Brat Summer & THAT Olympic Ceremony

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1:23Hello and welcome to another episode of The Rest is Entertainment with me, Marina Hyde. And me, Richard Osman. You sound like you're not in the same studio as me. I sound like I'm not with you, and I feel like I'm not with you, Richard, which, as you know, is worse. I am in Corfu, and we're parted, but we shall soon be reunited. But I have to say, it's pretty nice. How's the temperature? It's hot, but apparently it's hot with you. Yeah, but it's like English hot, so it's unpleasant hot. I mean, it probably gets to about 35, but there's always a breeze, and I don't mind it at all. Sounds absolutely awful.

1:55Sorry, I won't bang on too much about it, because there's nothing worse. um what should we talk about today or what are we going to talk about i'm not going to pretend that we haven't um decided already what should we talk about we just talk about anything with absolute inevitability we are going to get to the olympic opening ceremony yes yes i have some good insider goss on that as well oh good i'm looking forward to that because i've watched it on a spanish tv channel but as we say you don't you don't need the commentary we're also going to talk about brat and brat summers you look like you're having a brat summer and charlie xcx and what that means I'm 100%.

2:28My aesthetic has been vocalised for me and I've been seen, yes. And we're also going to talk about the absolute craze for Hollywood reboots. There are so many in the works. Many films that were not even successful the first time round or were, in my view, a distinct CLB movie. And also finally talking about Beverly Hills Cop 4, which we promised a couple of weeks ago. Not a reboot, I'll say, but in a way a reboot because it's been such a long time, yeah. But I've thrown it in with the reboots because I felt guilty we hadn't talked about it. Because you can. Yeah. It's one of the things you can do.

2:59Exactly. What are you going to do? What? Out there in Corfu like you give a toss. You just want this over with. No, I don't, Richard. I've been looking forward to chatting. So why don't we get on to the subject of Brat? Okay, let's do exactly that. And now it's come into the public consciousness via a number of routes. The Charlie XCX album Brat. But now it has become more than an album. It's become an attitude. it's been co-opted by Kamala Harris can you talk us through exactly what Brett is and what it might represent okay Charlie XCX has has an album had an album out and I think it came out it came out like June the 7th it has six albums so this is not some sort of sensational debut etc but it's really good the album's brilliant I can talk a bit later on I will talk about how I think that they have pulled off this incredibly successful campaign to make it the viral aesthetic viral attitude whatever it is people have tried to define it she's tried to define it she says you're that girl who's a bit messy and loves to party and maybe says dumb things sometimes she's honest blunt and a little bit volatile like i said richard feeling seen yes yes yes i am feeling seen thank you for noticing fierce hot intimidating people are saying it's inclusive but it's also exclusive i mean it's one of those things isn't it but it's a sort of state of mind that has taken over the summer.

4:17And one of the noticeable things about it is this slime green. People are calling it lime green. No, thanks, boomers. By the way, I'm just not a boomer, even though my children have been calling me one the whole holidays. And it's like this slime green colour, and it's got that very simple aerial typeface saying brat, and it's been co-opted in millions of ways. It's currently, I believe, the header of Kamala Harris's presidential Twitter campaign. So it says Kamala HQ on the slime background in the aerial font. Now, that front cover is very interesting, because that's almost been the lightning rod.

4:47Because, you know, every year there's music which is, I'm uncompromising, I'm slightly messy. Look at me, I'm arrogant, but I'm also vulnerable. I mean, that's been the stuff of youth culture and youth music forever and ever and ever. But this is massively caught on, so there's other things to it. As you say, all it is is a very lurid shade of green with the word brat written on it, which, you know, looks like you knocked it up on Photoshop in an afternoon. But, of course, they didn't knock it up on Photoshop in an afternoon. and it's six months worth of kind of testing that. There were 500 different shades of green they looked at before they found the lime green.

5:20Now, what they're trying to do with that cover, and Charlie XCX and the agency have been very open about it, we wanted to make something that looked like it didn't fit, that looked like it wasn't right, that looked like everything about it was just slightly off. So the colour, let's say they went through 500 different ones, and so they went, yes, that is unpleasant. You just look at it, you think, oh no, I don't know about that colour. For the font, as you say, they went for an Arial or a variant of Arial. And again, they went through lots and lots. They wanted the one you think, oh, that doesn't.

5:48No, they haven't really. That's not right. I type in Arial. Oh, do you? It's aesthetically unpleasing. And I don't like to type in anything that looks like it's already on the pages of a novel. I like it to be really basic. I always write in very cheap notebooks. I like the idea of it with a BIC. Yeah. Because I don't want to be too highfalutin. you know i don't want to go look at look at me with my fountain pen and my uh my moleskin diary uh so yeah it's it's deliberately the aesthetic is deliberately off even the font size they went you know slightly bigger it looked a bit better and slightly smaller it looked a bit better so we'd put it dead in the middle where it just doesn't look right at all so it's a very it's very clever and you know the color in the same way that pink or lurid pink was the color of last year because of barbie and that that's a very marketable thing just a color that this this slime green is the colour of this summer and it's instantly recognisable to be to literally have a colour that people suddenly go oh yeah that's charlie xcx it's quite an impressive it's quite an impressive trick to pull off she hasn't tried to copyright the colour which by the way would be totally non-brat yes but she hasn't tried that would be non-brat in my opinion now that yeah given that we're ruling everything is it brass or non-brat it's a taxonomy everything in the world by the end of the day that would have been divided into two categories.

7:06Anyway, but she's obviously decided that mass adoption of this colour is much better than exclusivity, which it is. And in fact, they did launch a BRAT generator microsite so that everyone could already start copying and memeing this thing and putting it out in millions of different ways, which has been a big help to kind of drive it. I think the number of it is, in the spectrum, is it's hash 8 ACE000. So if you want to find the exact colour, That's what you look for. You can imagine there's so many mums and dads right now having to go to B &Q with their daughters or sons and just literally going to the guy who works on the paint thing, just going, could you do this?

7:44And he goes, yeah, yeah. Do you know what? I've done it 49 times already this week. Of course I can do that. Well, you know, in last summer when they were, in fact, actually when they were shooting Barbie, they ran out of that particular shade of that pink and they were painting, you know, at Leavesden where they built it all and shot it. they ran out in the uk of the stuff that can make of the various pigments that create that shade of pink it feels to me like and listen this is a theory and it's just come up to me but perhaps we're going through a cycle of highlighter pen culture yeah and next summer i'm just going to invest in lurid yellow go with the yellow or the or the pale blue yeah which always feels a little tasteful you know what the blue if there's three it's pink green and yellow isn't it and sometimes they come they come in a four you go oh you've just got like a like a blue that isn't even really particularly shiny i haven't put any glitter in it the blue in a highlighter uh pack should not be there that's my bit anyway that's that's just my theory highlighter pen culture we'll do a separate i promise you everyone we would do a separate item on what actually belongs in a highlighter pack because the show is about entertainment to bubble now the here's another interesting thing i think now there's always been um there's always been very um countercultural female pop music since the mid 80s i mean before as well but that's when it got massively mainstream madonna and so on but the last 10 years it really has been an absolute tsunami you know from taylor onwards taylor and olivia rodrigo and sabrina carpenter and chapel rowan now as well and charlie xcx these incredible artists who seem to make their own music write their own music write for other people have their own uncompromising attitudes i think when i was younger a lot of music for teenage girls was sung by teenage boys and written by old men and now you've got this incredible generation of women who are making their own music writing their own music marketing their own music selling their own music and it's been an incredible run of it for the last few years and charlie xx is just the the latest version of this yeah this is the other thing the real world because obviously a huge amount of this thing and how it's gone viral is the way that everything goes viral, which is on social media and it's digital.

9:53But she did have this kind of bricks and mortar version of this as well. You know, she did a private show that she did on a private fan group chat. And then she said, I'm teasing this. And then what they did is they got this wall in Brooklyn, in Greenpoint, and they put messages on it saying, whatever it was, Brat was the first message. And then it kept repainting it with all these other messages. But that wall itself became a viral thing. But she went to the wall in a Bratmobile, basically, and stood out the roof of a car and sung and it's like this crazy like everyone's there and i suppose we should say that for everyone that and there are very few that have been this successful and this all pervasive there are so many people like meticulously planning campaigns and say and we'll do it like this and then that and we hope it will take off organic you just have to hope that you know you've planted the seeds on good ground and it will work yeah that's it you know when people go oh god is it that that easy to do oh my god culture is so dumbed down you think well no because everyone is trying to do this firstly they did it really really well secondly the album is absolutely incredible and but that's the key so what she's done is she's made an incredible album and then she's done an incredible marketing campaign on the top of that i agree and there's something about it being her sixth album there is a thing like all people who write in all different kinds of ways know that moment where you've kind of i'm not saying she hasn't found her voice on earlier albums but suddenly like your voice is working and it's of its time it just happened it's a zeitgeist thing yeah she's such an interesting artist because as you say she'd been around a long time she was very very underground at first written loads of songs for lots of other people Iggy Azalea Blondie all sorts of people she sort of made a deliberate attempt to go quite pop for a while to see if she could crack the charts in that way and sort of did and sort of did but it slightly didn't suit her well and a lot of this album is about that isn't it exactly that And so she's finally found the way of doing the stuff that she loved, the underground stuff that she started out with, but doing it in a way that massively explodes into pop culture, which is very impressive.

11:50But it comes from being true to herself, I think. It comes from making great music. It comes from being true to herself. So by all means, listen to the album and not enjoy it. By all means, have the view that modern music is not like it was in the 80s or whenever we were growing up. But that is demonstrably a brilliant album. She's a brilliant artist. It's a brilliant record. It's a brilliant LP. and the fact that it's been marketed so brilliantly could make you resent it, but I think actually it's a masterstroke of 2024 culture. It works. All of these things, when you hit your voice, it's because you're authentic and you're colliding with the times in the right way, but it's about she's able to be authentic about the promotion now.

12:29Favourite song on the album? 360. Oh, it's interesting because often in conversation, you would then say to me, what's your favourite song? but listen but it doesn't matter no i tell you what what's your second favorite song von dutch what's your favorite song richard oh thank you for asking uh i would i would say von dutch would be my i love the fact we've chosen the singles uh god we're such parents yeah um i mean i think um oh god i'm gonna get hated for saying this but um it's got a lot of punk to it the aesthetic of it is very punk the fact that it's a person doing their their own thing and absolutely being uncompromising is very punk the fact that it's somebody making music which you could make in your bedroom if you if you really had to but you know it's obviously the the production is much more expensive than that but it's doable and someone who's made her own music for years and years and years has made music in a bedroom has made mixtapes and suddenly doing these lurid technicolor album we think well that's um that sounds like the sex pistols to me uh good luck to neil with the uh with the post bag um the other interesting thing it reminded me of a bit when i I was reading a thing saying the smell of Brat would be sweat and chips and Marlboro lights.

13:37And you think, well, that sounds a lot like grunge. Yeah. But grunge was very, very male. And women, to get involved with grunge, had to slightly subsume themselves. And, you know, in the 90s, you had that whole ladat culture. Yeah. And it seems to me that this is women owning that culture more than they did in the 80s and 90s. This feels female-led rather than a male version of what they'd want females to be. yeah because we know how we've discussed before how the loud neck culture ended up for women poorly so i do think i i think the basic message would be whatever you make of this music if you don't like it if you've got kids who are into it if you're into it if you've got friends who are into it whatever you think of it i think is an incredibly positive bit of our cultural life i think it's a great record which will survive for a long time i think it's very very clever marketing i think it's done by people who really understand what they're doing who already get the jokes you think you're making right they're absolutely ahead of all of that game so even if it's not for you i hope you recognize as the summer goes on that something good is happening and it's good for you know teens who are who are listening to pop music and it's good for our culture as a whole i think absolutely the one thing i'm gonna have to put slide breaks on is the idea i saw i think it was this morning i don't know because i'm slightly on one day behind on everything but i saw a telegraph headline that said the the brat british pot star who could decide the american election you see no no that that is one thing that won't happen i just so it can be a brat summer but it's not going to be a brat american election no no and on that note shall we go into a break richard i would love to at sierra discover great deals on top brand workout gear like high quality walking shoes, which might lead to another discovery.

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17:12Welcome back, everyone. This is Richard Osman live in the studio. I'm talking to Marina Hyde live in Corfu. Marina, what are we... Not that everyone's jealous. What are we talking about next? We're going to talk about reboots because there is... Obviously, you will have noticed there is an absolute craze for reboots. This year, you've already seen Jake Gyllenhaal was in Roadhouse reprising the Patrick Swayze role. There's going to be a remake of Ghost. And these, by the way, They're not sequels, they are remakes or reboots, reversions. Dirty Dancing, before you think they're going through all the Patrick Swayze movies and just remaking them, which I've got a number of views on, they've just pulled the plug on the last minute on a Dirty Dancing one and are going to do it again because they have already done a Dirty Dancing remake, but it's now back in development.

17:58If I know anything about Dirty Dancing is you will not stop it. You can't stop it however you want to do it, those kids will dance. You will not place it in a corner. No, you won't. So, War of the Roses, Officer of a Gentleman, Parenthood, Splash, Spaceballs, Blair Witch Project, Happy Girl Mod, The Matrix, Lord of the Rings, again. The Running Man, starring Glenn Powell. Glenn Powell. I mean, listen. We're going to talk about him again in a minute. Heaven Come Wait, starring Glenn Powell. And I tell you what, Glenn Powell also wants to star in a remake of Backdraft. I am interested in Glenn Powell starring in a remake of Backdraft.

18:31I don't think I've actually been as here for a movie star. When I was laughing throughout Twisters, I was thinking, I don't think I've been as here for anyone since maybe the pomp of Gerard Butler. And I like Gerard Butler and Glenn Powell both having names of people who I could have gone to primary school with. But in a way, Glenn Powell, okay, he's supposedly the star of the moment and whatever. He wants to be in all his remakes. I feel that Glenn Powell is trying to remake all the movies from the era back when being a movie star meant being the biggest thing in the world. So it's almost like he's trying to, it's like a cargo car.

19:02if he just remakes those movies, then he will be as big as the star of those movies were in those days. Whereas no one is actually as big as that now, apart from just a very few like, I don't know, The Rock or Tom Cruise or Denzel or whatever it is. But they're not even the same as they once were. I went to Twisters on day one of opening. And that has turned out to be, by the way, a huge hit. And I don't know if you understand why when you see Glenn Powell in a wet t-shirt in a barn trying to explain something about super absorbent polymers, he's just saying science words, you understand them more than glendale i just i'll tell you the one thing you don't hear about in that movie is climate change okay no but it's interesting because part of the thing about reboots is everyone's saying oh why would you do it now or you know twisters well of course that'd be related to climate change i honestly thought you'd get one line about it in the movie like why are we seeing this rash of these f5 storms or whatever they call them the tornadoes and you don't get any and i think it's because glenn powell has decided you know in the words of michael jordan that republicans buy sneakers too i i don't think you'll see any of that stuff in a Glenn Powell movie.

20:03See, that's the thing with reboots. Listen, there's a lot of them and they say, look, it's crushing originality and all that stuff. I don't mind them too much for a couple of reasons. Take, for example, Outrageous Fortune they are going to remake, okay? And as you say, Outrageous Fortune was a sort of a hit movie, not a massive hit movie. Shelley Long and Bette Midler, a great film, came out in 1988. Films quite often is archaeology. When we were growing up in the 80s, you could pretty much look back over the history of movies and know all the films. You know, there was a canon and it was being built up, but, you know, it had only been built up for sort of 30-odd years in terms of big movies.

20:41Now, since Outrageous Fortune came out, 72 ,000 movies have been released worldwide. So nobody in the future is really ever going to dig down and find Outrageous Fortune again. Maybe a couple of people one weekend might take a look at it, but as a cultural artefact, it no longer exists. Whereas actually, you remake it. Firstly, you'll watch the remake. Secondly, you'll go back and watch the Shelley Long and Bette Midler original. And suddenly you've found yourself an amazing movie. So I don't mind it because I think a lot of those smaller films that are great films are buried. But as you say, the key is, you know I'm taking every single opportunity at the moment to ask Chris Columbus everything.

21:20While I've got him, the IP that he's been involved with, the reboot swirl around it endlessly. You've got Gremlins, Goonies, Home Alone, Mrs. Doubtfire, Adventures in Babysitting, just an incredible slate of things, all of which are in that mix. And he said, well, I would never do a reboot unless, as you say, I have something new to say, unless there's a reason for making it in 2024, which we didn't have for making it in 1982. I can tell a story, a different story, because of the times, and I can use these characters that one generation understands to tell a story for another generation. But yeah, his view is exactly that of, I would remake Twisters if I could say something about climate change because I have something interesting to say about it.

22:03I could remake Ghost. I'm not quoting him. Well, no, they are actually doing it because they want to talk about mental health and depression, apparently. Oh, Ghost, really? Yeah. I guess also we've had the Great Pottery Throwdown since then, so maybe there's a spinoff. Maybe it could be set on that. That's an idea. And then you have a competitive element to it as well. Reboots have always existed, right? As long as there have been stories, there have been reboots. That's what folklore is. But Hollywood in the golden age remade things all the time. I do think there's something bigger now. First of all, they don't know what young people like at all.

22:36And they're trying to work out what young people like. What they can see is that they like watching TV programs that their parents watched. They like watching Friends. They like watching Gilmore Girls. They find things on TikTok and they kind of develop a sort of ironic interest in them that maybe then becomes a serious interest. And it's old stuff. They find old stuff and say, look at this. And it's a sort of weird nostalgia, that kind of false nostalgia for things you didn't actually experience. And, you know, there's lots of people in the UK who feel like at some level they lived through the blitz, even though they were born in the baby boom, if I may say, after the war.

23:10But they somehow at some level feel they lived through the blitz and it was great. And there's that sort of feel to some of this, which is that there's a nostalgia for something that you didn't know the first time around. I also think it's really significant. We've talked about the gerontocracy before in politics and how it's just sort of bled into culture. It really has. The people who run the studios are so old now. There's a guy called Mike DeLuca, who they got to be the kind of green lighting executive at New Line in 1993. He was 27 years old, 27. He did Austin Powers. He did Boogie Nights.

23:42He did Seven. He did all these sort of things like that, Rush Out, all these kind of new things. And they were all massive hits. And it was a new kind of vibe. And he was brilliant. You know when they went to find someone to be head of Warner's films last year, they got Mike DeLuca. Now Mike DeLuca is now, you know, he's now 57, you know, 58. And all of the people who are greenlighting these films, who are greenlight level, apart from about one, is in their 50s and 60s. It sort of maybe shows that there's a big sort of let's make them like we used to feel to all of this. I do think there's a sort of comfort to all of that.

24:15It's like the Elasticated Waste movie, isn't it? It's like a sort of, it's a very risk-averse era, and it's so risk-averse. And one step more than we can't do anything unless there's some IP there is to remake IP that you've already made. Let's talk about Beverly Hills Cop 4. What was that saying? Listen, I'm going to shock you. I absolutely loved it. I thought it was very good. I loved it. But didn't you feel that it was just trying to give, it was trying to give you a feel of like that feeling that you it's chasing a high i just honestly i disagree i tell you why i disagree is if radiohead bring out an album and i like it i want them to bring out another album if i enjoy the sopranos i want another season of the sopranos i think this idea that when something is made is then sort of just sort of you know cast in stone like harrison ford in star wars and you know never to be seen again i think i want to see it again i I love the film.

25:08Why would I not want to see the next bit of that film? Why would I not want to see those characters? When they're old and he doesn't have the same... Eddie Murphy does not have the same joy of being on screen that he used to have. He just doesn't. And you can see that. And I felt that really strongly. And it's sad watching that. And even though it was very well done and great car chases and the stuff of the daughter was good and all that sort of stuff, there is a level of soullessness to that kind of Netflix retread of it all. I don't know. And I know what they're trying to do. they're trying to get you back to the mood the mood of the original but which was don't forget that in the kind of quite early on in the blockbuster era relatively speaking and it's that mood of the 80s there's no message you're just pumped it's heightened and if people are saying well that wasn't my 80s it was the 80s of mass culture but it's slightly trying to get you back to that mood in a time where we don't live like that anymore i don't know because i think if i'm eddie murphy or judge reinhold or john ashton or paul riser or anyone who came back for this film i would think do you know what i loved making that film i'm really really proud of that film it's huge people absolutely loved it why do i of all artists have to just go okay i won't do it again because painters are allowed to paint similar things but bands are allowed to make similar albums obviously tv executives are allowed to make the show the same show again and again and again and again and again and i would have thought in a lifetime you're allowed to make four versions of beverly hills cop if it's something that people loved i think i think it's you're right I feel allowed.

26:32I'm not saying they shouldn't have done it. Go ahead and do it. And it was done perfectly serviceably well. And it was really actually enjoyable. But for me, I find it quite sort of poignant at the same time. I really do. And I don't think it's saying anything about the passage of time or anything like that. I just feel like... I thought it lent into the poignancy of it. That's what I love. I love something that's 40 years later. But when something's 40 years later, it has to be poignant. I think there's something rather lovely about that i will say however if you've been put off by reviews or anything it's genuinely it's a lovely saturday night sunday night stick it on it's a it's it's a it's a really good bit of entertainment the new beverly hills cop movie um you mentioned right at the beginning there that um they're thinking of doing a reboot of space balls yeah which reminds me when uh i think in the 80s they first asked mel brooks about whether he would do a sequel to space balls he said yes i am going to do a sequel and i've already got the title i'm going to call it Spaceballs 3 The Search for Spaceballs 2.

27:32That is brilliant. Now the Olympic opening ceremony can we talk about that next because that occurred on Friday evening and in Paris and I mean I love a big swing they went for such a big swing and I fear to say I thought I saw it rather missed which was a shame because I love it when people try something completely radical and different and Fair play to them for giving it a go. It probably looked great on the little model that they built. Yeah, well, listen, it was a great moment on Twitter, that's for sure. It was one of those uniting moments. Yeah, as you say, it's interesting. We constantly say culturally, oh, people need to take more risks.

28:08Why are we so safe? And what they really did was take a risk. And actually, the idea of taking it out of the stadium, where these things always are, and putting it on the streets of Paris, showing off Paris, showing off these incredible buildings, incredible French artists, I thought was a great idea. But when you saw it, what did you think? Well, firstly, it was raining. I know, I can't bear it, the weather. I mean, I looked at the weather, the only thing that worked with our terrible Wi-Fi was the weather map, and you could just see this one blob over the whole of France. That was it, that was this enormous storm.

28:37But also, it's a weird sort of twofold thing in that it went on for a really, really long time, and the rain continued throughout. Creatively, I thought it was a great idea. Lovely to have everyone go up the Seine, that's lovely. and it was all directed by, you'll be surprised to learn, an avant-garde French theatre director called Thomas Joly and he was the creative director in the way that Danny Boyle was the creative director of London 2012. The interesting thing about this is it's the difference between sitting around a table having an idea and then watching it go out, which I've done a million times.

29:09And you can have ideas that around the table you think this is great and then in a run-through you think, yes, it's really, really working. and then the second it goes out you think oh of course it's much much much too long also you can tell he was a theatre director because I didn't think it worked as a tv spectacle yes it's important that people understand that this is almost always the biggest rating event of the entire Olympics people are into lots of events and you think it would be the 100 meters men's final but it's not necessarily the opening ceremony is always enormous in the UK it got I think 7.8 million at its peak and I say at its peak because I don't think everyone's stuck around with the whole thing.

29:46But if only a rating is going, that isn't it. It just didn't work as a TV spectacle, I think. And it must have looked great on the maquette when you've got the whole set because you can see it all at once. But the whole point of the screen is that it's very limiting. And that's in a way why when you work within a stadium, you are working, he would have been better off doing that as a theatre director and he would have been better off translating to TV that way. but the inclusion of many elements um i mean i love the minions why were they there um and um that the guy who with the torchbearer who definitely looked like he was everyone said he looked like assassin's creed or whatever also also by the way can i just say one thing we've learned one thing from popular culture in the last 10 years if somebody is wearing a mask at some point they must be unmasked and it must be the reveal must be unbelievable you're a theater director?

30:38What on earth? What happened? Why wasn't it on Mars? And it was, you know, obviously Macron or someone, you know, just because it has to be. Why didn't they do it? I mean, I have always got, if there are dignitary suffering, which there were in the rain, as the expression goes, hang that in the loo for me. I love to see some of the worst people in the world. If they're getting rained on, I love it. I enjoyed that bit. But let us be honest, Opening ceremonies are almost without exception, sort of gibberish and really quite bad. And there have been, in my recent memory, two great ones. And I was very fortunate to be in the stadiums for both of them.