What's In A Name? The Worst Movie Titles Ever

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2:13Hello and welcome to this episode of the Restless Entertainment Questions and Answers Edition. I'm Marina Hyde.

2:19Richard Osman:And I'm Richard Osman. And for once, we're not talking to Steven Spielberg or Tom Hanks. A major celebrity. We are talking to each other. Just a little old us. Well, I've missed it. I've missed it as well. It's quite nice to be back, isn't it? Yes, it is very nice to be back. Are you going to hit me with a question? Yeah, I certainly am. And it is from Jane Burrows. Thank you, Jane. She says, I've seen a few social media videos in recent past showing table reads from shrinking to Game of Thrones. Can you tell me what's their purpose? Who are they for? When do they happen in the timeline of a production?

2:48Richard Osman:and would actors deliver their lines in character? Jane's question goes on for some while longer. There's lots of smaller questions inside it, but I think we can talk about the world of table reads. She ends saying that they do look super awkward. Well, they look awkward because obviously that is not the finished product and in many cases that's the first, I'll get on to this, the first time those actors are seeing the scripts. I think particularly with stuff like Game of Thrones, I know which one you're talking about. You're talking about the final episodes where the actors are discovering, effectively in real time what happens to their characters and who wins the Game of Thrones.

3:22And it can be very emotional. You can see people suddenly thinking, oh my gosh, hang on, I'm dead. It's been a decade of their life or something. But they are such a key part of the process. They do happen at different times, by the way. So it's not all the same. Normally, they would happen at the very end of pre-production of something. And it isn't ever the final script. That's part of the point of the table, Reed. But if you're doing a series, it will be the end of pre-production of that episode but you're probably filming one of the others although funnily enough last week i've got a thing in development and oh my god i went to a meeting and they told me that they were going to do it um something internally and then they said well actually it's really interesting when we with the script the last draft that i gave them and they said yeah it was interesting what okay what people like that in the sort of when we did the sort of table reading i was thinking oh my god i'm so glad i didn't know that this was going to be read up anyway but people who work they've done a table read of it not with actors not with actors but amongst and I thought I don't even want to ask about this because I just that feels excruciating to me at the moment so I don't want to think about it

4:26Richard Osman:so they had in the office done a table read just amongst themselves oh my god anyway anyway but that's not in general what you're doing without you there but I knew that they were going to be doing that because they were going to they were going to feed other people who are not like the direct executives involved in this were going to sort of they asked the general group and it's and it's very very helpful because people who've never seen haven't had eyes on it at all because you do get in the weeds quite quickly even if you're the detective I suppose in charity things. It was really interesting but I did think I'm so glad I didn't know that was happening.

4:54Richard Osman:Can we explain what a table read is to people? Yes, table read is you get the script of an episode or I suppose of a film. Everyone is sitting down. It's like a conference table or an oblong of tables. You've got all the actors there. You've got all the heads of departments. And by heads of departments that means that you do the head of the sets, the head of makeup the head of costume lighting anyone who's gonna have to do sfx anyone who's gonna have to do anything for this uh you've got the writer in the my experience of doing it you've got like the showrunner sitting there and if it's your episode you're sitting next to them at the head of the table it's a big thing with american money that's being filmed over here then the very big executives from america will fly over and be sitting in the room as well on chairs behind the big table so everyone it's a big and important thing somebody reads the state actors all do their own roles in the answer to your question do they do it in character i would say they do it it's it's varying they do it in i would say 50 they put 50 they're seeing it often they're seeing it for the first time or they've had chats with the director or chats with the showrunner about where they're going you know but they haven't actually seen the thing that's not the shooting script because you'll make a lot of adaptations from how the table read goes I've done them always for comedy so that can be you know something that you thought was your great joke doesn't get a line in the laugh in the room and something you didn't realize was a joke gets a really big laugh you're like oh okay that's interesting I saw someone from Friends I can't remember when I read this someone who worked on Friends saying by the end of that if the actors didn't like your joke they would just absolutely ruin it by misdelivering it in the table read so that it would then get killed.

6:36Some actors just literally just read the lines out almost in a monotone and they don't put everything into it. Others go quite big but no one goes as big as you'd possibly go on set. It's not like that at all.

6:47Richard Osman:You want to hold something back. Someone reads the stage directions. There's a person at the table read whose job it is to read every stage direction but for me it's really tempting to kind of you want to mark up your script if you're the writer, like this, you know, three ticks, that one got a big laugh, that one didn't. But it's actually much better if you can avoid looking down the whole time and sort of essentially reading the subtitles because you want to hear it. You want to hear the rhythms, what works, and then you'll suddenly think, hang on, we really lost them. We don't see that character for quite a bit in the middle, and you can see by their face that they have also noticed that they didn't appear for quite a few pages in the middle.

7:23But a lot can change after the table read. I mean, if it's bad, you can have to go quite significantly back to the drawing board under quite a lot of time pressure.

7:33Richard Osman:Yeah, so the main thing about a table read really, I mean, from our perspective, we would say this is for a writer. So the writer gets to hear the pace of the thing and the speed of the thing. And as you say, the feel of the thing. And the job is then to go, OK, now we're going to go and make that better. As you say, there are also heads of departments sitting around. And sometimes you're thinking, why is no one laughing? and you think well because the person from wardrobe literally all they're doing is trying to hear every time in the stage directions they say he is now wearing a fez yeah and they're literally just writing down fez or so and so you know walks out of the swimming pool and they're like oh okay waterproof okay so they everyone's just doing their job and the lighting director is literally just going okay so that's outdoor but then we transition to indoor okay okay and That's all they're doing.

8:19Richard Osman:So everyone is doing their job. For a writer, it's the most important thing. We just did a table read for the Thursday Murder Club play. I'm dying for this. But that wasn't a full production table read. That was literally Tom Bastion and I had a draft that we were sort of, we had a finished draft that we knew was not going to be the final thing. And we have a lot of friends who are comedy actors. So just sat around in the West End in a really nice rehearsal room and just read the whole script out with very, very, very funny people. It's so helpful. I've done that at an earlier stage of things before, and it's really immensely helpful.

8:56Richard Osman:And in that situation, the actors get paid to do it. If actors are free and they know it's going to be a fun room for the people, they'll always come and do it. And it was such a laugh. You had a great day. We had a really great crew of people doing it, really, really funny people. And, you know, you work out what's funny, but you also work out, oh, there's too much of that, there's not enough of that. and so we maybe did that six weeks ago and I've literally only just finished the next draft. The draft that was in response to that, yeah. That's in response to it because you finally go, okay, I hear exactly what's going on here.

9:26Richard Osman:I know how to fix that. I know how to fix that. And just stuff that got huge laughs in the room. You think, well, that's great, but it has to go because it's not, it doesn't fit in, you know, by the end of it, I was thinking, yeah, come on, I need, let's speed this up. Let's speed this up. So, you know, table reads are incredibly useful in that regard at the very early stage of the production. but it's never going to be the night before yes um but but but the game of thrones type yeah that that is far more that's a god everyone just sitting down taking care of business as quickly as they and then by that stage there was so much secrecy around that show and because it had gone ahead of the book so no one really knew who would win the game of thrones and so you wanted people you wanted to have those reaction shots of people finding out what happened to their characters and it can be but i do agree that it is exposing for actors to have those sort of things filmed because as i say they're not giving 100 on purpose yeah and you know you're sitting in sort of tracksuit around a table and it's not the same as being like in westeros so i feel sorry for them that they've got a you know and it's quite hard to explain that to someone who's just coming to the whole thing that's maybe why they look awkward yeah and often it's the first time you meet your fellow cast members and stuff like that as well which is interesting and you know you're usually sat next to the person you're doing most of your scenes with but i remember when we talked to ben elton he was talking about what nightmare the blackout of table reads were and because there were there were a lot of very strong voices yeah in there all of whom had an opinion on what they were reading and you're like oh that's not what a table read is for you could see ben elton just want to go shut up you know honestly just do it and then let me and richard fix it afterwards you know the next question is almost thematically related to that because i think it's interesting and it's about traitors in in the west end and it's from araminta araminta says it's recently been announced that the traitors will now be a stage production in the west end next year 2027 how does a production company go about making a popular tv show into a stage production yeah it's i mean there's i mean there's so many different answers to that question first you have to want to do it yeah uh and you know the one that you can't accuse studio lambert of not trying to maximize income from everything they've got maybe he got a show that's as huge as the traitors and they do a live traitors experience which everyone says is brilliant and i still haven't done i'm ashamed of myself i'm going so i imagine they started exploring the idea of doing it on stage how would that work now we all know the simple way that would work we do a cheap cash-in version of it which they don't seem to have done and studio and amit tend to do everything right so you have to get a script you have to get a producer and you have to get a director and you have to get a theatre.

12:07Richard Osman:Those are the four main things you need to do. Something needs to be written, someone needs to direct it, someone needs to put the money behind it and a theatre has to agree to do it And a concept because you're just not doing... Hopefully you leave that with the writer really But you're not, it should be clear that you're not sort of just resurrecting this It's not going to be Claudia just sort of wandering around the stage If you have a franchise as big as Traitors, then obviously a lot of people want it to work and a lot of people will take a meeting with you. In this instance, this play, I think it's called Traitors' Acts of Betrayal.

12:40Richard Osman:The writer they've got is John Finnamore. And John Finnamore, I think, is a genius. I mean, weirdly, still best known for doing cabin pressure on Radio 4. But, you know, did his own sketch show on Channel 4. And he's a great, great, great writer, John. So they immediately, rather than go for someone sort of big and mainstream, they go for someone who is very, very smart, loves puzzles. Yeah, I was about to say, he's a puzzle genius, genuinely. Whoever came up with this concept, I don't know. But the idea of it is the play always starts the same, but there are five different endings. I think someone was saying, you'll never see the same show twice.

13:17Richard Osman:And I think somebody else pointed out, well, you will because there's only five different shows. But anyway, the idea is you could go more than once and you could possibly see a different ending. So John Finnamore is writing it. I know someone, funnily enough, who did a table read for this said it was terrific, which it would be if it's John. Robert Hastie is directing it and, again, standing at Sky's Edge. He's just like a proper theatre director. And theatre directing is, I've discovered from this Thursday Murder Club process, there's only about eight people who can do it. But it's immensely complicated and difficult.

13:51Richard Osman:and it's sort of very, very different to being a movie director in some ways. There's something much more up close and personal about it. So they've got a great director. Studio Lambert, I see, are producing it. I saw it said that they're producing it themselves and I thought, huh, I mean, that's very brave because, again, producing a theatre show is very, very different to producing everything else. But then I saw that Neil Street are producing it with them and Neil Street have done lots of theatre. That's Sam Mendes and Pippa Harris's company. and then of course they have a theatre because John Finnamore is writing it and Robert Hastie is directing it and Neil Street and Studio Lambert are producing it and The West End is in incredible health we have to keep saying this this is why so many things are it's extraordinary I've said it before but that sort of thing that you used to do if you wrote anything the contract like what if it becomes a musical it always used to just be a joke with writers I'm pretty sure that originally when Irvin Welsh wrote Train Spotting he didn't what if it becomes a musical he'd go a musical of this okay you know what if it does we'll come to that but it is a musical the offers we got to turn Thursday Murder Club into a musical I mean like a lot I mean we've you know we're doing it as a we are doing it as a play so this is going to be at the Gillian Lynn Theatre it's called Traitor's Acts of Betrayal I think it opens in 2027 but to answer the question you have I mean a number of things if you had a smaller piece of IP and you develop an amazing script then maybe a director or maybe a theatre would be interested with this I think even if they'd done a substandard script they would have found a director and they would have found a theatre because you know that lots of people are going to come and see this, it'll be an event play but it seems like and it sounds like they've done the opposite and they've actually done something great with it as well I'm dying for it I think they have high hopes, I imagine it'll be very good, I hear it's very good and yeah, it'll be in the West End in 2027.

15:50Richard Osman:But yeah, you have to want to do it. Then you have to do it really, really well. And then someone has to give you several million pounds. But look at the amazing things that I've got. You know, if you look at something like My Neighbour to Toro, which was extraordinary to have come from, I mean, it was absolutely brilliant. Stranger Things, The First Shadow, all of these things. And they all start here because it's too expensive on Broadway. And lots of them then go all the way around the world. But it's really interesting to see how it's a part of our creative industries that is in mega health.

16:21Richard Osman:And the reason they do it, and Studio Lambert is a good example here, the reason you do it is almost all plays lose money. But if you make money, you really, really, really mint money forever and ever and ever. And I mean, you know, there's a reason Andrew Lloyd Webber's got such a nice house. You know, you can print money forever and ever. The reason you wouldn't do it is because it costs you a lot of money to put it on. But if you're Studio Lambert and you've got a piece of IP that is so powerful and so successful in this country, you know that other people are going to finance this thing for you and you're still going to get a very good deal.

16:53Richard Osman:I imagine they've invested their own money in it as well because, you know, they would believe in it. But it's a low risk way to sort of be involved on a poker table where the winnings could be absolutely enormous. Let's go to a break now, after which I'm going to be considering some truly terrible film titles.

17:15Richard Osman:This episode is brought to you by the Lloyds 5k house deposit. Lloyds are offering a 5k house deposit which was last seen in 1996. What are your entertainment memories of the 1990s? I feel guilty talking about the 1990s because you look back and it was such a golden era. We'd never had it so good and we didn't even realise because we were young and we just thought we were entitled to it all. We absolutely took it for granted. Yeah, Britpop was absolutely in its pomp. Oasis playing to a quarter of a million people. You had Blur and Suede and Pulp. Spice Girls and Girl Power. I'm so sorry. Spice Girls.

17:46Richard Osman:Amazing movies at the cinema. Train spotting. I mean, it felt a time of absolute optimism. But at the time, you just assumed that was the way that the world was going. A very British type of optimism. Yeah. And part of the optimism, of course, is that mortgages were more affordable. And that is what Lloyds is dealing with right now. Yep. Last seen in 1996, Lloyds are now offering 5K deposit mortgages to first-time buyers. Search 5K first-time buyer. 1996 average first-time buyer deposits based on ONS data. subject to status, your home may be repossessed if you don't keep up repayments. Conditions apply.

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18:41Richard Osman:Welcome back, everybody. Chris Rand asks, I'm interested in how film titles are determined. Two decent films this year, I Love Boosters and Crime 101, have had poor box office numbers, and I'm convinced it's because of their terrible titles. Could you explain how films with significant branding investment can end up with titles that fail to resonate with audiences? Chris, I so agree with you on bad titles. it is extraordinary sometimes I have to say I haven't seen either of those I know what they're about but that's why you haven't seen them maybe I also thought the trailer for Crime 101 looked like gibberish so I didn't feel the need to gibberish is a good name for a movie yes I mean it could apply to many but I totally agree with you there's some sort of sense that the title doesn't matter the title really matters for anything for any single thing it's such a crucial element it's the first kind of thing that a potential audience will have will effectively hear about a film or anything or any creative property it needs to have a certain stickiness because there's a lot out there well any creative project you're constantly trying to nudge your audience in one direction or another and the and the title is where you start nudging them from yeah i i and you're so right how on earth can it happen because we are talking films that cost tens of millions and sometimes even sort of hundreds of millions I sometimes think that I don't want to be too unfair here because I do think there's a sort of confirmation bias and when films flop then sometimes you can say oh well you know you can retrofit the idea that the title was terrible but there were certain things that people thought would be a flop I mean I know that Tim Robbins was like the Shawshank Redemption it's like a tongue twister you can't even say it actually that is a bad title yeah and yet it doesn't matter because something you know and now everyone you can say it very easily and name it as their favorite film etc um he thought it was just like almost like a tongue twister there are others that you just think i can't there was do you remember that um there was that amazing gabrie sidibe who made her debut in that film and she was brilliant in it and it was called precious colon based on the novel pushed by sapphire because there'd been some other film that nobody cared about or something called precious i i mean you've got to explain to me how you've this is ridiculous okay I thought like Joker, Foliadur if I hadn't already thought that sorry you're turning Joker into a you're turning the incel film into a musical if I hadn't already thought that was in a bit of problems I would have definitely thought it once I saw that title I actually, I mentioned this on Tuesday's episode I don't think Nope is a good title that film is really really good and it's like, sorry what am I watching here so I've tried to break down the different types of bad title oh great I would say when it's sort of genericism to a ludicrous degree so that film john carter sorry it's just a name tell me what it's about yeah i've no idea that this is some kind of sorry that's that's a friend of my dad yeah exactly i mean it's just ridiculous i do not know what this film is there's a couple of those planet of the apes ones that annoy me just because it's like rise of the planet of the apes dawn of the planet it's like what order does this come in and i know the same thing you can't have two of those as well in the same title.

21:48Just know, ludicrous grandeur, I cannot bear. So if I didn't already know that Quantum of Solace, well, if I hadn't watched it, it was not going to be my favourite Bond movie. This is the one where he's in so much grief, Daniel Craig, over Vesper's death that he doesn't even have sex with a Bond girl. Okay. No wonder Sam Mendes came back with a one-word cracking title, Skyfall. I'm not sure what it is, but it sounds very Bond-y. I'm interested.

22:12Richard Osman:I'm assuming Bond is going to have sex with somebody in a film called Skyfall. Yeah. I mean, it's not that hard a life, is it? You go around seven-star hotels and have sex with beautiful women, but anyhow. I don't like... I've talked about under-explanation, where it's like... This is so generic, I don't even know what it's about. John Carter. Franchise over-explanation. Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. If you didn't know that Marvel was really going off the rails by that point. Also, Ant-Man and the Wasp, colon, Quantumania. No. Those ones where you're just saying, okay... Or like something, a Star Wars story.

22:46like oh I don't know is it canon is it off world is it this or that no thank you I don't need any of that and I think the most I think the one I think is the most egregious are titles that suggest the wrong genre so Greenland and I'm like what's this it's like look let's be honest it's a Jerry Butler disaster movie let's just let's just call it what it is then I would have like call it Extinction Event

23:08Richard Osman:I've not even heard of it yeah I know so Greenland it should be called Extinction Event or something like that or Greenland Has Fallen yeah or Greenland or Jerry Butler does Greenland it's fine you know what you're getting I want to know what I'm getting maybe the absolute classic of this for me is The Constant Gardener sorry is this a spy movie I mean I understand if you love Le Carre or whatever I get it but you know you're trying to get everyone in here this is a spy movie it literally sounds like it's a Jane Campion movie about a prisoner of war or something with that one though I mean if we're going to talk about why films end up with bad titles Le Carre is not going to let you make that movie and change the title and it's a great title for the book because in the book you can play against the title yes because you've got John Licari on the cover you haven't got that on the cinema marquee it's just Ralph Fiennes doing something about gardening yes maybe he's a prisoner maybe he's an alcatraz I don't know what's happening he's got a tiny garden on the window I don't know what's happening is this Alan Titchmarsh the movie in terms of the next part of the question which is how does it happen honestly the people with the power agree and sometimes that might be the writer as you say sometimes it might be the author who's allowed you to adapt his brilliant spy novel.

24:17And committeeism, in my experience, in many people's experience, can lead to madness. I actually think you should just know what you're getting. Movies that I mentioned in the Tuesday episode, Barbie. Oh, I think I know what's happening here. Oppenheimer. I know what's happening.

24:30Richard Osman:A Minecraft movie. Dude, where's my car? I mean, people, that one was so bad it was good. There is a genre of so bad it's good. Dude, where's my car? And you know the follow-up to Dude's My Car. Yeah, seriously, Dude, where's my car? Yeah. And that brilliant, you know I told you I was looking forward to a horror that's coming in August, by the way. I have now seen it and it's absolutely brilliant. I'm desperate for you all to see it. It's so good. It's quite genre bending, but it's also very, very much an homage to the genre and very funny. That's called Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma. Okay, I guess call it what you like.

25:02There you go. Okay, so I think you can sort of get away with those sort of titles in, maybe it'll just, everyone just call it Teenage Sex and Death, but that is brilliant. That's written and directed by Jane Schoenbram. and it comes out in August. But again, we'll see. It is a brilliant film. I absolutely loved it. I'm still thinking about it. Oh, that's cool. It's a lot.

25:22Richard Osman:Yeah, we spend a lot of time on the titles. I mean, for my books and everyone's books, and sometimes books will come out with titles where you're like, I mean, how are you supposed to know what that is? But yeah, we've always spent a long time on titles. And it's, you know, I'm very, very happy to involve as many people as possible in that. It's funny because sometimes they have to come up with the titles before I finish them sometimes just because, you know, the process of covers and things like that. And I will never let my publishers read anything beyond the first 20 ,000 words because they're sort of whodunity type books.

25:55Richard Osman:So I want them to read it all in one. So they'll come up with titles and they go, yeah, that's going to give away the killer just so you know. Or, yeah, that has literally nothing to do with what's about to happen. And, I mean, God bless my publishers. so they do keep at it, and they can give us any hints. I go, yeah, maybe something around this sort of area. But it always, you have to have a title that at least, you know, The Bullet That Missed, The Man Who Died Twice, even The Thirsty Medal Cup at the first point. Just things where you go, oh, okay, there's a little something to get your teeth into.

26:30But I can understand it from the title. I mean, these things do seem basic, but with some of these film titles, I agree. yeah i you know i love boosters is a terrible title and i think it was quite funny and good