The Rest Is Entertainment - Titanic, Tattoos & Trade Wars

Episode Date: April 16, 2025

Why are books rectangular, and what does it have to do with ancient Greek mathematics? How did Mike Tyson's tattooist almost bankrupt The Hangover franchise? And how was Star Wars almost derailed by a armed robbery? Richard Osman and Marina Hyde answer your questions on plots of cancelled TV shows, how cinemas actually 'play' movies and how to hide the tattoos of your favourite action heroes 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] Producer: Joey McCarthy
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This episode is brought to you by Sky, which has great TV lovers we are delighted about. It's fantastic news. I'll be honest though, I'm also a fan of Netflix, of Disney+, of iPlayer, and this is supposed to be an advert for Sky. Well, the good thing about Sky is that it's not just good for Sky shows, it's basically an all-you-can-eat buffet for TV lovers. Mmm, buffet. If you've got something specific in mind?

What about that thing you were talking about the other day? Memento Mori. It's a one-off drama some BBC I play if you like that sort of thing based on the novel by Muriel Spark that's nice So it's got everything the niche stuff the mainstream stuff It's got all the apps you like if you want to go straight to watching the best the TV has to offer without the fuss Of searching sky is a game changer. Just go to sky.com to find out more game changer. Just go to sky.com to find out more. Hello and welcome to this episode of the Restless Entertainment Questions and Answers edition.

I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osmond. So many messages from last week when I talked about showing television in cinemas, so many messages personally, so many messages to the website, people are going crazy for it. I think it's going to happen. We're not going to make a penny from it. No. Actually, why would you make money from it? Hold on a minute. You're trying to muscle in on this. You bounced the idea off me. That's the thing. Yeah, I bounced it. I like how she build your business. You said that's a terrible idea. Well that isn't, yeah, and you push back. Anyway, people are also people telling us

all sorts of things that they go to the cinema for. Sparring partners, it's a thing. In boxing and in business development I understand. If Rory had an idea... Why don't always start it like that? If Rory would... Do you think for one second that Alistair Campbell will get 8% of anything Rory ever thought of? I've thought of a number of answers to this question and I can't say any of them out loud. Shall I just go with I don't know Richard? Yeah, good one. The Odeon on Lothian Road in Edinburgh, they use it for jury selection.

Do they actually? Yeah, that's pretty cool, isn't it? It came from one of our listeners. Wow, diversifying syndromes, how interesting. It's just a room for the seats. You know what I mean? Is it? Or is it all those wonderful people out there in the dark, Richard? It's a theatre of dreams, but also really good for jury selection. Now, last week, we also, we were talking about dust jackets. Emma Yes. Richard And you said, oh, by the way, I wish someone would ask why a book's rectangular,

because I have an answer to it. So we said, if anyone wants their name read out on this podcast, just write in why the hell a book's rectangular, we asked people to write. Emma We tried to make it sound like an action movie. Richard It is fair to say an awful lot of people wrote that exactly that question so we had to go with the first person who sent that in. So John T Smith has a question for you Marina and John T Smith's question is would you mind explaining to me why the hell books are rectangles? John T thank you so much. Now they are rectangles and we'll talk about the ratio of the ratio. Can I say by the way, my answer to that would be well because of course they are. So I assume there's something more than that. Okay yeah but the ratio is interesting all this is it anyway.

Actually papyrus was square right? Was it papyrus? Yes papyrus was square. Greek scrolls there was scrolls so that's a very I mean this is a rectangle. It's a long rectangle. It's a very long rectangle and it's a different proportion. It's not the five-eighths proportion or the two-three proportions that you might see. Well, what's a papyrus? The scrolls are made of papyrus, weren't they? What? Scrolls were made of papyrus? Yes, scrolls were made of papyrus.

When it was in sheets, it was in squares, but when Greek scrolls, it depends on which culture or which civilization you're talking about. Egyptian scrolls, they read left to right and it was in columns down the scrolls. So by the time you get to parchment, which is- Finally, finally, finally. By the time you get to parchment, your catchphrase finally pays off. It's wall to wall showbiz this week. What's parchment?

Parchment's got animal skin in it and therefore the stretching, the particular means they used to stretch it made it more oblong. If you're making this up it's very impressive. It sounds like I'm with my life here. But reading is, rectangles are the best way to organise both reading and writing. And now the golden, do you know about the golden ratio as a thing? That's a facial thing. It's called phi or sometimes phi in mathematics, P-H-I, that's the Greek letter that's used

to symbolise it. And it's roughly speaking, it's two to three, okay? That's roughly speaking as a golden ratio. And it's sort of obsessed mathematical thinkers, it's all connected with Fibonacci numbers. You see it in lots of things. Architecture, Le Corbusier was very, like, was fascinated by the golden ratio. Salvador Dali's Last Supper, it all conforms in these kind of obscure ways to the golden ratio. Also though, music and things like posters, widescreen TVs. Anyway, there's the other way around. But the other way around, but there's a reason it sort of works anyway. But there are obviously practical reasons.

If it's wider than it is tall, then- This is amazing, Jonti. Thank you so much for asking this question. But if it's wider than it is tall, then there's too much pressure on the spine. Yeah, I've lost a lot of copies of Good Night Moon to this exact problem. And I taped a lot of them up and this is what happens. Good night, Good Night Moon. Mainly it's like ergonomic. Who is reading them?

We need our hands like this. It's like a blah, blah. And then... And our hands are rectangles, really. In some ways. In terms of how the pressure that can be put on them. Quite right. It's a rectangle of pressure. But be put on them. Quite right. It's a rectangular pressure.

But it's the movement of the eyes. Now I am conscious of talking to you about this because you'll say to me, well, my eyes don't move in this way. But in general, people's eyes is called circading. After a certain length... It's like a TED talk. It's like a disorganized TED talk. Quite right.

Okay. After a certain length of line, your eye gets lost and it finds it hard to reconnect with the start of the new line, but also too short and your eye is distracted by the different line lengths. And you sometimes get that thing, do you ever get that thing where someone's, for some reason you reply to certain emails and for whatever reason the system that you've replied to means that there's a really, really long email and you have to kind of scroll along the bottom. What the hell is happening here? There is a certain length that is and I'm saying this for the people without your condition but the eye can hook around the

most easily and not flick around. There's a certain form of mathematical not just satisfaction but rationality which is the golden ratio which books are generally in the golden ratio all of that has to work and that's why we have our golden ratio books. Are you happy with that Jonty? Are you glad you asked? So books are in the golden ratio. Okay I love it. And lots of things are and actually the golden ratio is such an interesting thing to read about it's this kind of harmonious proportions and it's very very interesting to delve into. I'm sure the golden ratio is also I can order from it on my Deliveroo. Yeah, it really does sound like that doesn't it.

Question for you Richard from Scott about the trade war. Rumours are floating about that China could ban American movies. What would the impact be to Hollywood? It would be substantial. The impact on Hollywood is the truth. Certainly it's not an impact if you're an industry that's not in the best shape anyway, not an impact that you would welcome. In China, they go and see a lot of movies. It's still a huge deal in China to see movies. Most of it is domestic, but it's 17 billion is the cumulative box office

in China any given year. There was a point where they were building 600 movie theat theaters a week. Yeah, that sounds about right. Now almost all of them being used to show episodes of television programs. You will make this happen, won't you? You will make it happen. Even if I have to relocate to China. To put that into perspective, 17 billion, the American box office is about 9 billion, something like that.

So it's almost double the size of US box office. So an awful lot of people in China watch movies. As I say, most of it is domestic, but allowed films that go over there. They had a quota, they have a quota system, but the quota is not functioning the same way it used to. In the older days, it mattered so much that you got your movie into China, so much. And now less so. I mean, I'm just, so the Minecraft movie, I don't know what the Minecraft movie probably took, which was one of the movies they've allowed in because they don't allow lots and lots of movies in that I think took 20 million. Of course, it's not nothing. It's about a fifth of what the US box office was this particular week.

Yeah. And it's, it's one of those things. It would cost if you want to put an exact figure on it, it would cost about half a billion dollars to the US movie industry. It's not an enormous amount, but it's also not nothing when you think about the state the industry is in at the moment. So if China were to ban movies now, what the China have actually said was, we will limit them appropriately, is the language they use, we will limit them appropriately. And appropriately is a word often used in Chinese diplomacy, which sort of means anything. It sort of means we can completely row back from this and not ban anything at all, or we could put a complete blanket ban.

I parent like this in time. This is exactly how I parent. It could mean anything. Yeah, I'm going to limit your pudding appropriately. This is a ridiculous holding position that allows me to do anything in the future. They have definitely said, they've definitely spoken about limiting American movies. It might not happen at all. It might also cost them half a billion dollars, but it's certainly money that Hollywood wouldn't want to lose. But at the moment, listen, we'll see where that trade war goes. It'd be fairly easy for the Chinese to target American movies. Hollywood was so happy about Trump. Lots of those executives thought, oh, we'll get to do all the M&A stuff that we think

is really essential for us to be able to survive. Where I was like, now, like Disney are like, sorry, we need a lot of steel for our parks and cruises. A lot. We're all, we're in the entertainment business. We are all in the ad business. And therefore you've just messed up the ad. But anyone who's in the entertainment business, business basically those studios are in the ad business

And he's just made it incredibly difficult for them So yeah if you imagine what you're one of those execs as well you got these two things which you think it will look if Trump gets In as good for us because this is this is gonna be great at a corporate level You know there is gonna be more money and so Trump gets in and so now I think it always actually really bad for us economically and they think about they've still got the thing of every single person who works for them pretty much 95% of people who work for them are absolutely furious about Trump getting in as well.

So they're like, oh, God, now I'm getting it from both sides. Like everybody hates me. No one's helping me out here. We weep for them, do we not? Yeah, we also cry for them. Yeah, it's quite a soft target. But the Chinese do like having Western movies coming into the country. It gives them sort of, you know, an illusion that there is some freedom of choice. And that's quite a powerful thing. But yeah, appropriately,

if you have ever you hear that in a Chinese context that as you say, is already the parenting one. Yeah, that's essentially the let's talk about it when your mom gets home. In terms of theme parks, which we talked about on on Tuesday show, you know, there's there's the big Disney theme parks in in Shanghai and and in Hong Kong. And obviously, if you were to lose Disney IP, that would be a huge deal. That I don't think is at risk. If that's at risk, then the trade war has got so we got bigger problems. It feels like there are there are accommodations to be made there. A question for you Marina from StevenCoin, which I don't think is crypto, but you never know. It's a StevenCoin.

StevenCoin. Yeah. Oh my god, my StevenCoin has gone crazy. We're riding this to the moon. That is quite something. Steven says, how much work goes into a future series of a show during the first series production? For example, did the writing team of the franchise think about what would happen after the cliffhanger of season one? Anything I've ever been involved with, yes, you're thinking ahead. By the way, you could throw that all in the air and I'll come to that in a minute. Jesse Armstrong doing Succession, he knew roughly where it was going. And I mean, you know, it's kind of out there in the title, but he knew roughly where it was going. Obviously, every season you think how

are we turning this wheel this time and anything can get thrown out But it's tricky on this on this on the series one thing because every time you launch a series one You're like, I hope this runs forever and ever and ever and that thing of when you go Well, let's work out what would happen in series two, but in some ways it feels like bad luck It absolutely feels like a bad juju and you're like, oh my god I just I don't want to say anything and you have to constantly catch yourself the way you're like, oh my God, I just, I don't wanna say anything. And you have to constantly catch yourself the way you're talking about it. I mean, I've had ideas for like pilots

that I was already thinking what could happen that would completely upend everything in season two. In the franchise, yeah, we definitely had a full idea, not a full idea, but roughly where it was going. Then again, you know, I was remembering right in the middle of the night when I was thinking about this particular question, right back at the start of development, I remember Sam Mandes and Armando Unici,

one of the things we were saying is, or maybe it could be on a different type of movie, maybe they'd then be doing a children's franchise or a kind of like muscle car franchise or whatever it is, you know, there were all sorts of different ways you could do it. I would say that in general, every time, and I know people who are working on some of the big, big successful US dramas at the moment, you get to the end of a season, nothing is set in stone. You don't then say if sometimes, okay, if there's source material, like there was in sort of Game of Thrones or whatever, then you sort of know what's going to happen. Equally, everything in my experience, and most people say it can be back on the table. And if you suddenly, if things haven't worked, one of the things they often say to you is, what about a time jump? Because let's leave this mess of your first season behind and

kind of try and put it on a different footing for whatever reason. There's lots of different things you can do and nothing, I think most writers would say to you, nothing can be off the table. And you know, the way it goes, the way it's received, if you have any off, if you're lucky enough to have any sort of off season, you might think, oh, hang on, I just maybe the world, the currents of the age are going a different way. And you suddenly think, oh, this would be a fun way to take it. And what's best is when you can always say, oh, I let's do this totally different thing. Having said that, I do think you're always thinking to some extent in a path,

even if you're not voicing out loud because you don't want to jinx it. Yeah, you're setting things up. You're thinking characters who are slightly underused in a path, even if you're not voicing out loud because you don't want to jinx it. Yeah, you're setting things up, you're thinking characters who are slightly underused in a season, you know, and when you're filming, everyone goes, oh my god, we absolutely love this character. And all the writers are like, oh, we want to write more for that character, that character needs a bigger arc in season two. And then you start maybe in the last episode, you introduce them a little bit more. Or people talk about configurations. Oh, we haven't seen, especially when you get into long running, we haven't seen much of

those two together. Because what you're trying to say is, you know, these two random two who we don't really often, you know, what would happen if we throw them together and we give them a story that has to play out, you know, gives you different dynamics. It's always the most fun thing in books is when you've got two characters who never had a scene together. You think, oh my God, this would be fun. I remember on the first Thursday murder club, I obviously wanted to write a series, but

it's not in your gift, as you know. And so I left enough open ended, but I didn't do anything that murder club, I obviously wanted to write a series, but it's not in your gift as you know. And so I left enough open ended, but I didn't do anything that you know, you know, sometimes when you watch something or read something and at the end you go, oh, there's a sequel is there because there's something unanswered or undone. And I made sure I didn't do any of that just just in case I was caught by my own hubris. So you know, you have to hide the fact that you want a sequel as well. When I did Boys Unlimited, the sitcom and the first series came out in 1998 and that was a shoe-in for a second series.

It didn't happen, spoiler alert. But we'd started some of the pre-preparation for the next series, which was going to be a girl band competing with the Boys Unlimited. There's so many things you want to see also because it was coming out in 1999 are we gonna do a boy band version of 1999 by Prince with a double a side with a boy band version of old langsine which was the thing I was most looking forward to putting together that's so funny I love that obviously I love all these lost things that never happen yeah exactly but there are's interesting, things that had first series, there are so

many lost storylines and lost characters who were never coming back. Perhaps there's a show in that. And the franchise from being the unloved thing, they became the sort of tentpole and that was going to be much more about, you know, you get everything you wish for and you get all the money and all the technocranes and all the power. Oh, is that going to be season two of the franchise? It's the biggest movie in the world. Suddenly you've replayed your other tentpole, your other sort of whatever. So we thought that would give us something different. But equally, you never know, you know, if you had got a second

thing, you might've gone back and said, oh, let's change this totally. It's always good to be able to have the scope to totally just rethink it. You know, people, you know, you could see in the first season of Lost and there are other examples of it where they throw everything. They just say, you know what, we're just going to throw everything at this and you think we can work out the problems in season two and sometimes it takes a while. So yeah, sometimes you set things up which are never ever going to be seen ever again. And sometimes you just go, please God give us a second series. And I'm aware there's a absolutely gaping logic floor here somewhere that people need us to fix.

But that's a problem for next year's me. Yeah. Shall we go to a break and hope we got a part two of this episode? Let's hope we have a sequel to this. I'm really looking forward to the narrative arc in the second half. This episode is brought to you by Sky where you can watch the highly anticipated second season of the award winning The Last of Us. Richard, I am very excited that The Last of Us is back on our screens. I watched the entire first series. It was emotional. It was bleak. It was brilliant TV. It follows Joel played

by Pedro Pascal, who is tasked with escorting Ellie, played by Bella Ramsey, who's a teenage girl. She's immune to a deadly infection and he has to transport her across a post-apocalyptic America in which they face these infected clickers and much more. And season two, I think, picks up five years later. They're living in a community of survivors. They've done a time jump. They've picked a whole time jump. Might just be five years since they filmed the first one. So it's fair enough, isn't it?

From what I hear, my nerves, my nerves. The second season sounds like it's going to be even more intense. There's conflict brewing everywhere, not just on the outside with the infected and all the different factions among them, but inside between Joel and Ellie too. Yes. If you're into emotional gut punches, high stakes world building and brilliant performances, this show is for you. Watch the brand new series of the award-winning The Last of Us, available on Sky now. Okay, Martin, let's try one. Remember, big. You got it. The Ford It's a Big Deal event is on. How's that? A little bigger. The Ford It's a Big Deal event.

Nice. Now the offer? Lease a 2025 Escape Active all-wheel drive from 198 bi-weekly at 1.99% APR for 36 months with 27.55 down. Wow, that's like $99 a week. Yeah, it's a big deal. The Ford It's a Big Deal event. Visit your Toronto area Ford store or Ford.ca today. Welcome back, everybody.

Welcome back. After a time jump, it's now five years later. Yes. Can I ask a question? Why are books all now square? That's something that's happened, isn't it? Like in the last 18 months or so, after the end of the trade war. Well, as the CEO of TED Talks, which is, as you know, enjoyed a huge revival under my leadership. And by the way, lovely to have you in so many of my cinemas. Can I ask you something about actors with tattoos? Because Paul would like to know tattoos have been very, very lax with Cernate. It's almost like they don't want you to do a four minute riff and say, right, I'm putting you in my

book as a sort of, you know, homicidal snooker player in the next. Yeah. Hold on a minute. Actually, hang on a second. That's a great idea. Homicidal snooker player. Why have you got a snooker cue? Because I play snooker. It's nothing more sinister than that. Yeah. Why have you got a long case carrying something? Listen, I was fine. Steven Coyne, he gave his surname. He got away Scott Free. All right. Paul hasn't. Let's imagine he's got a surname. Okay. Yeah. Paul Scott Free is a double barrel. Paul Scott free. Paul Scott free says tattoos are now incredibly common, particularly with younger adults. Wouldn't actor with prominent tattoos be automatically excluded from some roles if they were otherwise perfect for the

role but they had a huge tattoo across their chest, which might require shirtless scenes. Would casting directors still consider the actor or decide that the makeup editing is not worth it? Yeah, it's an interesting question because all young people have tattoos. You can't watch a football match now. The sleeves on people, it's unbelievable. Actors are told not to have tattoos. Agents will say if you can avoid huge body art, then it's probably best. Because you can put makeup over them, but obviously the more tattoos you have if you're gonna be in Bridgerton and you've got you know

sleeves and back just covered in tattoos then your costume sort of could cover it up but what if you've got tattoos on your hands there's all sorts of roles where it absolutely loads but yeah you know you're Chris Evans you're in a Marvel movie but what you're buying yourself is an extra hour in the chair every single day. Exactly that. So you will find that actors have fewer tattoos than say footballers or normal members of the human race. Civilians, let's call them.

Civilians, let's call them. Angelina Jolie has got a lot. Sometimes her character, Fox, which is in the wanted movie, her tattoos become part of her character and part of her plot, not the Billy Bob Thornton tattoo. But the interesting with tattoos is that the other difficult issue is they are actually copyrighted. Anytime you see a tattoo, it belongs to the artist who tattooed that on you. So actually showing that-

Is that true? I did not know that. It is. Well, the hangover got in trouble. Ed Helms wakes up with that Mike Tyson face tattoo and the hangover producers were sued There's got called Victor Whitmill who created that tattoo and the hangover producers had to settle out of court with Exactly, so yeah, it's one of those things where you will find that actors have fewer tattoos than other people It is an enormous pain. I guess you could take them out with CGI

But if you're an actor, you are discouraged from having Too many tattoos which you know in the music business and the football business you are not discouraged You want to be the US Secretary of Defense though? Just you know, keep getting a car sleeves the Crusades tattoos. Yeah, I mean I think if you were a time traveler from the 1970s you've crash landed in 2025, of all the things that would surprise you, and there would be an awful lot, I bet the main thing would be watching the football and seeing that literally every single person has arms full of tattoos, you'd be like, wow, I didn't see that coming.

It would be that the US defense secretary's got a net tattoo or something. I mean, no, I'm sorry. I just I think if you're from that, like sort of post-war Eisenhower generation, you're like, sorry, now what? You've got a what now? You've got a what now? By the way, I was to say in future, if you do send in just your first name, I will provide a surname for you. I just, you get more of an idea of someone if you get the surname as well, don't you? Richard will fit you with a surname whether you wish to be or not. I will retrofit it. It'll be a cut and shut. It might be deeply, it might be completely inappropriate. But listen, that's the risk you take.

The old Osman nomenclature chop shop. If you don't want to be grafted onto the body of something completely different, then... Did you say the old Osman nomenclature? Did you say the old Osman nomenclature? I don't know what I said. It's not the old Osman nomenclature? It's not the repair shop is it? It's not as catchy. Wow, nomenclature is hard thing to say. The nomenclature. The nomenclature chop. Try saying everyone at home try saying nomenclature chop shop. You did amazingly. That's a skill you

didn't know you had. Let's move on. Yeah. Can we move on. Yeah. Can we move on to someone who has provided us with a surname and what a surname as well, Richard Herring, the wonderful podcaster and comedian. He asks this. Hi guys, long time listener, first time caller, Richard Herring here. On Instagram, I keep on seeing clips of films and sitcoms where they allege that a bit was

improvised during filming but they always seem to be well captured by the film crew. Are any of them actual examples of total spontaneity in the moment? I accept some may have been improvised in rehearsals but given the little I know about filming stuff none of the ones I've seen seem to be real. Did Aniston really not know a dummy was about to be thrown downstairs? I mean, that's about the best one I can think of. Did Johnny Depp improvise falling down some steps even though it's filmed from about 16 angles?

They are relentless and I think quite offensive to the actors and writers who are often accused of corp sing when they're just laughing in character or whatever. Anyway, love the show, show Steve keep up the good work This is me Richard Herring. Goodbye. Okay. Well, I do think that some of the those drive me mad By the way Instagram is full of people saying they didn't even know the cameras were on or these two actors went completely off script Yeah, you can always tell if there's something like a single camera sitcom I don't know something like the office then you can see how they get it if there's something like a single camera sitcom, I don't know, something like The Office, then you can see how they get it. If there's lots of cameras, then of course not.

It's much harder. It reminds me of that bit in broadcast news, do you remember where he interviews a rape victim and then he's shown crying on the footage and then she works out that actually they only had one camera so he's faked his tears because they only had... and that's the sort of plot point there. But there is a really big tradition, as we've talked about before, in American comedy of improv, and certain people are just, they'll do all the proper takes and they'll get the coverage and everything.

And then for their own coverage, they'll say, can we do a loose one? Can we do a loose take? And someone like Kieran Culkin in his session was absolutely brilliant at improvising. They ended up losing lots of his things. There's a bit in community, you know, Arbe's trying to work out whether Nicolas Cage is a good or a bad actor. And they knew that he was going to do this big sort of monologue at the end. It was set up, but they didn't know what he was going to say. It's absolutely go and watch that clip. It's absolutely brilliant. They didn't know. And he didn't know. He was

so in depth into like the Nicolas Cage thing at that time. There's a scene in season three, I think of the US office where Michael's accidentally outed Oscar within the office as being gay. There's a sort of, you know, didn't even want to do it all. And then he actually ends up kissing Oscar, which it wasn't at all scripted. It's completely improvised. If you look, because remember it's single camera, so you were able to see, some of the cast break character completely because it's just so ridiculous. It's a sort of a brilliant sort of iconic scene.

A really famous one. It ended up being part of a cold open in Friends. Billy Crystal and Robin Williams, they had a movie called like Father's Day, which was for some engagement to do with it or whatever. They were on the lot and the producers, the writers saw them and they went onto the Friends set and they said, will you do a bit? And they're on the sofa and they're these two friends and they completely, I mean, they are obviously genuine comic geniuses and they improvise this extraordinary thing about this guy who's saying, and Monica's trying to tell an anecdote,

I think, I think this is a, so if memory serves, Monica's trying to tell some anecdote about something that happened to her. They get so sucked into these two guys having a conversation where the guy, he's saying, well, my wife's sleeping with someone else, I think it's a, you know, the guy, an ecologist, and then it becomes clear that actually the person he's sleeping with is the other one and it becomes this thing and then they break up their friendship and then they leave and then Monica's like, I can't remember what I was going to say now. But that's a simple shot. Again, what you're saying, Richard, is, you know, this bitch, right? Yes, if there's a camera at the top of the stairs, maybe they did it in rehearsals, but then you knew it was going to

happen. But that is a sort of fairly simple frame shot of the sofa of these two people interacting. So it is possible. So yes, lots of times they kind of come at the end in a sort of loose take, often those kind of great improvised moments. When you know you've got the shot, so you've got the storyline, you've got the script as was written, and then you try extra things. But often on Instagram there are those things where people say, oh, the two actors just completely changed what was happening, and then they'll go somewhere and there'll be a fire outside you think well they obviously that's not improvised. They hit every mark. There are three cameras on there. And also every writer who's ever lived when

they're going yeah you know that's that was the script we wrote yeah pretty much you know not everybody is Steve Carell yeah and like you were talking about Jason Momoa doing improv in the Minecraft movie not all actors can do it. Well I mean you know audiences aren't hating it. Well, the sudden turning out for it, who knows? Who knows how much that's great he improvised. But one of my favourite things in the world is just to watch, you know, the American Office bloopers. I mean, you can just spend forever. They're all absolutely brilliant and they love to do it like that. And you know, actually

American actors in UK sitcoms will often ask for takes like that at the end when they know you've got everything because it's so in their blood and their bones and their sort of training that they just want to do improv takes at the end. Yeah and also try and make each other laugh. There's lots in them, you know, the Anchorman outtakes where you've got to do a list or you've got to give an example of something and every single take a Will Ferrell will give a different example of the thing to just to try and break everybody else and those I'll watch those all day. You want a name because here's a name. Oh great.

And by the way, I'm going to mispronounce it. I'm so sorry. Talin Aslanian or Aslanian either way. I love it. That's a good name. Yeah. That's also a question. I'd be happy if I came up with that.

I'd really love to know how cinemas actually play the physical films. Are they downloaded onto a system? Has someone plugged in a memory stick? How do cinemas stop employees sending themselves a copy to watch at home? That used to be of course that cinemas you know took reels of film and which were incredibly long and incredibly heavy. Each reel would be about 2 000 feet worth of film. So the average film would weigh about 30 kilograms. Titanic which is three hours and 15 minutes long that was 17 reels so it means the theatrical release was over three miles of film, so every single cinema showing that has got three miles

of film that they have to spool up and re-spool and that doesn't happen anymore. Everything is now digital. What you actually get is a thing called a DCP, which is a digital cinema package. The distributors and the studios put together. That contains all the video, audio, all the subtitles, any metadata you need. So that gets sent to individual cinemas, this DCP, and Tan is questioned of can you steal it? Firstly, every single one is unique to the cinema itself, so they know exactly what copy has gone to exactly what cinema. The password is unique to that cinema as well. So if anything ever turns up elsewhere, they'll know it is also time locked. So if a distributor is giving a film to a cinema for three weeks, at the end of three weeks, it disappears. It no longer

is this you can't just keep it on your system or anything like that. So they're very, very good at understanding what pirates would like to do very easy to get a job in a cinema and steal a movie. And so they make it impossible to do so. It is all digital, it gets downloaded, you've got a parser, but it is unique. Your copy of it is completely marked, everyone knows exactly where it came from, everyone knows exactly who had access to it and yeah it disappears in a puff of smoke after. People used to steal reels of movies all the time. Wow, it's self-destruct after watching or whatever. Yeah, exactly, Return of the Jedi that was stolen at gunpoint during transit.

Yeah, Return of the Jedi. Stolen at gunpoint during transit. Yeah return of the Jedi the Gunpoint. Yeah, and someone tried to sell that I mean, that's a weird thing to sell I'm Pasolini is the 120 days of Sodom that was stolen. He was murdered Of course, yeah, so leaning around the time that that was stolen as one he was investigating it There's lots of other theories as to why he was murdered But that's that's certainly one of them that That took a dark turn, didn't it? Yes, it did. Yeah, you were just asking about digital password protection and suddenly we're on brutal murders of Italian film directors.

That's the magic of theatres. That's what happens if you give us a surname. Right. I think that is about us for today, but we will be back with a bonus episode about the island of Doctor of Mereo. It's going to be a two-parter because it's that troubled. It's one of the craziest stories in the history of cinema. It's crazy. It's absolutely mad. Other than that, if you're not signed up to our club, the rest is entertainment.com. We will see you as usual next Tuesday. See you next Tuesday. Well, that wraps up another episode of The Rest Is Entertainment brought to you by our

friends at Sky. Now, what have you got on your must watch list at the moment? At the moment, the White Lotus enjoying the latest season of that. Oh, it's such a treat. Oh my God, it's incredible. It's so good. A dark treat. A dark treat. The visuals are really great and with your Skyglass TV, you'll be able to enjoy it all

in its 4K glory. And also the built-in sound bar means you can also listen to it in its full whatever the sound version of 4K glory is, but it sounds immense, I'll say that. It is indeed. It brings everything to life and it really gives that cinema experience at home. It feels like Jason Isaacs is in your house. Like sometimes I go downstairs and I'm like, Jason Isaacs, come on man.

God bless you please. But he's not there. No. But for our listeners who want to experience this with Skyglass 2, visit sky.com to find out more.