Beef And Dairy Network - Episode 3 - Gareth Belge

Episode Date: September 24, 2015

Henry Paker joins in this episode in which we tackle the issue of whether it's strange that we drink the milk of another species, and interview Hollywood bovine actor wrangler Gareth Belge. By Benjamin Partridge and Henry Paker.   Stock media provided by Setuniman/Pond5.com and Soundrangers/Pond5.com.

The Beef and Dairy Network podcast is sponsored by Graze-X, the latest grass replacement pellet from Mitchell's. If it's not Mitchell's, get back in the truck. Graze-X is available as either an easily digested pellet or as water-soluble granules, which, in cases of full mouth collapse, can be administered rectally. For a limited time only, look out for a golden ticket in promotional sacks to win a chance to visit our Kentucky pellet mill. Hello and welcome to the Beef and Dairy Network podcast, the number one podcast for those involved or just interested in the production of beef animals and dairy herds. The Beef and Dairy Network podcast is the podcast companion to the Beef and Dairy Network website and printed magazine, brought to you by Grey's X. As mentioned in the advert,

be sure to look out for your golden ticket for your chance to win a visit to the Mitchells Pellet Mill in Turkey Hills, Kentucky. Last week, Mitchell's treated all the staff here at the network to a trip to Kentucky and a tour of the mill, and I have to say it was an absolute treat. Not only did we get a valuable insight into how their market-leading grass replacement pellets are developed, we also got to see their various pellet presses, stoves and famous heritage barns. Also, there is a fascinating museum on site with a number of evocative audiovisual slideshows. Also, and I'll say this because I promised I would, a big beef and dairy shout out to the diminutive race of pygmies they employ to operate their machinery. On the show today, the beef forecast, the milk prices and a big interview with Hollywood bovine actor angler Gareth Belge. But first, the hot topic on the message board this week was a

question raised by Philip Christingle from Bishop Auckland. He wrote, Does anyone else think it's really weird that we drink the milk of another species? There were a number of very considered replies, and so I thought I'd read some out here on the podcast. Ian Davis replied, I agree. I think there's something deeply unnatural about drinking the milk of another species. However, as a fan of a milky morning coffee and a milk pudding on a Sunday, I meet all my milk needs by expressing milk from my wife. Despite her being in her late 50s, we find that it is possible to stimulate milk production with a hormone bath. It's great and means we don't have to sully ourselves with cross-species milking.

In fact, I think cow milk drinkers are very weird indeed. Thank you for that valuable insight, Ian. Timothy Parks wrote I think people should be more open-minded. Cow milk is just the tip of the iceberg. My wife and I spend most of our disposable income on trips abroad to sample exotic milks. Last year, for example, we celebrated our 40th wedding anniversary by milking a dolphin. Thanks Timothy! Sandra Francom had this to say.

I view the mammal kingdom as a well-stocked bar that God provided for us to sample. I've drunk the milk of most mammals. I take them off a list that I keep on my fridge. The big goal is to one day drink the milk of a grizzly bear. Last year I was head of an expedition to the Yukon River Delta in Alaska to milk such a bear, which ended in the death of two of our party and my imprisonment by angry American policemen. But nothing will stop me. Just try and stop me. You won't be able to. My bones are so strong. So, so strong. Thanks, Sandra. so strong. Thanks, Sandra. Now it's time for our big interview with Hollywood bovine actor-wrangler Gareth Belge. He's been working with cows and other animals in Hollywood for almost 20 years, and this month publishes his first book, Dark Hoof, a no-holds-barred, behind-the-scenes look

at his life in Hollywood. I started the interview by asking Gareth to introduce himself. look at his life in Hollywood. I started the interview by asking Gareth to introduce himself. My name is Gareth Belch and I am a bovine actor wrangler. Now the reason we've got you on is because you have recently published a book. I'd just like to say I was sent an advanced copy of the book and I took it away with me on holiday to the German North Sea Coast Resort where I was staying and one day I just sat down on a concrete bench and read the whole thing cover to cover. Well, that's exactly what I intend for the readers to do. I love the German North Sea, by the way.

It's just great knowing that you're in the North Sea, isn't it? It's a real kick. It's a real tonic. Yeah, and then, of course, you swim onto land and then you're in Germany. If your book is to be believed, there are thousands of cows working in Hollywood today. Why is this and what are they doing? Well, basically cows are a lot cheaper than actors. So a lot of the time, if a cow will do or can substitute, a director will choose a cow over an actor i think lots of people will find this quite hard to believe can you give us any any examples of times when cows are used in

the filming process um yeah well close up on eyes whenever you have a close-up on a beautiful woman's eyes in a film it will generally be cow's eyes because obviously cow's eyes are the most large lustrous beautiful shiny wonderful eyes in the world and a lot of actresses they look quite nice for a distance but when you look up they've got sort of nasty little eyes a lot of the time so um kira knightley for example her eyes are played by a uh cheshire blue i believe um sophia lorraine the most famous eyes in the history of Hollywood those are actually the eyes of an Isle of Man fat adder Morgan Freeman's eyes

in close up a Berkshire Roundtail Do you not think there's an element of kind of artifice here where the person sitting in the cinema is watching this and they're thinking look at those beautiful eyes, you know, look at the beautiful eyes of Brigitte Bardot and in reality

they're being sold a pup it's not real well is hollywood is it about reality going to the cinemas i would argue it's about something better than reality and what's better than a beautiful woman's eyes a beautiful cow's eyes a cow's eyes are so mesmeric. If you've ever been on holiday and wandered into a field and just sort of gone up to a cow and looked at it in the face, two hours later, your family are going, where is he? And you're just still stood there in the field, aren't you? Because a cow's eyes are utterly mesmerizing. It's like being hypnotized. And that's what happens to the audience. When a cow's eyes are on the screen, this might be 50 foot wide, the effect is so hypnotizing that often the audience won't notice the hair around them,

the black and white markings, the large wet nose, the ears, and a field sometimes in the background. The audience won't notice that because they're so mesmerized by the cow's eyes when i read the book it was very obvious to me that you harbor quite a lot of anger actually about the kind of credit given to bovine actors and the lack thereof yeah it's it's crying shame you know um cows are simply not given their due in the industry today tippy hedron for example in in the birds was originally cast as a cow unfortunately the studios didn't like it and they had to reshoot the entire film with tippy hedron with an actress playing tippy hedron and good though that film is you know i think most listeners would be thinking i like the birds but

it would be better with a cow in the main role i can see that very strongly myself well exactly i mean when you think about the whole the whole logic of the film it's about it's about birds landing on a woman isn't it and um i mean if you've ever just had a walk in the country you'll know that birds don't land on people but they do land but they do land on cows of On cows, of course. That was the whole concept of the screenplay. And of course, you know, it's obvious, isn't it? Tippi Hedren obviously is a name of a cow, isn't it? You wouldn't call a human Tippi Hedren. It's the same with other animals as well.

I mean, 12 Angry Men, for example, was originally 12 Angry Hens. To play devil's advocate for a moment do you think maybe if 12 angry men had remained 12 angry hens a lot of the audience would have had a hard time to begin with believing that in a court of law there was a jury of hens that had been left to make that decision to begin with and then secondly also quite hard to connect emotionally and to empathize with a hen on screen or is that not the case uh it sounds like you've never acted with a hen or worked with a hen in a creative capacity is that right i'll hold my hands up that is true yes yeah and you know in terms of 12 angry men I would say that as 12 Angry Hens, it was more of a dystopian film about a future in which, you know, hens control the legal system.

And the judge, of course, was going to be played by a wood pigeon. Right. OK. I mean, hens, very interesting. Have you worked with all farm animals? Are you particularly keen on any particular ones? Do some animals have different acting abilities that maybe other animals don't have? Geese are very good at playing detectives because of their piercing eyes. Hedgehogs are quite good at playing Romans. More from that interview after the beef forecast.

Expect beefy mist in southern coastal areas while beef medallions hammer the west. A rich broth can be found in canteens and bistros. And the milk prices. UHT tumbling this week to an all-time low, down 52 against yoghurt. Low-fat yogs and cottage cheeses are stable. And if you want some Emmentaler,

you'd better get some Deutschmarks. Back to more from our big interview what's the hardest thing you've ever had to do on set i had to tell daniel radcliffe that all of his leg acting was going to be um edited out and they were going to substitute in a flamingo. All of his, all of his leg shots in the Harry Potter films are a flamingo, flamingo's legs. In,

in boys trousers. In a boy's trousers. Yes. They didn't bank on it when they, when they cast him as Harry Potter, he was fine for the first two films, but they didn't realise that as he got older and became an adolescent, he got,

his legs became very, very wide and very, very chunky. And it just wasn't believable that he'd be able to stay on a broom. So we brought in a Cuban flamingo, Lopez de Goma, great to work with. So yeah, he played all his leg shots

and they just had to... Actually, you can still see, there's a shot where you can see that his legs are pink and have talons interesting that you say that because i remember watching the prisoner of azkaban and thinking there was something up with rupert grint's arms can you shed any light on that yes um rupert grint's arms had to be played by sea cucumbers in that film a separate sea cucumber for each other? Yes, they were two cucumbers. They were twins.

They were Chinese twins. They'd actually been Mao Tse-Tung's sea cucumbers. Right. So he could only relax and go to sleep if he had both of them perched on his chest. And, of course, when the Cultural Revolution happened, they actually went into exile in America, like a lot of animals did,

and they got jobs working in Hollywood. Now, obviously, at the end of a movie, often a little message comes up and it says that no animals were harmed during the making of the emotion picture. How often is that actually true? I get very, very emotional about this issue. To be honest, when it says no animals were harmed during the making of this film, what more accurate would be loads of animals were harmed during the making of all films some of the stuff that goes on is horrific i mean uh helicopter explosions for example they'll generally be a cow the cow will be piloting the helicopter

yeah the cow will be blown up because it's a lot cheaper than blowing up a helicopter and actually it does look a lot better but not i mean not all films have a have a helicopter explosion in them that's true but uh there are lots and lots of ways that cows suffer in filmmaking i mean today for example it's it's well known that richard curtis slaughters a cow every morning before filming for what reason to placate the god Thor, yeah. And to be fair to him, it's worked. His career has gone pretty well. On his early films, he would slaughter the cow with a sword.

And as they got bigger and bigger in budget, you know, he now uses a bazooka. A huge thanks to Gareth for giving us that interview. Since that was recorded, he has sent me a string of emails, many of them in block capitals, imploring me to plug the book as much as possible. So again, the name of the book is Dark Hoof, and it's available at all failing bookshops. He would also like me to add that he desperately needs the money, because lots of his work is made up. So that's it for this week. But if you're after more beef and dairy news, get over to the website

now where you can read all the usual stuff, including your chance to win a copy of a new book, Meat and Poverty, Eating Beef in a Post-Livate World. And in our off-topic section, an interview with actor Robert Lindsay, who takes us through a rundown of his favourite low-fat pizzas. Until next time, beef out.