Golden Globes Boss: Gervais Crossed the Line

Acid-tongued Ricky Gervais is getting bashed himself by the president of the Golden Globes organization, who said the comedian "crossed the line" with his stinging celebrity jibes. "He definitely crossed the line," Philip Berk, head of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, told the Hollywood Reporter. "Some of the things were totally unacceptable. Any of the references to individuals is certainly not something the Hollywood Foreign Press condones." Still, Berk added rather nonchalantly: "That's Ricky." He refused to discuss a possible Gervais ban in the future and said he thought the Golden Globes awards show was "terrific."

Berk was himself a Gervais target during the show. "I just had to help him off the toilet and pop his teeth in," the comedian quipped about him. Berk says he traditionally gets the entire program script ahead of time, but that wasn't the case this year: Gervais didn't allow pre-show scrutiny. "That's not how Ricky works," Berk said. "I had absolutely no idea what Ricky was going to say so anything I heard was at the same time you heard it," Berk says. "When you hire Ricky Gervais, you expect the unexpected." (More Golden Globes stories.)