The Rest Is Entertainment - Pitching Buckaroo To Spielberg

Episode Date: August 28, 2024

Did Richard pitch 'Buckaroo The Movie' to Steven Spielberg? How important are the timings of ad-breaks and features on radio to the routine of our lives? What is the history of 'cold opens' in TV and what purpose do they serve? Has James Bond always loved a brand endorsement? Just a few of the questions posed by you and answered by Marina Hyde and Richard Osman on this, The Rest Is Entertainment. Sign up to the newsletter at www.therestisentertainment.com Twitter: @‌restisents Instagram: @‌restisentertainment YouTube: @‌therestisentertainment Email: [e-mail] Producers: Neil Fearn Executive Producers: Tony Pastor + Jack Davenport 🌏 Get our exclusive NordVPN deal here ➼ https://nordvpn.com/trie  It’s risk-free with Nord’s 30-day money-back guarantee! ✅ Redeem data in 1GB increments. Save by mixing to lower cost plan and supplementing with rolled data. Downgrades effective following month. Full terms at Sky.com/mobile. Fastest growing 2021 to 2023. Verify at sky.com/mobileclaims. For more information about how you can use Snapchat Family Centre to help your teenagers stay safe online visit https://parents.snapchat.com/en-GB/parental-controls Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What does possible sound like for your business? It's having to spend to power your scale with no preset spending limit. Redefine possible with Business Platinum. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Terms and conditions apply. Visit amex.ca slash business platinum. Hello and welcome to this episode of the Rest is Entertainment questions and answers edition. I am Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osmond. Hi Marina, how are you? I'm very well, how are you? Yeah, I'm not bad.

We're still apart. You are still an Ibiza, but that's okay. We forgive you. It's unacceptable. I hate being parted. We will be back together next time. You could just say no to the family holiday. I could say no.

Or you could come on my family holiday, which I'd prefer. Your kids are delightful. There's very few families who I'd agree to come on their family holiday. Yours I could just about handle, I think. Oh, that's quite a tall order. I mean, I'm not sure I can quite handle it. So well done for at least pretending. Now I have to start with this one.

It's like any other business question. Mike Shearing asks, as mentioned in an earlier episode, Richard, did you pitch Buckaroo the movie to Steven Spielberg? I did not. Do you know what? I had so many plans for when I met Spielberg. I was like, yeah, do you know what? I'm going to do that.

I'm going to ask him his favorite three Spielberg movies. I can do that. And this is me meeting Spielberg. Hi, me. Hi. And that's about as far as I got. Thank you for everything. Yeah, pretty much.

I go, I gotta say, Steve, I think my favorite movie of yours is Jaws. I couldn't hold it together at all. And the idea of pitching Buckaroo the movie to him, listen, there'll be edits, there'll be premieres, perhaps by that time we'll be firmer friends and we can have the Buckaroo chat. I'm going to ask you a question Marina, enough of my brilliant Spielberg impersonation. Sean Morgan has a question about cold opens on TV shows. They seem to be mostly a thing in American sitcoms like Brooklyn Nine-Nine and Big Bang Theory, but some seem to contribute to the plot of an episode where others can seem to be unrelated to the rest of the episode.

What's the reason for cold opens? When did they begin and what is a cold open? Right. Okay. A cold open is a sort of brief scene before the opening credits. I mean, now you can see a 10-minute cold open for reasons we'll get onto, but it used to be a sort of little one-minute thing. And really the reason they started is in American network television, they would have the titles and then they would immediately go to a commercial break.

People who were creating shows, who always sort of slightly hated the commercials and having to break up the shows, felt that you would try and get something in before the show itself because they would go straight to a commercial break. Now, funnily enough, when the UK used to buy in American shows from this era, we would re-edit it so that that cold open would happen after the title. So if the BBC bought an American show or channel or whatever, they would re-edit it so that that cold open would happen after the title. So if the BBC bought an American show or channel or whatever, they would re-edit it. But it's become more of a convention in our things now as well. And in those kind of you know monster of the week shows, something like X-Files or do you remember

Six Feet Under the Show about The Undertakers, which is an amazing sort of HBO show, but their cold open was always the death that would form the sort of centerpiece of that week's episode. Often with detective and murder shows, you'll find either the discovery of the body or sometimes the killing itself. It's an exciting way to get you straight into the story, but really we don't need them now on lots of streaming platforms, obviously, because you can skip even the credits, let alone there are no adverts. So they have become, in some ways, quite self-indulgent. I've seen sort of 10-minute ones before and you'll see the credits, let alone there are no adverts. So they have become in some ways quite self-indulgent.

I've seen sort of 10-minute ones before and you'll see the credits come on and you'll be like, what? Sorry, I forgot. I thought that was happening ages ago. Things like the Bond movies always did those. There's that kind of crazy action prologue and then you get the titles. Marvel movies often do that now. It's just a sort of way to plunge you into some quite exciting action right at the start and make you not want to leave. And as I say, that used to be because of the commercial break, but it's become a bit of a convention. So in drama, as you say, with Bond, it's quite hard to start a Bond movie because you want

to start with as much action as possible. Most stories do not have all their action at the beginning. So Cold Open gives you, oh, by the way, just before this story happens, Bond is sort of going down a ski slope In a BMW. This is a completely different story But just before we get on just watch this because actually it's crazy what just happened. I wouldn't want you to miss it Don't worry. This is an old case. That's nothing to do with this movie He's just tying up some loose ends on a ski slope. Honestly given it happened We just thought why don't we show you it anyway, then we'll get on to the story.

And then back to London. Yeah, exactly. You can jump off a dam and stuff like that. And it's nothing to do with the story, but you start with a big stunt, you start with big action, the music starts up, and then boom, you're in and people understand it as a convention. So in drama, it's just a very good way to absolutely come in incredibly hard. It's like lots of books, you'll start with a big thing that happens later in the book,

and then you'll go back because actually the start of most stories is just two people sitting around having a cup of tea and a slice of toast. It can be quite lazy. A lot of people hate, my husband absolutely hates it. You see this thing and then it's six months early. He's like, so lazy. I'm just trying to think if I've done that. I think I have.

I've done it once on something and sometimes you just have to do it in order to say, oh, don't worry, you know, they get their comeuppance for this because you're about to show a very immoral character or there's various different reasons. The way I really hate it, and there was quite a lot of talk about this not that long ago, where a lot of dramas would start with something just unbe- or the discovery of a female body that something absolutely unspeakable had happened to. And it became such a thing. It's like why have there been so many rapes in cold opens or so many kind of after-mast of rapes or whatever. I find there's an

element of laziness to that because you're saying, oh by the way I'm not going to make you care about these characters any other way. You just have to care about them because something really grotesque and extreme has happened. And it can make me very annoyed if I see that. there are times when you can't avoid doing that kind of a cold open. In general, it became such a sort of lazy way to do it. And obviously for me, kind of very politically problematic. It's not a cold open, but we've spoken before about something that seems to have stopped

now which is on lifestyle and documentary shows. You have Gordon Ramsay type shows of essentially showing you the four big highlights of what's going to happen in the show right at the beginning, which is sort of the opposite of a cold open, but it's for the same reason, which is boom, we've got to just drop you in here. We've got to make sure you're not going to switch off. We absolutely have to get your attention. They seem to have worked out different ways of getting into those shows now, which is good.

But the sitcom one, I think is interesting because once you do have this convention that you can have a cold open, which as you say, comes from adverts, if you're in a writer's room, then a plot very, very quickly constrains the things you can do in a particular episode or a joke that you've got, you know, everything has to be in service of the through line of that plot. Whereas a cold open gives you the opportunity, just as a group of writers to go, let's just do a 30 second gag here, which has nothing to do with the rest of the plot, but it just is perfectly crafted like a short story before a novel. And so the best one ever, Cheers often did brilliant cold opens. There's a brilliant one where a guy comes back to the bar who hasn't been in the bar

for 25 years and essentially is pointing out all the things that have changed. It's got absolutely brilliant payoff. I think in comedies, it's a great thing for writers to go here's a free gag that we can do in big dramas and books and things like that. It's that thing of every one story really starts somewhere small and quiet and boring and these days you just want boom just drop you in at the most exciting possible moment into a movie. I love a cold open. It's interesting that the two comedies mentioned in your question are obviously both networked comedies, which means that they are subject to commercial breaks, which is why you particularly see them there. It's funny now when you see them on Netflix, because there's no need for them.

But they've become such a convention that people do them. Oh, I've very much got one for you, Richard, from Chas Alexander Smith. Oh, wow, Chas Alexander-Smith. When searching for a new book in a shop, I often give them a quick flick through to see if I like the writing style, etc. In doing this, I've started to notice that different books have noticeably different font sizes and spacing between lines. Is this to disguise the book's real length, i.e. giving shorter books a larger font and longer books a smaller font so they all meet the spine width deemed most desirable to a prospective reader. Or another reason.

Love that. A desirable spine width. And there will be one. There is a reason for it really. Most books that you'll find in a bookshop somewhere between 90 and 100,000 words, something like that. Well, between 80 and 100,000 words. And that takes you between about 300 and 400 pages.

If you were just having a standard font, standard margins, all that type of stuff. So most books are that and that's what we used to, and all of us sort of know intrinsically what a hardback book should look like, how big a hardback book should be. If it's thinner, we instantly understand something which probably more literary. If it's thicker, we understand probably it's more fantasy-based or American. So we absolutely get that. There are two ways that kind of font and margin sizes will come into it. If a writer has slightly under-delivered on words.

So if a writer has given you a 70,000 word novel, which by the way, books don't have to be 80 to 100,000 words. The Great Gatsby is about 45,000. You know, it's good. Exactly. A month in the country, my favorite book ever is super short. But equally, it's clearly not a novella. It's slightly in between the two.

And so if you've got a 70,000 word book, yes, those font sizes will be slightly bigger. The margins will be slightly bigger. So you can get up to somewhere about 350 pages because that's what it feels like that's roughly what it should be. If it's a 50,000 word book, you have a course, a smaller one and you cut your cloth accordingly, but if it's 10,000 less than it should be, really, you just bump it up on the other end of the scale, big fantasy novels, which can go on, I mean, forever and ever and ever, and they can be 600 pages.

It's not desirable spine size exactly, but it is really expensive to make books, to physically make a book that you buy in a bookshop is expensive. If you've got an 800 page book, that's really, really, really expensive to make, which sounds ridiculous because it's just some paper, but it's a huge cost on the industry, jacketing and printing and papering an 800 page book. So on those books, they will try and get it down to somewhere around 600 pages. Anything above that is seen as possibly slightly difficult. You know, Robert Galbraith can get away with it, very few people can get away with it.

If you have under delivered by 10,000 words, it will bump your font up. If you've over delivered by 100,000 words, then they'll try and bump the font down a little bit. I love a well-spaced book. I've got certain books that I've probably got really old editions and they're incredibly dense. It's like, God, how have I managed to only read 20 pages? I've been at this forever, even if I'm rereading it.

But I love a really well-spaced out one. You're like, oh my gosh, I'm really caning my way through this one. I'm the same. I'm so goal oriented. It's like when you know there's a new chapter coming up and you turn over a page and there's only one line on the page, you think, yes, I've actually read two pages in one page. I'm on holiday at the moment, so you can imagine I'm doing this all day long. First thing I do when I read any book, I turn to the back, I put my hand across it so I don't literally see the last line or anything and I see how many pages there are.

And I'm like, okay, 334 pages. Because on Kindle, it will tell you how far you are through, but then it's got all the bonus material and stuff. So you're not really that far through. Same with Audible. You know, I put half hour interviews at the end of my books and it looks like there's half an hour left on the book. I like to know exactly how many pages I've got left.

Honestly, anytime I get through page 50, you're like, yeah, nice. You get past page 100, you think, oh, yeah, now I'm crushing it. I always know exactly when the halfway point is. So if it's 336 pages long a book, then I know 168. I know I'm halfway through the book. I sense from your silence, you're less obsessed with that than I am. I notice it a lot and I notice it's a surprising amount. Although I've never read a book digitally, so I don't get any of that stuff.

Obviously, lots of my friends do, but I don't do it like that myself. I have to have the physical books, but I'm therefore quite conscious about where I am in it. Marina, I have a question from Evie for you. She says, I'm watching the new season of Emily in Paris. Their first episode takes place at the Roland Garros Tennis Tournament. Would Netflix film at the actual tournament or stage a fake Roland Garros? Emily in Paris, I do feel we'll have to fully center it on it at some time because it has become this absolute cult. People start by saying this is so ridiculous and here we are

as the fourth season starts. Okay, Roland Garros, the French Open, they would have filmed there. I happen to know that The Strike stopped filming, so they weren't able to film. When they filmed at Roland-Garros, there was no one there. They basically did have to restage an element of the French Open. Wow. Obviously, if they had had to take the actual footage from the French Open, which is one of my sort of bug bears of international sports footage, it is some of the most ridiculous sports footage you'll ever see.

They've always got some new weird camera angles. It's so idiosyncratic and it's very much like if you saw that piece of footage, you would instantly know if you watched a lot of tennis. Yeah, that's from the French Open. It could only be from Roland Garros. But yeah, they did actually have to sort of restage a version of it so that it could be filmed for Emmy and Paris. I don't think it conformed to the Netflix house style, the Roland Garros house style, so perhaps it was all for the best that the strike

happened. So what's the Roland Garros house style for this French open filming style? A lot of fades, like weird, kind of slightly romantic, slow-mo. I think this year they had some mad innovation where they got sort of like umpire's eye camera. You're looking at these players' strange upturned faces making this or that appeal. Every year they've got something ridiculous and a lot of sports broadcasters who have to take the package as it comes become very frustrated with the particular way that the French are open.

It's not the action itself, but lots of this other kind of peripheral stuff because it's so idiosyncratic and I'm sure it looks very normal on French TV, but for a lot of other people it's like, what is this? But if you're Emily in Paris, for example, you would get the rights, you would negotiate with the French Open, you would have your cameras in there, you presumably would film a section of crowd where everyone's just signed a waiver. If you come into that bit of the crowd, a sign is up saying you may appear on TV. So they sort of film their bits, but probably not the players because of the image rights

and stuff like that. But you can film the atmosphere of an event and you can film the crowd. The crowds are the big thing, isn't it? Because to fill a stadium like that, if it was just you with supporting artists, would cost you so much money. But if you just get permission to go in when there's a huge crowd anyway. But at this point, I mean, Emily in Paris is just the most mega advert for the French tourist board. If there's any classic French scene you've ever seen on a biscuit, something will happen in Emily in Paris right now. Which reminds me, but sorry, this is an absolute digression and Evie does not want to hear

about this at all. Evie, I'm so sorry. We just finished the fourth season of the single best property show on television, which is The Parisian Agency, which is of all the shows about properties you can't afford. It's the one with the best properties and the most believable people and just is so beautiful. The family are so wonderful behind it. The properties are absolutely incredible. And as you say, it's literally like an advert for the French tourist board, the French Open Parisian Agency Tour de France. They might as well all be sponsored by Visit France. And now Emily in all be sponsored by Visit France.

And now Emily in Paris. Yeah. Does that answer your question, Evie? Right. Here we go with one from Andrew Brickles. He says, I listen to a lot of speech radio. Whenever a presenter overruns their slot, so the quarterly hour break is late, like news and adverts, they often seem to imply that they will be in trouble or get moaned at by a producer or some such person. My questions are, do they? Who monitors this stuff?

And how rigidly should it be adhered to? I imagine them being hauled before the boss's desk and told off, but surely no one actually cares? The opposite is true about no one actually caring. Firstly, Andrew Brickles, we're just going to let that go. Someone called Brickles, we heard that surname before? No, we haven't. That's amazing. I never know whether you're going to bite, but I should just be aware that you mostly

will bite. You must have said when you read out Brickles, you're thinking, hold on, we've got a live one here. I should have done a four second pause. Yeah. Andrew, yeah, they really, really do care. And there's two different things here. Commercial radio, which I think Andrew is referring to here, and also the BBC.

Now, in commercial radio, it's a huge deal to not hit those quarter hours because essentially each hour of a show is split into quarters and ad breaks are sold to be played in each of these quarters and the advertisers know how many people are listening in each quarter. So certain quarters are more valuable than others. So each quarter is worth a different amount of money based on that audience size, which means if your ad break misses its quarter, those adverts have to be rescheduled to make sure they fulfill their audience quota. You know, the commercial revenue spend is incredibly complicated. So if you are missing that quarter hour, somebody in an office upstairs is job is made immensely harder that day. And there's a huge algorithm that has to go into play of how much money do we

owe this advertiser? When can we replay this advert by this advertiser? Because it's so carefully calibrated because the way that radio audiences are put together, they're very aware that different groups of people are listening at different groups of time. If you think about radio in the morning, people going off to work at certain times, school runs and things like that. 15 minute chunks can be worth an awful lot more than other 15 minute

chunks. So yeah, in commercial radio, it is an absolutely huge deal to miss those quarters. For the BBC, of course, which doesn't have that commercial imperative, it's slightly different. But that does tie into, funnily enough, the thing about taking the kids to school and what have you, is we are creatures of routine. And if the nine o'clock news is not at nine o'clock, it genuinely spins people out. And even if there's features on the show and not at the exact time they used to be, because

we all have a rhythm. You know, we're all in certain places when Popmaster comes on or 10 to the top on the Vernon K Show. Our lives are sort of built around those radio routines. So if you don't hit the news at the right time on the BBC, it discombobulates people and people who are discombobulated like to write into the BBC and complain. So again, easier if you do hit your marks. But yes, it's really one of those things.

And again, as so often in the media for the commercial thing is all about money. It's all about how complicated it is to advertise on a show and the different rates that you have. So they're not kidding when they say they'll get in trouble. And the producer will have a go at the presenter because the station manager will be having a go at the producer. It's a genuine big deal. It's a big part of the professionalism. And with that, I think we should go into a commercial break.

Welcome back everybody. Marina, here's one from Joe. Can't do anything without Joe. Joe asks, hearing you both talk about Steven Spielberg, it got me wondering why in the film world directors are the biggest non-acting celebrities rather than the screenwriters. Is there a historical cultural reason for this? I can name many Hollywood directors, but far fewer screenwriters. Okay, Joe. Well, historically, it wasn't always thus.

Right at the very start, when the movie business started, the director was a really technical job who was just like, can you make sure you capture everything? They didn't have the status at all. Even in the golden age of Hollywood, it's almost like the producers were the star. They were the powerful people. Yes, some of the directors emerged, like people like Billy Wilder, Frank Capra, John Houston, John Ford. There were some big name screenwriters. They used to get in people like Scott Fitzgerald, who all these people used to be brought over and drink themselves to death in Hollywood.

They'd all go over and get nothing in. But then there were people like Ben Hecht, who wrote lots of great things and became well-known. But no one was bigger than the stars. It was all about stars and studios. The stars were not bigger than the studios. They were sort of contract players. But then in the 1950s, the auteur theory emerges in Europe, which is the idea that the film is the director's vision and that they are the linchpin of the whole movie and everything is sort of refracted through them. And that itself, the auteur theory, was very influential on the new Hollywood, which is

kind of the bit probably that you're thinking of most where you're thinking of people like Spielberg, as you mentioned, Coppola, De Palma, I don't know, George Lucas, Michael Cimino, Scorsese, all these people. That sort of new Hollywood of the 1970s, they come up with this idea and it is very much their vision and the director becomes a huge thing. Now, interestingly, the writers' medium now surely is and has been for the last 20 years. You don't really know who writes movies and I'll have cycled through about four or five or six sets of writers.

The big, big names in television are the showrunners who almost without exception have been writers. They're not directors. They don't often direct. Sometimes they direct. It started with people like David Chase, The Sopranos, David Simon, you've got Vince Gilligan, Breaking Bad, Sean Ryan, The Shield, all those sort of people. Then you think of Jesse Armstrong or Amanda Iannucci or people like that. We'll talk about the lack of female showrunners another time, I think, just as I'm running cycling through that, Liz. Those have been the auteurs. People are drawn to television because they think,

oh my goodness, I can tell a story over maybe 10 hours or I can tell a story over seven seasons. That has become known, obviously, as the writer's medium. You know the names of those writers. You honestly, with the greatest of respect to many of the directors working for those people, you don't know the names of them, even though there are brilliant people, people like Mark Myler, who directs succession episodes and all sorts of, I mean, there's so many, I couldn't sort of mention them all, but you know the names of the writers in that medium. And that's been such a sort of bifurcation in recent years where you think of the movies as the directors and TV as the writers medium.

Yeah, why do we think that is? Because it's fascinating,, it's still true. I think it still holds true in the world of movies. It's a director's movie. TV is showrunners. Is it because they're 10 times as long? It's control. The director has all the control on a movie set and they can tell the writers to do all sorts of rewrites and things like that. And as we've said, people have spent years writers trying to get a project

and then eventually it gets bought and eventually they're chucked off their own project and other sets of writers are bought in. You have no control whereas in this kind of TV show runner culture you are more important than all the directors on the set even though they'll do blocks of three episodes say on something like Succession. It's impossible to direct a whole series of this kind of long-form television now no one does that because it's just so much work. Three of them is like doing a feature film, but it's the control. And so the writer has the most control in television on that kind of prestige television and has very, very little still in movies. And it's the other way around for directors. But that's the length, depth and complexity of the medium. It's fascinating watching Chris Columbus and you see how he's across the script

and what it looks like and the actors and those relationships. But within a two and a half hour movie, that's kind of possible. I mean, they absolutely run themselves into the ground to do it, but it's possible. Whereas if you've got a 10 episode series and then another one, the sheer length of the thing means that it has to be in the hands of somebody who's able to delegate and be across something creatively and not worry about what it looks like every five seconds. Yes, very occasionally people will direct some episodes and Armando directs some episodes, often will direct like the first episode of a show, but in general other directors are in charge and the showrunner is the most significant person. Oh here's very very much one for you, Richard Cook says, having read several original James Bond novels, Ian Fleming was constantly

dropping brand names all over the place. The Bond movies obviously have commercial references, but did he do that in the original release of the books? He did, yeah. He loved it. You know, he wouldn't make a cocktail without telling you exactly what gin and what vodka was in it. You know, they have Gordon's gin and, you know, the cars and the suits and things like

that. And I think for him, Bond was supposed to have the best of everything and be the best of everything and, you know, be a connoisseur of everything. And that was a useful way of showing that it wasn't something he monetized. He wasn't getting paid by Gordon's gin or by, you know, car companies or anything like that. I think he felt it lent a verse of militude to his writing into the world that he was creating. Because on television, you're not really allowed to do it. felt it lent a verse of militude to his writing into the world that he was creating.

Because on television, you're not really allowed to do it. If you write a British sitcom, you can't really say Twix. You'd have to say chocolate bar. No gag works with the word chocolate bar instead of Twix. So quite often, the biggest rouse you'll have with the BBC is, you'll say, but surely I'm allowed to say Bisto rather than say gravy granules because it's just funnier. And also it speaks to how people live and all that kind of stuff.

But you can mention whatever brands you want whenever you want to mention them. There's a bit in your new book, which I really like, and I thought, is this the first mention of the Boots Meal Deal in a book? I often think, you know, if aliens came to our world and tried to understand our civilization, they might think it was all frightfully highfalutin. What they do need to understand is that a Boots Meildale is a big part of the day for a lot of people. It's very evocative. I love all those things. I love the way you mention brands in your books. I do absolutely constantly. And for the same reason as Fleming, but in a slightly different

milieu, because I'm not doing a lot of kind of expensive watches, but yeah, I'm doing, you know, all of a bonus. And, you know, I try and write about today, so it grounds the thing in a certain time. When you read books from the 20s, I love reading about real brand names and I love reading about real newspapers and stuff like that. People in foreign countries love it as well because they don't know the brand, but they can sort of imagine what that brand might be. I might have said before, but the Chinese versions of the books that we talked about the other day, funnily enough, almost half the Texas footnotes where

they're explaining what Lilt is, explain who Lorraine Kelly is, just the whole thing is talking you through the cultural items and I don't realize as I'm doing it quite how many I mentioned, there's Nigella Lawson and Poundland and all of these things. People by and large are not walking around thinking about love and loss and things like that. They're literally just walking past Costa going, there's a lot of Costas on this high street. Those parts of our world which are so close to us, they become invisible.

But they also are so evocative. Victoria Wood used to do it so brilliantly. Even their little flicks of it and there's something like Fleabag where GNT from M&S. I don't know what that collection of letters means, watching Fleabag in America, but to us, we know exactly what it means. It's something that gets you right there in the second. And it's amazing how brands can do that. It made me think of your books. Yeah. And I should point out, by the way, I'm also not paid to put any brands in because you just want to choose exactly the thing that sounds real or in certain situations sounds funny or in certain situations makes you feel nostalgic.

Those brands are incredibly powerful things. Yeah, I didn't get paid, Fleming didn't get paid. He would have got a fortune. I know because these are all status things. What I love in your books is that they're not status things. They're the Boots Meal Deal and things like that. They're status things to people in my family. It's where you're from, isn't it?

It's the little treats in the day. For Fleming, a little treat in the day would be a Rolex. And for me, a little treat in the day would be a Boots Meal Deal. We're very similar writers. Okay, I was going to ask you a different question, but I'm going to off the back of that, not brands in fiction, but celebrities in fiction. Ben Hardy, maybe the actor, who knows? He asks, I have just watched an episode of Black Mirror, Joan is awful, where they mentioned

George Clooney in the context of playing Thomas the Tank Engine, and they had a picture of Cate Blanchett as the next level Joan. Will these actors have been required to give their consent? Is there a distinction between a mention, George Clooney, and a photo, Cate Blanchett? Yeah, it is sort of brands. You are using brands because again, you're evoking something that the audience should be able to get immediately like the absurdity of, I don't know, Clooney doing Thomas the Tank Engine or whatever it is.

The short answer is you can do it and you can be really quite rude if you're being satirical. I'm trying to think. I mean, I think we've got quite a few in the HBO show I've done coming up. And previous things I've worked on, we've had some really rude ones. But no, you're allowed to say it. And even the picture of Cate Blanchett, I think you would be able to do it. It's a fair comment. It's a joke. You could defend it as a joke. She would have to be very humorous to say you can't use it. What you would have to have, strangely, is you must have the right to that specific photo or be paying the person for that

photo. So sorry, Cate Blanchett, you're just part of the joke. But if a photographer has taken that picture of Cate Blanchett and you're not paying them for use on the screen, then you might be in a bit of hot water. I think that about ties it up for this week. Yeah, that was fun. It was great. Next week, I think maybe we'll be together. Thank God. If you have more questions for next week, send them to us at rezzesentertainment at gmail.com. And other than that, we will see you next Tuesday. See you next Tuesday.