The Rest Is Entertainment - Is The Bear REALLY a Comedy?

Episode Date: September 16, 2024

If you've ever watched The Bear then you'll have seen anxiety inducing moments of real restaurant culture, tense family shouting matches and a ton more drama... however at the likes of the Emmys awards and the Golden Globes it is considered a comedy. Why? The West End is in rude financial health with musicals and plays proving as popular as they ever were, returning to pre-Covid success. A lot of the big West End successes are based on films or existing stories. Is there a lack of creativity in theatre, and will it hurt the art in the long term? Richard & Marina wrap this episode by talking The White Stripes vs. Donald Trump. Jack White is suing the former American President for unauthorised use of a song, but he's not the first to take issue with their music being coopted by politicians. Recommendations: Marina: Jilly Cooper - The Rivals (read) Newsletter: www.therestisentertainment.com 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! ✅ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I'm going back to university for zero dollar delivery fee, up to five percent off orders and five percent uber cash back on rides. Not whatever you think university is for. Get Uber One for students. With deals this good, everyone wants to be a student. Join for just $4.99 a month. Savings May 3. Eligibility and member terms apply. Hello and welcome to this episode of The Rest is Entertainment with me, Marina Hyde. And me, Richard Osmond. Hello everybody. Hello Marina. Hello Richard. How are you? How has your publication week been? I would say busy. I was just saying to you, it's been weeks since we've done a podcast and it wasn't. It was six days ago. Yes, I've spoken a lot and it's lovely to be able to speak about

other people's work now instead of mine. Huge congratulations and we want to hear much more about it always. My favourite thing is always going from talk sport to times radio and having to remember which one you're on. That's the key. Slightly switching your personality. Do you recalibrate yourself? Yeah, 100%. I mean, talk sport's my favorite because I could talk about the book for a minute and then I can talk about Fudum for 10 minutes. Then you go on Times Radio, you have to talk about quantitative easing or something. But listen, I can turn my hands to both. Of course you can. And we're talking about quantitative easing today. You are a renaissance man. So this week we are going to talk about, we'll

talk a bit about the Emmys which happened on Sunday night or into Monday morning if you live in the UK. Which we do. Which we do. We will talk about the white stripes are suing Trump for using, like one of a million artists who are not happy with Donald Trump using their music but are actually suing. So we'll talk a little bit about that. We're also going to talk about whether it's the white stripes or the white stripes. What is it? The white stripes. The white stripes. Well, I'll just have to say it in context. And now you've made me think about it too. Oh my God. They're not even words any longer. I'm just

no wait, we'll hear it in context and then you can pull me up. We'll be talking about that and a sort of history of songs that have been used by various campaigns as well. But we're going to start with... Musicals. Okay, West End musicals that are based on movies. Okay, right. In the West End right now, or currently, or about to open are Mean Girls, the musical

Back to the Future, Moulin Rouge, Mrs. D'Outfire, Facing the Crowd, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, Devil Wears Prada is about to open, the producer is about to open, The Lion King, obviously that's been open at Absolute Behemoth. And then you've got things like Magic Mike, Ghost in Concert, My Neighbour Totoro, Silence, the musical, which is like a parody Silence of the Lambs musical. And then last week it was announced that there are two new musicals based on movies coming to the West End. Clueless, which is coming to the Trafalgar Theatre and Titanic, which is at the Criterion, which is a bit of a parody of the movie but has the Celine Dion songs and so on. So one of the things that's really interesting is that it all sort all sprung from some years ago,

Universal Studios, the movie people, realized that actually the most successful thing they'd basically ever made ever, ever, was not a movie, but was the musical Wicked. What happened with that one was the book's done by someone called Winnie Holtzman, but Stephen Schwartz did the music and lyrics. He'd read this book, which was based, you you know this prequel story to The Wizard of Oz on a holiday I think and he'd said oh I really want to do this and he found that Universal unfortunately had the rights to it and they were you know saying oh well we're going to make a movie about it was like sure you are they were

probably never gonna do it's just one of many many things they held the rights to and he managed to persuade them to let him do it as a musical I mean that thing it makes billions, okay? It makes absolutely billions. And so what suddenly started happening? By the way, I talked to a theatre producer this week. He said, do you know that the work of creative art in the whole of history that has made the most money in any genre, so music, film, video game, anything, is Lion King the musical?

It's made more money than any other piece of art in the history of pieces of art. And the reason that these things make money, and we'll come in deeper depth to this in a minute, is that they obviously they make money in their sort of original markets, maybe it's Broadway, maybe it's the West End, but it's touring, it's going on the road that you make unbelievable amounts of money within the US and then around the world. So having really slightly patronised theatre for a long time in the 20th century, the movies were like, right, we need to have lots of significant appointments and people

are going to head up our theatre divisions on Broadway. So that went on and as you can see there's lots of successful musicals. But now lots of them are starting in London which is really interesting. First of all some good news which is that the West End is in rude health it has come back completely after Covid. Yeah beyond there's no dark theatre, this is not something you hear people in theatre, people in theatre are always telling you that their business is like on the edge of the cliff right. Now Broadway hasn't come back as well, there's numbers of reasons for that, people think Right. Now Broadway hasn't come back as well. There's numbers of reasons for that. People think that, you know, it hasn't come back as well after the pandemic. Sometimes people are staying away.

Um, maybe there are fewer office workers or people, suburbanites who will come in at the weekend or whatever's happened. They are losing money on Broadway. I think in the last, over the summer, they lost 250 million. We'll come to how we know how much they lose in America. We declined to talk about this in our country. Anyway, but a show in, if you want to put a show on in Broadway, which I do, which you do, it costs, well, first of all, starts here, Richard, which I'm sure

you will, it costs about five times as much to do it there. So if you put on a show here, you might put something that costs like a million pounds to put on here could cost $ million dollars over there. And there's various reasons for that, most particularly how heavily unionized they are and their union activity means that people get paid a lot more and things are just miles, miles more expensive. So what you really have now is quite a good situation for the UK, which you've got lots of Americans coming to London to develop their musicals and see how they go and get them started. Now, they're much more attracted in a way to London, to New York. If it works, Broadway is still the dream and

everyone wants their musical on Broadway. And by the way, of course, the upside on Broadway is a great deal more than it can be in the West End as well. The upside in Broadway can be absolutely insanely lucrative. It is insanely lucrative. But you can retire from a musical if you have a successful one in London. Oh yeah I was told there's a musical running in London at the moment one of the very very few that isn't based on IP or isn't based on a movie and someone was telling me that the two creators are making a six-figure sum each week, each, just because it's run and by the way is brilliant. So the upside on theatre and musical is

enormous. Most things lose money, but if they make money, goodness me. If you, all you need to do is take one look at Tim Rice's house and you'll know how much money you can make in musicals, a good musical, a hit musical. There is a snobbery about this sort of thing. If you look at something like Mean Girls, which obviously was a very successful film,

and then they made a musical of it, which it did well on Broadway, but it made an absolute fortune out on the road touring in the US. At which point they thought, could we now make this back into a movie? So that has been made back into a movie. We know that Wicked, which obviously started as a musical, that's being made with Cynthia Reaver and Ariana Grande. The first half of that is coming out later this year. I think that will do enormous business, but you know that there's a big audience for it out there because you just toured it around the state so we've toured it wherever and

you can see. So Mean Girls, then people were really surprised that the movie of the musical of Mean Girls which itself was of the movie made a lot of money. They should make a musical of that. Yes they should do. They hit behind the scenes on it, behind the scenes of behind the scenes but people can be really snobby about this sort of thing because they sort of say, oh well aren't there any new ideas? Well excuse me, theatre has always been a revival art form, you don't say oh they're remaking what the remaking a Tom Stoppard play, it's like yeah that's what they do. Oh god they're doing another Mozart concerto, come on guys. Mid-summer night's dream, seen it, no new ideas under the sun, but actually quite clearly

they are different properties because you're not remaking Mean Girls when you're remaking the movie of that. There's been some sort of sublimation. Something else has happened to it and it's become a different thing. And so you can see all these kind of shows that are coming, things like Clueless. Now one of the things that a lot of, and you're very good on this, Richard, one of the things a lot of people don't think of in many, many different media, and it's quite surprising is, who's my audience? It seems like such an obvious question, but a huge number of people don't think of it.

Now, clueless, this is a cult movie. It's particularly cult amongst Gen X and people who now have the money or are people who go to theatres. Women demographic, lots and lots of things say to me that that will be a hit. But there is still a snobbery about all of this, a mega snobbery in the West End. We don't know anything about like how much British theatres make because unlike Broadway which publishes the grosses every week, this is how we know they're 250 million dollars down, there is no

publication of it. So if anyone's saying oh my musical is doing better than anyone else's, it's hard for that to be a kind of great thing on a poster because we don't know what anyone else's is. So we have nothing to compare it with. But I think the issue, so there's not a snobbery thing, but there's definitely a thing which is the West End has a limited number of theatres. As you say, none of them are currently dark because there's always something to fill them, but there's not that many of them. And we're in a position now where some theatre producers would say every single theatre has got a musical in it and almost all of those come from existing IP, they all come from movies. So you're seeing almost kind of half of the theatres that are available,

putting on a play that is something to do with IP. And people might think that that's unhealthy for the theatre ecosystem in London. I agree, but I disagree that there isn't a snobbery because half the critics don't even like to review the West End. There's a lot of that. There is a difference between, I was talking to a theatre producer this week who was saying to me, there's a real difference between US theatre critics and UK theatre critics, which is that US theatre critics are at least notionally interested in the business and numerate and they understand things that are making money and not, and there's not some sort of embarrassment and it's frightfully

and frantic and you should only be talking about the art. They are interested in things as, you know, successes and what that indicates and financial success is obviously part of that because it's all got to work. You see, that's the fascinating thing. We talked about the upside of theatre and we talked a little bit about how much it costs. And this is why this IP thing has gone absolutely crazy and is gonna keep going crazy. I talked to a lovely guy called John O'Farrill.

He's one of our finest comedy writers, been around for years, used to write, have I got news for you and all sorts of things. And a few years ago turned his hands to writing musicals. Like anything John does, he turns his hand to it brilliantly. So he did a big show on Broadway called Something Rotten with the Kirkpatrick Brothers, which ran for two years. But he said it didn't ever quite make it. It didn't quite sort of get over that bit where you think, oh my God, this is running forever and we're making millions upon millions. And he said he would go down to Times Square

to the ticket booth, the TKTS booth on Times Square, and he would just see lines of tourists and they were all just looking at the board and they'd see his thing, something rotten, which sort of based on Shakespeare, early days of Shakespeare, and go, oh, I don't really know what that is. And then they would see legally blonde and go, well, we do know what that is. And he said, yes, every person in the queue was looking up the thing, just going, oh, let's go and see the thing that we've heard of. Because it's $150 a ticket and there's four of them. It's not something you're gonna take a chance on. You're happy to pick up a paperback,

aren't you, in a shop? But $600, you have to have something that you've already heard of. And so someone came to him after something rotten, which by the way now has an incredible life in American schools, virtually every school in America has done a production of something rotten. Yeah, it's an educational and brilliant. Which they make a lot of money from. It's really, you know, there's has done a production of something. Like a sort of horrible history type thing. Yeah, it's educational and brilliant.

Which they make a lot of money from. I mean, it's really, you know, there's a lot of money in it. So someone came to me and said, well, would you do Mrs Doubtfire the musical? And of course, its response was yes, because I've just done this musical, which takes so much out of you. It's so difficult to do, so expensive to put on. I mean, an absolutely, an eye-watering amount of money to put on. And even after two years, an eye-watering amount of money to put on, and even after two years, it's not really turning a massive profit. So yes, I will do the thing that when I go down to that ticket queue, everyone's gonna go,

oh, it's Mrs. Doubtfire, let's go and see that. And so that's, you know, that's been two years in the West End now and is doing very well. But yeah, it's fascinating about the process because of course, you know, Fox, who are now Disney, of course they want Mrs. Doubtfire in the in the theaters I think they suggested night at the museum first and John's like, I don't know. They said mrs. Doubtfire He went oh, yeah, absolutely

And of course and they want it to be as true as possible to the IP They said there's no way we're making this without boobs on fire and pie and face Yeah, those two things have to be in this in this musical So he said now he's a he's I think yesterday in fact, they announced he's doing the Live Aid musical, which I think will be amazing, called Just For One Day. And again, that's an interesting mix because it's sort of IP, but it's not really owned. So a lot of the profits are going to charities and what have you, but it's not the sort of thing where it's owned by a Disney or a Fox or anything like that.

But it's something that people recognize and understand. And so if you are a creative in that industry, for every show like the Hamilton or Six or these things or Operation Mincemeat that really do fly, just most of them don't. And you can't keep putting $5 million, $8 million, $10 million into things that fail. And you'd rather put $3 million, $5 million, $8 million into eight million, ten million dollars into things that fail and you'd rather put three million, five million, eight million dollars into something that

even if it doesn't absolutely set the world alight is probably not going to lose you a huge amount of money so it feels like it's something that's good that's here to stay this thing because of the high operating costs of putting on a play. Yeah it's a gamble, it's a real gamble and actually the sort of thing, it's interesting thinking who backs theatre other than the studios. Obviously the studios for a long time actually felt that theatre, I was talking to one producer this week who said they thought that the theatre was a place of skullduggery and that they were always going to kind of rip you off. And so they wanted people to share the risk

even on their own properties. Now they feel like, oh, some of these things are such bankers, we're going to take all the risks. But it's interesting, like who has backed theatre in London, in the West End, all the different bits of money has blown through London and you've had Middle Eastern money and Russian money and Chinese money, you know. But actually in a funny kind of way the people who come back and back are people who like gambling. They are people who like betting on stuff because you've got to like losing, you've got to be comfortable with losing. You have to a bit like show business, but also like a bet. And you should. And actually, people, if you don't like show business, then you're going

to just be angrier that you lost money, because it's like, you know, people like watching racing and that's why they're best on it. Sometimes people say, people who are really angry in a divorce, if they're really happy and they've got a huge settlement, they love to spend it on a hopeless case. And. And you know something rather lovely about that. That was always the wonderful thing about Inexcess when they got absolutely massive you know that story. So Inexcess got like worldwide global huge success and their accountant said to them look you can literally just throw away a million quid because it's not going to cost you anything so you can just take a punt. So they put it all into like a little

Australian movie which turned out to be Crocodile Dundee. So they've certainly kind of turned that into a hundred million. They can't lose money at this point. I know exactly. Yeah. Well, and there are some vanity projects, but London Theatre is thriving. There's all sorts of different things on and you don't have to be seeing things in the West End, but it's pretty great, especially after COVID. There's very few sectors that are like, no, we're better than ever. And we're doing, we're doing fantastic.

And you also want these shows to be touring because you've got this incredible regional theaters, a lot of which are under threat and some of which have closed down. That hasn't come back in the UK, whereas in the US it has. Yes, absolutely. So it's lovely if you do have some shows

that you know are gonna be sure-fire hits that can fill out those places for two, three weeks at a time. Listen, there is the worry of it becoming a bit of a monoculture, but I sort of understand why. You always get this thing in any creative arts when people go, oh, why don't you take more risks? Just take more risks. You think well, so who's a risk with what with your money? Yes, you want to take a risk with your money because we'll do that if it's your eight million dollars

You find yourself less creatively inclined to take a risk I think then someone else's opening all the time that are, you know, odd and unusual and amazing and are doing really well. They don't have to be in the West End. Obviously the sort of dream of lots of theatre producers is that this weird kind of hopeless case suddenly becomes a hit, which does happen with lots of different sort of plays or musicals that they just think... I mean Operation Mincemeat would be perfect. It's not, but I think that and Six, they both started at the Edinburgh Festival. We went to see the Edinburgh Festival this year at the show called

We're by Natalie Palamedes. And you just think, well, I could see that running forever and ever and ever in a West End theatre, because it's so brilliant. There's no one who wouldn't enjoy that show. It's already there. It's already written. You can see the audience reaction to it. So, you know, these shows can come from somewhere, but I think it's hard if you are just straight off sitting at home around a piano with a friend thinking we're going to write a musical about Dr. Bernardo. It's quite hard, the route to market is quite hard there but if you do, if you take it through rep and you take it through Edinburgh and things like that, then the market is there. I sort of feel like it's a positive story. It's interesting because those London versions of those shows are the ones they talk

because for obvious reasons, as I say, you know, if it costs five times as much to do it on Broadway. So people are trying things out in London and then they're taking those versions of the shows on the road all over the world, everywhere, you know, China, South Korea, that's these places are huge for touring. So it's not just the places you'd think it's, it's much further afield and they're very, very, very successful. But yeah, it's lovely that the West end is booming at the moment. The one thing I would say, Legroom, come on guys, it's lovely that the West End is booming at the moment. The one thing I would say

leg room come on guys. It's still back to your bugbear. But it's outrageous. It's genuinely outrageous you're paying 150 quid for a ticket and you're literally going to get deep vein thrombosis and I always sit on an aisle anyway so I don't want to sit in front of anyone because people just tut. Where can you sit without just having to apologise for yourself? Right on the very, very, very end of any particular row. But yeah, leg room, sort it out. Yeah, okay. Can we do that next week? Yes, we're just going to do a whole episode just on leg room. That's why I like TV. In my house, I have the leg room that I like. Save it for next week, Richard.

In front of the, I have not put another sofa in front of my sofa. Well, we'll discuss that in much, much more detail on a few later episode. So just to give a few recommendations. So we talked about touring, Heather's is touring at the moment. If that's anywhere near you, absolutely go see it. Hairspray. Hairspray. It's touring my favorite musical of all time. Sixth the musical I think is on tour. It's in Milton Keynes in September, I think think and that is a wonderful piece of work. It's fantastic. Yeah, it's feel good, it makes you think, it's got great tunes, so I'd really recommend that but, and if I'm in front of you I promise I'll be on the aisle.

What would you turn into a musical? What hasn't been done? What would I turn into? I think you've just got to do, I mean but how funny, how much was I laughing at the 39 steps? I know that's a bit, but it was, you I don't say anything can be anything because you just sound like people who work at Marvel and just like just do anything but I I mean I actually yes a Marvel musical a really but I like these parody ones yeah kind of just use like Titanic Titanic you've got to go

quite close to the wind it's it can be it'd be quite interesting to see how that one pans out I'll like to see it I haven't seen this um parody silence of the lambs one, but I would like to see it. Shall we have a break before we talk about the Emmys? Let us do that. Welcome back, everybody. Now, it was the Emmys on Sunday evening slash Monday morning, depending where you are. There's one story I really want to talk about. Well, I know what I can imagine. We want to talk about the same thing.

But yes, the big winners were, I mean, these things are largely very predictable. And we'll talk a little bit about why that is, but the big winners were Shogun, the bear, Hax and baby reindeer. But I have to say a special, so happy that Will Smith runs outstanding writing for a drama series for Slow Horses. Isn't that wonderful? Yes. And who on receiving his awards said the funniest thing said at the Emmys, I know that's not our field, came up and said, sorry, relax despite my name, I come in peace. When he went up to the stage. Will is absolutely brilliant,

has put his absolute heart and soul into that show and it really Caught some people's imagination sometimes it takes a while and the third season of something and It's hard when you're coming from one of the smaller streams in hit that case Apple and it just caught fire And I'm so pleased because he is genuinely the nicest person you could possibly meet in you know What I think is the second nicest person's the nicest person you can meet is his brother Olly Smith the wine expert who is like unbelievably nice. I refuse to imagine that someone exists who is nicer than Olly Smith so I'm afraid. Which Smith? Let's put them together in a new tv format. That's a really good idea. I know. Smith bros. No that was a fantastic one.

There are a few British ones. Alan Cumming won as best host for the traitors. The traitors did very well. The traitors won. Michaela Cole won for for a guest star thing on Mr. and Mrs. Smith as well. And Hamish Hamilton, one for directing the Oscars. The Oscars won two Emmys. It's so, I know. Yeah. There's a lot of Emmy.

When you look at all the different Emmys, there's a lot of them. By the way, they had the creative arts ones the week before, which again, Shogun did amazingly on. And it's quite interesting when you look at all these things is that one of the characteristics of Emmy voting is that it's quite herd-like. It is super predictable. There's a couple of upsets in this, which we'll talk about. But even though the individual categories are voted for, their form of voting is that

like actors vote for actors and makeup artists vote for makeup artists and things like that. In the end, everyone can vote for the overarching things like best comedy or best drama or whatever. But it's amazing how these things got locked on and you have this idea it's going to be Shogun's year and then everyone sort of just falls in and votes for those things. But also if a show like Shogun is voted for best drama, there will definitely be a best actor nomination, best actress nomination, best supporting. And you just think there's lots of telly out there with amazing performances in, but you literally, they come as a package almost. If you're nominated for best comedy or best drama, then you are nominated in all those categories as well.

Yeah, there's a slipstream that you get in on. And they also love to nominate things that they then love to nominate again and again and again. And if you can't get in on that, which is why it's great that Slow Horses broke through with this season but there are things like you know last week tonight with John Oliver has never not won it just they might as well retire at the award because it just wins it every single time. He's like the Ant and Dec at the NTA awards of the Emmys. It's that level yeah there is an art to submitting and I think this is going to get onto the subject that we both like to speak about. You're allowed to put yourself into and they don't say

well you're obviously not a comedy yeah you can guess what this is going to be. For example. You're obviously not a comedy or you're obviously a lead actress you're not why you're being nominated and supporting. You can choose where you get nominated. Now The Bear is what people always say I mean they were making jokes. It was presented by Eugene and Dan Levy and they were making jokes about the bear not being in comedy on stage, which I know that you know there's a sort of roasting element to all these things, but there's something that's sort of reached slightly critical mass. In the end it didn't win Best Comedy, that was won by Hacks.

Which is a comedy. Which is a comedy and which is in a funny kind of way about how comedy is slightly undervalued in our world Yes, so the bear people have said for a long time. I don't really understand. This isn't a comedy and The creators have always said I only know it's about how people use humor to respond to really terrible situations life No, it isn't I wonder whether when we come to write this when you come to read the old history of the period or whatever But someone will say yeah an FX executive told us that we were submitting, whether or not we liked it in the comedy category, because succession dominated the drama. So we weren't going to win that.

And succession was untakeable. And once succession, you know, as I say, once they're nominating, they're nominating you, although by the way, this is, yeah, succession was actually brilliant. And funny. Yeah, it's a comedy as well comedy as well. It was comedy and a drama. It did everything. It was all the threat. But they felt that that category was untakeable. And you have noticed to see, a lot of writers, I have talked to a lot of comedy writers

who have a number of views about that show being nominated in the comedy category because they feel like this is taking an award from comedy. If you look at what some of the stars and the producers of Abba Elementary have said, they're not thrilled that The Bear, which they think, and I think actually, is a drama, is taking a comedy prize because there aren't that many. There's always a thing that I'm talking about. I mean, I've been talking a lot about Snobbish this week, but there is a massive snobbishness about comedy and the Prestige Award is the Drama Award and comedy is just this thing that's like, yeah, you know.

Oh, that's easy. Comedy, this is just jokes. Which I don't agree with and I think that's been pretty hard for a lot of people in that category. So it's nominated for that, it's won it before, it didn't win this year because of hacks. Jeremy Adam White won best comedy actor. Right. Yes. Okay. Now, so The Bear, it's not darkly comic, right? It is not

comic at all. And he's brilliant. This is no shade on him. It's a brilliant show. It's amazing. But what it is, is incredibly traumatic as a show. And it's not, it's so traumatic it's funny or it's traumatic because we're making some ironic point which actually shows that we understand the world and we're shining a light on it which makes it comic. It is just traumatic and a brilliant drama and he is absolutely brilliant in it. He has not done a single joke in any season of that show and yet he's just one best comedy actor and the thing is as you say the people who vote for these things in the world, I don't know what number you put on this, maybe 30% of people don't have a sense of humor. They just don't have it. And that's absolutely fine.

But it's absolutely fine not to have a sense of humor. Some people, you know, we have different things, right? But that means that fully 30% of the people voting in that category are looking down the whole thing and going, well, Abba, elementary, no, I don't understand what they're... There seems to be a lot of misunderstanding in that and people not saying exactly what they mean And looking down to hacks and going well, I saw it but I thought it was a documentary about Hollywood But then I saw something that never would have happened. It was almost like sort of comic and then they go all the better Oh, yes, actually that was very good

And so you've immediately got 30 to 30 percent of people who don't want to vote for a comedy are voting for us So, of course it wins and I just think that it is completely outrageous. Comedy is a specific group of people doing a very specific thing for a very specific reason. And it is really really difficult. And by the way you can make a comedy that doesn't get any laughs. You can make a comedy but at the end you're kind of going, you know what that was really funny. Or you make a comedy that makes people laugh throughout. The Bear, and again we have to reiterate, it is a brilliant piece of television, brilliantly

written, the cast is incredible, the directing is incredible, it is a great piece of work, it is not in any way, shape or form a comedy and it is stealing awards from actual comedies. Stick it in the drama, we would have won drama this year I suspect, you know because people absolutely love it, it's great. They could quite happily run it in a different category next year, but won't. But you know, why not make it best live sports event? I mean, literally just go for it because people would still vote for it because they go, they go, oh, the Super Bowl. Yeah, I sort of enjoyed it. Oh, the bear. I love the bear. Yeah. But yeah, listen, if you're comedy people,

you don't win Oscars, you know, people look down on it, you know, it's not seen as a great art form, whereas I would say it's one of the greatest art forms there is and for this to be in that category I think adds insult to injury. It also makes your award ceremony look like something that people are gaming. Yeah, it's great. It makes your and I actually think that despite whether or not they were very clever and decided to put it in this category a while ago, it was while succession was still being garlanded every year, who knows, maybe we'll know

one day, maybe we won't, it's not what they say. But because of the way the Bears' third season, which to use euphemism is divisive, namely a lot of people hated it, was out while people were making voting basically. And so maybe Hacks did well, but people also say, oh, Hacks has run an absolutely brilliant campaign. And you forget with all these things that it's so political and you are working like a candidate. If you're even a writer, and I'm having spoken to various different writers involved in these things, there's so much politics around you. You're working like a candidate. You've got to do all these different things and people have got ahead of these criticisms you'll share on that.

And they've got to, you know, flan up some other bit of what you've done well. And some people have money to spend on those things and some people don't. And that's how Netflix came in with stuff like the Crown and House of Cards, because they thought not only are we going to make really expensive things that everyone's like, what, who's Netflix and why are they doing this? We are then going to spend a huge amount of money trying to get all those people nominated for awards. And they did, and they made it successful, but it's harder to break through if you can't do that but it is again like all of these races it's very

political and then also you have to look at the demographics it's not a perfect process by any means but I do think that there's something very interesting about the bear that this year finally kind of perhaps broke in that thing where people are just saying actually it's this is ridiculous. I would be shocked if it wins a best comedy award in any of the nominations next year. You can't you can't keep doing it. It's an impossibility and again it it's it reflects badly on them because it's a great show and all you're getting when you're winning these things is people going that's outrageous you shouldn't win that and it's which is incredibly unfair. And everyone on the stage

making jokes about it. Yes it's a little bit of gamesmanship that has cost you in some ways. The interesting thing is Baby Reindeer, of course, because in this world, we talk a lot, talked earlier about risk taking and about how everything is narrowing and, you know, very difficult to get a risky project off the ground. And Baby Reindeer was sort of in the last gasp of the previous regime at Netflix, where they were taking chances on people. And it's really paid off. I mean it won you know best limited series one Richard Gad won best writer best actor Jessica

Gunning I was delighted to see one best actress as well and that's lovely to see again that thing like Six the musical that you can have something which starts small and starts very sort of British and parochial and can break out into the world. As you say, that stable of shows is incredibly closed off and it's lovely to see a few Brits getting in there. But you're also hearing all the comedy commissions saying we want broad comedy, we want lots of laughs, we want lots of laughs. The biggest hits are something that is not necessarily even a comedy. I absolutely love hacks by the way and I've got a huge amount of time for hacks but a lot of people feel that the bits that are least successful of that are the sort of comedy bits in some ways and that it works so well as a drama. And then you look at Baby Reindeer which you know is not a comedy and yes it sort of probably started

life saying it's a sort of comedy I've done a comedy show at Edinburgh yeah it starts at Edinburgh comedy show a fringe comedy show but it obviously is complex and more difficult than that. And so all the people say I want all this broad stuff, but look what's still dominating. I know it's crazy. And because if you look at the, you know, what the Emmy noms would have been 20 years ago, you've got Friends and Frasier and you know, Seinfeld and you got the American office, you've got these shows, which by the way, people loved and also made billions upon billions of dollars. And other than Abbott Elementary, it's hard to see where those shows are now. And as you say, we said for a few years now,

this sort of stuff that is cool is lovely. It's great that we can sit and watch it, but someone at some point has got to start making big shows for big populations again. Baby Reindeer was one. And that's what, so what you would say in the old days, did everyone say, oh yeah, Baby Reindeer is gonna get all these awards, but no one's actually seen it.

Well, we can see how many people actually seen it and huge numbers of people watch it, which is, I think, interesting because people always used to say, oh, they're now turning away from the network stuff. And so people like, you know, Avatar Elementary or Britney and I, when that was running, you know, it was kind of like they were the sort of fag end of all of that in some ways. But it's interesting how massive Baby Reindeer was and how many people watched that when it is, you know, in lots of ways you would have thought that is quite a niche show. It's a very niche subject and there was something so propulsive about it, people absolutely

became addicted to it. So again, those shows that you think might have been tiny gambles have become huge. Nobody knows anything. Nobody knows anything. That's true. And so, I mean, to sum up some, there's some good news hacks is very good news. I think baby reindeer is good news for lots and lots of reasons. They're the elephant in the room is the bear. Hold on a minute.

The elephant in the room is the bear, if you know what I mean. Uh, and what can we do about that? And it's, I do think it's, it's insulting to the comedy community. And I don't think it does the bear any favors at all, cause it's brilliant. And if you're thinking they're only awards,'t worry about it, think yeah but they're entertainment awards and that's what we love. And there's a reason they campaign so hard all of the streamers, the studios, whoever because it really matters and it matters so much for business and it matters how you can promote and market your show. It matters a huge amount so it's not just prestige and I know

that we sort of sometimes say oh like just a turn up and see the people that they've greenlit or whatever get things. It's not like that at all. It's a mark of success. It's actually, it has measurable financial impact. It's a bit bitter because the bear won best podcast at the British comedy at the British podcast awards, didn't it? So should we move on to the white stripes or the white stripes? Yeah. Yes. I can't work out. I'm going to say in context or the white stripes? Yeah. Yes. I can't. Now I can't work out how I'm going to say it in context.

I can't work it out either. Yeah. Well, they, specifically Jack White, I think I've said that right, rather than Jack White, is suing, actually suing Trump. By the way, who hasn't issued a cease and desist letter to Trump? By the way, something like 93% of artists making complaints of against politicians are against Republicans, which is not going to be the biggest surprise. I'm really interested in who those 7% are because I don't think anyone on the Democratic side is using like Kid Rock

and Ted Nugent, but okay, surprise me. There's a huge list of people who have complained, everyone from the surviving Beatles, Adele, Beyonce, Pavarotti. Panic at the disco. They've all done it. So yeah, Springsteen, Rihanna, okay, they've all done it. One of the reasons why Trump uses so much music is because you may have noticed he has a lot of rallies and it takes a long time to get the people in and he is often late for them. Not just walk on music, but all the buildups. So pretty much, I mean, there's probably no band in the world that

hasn't been played at one of those. Yes, exactly. I think people kind of love it. Like Johnny Maher, they played some, they played, they played, please, please, please let me get what I want by the Smiths. And he said, you're not, you are not allowed to play that thing, but I think he was delighted that he got the opportunity to, to ban him. He's like, he told Cameron he wasn't allowed to like the Smiths as well.

You weren't allowed to like the Smiths as well. So you weren't allowed to like them, which I really respect. Someone once told me about some really curse sounding party given by Matthew Freud and David Cameron was there, of course, it was in the country, in the Cotswolds somewhere, and David Cameron danced, like got on stage and was, you know, got on the dance floor to like Town Call Malice, Eaton Rifles. It's like, yeah, you're not allowed, you can't be ironic about this. This is not your music. Yeah, this is not. Yeah.

I'm so sorry. Even people, even amongst people who would attend a Matthew Freud party, there were people who drew the line at that. Yeah, listen, listen, listen. Everyone's got a line. Jesus, who knew? But that's a bit much. Um, so, I'm sorry, where are we now? Okay, so what are the rules about

this? If you pretend you've done some sort of campaign video, that you have to get the artist's permission. Jack White might have a bit of a case because I think he put out some social media video with Seven Nation Army. It's always Seven Nation Army, by the way. And Jack White's very, very circumspect about talking about politics at all, even when they're asking about like Jeremy Corbyn he's like yeah no I don't know the guy, I don't really have any views on that. I love it being used at sport, yes every time my children hear it at a football any kind of game of any type of thing and they're like he's much happier with old Michael Van Gerwen than old Jeremy Corbyn. Yes, much happier. Yeah you're right there's a blanket the ASCAP

which is same as BMI over here, which means at a rally, you can actually play whatever you want. The second you put out a campaign video, or it makes it look like somebody has consented to it being used, that's when you get in trouble. Eddie Grant, four years ago, 2020,

he started suing Trump for using Electric Avenue, and as you say, in a publicly available forum. And literally this week, finally won the case and you know, Trump's people are going to have to pay him off and Isaac Hayes as well. So Trump used to use Trump uses, hold on. I'm coming. Yeah.

I think that you don't want to hear Trump and hold on. I'm coming in the, in the same room. Uh, and, uh, Isaac Hayes' family sued him. So he can't use that either, but again, they were using those as almost like official campaign songs. Whereas a lot of these other stuff, like Celine Dion said, why are you using my heart will go on. I mean, that's literally the song from Titanic. What happens is that venues can buy rights to play songs and they're sold in a package.

And if you want to say, I don't want any of my songs in any of those package. What you're also saying is I don't want them to be played in bars. I don't want to be going... So there's some people are trying to make it mandatory for politicians to request before they play their songs at rallies and people like Sear and Mick Jagger and Blondie and Greene have written a letter but we are at the letter stage. In general people do cease and desist letters to Trump but don't forget I mean the most famous actually I went recently when I was in New York with my son and

we went really early in the morning to Trump Tower because we were up so early because of the jet lag. So you go into the thing and you see the gold escalator that he came down to launch his original campaign in 2015 to Neil Young keep on rocking in the free world. Now the interesting thing about Neil Young is that Trump genuinely absolutely loves Neil Young. Like he loves him and in the years before when he was just the Donald he was on The Apprentice he would always talk about Neil Young. Listen to this slightly cursed front row of people rocking out at a 2006 Madison Square Gardens concert Patti Smith, Salman Rushdie and Donald Trump at the Neil Young concert and

they absolutely loved him. That honestly sounds like an episode of The Bear. Yeah. It sounds as funny as that. Yeah, and it's twisted and dark. So Neil Young tried to stop him. Also a bit like Born in the USA, which we'll come back to in a minute because Reagan used that.

It's like, have you actually listened to the song? If you listen to the words of Keep On Rocking in the Free World, it is not like an upbeat sort of anthem about whatever. But anyway, Trump came down the gold escalator to that. And one of the, that's one of the most interesting things I've ever, I remember seeing an interview with him once actually, when everyone said, some of the interviewer just sort of went for it and said, you know, you know, Young really hates you and like, he really like actually hates you. And Trump just no well you know what I still like his music and I thought I don't think I've ever seen him not like decide that attack is the best form of defense and I thought we know that emotion is like his

phantom limb but I think we just saw a sort of twitch on it just the tiniest twitch. That's kind of terrifying yeah it's terrifying that he's actually in there. That there's something yeah Davros, he's actually in there. That there's something, yeah, like Davros. He's more machine than man, but there's something still in there. Yeah, so anyway. The history of using this is interesting. America's always had campaign songs, and for years and years and years they were written campaign songs. 1808, Huzzah for Madison, Huzzah was for James Madison, and they would take like old tunes like Yankee Doodle Dandy and John Brown's Body and things like that and they would, you know,

do lyrics for their different things. Harding, You're the Man for Us, that was Warren G. Harding. Calvin Coolidge, Keep Cool and Keep Coolidge, which is an absolute cracker. Then FDR was the first one to go, I'm gonna use a commercial disc, who used Happy Days Are Here Again? So they're starting to go, oh okay,

actually we don't need to just have someone and Tim Panetti writing us lyrics about how great we are. But then even as late as Nixon's era, Nixon had Nixon's the one and Nixon now which were written for him. But George McGovern against him used bridge over trouble water, which is the first person used like a song that was actually in the sort of current atmosphere. And that was early 70s first person to do that. And then the one that really yeah didn't it just you know McGovern yeah you know the guy who wasn't president failed to win while Watergate was actually running yeah exactly McGovern great great election but the one that

really broke everything i think was Clinton when they used Don't Stop by Fleetwood Mac which really felt it had that same thing with Things Are Going Get Better in the UK with Blair, where you just think, oh, it really matched the mood of the times, it absolutely matched the energy of the campaign. And that's when, from now on, the campaign song is such a huge deal, which is why people get exorcised when people use the wrong ones. Actually, as a slight throwback, Bob Dole, when he ran in 96, he had a version of Soulman by Sam and Dave called Doleman. Come on. We've just done Don't Stop. Thank you. No.

We have moved past it, Bob Dole. Well, Reagan said he shared the same American dream as Bruce Springsteen. Again, have you listened to this song? Because of Born in the USA. I mean, dream, maybe, but every waking moment. No, I don't think so No, I really one thing you can do I know we said that you can do it in America you can basically write a cease and desist letter and it's not gonna work There are more complicated ways of suing this there's like the right of publicity If you're saying your trademark is being diluted by mere association

This is where all these people are now coming in with Trump where they're able to say No, it looks like I'm endorsing you and that alone is damaged to my reputation Yes, because your brand is so tainted It is now tainted and it's certainly toxic amongst the people to whom I would otherwise Regard as a market for my records It's a form of copyright infringement whether or not you think it is its trademark infringement and your it's false endorsement And so they can get him on these other things And I think that's where you're starting because Jack because Jack White, by the way, has been complaining about this since 2016.

It's only now that he's suing. Yeah. Well, same as Eddie Grant. So Eddie Grant's been four years that's been going through the courts and it's literally just finally this week. So you would think that there might be like a little deluge of those things at the moment. And this year, of course, Kamala Harris, Freedom by Beyonce. Yeah. That's again, it might be one of those things at the moment and this year of course Kamala Harris freedom by Beyonce yeah that's it again it might be one of those ones that captures the the mood of the times it might be but I I slightly I still think that I wouldn't say because it's what I'm first of all there's always a law I just think never litigate yes and second of all you're suing a campaign they've got lots of money obviously lots of other people's money I tell you I tell you that I tell you this for a fact all, you're suing a campaign, they've got lots of money, obviously lots of other people's money. I tell you this for a fact, I know you're saying that, but if

we're watching the next Trump rally on TV and just as he's coming on you hear go, Hi, I'm Marina Hyde, welcome to the questions, sorry, the questions and answers edition of the Ress's entertainment. You would be like, I'm suing, I can't have that. Well, I would just find it hilarious. I just would think it, I just get a column out of it and move on. That is the honest thing I would do. Or two columns. Come on, you'd see that bit, that'd be money in that one. It's suing Trump. Oh no, never have a lawsuit unless there's no alternative to having a lawsuit.

You'll probably, you'll just, it'll be the first thing you think about in the morning, last thing you think about at night. You'll, it will take, do you think he'll think about it for one second? Yeah. It will just weigh on you and you'll be thinking about it all the time. So you know, I'm sure that he's itching to use that. Which politician was it said never fight with a pig because you both get dirty but the pig likes it.

Lots of people, lots of strategists. It's attributed to many US strategists, isn't it? I don't know. Was it, did it first come to light around Clinton times? I'm going to get that wrong. Was it Shane Ritchie? I think it was Shane Ritchie. Shane Ritchie, Shane the Legend Ritchie.

Is that us done? I think it is. Yeah. So the big headline is we're not suing Trump. No, we're not suing Trump. We're just hoping for him to do it. So we get a column out of it. Well, I do. Any recommendations? My book is my recommendation is a book that came out in the 80s. I'm very excited about the upcoming Disney Plus adaptation of Rivals. Now, many of our listeners will have already read this. If you haven't, first of all, it's absolutely brilliant. It's even amongst Jodie Cooper, who is brilliant. I think it's her best one, but that's, you know,

it's a matter of taste. I like all her big books rather than the sort of small individual character, but it's got a huge cast of characters. I'm fascinated. I haven't seen any of it yet, and I'm going to sit to a screening of Rivals tomorrow night. Oh, we will be talking about Rivals. Oh, we're going to be doing, we're going to be talking about Rivals, believe you me. Tenant, Dire, they're all in it. Turner, Parkinson, I mean there are a huge, it's going to be amazing

and I will just, I think it's really interesting to read it, reread it if you haven't read it, or if you read it if you haven't read it and then watch it and see how they've managed to do that because for so long people thought it was sort of unfilmable for a number of reasons we'll talk about when we... But the recommendation is read the novel because Julie Cooper will royally entertain you. She's hilarious, it's brilliant social observation, everything is, it's a real sort of mood piece of the 80s but it's very current today and it's, you know, it's got lots of great love stories and lots of great sex stories so you know it's very current today and it's, you know, it's got lots of great love stories and lots of great sex stories. So, you know, it's got the lot.

It's got the lot. On which bombshell, maybe we'll see each other Thursday? Yes, please do keep sending your questions in. The address is therestisentertainmentatgmail.com and we'll see you on Thursday. See you on Thursday. Bye everyone. politics U.S. Anthony Scaramucci and I want to tell you about this great new series we've done on how Donald Trump won the White House in 2016. We're going to take you right back in time and explain just how Donald Trump went from being that extraordinary apprentice reality TV star and real estate developer in New York City to being president of the United States in just 18 months.

We're going to start right from the moment he descended the escalator to November the 8th. I was with him at 6 p.m. on November the 8th, election night, and we're going to regalia with stories related to the campaign, why he has so much loyal support, what he does in debate preparation in 2016, all of the different entry that went on in the campaign, and some of the things that we were battling internally while we were also fighting the Clinton campaign. There's no doubt that 2016 was this extraordinary historic moment. It changed American politics. It hangs over the country. It hangs over the world still today. So come join us. The rest is Politics U.S. wherever you get your podcasts. It's a four-part mini-series. Find out how Trump won the White House in 2016 and it'll tell you a lot about where we