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A
This episode is brought to you by Octopus Energy.
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Now it is award season. Everyone is wondering who's going to clean up. And we tend to think awards are
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about that one big moment. Like, oh, my goodness, that one night, that speech. I can't believe I've won.
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A
But the effort that goes into winning
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an award, everyone going for one of those big movie awards, it's not a
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coincidence that Academy members or whatever are
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saying, oh, you know, did you see that thing? Yeah, I did. It was really good.
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C
There is a remorseless many months campaign
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B
and there are tens of people working on every single film's awards campaign.
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C
Campaign?
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A
I thought you were gonna say tens of thousands. No, no, there are tens.
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B
Yeah, there are tens. But that's quite a lot when you
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C
think of, like, one.
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B
And it's a full time job.
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A
We mention this only because we are announcing our presenting partnership with the lovely people at Octopus Energy who have just won the which recommended provider of the year for the ninth time in a row. And that is not something you get just by.
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B
Which is hard to win.
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A
Which is hard to win. Which is hard to win.
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C
Which is hard to win.
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A
Which is hard to win. But. But nine in a row, I would say that makes Octopus Energy the Meryl Streep of the business.
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B
Oh, yeah, they're the Meryl.
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C
They're the absolute. They're the Meryl.
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I call them Merrell Energy. That's what I call them.
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B
I'm not an astronaut.
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A
I don't need an astronaut.
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D
Audiences have spoken. Project Hail Mary is an awe inspiring masterpiece.
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A
So I met an alien.
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If you've fallen out of love with going to the movies, this one will bring you back. Ryan gosling in the first must see mov of 2026. Project Hail Mary, rated PG13, may be inappropriate for children under 13 only in theaters March 20.
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E
This episode is brought to you by White Claw Surge. Nice choice hitting up this podcast. No surprises. You're all about diving into tastes everyone in the room can enjoy. Just like White Claw Surge. It's for celebrating those moments when connections have been made and the night's just begun. With bold flavors and 8% alcohol by volume. Unleash the night. Unleash White Claw Surge. Please drink responsibly. Hard Seltzer with flavors. 8% alcohol by volume. White Claw Seltzer works, Chicago, Illinois.
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B
Hello and welcome to this episode of the Rest Is Entertainment Questions and answers edition. I'm Marina Hyde.
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A
And I'm Richard Osman. Good day, everybody. Good day, Marina.
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B
Hello.
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C
How are you?
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A
Yeah, really well. I'm so, up for some questions?
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B
Yeah, that's good.
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A
Yeah. I'm in answer mode.
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C
I'm going right in with one on Taskmaster.
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A
We're not like, no pleasantries.
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B
Well, we've just had some pleasantries. You said, I'm in question mode.
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A
Do you know what? You're absolutely right. That's on me.
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C
Proceed straight to questions. Okay.
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A
Proceed straight to questions. When this is AI that's literally. We'll start it. I'll go. Proceed straight to questions.
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B
I'm. This is AI I'm.
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C
I haven't done the show for weeks.
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A
You know what? I thought you were getting better.
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C
Right.
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B
Richard, Mark would like to ask something about Taskmaster. How do they film the tasks in Taskmaster? Do they film all the tasks with each contestant over one day, or do they focus on filming all the contestants doing a particular task on a particular day?
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A
I think that's a very astute question, because in. In any other form of television, you would absolutely set up the one task and have everybody do that task at the same time, because the cameras are set up. You know, you've got a location or whatever it is, and so you would always do that. But Taskmaster, absolutely, that. That is not what they do. And the reason they don't is they don't really want you to meet at any point before you go into the studio. So you'll be filming Taskmaster tasks for maybe. I mean, I did an early series where you did fewer tasks, but. So I maybe did eight days of filming.
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B
And it's a lot, isn't it?
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A
It is quite a lot, yeah. You then. Wait a minute.
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B
I almost think it when I'm watching it. This is.
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A
Well, these days, they must do absolutely loads. I mean, I had it easy. I get all the glamour of Taskmaster without having to do most of the hard work. So you film maybe sort of eight days worth of tasks. You then wait a couple of months because everything has to be edited and put into order, and other people have to do theirs before you go into the studio and you watch it all on that big screen. But they do not have people doing them at the same time. Purely that thing of. They don't want you to talk to your fellow contestants at any point about it. And actually, everyone's very, very good about that. So, you know, in the kind of two months leading up to my taskmaster, you know, I know John Richardson fairly well, and anytime we would meet, we would be like, we mustn't say anything about what we've done. Even when you've Just done the task where, you know you've done disastrously badly and you just. All you want to do is say, oh, my God, can you believe that when we met the mayor?
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Yeah.
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Was that the worst thing you've ever done in your life? So you would do eight days, and on that day, so you might be down at the taskmaster house, and you would do four or five tasks on the same day. So it would be venue based, really. So you will go along, you'll sit in the tiny little dressing room, and then at some point there will be a knock on the door and you'll be like, oh, no. And it'd be lovely Andy Cartwright or Andy Devonshire. And they'll say, okay, Richard, are you ready? And you go, well, not. Not really, because I don't know what I'm gonna do. I've no idea where you're taking me. Are you ready? Yes, sure, I'm ready. And then you walk into a room, there'll be like some contraption there. Oh, no. And then there'll be Alex Horn. And they'll say, hello, Richard. And you're like, I've said before, it's my least favorite bit of Taskmaster is I really, really like Alex so much. But when you walk into a room and you want to just talk to him and he's in, you know, taskmaster assistant mode, and you go, oh, everything's on the task. And you go, no, Alex, I just wanted to talk to you about, how are you? Have you had a nice day? What did you have for breakfast? He'll go, we're doing a task, you know. No, this is awful. It's like sort of if you've got, like, there'd be people here who've had distant parents, and it feels exactly like that, which is all I want is the love of my father.
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I'm getting the task.
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Yips.
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I don't know if I can do
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this and I'm not getting it. So you would do it that way around is the truth. So, you know, each person, I'll do a day where I do six tasks. Then, you know, the next day, John Richardson will do a day where he does six tasks. And so they will stagger it in that way. But no, it's not one of those ones where, you know, the moment I've knocked a toy fox out of a tree, Joe Wilkinson comes and tries to knock the same fox out of the same tree. I would not see Joe or Catherine Ryan, who is in mine, or Doc Brown, who's in mine, or John at any point before we go into the studio, apart from when you do the group tasks. And when you do the group tasks, that's like my favorite bit. Because. Because there is a loan. There is a sort of weird loneliness to it. You have to trust the process of madness. Yeah, a little bit. And you trust that. You definitely trust the team because they're brilliant. And, you know, so many tasks are so good. Some of them you're like. So you absolutely trust that they know what they're doing. Secondly, you know, it is better if you haven't discussed it with the others. You know for a fact that it is better if you don't. But you are. You. You. You go in there, you are by yourself. You walk into a room, you're surrounded by, you know, this crew just going, what's this guy gonna be doing? This is gonna be amazing. And you are by yourself at all times. But that's why that show is so great, because you get the joy of that show is firstly seeing different people doing the same thing in different ways, but seeing people's absolute first reaction to their competitors. Doing something much better than them or doing something much worse than them, or have finding a cheat that you could have done that would have saved you so much time. A question for you, AI Marina from Georgia Cook. Georgia, says, I have a question about bath scenes in TV shows and films. How are those actually filmed? There are usually lots of bubbles. So I'm curious whether there's some kind of synthetic foam or blanket prop that can be arranged for coverage or if the tub is really filled with water. If it is real water. How do keep actors warm when multiple takes are needed?
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Okay, very good, Georgia. There is no such thing as, like, a sort of synthetic bath bubble carpet that they kind of lay on top of a bath.
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Well, for various reasons, which I'll get to, you don't actually need that. But in terms of the. If there are bubbles, if sometimes they're not bubbles in bath scenes, they always have to, because the actor will be in and out of the bath a lot of times during the takes. They will always, like Mark on the side of the bath where it.
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Oh, that's an impossibility.
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No, just the water. That's. If there's no bubbles.
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Right?
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That's if there's no bubbles, that is not an impossibility. And actually, what actors will tell you is that, funnily enough, as long as the room is warm, that's the problem. So they often will have so many heaters, and everyone else will be really Sweating. Because it doesn't particularly. You don't have to keep putting hot water in. I mean, if there are really long scenes done in a bath, they may find way. And then. And this has happened, they find ways of sort of heating the tub so it sort of stays warm. But in general, people will tell you it's the outside temperature that really gets you. So in terms of bubbles, if you go and watch that scene. Do you remember in the big. Where they. Like Margot Robbie, you know, the financial crisis, the people who shorted that. And so when they want someone to
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explain sort of subprime loans and all
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sorts of things like that, they get
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Margaret, Margot Robbie in a bathtub to do it.
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And she's sitting there. She said it was one of her greatest days of filming ever.
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They gave her vintage champagne, although it took about half a day in some house in Malibu.
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B
The one thing I will say about bubbles is that they're one of the easier things to kind of make look the same in post people, aren't they?
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A
Oh, really?
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B
Yeah. This is not a sort of very detailed piece of c. So you can make it look the same and the bubbles kind of move a bit and. Or you can just make them look the same.
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A
So you can just take bubbles from here and put them on here.
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B
Because you can do that.
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A
You can join bubbles together.
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You can join bubbles together.
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B
Bathroom scenes in general are very, very interesting and why we have them. There's something about. It's. They're sort of. The bathroom is a sort of taboo space. It's supposed to be a place of safety, which is why they're often in horror movies. It's. In fact, it was. You couldn't show it. Psycho is really shocking. Not.
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Not because of everything that happened to Po. Janet Leigh in the shower, but because
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they showed a loo for the first
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time ever in film.
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B
Because it was in the bathroom. And even more wild. She flushed it. So this. She throws something down it. Anyway, it's input. That's one thing. Obviously they're sort of sexual as well. The sort of promise of what lies beneath in the. But, you know, that's why Margot Robbie's
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there with all her bubbles like that.
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B
But there is a huge amount of the idea of vulnerability. That's. That it's almost always. You know, there's terror. You're suck. You're. You're.
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Or opulence.
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There's Al Pacino. If you. I went back and thought, oh, I must have a quick look at this bath scene. Like Al Pacino in.
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In Scarface has a huge bath with
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a lot of bubbles, but actually the bubbles don't move that much.
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Okay.
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And they wouldn't have had the same post production techniques then.
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B
So it's, it's like they're slightly better at staying the bubbles than you think, but it's the water level and it's the cold that gets people. And so that almost always the crew will be sweating while you're filming one of those things.
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A
And it's incredibly hard to film in a real bathroom. Firstly because they're quite small and secondly, there's loads of mirrors everywhere and, and the mirror is the.
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B
They almost always construct it. And if you see how they do it, they almost always construct it and it's it. And, and that's another reason why it's absolutely freezing, because it's in a drafty studio. And the thing about all sound stages that I've ever been on is they have two speeds. Either you are absolutely freezing and you're like in a refrigerator box, or suddenly it will get to April and you'll
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be so boiling and that's it.
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B
There was never a time, there was never a temperate five minutes. It will just switch over one day
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and the temperature will never be right.
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So they have to. But they adjust it all for the actors.
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It'd be worth talking at some point to a cinematographer about mirror shooting because occasionally you'll see films. You think it is an impossibility that I'm seeing that angle of that person in that mirror without seeing the camera that is filming that person in that mirror.
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Typically, many times, you know. Yeah, I agree. It's very, very. Yeah, we'll do that.
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If anyone wants to ask about mirrors, we can talk about that another time.
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We've got a question from Lux Adams
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who says on my recommendation, Lux has
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been reading Lunches with Orson, which is a fantastic book, which is about Henry Jaglum, the film producer and director, used to have lunch with Orson Welles towards the end of his life and he just recorded them all and then eventually published the tapes as transcripts. Anyway, Orson Welles said in one of those lunches that he hated author biographies because he said, I don't want to
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keep hearing that Dickens was a lousy son of a bitch. I'm very glad I don't know anything about Shakespeare as a man. Do you agree, says Lux, are actors, directors and writers better off as enigmas?
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That's like a think piece question, isn't it? Firstly, great name. Yes, Lux. Yes, I think sometimes, you know, I was, I was weirdly I was reading some Philip Larkin the other day.
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B
Yeah.
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A
And you can pick all sorts of different articles at Larkin that will tell you he's the worst man in the world or he wasn't the worst man in the world. And I think I choose to only read those ones that tell me that he was okay. Because that must mean that it affects me if I'm reading his work, if I think that, you know, he was a difficult or irascible or troublesome character. You know, his work resonates more with me if I feel there's some fellow feeling. So I think in general, and, you know, when you work in television particularly, there are some programs which are spoiled because, you know, some of the people who do it and, oh, in telling a lot, you've had issues with them where you think that they don't treat people well or something like that, and it makes. It makes it much harder for you to enjoy their work. So I think, in general, yes, it's. It's one of those things that, like watching a horror movie through your fingers, that you can. If there's a. If there's an artist you particularly like, a writer you particularly like, you can just, by the vibe of a headline, work out if you want to read something about them. Often the blurb on the back of a biography, if there's. For example, I love Michael Frayne, the writer. So let's talk about Michael Frayne. If someone's written a biography of Michael Frayn and on the back it said, an intimate portrait of one of our great artists and where he gets his inspiration from, I think, great, I can read that. If it says, well, I think we all thought that Michael Frayne was a good guy, but let me tell you, I think. Well, I wouldn't read that, by the way.
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B
Oh, my God. The Daily Mail used to have a Saturday, almost like a recurring Saturday feature
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C
that would always begin like, he was beloved by millions. And it would be like, you know, it would be. Honestly, people. It's not literally Michael Palin, but it'd
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be like people you wrote, you know, Derek Nimmer, whoever it was. And then they just.
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C
Absolutely.
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B
But what that hid was.
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C
And you think, do I actually want to.
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B
The thing is, I do tend to always want to know, particularly if they're in the past, because it's slightly fascinating, it does inform their work. And, you know, every now and then you kind of. Of read something and you think, I'd
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rather have not known that.
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B
I do think that silence is sometimes the most intriguing statement of all. And there are people like Kate Moss who never spoke. And then suddenly when she started giving interviews, it's like, oh, I think you. Nothing you've said at all is remotely interesting. And actually, when you never spoke and we didn't almost know what you sounded like, and you existed as an enigmatic and chameleon like image, you were much more interesting than when I had to listen to you about talking about moon baths and, you know, this or that
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C
in order to sell your product range.
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B
Something like that is often with. I mean, you're talking about Dickens or whoever it was. Orson Welles was talking about Dickens. The further you go back, the less we know. So we're always kind of on fairly safe ground with the. With much older writers who are long dead.
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A
I think writers is particularly tricky because the whole job of a writer is to get out of your way. You know, the whole job of a writer is not to be present in the text. You know, that's the. That's the gig, really, with an actor. You sort of. They're very in your face anyway, and that, you know, they'll often play roles that, you know, have. Have, you know, sort of some sort of weird moral duality or something. So it's less of an issue, I think. I think sometimes with writers, you know, the less I know, the better. I love Ian McEwen, for example. He's. That's one of the few examples where if I read an interview with Ian McEwen, it sort of adds to how much I love his work because you can tell how much he feels it and how interested he is in the world. So I can sort of see there that I like to read about that person. But, yeah, I think that the genre.
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B
Yeah, aren't there somewhere? You just think that there's something about the lore around them that's actually indivisible and that adds to. Even if they're sort of monsters, you know, or very difficult. You know, I think of someone like Truman Capote or Patricia Highsmith.
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C
I mean, Patricia Highsmith was really a monster, but I love knowing all of that.
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A
That's a very good example, I think, because of what she writes, though, it really ties into that. You know, the sort she writes very well about evil and difficult people. You think, oh, that's at least. At least, you know, and someone like Donna Tartt, where the very fact that she's quite enigmatic and hides away really adds to the sort of books that she writes as well. But, yeah, I think. I think it's. I think there are definitely examples where you Think I. I love this writer so much. I do not want to know about them, just in case. I think that would be my role. Actors, directors and stuff, I. I think it's slightly different. I think writers is a particular thing because they give so much of their heart and their.
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B
I don't mind knowing it all with writers, whereas with actors.
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C
I think.
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B
I wish I didn't know that you'd said that. Sorry. I mean, just.
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That can be difficult. Yeah.
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A
Yeah. Well, I suppose oftentimes when you're reading about writers, you are possibly reading about them through their own lens and you would hope that they would express themselves in interesting ways, even when they're telling you about themselves, which may maybe is less so with, you know, musicians or directors or something. It's a really good question. I'm gonna be thinking about that a lot.
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C
Me too.
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B
All right, then. Shall we go to a break?
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A
I'd love that.
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B
This episode is brought to you by Airbnb. Now, everybody is talking about Emerald Fennell's Wuthering Heights, which is in cinemas right now. If you are going to stay on
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C
the auction moors cause you want to drink in the atmosphere of the film,
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B
my view is you've got to stay in an Airbnb. You've got to stay in a house. You cannot stay in a hotel. It's not the Wuthering Heights Hotel and Spa Complex.
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A
Waking up to misty views of the moors is very romantic. A hotel car park, not so much. You want to wake up and feel like you're in it. A snuggly night in. In your own cozy living room with the entire place to yourself.
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B
Yeah, proper stone cottage. The fire roaring.
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A
Wuthering Heights.
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B
Wuthering Heights. You want to be within the world of the thing.
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A
Speaking of which, have you seen. They've actually recreated Kathy's bedroom. Airbnb have recreated Kathy's bedroom from Wuthering Heights. It's in Yorkshire.
- [19:02]
B
That feels like committing to the bit in a very, very serious way.
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C
And I'm 100% here for it.
- [19:06]
A
Perfect place to go if you need a few days to brood productively. Welcome back, everybody. Margaret Barnsworth. Hello. Margaret has a question for you, Marina. I suppose it was a question for either of us, but it's been apportioned to you by the. By the sorting hat. Margaret says, with all the military conflicts on in the world right now, is there a shortage of military equipment that Hollywood productions can use to film TV shows and movies? Well, I mean, talk about keeping it topical, Margaret.
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C
I think she probably wrote that before There were even fewer pieces of hardware available to film productions. If I can euphemise what's happened over the last week.
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B
Actually, funnily enough, we also.
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C
This is relevant to our interest because we have the second half of our Top Gun bonus episode for members, which involves a lot of of borrowed military hardware and the various conditions attached to it. Remember, you can be a member@the resticentertainment.com okay, let me talk to you about
- [20:03]
B
how this works in the us it works differently in different countries, but primarily I will talk about the U.S. the Department of Defense has something called the Entertainment Media Office and they. And the various different.
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C
Yeah, they didn't call it that.
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A
Sure.
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B
And wouldn't get the joke. And they cut deals with film productions, with Hollywood and they will lend things you have to sign. If you borrow existing military hardware, you have to sign something called a production Assistance agreement. And there are tons of restrictions and you have to submit your script for review. They're not allowed to do certain things with it anyway. But they operate under what's called a mission first policy.
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C
So no surprise if they need it. Whatever you're using for your kind of military romantic comedy, if they need it
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B
to actually, you know, bomb a country, they can take it back. Yeah, they can.
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A
What's that called again?
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B
Pentagon is the military.
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C
It's called Mission first policy.
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A
Mission.
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C
Can you believe that something's more important
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B
than showbiz anyway, in their eyes, the Pentagon always comes first.
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C
The Department of War, as I think we now have to call it.
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B
And they can revoke the agreement at any time. So after things like after 9 11, all sorts of things were suddenly recalled from film productions for Operation Enduring Freedom,
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C
which obviously, as you know, endured for quite some time.
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B
Not the freedom for Top Gun Maverick. They. Part of the reason that that took actually a long time to. To get filmed is because there were lots of equipment delays. Had so many really, really high end pieces of kit, primarily planes that pushed that back a while. Transformers, where you know, obviously the military.
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A
Robots in disguise.
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C
Robots in disguise.
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A
By the way, I hope that's not a spoiler for people. No, yeah, I mean that's a. Do you know what that genuinely. I've never thought of that. The very slogan is a spoiler.
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C
Yes, Transformers.
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A
Robots in disguise. Just say Transformer.
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C
Just.
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A
Yeah, I wonder what you mean. Oh, look at this car. Yeah, hold on. It's not a car. Yeah, I knew already because you'd said Transformers. Robots in Disguise. I knew it was a robot in disguise.
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B
But you didn't know that the future of Optimus prime, did you? And you didn't know?
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A
Yeah, I suppose so.
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B
They've got a magic stone. Anyway, I'm not going to get into it.
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A
Aren't we all sort of robots in disguise in a funny kind of way?
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B
Well, it does make you think.
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A
Yeah, it does make you think.
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B
Transformers.
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C
If I can get back to the point in hand.
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B
Robots in disguise that became restricted because they needed hardware for Iraq and Afghanistan.
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A
A car that turns into a. A robot or a robot that turns into a car.
- [22:30]
C
Yes. I'm sorry to break it to you. The US military is involved in the fight against the Decepticons. I can't believe I'm getting into it.
- [22:38]
B
I can't.
- [22:38]
C
Look, can I just get about onto this?
- [22:40]
B
Right, so there were also private rental
- [22:42]
A
companies angry about the Decepticons.
- [22:43]
B
I know.
- [22:44]
C
So we all are furious.
- [22:46]
A
Absolutely boils my blood. Anyway, listen, right, okay.
- [22:49]
B
So for Mission Impossible, the final reckoning, the crew of that were allowed on the. The USS George H.W. bush in the Adriatic Sea. But it was on active duty at the. So you. If any sort of real world anything happens, you just have to go. You're never in control of this and everything. You have to gear your production around the military. Also, by the way, it doesn't have to be war. It can be a disaster response, hurricane, whatever, anything. The war in Ukraine has significantly impacted the industry. Mosfilm, which is Russia's largest film studio, they had to donate lots of their prop tanks from the backlot to be used by the Russian military to suppose their armored. Imagine.
- [23:32]
A
Can you imagine a grimmer meeting?
- [23:34]
C
Well, it's not really a long meeting. You are donating your kit.
- [23:38]
B
Okay. You know, lots of productions have had to move out of Eastern Europe, which, remember before this was a particularly attractive. I mean, parts of it still are, but a particularly attractive filming destination. The most famous, of course, in some ways is that is Coppola. Francis Ford Coppola making up Apocalypse Now. He struck a deal with Ferdinand Marcos, the Philippine dictator, to borrow their military helicopters because he needed loads and loads for Apocalypse Now. And I think it was $100 a helicopter per hour. And the Philippines was under martial law at the time, but Marcos was simultaneously using those helicopters to put down an insurgency. So when the Filipino pilots would fly
- [24:18]
C
onto the set every day, they'd have
- [24:19]
B
to quickly be the plane. Helicopters would have to be quickly repainted
- [24:23]
C
in Philippine color, in US colors.
- [24:25]
B
And then sometimes they would just be
- [24:27]
C
pulled off the set and they would
- [24:28]
B
have to go back. But Marcos did it because he thought it was prestigious. And Imelda went to set. Imelda, Marcos's sort of dreadful wife, went to the set and asked Coppola to the palace. But primarily he did it because it
- [24:42]
C
allowed him to be paid in hard US currency, which was appealing to him.
- [24:47]
B
So, yes, it really affects things. And there will be things that, because of what's happened in Iran, lots of things will have to be kind of recalled. Pieces of kit, things you wouldn't imagine were particularly even pieces of kit, which is why some people like to just kind of fake it like that. I don't know if you saw that Alex Gardner and movie Warfare, which they did. They shot off. It was an A24 thing, which they. I think they shot that somewhere off the M25, which is about a sort of SEAL team raid that goes wrong in the Iraq War in 2006, during the insurgency, they created all those vehicles. They would not have been allowed to use them because the film is essentially quite negative about the whole experience, as it were. Although it's supposed to be sort of like a real time thing. But they wouldn't have that. You would not have got that script approved. Oh, I'd like to actually know the answer to this question from Scott Clapperton,
- [25:37]
C
who says, Richard, what are the top
- [25:38]
B
three TV quiz shows that you wish you'd created?
- [25:42]
A
Oh, God. Well, I mean, so there's two parts to that, Scott. One is creatively. Yeah. You know, that I wish I had. Or that I could have, if that makes sense. You know, certain things happen. Like who Wants to Be a Millionaire? Came specifically out of a radio thing, and it's. That's. I couldn't have, you know, I could have come up with a format, but it wouldn't have been who Wants to Be a Millionaire? So it's something that I admire and that I could have had the opportunity to do, but that also I wish I created. That were insanely lucrative.
- [26:15]
C
I was gonna say. Is that gonna be one of your things?
- [26:17]
A
Yeah, I think it has to be.
- [26:18]
C
They're very rarely.
- [26:19]
A
Because otherwise. Come on. So number three, I'm gonna talk about one that I was sort of involved with, but I didn't come up with, which is Million pound drop. A million pound drop. I remember the first we've come up with by a brilliant guy called David Flynn, who's still making great shows now, and. And the first time he showed it to me, I thought, that's so great, so clever, the way you sort of put your money across the different answers, and you've always got to leave one clear. And it just. It had that money ladder thing, but it had this extra level that just. I love a format where there are just no moving parts. Once you've got it down, it just works and works and works. So many shows you have to constantly go, oh, but hold on, if that happened, then I have to fix it in this way. And suddenly things get complicated and you've got 50 different lifelines and this, that or the other lifelines are almost always. Because there's something up with the format.
- [27:11]
B
Really?
- [27:11]
A
Yeah. Oh, yeah. And so million pound drop. I think it's great. The only thing I did, 1 million pound drop was I said we should play it from. We should play it for a million pounds. And which, you know, that's, I think, what people think TV executives do on. On that day. That is what I did. Which is the most obvious thing you can do because I loved it so much. And we were gonna pitch it as a daytime thing.
- [27:29]
C
Yeah.
- [27:29]
A
I said, oh, my God. But it's such a great mechanic, that thing that Dave came up with, I was just going, but imagine that. Imagine you had a million pounds there.
- [27:39]
C
That's cool.
- [27:40]
A
Yeah, that was the limit of my thinking on that one. But I loved that. The second I saw it, I thought, oh, I wish I could have thought of that. Why did Dave think of that? I could have thought of that even more. So my number two, which is weakest link, which is the idea essentially just voting people off, and that's all you got there. And that's something that I did with Survivor, so I had that in my head. Anyway. It was in my head I loved quiz shows and I had the idea of voting people off and I didn't come up with the weakest link. And that's made, you know, billions and billions and billions of pounds. And again, it's. Once you've got it just. You can just. It just runs forever and ever and ever. It is slightly complicated because of the. The banking and the, you know. And this round, we take 10 seconds off, but we add this extra money to the. Is somewhat. Someone once said with weakest thing. Oh, the genius of it is you can explain it in one sentence, which is such nonsense, because it's actually quite complicated. But the heartbeat of it, the drive behind it, which is we start with ex contestants and each round we lose someone. How you play those rounds is. That's, you know, that's different, but just that idea. And also it's got the huge flaw of it, which is of course, you vote off the weakest link until the end when there's three of you. When you always have to vote off the strongest link because otherwise you've got to play against them in the final. But you know, that's okay. That's on my list because I really, really could have thought of it. And it made so much money. So you think so it really scores highly in those two.
- [29:11]
C
Your dream piece of self flagellation.
- [29:13]
A
Yes, exactly. Whereas my number one is something probably made a lot less money than those things. But I just think as a format, I love things with polling and stuff like that. I would just love to make this show. Cause it feels like the easiest show in the world to make. And you can make it forever and ever and ever and ever and ever. And. And it's Family Fortunes or Family Feud as it was in the States. Because it's really, really, really watchable. It's beautifully watchable. It's endlessly, endlessly replicatable. I mean, you're never, ever gonna run out of things on Family Fortunes.
- [29:50]
B
And it's dynamic and living dynamic. Response to exactly. A hundred people would have said something
- [29:56]
C
completely different 10 years ago.
- [29:57]
A
Exactly that. And it has the beauty. You know, to me, game shows are all about play along. That's what we've always tried to do in, you know, House of Games. It's just, it's, it's all about watching at home. And that like the 1% club now as well. Everybody sitting at home across the generations can play. You know, the second you say name, you know the top five things you find in a bathroom is everyone can play that. And the joy to me of game shows is bringing you either do your university challenges or only connects. And that's like the Olympics of quiz shows. But if you're doing a quiz which is inclusive, which everyone can play along, something like that I think is the dream, which is it requires thinking. It means you can be competitive with the person sitting next to you. You can be 80 or 40 or 12 and you can just do it again and again and again and again. And you can do hundreds of episodes and you can set it to every single country in the world. But it's just a simple thing that brings joy. So I would say the, the one I wish I'd come up with that I would have sat and been happy for the rest of my life would have been a Family Fortunes.
- [31:04]
B
I could listen to you on game
- [31:06]
C
shows all day long. I really could. Okay, well, I certainly can't top any of that. So we're going to wrap this episode right now. As I say, we have got this second half of our Top Gun special
- [31:17]
B
bonus for members which is join the resters entertainment.com otherwise we will see you next Tuesday.
- [31:23]
A
See you next Tuesday. Foreign.
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F
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F
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B
Close your eyes, exhale. Feel your body relax and let go of whatever you're carrying today.
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G
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B
Breathe.
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G
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- [32:37]
B
1-800-contacts.