The Rest Is Entertainment - Have We Passed Peak Kardashian?

Episode Date: February 4, 2025

Is it the end of the road for reality TV's first family? Marina gives Richard a crash course on the dizzying world of the Kardashians. Dan Brown is back. The literary phenomenon behind The Da Vinci code returns with a new book, the phenomenally successful author behind Angels & Demons, The Da Vinci Code and more returns with The Secrets of Secrets later in the year. The reception to his books hasn’t always been kind, but is the criticism fair or is it once again an example of critics and the public wanting different things? We're now just a few weeks out from the Oscars. It isn't always the best in their respective categories that win with jockeying and the politics of Hollywood playing a major role. Listen for the inside track on the PR plan to win an Oscar statuette. Join The Rest Is Entertainment Club for ad free listening and access to bonus episodes: www.therestisentertainment.com Recommendation: Richard - Amanda & Alan's Italian Job (iPlayer) 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 🌏 Get our exclusive NordVPN deal here ➼ https://nordvpn.com/trie It’s risk-free with Nord’s 30-day money-back guarantee! ✅ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

There's so many things I want to do and see. Like redoing the basement without having to do it all myself. Or doing absolutely nothing. With a spectacular waterfall view, of course. So, I'm starting here. Investing with RBC. When it comes to reaching your goals, personalized advice and performance matter. And now, you can get $300 when you invest with RBC.

Offer ends March 3rd, 2025. Terms and conditions apply. invest with RBC. Offer ends March 3rd, 2025. Terms and conditions apply. Invest with RBC today. ["The Star-Spangled Banner"] ["The Star-Spangled Banner"] Hello and welcome to this episode of The Rest is Entertainment with me, Marina Hyde.

And me, Richard Osmond. We've just been told it's our 119th ever episode. So there's a real atmosphere of celebration in the studio. There is also an atmosphere of concern, Richard. you? Oh I'm alright yeah I've had quite a week of it I woke up the other night in pain and I had a kidney stone if anyone at home has ever had one it's the single most painful things that ever happened to me. I have had one and it is more painful than childbirth which I've had three of. The doctors kept saying it's more painful than childbirth I

can't I'm not sure I can buy this. I can't believe you're gonna argue with me about this. It was super. Yeah, I'm gonna mansplain I just I just feel that I mean, you know, it was unbelievably painful But thank you to everyone at the Charing Cross Hospital who was so great. They were always having like liquid morphine It didn't touch the sides. It was awful But then I'm believe an op and they took it out and so I just have the absolute joy of not being in pain. But literally when I was in the bed next to someone else called Osmond and I thought well this is the start of a medical malpractice drama isn't it right there that's the start of a novel. You weren't. Yeah how about that and I kept thinking we just had to just be very careful.

It's great that you were creative even in that situation. Even in that situation but honestly the staff they were unbelievable. But it is, listen, don't get kidney stones. Right at the end I said, look, what can I do to not get again? They just said, I just want to drink water. I thought, okay, I can do that. That I can do, no major lifestyle changes, just drink more water. But yeah, but listen, it's a delight to be here and be pain free.

But if at any point I pass out, it's because I have been on on an awful lot of morphine and general anesthetic in the last 24 hours. Right. Well, on that preamble. Yeah. What are we talking about? Well, we're going to talk about something else potentially painful beginning with a K. We're going to talk about those Kardashians. That's very good. Because I think they're back and the Kardashians is one of my absolute cultural blind spots. So you're going to give me a masterclass and hopefully have some people at home as to who they are, what they are, where they are currently

and what we're about to see next. Whether we've reached and maybe passed Pete Kardashian. I mean, I hope so. Don't talk to me about passing things just at the moment. We're also talking about the biggest publishing event probably the last five years. Dan Brown has just announced he's got a new novel out, another book in the Da Vinci Code series that is out in September. We're going to be talking about that, how much money it might make, what it's called, what it's about, all that kind of stuff. And Dan Brown in general, which I am fascinated by and looking forward to explaining a lot of that to me. And also we're going to talk about what is an Oscars

campaign? Which ones are running at the moment? How much money is spent on campaigning for films or actors or anyone involved in the making of films to get Oscars. How do you get yourself to the front of that horse race? Yes, absolutely. We can talk about that. Yeah. Also predicting who's going to win all of the Oscars too.

Shall we start with our friends, the Kardashians? Well, let's, let's, okay. In his farewell address in 1961, President Dwight Eisenhower coined the phrase military industrial complex. He was talking of course about the Kardashians, a sort of strike force of warlords, consumer warlords, warladies I suppose, if you will, who convinced America that its very survival depended on the exponential acquisition of skin care, shapewear, lip filler, all kinds of fashion. They are, of course, Kim, Chloe, Courtney, Kendall, Kylie, and their momager, that's the Kardashian coinage, Chris Jenner.

This is where my problem begins with all the Ks. I know. It genuinely does. I find it very, very difficult to differentiate between all of them. Kim, I know, because she was the first one, and then there was another one, and then by the time there's three,

I had zoned out, I'm afraid. I know you couldn't believe there were a couple more coming down the stairs Kendall and Kylie but we will talk about their different successes, their varying successes in a minute but they're back next week with their show The Kardashians which is made by Hulu but is available on Disney Plus and some are saying that they have passed their peak and that maybe not that the Kardashian bubble has burst because they've got many, many successful ventures and obviously they've got a big show and all that sort of thing, but there are sort of declining pop cultural force. So we're going to discuss that, but I think in order to do that, we have to go,

I'll take you on a journey. We have to say, what do they sort of signify in entertainment? And I'll start with a little bit of history because the Keeping Up with the Kardashian show was created by some people who called Mary Alice Boonim and John Murray and they had actually created first the real world on MTV. Do you remember? Which is probably the first soap opera where- The soap reality type show.

Yeah, whatever it was called, constructed reality. They lived in an apartment, they were all young and beautiful and trying to make it in New York City, which is where the first apartment was. What was interesting about the real world in lots of ways was that it sort of created a different kind of viewer to one that existed before. One who said, oh I like this form of reality more than I like fiction. It sort of created really addicted reality TV viewers. And the other great thing is that reality TV is relatively cheap to make. In fact, that can be, well, those sorts of shows are much cheaper than

making a scripted drama. Oh, much cheaper than that. And that's why that show got, why the real world got commissioned because they were thinking MTV are never going to spend like half, what would they then be in about half a million dollars an episode, but we can give it to you for about a quarter or a fifth of that. There's no writers, the sets are kind of... Yeah, they're writers but they're not, yeah, they're differently unionised writers. Well, they're basically non-unionised writers. I call them differently unionised.

And the crews are often not unionised in the same way, it makes such a huge difference to cost, which is why lots of things are filming over here in the UK these days because unionization in America people think that they can't support the costs any longer and also the production values are lower than what you would expect on you don't need to have and deliberately you don't need to shoot like 15 the coverage for everybody in the scene you can pan the camera around you know that gave it to some extent its authenticity a lot of these things always happen in writer strikes, by the way. There is this whole alternative timeline that Trump and the Kardashians are completely the fault of the Writers Guild of America who were on strike in 2007.

And everyone is looking for kind of content and the apprentice becomes much bigger than it might have been otherwise. And the Kardashians... It's always writers, isn't it? It's always writers. Yeah. So there were all these people. She turned up in, she was a sort of,

I can't remember what Kim's job was even at the time. She rearranged people's closets and she turned up to do Paris Hilton's one day. But there were lots of these reality shows, things like The Hills, The Osborne's, and they were big. The Osborne's was Sharon and the Osborne's. Sharon and all their children.

The Hills was Jimmy Hill and his wife. Yeah. They were kind of like a phenomenon in themselves and families were great for them because they have all those ready-made dynamics and reasons why you might be together because you're always wanting it to look kind of, and you want to shoot it in the same place. And if you all happen to live in the same house, but lots of families fizzled out, but the Kardashians don't, and I'm going to discuss why they don't just change TV.

They actually change business, which I think is really fascinating. We just said sometimes they changed America. Yeah. I don't know if, yeah, I guess they, yeah, they did in lots of ways. I mean, a lot of women will tell you they are singly the reason why curvaceousness and things like that came back into fashion. Um, and for so long people were sort of, you know, the incredibly thin look and they would compare something completely different.

So in some ways that made people love curves in a different way. So I say that from the female side of things, they have changed it in a really significant way, but they change how people buy things. And I tell you, they did it because they were, whether you call them all digital natives, because maybe just they were social media natives. People realized that social media was sort of a thing. The iPhone also launched in 2007, which is quite significant. So writer's strike plus iPhone plus Kardashian equals future. Yeah, it's the perfect storm. And so lots of people would hire a social media team and think, oh, we'll do one for

the socials. They sort of put it out there. Something you had to do, sort of like you had to tick it off the list. Yes, whenever you were making TV in that decade and in the early 2010s, there would always be a bit at the end where you say, can we just do two minutes just for something for socials and everyone going no. And now, of course, I mean, that's all that's like, can we start can we do something with socials before we do the actual show? Because that's that's that's where all our money is coming from.

Exactly. And that the Kardashians understood that somehow instinctively, where others didn't, that they needed to be unmediated stars and their businesses would become much more valuable and that they would be valuable to other businesses by just making themselves completely accessible and I got I remember a friend of mine not that long after that saying to me I mean if King Kim Kardashian just tweeted about my company I could like sell it tomorrow and now that seems quite obvious because it seemed you can see these huge market moves. So what they did,

they made a sort of lack of privacy aspirational. And the show was very important to those businesses. You needed plot lines to kind of drive the selling of all of those things. And it became incredibly successful. And people had never sort of seen, it seemed tacky to open your life up like that, but then they were becoming moguls.

What is that fascinating thing of authenticity, which I think is at the heart of the last 15 to 20 years of culture, where I think to an older generation that these shows seem shallow and they seem like artifice. And actually, if you watch them, they sort of are, but they're also sort of not because even in their artifice, they're very, very revealing. And people always say, oh, Big Brother, always just nonsense in this because it's constructed. But I think you learnt more about human beings from big brother than you would have done from one of those, you know, classic 1970s documentaries, people were saying, Oh, the

BBC made these beautiful crafted documentaries, but of course they're made in the edit suite and they're very editorialized. And actually the sort of raw footage of people's lives, even though you know, it's then been through, you know, a kind of glossy edit, there's something about it that you know, has a truth to it, which people were not getting from the media they were getting before things like the Kardashians. That might be an unfashionable view, but I think there is a genuine authenticity in the artifice of what these people are doing. Absolutely. And they were reacting to the same things. They were talking about pop culture

in the same sort of way. But for all their sort of kind of hypersexualized selves, they did, they do make money off the female gays, the Kardashians. That's where all their money has come from. So if we have a look at their businesses and how they're all doing right now, Kim is by far the most successful. The reason she's most successful is this business she has called Skims, which is like shapewear, underwear, some loungewear. This is worth literally billions. It's hugely successful. Skims, I mean, that's terrible. It's going to go to IPO very soon I should think,

and pretty soon and it will do very well. However, I do think that I have felt in my waters, and you can look at all these kind of in prep page impressions and things like that, that it has gone down her sort of presence as a cultural, you know, as someone who can break the internet. I'm not sure she's broken the internet in a while now things like the Met Gala last year She was wearing she had a very small waist and I suppose that was supposed to be shocking but she was wearing a cardigan Over her dress. I was like, sorry boring. You're not there for that You're there to be in you know patient zero of a Zempik in Marilyn Monroe's old dress or in some you know

That one dress has made to look like she's just coming out of water or whatever It was these kind of shocking things cardigan with a K though, I hope. Yeah, it was a cardigan with a K, I hope. She's there to kind of create unignorable red carpet moments and that's how she's got into high fashion. She's got a makeup brand that's not doing altogether particularly well. Ken. Yeah, it's called SKKN.

I didn't even, I mean, that's enough. SKKN. Yeah. Kendall. Now Kendall, she's been the highest paid model in the world for the last six years. The original supermodels are still more famous even than Kendall. You know, one of the family's some of parts, she's more of a thing, but she's not. So it's like being the world's most famous snooker player now. You think, listen, I get it, but it's not like being the world's most famous snooker player in the 1980s. It's not like being Linda Evangelista back then.

Okay, so Kendall Jenner would be like Stephen Henry. Yeah Kendall yeah I mean she's like Stephen Henry. Okay gotcha so Kim Kim is Steve Davis, Kendall is Stephen Henry, finally I'm getting it. Yeah I should have done it this way. Who's Willy Thorne? Let's come to Kylie. Okay now Kylie Cosmetics that was huge when that launch people I think falsely said she's the first self-made billionaire in that family. Kylie Cosmetics is huge. It has not kept pace with its original kind of mad growth. And if you look at all the brands that are super mega big are Selena Gomez's Rare Beauty and tearing it all up now is Hailey Bieber. She's got something called Road. They're not necessarily overtaking Kylie at the moment, but all the momentum is with people like that.

And is Haley Bieber related to Justin Bieber? She is the wife of Justin Bieber. But Selena Gomez was in a relationship with Justin Bieber. Yes, and that's why it's taken so long for Haley's line to get accepted by Sephora because rare beauty is a big deal. I can't believe I'm getting into this now. So Justin Bieber's been married to the two biggest cosmetics moguls. He hasn't been married, he was not married to Selena Gomez. I gotcha.

Yeah, I mean, yes. There's something about him though. He must have a head of a skincare routine in the morning. Oh, he's got a regime, I'm sure. Absolutely. A regime, that's what I'm talking about, a routine. Come on, man. It's 2025.

Now Courtney, Courtney Kardashian, she's got these gummies. Gummies is a huge bubble. All this pho-Zempic gummies and all these sort of things. So that's doing quite bubble. All this phosempic gummies and all these sort of things. So that's doing quite well. Phosempic? Yeah, phosempic. Every single time you say a word, I think, well why don't we just do that as a whole item?

What is phosempic? There's a number of things that claim to be phosempic. Okay. Okay. And finally Chloe. I mean if this was Thunderbirds, she'd be out there pointlessly in Thunderbird 5, Chloe. I'm sorry to say. Bless her. So she's Willy Thne. God bless him. She's really Thorne. Out there doing a job that a laptop could do. This is Thunderbirds 5 not Willy Thorne. Yeah. And she's got sort of a denim range and so on.

Aww. And Chris, it doesn't matter that like Chris, Chris's cleaning products line never really gets off the ground. So Chris is the mum. The mum. Because Chris takes like 10% of everything, the momager. so what does it matter? That's why he's got so many kids. Yes, she's really got them all working for her. And actually perhaps Kim is becoming a bit of a momager herself to North, which is... That makes sense. Yeah, I would not put my daughter on the stage, but you can't tell the Kardashians. So is North now, who was her child with Kanye? Yeah, one of them, yeah.

One of them. She's got four with him. Wow. Yeah. So behind. So there is a sort of sense that whilst they have these businesses and they're all doing pretty well, I think they are slightly declining as a kind of cultural force. And I suppose the question is why?

First of all, there's only a limited number of lines of products that those people can sell you and they've all slightly started to cannibalise each other. It's like, I'm doing a skincare range now, I'm doing whatever. They should have like carved it up. Yeah, there's only so many things that can be wrong with women at any given time that they can be trying to fix for money. But what you said earlier about it being a kind of authenticity, I think that was really important. But I now feel that younger people are looking at them and they don't see the same authenticity.

I don't think they are natives to the platforms that are totally in ascendancy now, which are YouTube and TikTok. And there's a different kind of authenticity there that is at play. The Kardashian show comes out months after the event. We've seen them go to the Ambani wedding in India India and now we're going to see it many months later you know time in the Kardashian universe is a very odd thing and so you're going to go back and see

what was happening backstage but that all just feels so yes so I think for television television they felt authentic but yeah now television in itself feels like an artifice and I mean absolutely and that it's been so carefully edited and it's not you know you not that you did it yesterday afternoon it seems bizarre that we're going back to hear what they felt about things that happened months and months ago of course they've been at the top for a very long time and other people do come along yeah I'm not saying other people do come along and have you know appeals to people and appeals to demographic and you know as you say

learn to use different media in different ways so it would be impossible to really stay at the top for much longer. Yeah, and look at their ages. They're getting older and they're not the same. Aren't we all? Aren't we all? And they're not plugged into those same things. But I do think that there's, you know,

it's interesting that they don't have some, none of them has some huge podcast that everyone is obsessed with. Hasn't Chloe got a podcast? Yeah, but it's not, but it doesn't make waves like Call Her Daddy or any of those ones, or obviously all the loads of the men's ones. It just doesn't do it in the same way people are looking for different type of authenticity and a different type of chat. Is one of them dating Timothy Chalamet? Yes, that is actually the most thing that any of them has done in a while. That's Kylie. Yeah, is it? Yes. Now that plotline is helpful to her and to her because he is probably the number one young movie star as We've discussed before so that sort of helps

But they sort of need more plot lines that knit them into the stories that everyone is talking about They all of these things which many of us would think is a really horrible way to lead your life It has just been dollar signs for them all the way clever in a way a way is the Trump trick as well, which is write whatever you want about me, I'll give you something else tomorrow. Yeah. And everything slides off you eventually. It's, you know, you either do nothing or everything and they choose to do everything. Yeah and they've monetized it to an unbelievable level and I suppose the ones that, you know, have particular aspirations, someone like Kim, she wants to be seen as we we all see, even like someone like David Beckham, all of these types of people, they want to be seen

in the end. The only thing that matters is if people see them as business people. They feel that that's when you're taken seriously, is when you're seen as a business, as a corporation. And it's really interesting how many of these people work in these insecure professions, and actually they feel like when people think I'm a mogul then I will have arrived. Yeah it's really true to go from yeah fame to CEO is the seems to be the journey that everyone wants to go on these days. Yeah absolutely it's prestige and the way they talk about that you know in the way that even someone like you know to go back to the rock in the way that the rock talks

about everything because he wants people to think he's a sort of you know a tech boss. I think a lot of that comes from obviously what we talked before about celebrities going to very rich people's parties and if you're Kim Kardashian and you're in a situation where you go like I can get a million dollars for a tweet and you then meet a guy who just sold a data analysis company for 400 million dollars and you're like you can set a business and someone give you 400 million dollars they suddenly go oh there's there's a way I can make much more money than what I'm doing now. And they immediately go, okay, I need to set up a business.

And more importantly, I then need to sell that business. That seems to be, that seems to be the route that most people take. Actually, Kim launched a private equity company, but she's now sort of stepped away from it. I don't think that one really worked out. Um, and so this show is back on this day on, on Thursday, the sixth thank you. Cause genuinely I'm the weather I'll remember

it all but but certainly the snooker thing helps and and Kylie going out with Timothy Chalamet means she sort of is now Ronnie O'Sullivan. Yeah, oh yeah, completely excellent done. Shall we go to some adverts? Let's do that. Welcome back everybody. I am filled with suspense because Dan Brown has a new book out and I would love you to talk to me about it, Richard. I mean, Dan Brown so much more, but he's my sort of Kim Kardashian. Dan Brown. Yeah, I got a call from Penguin a couple of months ago said, yeah, we've got something we need to tell you. I was like, oh no, what's this? And they said, yeah, just next year, there's going to be a lot of our resources going behind this. Dan Brown's got a new book out. I said,

oh, good. I quite like Dan Brown. But they were sort of saying that this, and they've been keeping it secret for ages, and they released this week that Dan Brown's new book is out. It hasn't released a book for a long time. It's another of his Da Vinci Code books. I love the title, it's hysterical. The title, see I'm trying to come up with a title

for my new book at the moment, and it is difficult, but it makes you realize you don't really have to try that hard. I don't mind the title. Everybody, everybody in the industry is sending WhatsApps about this being a terrible title. I don't mind it at all. I love it. I'm an ironist.

It's the most Dan Brown title you could possibly think of. It's called the secret of secrets. I don't mind it. The secret to top all secrets rather than secrets themselves have some secrets. And I'm about to reveal them. I've frequently seen him reuse the same word in one sentence. So I don't see why he can't do it in a title. So listen, it's coming out in September.

It's going to sell, you know, he's the biggest selling adult author of all time or since records began is hard to say whether... Is it on the same day as your book? It is not the same. I think we're out two weeks after, but there's certainly going to be an interesting battle in September. I really hope you beat him. Where I've got to go head to head with Dan Brown, which will be an interesting one.

I'm dying for that. We're going to cover every cough and spit of that on this podcast. Well, he'll be, listen, he'll be over here doing all sorts of media and all sorts of things. They're going to throw an awful lot of money at this. They're releasing it simultaneously in, I think, 20 different territories. It's quite rare with books. Normally it'll come out in America or in the UK, slightly different times, but this is

coming out everywhere on exactly the same day. So like a big worldwide launch. And if you bear in mind that the lost symbol, one of his Robert Langdon books sold over a million hardbacks in one day in America alone. This is a Prince Harry numbers. They really are. It's a huge bonanza for Penguin. It's a huge bonanza for booksellers as well. So it's really it's genuinely good news for booksellers when something like this comes along that gets people into bookshops. It's like the adult version of JK Rowling has come out with a book. As to what we think of Dan

Brown, as to why he sells so many books, it's a very interesting question. Can I take you through the plaza of this new one? Yes. This is exciting. It has similarities to some of his other ones. Robert Langdon, our hero, played by Tom Hanks, of course, in the films, who is a... What does he do? He's a Harvard symbologist. Harvard symbologist, exactly what it is. One of the many Harvard symbologists. He is in Prague for a conference to see his girlfriend who

is hot. She's called Catherine Solomon and she is a noted noetic scientist. Noetic is the mind contemplating itself. Exactly that. She's an expert in the art of consciousness and the understanding of the mind. But she's just written a manuscript. He loves that. That is a real trope of his, that sort of sciency. He loves where science meets mysticism is essentially his, that's his sweet spot. She is about to release a manuscript, which is about to send waves through the world, not just of science, but of religion as well, which you might think would make her a target for a number of different people.

Indeed, she gets kidnapped. But if I know the religions, they probably all want to take her out. They all want to take her out. Her book, her manuscript, contains startling discoveries about the nature of human consciousness and threatens to disrupt centuries of established belief. She and her manuscript disappear. Wow, I hope that doesn't come out on the same day as yours. She and her manuscript disappear. I don't know how the manuscript is disappearing because you

would have that backed up somewhere. She's not writing it with a quill, like carrying it with her. Well isn't she? He does write artifacts as well. I know but she's writing for a publisher. There's no way the publisher hasn't asked to see any of it. You know, but they assume that her, but I mean, she's writing a for a publisher. There's no way the publisher hasn't asked to see any of it. You know, she's got an advanced Katherine Solomon. Please let's not get into another commissioning process round. But I'm just saying if you're a noetic scientist, you're not like, and you've written a book, someone's giving you some money. You've had to provide them with some materials.

But if you say one word, anyway, I don't know how the manuscript is appearing. Dan would have dealt with it. There'll be something where she won't have shown the publishers because it's what she's writing is too dangerous or whatever. Although she would not have been paid. That's what I like to say to people when I'm late on a deadline. It's too dangerous. She disappears.

Langdon then himself is hunted by chilling assailant sprung from Prague's most ancient mythology. Oh, I thought you were going to say jail. No, it's most ancient. How's he? How's he done that? Then how's he come out the pages of that? sprung from Prague's most ancient mythology. Oh, I thought you were going to say jail. No, it's from most ancient jail. It's sprung from mythology. How's he done that then? How's he come out the pages of that mythology?

Sprung from the, well, we will find out. See, that's the thing about it. The Da Vinci Code sold 18 million copies. This is a guy, by the way, who started off as a musician, and he came to Hollywood and he wanted to be a singer-songwriter, and he did an album about synthesizer versions of animals and you know he would write songs and this that or the other. Another frustrated artist. Another frustrated

artist. He goes on to do some really bad stuff, I'm joking of course. His father was a maths professor and his mother was a student of sacred music so you can see how those two things might combine in where he ended up. And so he's on holiday in Tahiti and reads Sydney Sheldon's The Doomsday Conspiracy. And he thinks, oh, I could write a book. Now, I don't, by the way... Sydney Sheldon, by the way, was a sort of like a massively popular author, you know. 60s, like big blockbuster.

Yeah, exactly. And bonkbusters. There was some sex in there. It was all like, yeah, but it was a huge popular... Super popular, twisty, turny, lots of big ideas and big thoughts. Funny you have to say who Sydney Sheldon is now but you just suddenly it just completely passes. I know one day we'll have to say it for something else. So you know he goes well I should write a thriller and by the way lots of you see that a lot with people he's a bit but you know where they just go oh actually they

weed something oh I could do that and it never really works but I think given what he'd been doing before and he he had, you know, he'd always been interested in cryptography and you know, ambigrams and all of this kind of stuff. He sets his mind to writing a book. So he writes digital fortresses, his first book, then follows that up with deception points and angels and demons, which is the first Robert Langdon book, none of them sell none of them. They said under 10,000 copies each. So yeah, absolutely nothing. It's just not so he continued his teaching clearly written books and people want the second one and the third one, but nothing is sold. And then the Da Vinci code came out

where everything seemed to coalesce and everything came together. And people discovered Robert Langton and people loved this kind of breakneck thing. So all his books essentially follow the same pattern or all the Robert Langton books, which is a sort of 24 hour chase around the world where science and religion meets and secrets and you know, incredible locations and codes and yeah, all that kind of malarkey some of which I have to say I do as well. That's what he did. And that's, you know, that was the huge success of that book, I say 80 million copies sold 250 million copies of all his books now, because of course, those first three books, which had sold none, suddenly they're all selling tens of millions as well. And it's fair to say

the most successful author of the 21st century, probably the most polarizing author of the 21st century as well, because a lot of people do not have a lot of time for his prose style. No, but I would say that I read the Da Vinci Code just because it's not the sort of book I would normally read at all, but I just thought I must read this for no, if there's anything that's a phenomenon, I think I must take it. That's when books really, really go, when you have to read it because everyone else has an opinion on it. Yeah.

But something I would say about him, which is that I think he is a bad writer, but I think he is a brilliant storyteller. And you can't, it can be, you can have that complete sort of divergence and interesting to me anyway, that you can have one without the other. And I, you know, okay, well, he's a bad writer, obviously he can get sentences out and do all of that. But as I say, you know, often I remember going through paragraphs thinking he honestly used this adjective three times in this one paragraph, but it doesn't sort of matter because the story is really, really good. I even think that, like, tell me who the character of Robert Langdon is. He

doesn't have a character but it reminded me of something else which again I absolutely love Line of Duty. Line of Duty is amazing, it's so propulsive, you know you're addicted, you can't win each episode episode but you tell me, please tell me what this character of Steve Arnett is okay. Well he doesn't really have a character, he is I don't, he's trying to get the job done. He's amazing. He's got a waistcoat. Maybe he's addicted to Neurofen, right?

What's her character? What's Vicky McClure's character? No nonsense, gets the job done. I mean, maybe Adrian Dunbar, he's got more of a character, but it doesn't matter. And I think it is a brilliant, brilliant show. And it is so, you get completely involved in it and the stories and whatever, no matter how outlandish.

So it's interesting to me that not, you know, the thing is always like to create characters and everything else will follow. I don't think Robert, I mean Robert Langdon, what he's got a Mickey Mouse watch, he's claustrophobic, all of these things are just sort of things. He likes fit women. Yeah. He likes saving fit women. Yeah. That's his favorite and anagrams. But Dan Brown does actually something that you do quite a lot, but also, no, lots of other people do it, is labels or brand names or things like that go all the way through the text and you always have seen them. And I think he understands to some extent, and sometimes people will

take the piss out of it, I think it really, it does bring something. When you do it, I find it absolutely hilarious because I know what all of them mean. And I find it hysterical, the idea of the notes for the footnotes for the Chinese translation. Explaining what a lot of the bonus is and what a twix might be. Or even waitress is. What's diet limits? Yeah, but I love all of that. And I think that actually, I'll tell you what other sort of great storytellers, Judith Krantz did it a lot, E.L. James does it a lot, all those sort of, it instantly

brings people in and it is a popular way of writing. So to me, it's really fascinating that that central character, I don't really believe he even has a character and I don't think you can give people a Mickey Mouse watch and say that's it. But it doesn't matter because the stories are so completely compelling. It's one of the few books I've ever bought

three times the Da Vinci Code, because I bought it many, many years ago and then I was on a train journey down to the South Coast and I hadn't bought it with me and but I was really really enjoying it so much I bought it again at W.A. Smith's at Victoria Station so I could read it and then I read it again a couple of years ago because I wanted to see what it is that he did yeah I just I just wanted to take a look as I do short chapters he has quite short chapters I just wanted to take a look at the thing and yeah he listen he's not a prose

stylist but just everything, everything is going in the same direction all the time. And it's incredibly, the momentum is incredible. And it's going there fast. Yeah, exactly. Lots of people write books like him. Lots of people write books like him, but no one sells like him. So he is doing something different to the other people who write like him.

Something in what he does is sticking to people in a way that- And what is it? Did you work it out when you're looking at it? No, I think... And if you did, you wouldn't tell us. No, of course not. Of course I would. I think it's sort of obvious, which is there's no, there's never any let up. You know, these things are in 24 hours. In the Da Vinci Code, he has to invent a plane that didn't exist yet in order to get his character from America to Rome in enough time that he could still fit this thing within 24 hours. Everything has to be as quick as it possibly can be. So you're

just not ever given a second. There's no sort of meditations on character that might be the odd thing about, you know, the heroine's father died or something like that, but there's no sort of long language. It's like an action film, you know, what do we really think about Keanu Reeves' character in Speed? We don't necessarily know about it. We just know that he's the guy who's maybe gonna save the day. So the question is, how well is this gonna sell? And it's a very similar question to the Kardashians really, which is, he's the master of all he surveys.

And certainly, when he came along, he absolutely bestowed the world a publishing like a colossus. And all the bets that Penguin are making worldwide are, is that he's going to do it again. My suspicion would be that he is gonna do it again. My suspicion would be that he is gonna do it again. My suspicion would be that that brand is still big enough and strong enough.

And the Da Vinci Code of Brand is still big enough and strong enough that this will be absolutely huge. Certainly every single, I've talked before a little bit about when a book is this big, that actually the bookshops and the book industry becomes complicit in making it a big hit as well,

because the bookshops wanna have a great Christmas. And if they can get this book selling half a million hardbacks in the UK and five million hardbacks in America then it's very very good news for everybody. I wonder whether it feels also that it is even more suited to its times because hasn't the idea of conspiracism become a bigger thing even since we all live in a world of conspiracism and the need to think that everything is being Managed and puppeteered and that all these different organizations are kind of conspiring is that's Far more than when the Da Vinci came came out has become like part of the daily warp and weft of politics It's interesting that I wonder if that might actually work against him a tiny bit in that when he was writing it

It all felt very sort of mystic and exciting and oh this is different and this hidden arcane knowledge and now our entire life is about people telling us about hidden arcane knowledge and we do their own research on youtube we know the nonsense of most of it and whether it works against him whether he's able somehow to weave the modern version of conspiracy theories and what people believe in and how they believe whether he's able to weave that into it you know the good news for Dan Brown is because these books take place over a very short period

of time, there is not a lot of room for reflecting on the world. You know, Robert Langdon does not have a lot of time to think, you know, it's interesting how the online rights are being radicalized, isn't it? And how the online left have missed that boat. I don't think there'll be a lot of that because I think essentially he'll be clinging

to the top of a train getting out of Prague and he'd be more worried about bridges. He must be knocking on a bit, mustn't he now? You'd have thought so. I assume, like George Smiley, he's not being aged particularly, and like my characters, they are staying for obvious reasons. I'm not aging them too quickly either. It's a fascinating thing and some people can't bear Dan Brown's writing and I absolutely

get it. But I just think, you know, there's a reason why you sell that many books, you know, there's a reason why you sell that many books. And he is, you know, JK Rowling just about outsells him as an author, but not by much. But for adult authors, he is the biggest of the biggest of the biggest. And it's, I think I'm excited to be going up against it as well. That'll be quite fun in England to have my book up against Dan Brown's book. That's quite cool. and I wouldn't have thought of that a few years ago. So I'm excited about that. I mean will I read it? I will. But have you read all the Da Vinci books? No I haven't. I'll catch up. It will be fine. It will probably all be dealt with in a couple of

repetitive paragraphs at the start. Did you draw my attention to Michael Deacon's review of Dan Brown? It's one of my favourite. I love Michael Deacon's review of one of my it's one of my favorite I love Michael Deacon He is my friend and it's one of my it's one of the great pieces of Read a couple of bits of it Michael Deacon my mind with it. So this is this is Michael Deacon He wrote it in the Telegraph. This is Yeah renowned author Dan Brown woke up in his luxurious four-poster bed in his expensive 10 million pound house and immediately he felt angry Most people would have thought that the 48 year old man had man had no reason to be angry. After all, the famous writer had a new book coming out. But that was the problem. A new book meant inevitable attack on the

rich novelist by the wealthy wordsmiths' fiercest foes, the critics. Renowned author Dan Brown hated the critics. Ever since he had become one of the world's top renowned authors, they had made fun of him. They had mocked best-selling book The Da Vinci Code, successful novel Digital Fortress, popular tome Deception Point, money-spinning volume Angels and Demons, and chart-topping work of narrative fiction The Lost Symbol. And it goes on. The critics say his writing was clumsy, ungrammatical, repetitive and repetitive. They said it was full of unnecessary tautology. They said his prose was swamped in a sea of mixed metaphors. For some reason they found something funny in sentences such as, his eyes went white,

like a shark about to attack. They even say my books are packed with banal and superfluous description thought the five foot nine man. He particularly hated it when they said his imagery was nonsensical. It made his insect eyes flash like a rocket. It's so brilliant by the way. He does write like that Dan Brown. Yeah. It's a very particular way of writing but you know I mean just watch someone read it. I want to read the phenomenon one on if it becomes hugely successful in September, which I think you're quite right, it probably will.

The Secret of Secrets. The Secret of Secrets, so brilliant, I love it. I don't mind it, listen, I don't mind it, The Secret of Secrets, yeah, so that is out on September the 9th this year, everywhere in the world at the same time. And I'm out two weeks later, so may the Lord have mercy on my soul.

Moving on from that and ahead of the Oscars which are coming up in very early March, we're going to ask now what is an Oscars campaign? You might sometimes read about this that oh there's people they're running a really really intense campaign. Well that's it we're at the stage now where you can see the runners and riders and there's about three or four films that are going to be up for everything but it seems like people coalesce around particular films, but that's not an organic process That's something that a lot of money and time is spent on I mean we are committed on this podcast to bringing you the horror behind the smiles and This story is no exception. It's very interesting. The fires obviously that have ravaged LA, it's very interesting because all the studios have donated money to the recovery effort. Each studio of the major big

studios have donated about 10 or 15 million each and some have donated less than that. And somebody pointed out it adds up to the marketing budget of one Tacle movie. But actually, I cannot explain to you how much more will be spent on just campaigning for this year's slate of movies for the Oscars, probably up to half a billion. Really? Yeah, because it's a lovely town, isn't it? Because it adds such a lot to the back end of those movies, should they win? Actually, it doesn't do it. The whole thing is we'll get to that in the end. but let's talk about Oscar campaigning. Who you're trying to reach, you're trying to reach 10,000 Academy voters and you can't contact them directly. And they are people who work in the industry, mainly in Hollywood?

Mainly in Hollywood. There are various rules about what you can and can't do. In phase one, which is pre-nominations, you are selected by your peers. So actors will nominate actors, directors will not, and they don't nominate directors and so on. So for a big long list of movies. Yeah, but members of the acting branch will nominate their top five choices for their status,

whatever it is, but you don't need the whole academy to like you, and in fact, you can actually do it with only a small fraction of people. So it's interesting. The modern way of Oscar campaigning was invented, regrettably, but actually by Harvey Weinstein because he couldn't really compete. Miramax actually became an indie giant but had all these sort of great films but they couldn't compete with the big studio movies because they simply didn't have that same money. So he started this thing of sending out screeners to everybody, saying that actors had to be completely available for re- it's a really long period. So last

year Jeffrey Wright, who won for American fiction, said it was absolutely brutal because you, you, you are expected to be available for effectively months to do this. I mean, for far longer- And to do what? For interviews, for appearances? Well, we shall get to this. I mean, Daniel Day-Lewis, Harvey Weinstein made him go to go and appear before Congress for My Left foot and talk about to Americans about disabilities. Okay. Which, but just he doesn't actually have. You have to do, okay, so what do they spend

this money on? Yeah. Hospitality is a big part of it. Wining and dining voters, all that sort of stuff. Community influencers, lunches, you can't just give them food. So the stars will have to do a panel at the lunch. Okay, so it can't just be like an open bribe which says come along to this dinner and we'll feed you. Would you want to come along to an event where Jeffrey Wright is talking to Percival Everett?

Yeah, exactly. Fancy literature, and I'm talking they might even produce a coffee table book about their movie and mail it to thousands of people, indirectly, always indirectly. Art exhibitions, costume exhibits. If you ever see any of these things, it's not like, oh, that's so nice, they just wanna share their costumes from the favorites. Like, no, they want the favorite to win best picture, or they want, you know, whatever it is.

The favorite, Olivia Colman won best actress that year, they sent actors in powdered wigs to personally deliver cakes to awards bloggers. So you can you can contact as many awards bloggers and people like that as you like and there is a sort of financial bonus system. We're going down all the things that cost money. This is how they're going to spend half a billion on this. There's a bonus system for nominations and everyone from you know the publicist to the awards consultant. So now we get on

to awards consultants which is a big part of the spend. They right from the publicist to the awards consultant. So now we get onto awards consultants, which is a big part of the spend. Right from the development phase, by the way, of the movie, they are thinking, okay, especially with a sort of determinedly prestige project, they're thinking, the awards consultant will say, well, which festival should you have your, you might be able to open Venice,

or you might be able to open Cannes, or you should definitely be in competition at this film festival. And to give it a certain prestige because that's the key thing with an Oscar film. There are a lot of films come out and sometimes you'll see amazing films and then they get anywhere near the nominations. So you see other films which seem mediocre-ish and they do, but it's getting that thing of prestige, it buzzes in its word of mouth and it's making something feel organic and from the ground up it's faking that. But also like pre-prestige like, oh I see it was in competition at Cannes or whatever

like that. And you might have up to, you know, a lot of people, more than a dozen people in a war room working on just one film. And the talent themselves, even at the stage of signing on, will say, what are you going to do to support my movie? Which basically means, how much money are you going to throw at getting me my first or third or whatever Oscar? And then okay, you've got to pay for the talents. You've got all the fashion all the Obviously, there's so many businesses by the way that depend upon the award season campaigning fashion is completely

Symbiotically entwined in it and labels can be made during award season like someone like last year Loewe became absolutely huge and everyone was talking about it was most interesting red carpet looks etc etc so it can be a really big thing for them. It's interesting that thing that there was a trope a few years ago why do they ask women what they're wearing on the red carpet and this is sexist they don't ask men and but a lot of it was well they contractually they had to because they've been given this incredible thing and a huge amount of money and they had to say what they were wearing because that's what they have been asked to do that's an industry isn't it? Yes oh it's a massive that's a massive industry but and the funny enough the more wide open an oscar race is and I think

in lots of ways this year's is wide open there's no sort of obvious not everyone's coalescing around one thing as you say they do. I'm going to tell you who's going to win every single Oscar. Okay, that's exciting. I'm looking forward to you telling me this. Okay. But the more money is spent because they think they're in with it. And there are, as I say, these whole, there are whole awards focused industries and Netflix, there's such rubes.

When they had their first movie, Roma, that Alfonso Cuarón, that they thought was going to maybe get an Oscar, they just was like, okay, well, let's just buy an awards consultancy. So they bought an entire agency. Phase one, the individual categories can nominate, but then in phase two, which we're in now, the whole, the entire academy can vote. On the short list.

So the specialists have put the short list together and now the whole academy votes on those short lists. Yeah, but all of these processes completely open to various forms of corruption and have been quite obviously in the past. Excellent. Let's talk about negative campaigning. Negative campaign, which you can, I'm going to shock you. Harvey Weinstein was a big fan of negative campaigning. But smear campaigning, just saying there was the time when the producer of the Hurt Locker just sent out an email saying, Oh, you know, please bet on our little movie or something over over a $500 million movie, which was taken

as obviously a reference to Avatar, which was of course directed by the ex husband of the director of the Hurt Locker. Yeah, luckily he didn't get into that. So negative campaigning is big and we can talk about who I think is being negatively campaigned against in a minute. Rogue campaigns, this can also happen. Melissa Leo for The Fighter a few years ago, she thought, I'm not getting any coverage for this. So she took out all of her own adverts to push her performance in the room and she did actually get best supporting actress.

Now the most controversial recent one was Andrea Reisbrough in 2023. She was in this movie called Four Leslie, which is about a sort of alcoholic mother. It took $27,000 at the box office, which is not good as listeners to this podcast will know. However, screenings for this movie once it came around to awards time were hosted by Charlize Theron, Jennifer Aniston, Gwyneth Paltrow, who else? Sarah Paulson. There were all these social media posts by lots and lots of actors, Edward Norton, Susan Sarandon, blah blah. There were so many of them. Even Cate Blanchett. The publicists were like, this is just like a grassroots effort. Unfortunately, some of them did use the same wording. It's a little

bit like that Victor Anichabee tweet, do you remember? Oh, the football tweet, yeah. Yeah, the football one where he, this is a Sunderland striker who wants, just his agent had obviously sent this in and the thing he tweeted was can you tweet something like unbelievable support, yes, he just tweeted the whole thing. So they unfortunately didn't reword whatever they were told and that caused quite a big scandal. What was behind that, money or friendship?

She's a fantastic actress. Obviously for someone to be included, someone else doesn't make it. And there was a lot of hassle that Danielle Deadweiler and Viola Davis would therefore didn't make the nomi- not therefore, we don't know. We can't quantify it, but didn't make the nominations. And everyone was like,

oh, look at all these white people campaigning for another white actress. It was a really tricky one. First of all, it drew attention to that someone was saying, oh, look, she only needs 218 actors to put her forward, because there are 1302 actors in the acting branch, and then she can be nominated. And so there was all this sort of open stuff about how you were voting. Christina Ricci put an Instagram post up saying that it was ridiculous that surprise nomination means that actually tons of money wasn't spent on her because it's so you know, you're the fact is you get so

few surprise nominations now because because they buy the machine by the machines are successful and they work and it's very, very difficult. I mean, the amount of money spent getting some of the other people on that list, a best actress nomination is way more than the movie that Andrea Risebrough was in. So they were furious that Andrea Risebrough did it for no money. Yes, but it was, I mean it's difficult. To what end all of this happens, I don't know.

I mean the popular thing was, oh my god it adds so much to the box office. It doesn't really they don't think the most recent really in-depth studies about it are thinking it doesn't really add a lot I tell you what it does do is it boosts actor pay enormously so yeah and directors yes and directors so in terms of who's doing a campaign right now okay please can everyone just watch Timothy Chalamet for a complete unknown every single thing that he is doing currently and including maybe dating Kylie Jenner, I'm joking of course they're in love,

is a major campaign. Maybe you saw it the other week when he came to the London premiere of it he got the line bike up the red carpet and then left it there and he was really annoyed that like he was being charged for the time that he was, because he didn't return it to wherever he was supposed to anyway. He's also going all out as a sort of meme. He's quite a digital native. And so he's gone on like college football shows and been really, really knowledgeable about it. He went on Thea Vaughan's podcast, one of the podcasts that Trump went on in the campaign. So he's appealing to every single base here. In terms of who's a victim right now, I definitely think the Brutalist

is a victim of this currently. The Brutalist is getting a real backlash against it, which considering that it's made by this guy who took absolutely years to make it, really struggled to sort of get anyone to A24 board it in the end, but after it was shot, they're sort of under fire for using AI. There's something called re-speecher, which makes people speaking in, I don't know, in Hungarian sound more Hungarian. Also there's something called mid-journey that creates kind of visuals and some of the architectural drawings were done by mid-journey, which is a sort of form of AI. And that is a real takedown, I think.

That is someone else working against those movies for definite, I think. Are you now going to tell me who's gonna win the Oscars? Richard sure, of course I will but it is yeah I do think the weirdest thing is there are very few surprises and you'll see movies In the cinema that will never ever get anywhere near the Oscars because they just don't have the money spent on them and it becomes In the kind of month or two before the shortlist comes out. It becomes apparent what that shortlist is going to be So for the best picture, there's only four films in with any chance, The Brutalist, Emilia Perez and Nora, which I'd love to win and Conclave as well as an outsider. I think The

Brutalist is going to walk away with it. I think that has enough momentum. So do other people. That's why it's under fire because honestly, if you had a story of how much of a labour of love it was to get this to the screen and now everyone's going oh ai which by the way if you said ai in the old days everyone would be like oh that's interesting and now you just have to say it and it's like you're trying to kill the industry. I think that will be Brady Corbett who should probably with the best director as well whether it might scupper him I don't know but I would still I would still say that Brady Corbett might win that. The best actress is probably between Demi Moore for The Substance and Mikey Madison.

I would think Demi Moore is going to win that because I think she's you know it's one of those ones where you where people want to. Finally your turn. Oh yes. But that's life's work. She was campaigning in her Golden Globe speech when she said oh my goodness this is the first time I've won anything in 40 years. That by the way, is an Oscar campaigning moment. Yeah, 100%. Uh, equally the best male actor is, is Adrian Brodie against Timothy Chalamet. I think Adrian Brodie will win it. I think there's something about Timothy Chalamet's campaign, which is extraordinary and is amazing. And you know, he's nonstop on everything.

I think maybe he's made a tiny bit obvious. I think, but you know what I mean? So I think Adrian Brody He wants to win an Oscar. Yeah. Oh, who'd have thunk it? Listen, he's going to get one, isn't he? Eventually. But I think Adrian Brody wouldn't win that. The absolute locks where you can really make your money. It's best supporting actor, best supporting actress, because Zoe Saldana is definitely going to win best supporting actress and best supporting actor. And you wouldn't have predicted this 10 years ago, but for definite Kieran Culkin for a real pain he's absolutely going

to walk away with that um can I just say one thing where there might be there might be some good money to be made but this is only if the academy is feeling particularly cheeky and I don't think it will but you can get very good odds on Sebastian Stan to win best actor yes for as Donald Trump in The Apprentice. He's really good in it. Yeah. And that would be a very, very funny bit of trolling from, I don't know if it's trolling

or trolling. Trolling. Trolling. It's not a troll. It's like J.K. Rowling or J.K. Rowling. Yeah.

I think that would be an amazing piece of trolling from Academy members. They're not going to do that because- I mean, you can get good money. So- Got a lot of M&A business and consolidation happening, and they don't need to make him angry. So I think the Brutalist, I would think Demi Moore, Adrian Brody, and then I would think Zoe Saldana

and Kieran Culkin. One lovely one would be the Conclave screenplay as written by Peter Strawn, who's been nominated before for Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, did the Wolf Hall adaptation, like a proper British win. I think he might win that, and that would be a lovely one but those are my predictions and we can we can play them back in a few months. Please bet responsibly on entertainment award ceremonies. Oh you don't have to bet it's just it's just for fun just a bit

of fun. Recommendations Richard. Oh I'm gonna recommend and it's the third series of this but it's an absolute delight Amanda and Alan's Spanish job on BBC One you can watch it on iPlayer. It's Amanda Holden and Alan Carr doing up an old house in a Spanish village turning into a bed and breakfast this time. It's just one of those lovely shows. I mean, I quite like a home renovation show. I quite like a show that's set in foreign countries. I quite love one. But their friendship is such a delight to see. And Alan is so genuinely funny funny and Amanda so genuinely kind of unaffected and there are moments of real closeness, there's moments of gentleness, there's a lot of moments of humor and you get to see you know a little bit behind the masks of both of them so it's lovely it's like a home

improvement show, travelogue, lovely little kind of celebrity loving and they they genuinely seem like really really good friends and you genuinely you're just smiling all the way through and there was even a little tear last night. So that's a that's a lovely show. And if you haven't watched the previous episodes as well, the previous series, they're well worth it. Well, that's about us. I think we will see you again on Thursday for our Q&A edition. And if you're a member of our AAA membership club and you wanna listen ad free and so on, join us on Friday because it's 20 years

since Tom Cruise jumped all over Oprah's couch and we will be discussing the impact of that moment. You're gonna be telling me all about it. I'm really looking forward to it. And on that note, I will see you on Thursday. See you on Thursday. The End