Typecasting, Typefaces & Greatest Hits

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1:25Hello and welcome to this edition of the Rest is Entertainment, questions and answers episode. I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osmond. Hi Marina. How are you? Yeah, I'm very well. We've got lots of lovely questions from our listeners today. Also, I should say, we have our most famous questioner ever. An absolute hero has a question for us, which we're going to do everything we can to answer. Shall we just kick straight off? Please do. I have a question from Richard Gosler. Diggy G asks this. He said, I've watched Wild Oats on Netflix. Oh, I haven't. Which has a quite frankly ridiculous number of producers and exec producers.

2:03So my question is, how many of those are actual producers and how many are just on a percentage? Richard, both Richards. I have, unbelievably, I have seen this movie. And by the way, about five people have, which is part of the problem here. And we'll come to that. there are 72 producers, executive producers, and associate producers listed on Wild Oats' IMDb. By the way, if you haven't seen it, don't. Shirley MacLaine and Jessica Lange, Demi Moore's got a bit in it, Alan Arkin. They get more money in some form of legacy than they are. By the way, I haven't watched it for a while, and they end up going to Tenerife to sow their wild oats, et cetera, et cetera.

2:38Now, I think that took 40K in the opening box office, which, bear in mind, it took about four years to get to screen. This tells you all the stories. You're asking me if some of them are on a percentage. They are on a percentage of the loss, OK? Some people are being paid on those producer credits, and some people are paying to be a part of a film that is losing a lot of money. I think the production of it took a long time. So you've got actors coming on and off the project, but all of that period costs money. So what would have happened here, it's not some big studio film, it needs constant little cash injections all the time.

3:11And probably what they did was say, you know, you'll have a credit, you'll be an executive producer. I mean, when you've got that many, you can see that there's been quite a problem. I think it was supposed to be in Vegas and it ended up in the Canary Islands for tax reasons. Yeah, that tells a story. So that would have been another few writers. And you're pretty sure that any WGA writers would be like, OK, I've done an entire movie about Las Vegas and people going to Vegas. I can't really repurpose it immediately for Grand Canaria. I'm sorry. Probably it would have been negotiated that their name remained on the project.

3:40So this is how it builds up. 72 is some kind of a record. I don't want to say that that is the record, but it will be close to the record because you would never get that on any big studio thing because they don't have to have that. As things go wrong, you will find that more and more producers may come on. And what it often means is that they are bringing money and their credit as an executive producer or an associate producer or whatever is purely vanity. And it might be, you know, It will probably be related, the rank of it, to how much they put in. So ironically, a film about making more money than you think you're going to make made an awful lot less money than people thought it was going to make.

4:17But it had so many more producers than I thought they were going to include. So yes. Oh, here's a good one for you, Richard. Greatest Hits. Kevin Hamilton would like to know, what makes an artist release a Greatest Hits compilation? There are some notable artists like Iron Maiden who've never done a Greatest Hits or Best Of. I've always imagined the reason for this is some notion of not wanting to sell out. is there a negative connotation with releasing an album like this and why do some bands not do it yeah i mean almost all bands do do it and if the bands don't do it then the record company who owns the rights of the songs uh will do it instead yeah bands i think you know albums were so fetishized weren't they in the 60s 70s and 80s that this idea that a band would be on an odyssey and come into the studio and create like the perfect work of art and this is how they want to be judged but i'm afraid i'm with adam partridge on this when they said what's the best ever beatles album and he says the best of the beatles because i mean of course it is because that's all their best songs uh and listen it's lovely the idea that you know people went in and you know created some extraordinary thing but they were all on drugs at the time and no come on it's the singles that's the stuff that we want to hear so i i love a greatest hits album doesn't it make you slightly feel it's like lifetime achievement though but you know people always feel like oh no but we're still going to do more well no because it's just a way of repackaging the songs you've already got now of course greatest hits are very much out of favor now because you don't need them because you know the spotify's of this world you know you get these you know you don't need to taylor swift greatest hits because it's all there for you in you know various playlists but if you're a record company it's just it's just an easy way just to get a little bit of an extra boost for one of your artists so if they're slightly kind of flagging or as often happens with bands and this is when greatest hits usually come out a band has said yeah we'll give you an album in two years time and three years later there's still nothing and you know they're on mystique in some you know studio and you've heard the demos of the kind of songs and you know they're no good so you know you're not getting anything for another three years you know you're not making another penny out of this act and that's the point where a record company go why don't we do a greatest hits certain bands would of course say we'll never do a greatest hits and they go why don't we do a live album and maybe they'll do that but greatest hits are other things that make money some bands haven't done them uh metallica didn't do greatest hits acdc so like with iron maiden there's a kind of a heavy metal thing of saying we're not going to do it coldplay i've never done it funnily enough bands like radiohead you wouldn't think have a greatest hits they did have a greatest hits but again that was the record company so the record company they were with for their first six albums they left when they you know became this sort of um alt rock group and the record company They said, well, we're going to do Radiohead the singles, and Radiohead were furious about it.

6:58All you have to do is look at the top 100 albums in the charts at the moment, and you'll know why people release greatest hits. Because don't forget, by and large, this is not costing the record company very much money. It costs them distribution money, packaging money, marketing money, stuff like that, but the stuff has already been recorded. It's already there, and it's the most popular songs by that particular group. And in the top 100 at the moment, and you'll hear how many heritage acts there are in this, We have greatest hits from Elton John, Queen, ABBA, Fleetwood Mac, Eminem, Michael Jackson, Oasis, Linkin Park, Bob Marley, Maroon 5, Elvis, Green Day, The Beatles, Red Hot Chili Peppers, 50 Cent, George Michael, David Bowie, Pitbull, Billy Joel, Whitney Houston, Foo Fighters, Britney Spears, The Killers, The Rolling Stones, Blink 182, Phil Collins, Celine Dion, The Weeknd and The Smiths are all in the charts at the moment.

7:47there's albums there that came out 10 20 25 years ago that are still making money for record companies they're still making money for the artists as well so it's one of those things where it's just it's sort of a no-brainer unless you have an actor who is absolutely strongly against it which i would say is just for cultural reasons these days that's that's an old thing not wanting your stuff repackaged that way there is absolutely no argument about releasing the greatest hits and also if you want to find an old band listen to the greatest hits first right if you want to say i tell you if you wanted to say to somebody i tell you who you'd love billy joel playing on the greatest hits they can do the deep dive into you know all the albums and stuff like that but as an introduction to a band's back catalog the greatest hits is of course the way to go so it's just one of those things that makes such utter financial creative commercial sense that people have done it forever.

8:40As I say, I think now it's glory time has passed because there's a million different ways to kind of launch different bits of different acts, careers, and Spotify has really taken over all of that. But for a certain generation of bands, the greatest hits are just kind of the perfect marketing tool. So interesting. Marina, John Saunders has a question for you. Well, I guess for both of us, but John is going to Marina. I hope that's okay. Do you know what? I think John would be okay with that. if we'd given John the choice of who to answer I bet he'd go do you know what Richard I like you let's have Marina.

9:14John asks why do some actors suffer from typecasting while others do not? Is it even a real thing or just something that agents say to actors to be kindest to them when they're not getting the roles? I mean in some ways I sort of feel that typecasting is almost when movie acting is working perfectly. This is why the studios in that when they were great big factories right back in the day when they owned all the stars again and again and they always played versions of their personas but even once that since that's been broken out of all the big stars play I think a version of their persona so in a way you're always being typecast your agent is doing a good job if there's a specific type that you play and they're getting you those roles and the audience then turns out because they like seeing that thing you know you've got someone like Julia Roberts where you know there's going to be humour but there's going to be lots of plot but there's also going to be vulnerability but she's always going to be a sort of contemporary woman yeah Tom Hanks you know there's going to be a fundamental decency whatever situation he's in what are the stresses under is what happens to a man like Tom Hanks in this situation yeah he's getting you back from the moon or he's that pilot investor land on the Hudson Sully who's a real life story he's a real jinx Tom Hanks isn't he yeah yeah yeah just don't have him on your aircraft on your craft but um captain phillips my god don't literally yeah listen i'll tell you what he'll get he'll get you out of it too so that's the point yeah that's true this idea of the persona i think is so important because even when even that you see it obviously today you see someone like general ortega obviously she's played that type in wednesday she's now playing it in beetlejuice with winona rider who's her sort of ancestor in that type of gothic persona she'll have to deviate it from a from it a bit general ortega or else she really will be just playing these kind of weird little gothic princesses all of these people are playing versions of the same character so I think that typecasting is actually a good thing when it was different for character actors where you feel that you could see them play anything and you kind of want to know but for leading actors and actresses you want to see them in these same situations then there's a wonderful writer about um about movies called Janine Basinger I urge you to seek out her books but she's um she wrote a really great oral history of Hollywood recently and she said something about um nicole kidman for instance she said that nicole kidman and robert redford both play similar characters in that their characters never reveal all their secrets and there's just little things like that that you think yes there is always something sort of kept back about her and there's something kept back about robert redford you want to go out and see those things so in some ways it's working best when you feel type gods as i say if jenna ortega then plays another gothic princess after this then i think we're getting you're getting too tight into it but she will take that energy and she'll do something slightly different she'll maybe do some sort of some kind of more updated modern thing but she will still indisputably be jenna ortega that's such an interesting question and it's not something i've thought of before and in terms of where it comes from is that thing if you're casting a movie if you've written a script and you're casting it yeah now what are you thinking you're thinking okay is a person the correct age for this character you know is it within the realms of possibility that physically they might resemble this character in some way but what you're mainly thinking is what is the energy of this actor because i know what the energy of the character is and i know i wanted to be a decent uh you know stand-up human being whatever happens so let's go to tom hanks because that's a decent stand-up human being there there are archetypes and that's how you cast a movie you put them in and then of course you know you can cast against type so anthony hopkins's hannah wallector coming off the back of various things where he was in very posh english films sort of casting against type but you can't cast against type if you don't have a type.

12:53But what you'd have been saying, nonetheless, with Anthony Hopkins is, oh, he's got that precision. He's got that sense of total self-control. So that's what the casting agents say. You're using those kind of abstract nouns, but you're saying he's got that X or Y or whatever, and you will find that they run like a sort of golden thread through these people's careers, and it makes you think of them when those roles come up. But also, say with Hanks being likable, but one of the hardest things to do is cast likeability. So if you write a character and you want people to feel warm towards that character and you want them to bring a certain sort of sense of serenity to a role, then that's quite hard to act.

13:31You know for a fact that if Tom Hanks does it, you're going to get it. And so, of course, you go to Tom Hanks before you go to anyone else, and then you go to a sort of second-rate Tom Hanks. But, yeah, bringing something that the audience already knows does a lot of the writer's job for them. And the writer, by the way, has already done that job. But to hammer it home, having an actor you know has already done this and already has that energy is incredibly useful. And I guess that's why people get typecast, because they do things incredibly well and audiences like them doing it. And it's why a lot of writers might write with someone, a fantasy star in mind, that they feel for the role.

14:05Because they've so successfully communicated that personality. to you, you feel so well as you know them in that role that it really helps when you're trying to conceive of the characters to help them to hear, to think of someone who you probably will never be able to cast playing them. But this is why I'm always interested who they get to narrate those big IMAX movies. And they'll have Tom Cruise will do the International Space Station. If there's some story about America and how you'll want Tom Hanks to do it because he says certain things, just the mere sound of his voice after a while, it's almost Pavlovian.

14:35You're already associating those qualities from their screen persona with what they're about to say there's a sort of fly wheel effect to it anyway which is that those roles start coming to them anyway morgan freeman the wisdom of the ages i mean he said that that voiceover in shawshank just gave him an entire career suddenly okay let's go for a break and after the break uh the question from uh our most famous ever questioner this episode is brought to you by white claw surge nice choice hitting up This podcast, no surprises. You're all about diving into tastes everyone in the room can enjoy, just like White Claw Surge.

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16:47Welcome back, everybody. Now, Marina, a person we're both huge fans of, has a question for us. Marina Richard Paris. I'm Russell T. Davis, and I've worked in television for 500 years and I need your help. At the end of Celebrity Race Across the World, they've started to credit the typeface. What? Is that a thing? Since when did we credit the typeface? Have we got to do that now? Go and have a look. It says graphic typeface, inverted commas, evil empire, close inverted commas, by Top Wonders, cc-by 4.0. in the credits scrolling in the credits is that a thing what's happened why has that happened how has that happened help me you're my only hope muscle t davis this truly is a genuine massive honor he's given me more delight than almost anyone working in television what a star the t stands for trivia yeah listen you were i'm you know i'm a huge fan of russell's work and just when you think of the the worlds that he creates and these extraordinary characters and the extraordinary emotions and the broad sweeps of history that he's able to sort of just conjure up in just a line and he's asking us a question about a font come on man listen we're going to answer it because imagine if we said to russell t davis no do you know what do you know it's not it's this is beneath us but it isn't because very very little is beneath us very important that nothing's beneath us by the way loving celebrity race across the world if you're not watching it it's one of those shows that it can really handle a celeb edition and people really open up on it because it's fascinating that thing of people tend to get much more honest when they've just got off a 16-hour bus, you know, and there's a camera on them and they can just go, do you know what about my husband?

18:37He's an idiot. But it's lovely, and there's lots of beautiful relationship between Jeff Brazier and his son, and there's lots of really, really lovely things. But what there also is is an amazing font, sort of like a Wild West-type font. And, yeah, I spoke to one of the gang behind Celebrate Race Across the World, and I have an answer. I'm going to tell you now, it is not an exciting answer. This is, and this is a direct quote, Russell, don't shoot the messenger. It is a rather prosaic term of the license for the font we use all over the show. The font is free. So this is for us to save money because credits are free.

19:11So the font is free, but you have to essentially credit it if you want to use it. And it's a great advert for the font because it looks amazing. So hopefully Evil Empire is going to make a bit of money off getting that credit. Do you think Russell T. Davis will be happy with that answer Marina. I think he will but I have to say that first of all other designers like it because they say what is that I want to use that and I think he makes this font available for free as well which is what a lot of typeface designers do because it's quite hard in the days of you know computers now to stop everything but it's really interesting in books they often tell you the typeface and they and there's a whole sort of little bit on it and it says this book has been created with this and that that it's called the colophon that's c-o-l-o-p-h-o-n the colophon yeah that dates all the way back to classical antiquity when people used to have to write everything out by hand scribes and then you'd have your own personalized sign off and it would say something like finished thank god my weary hand is done or whatever it was and it was a way of getting your name out there and obviously it's being given a credit it's a form of credit but it's you know it's part of the furniture of the show and i do think when you see those things there's lots of little below the line jobs that you lots of people might say well who cares who did the hair well a lot of people care who did the hair and it's part of the craft and it's part of all those people below the line that you know obviously russell knows who make that the television show so i slightly feel that the way they do it in the books when it becomes quite indivisible from the way you perceive the show and the furniture and where they're telling you where they're getting to i personally think it deserves its credit i mean it's interesting i think that russell will be less impressed uh with me saying it's a rather prosaic term of the license for the font and more impressed by you talking about colophons i think we do you know what i think we really pulled that back from the brink.

20:54Well, I don't, I don't, but there are other iconic fonts and there are other ones that, you know, we love to hate as well. I've got, I read a really interesting interview not that long ago, and it's an old interview with someone like the New York Times or the Washington Post or something about the guy who created Comic Sans. He just, he'd been working at Microsoft and he had to sort of come up with some sort of basic version of the font that had been in, you know, comic book bubbles, basically, when people were talking, whatever. And he thought, I can't copy it exactly. So he did a version of it and he's seen as it kind of progressed and you now see sort of people being given their bowel cancer announcement in it and they're this and he's like what the hell he truly believes he created a monster and you know he didn't mean to at all he was just trying to sort of create a sort of generic jolly font and he just didn't realize how ubiquitous and how inappropriately it would end up being used it in multiple examples every day and it sort of became the world's most detested type typeface so i'm very glad the evil empire is not the world's most detested typeface but i'm sorry for the comic sans guy because i don't think he meant to do what he did ingrid was flying to germany and got talking to the guy next to her who turned out to be a guy called eric speakerman who's one of the greatest font designers of all time and we used one of his unique fonts for our wedding invite in the end because they got they got along famously we went and met up with him in in berlin recently uh so that was uh that was lovely he does incredible his entire workshop is like just covered in these extraordinary fonts so listen i know font people i got font friends yeah typefaces and that guy's name is vincent canair and comic sounds actually teachers use it all the time because apparently it's the most easy font for dyslexic children to read so even though people think he created a monster he did something great in lots of other ways but you know it has rather run away from him marina one for you sean flanagan asks oh do you know what he i just looked at the question he is so right about this sean asks why oh why when all episodes are available for a series do they have a thumbnail of that episode next to the synopsis it is especially infuriating when the previous episode is left on a cliffhanger say a death or disappearance only for them to be in there for you to see before the start of the next one yes sean sean i i couldn't agree more with you i'm delighted i'm surprised to tell you i've made a rare foray into service journalism.

23:06And I'm delighted to be able to give you some information and then some good news. Okay. We're talking about Netflix here and for Netflix's thumbnails are all AI generated. They've got this incredibly sophisticated tool, which is called something aesthetic visual analysis. Now, all of the thumbnails you see on Netflix, by the way, are tailored to you individually. They've got many, many different ways of showing you a show. So say it's like Stranger Things, the thumbnail for you, if they see that you watch a lot of romantic comedies they'll have a picture of like uh grace and hopper you know winona rider and david harbour so it will look like it's that sort of show if you like comedies then they'll have all the kids dressed up in their ghostbusters halloween costumes that every single person you know is getting a tailored version of thumbnails now what you're talking about is the episodic thumbnails which i so agree i'd drive you absolutely mad i saw one for example on prime suspect the other we were re-watching Prime Suspect and at the end of one is is this guy going to get arrested and the thumbnail for the second episode was the guy in court and you're like come on there is something you can do about this in your settings you can first of all you can turn off autoplay previews so you don't see those things if they're sort of coming ups and what have you that you I mean we scream in our house the whole time we don't watch the coming up don't watch the coming up so not Not next time, we say in my house.

24:28Not next time. So you can turn off that. But most crucially, you can use the no spoilers extension, which covers up all episodic thumbnails. So actually, Sean, you never need to see them again. And I didn't know this. And I'm very glad you asked this question because I've now found this out because it drives me absolutely mad. So thank you for asking that. Please expect sort of normal no service journalism to resume very shortly. Where do you get that? Where in your settings is that? you can do it in your account settings and you know i recommend everyone does it by the way can i also say please for the love of god when i start a new show tell me how many episodes there are don't make me google how just say episode one of six i cannot stand watching the first episode of something not knowing if it's a two-parter or three-parter or six-parter i couldn't agree more it's a bit much like what we were saying the other week about books and you obviously want to know where you are in the book otherwise it just it lots of things don't make sense to you thank you sean thank you very much for that now richard i don't want you to mess this one up because it's a top three ah fine we haven't done the top three for ages we haven't um i think they pretty much retired the show when i stopped doing it but okay fine you think you can you broke the broke the format but it's coming back you think you can step into these shoes christopher green would like to ask you what are your top three brit pop bands that are not oasis well listen you don't need on Oasis because they would not be in my top three.

25:56Looking forward to the gigs. My top three Britpop bands. So, number seven. No, I jest. Number three. Should I be controversial? I probably should, shouldn't I? So I was really around right in the middle of Britpop because of my brother and I lived in Camden and it was all happening at that time. and it was such a great laugh and I knew lots of the people that asked, yeah, listen, this is difficult. This is a tricky one. Can I, right, so forget Oasis because I wasn't going to have them in the top three anyway. So from that statement, we get rid of except suede because of course they're my number one by a million billion miles.

26:42Have you just said you're number one now? No, no, no, Marina. Honestly, just occasionally, just listen. i was saying can we sub out suede okay because isn't it because of i i can't do a top three they're of course going to be my number one because i've been the huge part of my uh my life assume this is a top four but yes and they were and they were also the best band in brit pop so it's like it's sort of it's sort of moot anyway so okay top three let's do it uh number three I am going to say Shed 7. Love Shed 7. Love Shed 7 so much. Again, we talked about greatest hits. Shed 7's greatest hits.

27:21Yes, please. I mean, that's a record that keeps on giving. And they're still going now. I think they're on Radio 2 in the park this weekend. Shed 7. Them, the Sugar Babes. It all comes around. Yeah. Number 3, I will say Shed 7. Number 2, I am going to say Elastica. absolutely love elastica i knew you'd say elastica yeah uh and i love everyone in elastica they were so cool i mean insanely cool that first album was just like nothing that had come before um apart from the theme tune to are you being served which is very similar to uh but listen that's a it's good the theme tune to are you being served so number uh to elastica so we're not having suede so number one it has to be you know the answer to the question who do you prefer blur or oasis is always the same which is pulp i mean this i mean how how could you not so i'm going to go shed seven uh three elastica two and pulp number one again a band that started such a long time before brit pop that's what people forget about pulp they were around in 85 a sort of slightly difficult arty studenty band from sheffield and brit pop came along at a time when really they should have just been sort of giving up and thinking oh this is never going to work for us and just something about their incredible songwriting, something about Jarvis's personality in that incredibly tight band, and something about the songs just all coalesced.

28:47And suddenly, if we had Britpop to thank for anything, it's that this band who might have just absolutely disappeared became one of the biggest bands in Britain and certainly one of the best bands in Britain. So with Suede Disqualified, my number one Britpop band is Pulp. Well, I very much approve those choices. Would you have a view on that? You haven't thought it through. how you're not going to know your colours to the Britpop mast. I would have definitely had Parpanelastica in there. I'll come back to you next week. Yeah, yeah, yeah, listen. Well, actually, I would have put Suede in there.

29:17So there we go. We've covered everything. I also wouldn't have put Oasis in. That's us done, I think. I think it is, regrettably, but we will definitely be back on Tuesday. Definitely. Well, listen, you never say definitely, can you? For sure. But everything, God willing. Everything points to the fact that we will. yes predictably we'll see you next tuesday