Method Acting Sickos

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

I'm Marina Hyde.

And I'm Richard Osman,

still in La Belle, Italia.

See?

That means Italy.

Oh, does it?

I've always wondered.

I pick up a bit of the lingo.

Wherever I go,

I pick up a bit of the lingo.

That's how I work.

Like a sponge, you are for the culture.

Like a sponge.

As Italians would say, un spundia por la cotura.

I think that might, that last bit might actually be correct.

Not the sponge bit.

I shouldn't have thought so.

Shall we get straight on and ask our first question?

Please do.

This is from Lucia Gifford.

Oh, Italian.

Italian who married an Englishman and is now resentfully living somewhere in England, just going, the food is so terrible and the weather.

I'm watching a Daniel Day-Lewis movie and I realize I have a burning question for you.

How does it work on a movie set when the star is a method actor?

There must be so many moments that are strikingly awkward, like hair and makeup.

How far does it all go?

And are staff on set briefed to play along?

The whole story of method acting is so interesting.

And let's do a primer on method acting first, and then we'll go on to some of the most egregious examples of it on sets.

It comes actually from Stanislavski, who was a sort of late 19th-century Russian actor, and

he was really against all the sort of hammy acting they had at the time.

And he developed something called the system, which was a sort of more realistic form of acting.

And basically, that was taken up by a guy called Lee Strasberg in America, who's an actor, but primarily an acting teacher.

And in the 30s, he coined the term the method as a way of describing this sort of sort of living the role and really immersing yourself deeply so that you could kind of facilitate facilitate realistic behavior under imaginary circumstances as it were you had to do what's called a sort of effective memory exercise and least strasberg got really into making actors access their past trauma or dark moments and it sort of at that point stopped being the american version of stanislavski and became whatever least strasberg and his wife paula and their disciples wanted it to be a lot of actors who were kind of credited with being method actors people like marlon brando really hated it at that point and kind of got out of the actor's studio and severed ties.

You know, Al Pacino, if very interesting, actually, if you watch The Godfather Part 2, the guy who plays Hyman Roth is Lee Strasberg.

And you have these famous stories of I'm Marathon Man, Dustin Hoffman completely immersing himself in the role and Laurence Olivier saying to him, Well, try acting, dear boy, you know, so the sort of clash of styles.

I mean, I actually think that, you know, Lee Strasberg and his wife were bad hats, particularly because of what happened with Marilyn Munro.

Now, Marilyn Munro, he said, I made Marilyn Munro an actress, even though she was a star when she came to him.

I mean, they really sort of took her over completely, him and his wife, Paula.

People said to Marilyn Munro, you know, why are you putting all this poison into yourself?

Why are you allowing yourself to become like this?

But she left them everything in her will.

No, really?

Lee Strasberg?

Really?

Yeah.

I mean, Paula used to cough during the takes when she felt she wasn't doing it in the way that Paula would like.

She was a nightmare for directors.

Really, really difficult.

By the way, this has filtered down into drama schools.

You know, it's a form of sort of really dark, unlicensed psychotherapy.

I went to university and I didn't have this experience, but a lot of my friends went to drama schools and even drama schools, performing arts schools in six form and things like that.

All of them had been through incredibly dark experiences.

I remember thinking, this is abuse and the things that you've been through and so many people, and as far as I know, it's never really properly been investigated.

If you want to make someone as vulnerable as possible, then possibly that is helpful if you are an actor, but

it's more helpful if you're the sort of person who likes people to be vulnerable in your presence.

Let us lighten this up in a way now because we've got to talk about Lucia's question, which is how bad does it get on set?

Really, really bad, Lucia.

The crew do not like you if you do this.

Can I just say your co-stars often don't like?

I mean, you still see those kind of clashes today.

You know, that kind of Olivier Dustin Hoffman clash, I think, was really replicated on succession with sort of Brian Cox and Jeremy Strong.

And I mean, just go and read, just go and read their interviews and you can just see the absolute sort of, well, particularly, I think, Brian Cox's sort of thinly disguised contempt for that particular way of working there's an interesting thing that Natalie Portman said which I rather love talking about method acting I think it's a luxury that women can't afford I don't think children or partners would be very understanding of making them call me Jackie Kennedy all day Robert Robert Pattinson as well I loved he said

he said he says so interesting he said

people only ever do method acting when the character they're playing is horrible.

He said no one when they're playing someone who's really lovely just goes around set being delightful to everyone 24 hours a day.

Is such an excuse to behave in an outlandish or unpleasant way.

There's some very strong examples of people who behave very badly on sets, right?

Oh my god.

Okay, Jared Leto in Morbius, he refused to get out of character as the disabled titled character in Morbius.

I mean this stuff is politically, I find, very complex.

And we're going to mention Daniel Deluis on this front as well.

So his bathroom breaks would take over 45 minutes as he sort of hobbled across the set.

And the the director sort of did a deal with him saying, you've got to use a wheelchair because we're wasting the entire day.

Now, Daniel Day-Lewis in my left foot, he's one of the most notorious.

Now, he put the entire crew through that particular misery.

He played a writer with cerebral palsy and he forced assistants to carry him around.

on set, feed him with a spoon.

As I say, I think politically this would be a slightly more complicated way to behave in this day and age.

When he was playing Lincoln, he made the whole car speak with American accents because they wouldn't throw him off.

I don't think Steven Spielberg loved it.

Geraldito, again, playing the Joker in Suicide Squad, and he sent really gross gifts to all the female co-stars.

Some of his gifts included a used condom, anal beads, a live rat, a pig's head, which he dropped in the middle of the rehearsal room.

Again, Jim Carrey in Man on the Moon.

Now, people hate it.

Now, he was on the Andy Kaufman biopic, Man on the moon and he was pretty difficult uh the obviously the titch of the character is a difficult man at the best of times jim carrey claimed he was um possessed by andy kauferman for for four months got him sort of got into physical fights with the crew and he would say things like why am i here why are all these cameras around

because you know he was the guy and if you ever look at a video on facebook or something you are then shown a million videos at the same and uh i i was watching a norm macdonald video and now every day i get like 50 norm mcdonald clips and i'm very very happy about it But there's some brilliant one with Norm McDonald, but he's on a chat show with Jim Carey, and they're talking about Man on the Moon.

And Jim Carey goes, Norm, do you remember one day you came down to the set of Man on the Moon?

And Norm goes, What?

I came down to the set of Man on the Moon.

He goes, Yeah, do you remember when you came down to the set, you came down to visit me on the set of Man on the Moon?

And Normac Donald goes, Jim, I was in Man on the Moon.

That's why I was on the set.

On the chat show, that happens.

Yeah, yeah.

Oh, my God.

Okay, I mean, Jim Carrey did later say that

his attitude was self-aggrandising, selfish, and narcissistic.

So you can only imagine how much worse than all the three of those things it actually was if he's coughed to that.

I think it does make it completely insufferable for anyone around you.

And, you know, I really think you should be able to do it without it.

For some, you know, some people get incredible results.

And you can't deny that there are how many incredible Daniel Day-Lewis performances out there.

There is a halfway house, which is an awful lot of actors will take themselves off for, you know, 20 minutes before a scene, particularly a very emotional scene no they have to go somewhere they do have to find something within themselves but you can do that without being that person yeah 24 hours a day now we have had about one billion questions about race across the world which is phenomenal this season and all seasons but this is so good Here's one for you, Richard.

How did the team behind Race Across the World find a couple like Yin and Gaz?

They are literally the perfect pair for television in terms of their relationship with each other and so sweet.

Is it luck or does a casting agent go out of their way to find a team like that?

I spoke to their brilliant team on that show.

No, there's no casting agent especially.

I mean there are people on the production team who are incredibly experienced in casting.

Obviously they get thousands of applications.

People send in videos.

People will trawl through those and you know look for people with interesting stories.

Interesting relationships is the main thing on something like

Race Across the World.

They will invite a number of those people to London.

Now you have to be available for the dates, so you'll be told exactly what the dates are, and your availability will be checked before you come down to London.

They'll look at the interaction between the two people.

They'll get backstories.

That's one of the beautiful things about that show is how slowly they reveal people's relationships and stories and things that have happened in their life.

But they're looking at the interaction.

They're looking at the two people.

But then they say to everyone, here's a director.

A director walks into the room.

and they will give them a location in London, which is around about 45 minutes or an hour from the production offices of Studio Lambert.

And they will say, we need you to get to that location in the next hour.

You're being followed.

Your time starts now.

And so you then take that pair.

They then go out on the road.

So you see them under pressure.

You see how they problem solve.

You see how they talk to each other when things are not going right, where things are not going wrong.

You see how, you know, they work out what transport to take.

And just things like that.

You see them in their natural environment.

You see how they are in front of a camera.

You see how they are with each other in front of a camera.

It's the perfect way of choosing a cast really we know incredible deep casting really isn't it it's really i mean that to for producers to cast that is it's sort of really immersive i think that's i i think that's a very amazing way to do it it is just brilliant and it is the thing that makes the show because it's just you know beautiful things are happening beautiful uh places people are going but we follow the stories we follow the emotions and like any book like any tv series is characters is the stuff we're interested in they need to find people who are going to endure across a series and they need to see people's problem-solving experience.

But it's one of the hallmarks of so many of their shows.

Also Traitors, also Gogglebox,

that sort of deep, deep casting.

You're not just picking the first sort of really pretty good or great people who come along, to have probed so deeply before you go anywhere close to where is really interesting, I think.

And it's different, you know, a lot of reality casting is who are the most extreme characters.

And certainly was, you know, 15 years ago, it was God, who's going to be noisy, who's, you know, who's crazy,

which we still have on some of some of the dating shows and things like that, and some of the Meredith First site type shows.

But a show like this, which is mainstream and heartland, and you want to watch it with your whole family, it's a very different sort of casting, which is

still waters run deep.

It's not just who's the noisiest, it's where are the stories,

where's the heart, and where are the relationships.

And it's so much better for it.

It's so much better for it.

The depth of it is really, it's what gives it all of those programs their real depth, is the quality of the people that you're seeing and their stories.

Shall we go for a little break?

Let's go to a break.

This episode is brought to you by Sky, where you can watch the brand new series of the award-winning and lost at us.

So we've both been watching the new season, which once more does not hold back.

If you thought the first series was dark and had twists and turns, I'd say this one's darkerer and more twisty-turner.

I think that's correct.

The infected are obviously terrifying, but the real danger arguably now comes from the living, Richard.

The first season, for people who watch that and have yet to watch the second season, you know exactly what you're going to expect here, but this time I would say there are even more rug pulls and even more extraordinary money once we go, okay, I didn't see that coming.

Beneath the horror, I suppose it's about the fragile ties that bind people together.

So grief, revenge, love, the price of survival, which is fairly high.

Now, the new characters, Abby and Dina, they have taken it off in a whole different direction, which is as you would expect.

And without giving anything away for those yet to watch, it does just keep delivering those moments where you think, what?

I can't believe they just did that.

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Welcome back, everybody.

Marina, I have a question for you from Simon Meadows.

Simon says, when digital radio was introduced, the first thing everyone noticed was that it always lags behind the analog signal.

I've also noticed timing differences between digital devices.

Given this, how can we rely on the accuracy of the Greenwich Pips broadcast on Radio 4?

Oh, Oh, the short answer to this, we spoke to Matt Gray, who's a broadcast engineer, and said essentially you can't trust them anymore because

nothing is true anymore.

Like Gladys Knight, when money started disappearing from her dressing room, you cannot trust the Pips.

With all...

Okay, I have to have a pause after that.

Marvellous.

Okay, with old sort of AM and FM radios, the converting the radio waves into sound happened instantly, which meant that all the radios were in sync with each other.

But digital radio, the signal signal processing inside the radio is much more complicated and so in older digital radios used to take three seconds but now the technology has improved they all take different times basically there isn't one magic number for the decoding delay anymore so in a way i think they're 101 years old the pips they've been going that long and they were invented by the bbc's first director general john wreath might have heard of him thank you john and he did it with the astronomer royal who was sir frank watson dyson and so yes Wow.

That's a hell of a lunch they must have had.

Yeah.

It's sort of amazing.

The machine that used to generate them down the years, you can see these pictures of these different things that used to generate the pips, the Greenwich time service, all these things.

It's now still an atomic clock in the basement of broadcasting house.

Absolutely not the worst thing that's been in the basement of a broadcasting house.

Or maybe still lurks there in various sealed sections.

Yeah, yeah.

The various BBC Minotaurs.

But yes, they had the short pips and the long ones.

Still have it on local radio.

So people are sort of saying, well, why do we still have have them at all?

It's one of those things that if you were to get rid of them,

even though they don't sort of mean the same thing anymore, there would be an absolute outcry.

Yeah.

Finland has them, by the way.

Finland has a version of them.

Ireland have them.

But it's one of those things that if you tried to get rid of them, even though people know they don't mean anything anymore in the same way as they used to, people would not be able to.

stand it.

Presenters always talk about the pips on Radio 4.

If you crash the pips, if you kind of slightly talk over them, then it's really mortifying.

It's one of the great sort of radio four sins again you know there are some worst radio four sims i'm sure but if you sort of kiss the pips if you can just come just up to them then that's the real skill which of course is when cladys knight discovered that it wasn't one of her backing band who stole the money she kissed the pips had to make it up to them somehow yeah and that's a joke from 1973 isn't it yeah i've never really thought about the pips yeah it's funny isn't that i just assumed they're a naturally occurring phenomenon yeah but uh they were invented by someone yes the royal astronomer general and the Director General of the BBC.

They must have had better things to do, surely.

But

yeah,

maybe not.

I'm going to move us on before we get into some hot water.

Okay, for reasons that will become clear, I'm not quite sure how I should say this, but Ray Cahill.

I have always been Ray Carhill, says Ray Cahill.

But 20 years ago, my life was ruined by a certain Australian footballer, and now everyone calls me Ray Cahill.

I'm so sorry, Ray Carhill.

I was going to write him a letter, but I realise it's probably the fault of pundits and commentators up and down the country.

Do Guy Mowbray and Preeta Jury just decide how they're going to say someone's name?

Or is there an official database in which every Premier League player's name is spelt phonetically?

This is a great question.

Thank you, Ray, if that's how you pronounce that.

I was so glad to see this question because it allows me to draw people's attention to something which I shall mention at the end of this.

But yeah, the basic principle is we didn't really used to have to worry about pronunciation of names, but now we're such a multi-national league.

You know, like for years and years, everyone called him jose mourinho and he's jose mourino because he's portuguese and he used to get angry that people would mispronounce his name and david ginola spurs would constantly be bringing up the broadcast and say this ginola it's ginola so for a long time pronunciations have been very difficult especially you know this new player's been brought in all the time and so what sky do now and you can actually see this there is a video there is a super cut of this they get every single premier league footballer i think it's 572 season, to stand in front of a green screen in front of a camera and say their own name.

Oh my god, that's amazing!

They each say it twice, and it's brilliant.

And then, you know, it'll all be like, you know, kind of, you've even got Ben White just going, Ben White.

Just say it one more time, Ben.

Ben White.

It's obviously been given to each of the clubs to do it, but you should watch the video.

You can see it on YouTube.

It's like an hour and a half long.

It goes on forever.

It's like mesmerizing.

You can tell the press officer each club because they've been told, make sure you say it twice and make sure you say it slowly.

I can't remember which club it is.

I don't think it's Chelsea.

But it's one of the teams where the press officer is really, he gets them to do every single syllable.

And he goes, no, I think what they really want you to do is say, Abdelay de Coré.

And the person just repeats it.

But yeah, it's essentially 572 people telling you how they pronounce their names.

This is...

funny to say Ben White, Ben White, but this is sent around the world.

So this is sent to all the foreign broadcasters.

We're actually, Ben White is a much harder name name to pronounce than some of the foreign names in the Premier League.

But it's really, really, just put in Premier League footballers pronunciation.

It'll come up and you've got an hour and a half.

I don't want to say entertainment because it's not, but it is a fairly extraordinary achievement.

And you certainly get a sense of the personalities of some of the players.

I'm dying for this.

A 10-minute interview doesn't tell you much about someone, but literally seeing someone twice having just to pronounce their name and just looking off camera to make sure they've done it right, it just is, it gives a unique insight into that.

Because Phil Jaggie Elka, I think right at the end of his career, he just said, you know, you've been pronouncing my name wrong my whole career.

You know, I'm Yaggy Olka.

And it's just these things, you know, players just put up with their names pronounced incorrectly forever and ever and ever,

which is the same problem there with poor Ray Carhill.

I really love that and I'm dying to see that particular video.

A question for you, Marina.

I think I can probably contribute to this one.

James Allen says, I've always said there should be a reality TV show based on my former workplace in a bingo hall.

Regardless, this has led me to wonder how a brand new TV program gets the green light.

First of all, you can always, if you've got an idea, you could try and take it to a production company.

People are often saying this.

And I have to say that one of the things you hear most is, I've got a brilliant idea for a TV show, or I know somewhere where you could film.

The thing I would say that is the sort of overarching reply to this about television and the people who make television is that ideas themselves are almost worthless.

And people think they've had a genius idea and without wishing to denigrate your great idea about the bingo hall, I'm sure it would be brilliant in the right hands.

But the hard work of any of these things, I could sort of come up with 10 places that it would be great to set a documentary right now.

We both could.

It doesn't matter.

Anyone can do that to some extent.

The hard work is in developing these shows, in testing them, in casting them, in directing them, in cutting them, all of those things.

Those take so long.

And if you've got your eye in, you could walk down the high street and see 10 different venues that would be brilliant to shoot a documentary.

And, you know, if you had the best people who, you know, we talked about casting earlier, the ways you can cast it, the ways you can develop it, the way you can change it, edit it, all of these things.

But there's a sort of conception about television that it is drowning in money, that for having a kind of quick idea, you should be certainly...

you know, not just like thanked in the credits, but you should get an executive producer credit and you should get a sort of huge amount of money just for having had the idea it's funny even though we know that you know tv's in trouble in lots of different ways people still feel that the mere for having come up with that idea that they've come up with the format whereas as you and i know and you particularly know richard my goodness developing a format is a huge amount of work for a huge number of people yeah to james's basic point if you say I want to do a reality show in a bingo hall, you know, a million people have said, let's do a reality show in X, let's do a reality show in Y.

That is not the end of the process.

It's very much the start of the process, which is which bingo hall?

Why are we choosing that bingo hall?

Is there this amazing character that we've seen?

Is the bigger hall about to close down and therefore there's some jeopardy towards the end of it?

Who are the punters who go to that hall?

You know, where do they live?

What do they do?

Are there two friends who've been going to that same bingo hall for 60 years?

and we follow their friendship.

You know, it very quickly becomes not, it's just set in a bingo hall.

Yes, but what is the show?

What do we care about?

What are we looking for?

So what that is is just a precinct, you know, setting something in a bingo hall.

And as you say, you could set something anywhere behind the the scenes at a shopping center, an airport.

You know, it's not a format.

However, James, to your point, if a production company had a researcher, he went to the same bingo hall every week and said, there's three amazing characters here at this bingo hall.

And there's something about this bingo hall because it's not one of the big chains.

Actually, it's independently run by a family and they've been running it for 50 years.

And that family are incredible.

And they're trying to crowdfund to save this bingo hall.

You would then shoot a taster tape for that.

You would talk to all of those people.

You would go to a broadcaster.

So you wouldn't say, I've got a really good idea.

Let's do something in a bingo haul.

You'd say, I've got an amazing story.

I've got these amazing characters.

And I've got a beginning, middle, and end to this story, which is they are trying to save their bingo haul.

As someone who doesn't work in television, if you have stumbled across...

a particular bingo haul with a particular group of characters who you can shoot on a phone and do a very quick very cheap edit and send off to people then people are going to be interested in that if you're just saying it would be great to do a bri added show and a bingo hold that i mean that's there isn't a workplace that someone hasn't had an idea but if you've got a very specific bingo hold in mind if the characters are amazing if the story is amazing then there would be people who would be interested in that but yeah you have to show sort of proof of concept you have to show why people would watch this for eight episodes ten episodes why it would come back for another season all of those things yeah it's never point and shoot even if it seems like it's a fly-on-the-wall documentary it has involved an unbelievable amount of time surprising amount of time to a lot of people who who don't work in television and don't know how glacially slow television is made.

And to go to your point about, you know, how to make a show, that everyone at home must be going, but I had the idea of the traitors because everyone has ever played Wink Murder or Mafia or any of those games have gone, they should do this on TV.

Every TV production company has done a pilot of it and everyone has tried to sell it.

But Studio Lambert just made it in the best way.

It's possible.

Out there, there are people who've got an idea that has never been seen before or done before.

In 35 years in TV, no one's ever given me an idea that I haven't heard before.

As I say, ideas are great and ideas are very important.

They're the wellspring, but they are absolutely just the beginning of how you sell a show rather than the end of how you sell a show.

All of these different decisions that turns an idea into a television program.

That said, I would watch a reality show set in a bingo hall.

So would I.

Perhaps it's the right one.

What you have there is not, I'm afraid, a formattable idea.

But if you've got a bingo haul in mind, then maybe it is.

Right.

I think that about takes care of us for today.

We will be back tomorrow with an episode for our members, which you can join at therestersenttertainment.com, which is about the story of Pixar, a great animation house.

If you are not a member, we will be, as always, back with the main podcast on Tuesday.

See you next Tuesday.

See you next Tuesday.

Well, that brings us to the end of another episode of The Wrestlers Entertainment, brought to you by our friends at Sky.

I have been catching up on The Last of Us recently, such a gripping watch.

Absolutely right.

The critics are fairly unanimous.

It's dark and intense, brilliantly done, they're all saying, especially on your skyglass with its high-quality screen.

Yeah, even those very low-lit scenes, every flicker, every detail, it really pulls you in.

One minute you'll be stretched out on the sofa, the next you'll be gripping the cushion, and that is not not a euphemism.

The picture quality really just brings everything to life from the comfort of your living room.

It feels properly cinematic, like the room fades away and you're in the thick of it.

Until the clickers show up, then it feels a bit too real.

Well, that's when you reach for the blanket.

The perfect night in.

Couldn't agree more.

So, for anyone wanting to upgrade this screen time, head to sky.com and check out SkyTV.