The Rest Is Entertainment - Inside The Oasis Reunion

Episode Date: September 2, 2024

If you missed it, Oasis are back. Noel and Liam Gallagher appear to have buried the hatchet and reformed one the UK's seminal bands for a tour in 2025. Tickets for said tour sold-out but note without controversy. Richard and Marina discuss the ticketing situation and the possible reasons for the Gallagher brothers to get the band back together. 'Wolfs' starring George Clooney and Brad Pitt seems to be another flop from Apple. Why are one of the world's biggest companies still making movies? Finally this week we get into toxic fandom. Singer / songwriter Chappell Roan released a statement expressing her discomfort at the level of attention some fans believe they are entitled to. This has caused a bigger conversation within not only her own fans, but in the wider entertainment world about the access fans have, or expect. Recommendations: Marina: Beetlejuice (Streaming) Richard: Freddie Flintoff's Field Of Dreams (iPlayer) Twitter: @‌restisents Instagram: @‌restisentertainment YouTube: @‌therestisentertainment Email: [e-mail] Producer: 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! ✅ Redeem data in 1GB increments. Save by mixing to lower cost plan and supplementing with rolled data. Downgrades effective following month. Full terms at Sky.com/mobile. Fastest growing 2021 to 2023. Verify at sky.com/mobileclaims. For more information about how you can use Snapchat Family Centre to help your teenagers stay safe online visit https://parents.snapchat.com/en-GB/parental-controls Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Add your teen to your Uber account today. Hello and welcome to this episode of The Rest Is Entertainment with me Marina Hyde. And me Richard Osmond. How are you Marina? I am very well, how are you? Yeah, very well. I'm very excited about some of the things we're talking about this week. We have got quite a lot to talk about. We are talking inevitably about Oasis. Little story, heard of them? The ticketing fiasco or triumph if you somehow manage to get tickets.

And also why they're doing it, which I think the answer to which is slightly more interesting than it's been painted. Yes. We are also going to talk about toxic fandoms. Chappell-Roe has said that she has to set boundaries with her fans, which even in itself sparked a fan backlash. So we can talk about that and why things have changed. Obviously there's always been fandoms,

but why things have got so bad. And we're gonna talk about Apple and how much money they lose on movies, so why they keep making movies and will they continue to do so. Right with that let's get into it. Oasis. You may have dimly been aware of the fact that they are performing and they're going to play some concerts and on Saturday the tickets finally went on sale they had a sort of pre-sale thing on the Friday night and Saturday morning at nine o'clock was the queue for everyone to get in the queue the websites were crashing before they even went up people spent all day in

queues and then one of the particularly controversial things if you were one of the people who finally got through they did this sort of dynamic pricing thing and tickets that were supposed to be 148 pounds are suddenly 355 pounds and you've got to sort of make the decision there or then and you've been waiting for 12 hours yeah I mean let's get this clear this is Keir Starmer's second big crisis isn't it I think I mean this is huge hashtag starman must resign well right now but if this story runs for 10 days, then you can be sure people will be calling for it. I'm only slightly joking, but people were also being wrongly

accused of being bots, so they were being chucked off the cues for that. I think if we knew in the old days, like how long we would have to spend of our lives trying to prove to computers that we were not computers. I mean, how many traffic lights have you had to identify? How many like their motorbikes in this square? And is what is like the bottom of the mudguard of the motorbike? Does that count as a motorbike? I reckon I get like 10% of recaptures. I can't do them. When you get one though, the thrill. Yes, but you know what? The top of the bridge was a bridge.

Yeah, called it. Now they have said, Oasis Management, you can only resell the tickets on Ticketmaster or Twickets at face value, to which I would say good luck with that. People seem to think that this is true, even though you can already see tickets priced at thousands of pounds on ViaGoGo and StubHub and things like that. And now Oasis Management have said they will be cancelled. This is unenforceable. What are they going to do? Have endless photographic ID for every person going into Wembley Stadium?

Well that's what they threaten to do, don't they? They always say this. They always say your tickets are not transferable. You like the queue for tickets, you'll love this one. Yeah and at the end you have to watch Oasis. What a Saturday. I know your thoughts on this. No, my thought, no, listen, just before we get onto ticketing, this is my thoughts on the queue. I am a fan of Oasis, okay? I'm a man of a certain age. I get it. I was absolutely I'm a huge fan of Noel Gallagher songwriting and Liam Gallagher's voice and Their general mood and spirit. Yeah, okay. I like them as a band Richard

They're about they are and we talked about the bands This is what you get with bands. They do break up Adele can't break up with herself. That's true Although she is taking a great album. She is taking a huge break by the way. Yeah. She has said. But we'll get on to that in Toxic Fandom I suspect. Yeah. Yeah, I just wouldn't be that fussed about going to see it.

If I had to queue for like five minutes outside my local hour price, which is how you used to get tickets in the 90s, even then I'd be like, do I really want to go and see two hours of Oasis? I just listen to the records. I don't get it. I don't get the absolute obsession with it. I think there's a mania that's happened. I think we all like Oasis, but I'm not sure we all love Oasis. Well then they've done it brilliantly, haven't they? Oh yeah.

I think, okay, I think you can't create, there's a level of hype you can create. Yes. And they have actually done it quite cleverly. They were fortunate with a number of, like, there's no news events. All the newspapers were running live blogs of the ticketing story, which tells you something about their good fortune in the news grid and the news calendar, because this was sort of front page news for everything. I want to talk a little bit about that dynamic pricing, because it is bullshit.

It's really awful. Because it sounds good, dynamic pricing. It does sound, yes. It was so dynamic in our pricing. That sounds like the sort of pricing that I would like. Companies like Uber do this, and what they say they do is that when demand is high, they put the prices up, which will hopefully draw more supply

in the form of e.g. Uber drivers to the area, to which I'd say, have you ever used Uber? But anyway, here the supply is fixed, right? Wembley doesn't get magically bigger just because lots of people want to go to it on a certain day. And by the way, I'm afraid to say that the band has agreed to this because you can't do this unless the band has agreed.

So, breaking, whilst Ticketmaster deserves some of your roths, also so do Oasis Management. And Oasis. And Oasis, who will pretend they didn't know anything about it. Let's assume that Oasis Management, however tough they might be, would find it hard to persuade both Liam and Noel to agree to something they didn't want to agree to. Yeah, but would you like some more money seems to be a fairly good question. So, but to queue all day for tickets and not know how much they cost, okay, this is obviously bullshit and Lisa Nandi has...

Resign. On the brink Lisa Nandi, hanging on, has said we're going to do something about ticketing, which as you remember, we did talk about a little bit this because ticketmaster in the US are facing a massive antitrust thing and the whole Taylor Swift debacle where something similar happened in America, where by the way there is no limit on reselling, you can do whatever you like. It's much more wild west in the wild west. Now we have to say that before the election, back in the spring, they said you were going to have it so that tickets can't be resold at more than 10% above their face

value and then that was sort of watered down by the time of the manifesto I think after administrations by a group a lobby group called coalition for ticketing fairness oh the CTF yeah our friends at the CTF yeah it's a little bit like calling your tobacco lobbying group the coalition for lung health it is these are the people who work on behalf of the ticketing industry. And anyway, the manifesto commitment was quite watered down. Um, you can make it totally illegal in loads of European countries. You can only sell it at face value or just above to kind of cover your,

any incidental costs you might have had. So I think they are going to have to do something like that. Cause what the ticketing websites want to be is they don't want anyone to talk about them. What everyone has now done for two days is talk about these people and what they're like and what their practices are. They really want you to kind of be slightly pissed off at the end that you've got to pay a five pound fee or something and that's it but they've been really front and centre the story. Well I think that it's maybe, fortunately for fans, has put a lot of focus on those websites.

It's a good thing that the government might have to deal with because it's not expensive. This is not an expensive policy and people will like it. This is a cheap win. This is a cheap win. So you can be sure they will try and do something about this. Interestingly, the whole thing about the ticket prices as well, and as you say, Oasis being complicit in these things being kind of hiked up at the last minute.

Everyone has been sharing ticket stubs from the 90s when they went to see Oasis for £22, or they went to Nebworth for £30, or they saw them at the Electric Ballroom for £7. And you think, yeah, that's because you were buying the albums in the 90s. And so they were making money. Now you're not buying the albums anymore. They literally, they don't have any other way of making money from this music other than charging your load of money for tickets, which is why all tickets for all bands are now so much more expensive because there is no other way of making money. So in it, it's sort of that massive kind of overinflation of tours and of, uh,

and of tickets and of merchandise to go with it comes from necessity because having to own your own much as I stores. I mean, that Taylor Swift one that was at Wembley which yeah was so confusing getting in that you sort of felt you had to go through it legal yeah it really was the sort of obverse of exit through the gifts that you have to enter through the gift shop maybe there was another way in that I just didn't quite get it but it seemed like we all had to truth through there anyway so why are they doing it the question so that's ticketing and there's going to be lots more about that I suspect.

Maybe they will legislate, but it's upfront. We knew what was happening. Everyone's involved in it. The ticket people involved in it, Oasis are involved in it. That's the price it costs to go and see this band if you really, really, really want to go and see it. Why are they doing it? The big thing is, oh, it's for money.

Noel's had a divorce, Liam's had divorces. They have these kind of lifestyles where they have to spend an awful lot of money newsflash. I was just a loaded Oasis of really really loaded even Liam is loading. He didn't write the songs. Okay, so no is really really really Loaded so those first three albums He wrote every single song Lynn didn't write a thing until little James on standing on the shoulders of giants Liam didn't write a thing until Little James on Standing on the Shoulders of Giants, Liam didn't write a thing. The first two albums, Gary Glitter makes more money from the publishing than Liam Gallagher does because he gets a co-writing credit on there. Hello. Well that's an insult for Noel's back pocket when Benet inevitably falls apart. So Noel

definitely doesn't need the money, okay, firstly, he's got a lot already. Secondly, at some point, very, very soon, he'll be able to do the deal that Dylan has done and everyone has done where he sells the publishing rights and he'll be able to sell them for a quarter of a billion. I mean, I think it's 2025 that they're able to, isn't it? Aren't they? Isn't it somewhere like that? It's really soon.

Yeah. Yeah. When better to do the tour? Well, I mean, there is some truth in that. So they don't need the money. Noel doesn't really need to lend Liam money. Noel's not sitting there thinking, yeah listen I've got 250 million coming but poor Liam, our kid, I think the reason they're going back on tour genuinely is because they want to be back in the conversation. They had this incredible

run in the 90s, an incredible run. I mean they were so beyond huge and as four or five years of it when Everyone wanted to see them to be them to meet them. They were that every single thing they said was reported and That doesn't happen anymore to them. It's fascinating. I looked at the album charts last week So the news have been all Oasis all week So you think okay all the Oasis albums are going to smash back into the top 40. And actually three of them did. So at number three, you've got Oasis's greatest hits. And number four, you've got What's the Story, Morning Glory. And at number five, you've got Definitely Maybe. Okay, so the two smash albums from the 90s and the best of. The next album

in the chart was number 86, it would be Here Now. When we think, I'll be overplaced. Yeah. When we think of Oasis, we think of those two albums. Yeah. It's the truth. That's what we're thinking of. We think of a very particular point in time. We're thinking of a very small group of songs and listen, they went on,

they did other great songs and there's great stuff on other albums, but that's what we think about when we think about Oasis, that incredible supernova that they had and that incredible group of songs and everything beyond that we're not that interested in is the truth. Well you can see on Spotify that Fleetwood Mac is doing a million times better than you or whatever it is. Well the Oasis stats on Spotify are interesting for two reasons. Firstly this, so they get 27 million listens a month.

I love that you didn't know this because I don't know not bad at all Yeah, but radiohead get 28 million. For example, the killers get 28 million Green day 34 million chili peppers 35 million Arctic Monkeys 52 million Coldplay 81 million Okay So I waste this on Spotify the big not like super super massive big but they have that very very Concentrated group of songs that everyone went crazy for. Now the Spotify listens for their follow-up Axo, Noel Gadiga's High Flying Birds, a fan of, 1.2 million listens a month. BDI Liam Gadiga's band 112,000 listens a month. So what they've done since Oasis

doesn't put them where Oasis put them. They do not need the money. They really, really don't. Noel doesn't need money. Liam doesn't need money. They have got 90s money. They sold a lot of records and they haven't wasted all of that cash. Listen, it's nice to have money. But you're so right.

They want to be on stage every night and like slagging off Coldplay and they'll be how many journalists? Well, instead of sitting on social media, we'll actually just be in the audiences trying to take down every single thing they say and get 14 news stories every single day. And actually, obviously because of all the hype and everything, their Spotify numbers will go way up. Will go way up. Yeah, it's an addiction to the attention of the thing. And I don't mean that in a, I'm not saying they're narcissists or they're terrible people. It's just very, very natural that they've got to a sort of an age where they, they had that incredible cauldron, that huge crucible of massive,

massive fame bit by bit. It went away. And now this thing at a point where going, Oh yeah, we just sort of nice corporate gigs, don't we? And like I release a record, but then, you know, there's, there's like a quote in the Daily Mirror, but that's about it. I just remember how it used to be where just everything we did, you know, we were followed everywhere and there is something about them as celebrities, a bit like Elton John, who actually say things. Yes, exactly. They don't care and they say what they think. And again, we'll come into this intoxic fandom.

There's a reason that many, many people don't like to say anything that they think these days. They will say what they think and there will be a bracing element to that, I'm sure. Keir Starmer will go, obviously. Oh, he has to go. Well, he gets freebies all the time So I was seeing I thought he was gonna resign. Oh, no. Oh, yeah. He'll go I'll go for this if you haven't gone for this he will go to the concert. So yeah, yeah You're right should have made I think he will go and then he will resign. Yeah When it when it becomes apparent quite how much his ticket how much his free ticket should have cost? Yeah

Yeah, I'm a star. I must, Nandi must follow. Nandi must follow. Did she get free tickets for Taylor? Did she? Prince William went to Taylor's. Oh, I tell you what, two other Warring Brothers. Hold on a minute. Hold on a minute. What if out into that box on that first night. Interesting. Keep talking. Slime like stealing light there, you wouldn't believe. Two other Warring Brothers. Oh my god. Two princes.

Yeah, that's great. If I was Netflix, I'd be all over that documentary. Come on, just do it. Yeah, Noel, I guess Noel has to be the Prince William of the piece. Yes. And, and... I'm afraid he does. And Harry as Liam. Yeah.

Wow. Incredible that I haven't read this as a comment column. I've seen almost... Oh, you will. I've seen almost every other take in the whole world. Well if you do write about that this week then we have an answer to where do you get your ideas for your columns from. It was just that. But I think this is a great thing. I think it's such a lovely thing to have right in the middle of our culture.

I think Oasis are a force for good, you know, I think whatever you think about their music, they came along like an absolute rocket and you know wrote these things that people fell in love with and now people get to have all of this. But it's funny that it happened so quickly after Taylor Swift, it's almost like our generation were like, wait, wait, wait a minute, we could do that. We'd love to do that. Yeah, it's lovely in the same way that Oasis are coming back, I think because they want things to be like they used to be. I think that's why people are going as well, because they want things to be like they used to be. But I genuinely, honestly, and I'm just not a

huge fan of going to gigs. So for me, it's the greatest joy, because on Saturday morning, it was just a spectator sport, because it's genuinely what you know, things about yourself that you know, different to other people. And you're like, I absolutely get, I understand why other people do that. I understand the appeal of that. This I'm like, I don't know why you're getting your knickers in a twist over it for five hours just to go and see a gig. It's just Oasis. And as you know, who I'm a fan of, but you can just listen to the records and there will be loads of other gigs. Oh, yeah. And you know, so you can get tickets to those. They'll obviously do North America and Europe and you know, who knows how much.

Yeah, of course they will. Unless they split up on the second night. So it's... Well, exactly. Do you know, funnily enough, we had a question for the question and answers edition about when one gets paid, when one tours. And I think with Oasis in mind, because you know, it's very possible they might not make it through the tour and I've got...

Can we answer that on Thursday? On Thursday. Okay, very good. I have a detailed answer that in specific relation to Oasis and the slight risk that they might not make it all the way through the through the shows. But that's the thing I think if they were desperate for money, then you they would see the tour through to the bitter end. But you can absolutely see because they love the drama of the thing. Yeah, that's perhaps one night when they're

in Antwerp. And they think we've done 47 shows, we've got six to go. I mean, do we really need to do those other six? Wouldn't it be more fun if we had a massive fight and suddenly we're in the papers again for a year and then we can reunite again in 15 years? That's what I do, Antwerp. You heard it here first. But genuinely, this is one of those things

I think is a good new story. I think it's a really lovely thing to be happening. It brings lots of energy and good luck to the two of them as well, where they came from and what they did, what they achieved and the joy they've given. I think it's one of those stories that is just other than expensive, I think it's fun. No, it's lots of fun. Yeah, yeah. And we'll be talking about it more as it comes down the slit way.

Thank you, Noel. Thank you, Liam. Okay. Right. Shall we have a break, Richard? Oh, I think we should. Welcome back everybody from those dynamically priced ads. Marina Apple have been in the news this week. Yes the latest Apple movie is Wolfe's starring Brad Pitt and George Clooney who were two obviously very big stars, stars as we used to know them, and it had its premiere this movie at the Venice Film Festival which is kind of pretty prestigious, it had a whole red carpet thing. It was scheduled for a big wide release and just before the

premiere they said yeah they're gonna put it out for a week in extremely limited number of theaters. And then a week later, it's going straight onto Apple for streaming. So it's quite expensive. They were paid tens of millions of dollars each to do it. And this is of a piece with a lot of stuff that Apple have done. Okay. Apple have been in the movie business for five years.

Quite why they're in the movie business is interesting. One of the things about Apple that is interesting as a company compared to lots of other companies that people write about is that they're quite a black box. People don't fully understand what's in there, why the decisions are made. So this is an example. I mean, this is, first of all, this is quite humiliating for its stars who have had to, and the director, John Watts, who did all the big Spider-Man ones recently, they had to say, oh yeah, we're not going to the theatres, but we're sort of cool about it, which they're obviously not, by the way, because stars want to be in theatres.

Yeah, and directors really want to be in theatres. What has said, I've made it for theatres, it's made to be seen in theatres. That's the point when I'm shooting it, I'm shooting it for a cinema screen, I'm not shooting it for a home screen, and that's what they've been told all the way through. And you know, if you're Clooney and Pitt, you're used to getting your way because you're Clooney and Pitt. But no one else wants to make your type of movie anymore so Apple have looked like they have bottomless cash well they are they're like the world's biggest company. They're like Noel Gallagher. And you get theatrical release so stars are like yeah they're

like Noel Gallagher. We can go back to how it used to be we can be paid huge amounts of money we can have theatrical release. And also the other thing they did in order to slightly disrupt the market, they don't have development executives in the same way that any of us would understand them in the other Hollywood studios who are kind of gonna get up in your grill as a creator

and say, they sort of let creators do what they want. Now, are they OTA friendly or OTA indulgent? That's unclear, but they've had a run of not successful. I mean, you can't have bad box office if you're not in the box office. So maybe Wolf's has been saved a humiliation. Well, that's the thing. I mean, you look at the money they're spending and this is the crux of it. This is why it's an interesting thing is, is Could This Be the Flower Moon, the Scorsese movie, they spent $200 million on by a rough rule of thumb you

have to clear about three times that before you make a profit so that would have to be six because of marketing of theatrical release sorry we should say that the reason that theatrical release has been pulled for this movie is because it is very expensive very expensive and they're worried they won't make their money back on on theatrical release so could as of the flower moon 200 million needs to take about 600 million, made 157 million dollars, which by the way is a perfectly good box office but not if you just spent 200 million making a film. Fly Me to the Moon, which is the very recent one they did with Scarlett Johansson

and Channing Tatum, which is a very good movie, as is Cuddas of the Flower Moon. They're making good films, that was a hundred million budget, made 41 million. Argyle, Matthew Bourne movie, these are guys who had hit movies before. Again, they say 200 million, I can't quite see how it's 200 million, but that's certainly what they say. I can work out how that works. That made 96 million. So Apple are losing a huge... That was a huge flop, okay, and they've had a run of flops. And this is the thing with Wolfs. So Apple are saying, well, we'll give you the money. So that's great.

Well, obviously we'll release them in the theater if we want, but that's great. They've got to the point where Apple employees high up have said, we are worried about our exposure to public disappointment. If we release a film in the cinema. So they finally got around to the point where they go, I mean, listen, 200 million to them is literally nothing. It's zero pain. Brad Pitt and George

Clooney, 17 million between them. Sofa money down the back of the sofa. It's absolutely nothing to them. But reputationally, they're just going, Oh, hold on. So if we put this movie out in the cinema, it gets reviewed everywhere. And everyone says it's bad. And then everyone sees the box office receipts and those are bad. And that becomes a story. Well, we don't want that. Listen, we're happy to spend a billion pound a year, but we don't want anyone having a go at us. And that's what's happened here. That's what they've taken Wolf's out of the cinema. Because

they're like, if we just put it on Apple, then we spend all the money that we're very happy spending it because we like going to, you know, premieres and we like hanging out with actors, which is why they spend a lot of money. Yeah. But what we don't want is people saying we've made a bad film. And actually, if we don't show it to people in the cinema, then nobody knows we made a bad film. I agree. They're the world's biggest company and they think they should be with the world's

biggest stars. They massively care about prestige, supposed quality, things like that. And stars love that because they've said, oh, we'll put you in theatres, whatever. Agents love them. And I'll tell you what, this is an interesting aspect of it. Agents love them because these are movies that aren't really being made anymore by the major studios, which ding-dong tells you something. And what agents can now still do with these things, because Apple don't have this huge infrastructure

for making movies, they sell them a package. Now, packaging is something that, again, nostalgia. In the franchise era, this has been impossible. When you're packaging something, you say, we've got a package here, we represent the script writer, we represent the director and George and Brad want to star in it. You're getting paid all the times over.

Yeah, and also, and by the way, if you're Apple, you're going, oh great, then we don't have to. Then we don't have to do anything, right? It's all dealt with. This can be dealt with. In the franchise era of filmmaking, this has not been possible because the IP has been the star.

So with something like Spider-Man, Marvel and Sony can turn around and say, well, we've just shown you that not any old three guys can play Spider-Man in fairly short order, but you can see that they can. So no, you don't get to tell us who's going to direct this movie. We will rent your star, but that's it.

So agents have loved it for that reason and they've got paid, but now agents are having to turn around and say to their clients, yeah, you're not sorry, George and Brad, you're not going to be in theatres. Don't worry. The biggest movie, by the way, that Apple has been involved with by a long way is coming out next year and is the Formula One movie with Brad Pitt in it. There's no way that's not going to theatres. But the other thing I'm going to say is that all these streamers, they spent lots of money to acquire scale and to whatever, and they could

say, it doesn't matter if it doesn't make a huge, and I'm sort of slightly with this on killers as a flower moon. It was an awards play. They were nominated for a ton of stuff. They won a ton of stuff that is so prestigious. They can make money back on streaming. That's marketing money for them. They're saying it makes Apple look good and they've got them at their marketing budget. It's huge anyway.

So why not spend it on that? That's worth it. Like Argyle, you know, Matthew Vaughan now says, oh, it's doing well on streaming. It's doing well on streaming on Apple TV plus. Okay. Which is like accounts for a tiny fraction of viewership. Netflix, it makes sense. You put it in theatres for a week because you want it to have an awards, you want it to be eligible for awards or whatever it is, but you are going to make it back on streaming because you have built your audience.

Netflix built a massive audience, so it makes sense for them to make do these kinds of things, except they're really out of theatrical release. They don't really bother doing it anymore. Amazon have done the same thing. You might have noticed that whole controversy with remake of Roadhouse, you know, and Doug Lyman, the director of that. Now Doug Lyman is, you know, he's done all the Bourne movies, he's done loads of amazing things and he had this big sort of remake. And he then when they said, oh, by the way, you're not having your theatrical release, wrote a big column in which he said, contrary to their public statement, Amazon has no interest in supporting cinemas.

They asked me in the film community to trust them and their public statements about supporting cinemas, and then they turned around and are using Roadhouse to sell plumbing fixtures. You know, if you can't get the creators, they wanted product. All of these people had to have product at the start. They had to spend and they had to borrow, you know,

as we say, cheap money and it was easy for them. But Netflix builds an audience. You're not gonna make this money back on Apple TV+. You can't make it back. So why are you still here? But we don't want to say that bit out loud because actually having Amazon and Apple putting all of this money into movies is keeping an enormous amount of people in jobs.

It is creating films that would not have been made otherwise, many of which are very, very, very good. There's great TV and great films coming. People don't want to see them, Richard. Yeah, but. People don't, are they good if people don't really want to see them? I mean, by your logic, shouldn't- Gosh, that's a think piece. Because they, but I don't see, maybe people don't want to go. I have to say they make a lot of

films that I think, huh, if this was the 90s, I might have gone to the cinema and seen that. And it's not to do with me, like having children or being older. I just, they, if this was the 90s, I might have gone to the cinema and seen that. And it's not to do with me having children or being older. They don't feel like the sort of thing I would go to the cinema anymore. Apple have actually won Best Picture with Coda, a movie that don't tell me you've seen. Coda? Yeah. It's have I seen Coda? It's won Best Picture. Nobody's seen it. Okay. They did put it in limited theatrical release so that they could be eligible for the awards. Okay, and they didn't disclose its box office. So let me disclose for you, nobody watched this thing and yes it won Best Picture, things are winning Best Picture now that nobody sees.

I just think though creative people, listen hits are going to come from creative people, okay that's always been the case. So there'll be people sitting wherever they're sitting in their back rooms somewhere, writing, writing, writing and a hit will come from them. They need people to fund those things. The studio system that always funded it, it's sort of collapsed. A lot of the linear television people who funded it

have sort of collapsed. For the moment, we have two of the biggest companies in the world, Amazon and Apple, and also by the way, Disney and other players like that, who are funding these things in a way that makes no economic sense. But I'd rather we had another few years of that and let a couple of people just have some that you

know you never know what big hit comes out of that pool of money. But at some point they will say to themselves and it's exactly this thing of saying we don't want the we don't want the public humiliation of this coming out. They will at some point say it's been lovely spending all this money, we like hanging around with actors, we like being in this business. It's fun. It brings us a lot of joy. It brings us good reputation.

But if the downside starts getting worse than that, then that money goes away. And if that money goes away, there's a huge domino fall where there's no money left. There's a big chicken franchise in America, Chick-fil-A, the chicken company are starting to fund movies and TV shows. So big companies are coming in to fund movies. People who have had success in other areas, which by Amazon and Apple went into movies, they thought we've had success everywhere else, surely we can do this. When that money goes... I think they got into it in order to sell you their core business. For sure, but I think suddenly they realized, oh we have to spend

200 million to do this, which is a lot. So I would say to both of those companies, it does reputationally make you look great doing movies. I love it. Keep doing it. Keep funding them. By the way, Apple over here, the TV offering is brilliant. Run by Jay Hunt. You've got Slow Horses, which we all love. You've got Bad Sisters. There's so many good shows coming out of it. So Jay Hunt is running that as someone who has utter experience in development. You know, some of the film unit in Apple in America is run by a sort of acquisition, a former acquisitions guy who used to program film festivals, which is not to disrespect

him, but you're not having the same development within the studio that you would have in other studios. So sometimes movies that are quite indulgent and that at some point someone should have said no. And by the way, as we we all know necessity is the mother of invention and sometimes notes come down that you have to work around and actually everyone combines to make something great movies there's a situation I'm not going to name this director but there was a director who said I love it I love it when Marina starts with I'm not going to name this director but there was a director who made a film which I thought was unbelievably indulgent, but he said to a friend of mine at the time, this is the point at which they normally say, someone normally says to me no, but no one has said

no. Well, you know, somebody should have said no at some point, not to the whole film, but to various bits of it. And if you're allowing people to just giving them all the money and a level of creative freedom, executives can be creative as we know. So if they had much, if they had more creative development executives, then I think something better would come out and maybe something that they feel that having spent all that money, they could actually put it in theaters for longer

than a week. But do you think they haven't hired those people because there is a hubris, which is we succeeded in every area we've tried. So honestly, we've got this we don't need the traditional Hollywood infrastructure. Netflix hired people who were more rooted in traditional studios. But that's because Netflix had not, they weren't sort of a company that, they weren't Coca-Cola or someone that said look we're masters of the universe already we know how to run a business they were like this is our core business so we're gonna do this as well as we

possibly can if you're Apple or Amazon you are saying oh listen I'm sure Hollywood's all well and good but we we really know how to run a business. Well they're going to need to do something now because they've had how many on the bounce that look like either they're chickening out or that when they put them out people have laughed at them. They should really maybe get you in as an advisor don't you think? On a stipend. I don't think, I'm sure I'd I'd do it collapse their company in I'd do if they're interested you wouldn't what you reckon you could collapse Apple go for broke yeah that is you know what that's such a reverse narcissism

yeah it is you see me oh me I'm so talentless I could I could bring down the biggest company that ever existed within weeks but so listen the point, it doesn't quite make financial sense for them to make movies. It makes reputational sense. But we're at the stage now where the worry is it's not making reputational sense either. And if it doesn't, then there's going to be a big collapse in money going into the movie industry. So hopefully they can find a way through. Shall we talk about toxic fandom off the back of an amazing post by

Chapel Rowan, one of these big new superstars? Yes, I find it very sad and actually anyone remotely connected to the public eye will recognise a lot of things about this. She said... She, by the way, two years ago was a bit famous, then I read someone saying she became gay-mas and now she is absolutely mega huge famous number one all around the world. Yes. So she said she wanted to set boundaries with her fans and she said, I'm talking about predatory behavior that's disguised as super fan behavior, which has become normalized because of the way women who have been treated in the past.

And she says, when I'm on, when I'm on stage, then I'm there for you, but I don't owe you anything. If you see me as a bitch or I'm grateful or if my entire statement upsets you, baby, that's you." And people have got really angry about it. Someone like Hayley Williams from Paramore said, please read this whole post. This is exactly what every woman in the public eye feels like. And without any question, we can all see over the past few years,

and yet again, you know, you have to talk about social media, but fandom has changed in that obviously there were always obsessive fans and there've been songs about obsessive fans and fandom has always been a sort of haven for people who can feel in some ways marginalized in other ways. So there are sometimes people who are, you know, maybe not entirely rational about the way they behave in these situations. Stars are more accessible because they have these social media, they're able to communicate directly with their fans and this is always sold as a universal benefit. It's not necessarily, but the internet itself, where, you know, in the old days, people used to be in these little pockets of places where they do

fan fiction and fan art and they're expressing your fandom, sort of tentative ownership of that star was done in a little corner of somewhere. The internet is incredibly centralised now, there's about five sites on which everything takes place. So it's never been more easy to find each other. And there's a huge backlash against her even saying this, which I find extraordinary. People's is such a failure of imagination. And she has basically said, if I am off duty, don't touch me. Don't be weird around my friends and family.

Don't pursue my friends and family. Don't pursue my friends and family. Give me a bit of peace. Listen, you can understand people say, yeah, but you know, you're a pop star. This is the thing you wanted. But what she's saying actually very deep down is very, very gentle and very simple and very just I'm not a zoo animal. She said very clearly, I've never felt less safe.

And you have to say that it's really hard to know when to be scared. Another thing I think has changed that people have grown up issuing death threats from the age of about eight. I mean, I don't want to sort of make a humorous thing, you know, about little One Direction fans who probably first, their first precious death threat issued from their pink decorated bedroom.

Not really understanding what they've done, but they're sort of weird digital natives in that way. Fans now understand how to organise, they have huge power, they can review bomb things. So it's a much more sort of scary landscape out there. And many other people have felt like this. There was a really interesting interview I read, you know Shonda Rhimes? She's the creator, showrunner of originally Grey's Anatomy, Scandal, Bridgerton. Okay, she's just a huge towering television figure. Okay. She will not now say what state she lives

in. She's had to move. She long ago left LA. She said social media change, fancy passionate feelings. I was always fine with that. I understand that characters felt like their friends, but people just had very strong feelings about what happened with their friends, but then it became weird. Now, she got to the point where at the end of every season of Grey's Anatomy, season, not the end of the whole show, she had to have police cars outside her house because people were so angry with the way that season had ended, right? It then moved to having to have security inside the house with her and her children. She's a single mother of three children. Because of this, she has

moved to another state, which she will not name. She will not name the entire state. And it's totally affected her interview persona. She just doesn't want to be, we've talked about this before and they, you don't want to say anything interesting. This is so ridiculous. People feel scared all the time and nobody helps you and it's not quite clear for these people. You know, you could say you can go to the police. I mean, I don't know. She obviously feels unsafe and why shouldn't she be allowed to say this? And what you were just referring to there, that thing that people say, yeah, but this

is what you wanted. I find that fascinating. Of course, there's a group of people who just want to be famous, but most people who become famous are famous because they're good at something. So if you're Chapel Rowan she's an unbelievably great musician so she wants to make music and she wants to make music as well as possible and she wants people to listen to that because that's what music is for and when some people listen she wants more people to listen and that's very you know seductive and she's excited that she's making this music that people love and she's excited that she's putting across a message that is resonating with people and she can see in people's eyes that she's having an impact on an audience. And so all of that

stuff is part of her talent. That's the thing she wants to do in the same way that a footballer starts playing football when they're seven years old and then you sign terms with Man United or Chelsea ladies or whatever it is and then you become a professional footballer and then you're famous. But you're not famous because you wanted to be famous. You're a really good footballer or if you're Shonda Rhimes, you're an amazing writer and an amazing producer and the more that you do, the more famous you become because you're really, really, really good at what you do. And the fame is just obviously the fame brings money. We see that the more people who are following what

you do, the more money goes into your bank account, but you are not going, the thing that I love here is people thinking I'm great, is people knowing who I am, what you're actually thinking is people are enjoying my work and almost everyone who becomes famous, it's not oh they really want to become famous, it's they want to do their job as well as they possibly could do it and they happen to have a particular skill. I agree with you and I think it's they want to do their job as well as they possibly could do it. And they happen to have a particular skill. I agree with you. And I think it's interesting that you brought in football there because it, this slightly reminds me of people who will scream absolutely disgusting things at footballers on the basis

that we pay your wages. Now that, you know, I have an all, and the other thing that reminds me of it in terms of football is that sense that because of the big backlash from her fans to understand that if you're not like that, she's not talking about you. This is like when like England fans try and burn down Marseilles. Sorry. A small minority of England fans. And if you don't say a small minority, and if every pundit, if every news person doesn't say it, then England fans go nuts that they're all being told at the same bar, you know,

it's a real not on one thing. And you slightly feel like, okay, don't worry if you didn't throw a keys to cafeteria furniture at someone's head, they're not talking about you. Okay. So don't worry if you're this angry about maybe being, you know, then maybe you are, your anger is also a problem. And I think that's definitely the case with her fan backlash where people are saying, it's not me, I don't do this, but I'm really angry with her as well.

Try and listen, try and, it's such a failure of imagination to not be able to understand. If you're receiving a billion messages, people are touching you, people are grabbing you. These days, people are tracking them everywhere. That's the other thing that technology has enabled, that kind of, you know, used to sort of stand outside the stadium and see if you could see their limousine drive past if they were playing there Now, people can du-locate their stars in about four seconds, okay? It's a very scary world. There is a darkness to fandom and there always has been, but people feel it's closer than ever now because of various of these barriers have come down. I find it absolutely extraordinary that anyone could criticise her. I mean, someone like Doja Cat said, her theory is that if

people just think that they don't have a proper relationship with you, a proper social relationship with you, so they have this very warped one where they think they own you. She really called out her fans, all the hub super fans, and she lost something like 200,000 followers and she said, I feel free. Because she didn't want those. COVID did something as well where people forgot their outdoors manners. And all of these things have contributed to, I can see why she's never felt less safe. I think lots of women in the public eye have never felt less safe. Well, it's interesting if you take it down to a very personal level, you know, we all know lots of relationships that are codependent and that can be often very healthy as well.

So there's definitely lots of acts, certainly acts who were from an older generation, who have a fan base with which that codependency works beautifully. The act loves the fans, the fans love the act, they're respectful to each other, they understand what each other wants, that works for everybody. But the second that is not a codependent relationship, and Chapel Roman is saying right now, this is not codependent, I am not getting joy from this. Some bands get joy from being screened out at airports and people going crazy. And for some bands and some acts that's terrifying. You could say that's what you want to you think, but it isn't.

I wanted to sell a lot of records. I didn't, this is not something that I bought into. So some acts like it, but the second then act says, this is not for me. Then fans who need that just head elsewhere. If you really love this act, then you'll stick with him and you'll be respectful. If the thing that you love was not the act, but your relationship with that act, then maybe go and have that relationship with another act. Mitski is really interesting. Yeah.

Mitski's work. And she found something similar. So she's an amazing actor, slightly more indie, maybe than Chapel Rowan. And she got to the stage where she began to understand things were getting too big. And she was starting to get a fan base that was slightly out of her control and where the co-dependence was not working. And she sort of went to ground a little bit and she just had to reclaim what it was that she was loving about her career, which is the music and the fan base who appreciated it. Chapel Romanist is doing the opposite thing, which is equally valid, which is saying, this is too much for me, I wonder if you could have a thought about your behaviour. But good for this, again, this generation where they call stuff out, right?

It's like democratisation of therapy speech. So when they talk like this, they say, I need boundaries. As you say, lots of bands didn't necessarily enjoy this or artists in the past. But without sadly patronising, maybe didn't have the words for it yeah we understand much more what is happening and much more how to say things having said that it's never been like this because of technology it is it is a completely different experience well the band that went through the closest to it probably with it were the Beatles you know they because because they got big at an era when society was changing and

teenage became far more of an economic force. So suddenly, like today, something weird, a new fissure opened up between the generations and so they had just, you know, their life was sort of almost unlivable for about two or three years and they responded to that by going, you know what, we're gonna smoke a lot of dope, we're gonna go to India and we're gonna make difficult music and we're gonna lose some of that fan base, you know what, we're going to smoke a lot of dope, we're going to go to India and we're going to make difficult music and we're going to lose some of that fan base, which is absolutely what they did. And then of course, you know, Mark Chapman shoots John Lennon and you just think they live the whole thing with parasocial relationships. Yes.

But we are in another of those eras now where a big fissure has opened up, a big new force has opened up and these acts, I'm glad to say, are starting to take things into their own hands a little bit more before, you know, we have other tragedies like that. Any fans that can't understand that they're not being talked about, if you're angry because you think you're being talked about, then maybe it's you. Yeah. Again, it's always women in the public eye. Yeah. And I think that that is something really worth bearing in mind, and to listen, you don't just listen to the music, listen to what they're saying.

But you know what, that's the other interesting thing, you know, we've talked a little bit before about quite how huge female solo artists have become in the last 10 years and how they're absolutely the dominant force in music in almost every single market. And that has led to this directly, because suddenly you go, you know, they're not being, you know, run by Sven Gardies, you know, they are in charge of their own career. And they're speaking in a more interesting and unusual and open and honest ways. And it leads to this sort of leads to Mitsuki and at least the Chapel Rowan and leads to, you know, an intelligent discussion about what it is to be a star and

what it should be to be a fan. And it's what you were saying again, it's related to that thing about bands, there's so many solo artists and then you're on your own. There's no one else in the band going through it with you, you don't have that inbuilt community that's traveling with you. You may say that I have a peer group in terms of other female artists but you've got to get in touch with them, I mean you know this is not, it's not the same thing, you're out there on your own. But if you haven't read Chappell Rowan, it's really, really worth reading the whole thing

in full. It's on, it was on Instagram, but you'll find it anywhere. And also if you don't know her music, I would strongly recommend it. She's amazing. And also Mitski as well. I'd also strongly recommend it. Two recommendations right there. Yes. Talking recommendations, any recommendations for this week? I watched a lot of old late 80s and 90s movies this weekend. I rewatched Beetlejuice in preparation for next weekend when the new Beetlejuice comes out. I fear it might be a diminishing return. I never read reviews of something before I'm going to go and see it, but I can see from the small star count that the new Beetlejuice might not be as good. But I remembered what I loved about the old one and my children absolutely loved it. And so I can I honestly recommend of course you can

recommend Beetlejuice and then it will be if you do go and see the new one in the cinema which I still think will be a big hit yeah in terms of how many people go but it's clearly not a critical hit and it'll be it might be interesting to have a look at those two properties. I recommend just a beautiful series on iPlayer it's a second series of Freddie Flintoff's Field of Dreams where he takes a group of kids who don't play cricket from Preston and he turns them into a cricket team. That was the idea behind it. Suddenly he's going to find this cricket team. They never got good at cricket, these kids really. There's

a couple of ringers in there. And in this series he takes them out to India. So you think, well, I don't want to watch this series about some people who are not very good at cricket, not playing cricket very well. It is one of the most beautiful things I've seen about what it is to be a young man on the cusp of adulthood and what it is to be a young working class man with very little power on the cusp of adulthood. It also so happens that during this series is when Freddie Flint of had his accident. And you see what happened to Freddie. You see it makes him so dreadfully vulnerable and, and, and questioning of himself and he obviously doesn't want to continue the project, but then he thinks

he should, and he's been such a lovely mentor to these kids and then they slightly become mentors towards him and they kind of look after him and it's very, very beautiful on the difficulties that young men have in communicating and the difficulties they have in navigating the world as it is today and it's very beautiful on seeing an older man, Freddie, also having those feelings of being vulnerable and not wanting to talk about things and there's the occasional bit of cricket here and there and there's the occasional bit of you know them trying you know Indian food and not enjoying it so there's some nice travelogue stuff in

there but really it's it's it's a really beautiful portrait of a young generation and you feel so deeply for so many of the kids in there. Absolutely I second that. Well with that shall we encourage people to send us questions for the questions and answers edition on Thursday the address is therestisentertainment at gmail.com and we look forward to answering those very much that was fun thank you for today yeah and if you did get OS's tickets congratulations if you are Noel and Liam Gallagher congratulations as well but if you didn't don't worry it will be televised yeah exactly and also it's just a gig that's what I think about about it. I'm going to stop you before you. Well go to your local pub and watch a band.

You know I'm gonna stop you before you have to set boundaries with people. There's loads of it's loads of it exactly. I'll see you all on Thursday. See you on Thursday. The End