Creative Arts Emmys Smile On HBO, 'Carnivale'
Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service (September 14, 2004)

Premium cable giant HBO dominated Sunday night's Creative Arts portion of the 56th annual Primetime Emmy Awards. With a record 124 nominations this year, HBO grabbed 16 trophies at Sunday night's ceremony at the Shrine Auditorium. FOX and PBS were a distant second with seven wins each.

Leading the way for HBO was the mystical Dust Bowl drama "Carnivale." Although the first season of the ambitious series failed to earn an outstanding drama nod or nominations for any members of its ensemble cast, "Carnivale" had five wins in technical categories.

Even its harshest critics, the ones who derided the show as boring or pretentious, acknowledged the show's realistic look and feel. "Carnivale" won Emmys for art direction, hairstyling, costumes and for Jeffrey Jur's cinematography. Jur earned an American Society of Cinematographers award earlier this year, while the show's production design, hairstyling and costumes were also honored by their respective guilds.

HBO's epic "Angels in America" won four Emmys on Sunday, recognized for longform casting, art direction and makeup. Up for 21 Emmys overall, "Angels in America" is expected to be a big winner (along with HBO's "The Sopranos" and "Sex and the City") when the final 27 awards are presented next Sunday (Sept. 19) at the Shrine.

Although "Angels" was repeatedly celebrated, the Mike Nichols adaptation was victim to one of the night's biggest upsets as Stephen Goldblatt lost the longform cinematography prize to Donald M. Morgan for HBO's "Something the Lord Made."

FOX was led by "24," which won four Emmys and "Arrested Development," which won for casting.

NBC had five wins, including four for the final season of "Frasier," and ABC also took five Emmys, with a pair going to "Practice" guest stars William Shatner and Sharon Stone.

Other big winners included a reality prize for Bravo's "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy," PBS' "American Masters" as outstanding nonfiction series and HBO's "Elaine Stritch: At Liberty" as outstanding variety, music or comedy special.