Did Star Trek Invent The Mobile Phone?

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1:30Hello and welcome to this episode of The Rest is Entertainment, questions and answers edition. I'm Marina Hyde.

1:35Richard Osman:And I'm Richard Osman. Hello, Marina. Hello, Richard. How are you? I'm very well. Looking forward to answering some questions. Yes. Keeping people company. As always, the questions are brilliant. I love the first question. The first question is a fun one and I'm looking forward to hearing your answer. Shall we get straight on and do it? Yeah, I have actually thought about this one. Good. Hit me with it again. Chloe Satchel Cobbett has been in touch. Yeah. Thank you, Chloe. and she asks if you had to do a job swap with any celebrity including all their multi-hyphenate roles side hustles etc who would you pick and would you be able to do a good job i think the last bit is a lot of the following bit yeah it's really hardcore yeah because evil can evil and no okay multi-hyphenates first i started going down the wrong alley and i started thinking oh my god who do i most admire and think is so unbelievably talented and they're people like Hugh Laurie I find him so extraordinary okay think of what he can do absolutely to an A-level comic acting serious acting he's written one book again he does these things and says I don't know why I did this I really didn't enjoy it the book is brilliant it's called The Gun Setter it's a terrific book he's academically very clever was a great sportsman brilliant at music I would love to ask him if he's good at art because I'll be I will do my nut if he's good at art as well because that's ridiculous because that's everything.

2:54Richard Osman:Yeah, and like Call of Duty. Yeah. Oh no, I'm amazing at Call of Duty. Yeah, that's just like multi-talented. I think the funny multi-hyphenates are the ones that, you know, I'm such an ironist, I'd have to go to. Liz Hurley, whose actual Instagram bio is mummy, actress, model, farmer, bikini designer. I mean, I'm not saying I'd like to model them with Damien Hudson taking the photos, but... I do enjoy farming, so... But it's in the mix, okay. I can't bear all the sort of really over-diversified younger celebrities like Millie Bobby Brown you know I've got a beauty line and fashion line they've diversified really early and they're obsessed with all those things Oprah like show producer book club yeah America's conscience I mean could I do it I'd love to have a go uh I was thinking I see you as Oprah Margot Robbie I've got a bit I'm a big fan of Margot Robbie's I think producer actress like an unpretentious person like you will see her like having dragging her own suitcase somewhere.

3:52You know she loves Infernos in Clapham. Then I thought, okay, Clarkson. Farmer, TV star, producer, columnist. I mean, Prime Minister across the water.

4:04Richard Osman:Could I do it? You're sort of halfway there. Richard, I just feel like it's, in some ways... He doesn't seem to mind what people think of him, which is the thing I'm most envious of. Yeah. That would be, imagine living your life not caring what people thought about you. Yeah, I think that's pretty, I'd quite like that. I think I could go for that. But of course, when I thought of the prime minister over the water a bit, I thought, who wants to be prime minister over the water? Don't you just want to be president? So I know who I would actually be. And I think you know who I'm going to choose. It's Dwayne Johnson.

4:33It's The Rock because it is the most hyphens of all the multi-hyphenates. Okay. He's an action star. But he's so much more than that. He has his own tequila brand. Yes, I could do it. He considered his GSD table the get shit done table.

4:48Richard Osman:is that a real table that he has yeah it's like airlifted into his trailer for every single film he works on he's got a GSD trailer yes of course it's the GSD table my get shit done table future president yeah I think I could easily do that you weren't born in America but that feels like it's getting less and less of an issue wrestler it's all staged come on I could lean in UFC and WWE board member yes I want to sit on the board of like a thing about lots of men fighting I want to sit on a board of it and to make decisions that really affect both actually US politics and entertainment. So I want to do that.

5:24But ultimately, what I really want to do is give the interviews and do the posts that he does. And you're probably saying to me, yeah, but, you know, how could you get all those muscles? And I would say, well, look, you know, I would do it with injections. Unlike The Rock, comma, 53. I would do it. So you would cheat. I mean, it's not cheating if you're not competing. You're just competing against other actors to be in Jumanji. jumanji yeah yeah it's just you just can be together you're not at the olympics you would do everything not that i think he does any of this sort of stuff of course you make that entirely

5:55Richard Osman:you would do everything that the rock does except you would build your muscle mass through steroid injections rather than just through good diet and sheer hard work in the gym at four in the morning because i'd need to be posting all the time so that i could be like you know better never stops you know games getting tougher all of this stuff i could just i'd love to do the interviews the humblebrag interviews i love all of it yeah so the rock is without any question just because he just bestrides entertainment and maybe other things like a colossus and i think i could do that i think it's a really really good idea okay the rock i mean i i would have uh i was going to say ryan reynolds only because he gets to run a football team and he has an alcohol brand and that that's just like free money he's not spending a lot of time sort of looking through sales figures have you read the email that he wrote that's now have come out to colleen hoover and it's come out as part of the disclosure in this the world's most never ending case even worse than the one in bleak house the lively v valdoni oh my god you must read the email it's the biggest cringe you'd cringe yourself inside you could never write that email whereas i know i could write the rocks workout post it might be better for ryan reynolds if i was ryan reynolds that's what i'm saying i've watched that body swap comedy yeah see there you go i've already got a hit movie yeah that's the hit and then the art house one doesn't work but then when you said oprah i thought actually that's better for me because she does lots of behind the scenes type things and she does producing and the book thing and all that kind of stuff.

7:18Richard Osman:And good stuff. And really good stuff. So I think I would be absolutely in unbelievable footsteps but that's a job I think that maybe would suit me more than... You can be Oprah and I can be The Rock. Imagine if The Rock and Oprah had a podcast called The Rest is Entertainment. What are you talking about this week? Alan Carr. Wow. I would listen to every single nanosecond as you know. That would be amazing. Okay, Chloe, thank you for that question. There are others I'll have missed off there, but I know I would always end up in the same place with Dwayne. I have a question for you about Shakespeare from The Rock.

7:52No, I'm so sorry. It's from Al Coomer, who says, what is the most successful film about or adapted from Shakespeare commercially? And do you have any favourites?

8:03Richard Osman:Filmmakers love a bit of Shakespeare. They crazily do. And actually, the direct adaptations never do particularly well. Well, certainly the biggest grossing one was Baz Luhrmann's Romeo and Juliet, which was updated. That's a good idea, isn't it? Updating Shakespeare. Why did no one do that before? But, you know, there aren't many huge, you know, you've got Ken Branagh's Much Ado About Nothing. You know, there's various versions of Hamlet and Othello from the 50s and 60s that did well. But the adaptations obviously do very well because, I mean, Shakespeare took a lot of his stories from other places anyway.

8:39Richard Osman:But we, you know, we take something like The Lion King to be inspired by Hamlet. And The Lion King is one of the biggest grossing movies of all time. And the musical is one of the, you know, and the live action version of it. So there's a lot of money to be made in Shakespeare adaptations. That's for sure. West Side Story, which is based on Romeo and Juliet, made a huge amount of money. 10 Things I Hate About You, inspired by Taming of the Shrew. Yeah. But I generally think that the best Shakespeare movies are the ones that are about Shakespeare. so I'm going to go through my top three because all that stuff is fine Lion King but this is like storytelling from the ages and I do think direct adaptations are hard to sit down and concentrate on and what have you but Hamnet which is out this year which I didn't love I didn't love it, it's great you can tell it's great it's a beautifully made film it's a bit grief-porn-y it's a bit kind of relentlessly bleak so it's very beautiful and Jesse Buckley's performance is amazing and the kid in it is unbelievable the boy in it is like incredible she's an incredibly sweet and uplifting post by the films did you see it where at the end of a day of heavy heavy grief filming I think Chloe Jad the director got everyone to dance and this particular at the end of this particular day they're filming in Shakespeare's Globe and they're dancing to We Found Love of Rihanna and Calvin Harris.

10:08And it is particularly joyous. There's something about all those people in those clothes, the groundlings just kicking off.

10:16Richard Osman:If it was me, I would have put that, like in the Marvel movie, I would have put that in the credits. Yeah. Just put it as a pre-title sequence. Because it's quite a lot, that film. And it's, you know, you can tell it's quality cinema, but you are kind of going, okay. And that would have raised my spirits a little bit. Shakespeare in Love, of course, is Joseph Fiennes as Shakespeare, I think is brilliant. And Ed Zavik's chapter on Shakespeare and Love in his book we've talked about before, Hits Flops and Other Illusions, is well worth reading the Tom Stoppard scripts and all that. But I think the best Shakespearean movie...

10:53Richard Osman:I know what you're going to say. I'm taking into account... I know what you're not going to say, but you're wrong. I'm taking into account all the faithful adaptations. I think the best one is by the Horrible Histories gang starring Matthew Bainton as William Shakespeare. That is a good one. You're right. About the life of Shakespeare. That's my favourite ever Shakespeare movie. Just like anything done by the Horrible Histories ghosts crew. It is impeccable and funny and weirdly I think shot in very similar places to Hamnet but they do very different things with those locations. But if you haven't seen that it's a fun one to watch with kids as well.

11:29Richard Osman:Bill, it's a very, very enjoyable movie. Is that what you thought I was going to say? Oh yeah, no. I thought you were going to say Kurosawa Throne of Blood or Ran no yeah of course not awesome world's chimes at midnight no yeah talk us through Thrones of Blood Throne of Blood is Macbeth and Ran is King Lear and I mean those are amazing those are like ultimate movie classics and you know they're done as sort of samurai films really those ones but not as good as Bill but sorry Matthew Bainton yeah I defer to you you're answering this question in my opinion just chucking in some other Shakespeare things just to sort of you know yeah I think that um it's interesting that if we were the rock and oprah in that situation i think the rock would insist on himself a little bit more i think the rock would be a little bit more i'm not doing this without talking about kurosawa i'm refusing to do it and oprah would be like i know what i wasn't being the rock then i wasn't being the rock if you're if i'm being the rock for the rest of this which i'm not going to do because it's going to ruin the rest of the answers but if i was being the rock you'd know about it exactly and by the way i'd deliver i absolutely know that you would you weren't being the rock then now you look like the rock you're doing like you've got rock body language now there's a new role he's doing where he's he's talking about losing all the weight or losing all the bulk because he's doing some different role mr bump he's not he's not happy unless he's talking about things that are happening to his body tom stevens has a question for you it says my girlfriend has just said that she thinks no film can be good unless it has an element of romance my initial reaction was one of outrage but when she asked for examples to disprove her hypothesis i found myself struggling could you provide me with some examples or must i concede defeat tom i'm so happy to be able to tell you that don't worry she's wrong yeah um but she is right to this extent that an amazing amount of films do have i like the way she put it an element of romance because there's always just it can be quite small but they always it's it's eye-catching when they don't have them i was weirdly for some reason the first one that drifted into my transom was A Few Good Men, which is a good film, just calling it.

13:29As you know, it obviously stars Jack Nicholson, but it also stars Tom Cruise and Demi Moore, and they're both sort of military lawyers. But nothing happens between them. And so many people have said to Aaron Sorkin, you know, why doesn't anything happen between Demi Moore and Tom Cruise? And he said, women have other purposes than to sleep with Tom Cruise. But actually, he had a note of one of the executives. He said, well, if Tom Cruise and Demi Moore aren't going to sleep with each other, why is Demi Moore a woman? Which tells you a lot about the business they're in. But look, anything courtroom often doesn't happen.

14:03You know, 12 Angry Men. Would it have made it a better movie? I'm joking.

14:06Richard Osman:There's almost certainly a porn film called 12 Angry Men, which would have some romance in it. Which would have a lot of romance in it. Romance element, to use the euphemism of Tom's Garthold. Someone's being hung, and that's your starting point. Loads of thrillers and war movies don't obviously have any romance. It's, you know, Apocalypse Now or Apollo 13 or Dr. Strangelove. I mean, you know, the comedies of these. This is looking worse and worse for Tom's girlfriend. Hunt for Red October. I mean, loads of Denzel movies. Denzel had barely ever had a screen kiss at a certain point. Apocalyptic things.

14:41If you think of like, there are so many women in something like Mad Max Fury Road and nothing, you know, they're just going nuts all the way through. No Country for Old Men. Yes. again there are lots and lots of movies that do not have any single romance element in them and so she's right to the degree that there is always that so many people put one tiny bit of it because

15:01Richard Osman:otherwise it doesn't make sense and it's the biggest note ever you one would ever get in any situation which is you know people do prefer it when there is a little bit of romance it often works when you when you can leave it out but it's if you're struggling with a particular script or something then you do think you know in the same way that i think raymond chandler said if you're you know struggling with a storyline send a man into the room with a gun yeah if you're struggling with a film make two of your characters fall in love or miss out on falling in love you haven't got a c-plot yeah except but you know i've said before i once said to my daughter once when she was getting to the age where i wanted to show her sort of older movies and i said look i'm you know um here's three movies choose one of these and it was Shawshank Redemption Usual Suspects and Reservoir Dogs and she IMDB'd them she said there is not a single woman in any of these films and I'm like oh yeah which also means there's no I mean there's a little bit of sexual jealousy at the beginning of Shawshank Redemption I mean that's where we sort of start but not really so I would say in those movies there are not a lot of romance so I think Tom we absolutely get what your girlfriend is saying which is romance almost always improves a movie but there are loads and loads and loads of movies.

16:12Well it would have been preposterous and they would be the worst movies for it so you're right

16:16Richard Osman:And Tom, if you just tell your girlfriend that is not us talking, that is Oprah and The Rock both disagreeing with her. And after the break, we have a great answer from a very famous contributor.

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17:46Welcome back, everybody. Now, Sam Fletcher, thank you for this question. Sam says, how do voiceover artists react realistically to other characters when they're not in the studio together. What say does an actor have on how their character moves in the scene?

18:02Richard Osman:It's a question we get from a lot of people. And so we thought we'd go right to the top. And so answering your question, Sam, you'd be delighted to know the star of many animated shows, Mr. Will Arnett. Thank you, Sam. Decent question. You know, it just depends. It varies from project to project. I can tell you that working on something like an animated film, which you make over the course of a number of years, that process is you do it over and over again. We record the audio, and then the animators go and animate to that. And then we come back, and we finesse it and see how it works, and it starts to sort of take shape after that.

18:51Well, the first Lego movie, I probably went five, six times, maybe seven times. Lego Batman, countless. We made that over years, and it was really— First Lego movie was Phil Lord and Chris Miller, and none of us knew what it was going to be. So we were—you know, and it was really fun and exciting. Lego Batman was fun and exciting, too. It was just really Chris McKay and me. And he and I did all that stuff together, and we ended up— It changed, so we ended up doing all sorts— There were a few months where I kept improvising this stuff that Batman was secretly Canadian. And so we went down this whole rabbit hole.

19:31And eventually we're like, no, no, you guys, you can't. What are you doing? This is not part of the story. So, yeah, sometimes it feels. It was over the course of a couple years. Chris and I probably recorded 30 times. When you're making a show that's week to week, like, say, BoJack Horseman, and we don't have the luxury of that much time. So we go and we record. BoJack I always recorded with Raphael Bob-Waksberg, who created the show. So he's there with me, and he's reading the other characters. And so what's great about that is, because he's the writer, I'm not necessarily getting an interpretation from another actor of what he wants that line to be.

20:13I'm getting exactly from him what the intention is of the other character, And so I'm playing kind of playing right off the source, if you will. And yeah, we just we just record the scene like that. And but I, you know, you do, of course, also get a lot of license as to how you react to things, how you deliver a line. And and you get to add stuff as well. I always did.

20:41Richard Osman:Well, on it himself, answering your question for you, we were listening to an amazing episode of Smartless the other day with I love Smartless, but with Julia Roberts. so there's just something so charming about that show but Will thank you so much for doing that it is greatly appreciated and I would be very much here for a spin-off of the spin-off and for the Lego Batman Canadian interior monologue oh this is a good question for Michelle Burton she says when I hear about someone directing a stand-up comedy show I'm unable to picture it presumably the comedian decides what to say how to say it and where to stand and the sound and lighting requires very little what more requires direction thank you michelle i love that question because it's one of those things that where what a director would do in a with a cop with a with a stand-up is not immediately apparent but actually the second you start looking into it it becomes very very apparent and actually tells you a lot about what stand-up is funny enough by the way will arnett is currently in is this thing on which is the film loosely based on on john bishop but um yes this idea that a stand-up would have someone directing their show because when we think of a director we sort of think of a movie director and setting up shots and you know choosing this out of the other and that that's not really what a um a comedy show director does so i talked to a few stand-ups i also talked to um there's a brilliant comedy director called phoebe burke who's worked with everybody and it's brilliant won every award in the business so i said to phoebe is eric can you explain exactly what it is that a comedy director is doing and if uh really we're talking about stand-ups who are We're putting together an hour or an hour and a half or two hours, that sort of thing.

22:15Richard Osman:And that's quite a lot. It's quite a lot of talking. And Michelle is rightly saying, well, surely it's just a comedian doing jokes. And most shows do start out like that. Here's a joke, here's a joke, here's a joke. Where a director comes in, I'll give you Phoebe's words, in fact. She says, well, the director's role is to shape the journey of the show, the order, the themes, the flow, the callbacks. Callbacks is that thing, you know, the way you sort of weave a show together by going back to something you talked about. or you keep making the same reference. You go, oh my God, you're talking about that thing you were talking about earlier that is incredibly satisfying.

22:46Richard Osman:In the same way that a piece of music has little codas that kind of satisfy you, the callback does that. So the director is doing that. And so all of those things, Phoebe says, that's the connective tissue that gives structure to the material the comedian is doing and makes it feel like a show rather than just a pile of jokes. And I think that's the key, is that thing if you go and see a comic, if you go and see a comic for 20 minutes, they can just do their material. That's great. and we will enjoy it. But you go and see an hour show or if you go and see a show at your local theatre that's 45 minutes, interval 45 minutes, they often do have a flow and a structure and they go somewhere.

23:22But also with so many specials nowadays where it really has to be quite a coherent and produced piece of television.

23:28Richard Osman:It has to be coherent. It has to have an overarching concept. And Phoebe says that the director has this kind of bird's eye view of the whole show, which is hard for a comedian to hold while they're inside the material, which is absolutely right. And it's very like a book in a lot of ways, It's very like a novel. In a novel, I know everything about the story. I know my characters. I know what they're saying. I know what happens. But an editor can look over and just say, oh, what happens to this character? Or why did this happen here and not here? They're looking at it differently. And any comic, the reason that almost all comics work with directors, some of them don't, especially when they get later in their career and they've worked out how it is that it is done.

24:05Richard Osman:But almost all comics will work with the director, will go, okay, here's my stuff. try it out try it out maybe a small venue with the director sitting there with a with with a notebook often try out in front of other comics as well and we'll then sit and go what do we think and they'll go oh my god this joke this joke i love this i talked to john robbins the um the comic who has been directed in his time has done direction for other comics says these days i don't really use it quite so much because again he's he's sort of worked out how to do it and you know and he says look if you if you're directing someone you're trying to turn a funny routine into something that is a show.