Which Celebrities NEED Media Training?

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Hello and welcome to this episode of the Res Entertainment Questions and Answers Edition.

I'm Marina High.

I'm Richard Osman.

Hello, Marina.

Hello, Richard.

How are you?

I'm really, really well.

Now, on the last questions and answers one, we somehow got ourselves into a cul-ie-sack, which was the question of which is better, Citizen Kane or Interior Design Masters.

Hold us up.

I don't think that's what it was at all.

I think it was potentially a looming Third World War, but carry on.

If people haven't listened to that, you will be shocked to learn that Marina and I came down on different sides of that debate.

You'll also be shocked to learn that Marina came down on the side of Citizen Kane, Orson Welles' classic movie, and I came down on the side of Interior Design Masters, Alan Carr's classic Elimination TV series on BBC One.

So we asked our listeners, of course, because that's the way to deal with these things, what they thought was better, Citizen Kane or Interior Design Masters.

You must be fairly confident.

about winning that.

I think people make a huge number of mistakes and it's quite possible they've made a big one today.

I have no idea.

I'd like to think that people realize that the fact that people are still talking about Citizen Kane and it's still an influence on many filmmakers today, and it was made in 1941.

If you think, which filmmakers, Martin Scorsese, have you heard of him?

Well, yeah, there are.

I better not make Citizen Kane.

That's not what he thinks about Citizen Kane.

All of those people were, all of those new wave, the new Hollywood filmmakers were influenced by Citizen Kane.

Okay, if you think that people are still going to be talking about this series of Interior Design Masters in like 80 years, do you?

Marina.

Do you actually?

Yeah, I do.

I've got three words for you.

Banjo's Hebridean Rescue, okay, which is Banjo Beal, who won a previous series of Interior Design Masters, essentially goes around the Hebrides and does up people's properties.

And it's a really terrific show.

I don't know what Scorsese has done that you think is better than...

Banjo's Hebridean Rescues, but certainly I think both of these projects have a legacy.

Let's just say that.

I am so going to come back and haunt the world in the year 2100 and find out whether people are still talking about Interior Design Masters.

But please carry on.

I believe there's a result of a poll in an envelope in front of you.

There is.

The envelope says Citizen Kane versus Interior Design Masters.

No expense spared there.

It's exciting, isn't it?

By the way, I don't know why I'm being negative.

If I've won, I'm going to be so happy.

Let's see.

Okay.

We polled 5,000 The Wrestlers Entertainment mega fans as to whether they preferred the 13-time Academy nominated Orson Welles Epic Citizen Kane or BBC2, BBC One,

competition interior design masters.

I can't deal with the suspense, just saying.

Citizen Kane,

31.7%.

Interior Design Masters, 68.3%.

I mean, that's, come on.

Have a word with yourself, listeners.

I'm sorry, these are incorrect opinions.

They're wrong.

It will not stand the test of time in the same way.

And I know.

Interior design master.

Of course it will.

Do you think

that I can assure you that in 80 years, people will not be talking about interior design masters?

Should I tell you who's talking about

it, right?

Me and you, right?

That's it.

So, tell you what, we're not the only people.

Interior design masters, and so are 68.3% of our listeners.

Listen, you have to follow

interior design masters, want it fair and square in a you know, non-scientific.

Could we get one of the larger polling companies?

No, you're right.

That's it.

I'm going to lose it.

I'm going to lose a lot.

I've got our good friends at more in common i'm gonna ask them please don't because i'm gonna lose a lot harder i'm sorry you know of course as always when people are wrong i'm very sorry that they're wrong i'm gonna put a series of things to more in common x v y and uh let's have a series of playoffs in fact let's do it let's do a world cup of what's the bottom of the

stupid opinions wow wow those are our listeners you're talking about marina and you

That's true, mainly me.

It's the truth.

I'm going to come up with a little format, a little World Cup format that more in common can help us with.

And we'll just see exactly what the most important, culturally relevant entertainment franchise of all time is.

And we'll see where Citizen Kane comes on that one.

Okay.

Liz, I am going to get sedated and then I can't wait to play.

Should we get on with some questions?

Please.

I have a question for you.

Connor Burns wants to ask about media training.

He says, we hear lots of examples, usually when interviews have gone badly, that the the person needs some media training.

Or on the flip side, you can tell they've had media training, but what is it exactly?

People talk about media training all the time.

It's quite a sort of savvy, because everyone's become so media literate now, they use phrases like media training, saying, oh, normal people in comment sections say, why didn't they have media training?

Media training teaches subjects how to engage with the media and teaches you the tricks and the pitfalls and how to get your message across.

And if your role suddenly or even momentarily becomes kind of front-facing and you're going to be asked questions by news outlets of any kind, you probably need it.

And actually, interestingly, people who are very, very senior in the media really need media training when suddenly they have to talk to the public because it's very, very different.

They might need to be trained not to say certain things just to get that point across

or

in some cases to make themselves very boring because they can't, you know, they might be sparkling and terribly gossipy conversationalists backstage, but they have to become a very boring version of themselves.

Yes, I would say media training has this two very different versions of it, which is how do I make a boring person interesting?

And how do I make an interesting person boring?

I agree.

And it's amazing who, I mean, a friend of mine was saying to me recently that she's spoken to a filmmaker.

They were going to a film festival and they were doing a sort of dry run saying, you know, why did you make this movie?

And he said, oh my God, I can't remember now.

She's like, okay, you're not going to say that.

Because by this point, you're so many millions in the hole for this thing.

But also, you know, people like sport stars need it because they're amazing at sport, but they're not necessarily amazing at seeing the pitfalls of what someone's asking you.

And just even for the post-match, you need to have a way of doing it.

And again, it can matter because a franchise in sports can be worth millions and millions and millions.

And you say the slightly wrong thing, even tell the truth about something that happened in the dressing room.

Suddenly, it's a huge story and suddenly it's a- Yeah, and it destabilizes you, it could destabilize the team because it will be written about.

And that is really what we're talking about.

It's become much more important media training in an era of viral moments where everything's instantly shareable, you know, in an era of cancellation, all of these sorts of things.

If you think of stories we've covered, I'm just thinking of things like that, the business of Rachel Zegler and the Snow White thing.

I mean, the things that she said,

she was someone who people said, why didn't they give her media training and tell her not to do these things?

Because in the end, it ended up derailing hundreds of millions of dollars worth of investment.

And again, there are two prongs to this, which is media training can be to help someone go viral.

Or media training more often than not is to help someone not go viral.

That's the key.

Most media is get out of that room without there being any headlines at all.

And so this is the thing.

The media thing is get out of that room with as many headlines as possible.

Yes, I agree.

But it is the thing, and I know you've said this to me before.

I remember a couple of years ago at the Edinburgh TV Festival, I interviewed Jesse Armstrong and I said to him beforehand, is there anything particular that you know you'd like to talk about?

And he just said, yeah, you know, I'd kind of love it if we didn't make news.

And I fully understand that.

And so many creatives feel the same way.

And I'll tell you what that means: is in the old days, you used to interview people, and there was an interview.

Now, what happens in newsrooms every single time you interview someone is that the news desks say, Is there a news line?

And they want to say, They want to have a news story running saying, You know, Richard Osmond says X, Y, Z.

And then they'll have the interview as well.

I saw an amazing one the other day, which is the Daily Express or something, said, Um, Richard Osmond left floundering on holiday.

I was like, I wonder, I have no idea what that is.

I literally, I could not pick that out of a lineup as to what I I said and when.

And I think it was, I was saying, when we're in Italy, because Ingrid speaks Italian, she does all of that, and I'm just sitting floundering at the table, just in admiration that someone's speaking the language.

And you're like, hardcore newsline comes out of this podcast every week, and that was absolutely one of them.

I wonder what that knocked off the front pages.

Floundering.

I mean, I was honestly that holiday, I did nothing but flounder.

It's interesting.

There are some people who don't care about newslines, and there are people like Elton John or JK Rowling who don't care and have passed through some sort of either baptism of fire or just do not care at all over an age and of a level of celebrity that they don't care and they don't care that they make newslines every time they say anything and in fact they quite maybe they quite like it and they want to and they're and they're strong enough to deal with it but for a creative thinking okay say you make do an interview and you make news and you you say something that has become a newsline It's a real hassle.

Then people are ringing for follow-ups for the next two days.

Those are two days you can't properly concentrate on writing or being in the edit or whatever it is that you're doing there are always follow-ups if there's something even like a non-story like that there will be like three emails the next day saying oh any comment on x y or z you think do you linger would like you to give her a free password to her talion would you like to

i can't answer these questions um and yes that's what happened so in a way what i find quite depressing about all of that is that it has led to a much a sort of flattened discourse where people don't want to make headlines if you go back and read interviews with film stars in like the 90s even even they're wild.

People say I've seen incredible things.

And it just wasn't the convention to try and pull a newsline out, make a news story out of that.

And also, just the ease of which you can share it nowadays has made it very, very difficult.

Again, it's two-pronged, which is mostly it's how do I get out of this without a newsline?

Or it's here is a very specific newsline we want this journalist to take from this interview.

How do you do that?

How does everything you say be bland, except then just drop this at the end?

It's made everything very managed and curated and far less authentic, which is supposedly the thing we prize.

And yet at the same time, liberals have become these kind of great policers of things.

And everyone became the people who made things, you know, all of us probably have highlighted some stupid thing that somebody said in an interview and put it at some point on social media.

I don't do that anymore because I just think it's a complete waste of time.

And also, you think it feeds into a really kind of boring and flattened culture.

Practically how it happens, media training.

So say you're in a football team, often the press officer of that football team or the communications communications director will do sessions with players.

So you'll do sessions with younger players who are for the first time going to be interviewed on match of the day.

And you say, look, this is how it will happen.

You literally go through it like 20 times.

This is how it will happen.

This is what will happen if you lose.

This is the question you will ask.

Give me a natural answer.

And they'll give you a series of answers.

You go, I think probably the best one of those answers to give if you've lost.

is this.

We go again, you know, thanks to the fans for coming out.

They really supported us.

The gaffer knows what he's doing.

You know, how do you feel about being left on the bench?

I understand it's the gaffer's decision and, you know, I respect that.

So they're taught to say those things.

And often you'll also get at the end of players' careers, the same communications directors or PR people will be asked to go into a TV studio with those people and say, how can I be a pundit?

What would happen if I were a pundit?

Which is a very, very different skill because that skill is now.

I've literally spent the last 16 years teaching you not to say what you think.

Not to say what you think.

Now I'm going to teach you to say what you think and be honest about things and be honest about other players and be honest about the game.

And so you have those skill sets.

Equally in a political organization, there will be...

in-house staff who are communications experts who will take you through any single debate you're about to have or any single interview you're about to have they'll talk you through how that might work um but you also get lots of outside companies who do this this is like like a business and they will go into organizations or they will go and talk to if you're kier starmer for example um he knows how to speak to the media because he's done done it forever and ever but he's speaking to the media in a different way so someone will come in and say these are the different new angles that will come these are the different places you will be reported these are some of the things you might like to think about I absolutely get it in sport and all those things because it's sport my view in politics is and you will get new media trainers who are reflecting this the authenticity is the thing as you say we're this media training this flattening of people's answers and people's responses to questions has done everyone a disservice.

Everyone's lost interest.

No one believes anything they're hearing because they know they're not hearing the actual truth.

It's like background music now.

You just immediately switch off when you hear it because it's such a sort of time-worn performance.

And you lose, you absolutely lose respect for what is being said.

And so you get people, you know, you meet politicians in real life.

You think, oh my God, you're genuinely passionate, funny, you genuinely care.

There's stuff you want to do, but nobody.

And you talk like a human.

Yeah.

So if I've got a TV presenter who I know has a certain personality, you do everything you can to make your format fit that personality so they can show people who they are.

That's the point.

You don't put them in a straight jacket and say, no, just do this script.

You try and get the format so that that person's personality shines through, that authenticity shines through.

So they serve the format, the film that serves them.

But with politicians...

We're still in that kind of Paxman thing of, oh, no, but if they ask you the same question 12 times, this is how you respond.

This is how you shut down a question.

And actually, the thing to do always, always, always, like improv, instead of your response to a question being no, your question, your response should always be yes.

And always, always, just and then say the thing that you want to, but it's hard because, as you say, every single thing you say is, is so scrutinized.

It's very difficult if you're a politician, I think, to kind of go, do you know what?

I'm going to actually ride the waves of this and enjoy the chaos and the scrutiny.

But we can see that.

the people who are surging

in politics are people who don't play by these rules who don't sound media trained a long time ago

and have decided to, you know, just, as you say, to ride the wave and just to try and feed off the chaos.

Yeah, to not manage the thing you said yesterday, just say something new that then would have to be managed, but then you say something new and that would have to be managed.

And, you know, and then you're yourself, aren't you?

And that feels to me the only media training you should have.

But again, look at Cole Palmer.

Cole Palmer is sort of a cult hero.

He's reinvented the fork.

Because

he's himself.

You know, he's not saying the things he's supposed to say.

He's sort of incapable incapable of playing the game, and so he does his own game.

He's created a persona

post-match.

And listen, that's a lot of fun.

I don't want to be afraid.

Yeah, exactly.

But media training is a fascinating industry.

But media training has also worked all this stuff out as well.

There are some very old-school media trainers who will just teach you the...

you know, how to avoid stuff.

But there are a new generation of media trainers who have said, actually, you need to give more of yourself in a way that you're comfortable with.

Thomas Middledich, who is the lead in Silicon Valley, the HBO show,

he did an interview in 2019 with Playboy in which he said, I have an open marriage, we've gone to swingers' clubs.

And talking to people who are on that set, it gives you an example.

As the interview dropped, you could sort of physically see it being read.

And that was just a tiny microcosm of it happening across the world.

It spread like across the set in real time, almost like a wave.

And it just created, I mean, huge drama.

him and his wife were split within six months that's unusual for an open marriage i know normally rock solid it just went it went it went completely nuts and someone had no one had said to him yeah yeah they really want you to be yourself but don't be too much yourself and it is extraordinary that someone actually i hadn't the lead in a show that big was able to do that and then to not and to not see around the corners of where it would go I heard the most unbelievable story, I can't tell it, of someone who puts something in their autobiography that was so jaw-dropping.

And their publishers are like, I don't think, and they were saying, but it'd be a good news line.

And they go, oh, I think this would probably.

It would be the only news line we'd be reading forever.

Yeah.

No matter, even if a world war erupted, I'd be reading that story.

God, that's one for, yeah, the obituaries.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But

the dead can't see, Richard.

It's much harder to get canceled these.

It's so funny with them, because X used to be the place where you would get cancelled.

You had to be very careful there.

But now it seems like you can sort of say, I mean, people are constantly, you'll see something and people say, oh, well done.

You've absolutely ruined your legacy.

That's it for you.

And then the next day, everyone's like, oh, sorry, what happened?

Nothing happened.

The engagement on that particular platform seems to have almost completely disappeared.

So at least that makes things a bit easier.

I know we've only had one question, but let's go to a break and then we can try and fit as many questions as we can into the second bit, starting with one about TV burp.

Oh, very good.

Let's do that.

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Welcome back, everybody.

Now, that question about TV Burp comes from Elliot Hart, who says, I've recently been sucked into a rabbit hole of old episodes of Harry Hill's TV Burp on YouTube.

What a wonderful rabbit hole.

That's a nice rabbit hole.

And it's made me wonder a number of things about how they originally produced the shows.

How quickly did they turn an episode around, given that they were reacting to TV that was live that week?

It is a very good question because it was a very tough show to make on TV Burp.

And I've spoken to a few people.

I've spoken to Dan Mayer, who was one of the writers.

He's an absolute genius.

But first, we talked to the man himself, Harry Hill, to give us his insights.

Hello, Richard.

Hello, Marina.

Welcome to TV Burp Explained.

So the way we did it, as far as I remember, and it's a long time ago, I mean, you take your time asking me.

We would get preview tapes of the shows from the channels.

BBC wouldn't give us any preview tapes because they didn't like us taking the mickey out of their shows.

So we used to get those from Ali Ross of the Sun.

and other

journalists.

They would watch and copy them and then send us to our

five five of us watch would watch these tapes at home in our various homes you'd have two VHS players if you liked at something you saw something you'd rewind the tape press play and you press record on the other VHS record so at the end you had a at the end of the week you'd have like a maybe 20 minutes of clips we'd have two meetings a week and I would write this we'd record the show on the Thursday, on the Friday,

I would go to the edit in the morning, I'd go to the meeting for the next show in the afternoon,

and

on the Saturday I would write the script for that show.

Any live shows we would watch

live, and we'd add those clips in at the last minute.

But the truth is, I never really rewrote it.

I would do one draft, and then

the producer, Spencer Millman, who was a brilliant producer, he was always very tough on me.

He'd say, cut that, cut this.

I would cut stuff or sometimes I'd

fight for it.

And on the day,

on the Thursday when we recorded it,

we would run it.

And

often the memory of what you'd seen in the clip wasn't actually what happened.

So that would get cut.

And we'd record about 35 minutes, edit it down to 22 minutes, an ITV ITV half hour.

And sometimes there'd be stuff left over which she could put into the next week.

I mean, that was a joy for me because it

made the writing job easier.

And that's it.

And we would do that week in, week out for the nation's entertainment.

But thank you for your inquiry.

I hope that's answered your question.

Oh, he's very good.

I literally love him.

That was my, when that was running, that was without any question, my favourite TV.

TV book.

My kids were young when that happened, so it's the first thing we watched together where everyone was laughing at the same time.

Unbelievable.

It was just so, but you knew watching that just how much work because you have to watch an unbelievable amount of stuff to just

get one joke.

I remember once they had like the end of the show, they'd done a bit earlier in the show about,

I think it was a reality show set in a motorway service station.

And they had this guy who was like a karaoke singer and sung this song on the reality show.

And at the end of Harry Hill's TV burp, that guy came on and sang a song and i remember my son who was very young at the time he was just going is that the guy from the motorway service station reality show okay yeah that they they've got him on to sing how did they do that and he'd go all right listen i don't know it's the the miracles of booking isn't it but just lovely little things like that i i spoke to um dan mayer as well who i say is one of the writers on this show some brilliant writers on that paul hawksby and lot lots of um great people and i was asking what the most difficult things were and he was saying that the absolute key with a clip is the clip itself cannot be funny yeah if the program makers already have tried to be funny then that's their joke yeah you can't put a joke on a joke you can't put a joke on a joke so he would say it would be things like he gives an example he said you would have to watch corrie east enders and stuff you have to absolutely decontextualize what you were seeing to try and spot if there was a joke.

It was getting their iron because the things that would happen in the back of scenes, and you'd think, sorry, how could you notice that while someone was having a meltdown in the front of the scene?

But he gives a couple of examples.

So one example, he says, episode of Corey, Ken Barlow picks up a kettle, goes to the sink and fills it up.

Okay.

Obviously, when you're watching Corey, you're supposed to be

following the narrative, but he says, I have to watch it differently.

And he said, I note that, of course, you can't see the kettle.

We just see him pick him up.

So we know what's happening.

But my TV Burt brain sees Ken at the sink, he's running water and interprets it as Ken having a wee in the sink.

Right.

So it's that sort of thing.

And his favorite one, he sent me a cliff of it.

I don't know if we can get a screen grab of it.

But there's an episode of The Bill.

And I tell you what the joke is, and you can imagine what the cliff is.

You have to constantly look where you weren't meant to be looking narratively to see funny stuff like extras or props that look like people.

Pathetically, probably my favorite of my very own TV burp jokes, which is, have you ever noticed when your shadow looks like an elephant carrying a shopping bag?

And from an episode of The Bill, and you watch it, you go, oh my God, yeah,

that guy's shadow does look like an elephant carrying a shopping bag.

Absolute decontextualization.

And Dan would do lots of the other slightly longer form things.

Like he noticed that Phil Mitchell would sigh through his nose a lot at the end of a scene.

And he'd seen a couple of them.

And he goes, and when you notice that, he said, I've got a couple.

You then have to go back two years through EastEnders for every single time Phil Mitchell is on screen.

He said, we didn't have a search.

It's like being the director of the FBI and just trying to develop a file on Phil Mitchell's nose sign.

Yeah.

And he would like, he'd do a super cut of that.

But one of the what which I thought was a clip from TB Burke, but it's not.

It's just Dan himself.

Did this amazing clip uh and i think rodri marston the the musician put some sound on it with martin roberts from homes under the hammer

and it's essentially martin roberts from homes under the hammer and saying um so what made you buy the house and he always does a little thing with his hands that makes it look like he's playing the piano and so dan because of the sort of comic brain he has so i have to do a supercut of this so he's got the supercut that rodri has put pianos on it's just brilliant it's like so what made you buy the house

and so when you've got writers like that in the writer's room as well it's it's a it's a real skill.

But Dan said, as Harry says exactly that, it was hard work.

And Dan also says, look, the stuff would then go up to Harry and Spencer, and we wouldn't see it again, and they would put all sorts of magic on it.

But he said, their job was to find these decontextualized things, absolutely switch their brain off somehow, and come up with you must have to relearn how once you finish that job, how to watch television again.

I miss that show more than any, probably any other show.

I miss it so much.

It's amazing.

I mean, listen, the reason it's not on is a whole other tale, which we can't tell for legal reasons.

James Lovick has a question for you, Marina.

In big budget blockbusters, how do filmmakers arrange to use real military planes, helicopters, ships, or even aircraft carriers?

I know CGI can replicate a lot, but some films clearly feature the real thing.

Surely there aren't any spare Hercules bombers or carriers just lying around.

How do productions afford them?

More importantly, how does it work logistically?

Right, well, obviously, a lot of films have these things in them.

Sometimes it's stock footage, but and of course, if something's set on it, for example, on the siege, they will have to build the sets to look like it's on the that was the USS Missouri.

But sorry, the Navy and Army and all around the world, they all have their own TV and film departments.

Wow.

And particularly in the US, where

yes, but particularly in the US, where it's been such a huge part of recruitment and things like that.

So they've, and you know, going all the way back to the war and before the Second World War, you've got to provide a copy of the script, and then it needs to be approved.

There are certain movies, Blackhawk Down, they let them have actual Blackhawks.

They let the cast and crew go to Fort Bragg and they train them.

They involve you in those things.

I mean, Top Gun, obviously, is a movie originally, but both

the original and Top Gun Maverick, these are movies that were hugely instrumental in signing up for the US Navy or whatever.

And so they...

they will let you use lots and lots of stuff.

I think for Top Gun Maverick,

they came up with totally different ways

of getting the cameras in.

But Tom Cruise was the camera operator for that so he's in the back there's a person actually doing the maneuvers and he's turning the camera off and on there are obviously limitless historical ones for hire you can go on if you're making there's lots and lots of um things that are in museums or i actually went to new york last week as i mentioned and um i walked around the us

intrepid which is now a sort of museum it's so big it's got a concorde one of the planes on its deck is a concorde that's cool yeah which i look at duxford as well if you want to go to duxford it's a great day out out.

They've got a Concorde.

Oh,

have they?

I've never been, I've never sat on one.

In the UK, you can contact the Ministry of Defence.

People generally want to help and they want to, they will let you film footage.

In Iron Man 2, the Pentagon was still heavily involved.

They let them have these F-22s

and they actually went and filmed at an airbase which had real BT bombers, but they were only allowed to film them from certain angles in case our enemies are watching Iron Man 2.

Yes, I'm like, yeah, which is

to anyone.

Iron Man 3, yes.

Yes, Iron Man 3, yes, which is considerably better, as you say.

Richard, this is one for you, for Charlie Addy.

What happens when two actors represented by the same agent go up for the same part?

Does the agent push the client they think has the better chance, or do they try their best to remain impartial despite having 10% of a horse in the race?

Often 15%, sometimes 20%.

I spoke to a few people on this because this is something I wondered about.

I talked to to Oliver Slinger, he's one of the big

UK agents, represents loads of good people.

He says, actually, it doesn't happen all that often.

He said, quite often it will happen within your company.

There'll be other agents who have a client going up for the same job.

But he says, quite rare that you've got two people in your stable who go for the same thing because...

what people are looking for tends to be so specific and for you to have someone in exactly the right age range exactly you know the right look all of those different things is quite rare he said but definitely does happen definitely happens and when it does they're both your client, and you absolutely give both of them 100%.

100%.

Yeah, I mean, but I mean, you have to, because there's nothing to be gained or lost.

You know, the money's going to be the same, whatever happens.

You have to let the production company work out exactly who they want.

And pushing them doesn't make

the idea that you're pushing them, you're putting them up for it, but actually,

you're not pushing them.

It's up to them.

An agent wouldn't talk to a casting director or a producer and say, yeah, I mean, maybe B, maybe a person B.

But I talked to a casting director, which, of course, is the other side of that thing.

And the casting directors

you know they know exactly who's coming in they know that who they're from they know uh as soon as you know the first 20 auditions are done and there there's a short list and people are called back they they know who's on the list and they recognize immediately if two people are with the same agent they said a couple of things we'll do if these people are coming in we will make sure they're not coming in on the same day we'll make sure they're not coming in you know next to each other so just in case the agent wants to keep you know everything under wraps which some agents will want to do absolutely 100%.

Again, they say we've never had a situation where an agent has come to us.

I was talking to there's an amazing casting director called Andy Breilly, who again is one of the absolute best in the business and discreet as you like, but he was like, Look, I can talk about basic principles.

I've never been in a situation where an agent would push one person ahead of another.

He said, I've been in lots of situations where we have a preferred person to cast.

You go to the agent and say, okay, we'd like to make this an offer.

And the agent said, I'm afraid actually, she can't do those dates or this is and then Andy will say just so you know if she is unavailable our next choice is also your client so it will go to that person and again so he said he said that happens a lot but he he has never been in a situation where he's felt there was a conflict of interest

how could you possibly second guess it and they often don't know themselves so if they see it they see it and if they don't they don't and an agent's job always is i look after the interests of my client and so you just have and it you can do that with two people at the same time knowing that most of the time people are not getting jobs anyway You just, you, you, you, you just do your job as normal.

In the TV world, of course, the thing that happens all the time is if someone doesn't do something, and then an agent will say, What about my other client?

Yeah, maybe they could do it, and you know, so they'll, they will definitely do that.

I think that about winds us up.

Yeah, we are

really winds us up.

We're back tomorrow with for members, and you can join at the restisentertainment.com with the first of a two-part special on uh, it's it's 50 years since the release of Jaws.

It's the movie that both changed the movie industry and the swimming industry.

That's a very good way of putting it.

All right, otherwise, we will be back as normal with the main episode on Tuesday.

See you next Tuesday.

See you next Tuesday.

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I'm Gordon Carrera, and I'm David McClarski.

Together, we're the co-hosts of another goal hanger show called The Rest is Classified.

Here's that clip we mentioned earlier on.

When I look back on it now, you still see that, you know, there's plans, there's memoranda, there's notifications, there's all these things,

but they're never actually executed.

They never actually kind of pull the trigger on anything, do they?

I'm a little bit of two minds on this because I agree with you that the theme of this episode really is a series of missed opportunities to get Osama bin Laden prior to 9-11.

Yeah.

But we should also note that once Tenet and the CIA

understand that Osama bin Laden is

coming for us, in particular after the East Africa bombings, there is a push to improve our collection and our understanding of al-Qaeda pretty significantly.

I mean, there's a bunch of human sources who get recruited in this period.

There's a lot more technical collection.

Alex Station is beefed up to more than 40 people.

There's a bunch of connections with foreign partners on Al-Qaeda that hadn't existed before.

I mean, interestingly, there's a PDB, President's Daily Brief, in December, December the 4th of 1998, which is titled, quote, Bin Laden Preparing to Hijack U.S.

Aircraft and Other Attacks.

And so there's a lot of strategic warning, I think you could say, about what Al-Qaeda is up to.

And yet there's an inability, I think, to translate that into

practical efforts and operations to stop these attacks and to stop al-Qaeda from ultimately carrying out 9-11.

If you want to hear the full episode, listen to the rest is classified wherever you get your podcasts.