Marina's A-List

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1:32Yes. I put out a call last week for people to start using the first name and surname. Otherwise, I would essentially assign a surname to them. And Olivia Buckley has paid attention. Fitting people with surnames, whether they wanted them or not. Exactly. I mean, everyone wants a surname, don't they, really? Yes. Maybe not Madonna. Olivia Buckley says, I originally started watching Grey's Anatomy. Only 20 years late. Doesn't matter. You can watch things whenever you want these days. In series seven, there was an episode filmed in a mockumentary style, breaking the typical episode conventions of your standard medical drama.

1:58I'd all but forgotten about bottle episodes, be it elaborate dream sequences, musical numbers, or focusing on a totally random character. Why did they do this? Is it to help break up the series, allow the wider narrative to shift to another focus? Was it an outlet for the writer's creativity or just an attempt to push boundaries? Normally, it's none of those things. It's really just to save money. Well, a bottle episode is slightly different to what Olivia's talking about here, I think. Yes. So define a bottle episode. For me, a bottle episode, and it actually came from somebody, some American TV producer saying, we had to sort of pull an episode out of a bottle like a genie.

2:29because when you were making these long 26-part series, sometimes you'd have an expensive episode or, you know, you'd have various guest stars and then suddenly, clearly, you have to allocate your budget across the series. So if you spent more on one episode, then you're going to have to cut back somewhere else. You'd only have your very core cast or even sometimes you only have a couple of your core cast and they're often trapped somewhere, like maybe they're stuck in a room. It's not an expensive setting. If you've ever seen, like, you've noticed quite often throughout the new iteration, not the newest, but since Doctor Who came back originally when Russell T.

3:01Davis originally brought it back with Christopher Eccleston, you watch all of those series and you'll see they've had some massive intergalactic battle episode and then suddenly everyone's stuck in a library. Now, that's not to denigrate those types of episodes at all. That's the beauty of them. Well, that's what people will say. And how many people will say that necessity is the mother of invention and that great stuff comes from these... It's always a budgetary restriction that has forced doing something like that so that you have money for elsewhere. It's really interesting. recently just because I love the episode and I haven't seen it for so long, I thought well I must watch Pine Barrens, which is that amazing episode of The Sopranos where Christopher and Paulie are lost in the sort of snow in the forest.

3:39And you think that that's the whole episode. It's really weird in my memory, it's almost become a sort of bottle episode. And actually when I went back I was like God, it's not that much of, it's not as much of the episode as I remember. You know, you see Tony and Carmela, you see all this other stuff happening but it's so overwhelming that idea of those two characters, you hadn't seen them necessarily in that configuration and then obviously they were completely out of their comfort zone. And it's really odd. It's like, oh my God, it's not actually a model episode. But many people remember it as such, I think.

4:05There's a really good one of Parks and Recreation where Ron Swanson and Leslie Knope, obviously played by Nick Offerman and Amy Poehler, they're sort of stuck in the office all night. And it's just a two-hander. It's really incredible. I mean, it's an amazing episode. And obviously because those two represent really different ideas of like big and small government and all. Anyway, it's really interesting the way they work through the night together. There's a West Wing episode. I think it's called something like 17 People and they were stuck in the West Wing overnight and they have to work out whether or not they're going to raise the terror threat.

4:33They'll bump heads and blah, blah. I'm trying to think of the other great ones. There's one where Peggy and Don Draper, there's one called The Suitcase. They were working on the Samsonite account, I think. They eventually have these various breakthroughs, I suppose, in their relationships and their views of life. There's that episode of Breaking Bad. The Fly. Yes, The Fly, where I think I've read about this once. They were stuck on the location somewhere. Vince Gilligan said, I couldn't really get them to the next place and we were sort of stuck between things. So I had the pair of them and they were just stuck in this location in the last episode.

4:59And then there's this sort of fly in the room. The second the door locks, you think, oh, it's a bottle episode. I remember Family Guy doing a brilliant bottle episode with Stewie and Brian. And the joke being, of course, at Family Guy, you don't need a bottle episode because it's the locations. I mean, you've got to draw different backgrounds, but a lot of those are reused. I always remember the brilliant Jimmy Mulville who ran Hat Trick. He was the producer on Alas Smith & Jones, Mel Smith & Griffith Jones. And the most famous thing about that show, the thing that most people remember, are those shots with the two of them with their heads really, really close together against a black background.

5:28And Jimmy was saying, well, you know, it was a sketch show. We do all these things. We were sort of three minutes short per show and zero money left in the budget. So I just said, listen, let's just sit the two of you in front of a camera with a black background and we'll just write some stuff. And he said that became the biggest, the most famous, most successful bit of that entire show. It defined it really. And it was ripped off beyond all, you know, it just became, we didn't have the word meme then, but it was a meme. Yes, it was very memeable. And yeah, if they'd had the money to do a, you know, a Bridgerton ripoff, they would have done that instead.

5:55but instead it was just two people in a room but I think Olivia is also talking about that thing that you get after a few series of something where suddenly yeah there'll be a musical episode or there'll be a live episode and I think that comes from when you sign up for one of those big shows a Grey's Anatomy something like that you are signing up for a minimum of seven seasons and that's a lot of actors that's a lot of talent behind the camera director writers all sorts of things and there comes a point where you've really proved what you are as a show and you know you're making money for everybody there's a sort of creative itch that goes we've got this massive thing that everyone's watching there'd always be someone in the writer's room who's you know just written the book for a musical and there'd always be you know someone on staff whoever the composer is just say i can knock you off a few things and so it's one of those things it sort of comes with success where you go we have earned the right now to do a very unusual standout episode that keeps everybody sweet he's getting quite bored of going around the same circle every week i think exactly that season six is on you look at the scripts there's 20 episodes and like episode 12 you go oh that's a musical oh oh that's quite fun yeah so it just it just gives everybody they're all going up to someone's cabin in the woods yeah the woodside cabin that's a lot of use that happens an awful lot guys i just want a competition and the prize is the use of a cabin my uncle has a cabin right yeah yes that's something you don't get on british tv where people go guys just come out to my lakeside cabin because everyone goes what what do you mean your lakes are you talking Caravans though are a fixture They are caravans in real and what have you But yeah that's absolutely just a thing of Well firstly keeping the talent sweet But secondly people can get bored of a show People can get bored of the same thing and of formula And occasionally just dropping in something different Can be refreshing That's why Have I Got News For You is still such a huge hit Funnily enough having a different host every week Is the thing that absolutely has kept that show You know so current and so high up in the ratings as well A little bit of novelty every now and again keeps everybody sweet you could not fit a better surname here because maya sharon oh nice yeah says why do pop songs have so many writers am i right to be skeptical on every person having helped out i mean in the 60s there were teams of writers you know holland dozier holland and all those groups and you know they would write together and you know they put music out for so say you know a motown song you know holland dozier holland would write that so that's three writers.

8:12Then you get to 70s and 80s and people started sort of writing their own material. So Elvis would never really write his own songs. He's always got writers writing for him. Get to 70s and 80s, people start writing their own material, either the lead singer of the band or the whole band would be credited. Bands where it's just the lead singer tend to fall apart quicker because the lead singer suddenly becomes incredibly rich and the rest of the band don't. You know, a Coldplay type band where everyone's getting equal credit, they tend to stick together because they're all billionaires at the same time.

8:38What happens now? So much music is collaborative now. We talked before about the absolute collapse of bands in the 21st century and how almost all number one signals now are soloists or soloists featuring various people. And firstly, you've got your original artists who might have a couple of writers and themselves. You've got the person coming in to do a rap. They've got themselves and someone else maybe they work with. But the big thing has been samples. So the big thing is so much of modern music, modern R &B, modern hip-hop is composed of samples and every single time you sample something that has to be included on the writing credit.

9:13If you're Beyonce you want to sample a Motown song then already the credits are Beyonce, Holland, Dozier, Holland you've already got four people before you've got the other people who Beyonce is happening to collaborate with on this album. I think songwriting has got much more collaborative because studios are now such an interesting creative space and a more democratic space than they used to be because a producer of a song was always not dictatorial but they're a gatekeeper because it's complicated the thing that they were doing and now with the software lots and lots of people can sit sometimes they were dictatorial oh of course they were because you know like a theater director isn't it you know beyonce's album i think there's 24 you know for alien superstar for example it's got 24 credited songwriters now there'll be a few of beyonce's collaborators there'll be the producer but then there'll be every single writer of every single sample in that song and so it's not 24 people sitting in a room doing the same thing.

10:02But yeah, essentially the thing is, if you change a single word, it used to be change a word, get a third. So some of our favourite boy bands and girl bands, they would be given a song. Listen, I'm mentioning absolutely no names. They would be given a song and, you know, there'd be like a sort of beauty parade of songs would be played to them by songwriters and they'd choose one they like. And then they'd go, oh, instead of this thing saying, I love you so much, I think I would say I love you very much. That's the whole 90s, basically. The whole 90s, yeah. And then they give interviews saying, we're different because we write our own music.

10:30We write our own stuff. It's a really collaborative process. We say our own words. And if you are the songwriter, by the way, whose song has gone in there and the record company says, yeah, we absolutely love it, just so you know, person X from this band has changed a couple of the lines, so they will be getting 50 % of the thing. Well, as a songwriter, either no one is doing your song and you're getting nothing, or that group is doing your song and you're getting 50 % of what is hopefully a big hit. There are, of course, you know, Gary Bardo writes his own songs and there were examples of people in those groups who do their own songs, But there's more examples of people who have credited on all sorts of big hits who, yeah, essentially.

11:06Maybe did not even say a word. Write a word, get a third. Ed Sheeran did Perfect in 2017 and he's the sole songwriter on that. But when he did a version with Beyonce, she changes the gender of a couple of lines. But that is credited to Ed Sheeran and Beyonce as songwriters. Well done, Mr. Entertainment Lawyer. Or might be a lady, missus. It might be an unmarried lady. Yeah. It might be miss. Yeah. entertainment lawyer many so many options so yeah it's one of those things the world of songwriting has changed one thing that hasn't changed is you get teams of songwriters you're always used to in tin pan alley and all that they're you know having certainly pairs there were loads of the loads of trios as well in the motown era and by the time you've got four samples on something and your own people and there's three people on all of those it's very quick to get up to 15 16 17 18 writers on something i was listening to um the new manix album which i like very much and there's a beautiful song called The Decline and Fall and I was looking at the credits for that on Spotify.

12:04I always click on who wrote the song because there's always interesting stories and it has Difford and Tilbrook on there and Difford and Tilbrook, as our older listeners will know, were the songwriters behind Squeeze and it's because they used a distinctive guitar part from Call for Cats on that and so Difford and Tilbrook are joint songwriters on that and will get equal share of the money. Famously Bittersweet Symphony by The Verve, all their money really went to the Rolling Stones or at least Andrew Lugaldum because they used an orchestral version of a stone song that he had arranged. So it's, yeah, if you are at all interested in modern music, you do want to use samples.

12:36You do want to reference the past. You do want to use things that have been done before. And if you do that, suddenly there's more and more and more and more writers. Right, everybody. I think we should go to a break now, although I understand I've been set some terrible tests later. You are. We had a lovely question a couple of weeks ago about what constitutes an A-list star. I think Leonie Beck wrote in and said that her and her husband argue about what A-list is. and you said that you could literally be given the name of any actor and tell me if they were A-list or not. So I will be... Leonie, keep listening because I'm going to be putting Marina to the test right after this.

13:06Oh, this could be quite... I'm sorry. I apologise in advance. Oh, you love it. You're going to get to play God. Yeah, you're right. My revolution is happening after the break.

13:20This episode is brought to you by Sky, where you can watch the highly anticipated second season of the award-winning The Last of Us. Richards, I am very excited that The Last of Us is back on our screens I watched the entire first series It was emotional, it was bleak, it was brilliant TV It follows Joel, played by Pedro Pascal who is tasked with escorting Ellie, played by Bella Ramsey who's a teenage girl, she's immune to a deadly infection and he has to transport her across a post-apocalyptic America in which they face these infected clickers and much more Season 2 I think picks up five years later they're living in a community of survivors They've done a time jump They've picked a whole time jump.

13:56It's probably five years since they filmed the first one. So it's fair enough, isn't it? From what I hear, my nerves, my nerves. The second season sounds like it's going to be even more intense. There's conflict brewing everywhere, not just on the outside with the infected and all the different factions among them, but inside between Joel and Ellie too. Yes, if you're into emotional gut punches, high stakes world building and brilliant performances, this show is for you. Watch the brand new series of the award-winning The Last of Us available on Sky now.

14:28Welcome back, everybody. Marina, are you ready? I'm as ready as I will ever be. Excellent. Zalini Beck, a couple of weeks ago, her and her husband argue about what's A-list or not. We had a little chat about it, but I said I'm going to set you a challenge. You said you could tell me if anyone was A-list or not. I wish I had a gavel. I've just realised, but never mind. Everyone at home, see if you agree or disagree with Marina's options. So I'm going to give you a list of actors. You have to tell me. And I just say... Say A-list or not A-list. I'm going to say what strikes me in the moment. This is like one of those things where you just have to react to pictures or whatever it is.

14:58Are the following actors, A-list, B-list or C-list? Let's go. Your first actor is Idris Elba. B. Cillian Murphy. Oh, B, come on. Florence Pugh. B. And that's, yeah, B. No, she's B. Yeah. I hope this is not just Marina saying B the whole time. No, okay, no, no, carry on. You get that from a Chris Packham podcast. Zendaya. A, can open a movie. Don't worry, carry on. Jennifer Lawrence. A. Actually, Falling, but she's had two very big franchises. A. Pedro Pascal. B. TV star mainly. Barry Keoghan. Fantastic Four could change it. Oh, Barry Keoghan. No, B. Come on. Ayo Adeburi. No, B. If that. That would also be an interesting one.

15:39Vin Diesel. A. Sorry, it's a massive franchise. You don't make the rules, right? If I did anyway, I'd put him in. Come on. What are we talking about? Rachel Zegler. Oh, no. I mean, B and Falling, I'm afraid. Dev Patel. What? No. I mean, I love, very nice, but B, C. Okay, here we go. Friend of the podcast, Glenn Powell. B rising, strongly rising. Still B, though. Still B. Yeah, come on. A couple of years' time, they'll be going, do you remember when Glenn Powell was B-list? It won't be through Wands of Trying if they aren't, let's put it that way. Talking of Glenn Powell, Sydney Sweeney. Again, B rising, both of them, you know, but they haven't yet got those kind of open movie roles.

16:16We have to see if they can do it. On the cusp. Cuspy, no. Tom Hardy. B. Al Pacino Oh come on Okay A but heritage I mean he's not opening a movie now is he I mean yeah Heritage A A heritage It's a special category If you hadn't said A yet Well that's A star Oh come on A heritage Yeah Yeah Don Cheadle No We're not even giving him a letter He's getting a B Dustin Hoffman A heritage Come on Okay Saoirse Ronan I love her but B I mean you know Yes I mean it's art house isn't it Natalie Portman Used to be A Now B Okay Viola Davis. A, maybe. A, maybe. B, right, yeah, A. This guy's got a clue in his name.

16:57Michael B. Jordan. Oh, A. Michael A. Jordan. You're saying, wow. Michael A. Jordan. I think so, yeah, definitely. Olivia Colman. Sorry, I mean, amazing, but B. Amazing, but B. Well, because, you know, of course she should win all the awards and the Oscars and whatever, but I don't think of her as a sort of A-lister in that sense. So you think she's many things, but she's not Sylvester Stallone. Yeah, and I think she probably loves that. Yeah, Sylvester Stallone. Oh, A heritage. Amy Lee Wood. What? I mean, it doesn't rate. Sorry, I know she's had a terrible week, so I don't mean to add to it. But no, I mean, she's a part in an ensemble on a television programme.

17:32Okay. The end. Robert De Niro. Heritage. Seen all three nights. Andrew Garfield. I love him, but B. And we're going to end with this one. Interesting one. Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds. Both A. Both A? Yeah. But would they be A without the other? Does a rising tide raise all ships in that relationship? That's difficult, isn't it? I don't know. Yes, they're sort of somehow have been greater than the sum of their parts, I think. It's a double A. I think they're both overrated. No, listen, it's good. I don't think he's a good guy at all, actually. But yeah, I don't get a good vibe off him. I don't mean that kind of awesome.

18:06Just like a celebrity monster, you know. I think when you become very, very famous. I think that's the problem with those two. But yeah, they're very, very famous. You did that very quickly. I got through the entire list of people. That's very, very impressive. I mean, some of those, I honestly think, in retrospect, because I didn't know who was coming next. So I was trying to sort of always calibrate against the ones before. So I never knew who was coming next. You know, I could have definitely had a couple of C's and D's in there. But that doesn't mean that, you know, I don't love them as an actor.

18:30But you have to we have to be honest about what what type of star they are. Tom Cruise, Tom Hanks, Sandra Bullock. Oh, I mean, well, Sandra Bullock. I mean, I love her. But yeah, I mean, she's heritage A now. Tom Cruise and Tom Hanks is still A. Aniston. Well, I mean, Aniston's A. I should think she could open movies still. Yeah. She just likes doing, you know, brands now, as far as I can work out, fitness brands and things like that. Listen, that's easier than acting, isn't it? Yeah, I think so. Leonie, thank you so much for your question from two weeks ago. And Marina, congratulations. That was very, very good.

19:01Okay, Richard, for you, Laura Harper would like to know something about first editions. On auction sites, it seems that the most expensive antiquated books are first editions. What does this mean? Is a first edition always a set amount of books? How are they distributed compared to others? Does the author get a say on where those go and who they're distributed to? So first editions, yeah, absolutely. They're very much the most expensive books you can find. And the real sweet spot is an incredibly famous book that wasn't very successful at the time. So if you take the first Harry Potter, The Philosopher's Stone, this is a book where lots of books will go straight to paperback.

19:37A few books will go to hardback and Philosopher's Stone did that. But if it's an unknown author and people don't know if it's going to go well, they might publish a thousand, two thousand, something like that. A very small print run. a very small print run and so in 30 years time and that's the first edition when that all sells out and actually people like it the next print run is 3 000 and then 5 000 and the very the very first editions of the harry potter books for example which have a few typos in them which gets changed for the for the next edition are worth an absolute fortune because there's very few of them and it became immensely popular and successful afterwards it'll say first edition first printing as well that's the that's the absolute key whenever a year it comes out you'll do a certain amount and then if it's successful you'll do more that'll be the the second printing or the second edition and then more and more and more um so you know the key thing is well two things firstly a book like harry potter a more modern book if it didn't sell a huge amount at the time but now has sold millions upon millions those are worth an awful lot of money and then the older books you take like an ian fleming or something like that which again the first ones didn't sell as well as you might think and so if you can get an original first edition of ian Fleming they are worth an absolute fortune especially we talked about this the other day if you get them in the dust jacket yeah because very very very few dust jackets survive from anywhere and there's American first editions there's UK first editions so see how many books there are see if it's in a dust jacket see what sort of state it is in and there's all sorts of things like like um Gatsby there's on the very first ever dust jacket of the great Gatsby there's a typo one of the letters is in lowercase that should be in uppercase and so you know you've got yourself a first edition there because people there's all sorts of people never quite sure with dust jackets they put them on different ones or there's the various fakes and things out there the most expensive first edition ever really is it a first edition Shakespeare's first folio and at the time there were 750 of them but as you can imagine very few of those still exist and one sold auction for nine million pounds so that's what you're paying for a first edition of that Now, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, again, a book that didn't sell like crazy in its first edition.

21:39There's only about 22 copies still in existence. So that sold for two and a half million as well. So there's all those sort of things out there. Now, before you get first editions, there are also proofs. There are things like that. There are special editions that different bookshops will put out. But if you have a book that was big at the time, then even the first edition is not really going to be worth a lot of money. If you, for example, you know, have a first edition of an early John le Carré book, then you've got yourself some money. If you've got a copy of a John le Carre book, a first edition, anytime after The Spy Who Came In From The Cold, which was his huge hit, and suddenly all his books sell a load, it's worth an awful lot less money, even with a signature on it.

22:14So you want to get those authors who are huge now, but had the first couple of books were not huge, and you can make an absolute bomb. Goldsboro Books in London do special one-off limited editions, first editions of lots of books, and there's a club you can join where you get sent them. those are the sorts of things that if you wanted to collect books for any other reason other than just reading them if you did think well maybe this would be an investment it's collecting those one-off first editions but collecting first editions of books that are going to be number one in the hardback chart absolutely no point doing it's collecting those very unusual one-offs and you know authors that are going to be famous that's the key so like with art it's uh you know if there's an author that you love and you think that everyone's going to love them in 10 years time then buy the earliest edition of whatever book you can find by them i actually i have a first edition of t.s elliott's four quartets and they were given to me my grandmother she because she had them from the first time around and so i i love but and it's also a poem i absolutely completely love so i think i find that really really special but i read it i read those all the time yeah i got ingrid got me as a present an american first edition of my favorite book ever a month in the country as well.

23:25And again, it's not one of those ones, but it's just, it's such a special, lovely, beautiful thing to have. Yeah, because it's in the original cover. Because we both love those things. Yes, I'm not someone who would be motivated to collect in that way, but I really love that this is kind of, there's something very evocative about just this kind of, these little paper pamphlets because they're very short. And it's the thing that came out at the time. And also if you do have books, keep them in a good condition because there's vanishingly few books from the 20s, 30s that are in a good condition.

23:58So, you know, in 100 years' time, if you've got the books that are in good condition, then your great, great, great grandchildren, not to quote Year 3000 by Busted, might make a lot of money from them. I can imagine you going into a small sort of children with the white gloves to read a month in the country. Oh, I don't read them. I don't read my... Oh, my goodness. Yeah, no, don't be silly. I think that concludes us for today. But if you're a member of our club, which you can sign up to at therestisentertainment.com we are back with the second part of our malarial, in fact the only thing that doesn't hit the production, our kind of lunatic recounting of the disastrous shoot of the island of Dr Moreau.

24:34I loved part one, I'm very much looking forward to part two. But if you're not, we will as always, see you next Tuesday. Because we love you too. See you next Tuesday.

24:55Well, that wraps up another episode of The Restless Entertainment, brought to you by our friends at Sky. Now, what have you got on your must-watch list at the moment? At the moment, White Lotus enjoying the latest season of that. Oh, it's such a treat. Oh, my God, it's incredible. It's so good. A dark treat. A dark treat. The visuals are really great, and with your Sky Glass TV, you'll be able to enjoy it all in its 4K glory. And also, the built-in soundbar means you can also listen to it in its full whatever the sound version of 4K glory is. But it sounds immense, I'll say that. It is indeed.