Auditions, Adaptations and Law Suits

22 May 2024 · 34 min

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Podcast Episode Notes: The Rest Is Entertainment - Auditions, Adaptations and Law Suits

Episode Overview In this episode of *The Rest Is Entertainment*, hosts Richard Osman and Marina Hyde delve into the intricacies of the entertainment industry, focusing on auditions, adaptations from books to various media, and the legal complexities surrounding portrayals of real individuals in dramatized content.

Key Topics Discussed

  1. Auditioning in the Modern Era
  2. The transition from traditional in-person auditions to self-taped submissions.
  3. The challenges actors face in self-taping, including:
  4. Filming and editing their own auditions.
  5. The need for suitable lighting and background.
  6. The emotional and psychological toll of auditioning without direct feedback.
  1. Adaptations from One Medium to Another
  2. The complexity involved in adapting TV shows, books, and plays into different formats (e.g., theater, film).
  3. Discussion centered around the successful adaptation of *Inside No. 9* into the West End and other adaptations like *Thursday Murder Club*.
  4. Differences in audience engagement across various mediums and the creative opportunities these differences present.
  1. Legal Considerations in Portraying Real People
  2. Examination of the legal ramifications when adapting real-life stories, specifically regarding defamation and character portrayal.
  3. Case study: *Mr. Bates vs. The Post Office* and its handling of real individuals and events.
  4. The challenges creators face in ensuring accurate and fair representations while avoiding potential lawsuits.

Key Takeaways

  • Modern Auditions:
  • The self-taping process has democratized auditioning but presents new hurdles for actors, such as technical skills and the pressure of self-presentation.
  • Casting directors benefit from self-tapes due to increased submissions but can miss the personal touch of in-person auditions.
  • Adaptation Insights:
  • Successful adaptations require a deep understanding of both the original material and how it will resonate with audiences in the new format.
  • The experience of live theater brings a unique energy that cannot be replicated in film or television.
  • Navigating Legal Challenges:
  • When dramatizing real events, especially involving living individuals, creators must tread carefully to avoid legal repercussions.
  • Using existing material, such as books or public statements, can provide legal protection but does not guarantee it.

Notable Quotes

  • "Acting is reacting. Acting is being in a room with someone."
  • "The idea of entertaining a live audience for a writer is very exciting."

Additional Information

  • The episode also features a light-hearted discussion about the differences in book genres and the scale of various literary markets.
  • Richard and Marina encourage listeners to send in their questions, covering everything from industry secrets to personal opinions on shows.

Conclusion In this engaging episode, Richard and Marina provide invaluable insights into the entertainment industry, highlighting the evolution of auditions, the art of adaptation, and the legal landscape that creators must navigate when depicting real-life events and individuals. Their expertise offers listeners a deeper appreciation for the complexities of showbiz.

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For more insights and updates, follow *The Rest Is Entertainment* on social media or visit their website.

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1:26Welcome back to another edition of the Rest is Entertainment questions episode. the resistance questions episode. It's traditional for me to absolutely monster this introduction. Welcome. And you are? I'm sorry, I'm very nice. There we go. I'm Richard Osmer. Hello. Welcome to the questions and answers edition. Yeah. Now, Sam Noble writes, with the news that the wonderful Inside No. 9, yes, I agree with you, Sam, is moving to the West End, as writers, how difficult is it to move a TV show, book, play, film, etc. into another medium? Should we focus on theatre because that's what Inside Number Nine are doing?

2:02Yes, and we spoke a tiny bit about it, didn't we, what you did as a recommendation. Yeah, that will work amazingly. And many of them almost have, in fact, they have done a live version on TV, which I always love those kind of absolutely high-war acts of trying to do the whole thing on TV. But I believe someone else is doing an adaptation or a skew-on. Yes, yeah, we're going to do, well, we started working on a Thursday Murder Club adaptation for the theatre. So yes, it's a good question. And I think the question about whether you can adapt things. So you get something like Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime, which became one of the biggest grossing plays anywhere in the world.

2:40And it's that understanding, I think, of who your audience is. So there's a visual thing, which is, you know, you're stuck on a stage. There's the idea, of course, in a theatre production that you can't suddenly go from a living room to a car chase to a helicopter chase to a graveside. You know, you have to cut your cloth accordingly. But I think for most creatives, I think actually they rather enjoy that. Now, Inside Number Nine is interesting because they do lots of what we would call bottle episodes. And a bottle episode is you've just got your two main cast members on one set. The one from last week on Inside Number Nine was a bottle episode.

3:18It's essentially just set in one house and just Rhys and Steve. Well, the first episode was set in one juke carriage. Yes. So they're very, very used to that. so they have a stage that they can use. But also, they're such geniuses. They'll subvert it and do all sorts of weird things that you're totally not expecting. Well, that's the thing. I think as soon as you go into another medium, if you do Thirsty Metal Club as a book, I understand what it is to be a reader or you'll listen to an audiobook. I understand the intimacy of that. I understand that you can go back and recheck things. I understand that you can put it down and pick it up again the next day.

3:49You understand how somebody reads. In the same way that if you're making a quiz show on TV, you understand that people are sitting at home with their family they're not always concentrating the whole time but if they are they want to interact they want to talk to their family about what they're seeing they want to answer questions so you understand exactly why and how somebody is consuming what it is that you're doing and in the theatre again it's that idea of you have to get inside the feeling of somebody who's come down to London or to a regional theatre on the train who's had a bit of dinner beforehand who's now sitting and there's going someone a bit taller than them in front of them but just that excitement You are putting on a show quite literally it's an event, it's much more of an event The second you understand that you start thinking about your raw material if it's Inside Number Nine or if it's Thursday Murder Club you start thinking about it in those terms is how do people want to see that what's the first image they need to see what feeling do they want and for most creators I think most writers that is not something that frightens that's something that excites them you know that's an incredibly if you've got something I'll just talk about Thursday Murder Club because I can think about it from my own experience I know what the material is I know who the characters are but it's a different version of it that's the fun exactly and so you know the adaptation has to go through the lens of being in the theatre lots of smaller things you know it has to be an hour first half there has to be an interval because that's how theatres pay for things and then there has to be a slightly shorter second half but you know that's not a million miles different to a movie it's very different to a book but i think by and large when you adapt things and change them into a different medium the technical thing is interesting but there's a million great theater producers and i'm doing the thursday medical adaptation with a brilliant writer called tom basden so you have people who know what they're doing and directors who know what they're doing but honestly i think the key and it'd be inside number nine will do this brilliantly is understanding you have a live audience and there's a totally different there's an electricity and there's a crackle i should say that every contract i've signed every tv contract at the end it takes so long to you've way long ago started writing by the way before you ever get these deals signed and that's completely normal but there is always a long period where you're like what what if this becomes a stage musical and you're always thinking okay this is never going to become a play or a stage musical but lots of things actually do yeah all sorts of things that you might not expect so it is Bake Off Bake Off they did a musical off yes it's worth going all the way down to the bottom of the contract and making sure because it will look after you if it does become it's interesting on the Thursday Murder Club exactly that contract thing because we're doing the movie with Amblin which is Stephen Spielberg's company and then we started talking about doing a theatre adaptation a bit after that and if you buy the movie rights you have certain other rights as well and so they were saying well look if you are going to do theatre production, then I'm afraid we're going to have to put our foot down and say that Amblin and Steven Spielberg have to be involved.

6:50And we're like, yeah, that's okay. Listen, we're not going to play hardball if Steven Spielberg wants to put some money into this. Oh, he wants to be involved, does he? Okay. He is very, very welcome. So that's a very, very early stage as me and Tom are just sitting down and thinking about it and talking about it at the moment. More on that kind of next year, I suspect. But in general, the idea that if as we're talking about the boys from inside number nine the work insane amount of work they put into that program and the insane amount of imagination they put into that program the difficulty of filming the idea that they could put together a stage show which could then run for the next 10 years and delight to people everywhere and bring them you know money as well for the next 10 years um i think is great but just the idea of entertaining a live audience for a writer i think is very very exciting yes and others have crossed the other way that the play that goes wrong which was very successful they've had all sorts of spin-offs and they then took it to tv and they had two seasons with the bbc which was sort of hilarious because the whole point of it's so low budget when they first started i think they actually started in a kind of maybe a theater above a pub and then it ended up going to west end and it was hugely popular yeah yeah but when it was on tv that i mean they actually had some of the sets were hilarious because they had thought what we can have this we can have some money we can have a tiny courtroom an absolute tiny courtroom that no one can get in yes we'll have that please but again you had to think completely differently and they did have a tv studio audience but that again is a slightly different thing and they had to sort of bring that in and make that part of the narrative of the story and that's the thing because that's why it's such a good question sam because you immediately go well this why don't we just film the uh the theater thing and just put that on tv and the thing is people are watching these things in different ways and people are feeling them emotionally in different ways and you very very quickly work out that the medium is incredibly important and that you can have fun with the medium and change things around I haven't seen the Stranger Things play yet which is supposed to be terrific yeah I really want to see that I haven't seen it but again you can imagine the kind of issues you have with turning something like Stranger Things into a play and apparently they've done it in an absolutely brilliant way and obviously The Cursed Child has been hugely like just a sort of mega hit.

9:01And again, that's the idea of saying, well, do you adapt the book or do you do something entirely new, which they do when you bring in someone like Jack Thorne, who's a absolute genius. And John Tiffany. And John Tiffany, yeah. And you cut your cloth according to what you're doing. You have to look at all these mediums as completely different things. Movie is entirely different to the book. Theatre is entirely different to the movie. And when we eventually do Thursday Murder Club, the musical, that'll be different too. The endless murder verse. The Endless Murderverse. Trademark. Here's a question for you, Marina, from Don Ferris.

9:37We've got a very similar question from Jordan Rodway. Actually, so Jordan Rodway and Don Ferris. Okay, we've got a dual question. Ferris and Rodway. They were like the Holland Dozier Holland of the 70s, weren't they? A lot of Motown hits. Or maybe they're like buddy cops, Ferris and Rodway. You know what? At the start, you think they're not going to get along? Yeah, but... And at the end, they save each other. Funnily enough, yeah. Ferris has just had enough of Rodway's nonsense at the beginning because Rodway doesn't play by the rules. No, he doesn't. I wish that he would. And Ferris, you know, he likes to please the DA, but Rod, oh my God, he's an absolute liability.

10:11They're going to get their asses busted all the way back down to traffic duty. Exactly. Anyway, so this is Ferris's version of the question, much more straight-laced. Rodway's version of the question is like crazy. And he's got two guns in his hand as he's asking. But this is Ferris's version of the question. He's going to have to turn in both guns and both badges. Veracist Sir Respectfully He doesn't say that at all Don says When a movie shows a photograph Of someone who is not in the movie Does that person get paid? I saw a trailer recently For the new Exorcist movie There was a photograph of Linda Blair Would she get paid?

10:44Aha Okay this is really nothing to do Brackets By the way the DA is really Busting my ass on this one Okay The short answer And also to Jordan's question Is that it Obviously it depends on the contract If they haven't got the contract and quite often they don't have the contract properly nailed down. Basically, what you do is you own the rights to the character and pass, say, episodes or whatever. So if they've got a still from the... I imagine if you're using a picture of Linda Blair, it's not necessarily one of her with her head spinning around or whatever. So if you're trying to just do, oh, it's a sad family album thing, then you might have to pay her again.

11:23And the Screen Actors Guild will certainly try and get you paid. There was a thing in The Grey's Anatomy where there was this guy, Isaiah Washington, who's in the early series, and he was fired for being homophobic to another cast member. And then in order to sort of explain what had happened to the character, they showed a picture of him in a local newspaper saying he'd won a prestigious Surgeon's Award and therefore had to go away. And I think he sued them. If they'd used a still from the show or anything that had been pictured in the show, they would have got away with that. But equally, they don't always do that.

11:54Now, on something I worked on, they wanted a sort of almost like a pub scene, but it was just going to be playing in the background on someone's phone. And someone just said, oh, I could just take my iPhone into a pub and just, you know, and the executive producer's like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Unless you're getting the back of everyone's head. If one person sees their face on that, because now people freeze frame on everything. And then they're like, hi, can you please pay me for being in the show? You have to be so careful because of freeze framing. It's a big thing. God on the thing we've been working on recently an actor was just going to be waving a bit of script around and me and my friend wrote two pages of script just in case anyone actually Oh no, so it was, yeah Yeah But it's true there's a brilliant Adam Hurry on Twitter who does football cliches Yeah He's incredibly great if there's ever footage of a football match in the background of a thing which sometimes there are and by the way you'll always get the cheap it'll be something from a library somewhere it won't be Man City winning the league it'll be some sort of obscure match from 1991 and he sort of goes into the footage, finds out what he goes.

12:54Oh, this is like England under 17s against Chile under 17s in the Toulon tournament in like 1983 just by looking at the kind of the kit and the badges and stuff like that. Yeah, there's a story, Jonah Hill in 22 Jump Street. They need like an old picture of him, which you often see in shows, which is, you know, old pictures of you. And he had a picture from like his high school graduation and shooting it and using it. They go, hold on. Do we definitely have the rights to this picture? And he goes, yeah, yeah, well, it's my mum's picture. She's paid for it. And they go, yeah, but she doesn't own the rights to the picture.

13:24The rights are owned by the guy who shot your high school thing. And so suddenly they have to go and find the guy who shot Joni Hill's high school photograph and get the rights off him. You can see why. What happens often on productions is they will get people in and they'll pay you to be in a photograph because otherwise it just becomes this huge can of worms. Yeah, and also, rightly so, if you take a photograph, it belongs to you and you should get paid for it. Yes. And that's the idea. If ever, you know, if I run the one show and they need a picture of you as a kid, they literally have to email your mum.

13:53So they'd email my mum and say, can we use this? And, you know, you have to waive all rights. And she's like, oh, of course I'll waive all rights. But if it's taken by... Why doesn't she play hardball with the one show? I would love it if she did. It's a really good idea, isn't it? Tell her next time. Give her a script. Yeah. This is how you do it. Yeah. And they'll say, do you know what? Auntie Jan has used one of hers and she undercut you. So I'm afraid you lost your money. But yeah, anything that's even a tiny bit in the background, a snippet of music, a snippet of television, whatever it is, someone has got permission for that.

14:24Often they've had to pay for permission for it as well. But there is nothing that appears on screen that a lawyer hasn't said, do you definitely own the rights to show this? And if they haven't, then that lawyer's in a lot of trouble. There's things like if you say a line from a song, it's all right. But if you sing it, it can cost like just really quickly$50 ,000. Yeah. Just to sing one line from a chorus that someone might be using in a line of dialogue. if you say it without the intonation of the singer and without the specific emphasis then okay you might just get away with it but otherwise you're paying$50 ,000 at least yeah same on House of Games obviously if you have a question about a song you know if the song is about a final countdown then someone might sing the final countdown as their answer and you go we just might have to get you just to say it's the final countdown because otherwise it's going to cost us more than the show literally more than the show which again is fair enough don't take Europe's money off them So if we were to start singing the final countdown now, it would genuinely cost Goldhanger an absolute fortune.

15:23They'd be furious. Yeah. I imagine we'd be paying. It's worth thinking about. I think you'd have actually just sung a little bit of it. I don't think I sang a little. I think I intoned it. That's better. But even if people at home, actually if people at home, can you just for the next three seconds sing the final countdown for us starting now? Thank you. Yes, that was great. You've got one over on Europe. Yeah, unlucky Europe. I hope that now that our listeners are not sent a bill by Europe's solicitors. For singing it in their own houses. Yeah, exactly. If that happens, we will fight for you.

15:58Will we? I will. Can we not take... I'm taking on Europe. I will personally go to court for people's right to sing the final countdown in their own house. I've taken on Europe before. I'll do it again. Here is one from Andrew Day, Richard. Is there a difference between reading for and auditioning for a part? Ah, there isn't, but both of those things are... It's an interesting world as the husband of an actor. The whole world of auditioning is absolutely insane. I mean, all actors do it. And, you know, it's an uncomfortable place to be, of course. And it used to be that you would go to a rehearsal room somewhere in London and, you know, 10 actors would come in and the director would be sitting there, the casting director as well.

16:41This is what people imagine auditions are like. Yes, exactly. If you've ever seen one on TV, this is what you think an audition is. You know, you'll walk in, you've learnt your lines, the people will be sitting there and go, OK, and you'll go through it once and then the director will say, oh, maybe we'll try it like this and, you know, you do that. What a period piece. What a period piece because now almost all auditions are what they call self-tapes. So it's saying to actors, in the old days you could come into a room, you could get some eye contact, you could chat away, you know you could show a bit of your personality you do a read you could the director can then say oh why don't you try it like this so you could do another read you can show what you've got now you are responsible for filming yourself for lighting yourself for editing yourself you also you don't really get to do a second take where the director says oh that's interesting we thought maybe we could do it a bit more with lightness of touch and then you show what you can do you have to work out what's the take that's best going to represent me here so you have to do that you have to find someone to read in with you so in a scene it's almost always a two-hander and if you're in a room the director or the casting director more often will read in the other lines and you'll react off them so you have to find someone who reads um in so i always read in with ingrid and i do the other parts and i love that you do that i get into it somebody was telling me once about hearing joe alwyn the actor read and thinking i know it was taylor doing the other taylor swift when they were going out i know it was her doing the thing she's off camera but i know it was her doing that that's cool sometimes ingrid will say to me you don't have to do the accent you can you can be you're supposed to be quite monotone as the as the as the we always want your american accent in anything so i hope if there's anything american i i hope we hear you for sure um and so yeah so everything is now on the actor everything is now on the actor and of course also because everything is on the actor they can now audition 40 people instead of 10 people and you know there's various filters they go through and a lot of actors are thinking i don't think the director's even seeing this so you're putting yourself through all of this which is hard to do yeah there's an agent actually told me um quite recently that they think it's it's becoming really some unscrupulous agents when their clients are saying sorry why didn't i read for that i would have been great for that why didn't i read so they know that their clients are going to say that so they get them to do these self-tapes and then it never yeah this is now becoming a sort of thing that some people think others are doing so you can say well you did do it but you you know you didn't get it and then there are some people for whom you would have something called offer only where they don't have to do this which is like tom cruise but you know it's funny i was we had phil daniels on a show the other day and i was talking to phil daniels and i was saying you're not surely you're not doing self-tapes i mean you either know what phil daniels does yeah or you don't right and neil morrissey they self-tape for stuff and you know they send this stuff off and they don't hear you know just big big names self-taping editing themselves sending and by the way you've got to learn all the lines yeah you've got to it's all got to be and you might do so many of these as you say because it's made it so much easier people do many more than they would have done in terms of the old style of auditions and it's all monologues almost because they want you just to see as much as what you you know they don't really want to No offence to you, Richard, but they're not auditioning you.

19:51So they want to, do they? Yeah. Well, if you'd only creep out from behind the camera. I often, whenever she gets a part, I always go, and what did they think of the air traffic controller in the background? Were they interested in that? I think it's psychologically quite a difficult thing to do and technically a difficult thing to do. So I think actors are fighting back against it and equity are as well. And I absolutely get, by the way, why casting directors do it and why directors do it. It makes a lot of sense economically and, you know, it makes a lot of sense. But it is, I think that it's changing a little bit.

20:22And, you know, Ingrid especially is back in rooms a bit more now. Acting is reacting. Acting is being in a room with someone. Acting is talking. And so I think it's changing a bit. But certainly I think if you talk to most actors, what's the worst part of their job? Auditioning's always been the worst part of the job. But we all do job interviews. That's hard. But having to literally do that to yourself all the time in what's supposed to be a creative, endeavor I think has been very, very difficult for people. Shall we now go to a break? Flight 743 to Malaga, you are clear for landing on runway four.

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22:56Welcome back, everybody. More questions and answers? Certainly more questions than answers. Now, this has come to me on Twitter, but actually a lot of people asked me this recently, so I'm just going to read it out. Anna G said, absolutely baffling how there have been so many technological advances in the last 50 years. The stuff that human race has invented is incredible. Why are satellite delays for live broadcasts painfully slow? This is a question that a lot of people ask. And it's been a big problem in things like sport with gambling and things like that. Because obviously if you can bet on, I don't know, corners or things like that, then the time matters.

23:28But official time for this is called latency. Latency is the difference between something happening and you seeing that thing happening on screen. the latency is almost nothing on the old tv signal that came through ariel or on like analog fm radio but when it's on streaming everything is broken up into chunks and they're in like this is so technical most streams are in like 10 second chunks and the streamer needs three of those chunks to start so that's a 30 second delay right there and then sometimes if it needs transcoding this is adding to it all this is what people find it very annoying things like eurovision or anything where they wanted to watch the TV and listen to the radio commentary, which is what some people still like to do.

24:08Or read your online comments at the same time. Yeah, and they just feel that they can't. So in a second screen world where people want to be doing another thing at the same time, this is quite annoying. But it sometimes has to go all the way up to the satellite, which is 25 ,000 miles, and then come all the way back down. People are saying, well, what about Zoom? Because there's no delay on my Zoom call. It's like, yeah, but you don't want to watch TV at Zoom quality. Okay, that's shit. It's good for what it does. It's good for what it does. People will accept lower latency in a Zoom call. We're not anti-Zoom.

24:33No, I'm not anti-Zoom. It's not sponsored. There's not an anti-Zoom rant. If you wanted to sponsor, you could. And yes, so people will accept lower latency in something like video calls because you don't really care about the quality. And in my case, I would like it to look very, very jerky and so you can hardly see me shot or else be shot on a$70 million lighting budget, neither of which are apparently possible. One or the other. Because you get that thing, don't you, sometimes like during a World Cup when people in the house next to you or the flat below you have a different stream to you, like a lower latency stream, you hear them cheering a goal.

25:06It's so annoying. Like five seconds before it happens on you, you're like, oh, no. I'm not saying the old way is the best, but if you do actually want no latency, getting it through your TV aerial or analogue radio. So is that the thing? So literally the lowest latency you can get? It's almost nothing on those things, but because it's broken up into these chunks and they need like one on, one waiting, and one that it's always going to be behind and sometimes really quite significantly behind. Streaming puts the late into latency. Yeah. But we must, yeah, between us, we must be able to get those chunks put together.

25:37You're always trying to get us to invent something in this show. Last week, it was a conversion device for using the gym to power the national grid. Oh, I did that, by the way. Oh, you did? Oh, you did it. Great. Well, if you could just bring it in next week and have a look. And this one is to get rid of latency. Just to fix streaming. I'm seeing a grey silver box with lights flashing. Yeah. And you plug it into one of the... inventor, aren't you? It's very much about the look of the thing. It's the key. And then you plug it into it, because there's a whole bunch of things at the back of your telly, and there's always one free.

26:04Just plug it into that. What do I call it? I call it Goodbye Latency. Bring it in next week, and we'll take a look at what you've come up with. Yeah. This is a good one from Ros Clark about book genres. I've often heard it said that in the US, romance fiction makes up about 50 % of the publishing industry, but in the UK, romance doesn't even exist as a genre in its own right, but gets lumped in with chick lit or women's fiction how does mystery match up to thriller or science fiction to fantasy the basic answer i mean you know romance whatever label you want to put it under is absolutely huge in the us and the uk and it's got bigger and bigger um in the last few years and romanticy and which we talked about which we talked about all that kind of stuff and colleen hoover but the biggest genre in the us and the uk is crime mystery and thriller that's where and it's which makes up about 25 percent of uh of the market and that's the last i think the last figures i think we're still just waiting on last year's figures still to come out but so but 2022 um yeah so crime and thriller is the biggest market um thank you everybody i was about to say i can't believe you find yourself in yes and then and then and then uh romance is is is just behind and literary fiction is is a really really a very very small fraction of the of the book market without those two you know great kind of um drivers which are which are crime thriller and romance then bookshops would be in a lot of trouble of course you've got non-fiction is an entirely different world but yeah those two genres are huge sci-fi is very very big sci-fi and fantasy I say and a lot of that has started crossing over with romance which is why it's quite hard to really categorize them exactly and there's a lot of sci-fi crime things as well but yeah if you took out genre fiction as they like to call it there would not be a particularly big book trade left.

27:50But yeah, genre fiction, everything that isn't literary fiction. Yes. So genre fiction is the stuff you can be sniffy about and say, oh, it's just a, it's a crime thing, isn't it? Oh, it's just, oh, it's an airport thriller. Just keeping the lights on. Don't worry about it. Just keeping the industry's lights on. All we're doing is, yep, just entertaining people. I'm so sorry. Just giving people something they want to read. Ooh, that's awkward. I'm sorry. My next one is a meditation on loss. I promise you in 15th century Prague. I promise you it is. but yeah so genre and of course like like in everything the stuff that gets called genre fiction is some of the you know ian rankin is a genre fiction writer and is one of the greatest authors we have i mean as john le carré was genre fiction do you know what i mean probably patricia highsmith was back in her day um but yeah it's it's crime is number one then romance then this sort of sci-fi thing but i think if you add sci-fi and romance together bleeding into each other yeah i think we'll probably overtake crime gosh that's interesting yeah but crime pays um hannah calburn has a question her question is really enjoyed the chat about baby reindeer ethics i don't understand though how this applies to drama shows that openly identify real people and cast them in a villainous light e.g uh mr bates versus the post office where various people are seen in a villainous light uh scoop the crown etc can you discuss it's pretty difficult um and And actually, even though some people, they will have bought up a book in most cases.

29:16So to say they might have bought up Alan Bates's book for the post office drama. But Gwyneth Hughes, the writer there, I remember thinking, God, she would have had a really tough one. Because Paula Venels, who is the CEO of the post office, is going to appear Wednesday this week at the inquiry. And we don't know what will happen after the inquiry. But clearly, any of these things could be regarded as potentially incriminating. They were fortunate with her in that she had made some committee. I'm going to talk about her just a little bit because she'd made some committee appearances. So they were able to use those as a general rule.

29:48If it's been in a book, then it has been fact checked and legaled. And it's in the public domain. You're pre-covered. Sort of. You could say to them, well, if you didn't agree with it, why didn't you see the book? But there is obviously something so much more high profile about a TV drama than there is about a book because a lot more people are going to see it. There's this show that I still want to do that has a lot of real people in it. The Taco Brothers story. But it would be a comedy drama and nobody in this thing that I still really want to write would be accused of being anything more than a bit of an arsehole.

30:21But I mean, I had such long conversations with a lawyer about like how we would have to do this. And I was left in no doubt really about the scale of the task. It's doable, but it's really tricky. Something like The Crown, that's a very unique situation because they're not going to sue. once they open that can of worms the royal family they can't get into it I'm sure they think that lots of things are complete misrepresentations are complete fantasy because obviously it is a drama. So would that have been their basic starting position there because normally with lawyers you say well look Tom Cruise is not going to sue us and it doesn't matter he might do but on that they thought there is stuff here that you could get in trouble for Well I think there's lots in the crown that you could get in trouble for but on the balance of probabilities you have to say is the first time the royal family ever going to sue is it going to be us yeah and it hasn't been um having said that netflix have been sued and i don't know whether the person who's been identified as the real martha she says she is going to sue netflix and maybe she'll have a case there are a lot of people suing um as we've discussed before um inventing anna that one the supporting characters can end up suing um it's harder to sue in the us but definitely for baby rendia i don't know whether she'll have a case at all i mean it's it's hard to know whether she'll you know libel depends on someone having a reputation to defend and whether or not you think that the person who's accused of being the real life mother has a reputation to defend i don't know but certainly she has got it she could she will it's possible for her to bring a case it's possible for paula vennells to see over the post office to have sued itv over how she was portrayed and therefore they were extremely careful and you can see actually if you go back and the people who might emerge as the villains and might emerge as the real life villains um out of that particular story uh that you will see that they've been so careful about their public pronouncements and they if you're trying to filter the drama really through the victims of it many of whom you will have paid for their stories so if we if we go back and watch mr bates versus the post office it's interesting to say that because the the feeling you get at the end is is of Paula Vennells as the villain of the piece but in terms of what she's saying everything that she's saying there's either something she said herself yeah or something actually fairly non-committal in a scene and actually because of what's around it the scene before and the scene afterwards she's cast in that light but actually they're not actually saying that she did very carefully say something it's incredibly painstaking and that the sense of the impact of some of the things you might say it's through the prism of the victims yeah it's not a sleight of hand because that makes it sound like a trick and it isn't.

32:58But it's a way of telling those stories and of explaining what happened, but without actually libeling potentially or interfering with eventual criminal trial if there end up being any charges brought after this, which is not at all clear. So I think that's us done. Please keep sending in your questions. The rest is entertainment at gmail.com. Yeah, but anything you want, specific shows, little TV secrets, film secrets, anything you like, or just opinions. Yes. Our opinions on things. Yes. All of them. Because I love a list, and Marina hates a list. So if you want top three anything, just ask, because that would be an absolute dream.

Read the full transcript

33:34Then I'd be forced through top threes of everything. Just force me to do a top three every week. I say, Marina, the question's been asked. I'm so sorry. A lot of people want to know. I'm duty-bound to create a top three. Okay, fine. Your favourite three cartoon mice. And we will see you all next Tuesday. See you next Tuesday.

33:58The End

34:27Save we save. That may have been too much feeling. Only pay for what you need at LibertyMutual.com. Liberty, Liberty, Liberty, Liberty. Savings vary. Underwritten by Liberty Mutual Insurance Company and affiliates. Excludes Massachusetts. Your sausage McMuffin with egg didn't change. Your receipt did. The sausage McMuffin with egg extra value meal includes a hash brown and a small coffee for just$5. Only at McDonald's for a limited time. Prices and participation may vary.

From the publisher

Do all actors have to audition and what is the modern audition process? How do you translate a book to a film or even a theatre production? Can it be a simple copy and paste? Plus how do shows such as Mr Bates vs. The Post Office avoid law suits from those that are shown in what could be described as, an unfavourable light?

Those questions and more tackled by Richard and Marina on The Rest Is Entertainment.

Twitter: @restisents
Instagram: @restisentertainment
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Email: therestisentertainment@gmail.com

Producers: Neil Fearn + Joey McCarthy
Executive Producers: Tony Pastor + Jack Davenport

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