Marina's Tribute to David Lynch

0:03Hello, Richard and Marina here, you know that anyway. Would you like to be a member of the Restless Entertainment Club. I can't hear you, but I'm assuming yes. For ad-free listening, bonus episodes and access to our chat community, sign up to the Rest is Entertainment Club. Visit therestisentertainment.com or if you're listening on Apple, sign up directly in the app.

0:25Hello and welcome to this episode of the Rest is Entertainment questions and answers edition. I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osman. A lovely lineup of questions today, Marina. An absolutely gorgeous beauty pageant thereof. If you have questions, by the way, just send them to the rest is entertainment dot com. And we absolutely love getting them. Sorry, we can't do all of them. We like to choose a mix. A lovely mixture. The rest is entertainment at Gmail dot com. Oh, is that right? What did I say? The rest is entertainment dot com is where you can join our lovely club. That's right. So the rest is, I mean, they could make it simpler.

0:56Ad free listening, bonus episodes, etc. So rest is entertainment dot com is you can join the club for ad free listening and bonus episodes and the rest is entertainment at Gmail dot com. At gmail.com. Very different. Very different. Is where you can send your questions. Shall we ask the first question? A question here from Gordon Cole. And we've had lots of questions sort of in this same area, but Gordon puts it very succinctly. He says, I'm devastated by David Lynch's death and think he was a genius. What are your top three works by him? Okay, 100 % I agree with you. He was a genius. And these are the moments where I particularly hate ranking things because, as you know, I don't like...

1:30You don't have to. You don't have to for this. But I will. Okay. But I will, but it's hard. But the idea of like I'm leaving out Wild at Heart or Razorhead or Lost Highway, but I am. At number three, I am going to say Blue Velvet. At number two, and this was just two and one was really hard. I'm going to put Mulholland Drive at number two. Definitely the cinematic masterpiece. It is extraordinary and amazing. Can you explain to people who are not aware of his work, haven't watched his work, what is it about David Lynch that you do not get elsewhere? What is it about his particular vision? God, I mean, he is a sort of master surrealist, but he's folksy, he's funny, he's black, he takes you off in strange story directions.

2:14It's always the most extraordinary and unpredictable ride. But when you think of the American dream, which he's great at talking about, the dreamlike quality of that dream is half dream, half nightmare, that the obverse of it is a sort of nightmarish world in many ways. The obverse of this American dream is a kind of, you know, almost another type of narcotic fantasy. I think it's all so weird and strange and completely original. And speaking of which, at number one. Yes, I was going to say, what's your number one day of this movie? It's Twin Peaks. I guess I was 16 when I first watched that. You know, he was shooting, he must have been shooting it in 89.

2:51It airs in 90. It airs on network television. I can't really explain what network American television was at that stage. But it's on ABC. millions and millions of Americans and people around the world obviously but in order to get renewed care about the most extraordinary odd world that was kind of funny and completely eccentric it completely foreshadows all sorts of the Sopranos is almost a decade later all of and I think it's better than the Sopranos I think it's just this most extraordinary weird way of doing storytelling of characters totally charming people were hooked and it was very very weird and yet it had mass appeal it was sort of hypnotic and mesmerising and people didn't know why they loved it, but they loved the characters and they loved the story.

3:34He was a sort of work of art. And when he gave interviews, he was just sort of... I remember there's one interview he gave where he was trying to explain that he developed a really amazing squirrel-proof bird feeder. And so he draws out this whole diagram for the interviewer and the squirrel's kind of crying. And he then gives it to them and it says, Larson, a squirrel thwarted by the disk of sorrow, cries in despair. It's like maybe my favorite story, but there's many favorite stories. But have you seen ever the pictures of him, which, by the way, go over many years, pictures of him with these five Woody Woodpecker toys?

4:06No. Now, he gave an interview about his acquisition of these five Woody Woodpecker soft toys. He'd seen them hanging in a petrol station. He said, I screech on the brakes. I do a U-turn. I go back and I buy them. I named them Choco, Buster, Pete, Bob and Dan. And they were my boys and they were in my office. These go back years. There's several of these photos. and then he says to the interview and he's looking straight ahead they were my dear friends for a while but then certain traits started coming out and they became not so nice they are not in my life anymore and this is the essence of david lynch you're thinking is this real is he serious is it black comedy is it tragedy so he's always on that darkness is there is it horror it's sort of a bit about and yes it's completely charming and you want to know more and he was a genius i i'm devastated by his house i think he's extra it was extraordinary and he was such a we talk about big swings and people not making them my god i mean he made them the entire time and he meant so much to me as an artist i can't even that's why i had to put twin peaks as number one because he just opened my mind at the age of 16 and i you know you kind of never look back in some ways it was he's amazing and if you are 16 now and there's a whole generation maybe who for whom david lynch means less than it did for our generation where would you start would you start with twin peaks Is that the best way in?

5:22Yeah, start with Twin Peaks And if you like the slightly unhingedness of it Then you've got a whole series of movies That will open up to you Yeah, start at the beginning with a razor head and go on Gordon, thank you for your question Oh my god, I love this question from Maddie Gould I was recently delighted to see the Thursday Murder Club Pop up in a kinky monk erotic novel Saint by Sierra Simone The undisputed queen of kinky monk erotica I'm totally taking your word for this In the context of the story, Maddie says a character was described as being a fan of the Thursday murder club in order to indicate their wholesomeness.

5:55I wonder, how does Richard feel about this and how does it work in terms of copyright? Are authors allowed to reference real-world work in their fiction without fear of repercussion? What would happen if Richard objected to a reference to his work in a kinky monk erotic novel? Maddy, thank you. Listen, I'll tell you, I will do many, many things in life before I object to a reference to my work in a kinky monk erotic novel. That, to me, is one of the great honours. You finally have made it. Yeah, I finally made it. Yes, I was not aware of the work of Sierra Simone. I am now because I've been looking up Saints.

6:27Honestly, I'm absolutely all for this. It happens all the time. Authors always, always, always reference other authors and other books in their novels. I do it all the time. A character is reading something. I think that in Thirsty Murder Club. Yeah, you do it a lot. Yeah, Ron loves Mark Billingham. Elizabeth loves John le Carré. I think Joyce's favourite author of all time is Marion Keys. I do it all the time and like I mentioned Kate Atkinson it's just a lovely thing to do to mention people whose books you love and books you like I mentioned the brilliant Claire Chambers a small pleasure in one of my books and it's just it's a really lovely thing to do but this is great can I I looked up Sierra Simone's novel Saint it genuinely sounds great if you're into kinky monk erotica which I am not yet I don't know if I am I don't want to say I'm not shall I read you out the synopsis for Saint go on and you tell me if you are into it I'm ready Aidan was the last person in the world anyone expected to become a monk.

7:20But the decision to become a monk saved his life, and he's determined to do it right, even if it's taken him from his millionaire party boy lifestyle and the love of his life, Elijah Iverson. Four plus years haven't made letting Elijah go any easier, but at least Aidan hasn't had to come face to face with those whiskey eyes and soft mouth since he left. That is, uh-oh, until Elijah shows up on his doorstep, assigned to accompany Aidan on a European monastery road trip for an article he's writing. Assigned? Assigned. Okay. Assigned. Like an assignment from a... You've done that. And he has to take the assignation.

7:51Okay. Well, listen, perhaps he still has feelings for Aidan as well, which is why he's going back. Because otherwise he would just go, oh, no, I can't. That's Aidan and we used to have a thing. But obviously he wants to... He feels the pull still. Yeah. I think Aidan left him. So Elijah is, of course, taking the thing. Yeah, but I guess Aidan doesn't have to go with him. But again, I think there's a stirring when he hears the name and he hears it's Elijah and he's thinking, what are the odds? But let's go with it anyway. Go on. Go on. The pull is still there between them. But Aidan knows he can't have Elijah back.

8:20He broke his heart when he left. And now Elijah's engaged to someone else. Aidan chose God. He chose his vows. Except between whispered confessions and stolen kisses. And moments bent over an ancient altar. Those vows are feeling flimsier by the day. Vows or not, it would take a saint to resist Elijah. And Aidan sure as hell ain't no saint. I mean, come on. Okay, fine. Yeah, yeah, in. Okay, I'm in. Yeah. I'll have a look. But what's going to, I mean, so Elijah's with somebody. The love hasn't died. The fire hasn't gone out. That's for sure. Aidan's running from something. I mean, listen, I'm sure it's fine.

8:55I feel like I've pressed the red button for your editorialising of the Kinky Monk erotic novel. No, I just. I want to go to the source. To Sierra Simone. No, to the text. Oh, to the text. To the sacred text itself. I think it's a good set up for a story, though. The commissioning process of the road trip thing, you know, it's bumping slightly for me. Why? It's partly my world. And it's bumping slightly. And I just want to, once I've got that out of the way, I can believe all the rest of it. Of course. I've got no problem with that. I'm struggling on the commissioning process. You turn up on the doorstep.

9:26Is that how I've been assigned to go on a road trip with you and cover this? No, this is what's happened. So let's say he's been assigned by Air Mail, which does brilliant articles every week. Which we love. Which we love. And they've said to Elijah Iverson, who's doing pretty well, flying pretty high since Aidan left because something's missing, I guess. So he's thrown himself into his work. they said to Elijah we want to do a thing about monasteries as retreats in Europe and about you know wellness and about sort of getting inside your own headspace do you fancy doing a trip around Europe and visiting monasteries Elijah's going yeah of course and he's also thinking God Aidan was he went to did he go to a monastery in Europe certainly the last time I heard of him I think you remember that detail about one of your exes oh yeah he ended up in a in a monastery but after four years do you remember do you know what I mean after four years you're a very propulsive person Richard I don't think you look back.

10:14So they then get in touch with Catholic Church or whoever's in charge. They're not getting in touch with Aidan. Again, it's just bumping a bit when you said they get in touch with the Catholic Church. They get in touch. Monasteries have press offices and things, you know, because you can stay there. There's ways and means of getting in touch with monasteries. They're not completely shut off. You're not suddenly, you know, there are ways and means. People work for them. OK, people are getting paid by monasteries. So they get in touch with the monastery organisation and say, could we send a journalist over?

10:41They go, of course, we've got four or five different places you might be interested in. Send them over to the first one. It's a franchise. It's a chain of monasteries. A chain of monasteries, yeah. A chain of monasteries. Sierra, a chain of monasteries. That's a doable, yeah. They send them over. And Aidan doesn't really know about it. He knows, oh, there's a journalist coming over and we need you to show them around. To be clear, this isn't necessarily the plot of the book. This is just Richard telling me that this is what the plot of the book could be. No, I'm just saying, if you're worried about the commissioning process, I'm telling you a way in which that story might have been commissioned.

11:08And in which Aidan wouldn't have known that it was going to happen. but he's just someone said to him oh by the way tomorrow brother he's a pen for hire he's a laptop for hire he is but sometimes those are the gigs you take right don't tell me about it I don't think his heart is in the new relationship Elijah so actually a trip to Europe he's thinking you know what I wouldn't mind just a month away that would do me and then suddenly they're banging on ancient altars all across Europe tell you what I'm going to have a look at it and see just how the commissioning process works but thank you very much for introducing me to that whole sub-genre yeah thank you Maddy And also, yes, I mean, no, I'm delighted.

11:44I'm absolutely thrilled that they mentioned the Thursday Murder Club. Yeah, sorry to say, tie a bow on it, this one. Delighted, yeah, Kinky Monk Erotica. Don't say we haven't got range. I love that you're just worried about the commissioning process. Well, that says a lot, doesn't it? I mean, that feels like a book we're going to have to buy online. Oh, yeah. Do you know, yeah, I saw Richard Osman in Daunt Books the other day. Yeah, he was buying, it was like two priests banging each other on the front of the cover. but I didn't, and yeah, I just was quite surprised. And he bought the new Kate Atkinson, which he'd put on top.

12:17I'll tell you what, we'll read it, and then in the next Thursday Murder Club book, maybe I'll reference it. Oh, the meta. I'll tell you, if anyone knows Thursday Murder Club, I'll tell you someone who would love that book, and that is Joyce. She would go crazy for that. Two priests. Yeah, come on, that would be catnip to Joyce. That's about all we have time for this week, listeners. I'm so sorry. Marina, a question for you. that does not involve priests. Bethany Wilson asks, I was watching 500 Days of Summer last night and was wondering when childhood photos of characters or montages of them as children are used in films, are they childhood pictures of the actual actors or do they find child actors to replicate the effect?

12:56Bethany, that's a good question. Sometimes it's both. I mean, all of these things, it's quite depressing after a while, you just look at all these things and think of everything as a line item and a cost. They sometimes hire child actors to create those photos. And sometimes if they're really integral to the plot, then they'll spend much more time on them. Other times the art department, who is in charge of all of this stuff, will have to, either they can ask for the real thing. I think in Sideways, there's Miles, Paul Giamatti, his mother had a picture of him and his father. And the photo was of Paul Giamatti and his father, who was actually the Major League Baseball Commissioner at the time, Bartlett Giamatti.

13:37Morgan Freeman, I think they've once used his, in Shawshank, when they have that picture of him as a young person, they used his son. But it all costs money and doing it credibly costs a lot of money. And the art department, sometimes they're scanned in, it's quite easy and you can Photoshop it because it's only in the background of a shot. And the trouble comes, the trouble comes from two sources, as always. The main trouble that we have in television today is that motion pictures have become a pausable medium. so people are constantly pausing and zooming. There was a guy on Twitter who did a thread of bad photos I've seen in fictional TV shows just this year, and if you look at them, they do look dreadful.

14:16But the idea is that you're supposed to just pan past them anyway and you just get the vibe of them. And what's happened often is that the art department is always meticulous and you say, what's the set-up for this scene? And they say, well, we've got to have the cameras. So you do it, and then when they get onto set, they think, yeah, it's not really working like this. why don't we swing the camera around having this side then your sort of little bit of background is suddenly someone is going oh my god that's so bad i could have done better than that in photoshop in five minutes and there just isn't the time it's normally things changes like that at the last minute so it's something that was going to be background has suddenly come much closer to the foreground but it is a big thing because there's so much of how we create those worlds and especially things in homes people always have photos so a huge amount of the art department side this is a job by the way if you talk to i talked to an art director about this who was like oh my god i don't often say please can ai do this but please this is so great ai is just going to be able to do all of that because it takes so long to kind of create these credible photos and ai will do it brilliantly and i won't have to think about it anymore because it's a big waste of time but um this person said please just like they were originally emotional pictures making everything pausable is a real nightmare for the art department yeah ingrid did a job the other day and essentially a flat had to be covered in photos of her from different stages of her life so she had to like find photos of her as a child as a teenager in her 20s and all that kind of stuff and they all get sent off and then they all get kind of merged with uh with with other people it's quite cool it's quite a fun thing to do but as you say sometimes it is harder than others and some of them are not meant to be paused on yeah talking of pauses yes good isn't it lovely um it would have been easier than talking of kinky priest should we go to some adverts talking of pauses should we go for some adverts tron aries has arrived i would like you to meet aries 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.

16:21Tron Aries, rated PG-13. May be inappropriate for children under 13. Only in theatres October 10th. Get tickets now. Let's do that.

16:32Welcome back, everybody. I have got a question about weather and freezingness. Ian McLeod, he says, I was listening to a football match on the radio and the commentator and summariser were talking about how cold the commentary gantry was. It got me thinking, what is the coldest stadium in the UK? As Gary and Micah are generally in the studio keeping warm these days, I'm guessing that Alan is best placed to answer. Well, we found out exactly who was best placed to answer. We went to our friends at the rest of his football. They'll be furious because this would have been a great question for the rest of his football Q &A.

17:03Yeah. But we got it first. So we have... That's showbiz, boys. So we have an answer for you, Ian, from our very own team of kinky monks, Gary, Micah and Alan. I think we can probably help. mainly through Alan because he's done a lot of co-commentary lately. So he's been in lots of gantries. We usually tend to be nice and smug and warm in our studio. It's a good looking ones for the studio, isn't it, Gaz? The good looking ones. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Alan's got a face for co-coms.

17:41Well, it's an interesting question, isn't it? The coldest. I think that often happens when it's the highest. And I think the two highest grounds in the country are, if I'm not mistaken, West Brom and Oldham. I think there's not much to choose between the two. So they're probably factually the coldest ones in the country. But there are a few. I'll tell you where it was always cold at Stoke. And I don't know whether that's where that phrase came from. They won on a cold Tuesday night in Stoke because they had gaps in the corner of the ground where the wind would howl in. And I still think they're there.

18:26But what about your experiences, Alan? What's it like on the gantry? And some of them are really tricky to get to, aren't they? Yeah, they are. Some of them are really, really tricky. I've never done one at West Brom. I've never done one at Oldham. I've played there, but I've never done a Corcom there. What I find really cold and windy and like you're high up is Goodison Park, Everton, the old Goodison Park. You've got to walk right up and you're right across the gantry and then you've got to climb through another little hole to get to where you are. And it's always so bloody windy and cold up there.

18:59But I always now go out and have like an electric jumper on with a battery. so I try and keep nice and warm because it's bloody painful if you get too cold, you know. Because you've got to be there, you're sat there from half an hour before the game and you're there for another two, two and a half hours and it can get miserable if you get cold. So I always wrap up and I get my electric jumper and press the red button as soon as I go out into the outside and I'm not too bad some of the times, yeah. What do you have to drink? do you know what though Micah you have to time it before you have your last drink because I was if you need a wee you can't just get out of these places and run to the toilet when you're stuck up at the top of the stand in Everton because you wouldn't get back in time to get for the second half so I have to actually time it I have a couple of sips during commentary but I don't have that too much beforehand I might have a cup of tea at a half time if someone's kind enough to bring you one well Richard Marina we've done our best for you I hope that helps a little bit.

20:05I'm not sure there's an exact science on this. Sounds like exact science to me. Sounds like Goodison Park. The heated gilet. I didn't know you could have a heated jumper. What is that? It's like a gilet and they all wear them on Emmerdale. Anywhere you're doing on location, lots of people. And they've got these things going through. And you charge the battery pack. And it's like an electric blanket, but you're wearing it. Wow. I know crew have gone soft. Game's gone. Game's gone. but it's interesting because it was sort of in some ways a question about the coldest ground in the country let's say it's Goodison Park with possibly West Brom or Oldham but really it's become everyone going wait what?

20:41They're really reasonably priced if you go on Amazon because once someone told me about this I thought I mean really why don't I buy one of these on those days when you're typing cold at home or whatever but anyway so they have them and people wear them We should at all times have Micah Richards in the studio with us don't you think? Yeah Just to laugh stuff in. Yeah. Thank you so much, gents. If we can ever help you, I can't imagine a world in which we could. But, yeah, if you ever get any showbiz-related questions, then, you know, explain the career of Peter Crouch, for example. Then, honestly, just get in touch with us.

21:19Marina, Shanie Sanderson has a question. She says, on a recent trip to see Nosferatu, there were quite a few scenes with loads of rats loose outside or possibly on a set. But even so, how do they keep the little blighters from lagging it? Right, Robert Eggers, who is the director of this, he used 5 ,000 live rats. They are all live. And if they're in the foreground, they're live. And then they kind of fade back into CGI rats. But none of them died. And they were very well trained. But what they did was that they built and they didn't lose one. None of them died. But in order not to lose. How long are they filming for?

21:50Because what's the life expectancy of a rat? Oh, quite long. Oh, OK. So I was just thinking that even statistically, one of them might have died of old age. Yeah. In a Robert Eggers film. It was suspicious that none of them had died, but I'm willing to accept that none of them did. Yeah, so, well, the Humane Society is mega hot on this, which we'll come to later in my answer. They built these kind of plexiglass channels and barriers so that the rats couldn't get away. There's a scene in the street where there are horses on one side and it looks like the rats are running between their feet, but they're not.

22:20They're actually on the other side of a plexiglass barrier. So nobody gets squashed and nobody gets hurt. Animal wranglers on set, by the way, are really interesting. I'm going to stick to the ones that have to do a lot of animals and clearly someone has to do 5 ,000 rats here or many of them. There are sort of funny stories about animal wranglers. Daniel Ragliff always says that there was a monkey in Professor Gonneagle's classroom that just masturbated incessantly in a cage. But then you also have... Harry Potter and the Wanking Monkey. The Humane Society for Shawshank, they had to find a maggot that had died of natural causes.

22:53They're so hot on this, the Humane Society, you come on the set and whatever. Good, by the way. Yeah. But the best... Well, it wouldn't worry I'm a celebrity. Let's put it that way. No, it would not. The best stories contain smaller animals in larger numbers. So I've kind of focused on that. Okay. The locusts in Exorcist. There was a guy called Stephen R. Kutcher. He was an entomology student. So he studied bugs, basically. They needed 6 ,000 of them. And he was basically just brought in as a contact of someone who knew someone who knew lots about bugs. He had to sex them all so there were no females.

23:24So he had to make sure that however... It's a 6 ,000 locusts. Apparently he found seven and were like, seven females. Like, yeah, you made a mistake. I mean, I would watch that film. Yeah. But he still works in bugs. It opened the door and he became someone who worked in them. So when Sam Raimi needed a spider for Spider-Man, who I don't know if you heard, he was bitten by a radioactive spider. Oh, no way. What happened? Yeah. I can't believe it. Yeah. Anyway, sorry. Spoiler. Is he okay? Yeah. Cockroaches. There was a movie called Race to the Sun. And a cockroach, listen to what this cockroach had to do that Stephen had to be in charge of.

23:57He said, I had a cockroach come out of a shoe, walk onto a bag of Cheetos, turn left, walk through some Cheetos, stop on a magazine that had a picture of a surfboard. Like most actors couldn't actually do that. Sorry, I mean, I've worked with human actors. And so he did it by understanding how cockroaches think. And he said that they're thigmatatic, which means they like to run along the edges of things. So what he did was he kept creasing the bags of Cheetos and he did everything so clever. He provided all the giant locusts for Jurassic Park. I wondered, you know what? I was going to ask who provided them.

24:29Candyman. Tony Todd said, I will do it. The original Candyman. And they used 200 ,000 bees in that movie. Don't tell me all of them survived because they die every time they sting. And Tony Todd's agent. Who's Tony Todd, sorry? Tony Todd is Candyman. Got his agent to negotiate a$1 ,000 bonus every time he actually got stung. That's a great idea. And he got an extra$23 ,000. He was stung 23 times. who got an extra 23 ,000 pounds. I would constantly be going, ow, oh, there's another one. The snakes in Raiders of the Lost Ark, we've previously discussed them from a sound angle. Do you remember that the sound guy, it was his wife's spaghetti?

25:03Yes, yeah, yeah. But actually, the snake scene, they were filming at Elstree, which is in the UK, and they were filming at Elstree, and they had all those snakes down there. But Stanley Kubrick's daughter, Vivian, her father had filmed The Shining the year before, and she was editing her documentary about the making of The Shining. and she came onto the set and was like, this is so cruel to the snakes. And they were all like, hmm, because it was standing, other than telling her to go away. She rang the RSPCA and she got Raiders of the Lost Ark shut down because of the cruelty to snakes. And they all had to just swallow it.