Fake Vomit & Corrie In Crisis

0:00Tron Ares has arrived. I would like you to meet Ares, the ultimate AI soldier. He is biblically strong and supremely intelligent. You think you're in control of this? You're not. On October 10th. What are you? My world is coming to destroy yours, but I can help you. The war for our world begins in IMAX. Tron Ares, rated PG-13. May be inappropriate for children under 13. Only in theaters October 10th. Get tickets now. Hello and welcome to this episode of The Rest is Entertainment with me Marina Hyde and me Richard Osmond. Is it a normal episode or is it a question and answers episode? It's got reverted.

0:43I'm so sorry. This is a question and answers episode. I just have to get my brain in the place and I have to, you know, otherwise I don't know what I'm talking about. You are always thinking and I love that about you. Talking of question and answer episodes, we are doing a bonus episode tomorrow for our subscribers, which is just questions about the traitors, because there's so many. Tomorrow, if you're not a subscriber, you go to therestorsentertainment.com. Loads of great... Behind the scenes, basically. Yeah. How does it work? But also you get access to all our other bonus episodes we've done.

1:13People loved the best five books about Hollywood. I could have done about 30 of those books. But anyway, perhaps we'll return to further books. I must do music at some point. Anyway. Exactly. But there's loads of other stuff there. It's a Royal Knockout. There's Mariah Carey. They are a lot of fun. So the rest is entertainment.com. They're all timeless things. They're not like what we do on the normal podcast or the questions and answers. Marina hides timeless things. Alice Johnson has a question. She says, you know on Marina hides timeless things where Marina... Alice Johnson. In fact, she's talking about on-screen vomit.

1:45Ah, our occasional bodily fluids series. Yes, exactly. There's a couple we haven't done. Yes, there are a couple we haven't done. I'm done. I'm rushing to do. Alice says, how do they portray vomiting on screen? Is there a tube strapped to their cheek? That's a nice place to start. Alice, I've done a really deep dive on this one for you, if I may. People always think that they put vegetable soup in their mouth and spit it, which sometimes happens, or that there's a sort of S-shaped tube they shoot in profile, right? I'm going to take you to four big vomit scenes in movie history. Oh, my goodness.

2:16Yeah, I know, but I want to... That sounds like a bonus episode. I know. Actually, it's almost a whole strand, isn't it? but we can't do the rest of the vomit. So The Exorcist. Now, that's a very famous vomit scene, right? Now, first of all, it's porridge. People think it's pea soup. It's not. It's porridge with pea soup colouring. With pea soup, wouldn't that just be pea colouring? Well, it's pea soup colouring. You know, it's American cuisine. Listen, it's not for me to second-guess the ways of the American grocery aisles. Oh, you've changed. What, is that your New Year's resolution? This is all you used to do last year.

2:50There's a tube under her nightie. Okay. Yes, and beneath, Linda Blair's night, beneath the bed is someone with a crank and a pump. And now Jason Miller, who was playing the priest in that, he was supposed to get the soup in the chest. You've got to reset every single time you do one of these scenes. In the end, they did this in one take, which is good, because the reset on that is enormous, but it's slightly misangled, and so he gets it in the face. They did it all in one take, but actually the noise, I went back to William Freakin, who's the director, who was a sort of enfant terrible, and the noise, the sort of squeal of it was done by the sound guy who saw his girlfriend asleep on a sofa, put a microphone next to her, ran across the room and jumped on her back, like landing on both knees and she lets out this kind of muffled squeal.

3:35Close to domestic abuse noise is the noise of the vomit, of Regan vomiting. Anyhow. That's sort of awful all round. Awful all round. Okay, let's move on to the meaning of life, Mr. Creosote, Monty Python. Now, they had a catapult to fling it there. They had something like 900 gallons of... It took so long to film that scene. And they had about 900 gallons of vomit made up, and it sort of flung it. 900 gallons of vomit sounds like the sort of thing Russell Crowe would call his album. Another of my favourite vomit scenes, I wanted to find out about this one, which is Team America. Do you remember when Gary goes on a bender because he's trying to leave Team America?

4:12One of the most underrated movies of all time. It's so unbelievable. Well, you know, one of the reasons they did it, Matt Stone and Trey Parker, was because they really hate actors. At the end of it, they really hated puppets. You've got it already. It turns out we just hate everything. The lead puppeteer on that is a guy called Scott Landon. It's so amazing. Puppeteering is so amazing. He'd often worked with the Muppets as well. You have to do lots and lots of rehearsals. What he loved about the South Park guys was that it was really improvised. A string breaks, a string of Gary breaks while he's doing that kind of vomiting.

4:44But it kind of helps and Scott Landon really leads into it because the puppet convulsed in even more ridiculous ways because it had lost the use of one string. So that's that one. And we're going to end with the director of Triangle of Sadness, which has got a huge vomit scene in it. Yeah, it really is. Do you know what? It's such a good film. Not for everyone. It's not for everyone. It's brilliant though, isn't it? That scene itself, if you are in a metaphor, don't see that scene. Well, yeah, the director, Ruben Osland, wanted to do the best vomit scene of all time. So they're all on a boat, the sort of plot.

5:15They're on a very expensive luxury cruise. There's bad weather and they're having a nice dinner and everybody throws up. Anyway, so what they had there, they had tiny nozzles in their mouths, which were attached to tubes and pumps, which were operated by the effects team. But what's amazing about it is that they didn't know when it was coming. So when you see the panic in the eyes, it took them two weeks to film the scene, by the way. And they put them on gimbals. You know, gimbal is when you can wobble a set. Some of the extras had what they call on a normal movie set, swig and spew. So you've got a bottle of some sort of vomit.

5:48Now, not only that, they made a kind of fruit soup for the vomit. But they thought about it so much that they thought, what has each individual person eaten? So some of it had what looked like bits of octopus in it. Yeah, they were really, it was so thought about. How did they hide it? So the tube must have come from outside. Yeah, and then it's got a small... Or is it just kind of skin coloured? Oh, you painted it. Oh, I see. But they don't know when... The very different thing about this one is that they don't know when it's coming. Yes, that's brilliant. And that's why you've got the panic in the eyes.

6:20That is movie vomiting in four different iconic scenes. And thank you for that question, Alice. Yeah. I would say if you haven't seen Triangle of Sadness, it's worth seeing unless that... Listen, if you've just heard what you've heard and it's not for you, then absolutely don't watch it. But if you have watched it, do what I'm going to do as soon as I get home, which is I'm going to watch that scene again and remember that they don't know they're about to... Yeah. Look at their eyes. Richard, Ben Clarkson would like to ask, I recently watched the Taskmaster New Year's treat and for the prize, Martin Lewis bought the deck chair.

6:52He won on House of Games. Lewis. However, Alex stated that items won on BBC game shows cannot be given away. Is this true? And if so, what is the reasoning behind this? No, it's definitely not true. I'll say that. But I tell you what, he really is a money saving expert, that Martin Lewis, isn't he? Bring along those prizes. and he's just saying, I'm going to get something I got for free anyway. No, on that occasion... Reprising. It's not regifting, it's reprising. I mean, this must be the first coinage, but reprising. I think Josh Widdicombe tried to give away his pointless trophy on the very first series of that.

7:27Anyone else? Three's a trend. Yeah, three's a trend. Three, suddenly there's an article in Vanity Fair about it. No, on this one, funnily enough, I did a thing for Taskmaster recently which I really, really enjoyed, which is you put together your perfect episode. So I went back down to the Taskmaster House. You can see it on YouTube and you go back over your series and you choose your favourite tasks. And Andy Devonshire, the producer, I think said, oh, Martin Lewis has bought his House of Games deck chair. How do you feel about that? And I said, I'm very happy for you to say that I'm furious.

7:58I'm very happy for you to say that actually legally we are not allowed to do that. So it was a bit of business, is the truth. Yeah, and if you want to give away your House of Games tees made, you're very very welcome in fact people do a lot you know they turn up as charity prizes and we gave away a house of games piece of luggage didn't we at the Royal Albert Hall show I think it's different when you do it I'm sorry to when Martin Lewis does it yes I do I think there's a qualitative difference and I take a dim view listen if the money saving expert wants to give away a deck chair with my face on it please go ahead Martin Lewis for all the good you do for all the good you do I actually meant for all the good you do do a lot of good for all the good you do quite often you see things up for grabs on eBay that people win, especially with Pointless, because when you come on Pointless and often people are couples and you win a trophy each, of course, stick one on the mantelpiece stick the other one on eBay.

8:49Why not? That, I think, you're probably not supposed to do that but, I mean, you're not going to take them to court That would be crazy. Imagine that. Might as well take capitalism to court, Richard. Marina, Gemma Rowe has a question. She says, there are so many great documentarians out there. Oh, that's a nice word to say, documentarian Thank you, Gemma. There are so many great documentarians out there from the mainstream of Roskamp to the more surreal like John Wilson. All of his stuff is on iPlayer if you haven't seen the John Wilson stuff. The king for me is of course Louis Theroux. What makes a good documentary maker and how do they get the most from the subject matter and how do they have guests open themselves up?

9:22Well I'm incredibly honoured to say that we have a video from my idol Louis Theroux. Ah I thought you were going to say Roskamp. Yeah. Ah no just Louis. I think he is the absolute beasties and have done forever So I'm thrilled that he has recorded this for us in answer to your question, Gemma. Louis Thru here. Thank you for the great question, which was what makes a good documentary maker and how do they get the best? Is it the best out of the guests or subjects? We don't think of them as guests. It's really subjects because part of it is building trust and rapport. And that's important. You spend time.

9:57You put the hours in. You make yourself emotionally available in order to coax intimacy in a short period of time. or you spend longer and build the trust that way. But you also need to poke the bear from time to time. You need moments of provocation. So you're walking a kind of line, a line of tension between the need to make someone comfortable but also to make them uncomfortable, to create moments of fireworks. When I did my episode about the porn industry, I would participate. And so in the porn world, I got a role in a film. I signed up with a porn agent. the porn agent took pictures of me naked.

10:33It was kind of funny. As I went through the filming, I would have these Polaroids of me naked and I would occasionally show them to people that I was interviewing in the porn world because they'd also gone through Jim South's, that was the name of the agent. And so it was a way of saying like, look, I've done it too. And it was really amazing how it caused them, it kind of caused them to see me differently in a way that felt, they trusted me more. It felt like I'm no longer aloof. I'm no longer judgmental. By the way, showing naked pictures of yourself is not a technique I recommend in other workplace environments.

11:04But here it was helpful. Really choosing great subjects, worlds that feel counterintuitive, that involve choices, that demand unpacking. You know, the extreme example we've seen that in our own time is this obsession with true crime, which again, it's about trying to get your mind into the headspace of the unspeakable, you know, and, you know, the tension that exists between ourselves and the people involved in the most hideous kinds of behaviour. Oh, that was nice. It's interesting, yeah. Make people comfortable but uncomfortable. So often with documentaries, it's the stuff you don't see, which is the just sort of sitting around beforehand and the way you chat to somebody, making someone feel that they can open up.

11:47And he's the best at it. Newspaper interviewers sometimes do, you know, they have little tricks like arriving half an hour early, but also just staying silent at the right time. It's so interesting how often silence is such a powerful tool of anyone interviewing or making a documentary about anyone. Because if you're quiet long enough, people often stumble into some form of confession. Yeah, often when people are on TV for the first time, you see, you know, that's an easy trap to fall into. It's a real skill to be able to sort of find fellow feeling with someone instantly, which he appears to be incredibly good at.

12:24Ross Kemp, if you're listening, we'd love your take as well. Right. Shall we now proceed to a break, Richard? Oh, my God. Genuinely, I would love to.

12:37Welcome back, everybody. Now, we have got some any other business because last week we spoke about quiz shows. Now, Josh O'Donovan has written in, says, I'd like to say what a fan of the podcast I am. Thank you, Josh. Thanks, Josh. I listen to it every Tuesday and Thursday and it makes my commutes all the better. Secondly, I'd like to introduce myself. My name is Josh O'Donovan and my father, Cornelius O'Donovan, was mentioned on the podcast on Thursday as the most capped TV quizzer in the UK. Reports of his death have been greatly exaggerated. No way. Josh Cornelius, we're incredibly sorry. He is still very much live, still going on quiz shows with his most recent appearance being on the finish line.

13:11Go for it, Cornelius. And he was absolutely thrilled to be name checked on your podcast. Oh, Cornelius, and we said you are no longer with us. Because he's been on so many quizzes, by the way, he's not always successful, but he's still applying for them. for the last 10 years we've been trying to get on Pointless as we want to go on a quiz show together both of us have already been having been on 15 to 1 with Sandy Toksvig but on different series once again thank you so much for your wonderful podcast and it was so lovely for the surprise this morning that's great and Cornelius glad to hear you're still with us of course quiz show contestants never die they simply get eliminated and when they meet God God says how was your life and they say I've had a lovely time I imagine he'd be like you but just in a white suit God?

13:48yeah that's what I picture him I think he'd be much more like Xander you know what wouldn't that be lovely if there were if there were an afterlife and you just turned up and like Xander was there I'd just say take a seat come on oh my god that'd be lovely I love him so much after his performance at the Royal Albert Hall for us I couldn't love him even more but I can I love that he was sort of acting as a game show host even though he is a game show host but he took it up a level I think that's the way he took it up a notch yeah okay I absolutely loved the Wallace and Gromit on Christmas Day it was unbelievable to be I mean to be talking about like how brilliant the stunts were in an animation, but they were.

14:25Everything about it was amazing. But Lee Emerson asks, like many, I was blown away by the latest Wallace and Gromit film this Christmas. It was even more impressive knowing that the main character was not voiced by the late Peter Sallis, but by a different actor, yet he sounded the same. I was wondering if Peter Sallis' estate benefited at all from Ben Whitehead's uncanny performance. It was an amazing, it genuinely was amazing. I mean, it sounded like him, and in some ways doing an impression of someone is, I'm not going to say it's easy, but you can mimic someone's voice. But the performance by Peter Salas is so brilliantly comic and the timing and all that stuff.

14:58And Ben Whitehead managed to match all of that as well, which is the amazing thing. It's not just, you know, an impression. It was, the whole performance was extraordinary. You wouldn't have known that it wasn't Peter Salas. Peter Salas' estate receives money, receives some residuals. The character belongs to Aardman. So the character of Wallace absolutely belongs to Aardman. The scripts belong to Aardman. But genuinely, Ben Whitehead, I mean, absolutely all due respect. It was amazing. It was brilliant. It was unbelievable. It was absolutely uncanny. And he'd been working a lot as Peter Salas's understudy ever since the curse of the Weir Rabbit.

15:31Nick Parker said, I need to develop this character as well. So Ben Whitehead was able to do that. But I think he did it in such a way. It was so respectful of the performances of Peter Salas. Makes you realise what a brilliant actor Peter Salas was, but also what a brilliant job Ben Whitehead did. But, you know, it happens a lot in animation, people's voices being replaced. Kermit the Frog was originally voiced by Jim Henson, but then Jim Henson died in 1990. By the way, if you haven't seen the movie Saturday Night, which is about the history of Saturday Night Live, it's about the first ever episode of Saturday Night Live.

16:02And Jim Henson is portrayed on it by Nicholas Braun from Succession, Cousin Greg from Succession. And it is portrayed absolutely beautifully as well. It's a fun watch, that. But the Jim Henson character particularly, it's very good. So his protege, Steve Whitmore, he took over and starred as the frog in some of the things that we know today. But the voice, it is an impression, but you do then take it on and do different things with it. Mickey Mouse, do you know who was originally the voice of Mickey Mouse? Was it his brother or something? It's Walt Disney. Walt Disney himself was Mickey Mouse's voice.

16:37But he was a chain smoker at Walt Disney, so he could not continue for too much longer. So Jimmy McDonald took over that. God, what a Christmas for the BBC. But the interesting thing, of course, as well as scheduled TV, is the long tail of both of those shows, Gavin and Stacey, and the Waddles and Gromit. You know, people can keep watching and keep watching and keep watching and will do. Kate Garner has a question for you now, Marina. This week saw Charlotte Jordan, Colson Smith and Sue Cleaver announcing they would all be leaving Coronation Street, following in quick succession from Helen Worth's exit over Christmas.

17:11Amidst tabloid talk of cash flow problems on the Cobbles, rumours are also swirling about potential exits or part-time contracts for favourites including Sue Devaney and Maureen Lippman. Is it the end of the road for Coronation Street, Kate asks. It's interesting what's happened to the soaps in general because in days, the old days, they would have had huge ratings, particularly around Christmas. What I've always loved about our soaps, whereas the big American soaps were always glitzy and glamorous and things like Dynasty or Dallas, all their big shows like that. And ours were all working class.

17:44I mean, Coronation Street is amazing. It was created in 1960 by Tony Warren, who was 23 at the time. And on the first night, everyone thought it would just be a complete failure because they said it was all doom and gloom. I think its top rating ever is something like 22 million on a New Year's Day episode. All the soaps, and by the way, 20, 25 years ago, the soaps were by far and away the biggest thing on television and had huge audiences. Yes, they would always be the number one show on any day they were on. EastEnders and Coronation Street obviously avoided each other, so pretty much every night of the week, one of those two was the biggest rating show on television.

18:17And now they all, including Emmerdale, and I've come to the reasons why I think that might be the case, get about 3 million and 5 million on catch-up. About 7 million people would say, I watch it. That doesn't mean they consolidate to 5 million. And so therefore about 7 million people say they watch it. Now, that's pretty good. In terms of what happened, EastEnders went wrong first, really. First of all, they spent 87 million pounds on a new set. What they did is they started moving it around in the schedule, which for a recurring programme like that is a tricky thing to do because people slightly feel like that's what I do when I finish my work.

18:48I turn on or I get in and I'll watch this or when I've just finished having my supper, I'll watch it or whatever it is. They did sort of slightly creatively lose their way. But Corrie went to an hour about, it used to be always a half hour, it's forever been a half hour, because they slightly felt greedily, I think, well, why not? You know, people will probably watch it. But it's simply, you'd never start a soap now, OK, because the way people watch television is totally different. People want to be able to sort of binge things. They sort of reflect a world that isn't there anymore. You know, the Rovers Return, the community of that pub where everyone knows everyone and whatever doesn't exist like that.

19:23Young people, they do show up in the viewership figures, I am told, but it might be just because they're in the room and someone older in the house is insisting having it on. But one very interesting thing is that the viewership of Corrie and Emmerdale is 80 % located in the north. So that is a very, very significant skew. And that is, you know, still 7 million people say they watch this. So I think Corrie will go back to half an hour. It's interesting that Emmerdale, of all of those, has survived the best by far. And now if you schedule it against Descenders, it beats it. It is extraordinary how they have gone from far and away the biggest shows on TV.

20:02Oh, they were at the front of the tabloids. Any plot line could get on the front of the tabloids. They make it an awful lot cheaper than they used to. It was always not crazily expensive for drama. No. Basically because they're doing such volume. But now you talk to anyone who works on those shows are really working proper long hours and, you know, the turnarounds are very, very quickly. So they're cutting their cloth accordingly. You know, you say Corrie started in 1960. It'd be hard to imagine that it'll still be on in another 60 years' time. It is not what it was, but it's still loved by many and I suspect still value for money.

20:38You know, that tipping point has got to come soon. Yes, it is. I think it's still value for money. Yeah. And also, what a great starting point for so many actors, so many writers, so many directors. Oh, my God, how many writers? Yeah, I remember they had so many big writers, Sally Wainwright, Kay Mellor, Paul Abbott, Russell T Davies. They all started on Coronation Street and loved writing those sort of funny things. I remember reading an interview with, I think it was, God, was it Paul Abbott? Maybe it was Russell T Davies. I think it was Paul Abbott saying that, you know, obviously it's exciting when you're given the sort of terrible rape storyline.

21:12but what you really want to write is, you know, Jack Duckworth has to go and buy a ladder. Yes, exactly. So they all, that ear for that type of dialogue, that kind of iconic, people talking about not very much at all but it being, saying so much about your life. Can I ask you one traitors question please? Yes, because we're doing a bonus episode with lots of traitors questions. Because the sheer deluge holding back our metaphorical door. Josephine Bradley says, I can't get my head around how and when the murder is done. We see Claudia leave the letter on the chair once voting's happened, and then the murdered contestant picks it up from the chair.

21:46But people seem to leave and arrive in groups in the Land Rovers, and they arrive in groups to the breakfast room. How do they choreograph the sort of leaving and departures and all of that business then? Well, everyone lives in their own separate accommodation, and everyone's driven in separate vehicles, just so you can't ever say, it's interesting that John didn't come home last night. They're like a band that have fallen out, separate limos stages of life. Exactly, separate limos. and if you're one of the murderers then your Range Rover simply does a few laps around the block until all the Range Rovers have gone.

22:16The block is quite big in the Highlands though, isn't it? The block is very big, exactly. You could be driving by our Inverness. Exactly. And so they will come out and they will then come back to the house, park up and they will then film the discussions about the murder. You will, right at the end of the whole series, anyone who has been a traitor at any point will go back and film lots of other little shots of them just walking and talking, you know, just... All that interstitial bit with the hoods in there. Yeah, exactly. So they're not having to do any of that on the time. Yeah, so the cars will all leave as if they're going to where they're going.