The Rest Is Entertainment - Marina's Tribute to David Lynch

Episode Date: January 23, 2025

In light of the sad news that legendary director David Lynch has passed away Marina pays tribute. The Rest Is Football provide an answer for us on cold, windy, commentary positions plus stories of rats, spiders and flies on set. Your questions answered by Richard and Marina. As ever, we really appreciate your feedback on The Rest Is Entertainment to make our shows and partnerships even better: https://forms.gle/RRtnYHRhxrbcqU8A7 Join The Rest Is Entertainment Club for ad free listening and access to bonus episodes: www.therestisentertainment.com Sign up to our newsletter: www.therestisentertainment.com Twitter: @‌restisents Instagram: @‌restisentertainment YouTube: @‌therestisentertainment Email: [e-mail] Producers: Neil Fearn + Joey McCarthy Executive Producers: Tony Pastor + Jack Davenport As ever, we really appreciate your feedback on The Rest Is Entertainment to make our shows and partnerships even better: https://forms.gle/RRtnYHRhxrbcqU8A7 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Get groceries delivered across the GTA from real Canadian Superstore with PC Express. Shop online for super prices and super savings. Try it today and get up to $75 in PC Optimum Points. Visit superstore.ca to get started. In a darkly comedic look at motherhood and society's expectations, Academy Award-nominated Amy Adams stars as a passionate artist who puts her career on hold to stay home with her young son. But her maternal instincts take a wild and surreal turn as she discovers the best yet fiercest part of herself. Based on the acclaimed novel, Nightbitch is a thought-provoking and wickedly humorous film from Searchlight Pictures.

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Offer ends January 31st, 2025. Visit td.com slash DI Offer to learn more. Hello, Richard and Marina here. You know that anyway. Would you like to be a member of the Rest is Entertainment Club? I can't hear you, but I'm assuming yes. For ad-free listening, bonus episodes and access to our chat community, sign up to the Rest is Entertainment Club.

Visit therestisentertainment.com or, if you're listening on Apple, sign up directly in the app. Hello and welcome to this episode of the Rest is Entertainment Questions and Answers Edition. I'm Marina Hyde and I'm Richard Osman. A lovely lineup of questions today Marina. An absolutely gorgeous beauty pageant thereof. If you have questions by the way just send them to therestisentertainment.com and we absolutely love getting them. Sorry we can't do all of them. We like to choose a mix, a lovely mixture. The rest is entertainment at gmail.com. Oh is that right? What did I say? The rest is entertainment.com is where you can join our lovely club. That's right, so the rest is, I mean they could make it simpler. For ad-free

listening, bonus episodes, etc. Yes. So restisentertainment.com is where you can join the club for ad-free listening and bonus episodes and the rest is entertainment. At gmail.com. At gmail.com, very different. Very different. Is where you can send your questions shall we ask the first question a question here from Gordon Cole and we've had lots of questions sort of in this same area, but Gordon puts it very succinctly He says I'm devastated by David Lynch's death and think he was a genius. What are your top three works by him? Okay, 100% I agree with you He was a genius and these are the moments where I particularly hate ranking things because as you know I don't know I love you don't because as you know I don't like, I love-

You don't have to, you don't have to for this. But I will. Okay. But I will but it's hard but the idea of like I'm leaving out Wild at Heart or A Razorhead or Lost Highway but I am. At number three I am going to say Blue Velvet. Okay. At number two and this was just two and one was really hard, I'm

going to put Marlholland Drive at number two. Definitely the cinematic masterpiece. It is extraordinary and amazing. Can you explain to people who are not aware of his work, haven't watched his work, what is it about David Lynch that you do not get elsewhere? What is it about his particular vision? God, I mean, he is a sort of master surrealist, but he's folksy, he's funny, he's black, he takes you off in strange story directions. It's always the most extraordinary and unpredictable ride. But when you think of the American dream, which he's great at talking about, the dream-like quality of that dream is half dream, half nightmare, that the obverse of it is a sort

of nightmarish world in many ways. The obverse of this American dream is a kind of, you know, almost another type of narcotic fantasy. I think it's all so weird and strange and completely original. And speaking of which, at number one. Yes, I was going to say, what's your number one David Litchley movie? It's Twin Peaks.

I guess I was 16 when I first watched that. And it's made, you know, he was shooting, he must've been shooting it in 89. It's airs in 90. It airs on network television. I can't really explain what network American television was at that stage, but it's on ABC. Millions and millions of Americans

and people around the world, obviously, but in order to get renewed care about the most extraordinary odd world that was kind of funny and completely eccentric. It completely foreshadows all sorts of, the Sopranos is almost a decade later. All of the, and I think it's better than the Sopranos. I think it's just this most extraordinary weird way

of doing storytelling of characters, totally charming. People were hooked and it was very, very weird. And yet it had mass appeal. It was sort of hypnotic and mesmerizing and people didn't know why they loved it, but they loved the characters and they loved the story. He was a sort of work of art and when he gave interviews, he was just sort of extremely, I remember there's one interview he gave where he was trying to explain that he developed a really amazing squirrel-proof bird feeder. And so he draws out this whole diagram

for the interviewer and the squirrel's kind of crying and he then gives it to them and it says, last in a squirrel thwarted by the disc of sorrow cries in despair. It's like maybe my favorite, there's many favorite stories, but have you seen ever the pictures of him, which by the way go over many years, pictures of him with these five Woody Woodpecker toys. Now, he gave an interview about his acquisition of these five Woody Woodpecker toys. Now, he gave an interview about his acquisition of these five Woody Woodpecker soft toys. He'd seen them hanging in a petrol station. He said, I screech on

the brakes. I do a U-turn. I go back and I buy them. I named them Chukko, Buster, Pete, Bob, and Dan, and they were my boys and they were in my office. Days go by years. There's several of these photos. And then he says to the interview, and he's looking straight ahead, they were my dear friends for a while, but then certain traits started coming out and they became not so nice. They are not in my life anymore. And this is the essence of David Lynch. You're thinking is this real? Is he serious? Is it black comedy? Is it tragedy? So he's always on that tightrope. Is it darkness? Is it horror? It's sort of a bit about, and yes, it's completely charming and you want to know more and he was a genius. I'm devastated by his also I think he's extraordinary and he was

such a... we talk about big swings and people not making them my god I mean he made them the entire time and he meant so much to me as an artist I can't even... that's why I had to put Twin Peaks as number one because he just opened my mind at the age of 16 and I you know you kind of never look back in some ways. He's amazing. And if you are 16 now and there's a whole generation maybe for whom David Lynch means less than it did for our generation, where would you start? Would you start with Twin Peaks? I think I might actually.

Is that the best way in? Yeah, start with Twin Peaks. And if you like the slightly unhingedness of it, then you've got a whole series of movies that will open up to you. Yeah, start at the beginning with a raise ahead and go on. Gordon, thank you for your question. Oh my god, I love this question from Maddie Gould. I was recently delighted to see the Thursday Murder Club pop up in a kinky monk erotic novel, Saint by Ciara Simone, the undisputed queen of kinky

monk erotica. I'm totally taking your word for this. In the context of the story, Maddie says, a character was described as being a fan of the Thursday Murder Club in order to indicate their wholesomeness. I wonder how does Richard feel about this and how does it work in terms of copyright? Are authors allowed to reference real world work in their fiction without fear of repercussion? What would happen if Richard objected to a reference to his work in a kinky monk erotic novel? Um, Maddie, thank you. Listen, I'll tell tell you I will do many, many things in life before I object to a reference to my work in a kinky monk erotic novel. That to me is one of the great honours. You finally have made it.

Yeah, finally made it. Yes, I was not aware of the work of Sierra Simone. I am now because I've been looking up Saint. I'm honestly, I'm absolutely all for this. It happens all the time. Authors always, always, always reference other authors and other books in their novels. I do it all the time. A character is reading something. I think that in Thirsty Murder Club, yeah, Ron loves Mark Billingham, Elizabeth loves John Le Carre. I think Joyce's favorite author of all time is Marion Keyes. I do it all the time. And like I mentioned, Kate Atkinson, it's just a lovely thing to do, to mention people whose books you love and whose books you like.

I mentioned the brilliant Claire Chambers, a small pleasure in one of my books and it's a really lovely thing to do. But this is great. Can I, I looked up Sierra Simone's novel, Saint. It genuinely sounds great. If you're into kinky monk erotica, which I am not yet. I don't know if I am, I don't want to say I'm not.

Shall I read you out the synopsis for saint? Go on. And you tell me if you are into it. I'm ready. Aidan was the last person in the world anyone expected to become a monk. But the decision to become a monk saved his life, and he's determined to do it right. Even if it's taken him from his millionaire party boy lifestyle and the love of his life, Elijah Iverson.

Four plus years haven't made letting Elijah go any easier, but at least Aidan hasn't had to come face to face with those whiskey eyes and soft mouth since he left. That is, uh oh, until Elijah shows up on his doorstep, assigned to accompany Aidan on a European monastery road trip for an article he's writing. Assigned? Assigned. Okay. Assigned, like an assignment from a judge.

You've done that. And he has to take the assignation. Okay. Well, listen, perhaps he still has feelings for Aidan as well, which is why he's going back. Because otherwise he would just go, oh no, I can't, that's Aidan and we used to have a thing. But obviously he wants to, he feels the pull still.

Yeah. I think Aidan left him. So Elijah's of course taking the thing. Yeah, but I guess Aidan doesn't have to go with him. But again, I think there's a stirring when he hears the name, he hears it's Elijah and he's thinking, what are the odds? But let's go with it anyway. Go on. Yeah, I'll go on. The pull is still there between them. But Aidan knows he can't have Elijah back. He broke his heart when he left and now Elijah's engaged to someone else. Aidan chose God. He chose his vows. Except between whispered confessions and stolen

kisses and moments bent over an ancient altar, those vows are feeling flimsier by the day. Vows or not, it would take a saint to resist Elijah. And Aiden sure as hell ain't no saint. I mean, come on. Okay, fine. Yeah. Yeah. In? Okay, I'm in. Yeah. I'll have a look.

But what's gonna... I mean, so Elijah's with somebody, the love hasn't died, the fire hasn't gone out, that's for sure. Aidan's running from something. I mean, listen, but I'm sure it's fine. It's like I've pressed the red button for your editorializing of the Kinky Munker erotic novel. No, I just- I want to go to the source.

To Sierra Simone? No, to the text. To the text. Oh, to the sacred text itself. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's a good setup up for a story, though. The commissioning process of the road trip thing, you know, it's bumping slightly for

me. Why? Just because it's partly my world. And it's bumping slightly. And I just want to, once I've got that out of the way, I can believe all the rest of it. Imagine. Of course.

I've got no problem with that. Imagine you're... I'm struggling on the commissioning process. You just, you turn up on the doorstep, that I've been assigned to go on a road trip with you and cover this. No, this is what's happened. So let's say let's say he's been assigned by airmail, which is which does brilliant articles every week Sort of thing that we love which we love and they've said to Elijah Iverson He's doing pretty well flying pretty high since Aidan left because something's missing I guess so he's throwing himself into his work

They said to Elijah we want to do a thing about Monasteries as retreats in Europe and about you, wellness and about sort of getting inside your own headspace. Do you fancy doing a trip around Europe and visiting monasteries? Elijah's going, yeah, of course. And he's also thinking, God, Aidan was, he went to, did he go to a monastery in Europe? Last time I heard of him. And you remember that detail about your, one of your exes. Oh yeah, he ended up in a monastery. After four years, do you remember? Do you know what I mean? After four years, they're like, I am a very propulsive person, Richard. I don't think you look back.

So they then get in touch with Catholic Church or whoever's in charge. They're not getting in touch with Aidan. Again, it's just bumping a bit when you said they get in touch with the Catholic Church. There are monasteries that have press offices and things, you know, because you can stay there. There's ways and means of getting in touch with monasteries. They're not completely shut off. You're not suddenly, you know, there are ways and means people work for them. Okay, people are getting paid by monasteries. So they get in touch with the monastery organization. And so we can we send a journalist over there. Of course, we got four or five different places you might be interested in send them over the franchise.

It's a franchise. It's a chain of monasteries. A chain of monasteries, yeah. A chain of monasteries. Sierra, the chain of monasteries. Lots of people, yeah. They send them over and Aidan doesn't really know about it. He knows, oh, there's a journalist coming over and we need you to sort of show him around. To be clear, this isn't necessarily the plot of the book. This is just Richard telling me that this is what the plot of the book could be. No, I'm just saying if you're worried about the commissioning process, I'm telling you a way in which that story might have been commissioned and in which Aidan wouldn't have known that it was

going to happen. But he's just, someone said to him, Oh, by the way, tomorrow brother, you'll, you'll. He's a pen for hire. He's a laptop for hire. He is. But you, sometimes that's, those are the gigs you take, right? You know, and I don't think, I don't think his heart is in the new relationship, Elijah. So actually a trip to Europe, he's thinking, you know what, I wouldn't mind just a month away. That would do me. Going round and chaining them on a tube. and then suddenly they're banging on ancient altars all across Europe tell you what I'm gonna have a look at it and see just how the commissioning process worked but thank you very

much for introducing me to that whole sub-genre yeah thank you Maddie and also yes I mean no I'm delighted I'm absolutely thrilled that they mentioned the Thursday Murder Club yeah sorry I'm absolutely thrilled that they mentioned The Thursday Murder Club. Yeah, sorry to say. I've got a bow on it, this one. Delighted. Yeah, Kinky Monk Erotica. Don't say we haven't got range. I love that you're just worried about the commissioning process.

Well, that says a lot, doesn't it? That feels like a book we're going to have to buy online. Oh yeah. Do you know, I saw Richard Osman in Daunt Books the other day. Yeah, he was buying them. It was like two priests banging each other on the front of the cover. I didn't end. And yeah, I just was quite surprised. And he bought the new Kate Atkinson, which he put on top. I tell you what, we'll read it. And then in the next Thursday Murder Club book, maybe I'll reference

it. Oh, the meta. I tell you, if anyone knows Thursday Murder Club, I tell you someone who would love that book and that is Joyce. She would go crazy for that. Two Priests. Yeah, come on. That would be catnip to Joyce. That's about all we have time for this week, listening. I'm so sorry. Marina, a question for you that does not involve Priests. Bethany Wilson asks, I was watching 500 Days of Summer last night and was wondering when childhood photos of

characters or montages of them as children are used in Films are they childhood pictures of the actual actors or do they find child actors to replicate the effect Bethany? That's a good question. It's it's sometimes it's both. I mean to put all of these things It's quite depressing after a while. You just look at all these things and think of Everything as a line item and a cost they sometimes hire child actors everything as a line item and a cost. They sometimes hire child actors to create those photos and sometimes if they're really integral to the plot then they'll spend much more time on them.

Other times the art department who is in charge of all of this stuff will have to, either they can ask for the real thing, I think in sideways there's Miles, Paul Giamatti, his mother had a picture of him and his father and the photo was of Paul Giamatti, his mother had a picture of him and his father. And the photo was of Paul Giamatti and his father, who was actually the Major League Baseball Commissioner at the time, Bartlett Giamatti. Morgan Freeman, I think, they've once used his, in Shawshank, when they have that picture of him as a young person, they used his son. But it all costs

money and doing it credibly costs a lot of money. And the art department sometimes says, it's scanned in, it's quite easy and you can Photoshop it because it's only in the background of a shot. And the trouble comes, the trouble comes from two sources, as always. The main trouble that we have in television today is that motion pictures have become a plausible medium. So people are constantly pausing and zooming. There was a guy on Twitter who did a thread of like bad photos I've seen in fictional TV shows just this year. And if you look at them, it is, they do look dreadful.

But what's happening- But the idea is that you're supposed to just pan past them anyway. And you just get the vibe of them. And what has happened often is that the art department is always meticulous and you say, what's the set up for this scene? And they say, well, you know, we're gonna have the cameras

and then, so you do it. And then when they get onto set, they think, yeah, it's not really working like this. Why don't we swing the camera around, have it this side? Then your sort of little bit of background is suddenly someone is going, oh my God, that's so bad. I could have done better than that in Photoshop in five minutes.

And there just isn't the time. Normally things changes like that at the last minute. So something that was going to be background has suddenly come much closer to the foreground. But it is a big thing because there's so much of how we create those worlds and especially things at homes, people always have photos. So a huge amount of the art department side,

this is a job by the way, if you talk to, I talked to an art director about this, who was like, oh my God, I don't often say, please can AI do this, but this is so great. AI is just gonna be able to do all of that because it takes so long to kind of create these credible photos and AI will do it brilliantly and I won't have to think about it anymore because it's a big waste of time. But this person said please just like they were originally emotional pictures making

everything possible is a real nightmare for the art department. Yeah, Ingrid did a job the other day and essentially a flat had to be covered in photos of her from different stages of her life. So she had to like find photos of her as a child, as a teenager, in her twenties and all that kind of stuff. And they all get sent off and then they all get kind of merged with other people. It's quite cool. It's quite a fun thing to do. But as you say, sometimes it is harder than others and some of them are not meant to be paused on. Yeah.

Talking of pauses. Yes it's good isn't it? Lovely, I love that. If it had been easier then talking of Kinky Priest, should we go to some adverts? Talking of pauses, should we go for some adverts? This episode is brought to you by NordVPN. Now it might be a new year Richard but online fraudsters continue with their same old tricks. I feel you're about to help me avoid some online disasters. I'm always here to help. I live to serve. And with that in mind I want to tell you about NordVPN's

threat protection. Threat protection? It's the first Steven Seagal movie. Threat protection 2. That could be his comeback. He doesn't necessarily need a comeback but yes once again we are claiming copyright here on this podcast. Anyway many ransomware attacks start with phishing emails or malicious websites by encrypting your data NordVPN can protect against certain types of attacks threat protection reduces the risks of accidentally downloading ransomware from malicious links or even from ads as does threat protection too I think I speak for everyone when I want to thank you, Marina and NordVPN for keeping our data safe online.

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Hi, it's Cathy Kay here from The Rest Is Politics US. We felt at this time, as America is heading into the Trump administration that we should look back on one of the darkest moments in recent American history. So we have done just that with a series on Trump's insurrection and his attempts back in 2020 to steal the election from Joe Biden. There was an incitement of an insurrection. They stormed the Capitol. They literally have senators running for their lives.

We break it down. We give an hour by hour of all the incidents, the fences smashing, the windows breaking, gunshots firing, Trump supporters smoking joints in statutory hall. Just imagine the bedlam and incredibly some of these people are going to be pardoned by Mr. Trump. And so January 6th, I've never told Cady K this, but January 6th is my birthday. Okay, tune in and listen. Yeah, that's not the only extraordinary thing about the date of January the 6th, however. I mean,

this is why this story in this series is so important and so gripping because so many of these characters are coming back with us today and so much has been forgiven and swept under the carpet. And America decided in the election last year that they were gonna reinstate Donald Trump. With that, there really is no better time to take a look at these events. To hear more, just search the rest is Politics U.S., wherever you get your podcasts.

Hear a clip from this mini-series at the end of this week's episode. Let's do that. Welcome back, everybody. I have got a question about weather and freezingness. Ian MacLeod, he says, I was listening to a football match on the radio and the commentator and summarizer were talking about

how cold the commentary gantry was. It got me thinking, what is the coldest stadium in the UK? As Gary and Micah are generally in the studio keeping warm these days, oh, hock at them, I'm guessing that Alan is best place to answer. Well, we found out exactly who was best place to answer. We went to our friends at the Restless Football. They'll be furious because this would have been a great question for the Restless Football Q&A. Yeah.

But we got it first. That's showbiz. would have been a great question for the rest of football Q&A. Yeah. But we got it first. So we have... That's showbiz. That's showbiz, boys. So we have an answer for you, Ian, from our very own team of kinky monks, Gary, Micah and Alan. I think we can probably help, mainly through Alan because he's done a lot of co-commentary lately, so he's been in lots of gantries.

We usually tend to be nice and smug and warm in our studio. It's the good-looking ones for the studio, isn't it, Gaz? The good-looking ones. Yeah, exactly, exactly. Alan's got a face for co-coms. Well, it's an interesting question, isn't it? The coldest, I think that often happens when it's the highest.

And I think the two highest grounds in the country are, if I'm not mistaken, West Brom and Oldham, I think there's not much to choose between the two. So they're probably factually the coldest ones in the country, but there are a few. I'll tell you where it was always cold, at Stoke. I don't know whether that's where that phrase came from. They won on a cold Tuesday night in Stoke because they had gaps in the corner of the ground where the wind would howl in.

I still think they're there. What about your experiences your experiences Alan what's it like on the gantry and some of them are really tricky to get to aren't they? Yeah they are some of them are really really tricky I've never done one at West Brom I've never done one at Oldham I've played there but I've never done a corecom there what I find really cold and windy and like are you high up is Goodison Park Everton the old Goodison Park you've got walk right up and you're right across the the gantry and then you've got a climb through another little hole to get to where you are and it's always so bloody windy and cold up there but I always now go out and have a like an electric jumper on with a battery so I'm I keep

I try and keep nice and warm because it's bloody painful if you get too cold, you know, because you got to be there. You're there. You sat there from half an hour before the game. Um, and you're there for another two, two and a half hours and it can get miserable if you get cold. So I always wrap up and I get my electric jumper on, press the red button as soon as I go out into the outside and I'm not too bad some of the times yeah. What do you have to drink? Do you know what though Micah?

You have to time it before you have your last drink because I was if you need a wee you can't just get out of these places and run to the toilet when you're stuck up at the top with the stand in Everton. Because you wouldn't get back in time to get for the second half. So I have to actually time it. I have a couple of sips during commentary, but I don't have that too much beforehand. I might have a cup of tea at half time if someone's kind enough to bring you one. Well, Richard, Marina, we've done our best for you. Hope that helps a little bit. I'm not sure there's an exact science on this.

Sound like exact science to me, sounds like good as some park. The heated g-lay. I didn't know you could have a heated jumper. What is that? It's like a g-lay and they all wear them on Emmerdale. Anywhere you're doing on location, lots of people and they've got these things going through and you charge the battery pack

and it's like an electric blanket but you're wearing it. Wow. This is, I know, crew have gone soft. Games gone. They really have, the game has gone. But it's interesting because it was sort of in some ways a question about the coldest ground in the country. Let's say it's Goodison Park with possibly West Brom or Oldham but really it's become everyone going, wait what? They're really reasonably priced. If you go on Amazon, because I want someone to talk about this, I thought, I mean really why don't I buy one of these on those days when you're typing Coles at home or whatever.

But anyway, so they have them and people wear them. We should at all times have Michael Richards in the studio with us. Don't you think? Yeah. Just to last stuff in. Yeah. Thank you, thank you so much, gents.

If we can ever help you. I can't imagine a world in which we could. But yeah, if there's if you ever get any showbiz related questions, then you know, explain the career of Peter Crouch, for example, then honestly, just get in touch with us. Marina Shaney Sanderson has a question that she says on a recent trip to see Nosferatu, there were quite a few scenes with loads of rats loose outside or possibly on a set but even so how do they keep the little blighters from legging it? Ha! Right, Robert Eggers who is the director of this, he used 5,000 live rats, they are all live and if they're in the foreground they're live and then they kind of fade back

into CGI rats but none of them died and they were very well trained but what they did was that they built and they didn't lose one None of them died. But in order not to lose. How long are they filming for? Because what's the life expectancy of a rat? Oh quite long. Oh okay, so I was just thinking that even statistically one of them might have died of old age.

Yeah. In a Robert Eggers film. It was suspicious that none of them had died but I'm willing to accept that none of them did. Yeah, so well the Humane Society is mega-hot on this, which we'll come to later in my answer. They built these kind of plexiglass channels and barriers so that the rats couldn't get away. There's a scene in the street where there are horses on one side and it looks like the

rats are running so between their feet, but they're not. They're actually on the other side of a plexiglass barrier, so nobody gets squashed and nobody gets hurt. Animal Wranglers on set, by the way, are really interesting. I'm going to stick to the ones that have to do a lot of animals and clearly someone has to do 5,000 rats here, or many of them. There are sort of funny stories about animal wranglers, like Daniel Raglerford says that there was a monkey in Professor Gonnigal's classroom that just masturbated incessantly in a cage. But then you also have...

Harry Potter and the wanking monkey. The Humane Society for Shawshank, they had to find a maggot that had died of natural causes. They're so hot on this, the Humane Society come on the set and whatever. Good, by the way. Yeah. But the best, well, I wouldn't, I'm a celebrity, let's put it that way. The best stories contain that smaller animals in larger numbers, so I've kind of focused on that. Okay. The locusts in Exorcist, there was a guy called Stephen R. Kutcher, he was an entomology student,

so he studied bugs basically. They needed 6,000 of them and he knew, and he was basically just brought in as a contact of someone who knew someone who knew lots about bugs. He had to sex them all so there were no females. So he had to make sure that however... He had to sex six thousand locusts. Apparently he found seven and were like seven females. Like yeah, you made a mistake. I mean, that's the... I would watch that film. Yeah, but he still works in bugs. It opened the door and he became someone who worked

in them. So he... when Sam Raimi needed a spider for Spider-Man, who I don't know if you heard, he was bitten by a radioactive spider. No way, what happened? Yeah, I can't believe it. Yeah anyway sorry spoiler. Is he okay? Yeah cockroaches. He when there was a movie called Race to the Sun and a cockroach listen to what this cockroach

had to do that Stephen had to be in charge of. He had to he said I had a cockroach come out of a shoe walk onto a bag of Cheetos turn left walk through some Cheetos stop on a magazine that had a picture of a surfboard. Like most actors couldn't actually do that, sorry. I've worked with human actors. He did it by understanding how cockroaches think and he said that they're thigmatatic, which means they like to run along the edges of things. So what he did was he kept creasing the bags of Cheetos and he did everything so clever. He provided all the giant locusts for Jurassic Park. I wondered you know what I was gonna ask you provided them Candyman Tony Todd said I will do it the original Candyman but and they use

200,000 bees in that movie don't tell me all they them survive because they die every time they sting and Tony Todd's agent who's Tony Todd sorry Tony Todd is Candyman got his agent to negotiate a thousand dollar bonus every time he actually got stung. That's a great idea. And he got an extra 23,000. He was stung 23 times, he got an extra 23,000. I would constantly be going, ow, oh, there's another one. The snakes in Raiders of the Lost Ark.

We've previously discussed them from a sound angle. Do you remember that the sound guy, it was his wife Spaghetti. Yes, yeah. But actually, the snake scene, they were filming at Elstree, which is in the UK, and they're filming at Elstree and they had all those snakes down there. But Stanley Kubrick's daughter, Vivian, her father had filmed The Shining the year before and she was editing her documentary about the making of The Shining. She came onto the set and was like, this is so cruel to the snakes. And they were all like, hmm, because it was standing,

I wasn't saying, you know, telling her to go away. She rang the RSPCA and she got Raid of the Lost Ark shut down because of the cruelty to snakes and they all had to just swallow it. So, but then my favorite final story, because I'm talking about lots and lots of small animals, a very famous director, this is from a very famous director who wanted

to have flies in his movie because there was going to be corpses and it's going to be a sort of sense of decay. And so he got the animal handler to bring, they were shooting on location, he brought boxes of flies, they come in these big polystyrene boxes and what you do is you put them in a fridge and what that does is it anesthetizes the flies so that they are kind of in a narcotized state. Anyway, and this guy was staying in some sort of motel on location and he had this and they were right out in the middle of nowhere and as he's walking into his room that night he trips over the step into the room, loses the box which comes open and all the flies get loose. So he has to shut the door and spend the entire night trying to catch all these flies in a hotel room and

get them back into the box to go into the fridge. That's a nightmare. Do you know what I would have done? I'd just got two panes of glass. That's like hell. It's a vision of hell, isn't it? Yeah. We'll be doing that for you. That's much worse than pushing a rock up a hill for all eternity. I think just doing that even for three hours in a motel room is probably... Or sixing 6,000 locusts. So there we go, small groups of animals. That's such a great answer.

Of which there are many of them. Oh, here we go with a question on overspending from Michelle G. I'm wondering whether you think modern TV or movies are too gluttonous with money and time. You've previously talked about how news crews are highly skilled at filming and editing footage rapidly. Are regular TV shows and movies too indulgent with long writers' rooms filming from every angle and onerous editing?

If the industry's struggling, surely the process could be more streamlined. That's a really interesting one, Michelle. By and large, sometimes when you finish a show, you'll do a crew shoot and you know you can put it out on social media and people go, you don't need that many people to make a TV show. I think you do. I mean we're making this as cheaply as we possibly can and every single person here is doing a job. So just, it is the second you start looking at TV or film, it is unbelievable the amount of work that goes into it and the amount of people you need to do that work. Certainly television, certainly British television has been made as cheaply as it can be made for a very, very long time now. There is an interesting question as to whether there is still some, you know, fat on the body of drama, of high end drama

and as there's less and less money. UK drama or? UK drama, well US drama in fact, more so in some ways. It is very, very expensive to make drama. I mean, you'll be lucky to get away with three million pound an hour for a drama. It is very, very expensive. But Michelle is right in that we find ourselves in a slightly different era now where there is less money around. I'm hearing that coming down to saying we've got to do it for two.

Which, by the way way sounds incredibly expensive. Channel 5 are making stuff for under a million an hour and they're doing that through various different routes. There's this idea where drama is often called blue chip and there is this new industry which they call blue cheap which is how do we make a premium product on much less money and Channel 5 in the UK have been at the forefront of that because they don't have the budgets to spend two three million on the show they do have the budgets to knock in 250,000 let a TV company find the other 750,000 and make it but how do you do it there are ways it means there's a really good article I picked this question particularly so a great article by

Manori Ravindran in the Anchla this week about this very area and about the way that choosing to or finding ways to Make things cheaper and there's there's a number of ways firstly in the UK a lot of non scripted people are getting Inter scripted and non scripted people in the same ways news and documentaries are very used to making things with a smaller crew and slightly more on the hoof and what have you and not having the Kind of support team you'd have around a drama for good or for ill I would say but certainly they're bringing a skill set that perhaps doesn't exist in the drama industry. By the way something you couldn't do in the States because it's so unionized you can't suddenly go from being an unscripted producer

or director to the other side of it. So they are doing that, they're filming a lot of the stuff out in Hungary, out in Eastern Europe, which is very common. Because even the UK, the UK has very good tax breaks. A lot of the roles of people, you get this thing now called a predator, but it's a producer and editor, all in the same thing, because your producer does a particular job, your director does a particular job, your editor does a particular job, you're directed as a particular job, you're edited as a particular job. And often now in this blue cheap world, those roles are being combined. And there's some, you know, someone can do all three of those things. It's not ideal. But all of this requires the people who are in those roles, a huge amount of experience, and actually just be able to see things much more in your mind's eye before it's even happened because you are so incredible, you've had decades of experience basically. You can't get someone who's, I don't know, 30 to do it and suddenly become a producer editor because it's just not, you don't have that 360 degree vision and it's not possible to attain other than via experience.

There is some overshooting that goes on in drama because you do not know what you're gonna need in the edit and actually if you're someone who is also editing as well, I can see the argument for it. I can see how you can do it cheaper. In terms of the writing of the thing, Manori talks to a Finnish producer who is saying, well, we just don't have subplots anymore because a subplot means you're in a different location and you've got more actors. And the more locations you've got, the more actors you've got, the more expensive your shoot is, the longer your shoot is, the more locations you've got the more actors you've got the more expensive your shoot is the longer your shoot is the more people there are and so we say no we absolutely just go straight through one like a one note bit of drama. I can see a world

in which with all of these things and with AI and you know cheaper CGI and all those things that you can get the price down. It is not an industry where there isn't a lot of fat to trim is the truth. Most things cost what they cost. And of course, there's auteur directors who are spending too much money because they're wasting money on things. But you know, that's the studio's business. But in terms of if you're a producer of scripted shows, there are ways and means you're going to get that price down.

But drama costs a lot of money. And if one of the ways you're stopping, you know, spending that money is to say, well, we won't have subplots, you can see how it immediately might have an impact and maybe only a certain type of drama might be made on certain sets. And also it feeds into what we talked about before, which is that people are sick of it taking two and a half, three years for their shows to come back. You can't even remember what happened. It's completely ridiculous. I'm supposed to watch the whole of Severance all over again. I cannot remember. Top high-end stuff is always going to be super expensive because people who can ask for all

the money in the world will get all the money in the world. But in terms of the general industry then blue cheap might be taking over from blue chip. I thought it was a good term as well. Yeah. And the new generation will work out how to do blue cheap brilliantly and for it to look amazing and to not make these compromises, I suspect. But that's a transitional period we're in at the moment. I think that about wraps us up for this week.

That was fun. Yes, it was great fun. I very much enjoyed that. For our members, there's a bonus episode tomorrow. Which is about best and worst fictional presidents. Ooh, topical. Topical, isn't it? It's very clever. Yeah, you are giving your list of best and worst ever fictional presidents. That's for our members if you want to become a member.

Go to TheRestIsEntertainment.com. You can sign up for ad-free listening and bonus episodes. And with that... See you next Tuesday. See you next Tuesday. Here is that clip from our mini-series on Trump's insurrection. These senators are being kind of ushered out through a very narrow corridor. One of them says, we were 20 feet away from the rioters. If the rioters had just looked the other way and seen that a whole bunch of senators were coming out, who knows what would have happened?

Who knows what could have happened to Mike Pence? I think it is important to point out that Donald Trump was getting these reports and did not care. The Senate has been evacuated at 2 18 PM. Nancy Pelosi is also pulled out of her chair by the Capitol police and taken off the podium and taken to a safe location at Fort McNair in Southwest Washington. She originally tried to stay. She didn't want to leave the building, but because

of security, she had to get out of there. One of the Democratic members of the Congress at this point, as they realized that the rioters are starting to breach their area, one of the members, Democratic members of the Congress, yells down to the Republicans, this is because of you. And the members are getting texts. This is how they know that things are bad, because they're getting texts from their family saying, what are you doing there? Why haven't you left?

Are you safe? But they haven't got a television. They're not watching it. They're trying to get on with the business of the day. I mean, it's this surreal. I keep thinking how surreal it was that inside the chambers, they're trying to do business as usual,

and feet away, the rioters are there saying that they want to have some of these people hung and that they want to overturn the election result. So then a few minutes after that, the house floor is evacuated, literally in front of the rioters. The police manage again to secure a very narrow passageway through the rioters to get them out. And one member afterwards says, I could look in the eyes of those officers and I saw the fear. They knew that the officers were outnumbered. To hear more, search the Rest is Politics US wherever you get your podcasts.