Should Children Watch The Shining?

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1:41Hello, and welcome to this episode of the Restless Entertainment Questions and Answers Edition. I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osman. And you are the stars of the show with your many, many questions. I'm going to go straight in with Annie Ludler. Hello. Hello, sorry. Hello. All right. Okay, ask me. Okay. Marina, I'll ask you a question. How are you? I'm fine, thank you. How are you? That's got out of the way. None of your business. It is none of your business. Annie says, it's from Annie Ludlam. She says, the new Wuthering Heights trailer is incredibly sexed up. Would the Bronte estate have any control over the adaptation?

2:13And how does studio execs tell if an audience will enjoy something like this? Okay, I have seen this trailer. I've seen it a couple of times. I agree. First of all, it's out of copyright. They're all in the public domain because copyright expires 70 years after the author's death. so we're well past that period. So it essentially means anything that's written by someone who died more than 70 years ago is absolutely fair game. You can do absolutely anything with it and there are certain anniversaries coming up of people. That's why we can see there's so many Sherlock Holmes movies and so many different versions of that Sherlock Holmes story is because anybody could do it.

2:45Anyone at home now could film a Sherlock Holmes film. I should say if you don't know about it it's The Wuthering Heights it's directed by Emerald Fennell and it's got Who did Saltburn Who did Saltburn and Promising Young Woman and it's got Jacob Elordi and Margot Robbie as Heathcliff and Kathy. First of all, I do find these things quite hilarious. I love it when a trailer like this comes out because you can just imagine the sort of frothing fury and, you know, people saying, this is quite disgusting, you know, and it's kind of like, get over it, Grandpa. Everyone's going to go and see it. I don't know where they are, but I'm telling you right now that the Daily Mail are currently running about two articles a week about a film that doesn't yet come out till February, Valentine's Day, obviously.

3:27she's very provocative she's actually kicking there's a Bronte Women's Writing Festival next year so she's kicking that off I'm sure there will be some people who are absolutely furious about that but I do think if you're going to do the classics you should just redo them I mean people will probably be annoyed about Kate Bush doing it in her inimitable style but it was bonkers and brilliant she's got a real sort of talent for this kind of event thing Emerald Fennell and it's kind of transgressive and whatever and they've done a preview screening I think quite deliberately because the leaks that came out of it were all like the first thing you see is a hanging and there's the person being hung ejaculates just before his death and then a nun sort of gropes his corpse it's like wow this is it's all I don't want to say it's all seeping out after what I've just said but it is all this information starts with an ejaculating corpse I know I mean like I said that's an idea for the next novel Yeah.

4:28Divisive, but jolly. See, I think the question is not what would the Bronte estate make of it, it's what would Emily Bronte make of it. And I would have thought she'd be delighted beyond words to still being, you know, written about all those years later and to have another artist do a different version of it. What fun. I mean, the last thing she wants to do is someone else has done a kind of dark and brooding adaptation. You know, Emily Bronte is watching this remote control in hand bag of maltesers uh she's thinking this is incredible look at the advances that hanging wasn't in the book i wonder where they're going with this oh okay i see where they're going with this well listen in for a penny in for a pound uh what for you know you've got to do it differently you've got to do it differently yeah i mean and as for the question of like does would audiences enjoy how do they know whether audiences enjoy this there is a sort of technical answer to this which is that when you're releasing films theatrically you do have things like preview screenings and you have screenings before the final edit is anywhere close to anything because a lot of directors find it quite helpful to see and you get audiences to fill in cards of how they felt and sometimes you can kind of shepherd them into asking particular questions and lots of directors find this very helpful but audiences did enjoy something like this with Saltburn and they in a way they enjoyed something like this not as I've just described with Barbie which obviously because this is Margot Robbie's production company he's made this it's got the same opening scene yeah it's had the same opening scene but Ken they cut that out in the end in the end they just decided to go with the no genitals thing but that was fine so they kept it canon but actually I mean people have always done these things they're those Pasolini films that are based on like the Canterbury Tales and the Decameron and things like that and they've just kept all the raunchy bits and I just got rid of the moral dimension.

6:17I mean, Roman Polanski's test, I suppose. I'm trying to think of other ones that have... Anyway, but the point is, you know, you don't have to go and see it on Valentine's Day. No, you don't have to see it at all. Anything that can make newspapers write free articles about it, this many months, six months out or whatever we are, from February the 14th, it's very, very helpful for filmmakers and there will be lots and lots of hype about this movie. Whereas with Saltburn, it didn't do so well in theatres, but it suddenly became, once it got onto the stream, was very quickly, it became a really big thing.

6:47I mean, she has a talent for this kind of provocation. So I think we have to say that we know people like it and probably they will see it. Yeah, and if you think it goes against the spirit of the book, well, I have good news, the book is still available. Yeah. You know, Emily Bronte's done her version of the story and she moved on quickly afterwards. So she's done it, she's told the story. And it's absolutely always there. It's in black and white, you can read it forever and ever. And for the next 500 years, people will go, do you know what, there's something in that story that gives me a different idea.

7:14So I'm going to use it as a springboard for something I want to say. And that's all those films are. But, you know, you cannot besmirch Emily Bronte's memory. I never feel younger than when I don't care about things like this. I just feel like, oh, shut up, Grandpa. All the moaning and the pile clatching. I never feel young. These sort of things make me feel young again when I see them because I don't care. Yeah, an awful lot of people who haven't talked about Emily Bronte much for the last 30 years suddenly talking about Emily Bronte. In a very protective way. Here's a question for you. This is a little bit connected, so I'm going to ask you this one because it forms part of a nice discussion.

7:45Okay, Victoria Wallace says, why are there so many Stephen King adaptations each year? Ah, and some of the greatest movies of all time as well. Stephen King. Well, you know, a number of reasons. Firstly, he writes a lot of books and he writes a lot of short stories and they have incredible beginnings, middles and ends and have incredible imagery. So, you know, generations of screenwriters and directors grow up reading these books and the first thing they think about when they think, what would I like to film, is Stephen King. So you have that in that the source material is fantastic and that he sometimes is hands on, sometimes is hands off and seems to be quite good at working out what to be when.

8:19But the interesting thing with Stephen King, and this talks to the idea of, you know, if someone's been dead for 70 years, you can do their work for free. You can almost do Stephen King's work for free. So he has long had this idea. He said it was my idea and my accountant was absolutely furious about it. But he has this thing which he calls his dollar baby project in the sort of 70s when they started getting big and students contacting him and saying I love this short story of yours I'd love to adapt it one day and so he has said right from that moment he said you know whatever legal issues there are he says I will grant any student filmmaker the right to make a movie out of any short story I have written not the novels that would be ridiculous so long as the film rights are still mine to assign I asked him to sign a paper promising that no resulting film will be exhibited commercially without approval and also that they send me a videotape of the finished work.

9:11And so he now has a shelf of these, of young student filmmakers who've adapted short stories of his. He has a whole shelf of them and he calls them his dollar babies. Firstly, it's indicative of there's something about his work that speaks to young filmmakers. There's something about the spirit of it. But secondly, on a very practical level, for example, one of the very first people to take him up on that offer, one of the very first people who wrote to him and was assigned the rights to something for$1 was Frank Darabont. Oh, yeah. So he made The Woman in the Room, which in 1986 with some fellow NYU film students, wrote to Stephen King, said that we'd love to do a version of The Woman in the Room.

9:50And Stephen King said, yeah, there's the rights for you for$1, you know, under all the usual terms. So Frank Darabont made that. And less than a decade later, Frank Darabont gets in touch with Stephen King again because they've been in touch, right? they have a commercial relationship already he can talk to him directly and Frank Darabont says I've just been reading the novella Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption I just think I can do an adaptation of it and Stephen King's like I just don't see how that would be a film but listen I know you I like what you did before you're on my shelf of dollar babies you can have the rights to Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption charging$5 ,000 which actually is much less than you would normally charge someone.

10:34But, you know, he knows Frank. He thinks it's unfilmable anyway. So he says you can have the rights for$5 ,000. There's a lengthy back and forth. I think Rob Reiner was originally going to direct Shawshank Redemption, but Frank Darabont does it himself in the end. And it's obviously one of the most beloved movies of all time. It made the reputation of Frank Darabont. Again, made huge amounts of money for everybody. It's greatly loved and comes directly from Stephen King, letting student filmmakers pay just a dollar to adapt things. Even the$5 ,000 that Frank Darabont paid Stephen King for the rights, Stephen King did not cash that check.

11:09Instead, after the movie was made, Stephen King, he sent the check back, he framed it, sends it back to Frank Darabont to this$5 ,000 check with a note saying, in case you ever need bail money. So that's a guy who understands filmmakers, who understands storytellers, and he works kind of hand in glove with him. So there's lots of reasons why there are millions of adaptations. There were four this year alone, which I think is amazing. Long Walk, Life of Chuck. You loved Long Walk. Oh, my goodness me. I'm still harrowed by it. Still deeply harrowed by it. The Monkey and The Running Man starring Glenn Powell.

11:42Your friend. Oh, yes. We're getting nearer and nearer. Edgar Wright's directing it with Glenn Powell. That'll be great. That'll be a lot of fun. That's a good combination of people. Yeah. Edgar Wright and Glenn Powell. And Frank Darabont, because we've also had a question, which we'll just deal with this very quickly, like whatever happened to Frank Darabont. he sort of just withdrew on purpose he had a fallout over Walking Dead and things like that he is coming back because he's going to direct I think a couple of episodes of the final season of Stranger Things so lots of people have said oh where is he what's ever happened to him he is returning to our screens behind the camera in not too long a time so he did the Green Mile straight after Shawshank as well didn't he yes which felt like more of the same but yeah another great film oh that's great to hear what's your favourite Stephen King adaptation The Shining which he hated really?

12:29yeah I just think it's I don't know about The Shining you don't think it's a good movie oh my god I can't start this just before probably we're going to a break I don't hate it it's just not my sort of thing you know I find it's a bit you know as soon as something becomes sort of magical realism and you know I just do you know Kieran's dad took him to the well premiere of The Shining when he was nine so honestly incredible my husband incredible parenting some incredible parenting there not the first or last incredible parenting it was really That is amazing. It's also an object lesson. With a friend who I think still had to sleep with a light on, you know, by the time he was 30.

13:02But it is an object lesson in parenting has very little impact on children because your husband could not be more level headed. He's not like a man who saw The Shining when he was nine years old. Although he very much did. And some other bad stuff, too. But yes, it depends whether the child can take it or not. I allowed my child to also see it when he was nine. But not all of them would be allowed to. It's like a fan of just one of them. Yeah, well, I mean, I'm not letting my daughter see it. No, she'd have an absolute... I mean, she'd get scared from a lot of things. Bake off. Yeah. Put those eggs.

13:36I'm not advocating showing The Shining to a nine-year-old. By the way, it sounds a bit like you are, because should I tell you what you did? He loved it. He loved it, Richard. You told a cautionary tale, like, can you believe how awful my husband's father was that he took him to see The Shining at age of nine? And then literally within 30 seconds, he's saying, I remember the payoff to the story The Shining when he was nine as well I should have kept a secret I'll tell you what I can't keep anything secret from you Richard I've got to have it all out there and that's the reality I've compromised myself in the same way Okay What was that?

14:08What's my favourite Stephen King adaptation? Sorry Wow Self-obsessed much I'm so sorry I'm just reflecting on my parenting What is your favourite Stephen King adaptation? By the way listeners if you have let your child watch something more inappropriate at a younger age do let us know that might not even be my worst I'd be amazed by the way I've just got to think it through kids kids there's a new Wuthering Heights adaptation come in gather round the television I think listen it has to be Shawshank Redemption but shiny wouldn't be anywhere close to the top three because you've got Misery and Stand By Me as well okay that well yeah I wouldn't put Shawshank in it myself you would not put Shawshank in it really really any reasons you think it's schmaltzy yeah I think it's trite you think it's trite yeah But I love Trite.

14:53I know. What do you mean you know it? I'm just going to have a break. I can't say it. I just can only say the wrong thing currently. No, I love Shawshank. I think if you're going to do Schmaltz, do it brilliantly. Yes. And I think if someone does Schmaltz brilliantly, then they've just made the best film of all time. That's my opinion. If you make the best Schmaltzy film ever made, you've just made the best movie of all time. I think it's harder to make a great Schmaltzy film than to make a great art house film. That might be the case. Yeah, that might be the case. I think you're probably right.

15:18Okay, fair enough. We can agree on that. I can't draw a veil over all my mistakes. OK, shall we go to a break, Richard? Let's do that.

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16:36Welcome back everyone. Actually, that conversation we just had about showing children thing, there's a question which we'll do next week I think, because I love it as a question, which is someone who's got 11 and 13 year old kids and they're saying I want to educate them on the basis of good entertainment. So can we pick a film, a TV show and a book that we would show to an 11 to 13 year old to put them on the right path? Well, that's anything as far as I'm concerned. But we'll do that next week because that's a really lovely question. But I have a question. Instead, I have a question about football audio.

17:02This is safer. This is a lot safer. Keep listening, everyone. Natasha Boyd asked this question. Natasha says, with football back on the telly and following the Lionesses roaring summer success, I have a question about the sound capture in games. I've noticed that the noise of football players hitting the ball is often audible when watching football on the television particularly during key moments like penalties you can hear a clear and satisfying thwack when the players kick the ball but how is the audio captured? Well you're right Natasha it's got so amazing and actually if you go back and you watch old matches and stuff on YouTube you're like oh my god I can't believe I listened to this or watched this it's so sort of basic it's become particularly ever since the money came in with the football rights and with the Premier League and with Sky, they've been able to make it so good.

17:46Premier League production set it up at every game and you've got three mics on every side line, which are boundary mics. In the 70s in football, there were three mics on every team, weren't there? Everyone was called Mike. Sorry. Okay, very good. You've got your boundary mic, Mike boundary. And then that picks up the ambient stadium sound. Then you've got two mics on each goal, which is in the top left corner and the top right corner. These are pressure zone mics so that they can get that, you know, if it hits the bar or else it hits the net, you can feel the sort of... Oh, really? Yeah. Then there's one mic at each corner flag.

18:23There are 360 degree microphones for crowd sound and some of them have, the big stadiums have them put into the roof already rigged. There are four for general atmosphere, which is like ambisonic and surround sound mics. And then there's one on the beauty shot camera, which gets up individual tackles and action. And then there's one on the steadicams for the technical area and when they're coming out the tunnel. They're using shotgun microphones. That's very important. You're pointing at the thing that you want. So they're incredibly directional. Yeah, they're very directional and they don't pick up the other stuff.

18:53So you're thinking, well, that's a lot of sound. So the real skill comes in the outside broadcast truck because there's a specific sound mixer who's taking all these different feeds and they have to follow the state of play and then they boost and they dip the levels of all these. I mean, can you imagine the stress? I know. That's amazing. So if there's a penalty, then you want to dip the stadium sound and bring up the behind-the-goal mic so you can hear it. And then if you think the player's going to just, I don't know, like when Rooney slagged off the England fans, you want to make sure that that's brought up.

19:24So you're mixing all these different audio channels all the time. You've got commentary, crowd, pitch. Tony Pasta, our esteemed boss at Goal Hanger. The governor. He's the powerboat. He is quite literally our Lord and Master. Now, he says that the best net sound in a Premier... Because he comes from a sporting background, Tony. By which I mean sporting broadcasting, not sporting. He didn't used to play cricket for England. Although, you know, I believe he could have. Oh, he could have. Anything he sets his mind to. He could do anything he wants. Anything Tony sets his mind to. But he was once doing the titles for Match of the Day, and he said the sound of curtains being opened really rapidly sounded much more like the ball fizzing into the back of the net than the real thing.

20:00So that's what they used. Oh, wow. That's cool. Just imagine. Yeah. I'm now just imagining Tony's in front of these things. But we know a lot about these types of sound because I was talking to someone who was part of doing all the soundscapes for COVID because obviously, and by the way, you should be on a list if you watched it without crowd noise during that time. It's like those people who say, I only watch sport without the commentary because I don't need it. You think, oh my God, really? What, I mean, you don't want to hear a human being? No, it's just that they think of themselves as purists and it's unbearable.

20:33I would rather hear Lee Dixon than silence. Oh, my God. Absolutely. But the soundscapes during COVID, they had to kind of create this thing from stuff that already existed, because obviously once it was shut down, they couldn't record anything. So they went to EA Sports and they got all the individual stuff for individual teams. They got the chance because EA Sports had already from FIFA had got lots of this stuff. And then they kind of created these things to make it seem less horrific, which, as I say, you should be on a list if you didn't listen to those things. but part of the whole thing about doing something like that is that audiences at home pick up on the queues from the stadium and are led by them and actually you know we all have to admit that sometimes you're talking about your team or whatever or thinking about it or watching something online at the same time and there's something that pulls you back so the noise is actually the crowd noise they've tested it and done lots of research if you have it to kind of push down the crowd noise then people don't find they don't know why but they didn't find the game as exciting but if they're being led by it people are very very suggestible basically and so that swelling noise really makes people stop being distracted by whatever's happening in their home when they're watching at home but it's quite a technical big business.

21:43That's unbelievable. Do you know what I would like AI to do? You know if you're ever out in the countryside or something on a Sunday going for a walk and you come across a game of cricket or if you're walking past some playing fields and there's a game of football going on if you could sit down, put your headphones in and AI could do a commentary on that game, I would stay and watch the whole thing. Because you know, you sort of watch, you think, oh, I wish I knew who was playing. I wish I knew who he would cheer for. I wish I knew, you know... The plot lines, which one of these slept with the other one's wife.

22:12Yeah, I'd like to know. All of that stuff. If AI could do that, in fact, if AI did that, you would have huge crowds at every single village cricket game, wouldn't it? It'd be amazing. Did you ever? Yeah. Wow. And then you're like looking, is that her? I bet that's her. That's her with the jam tarts, I think. Yeah, yeah, yeah. God, you know what? You can tell. You can tell. Looks no better than she should be. Yeah. How's that? I'd like that. Yeah. Well, okay, another of your great ideas just cast as pearls before swine. That feels to me like that's less fully formed than some of my other ideas.

22:45Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's like me saying, why don't we invent a pill that kills all diseases? Yeah. That's what I really like. And you just take it one morning. It feels a little bit like one of the dreams you've had rather than one of the ideas you've had. Yeah, yeah. I put it in your dream category folder. Yeah, I was being reminded the other day of the perfect episode of The Bill that I dreamt, but I'll tell that story another day. If anyone wants to ask me a question about the perfect episode, The Bill, that I dreamt, then do feel free. Oh, okay, I do, but okay, we'll save it to next week in case somebody actually obliges us.

23:15This is a question, but it's also therapy that I need you to give me. It's about skipping bad books, and it's from Damien O 'Rourke. He says, is life too short for a bad book? Maybe it's a modern attention problem, but I find I have less tolerance as I get older. Do you quit a book if you don't like it? And if so, when? Or do you keep slogging at it? Yeah, different people have very different views on this. I'm afraid I do skip things. No, it's great. I wish you've only got so little time in life. But also I'm aware that some people might read the first chapter of one of my books and just go, you know what?

23:47This is not for me. I know what I like. This is not quite it. And that's absolutely fine. And if they're allowed to do it to me. Well, then when do you drop it? Quite quickly. Okay. Because by and large, it's not always the story hook in me. And it's how am I enjoying this writing? There's always someone has a style. And I know the things that I like. I like things to be fairly direct. I like beautiful writing, but I'm not sure I love dense writing unless it's got humour or something or a bit of a spark in something. So, you know, very kind of flowery, descriptive writing. If the first three pages are describing a hedgerow, a bit of me is going, I know there's going to be more hedgerow stuff in the rest of this book.

24:23and I don't know if I can handle it. If after two pages of hedgerow description, like a car comes through the hedgerow and skids and someone fires out of the window, count me in. Yeah. Okay. But if that car is not, if on page four, the car comes through the hedgerow, I'm afraid I've switched off. I think you can. It takes a really, really long time to write a book. So it feels rude to not read. Oh my God, I read all the way and I hate myself. I mean, I read, I don't think I've ever not finished a book in my life but why? what's the thinking? I don't know it's like a no no it's like a but you know huge like 800 page non-fiction things oh my god but I really want to stop doing it it's almost you know what I have I have that psychological feeling you know say you've got a chocolate digestive and you eat half and you put it down somewhere in the house because the doorbell goes or whatever I do not know that feeling no but go on no but say the doorbell goes I agree but say it goes and you're aware that there's a psychological half a biscuit somewhere around the house and you don't know where it is and it doesn't matter that you've got a whole other packet and you could eat all of those.