The Rest Is Entertainment - Favourite Questions of 2024

Episode Date: January 2, 2025

As we emerge from our festive slumber, enjoy some of our favourite questions (and answers) from 2024. Why are cups on screen always empty? How do you substitute drugs? Why don't cameras get steamy in shower scenes? How would Richard commit the perfect murder? Join The Rest Is Entertainment Club for ad free listening and access to bonus episodes: 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

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along on your impromptu catch up. These are sips worth sharing. So come together and find your holiday magic, only at Starbucks. Hello and welcome to this episode of The Rest Is Entertainment. I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osman. Now Marina, you and I both say it enough, but we love the questions we get in, from behind the scenes to top threes to simply our trenchant opinions Yep

The listeners are very very good at selecting topics for us to talk about almost better than we are ourselves And plus you get the inspiration for future character names, but I definitely do the first time I actually put one in a book. It's going to be a great day for this podcast You have to tell us when you've done it. Of course. I listen will. Now listen, today we're going to revisit some of our favourite questions. Thank you so much as always for sending them in. Yes, thank you and don't forget the address to send your questions to is restesentertainment at gmail.com I have a question from Jeff Nicholson.

Thank you, Jeff. Is there any reason why when filming actors would use an empty cup and pretend there is a drink in it? No actor alive can cover up the fact that it's an empty cup It immediately brings me out of the story if you played a hundred This is a bold claim from Jeff Nicholson I think you can back this up Jeff if you played a hundred clips of characters drinking from these cups I could tell you with 100% accuracy which ones had a liquid in it

Even if they were just carrying the cups. It is brutally obvious, says Jeff. That's a podcast. Okay, first of all, Jeff, you are not even weird. This is an obsession. People have been obsessed with this for ages. The AV Club, which is a sort of TV cultural arm of the onion, there was a guy who used to track empty cups in TV shows.

Now, the sort of obvious practical reasons for it are if you can see through the cup it affects continuity so it's just a lot easier not to have anything in it but you can't have an empty glass so they do normally have coffee cups. Wardrobe would hate you if you spilt it. I mean even in the studio we have to have a ridiculous sippy cup. Yeah, little sippy cups. Yeah, so wardrobe would hate you, it would cause a lot of trouble. You don't know how many takes you're going to have to do so they don't put anything in them. I totally agree with you on the weight issue, this is also an issue with suitcases that

you will see on TV, where people are sort of flipping their supposedly heavy suitcase up very early and putting it on the rack in the train above their head and you think you couldn't do it, it's completely empty. I can do that. Now, I do also- Do you know something? I hate to go off on a sidebar. Why not? But I can stow my luggage

on a train or a plane without getting out of my seat. How about that? For skill. And I often do it because I know people get a kick out of it. They go wild for it. Yeah. Oh my God. He's sorry, boarding is stopped while Richard takes a bow for the stowing trick again. Yeah. Okay, the thing that you said about being able, Jeff, that people are able to tell, there's this museum of sort of illusion and perception called Twist at the Oxford Circus in London and there's a really interesting exhibit in there where they make you say, you listen to the noise of boiling water being poured or cold water and humans have internalized this so much that 93% of adults are able to tell from sound whether water is hot water like from the kettle or from the tap and if you do it you get every

single one right and you're like I can't actually believe it's got sort of 10 out of 10 on this and 93% of humans you've internalized this noise so much you've heard it so many times and this is a bit like drinks on tv no wonder wonder you can tell, I believe you could tell with 100% accuracy that there's nothing or something in those cups because these little tiny little quotidian noises of our day, we are so attuned to them and you know far more about it. So it is one of those things that sticks out and that I think is the reason why there's like a massive online community of

people who talk a lot about cups and I should say that something like 21 people wrote in about cups this week. I think there must have been a bulletin board somewhere. Is that a thing? No, or something has happened. There's been some sort of egregious example of it on some show and maybe, but it's an ongoing concern amongst people that there's nothing in that cup and it's really annoying me. But in general, yes, you mustn't let Tanon anywhere near liquid. Yeah. By like genuinely, you know, on telly because you split it down your shirt and then you've got to stop filming. That's why we've always had tippy, toppy Tommy cups on Pointless because Zander spilt mint tea down on it,

literally on the first ever episode. And it's, you know, it ruins everything. But yeah, that thing of continuity is fascinating. On panel shows, you always have to have mugs and not glasses because if you use an answer, if you use the second answer first and then the first answer, because for various reasons it works better,

and the water keeps going up and down, then you can't use it. It's the same thing that if someone's wearing glasses and then they take them off when the camera is not on them, and so the next time you look at them, they're not wearing their glasses, you have to make sure you've got a shot of them taking their glasses off or putting them you just have to make sure you've got that shot otherwise people go well this is insane. Very important pick up. Are they wearing it or not wearing it? Yeah. That's different sort of glasses.

There's a good bit in One Day funnily enough. One Day is very good for having things like you know having to write letters to people and having cassette tapes, all these things that we lost long ago. And there's a great bit where Emma is carrying a really heavy suitcase and you realize, of course they didn't have wheels. Yes. It was pre the wheelie suitcase. Yes. So, yeah, but that looks heavy. Good. It needs to look heavy. That's definitely one of my bog bears. So, okay, that was a

good one, Geoff. Thank you. Richard, one for you about tribute bands from someone called Paul LaRondi. That is a cracking name. Wow, Paul LaRondi. You're just going to have to put all of these in your books. Yeah, Paul LaRondi. Yeah. That's Paul LaRondi rather than Paul LaRondi. Yeah.

I wonder if you've had a question before from someone called Paul LaRondi and Paul LaRondi is a tribute questioner to Paul Arundi. This would be deeply meta. Okay. What are some of the opinions that real bands have regarding their tribute bands? Do they see them as a positive or negative thing? I think by and large, I think it can be quite useful to keep your music out there. They have whole festivals now where you just see Oasis and The Jam and you're like, hold

on, and you go, oh no, it's all the tribute bands. But it's a fun thing to do. Tina Turner, I think once sued one of her tribute acts, there was Simply the Best, the Tina Turner story. And the woman who was Tina Turner was Dorothea Fletcher. And Tina Turner said, she looks so much like me. And she sounds so much like me. This is going into the realm of passing on. Oh, really? Yeah. And also, of course, she was just about you know a big live musical, you know, The Teen Attorney Story. So that became an issue. If it's kind of imprint, you know, if someone's doing a big tour and getting massive and you want

to do the same thing and you actually are you, I think you're allowed to say this doesn't seem quite right. But there's a long varied history of people in tribute bands joining the real band. And Rob Halford, when he left Judas Priest briefly to come back, they replaced him with the lead singer in a Judas Priest tribute band called British Steel. God, I bet he was just so much less trouble. Oh God, can you imagine? That's the thing, isn't it? That you just, so many of the bands, like, you're like, okay, Spandau Ballet, you can't keep it together, but you know what? Your tribute band can,

so you can just see them. Yeah, and this guy's called Tim Owens. Tim Owens, the Judas Priest fan, he literally became the lead singer of Judas Priest. The same thing happened with Journey. I think they've had quite a few lead singers Journey. They've had a few people leave the band for various reasons. Yes, exactly. Listen, it's a Journey. And Neil Shearn, he's the guitarist, he was messing around on YouTube and he found videos by a guy called Arnel Pineda, who was the frontman of a Filipino journey

tribute band called Zoo. And he loved him so much, auditioned him, and Pineda got the job. Yeah, he's in a journey. The best ones. Believe in magic. Are amazing. You know, the point is, if you're Oasis,

Oasis aren't gonna play again, the Pistols aren't going to play again, the Smiths aren't going to play again. So you can't go and see that. But you can when Blossoms and Rick Astley teamed up to do a Smiths tribute. The songs are the songs. So you still get to see them. And if you get a tribute act you really, really know their business and they're great musicians. Then it's an amazing night out. There's loads of great, there's Fake That. Yeah. There's one, there's the Rolling Clones, there's the Foe Fighters, and Oasis have got loads, there's Noasis, there's Oasis. There's an amazing band who did bluegrass versions of ACDC songs, they're called Hacy Dixie. And in the end, if you can find their version of, I know this and this is a departure of

Haseed Dixie, they did an amazing bluegrass version of Snoop's Gin and Juice, which is well worth finding. I will seek that out. Yeah. There's a Yes Tribute Band. Can you guess what they're called? No. Yes, that is what they're called.

They're called No. There's a Scottish Iron Maiden tribute band. You have to see this written down really, but they're called Iron Maiden, but with the iron like iron brew. There's also a band called Brian Maiden. There's the Yorkshire Bon Jovi Tribute Act. They're called By Jovi. I actually want to book all of these.

Yeah, be fun, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Addy asks, what is substituted for drugs in scenes? If an actor is doing 10 takes of

snorting prop cocaine up their nose, I expect that has to burn after the first couple, no matter what substance it is that they're snorting. That is a very good question. And I've asked some props people about this. What they tend to use is a substance called inositol, which is actually real drug dealers sometimes cut pure cocaine with it, but it's a sort of, it's a kind of vitamin B complex or maybe was it vitamin B? No, I think it's vitamin B. Now the trouble with it is that it also has a slight laxative effect. Oh wow, I love where this is going. This is like the babies all over again.

Yeah. Well, Ray Liotta and Debbie Mazar, do you remember she plays Sandy, his mistress in Goodfellas, and they really run the coke business together. She said it had a real laxative effect, and he said it really cleans you out. But you do actually snort the substance, but the props department said what they want is you to get as little as possible in your nose or whatever it is because it does obviously have an

effect as you say Andy. So they put Vaseline inside the rolled note or the straw or whatever you're using to snort it so that as much as possible sticks to the inside and doesn't go up your nose. That's clever. However Jonah Hill was actually hospitalized on the Wolf of Wall Street. He said, I was basically doing fake cocaine for seven months. And even though they do all these tricks and they have the Vaseline and all this stuff, he still ingested quite a lot of whatever this inositol is. And he got bronchitis from it and was hospitalized from the fake cocaine. So don't try any of it at home.

So the message to kids is don't even do fake drugs. Don't even do fake drugs on a multi multi-million dollar production because you could still end up in hospital with bronchitis. This is from Stuart Haddo, showers he's talking about. Steam must be an issue when filming any sort of shower scene says Stuart. Does this mean that every time you see someone showering on screen they're actually enduring a cold shower? Haha. Whilst you're right, it is an issue and they cannot have a hot shower, but there are things that you can get anti-fog sprays and whatever, it doesn't really work. So generally it will be a pretty lukewarm shower. If they were having a cold shower obviously you can't help but draw breath and be sort of squeaking, so they wouldn't have that. But they would use sort of warmish water,

but a vaporizer to create the practical effect because they want to correct the effect of steam. Oh, of the heat? Yeah. So just to create the practical effect always. But also if you're working on something that's quite high budget and therefore they have built a shower for you, say you're James Bond in one of the James Bond movies and you're in a shower, that will have been built on a stage. Therefore it is pretty ventilated.

It's enormous. And so it's- So if you see Bond showering, he's not in some little hotel room, he's in a massive soundstage. They haven't got a huge crew, no, because there's so many cameras on things like that. So no, he will be, they will have rigged that up

on the stages at Pinewood, I think in that case. I would watch a film, and I think you'd make a lot of money from it, that was split screen, which was the film, and a wider shot of the filming of that scene. Wider shot of everything is amazing. Actually, screen, which was the film and a wider shot of the filming of that scene. A wider shot of everything is amazing. Actually, well, funnily enough, if you like that, then I'm working on a TV show where you might see quite a lot of that.

Oh, really? Oh, great. Yes, because it's all set behind the scenes at the film studio at which it is set. Another one I really want to ask you, Richard. Sarah Milton says, Richard, having written several bestselling crime novels and being generally immersed in the crime genre for years, do you think you could commit the perfect murder should the need arrive? I like should the need arrive. Yeah I mean just listen you never know. Only if called upon could you do it. She's very much given me the benefit of the doubt there Sarah isn't she. The honestly yes. What? Is my answer. I obviously thought your answer

would be no. Really? Yeah. You don't think, I mean, you could commit a perfect murder, surely. I mean, how long? No way. What if we had like four days to plan a murder? Of course we could. Well, who's investigating?

Is it like Jane Tennyson is investigating? In which case I don't think I'm going to go up against that. I have bad news. It's Lorraine Kelly. All right. Yeah. She'll get it from him. Yeah.

I think. No, but what? You do think you could? Of course. Because, you know, the whole point when you write a crime novel is you have to find a crime, you have to find a murder that is difficult to solve, but then there's always a fatal flaw, which means you can solve it. So just do that, but without the fatal flaw. And there are sort of brilliant technical consultants, most crime writers use. So Val

McDermott is one of our finest crime writers, brilliant stuff. And she has a great relationship with this amazing woman called Dame Professor Sue Black. And I think she's at Lancaster University but she's a forensic scientist. Yeah she's absolutely brilliant. Val will take Sue out for dinner and go, what are you working on Sue? And Sue will outline to her some new technique that forensic science has got and the vowel will go But hold on if I turn that on its head that means I can get away with murder and Sue was telling me once I she told Val something and Sue was about to go to a conference to it

She had this big new something about human bones that she discovered and she was about to you know She's done a paper on it She's about to give her first ever speech about it And then she read Val's new book and it was like the main bit of the plot and she said I haven't even announced this yet Val. So you know you talk to someone like Sue Black who can give you various ways of getting away with murder which is usually how to hide evidence, how to obfuscate evidence, things like that, but it's working out the ways that you can solve murders, which is usually these days CCTV, phone records, it is, you know, DNA exactly, traces and stuff like that. But

once you take all of those out of the equation, I think it's possible to commit the perfect murder. Don't, by the way. I always think the way to commit a perfect murder really way all you don't have to worry about any of that stuff is to So this is a weird thing to be talking about now, but I don't want you to stop Richard in for a penny in for a pound If I ever did it also now I won't ever be able to do this because I'm saying If you're going to if you're going to don't commit a murder I don't need to say that do I but I think we're covered yeah I would cover it legally we're covered yeah I would not get super liable is to assume you're gonna get caught and to commit a murder in such a way that you will get away

with it in court so you know for example if you were to commit a murder and drop a glove that later on the prosecution asks you to try it in court and it's too small for you, suddenly they go, well, I obviously didn't do it. This is your big bit of evidence, I didn't do it. So you would drop a glove that's slightly too small for you somewhere. You try it on in a really, a way that for some reason no one queried and said, OJ, you're not putting your hand in the glove properly.

I wasn't thinking about OJ. All right. No, I was. So essentially, you know, just put conflicting evidence. If the glove don't fit, you must acquit. You must acquit. Also get Johnny Cochran because really that was... Yeah.

So, you know, I think that, but yeah, so in the spirit of the question, I think you spend a lot of time thinking about how people solve murders in these books. And so and the the counter side to that is how someone else tries to get away with murders. So I think in the context of a sort of Los Angeles race war would be helpful. So try and if you think of your cultural context, that's always helpful. Exactly. Cultural context is very, very important for police officers to go off or something. Yeah, just yes. Okay, for a B police beating. I'm getting too into a specific case of course, but yeah, but you'll keep it light and general. Yeah, me. Yeah, listen, it was much easier in the old days, of course, but that goes for crime writing as well. So if you know, if you're Agatha Christie, firstly, she's

a genius so it's much easier for her. But secondly, the ways you could be caught was so difficult because you know, there are no mobile phones and there is no DNA. And so for her police officers to catch someone is actually very, very difficult. These days it's really, really, really hard to get away with murder is the truth. We're watching a true crime thing. This is a slight sidebar, but watching lots of true crime things and the cold cases where they catch people because the DNA from the 70s and 80s was kept. And I can't help

thinking in a world where everything is incompetent and everything goes wrong, the foresight to keep all of that evidence in all of those cases, which now leads to hundreds of people being convicted, that's pretty impressive isn't it? Yes. That was one of the most efficient things done in the 1970s across all formats. But it is though. If you think about everything we got wrong and how stupid we were in everything, the fact that the police were going, no I tell you what, we will keep all of this stuff just in case you know science catches up with us. And it did. And then the law catches up with murderers. So listen, I don't approve of murdering. No, I'll go on the record of saying that I'm never gonna commit one

I'll go on the record of saying that And which is legally binding but yeah being a crime writer makes you think a lot about How one would get away with murder? But I think by and large it's hard to get away with one because to be a murderer in the first place get away with murder. But I think by and large it's hard to get away with one because to be a murderer in the first place something has to have gone wrong with your logical thinking and so you wouldn't be in the sort of, unless you're an absolute psychopath, you wouldn't be in the place where you were able to think in that way and if you are a psychopath then as always their fatal flaw is they tell

you that they've murdered somebody because they need to be seen as clever. So listen it's hard to get away with murder but logic you know as a exercise yes you could. I think in in real life I think it it might be slightly harder but if anyone could do it it'd be Professor Dame Sue Black. I love it honestly there's so many questions that make me think oh we should just do a whole episode on this. Yes, thank you so much. Do keep them coming in, in their infinite variety. Exactly that. There is no question too weird for us. I probably will regret saying that. Yeah, I was going to say, maybe.

Actually, there's a whole section of questions that are too weird for us. But, you know, as long as it's within reasonable bounds. There are a whole series of very, very powerful red lines, which you must not cross but apart from that there's nothing too weird. Thank God you've taken me in hand because there's actually a whole lot of things I don't want to hear from people on but please the ones that you know I will want to hear from you on could you please send them to therestisentertainment at gmail.com. Thanks everyone we'll see you next time. See you next time! See you next time!