The Rest Is Entertainment - What's In A Name? The Worst Movie Titles Ever

Episode Date: June 24, 2026

Can a bad title kill a movie's chances at the box office? Why was the Game of Thrones table read so awkward? How do actors interact with enormous animated monsters? Richard Osman and Marina Hyde answer your questions on the world of theatre, television and awful film names. The Rest is Entertainment is brought to you by Octopus Energy, Britain's most awarded energy supplier. Lloyds. 250 years on and still backing the nation's aspirations. Lending is subject to status. You could lose your home if you don't keep up your mortgage repayments. Conditions apply.1996 average first-time buyer deposit based on Office National Statistics House Price Index data. Summer sale is here: get an annual membership for a third off with code SUMMER26. That's ad-free listening, every bonus episode, and full access to our exclusive members' series. Sale ends August 31st, so grab it before summer's over. For more Goalhanger Podcasts, head to www.goalhanger.com Video Editor: Max Archer Assistant Producer: Imee Marriott Senior Producer: Joey McCarthy Social Producer: Emma Jackson Exec Producer: Sam Psyk Filmed at www.westdigitalstudios.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The rest is entertainment is presented by Octopus Energy. Now, one of the stranger signs of status in show business is being very, very hard to reach. Exactly. You get to a certain level in the business where you don't want anyone to talk to you at all. Some people who are notoriously difficult to get hold of. So Christopher Nolan, for example, is famously almost completely, it doesn't even have a mobile phone. I mean, you literally cannot get hold of Christopher. He said, of course he does. He's got a sneaky little mobile, has he?

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I mean, that's amazing, right? This episode is brought to you by EasyJet. You must have had that moment when you're watching a film, but you completely tune out the plot and start daydreaming about the location instead. The bright Mediterranean colours on screen suddenly make the British weather look even greyer. And sometimes it doesn't even take the technicolor. put on a black and white thriller set on the Italian coast and I'll enjoy the mystery, but part of me is already working out which flight gets me nearest,

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edition. I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osmond. And for once, we're not talking to Stephen Spielberg or Tom Hanks, racially. A major celebrity. We are, we are talking to each other. It's just a little old ass. I've missed it. I've missed it as well. It's quite nice to be back, isn't it? Yes, it is very nice to react. You're going to hit me with the question? Yeah, I certainly am. And it is from Jane Burrows. Thank you, Jane. She says, I've seen a few social media videos in recent past showing table reads from shrinking

to Game of Thrones. Can you tell me what's their purpose? Who are they for? When do they happen in the timeline of a production? And would actors deliver their lines in character? Jane's question goes on for some while longer. There's lots of smaller questions inside it. But I think we can talk about the world of table reads.

She ends saying that they do look super awkward. Well, they look awkward because. obviously that is not the finished product. And in many cases, that's the first, I'll get on to this, the first time those actors are seeing the scripts. I think particularly with stuff like Game of Thrones, I know which one you're talking about.

You're talking about the final episodes where the actors are discovering effectively in real time what happens to their characters and who wins the Game of Thrones. And it can be very emotional. You can see people suddenly thinking, oh my gosh, hang on, I'm dead. It's been a decade of their life or something.

But they are such a key part of the process. They do happen at different times by the way. So it's not all the same. Normally they would happen at the sort of very end of pre-production of something. And it isn't ever the final script. That's part of the point of the table read. But if you're doing a series, it would be the end of pre-production of that episode, but you're probably filming one of the others. Although, funnily enough, last week, I've got a thing in development and, oh my God, I went to a meeting. And they told me that they were going to do it something internally. And then they said, well, actually it was really interesting when we, with the

script, the last draft that I gave them. And when they said, yeah, it was interesting what, okay, what people like that in the sort of when we did the sort of table read. And I was thinking, oh my God, I'm so glad I didn't know that this was going to be read up anyway, but, almost per people who work. They done a table read of it. Not, not with actors, not with actors, but amongst, and I thought, I don't even want to ask about this because I just, that feels excruciating to me at the moment, so I don't want to think about it. So they had in the office done a table read just amongst themselves. Oh my God. God.

Anyway, but that's not, in general, what you're doing. Without you there? But I knew that they were going to be doing that because they were going to feed other people who are not, like the direct executives involved in this, were going to sort of, they asked the general group and it's very, very helpful because people who've never seen, haven't had eyes on it at all. Because you do get in the weeds quite quickly, even if you're the executive, I suppose, in charity things. It was really interesting, but I did think, I'm so glad I didn't know that was happening. Can we explain what a table read is to people? Yes. Table read is you get the script of an episode or, I suppose,

of a film. Everyone is sitting down. It's like a conference table or, you know, an oblong of tables. You've got all the actors there. You've got all the heads of departments. And by heads of departments, that means that, you know, the head of the sets, the head of makeup, the head of costume. Lighting, anyone who's going to have to do SFX,

anyone who's going to have to do anything for this. You've got the writer. In my experience of doing it, you've got like the showrunner sitting there. And if it's your episode, you're sitting next to them at the head of the table. It's a big thing with American money that's being filmed over here, then the very big executives from America will fly over and be sitting in the room as well on chairs behind the big table. So everyone, it's a big and important thing. Somebody reads the state, actors all do their own roles? In the answer to your question, do they do it in character? I would

say they do it, it's varying. They do it in, I would say 50%. They put 50%. They're seeing it, often they're seeing it for the first time, or they've had chats with the director or chats with showrunner about where they're going, you know, but they haven't actually seen the thing that's not the shooting script because you'll make a lot of adaptations from how the table re-goes. I've done them always for comedy, so that can be, you know, something that you thought was your great joke doesn't get a line in the laugh in the room,

and something you didn't realise was a joke, gets a really big laugh, and you're like, oh, okay, that's interesting. I saw someone from friends, I can't remember when I read this, someone who worked on friends saying, by the end of that, if the actors didn't like your joke, they would just absolutely ruin it by mis-delivering it in the table read so that it would then get killed. Some actors just literally just read the lines out almost in a monotone and they don't put everything into it. Others go quite big, but no one goes as big as you'd possibly go on set.

It's not like that at all. You want to hold something bad. Someone reads the stage directions. There's a person at the table read whose job it is to read every stage direction. But for me, it's really tempting to kind of, you want to mark up your script if you're there. the writer, like this, you know, three, six, that one got a big laugh, that one didn't. But it's actually much better if you can not, you can avoid looking down the whole time and sort of essentially like reading the subtitles because you want to hear it.

You want to hear the rhythms, what works. And then you'll suddenly think, hang on, we really lost them. We don't see that character for quite a bit in the middle. And you can see by their face that they have also noticed that they didn't appear for quite a few pages in the middle. But a lot can change after the table read. I mean, if it's bad, you can have to go quite. significantly back to the drawing board under quite a lot of time pressure.

Yeah, so the main thing about a table read, really, I mean, from our perspective, we would say this is for a writer. So the writer gets to hear the pace of the thing and the speed of the thing and, as you say, the feel of the thing. And the job is then to go, okay, now we're going to go and make that better. As you say, there are, there's also heads of department sitting around. And sometimes you're thinking, why is no one laughing? And you think, well, because the person from wardrobe, literally all they're doing is trying to hear every time in the stage directions, they say he is now wearing a fez. Yeah. And they're literally just writing down fes or so-and-so, you know, walks out of the swimming

pool and they're like, oh, okay, waterproof, okay. So everyone's just doing their job and the lighting director is literally just going, okay, so that's outdoor, but then we transition to indoor. Okay, okay, and that's all they're doing. So everyone is doing their job for, for a writer is the most important thing. We just did a table read for the Thursday Murder Club play. And that was, of going for this. But that wasn't a full production tablery. That was literally Tom Bastion and I had a draft that we were sort of, we had a finished draft that we knew was not going to be the final thing.

And we have a lot of friends who are comedy actors. So just sat around in the West End in a really nice rehearsal room and just read the whole script out with very, very, very funny people. It's so helpful. I've done that at an earlier stage of things before and it's really immensely helpful. And in that situation, the actors get paid to do it. If actors are free and they know it's going to be a fun room for the people, they'll always come and do it.

And it was such a laugh. You had a great day. We had a really great crew of people doing it, really, really funny people. And, you know, yeah, you work out what's funny, but you also work out, oh, there's too much of that, there's not enough of that. And so we maybe did that six weeks ago, and I've literally only just finished the next draft. The draft that was in response to that, yeah. That's in response to it because you finally go, okay, I hear exactly what's going on here. know how to fix that. I know how to fix that. And just stuff that got huge laughs in the room.

You think, well, that's great, but it has to go because it's not, it doesn't fit in, you know, by the end of it, I was thinking, yeah, come on, I need, let's speed this up, let's speed this up. So, you know, table reads are incredibly useful in that regard at the very early stage of the production. But it's never going to be the night before. Yes. But the, but the Game of Thrones type tight ones. That is far more that's got everyone just sitting down taking care of business as quickly as they possibly can. And by that stage

there was so much secrecy around that show and because it had gone ahead of the book so no one really knew who would win the Game of Thrones and so you wanted people you wanted to have those reaction shots of people finding out what happened to their characters and it can be but I do agree that it is exposing for actors

to have those sort of things filmed because as I say they're not giving 100% on purpose and And, you know, you're sitting in sort of track suit around a table, and it's not the same as being, like, in Westeros. So I feel sorry for them that they've got, you know. And it's quite hard to explain that to someone who's just coming to the whole thing. That's maybe why they look awkward.

Yeah. And often it's the first time you meet your fellow cast members and stuff like that as well, which is interesting. And, you know, you're usually sat next to the person you're doing most of your scenes with. But I remember when we talked to Ben Elton, he was talking about what nightmare the black out of table reads were. And because there were a lot of very strong voices in there. of whom had an opinion on what they were reading.

And you're like, oh, that's not what a table read is for. You could see Ben O'Nott and just want to go, shut up. You know, honestly, just do it and then let me and Richard fix it afterwards. You know? The next question is almost thematically related to that, because I think it's interesting. And it's about traitors in the West End. And it's from Araminta. Araminta says it's recently been announced that the traitors will now be a stage production in the West End next year, 2027.

How does a production company go about making a popular TV show into a stage production? Yeah, it's, I mean, there's so many different answers to that question. First, you have to want to do it. Yeah. And, you know, the one that you can't accuse studio, Lambert, of not trying to maximize income from everything they've got. Maybe he got a show that's as huge as the traitors and they do a live traitors experience. Which everyone says is brilliant. And I still haven't done.

I'm ashamed of myself. I'm going. So I imagine they started exploring the idea of doing it on stage. would that work? Now we all know a simple way that would work, we do a cheap cash-in version of it, which they don't seem to have done. Studio Lamut tend to do everything right. So you have to get a script, you have to get a producer, and you have to get a director, and you have to get a theatre. Those are the four main things you need to do. So they need to be written, someone needs to direct it, someone needs to put the money behind it, and a theatre has to agree to do it.

And a concept, because you're just not doing... Well, hopefully you leave that with the writer really. Yeah, yeah. But you're not, it should be clear that you're not sort of just resurrecting this as some kind of... It's not going to be Claudia, just sort of wandering around the stage. If you have Franté's biggest traitors, then obviously a lot of people want it to work, and a lot of people will take a meeting with you. In this instance, this play is, I think it's called Traitors' Acts of Betrayal.

The writer they've got is John Finnamor, and John Finnamar, I think, is a genius. I mean, weirdly, still best known for doing cabin pressure on Radio 4, but, you know, did his own sketch show on Channel 4. And he's a great, great, great writer, John. So they immediately, rather than go for someone sort of big and mainstream, they go for someone who was very, very smart, loves puzzles. Yeah, I was about to say, he's a puzzle genius, genuinely. Who ever came up with this concept, I don't know,

but the idea of it is the play always starts the same, but there are five different endings. I think someone was saying, you'll never see the same show twice. and I think somebody else pointed out, well, you will because there's only five different shows. But anyway, is the idea is you could go more than once and you could possibly see a different ending. So John Finnamor is writing it. I know someone, funnily enough, he did a table read for this, and said it was terrific, which it would be if it's John. Robert Hastie is directing it, and again, standing at Sky's Edge.

He's just like a proper theatre director. And theatre directing is, I've discovered from this Thursday Murder Club process, there's only about eight people who can do it. But it's like immensely complicated and difficult. And it's sort of very, very different to being a movie director in some ways. There's something much more up close and personal about it. So they've got a great director. Studio Lambert I see are producing it.

It said that they're producing it themselves. And I thought, huh, I mean, that's very brave because, again, producing a theatre show is very, very different to producing everything else. But then I saw that Neil Street are producing it with them. and Neil Street have done lots of theatre. That's Sam Mindy's and Pippa Harris's company. And then, of course, they have a theatre because John Finnamora is writing it and Robert hasty is directing it and Neil Street and Studio Lambert are producing it.

And the West End is in Incredible Health. We have to keep saying this. You know, this is why so many things are, it's extraordinary. I've said it before, but that sort of thing that you used to do, if you wrote anything, the contract, like, what if it becomes a musical? It always used to just be a joke with writers. I'm pretty sure that originally when Irvin Welsh wrote Train Spotting, he didn't, as someone said to him, what if it becomes a musical?

He'd go, a musical of this, okay. Yes, you know what if it does? We'll come to that, but it is a musical. The office we got to turn Thursday at Medi Club into a musical. I mean, like a lot. I mean, we're doing it as a play. So this is going to be the Gillian Lynn Theatre. It's called Traitors Acts of Betrayal.

I think it opens in 2027. But to answer the question, I mean, a number of things. if you had a smaller piece of IP and you develop an amazing script, then maybe a director and maybe a theatre would be interested. With this, I think even if they'd done a substandard script, they would have found a director and they would have found a theatre because you know that lots of people are going to come and see this. It'll be an event play.

But it seems like, and it sounds like, they've done the opposite and they've actually done something great with it as well. So, you know, I... I'm dying for it. I think they have high hopes. I imagine it'll be very good. I hear it's very good. And yeah, it'll be in the West End in 2027.

But, yeah, you have to want to do it. Then you have to do it really, really well. And then someone has to give you several million pounds to put it on. But look at the amazing things that have come. You know, if you look at something like my neighbor to Toro, which was extraordinary to have come from, I mean, it was absolutely brilliant. Stranger Things, the first shadow, all of these things. And they all start here because it's too expensive on Broadway.

and lots of them then go all the way around the world, but it's really interesting to see how it's a part of our creative industries that is in mega health. And the reason they do it, and Studio Lambert is a good example here. The reason you do it is almost all plays lose money. But if you make money, you really, really, really mint money forever and ever and ever. I mean, you know, there's a reason Andrew Lloyd Webber's got such a nice house.

You know, you can print money forever and ever. The reason you wouldn't do it is because it costs you a lot of money to put it on. but if you're Studio Lambert and you've got a piece of IP that is so powerful and so successful in this country, you know that other people are going to finance this thing for you and you're still going to get a very good deal. I imagine they've invested their own money in it as well because, you know, they would believe in it. But it's a low risk way to sort of be involved on a poker table where the winnings could be absolutely enormous. Let's go to a break now, after which I'm going to be considering some truly terrible film titles. This episode is brought to you by the Lloyd's 5K House Deposit.

Lloyds are offering a 5K house deposit, which was last seen in 1996. What are your entertainment memories of the 1990s? I feel guilty talking about the 1990s because you look back and it was such a golden era. We'd never had it so good and we didn't even realise because we were young and we just thought we were entitled to all. We absolutely took it for granted. Yeah, Brit Pop was absolutely in its pomp oasis playing to a quarter of a million people. You had blur and swede and pulp. I'm so sorry. Spice girls. Amazing movies at the cinema, train spotting. I mean, it felt a time of

absolute optimism. But at the time, you just assumed that was the way that the world was going. A very British type of optimism. Yeah. But part of the optimism, of course, is that mortgages were more affordable. And that is what Lloyd's is dealing with right now. Yeah. Last scene in 1996, Lloyds are now offering 5K deposit mortgages to first-time buyers. Search 5K, first-time buyer. 1996 average first-time buyer deposits based on O&S data. Subject to status. Your home may be repossessed if you don't keep up repayments. Conditions apply. Hey y'all, it's Kelly Clarkson with Wayfair. Ever order furniture online and wonder what if? Like, what if it doesn't hold up? That sofa was four days old. You should have ordered from Wayfair.

With Wayfair, there's no what if. Just style you love and quality you can trust. Visitwayfair. Wayfair, every style, every home. Welcome back, everybody. Chris Rand asked, I'm interested in how film titles are determined. Two decent films this year, I love boosters, and Crime 101 have had poor box office numbers. and I'm convinced it's because of their terrible titles. Could you explain how films with significant branding investment can end up with titles that fail to resonate with audiences? Chris, I so agree with you on bad titles.

It is extraordinary sometimes. I have to say, I haven't seen either of those. I know what they're about. But that's why you haven't seen them. Maybe I also thought the trailer for Crime 101 look like Jibberish, so I didn't feel the need to... Gibberish is a good name for a movie. Yes. I mean, it could apply to many.

But I totally agree with you. There's some sort of sense that the... title doesn't matter. The title really matters. For anything, for any single thing, it's such a crucial element. It's the first kind of thing that a potential audience will have, will effectively hear about a film or anything or any creative property. It needs to have a certain stickiness because there's a lot out there. Well, any creative project, you're constantly trying to nudge your audience in one direction or another. And the title is where you start nudging them from. And you're so right, how on earth can it happen?

Because we are talking films that cost tens of millions and sometimes even hundreds of millions. I sometimes think that I don't want to be too unfair here because I do think there's a sort of confirmation bias and when films flop, then sometimes you can say, oh, well, you can retrofit the idea that the title was terrible. But there were certain things that people thought would be a flop. I mean, I know that Tim Robbins was like,

the Shawshank Redemption. It's like a tongue twister. you can't even say it. See, that is a bad title. Yeah, and yet it doesn't matter because something, you know, and now everyone can say it very easily and name it as their favorite film, et cetera. He thought it was just like almost like a tongue twister. There were others that you just think, I can't.

There was, do you remember that, there was that amazing Gabri Sidibe who made her debut in that film and she was brilliant in it, and it was called Precious Colon based on the novel Pushed by Sapphire? Because there'd been some other film that nobody cared about or something called precious. I mean, you've got to explain to me how you've, this is ridiculous, okay? I thought like, Joker, Foli Adir, if I hadn't already thought that, sorry, you're turning Joker into a, you're turning the Incel film into a musical. If I hadn't already thought that was in a bit of problems, I would have definitely thought it once. I saw that title. I actually,

I mentioned this on Tuesday's episode. I don't think Nope is a good title. That film is really, really good and it's like, sorry, what am I watching here? So I've tried to break down what, the different types of bad title. Oh, great. I would say when it's sort of genericism to a ludicrous degree, so that film John Carter, sorry, it's just a name. Tell me what it's about. I have no idea that this is some kind of...

Sorry, that's a friend of my dad. Yeah, exactly. I mean, it's just ridiculous. I do not know what this film is. There's a couple of those Planet of the Apes ones that annoy me just because it's like rise of the planet of the apes, dawn of the planet apes. It's like, what orders this come in and aren't they the same thing?

You can't have two authors as well. in the same title. Just no. Ludicrous grandeur, I cannot bear. So if I didn't already know that Quantum of Solace, well, if I hadn't watched it, it was not going to be my favourite Bond movie. This is the one where he's in so much grief, Daniel Craig, over Vesp's death, that he doesn't even have sex with a Bond girl. Okay. No wonder Sam Mendez came back with a one word, cracking title, Skyfall. I'm not sure what it is, but it sounds very Bondy. I mean, I'm interested. I'm assuming Bond is going to have sex with somebody in a film called Skyfall. Yeah. I mean, it's not that hard.

of life, is it? You go around seven-star hotels and have sex with beautiful women, but anyhow. I don't like, I've talked about under-explanation where it's like, this is so generic, I don't even know what it's about. Franchise Over-Explanation, Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, that if you didn't know that Marvel was really going off the rails by that point. Also, Ant-Man and the Wasp, colon, quantumania, no. Those ones where you just think, okay, or like something, a Star Wars story, like oh i don't know is it canon is it off world is it this or like no thank you i don't need any that's and i think the most i think the one i think is the most egregious are the titles that

suggest the wrong genre so greenland and i'm like what's this it's like look let's be honest it's a jerry butler disaster movie let's just let's just call it what it is then i would have like what you call it extinction event i'm not even heard of it yeah i know it should be called extinction event or something like that or greenland has fallen yeah or greenland for or Jerry Butler does Greenland, it's fine. You know what you're going. I want to know what I'm getting. Maybe the absolute classic of this for me is the Constant Gardener.

Sorry, this is a spy movie? I mean, I understand if you love La Cary or whatever, I get it, but you know, you're trying to get everyone in here. This is a spy movie. It literally sounds like it's a Jane Campion movie about a prisoner of war or something. With that one, though, if we're going to talk about why films, end up with bad titles, Le Cacari is not going to let you make that movie and change the title.

And it's a great title for the book. Because in the book, you can play against the title. Yes, because you've got John Nicarry on the company. You haven't got that on the cinema marque. It's just Ray finds doing something about gardening. Yes. Maybe he's a prison. Maybe he's an alcatra.

I don't know what's happening. He's got a tiny garden on the window shirt. I don't know what's happening. Is this Alan Titchmarsh at the movie? In terms of the next part of the question, which is how does it happen? Honestly, the people with the power agree. And sometimes that might be the writer, as you say. Sometimes it might be the author who's allowed you to adapt his brilliant spine.

novel and committeeism in my experience and many of people's experience can lead to madness. I actually think you should just know what you're getting. Movies that I mentioned in the Tuesday episode, Barbie. Oh, I think I know what's happening here. Oppenheimer. I know what's happening. A Minecraft. Dude, where's my car?

I mean, people, that one was so bad, it was good. There is a genre of so bad it's good. Dude Where's My Car? And you know the follow-up to Do's My... Yeah. Seriously, Dude Where's My Car. Yeah. And that brilliant, you know what I told you I was looking forward to a horror that's coming in

August, by the way, I have now seen it and it's absolutely brilliant. I'm desperate for you all to see it. It's so good. It's quite genre-bending, but it's also very, very much an homage to the genre and very funny. That's called Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Myasma. Okay, I guess call it what you like. There you go. So I think you can sort of get away with those sort of titles in, maybe it'll just, everyone just call it teenage sex and death, but that is brilliant. That's written and directed by Jane Joan Bramman, it comes out in August. But again, we'll see, it is a brilliant film. I absolutely loved it. I'm still thinking about it.

Oh, that's cool. It's a lot. Yeah, we spend a lot of time on the titles. I mean, for my books and Neverwood's books, and sometimes books will come out with titles where you're like, I mean, how are you supposed to know what that is? But, yeah, we've always spent a long time on titles. And it's, you know, I'm very, very happy to involve as many people as possible in that. funny because sometimes they have to come up with the titles before I finish them sometimes just

because you know the process of covers and things like that and I will never let my publishers read anything beyond the first 20,000 words because they're sort of the Houdanity type books so I want them to read it all in one and so they'll come up with titles and they go yeah that's I mean that's going to give away the killer just so you know or yeah that has literally nothing to do with what's about to happen and I mean god bless my publisher they they do keep out and they can give us any hints that I go, yeah, maybe something around this sort of area, but it always, you have to have a title that at least, you know, the but at the miss, the man who died twice, even the Thirsty Medal Cup at the first point, just things where you go, oh, okay, there's a little

something to get your teeth into it. But I can understand it from the title. Yeah, yeah. I'm sorry, I mean, these things do seem basic, but with some of these film titles, I agree. Yeah. I, you know, I love boosters is a terrible title, and I think it was quite. funny and good. Eddington is a film I've read so much about. I have no idea what it is because I just think I'm not, it's just, it's called Eddington. I agree with you. You're not giving me anything.

And unfortunately, in a very crowded marketplace, you have to. So I agree with you. And thank you for raising that, Chris Round. This segment is brought to you by Lloyd's Arena. Lloyds are offering a 5K house deposit, which was last seen in 1996. What made 1996 such a huge year for podcast and it was massive. Yeah, it was massive. I mean, by the way, that's an amazing idea. Yes. I just remember like when we were in our 20s, you didn't have to put down a huge amount money for a house, which was handy if you didn't have any money. Yes. Which I definitely didn't. So yeah, 1996, it feels like the year that everyone harks back to when we're kind of going, it was just before Blair got in. But it's, you know, there was a sea change in the air.

Yeah, and it was, you know, and we felt this optimism would last forever. So thank you, Deloise, for bringing some of it back. There was a thing that people always used to say, about the 60s, which was that the swinging 60s was actually 17 people in London and Mick Jagger. But it didn't feel like that in the 90s and in 90s at 96. It was very, the whole sort of Brit Pop. One of these things were a much more democratised movement. And they all joined up. The football, obviously, what was the Euros?

I might be able to talk. I'm still quite upset about it. Yeah, so Brit Pop started sort of early 90s and it was sort of very cool and it was very kind of left field and it was swayed and blur and pulp. But then Oasis, when you get to 96, Oasis suddenly are playing to a quarter of a million people at Nebworth. So this thing that was very, very British, very, very cool, very, optimistic that crossed different classes, suddenly became absolutely the heart of mainstream culture and difficult to think of an example of that happening in the years since. No, and it was internationalised in American magazines. You know, there's a famous Fancy Fair cover of like Patsy Kempett and Liam Gallagher lying on the front of it under some sort of Union Jackson.

sheets and things like the movies were train spouting came out and the soundtrack for that was amazing obviously underworld but there was palblah alaska they were all on it that became the sort of second highest grossing british film of all time it is hard to explain to people how that was a sort of cultural and incredibly cool idea but danny boyle sort of exploded into everything with that yeah and it felt much more a time of possibility it really did i wish i'd known at the time that I was living in a golden age. Yeah, because it just seemed like what you've got. It seemed like what you've got.

Though actually, I mean, you know, one of my favorite TV programs of all time came out in 1996, our friends in the North, which was very reflective and looking back, really. It was kind of 1964 or five to 1995 and it had Don't Look Back in Anger playing over the final credits of the final episode. But that was looking back over, you know, the previous decade. So you didn't necessarily, you know, there was, it was a time of reflection, but it was a forward-looking time for definite. And to give the people who are always then now hope, it's cyclical because the 70s were pretty awful. I mean, I loved them because I was a child. But, you know, it wasn't a hopeful and optimistic decade. And then, you know, 15 years later, suddenly you've got this incredible rush.

I mean, one of the great decades, it all comes round again. It does all come round again. And you have to thank Lloyds for perhaps kick-starting this with their 5K house deposit. Yes. Lloyds are offering 5K deposit mortgages to first. first-time buyers. To find out more, search 5K first-time buyer. 1996, average first-time buyer deposits based on ONS data, subject to status. Your home may be repossessed if you don't keep up repayments. Conditions apply. Question from Danny Marchant, who says, in films with enormous VFX monsters, how do they film the actors interacting with things that don't exist in the real world?

Thank you, Danny. Well, I think a very, very good example of this is interacting with the dragons on House of the Dragon. So we put your question to the VFX supervisor. is on House of the Dragon as Darvey Inison. And here's your answer. So the design of the dragons really begins from the script, which is ultimately derived from the book. So there will be a description of the dragons. And it's not just the visual description.

It's also like the character. We then work very closely with Ryan Condole, who is our showrunner. He will kind of talk us through what kind of characteristics add or subtract something from the traditional kind of description of it. And then that becomes a three. It becomes textured.

You put a skeleton in it and add musculature and then the movement is a big part of it as well. So it's a very multi-layered, multi-step process. You know, we'll have on set, we'll have dragon performers. So they're, I mean, they're fantastic. You know, they are really kind of behind the scenes and never end up on screen, but they are people with some kind of a performance or acting background. And, you know, we basically show them the previews. We talk about the character of the dragon.

dragon and then they'll get in a blue suit and they'll hold a hold a pole with a fiberglass dragon blue dragon head on it light enough for them to be able to kind of move around and manipulate they basically perform the the dragon movements and you know it's for an eye line for the actor sometimes the actor would go and kind of put the hand on the dragon head or kind of run up and interact with them we try not to subject them to making the noises you know sometimes we'll have the director on the mic. We call it the god mic. So it's like when you're looking through the monitors, you can kind of have a microphone on speakers that people on set can hear. The director

might shout or I might shout, you know, some kind of version of the dragon sounds or kind of cue the performance beats. It's hard enough to keep everyone focused on someone in a blue leotard, let alone if they're kind of making dragon noises. It's a big exercise in suspension of disbelief. You know, any small thing, anything that bumps can just kind of trigger you to kind of step out from that and then you kind of dismiss the scene. You know, and a lot of these scenes are, you'll, you'll have like one of our key cast interacting with the dragon and it might have to be a very emotional scene, you know, and you're kind of creating a dragon that has character and you have to have kind of blow some life into them, not just how realistically

rendered they are and how realistically comp they are, but also like the mannerisms and characteristics and, you know, it needs to feel like a, I mean, I often talk about giving the dragon of brain when we're kind of reviewing things. You know, like you need to make it, make people believe that there's a thought process going inside there. Thank you so much, Darvey. That was fascinating. It is fascinating.

It's really weird when you see it. It's undeniably quite comic that there are people in these green or blue suits. They sometimes just have to have a head on a pole really high up because obviously the dragons are enormous and you can't look in the right place. But it does look kind of absurd. And it was the same for like Thanos in the Marvel movies where you actually see. Josh Brolin and then this kind of huge thing

going much further up it is kind of a weird thing to have to do and some actors absolutely hate it and I'm not moving into this kind of CGI world where almost nothing is real and very little. The whole frame is effectively not practical. Sometimes people will try and insist

on doing much more sort of practical stuff I know they've done building incredible practical sets for Eldon Ring that Alex Garland is directing that's out of Elstri, I think, and it's extraordinary. Often it can all be completely green and then you've got someone in a green catsuit or blue catsuit and a not particularly advanced head on the top that the actor is having to interact with.

I love hearing from people like Darvey there because it just, and you know, we talk about a lot, but you realise that, you know, the public facing people and movies are, you know, the directors and the actors and stuff, but behind the scenes, the extraordinary talent of people and what they do and how much they care about and how much thought they've had to put into things and how, if they do their job brilliantly, it makes the film better. So I absolutely love when people like Darvey tell us what it is that they do because you just go, it's everybody has to be rowing in the same direction to make a brilliant TV program or make a brilliant movie.

That about wraps us up for today. If you haven't listened to it yet, the final episode of The Vibe Shift, my series with James Kanagosuriam came out yesterday and it's about the sort of end of Pete. woke and where the zeitgeist is going now. Other than that, we will see you next Tuesday. See you next Tuesday.