Summer Special #2

0:03Ben Hanlin: Welcome back to What's the Trick? I am your host Ben Hanlin and this is the podcast where I sit down with the world's most creative people and try and understand their creative process. And right now it is the second week of our summer specials. So if you're new here, by the way, this isn't the normal podcast. Normally I sit down with a guest each week, but we are on a bit of a summer break and we're using this time or I'm using the time to try this new style, the summer specials. and this is how it's going to work each week this week included i am going to deep dive through the vault the archive if you will and pick out three fantastic episodes that either if you're an og and you've been here for ages you'll have heard them before but you may have forgotten some of this value in this gold so it's going to reiterate some of that or if you're new here you've probably not listened to any of these episodes yet and you might get excited about some of these chats and go back and have a listen to the full episode as well.

0:56Ben Hanlin: So that's where we're at. Also, I went to see a brand new West End massive magic show a week or so ago with my family. I'm going to give you the full review and what that was like as well. All right. So let's kick off with our first guest for this week. It's the Pulp Kitchen guys or the Pulp Kitchen podcast. Let me tell you about these two lads, James and George. This episode, by the way, was one for the film buffs. I bloody loved this one. So James and George, two friends, they met at uni, they bonded over their love of film. And on the side of their day jobs, they started doing this podcast.

1:34Ben Hanlin: And what was amazing about this, and they were really honest, no one listened for ages, but they stayed consistent. And eventually it built, it found its audience on YouTube, on Instagram, on TikTok, everywhere. And now they're one of the biggest film reviewers in the UK. They get access to the biggest films. they meet stars they meet directors they're living their best life they're flown all over the world to watch films and be part of it so they've really created something out of their passion and i wanted to know how can you do that how do you build this podcast and this thing from nothing and be able to quit your job also in this episode was amazing film trivia and film recommendations so as i say it was one for the film buffs let's have a little listen to james and george aka the pulp kitchen let's change subject let's go talk about the film industry great so lovely hopefully this isn't a negative start but for those that maybe aren't as tuned in where is the film industry at in general because and if you want to be specific more about cinema because i grew up going to cinema what's gonna happen where are we at james go ahead i mean like interesting if you're going to talk about 2025 2026 now um it kind of comes with this like post covid strikes baggage context i'd say whereas like the last five six years have had these cataclysmic disruptions and influences and just recently the whole netflix warner brothers thing is changing the landscape of cinema so i'm sorry how is that netflix warner brothers thing going to change for those that aren't up to date with that well it's it's uh so the deal hasn't gone through but it could go through and if it does it might not take effect for like a year or so but for those who don't know netflix is going to buy warner brothers which would mean that they would own a lot of ips but the the worry that a lot of people have is to do with like release windows for basically for cinemas as a as a as a physical space so uh although ted saran also think has come out and said he wants minimum 45 day release windows there's rumors that they might want 17 and obviously what that does if you have a film that comes out on uh one week and then it's going to be on netflix within two weeks death your audience yeah your audience are gonna go why am i gonna pay you know 20 25 dollars to do that and the challenge we've i think we've seen in the last four or five years is that you know how do you entice people to go to the cinema when at home they have access to every tv show and every film ever made on a probably quite a good tv that they didn't have to spend loads of money on what is it that you do to get them to go into the cinema and so i think the response have been in these success stories that i'm trying to think very positively about it is that filmmakers really doubled down on the large format imax experience show them something they literally can't get in their own home so if they've got big we go big so oh if you didn't see it on the biggest screen you didn't really see it or like oh it's that movie the star wars the moment with the crowd the fan moment comic book films christopher nolan denise all of those really big format films they've doubled down on and that's great for really big filmmakers and studios who can put two three hundred million dollars into a film that's there you've also had this great success story with low budget horror movies where somebody goes studio says that we can take a risk and fund this horror movie for 20 million but if it makes money the profits are so much bigger for what we put into it but what's happened is that the mid-budget mid-tier film has disappeared and they studios aren't willing to take a sort of average risk for an average reward so that's why you just don't see rom-coms comedies full stop sort of like the so i mean we do have great sort of like art house great sort of love story indie films that make it to the oscars there's things that do break through but so many of these are just basically not being commissioned right now you'd say in hollywood it's it's action comic book and horror and that's all that's being made and that's like the sentiment coming out of la so it's become very risk averse very specialized and very specific on the flip side i'm watching tv series that are good tv okay okay tv series but i don't need to watch eight hours of that narrative they could have given me a 90 minute two hour film yeah and it would have been brilliant yeah but it feels like tv has also taken the stories that film would have had they've taken a mid-budget category yeah there are definitely tv series that 30 years ago in the 90s would have been you know uh probably like the eighth highest earning film of the year would have been cost 50 50 million dollars to make and you know we've starred i don't know like christian slater and it would have been like it would have been a decent business proposal but like especially thrillers and things like that where it was there was a like look at seven right yeah if seven was made today that would be a 10 part yeah series and it would be crap you've been paired to give it me in two hours with brad pitt and that's like a problem with like a tv we love tv there's obviously amazing tv shows but um the tv experience inherently is less protected and sacred sacred than the cinema experience yeah taking yourself away from your home going into the dark box hopefully having your phone off hopefully everyone being quiet and just losing yourself and relinquishing yourself to this catered experience which again it should be good because if the cinema is not being good then you're losing a point versus tv and like we've all had amazing moments where you've been totally locked and sucked into a tv show but you know i don't even have kids and i don't even like i'm not i would say i'm that busy but my phone is buzzing all the time somebody walks in we got to do this it's not like a truly immersive space and so i think like the more that we take people away from that the more this this tv box just becomes like an ever-ending role of content which you know Maybe we don't have to make it that engaging because if people can't watch it whilst they're also being distracted, maybe we don't make it at all.

6:59Well, did you hear what Matt Damon said that they're doing with scripts?

7:02Ben Hanlin: Yeah, yeah. Because of the second screen. Yeah. So for those that didn't hear it, Matt Damon a month or two ago said they're now asking people when they're writing scripts for films to reiterate the point of the plot two, three, four times. Because they know that the person at home on Netflix is also looking at their phone. So now we're having to essentially solve that problem by just dumbing down the script. Mentally changing the way the stories are being told and the type of work that's created. So that was the Pulp Kitchen. Really fun episode. Honestly, you won't be disappointed if you go and listen to that.

7:33Ben Hanlin: But during that, they gave me a load of film recommendations. And I was just having to think about what I've actually watched and I haven't. So since their chat and because of their recommendations, I went and watched Sinners that was up for the Oscars. We spoke just around the Oscar time. And they said to me, go and watch Sinners because it's a film that's nominated for the Oscar. But everybody will enjoy it. And I did. I thought it was a pretty decent film, a good action film. It's one definitely not one for the kids. But if you're looking for a Saturday night popcorn film, Sinners was good.

8:01Ben Hanlin: Then they told me about 13 Lives, which I mentioned in last week's episode. I'm not going to repeat myself again, but my God, what a film. It's on Amazon Prime, 13 Lives. It's brilliant. What I've not watched is they recommended Blackberry. They said Blackberry was a great film about the phone, Blackberry. So that's on my watch list. and then also that reminded me of one thing I said to them or mentioned on that podcast and I think it's a good time to mention it here because there's so much stuff on Netflix it's how do you actually find a really good film for me the best film the most undiscovered film on Netflix is Fundamentals of Caring with Paul Rudd just go and get that in your life Fundamentals of Caring give it a watch let me know what you think right those were those guys moving on to our next guest it's a man that needs very little introduction it's dom jolly now i say little introduction there are people that i know listen from not from the uk so dom jolly was the creator of trigger happy his story was fantastic he was working for itn as an international news correspondent he got bored and at the back of his video shot in westminster he would get his mates to have a fight just to create a bit of entertainment.

9:15Ben Hanlin: And it would show up in the back of his shot as he's reporting. And people thought it was quite interesting. But it kept happening. And eventually he got sacked for that. And then that got him some attention. He had a conversation at Channel 4. And then long story short, he makes Trigger happy, which sold to 85 countries. Just think about that. You've made a show and it's gone to 85 countries. He did two seasons and then he walked away. Channel 4 were offering him lots of money and lots of opportunities, and he just said no. So I wanted to know why. Why would you stop that? And also, in this episode, there were just so many funny moments of him talking about how they made Trigger Happy, these bonkers ideas that went all around the country filming.

9:59Ben Hanlin: And a bit of backstory as well. Since filming this episode, his social clip has been the most watched social clip we've ever put out for the podcast. You may have seen it. It's about four million views. It's the one where he talks about flying to Newfoundland and walking up behind an Inuit and whacking some cymbals behind his head while he's fishing. I've just butchered that entire story, but go and watch it on my socials. OK, right. Here he is. It's fantastic. Dom Jolly. So let's talk about the transition. So because obviously we talked a lot about Chug Happy, but your career has done lots of other things.

10:33Ben Hanlin: You've got writing for papers, books, presenting, loads of things. And that evolving, that constant evolution. And something I feel bad at sometimes is that I get really jealous when I see certain people that have found their passion and they love music and they want to be a musician. That's all they want to do for the rest of their life is just playing music until they fall down dead. And I like magic. I love magic. But I always feel like I'm evolving. And I look at you and you have evolved. I love this discussion because it basically comes down to what I call the 10 ,000 hours syndrome. You know, there's that thing where I met a guy.

11:06I was a one of my weird jobs I was a foreign correspondent at the Beijing Olympics and I meet Matthew Saeed who writes for the Times he's an amazing oh rebel ideas math yeah yeah yeah amazing guy real intro but he started off he represented Britain as a ping pong player that's right I've read his book and black box thinking yeah and he just said you know I grew up in a little suburb and we had a table tennis table and he said all we did was play that and he said that was the 10 ,000 hours and he got in and i basically said do you think anyone if they just played table tennis for 10 000 hours could get good he said yeah of course and so my thinking about my life has always been i've never known what i wanted to do and now looking back i could probably think oh that actually probably was something you could have stuck out yeah and i've had the most amazing life like i've had been massive in comedy i've directed music videos i've been in bands i've written i've been a foreign correspondent i've written 10 books i've done all these great things but there's a part me thinking is that you being jack of all trades master of none because you've had a great time but the end of the day you're not great at anything and my my my alternative to that is always sasha baron cone because sasha and i started together on paramount and sasha and ali g hit just as triggered and did and sasha just went for it like like he just that was what he did you know and i got trigger happy in america and i didn't want to do it and i said no and in the end i just went and did some cameos on it and there's part of me thinking should i have just cracked on and become the world's greatest hidden camera person i probably could have been to be honest i don't know i can't live that life like that's a multiverse so firstly you should not beat yourself up about it because it's too fucking late like you are what you are yeah and i think at the end of the day as long as you can live your life and you don't die in abject poverty like to do more and more varied things and evolve is what life's about yeah and is it from your point of view so i have

12:57Ben Hanlin: this balance of am i getting bored with the thing so i'm moving on or am i trying to preempt evolution so it's kind of like okay the person i am now at 40 is different to the person well i think you're a smart smart i was gonna say kid be a fucking 40 but you're you're smart and i'm smart like and so i constantly was trying to preempt like part of probably knocking trigger happy on the head was me thinking like every album because i always think in band terms because i love music like you know you kind of want to finish you just you just want to finish with a great album and then just go and live in ohio for the rest of your life and no one ever hears me that's what's cool you know instead i did that and then went on i'm a celebrity so like that was not cool but it's it's yeah i don't think you should beat yourself up about it yeah i think it means you think about stuff a lot uh and sometimes it's a lot easier being thick like it's a lot easier being thick and not thinking about stuff but then it's you just can't think like that and i'll tell you what if you were doing it all again, if you were a young Dom Jolly, you had all this energy and you wanted to be a bit punky and do this hidden cameras, how would you go about it now in 2026?

14:03Would you think you, because that route of... Well, very weirdly, I am going about it now because Trig Happy's 25 years old. I don't look back too much, but I did think, because Sam, who I made Trig Happy, went off to LA to do ads and stuff and now he's back. And for the 25th anniversary, 14th of jan 2000 was the first trigger happy show so i thought i do want to mark it because i didn't really enjoy it at the time it was such a whirlwind i enjoyed it but you didn't have that moment you think where you look around and think oh this is it you know and so i and is that is that because you're worried about the next thing or because i just don't i think you i think in your mind you always think if you're in a band you think there's gonna be that moment where you sign the record deal you know like and that's it we've done it but i think the truth of these things is that it never kind of happens like that it's always is that have we actually signed and then what are we doing so you kind of think they're gonna be these moments where you can just sit around and enjoy the view and it wasn't it was it took me a long time to realize fuck that was incredible what we did and I enjoyed moments of it and so 25 years was a really nice way of getting all the people I made it with together and we got back together in a pub and we just had an amazing night and then we came up this idea for a live show and we did four shows and uh really that was about Sam found a box of rushes that was incredible we we found the very first thing we ever filmed for trigger happy which was me on wimbledon common dressed as a womble having a nervous breakdown littering and that was like it was almost all of trigger happy in that one scene and so we did this show and they were brilliant really good fun but we did film a couple of new things because people were saying to us all you couldn't do it now and suddenly i thought oh my god we could do it now and so we thought what do we do like do we go back to channel four and say hello i'm back you know uh can we do a 25th anniversary and then i just thought my kids i've never watched i've never seen my kids watch telly so you didn't even go to channel four and have the conversation no i haven't

15:54Ben Hanlin: been anywhere i just a lot of those gay almost what's amazing about your comedy and those skits you could take almost any of them yeah and it's still relevant oh listen i'm i really i'm not blowing smoke out my house but i can put and i know that because i've done it now i can put 10 trigger happy beautifully edited clips in front of an audience and i guarantee you that'll get a bigger laugh than anything you can provide there's something about trigger happy because it was so beautifully made and you know i did it i put beautiful music on it it's like an it's like listening to a beautifully produced pink floyd album not that i'm pink floyd but you know i know it works like i'm not modest about that it's great it's about doing it again without it being pastiche or nostalgia and my kids never watched telly i never got into youtube i've never kind of did it i just did other things and i suddenly thought fuck it let's just set up a youtube channel and there's something quite punky about you know 50 something 250 something men literally setting up a youtube channel and part of i think what we're going to do is called mug often part of what we're going to do is almost discuss the the ridiculousness of us doing that how why are we doing this how do we do it sam asks his kids like is this working and they're just like that's fucking terrible so like a behind the scenes yeah i think so yeah a bit like that but also i think i'm interested in you know i could just show old clips but that's pointless so actually we're filming new clips but actually what we're doing is exactly what this is about we literally sit there and think what's a good thing like as an example i've got this idea for a guy called crypto guy yeah i'm obsessed with crypto because no one really knows so i've got this character who's slowly developed who's a guy who lives in swindon because swindon makes me laugh he goes to dubai for two weeks but now thinks he's the crypto king of dubai and he now drives around drive-thrus around swindon which is me in a sort of crypto shell suit trying to pay with non-existent cryptocurrencies like cilantro yacht monkey yeah captain sandy so that was the joke and so we started doing it it's fucking great but the first thing we did was awful he didn't have the outfit and i'm just going up trying to get people to help me pay and so we show the progression like we show like we went out and i can hear sam going this is not funny and then i'm like nah shit and i kind of like that it breaks it all down yeah but also it does help you show where how ideas come no that's that sounds and if people want to go and watch that that is on what i don't fucking know oh would they no no is it on youtube now no not yet i mean if when you watch this we've probably canceled the whole project because we got bored but the idea at the moment is where it's going to drop as the kids say on april the first april fool's day the first one when it's called mugwuffin and the live tour so i'm i was going to ask you you know what to expect in that but in essence it sounds like it's come out giving away all the stories yeah the live tour here really But organically, it's going to be you talking about the things and the rushes and all the material that you didn't.

18:50And I kind of take them through the history of Trigger Happy from Sam found all the rushes for the pilot, which is great. Most people haven't seen the pilot. So we analyze what makes a Trigger Happy sketch, basically. And then we talk about some of the weird things that happen behind the scenes, some of the things that went wrong, you know, being arrested by the police of the snail. lots of things that go wrong and then really just answering all the questions that people always ask me which is uh you know how did the mobile phone happen there's a whole story around that uh what's the weirdest thing did you ever get beaten up did you have to get consents consents is an amazing story yeah i mean jesus christ the main reason people didn't sign consent forms is because they were having affairs there's an insane amount of people wandering around with someone and they were like oh i love trigger happy am i in it and they didn't realize and then they go oh fuck were you filming obviously they go this isn't my wife you know so so that's dom jolly and

19:46Ben Hanlin: by the way if you're near the cheltenham area he's got a night once a month the dom jolly speakeasy i think it's on a thursday night i've done it uh other people do it he has like a variety act comedy act music act and it's a bit of fun it's about 200 or so people under a pub in cheltenham really fun vibes if you're in the area go and uh have a look at it see what you think right what else i need to tell you before we dive into our final guest of the episode a little ad from me is i mentioned it last week i've revamped my website benhanlin.com if you need a awards host or a keynote speaker i don't know why i'm talking why am i talking like this in essence it's i've put new videos up of me doing my keynote speaking where i talk about human connection and also about awards hosting i've put new videos up so go and have a little look at that benhanlin.com if you work for a company or you know someone that organizes events uh it would be great to hear from you there you go right also i want to tell you uh thank you to all the messages we've had in the last few weeks we've had new listeners finding the podcast any new listener you are always welcome and you can always message me at what's the trick pod on instagram and find me at benhanlin and feel free to share this with any of your friends that you think would be into a new pod right um oh so this is what i need to tell you about me and the family went to now you see me live which is the brand new west end magic show let me give you a bit of a review so a bit of backstory there was a massive show a few years ago called the illusionists it was in the west end it was in broadway it's actually been all over the world and the same producers of that are producing this now you see me is the big film um the magic film that's been out the last few years so they've done a partnership with lion's gate for that franchise which is quite clever and actually the branding and the way they put it together is pretty cool pretty slick uh it's quite cinematic in that sense that was really cool what did i think of the show i think first of all i've said this for years I think everybody should take their kids to at least one magic show ever.

21:55Ben Hanlin: Please. They might just fall in love with it and then we've got new magicians and that's a lovely thing. But in general, I think every family should go and see a magic show. And this is a great, great family magic show. There are big illusions like helicopters appear. Other things happen. The cast are solid. They're world class. They've worked in Vegas. They've worked all over the world. There's escapologies. There's all the dangerous escapes underwater. There's drama. It's well produced. The music's good. My critique, if you want me to be honest, if you're a magic nerd and love your magic, are you going to see any brand new magic in this show?

22:34Ben Hanlin: Never before seen material? Probably not. There's maybe a couple of things, but not loads that's never been seen before. but if it's your first magic show or you know people that go don't go to many magic shows and you were to take them to one this is a fantastic like brilliant show to go to so that's my review there and speaking of magic shows the edinburgh fringe is on at the moment i went to see a show earlier this year mario the magician totally different than this if that is a bit for older kids my kids are kind of eight and seven and there were kids that were older that loved Now You See Me Live.

23:07Ben Hanlin: I would say from those ages down, Mario the Magician was fantastic. He's at the Edinburgh Fringe. If you're going up there and you've got kids and you want to see a family magic show, go to that one as well. Right. Let's move on to our final guest of the episode. It is. So what have we had? We've had Dom Jolly, a comedian. We've had film reviewers. And now we're moving on to animatronics matt denton is an animatronic that was worked on loads of things harry potter he's worked on star wars he's worked on the new project hail mary helping build the robot for that i suppose most famously when he was on star wars he helped make bb-8 the droid that rolled around you remember it's like a ball with a thing on its head him and the team made that so i wanted to know how on earth you make ideas that directors come up with come to life he has to straddle this idea of creativity and science and make the two worlds collide so that it works for tv so i'd never spoken to an animatronic before so here he is the fantastic matt denton well let's talk about harry potter in general then because obviously i'm guessing you worked on a few films what are the big animatronics that you worked on throughout that films so as gaban yeah we we did um the hippogriff which was a massive thing we'd built built i think two or three hippogriffs um which were hard work i mean some of the work on that was beautiful the feather work was stunning um that was headed up by val jones and her team and they were hand cutting and hand painting and dyeing the feather suit on the hippogriff which was beautiful but as an animatronic it was really hard work really difficult um in fact we called it the heap of grief it was the well-known nickname for it instead of the hippogriff um and we have a we have a phrase why is it a difficult animatronic oh it it was very ambitious um yeah very ambitious i mean it was filmed in scotland in the mud you know like and it rained every day and it's a feather suit so we had to keep going in with umbrellas it was supposed to be this summer you know like the summer didn't come it was just a difficult thing to build we built a fully standing version which is pretty much what you can see in the harry potter museum now yeah and you know that's where where um uh harry potter daniel first meets the hippogriff and that scene and we get it you know we take it on set it it can do everything but walk you know I can lift a leg up, the wings work, the head works.

25:46It's beautiful, but it can't walk. We can't make things walk. We get it on set. Alfonso Coran, the director, is like, okay, now Harry, you step in, and now the hippogriff steps in. And we're like, what? You just watched us. We're two hours. We just buried it into the ground and hid all the cables. He can't walk, and he knows this. He's seen it in our workshop. But anyway, so they're like, all right, get rid of the hippogriff. so we get we take out this four month five month build of animatronic and beautiful you know and stick it back in the van and it becomes a cg shot you know and that was that was that's the way that the industry was going in general and it was really sad but that was the reality of it so the heap of grief um sorry no well let's very quickly uh it's because you if you go back

26:35Ben Hanlin: through that time CGI and you must have had this throughout your career that why pay a team five months to build something when I can just do it in post and it's and even now with AI very quickly where do you think we're at is it is animatronics gonna stay there because it helps just general film and audiences love them or do you think AI is going to potentially come in there a bit more as well well i mean not to be negative by the way i'm sorry if i'm saying negative no no it's all right i i think everyone is worried about generative ai at the moment um i mean yeah so cg pretty much wiped out my industry for a while we were doing things like stage shows and stuff where you can't fake it it has to be live on stage for a while and then the force awaken came along force awakens and uh jj wanted as much practical stuff as he could and so we started collaborating together again and it's it's really about telling the story you know like you you can't be having a physical thing on set for a for the actor to work with for the lighting um you know for all that essence and then if you can collaborate with the digital creators to make something more believable or do shots you know i always use jurassic park the original as my the t-rex scene i think still stands out to this day because one minute you're looking at a full-size animatronic t-rex close up eyeball dilating you know the pupil dilating and stuff and then it's wide and it's tearing a car apart and it's like cg even the car was cg and that fooled me when i went to watch it i remember They're thinking, how do they get that car interacting with the dark, you know, but it's CG car as well.

28:22So, you know, it works really well because you're left guessing. What am I looking at? If you look at too much CG, it looks like CG. If you look at too much animatronic, sometimes it can't.

28:33Ben Hanlin: So there we go. If any of those three episodes tickled your fancy, go back and give them a listen now. That was Matt Denton. It was Dom Jolly. And it was the Pulp Kitchen. We'll give them all three. Let me know what you think. DM me. also if you've got any questions or comments for me send them over and i'll try and include them in the future summer specials uh what else i need to tell you uh drop me a dm obviously is like i just said uh share this share any of the episodes the derren brown episode or the any of the episodes you're enjoying with a friend that might be into a podcast that'd be lovely and i'll see you all again next week on what's the trick