The Rest Is Entertainment - Fake Vomit & Corrie In Crisis

Episode Date: January 16, 2025

How do actors fake vomiting?  Louis Theroux tells us his tips and tricks for how to get the most out of documentary subjects. It was a national institution, but is it time for last orders to be called at The Rovers Return and Coronation Street? Plus, we tackle The Traitors (with no spoilers) ahead of a full Traitors Q&A bonus episode for The Rest Is Entertainment AAA Club members on Friday 17th Jan. Join now at www.therestisentertainment.com Sign up to our newsletter: www.therestisentertainment.com Twitter: @‌restisents Instagram: @‌restisentertainment YouTube: @‌therestisentertainment Email: [e-mail] Producers: Neil Fearn + Joey McCarthy Executive Producers: Tony Pastor + Jack Davenport Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello and welcome to this episode of The Rest Is Entertainment with me Marina Hyde and me Richard Osmond. Is it a normal episode or is it a question and answers episode? Oh God, I've reverted. I'm so sorry. This is a questions and answers episode. Is it? Okay, good. Everyone, hi! I just have to get my brain in the place then I have to, you know, otherwise I don't know what I'm talking about. You are always thinking and I love that about you.

Always thinking. Talking of question and answer episodes, we are doing a bonus episode tomorrow for our subscribers, which is just questions about the traitors, because there's so many. Tomorrow, if you're not a subscriber, you go to thewrestlesentertainment.com. Loads of great- Behind the scenes, basically.

Yeah, on the traitors. How does it work? But also you get access to all our other bonus episodes we've done. People loved your, the best five books about Hollywood. I could have done about 30 of those books but anyway perhaps we'll return to further books. I must do music at some point. Anyway. But there's loads of other stuff there. It's a royal knockout, there's Mariah Carey, they are a lot of fun. So the rest is entertainment.com. They're all timeless things. They're not like what we do on the

normal podcast or the questions and answers. Marina hides timeless things. Alice Johnson has a question. She says, you know on Marina hides timeless things, where Marina... Alice Johnson, in fact, she's talking about on screen vomit. Oh, our occasional body you leave fluids series. Yes, exactly. There's a couple we haven't done. There's a couple we haven't done.

We're not rushing to do. Alice says, how do they portray vomiting on screen? Is there a tube strapped to their cheek? That's a nice place to start. Alice, I've done a really deep dive on this one for you, if I may. People always think that they put vegetable soup in their mouth and spit it, which sometimes happens or that there's a sort of S-shaped tube they shoot in profile, right? I'm going to take you through four big vomit scenes in movie history.

Oh my goodness. Yeah, I know, but I want to take... That sounds like a bonus episode. I know, actually it's almost a whole strand, isn't it? But we can't do the rest of the vomit. So the exorcist, now that's the famous, that's a very famous vomit scene, right? Now, first of all, it's porridge. People think it's pea soup.

It's not. It's porridge with pea soup colouring. With pea soup, wouldn't that just be pea colouring? Well, it's pea soup, it's not, it's porridge with pea soup colouring. With pea soup wouldn't that just be pea colouring? Well it's pea soup colouring, you know, it's American cuisine. Listen, it's not for me to second guess the ways of the American grocery aisles. Oh you've changed. What is that, your New Year's resolution? This is all you used to do last year. There's a tube under her nightie.

Yes, and beneath, Linda Blair's nightie, beneath the bed is someone with a crank and a pump. And now Jason Miller, who was playing the priest in that, he was supposed to get the soup in the chest. You've got to reset every single time you do one of these scenes. In the end, they did this in one take, which is good, because the reset on that is enormous, but it's slightly misangled, and so he gets it in the face. They did it all in one take. But actually the noise, I went back to William Freakin who's the director, who was a sort of enfantere, and the noise, the sort of squeal of it was done by the sound guy who saw his girlfriend asleep on a sofa,

put a microphone next to her, ran across the room and jumped on her back, like landing on both knees and she lets out this kind of muffled squeal. Close to domestic abuse noise is the noise of the vomit, of Regan vomiting. Anyhow. That's sort of awful all around. Awful all around. Okay, let's move on to the meaning of life, Mr. Creosote, Monty Python. Now, they had a catapult to fling it there. They had something like 900 gallons of, it took so long to film that scene. And they had about 900 gallons of vomit made up andapult to fling it there. They had something like 900 gallons of, it took so long to film that scene. And they had about 900 gallons of vomit made up and it sort of flung it.

900 gallons of vomit sounds like the sort of thing Russell Crowe would call his album. Yeah. Another of my favorite vomit scenes, I wanted to find out about this one, which is Team America. Do you remember when the Gary goes on a bender because he's trying to leave the Team America?

One of the most underrated movies of all time, Team America, what place. It's so unbelievable. Well, you know when they, one of the reasons they did it, Matt Stone and Trey Parker, is because they really hate actors. At the end of it, they really hated puppets. Oh really? It turns out we just hate everything. The lead puppeteer on that is a guy called Scott Landon.

It's so amazing. Puppeteering is so amazing and he'd often worked with the Muppets as well. And you have to do lots and lots of rehearsals what he loved about the South Park guys was that it was really improvised. A string breaks, a string of Gary breaks while he's doing that kind of vomiting but it kind of helps and Scotland just like really leads into it because the puppet convulsed in even more ridiculous ways because it had lost the use of one string. So that's that one and we we're gonna end with the director of Triangle of Sadness, which has got a huge

vomit scene in it. Yeah, it really is. Do you know what? It's such a good film, not for everyone. It's not for everyone, it's brilliant though, isn't it? It's a great scene, and that scene itself, if you are in a metaphor, don't see that scene. Well yeah, the director of Riem and Oslo

wanted to do the best vomit scene of all time. So they're all on a boat, the sort of plot, they're on a very expensive luxury cruise. There's bad weather and they're having a nice dinner and everybody throws up. Anyway, so what they had there, they had tiny nozzles in their mouths, which were attached to tubes and pumps, which were operated by the effects team. But what's amazing about it is that they didn't know when it was coming. So when you see the panic in the eyes, it took them two weeks to film the scene by the way, and they put them on gimbals. You know gimbals is when you can wobble a set. Some of the extras had what they call on a normal movie set, swig and spew. So you've got a bottle of some sort

of vomit. Now, not only that, they used sort of made a kind of fruit soup for the vomit, but they were so, they thought about it so much that they Thought what has each individual person eaten? So some of it had like what looked like bits of octopus in it Some of it. Yeah, they were really it's like so thought about anyway How did that added the height so the tube must have come from outside? Yeah, and then it's got small And then you can paint it out And then they don't know when the very different thing about this one is that they don't know when it's coming and that's why you've got the panic in the eyes. That is

a movie vomiting in four different iconic scenes and thank you for that question Alice. I would say if you haven't seen Triangle of Sadness it's worth seeing unless that, listen if you've just heard what you've heard and it's not for you then absolutely don't watch it but if you have watched it, do what I'm gonna do as soon as I get home, which is I'm gonna watch that scene again and remember that they don't know they're about to spew. Look at their eyes. Richard, Ben Clarkson would like to ask, I recently watched the Taskmaster New Year's treat and for the prize Martin Lewis bought the deck chair he won on House of Games. Lewis. However,

Alex stated that items won on BBC game shows cannot be given away. Is this true and if so what is the reasoning behind this? No, it's definitely not true. I'll say that but I tell you what, he really is a money-saving expert that Martin Lewis isn't he? Bringing along those prizes he's just saying I'm gonna get something I got for free anyway. No, on that occasion... Reprising. It's not regifting, it's reprising! I mean this must be the first coinage but

reprising. I think Josh Weerdekem tried to give away his pointless trophy on the very first series of that. Anyone else? Three's a trend. Suddenly there's an Ask Lin Vanity Fair about it. No, on this one, funnily enough, I did a thing for Taskmaster recently, which I really, really enjoyed, which is you put together your perfect episode. So I went back down to the Taskmaster house. You can see it on YouTube and you go back over your series and you choose your favorite tasks and Andy Devonshire, the producer, I think said, Oh, Martin Lewis has bought his house of games deck chair. How do you feel about that? And I said that I'm very happy for you to say that I'm furious. I'm very happy for you

to say that actually legally we are not allowed to do that. So it was a bit of business is the truth. Yeah, if you want to give away your House of Games tees made, you're very, very welcome. In fact, people do a lot. You know, they turn up as charity prizes and we gave away a House of Games piece of luggage, didn't we, at the Royal Albert Horse Show? I think it's different when you do it, I'm sorry. You think it is? To what Martin Lewis does it. Yes, I do. I think there's a qualitative difference and take a dim view.

Listen, if the money saving expert wants to give away a deck chair with my face on it, please go ahead, Martin Lewis, for all the good you do. For all the good you do. I actually meant for all the good. You do do a lot of good. For all the good you do. I actually meant for all the good. You do do a lot of good. For all the good you do. Quite often you see things up for grabs on eBay that people win, especially with pointless because when you come on pointless and often people are couples and you win a trophy each. Of course, stick one on the mantelpiece, stick the other one on eBay. Why not? That I think you're probably not supposed to do that. But I mean, you're not going to take them to court. That would be great. Imagine that. Might as well take capitalism to court, Richard. Marina, Gemma Rowe has a question. She says, there are so many great documentarians out there.

Oh, that's a nice word to say, documentarian. Thank you, Gemma. There are so many great documentarians out there from the mainstream of Ross Camp to the more surreal like John Wilson. All of his stuff is on iPlay if you haven't seen the John Wilson stuff. The king for me is of course Louis Theroux. What makes a good documentary maker and how do they get the most from the subject matter and how do they have guests open themselves up? Well I am incredibly honoured to say that we have a video from my idol Louis Theroux. Ah I thought you were going to say Ross Kemp. Yeah.

Ah no just Louis. I think he is the absolute beazies and have done forever. So I'm thrilled that he has recorded this for us in answer to your question, Gemma. Louis Threw here. Thank you for the great question, which was what makes a good documentary maker and how do they get the best, is it the best out of the guests or subjects? We don't think of them as guests, it's really subjects because part of it is building trust and rapport. And that's important. You spend time, you put the hours in,

you make yourself emotionally available in order to coax intimacy in a short period of time. Or you spend longer and build the trust that way. But you also need to poke the bear from time to time. You need moments of provocation. So you're walking a kind of line, a line of tension between the need to make someone comfortable but also to make them uncomfortable, to create moments of fireworks.

When I did my episode about the porn industry, I would participate. So in the porn world, I got a role in a film, I signed up with a porn agent. The porn agent took pictures of me naked. It was kind of funny. As I went through the filming, I would have these agent took pictures of me naked. It was kind of funny. As I went through the filming, I would have these Polaroids of me naked and I would occasionally show them to people that I was interviewing in the porn world

because they'd also gone through Jim Souths. That was the name of the agent. And so it was a way of saying like, look, I've done it too. And it was really amazing how it caused them, it kind of caused them to see me differently in a way that felt felt they trusted me more. It felt like I'm no longer aloof,

I'm no longer judgmental. By the way, showing naked pictures of yourself is not a technique I recommend in other workplace environments. But here it was helpful. Really, choosing great subjects, worlds that feel counterintuitive, that involve choices that demand unpacking. You know, the extreme

example we've seen that in our own time is this obsession with true crime, which again, it's about trying to get your mind into the headspace of the unspeakable, you know, and you know, the tension that exists between ourselves and the people involved in the most hideous kinds of behavior. Ah, that was nice. It's interesting. Make people comfortable but uncomfortable. So often with documentaries, it's the stuff you don't see, which is they're just sort of sitting around beforehand and the way you chat to somebody, making someone feel that they can open up and he's the best at it.

Newspaper interviewers sometimes do, you know, they have little tricks like arriving half an hour early. But also just staying silent at the right time. It's so interesting how often silence is such a powerful tool of anyone interviewing or making a documentary about anyone. Because if you're quite long enough people often stumble into some form of confession. Yeah, often when people are on TV for the first time you see, you know, that's an easy trap to fall into. It's a real skill to be able to sort of find fellow feeling with someone instantly, which he appears to be incredibly good at. Ross Kemp, if you're listening, we'd love your take as well.

Right. Shall we now proceed to a break, Richard? Oh my God, genuinely, I would love to. Welcome back everybody. Now, we have got some any other business because last week we spoke about quiz shows. Now, Josh O'Donovan has written in, says, I'd like to say what a fan of the podcast I am. Thank you, Josh. Thanks, Josh. I listen to it every Tuesday and Thursday and it makes my commute all the better. Secondly, I'd like to introduce myself. My name is Josh O'Donovan and my father Cornelius O'Donovan was mentioned on the podcast on

Thursday as the most capped TV quiz in the UK. Reports of his death have been greatly exaggerated. Josh Cornelius, we're inclined to be sorry, he is still very much live, still going on quiz shows with his most recent appearance being on the finish line. Go for it Cornelius. And he was absolutely thrilled to be name-checked on your podcast. Ah Cornelius, and we said you are no longer with us. Of course he's been on so many quizzes by the way, he's not always successful but he's still applying for them. For the last 10 years we've been trying to get on Pointless as we want to go on a quiz show together. Both of us have already been having been on 15 to

1 with Stanley Toksvig but on different series. Once again thank you so much for your wonderful podcast and it was so lovely for the surprise this morning. That's great and corny. Just glad to hear you're still with us. Of course, Chris Show contestants never die. They simply get eliminated. And when they meet God, God says, how was your life? And they said, I've had a lovely time.

I imagine he'd be like you, but just in a white suit. God? Yeah. Oh, so so sweet. That's why I pitch him as. I think he'd be much more like Zander. You know what? Wouldn't that be lovely if there were an afterlife

and he just turned up and like Zander was there. Just say take a seat, come on. Oh my god that'd be lovely. I love him so much after his performance at the Royal Albert Hall for us. Oh he did a cracking job. I could love him even more but I can. I love that he was sort of acting as a game show host even though he is a game show host. I think that's the way isn't it? He took it up a notch.? Okay, I absolutely loved the Wallace and Gromit on Christmas Day. It was unbelievable. I mean, to be talking about how brilliant the stunts were in an animation, but they were. Everything about it was amazing. But Lee Emerson asks, like many, I was blown away by the latest Wallace and Gromit film this Christmas. It was even more impressive knowing that the

main character was not voiced by the late Peter Salis but by a different actor, yet he sounded the same. I was wondering if Peter Salis's estate benefited at all from Ben Whitehead's uncanny performance? It was an amazing, it genuinely was amazing. I mean it sounded like him and in some ways doing an impression of someone is, I'm not going to say it's easy, but you can mimic someone's voice but the performance by Peter Salis is so brilliantly comic and the timing and all that stuff. And Ben Whitehead managed to match all of that as well, which is the amazing thing. It's not just an impression. The whole performance was

extraordinary. You wouldn't have known that it wasn't Peter Salis. Peter Salis' estate receives money, receives some residuals. The character belongs to Ardman, so the character of Wallace absolutely belongs to Ardman. The scripts belong to Ardman, but genuinely Ben Whitehead, I mean, absolutely all due respect. It was amazing. It was brilliant. It was unbelievable. It was absolutely uncanny. And he'd been working a lot as Peter Sallis's understudy ever since the Curse of the Weir Rabbit. Nick Parker said, I need to develop this character as well. So Ben Whitehead was able to do that. But I think he did it in such a way. It was so

respectful of the performances of Peter Salis. Makes you realize what a brilliant actor Peter Salis was, but also what a brilliant job Ben Whitehead did. But you know, it happens a lot in animation. People's voices being replaced. Kermit the Frog was originally voiced by Jim Henson, but then Jim Henson died in 1990. By the way if you haven't seen the movie Saturday Night which is about the history of Saturday Night Live, it's about the first ever episode of Saturday Night Live, and Jim Henson is portrayed on it by Nicholas Braun from Succession, cousin Greg from Succession, and is portrayed absolutely beautifully as well. It's

really really really it's a fun watch that but the Jim Henson character particularly it's very good. So his protege, Steve Whitmore, he took over and starred as the frog in some of the things that we know today. But the voice, it is an impression, but you do then take it on and do different things with it. Mickey Mouse, did you know who was originally the voice of Mickey Mouse? Was it one of the, was it his brother or something? It's Walt Disney. Walt Disney himself was Mickey Mouse's voice. one of his brother or something? It's Walt Disney. Walt Disney

himself was Mickey Mouse's voice. But he was a chain smoker of Walt Disney, so he could not continue for too much longer. So Jimmy McDonald took over that. God, what a Christmas for the BBC. But the interesting thing, of course, as well as scheduled TV is the long tale of both of those shows, Gavin and Stacey and Waddes and Gromit. You know people can keep watching and keep watching and keep watching and will do. Ah, Kate Garner has a question for you now, Marina. This week saw Charlotte Jordan, Colson Smith and Sue Cleaver announcing they would all be leaving Coronation Street following a quick succession from Helen Wirth's exit over Christmas. Amidst tabloid talk of cash flow problems on

the cobbles, rumours are also swirling about potential exits or part-time contracts for favourites including the Sudavania Moor and Litman. Is it the end of the road for Coronation Street, Kate asks. It's interesting what's happened to the soaps in general because in days, the old days, they would have had huge ratings, particularly around Christmas. What I've always loved about our soaps, whereas the big American soaps were always glitzy and glamorous and were things like Dinner Steal or Dance, they're big shows like that. Ours were all working class. I mean, Coronation Street is amazing. It was created in 1960 by Tony Warren, who was 23 at the time. On

the first night, everyone thought it would just be a complete failure because they said it was all doom and gloom. I think its top rating ever is something like 22 million on a New Year's Day episode. All the soaps, by the way, 20, 25 years ago, the soaps were by far and away the biggest thing on television and had huge audiences. Yes, they would always be the number one show on any day they were on. EastEnders and Coronation Street obviously avoided each other. So pretty much every night of the week, one of those two was the biggest ratings show on television. Now they all, including Emmerdale, and I'll come to the reasons why I think that might

be the case, get about three million and five million on catch up. About seven million people would say I watch it. That doesn't mean they consolidate to five million and so therefore about seven million people say they watch it. Now that's pretty good. In terms of what happened, EastEnders went wrong first really. First of all they spent £87 million on a new set. What they did is they started moving it around into the schedule which for a recurring

programme like that is a tricky thing to do because people slightly feel like that's what I do when I finish my work I've turn on or I get in and I'll watch this or when I've just finished having my supper I'll watch it or whatever it is. They did sort of slightly creatively lose their way. But Corrie went to an hour about, it used to be always a half hour, it's forever been a half hour, because they slightly felt greedily, I think, well, why not? You know, people will probably watch it. But it's simply, you'd never start a soap now, okay? Because the way people watch television is totally different. People want to be able to binge things.

They sort of reflect a world that isn't there anymore. The Rovers Return, the community of that pub where everyone knows everyone and whatever doesn't exist like that. Young people, they do show up in the viewership figures, I am told. But it might be just because they're in the room and someone older in the house is insisting having it on. But one very interesting thing is that the viewership of Corrie and Emmerdale is 80% located in the north. So that is a very, very significant skew. And that is, you know, still 7 million people say they watch this.

So I think Corrie will go back to half an hour. It's interesting that Emmerdale of all of those has survived the best by far and now if you schedule it against East End as it beats it. It is extraordinary how they have gone from far and away the biggest shows on TV. Oh they were on the front of the tabloids, any plot line could get on the front of the tabloids. They make it an awful lot cheaper than they used to, it was always not crazily expensive for drama and the shows basically because they're doing such volume. But now you talk

to anyone who works on those shows, are really working proper long hours and the turnarounds are very, very quickly. So they're cutting their cloth accordingly. You say Corrie started in 1960, it'd be hard to imagine that it'll still be on in another 60 years time. It is not what it was, but it's still loved by many and I suspect still value for money. You know that tipping point. Yes it is. I think it's still value for money. And also what a great starting point for so many actors, so many writers, so many directors. Oh my god, how many writers? Yeah I remember they had so many good, they had so many, you

know, so many big writers. Sally Wainwright, you know, Kay Mellor, Paul Abbott, Russell T. Davies, they all started on Coronation Street and loved writing those sort of funny things. I remember reading an interview with, I think it was, God was it Paul Abbott? Maybe it was Russell T. Davies, I think it was Paul Abbott saying that, obviously it's exciting when you're given the sort of terrible rape storyline, but what you really want to write is you know Jack what Dark Worth has to go and buy a ladder. Yes. So they all that ear for that type of dialogue that kind of iconic think to people talking about not very much at all but it being saying so much about your life. Can I ask you one traitors question please? Yes because

we're doing a bonus episode with lots of traitors questions. Because the sheer deluge holding back our metaphorical door. Josephine Bradley says, I can't get my head around how and when the murder is done. We see Claudia leave the letter on the chair once voting has happened and then the murdered contestant picks it up from the chair. But people seem to leave and arrive in groups in the Land Rovers and they arrive in groups to the breakfast room. How do they choreograph the sort of leaving and departures and all of that business then?

Well everyone lives in their own separate accommodation and everyone's driven in separate vehicles just so you can't ever say it was interesting that John didn't come home last night. They're like a band that have fallen out of separate limo stages. Exactly, separate limos. And if you're one of the murderers then your Range Rover simply does a few laps around the block until all the Range Rovers have gone. The block is quite big in the Highlands though, isn't it? The block is very big, exactly.

You could be driving by in Venice. Exactly. And so they will come around and they will then come back to the house, park up and they will then film the discussions about the murder. You will, right at the end of the whole series, anyone who has been a traitor at any point will go back and film lots of other little shots of them just walking and talking, you know, just establishing shots. All that interstitial bit with the hoods in the... Yeah, exactly.

So they're not having to do any of that on the time. Yeah, so the cars will all leave as if they're going to where they're going. Three of the cars, or two of the cars, will then circle back, go back to the turret, film the stuff and then take them back to their place. The actual murders, the one thing you always see the person coming in and looking at the bit of paper with their name on it, that will always be shot afterwards as well. Well, they're in different clothes for that, so next morning and not. The great thing about that is, which I'm so relieved as a sort of perennial watcher of reality TV, is when they've

just come out of, or they're still kind of coming down off their round table, you don't have people go in and burst into tears. I really like the fact that on that show you don't have to watch people just sort of heave through tears and snores and whatever while explaining what they've been. And as so often in game shows, the truth of the story is always there. But occasionally there will be shots that they do afterwards because you cannot do everything at the time because every single shot you do takes about an hour to set up. And so the actual mechanics of the day have to continue. Occasionally things are shot out of order just because you have to be making

a television show. But we will have loads more Traitors Questions on our bonus episode, which will come out tomorrow. Just there were so many, it would be boring for people who didn't watch The Traitors to watch this. But if you do want to subscribe to our members club, it is therestisentertainment.com. You can go there, you get all of our bonus material every single week. And do feel free to email us further questions on Traitors and other subjects for next week at therestisentertainment.gmail.com. That was a fun one wasn't it? It was.

Yeah all sorts of good things. Thanks so much for your questions. Thank you to Louis Threw as well for his contribution. See you next Tuesday. See you next Tuesday. Let me know if you have any questions about the movie.