Goodbye Dolly: Musician, Megastar, Mogul

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2:15Hello and welcome to this episode of The Rest is Entertainment with me, Marina Hyde. And me, Richard Osman. Hello everyone. Hi, Marina. Hello, Richard. I'm sorry we are parted. I know. It's because you've been on holiday the whole summer. Well, that's not strictly true, as you know, but I am currently not away, yes. Perhaps you're not on holiday. Perhaps you're on a mission. Yeah. Who knows? I never like to ask. No. Do you want to know my big news this week? I would love to know your big news, Richard. Yeah. I have had to abandon my fantasy football team. You know, I dipped back in this year, but it's too stressful.

2:52You know you're not allowed to play. I know. I thought this year my brother-in-law was over and he's got a team. I thought, do you know what? What harm can it do? I just put a little team in and it's ruined every football match I watch. So you have to know yourself, don't you? So I am out. That's great. Just every day as it comes and just get back on that wagon because I know you can't do this. I know you just can't control yourself. I want to thank you for your support in this issue. Thank you. As always. Yeah. This week we are talking about Dolly Parton. a total total icon and it's sort of been amazing since she so sadly died um but there have been so many stories and i guess we both have a lot to say about her as a kind of entertainment legend we do indeed yeah we can't we can't not speak about her i'm also going to be talking about i've been up in edinburgh so i'm going to talk about all the big new shows that have been announced and all the rumors of shows as well some really really interesting ones so just a little kind of update on what's coming our way in the next six months to a year.

3:54And we're also going to talk about long form things on TV being cut down into much shorter things, almost like micro dramas and just clipping culture in general. Is anything that you see on your feed actually real? Now, talking of real, it doesn't get any realer than Dolly Parton. She died last week. We wanted to talk about it. We know it's been a little while, but we felt that, you know, there's so many amazing stories about her. And she's such an icon and is such an important person, I think, in the culture that's been and the culture that's going to come. So we wanted just to pay our own tribute.

4:31And there have been so many tributes to her sort of amazing artistic career. And I endorse all of them and have read them all. But I'm also interested in her as a sort of brilliant entertainment business personality and particularly a sort of philanthropic brain. And she was just incredibly funny, incredibly witty. She always made the joke that you, if you were going to denigrate her, she always made the joke before you. She said, on surgery, she said, I'm a self-made woman and I have the doctor bills to prove it. When they said, would you ever sue the tabloid? She said, yes, for printing lies about me in the middle of the magazine and not on the cover.

5:09A great summation of her is when she was a big advocate for gay rights. And she was a real advocate for gay people getting married. And she said her reason was, why shouldn't they suffer like the rest of us? I mean, that's the way to do it. I mean, it's been amazing reading all the stuff because her story was obviously so incredible. And she came from such complete poverty. she always said she had like three passions god music and sex but she said the order would change without her knowing um and I I think all of those things she also said that uh she I look like a woman but I think like a man and I think as a sort of entertainment business figure as well as an entertainer which she was more than anything um she she was sort of fascinating in that regard because we talk a lot don't we about um you know icons of today and the way they control their image and the things that they have to do and she was way ahead of the curve on all of that she really took control of her own career and told people who she was before they could tell her who she was which is which is a hell of a skill if you can put it off yeah it's insanely hard to be that sort of uncompromising um a lot of her songs all through her career were not played on the radio because she refused to compromise but she kept all the rights to all her songs which again is incredibly way before taylor's version way before any of those things she understood that there was um you know the story that elvis wanted to record i would always love you who wouldn't want to record i would always love you uh and she was desperate for elvis to record it for obvious reasons i mean it financially would but also you just what an honored to have Elvis cover one of your songs.

6:56But Colonel Tom Parker, Elvis's manager, wanted 50 % of the publishing rights in return for Elvis covering that song, which is something he did quite a lot because obviously Elvis covers your song. It's a big deal. So Colonel Tom would try and take that money. And she said it broke my heart, but I had to say no. And that is a decision that paid off because she's made$60,$70 million out of that one song. And$30 to$35 million of that did not go to Colonel Tom Parker. So we missed Elvis singing it. But a lot of money was raised for Dolly and a lot of money, a lot of that money was spent on very good things.

7:32I wanted to talk about a very specific part of her career, which is the Porter Wagoner show, because I think it tells you such a lot about who she was, why she was important, what sort of a human being she was. And so she, you know, she turned up at Nashville the day after she graduated high school, made a name for herself. And the Porter Wagoner show was a big TV show at that time and porter wagoner was a big star so you know he was he was the big name in this relationship i've said before i'm sure that my brother once uh showed me a photo of uh johnny cash and elvis presley and said what's strange about this photo and i didn't know he said elvis wasn't famous when that photo was taken so that was elvis having his photo taken with johnny cash and so it was with dolly partner and porter wagoner she's very much the junior partner there he'd already um had a partner on that um show called normally and the first few times dolly turns up on the show and starts singing she gets booed by the audience because they miss normally so much and they're like who's this upstart is never going to amount to anything um and porter wagoner to his credit said okay for the next few shows we're going to do duets because they won't boo me okay so porter from the beginning we think oh okay we have some sympathy for porter anyway quickly becomes apparent that dolly is the star of this thing stays with the show seven years in the end but his writing songs, is recording songs, is trying to get a career outside of the Porter Wagoner show, quite a restrictive contract and all that stuff.

8:57Eventually she leaves and Porter Wagoner sues her for$3 million. She says, you're not allowed to leave. She says, I'm going to leave. Sues her for $3 million. Doddy at that point, of course, does not have$3 million, but gets out of the contract anyway, settles with him and says, okay, I will pay you a million dollars to leave this show. So firstly, we're told, we see immediately, because this is a big hit show, she's done perfectly well. I think her first salary on this show is$60 ,000 a year, so more money than her father made in a lifetime. So she's on good money, but she sees a different future out of there.

9:32So she buys herself out of that contract for a million dollars, and assiduously, over the next four or five years, pays it back bit by bit. She said, Porter Wagoner got the first million dollars I ever made. so absolutely buys herself out of that contract becomes free and from that moment on um she's making money now later on um porter wagoner is in trouble so he's got this money obviously he's been a huge star but he has tax issues and all sorts of things and he ends up owing the tax man half a million dollars and is about to go bankrupt now this is a guy don't forget who's just you know who sued her for three million dollars but it's also a guy who in the very early days of the show said, I'll do duets with you so you won't get booed.

10:16So what Dolly does is she buys his publishing company for exactly the amount of money that he owes, half a million dollars, buys it off him, he gets the money, pays off his tax bill. She then hands the company back to him so it could be left to his children. So, you know, she's worked her socks off to pay this man back half a million dollars and still has a big enough heart and a kind enough heart to buy back that, to buy his company for half a million dollars just so his kids have something to inherit. I mean, it's quite classy. The relationship with him is fascinating because I Will Always Love You is about breaking up with him, not as a romance, but about she felt like when she was trying to get out of this contract that she couldn't explain it all to him.

11:03So she wrote that song. So I Will Always Love You is about the breakup of a professional relationship. And she then walked into his office and played it to him and he said it was the prettiest song I ever heard obviously he did still sue her but it's sort of amazing that it's the most sort of perfect perfect song for people's breakups and then and yet it was really about their relationship yeah and it goes to show where creativity comes from which is all sorts of different places there is a there's there's an urban legend that she wrote I would always love you and Jolene on the same day which is which is not the case but in in in fairly quick succession and in fact funnily enough uh one of the reasons that she left porter in the end uh one of the many reasons uh she didn't need another one i don't think was he didn't want her to play the guitar part on jolene he was quite he had that sort of level of control so he brought in two male session musicians to play the guitar part on um jolene and neither neither of them could do it neither of them could do the thing that uh dolly had written so dolly does do it herself in the end but again i think it's one of those things where where she was like, maybe just leave me in charge of my own career.

12:14She absolutely grew up at a time where there were people trying to take money from you, almost always men, and there were people who wanted to control you and tell you who you were. You just see from so early on, she was like, I absolutely back myself. I back my talents. I back my songwriting. I back my personality. I back my business now. And that struggle, it's still a struggle for female artists. But imagine that struggle back in that era and the sort of guts that it took to overcome that. And the thing I love most about Dolly really is she wasn't particularly an angel. She had, you know, she could sort of set herself up as one.

12:53And obviously the incredible work she did with books for young children and stuff. You know, she certainly wears a halo. But she's so mischievous. She's so tough. She's so her own person. She took zero nonsense from anyone at any point. And yet she became, and this wasn't always the case, she became universally beloved. And I think more importantly, so it's amazing that she existed, amazing what she did, amazing the stuff that she left us, amazing what she showed us with her philanthropy and stuff like that. But that's lasted for, you know, her whole life. But it now continues. And this is the point.

13:33You cannot be what you cannot see, right? And there's a new generation of female stars and male stars now who see what it is that Dolly did with her money. Now, Dolly wasn't a billionaire because she gave away an awful lot of her money, but made enough money to be a billionaire. And there are other people in that situation right now. And if you don't have Dolly as an example, then you're sitting down thinking, oh, what should I do? You know, do I owe the world anything? You know, what's my legacy? They can look at Dolly. I'm thinking of Taylor Swift, but there are other examples. They can look at Dolly, see what she did.

14:04and that's a course for them to follow so that legacy continues and then by the way there'll be another generation of artists who will see what taylor swift did because she copied dolly and that sort of thing it just passes down the years it's almost like being abraham lincoln yeah and saying things that pass down generation to generation because people see you they want to be you they want to do the thing that you did and that's what she's given the world and she's done it in such a way without ever being a goody two-shoes as well with always being funny always being cheeky and always being herself.

14:34I mean, it's like Bowie multiplied by Prince, right? Yeah. The giving is very interesting because like everything she did, it's incredibly strategic. And as you say, there are people like JK Rowling who have thought really carefully about how to disperse their money. I remember the first time, remember for a long time, Jeff Bezos gave absolutely no money away. And the first time he, I remember being really annoyed about this, the first time that he gave a lot away, he gave$100 million. At the time, by the way, he earned$205 million a day. So this is like, I remember working this out. This was like somebody on the UK median salary, donating£34.56 to charity.

15:22Plus gift aid. Yeah, which actually a lot of people have done um and but they don't get a big gala about it but anyway yeah what he did was he gave he created this award called the courage and civility award which he gave to dolly parton and i remember thinking yes she understands how to do it why don't you understand how to do it why can't you work out how to do it but she the whole time which she was doing that she was still i think kind of just how sexy she was is sort of amazing because she said such i I mean, I suppose people would call them inappropriate things. She said she became aware of her magnetism during her baptism when she was 12 because her white cotton dress like clung to her breasts.

16:05It's so, she's so sort of full on. Dolly, you're in church. I know. Well, she said she always felt horny in church. She said, but that's the thing. She said, that's the great thing about a sense of humor and a sex drive. You can't wait to share it with everyone else. And to be able to be like that and to remain, I think it's just really very, very difficult. And there are people who were kind of sexual icons like Mae West who also had this incredible sort of strength and wit, but nothing on this scale really to be a sort of brilliant business person. And so much of the philanthropy was quiet. It wasn't like a Jeff Bezos gala where I'm going to give my special award of£34.56 to somebody today.

16:48Exactly. It's like Dollywood, which is a perfect example of the nakedly commercial bit of Dolly Parton, which you'll be shocked to learn I admire. Anybody who worked at Dollywood who wanted to go into further education, she would pay their fees. Anyone who wanted to do it, that was incredibly important to her. And that sort of, again, you really, really, really don't have to do that. You know, back when with the Industrial Revolution, there were religious industrialists who would set up, you know, model towns and ideal towns and build places for people to live. It's possible to make an absolute truckload of money, to constantly want more money and to constantly build things and look after people.

17:33And that's something that she did. And that's something, a lesson that hopefully, I think certainly artists will learn from her because they have a certain type of sensibility. But the billionaires of the world today, you just think it's okay. It's okay to want all that money and to have these valuations. But my God, you could do some good with this money that isn't just, I wonder if we could build a colony on Mars. You know, there's plenty of things on Earth you could be spending that money on right now and leave a legacy that isn't, oh, that weirdo who wants to go to Mars back in the 21st century.

18:06Yeah, we remember him. That's the way to leave a legacy. Dolly will be remembered a long time. I could lose him to Mars, Richard, though. So, you know, please, you know, we don't have to retain him. If, God forbid, he establishes a colony there, then maybe we should just let it happen. But yes, if he also gave 300 million books to children, that would be great. Can you imagine that first colony on Mars? Imagine the people who want to be there. That's going to be a mood. Yeah, he's got a version of it happening down, is it in Arizona where he's got the compound with the 15 baby mothers? So yes, I think, you know, he's trying to build that out.

18:43It is fascinating because, you know, if people can see an example of something, it does change them. There's an amazing quote from Lily Tomlin, who was on 9 to 5 with Dolly. And Lily Tomlin said to Dolly, she took her aside on the third day of shooting 9 to 5, and said, you know, you make it really hard for a person to be a hateful old grouch around you. could you at least hold back on the perkiness say till at least 10 or so uh and it's true you know what if you if you sit there in the middle of culture and radiate positivity and radiate good things then it's it's impossible not to be positive and not to think good things around that person it's you know it's it's a real power and she used it well and yeah i honestly the best thing about Arta is, you know, she, you know, she, of course, was calculating and she was, of course, as ambitious.

19:39She, of course, you know, used her image in incredibly clever ways. But what she did is sit right in the middle of popular culture as a funny, talented, brilliant woman. But there's lots of weird little entertainment facts. There's quite a lot of these people in that way that I think I've talked about before, how Lucille Ball is key to Star Trek, because it was a Desilu production, Star Trek, and it wouldn't have happened without her as this kind of amazing behind-the-scenes kind of overarching executive figure. Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Dolly was an uncredited producer because it was her company, Sand Dollar, was one of the ones who made the show.

20:18And Buffy has, there's little Easter eggs in it, like Buffy has the same birthday as Dolly. And Sarah Michelle Gellar said that she always sent them presents at Christmas and they were all very, very nice. But when Dolly found out that Gail Bergman, who was the only female executive at the production company, was getting a lower cut of the royalties than all her male counterparts behind the scenes, she took her out to lunch and then she wrote a check to cover the difference. it's uh you know listen we're lucky she existed we're lucky she wrote the things that she wrote we're lucky that uh she was that presence in the middle of culture but it is it's just and it's such an important lesson to learn right now which is you can be incredibly tough incredibly ambitious make as much money as you want but you can also leave the world a better place than you found it not everybody can say that but dolly parton definitely left the world a better place than she found it, right?

21:10She was an amazing entertainer, but also, and it's so unlikely when you look at the exterior, a brilliant strategic brain. RIP Dolly Parton. Shall we go for a break? We've plenty more to talk about after this. Let's.

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22:41Welcome back, everybody. Now, Marina, you said you were going to talk about this idea of cut down culture, of taking things and cutting them down. My Instagram feed is almost nonstop little 10-second clips of The Office, Peep Show, Friends, almost always with a thing underneath saying, this line was completely improvised. You can see the other actors. Can't believe it when this was said. Now, this is, it feels like, oh, these are just fan sites or something, but this is the business now in Hollywood and the business of anyone who owns a big back catalogue, right? These cut downs. Yes, cut down.

23:18And it's very hard to know, as you say, whether someone has just found that wonderful little moment from friends they want to put out there or whether this is a sort of remorseless militarised campaign. It's really hard. The more I looked into this, the more I thought, was any of this real? Was Barbenheimer real? Anyway, we'll get onto that sort of clipping in a minute. But Deloitte did a survey last year and they found out that 53 % of Gen Z millennials, they prefer to be recommended shows to watch, not by the streaming service algorithm, which I think they probably think is for old people, but by social media on their feeds.

23:52So the streamers know this and they kind of are constantly cutting down. Remember, library is like 80 % or more of what is actually watched on these services. Library simply means the back catalogue of every TV company, every studio. It's the stuff that is just sitting there. You've already made it. It's already paid out. So it's just sitting there. What do you do with it? How do you make people rediscover it? How can you monetize it in and of itself? It's a huge deal. Well, all the streamers have now realized that this is a way to get people into this content. And so they're all suddenly, really quickly, over the last six months, they've all added their own kind of clip feeds.

24:34Disney's got a vertical feed called Verts. Netflix has got one called Clips on its app. Prime has got one that's, I think, also called Clips. HBO Max has shorts. Paramount has one. They're all driving people into it. Can I ask whether any of these Clips shorts stuff end with a Z or do they use the S at the end? Amazingly, they all have an S, Richard, currently. Oh, OK. So they're maybe trying to not be super cringe and actually put off the young people who like to get in this way. But they're also paying creators to do those because they want – so there's two things. First of all, that they see it as a way of getting people into the library.

25:11And second of all, and this is a bit people are worried about for culture, is they see those things as destinations in themselves. Because some people don't want to watch the whole Sopranos. And there are people who will just watch one arc. Like maybe I'll watch Christopher's arc and someone has just cut that down into effectively a microdrama. And they'll watch it on TikTok and they'll experience the content that way. Hey, this is Michael and Hannah from Goal Hangers. The rest is science. This episode is brought to you by Cancer Research UK. When we talk about beating cancer, we often focus a lot on survival.

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