A Brief History Of Popcorn At The Movies

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1:46Turn car buying into a few clicks and not a full week's endeavor. Finance and buy your car at your convenience on Carvana. Financing subject to credit approval. Additional terms and conditions may apply. Hello, listeners. Richard here. just before we start this Q &A podcast, I just want to let you know we had so many questions about MasterChef this week, understandably, that we've done a special standalone podcast, which you can download. Thank you for not saying emergency. It's my absolute pleasure. Our special emergency podcast on MasterChef, you can download now, but this one is a MasterChef free zone.

2:19Let's get on with the podcast.

2:23Hello, and welcome to this episode of the Restless Entertainment Questions and Answers Edition. I'm Marina High. And I'm Richard Osman. Hello, Marina. I love the little, you always get a little look on your face when you get through the first bit of the show and don't mess it up. It's palpable, isn't it? Yeah. I can feel it myself. It hangs in the air. I did it. I said, hello. I said, it's Q &A. And I said my name. In the right order. Until that moment, it's hung like a sighted call over the studio. And then now it's evaporated. Yeah, you can relax. Yeah. It's in the ghost containment. And what people don't know is it was the seventh take, but that's okay.

2:55What are we talking about this week? there's a question for mark brotherton that i want to ask you he says i was recently at a rob beckett show in portsmouth i'm sorry about that mark we love rob beckett we do love rob we truly love him um and when i finally arrived i found out that my seat had been moved to the front row the idea of being picked on by a comedian is a deep fear of mine and i spent the entire evening avoiding eye contact with him do comedians have a system for who they interact with while on stage and what is the best way to be left alone god that's such a great question also that i mean that is the worst nightmare i was thinking i'd go to edinburgh every year and in that place sometimes you're in an audience of like 12 and like the odds of you getting picked i like pretty very very difficult yeah the best thing that ever happened to me was becoming well known on tv because then people never pick on me uh but before then i'd be picked on by everyone all the time if mark doesn't become well well known on television just say he does just say he doesn't create a career for himself on that medium what's the second best way the second okay i get it and this is this is such a common fear by people um audiences know comics know so i talked to so many comics about this uh because i thought i'd be interested and get different perspectives and they all had the exact same perspective which was everyone likes doing a bit of crowd work it just means every show is different you can sort of tailor it to um an audience it makes the audience realize that you're making stuff up as you go along as well but they every single one of them said there are two types of people i will always always always avoid on the front row that i would never talk to i would never talk to someone who's obviously not making eye contact so mark you did you did an absolutely grand job there congratulations they might talk to your wife for example sitting next to you and then you will be dragged in so anyone who definitely doesn't want to be picked they they can pick up on uh but also anyone who desperately wants to be picked so so those are the two classes of people every single comic said this to me it's like somebody doesn't want to be put there's no fun in that for anyone yeah and somebody desperately wants to be picked i know it's not going to be funny because they were already they probably have you already got some material that they want to use and they probably got, like, pretend they've got some hilarious job or something like this and some comeback they got for me.

4:56So then it always, always goes wrong. So you just pick someone who's just enjoying themselves. Maybe they've laughed at the first joke you've done, so you know they're on side, you know they're friendly, or maybe they haven't laughed at the first joke, but you sort of, there's a vibe to it. So it's reading that row, I would say you're unlikely to get picked on in a sort of touring comics show, a touring comic. Do you think people had not booked those seats in the front and that's why they moved? because having no one in the front doesn't look great? Or do you think someone had said, I'm so sorry, I've got a condition.

5:23I cannot stand this. I don't want to be in the front. Always, always, always a comic will get the front row filled up. Always. And the first few rows, if they can. If there's even two gaps, every comic will tell you. It's all you can see throughout the whole performance. You know, if there's someone not laughing at any point, you can see that person. And if there's like spare seats in there, you absolutely see them. So the job of the stage manager and the job of the crew or whatever venue is to fill those gaps. Normally they would fill that with volunteers because actually front rows do tend to set out fairly quickly.

5:54So normally that would be filled with volunteers. I don't know what's happened to Mark where he's been frog marched. That feels a bit harsh. There must have been somebody else around him who'd have gone, I'd love to be in the front row of a Rob Beckett gig. But I think that people worry far more these days because in clubs that really is somewhere that you should probably avoid the front row because in clubs, you know, comics are filming their things. We've spoken about it before. or putting them online, you know, and they've got all sorts of tricks they can use with people in the front row. But if you're going to...

6:20Does buying a ticket automatically serve as a release form for that stuff? Normally it would. Normally there'd be a sign up at the door saying, you know, your likeness might be used in a video. But that would come down to the comedian rather than the club. But that's a very, very good question. So you should write in. I'll write in. Write in and I will. They do not want you to have an uncomfortable time. No. You know, they really, really don't. I have a question on a very different subject for you, although it is a question about audiences. Suzanne asked a question, what is the history of eating popcorn when going to the movies?

6:51Suzanne, the second I read this question, I thought I want to know the answer to that. How did popcorn get that upgrade of image and that gig? Popcorn is a really old snack and they found corn cobs that were used for popcorn in Peru that date back to something like 4 ,700 BC. Popcorn is crazy, by the way. Popcorn is one of the weirdest things in the whole world. How long would you have to do that with egg whites to think, my God, this is actually quite cool. Yeah, you must have been so angry about something. I'm really just going to do half an hour of this. Yeah. The type of corn that they use is mostly grown in the American Midwest.

7:26Popcorn itself, and the association with the movies, is very American. Even before then, early 19th century America, they were called pearls or non-pareil or things like this. eventually um there was a guy called charles cretors and he had a sweet shop um i think it was in ohio he had a nut roasting machine which he adapted and that's how that's how this mad thing like how they thought all right if you really heat it and then it will pop it's crazy but charles cretors when he first saw it just must have gone i might be the greatest genius god knows what else he'd put in that machine before he hit on popcorn you imagine finally Yeah.

8:07Take 56. Run of beans don't work. So he had, anyway, so he created this. And then he thought, well, hang on a second. Why don't I just attach these to carts? And then, so he had, you know, he had a mobile unit, which was, as we know, one of the great snack innovations of all time. But the main thing is, in the Great Depression, it was very, very cheap. If you think, but movie theatre owners were very snooty about popcorn at the time. Remember what movie theatres were like. They were so amazing. Wanted it to be the art form of the people, but they put like carpets everywhere. The theatres, there's some, I've got, I read this book by, I've got this actual, there's a great guy, these will both be out of print, but I do have these somewhere in my non-unpacked book.

8:45So people can just knock on the door and borrow them. Yeah, absolutely. He's a guy called John Margulis and he wrote this book, he wrote one about sort of majesty of American gas stations called Pump and Circumstance. And he wrote one called Ticket to Paradise, which was, it's like a beautiful book of all these old movie theatres. Remember, things like the Roxy in New York is so incredible, like everyone, you know. Where do you find these books? I don't know, I once went to a talk by this guy at somewhere like Reba, the architect's place. I can't remember, a long time ago. But it was beautiful illustrations.

9:15And something like the Roxy in New York, which was a complete picture palace. It really was. It was amazing. They nearly went bankrupt building it. It seated 6 ,000 people. They had organs. There was guilt everywhere. I remember all this stuff. So the movie theatre owners were like, yeah, no, you can't bring your crap in here. But people started selling it outside. What were they selling? Were you not allowed to sell it at all? No, they didn't really want you to sort of... No, they... It's not a restaurant. Yeah, it's not a... It's a cinema, right? Well, as we now know... It is a restaurant. You're essentially a food court with some sort of digital screening service attached to you.

9:48You are in food retail if you work in these spaces. That's where you make your money. But back then, people would... Because it was so cheap and it was the sort of thing that people could still afford to do just about in the Great Depression, which is still a huge boom time for movies, they had the carts outside. people would think this is a great way we'll sell on the way in. Eventually the movie theatre owners thought this keeps happening. We're going to own this. You can buy it inside from now on. And that's how it got that role. But it is actually not that messy compared to what many other different types of snacks are.

10:19I actually remember Claudia Winkleman once telling me, saying I've thought the best snack for kids on a plane, right? And you can't do it if anyone's got a nut allergy on the plane. But pistachios, because they take so long to open each one. Like small children, they've got a really long time to open each one. they're not sticky at all and it just it's it's a it's very labor intensive and it's not sticky where the shelves i'd worry about the shelves sure popcorn isn't that desperate to clean up um and it's it's really not that bad but these carpets that they had even though it was in the great depression you know things like the roxy had the world's largest oval carpet and they had been sort of you know hands spun by something they wanted to make these places complete palaces for the working person and they are amazing when you look at these pictures of these things honestly like they were going to the Paris Opera.

11:04They really kind of put it all out there. So they were a bit snooty, but in the end they realised they could make money. And that's how it got the job. But it is helped by not being that messy. But who did like flavoured popcorn, sweet popcorn and all that stuff? Well, the Ruckheim brothers in Chicago in 1870 were like, well, they were the original people who just thought, what about if we just made this like a hundred times more sugary and they did caramel popcorn. Wow, the Ruckheim brothers. Yeah. I love this. And I've talked too often about the first flavourings and crisps, but I never knew about the first flavours in popcorns.

11:34Well, there you go. My son always goes half and half. Yes, I think that's the best one, actually. I've come to realise that is the best. It's like the revels of popcorn. Yeah. Because I had some assumption in my head. I had not spent any time thinking about it, and it's good to hear about it. My assumption was that it was just a snack that didn't make a lot of noise. That's helpful as well, but it's not. But it's interesting it didn't take over from, like, people were not eating crisps or something, and someone said we need a – popcorn was the first one in through the door. Yeah, but it was because it was so cheap.

12:03It's a lot cheaper to make popcorn than it is to make crisps. The markup on popcorn is insane. What do you think in cinemas when people eat nachos and things? That to me is... Well, again, I've told you, you're in food retail now, and there are loads of cinemas. They'll bring it to your seat. All of these things have changed and upgraded, and they're always trying to sell you these. In the same way, the two most important things to work out about cinemas is that you're in food retail and kids run movie chains because that's the genre that makes the most amount of money. You may think all sorts of other things are true, but actually really, yeah, I don't love that.

12:39And if they're very air conditioned, it can kind of get away with it. But I think I don't completely love it. But people will bring you drinks and coffees and everything. Yeah, these days. If you have a snack, like a Malteser, anything with any sort of crunch, anything with any sort of noise, I'm very, I don't like noise in the cinema, so I hate making noise in the cinema as well. do you do that thing and sometimes you can't do it there's certain films where you're like oh great i can't eat my maltesers that you would i'd only crunch when there's something loud happening on the screen i can expect like so if you're watching a marvel movie it's great because i can have i can have some maltesers because someone's about to go a lot through a lot in jurassic rebirth let me tell you oh really yeah you could have a lot absolutely no problem you could just bite down every time a dinosaur did a very a very malteser friendly yeah yeah but but sometimes you go see like you go see movies and you think i mean there's no noise here at all it's inappropriate that i'm gonna have this snack this subject matter is torturous literally having to suck my maltesers yeah you've got there's certain subject matter that is a malteser sucker they don't put it on poster they should do but there should be a rating that just says we will be sucking this elegiac movie yeah it's a real it's a real malteser sucker yeah god i love it i love an explosion if i've got some pick and mix everyone in the cinema at the same time just you know and the second it finishes just like one person just three away just still crunching and everyone goes come on man you've had 17 seconds of a nuclear bomb going off you're still eating popcorn thank you suzanne for that question because i i love a question where i'm desperate to know the answer as well and i still remember mr creta but being someone who invents something that massive yeah what would you think now if we he knew that we were still sort of he'd go that was me yes he probably made nothing out of it probably i mean i think he did fairly well at the time and his idea he was obviously very of the mobile snack carts.

14:22Are they big popcorn conglomerates? What is big popcorn? Big corn? Butterkist? Butterkist, of course. I was thinking I couldn't think of a popcorn company. But Butterkist. I wonder what Butterkist board meetings are like. I often think that with companies like that. But you know what I mean? All they're talking about is popcorn. Maybe they're just thinking about how can we make the packets smaller. That's what I think a huge amount of confectionery retail nowadays is. What if you kept at the same price and made the packets smaller? That's essentially the job. Imagine if you work for Butterkist and you listen to this and you've been listening right from the start.

14:48we talk about all sorts of industries and you go, here we go, finally. This is a bit of me. They know nothing about it. They're just purely speculating and they were trying to get more into a bag. Yes, exactly. If you work for Butterkist, do write in. Someone must do, right? Yeah. People are working for Butterkist. It's not just like a sort of self-automated firm now. Yeah, it's not AI, is it? It's not an automated firm that someone pressed the button on in 1992 and it just continues to occur. Big Butterkist, please get in touch. Shall we go to an ad break? Oh my God, what if Butterkist are on board?

15:17I very much hope. I can hear my own voice in a minute reading out something about Bustakist. Oh my God.

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17:34Welcome back, everybody. Welcome back. I don't know if you had any adverts for Buttockist there. Can I say, by the way, also in the studio, you are eating off-brand frazzles, which were on the Spotify snack tray. I'm eating something that it claims to be great for your gut. I had some already, but I finished mine. I know, and I can't now. I have to just wait until you talk really loudly and I just crunch one more. Maybe you'll do it in this question about the 1 % Club, Richard, because Andrew Davis says, how long does it take to record each episode of the 1 % Club? The lighting presets must take ages after each question, and working out who gets a blue light, who gets a gold light, depending if they answered correctly or not.

18:08Plus 101 microphones to control and the people Lee speaks to after each question. I'm guessing a lot of this is cut. Thank you, Andrew. Funny, I saw a couple of episodes being made last week because we were up at House of Games and they filmed in the next studio and they were still going when we were finished because we tend to finish quite early. And this speaks actually to, we talked on our AI episode on Tuesday about the creativity of the people behind the scenes in TV. And the 1 % Club, I'm going to say, is the most surprisingly quick television show I've ever seen. Because I was exactly like Andrew.

18:39I'm thinking this feels like a nightmare. Because if you don't know the show, it's 100 people. Each of them can be spoken to at any time. Each of them has an individual light on them. And when they get knocked out, the light turns off. Lee talks to people after each show, and you go all the way through until you've got one person left. So I went along to see it. I'll say one thing about it is they only do one a day, which is unbelievable. You can tell when something is a huge hit when they're allowed to only do one a day. Because the cost of doing one show a day is immense but when i heard they did once a day i was thinking oh of course it must take five hours yeah and it really really doesn't so simple things so you know we talk about there have to be a hundred lights and there are a hundred lights and they're all you know set to to look at individual people but you know an awful lot of that is on an algorithm on a computer and when the computer says that numbers 8 14 21 49 are out those lights switch off it's as quick as that so all the work there has been done before all the work has been done beforehand and just gone okay i built this system this incredible system that means anytime you get to the end of the round the thing that holds us up is not me it's not my team in lighting okay we have done our job as quickly as we possibly can and the lighting director on that girdip he's done a million brilliant things he's a absolute genius but again he's thinking there may be some delays on this show but they're not going to be girdip delays okay they're going to be somebody else the sound I think is even more interesting because anyone who's ever been near a tv show know that you know getting mic'd up you have a little lapel mic and you know you've got your pack and each of them has got individual batteries and you know at any given time certainly one out of 100 battery pack is going to be going down it's going to be dying and actually nobody is mic'd up on that show what is mic'd up is the set so all the mics are in the set and those mics are directional so anyone who is anywhere is essentially it's it's already pre-done again the sound crew are going listen there might be a delay on the show it is not going to be our delay because they've done all of their work beforehand and come up with a creative solution in terms of who lee talks to lee has an ipad instead of cards so the big uh that's that's that's that's the uh the biggest thing that's changed in game shows and lee the producers who are up in the gallery Andy Auerbach and Dean Nabarro who put this show together and have had a huge, huge, huge hit with it and have been working for years and years, done loads of great things.

20:58This is lovely to see them have just something that is absolutely going all around the world. They and their producers know something about every contestant. Again, all this work is done beforehand. The researchers know something about all of these people. They'll be an interesting little fact, an interesting little story. And for any given question, five people have been knocked out, 95 people are still in. lee will have a top five people to talk to and something to say say about so you'll see it on the show and lee will go um so someone's been knocked out john and you're but you've been knocked out your brother is still here okay so i think the gallery has done that the researchers have done that you know they're not kind of after every question going oh my god what can we what can we ask what could lee ask all that all that stuff is is pre-done plus also they go oh someone who's still left in lee is this guy and he's got an amazing story so let's make sure we talk to him while he's still in.

21:46So Lee will have the top five people to talk to. He will talk to those people. You might edit in three of those, depending on how those conversations have gone. And again, the producers are smart enough that as the show goes on, in that top five people, it's not just the stuff they've heard before from the researchers. It's, oh, it was funny when he talked to Person X earlier. Let's make sure that's a runner. Let's make sure we continue that conversation. So actually, the whole show is the art of pre-production. You know, every single thing has been done so brilliantly. and so thoroughly that when you get on the floor, I was genuinely shocked with the speed it went because normally anything with any sort of camera moves or any sort of lighting things or any sort of talking to loads of people, it goes on forever and ever and ever.

22:31I really, I just thought, what a crew they've got on this show. It's incredible. So the producers are brilliant. It's a great idea and it's made brilliantly. The question, right, there's a brilliant on that show. But I left that studio thinking, what a crew. This is crazy. it's that the speed with which they go is absolutely mind-boggling it'd be hard to do maybe more than one or two in a day even though they do one because i mean you could listen i don't want to tattletale you could definitely do two i'll say that you know there's there's a world in which you could do three there's a world in which you could do three but who benefits nobody you know for the crew they'd rather do one a day for the studio they'd rather you were doing one a day for lee he'd rather do one a day for the contestants they'd rather do one a day because it's all your day and it's you know the only people paying at itv and itv have got a hit so itv don't don't mind so much um anyway so i i loved them seeing just one a day i kept walking through because we were doing five a day at the same time uh and i know you don't like to talk about and you'd walk you'd walk past the holding pen and there's like a hundred people all getting their briefing at the same time by this amazing uh woman called olivia van der werth who who is sort of an adjudicator on all quiz shows she's like the kind of the god of of all quizzes and she's sort of talking to them about what to do what not to do and then there's a cardboard cutter of lee that everyone gets their photo taken in front of and that every single day every single day i walk through the double doors and i think there's lee and it's a cardboard cutout but every day i do it anyway that's a little behind the scenes peek but yeah it is surprisingly quick and it's surprisingly quick because it's got an amazing crew.

24:13Marina, I have a question here that I think I have views on as well. I suspect you'll have views on it. It's from Alistair Otto. And Alistair says, every so often you see an open letter in the media signed by a list of well-known names calling on the government to act on a particular issue. How does that actually come about? Do these things tend to go through agents and publicists or is it more informal? Do you ever sign these? Good question. I've probably signed a couple. It's a nonsense. I really think these things are a nonsense. But anyway, in terms of how they actually got together, I'm relatively, I don't know, I'm not even maybe that often asked.

24:45But I've been asked all different ways. Sometimes they might go to your agent and your agent might pass it on. Or your agent might think, yeah, I'd protect you from every single one of these that comes via. So I could be being asked lots. I just don't know. Because my agents, neither of them pass on ones except maybe less exceptionally. They think it might align with your interests, I suppose. Or it's like Mr. Motivator wants to get in touch. Yeah. And you're like, yeah, pass that on. Yeah, obviously. It goes without saying. just giving my home address. I think that open letters are, to a huge extent, they're performative, they're designed to make the signatories feel better about whatever it is, and I fundamentally don't believe they work.

25:21Like, I would love to know the time in history when an open letter... I'm actually thinking of Martin Luther and his 95 Theses nailed onto the door of the church. That's not an open letter. It sort of was an open letter. I finally got a reformation out of it. Exactly. But other than that... And then went on to be the money-saving expert, of course. Yeah. same guy let me yeah Martin Luther money saving expert I mean some money was saved that's a show yeah okay but I I mean if that was an open letter in general no I don't think they were I mean I remember god I mean obviously there are lots of ones about cultural boycotts there's lots that happen because of sort of peer pressure the Bailey Gifford sort of thing which we covered a bit about festivals lots of AI ones now lots of AI ones I am not convinced at all.

26:09I do think that people's talking heads might make some difference. I don't know. But I really don't think open letters do. I remember during the Brexit campaign, because the side that I didn't want to win won, but I remember thinking, oh, that's going to, I was just feeling more and more because I was thinking, how are they actually doing this? And it would be like, today, there is a letter from 100 business owners in the Times. It'd be like, geez, is this it? Is this the plan? And then today, 150 small to medium enterprise owners, have written a letter to the Times. And I remember thinking, again, I mean, I talk a lot about the dead languages of politics, but that to me is like, sorry, there's a letter in the Times.

26:47Is this what you think is going to make the difference? Because I just don't feel it is. And I thought it was really weird that that was part of a concerted campaign by the Remain campaign, Stronger Inn or whatever they were called. I remember just thinking, this is meaningless. That's when you go down to Ladbrokes and bet on leave. Yeah. I made the smart decision a long time ago of not having an agent. So it's very hard to get in touch. I think, yes, I think usually they're counterproductive. I get it. I understand it. But there's something about it saying we, the undersigned, you're going to be shocked and surprised when you see the names on this list because you're thinking if all these people agree with each other on something, then something's up.