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- [00:00]
Richard Osmond
The rest is entertainment is presented by Octopus Energy. Now can I tell you something cool that Octopus Energy do? If you ring them and you have to be put on hold because they know who you are, they know your birthday. The hold music is the best selling single from the year that you were 14. That's quite cool, isn't it?
- [00:17]
Unidentified Female Co-host
Yes, I love this.
- [00:18]
Richard Osmond
Exactly. I've looked into it for you. Do you want to know the bestselling single in the year that you turn 14? So this would be your old music on Octopus Energy. It is. Yaz. The only way is up. What do we think to that?
- [00:30]
Unidentified Female Co-host
Well, yes, and the plastic population.
- [00:31]
Richard Osmond
Yes, and the plastic population. Population. Oh, of course. Do you know what? I sometimes think the plastic population do not get their due.
- [00:37]
Unidentified Female Co-host
They don't get there. They don't get their credit, do they? You know, I need to ring into
- [00:40]
Octopus now and just listen to it. You can choose to say, oh, I don't want to have any hold music at all.
- [00:45]
Richard Osmond
Absolutely. Yeah, you can, you can do whatever you want.
- [00:46]
Unidentified Female Co-host
What animals? What monster?
- [00:48]
Okay, it might be a really bad song, but what monsters don't choose to listen.
- [00:52]
I have to say to the song that.
- [00:54]
Yeah, I love that they do.
- [00:55]
Richard Osmond
I hope we're going to do this for me in another episode, but then, but then we find out if I. Yeah, I think I'm considerably older than you, aren't I?
- [01:02]
Unidentified Female Co-host
Not that much.
- [01:03]
Marina Hyde
What it's like two, three years, is it?
- [01:05]
Richard Osmond
Yeah, you'll be saying. And the best selling single in the year that you were 14, Richard, it's Cumberland Gap by Lonnie Donegan.
- [01:14]
Marina Hyde
Hello and welcome to this episode of the Rest Is Entertainment with me, Marina
- [01:18]
Richard Osmond
Hyde and me, Richard Osmond. Hello, Marina.
- [01:20]
Unidentified Female Co-host
Hello, Richard.
- [01:21]
Marina Hyde
How are you?
- [01:22]
Richard Osmond
Yeah, I'm 24 hours earlier than I normally am.
- [01:24]
Marina Hyde
Yes, you are.
- [01:25]
Richard Osmond
We are say what?
- [01:27]
Marina Hyde
We are coming out early to catch the post Oscars buzz. We've Post Oscars.
- [01:35]
Richard Osmond
Are you feeling crazy?
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Marina Hyde
I'm, you know, I'm, I'm just managing to touch earth again.
- [01:40]
Richard Osmond
Yeah, it's like you're touching. Yeah, yeah, that's. No, that's different to touching cloth. Right. Yeah, yeah. Listen, it's crazy, absolutely crazy. But we'll talk about everything that happened last night, the winners, the losers and
- [01:54]
Marina Hyde
what it tells us about the state of Hollywood.
- [01:56]
Richard Osmond
Yes.
- [01:56]
Marina Hyde
And we're also going to talk about. About Love Story, the Monster Ryan Murphy
- [02:03]
Unidentified Female Co-host
show from Monster Ryan Murphy about the
- [02:06]
Marina Hyde
love story between Carolyn Bissett and John F. Kennedy Jr. And all the controversy.
- [02:12]
Richard Osmond
Yes, because specifically they portrayed Daryl Hannah as a baddie. And she's like, I didn't do any of this. And they went, yeah, we know. So we're going to talk about how that's acceptable.
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Unidentified Female Co-host
Right, let's get into it. Yes, she has the Academy Awards.
- [02:24]
Marina Hyde
It was a very good night for horror. It was not a good night for Timothee Chalamet. But I do find there to be something increasingly sort of energetic about this.
- [02:35]
Richard Osmond
The Oscars.
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Unidentified Female Co-host
Yeah.
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Marina Hyde
And you know, in Conan o', Brien, who hosted and did a very good job.
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Unidentified Female Co-host
Yeah.
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Marina Hyde
But when your opening monologue contains a lot of stuff about AI streaming, there is a sense that the bit that they can't say out loud is how
- [02:52]
Unidentified Female Co-host
relevant are we really? Even though surely we're the most relevant
- [02:55]
Marina Hyde
people in the world. And there is, and I find it increasingly something that fits with an industry in decline.
- [03:02]
Richard Osmond
Well, it's certainly the biggest awards ceremony in the world, but not for the biggest creative industry in the world. Because television and music and, you know, arguably even video games sort of have slightly more sway over the world. And yet the Oscars, there is still something great about them. There is still that legacy thing, you know, it is. Even though we don't want to care about them. It's like the League cup final.
- [03:23]
Marina Hyde
Later we'll talk about what actually is this event because it has sort of been going on for longer than ever this year. It's kind of a six and a half months campaign.
- [03:31]
Richard Osmond
And the broadcast itself, that was just last night.
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Unidentified Female Co-host
Yeah, yeah.
- [03:35]
Marina Hyde
Okay. So the big winners were One Battle after Another and Sinners. And they were, you know, they're both Warner Brothers films. They're both from. They got a lot of shout outs.
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Unidentified Female Co-host
Mike DeLuca and Pam Abdy, who run
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Marina Hyde
the film division at Warners and had
- [03:48]
Richard Osmond
those nine 30 million-plus dollar movies in a row.
- [03:52]
Marina Hyde
Lots of big swings. And these were two of them. And they won big. And yet already that studio has just been acquired by the Ellisons. They're saying they're gonna make 30 movies a year. Maybe humans will make some of those movies. I don't know. It almost seemed like, you know, we're already in a new and much more difficult era.
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Unidentified Female Co-host
Yes.
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Richard Osmond
If I was Mike and Pam, I'd be. I would certainly be, you know, I'd be having meetings.
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Unidentified Female Co-host
Yeah. This is the high watermark.
- [04:19]
Richard Osmond
Yeah.
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Unidentified Female Co-host
Anyway, there were a series of races
- [04:22]
Marina Hyde
that seemed so locked on throughout this.
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Unidentified Female Co-host
Incredible.
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Marina Hyde
I mean, people do say that this one has gone on longer than ever.
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Unidentified Female Co-host
I always think that Oscar campaigning basically is nine months of the year.
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Marina Hyde
But that's because I exaggerate for some
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Unidentified Female Co-host
form of comic effect, but I think it genuinely is like seven months. Timothee Chalamet hasn't sort of stopped campaigning from a complete unknown. He's sort of just been on a
- [04:42]
Marina Hyde
rolling Oscar campaign and he was one of the ones who. I mean, it seemed it was going to be between him and Leonardo DiCaprio for best actor. And in the end, Michael B. Jordan got it for sinners. Quite a few of these races. It seemed like, oh, my gosh, are they going to completely break open in the late stages? Actually, they didn't.
- [04:59]
Richard Osmond
They never do.
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Marina Hyde
No, no, it was the things that
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Unidentified Female Co-host
were sort of locked on, were almost locked on.
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Richard Osmond
It's like Eurovision these days. There's so many people know exactly what's going to happen before it happens.
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Marina Hyde
It's.
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Richard Osmond
I try and avoid it, or you can't. You have to just let it happen on the night.
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Marina Hyde
Well, you can. They do need a villain with. With anything that goes on this long. And I'm pretty sure we're gonna be
- [05:18]
Unidentified Female Co-host
talking about this in the love story section of this podcast as well.
- [05:20]
Marina Hyde
With anything that goes on this long, you sort of need a villain.
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Unidentified Female Co-host
The whole.
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The campaign season itself almost has to sort of function as a narrative.
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Marina Hyde
And so when Timothee Chalamet comes out, and, I mean, I feel so ridiculously sorry for him for this, these comments
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Unidentified Female Co-host
he made about ballet and opera and
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Marina Hyde
people not caring about them, and the fact is, those art forms are not
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Unidentified Female Co-host
as big as they were in previous
- [05:41]
Marina Hyde
centuries movies, the great art form of the 20th century, may not be as big in the future. First of all, don't ever do anything
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Unidentified Female Co-host
on a live stream. That was his first mistake.
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Richard Osmond
That's absolutely the secret. Yeah. It feels he said these in a
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Unidentified Female Co-host
live Stream with Matthew McConaughey, some sort of.
- [05:59]
Richard Osmond
Because when you read it fourth hand, you're like, oh, come on, man, come on, don't have a go at ballet and opera. People, you know, that's people's livelihoods. I'll say a couple of things about it. Firstly, yes, he's literally just on a stage with a friend in front of a live audience doing some, like, banter, which, you know, it's absolutely fine. And then you forget that it's live streamed and everyone around the world sees it. I imagine if you asked him, do you think that ballet and opera are worthless? He would say, they are. Not for me, but I don't think they're worthless. But the great thing about it is that ballet and opera Worlds have come out and used it in incredibly smart ways. Like all the kind of ballet companies who are now saying if you ring up and, and quote the, the code Chalamet when you book you get 10% off your tickets and things. It's, it's sort of in a weird kind of way been the best publicity ballet and opera have had for many, many years.
- [06:43]
Unidentified Female Co-host
Well, that says a lot. Yeah.
- [06:45]
Marina Hyde
Anyway, he emerged as the villain effectively, yes.
- [06:48]
Richard Osmond
Although he did actually say that after the academy had voted. So that had no effect on whether he was gonna win best actor or not.
- [06:54]
Marina Hyde
Jessie Buckley said something about having some her boyfriend's cats or her husband's cats rehomed when they first moved in together or something like that. She nearly became villainous cat lady. She then had to go on a
- [07:07]
Unidentified Female Co-host
talk show and say I actually want audition to play a cat. I wonder in what movie and didn't get it and sort of made a.
- [07:14]
Richard Osmond
You know, I'm guessing not Garfield too.
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Marina Hyde
No, I don't think so. So she sort of survived that and won best actress.
- [07:20]
Richard Osmond
She was, she was the biggest lock. I think she was the biggest lock. I thought in terms of the big awards I do think actually a more fun Oscars than there has been for years because there were proper races. Apart from Jesse Buckley who we knew was, was going to win that battle that was supposed to be between DiCaprio and Chalamet and then actually Michael Jordan, Windsor and correctly in my opinion. I think all three performances are brilliant. That's the other good thing. Some really good films out there this year nominated and crowd pleasing type films as well. And I thought Timothy Chaname was amazing and Marty supreme. I think DiCaprio. You forget what a brilliant comic actor DiCaprio is.
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Marina Hyde
Oh, it was so funny.
- [07:58]
Richard Osmond
And in one battle after another he's just, it's a really, really great performance. But I think Michael B. Jordan, listen, he's playing twins, which I didn't realize at first. I thought well, they got somebody really looks like Michael B. Jordan to play his brother. Because of my eyesight, I don't sometimes like it takes me a little while. And then I was like, I was turning to England. I go, are they both Michael B. Jordan? She's like, yeah, they're both Michael B. Jordan. Okay, good. I can enjoy the rest of the film now. I thought that's. I love that film so much and he's so great and he's such a class actor which I know has nothing to do with whether he should win an Oscar or not. But I But I love. We didn't know he was going to win, which, you know, which is not always the case. And also the best movie. We didn't know that one battle after another was going to win.
- [08:35]
Marina Hyde
No, I sort of felt it would. And I actually felt by the end that he was going to. He was for sure going to win. Can I say something that I think I said last year? But it remains a big thing for me. If you go to any music awards, music artists talk about their fans all the time. They literally talk about them all the time. They thank them all the time. They thank Michael B. Again, you don't see it at the Oscars at all. Even though the industry is besieged and people. Michael B. Jordan, such a class act. He said, I wanna thank people who went out and saw this movie once, twice, three times. And that was a thing with sinners. It was this kind of cultural phenomenon. And I find it extraordinary that you just don't see these people acknowledge.
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Richard Osmond
I think he was the only one who did. Right.
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Unidentified Female Co-host
All those wonderful people out there in the dark.
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Marina Hyde
When we can see that fewer people are going to the cinema. I really think it would be time, guys, to look outwards and say thank you to the people who go. Music artists do this all the time. And they live in a world where they are constantly interacting with and acknowledging the fan base that pays their salaries, if I can put it in that range.
- [09:40]
Richard Osmond
Well, film still has especially the very core of it and especially the Academy Awards. And this is one of the reasons it's so long. It still has that thing of we are an art form. And of course you are. Of course you're an art form. We absolutely get that. But when you're on that size of stage, when you're doing something like the Oscars, which is huge, and it's about, you know, these mass platform films, you also have to understand, you'll get to that you are not always. You are entertainment. You know, you're on it's. And people don't like to be in the entertainment business. Sometimes they want to be in the art business. And at that level of Hollywood, you are in the entertainment business. And when you're in the entertainment business, it is about whether people come and see you. And you're right. Who's the only person who said thank you?
- [10:20]
Marina Hyde
He's the only one person who said thank you. You got a joke in the opening monologue about Ted Sarandos, who's sitting there. He.
- [10:25]
Unidentified Female Co-host
By the way, he is so good at this.
- [10:27]
I mean, the studio cameo Is obviously ridiculously good. He's really good in that.
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Marina Hyde
But he was the big joke in the thing is like, oh, look, Ted, the Sarandis. You're in a theater, this is what people are talking about, you see, you know, and he laughs.
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Richard Osmond
First time in the theatre.
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Marina Hyde
The first time in the theatre, people, he laughed at all of that.
- [10:42]
Richard Osmond
Michael B. Jordan, by the way, is not only the only person to thank the fans, he's also, if you want to know what I was doing last night of the, of the, I think around about 400 Oscar winning actors in the history of the Oscars. It's the first one with a country as a surname. First one, can you believe it? I was going through and through and through.
- [11:02]
Marina Hyde
They didn't make anything of that.
- [11:03]
Richard Osmond
There's, listen, there's loads of cities, right? There's Burt Lancaster, there's Joaquin Phoenix, there's Glenda Jackson, Denzel Washington for Lancastrian's Listening, there's Vivian Leigh. So that's all been taken care of. But he's the first one with a surname as a country. There was however, someone with a country for a first name who's won an acting Oscar. Oh, anyone at home? Anyone at home? I should do this whole thing as a quiz.
- [11:29]
Marina Hyde
Yeah.
- [11:30]
Richard Osmond
Cuba Gooding Jr.
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Unidentified Female Co-host
Okay, very good.
- [11:32]
Richard Osmond
There you go.
- [11:33]
Unidentified Female Co-host
Very good.
- [11:34]
Marina Hyde
Okay, so again, let's go back to
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Unidentified Female Co-host
horror because this was, I'm very happy
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Marina Hyde
about that aspect of it.
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Unidentified Female Co-host
Horror is finally prestige. Finally.
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Marina Hyde
Every now and then you get these movies that break out for horror like something like Silence of the Lambs or maybe get out or whatever it is. Last year people thought that maybe Nosferatu and the substance would go further than they did, but they didn't. But this year Sinners is, you know, effectively a horror.
- [12:00]
Unidentified Female Co-host
They're quite sort of genre of the film.
- [12:02]
Richard Osmond
Well, half of it is a horror and the other half is like, is like, is not a horror.
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Marina Hyde
Well, I love, yeah, well, I love that Amy Madigan won for Weapons, which is again, which is kind of like a creepy thriller horror.
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Unidentified Female Co-host
But it is a horror thing.
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Marina Hyde
So that was. For some reason the Academy has regarded
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Unidentified Female Co-host
it as a little bit too rich
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for the blood, all of these kind of movies.
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Marina Hyde
But it was great to see them do well. And particularly when horror as a genre props up a huge amount of Hollywood and actually makes money. Because I have to say. Can we talk about the best picture nominations?
- [12:34]
Richard Osmond
Yes, please.
- [12:35]
Marina Hyde
To me, it's really interesting. I was thinking, what does this actually
- [12:37]
Unidentified Female Co-host
tell us about Hollywood?
- [12:39]
Marina Hyde
Which ones earned out at the box office okay, so they were earned. They earned their budget and the marketing and one battle after another. No sinners.
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Unidentified Female Co-host
Yes.
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Marina Hyde
F1. Just about. We don't know how much that movie cost. It probably cost more than 300.
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Richard Osmond
There's an awful lot of side bets on that, though, aren't there? If you're in bed with Formula One and Apple, there's.
- [13:01]
Unidentified Female Co-host
Listen, so unclear.
- [13:02]
Richard Osmond
Nobody. Nobody's having to put that.
- [13:04]
Marina Hyde
I'm giving it a yes.
- [13:05]
Richard Osmond
All right.
- [13:05]
Marina Hyde
Secret Agent.
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Unidentified Female Co-host
Yes.
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Marina Hyde
Sentimental value. Yes. Hamnet. Yes. Begonia.
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Unidentified Female Co-host
No.
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Marina Hyde
Train Dreams. No. It's Netflix. Frankenstein? No. It's Netflix. So that is four out of the ten nominees earned out in that first crucial window, the theatrical window, the time it's in cinemas. And two of those are very low budget foreign films. What does that say about, you know, the supposedly still prime entertainment product?
- [13:29]
Richard Osmond
Well, I don't know. I don't mind that so much. And, and because I'm going to argue against myself now because I was saying that thing about art and entertainment and I do think as a human being, you have to accept you're in the entertainment business. I think it's nice though, that as an academy, you're allowed to vote for movies that perhaps the public didn't go crazy for just to say, oh, by the way, maybe, you know, I wouldn't have watched Train Dreams without it being on that Academy Award list.
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Unidentified Female Co-host
And I'm very watching without being on Netflix, let's face it.
- [13:57]
Richard Osmond
Yeah, but you know what I mean. I think, I think, I think that, you know, I think it's good to have something like F1 on that list because at least, oh, look, there's a. There's a big sort of tentpole movie. You know, the trouble with Hollywood is they think that one battle after another is a big movie. And, you know, it isn't particular. It is. That is still an art house movie to almost every single person who watches movies. You know, Sinners is probably the closest thing on that list, if you discount F1 to being like a tentpole movie that lots and lots of people actually were excited to go and see, you know, one battle against another. Paul Thomas Anderson, he is, he's, he's sort of. He's an art house director who can make some money. But, you know, he's not. If you ask 100 people in the street, this comes from years of doing Pointless.
- [14:39]
Unidentified Female Co-host
Yeah.
- [14:40]
Richard Osmond
Who Paul Thomas Anderson is, two people will know and 98 people will not know. I mean, same with Ryan Coogler, but more people will have heard of Sinners than One battle against another. But, you know, I don't mind that so much. It is just there is an absence of though, because there's an absence in the marketplace of your Forrest Gumps and Lord of the Rings and Titanics and these huge movies that used to win at the Oscars. You know, those movies.
- [15:06]
Marina Hyde
Well, maybe we'll get that this year. We know that there are huge number
- [15:09]
Unidentified Female Co-host
of big films and some of them are big swing films.
- [15:11]
Richard Osmond
But the trouble is most.
- [15:13]
Marina Hyde
We had it with. We had it with Barbie and Oppenheimer.
- [15:15]
Richard Osmond
Yes, we did.
- [15:16]
Unidentified Female Co-host
So it is possible, still doable.
- [15:18]
Richard Osmond
But so much of that huge money has gone into animation, sequels and still, you know, Marvel things. And so, you know, the money for those huge, you know, movies is just not there anymore. But it's, you know, the Oscars is sort of bigger than the films inside it or has been for a long time. But the question is, is that going to continue? Can you talk a little bit about what's happening with it? It's going to go to YouTube, right?
- [15:41]
Marina Hyde
It's going to go to YouTube, which I think is okay. The Academy has one event, okay. And it can sell it to anyone it likes. And it's been with ABC for. We show it on ITV here. But you can they that that lie that Conan o' Brien said again in the opening monologue. A billion people are watching. A billion people are not watching.
- [16:00]
Richard Osmond
Yeah, I, I mean that's one in seven, like people in the entire world.
- [16:04]
Marina Hyde
It's a nonsense and it's not true. It gets around if it does. Well, like it keeps Getting about 19 million viewers in the U.S. okay, say it gets 20 million. There are 340 million odd people in the, in the U.S. yeah, it's equivalent
- [16:19]
Richard Osmond
to getting about 4 million people.
- [16:21]
Marina Hyde
It's the equivalent of what the BBC London 6:30pm bulletin gets any given weekday in our country. Okay, so what is it? Is it a broadcast at all?
- [16:31]
Unidentified Female Co-host
Because it's actually a sort of weird
- [16:33]
Marina Hyde
cultural event that, as we say, has
- [16:34]
Unidentified Female Co-host
been running for what feels like very, very.
- [16:36]
Marina Hyde
And has been running for very, very many months. There are whole newsletters that come out every week that make a lot of. Do a lot of business on, you know, who's up, who's down, which the big plays are. You know what, you know what? Where it can see the tracking going.
- [16:49]
Unidentified Female Co-host
There are.
- [16:49]
Marina Hyde
There's an unbelievable amount of money bet on it. I think the last count they said was 100 a couple of days ago was 120 million on Kalshi Polymarket. Those kind of predictions it will be
- [17:00]
Richard Osmond
a lot more now most of it will be. We've talked about calcium polymarket being really real two screen things. And if you're watching the Oscars, it's so long, it's so interminably long that actually betting on it having something to at least look through is one of the, the few things you can do. I've been betting on the Oscars, you know, you, you're not going to make any money from it. But you know, listen, but if it gets you through the Oscars or one and good.
- [17:24]
Marina Hyde
But nothing gets as much coverage for as long in almost our entire culture and it amounts to 20 million US viewers on a, on a very good day. Okay, so where is the event actually happening? That's why I think it's good that they've gone to YouTube, they've gone to some of the places that the conversation, the buzzer. Because right now the buzz is not happening within the ceremony itself. And you know, we've said it before, it's difficult.
- [17:49]
Richard Osmond
And the buzz is not happening on the TV stream either. The buzz is happening around it, around it.
- [17:54]
Marina Hyde
And it's difficult because it's much easier when it's the Grammys or anything like that or the Brits. The art that you were celebrating is
- [18:01]
Unidentified Female Co-host
handily comes in a three minute long
- [18:03]
Marina Hyde
thing and it can be performed on the night and it's quite exciting.
- [18:06]
Richard Osmond
And it's okay not to hear from the person who afterwards.
- [18:09]
Unidentified Female Co-host
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
- [18:11]
Marina Hyde
So the buzz is happening on TikTok, on Instagram, on YouTube.
- [18:15]
Unidentified Female Co-host
So they'll be able to collaborate.
- [18:16]
Marina Hyde
They've, you know, they bring in, they've already brought in for a long time, Emilia de Moldenberg who does the red carpet things. They've tried to do things but ultimately
- [18:24]
Unidentified Female Co-host
it feels like a very sort of
- [18:25]
Marina Hyde
1.0 thing still this long, long, long telecast. And it will be much better to see what they can do with it since they only have this one thing. I don't think everyone putting all their content on YouTube is a great idea, but for, for the Academy who have one shop front, they may as well,
- [18:41]
Richard Osmond
because also, and this is the reason it's so long and this is the reason why something has to be done is because there's so many stakeholders in the Oscars, the channel who make it, the Academy themselves and then all the different studios and all the different movies and then all the most famous people who are going to the Oscars, all of those people have a view as to what the most important thing about the Oscars Is okay. And the most important thing about the Oscars for all of them is theirselves or their organizations or, or whatever it is. So if you're at the Academy, they need things to be done in a respectful way. That's what they need. And they need, you know, the Academy to be held above all things. If you're any of the actors, if you're any of the people, they need to be respected, they need to be given their time. They need. If they want to take a long walk up to the stage, they're going to take a long walk up to the stage because they're like super, super famous. And it has become so calcified over years and years and years and years that the thing that happens in television all the time is if you've got a show with lots of moving parts, which this has a whole bunch of different awards, it's every time you add 30 seconds to each of them, suddenly you're. You've added another 20 minutes to your whole thing. And then if you add another 30 seconds, you've added another 20 minutes. And the whole point of these shows is everything has to be brutal. And if you're YouTube, they're the first people who would be able to say, oh, no, this is. Sorry, this is not going to be three hours and 30 minutes long, but everyone's good. Look, here's the numbers. This is when people are going to switch off this. You've got one minute for speeches we can do in a way that will stick them in a different room and we'll play them as an inset while you're doing something else. We are not going to sit and have that attention span.
- [20:17]
Marina Hyde
But you'll be able to go to the sidebar the entire time. The minute you're not interested in something.
- [20:22]
Unidentified Female Co-host
Exactly.
- [20:23]
Marina Hyde
That will be a bit that you
- [20:24]
Richard Osmond
are interested, like a, Like a, Like a sporting event. The whole point about those things is there's people in the audience, there's people on the stage and there's loads of people backstage. You've just won or about to win, you know, so you, you can hear from all of them all the time. If you want to do three and a half hours, you've got to give people three and a half hours worth of content. And if you looked at that, maybe they, maybe you've got an hour and 50 of content in three and a half hours. And it's just that's, that's, that's not going to wash for people. But I think it's because when you've done something for so long and there's so much money and so much art and prestige and ego involved. Nobody wants to give away their 30 seconds. Nobody does. And if any, everyone wants to keep their 30 seconds, then it's really, really long. So hopefully YouTube will be able to say we do this quickly now. We do it multi camera, we do it multi site, we do it, you know, multi feed and we're going to absolutely race through it. And then if you want to do a seven minute speech, by all means do it and then look at your numbers the next day to see if anyone had migrated backstage or if anyone was at the kind of watch along party.
- [21:24]
Marina Hyde
If your agent is worth anything, they
- [21:26]
Unidentified Female Co-host
will find a way of burying and hiding those numbers for you so that you never find out that actually people don't care about this stuff.
- [21:33]
Richard Osmond
No, but your agent is getting thanked in your speech and your agent will see those numbers. So your agent knows if you give a seven minute speech. I know they can't give long speeches now, but if you give a long speech and nobody is watching, if you give a really cracking, funny 30 second speech with one, with one absolute big sound bite in the middle of it, everyone's going to watch it. It's going to be clipped everywhere and everyone's going to hear their name. That's the, that's the key.
- [21:55]
Marina Hyde
I think it will shake it up
- [21:56]
Unidentified Female Co-host
in a way that it definitely needs
- [21:58]
Marina Hyde
to be something we talked about last
- [22:00]
Unidentified Female Co-host
year and sadly we have to talk
- [22:01]
Marina Hyde
about each year because it does matter what tells the biggest truth is what
- [22:06]
Unidentified Female Co-host
advertising is bought in. Supposedly this event where, you know, everybody's watching.
- [22:12]
Marina Hyde
There was one movie yet again, one
- [22:14]
Unidentified Female Co-host
upcoming movie project, Hail Mary, the thing
- [22:16]
Marina Hyde
where for reasons not at all clear
- [22:18]
Unidentified Female Co-host
in the trailer Ryan Gosling is going to space.
- [22:20]
Marina Hyde
I will watch it next weekend.
- [22:21]
Richard Osmond
So it does look great to be fair.
- [22:23]
Unidentified Female Co-host
I'll have a look.
- [22:24]
Marina Hyde
That's one advert for a season. A film about to come in the cinemas. There's lots of adverts for things on streaming, there's lots of TV adverts and
- [22:31]
Richard Osmond
by the way, there's no efforts from the big tech companies. So during the super bowl, which, yeah, something that people actually do care about
- [22:37]
Marina Hyde
and watch and, and what a lot
- [22:40]
Unidentified Female Co-host
of people watch that.
- [22:41]
Richard Osmond
A lot of people watch it and people who don't like the thing that it is about.
- [22:43]
Unidentified Female Co-host
Yeah.
- [22:44]
Richard Osmond
Which is American football, they will still watch the super bowl that had all of the, you know, your, your AI companies and the people with all the money and on the Oscars no, they're not spending that. It's not an audience that they're particularly interested in.
- [22:58]
Marina Hyde
Maybe they try and keep them out. We just don't know. But they'll certainly be having a few adverts from.
- [23:03]
Unidentified Female Co-host
What's the Google Gemini AI next time, won't they? Once it's on YouTube?
- [23:07]
Marina Hyde
I think they will be, yes, that's true, but.
- [23:10]
Unidentified Female Co-host
Yes, but I think they are sort of kept out.
- [23:13]
Marina Hyde
And the people who are watching, I can assure you, are 20 million movie fans, people who have gone out and bought the tickets. So thank them more. Let it not just be Michael B. Jordan's job to thank the people who actually go and leave their house and pay to see things, but also maybe you'd like to advertise some upcoming attractions to them. Or why are you advertising things that
- [23:35]
Richard Osmond
are on streaming, even during the ceremony? Turn it into a celebration of movies. And don't, you know, it's, you know, you can't have the Orchestral Sting lighting change. I mean, just.
- [23:45]
Marina Hyde
It's desiccated, isn't it?
- [23:46]
Unidentified Female Co-host
It is old and boring.
- [23:47]
Richard Osmond
But of course it is, by the way, because that's how, you know, my generation grew up making those shows. You want to. The idea of it is you make it grand. The idea of it, you see, do have these incredible lighting changes and you do have these incredible orchestral Stings because that was the language of television and you wanted it better than anyone else. And often better means longer. And so you can see why it got that way. But there is a new generation who watch television differently and you are in the business of storytelling. And by the way, there will be lots of people behind the scenes at the Oscars who know this. But because of the idea, there's so many stakeholders, it's going to take them a couple of years, really, to persuade people that maybe they, you know, if you have to persuade a room of people my age that you have to make it quicker and you can lose X, Y or Z, that take, that takes a couple of years, I would say. But, you know, you could see the Oscars being unbelievable entertainment, you know, absolutely full of clips, absolutely full of upcoming things, absolutely full of outtakes, you know, full of, you know, little remixes of movies. Actors talking to each other, you know, behind the scene, you know, the sort of stuff that people have shown you time and time and time again, they want to watch. That's the stuff about movies they want to watch. And I know you want to make it feel incredibly blue chip and incredibly important. And you do have to do that that's a balance you have to strike. But you. You do not do that by making it three and a half hours long. I think they know that. I think they know that by now. But the Oscars could be.
- [25:06]
Unidentified Female Co-host
I think they don't know what to.
- [25:07]
Marina Hyde
I mean, honestly, that's what I said at the start of this. I find it an energetic event to a huge extent. It is. They. They are not quite sure what to do. And even though lots of the Best Picture nominations, you know, nobody had really seen them and all of those sorts of things, and there was a sort of bombus to it all, I didn't detect that at all this year. It's like they now know they can't
- [25:29]
Unidentified Female Co-host
say the bit about irrelevance out loud,
- [25:31]
Marina Hyde
but my God, it hung over it.
- [25:33]
Unidentified Female Co-host
It really did.
- [25:34]
Marina Hyde
And I feel that it is there in the room now and people know and they don't really know what to do about it. So it is gonna take some quite significant disruption.
- [25:43]
Richard Osmond
They've got a great host, by the way. Now Conan, you could take straight to YouTube and would be absolutely acceptable.
- [25:47]
Marina Hyde
I like the cold open the weapon stuff.
- [25:49]
Unidentified Female Co-host
All of that was great. That was great.
- [25:51]
Richard Osmond
As you say, Amelia de Moldenberg. Absolutely. You know, that's a YouTube native. All the. All the pieces are in place for someone just to go. We just. We are absolutely. You know, the running order that we started. Start from each year and we fill in the gaps. We get rid of that running order this year, we just do it. We're going to do it completely differently. And you would think that maybe the YouTube move will be when they can do that. The big thing I was thinking about because of Wumi Masako, and this is the. I haven't seen a lot written about this, certainly in the American trades, is whether there have been more actors who've appeared in Casualty who've been nominated for Academy Awards or more actors who've appeared on the Bill.
- [26:30]
Marina Hyde
Why didn't. Why wasn't there a whole section?
- [26:31]
Richard Osmond
I haven't seen it at all, but I've done that. I've run the numbers. You'll be absolutely delighted to hear it.
- [26:35]
Unidentified Female Co-host
Surprise me.
- [26:36]
Richard Osmond
Yeah. So people who've appeared on the Bill have been nominated for Oscars and won some of them. Olivia Colman, who's been on the Bill. Pete Postlethwaite. Wumi Masako.
- [26:45]
Unidentified Female Co-host
Yeah.
- [26:45]
Richard Osmond
Who I thought was amazing in Wonderful Sinners. Ron Moody, who. Who was nominated for his role as Fagan. He's been on the Bill. Daniel Kaluuya.
- [26:54]
Marina Hyde
Yeah.
- [26:55]
Richard Osmond
And Keira Knightley. So they've got six on the bill. Casualty. Okay, well, Brenda Fricker.
- [27:01]
Marina Hyde
Yeah.
- [27:02]
Richard Osmond
Who of course was big on Casualty for a long time and then won the Oscar for My Left Foot. Kate Winslet, Orlando Bloom, Emily Watson, Riz Ahmed. So we've got five there. Don't forget we had six on the Bill.
- [27:14]
Marina Hyde
Yeah.
- [27:14]
Richard Osmond
So we've got five. But there are two people to build on the bill who've also been on Casualty and they are Daniel Kaluuya and Keira Knightley. So Casualty has seven against the Bills. Six. So seven people who've who've appeared in Casualty have been nominated for an Oscar.
- [27:30]
Marina Hyde
It would have been nice if they'd said thank you to both those shows from the stage.
- [27:34]
Richard Osmond
Well, can I tell you, did you
- [27:36]
Marina Hyde
even say thank you? I'm the J.D.
- [27:37]
Unidentified Female Co-host
vance of this Oscar. Did you even say thank you?
- [27:39]
Richard Osmond
I was tweeting non stop and then I forgot that no one could see it. I'll tell you the show that's coming up on the rails, though, they've only got two at the moment. They're not Silent Witness. So Silent Witness has got Cumberbatch and Daniel Kaluya, who's doing a lot of Daniel. Thank you. Doing a lot of heavy lifting, but also in Silent wisdom. As you can imagine, all of these I had to look through to check a couple of these hadn't ever been nominated. Idris Elba's been in it, Jodie Comer has been in it, Daisy Ridley, Nicholas Hoult, they've all been in Silent windows. So you would think maybe they could give Casualty a run for their money. But Casualty keeps going.
- [28:14]
Marina Hyde
Yeah.
- [28:14]
Richard Osmond
Yeah, but that feels to me like a real missed opportunity for Kalshee, for Polymarket, for Conan. I mean, I would have done almost all of the, you know, I would have enormous. All the monologue about Silent Witness, Casualty and the Bill, and then my closing remarks would have been about Michael B. Jordan being having a surname as a country. And that's how I would have done it.
- [28:36]
Unidentified Female Co-host
And YouTube, you have made a come and get me plea today for hosting duties in the future.
- [28:41]
Richard Osmond
Can you imagine anyone less suited to doing the Oscars on YouTube? It is me, that's all.
- [28:47]
Unidentified Female Co-host
Can I just say that I find this very interesting.
- [28:49]
Richard Osmond
You'd be saying that is all. That is all I'd be doing. I've done a. I'm not even going to go into this, but people with middle initials in their names as well. But it's. I'm not. I cannot. Because, listen, I know It's Monday morning, everybody. And we. We all have lives. My favourite fact, though, is Michael B. Jordan is the first person to win an Oscar for playing multiple roles since Lee Marvin in Cat Ballou. And yes, I double checked and Eddie Murphy did not win an Oscar for Norbert.
- [29:16]
Unidentified Female Co-host
Robbed.
- [29:17]
Richard Osmond
Robbed. Absolutely robbed. So congratulations to sinners. If you were choosing the best picture winner, what would you have gone for?
- [29:26]
Marina Hyde
It's never going to win. I absolutely loved the Secret Agent.
- [29:29]
Richard Osmond
Yes.
- [29:31]
Marina Hyde
You know what I mean? I would have gone for one battle after another by chance. It ended up being about its times and I thought it was very well done. I appreciate that. It is an art house film and, you know, I would bring it in for 90 or $100 million. Then we're not having the same conversation.
- [29:48]
Richard Osmond
Yeah. And he was. Which you shouldn't ever say, but he was due to win. I mean, genuinely, if Paul Thomas Anderson has not won an Oscar is crazy because he's made some of the best Hollywood movies there are. I wouldn't have given it this year. But again, you kind of go, yeah, but what if he's always done the second best every year and he never wins one? So I'm very happy that he won it. I would choose between sinners and Marty Supreme. I really liked Marty Supreme.
- [30:10]
Marina Hyde
Oh, my God. Why didn't I even say that? I should have said Marty Supreme. I absolutely. By the way. Yeah, you're right. What on earth.
- [30:16]
Unidentified Female Co-host
Okay.
- [30:16]
Richard Osmond
It disappeared.
- [30:18]
Marina Hyde
It disappeared. I'm so sorry. My actual answer is Marty Supreme. I don't know how I forgot. Yeah, it disappears.
- [30:24]
Richard Osmond
Paul, The Secret Agent.
- [30:26]
Marina Hyde
No, the Secret Agent is brilliant, but it's an art house movie. But I loved Marty Supreme. I love a young star. People don't.
- [30:35]
Unidentified Female Co-host
One of the reasons I don't think
- [30:36]
Marina Hyde
they like Timothee Chalamet to some degree is that there's some. That's part of the whole calcified thing. You gotta be a certain age to get an Oscar. You can't want it too much. You can't. You know, he's very hungry. He's very obvious. He says what he wants, but he's a young star that people are. Young people are excited about and they should be thrilled they have someone. By the way, this is not taken away from Michael B. Jordan at all. But the amount of opprobrium heaped on Timothee Chalamet, I thought he was extraordinary. I thought the movie. I loved the movie. Yeah.
- [31:05]
Unidentified Female Co-host
Okay.
- [31:06]
Marina Hyde
I would have picked that.
- [31:06]
Richard Osmond
I'm sorry, Supreme. Yeah, I don't.
- [31:08]
Unidentified Female Co-host
Yeah.
- [31:08]
Richard Osmond
Either. Multi supreme or Sinners. I really, really liked Sinners. What I will say, I thought it
- [31:12]
Marina Hyde
was quite three and a half star for me.
- [31:14]
Richard Osmond
Really.
- [31:15]
Unidentified Female Co-host
I really liked it.
- [31:16]
Richard Osmond
I know it was a flee from dusk till dawn, but it was, there was, there was something about it I loved. I think the term. What I will say is if you have not seen a lot of these 10 movies, you genuinely have a treat in store and that's not the same every year, but I think you would. I think Sinners is a really enjoyable watch. I think one battle after another is multi supreme, is Secret Agent, is Train dreams, is. You know, I haven't seen Frankenstein even though I sat next to on a plane as we've discussed. But of the movies on that list, there are some actual fun evenings to be had and how lovely that we can, we can say that at least. And. Yeah, and. And Michael B. Jordan, I thought was just. Was class personified.
- [31:59]
Marina Hyde
Yeah.
- [31:59]
Richard Osmond
So nice to see that.
- [32:00]
Marina Hyde
Thank the fans.
- [32:01]
Richard Osmond
Always thank the fans. And congratulations to Casualty, of course.
- [32:05]
Marina Hyde
Of course.
- [32:05]
Unidentified Female Co-host
Yes.
- [32:06]
Marina Hyde
Right, shall we go to a break?
- [32:08]
Unidentified Female Co-host
After the break, we are going to
- [32:09]
Marina Hyde
be talking about the huge hit love story, the Ryan Murphy series about Carolyn Bessette and John F. Kennedy Jr.
- [32:17]
Unidentified Female Co-host
Which has caused some significant controversies.
- [32:21]
Richard Osmond
Oh, you're gonna love it. And I'm gonna put a jacket on because I'm quite cold. You're not cold.
- [32:26]
Unidentified Female Co-host
I'm okay.
- [32:31]
Richard Osmond
This episode is brought to you by Bumble.
- [32:34]
Unidentified Female Co-host
Now, Richard. People get very nervous before sending the first message on dating apps. Your finger hovers over the phone screen thinking, am I actually going to do this?
- [32:42]
Richard Osmond
Yeah. They debate if the person is who they say they are and if replying is going to feel comfortable or mildly stressful.
- [32:47]
Unidentified Female Co-host
But Bumble's photo number and ID verification makes it much clearer who is behind the profile, giving you the subtle reassurance that lowers the stakes of sending the first. Hey.
- [32:57]
Richard Osmond
And when that pressure drops, something interesting happens. Profiles become more relaxed, more specific and way more human. And the conversation just starts to flow.
- [33:06]
Unidentified Female Co-host
This is why Bumble is an app. People trust the one friends recommend because safety and confidence are what lets real connection happen in the first place.
- [33:15]
Richard Osmond
So show more of the real you on Bumble.
- [33:18]
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- [33:48]
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- [34:22]
Richard Osmond
Welcome back, everybody. Now, we are talking about the strange case of Daryl Hannah. And the basic question in this story is what do you do when the biggest TV show in the world portrays you as yourself but completely misrepresents you, which is what's happened here. She's become embroiled in a scandal not of her own making, not at all.
- [34:43]
Unidentified Female Co-host
She Love story, which is the story of the, you know, fact or fiction story of Carolyn Bessette and John F. Kennedy, Jr. It's the most watched limited series now ever on Disney Hulu. It's not even finished yet.
- [34:57]
They're dropping.
- [34:58]
Richard Osmond
It's Ryan Murphy. Yeah, it's Ryan Murphy, friend of the podcast.
- [35:01]
Marina Hyde
Yeah.
- [35:01]
Unidentified Female Co-host
And of course it's triggered, retriggered. Everyone's complete style obsession with Carolyn Bassett. There's been a huge halo effect, all these. Even just the chemist that sells the
- [35:13]
tortoiseshell headband that she wears has had
- [35:17]
greater sales than ever.
- [35:18]
And it's sort of 100, 188 years straight.
- [35:21]
Yeah, I know, it's absolutely mad. Yeah, it came from a sort of, you know, fancy New York chemist.
- [35:26]
Richard Osmond
They call them drugstores.
- [35:27]
Unidentified Female Co-host
Surely they do, don't.
- [35:28]
Richard Osmond
They don't have chemists over there, do they?
- [35:29]
Unidentified Female Co-host
Yeah, I don't know, but I didn't
- [35:31]
want to confuse it with the drug elements of Daryl Hannah's story. That's pretty.
- [35:33]
Richard Osmond
Oh, do you know what? That's so clever.
- [35:36]
Unidentified Female Co-host
Thank you.
- [35:36]
I'm learning from the best, aren't I, Richard?
- [35:38]
Now, I think it's eight. It's 81 hours, basically, or nearly 81 hours. And you need an antagonist in a story like that, considering they got. We know they got together and they married and then they tragically died.
- [35:51]
Richard Osmond
For those of us who know very little about Carolyn Bassett and John F. Kennedy Jr. What's the basic story? Before we get into what Love Story
- [35:58]
Unidentified Female Co-host
shows us, he was JFK's child who we saw that I worked out. He's American royalty, you know, the tragic son of Camelot. He falls in love and marries Carolyn Bessett, who's incredibly stylish. One time he's piloting them down to the family compound on Martha's Vineyard and they die in a plane crash.
- [36:20]
Marina Hyde
And it's a sort of tragic love story.
- [36:22]
Unidentified Female Co-host
She's actually rel photograph compared to any single woman on the planet now, including people you've never heard of. Cause everyone is their own paparazzi now
- [36:30]
and photographs themselves all the time.
- [36:32]
Richard Osmond
So who was she? What was her background?
- [36:33]
Unidentified Female Co-host
She's a fashion sort of. She worked for Calvin Klein and she was a sort of fashion icon. But she's particularly become a fashion icon after her death and most particularly over the last few years. Ryan Murphy always knows how to tap into these zeitgeist things slightly before they hit the absolute mainstream zeitgeist. And he's done it with this again.
- [36:53]
Richard Osmond
So you think. So you got an idea for the story. JFK junior Carolyn Bissett, as you say, comes from a certain era, which she knows is going to look amazing. It's based on real people, which is, you know, a classic Ryan Murphy playbook
- [37:08]
Unidentified Female Co-host
and a genre all of its own now, which we will certainly get to in this discussion.
- [37:13]
Richard Osmond
But then you have to expand the story out a little bit, which is what he's done.
- [37:16]
Unidentified Female Co-host
And he previously, John F. Kennedy Jr. Had had a relationship with Daryl Hannah that was a bit on again, off again.
- [37:21]
Richard Osmond
Anyway, she was the actress who we'd remember from the 1980s, from Splash and all that, all that kind of stuff. She huge, wasn't she? I mean, absolutely huge. I think these days, perhaps there's a generation who might not know who she is quite so much.
- [37:33]
Unidentified Female Co-host
Yeah, she's sort of withdrawn from that kind of world, particularly. But all of these stories kind of need an antagonist once they stop being real life and become something that you watch on tv. Daryl Hannah last weekend published this op ed in the New York Times, an opinion piece which I have to say, seems to me like it was really written under the advice of lawyers. And she. It's headlined How Can Love Story Get Away with this? It's a completely searing attack. There are too many quotable bits.
- [38:02]
Richard Osmond
But so what? How can they get away with what? What's there?
- [38:06]
Unidentified Female Co-host
Okay, let me just do some quotes from Daryl. A recent tragedy exploiting television series about John F. Kennedy Jr. And Carolyn Bessette
- [38:13]
features a character using my name and
- [38:15]
presents her as me. The choice to portray her as irritating, self absorbed, whiny, and inappropriate was no accident.
- [38:22]
And then she cites one of the producers of Love Story who'd said, given how much we're rooting for John and Carolyn, Daryl Hannah occupies a space where she's an adversary to what you want
- [38:31]
narratively, to the story. Wow, why did you say that out loud, even though that's obviously what you've done?
- [38:36]
Okay. She even says there's a gender dimension to this. It's always, you know, there has to be a bad woman in all of this.
- [38:41]
But here's a paragraph that I find particularly would be quite hard to swallow unless you're Ryan Murphy and you literally don't have to do even your own swallowing.
- [38:49]
The character Daryl Hannah portrayed in this series is not even a remotely accurate
- [38:53]
representation of my life, my conduct, or my relationship with John.
- [38:56]
The actions and behaviors attributed to me are untrue.
- [38:58]
I have never used cocaine in my life, nor hosted cocaine fueled parties. I have never pressured anyone to marriage. I have never desecrated any family heirloom or intruded on anyone's private memorial. I have never planted any story in the press. I never compared Jacqueline Andassis death to a dog's. Yeah, Anyway.
- [39:19]
And what she does say, though, as well, is that when so many people watch a real dramatization, real life consequences follow. And she's had threatening messages from people who believe the portrayal is factual. And she says when entertainment borrows a real person's name, it can permanently impact her reputation.
- [39:36]
Now.
- [39:36]
Marina Hyde
Oh, my goodness me.
- [39:37]
Richard Osmond
I mean, what a thing to have done. I mean, you know, he very famously peoples lots of his shows with, you know, real people from history. And I'll go on to a particular example in a bit, but in this case, he's absolutely picked on someone who was still very much alive and kicking very much out there and has used her likeness, used her name. You know, you portrayed a living person as something that they're not. Making her do illegal things, for example, certainly making her doing morally questionable things. And as you say, when you go to such trouble to make everything else in your drama look so real and look so vivid, then as a viewer, why would you not think that this is true?
- [40:19]
Unidentified Female Co-host
When they put out some original publicity shots of this thing, and because everyone's so obsessed with this details of her style, everyone's like, oh, my God, this looks so awful. The hair's too blonde.
- [40:28]
Marina Hyde
This is that.
- [40:29]
Unidentified Female Co-host
So Ryan Murphy sort of swooped in and got rid of that costume designer, I should say. We should say that there is another showrunner for this project, a guy called Connor Hines. And all of these things kind of happen. Just to give you the background to how Ryan Murphy's unbelievable factory of content works, because he's got huge numbers of shows on at any one time. Connor Hines is a showrunner, but clearly it's all under the aegis of Ryan Murphy. He does these huge deals. His last deal was with Netflix. He got $300 million for I think a five year deal for them. The new deal is with Disney, which they say is for less.
- [41:02]
But you know, he's almost like, is
- [41:04]
he inching towards being the first billionaire screenwriter? You know, he's part the most sort of valuable showrunners or people who have lots of different shows on American TV are. I guess for me they would be Taylor Sheridan who does all the Yellowstone and various other spin offs and Shonda who has Bridgerton, Grey's Anatomy, all those sorts of things. Ryan Murphy for me is much more of a. I mean he's obviously, it's much more splashy in some ways, but he's much more of a liability. But he has so many more shows in some ways than them. And he is brilliant at capturing, you know, where the puck's going to go. He understands the zeitgeist in a way that he's sort of got. There's a show coming out before you've even quite realized that this has become mainstream.
- [41:47]
Richard Osmond
There's also another part of the zeitgeist which is not just what are people interested in, is how is the culture thinking about things. And one of the ways the culture thinks about things is facts are very movable and changeable and narratives are very movable and changeable. And actually you can remix history all you like. So he's sort of ahead of the curve on that. But then you get to a situation like this, you think, well, that's great. But the fact you understand the zeitgeist and you understand how people sort of look back at narrative and look back at how the world is. You have therefore ended up with a show where you have portrayed a living human being who's just written an op ed in the New York Times as a cocaine fueled monster and what happens next? If you're Daryl Hanna, where do you go? If you're Ryan Murphy, how do you defend it?
- [42:32]
Unidentified Female Co-host
We can talk about how the success
- [42:34]
people have had, the people versus Ryan Murphy and we can talk about that.
- [42:38]
Let's talk about that real life genre though, because that has become so huge and all of these you know, things that are true stories or based on true stories. You know, we had biopics, but they were kind of like they were looked down on, really, to be perfectly honest with you. And turbocharging events, in my view, happen in 2016. Ryan Murphy brings out the People vs. O.J. simpson, which, by the way, is quite prestige because everyone sort of remembers this thing, it happened, but it's long enough away, you know, the O.J. case, and he's able to go back and excavate it in quite an interesting way. The other thing that happens in 2016 is that the Crown starts airing. And that obviously is a sort of. Again, it's got real people and it's telling real stories, but is it, you know, they haven't bought any of those people up, as we would say. The Crown grew out of the Queen and even that, maybe even out of the Deal, both of which were actually directed by Stephen Frizz. And I've talked to him a lot about using real people. He's done lots of things that use real people. Norman Scott's still alive. He did the Jeremy Thorpe Very British Scandal, Very British scandal quiz about the Coughing major, all those sort of things. So he's very, you know, he says, normally you have to sort of sit down and talk to people and say, ultimately we are making a sort of
- [43:56]
piece of art here as well.
- [43:58]
So it may not be. But equally, people do sometimes feel deduced. In the Lost King, the one about the finding of the Richard third in the car park, the university professor has successfully won some money for being made
- [44:10]
to look like he was just a
- [44:11]
sort of sexist person who didn't care about the woman who eventually did find Richard Carpenter.
- [44:15]
Richard Osmond
And this is the thing, I mean, what's behind all of this is any screenwriter will tell you, any channel will tell you people's lives are not lived in the order of a movie. We tend not to live our life with a neat first act, second act, third act, with inciting incidents and beats happening exactly when we want them, and adversaries popping up where we want them and a clear delineation between good and evil. So whatever story you're telling, be that entirely fictional or, you know, a mixture of both. You are always manipulating people's emotions. You're always manipulating the order of events and making sure that things happen in the exact order that's going to give an audience the most satisfaction. So that's just. That's how you write any screenplay, any book, with obvious exceptions. But the second that this genre becomes incredibly Popular. And there's huge amounts of this, you know, stories from the news. I mean, it's the new ip, isn't it? Stuff that happens.
- [45:07]
Unidentified Female Co-host
Baby reindeer.
- [45:08]
Richard Osmond
Baby. Well, we must talk about baby reindeer because that's. That, that I want to know how it's impacted exactly. But the second you start writing in, in this sort of genre and the second people go, oh, but it's, you know, that actually we can, you know, we can be a little bit loose with the truth and we can change things and we can sort of, you know, kind of mold two characters into two. Absolutely inevitable. That of course, you change the lives of real people and you change the personalities of real people and you certainly change the personalities of people who come into the story and they happen to be real as well. So this story is not about Daryl Hannah, but as he said, we need an adversary and she fits it perfectly. So you see how it happens. But I don't think to me it is acceptable completely.
- [45:51]
Unidentified Female Co-host
Is it not also a function of this type and this era of long form television?
- [45:56]
Marina Hyde
Okay, when we had biopics, they were
- [45:57]
Unidentified Female Co-host
two hours long with US ad breaks, that's 90 minutes. Okay, so you can sort of do
- [46:02]
the love story of two people. And there are very, very ancillary characters.
- [46:06]
Tv, you cannot get eight hours of television out of two people. You need eight characters. They all need to have very significant arcs. A whole lot needs to ha. You know, I mean, just, I'm putting
- [46:17]
Marina Hyde
a number on it.
- [46:17]
Unidentified Female Co-host
8. Not necessarily, but maybe. Actually, I think you do. And in order for all of this stuff to happen, it'd be rich enough to sustain. And actually lots of these things, you think, God, in the old days this would have been a lot shorter. And you strung it out over an hour.
- [46:30]
Marina Hyde
Fine.
- [46:30]
Unidentified Female Co-host
But in order to sustain effectively eight hours of television, you need a lot more. And this is why you end up bigging up these people who are really just completely. As I say, I mean that they would be answering nothings in.
- [46:44]
Richard Osmond
Yeah, and it's, and it's very hard to, to sit in a writer's room and go, oh my God, that would be amazing. Oh, but it didn't happen. Is that okay? I think maybe, but you know, you're always going to pitch the story with
- [46:55]
Unidentified Female Co-host
the royal family because they can't answer back.
- [46:56]
Richard Osmond
Well, that's it. So they were lucky with that. I was looking at the people, you know, who have tried to sue and, and, and, and couldn't. And you know, you can get away with the crown because the principals are not Going to sue. Yeah, in that case. And, you know, Oliver Dowden, who was the Culture secretary at the time, said told Netflix, you have to write parts of this are fictionalized. And Netflix didn't because, yeah, I mean, who. Who's going to go to court? Sort of nobody. Eduardo Severin, who was, you know, one of the co founders of Facebook with Mark Zuckerberg, he took great exception to the Social Network and said, look, this is nothing like our relationship. You know, Andrew Garfield plays him in the movie. He didn't sue because he'd already reached some sort of enormous financial settlement with Mark Zuckerberg anyway. So they can sort of say what they like about Eduardo Severin because he's unbelievably loaded. The crown you get away with. Jeffrey Sarver, who's the guy who the Hurt Locker is based on, he tries to sue as well, but they changed his name. And sometimes that's all you really need to do. So he could say, well, look, it's obviously me. And the judge in that case goes, well, it's not obvious to almost anybody, you know, but the public don't know, so, you know, you can't sue either. The closest to this one would be Olivia de Havilland. So Ryan Murphy's the feud, which is 2016, which was Joan Crawford and Bette Davis, it was about their feud and Olivia de Havilland is in it. And Olivia de Havilland sues and she says, look, you have Catherine Zeta Jones plays her, and there's a scene where she calls her sister a bitch. And Olivia de Havilland and her sister Joan Fontaine famously had a very fractious relationship. But she said, I never called her a bitch. You made me out to be something I'm not. I'm a real human being. She was 101 years old at the time where she sued, lived till 104. Olivia de Havilland, she was. See, Ryan Murphy's thinking with that. Every single person in this is no longer with us. You know, Sinatra's in it, there's loads of people in that. But, you know, no one can sue. I can tell this story. Olivia de Havilland, of course, is still with us because she's 101 years old. And they said, well, did you not, when you're representing her, did you not go and talk to her and say, this is happening? And he said, I didn't like to intrude. That was his. That was his reason. She. She, by the way, did not win her.
- [49:03]
Unidentified Female Co-host
No, I know.
- [49:04]
Richard Osmond
Lawsuit, because in America, it's very, very, very hard. You have to show you know that someone intended malice.
- [49:09]
Unidentified Female Co-host
Yeah. Well, that's why we can get away with the crown in this country, because. Because the Royals won't sue anyone else. It is very, very difficult. And you can sue for libel. But Connor Hines said, who's the showrunner of Love Story, said that they didn't want to talk to the Kennedys. Cause it allowed them to be objective. So they're always doing this. I tell you who has had success. But this is ages ago as well. And by the way, this is quite a good precedent, though, because this was in 2013. VH1. That takes you back.
- [49:37]
Which was at the time owned by Viacom. Again, that takes you back. One of the many previous owners of
- [49:42]
Paramount, Perry Reid, who was nicknamed pebble, she was a manager of tlc and they did a biopic of tlc.
- [49:50]
The girl banded.
- [49:51]
It's called Crazy Sexy Cool, which is also the name of one of their albums. But she managed them in the early 90s. And they portrayed her as completely sort of manipulative and villainous and someone who withheld all the money from them and all of this.
- [50:01]
Marina Hyde
She sued Violet.
- [50:02]
Unidentified Female Co-host
Com for absolute years. She asked for $40 million. I don't know what she got because she settled. And it's never ever been revealed what she got, but she would have got
- [50:10]
a lot for that.
- [50:10]
So. So there is that. A comparable case may be Rachel delarose. She was the Vanity Fair journalist who's shown as Anna Delvey, the sort of scammer's friend. And then she sort of falls out with her in inventing Anna, Netflix's series about that. Now, she did sue and she settled with Netflix for quite a significant amount.
- [50:29]
Richard Osmond
There's Albert Friedman, who was the TV producer who's portrayed on Quiz show and portrayed as being part of the scandal, and he sued. There's Vincent DeSimone, who was one of the lawyers in the Reuben Carter case. So in that movie Hurricane, he is shown as. As deliberately using falsified evidence. So in both those cases, they won. It's very, very, very hard. And I've looked everywhere to find anyone who's won. But of the few cases where they have, one is where people have been deliberately named, named as themselves, and they've been shown doing something illegal which they can prove they did not do.
- [51:02]
Unidentified Female Co-host
Well, I mean, that's a baby reindeer. The character that Martha the stalker is based on, he's played by Jessica Garland.
- [51:08]
Richard Osmond
Well, the actual person that Martha the character is based on.
- [51:10]
Unidentified Female Co-host
The actual person, yeah. I'm afraid his name is now so ubiquitous that I forgot that the character was called Martha. She is suing Netflix for. I mean, I can't remember. It's more than 100 million.
- [51:21]
It's a huge amount of money.
- [51:22]
Okay. She's not going to get that. But they've allowed this case to proceed at every point. They could have stopped it through the American courts.
- [51:28]
Netflix will settle with her, I think is my.
- [51:31]
Marina Hyde
Okay.
- [51:31]
Unidentified Female Co-host
If they don't, then I'm wrong. But my feeling is they will settle with. With her and she will get a lot of money.
- [51:36]
Richard Osmond
Like a lot of money. And. And you know what?
- [51:39]
Unidentified Female Co-host
It's because they said that she. They say that she goes to. She goes to prison.
- [51:43]
Richard Osmond
Yeah.
- [51:43]
Unidentified Female Co-host
At the end of it. And that she. That doesn't happen. And they've made her identifiable and, and
- [51:48]
Richard Osmond
a large part of the marketing for that show is this is a true story.
- [51:53]
Unidentified Female Co-host
Well, I mean, obviously.
- [51:55]
Richard Osmond
And the one defense they will have is they. They didn't give her the same name as the person. So, you know, they could say, well, we hid her away. But in a court of law, she was so readily identifiable, like screenshots from, you know, tweets and things like that. That gossamer sort of screen between, you know, her fake name and her real name is pretty much non existent.
- [52:16]
Unidentified Female Co-host
I think Dara Hannah might sue because the way she. Maybe she'll just think, I can't. It's so. I mean, as I've said before in this podcast, don't litigate unless you really can't not. And she. I would have thought that that was written with a lawyer. A lot of that I think it comes across. It's so well done and maybe she. Maybe she will su. People have sort of felt it's like Pamela Anderson felt it was a sort of violation, but she didn't sue. I do really. The Pam and Tommy thing, I think that is harder. This one is quite easy because it's showing her involved in illegal activity and she can just say you do prove it.
- [52:50]
Richard Osmond
Yes.
- [52:51]
Unidentified Female Co-host
It may be that she doesn't want to go down that road for all kinds of reasons. And lots of us would not just really want to have to go through the whole. It's tricky though, because discovery process.
- [53:00]
Richard Osmond
If a version of yourself has been given such a huge platform, which it has, then your real self maybe wants a platform that size which a law suit might bring. I mean, I absolutely agree with you. These things never work out as intended.
- [53:13]
Unidentified Female Co-host
It's. It's definitely worth reading. And by the way, we. This the journey of Ryan Murphy in this direction, I think is really interesting because he, as I say, he didn't start off like this. If you look at that original, you
- [53:25]
Richard Osmond
can see how he ended up there.
- [53:26]
Unidentified Female Co-host
You can see how he ended up. If you look at that original People versus OJ which was very good and which really takes care with all the different people and particularly, you know, really humanizes people. The prosecutor in that, Marcia Clarke, who was, oh my God. The subject of such vitriol because, you know, it just became this complete kind of cultural obsession while it was going on the court. You know, it really humanizes her and shows her having to go through all that. It was really well received that series. But as it's progressed, one of the ones he did recently was about those Menendez brothers who murdered their parents. But there's a hold sort of counter thing that they were being abused and it's very. But they're in prison and they were sort of distraught and all people around them, many of their family members who believe that they were being abused and that this was a sort of form of self defense or whatever it is, really couldn't stand him for the way he portrayed it. And he didn't care remotely. And he was quite obviously every time he went on the record, he didn't care. And I will say that the journey from him for doing things much more like People versus OJ Much less defensible stuff we actually ended up doing. Do you remember? We covered it. We did it as three bonus episodes sitting on our three of them.
- [54:32]
His arc is quite big.
- [54:34]
It's certainly not over.
- [54:35]
We'll probably have to go back and do a fourth.
- [54:36]
But there are three bonus episodes sitting on our archive about that because I think that's been such a journey for him and it's really. He's really gone over to the dark side.
- [54:45]
Richard Osmond
But the problem is he's so talented that if he tells your story, then a lot of people will watch. Certainly if he said, oh, Marina, I'm going to do your life story, you would be like, this is a nightmare because you know you've got to be
- [54:56]
Unidentified Female Co-host
the worst thing in the world and
- [54:57]
Richard Osmond
you know you're going to have no control over it at all.
- [55:00]
Unidentified Female Co-host
No, he's not. Certainly not going to come to me
- [55:02]
about my life story. I mean, that's the last thing you'd want to do.
- [55:04]
Richard Osmond
You never know.
- [55:04]
Unidentified Female Co-host
It really gets in the way.
- [55:05]
Richard Osmond
Although if he hears this, but he
- [55:07]
Unidentified Female Co-host
doesn't want to, as we said, they don't want to go to the, the people who are Involved because it gets in the way of their much clearer
- [55:12]
vision as to what actually happened.
- [55:14]
So anyway, I think that that's sort
- [55:16]
Marina Hyde
of one to watch.
- [55:17]
Unidentified Female Co-host
Maybe she'll sue.
- [55:18]
Richard Osmond
Yeah. But certainly the person I'm more interested in is the baby reindeer.
- [55:22]
Unidentified Female Co-host
Well, we'll keep an eye on that one because that's continuing to go through the courts. I don't think you'll ever get a
- [55:27]
day in court because that will be settled. But, yeah, then somebody will become a millionaire. That'd be an interesting story as well.
- [55:35]
Richard Osmond
I mean, it really would. There's. There's a documentary series two. I mean, Netflix probably won't make it. Actually. They probably would. That's the way our cultures go. Netflix will say either you could be 20 million or you can have 15 million plus your own documentary about how you spend that 15 million.
- [55:47]
Unidentified Female Co-host
But we are seeing more and more of it, I think in the end, with all of these things, because real life, or supposed real life, has become this absolute runaway genre and it's regarded. Just by saying this is a true story or this is based on a true story gives you a massive viewership bump. Just by claiming that.
- [56:02]
Richard Osmond
Yeah, I'd like to see what Daryl Hannah does next. Certainly. And we wish her very, very, very well. And I hope she can get her story amplified as much as possible because that must feel powerless. Yes.
- [56:12]
Unidentified Female Co-host
Any recommendations, Richard?
- [56:13]
Richard Osmond
Yes, I want to Recommend the. The three part documentary on Channel 4 about Tony Blair, which I thought was. Yes, fascinating. Really, really interesting. Tony Blair talks. You don't always get as much as you want out of him. Alastair Campbell talks. Almost everyone involved talks. Bill Clinton talks. So they got really, really good access to people Jeremy Corbyn talks about. And it's all, you know, it's. It's kind of the rise of Tony Blair there, then Iraq and then, you know, the post Iraq. But it's really Beautifully made by 72 Films, David Glover and his team. And it's just one of those things, again, that doesn't hammer home what you should think. It asks questions, it puts the camera in people's faces, it lets them answer at length and lets you make your own mind up about what you think and is which I've found incredibly refreshing.
- [57:00]
Unidentified Female Co-host
Documentary not commissioned by its own subject.
- [57:02]
Richard. I know, right, catch on again, please.
- [57:05]
Richard Osmond
Wow. But also someone agreeing to do a documentary made by someone else they didn't have creative control over. Could that catch on? How about you?
- [57:12]
Unidentified Female Co-host
I would like to recommend the Last Kings Of Hollywood by Paul Fisher, which I think came out Last week, which is a book about Steven Spielberg, Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas. Oh, my God, it's so well done. Some of the stuff is sort of covered in easy riders, raging Bulls. But if you're interested at all in that period, he's talked to so many people. It's beautifully written. The story is, you know, I mean, it's so interest to think of how these guys, you know, they're the absolute anti Hollywood. They set out to be anti Hollywood. They kind of make their first films as sort of these weird tone poems. They wonder if they can continue to do that and retain their integrity and just kind of be outside of the whole system. And yet each of them makes the most successful film of all time. You know, Cobbler makes a Godfather, then it's Jaws, then it's Star Wars. And it's interesting how they sort of diverge. You know, Spielberg and Lucas become obviously the most commercial of possible filmmakers you can possibly imagine. And yet Lucas doesn't even really want
- [58:09]
to make films anymore.
- [58:10]
You can see. And Coppola just. He can't quite. He's. I mean, he is the soul of
- [58:15]
the true artist, really.
- [58:16]
It is so well written and it's so interesting. The stories and some of the details are just amazing.
- [58:21]
Richard Osmond
Perfect read for Oscar's week as well.
- [58:23]
Unidentified Female Co-host
Oh, yeah, it's a really good read. I loved it. And that's the Last Kings of Hollywood by Paul Fisher.
- [58:28]
Richard Osmond
Excellent. Thursday we will have a Q and A episode. Thank you very much, by the way, for all your feedback on the. The Tim Davy, the DG of BBC, for. For our Q and A with him. And thank you for your questions with that as well. That was fascinating. But we're back to your questions this week. And for our subscribers, for our members,
- [58:47]
Unidentified Female Co-host
we have the second part of the Village People. The second part is such an insane story. Anyway, if you want to.
- [58:53]
Richard Osmond
The first part was great.
- [58:54]
Unidentified Female Co-host
Yeah, genuinely. It takes an even weirder turn.
- [58:57]
You want to be a member and sign up for ad free listening and so on it and the bonus episodes. It's. The rest is entertainment.com Otherwise, we'll see you on Thursday. See you on Thursday.