Sydney Sweeney's Bathwater Bonanza

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Hello and welcome to this episode of The Resters Entertainment with me, Marina High.

And me Richard Osman.

Hello everybody.

Hello Marina.

Hello.

I'm very pleased we're together.

We're in the same room.

Long may this continue.

After years apart.

Yeah.

It's felt like a long time.

Has felt like a long time.

How's your week been?

It's been a brilliant, I've been to New York.

I went to New York.

You went to New York City?

I've been in New York Surface City, which I believe you've heard of.

And I've had a brilliant time.

I've seen, I've taken one of my children and I've seen every possible tourist attraction, every museum, every kind of major site, and it was brilliant.

Did you have a cronut?

I did have a cronut.

Did you?

Yes, I did have a cronut.

I had many different items of food

at a considerably higher price than the UK.

And

yeah, I had a brilliant time.

It was wonderful.

I've been having, because as we approach the longest day of the year, I've been having what is traditionally in British television, it's Christmas week.

So I did.

What are you doing Christmas right now?

I did the Christmas wheel, which is great fun, which I'll talk about more.

Nearer the time.

Suffice to say, somebody fell asleep during the recording.

That's all you need to know about that.

And tomorrow, it's the House of Games Christmas special.

Oh, this is just so seasonal.

And it's great because everyone's got their Christmas jumpers.

All the crew are talking about the earliest.

So I think catchphrase went earliest this year.

I think catchphrase went in May.

A catchphrase Christmas.

But no,

it's absolute Christmas season.

Well pour yourself a glass of egg milk and you know light the fire because this week we're going to be talking about Sidney Sweeney who I have a huge amount of time for.

She is a star of our era and she's launched a new bath soap which contains elements of her own bathwater residue.

I don't know what to say.

More on that later.

We're going to talk about arguably the greatest video games console in history, the Switch and the Switch 2, came out this week and has been a huge phenomenon.

And again, is eating up an enormous amount of hours that traditionally would have been spent watching television.

We're also going to pose the question: where are all the humans in movies?

I'll just leave that one and explain it once we get to it.

But also, during that thing,

I think we've both been to see a particular movie this week.

I think it might be one of the best movies of the last 10 years, certainly one of the best British movies.

And

that's going to be my big recommendation for the week.

An amazing movie, which I think 95% of our listeners would love to see absolutely i agree with that let us begin richard with sydney sweeney sydney sweeney um she's a tv star she made her big break in euphoria playing cassie there's something about her which is she she's treading her own path in in many ways which i think is quite interesting in quite an impressive way yeah actually she was in new york uh like we didn't see her i should have just found out what hotel she was because i tell you every day she came out of that hotel it was like a catwalk she had a whole look okay she was in new york because she was the premiere premiere of a new film that's coming out, which has got

her, Julianne Moore and Kyle McLaughlin.

And honestly, they're standing on either side of her at the premiere, just like spare parts.

She's in this unbelievable red dress.

It's just a sort of throwback to complete glamour.

And

she sort of

in the dread parlance of our times broke the internet because she released

Dr.

Squatch, the sort of, you know, affordable men's grooming brand, released a soap that they said contained

traces of her bath water because I think she'd done a photo shoot for them before.

She had it in a bath, yes.

Yes.

Which broke the internet beforehand.

Now she's broken again.

We've literally only just fixed it.

And she's broken it again.

Oh, you haven't?

She's not done it again, have you?

Sidney, I have, oh my God.

I swear to God.

If you break it one more time, one more time.

I'm taking it away from you.

Yeah.

And anyhow, so

there was a sort of, there was an immediate backlash and people said, this is completely unfeminist.

This is what I don't even know.

She said, what do your fans want?

Your bathwater.

What are you supposed to keep asking for your bathwater?

What are you supposed to do?

I mean, it's not so much how she, it is, obviously she's got a particular look, but it's more the things that she says or does that grab headlines.

And I think she's interesting because.

I think that her and her people are positioning her in a very, very particular way.

She also, by the way, seems to be someone very much in control of her own image and in control of her own business interests.

We were always told years ago that certain high-profile women were, you know, businesswomen and they were in charge.

And actually, you look back and there were various shady men.

But Sidney Sweeney seems to have, right from the straight out the gate, seems to have had some control over what she does.

Very interesting.

Although part of her sort of origin story is I didn't have any control and people sexualized me and didn't said whatever they liked about my body and now kind of I've taken it.

I've monetized it and and I'm doing it, and now I'm in control.

But

stardom has always been about telegraphing who you are.

And before we had like managers and brand managers and all those sorts of things, you know, we had the studios who decided who a star would be,

what their screen persona would be, and how they were going to be presented to the outside world.

And actually, it's funny, you know, when they when they deviate from that, often it's sort of ridiculous.

The only sort of ridiculous thing I can think that she's done recently is when they cast her in madam webb which is you know i sat through um and sydney sweeney in that movie plays a nerd

and there were so many people in the industry i spoke to who said sorry i don't understand sydney sweeney is hot why have you put her in a sort of pair of thick glasses this is no does she not even play hot nerd so like later on she's i mean yeah no no like plain jane no there was no like why you're lovely neighbors who is clearly beautiful but wearing glasses yeah and like then guy pierce took her glasses off and went whoa whoa and you're like

you are playing jane the super yeah okay sorry that's a quite ancient reference for those who are 27 years old like sidney zweeni but i like that it's like watching the simpsons and they mention something you don't know i like oh i wonder what that so i i

know i yes absolutely i'm always very comfortable throwing in uh and i think they all came back for the re the final

um episode of neighbors neighbors yeah playing jane the super brave in the hiatus in fact of neighbors for about 15 minutes

anyway that really is a sidebar that really is a sidebar anyway but she she's a sort of, she's, so she's had lots of backlash and people, uh, she seems to sort of welcome backlash.

Um, so I've seen pictures of her, you know, she's put a picture out of herself not that long ago wearing a sweatshirt saying, sorry for having great tits and correct opinions, which was, you know, there's something very, I don't care what you say about me, about her, you know, I, and I, but equally, she's very, very careful about talking to you about her origin story.

As we say, you know, she says she's working class, she's five generations rural.

Yes.

Rural, key makes a difference and she i was on every sports team those sort of things uh she's a rock she's like a rocket scientist she's on the maths team she speaks russian and spanish i think something like that she was actually accomplished but she wants to tell you about her financial anxiety and she spoke a lot saying i don't even know if i can you know it's very difficult once i pay my managers all those people for a long time she said i you know i can't really i don't have any connections in the business this is a very important part of the sort of um story i'm an outsider you know i don't have any any connections it turned out she bought a 13.5 million dollar

house in florida on a private island it's got a wine cellar an aquarium she's actually got a six million dollar house in bella i think she's got sort of much upward of 20 million dollars well i was reading i was reading there's a lovely story that said um that her family were had grown up in the same house for generations, some rural house.

And there's a lovely story on one of the American chat shows saying that they had to give up this house.

They couldn't afford it anymore.

And that the moment she became successful, she went to the new owners and bought it back.

And I thought, well, that's genuinely a lovely story because that's the dream.

But then you start looking into it and you go, I think it was quite a nice house.

And her mum still lived next door to that house.

And it had been in the family for generations, which is not the sort of thing that happened.

Maybe in America that happens.

But yeah, I started thinking, oh, I wonder if your origin is

quite what it was.

Sure.

And that, but if you want to be a star of the time, and you, and I think she 100% wants to be a star of the time, and we'll come to that in a minute.

Telling a story about financial precariousness

to modern America is clearly has been quite successful in the field of politics.

Much my struggle.

And perhaps of

showbiz.

And I think it's interesting.

She's got huge commercial instincts.

So much of politics or whatever in this polarized world has been how we see stars like, you know, either your Kid Rock or your George Clooney, even the stars who, for a long long time didn't really like to talk about politics.

We, and that's the sort of history of entertainment.

We didn't some over the past decade, pretty much everybody polarized, or it became quite obvious.

Um, there was a party she threw for her mother where people were wearing MAGA-ish hats.

I think they were saying make 60 great again.

And there was someone in a Blue Lives Matter um t-shirt, Blue Lives Matter, Blue Lives Matter.

It's a police,

it's a sort of police

thing.

I thought we were talking about it.

And

so there's someone like Jennifer Lawrence, who grew up in a conservative family and is one of those people stars who's not a lot older than Sidney Sweeney, but said, Oh, I can't really talk to them.

You know, there's a huge riff.

We can't really discuss politics anymore.

And we all know, like, you've read a million of those articles, particularly in US publications, those kind of slightly pathetic, now seem incredibly dated articles about like, you know, how to survive Thanksgiving with your politically diverse family.

And Sidney Sweeney is not really about that at all.

And I think that she has centered something on the, wherever she sits politically, she centered something on the wind that has, we've all felt since the Trump victory, which, by the way, wasn't the cause of it, but reflected it, everything's changed.

And the rules are not the same.

And five years ago, a very commercially instinctive Sidney Sweeney would not have sold soap with her own bathwater.

She would have done some sort of feminist stunt because that was where.

the eyeballs were and it's interesting that did you see that story about and there was a there's a film producer called carol bam who's was a sort of famous development executive and developed things like working girl officer and a gentleman she produced father of the bride dead ringers and she made some public comment on stage um saying oh i you know i watched this movie with her and um and glenn powell um and i don't understand why everyone she can't act and she's not hard

now Sidney Sweeney came out and said that it was really disappointing, but then she did a full interview saying that Hollywood feminism is bullshit and women supporting and empowering other women in the industry is fake.

I mean, I slightly agree with her.

She said, this entire industry, all people say, is women empowering other women.

None of it's happening.

All of it is a fake and a front for all the other stuff they say behind everyone's back.

I think you're probably right.

Yeah,

there's some truth in that.

But Another product she's done is she likes to tinker with cars, okay?

Oh, yeah.

What could be hotter?

And the other thing she did, apart from the fast water soap, was a limited edition ford mustang now it was so limited that i think she had one and one was on display at some sort of ford showroom that that's very very limited yeah but the point is it's a sort of whole big branding exercise and it's the whole sort of uh and it's very much the sydney sweeney vibe um but obviously what we've seen since the trump victory is all these entertainment studios making a big play of having had a big wake-up and saying, oh no, they're going to row back on

what's perceived as extreme wokery or whatever it is of the last 10 years.

And

it's so, so her positioning herself as this type of person.

I mean, who is going to get the big roles in the franchises?

Are you going to hire her or are you going to hire like Rachel Zegler?

I mean, it's not really out there, is it?

It's not a decision.

She really wants it.

Yeah.

There's something about watching someone just come out in that, the big red dress, coming down the hotel steps every single day, like it's a catwalk with a whole different look.

She really, really wants it.

The return of stars.

Yes.

But she wants to be a star and she wants to be a particular kind of star and she wants to appeal to people who lots of other people might have thought appealing to them was slightly beneath them or whatever over the past decade of cultural philosophy.

And she has positioned herself squarely in the market to appeal to them.

And as a result, I think she's going to get huge numbers of roles because.

Yeah, I agree.

And it's interesting the idea of now you have to be in a slightly different political space as an actor, culturally political.

And we talked last week about the cultural becoming very, very political.

And, you know, I've always, Hollywood's always going to be a progressively, politically progressive place just because, you know, the talent pool of writers and producers tend to come more from the left than from the right.

Although loads of executives vote Trump.

Oh, yeah, of course they do.

But it would be interesting.

My view on these things has always been: if you want to, you know, use art to further progressive politics, don't tell anyone, just do it.

And, you know, the last 30 years of actors constantly telling us what they're doing and why they're doing it.

You think that's the thing that people, you know, just do it.

Just show it.

You know, the first rule of Hollywood, show, don't tell.

Always, always, always.

So do that with your politics.

Show, don't tell.

Just do the stuff you believe in.

Make the projects that you believe in.

You don't have to spend your entire time telling the whole of America what they should be doing and what they should be thinking.

You can telegraph your own place in the firmament, though.

And I think that's what Sidney Sweeney does.

Oh, you definitely put that.

She hasn't told anyone anything, but she is showing, not telling.

Yeah, which is absolutely the key thing.

And, you know, as you say, she makes an interesting pairing with Glenn Powell, too.

And, you know, we've talked about there being no stars left.

And it feels like almost week by week, those two are becoming, you know, Burton and Taylor all of a sudden.

You know, a Burton and Taylor for our time.

seriously i can't take him seriously but he wants it so much no no no i know i know i know if we were doing the rest of

our times if we were doing the rest of the entertainment when this taylor was just breaking out on the scene we wouldn't be saying oh my gosh she's iconic oh my gosh she's incredible the things she's doing we'd be like going okay who's this we wouldn't go 50 years i would immediately be i like sydney sweeney is iconic and i think we we would have clocked Taylor pretty fast, but obviously she started as a child.

But yes, I think they're not the stars in the same way that they used to be.

Stars aren't the same at all.

And, you know, part of this is a hankering for a time that

you could never get back to.

Yeah, like a monoculture.

Yes.

And a huge part of Glenn Powell's career is like people saying to him, is going on films with people like the Expendables or whatever, which one he was in.

I can't remember which iteration of that particular Endless franchise he was in, but where Harrison Ford and all those people said to him, oh, it was amazing.

You know, we were the biggest stars.

And he wants to kind of tunnel his way back into a world where, you know, a Glenn Powell movie opening is the only thing that anyone in the culture is talking about.

I absolutely see it.

I see it in television as well.

You know,

I'm from a generation that grew up with, you know, if you had a hit, that was a show that everybody was watching.

And you can see the whole of television re-hankering to get back to that.

And you can't.

I mean, you can have a strictly and stuff like that, but even that is incredibly...

siloed.

It's the same with books.

Books, people say, you know, if you listen to people like Brettie Snen Ellis or Jay McAnene talking about when they had a book out in the 80s, it was like the most enormous sort of cultural event.

It would happen and you'd have this sense that everyone was reading it, whether or not

that was actually true.

It felt that to them that everyone mattered and it was like having a giant movie opening or something like that, which of course is not the case anymore.

I often think, and I talk to all sorts of creators about this, and no one has yet disagreed with me.

When I have like a new book out, there is a large bit of me that thinks, right, could everyone else not have a book out for the next two weeks?

Yes.

No one else should be allowed to have a book out or a film out.

When my thing is out, should we just have two weeks where we everyone can focus everyone can focus like we do have that with your books but supposing you want more

but everyone wants more that's the point you know you talked to yeah i was talking to someone who's in a very very very big band about this and he was saying yeah when our new album's out i want every i want the clocks to stop i want everyone else to go no no one else is like the radio is not allowed to play anything else you know no one else is allowed to release a record there are no everyone goes you know what we're not going to do gigs for a few weeks because this new thing is out so that's all i want yeah I

can understand that.

And I, it, you can never have stars like that again because the culture has become so much more atomized and that people can't be.

Although, we hang on, we've said that before.

And then I think Taylor Swift is bigger than anybody.

Um, and she's bigger than maybe even Madonna was at the time.

It's hard to well, that's it.

You're either everything or you're as small.

You're but this is.

I think Sidney Sweeney wants to be everything and I'm here and I'm here for it.

She wants to be the Walmart of actors.

Yes.

Now, after the break, we're going to talk about the switch 2.

I'm going to ask you questions about it and you're going to answer them.

And we're also going to recommend a film which everybody who hasn't already seen it is going to enjoy.

Yeah, which I loved.

All right, shall we go to a break?

Let's do that.

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Welcome back, everybody.

Now, we're going to talk about the Nintendo Switch 2, which was after a very long way, I think about eight years, was released last week.

And this is the sort of home console, but it's also portable.

So

it's both.

Richard, you have one.

Yes, I do.

Why is it important, you ask?

I think Nintendo might be the great geniuses of our time in the world of entertainment.

I know we talk about Netflix and YouTube, but Nintendo are so incredibly brilliant at what they do.

And for a very specific reason, which we'll get to, which is something that we talk about an awful lot.

So the original Switch has sold like 150 million.

We have one of those.

Yeah, exactly.

And it's, listen, it's great.

It's terrific.

The only consoles in the whole of history of video games that have sold more are the PlayStation 2, that's how long ago that was, and the Nintendo DS.

So Nintendo have very, very few rivals.

So it's come out this week, the Switch 2.

It's not enormously different to Switch 1.

It's bigger.

The technical specifications are better.

It's got live chat, but any big gamer can be

live chat.

Anyway, so it's not hugely different, but it's just an update on what they do.

And most importantly, it launches with Mario Kart World.

And Mario Kart and the Switch are almost interchangeable in some ways.

There's loads of other great games, but Mario Kart is always the launch game.

And in fact, it's one of the few Nintendo titles that actually is available for this new Switch.

And Mario Kart is one of the great pieces of art of the 20th and 21st century.

And the reason it's one of the great pieces of art of the 20th and 21st century is the thing we bang on about a lot, which is it's just fun.

Yeah.

It isn't anything other than what would people like to play.

I took my son who

he's the one who's got the switch to and he absolutely understands video games in the way that hopefully I understand TV.

And he's saying, well, look, the reason that people go crazy for Nintendo is, you know, they're not doing some big blockbuster game that eight years ago they say they're going to do and you know, bit by bit it comes out and then it's a year late.

They're not doing some open world that's stuffed with microtransactions.

They're just doing a great version of a game you've already played and they just make it a little bit better, you know, increase the playability.

You know, the new Mario World, you can play with more players, there's elimination modes, there's all sorts of things.

But it is just a great playable game that hardcore gamers love because you can go really, really in-depth, like if you're a chess player, and that you can pick up with any member of your family who wanders around.

Everyone can play Mario Kart immediately.

And Nintendo have consistently done that.

This new Switch that's come out is £395, I think,

over here, which is an awful lot of money.

And I think a lot of people will hold off buying one because weirdly, the switch one still works so brilliantly

that uh it would take a while to invest in a switch two, even though Walmart in the States had to change their opening hours last week.

Well, they did some of that, which you don't see anymore, which was a real since everyone's gone over to well, not completely, but to digital games, those big openings you used to get for a new game where people used to queue at midnight and it was kind of like a real gamer thing to do, don't really happen in the same way anymore.

Um, those kind of huge hype things where they dress the outside of the store or whatever because people have transitioned to buying digital games.

Yeah, but this there were people queuing, they had lots of sort of midnight because they're buying the hardware, yeah, you know, which is the one thing you do have to go to a shop to buy a money.

Well, actually, yeah, the pre-orders was interesting because I was reading how the pre-orders they had to apologize, didn't they?

Saying, oh, we're not actually going to be able to meet all the pre-orders.

But in store, if you did queue and you could be part of that visual, you know, which was obviously shared millions of times on social media, then you were more likely to get one in a funny kind of way.

So that old sort of bricks and mortar thing and that way of doing a form of hype.

Talking about old school curries sold 30,000 of them at midnight, you know, and that's at 400 quid a pop.

So, you know, you immediately sort of sort of see that there's an awful lot of money in this.

But actually, the consoles, and it's always been the history of consoles, are not the thing that's making the money.

The console, in some ways, is a lost leader because once you have the console, it's about buying the games.

And that's the key thing.

And the second you're on the Switch, you can buy games from there.

You can download games.

If you buy an independent game, Nintendo is taking 30% of the money from that.

If you buy a Nintendo game, because they develop everything in-house, they're taking 100% of that money.

No shop, no cover, no art.

There's no case for the CD to go into.

Big, big, big business.

And they sell huge amounts of software.

But you only do it if consistently over years and years and years, you just do it right.

And again, some were saying that Nintendo keeps so many of their developers, their developers, some of them have been around since the NES days.

You know, they've been there for so long.

And even if they're not the ones at the forefront of what's happening now, they are training the people who are at the forefront.

But all they've done all the way through is say, we make games for families, we make games you can play together, we make party games.

You know, then they make Legend of Zelda and have these incredible sort of worlds.

But the absolute entry route into Nintendo and into the Switch and things like that is you can sit down with your family.

Everyone can pick this controller up.

Everyone can play a game.

And you can take it with you.

We grew up in an era where you could take around computer games a lot.

And now, and now, you know, that's sort of Xbox, PlayStation, you're not taking around.

It's interesting where it falls in the life cycle of those.

They're both about halfway.

in their life cycle, aren't they?

Whenever the PlayStation 6 we don't know is coming out and whenever the next Xbox version is coming out.

There's a lot of cross-ownership.

I mean, I have a PlayStation and also a Switch because of the different things they do.

Is the hardware advanced enough you'd think, oh, like, this is a, sorry, this is going to sound crap, but, you know, like a game changer?

Not really, not anymore is the truth.

You know, you even look at the Switch, and as you say, it's been a lot, a number of years since the first one came out.

I mean...

It kind of looks better, graphically, it looks better, but that's the sort of thing that kind of gamer nerds absolutely obsess about, which is great because you have to get them on board.

But in terms of the playability, you know nothing's changed since the sego mega drive you know you can or you know if you play super tennis on the sness still one of the most playable video games of all time it's playability it's playable with other people is is is the key there and that's the key to getting a big mass audience into video games you'd always get hardcore gamers because it's the thing that they love and that they breathe but if you if you want to be making 12 billion dollars from software you're making 12 billion dollars by having something that two people can sit down together and play against each other or you play against you know someone from across the world who you know that's that's how you get that much money that's how you get a big family audience into these things and that's the thing that nintendo has always been incredibly good at they are a hardcore gaming company that in every possible way presents itself as not a hardcore gaming company as a oh this is a bit of fun oh you'll enjoy this but behind it every single decision they make means that every single one of their games there are exceptions are incredibly playable and incredibly playable whatever level of player you are they really last i mean my children spent we went we went to save some people at half-term and they spent a huge amount of time playing like Wii golf, which is so basic.

So basic.

They absolutely just kind of completely love it and it's just fun.

And it was social and it's fun.

It's basic to, you know, play football with a gold drawn on a brick wall.

You know, so you could play in Wembley Stadium with loads of people, but it's no, it's, it's the same game.

You know, there's no difference to the fun that you are having.

And Nintendo understand that in in a way that certain film companies and certain TV companies do, which is the customer is everything.

You have to give people something that they are going to love to do.

And they've done it forever.

I just think it's hard to think of another success story in any other realm of the arts that matches Nintendo's success story, the run of success, the lack of failure that they've had over many, many years and all the decades.

Over decades.

I mean, it's genuinely extraordinary what they've done.

And what's Mario, right?

You know, he's started in Donkey Kong, and he's just, he was a collection of pixels.

So he was something that's very easy to put together.

And, you know, then you look at Super Smash Bros.

You look at Mario World, all of these things, you know, this incredible universe they've created around something.

Around something that was in a game and watch.

Yeah.

And it's just, oh, he's a plumber.

Listen.

And no one might, yeah, everyone's, you know, okay,

he's a plumber.

And they have built an empire which feels like it's going to last an enormous amount of time.

And I think most importantly, has brought a huge amount of pleasure to people i agree do you think that thing is still true which i do still think which is that it's hard to replicate um to see that that success replicated anywhere else in the arts but we still have that thing where video games are not particularly taken seriously and they're siloed off and people they don't seem yeah even though they are beyond mainstream they're not treated by kind of legacy media outlets in that way i remember a really long time ago maybe even 20 years ago reading someone saying oh we need to find the pauline kyle video games criticism Pauline Kyle being the famous film critic who was a huge part of the new cinema, people like

Spielberg, Coppola, De Palma, all those people coming through School Saisi and wrote about their films in a way, and was as even as the critic was a big part of that kind of movement in film.

There's never been that kind of breakout way of talking or writing about them.

There has been, obviously, on dedicated sites, but it hasn't sort of crossed over.

It's written about as a kind of hype story, like, oh, look, you know, finally, Grand Theft Auto has come out and and, oh, dear, this, this bit's really violent, or

whatever your particular outlet likes to kind of seize on as its particular thing.

But it doesn't, it's not written about culturally in the same way as other branches of the artist.

I think that's right.

I think it came of age at a time where things were becoming siloed anyway, is probably the truth.

But it's interesting how and instructive whenever we talk in terrestrial TV about the threat of Netflix and the threat of YouTube.

And we talked last week about Netflix being threatened by YouTube.

This is almost as big.

You know, if you're playing Mario Kart and if you want to play something like Legend of Zelda and Elden Ring, it's going to be out on the switch as well now because the technology is slightly better.

This is hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of hours where you are consuming content.

And you're just, and you can't think of anything else.

You're playing like Ghost of Tsushima.

You need to go all the way through it and you're not going to be watching TV during that time.

Exactly that.

The eyeballs, the hours, they're all gone.

And of course, then add to the fact that the the second you finish, all you want to do is watch people on Twitch playing that game as well and seeing how they did it.

Is this industry takes a huge amount, and by the way, rightly, takes away a huge amount of eyeballs away from television.

Years ago at Endermod, I was saying, you know, television people play is more powerful than television people watch.

You know, there's something about being involved in something.

And you have to have one or the other.

And there's a generation of people, this is the thing that they do instead of television.

So forget Netflix, when they're on youtube they're watching stuff about games and it is an enormous amount of people and we can it does lead the culture yeah that that the whole business of like watching people play video games which you might start watching mr beast and his friends very or you're watching twitch things or whatever it may be that is now being pulled from that and i'm i noticed people talking about oh you know youtube's going to get into sports by getting people to watch along games um or matches or whatever sporting event it is.

And they're putting all of that from the way that gaming is covered on these particular platforms.

And Neil Mern, the CEO of YouTube, is talking a lot about that.

It's like starting to build those things around sporting events where people are watching along with whatever commentators they particularly want.

Yeah, which is Soccer Saturday.

Yeah.

That's what, you know, which to my mind is still the single greatest innovation in television in the last 30 years.

It's the only, I think it's the only original idea anyone's had in television in 30 years is Soccer Saturday.

Oh, so compelling.

People watching the football and just talking to you about it when you can't see it.

Do you actually think that Jeff and the guys were the pioneers for

the gaming community?

Yeah, I think Jeff Stenning,

when the annals are written,

he is literally going to be on the front cover.

He'll be the guy.

I know parents particularly worry about video games and my kids are spending too long playing video games.

And my view would be you don't need to worry.

If they are mindlessly playing video games, I get it.

It's quite hard these days with the quality of what's out there to mindlessly play a video game.

You know, there is a lot going on.

There's a lot of problem solving.

There's a lot of decision making.

There's a lot of sociability or can be a lot of sociability.

And in the, you know, I grew up, I did nothing but watch television, but I was interested.

I cared about it.

I was interested in who was making it and why they were making it.

There's a huge amount of everything I've learned off the television.

From that.

And if your child is playing a lot of video games, but is engaging in those video games, firstly, they're...

learning quite a lot.

But secondly, that's the world they're going to grow up into.

You can send your kid to piano lessons they're probably not going to end up a concert pianist however they probably will work in a video games adjacent industry like an industry where those skills are needed and coding is needed and all those things so i i personally think if your kid loves video games i think it's probably a net positive a video game and people don't really say that but i think they're i think they're extraordinary i think nintendo are extraordinary i think in the same way that saturday night television used to bring families together and give such joy and that's the thing i loved about television the reason i went into television i think that industry, I think Nintendo in particular, have created that environment.

I think they've created an environment in which you would have your Switch in the living room.

That's the thing.

It would be next to your big TV.

Yeah.

And it would be opposite your sofa.

And I think that's an incredibly powerful thing and something to be celebrated.

And I just, you know, given it came out last week, I just thought it was a good time to speak about it.

And as I say, if you've got a Switch one, you don't necessarily need to switch up.

I mean, the new Mario Kart is great and it's got a bit more open world stuff in it and there's there's new stuff.

You can live without it.

And also there's lots of Switch ones which are now redundant because everyone who bought a Switch 2 will certainly their Switch one very, very cheaply.

Can I, on a final note, the final note to

the president of Nintendo America is amazingly called Doug Bowser.

And Bowser is one of the big characters in Nintendo lore.

From the moment he got that job, literally...

He has never been left alone.

Like the memes about him, the jokes about him.

And Doug Bowser is quite a straight, businessy type guy, and he's clearly had media training.

So, why is everyone spending their entire life talking about mine?

I literally, I can't go on stage without people shouting stuff at me about Bowser.

So, they've given him the line, which is: it's a signal to me that we have an amazing, passionate following, and our fans are embracing it.

It's ironic we share the same name, and there are times when it'll be fun and we'll play with it.

But we're two very, very different characters.

Doug Bowser finishes, I'm not tired of it at all, though.

Doug, come on man.

Doug Bowser.

I'm not tired of it at all though.

Yes.

Says Doug Bowser.

But anyway, it's, you know, Mario Kart.

I bow to anyone.

My record against my son is currently, he has 873 individual wins.

I have four.

873 plays for a different human being to my son.

might throw me a bone every now and again but uh he won't do it and can't you can't let your dad say right you just can't the times i win are like the they they are

so special it's like someone's giving me five baftas i really hope you get your fifth soon richard

listen i will you'll you'll be the first to know listeners when i get my fifth mario cart win

now you have a thesis which sounded interesting when you it's like a demi thesis really but i yes i caught up with lilo and stitch the live-action disney version of the previous animation um and it's done huge business it's a cgi alien is the the protagonist and it's quite quite hard to have a non-cGI alien alien.

No, it is quite hard.

But it got me, I suddenly started thinking, movies aren't really, they don't really have humans as protagonists any longer.

So I looked up the 2024 top gracing films.

I'm talking about, obviously, there are movies, there are lots of interesting movies that have humans in them, but they don't do any business.

And you may see them represented at the Oscars, but nobody goes to see them in a meaningful way.

Okay.

So 2024, listen to this list.

I mean, these are the top, I'm going to go past the top 10.

Inside Out 2, okay, which is a sort of fantasia of

emotions.

No humans.

No humans.

Deadpool and Wolverine.

So my thesis is they are either superhero, animated, animal, or alien.

That's not really.

That sounds like a game.

Yeah.

Yeah.

The taxonomy, everything must be sorted into that.

Okay, but Inside Out 2, Deadpool and Wolverine.

Moana.

I mean, okay, they are humans, animation, but okay, human.

Despicable Me 4.

Yeah.

Wicked.

They're witches.

Mufasa, Lion King.

Dune Part 2.

Science Fiction, I guess so.

But then then godzilla versus kong new empire kung fu panda four sonic venna i mean i'm going way past the top 10 now these are all the biggest grossing things so i think what's interesting to me and it says something i think quite odd about our times is that none of these films are about real humans doing real things in real world situations they're not the

kind of these big dramas or big comedies or anything that can dominate i guess the last example that would uh overall that would be Oppenheimer.

Would be Oppenheimer, but he remains a sort of outlier, doesn't he, Christopher Nolan?

And yet he also is the person who we think can save cinema.

So it's quite interesting that both of those things can be true at once.

So I talked a little bit to the Guardian's film critic Peter Bradshaw about this, and I was like, but where are all the humans?

And he was saying, you know, that you really need the international sales of these things.

So the thing about having little cuddly animals or animations or superhuman things is that the international sales are helped by that.

He said, he described it as a sort of Esperanto of tame unreality and fantasy, which I liked.

So, if you're trying to sell a film like that into China or into Saudi or whatever,

without upsetting local sensitivities, where, I don't know, human women are shown driving cars or having sex or human men are shown uncovering corruption or whatever it may be.

It's just much easier if it's some lions

or like a little alien or a superhero.

Yeah, listen, it takes us back to Animal Farm.

Yeah,

it's much easier.

And so, but I do think that's quite significant.

You just don't watch these big drama movies or big comedy drama movies or whatever.

They don't, they don't dominate the culture at all.

They are nowhere near the top 10 of anything.

And they may be recognized at awards ceremonies.

And so therefore, what you've got is you've got to get the big actors who might have in the past driven those kind of movies, they do because they want to have awards as well.

But they're all hooked into different different franchises where you kind of think, What on earth are you doing in this?

You know, why are you here?

Why have you bothered with this?

How much money is enough?

Or do you just feel like there aren't on the other films?

You don't have the cultural relevance unless you're in one of these franchises.

And that's even the case with someone like you know, Timothy Janame, who is a big soul, and we've talked about that.

He's probably the biggest star of his generation.

Um, and he can do a complete unknown, which basically not very many people watched.

And, but he also has to be

in Dune as well, because otherwise,

Is Dune not?

I haven't seen Dune, I must admit.

But is that not a person?

I know it's sci-fi, but Star Wars was sci-fi.

Okay, so I'll count, you know, they're on an alien planet.

It's sci-fi.

Yeah.

But it's not, but yes.

But in general, it's just completely absent.

And the days of those kind of movies being able to draw people to cinema or even being made in a way that is intended to draw people to the cinema are gone.

However, we both independently saw a movie this week, which I just think is magnificent and makes you think, well, I would like to see films with people in them.

And that is the ballad of Wallace Island.

It's so lovely.

I saw it yesterday.

Tim Key and Tom Basdin and Kerry Mulligan.

Tim and Tom wrote it.

And

I don't really need to go through the plot, but it's about a folk duo and a guy who wants them to get back together.

So invites them to a gig on this island.

And it is, I think.

Ingrid cried, I would say for 75% of the film.

But you're laughing all the way through as well.

Beautiful performances from all three of the leads, a really simple one-hour, 40-minute-long film.

I can't think of anyone, it is entirely human, they are all doing human things in a real world setting, yeah, the Wales Coast.

Yeah, um, and I really loved it.

And I have to say, first of all, it goes without saying, Kerry Mulligan is just ridiculous in anything she's in, she's never not been absolutely amazing.

Tim Key is, I mean, he, I, I cried,

I mean, I, he, he's unbelievable in this, he's brilliant.

Tom Basdin adapted the accidental death of an anaker not that long ago for theatre, the Dario Fe play.

And he rewrote it.

I took my son to see it.

He was laughing so much.

He insisted on us laughing.

So the theater was completely packed.

It transferred everywhere.

I went to the West End.

We had to buy the script at half time, the interval, I believe they call it in the theater.

We bought the script at half time because it was so good.

I thought, I must find out who that guy's agent is and write to him and say, I just think you're amazing.

But I didn't actually do that.

So if Tom Basdon ever gets here, here this by the way i think you're amazing but in this watching these folk songs he's written he's yeah i mean he's like he's really what can't he do i thought it was absolutely wonderful and it is very funny but it it's it again as you say it's completely it's a completely human movie and it's it's in such a stark contrast you can see it in cinemas now by the way i think it's i've been out about a week-ish

i would really really strongly recommend it it feels like the cinema used to be where you could go along and what's what's the great film we can see this week and i definitely definitely the bad.

You won't be sorry if you go in and think, I'm just going to give a couple of hours, less than a couple of hours, one hour 40 of my life to this.

It's lovely.

Yeah, it's deeply charming.

Anyway, so that's that counts as a pre-recommendation and our clarion cry for human beings in films.

Where have all the humans gone?

More humans, please.

More humans.

That's us done, I think.

I think it is.

Can I give one other recommendation?

Because I finally caught up with the latest series of Night Coppers on Channel 4.

And I've talked about Night Coppers before, but I love it so much.

It's a very, very human show so it's not that one of those absolute blues and twos things and you know it it it just shows all that stuff but also shows uh the human beings behind it and um what the police do down in brighton uh so that's on channel four you can catch that on there on all four very good now other than that we'll be back for our usual question and answers on thursday and also it's 50 years since the release of jaws the the maybe the first summer blockbuster and it's such a brilliant story so we're going to be doing a two-part special on that for our members,

which you can join at the restaurants entertainment.com.

Otherwise, we will see you all on Thursday.

See you on Thursday.

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