advocate of narrative. I feel that it’s somehow fallen out of fashion in the theatre — not because we don’t have a professional hunger for it, but because it’s so difficult to achieve.”

Shortly after winning the Pulitzer Prize, Wright was interviewed by Playbill.com’s Kenneth Jones. The playwright acknowledged the contributions to I Am My Own Wife that were made by director Moises Kaufman and Best Actor Tony winner Jefferson Mays: “I feel like I would be remiss if I didn’t say that three dramatists have been awarded the Pulitzer this year, because the two of them were absolutely indispensable to the evolution of this play.” Reminding him of the quote, Wright tells me, “I still feel the same way.”

And, again he’s getting ready to open a show at Playwrights Horizons. As we speak, he’s at his office, polishing his book for Grey Gardens, and is “tremendously excited” to be in the first week of rehearsal. Concludes Doug Wright, “After two years of writing and a year of [three] workshops, it’s gratifying.”

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The film with the most nominations for the 2005 Golden Globe Awards is “Brokeback Mountain,” which I read has become a popular date movie. I wonder would that hold true if couples still double dated.

Monday night marks the 63rd presentations of the Golden Globes (NBC-TV, 8 PM/ET), which honor motion pictures and leading performances in two categories — Drama and Musical or Comedy — as well as television actors and TV-movies/miniseries. Also included is a Cecil B. DeMille Lifetime Achievement Award; this year’s recipient is Anthony Hopkins.

Designating “Walk the Line” as a musical puts it up against “The Producers.” Though both movies contain scenes with singing in prison, comparisons end there. It seems odd to have Joaquin Phoenix as the drug-addicted, dour Johnny Cash in competition with Nathan Lane’s money-obsessed, hilarious Max Bialystock.

Gwyneth Paltrow is nominated for her role in the movie version of the play Proof, and Felicity Huffman competes in two categories — as a transsexual in “Transamerica” and for “Desperate Housewives” (along with her three co-star title characters, all of them up against Mary-Louise Parker for “Weeds”).

While three of the actresses in the musical or comedy category have theatrical backgrounds -- Judi Dench, Sarah Jessica Parker and Laura Linney -- it’s not unlikely that Reese Witherspoon (as she has been doing in other award ceremonies) will walk the line to center stage.

Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward are both in the running for supporting performances for TV’s “Empire Falls.” It’s a big night for former “ER” star, George Clooney. In the running as Best Supporting Actor (“Syriana”), he’s also a nominee as director and screenwriter for “Good Night, and Good Luck” (a Best Drama contender, which focuses on a television icon from the 1950s, Edward R. Murrow.) David Straithairn is a nominee as Murrow, but Philip Seymour Hoffman deserves to win for his superb portrayal of Truman “Capote.”

Two of the performances I wrote about in previous columns are in competition for TV-movie acting honors: Cynthia Nixon (“Warm Springs”) and S. Epatha Merkerson, who will be hard to beat, for “Lackawanna Blues.”

In the Unusual Competitors Department, Mel Brooks is up against Dolly Parton (a very nice position, as Groucho Marx would say). They’re both nominees in the Best Song category: Brooks for “There’s Nothing Like a Show on Broadway” (from “The Producers”); Parton for “Travelin’ Thru” (“Transamerica”).

The Golden Globes should satisfy awards-show fans until the Oscars, which occur March 5. The best news about the Academy Awards this year is that the host will be Jon Stewart (“The Daily Show”). His off-center and on-target humor should work well in the annual “Hooray for Hollywood” festivities. The last late-night TV personality to fill that bill was David Letterman. For Stewart’s sake, let’s hope that Uma Thurman and Oprah Winfrey are not in the audience.

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Michael Buckley also writes for TheaterMania.com.