The Jeff Bezos & Lauren Sánchez Wedding

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Hello, and welcome to this episode of The Wrestlers Entertainment with me, Marina Hyde. And me, Richard Osman.
Marina, what a week. It's been the week we've all been waiting for.

We've been looking forward to it.

Are you talking about the wedding of the millennium? Of course I am. To all those that celebrate, which is all of us, which is all of us.

I don't think I've stopped weeping. No, no.

It was just so beautiful. Lovely to see love win.
This, of course, is the wedding of Restaurants Entertainment Untouchable Lauren Sanchez. Who did she marry?

She married a guy, like a basic, called Jeff Bezos. Oh, like the Waterstones guy.
Yeah, the Waterstones guy.

We're going to be talking about that. We'll be talking about that.
And we're also going to talk about F1, the movie. Yeah, which we've both been to see.
And which is a huge hit.

And we're going to talk about all sorts of aspects of what it means, the movie itself, what it means for the people who made it, and what it means for the sport. What it means for Brad Pitts.

What it means for Brad Pitts.

That's the prism through which I see everything. What does this mean for Brad Pitts? What does this mean for his green persona? How has it evolved? Should we start start with Lovers in the Air?

Lovers is certainly in Venice. The sap is rising.
The sap is rising. So are the ocean levels.
Yeah.

Lauren and Jeff got married in Venice, which

unless you've been hiding under a rock, you'll have seen this sort of blitz greed of coverage of it.

And there were multiple events across the city for them. I think, I'm trying to think of all the different things they had.

There was a, we'll talk about the different types of wedding event they had, but they had multiple parties, multiple Kardashians, some A-listers,

some business people. Some A-list Kardashians, some B-list Kardashians.
Yeah, and even the bottom tier.

Clearly, it was there.

It was a real Kardashian deep dive, wasn't it? It really was. They're real with Jeff and Lauren are real Kardashian completists.
Yes, yes, they are. They had the full set.

Anyhow, now. The tradition of, I suppose, using Venice in this way for a

dates, if not as old as love itself, then certainly back to 2014 when

George Clooney and Amar Clooney got married in Venice. And remember, that was, people loved that, of course.
They thought it was wonderful. I know various people who are involved in that wedding.

Now, they wanted to seen. Same, same.

I know Carla caterers. Yeah.

They wanted to be seen.

They wanted to be seen. So you have, and stepping off the same jetties this week, you had all the Kardashians and Lauren Sanchez in a number of, huge number of outfits.

And in some ways, they did, you know, they, they, you know, they want to be seen. They press release about the jewelry.

She had, there was another enormous sort of $7 million ring that she was wearing, as well as the one, the 30-carat ring she'd had for the start.

And we have vogue has immediately dropped a sort of online cover, which is all the inside take on the wedding. And they've obviously got exclusive pictures.

And yeah, people absolutely made it very clear that they hated this,

which they didn't when George and Amal got married there. And partly, I I suppose, it's the nature of the two principles.

But I think it's not that wealth inequality wasn't an issue back in 2014, but we didn't talk about it the whole time like we do now. Yeah, and obviously it's George Clooney.
And listen,

he's on the side of the good people, right? So we don't mind him splurging millions on a wedding. Yeah, but I do think that something has changed in the culture.

And so there was various types of protest.

They had to move to move where the actual wedding was, didn't they? Because

one of their events moved. Venetians were complaining.

Yeah. Not in our city.
Or some people were complaining. Yes, it's not quite clear.

There's so vanishingly few people who actually live in Venice now that I think some of the protest was bust in, shall we say. But it's interesting.
And so the fashion is a huge aspect of this.

And they've had,

I mean, none of these people. are what you would call stealth wealth, quiet luxury, all these trends.
I mean, it is all out there. Yeah, all the time.

I ended up writing about it this week and I was trying to think of what her look says, Laurence.

And it's that she just wants to look really sexy and really rich all of the time and like she's having a great time all of the time.

And she wants to show, you know, her cleavage and her money all the time.

And she really doesn't care what anyone else thinks. This is what makes her, I think, very unusual.

Because in the old days, you know, once you became a billionaire's wife or a billionaire's second wife or whoever it is, you moved into a different milia and you were actually, you felt socially awkward.

People, you know, the terrible sort of social anxiety of the super rich is a thing.

She did not look particularly awkward, I have to say. She's like, you know, she doesn't care at all what people think of her.
She doesn't care and she can buy all the stuff anyway.

She doesn't need designers to,

there was something that people were saying, oh, which designers will actually dress her? Will certain people just say no? And it's like, sorry.

High fashion is a really, there's a very few people who can purchase couture. Very few people.
It's like Rolls-Royce's. If you sell one a week, you've had a good year.
Yeah. If

someone's coming to a shop and saying, I want to buy that dress, you go, Yeah. I mean, sorry, you're a Kazakh, what?

An art stealer? Of course. That's the thing is that who actually buys couture? And when you go to the couture shows in Paris, there are a very small pool of people who will actually buy it.

And there are lots of, you know, Chinese billionaires. There are lots of wives of leaders of African nations.

And you might actually think, maybe, maybe the Laura Bees or Sarah Sanchez's didn't make their money in such a questionable way as some of those people.

So, of course, they're going to get dressed by these people, but all of this stuff was press released. So, you heard that she had a cocktail dress by Oscar de La Renta featuring 600 yards of

Oscar de Laurenta, yeah, Oscar de La Renta, 600 yards, Richard, of hand-sewn chain and 175,000 crystals. Wow, yeah, I know.

So, they really wanted to tell you that all of these people went out, but so you're not- Why did they do that in some Amazon fulfillment center in Scottsdale?

Yeah, just someone sewing on sequins, yes,

having to go to the loo in a bottle. Yeah, that's how it worked.
Anyway, so some more details of outfits that we perhaps didn't even see have emerged.

And Vogue describes one as a draped deep V burgundy velvet look inspired by the doges of Venice, the medieval magistrates who ruled the Venetian oligarchy.

She doesn't lean out of the oligarchy thing, I will say that. No.

And there's something very weird.

For me, it's the real housewivisation of everything. And by the way, we should do a bonus episode on that franchise at one point.

But there's something about these women behaving in a certain way, bringing their own drama.

But it's how they exist in our culture, which is that these types of rich women exist as an object of scorn and derision. And that's basically it.

No one is saying that, oh, I mean, I admire her so much, you know, she's so cheap, whatever.

You do. We do, don't we? I love her books mainly.
I love her books. We're one of 43 purchasers of one of the books, I think.
Yeah, I saw her described as a best-selling author in one of the pieces.

You didn't? I thought,

that's a stretch.

Wow. What would you be about that? So, what is that? Do we think? Do we think it's that there have always been billionaires

or whatever a billionaire was in the 19th century has always been people with enormous amounts of money.

There's always an unease if you are one of those people because in your day-to-day life, you must understand something is up with the amount of money you have and the things you see out of the window of your car or your horse and carriage.

So you know that something is up, which you're uncomfortable with. So there's all sorts of stories you can tell yourself about, you know, one's innate talent and hard work.
So I get that.

But in the olden days there would be that thing of we'll just keep a little bit quiet about it because we know we do get it we understand that something isn't right in the state of the world if we have got this much money but in the last 20 years this this the rise of shamelessness has given just an absolute get out of jail free card to so many people which has said look of course

It's absolutely crazy that you're a billionaire, but there are lots of people who would like to see the dresses that you're wearing.

Or if you're, you know, a guy, they would like to see the gym you're at. They'd like to see, you know, the way you've sculpted your body over the last 10 years and

how you've been kind of medically turned into some sort of super being.

And so they are able now to lean into it and go, yeah, we are billionaires. Yeah, look at the absurdity of what we've created and what we've got.

Oh, you think they were making a satirical point with our wedding? No, I don't think that. I think they're having their cake and eating it is what I think.

I think they're having an enormous Pavlova and eating the entire thing. I think your shamelessness is now monetizable.
And I think

that's what this is. This is like the apogee of that.
There's something weird about it happening in Venice, obviously, a kind of amazing Renaissance city.

But I suppose if Florence, maybe even more so, that these cities were basically built culturally by very, very rich oligarchs in Vogue's parlance or whatever, by these nobles.

These people contribute absolutely nothing culturally at all other than Instagram pictures. That's it.
They don't actually... Wait, Amir.

Don't that's that's you know, there's not going to be a gallery at some point, like the Affizi filled with all the kind of works that they, their patronage has created or anything like that.

There's no real culture challenge accepted.

There's no real culture that they give at all other than Instagram pictures, which, as you say, are quite shameless and are quite sort of self-advertising.

But the whole is it's fascinating, I think, because a lot of the people here at this wedding, the whole thing, this, because

I just have one question is why did they do it anyone here who's been married or whatever you think great i'm going to get married to the person i love we'll have our friends round yeah we'll make sure they have a really really good time make sure it's a party um but it's a party because everyone's happy because you're in love and you're making a commitment so that's what a wedding is but what was this and i'm absolutely certain they're in love with each other by the way they certainly they certainly look in love with each other and i genuinely happy it's nice that people find love but what is it that they are having to say to people what both of them are in on it.

Neither of them is saying, do you know what? Is this a bit ostentatious? They're both going, you know what? Let's go for it. We've earned this.

Bezos is, you know,

he's

one of the richest men in the world, however you want to measure it.

What has he still got left to prove? That he has to do this. This, this.

I mean, they really, as I said, they really wanted to be seen, but that's not unique. The Clooney's wanted to be seen as well in the same way.

But I do think there's something about, and also about these type of weddings where there were two pre-wedding dinners there was a ceremony yeah there was a wedding dinner and there was a like a pajama themed after party

concert it's like there's a sort of daily tentpole event yeah but it's like a series it's a you know it's like a format that you're it's a huge huge thing when you get invited to wedding okay okay i'm gonna as a thought experiment i get invited to a wedding and i get invited to a wedding by someone who i know and like but my relation to them is probably similar to, say, Orlando Bloom's relationship to Jeff Bezos.

Okay, that's how far removed I am. So we're in each other's orbit, I've had fun with them, but you think, oh, I didn't know I'd get invited this night.

I'm happy to be invited, but I could easily have not been invited to this wedding. So you kind of go, oh,

should we go? Is there, I guess we should go. And then it's like, they'll send a thing through, by the way, it's four days long and it's in Italy.

And you're like, God, I don't really know you that well. And you're going to invite me for four days to a wedding.

You don't have any old friends celebrities don't have old friends yeah if you look at her hen party bachelorette party in their language um which took place in paris like all of these people were from 15 minutes ago oh no it was very weird they had a day in the hermes shop oh really and it was all on instagram and it was sort of like is this it's almost like it's an advert yeah but then

it were they you know because you have to be invited or whatever to buy one of those for people the richest people in the world too who don't need to do adverts for irmes i don't know you have have to be invited to buy one of those bags but actually you know everyone's got one of the of some i saw someone this week saying um even the real housewives have these particular bags you can get you can get them in dubai there's other guests though that i think were like eva longoria she's the opposite of sleeping beauty 13th fairy she is on every she gets she goes to everything oh does she um and recently presented lauren with a humanitarian award oh good that's about time yeah she went they went down to cannes but there were there were also sort of funny events they want to be seen they did a foam party.

I sent you the pictures of that.

You saw that, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. On the deck of the world's biggest yacht.

Remember, he's got the world's biggest yacht, and it's so big that it has to have another yacht that carries around after things like the helicopter pad. Of course, it does.

It's called personal submarine, genuinely. He's got a personal submarine.
That feels that, come on, guys. That's terrible.
He's basic. He's so basic.

It's extraordinary what he's achieved. It really is, given how.
And I was looking a little bit into his family, which is also fascinating. He's a very interesting man.

His biological father, Ted Jorgensen, was a unicyclist hockey player. Really? Yeah.

Just at once. Yeah, at once.
Yeah.

Yeah, he founded a unicycling hockey team. Blimey, Jeff.
What can you do? I have to say his adoptive father, Miguel Bezos, sounds like an absolute dude, though. Does he?

And that's who Jeff absolutely considers to be his biological father. But the world would be a different place if some of these people grew up funny.
I completely agree.

And could just walk into a room and everyone was happy to see them because they knew they were going to have a laugh.

But the foam party on the yacht, I was, first of all, there's a lot, which they did on the deck of the yacht. And there's like four of them.
It's so, it's really tragic. Yeah.

And so I thought, oh, this is quite funny that they've done this. But I actually think that paparazzi photos

and in general, the eat the rich genre needs to evolve. I would have loved to have seen the kind of really disconsolate photos of the help just endlessly clearing up the foam afterwards.

Just a really silent, slow film. Yeah, just

put it in a gallery and call it art. Two of them clearing up the foam.
I honestly picture two people with mops, neither of whom want to do it.

Just have the argument about who has to clear up the foam party. They might be very funny people, those two.
Exactly.

There could be dialogue. It just seems so tiring.
If I were a multi-billionaire,

I would just think, you know what I'm going to do? Nothing. I will do nothing.
I'm going to stay in. I'm going to watch below deck.
I'm going to look after the people that I love.

I'm going to have my mates around. I'm going to do nothing.
I'm going to do everything I can never to be photographed. You're the richest man in the world.
Well, in some ways.

Why do you want all this hoopla around your wedding? In some ways, they behave in the way that a lot of people think they would behave when they were famous.

And that's what people, you know, people used to say about the spice girls right at the start. Oh, they're really fun.
They behave like I would behave if I got famous.

I would go out and have fun every night and act like that and just look like they're having a good time.

And in fact, what happens when most people become famous is that they just sit at home and moan about privacy. I understand that and my sympathies, etc.

But the Bezos's, in some ways, behave, you know, like they've won the lottery. And they're in a, you know, they're in a film about a couple who suddenly

and they're like, well, we're doing this. You know, normally there is a moral payoff to all of that.
I would have loved.

And I sort of feel like they look, you know, in we they lose everything and then, you know, in the movie version of this.

I would have loved an old-fashioned tweet along from Jeff Bezos' first wife. Yeah.
Just about the wedding. Because, you know, she knows, she knows, or she knows who he is.

If anyone knows who he is, it's her, right? Mackenzie. And she's come out and she's got all of this money.
She does lots of good things for good causes. But just imagine if that's your ex

like having that foam party with four people on the biggest yacht in the world. I just,

just the camera trained on her face as the pictures came in. Yeah.
It would have been lovely. So I do think that it's about wanting to be seen.

And I think it's that there's something incredibly tone deaf about that.

As I say, that the culture has moved on and people think about it. I don't know.

I think probably there's no such thing as tone deaf anymore. Or

it's better to be absolutely kind of tone or entirely tone deaf because that's half of our culture now. And actually, as you say, they've committed to the bit.
That's the key, isn't it?

They've gone, you know what? If we're going to be a billionaire, we're going to be a billionaire. Let's do it.

Let's do every single thing that a billionaire would do in a, in a film. Let's do all of them.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, they wouldn't do that.
I think their, their money is probably safe. Yes, it felt like there wasn't anything holding it up.

I mean, there is, because I do, you look at the two of them, you do think, I do think they're in love with each other. I think they've found someone that they're happy spending time with.

So that holds it up a bit. But everything around it, the weight of the whole thing, where it is, how much it costs, who's there, why they're there,

it feels so fragile. I was so embarrassed for the celebrity friends, not for Orlando Bloom, who, as we know, do you remember that? His,

one of my favorite Life in the Days in the Sunday Times, where he talks about what he does. And he said, he spends a lot of time dreaming of roles for myself and others, for minorities and women.

So he was probably just, every time you saw him in the back of one of those water taxis, you were thinking,

even now, that brain will be whirring and you'll be dreaming up roles for minorities and women. And I, you know, Leonardo DiCaprio.
He was there with his girlfriend, Vittoria Choretti, who's a model.

Now, they often say that

Leonardo DiCaprio only goes out with people who are 26 and under. Yeah.
Right.

Well,

Vittoria Choretti is not 26 or under. You know how old she is? She turned 27 two weeks ago.
Wow. Well, as they always say.
June the 6th, she said.

She's thinking, I bet she lied, but she said, no, actually, it's not the 6th. It is

6th of July, just so she got to go to the wedding. Yeah.

By the way, my favourite guest,

and this is this, I would, I think it's absolutely fair enough. Anyone who has a wedding, invite this guy, Usher.
Yeah. It's like inviting someone called Page Boy to your wedding.

If he wasn't an usher, I'll cry. Oh, that would be having Usher as your usher.
Singing usher. Oh, I'd love that.
I wouldn't. Okay.
We look back on this time in 30 years.

We look back on this time of oligarchs and of shamelessness and of, you know, publicly spending one's money. Is this the sort of the defining moment of the whole thing, the Sanchez Bezos wedding?

Yes, I suppose it is in a way, because it was so empty in lots of ways, other than you say, they obviously love each other. But it's, as you say, it's built on nothing in lots and lots of ways.

And unlike the robber barons of the Gilded Age, who, you know, however bad they were, they gave America these huge cultural treasures and kind of created all this stuff.

As I say, these people just give us Instagram pictures. That's it.
And I'm sure, you know, there's people will say, well, hang on, they've donated five million pounds to an ocean project. Okay, great.

Culturally, they give us nothing except for Instagram pictures. That's it.
They don't give us anything. And I think that's really interesting.

It's not like Carnegie and the libraries or whatever it is. They just don't give us anything at all.

I think one fact that sums up where we are as a culture is there were 95 private jets brought guests in, 95 private jets, and half the world is going 95 private jets. That's disgraceful.

And the other half is going, whoa, that's cool. You know, and

I'm sort of on the fence yes no listen i'm i'm very anti the um i'm very anti-climate change strongly anti i'm strongly against i'm just gonna i'm gonna go on the record there i say i would rather the world did not um boil and uh explode absolutely and that's my final that's when the historians do look back on this i hope they quote me on that well they might say that the those those jets were the tipping point making the seas actually rise and cover venice completely i mean that's the place you are going to

act three maybe.

I mean, you have your wedding somewhere that is literally sinking. Okay.

Have you heard of the Titanic? Yeah.

Yeah. There was a feel of that to it, wasn't it? But I actually don't think that they're in any way.

I think that the fact that they behave like that and the fact that they display it like that shows how utterly secure they feel.

in that mega wealth and they don't feel that it's something that it might be politic to play down or to seclude from public attention, anything at all.

So I think that the kind of tech oligarchs feel like they remain on the up and on. Well, because now they've all got bunkers.
Yeah. They have.
I mean, they've all got bunkers.

They've all got an escape patch. You know,

they're like us. They think it's the end of times as well.
But they've got somewhere to go after the end of times. But Noel Edmonds is already there.
So as I said to you before. Yeah, it's not

justice. But

we give our congratulations to the happy couple. Our congratulations to the happy couple.

Jeff and Lauren. Jeff and Lauren.
Well, having toasted them, shall we go to a break? Let's go for a break.

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Hi there, Rory Stewart here from The Restless Politics. I just wanted to tell you that we have now released the first episode of our mini-series on the real JD Vance.
Here's a clip.

If Donald Trump dropped dead,

this guy's automatically president.

How he has become what he's become from this background? I'm sitting in the back of this police cruiser. They've just arrested my mom.
The relief of having survived another day.

This is a story about something which we don't often talk about in America, which is class. Trump, I think that he's leading the white working class to a very dark place.
I'm a never-Trump guy.

I never liked him. But in the end, the main thing you need to understand about JD Barnes is, given the choice between his intellectual statements and power,

he chooses power every time.

I was wrong about Donald Trump. We're seeing migrants kidnap our dogs and cats.
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Welcome back, everybody, from

Love to Fast Cars, the F1 movie. This show's got it all.
It really has.

Yeah, the F1 movie, which came out, gets one of those slightly longer release opening weekends, but for because of American holidays. It's produced by legendary action producer Jerry Buckheimer.

It's directed by Joseph Kaczynski, who did Top Gum Maverick, so knows quite a lot about how to make small cockpits look exciting.

And it stars Brad Pitt as Sonny Hayes, a kind of, you know, who's returning in a kind of mentor role. As an F1 driver.
So he was an F1 driver from the 80s, had a crash. He's now coming back.

He's had a crash in the 90s, now comes back.

He's sort of 60-odd, and he comes back to help out his old friend, Javier Bardem, who runs a slightly dilapidated racing team who have to win a race before the end of the season or they close the board.

The board's going to take his company off him.

It's taken 55 million in the US and 85 million worldwide.

You always knew it's going to be bigger worldwide than the US, but it's drawing those in US audiences in. That is an unbelievable opening for a sports action movie.
Like

whatever it's about. Never mind that it's about something that used to be considered niche.
That is an unbelievable opening.

And it's by far and away Apple's,

it's not quite, I don't think it's quite as big as World War, World War Z, World War Z in our language, like Jay Z. That didn't trouble me.

And it's by far and away Apple's most successful theatrical release. Remember, they've only had about five theatrical releases.

Killers of the Flower Moon, which, you know, they've all of that, but it didn't make its money. And then they've had big flops like Matthew Vaughan's Argyle.
That was a big flop.

And they've had very, very little. This is like massively massively broad entertainment that you can take basically your whole family to see.
And it's, it's very, very successful.

And just on its own terms in like the sports action genre, that is a brilliant opening. We're calling it it's a hit.
I have to say, Richard, I mean, we've both seen it.

To me, it is totally phenomenal what Formula One has done for itself in recent years. It is unbelievable.
It's called off a real coup here. Yeah, I mean, they really have.

First of all, Drive to Survive is brilliant and it's become this sort of thing that it's brought so many people into watching their sport and it's become the template for other things.

You know, everyone would like, other sports would like to replicate that now.

But then to have this movie as well, it's really hard because it's become such a sort of part of the fabric of sports documentaries, Drive to Survive, to think they were really the first people who did it in that way.

And then to have this movie, and which, you know, is quite obviously a massive sales pitch for Formula One.

And we can talk about how they actually end up doing it within the movie itself, which I find hilarious. Agreed.

And it's just a huge thing to have done that for yourself to make yourself this kind of entertainment enterprise aside from what happens in these 90 minutes of which there are only a few a year which are the races and to sell to america particularly which is the home of nascar and to sell a movie which you unequivocally understand in this film that whatever form of driving you do wherever you've driven for whoever there is one pinnacle in the world of driving it is f1 this is the greatest driving experience in the world and in America now, that's sort of accepted.

And that was definitively not accepted. Even five years ago, F1 found it very hard to break into the US, which is a huge market.

And now, I mean, culturally, we understand that F1 is the absolute pinnacle of what you can achieve. American rights come up again, I think, next year.
And I think ESPN have them now.

And I really bet you Apple goes for them. Yeah.
Now, because and it's really interesting. Anyway, so let's talk about the film.
But my God, what about even the ads before?

Every ad before, I don't know, we saw it in completely different cinemas. Every ad before was for either an F1 sponsor or a partner.

Obviously, the real thing, there's advertising throughout the movie because things are written on the card. Advertising throughout the movie is amazing.

It's almost beautiful. It's in the way you can just

see advertising has achieved its final form. Almost every single frame, you're thinking, okay, that's paid for.
That's paid for. Okay, that's good.

So I don't know how much it costs, but a lot of it was offset.

A huge amount was offset. And as you say, because it's F1, everything is branded anyway, so it's perfect.
It's authentic, you're not kind of thinking it's weird that they would have Pepsi there.

You think, oh, no, of course they would, because it's an advertising thing if they didn't, it would not be authentic, and there's no point trying to invent some cheesy soft drink that doesn't exist, just yeah, Pepsi displays.

Oh, cheesy soft drink, yeah, yeah, that makes me feel quite ill now. Okay, the movie itself, I first of all, I'll talk about what is done for Brad Pitt in a minute.

In a movie like this, you have to explain the sport a lot.

Oh my god, oh my god, you remember that Michael York character in the Austin Powers movie is called basil exposition they've got so many basil expositions in this i'll tell you why because they've got people because people don't understand the rules of it and obviously lots of formula one races hinge on sort of technical technicalities or almost all of them yeah pit stops or anyway you have to look at a clock to see how well anyone's doing so the whole you know but you've got so first of all so all the opportunities for exposition are the track commentary the stuff that goes over the loudspeakers that people in the crowds hear is constantly in this movie people saying well he can do this but he've in fact what's happened here is yeah, but but also, you know, I'm not going to spoil any plot points, but you know, this team at the beginning of the movie, at least, are the back of the grid, and then they spend an awful lot of time, the on-treck commentator, talking about the cars that are in 17th and 18th.

Yeah, I mean, there was remember, this is a battle for last place

or whatever.

And then there's the people who are actually in Drive to Survive, like that motoring journalist and commentator, Will Buxton, you know, has a significant Basil exposition role in this movie as well.

No, the real Basil exposition are Martin Brundle and David Croft, who are the F1 commentators, because they're, you know, they've, do you remember when you used to play like the early football Sims?

And, you know, there'd be like Martin Tyder and Alan Smith when they spent like three days in a Soho recording studio saying, oh, he's passed it down to the wing. Yeah.
Great cross there.

It's a clearance. It was.
that almost non-stop. Brundle and Croft.
That's a cool movie. Yeah, they did a great job, by the way.

But, you know, they're having to say things like, and don't forget, because the safety car has come out, it could be a useful time to go into the pits because half of the time in the pits will be taken off.

So actually, you can keep track position at this point of the race.

Okay. I'm not joking, but this is not to denigrate the achievement of the TV, which is pitched at the level that if you don't understand it, they want you to be able to understand it.

But also you don't understand it because if you're like I made a million quiz shows, if something's simple, explain it and people will understand it.

If it is something like what happens when a virtual safety car comes out, the people who know F1 already know what happens, okay? And you explaining it to them, they're going, yeah, Martin, I know.

And the people who don't know F1, what you are saying makes zero sense whatsoever, but it's just no, it's noise in the brain.

It's hysterical, and you're sitting there thinking, I can't believe I'm having the virtual safety car. It's been a

and it's a really important part of Act 2. I want to get Martin Brundle and David Croft in the studio because they did such a great job.
I just want to hear about the day they spent

with the script in front of them saying, and just one more time, make it a tiny bit more natural. Can you do it a tiny bit more natural? And they go, Well, we would never say this, but

we'll give it a go yeah and there's a the sort of heel in it he's played um by tobias menzies says honestly one of the first things he says on screen was i'm a huge fan i've binged all of drive to survive there's so much you know and what i love about it as well because it's they shot huge oh we should oh we should say by the way and i should say as well i love this movie i loved it

i i i loved it and i didn't love it

i was i was glad i watched it yeah so was i come on the brad pitt bit of it i liked i mean it is a bit like having him Drive to Survive, but instead of Christian Horney, you've got Brad Pitt.

You know, I'm going to take the upgrade.

But what I love is that it's so, first of all, Kim Bodnier, who play, who used to be in the bridge, he plays the team principal, who, and you've just realised, oh my God, of course, you look exactly like one of the team principles.

Yeah, exactly. It is perfect physical casting.
And the other team principals, by the way, are played by themselves.

They're like press conferences where all the people you'll know and love from Drive to Survive literally play themselves. Zach Brown is in there.

Toto Wolf, Toto Wolf, yeah.

I'm going to say some of them acted well. Toto Wolf, listen, love the guy.

He needs work. Yeah.
Yeah. Don't give up the day job, Toto.
But what I find absolutely, what was so funny about it in lots of different ways was,

you know, you end up, because they're so desperate for it to be authentic, which is a whole set, which I think is extraordinary because in the old days, you used to be able to make a sort of, and Jerry Brookhammer did it himself.

Even if you would make something like Days of thunder and okay there are a couple of real race drivers in that and nascar drivers but it was fine for it to be at a sort of basic level and for things to happen that could never really happen in the real world and the reason that so much of this plot has to hinge on things like digital safety cards is because in the in the era in we in which we live you're so afraid of fans saying it's nothing like this this could never happen and actually that mattering and not just being a sort of general wide release summer fun movie which is what you could get away with in the past is that they have to have every single thing right.

And it has to be done on the tracks, the real circuits, and you have to be able to see all the people.

And it's quite funny, you know, you're watching someone like obviously Max Verzappen can't really be doing with Drive to Survive.

So I can tell you, he does not look like he can be doing the whole obviously. There's a few things that he's doing.

He was Hansen as the executive producer and is massively involved in this movie, massively involved in it. And he's got a production company now, and he's looking obviously to do more things.

I was seeing an interview with him where he was, he was saying, and then, you know, Hans Zimmer gets involved.

So we go to Hans Zimmer's studio and you're like, like i don't know i don't know you absolutely have to be in hand zimmer studio i don't know if hands zimmer is going oh i'd love to start work on it but um lewis hamilton hasn't come in yet uh but you know he does see so you lose that soundtrack was a miss by the way sorry when you're talking about the the authenticity of it often um producer credits like that are vanity credits it feels like hamilton the one thing hamilton does talk about and i i absolutely believe this he said i i was there to try and make it authentic at all points like what they're hearing in the uh cockpit you know what two sounds you'd hear at the same time, what sort of moves you could make and couldn't make.

You know, I was across that all the time, and I absolutely buy that he was across that because it does feel incredibly real. The storyline doesn't feel real at all.

As you're saying, the problem you have in this movie is what you really want in a movie like this is for Brad Pitt to come in and just, he's such a good driver that he drives faster than everybody else.

Yeah. And he wins the title.

That's what happens in movies like this. Which you can't do because

we know enough to know that, well, his car is not as fast as the other cars, so it's not going to go. And they do a good thing.

Kerry Condon, who is the sort of technical expert behind the team, she's really good in it.

She's the absolute heart of the movie, I think.

She kind of remodels the car very, very quickly, I have to say, and against almost all FIA regulations, but let's let that sit. You can't do the thing of just saying.

Oh my God, he was last and now he's driving past. Oh, he's driven past the 19th.
He's driven past the 18th because he's so fast at driving. You can't do it.
So the whole movie...

Purely because of our age, because of authenticity. In the old days, you would have made this movie and that's exactly what would have happened.

You can't have that sort of movie anymore because you're so afraid of Petrolhead saying, or any, or whoever, whichever constituency it is for whichever movie, this isn't real.

Can we talk a bit about Brad Pitt's new screen persona? Because a lot has happened to Brad Pitt in recent years and we all know about it.

There's been so much sort of tabloid interest in his life, his schism with his wife, apparently with most of his children. And it's a whole big thing.
And it's really interesting to see him now

because he was always the sort of a completely a different sort of like young sort of taro. And now, because things have happened to Brad Pitt, he is a character to whom things have happened.

And he's moved into that like mentor role that Paul Newman played for a significant part of his career. And I thought it was quite interesting seeing that.

I mean, I think he was, he's very charming, he's very charming in it. Yes, he is very,

it's a really, really lovely central performance. Sort of believable.

Not a lot happens with his character, I'll say that, but but you like him you like it when he's on he's broken before he started yeah this is and so there's not a huge and he's not and he's not mended at the end no yeah no what i think also is very interesting about this movie is that we it is an original that means it is not based on ip it's not based on a and so it was interesting a lot of people thought other movies would do much better than this.

They even thought like Megan 2.0, the Blumhouse horror sequel, might even beat it, which it hasn't done at all.

It's sort of fallen away away that weekend but I think it's really it's very hard the tracking is now so off with these originals because there are so few of them there are 80 or 90 original titles made in Hollywood every year and about 60 franchise titles but in terms of the box office 82% of box office comes from franchises

and only 18% from originals so something like this whether or not you like it we should celebrate it because this is a movie that has come it has been entirely created yeah from from nothing And also from some scrappy underdogs.

Brad Pitt, Liberty Media own F1 and Apple. It's lovely.
It's lovely to see the underdog have their day. Well, actually, the director said this is a coming together of two great brands.

And I thought, my, even directors are talking like that now. Apple and F1.
Which is what Austin Wells said about Scissors and Kane, right?

He said, I've got the Castle people involved. I've got the Sledge people involved.
This is Big Sledge and Big Castle. are loving this.

But actually, okay, bringing us on to Apple, because in order to promote this one, you've got the, again, the slightly bizarre spectacle.

You mentioned Hans Zimmer, and I will say, sorry, that I do think that the soundtrack was a miss. They should have had a top gun flying, you know, like that Fulton Howard Forteme flying music.

They should have had that for when he was achieving kind of race nirvana and everything was quite, they should have had something like that. They didn't have anything like that, any of that music.

So I thought that was a bit of a miss. But

there was a big interview on the front of Variety recently in which Lewis Hamilton and Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple, are

standing together talking about this movie. And, you know, people.

They're very much the Bezos and Sanchez of this

particular one. Yeah.
We keep saying, you know, why are Apple in this business? Why are Apple in the, you know, to use a terrible word, content business at all?

And people always say, oh, this is an incredibly expensive movie. It's like, yeah, don't worry.
They're like a $3 trillion company. I think they can afford any price of this.
It's fine.

That's like treating yourself to an expensive sandwich at lunch. Yeah, it's really good.
It's really, yeah, it's really, you know, once every couple of weeks, you go for it. You can have it.
Yeah.

And that's before the sponsorship. So, and they do keep saying, you know, this isn't about trying to make you buy tech.

But of course, in that interview, Tim Cook says, oh, yeah, all the camera technology, we're so leading in the camera technology, and we were able to put them inside the cockpit.

And that's how it works like that. But you know, all of that.
technology is in some way distilled into the iPhone 16.

I mean, it is always, it is always sort of about making you want to buy tech or bundle your purchases within Apple. And I find it, it's, it's very, very interesting why they are actually doing it.

They haven't gone out and bought a massive library of stuff. That's what people keep saying.
They've got all this money. Why don't they just go and buy some stuff?

So there's actually, obviously they've got some great shows and they've had a really good run of stuff recently. They've got the studio.
They've also got Slow Horses.

They've got, this is by far and away their most successful film by far and away.

And if it had been a disaster, then I think people would start saying, are you just going to keep doing this ridiculous thing where you give creators loads of money and then you keep having flops?

But by the way, it's far and away their most successful thing for one reason and one reason only is maybe

we don't know all the numbers for some of their other original stuff because they don't release it in cinemas.

And this one, whether it's through Brad Pitt, whether it's through F1, they've negotiated a 30-day theatrical window, which these days is almost unheard of.

I think, you know, Thursday and Murdikov are going to do a week-long theatrical window, and all that stuff is quite hard-fought. But a 30-day theatrical window is insane.

But also, it means that you can have a huge opening weekend. Suddenly, this thing is at the heart of the media.
Everybody's talking about it.

So when it does drop on Apple itself, you have a huge thing already because people have paid to do your advertising for you.

People have paid to go into cinemas, which we like anyway, because we love people going to cinemas or theaters in the States. They've done all of your pre-publicity.

all of the reviews are like this is a cinema movie and so when it comes to your platform in a month's time you have this ready is it's almost like you have bought a big franchise hit yeah because you you've made it a a hit by putting it in the cinemas.

It doesn't cost you a huge amount. You know, you lose that exclusivity for a month, but no one else is getting this after that month.
You know, this is not going on Netflix. It's not going on

Disney Plus. It's going on Apple.
And so I wonder if it will change the views of some streamers as to whether having a theatrical release actually can be quite useful. Yes.

I mean, this is such a spectacle, as it were, and they want it to be such a spectacle. And they want you to basically see an IMAX if you can.

I didn't see it in IMAX, but they would love you to do that.

Too much IMAX for this.

It's so yeah big it it is very big but i i do think it will they i do think they will want to pick up the f1 rights because they've they're buying more and more sport of companies like like all the like all the streamers who said they weren't going to get into sport they've gone into sport well certainly the f1 rights are going to be an awful lot more valuable than they were last time.

I mean,

you have to credit the sport. I think it is absolutely extraordinary what they've done with how they're seen and the type of people.

I mean, you know how American theatrical audiences are broken down by sort of race, by all different types of demographic. 38% of people watching this movie in the opening weekend were women.

That is actually amazing.

If you'd said to me 10 or 15 years ago, 38% of the audience for a movie about cars would be women, you would never have believed it. And they've all come in via Drive to Survive.

We've talked about before those huge numbers who just come in and love the plot lines and love all of those sorts of things.

And I think it's amazing what it's done for itself by creating, by imagining itself as an entertainment that can exist year-round in different ways and not just in those 90 minutes of race time and i think it's

there's nobody to touch it in terms of what it's done for itself yeah i think i think it's one of the great marketing achievements and i don't say that like marketing achievements genuinely that's that's your job your job is to make some you know i've always made people watch your sport i've always loved f1 i've always seen what was good about f1 and it has always to me it's always been people that's what that's the thing i'm interested in and to have taken that and shown that to the world in such a spectacular way you know you have to take your hats off to them.

It's very, very impressive. And there's lots of people who will never watch F1, but they've reached pretty much everyone who might watch F1.
And, you know, that's the job, isn't it?

They've made people want to watch their sport and made their sport, which was totally niche, seem exciting. And like it's

involves huge personalities, which let's face it, in many ways, motor racing has not involved huge personalities. One of the things I think is interesting is how they get around

that, you know, you can see through their helmets in this.

I wonder whether any of, because that's always been a problem with F1, was that you can't really, and they're always trying to draw you in by saying, okay, now you can hear their radio and we'll let you hear their radio as a fan.

And we'll let, we'll, we'll just let, we're just always trying to find ways to make it more human.

I wonder whether you actually have to have a blacked out helmet or, and this was actually a piece of license that they were allowed.

And because, of course, it's a movie and we want to see the actors' faces. That would be my next step if I...
if I could, was to find a way of getting us to be able to see their faces during races.

No helmets.

There you go, do that. At the end, they thank Martin Donnelly.
Now, Martin Donnelly was a Northern Irish F1 driver back in the late 80s, early 90s.

And actually, the crash that Brad Pitt is said to have had in this movie is based on Martin Donnelly's crash in Heres in Spain. And you see footage of it.
And

it's really sort of a testament, actually, to the people that F1 is built on and the sort of extraordinary kind of bravery of the people who made F1 what it is.

And I was so happy to see that Martin Donnelly was thanked.

And anyone who is interested in that previous incarnation of F1, there's an amazing documentary called Grand Prix the Killer Years about all the pioneers of F1 and

some of the safety issues.

And it's not the easiest watch in the world, I'll say that, but it is absolutely fascinating and works as a great companion piece to this, which is it's not all glitz and glamour. It is this as well.

And actually, I think that's something that the F1 film captures quite well. But lovely to see Martin Donnelly recognised and acknowledged by everyone on the film.

I thought it's good because you see both sides of it. And if you are interested,

went to him and said, Can we use your story for this film? Yeah, which is fantastic because

that's what F1 is actually. Is Lewis Hamilton the hardest working executive producer you've ever heard of and anything? He's actually done a lot of stuff on this movie.

It genuinely sounds like he actually did some he actually was an executive producer. And

he's like racing a lot. So he doesn't have all that much time.

But yeah, I think that you could tell that Lewis hamilton had uh had his fingers across this in a in a good way i think listen if you like jerry bruckheimer and i do and i do you know see you've got the great kind of long shot of uh the sort of cruise tom cruise shot the brad pit shot in this one of him walking from distance in kind of faded jeans and a leather jacket kind of walking down the pit street oh my god he's back you know got all the kind of bruckheimer tropes in there but if if you are ever thinking about writing a screenplay it's worth i would say printing this one out because every single beat is exactly like to the second where the beats in a big Hollywood movie are supposed to be.

It does not stray from them in any way.

As you say, they have to explain lots of the beats with Martin Brundle saying, Well, the interesting thing, of course, about being in third place is if he was in fourth place, he wouldn't be able to get the slip stream because his tires, did I mention earlier, his tires are soft tires because they finished 11th in qualifying, which means they've got an extra set of tires left.

Okay, anyway, that aside, every single beat is the beat of every single Hollywood movie. Brad Pitt is great in it, I think.
Down Zeniti. It's a really good book to read if you ever want to.

If you haven't read High Concept, which is the story of Don Simpson, Jerry Bruckham is producing partner, they create that three-act, well, they kind of refine the three-act structure for big flash American movies.

And they care so much exactly as what you said, which is like, I don't want to be feeling this on page 18. I need to feel it on page 15.
And then in a much more amplified way on 25.

And it's almost mathematical. And this

formula they distill is really on display in this film yeah it's really on display but i think um a special mention i think kerry condon uh is the heart of the film i think she actually makes it a film that has a bit of heart that takes it slightly um you know away from what it might have been and i actually cried at the end there's a bit with javier bardem where i was like oh i'm tearing up here I'm tearing up.

Bardem totally gets the joke of this movie and at certain points is completely chewing the scenery and just doesn't care. Yeah, he's great in it.

But listen, it's nonsense, but it's also kind of great. But hat tip to Martin Brundle and David Croft: your many days in that dark recording studio somewhere

will never be forgotten. I would read a full oral history about how everyone involved.
Brundle and Croft.

If I wish at the Oscars they had an award for best exposition.

Well, this is nailed on, believe me. Anyway, so that's Formula One and it's out in cinemas now.
Any recommendations this week? I have.

I went to see the amazing Jenny Saville exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery. It's by far the best thing I have seen this year.
It is, if you don't go to see art exhibitions, go and see this.

I mean, she sort of exploded onto the scene at the age of 22, Jenny Saville. She's now in her 50s.
And the work, these monumental canvases are just incredible.

It's absolutely an amazing exhibition. She isn't.

She's kind of revolutionised painting, but you also,

just to be in the presence of some of those is extraordinary i think she's an absolute genius and um i could not recommend it enough and for listeners of a certain age uh you might recognize her work she used to do the covers of lots of the man at street preachers uh albums and things like that that's jenny sevo i'm going to recommend we finish department q which i think is really really good so it's it's um netflix and it is their attempt to have a returning series i think they worked out after a while they got all these limited series and they're great but then you have to start again every time so they're on the lookout now for returning things and department q will definitely return it's uh Matthew Good playing a sort of slightly irascible detective and he builds this slightly kind of ragtag band around him.

And it's, you know, it's a murder mystery set in Scotland with loads and loads of great. If you want character actors, you go to Scotland.

There's so many kind of people that are only in this for two or three scenes where you just go, you have to IMDB them because you think, oh my God, you're brilliant. That was amazing.

It's a really, really good thing. And I think it gets better and better as the run progresses as well.
So Department Q would be my recommendation.

Other than that, we've got a questions and answers episode, as usual, on Thursday. And our bonus episode this week is on summer hits, which I'm dying to do.
Yeah, what are summer hits?

Where do they come from? What are the biggest ones of all? It's going to be hot in the city. Let me tell you that much.

Anyhow, I think that's us for the day. That is with our further congratulations to the happy couple.
Always, always just perma congratulations. Exactly.
We'll see you on Thursday. See you on Thursday.

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