Pitching Buckaroo To Spielberg

0:00This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Checking off the boxes on your to do list is a great feeling. And when it comes to checking off coverage, a State Farm agent can help you choose an option that's right for you. Whether you prefer talking in person, on the phone, or using the award-winning app, it's nice knowing you have help finding coverage that best fits your needs. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. At Sierra, discover top workout gear at incredible prices, which might lead to another discovery. Your headphones haven't been connected this whole time. Awkward. Discover top brands at unexpectedly low prices.

0:39Sierra, let's get moving. Race the rudders. Race the sails. Race the sails. Captain, an unidentified ship is approaching. Over. Roger. Wait, is that an enterprise sales solution? Reach sales professionals, not professional sailors. With LinkedIn ads, you can target the right people by industry, job title, and more. Start converting your B2B audience today. Spend$250 on your first campaign and get a free$250 credit for the next one. Get started today at linkedin.com slash campaign. Terms and conditions apply.

1:13Hello and welcome to this episode of the Rest is Entertainment, questions and answers edition. I am Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osmond. Hi, Marina. How are you? I'm very well. How are you? Yeah, I'm not bad. We're still apart. You are still an Ibiza, but that's okay. We forgive you. It's unacceptable. I hate being partied. We will be back together next time. You could just say no to the family holiday. I could say no. Or you could come on my family holiday, which I'd prefer. Your kids are delightful. There's very few families who I'd agree to come on their family holiday. Yours I could just about handle, I think.

1:43Oh, that's quite a tall order. I mean, I'm not sure I can quite handle it. So well done for at least pretending. Now, I have to start with this one. It's like an any other business question. Mike Shearing asks, as mentioned in an earlier episode, Richard, did you pitch Bokkaroo the movie to Steven Spielberg I did I did not do you know what I had so many plans but when I met Spielberg I was like yeah do you know what I'm gonna do that I'm gonna ask him his favorite three Spielberg movies I can do that and uh this is me meeting Spielberg Spielberg hi me hi and that's about as far as I got thank you for everything yeah pretty much I go I gotta say, Steve, I think my favourite movie of yours is Jaws.

2:27I couldn't hold it together at all and the idea of pitching Buckaroo the movie to him. Listen, there'll be edits, there'll be premieres, perhaps by that time we'll be firmer friends and we can have the Buckaroo chat. I'm going to ask you a question, Marina. Enough of my brilliant Spielberg impersonation. Sean Morgan has a question about cold opens on TV shows. There seem to be mostly a thing in American sitcoms like Brooklyn 1999 and Big Bang Theory, but some seem to contribute to the plot of an episode, while others can seem to be unrelated to the rest of the episode. What's the reason for cold opens?

2:58When did they begin? And what is a cold open? Ah, right. Okay. A cold open is a sort of brief scene before the opening credits. I mean, now you can see a 10 minute cold open for reasons we'll get onto, but it used to be a sort of little one minute thing. And really the reason they started is in American network television, they would have the titles and then they would immediately go to a commercial break. So people who are creating shows who always sort of slightly hated the commercials and having to break up their shows felt that you would try and get something in before the show itself because they would go straight to a commercial break.

3:31Now, funnily enough, when the UK used to buy in American shows from this era, we would re-edit it so that that cold open would happen after the title. So if the BBC bought an American show or channel or whatever, they would re-edit it. But it's become more of a convention in our things now as well. And in those kind of, you know, monster of the week shows, something like X-Files or do you remember Six Feet Under the show about The Undertakers, which is amazing sort of HBO show. But their cold open was always the death that would form the sort of centerpiece of that week's episode. Often with detective and murder shows, you'll find either the discovery of the body or sometimes the killing itself.

4:07It's an exciting way to get you straight into the story. But really, we don't need them now on lots of streaming platforms, obviously, because you can skip even the credits, let alone there are no adverts. So they have become, in some ways, quite self-indulgent. I've seen sort of 10-minute ones before, and you'll see the credits come on. You'll be like, what? Sorry, I forgot. I thought those happened ages ago. Things like the Bond movies always did those. There's that kind of crazy action prologue, and then you get the titles. Marvel movies often do that now. it's just a sort of way to plunge you into some quite exciting action right at the start and make you not want to leave and as i say that used to be because of the commercial break but it's become a bit of a convention so in drama as you say with bond it's quite hard to start a bond movie because you want to start with as much action as possible though most stories do not have all their action at the beginning so cold open gives you oh by the way just before this story happens bond is sort of going down a ski slope in a BMW.

5:04This is a completely different story, but just before we get on, just watch this because actually it's crazy what just happened. I wouldn't want you to miss it. Don't worry, this is an old case. It's nothing to do with this movie. He's just tying up some loose ends on a ski slope. Honestly, given it happened, we just thought, why don't we show you it anyway? Then we'll get on to the story. And then back to London. Yeah, exactly. You know, you can jump off a dam and stuff like that and it's nothing to do with the story, but you start with a big stunt. You start with big action. You know, the music starts up and then boom, you're in and people understand it as a convention.

5:31So in drama, it's just a very good way to absolutely come in incredibly hard. It's like lots of books. You'll start with like a big thing that happens later in the book, and then you'll go back because actually the start of most stories is just two people sitting around having a cup of tea and a slice of toast. It can be quite lazy. A lot of people hate, my husband absolutely hates it. If you see this thing and then it's six months early, he's like, so lazy. I'm just trying to think if I've done that. I think I have. I've done it once on something and sometimes you just have to do it in order to say oh don't worry you know they get their comeuppance for this because you're about to show a very immoral character or there's various different reasons the way I really hate it and there was quite a lot of talk about this not that long ago where a lot of dramas would start with something just on but or the discovery of a female body that something absolutely unspeakable had happened to and it became such a thing it's like why have there been so many rapes in cold opens or so many kind of aftermaths of rapes or whatever.

6:28I find there's an element of laziness to that because you're saying, oh, by the way, I'm not going to make you care about these characters any other way. You just have to care about them because something really grotesque and extreme has happened. And it can make me very annoyed if I see that. There are times when you can't avoid doing that kind of a cold open. In general, it became such a sort of lazy way to do it. And obviously for me, kind of very politically problematic. It's not a cold open, but we've spoken before about something that seems to have stopped now, which is on lifestyle and documentary shows, your Gordon Ramsay type shows of essentially showing you the four big highlights of what's going to happen in the show right at the beginning, which is sort of the opposite of a cold open, but it's for the same reason, which is, boom, we've got to just drop you in here.

7:07We've got to make sure you're not going to switch off. We absolutely have to get your attention. They seem to have worked out different ways of getting into those shows now, which is good. But the sitcom one, I think is interesting because once you do have this convention that you can have a cold open, which as you say, comes from adverts, if you're in a writer's room, then a plot very very quickly constrains the things you can do in a particular episode or a joke that you've got you know everything has to be in service of the through line of that plot whereas a cold open gives you the opportunity just as a group of writers to go let's just do a 30 second gag here which has nothing to do with the rest of the plot but it just is perfectly crafted like a short story before a novel uh you know and so the best one ever cheers often did brilliant cold opens there's a brilliant one where a guy comes back to the bar who hasn't been in the bar for 25 years and essentially is pointing out all the things that have changed and it's got absolutely brilliant payoff i think in comedies it's a great thing for writers to go here's a free gag that we can do in big dramas and books and things like that it's that thing of everyone's story really starts somewhere small and quiet and boring and these days you just want boom just drop you in at the most exciting possible moment into a movie i love a cold open it's interesting that The two comedies mentioned in your question are obviously both networked comedies, which means that they are subject to commercial breaks, which is why you particularly see them there.

8:28It's funny now when you see them on Netflix because there's no need for them, but they've become such a convention that people do them. Oh, I've very much got one for you, Richard, from Chas Alexander-Smith. Oh, wow. Chas Alexander-Smith. When searching for a new book in a shop, I often give them a quick flick through to see if I like the writing style, etc. In doing this, I've started to notice that different books have noticeably different font sizes and spacing between lines. Is this to disguise the book's real length, i.e. giving shorter books a larger font and longer books a smaller font so they all meet the spine width deemed most desirable to a prospective reader?

9:05Or another reason. Love that. A desirable spine width. And there will be one. There is a reason for it, really. Most books that you'll find in the bookshop somewhere between 90 and 100 ,000 words, something like that, or between 80 and 100 ,000 words. And that takes you between about 300 and 400 pages if you were just having a standard font, standard margins, all that type of stuff. So most books are that, and that's what we're used to. And all of us sort of know intrinsically what a hardback book should look like, how big a hardback book should be. If it's thinner, we instantly understand something which is probably more literary.

9:39If it's thicker, we understand probably it's more fantasy-based or American. So we absolutely get that. There are two ways that kind of font and margin sizes would come into it. If a writer has slightly under-delivered on words. So if a writer has given you a 70 ,000-word novel, which, by the way, books don't have to be 80 ,000 to 100 ,000 words. The Great Gatsby is about 45 ,000. You know, it's good. A Month in the Country, my favourite book ever is super short. But equally, it's clearly not a novella. It's slightly in between the two. And so if you've got a 70 ,000 word book, yes, those font sizes will be slightly bigger.

10:16The margins will be slightly bigger. So you can get up to somewhere about 350 pages because that's what it feels like. That's roughly what it should be. If it's a 50 ,000 word book, you have a course, a smaller one, and you cut your cloth accordingly. But if it's 10 ,000 less than it should be, really, you just bump it up. On the other end of the scale, big fantasy novels, which can go on. I mean, forever and ever and ever, and they can be 600 pages. And it's not desirable spine size exactly, but it is really expensive to make books. To physically make a book that you buy in a bookshop is expensive.

10:51And if you've got an 800-page book, that's really, really, really expensive to make, which sounds ridiculous because it's just some paper, but it's a huge cost on the industry, jacketing and printing and papering an 800-page book. So on those books, they will try and get it down to somewhere around 600 pages. Anything above that is seen as possibly slightly difficult. Robert Galbraith can get away with it. People can get away with it. If you have under-delivered by 10 ,000 words, it will bump your font up. If you've over-delivered by 100 ,000 words, then they'll try and bump the font down a little bit.

11:24I love a well-spaced book. And I think, oh, look, I've got certain books that I've probably got really old editions and they're incredibly dense. And it's like, God, how have I managed to only read 20 pages? I've been at this forever, even if I'm rereading it. But I love a really well spaced out when you're like, oh my gosh, I'm really caning my way through this one. I'm the same. I'm so goal oriented. It's like when you know there's a new chapter coming up and you turn over a page and there's only one line on the page. You think, yes, I've virtually read two pages in one page. I'm on holiday at the moment.

11:51So you can imagine I'm doing this all day long. First thing I do when I read any book, I turn to the back, I put my hand across it so I don't literally see the last line or anything. And I see how many pages there are. And I'm like, okay, 334 pages. Because on Kindle, it will tell you how far you are through, but then it's got all the bonus material and stuff. So you're not really that far through. Same with Audible. You know, I put half hour interviews at the end of my books and it looks like there's half an hour left on the book. I like to know exactly how many pages I've got left. Honestly, anytime I get through page 50, you're like, yeah, nice.

12:20You get past page 100, you think, oh, yeah, now I'm crushing it. I always know exactly when the halfway point is. So if it's 336 pages long, a book, then I know at 100 and... 68. And I know I'm halfway through the book. I sense from your silence, you're less obsessed with that than I am. No, I'm not. I notice it a lot. And I notice it's a surprising amount. And although I've never read a book digitally, so I don't get any of that stuff. And I've obviously lots of my friends do, but I don't do it like that myself. I have to have the physical books, but I'm therefore quite conscious about where I am in it.

12:52Marina, I have a question from Evie for you. She says, I'm watching the new season of Emily in Paris. Their first episode takes place at the Roland Garros tennis tournament. Would Netflix film at the actual tournament or stage a fake Roland Garros. Emily and Farris, I do feel we'll have to fully centre it on at some time because it has become this absolute cult. People started by saying this is so ridiculous. And here we are as the fourth season starts. Okay, Roland Garros, the French Open, they would have filmed there. I happen to know that the strike stopped filming, so they weren't able to film.

13:24When they filmed at Roland Garros, there was no one there. They basically did have to restage an element to the French Open. Wow. Obviously, if they had had to take the actual footage from the French Open, which is one of my sort of bugbears of international sports footage, it is some of the most ridiculous sports footage you'll ever see. They've always got some new weird camera angles. It's so idiosyncratic and it's very much like if you saw that piece of footage, you would instantly know if you watch a lot of tennis, yeah, that's from the French Open. It could only be from Roland Garros. But yeah, they did actually have to sort of restage a version of it so that it could be filmed for Emily in Paris.

13:58I don't think it would conform to the Netflix house style, the Roland Garros house style. So perhaps it was all for the best that the strike happened. So what's the Roland Garros house style for this French Open filming style? A lot of fades, like weird, kind of slightly romantic slow-mo. I think this year they had some mad innovation where they got sort of like on par's eye camera. You're looking at these players' strange upturned faces making this or that appeal. Every year they've got something ridiculous. and a lot of sports broadcasters who have to take the package as it comes become very frustrated with a particular way that the French Open is not the action itself but lots of this other kind of peripheral stuff because it's so idiosyncratic and I'm sure it looks very normal on French TV but for a lot of other people it's like what is this?

14:41But if you're Emily in Paris for example you would get the rights you negotiate with the French Open you would have your cameras in there you presumably would film a section of crowd where everyone's just signed a waiver like if you come into that bit of the crowd a sign is up saying you may appear on tv so they sort of film their bits but probably not the players because of the image rights and stuff like that but you can film the atmosphere of an event and you can film the crowd the crowds are the big thing isn't it because to fill a stadium like that if it was just you with supporting artists would cost you so much money but if you just get permission to go in when there's a huge crowd anyway but at this point i mean emily in paris is just the most mega advert for the french tourist board If there's any classic French scene you've ever seen on a biscuit tin, something will happen in Emily in Paris right there.

15:26Which reminds me, but sorry, this is an absolute digression and Evie does not want to hear about this at all. Evie, I'm so sorry. We just finished the fourth season of the single best property show on television, which is the Parisian Agency, which is of all the shows about properties you can't afford. It's the one with the best properties and the most believable people and just is so beautiful. The family are so wonderful behind it. The properties are absolutely incredible. And as you say, it's literally like an advert for the French tourist board. The French Open, Parisian agency, Tour de France.

15:58They might as well all be sponsored by Visit France. And now Emily in Paris. Yeah. Does that answer your question, Evie? Right. Here we go with one from Andrew Brickles, who says, I listen to a lot of speech radio. Whenever a presenter overruns their slot, so the quarterly hour break is late, like news and adverts, They often seem to imply that they will be in trouble or will get moaned at by a producer or some such person. My questions are, do they? Who monitors this stuff? And how rigidly should it be adhered to? I imagine them being hauled before the boss's desk and told off, but surely no one actually cares?

16:32The opposite is true about no one actually caring. Firstly, Andrew Brickles. We're just going to let that go. Someone called Brickles. We heard that surname before. No, we haven't. I never know whether you're going to bite, but I should just be aware that you mostly will bite. You must have said when you read out Brickles, you're thinking, hold on, we've got a live one here. I should have done a four-second pause. Yeah. Andrew, yeah, they really, really do care. And there's two different things here. There's commercial radio, which I think Andrew is referring to here, and also the BBC. Now, in commercial radio, it's a huge deal to not hit those quarter hours because essentially each hour of a show is split into quarters and ad breaks are sold to be played in each of these quarters.

17:11And the advertisers know how many people are listening in each quarter. So certain quarters are more valuable than others. So each quarter is worth a different amount of money based on that audience size, which means if your ad break misses its quarter, those adverts have to be rescheduled to make sure they fulfill their audience quota. The commercial revenue spend is incredibly complicated. So if you are missing that quarter hour, somebody in an office upstairs, his job is made immensely harder that day. And there's a huge algorithm that has to go into play of how much money do we owe this advertiser?

17:44When can we replay this advert by this advertiser? Because it's so carefully calibrated because the way that radio audiences are put together, they're very aware that different groups of people are listening at different groups of time. If you think about radio in the morning, people going off to work at certain times, school runs and things like that, 15 minute chunks can be worth an awful lot more than other 15 minute chunks. So yeah, In commercial radio, it is an absolutely huge deal to miss those quarters. For the BBC, of course, which doesn't have that commercial imperative, it's slightly different.

18:14But that does tie into, funnily enough, the thing about taking the kids to school and what have you, is we are creatures of routine. And if the 9 o 'clock news is not at 9 o 'clock, it genuinely spins people out. And even if various features on the show are not at the exact time they used to be, because we all have a rhythm. You know, we're all in certain places when Popmaster comes on or 10 to the top on the Vernon K show. Our lives are sort of built around those radio routines. So if you don't hit the news at the right time on the BBC, it discombobulates people. And people who are discombobulated like to write into the BBC and complain.

18:46So again, easier if you do hit your marks. But yes, it's really one of those things. And again, as so often in the media for the commercial thing, it's all about money. It's all about how complicated it is to advertise on a show and the different rates that you have. So they're not kidding when they say they'll get in trouble and the producer will have a go at the presenter because the station manager will be having a go at the producer. It's a genuine big deal. It's a big part of the professionalism. And with that, I think we should go into a commercial break. Eczema isn't always obvious, but it's real.

19:16And so is the relief from EBCLIS. After an initial dosing phase, about 4 in 10 people taking EBCLIS achieved itch relief and clear or almost clear skin at 16 weeks. And most of those people maintain skin that's still more clear at one year with monthly dosing.

19:55Tell your doctor if you have new or worsening eye problems. You should not receive a live vaccine when treated with EpGliss. Before starting EpGliss, tell your doctor if you have a parasitic infection. Searching for real relief? Ask your doctor about EpGliss and visit epgliss.lily.com or call 1-800-LILY-RX or 1-800-545-5979. I'm Christian McCaffrey, pro running back, and Abercrombie is an official fashion partner of the NFL. I'm not kidding when I say NFL by Abercrombie broke the internet last year, and I think this season's lineup is even cooler. and so does my wife who keeps stealing all my hoodies.

20:27Stay fit for the season and Abercrombie's newest arrivals. Shop NFL by Abercrombie in the app, online, and in store.

20:43When did making plans get this complicated? It's time to streamline with WhatsApp, the secure messaging app that brings the whole group together. Use polls to settle dinner plans. Send event invites and pin messages so no one forgets mom's 60th. And never miss a meme or milestone. All protected with end-to-end encryption. It's time for WhatsApp. Message privately with everyone. Learn more at whatsapp.com.

21:14Welcome back, everybody. Marina, here's one from Joe. Can't do anything without Joe. Joe asks, Hearing you both talk about Steven Spielberg got me wondering why in the film world, directors are the biggest non-acting celebrities rather than the writers' screenwriters. Is there a historical cultural reason for this? I can name many Hollywood directors, but far fewer screenwriters. Ah, okay, Jay. Well, historically, it wasn't always thus. Right at the very start when the movie business started, the director was a really technical job who's just like, can you make sure you capture everything? And they didn't have the status at all, even in the golden age of Hollywood.

21:49It's almost like the producers were the star. They were the powerful people. Yes, some directors emerged, like people like Billy Wilder, Frank Capra, John Huston, John Ford. And there were some big name screenwriters. You know, they used to get in people like Scott Fitzgerald, who all these people used to be brought over and drink themselves to death in Hollywood. They'd all go over and get nothing in. But then there were people like Ben Hecht, who wrote lots of great things and became sort of well known. But no one was bigger than the stars. It was all about stars and studios. And the stars were not bigger than studios.

22:18They were sort of contract players. But then in the 1950s, the auteur theory emerges in Europe, which is that the idea that the film is the director's vision and that they are the linchpin of the whole movie and everything is sort of refracted through them. And that itself, the auteur theory was very influential on the new Hollywood, which is kind of the bit probably that you're thinking of most, where you're thinking of people like Spielberg, as you mentioned, Coppola, De Palma, I don't know, George Lucas, Michael Cimino, Scorsese, all these people, That sort of new Hollywood of the 1970s, they come up with this idea and it is very much their vision and the director becomes a huge thing.

22:56Now, interestingly, the writer's medium now surely is and has been for the last 20 years. It's not really, you know, you don't really know who writes movies and often about, I'll have cycled through about four or five or six sets of writers. and the big, big names in television are the showrunners who almost without exception have been writers. They're not directors. They don't often direct, sometimes they direct. And it started with people like David Chase, The Sopranos, you know, David Simon, you've got Vince Gilligan, Breaking Bad, Sean Ryan, The Shield, all those sort of people. And then you think of Jesse Armstrong or Armando Iannucci or people like that.

23:31We'll talk about the lack of female showrunners another time, I think, just as I'm running sighting through that list. Those have been the auteurs. People are drawn to television because they think, oh my goodness, I can tell a story over maybe 10 hours or I can tell a story over seven seasons. And that has become known, obviously, as the writer's medium. And you know the names of those writers. And you honestly, with the greatest respect to many of the directors working for those people, you don't know the names of them, even though there are brilliant people, people like Mark Myler who directs succession episodes and all sorts.