The Power Of Agents

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1:30Hello and welcome to another edition of the Rest is Entertainment Questions version of the show. That's getting snappier every week. Yeah, sorry. It's just, why am I so bad at it, Richard? No, you're not. You're terrific at it. Thank you. It's because it shows, it's kind of that non-slickness. Actually, in a weird way, it's very slick. But as you always remind me, it is also an answers edition of the show. Yeah, question and answers. But yeah, authenticity is what people like. Is it right, is it now? In which case, in the spirit of being completely authentic, I have got something wrong, obviously.

2:01We talked about Category 1 deaths on this. If you didn't listen, it was... If you didn't listen, this is going to sound quite odd. Catch up now. Yeah, we did talk about Category 1 deaths on the Questions Edition last week. Questions and Answers Edition. Questions and Answers Edition, which is the members of the royal family that the BBC will interrupt all news programming for and it's a matter of protocol. And I said that it was the King, Camilla, Prince William and Prince George. In fact, because Prince George is so young, he has not been made a Category 1. But Kate has recently been upgraded to a Category 1 death, not to do with the health story.

2:35I should be very clear about that. So now the Category 1 death category is Charles, Camilla, William and Kate. And those are the people for whom all programming is automatically interrupted. Having said that, as we discussed, it would be interrupted for a lot of different people as well in the event of it, and that's an editorial decision made by the editor-in-chief, who is Tim Davey, as well as being the director general. Here's a question from Oliver Marks. You've mentioned on the pod before that those wanting to write a novel should be reading lots of books. Is it the same with budding script writers?

3:04Should they read scripts, or can you get enough from just being an avid viewer? Yes. First of all, you can find lots of scripts published, and there's some of the great... I mean, Faber recently brought out all the succession scripts, and so those are really worth looking at. but having said all that I would say watching is by far the best for the rhythms of speech and when I first started writing scripts I found that if you're writing final draft which is the sort of software that everybody uses my characters would be saying four or five lines to each other now come on okay any script that most people are involved with now you really gotta earn your four or five lines of final draft it should be one or two lines do you mean do you mean do you mean even a full two lines in a Word document or anything like that.

3:52And when you're getting notes of someone like Armando Iannucci and you're doing a script, I was talking to Ian Martin, who began as the swearing consultant on the Pick of It. He's a very lovely man. He's the most wonderful person. And I wrote a script with him on a series of Avenue 5 and it was just absolutely, he is a delight. But he will rightly say that all of Armando's notes essentially boil down to shorter, funnier. And actually quite often it will just say shorter, funnier in the margin. in blue so in the sense that looking at a published script is quite helpful you actually see gosh these lines really are quite short and you learn not to waste words and actually as in rich and i we've just we talked about this on the podcast before learning not to waste words in any form of writing is the best thing you can do writing short first and becoming longer is always the best thing you can do but there's a there's there's a temptation isn't there you you know you look at erin sorkin or jesse armstrong and you remember some big long speech some big grandstanding and speaks that someone did, and to write like that.

4:47And actually, both of them used those things very, very sparingly. Yeah, you look at that speech in something like A Few Good Men, the famous sort of Jack Nicholson speech, you see how rat-a-tat the scene leading up to that is with Tom Cruise questioning him, and it's really a lot of half-lines in there. And then suddenly this kind of release comes. But in general, so published scripts are very useful for things like that, but in general, I would always say that watching and listening to people on the bus or anywhere or wherever it is for the rhythms of speech is better. I can't do screenwriting.

5:19And I've tried. I bet you can. I find it very difficult. I find it too fiddly, the business of the thing, having to put people's names and then sort of say interior something day. I just want to get on with, you know, writing what people are thinking and saying. You know, so it doesn't... Oh, I think you could do it. No. Oh, listen, I've tried. And I can exclusively reveal I can't do it. I'm very bad at it. It's like the Thursday Murder Club movie. There's no way I would have written it. not just because of time and stuff like that. It's not my speciality. So I think for some people who've tried to do novels and it's not for them, screenwriting might be for them and people who've tried to do screenwriting, it's not for them, do novels because they're completely different forms of writing.

5:57They feel like they're the same form of writing, but I think they're entirely different. But you can get, if you write plays, there are so many brilliant things available. There's lots of free resources online as well. Just all the screenplays are some of the greatest movies ever made, the greatest TV shows. so yeah just look at them and sometimes it's worth looking at them whilst watching the thing yeah because you see little changes and little notes and how you know little bits of stage direction are interpreted and it just gets you into the rhythm of how these things are done so i would say 100 if you want to screenwrite read screenplays and watch things and maybe do both at the same time yeah that's a good a good primer richard here's one for you from aid bond when When contestants are eliminated from a game show, do they wait in the green room for the rest of the contestants to join them?

6:43Or are they in the next taxi out of town? I love the way we apportion questions with each other. You've got like, I want to talk about writing. It's incredibly important about how all the great works of entertainment have been created. And I do. Contestants waiting around in green rooms. I think it's good. Yes, it's two different answers, really. Lots of shows like Pointless, you're on the next show anyway. so you go back to your dressing room and get your next clothes on. By and large, if that's you off the show, you can go. Occasionally, you'll do a show where you do pick-ups at the end, in which case you have to stick around.

7:19I think 15 to 1 does that, because there's so many different camera shots in that, they'd have to pick up lots at the end. So you have to just essentially go into your dressing room and wait. And you can't even watch the show, because the ring main, and the ring main is in a TV studio, all the monitors can show you what's happening in the studio. It's called the ring main. And by and large, you switch that off anywhere contestants might be because you don't want them to see rehearsals before the show or you don't want to give anything away. So you can't even watch the TV. You can just stew in your own juice about your wrong answers.

7:52Yeah, exactly. I think I won't even have to do a pick-up probably. And your pick-up will always be the answer you got wrong as well. You'll be like, oh, you didn't get me getting that wrong, so now I have to do it again. I have to act and say, I'm going to say Anne of Cleves. No, that's wrong. And you've had to wait four hours to do that. But on a lot of celebrity shows, you get to go straight home because, you know, celebs won't stick around. We had lovely Kate Thornton on House of Games last week that we were filming. And she said that she had to get herself knocked out by round two of the weakest link because she had a taxi waiting because she had somewhere to be.

8:32And she said, I couldn't have gone beyond round two. So I think she, and you see that on Weakless Link a lot, people taking a dive and people very happily sort of, because you get paid the same money if you get knocked out early or late. So off they pop. But yeah, by and large, you can go home. But yeah, certain shows you'd have to stick around because, you know, you have to go back to your podium and, you know, relive your humiliation because the cameras didn't pan to you quite quickly enough. And the green rooms in TV shows is a whole other thing. if anyone wants questions about what's in a green room on a TV show and different dressing rooms in different studios.

9:07That's to say it varies in my experience. I mean, it really varies. And also, listen, I don't want to go, but the amount of how early you have to get called to a TV studio sometimes. Oh, my God. Just remember in COVID, goodbye and I actually call you somewhere in two hours. And even though I'm a producer, sometimes I forget and I turn up when they say, and in COVID you would be in a tiny dressing room that no one was allowed to come into. You weren't allowed to go and mix with anybody. and obviously there weren't allowed to be any snacks and people weren't allowed to bring you anything. So you'd be sitting, you know, in a cell for two hours, essentially.

9:40I mean, that's really niche. That was TV during COVID and that's, you know, I suffered. Also, you met your wife, so swing some roundabouts. So come on, swing some roundabouts, exactly. Here's a question from Daniel Barnes, and it probably touches on something that's been in the news recently as well, but here's the question he's asking. Daniel says, when in TV and movies a character has a gun trained on them, is it just a bunch of crew with laser pointers or do they add it with VFX? Okay, it depends on the camera setup. They might, depending on whose coverage, as in every time a scene is filmed, you'll have lots and lots of different camera setups to get every single piece of that scene.

10:16So there may be a part where someone is using a laser pointer, but in general, the weapons that come onto set are bought by an armourer. This has been in the news for various reasons recently, and we'll talk about that in a second. And in old Hollywood, they would use live rounds all the time. It was obviously a complete sort of Wild West. But now you would have weapons with a laser sight on it and the actor would be pointing them. But that armourer who comes onto a set, I've worked on a couple of shows that there's been an armourer and they are the most obsessively careful people you can possibly imagine.

10:48And for one of them, there wasn't even a gun. It was a sort of form of crossbow. But they are so careful in general. and they have to be and they check everything a million times and you sometimes think, why are we going over this? Like for a makeshift crossbow that doesn't even work, why are we going over all these ridiculous protocols? Well, you'll all have seen the story that happened with Alec Baldwin on this filming, this sort of, again, a Wild West film called Rust where there was an armour on set. She is now going to prison for 18 months. I mean, quite rightly. The weapon wasn't checked.

11:21Alec Baldwin discharged it in a scene, killed the director of photography, He injured the director. One of the things I found fascinating about the story is that when I first heard about it, I was like, how absolutely dreadful. This is the job of the armourer. And people who've worked on proper sets that are well run with an armourer, nothing like that could possibly, possibly have happened. There were live rounds mixed in with the blanks. I mean, this is absolute madness. But what I think is quite weird and interesting is you just don't see anyone in Hollywood defending Alec Baldwin over this, which I think is unusual or eye-catching in some way.

11:52and it may be because Alec Baldwin's quite annoying and people find him annoying in some way or another. But also I think that there's a perception that that movie is only happening because none of us will ever go to see the movies and see Rust. It's probably being made for TV. Yeah, so they're back on set making it, right? They're back on set making it. But none of us would ever go, I mean now perhaps people will in some ghoulish way go and look, but you would see it maybe on a streaming service, whatever. But that movie is only happening because of Alec Baldwin. He's got a massive executive producer fee.

12:22He's got a massive... And sometimes you find that in order to get a film greenlit, you need, in this case, Alec Baldwin. Otherwise, nobody else is there. So huge amounts of money are siphoned from all the budget, really, towards a big EP fee, as well as a stars fee. He's starring it as well, but he's an executive producer too. Clearly, on some of these sets, and people in the industry will talk to you about this and will say, yeah, then they're cutting corners because how you've got such a young armourer who doesn't know what you're doing in a film that is a western, by the way. Yeah, so lots of guns.

12:52Weapons is a significant part of it. But pure speculation. But I'm wondering whether there's a lack of defence for him from the wider entertainment community because people feel that at some level, he as a producer and as a producer who is being paid a big fee is responsible for the standards on the wider set. And if it's solely a vanity credit, then maybe stop taking the vanity credits and so much money in order that sets can be run properly. That is speculation. I don't know. But I think it's very, very significant, the lack of public support he's had. And it's fascinating that thing of, as you say, you've got a crossbow and it doesn't even work.

13:25And so why are you taking all those steps? And the reason you're taking all those steps is just to instil in every single person this is what we always do, whatever happens. Because if you start kind of taking shortcuts on that, then you'll take shortcuts on the next step up and the next step up. And that's why so many jobs involve absolutely going through the same motions every single time. It's like being a pilot or something you have to do, even though you know what you're doing, You have to check things off a list every single time, every single time, just because when you're doing a job where safety is paramount, pilot, armourer, then you just need to make sure that the processes are in place every single time.

14:00Absolutely. And the fact that they've gone back to continue with it is truly tells you everything about the type of industry and the money and how they look at it. Yeah. I mean, Daniel Barnes, I know that's not what you asked, but I hope it's a bit of a tangent there. Yeah. I hope you found it helpful. In-flight entertainment Richard, Darren Hinchy asks, my question's about movies and TV shows that can be watched on airplanes. Who chooses what will be shown? Is there good money selling a movie or TV show to an airline? Are TV shows like Hijack banned from being shown? Do you know what? I was on a plane recently and someone was watching Hijack on their iPad right in front, just sort of in my eyeline.

14:41So, you know, yes, they are banned from being shown, or certainly they're not encouraged to be shown anything with their air crashes. So by and large, I mean, we all know what those entertainment systems are. They're sort of a mix of TV shows and films. And, you know, it's always like they've got Cobra Enthusiasm, but one episode. And they're Big Bang 3. They've got 40 episodes. And, you know, Tulsa Kings, they've got episode two of season one and episode five of season two. But there is a sort of method behind the madness by and large. It's, I mean, there's a sort of very simple answer. So by and large, for an hour of content, be that film, TV, documentary, whatever, you would get$1 ,300 per hour if you're the producer.

15:23So if you're the distributor who's selling that onto the airlines, you would get$1 ,300 an hour for your content, which doesn't sound an awful lot, but two things make it slightly more lucrative. One, it's always non-exclusive. So you're getting$1 ,300 an hour from British Airways, but you can sell the same content to Virgin and Delta. You can sell it to 40 airlines if you want the exact same thing. So suddenly you're getting, you know,£45 ,000 an hour. And secondly, it's only for three months, so they've got a three-month licence on it. And in the world where, I mean, if you're making a big Marvel film, it's not making a huge amount of difference to your bottom line, but you do an overall deal in that situation if you're a studio.

16:07But if you are, you know, a documentary maker or you have a sort of smaller British sitcom and we've talked before about how everything is deficit funded now, which is channels can't afford everything. If you're suddenly getting, you know, another$40 ,000 an hour for your product and you don't have to do anything, you know, literally it's just money in your back pocket. And it's marketing. And it's marketing as well, then it can be incredibly useful. So it kind of works for the airlines because they're not paying a huge amount per hour for what they're putting on. It works for producers because they can be on 40, 50 different airlines around the world and it's money that you know they haven't put in the budget and they're not expecting kind of works for everybody but you know in these days of everyone bringing their own tablets and things onto planes I'm not entirely sure how long that industry has left but there's certain films that work beautifully on planes I watched an amazing film called Swing Vote with Kevin Costner I've watched that on a plane yeah there you go it's an absolute classic you know and it just the entire US election comes down to one vote and it's Kevin Costner Yeah, it's as good as it sounds.

17:09But I imagine if I saw that at the cinema, I'd walk out. Oh, yeah. I mean, I can't envisage myself buying a ticket at the window. But also, good luck walking out when you're on a plane. I mean, you'd really have to hate a film. Yeah. I'm going to say there's one film I saw in the cinema that genuinely if I was watching on a plane, I would open the emergency headset and throw myself out. Which one was it, please? I can't. Do you know what? I cannot begin to teddy the mail we would get. Really? If I said what that film was. was it by Guy Ritchie wow shall we go to a break now

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18:37October 24th. Get your tickets now. At Sierra, discover great deals on top brand workout gear, like high-quality walking shoes, which might lead to another discovery. 40 ,000 steps, baby. Who's on top now, Karen? You've taken the office step challenge a step too far. Don't worry, though. Sierra also has yoga gear. It might be a good place to find your zen. Discover top brands at unexpectedly low prices. Sierra, let's get moving. Welcome back, everybody. I'm going straight into a question about... That's a good idea. Agents. Don't you think on the question and answer, you know. Yeah. Alistair Otto would like to know, with a 35-year passion for football, I think I possess a good understanding of agents and their impacts on maximising players' potential and earnings after following this side of the game in the media.

19:27Thank you. Good use of euphemisms, Alistair. All right, the rest is football. Yeah. But he's curious about the entertainment industry. How influential are agents? Is having a great agent more crucial than having a good one? Or does an individual's success ultimately hinge on talent alone in this field? It is fairly crucial, I would say, to have a great agent. I like the fact that you do not have a TV agent, though, Richard. I don't have an agent. I think I'm the last remaining holdout. You've got a literary agent, but not a TV agent. Well, because I don't understand the business of books, where I do understand the business of TV.

19:59So people will send me a contract and you go, that doesn't look exactly right to me. Certainly in the world of comedy and entertainment, the big agencies have a real stranglehold on who's on television. And that's not quite as incestuous as it sounds because actually people gravitate towards those agents anyway. So by and large, they tend to get the kind of big names coming to them. So in comedy, there's Off the Curb, which is huge. Guy is no longer with us, Addison Creswell, who for years and years looked after Jonathan Ross and Michael McIntyre and loads of Lee Evans, loads and loads of big names.

20:36There's Hannah Chambers who looks after Jimmy Carr and Joe Lycett and lots of other people. So there are a few big names out there. And if you are with one of them, it is a huge advantage. Firstly, it's a huge advantage when you start out because, you know, Addison would say, well, of course you can have Jonathan, but if you have Jonathan, you have to take client X who he's just got on his books and Hannah would do the same. And, you know, not always officially, but they're just saying, I would love it, I've got this new client, I'd love it if you'd look at them. And you know that if you do that, you have access to the bigger clients as well.

21:11Avalon, who's another of the big agents, would do exactly the same. They'd often package up whole TV shows which are just their clients. And certainly if you wanted to book their client on a show, because they were a production company as well, Avalon, so if you wanted to book their client on a show that was not made by them, it would get tricky sometimes. And by the way, that's their business, they're perfectly allowed to do it. I think sometimes it does their clients a disservice. Were they the most loved in the business? Is being loved all there is? No. I will say something in terms of writing agents, which is, I've spoken to quite a few comedy writers about this, and maybe some of them are all with big people now, but I remember speaking to someone who's very, very successful, saying that when he was younger in his career, he signed with one of the big agencies, I can't remember who it was, maybe it was UTA or something like that, and he thought, I've arrived.

21:59and actually what he he ended up going to someone smaller because he felt that they had so many big clients that kind of those clients got lots of jobs and you sort of feel like oh I'm a you know I'm represented by Ari Emanuel or I'm represented by you know CAA or something like that and there's some sort of big sort of status brand thing about the agency but actually there are so many brilliant younger much hungrier agents who really are thinking about your career and building you as maybe as a writer and making sure that you don't have to do the things you don't want to do and really looking after you.

22:32So a big shout out to the smaller agencies and the smaller agents as well, who often people think they get a much better sort of tailor-made service rather than being with these kind of big behemoths. 100%. I say if you're, you know, an option you can take, if you just had a great Edinburgh and people love your comedy and you're working out who to go with, you could either be a smaller cog in a bigger wheel, but there is something to be said to being a bigger cog in a smaller wheel and someone really building your career. So, you know, Avalon will put on live shows as well and will take people up to Edinburgh and will build people's profile and all that kind of stuff.

23:07But there are downsides to being part of that machine. Whereas if you've got a slightly more personalised, smaller agent whom you're their most important client, yeah, your emails are probably answered a little bit quicker. But my goodness is three or four agencies which have a real stranglehold, especially on television comedy, I would say, and television entertainment. And in movies as well. I mean, if you look at the big ones and, you know, you look at CAA or Endeavour, what I would say about those is that even the really big agents there, and I absolutely love reading about agents and agenting.

23:41It's a real sort of, there's two great books on agents. The one about CAA, which is... And CAA stands for... Creative Artists Agency. Which is one of the big... It was started by Michael Ovitz and Vath for others in the 80s, or was it the late 70s? I can't even remember. It defines everything, and he ends up packaging shows and putting, as Richard has just described, when you're putting all of your stars into a show or a movie, you bring the director, you bring Scorsese, you bring... But these guys, someone like Michael Ovitz is such a monster, actually, one of the great monsters of Hollywood, but sort of a fascinating figure, and he's written his own book, which I've also read, which is called Who is Michael Ovitz?

24:18Oh, wow. Things you'd know, mate. By Michael Ovitz. Yes, by Michael Ovitz. But what those agents do is, it's really interesting. Things like Cape Fear was originally a script that Steven Spielberg had and Martin Scorsese had the rights to Schindler's List. And it was Ovitz who finessed and said, I think actually you'd both be better off with these and did the sort of switcheroo. Oh, really? Yeah, but there's so many, so many stories like that. There's stories of them bringing in, you know, There's stories of them bringing in bomb threats to stop planes taking off in order to sort of get there.