Is Trump Trying To Kill Hollywood?

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Hello, and welcome to this episode of The Restors Entertainment with me, Marina Hyde.

And me, Richard Osmer.

Hi, everybody.

Hi, Marina.

Hello, Richard.

I'm devastated because you're not with me.

You're in an undisclosed location.

We are, well, listen, I can disclose it.

I'm in Morocco.

By the time this goes out, I'll be back in England, but currently here.

So it's Aresters Entertainment International today.

Yeah, well, we've got plenty to discuss.

And be just.

We're talking about a developing story, which is Trump's overnight announcement that he is imposing 100% tariffs on movies made overseas or in foreign lands capitals as he puts it.

We're both in foreign lands at the moment.

You're in the UK, I'm in Morocco.

Yes, we're very much in foreign lands and I think we're very much in uncharted territory as to what this would actually mean for the film industry.

We're also going to talk about the Irish rap band Kneecap who've got themselves into, let's say, hot water in sort of a throwback scandal of punker bands saying unacceptable things and the whole of parliament going crazy about it.

But it's slightly different, slightly more interesting than that, I think.

Shall we start with Donald Trump?

As you say, he's announced these tariffs 100%.

But what does that mean and how might it work were it ever to actually happen?

Well, the only thing we know, because we're recording this on a Monday morning and it's happened overnight, is what he has posted.

He said the movie industry in America is dying a very fast death.

I bet he's devastated about that.

Other countries are offering offering all sorts of incentives to draw our filmmakers and studios away from the United States.

Hollywood and many other areas within the USA are being devastated.

So he says he's instructed the Commerce Department to immediately begin the process of instituting 100% tariff on any and all movies coming into our country that are produced in capital's foreign lands.

Now he says we want movies made in America again.

He loves movies made in America.

Oh, he loves it.

He loves Hollywood.

Loves Hollywood.

He loves them this much.

This is how much he loves Hollywood, I think, is probably the the top line on this particular story instead of giving them a tax incentive like every other country does instead he's going to over tax everybody else yeah listen it's an idea you can call it a policy now it's interesting because there's lots of things that we should talk around before we kind of get into it but one of the things that when trump came to power actually lots of people in hollywood were sort of covertly excited and probably supportive because I think that they felt there'd be more scope for M ⁇ A activity, less regulation, which they feel they need.

In order to survive, they need to consolidate in different ways and they need to be able to do things in a less regulated manner that can help them, if not to grow, then at least to kind of maintain or stay where they are rather than being in this kind of decline that occasionally looks like free fall.

And when he started announcing tariffs on other things, I suppose there was a sort of, you know, I don't know whether we maybe talked a tiny bit about what that would mean, you know, which entertainment companies would be more affected by tariffs on goods, because someone like Disney needs a lot of steel for parks and cruise ships.

And remember, that is by far the most profitable sort of division of Disney, much more than the entertainment.

Well, if he does this, the answer is all of the companies will be very affected, except strangely TV production.

We'll get to that.

Because you notice there's no mention of television in this.

I know, which is the sort of canary in the coal mine.

Well, it's interesting.

Now, obviously, various people in Hollywoods have, I don't want to say they've lost their minds overnight because it may be a very rational response to this, this, but many people are saying, oh my god, this is like a service tariff, which either way, I don't think it is.

It's slightly more complicated because this isn't like a car or whatever, but even that, as we know, is complicated.

There are different bits of the chain are made in different places.

Yeah, so can you explain how it works with an example of that?

You know, if you've got a mission impossible that is shot largely over here, lots of post-production is done over here.

Bits of it are done in the States.

The actors are American.

A lot of the money is American, but most of it is shot over here.

Does that, as a finished project, come from?

Not only can I not explain how it works, but I don't think Donald Trump can explain how it works.

A movie is not a commodity in any sort of very simple, meaningful sense.

Some people would say it's an intangible asset.

And others, and I don't think this is necessarily like they're saying, oh, this is the first service tariff because everything now has been all good.

Because in some ways, a movie is a collection of services that have sort of patchworked together from multiple locations.

You know, maybe you're getting the post-production done in India.

Maybe you're doing, you're filming in Hungary.

Maybe you're also filming partly in the United States.

There are areas of geographical specialism, uniqueness, whatever.

And at all times in that production, these services flow digitally around the globe.

I mean, you can't impound some pixels at the border.

Okay.

You can't say that's not coming in.

You can try.

You can try.

Imagine the size of the wall you'd need.

Well, I know, but to some extent, speaking of walls, okay.

You know, remember his plan to get Mexico to pay for the wall?

To some extent, foreign governments, lots of US studios make movies in places like, I don't know, it could be the UK, it could be Eastern Europe, it could be anywhere around the world, but they make them there because the governments have made local tax incentives.

But the profits of those films are taken back to the US.

Okay, so in many ways, this is like getting foreign governments to pay to build your war.

And this is, again, unlike lots of the industries he's tariffed so far, this is not a deficit industry.

Okay, this is in America a rare surplus industry.

I think they produced 22 billion in exports in the last reckoning which is probably 2023 now and 15 billion in surplus okay so foreign governments support this with their tax incentives so let's do a little history lesson okay once upon a time all movie production or most of it was in la apart from obvious stuff that you needed locations for you're going to south of france to film catch a thief or whatever it is yeah remains of the day was was probably not on the lot obviously they didn't have any houses built before 1985 so it was very difficult to film that one there but you know god knows otherwise they might have done.

Okay.

And even in the last decade or something, production in the US is down like 40% and hardly anything, as we saw from when the fires hit in that awful event, not that much was stopped because not that much is even being made in LA, which is supposedly the center, right?

Now, there's reasons that it's moved out.

Remember, American entertainment is so heavily unionized and it's consequently very expensive.

It's also expensive because wages have to be very high because they don't have universal health care, they don't have a federal pension, they don't have things like that.

So you have to keep wages high.

Now, what initially started happening is that the various states within the U.S.

started offering incentives and saying, oh, you can make your stuff much cheaper here and we'll give you all these tasks to move basically out of LA.

And this is why you get centers like things building up in Atlanta and huge industries like that building up in areas where which traditionally didn't have anything like that, because the states offered incentives.

But

ultimately, more and more of it moved overseas because that opened up a whole world of lower-cost crews with far fewer regulations who can work longer hours or different hours and do many, many different things they can't do in the US.

And in the high-end, the sort of Anglophone world, you know, Australia, the UK, lots of expensive stuff came here.

Medium, lower budget has a huge amount being made in Eastern Europe.

By the way, there's lots of high-end stuff being made there as well.

But all of these things have been possible because of these tax incentives offered by other countries.

Now, if we move on now to the state of the industry, obviously the industry is an extremely delicate state, as we know in general.

Now, even at the best reading of this Trump post, that it doesn't actually happen and it's a way of sort of scaring people or whatever it is, the best reading is that it injects massive uncertainty into a business that basically is beleaguered and very sensitive.

And, you know, uncertainty is obviously, I know he's such a great genius businessman, but an

uncertainty is terrible for business.

We know the box office is down.

We know there have been the fowls in LA.

It's interesting.

You remember his only other move to do with Hollywood so far has been that he appointed the three czars who I don't think knew they were being appointed.

Sylvester Stallone.

Yeah.

John Voigt and Mel Gibson.

Now, I wouldn't have had it down that John Voigt would be the only one to get his ass in gear and actually do something.

But as it turns out, John Voight has been going around around and he's been taking lots of meetings and talking to people.

And what a surprise, he's come up with the exact same thing really as the California governor, Gavin Newsom, which is maybe we should offer these industries incentives to stay in LA.

And what the business class, the executive class and the people who run this industry want is incentives and tax breaks to shoot in LA or to shoot in the US or whatever it is.

The reason they're making something like Avengers Doomsday, Marvel and Disney and making Avengers Doomsday in the UK is not because they're just trying to throw us a bone.

It's because it is too expensive and we, the UK, offer great incentives.

And that's why they're doing it.

So essentially, if you want to throw Hollywood a bone and if you want to increase things being made in America, you offer those tax incentives.

That's what you do.

That's why we put stuff in the UK.

It's why they have stuff in Hungary.

What is actually done...

is said, I'm going to make it too expensive for you to make a film abroad because of the tariffs I'm going to charge on your final project, but it is still too expensive for you to make a project in America.

So, actually, it's going to be too expensive for Hollywood to make a movie anywhere.

They can't make them in Hollywood because historically it's too expensive.

They now can't make them abroad because any tax incentives they're given is offset by this tariff.

So, it actually puts Hollywood in a position where they can't fund or finance anything and they can't really release anything.

He hates Hollywood.

Yeah,

absolutely.

And as you say, listen,

it's a message on Truth Social, and we've seen a million of those.

And at the moment, this is a mix between, you know, the rest is politics and the rest is money.

And soon it might be the rest is history.

But you wouldn't put it past him to try and force this through, though it feels like almost an impossibility given the forces who are on the other side of it.

For once, it might be slightly too difficult for him to pull off if he really means it.

It's interesting the reaction to it.

Obviously, the people who are high up are furious about this.

And as you say, you you know, ultimately, people will want to consume entertainment and they will, and as we've seen, look at the explosion in non-English language or whatever, people will consume stuff from wherever.

I have to say that obviously companies who are struggling, this is a night and studio, lots of studios are struggling to some degree.

Even places that are thriving, like Netflix.

half of Netflix original movies are made outside of the US.

What are you going to do about that?

Are you going to put 100% tariff on that?

It's sort of fascinating because

just to use that Avengers movie as an example, Avengers Doomsday, it's going to cost, I don't know what it's going to cost, let's say $300 million.

We're now making a $600 million movie.

Don't be ridiculous.

And also, if you're a movie company, then someone has to define at some point what a film is, if that makes sense.

And so you suddenly go, well, we'll still make it, but we're not going to release it theatrically.

And, you know, we'll find different ways of reaching people.

Yeah, you have to determine what percentage of the asset is made outside the US.

That's a very, very difficult question.

That's a real question question you could get in the long grass over.

Yeah, exactly.

You know, Star Wars has to shoot in the desert, and you know,

they don't have an appropriate desert in the U.S.

You know, some generals have to shoot abroad.

It's an absolute impossibility not to.

And, you know, whenever there are these tax incentives, you know, things like when there are nations and regions over here and things have to be made outside of London.

At some point, you have to define what that is.

So I think briefly it was anywhere outside the M25.

So suddenly Pinewood, which was just outside the M25, counts as a regional production.

You know, Hollywood producers are very good at working their ways around these types of things because there are so many moving parts in a movie production.

It feels like they could kick this, as you say, into the long glass for so long by obfuscating and little opt-outs and how they're defining films and things like that.

It doesn't feel like a clear-cut one, like, you know, a tariff on widgets.

Well, no, and even the supposedly clear-cut ones, things like prawns that that are caught in the US and then they go to Canada to be washed and then they come back into the US.

You know, at what point is that an American good?

A tariff has been put on that, as it turns out, because the service has been done in Canada.

Anyway, lots of things interest me about this.

Some of it I find quite sort of sad, and it is very difficult for people, particularly crew in the business, who have to live somewhere and for obvious historic reasons have tended to live in LA.

Now nothing's being made in LA.

With the exporting of lots of production to other countries, they feel that a select few of them go and effectively train local crew to be as good as them.

And then they've kind of colluded in the outsourcing of their own jobs.

Now, I don't feel that this is going to bring lots of production back to LA because for a reason of those costs that are not going to change, the costs of unionised labor, the costs of various things like that, it just means that most low and medium budget things will just become impossible, as you said.

So how many jobs will be lost to that?

It's incredibly destructive.

The difference is that people will still lose their jobs, but there'll be half an industry left.

It'll be a very different industry because really the only way if you're suddenly going to have to add all these extra costs to your business plan over the last five years,

what's the cheapest way to deal with that is AI.

I mean, it's just outsource all those things to a computer.

It's just outsource those things to much cheaper technology, outsource the editing process, outsource, you know, DOP process.

So all these things that are going to be possible.

If you're a Hollywood studio and they are not charities, I don't see that that's not a way that they would go.

If now it only becomes commercially viable to produce films in the States, that will be the first thing they do.

I think that would absolutely decimate the industry.

And whether that's something Trump wants or not is open to question.

But I can't.

But we haven't even talked about retaliatory tariffs.

What if, and certainly they will, even if it is his friend Victor Orban,

what about retaliatory tariffs?

If a company like Disney, where their global box office is much bigger in terms of percentage than their US box office, that's not the case, by the way, with everybody.

But if there are tariffs imposed on their products, retaliatory tariffs, then they're in a whole lot of trouble.

That's very, very difficult to deal with.

I do think the point about TV not being in it is so kind of enormous because obviously we know

TV, so much of it happens overseas, as it were, from the US.

TV can't get made without foreign sales.

So half the budget comes from foreign sales from lots of different shows.

Is it just a sort of random oversight?

And he's suddenly then going to say, and now I'm adding TV, which he could easily do.

And, you know, then we have to think about the four seasons, Detroit as the next setting for the White Lotus or whatever.

But also, what next?

I mean, books.

Books are produced overseas.

Are you going to put a tariff on books?

I suppose for me, the fear.

under all of this is is there a sort of cultural nativism underneath all of it that you know we want things made in America, we want shows about America, we want things, all the sort of globalizing of things, which has actually opened up in a really interesting way.

And that anyone who would never have watched anything with subtitles 20 years ago now does it routinely several times a week.

And by the way, and watches subtitles on kind of programmes in their own language as well.

But is there a sort of thing where you're saying, well,

if movies, then why not books?

Yeah, books are an industry that has troubles of its own.

And, you you know, why not?

It's not like the book world is a particularly friendly world to Trump.

You know, it's not like a lot of his supporters are gathering there.

It's tricky, though, because the movies and books, whatever the right may say, there are plenty of right-leaning pieces of art out there.

And there are plenty of middle-American, especially TV shows and films and books out there at the moment as well.

So it does seem to be cutting off your nose to spite your face almost to sort of punish the industry as it existed 10 years ago.

And the trouble is it will get rolled back.

It's just, it's just an awful lot of work for everyone now.

And it's uncertainty.

It's uncertainty.

And the movie business, you have to invest a huge amount of money.

So you immediately stop investing because

you can't.

And yeah, it's just, oh, we've got to deal with this now, have we?

This is...

Think how many productions are poised to sort of sign the paper this week to begin pre-production in Eastern Europe.

Would you do it?

No, you're going to have to wait now.

Everyone's going to have to just wait to see.

And it just makes things very, very difficult for an industry that is already struggling.

You don't get this problem in Morocco.

I'll say that.

Everything is very, very chilled.

I'll have a little glass of lemon juice with mint.

Sit down and talk about it.

So for the UK, I think it's a really difficult situation because there's so many things that all those big studios, you know, Pinewood, Leveston, Shepparton, all of these things that are filming for the US.

And if that goes, already, by the way, half as much is being made now as was before the writers and actors strikes.

And lots of it's being made in the UK.

But if that ends up going because it's just too expensive, and if it, by the way, if this widens to television, then that's a huge thing.

Yeah, we're in huge trouble if that happens.

I mean, TV really is in trouble.

And one of the bright spots for creatives, especially for creatives behind the scenes, is the movie industry and the fact that actually most of the big studios over here are expanding, you know, opening new studios.

It's been a huge success story for Britain and a sort of rare glimpse of light in an industry because the TV industry and the film industry really intersect in lots of different ways.

It's not completely porous, but

a lot of the skill sets are the same.

If this were to happen as well, well, those big studios can't rely on TV production anymore.

They can't rely on big Hollywood movies coming over because of the tariffs.

They can't rely on content that's being made by YouTubers and TikTokers and Instagram because they've already got their means of production and it's very, very different.

So what are they?

Enormous empty buildings.

Definitely, if these tariffs extend to television, we're in big, big, big trouble.

I think that I feel that, as you said before, actually, television is one of those industries where America makes an awful lot of money.

And

you had to hope that Trump's love of a deal

would let him understand that there's people making huge profits for America.

And there's ways of telling that narrative.

If you are Hollywood, that hopefully could reach the American people.

But yeah, if he is serious, and if you are putting a tariff on films, there's absolutely no reason why you wouldn't put a tariff on television.

If he is serious about that, then the repercussions will be felt in the UK industry.

immediately.

Projects will be cancelled immediately.

Studios will be left empty immediately.

And for the first six months, they'll get insurance on that.

But after that, they're empty and there's nothing there to fill them.

Empty studios, and there's already a lot of lower and medium-budget stuff has fallen away.

I mean, you do get these big, huge things that come in for the US.

But if there is uncertainty such that people pause things or withdraw entirely, then that is really, really bad for our own creative industries.

And by the way, if I was an American listening to this, and I'd be thinking, Yeah, good, because that means that our industry will be boosted, and that's what we should be doing.

That's what our government should be doing.

I think, as we have said, it doesn't actually massively help Hollywood either.

It doesn't massively help LA either.

Not at all.

They won't make it.

It just won't be made.

So not only will you still lose your jobs, but you'll come back to an industry half the size of what it used to be.

And it's interesting because next week I think we're going to talk about Eli Roth, the horror movie auteur who made Cabin Fever and Hostel and has made an awful lot of money in movie production.

And he has an entirely new way of financing film, which is really, really interesting.

We're going to talk about that.

And it might sort of show a way way forward for Hollywood, but certainly

because tariffs are going to make it very difficult for any mode of film financing to get off the ground, I think.

That's the real, the full spectrum horror show.

Yeah.

Oh my god, don't don't go to the house.

There's tariffs in there.

Now, shall we go to a break?

After which we will be discussing kneecap.

Yeah, on a lighter note, kneecap.

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Welcome back, everybody.

Lovely to have you still with us.

Marina, the story of NECAP, who are an Irish rap group.

They rap in Irish.

Two of them are from West Belfast.

One of them is from Derry, who have been around eight or nine years, something like that.

Started popular, became wildly popular, had a movie made about them last year.

But in the last week or so, they found themselves in the heart of a good old-fashioned punk rebel band controversy, the sort of thing that has echoed down the ages.

It was a little bit more than a week ago because it's been rolling and perhaps snowballing, shall we say?

So they were at Coachella.

Which is the big US festival, like Glastonbury in the desert.

Coachella essentially is, is a huge sort of cultural phenomenon over there.

It's the biggest festival in the States, pretty much.

Yeah, I mean, it's like a sort of mega corporate kind of turbo capitalist.

version of some hippie dream.

I don't know.

Anyhow, but at this festival this year, they led the audience in an anti-Thatcha chant.

And so their live stream got cut, which is, I think, the initial controversy.

Then they had very aggressive messages about Israel and Free Palestine or whatever it was, maybe

on their back projections.

Sharon Osborne got involved.

You know, you're in trouble when Sharon gets involved.

Yeah.

And then since that, the right, which hates offense mining, of course, has done the full trawl of any footage available anywhere.

And they have dredged dredged up some gig footage from some time ago where they shouted, kill your MP and, you know, the only good Tory is a dead Tory or something like that.

And some chants in support of Hamas and Hezbollah.

The surviving family of Joe Cox and David Amis, the two MPs to be most recently murdered, said, you know, you can't say this and became very angry.

It's become a sort of gig sort of skirmish and lots of politicians have got involved.

Nekap have made an apology, which sort of sounds like all of the boilerplate platitudes of the age, I suppose,

to the family saying to the Amos and Cox families, we send our heartfelt apologies.

We never intended to cause you hurt.

Neicat's message has always been and remains one of love, inclusion, and hope, which is sort of like, I mean, everyone talks like this nowadays, don't they?

I mean, I have to say.

So they sort of sound like Nat West.

It could be anything.

They could literally be apologising for anything.

I just take that and put it in your back pocket.

Have that written in your wallet.

Just use it.

If you get a speeding ticket, just use it for anything.

We apologise about the sausage roll incident, say, Greg's.

Our credo has always been one of inclusion and hope.

Anyway, I mean, obviously, lots of those messages are really difficult and offensive or whatever.

I have to say, certain things have started happening to them, you know, like their gig at the Eden project has been cancelled.

Yes.

There's something about this stuff that I read it and I think, oh, you're so hardcore.

You were doing a gig at the Eden project.

But

that Coachella thing, the anti-Thatcha chant, I was thinking about it and I was thinking, but she left office in 1990.

That was like 35 years ago okay in 1990 this is like public enemy leading the audience in a chant against eisenhower okay i mean you know i'm sure he did some bad you know but

i think she would have rather approved of coachella thatcher i mean i can't see her in the sort of native american headdress and hot pants beloved of the corporate influencer community that populates it but the sort of sponsorship heavy ethos of that particular festival so

you know

the film about their life and roots which i have seen and it's great, it's sort of great fun, and people really liked it.

And it did well for something, they star in it, and it's kind of slightly sort of mad capital.

One BAFTAs and all sorts of things.

Yeah.

Again, it has the meeting at a Belfast police station when I think they actually met at an Irish language cultural festival.

The inciting incident to the film is one of them getting arrested and refusing to speak anything other than Irish, which is something that happened to a friend of theirs that didn't happen to them.

But one of the interesting, I'm going to present the case for the defence, and we will get onto the case for the prosecution, I promise.

All of this couched in terms of, of course, it's ridiculous that we are even talking about them in one way.

So they're a very, very interesting bunch.

They are

Irish nationalists, and they're called kneecap, which was the IRA.

their sort of favourite method of punishment.

One of them wears a baraclava.

And I think, you know, for certain communities in Ireland.

Which you can buy off their merchandise shops.

Yeah, I should say.

Exactly.

Again, so.

But for us and for our generation, those feel like very, very loaded symbols.

But, you know, that's where they grew up.

That's their culture.

That's, you know,

they're ceasefire babies.

They grew up sort of after the Good Friday Agreement, which is a very interesting and unusual time to grow up in Ireland.

The peace dividend that they were,

you know, promises is perhaps not paid off.

But certainly there's less violence than there was, but the culture remains the same.

The folk memory remains the same.

And they play with a lot of the iconography of the ira and of the irish nationalists now they're very also very careful to paint irish nationalism the ira as as buffoons and venal in you know in the film they do that particularly so you know they're not one note they're taking you know we we are what we eat aren't we and you know they grew up in a certain community at a certain time their families grew up in in that same community at a very different time so there is humor there's humor whether it's to your taste or not it there is a sort of a satirical element to

a significant amount of it.

A lot of humour, a lot of irony.

They rap in the Irish language, and that's very important to lots of people in Ireland, and also, you know, creates a sound that is unlike lots of things that are out there.

So artistically, they've always been a very, very interesting proposition.

They've always been funny.

They've always had the courage of their convictions.

But they are playing a game.

There is an element of childishness here that I feel cannot go uncommented on.

This is, listen, we are going to get onto the case for the prosecution.

I absolutely promise you.

I'm just saying that where they're from, essentially, and you know, they've grown this audience and they've grown it massively, and they got to the stage where suddenly they're at a slightly different part of culture.

And the most interesting thing, I think, there's this expression, taken out of context.

And when they said, you know, kill a Tory, kill your local MP, they said, our remarks are taken out of context.

And so Brendan Cox,

Joe Cox's widower, quite rightly, he said, look, I've seen the film, I know who they are, I know what they do.

I went and looked at the footage, and I don't think it has been taken out of context.

Now, our understanding, generationally, if something is taken out of context, would be at the gig, they had said, We are not the sort of people to say

the only good Tories are dead Tory, kill your local MP, and someone had clipped it, so they just said, Kill your local MP, right?

That would be out of context, and that is not what happened.

And Brenda Cox said, I read it, I saw it, I watched the footage, and it's in context.

I think what we mean by context here

is

that

they said it to an audience they understood and they said it to an audience who understood everything that was signified and everything that was signified and there there was a sort of we're amongst friends we're in this room you know anyone who's listened to any punk band in the last 30 years has heard those things time and time and time again but unfortunately we live in a stage now we live in a context because of our culture where

everything you say you are saying to everyone all the time Because of digital culture.

Because of digital culture, and these things still exist.

And so it's all well and good to say, no, but we were with an audience who understood exactly what we meant when we said that.

They, you know, they know we don't mean really go and kill your local MP.

They understand what we're saying.

You think, well, listen, that's all well and good.

And I'm sure they're right.

I'm sure no one in the audience would have gone and done that.

But that's not the culture we live in.

You know, when the Pistols were singing God save the Queen, Shape No Human Being.

And I'd be fascinated to know the numbers on people who once pogoed around their living room singing that and then a few years ago were crying when the queen died.

And I imagine there'd be a huge amount of them.

Yeah.

And, you know, how many people are there who've screamed along, you know, to killing in the name, fuck you, I won't do what you tell me and now work for Goldman Sachs?

I mean, there's loads of them.

I mean, the...

The energy we have, the raw energy and the way we want to change the world in our teens and our 20s, which is incredibly necessary for all sorts of cultural reasons, you know, it's not who we are as human beings.

You know, there is a context there.

But I would say that NECAP grew up in that tradition.

Don't forget also from the tradition of Irish rebel songs and all these things.

Any artist is an accumulation of so many different things.

And so if NECAP have only just appeared on your radar and they seem like this extraordinarily constructed thing, I would say actually a lot of who they are, you can trace back who they are to a genuineness in their culture.

Now, that would be the case for the defense.

However, I think in this particular instance, they are wrong.

They're wrong about what they said.

What should happen next is a mood point.

But let's move on to the case for the prosecution for a moment, as if this is something that needs to be prosecuted.

Well, of course, let me tell you, I mean, honestly, this is the most cringeworthy part of it all.

And I'm talking about, you know, as I said, people in their 30s being that childish.

So two of them are in their 20s, to be fair.

Okay, two of them are 20s.

But it goes some, it's quite impressive that the most cringeworthy thing in lots of ways about this is all the politicians who've got involved.

I mean, there was a debate in the House of Commons about this last week.

A debate.

A debate.

And, you know,

what on earth?

Okay, I, first of all, I mean, there were things like Dan Jarvis, who's the security minister.

I mean, hopefully.

I didn't, and hopefully nothing's happened to do with like Iran and security threats in the last few days because there he was standing there.

I mean, really quite sort of well-attended House of Commons saying, I will not say the band's name out loud.

And I just thought, oh, oh my God, you know, this is this, this tech, but you see, it's such a period piece to some extent, Richard.

Didn't you feel when you were reading this whole story?

It really is.

Oh, my God, I'm back in the 80s.

I am back because we're this old.

You see, you're back in the 80s, or maybe even the 90s.

And you're hearing all these people say these things.

People won't remember this, but Sinn Fei and the political wing of, who was widely regarded or described then as the political wing of the IRA.

their politicians were not allowed to speak on camera on British news programmes at all.

And therefore, they had to be ventriloquised by an actor.

I know that sounds mad, but it was the case.

And I remember, you know, in the early 90s, and they used to have it, the Day Today used to have a sketch where Steve Coogan, who was, would play a Steve, a Synvane politician.

And there was one of the sketches, Steve Coogan used to play

a Republican politician.

Every time he, before he said anything, he would just take a drag off a massive helium balloon.

By that point, it became so completely ridiculous.

And all of these things, I honestly felt when I was watching this debate, you know, to watch someone like Mark Francois even be talking about the Glastonbury lineup and saying they've got to be removed.

You know, people going, they need to be removed from Spotify and iTunes.

I was like, what's iTunes?

Is that Apple Music?

Everything about it is embarrassing, right?

Kemi Badeno, oh my God, she's gone completely nuts about it.

Again, all this does is amplify it.

And for people who say, particularly on the right, who say, oh, we don't believe in all this, we believe in freedom of speech in this case, as you say, it has gone too far, whatever it is.

But all this sort of offence mining, you know, that Tory donor, Frank Hester, who I think it was last year, they found that he'd said, looking at Diane Abbott makes you hate all black women and that Diane Abbott should be shot.

He's their biggest donor, the Tory party.

Kevin Bader not described that as trivia.

Well, I mean, if that is, then so is Nikapp, okay?

And again, by the way, he said that in front of a room of people who were his people.

And he thought, well, of course, I can say whatever I want because it's in, that is the context in which I'm saying that is this group of people who will understand the context in which I speak.

And that's what Nikai did.

They were doing in front of a group of people who were, you know, in that room expecting to hear that sort of thing from that sort of band.

Yeah, that's context.

But you either have to accept context or not.

And if you don't accept it, then you have to take Frank, Hester, and Nika with equal seriousness.

I spoke to a couple of people in the music industry this weekend and I was saying, so what's the sort of vibe about all of this?

Because by the way, lots of artists have written, we should say that, lots of artists have written an open letter saying,

you know, this is censorious.

And I have to say, you do slightly feel that the bit they're not saying is, we have to support people's freedom to be complete childish twats as well.

And there is that sort of element of that.

I spoke to people in the music industry saying, people are taking this quite, you know, they're so, they're so ethical and courageous in the music industry, famously, Richard, famously.

So they're saying, oh, don't have anything to do with them.

Where possible, don't put your artists on the same bills as them.

And there's lots of that.

behind the scenes being said at the moment.

Now, another thing that reminded me of and made me feel like it was a real period piece is that it just sort of, there's something about it that is that 80s kind of ludicrousness, that, you know, do you remember Tipper Gore's thing?

You know, when you see a parent, explicit lyrics, parental, all this warning about the corrupting nature of music.

And Tippa Gore, who was Al Gore's wife, she was the second lady.

Now, she started this thing called the Parents' Music Resource Center.

And it was about explicit lyrics because she'd heard her 11-year-old listening to Darling Nikki by Prince.

And she was so appalled that this could sort of thing could be sort of said.

And the result of this was that those parental advisory lyric stickers that you used to see on things physically, but now virtually, were really all down to that lobby group.

But there are huge numbers of people who talk really interestingly now about how that censored or restricted access to artists who were quite political and whether, and a lot of that was racial politics in the United States.

In other ways, you know, the Dixie chicks were effectively cancelled or banned for criticizing George Bush.

A lot of this is, I find it really, I do think it's part of a sort of a form of sensorius in this or a form of just not giving the same benefit of the doubt that you would expect given to your donors when they speak in their context, as you quite rightly put it.

And it reminded me, funny enough, in that upcoming Adam Curtis thing, this thing called Shifty, he mentions the idea that it...

In the 90s, liberals kind of retreat from politics because they no longer feel they can sort of change things and that money is the sort of dominant power.

And

they retreat from it into culture and i suppose he doesn't talk about this but i'm talking about this now in the context of this is that the culture wars all sort of come from this and people are fighting about things

it's almost like they're fighting about this stuff because they don't know what to do about the bigger stuff i'm sorry i mean you know i don't believe that some idiot thing that some band said on some stage that just happens to have turned up on youtube and that some journalist has spent ages trying to watch every piece of footage till they find it is more important than the much bigger things and yet you see all these MPs lined up to talk about it because they feel like it's an easy gimme.

Maybe they think that clip of them, Richard, to again talk about the context of things, I can use this clip of me saying this.

This will play well with my constituents.

It's all this kind of industry of creating something, but it's not about doing anything meaningful and anything important.

And the one thing I would say is that Kneecap's fan base, their streams are, I think, are up 14, 15%

over the past four weeks.

So no one's emerged with any glory.

No, they really haven't.

And I read a piece by Trevor Phillips yesterday who said, well, I guess NECAP have got what they wanted, which is publicity.

And I think it's probably not fun to be in NECAP for the last couple of weeks.

I don't imagine they're enjoying this very, very much.

And I do think it's, there's some pump bands have done it forever, the thing of Tories and that trope and Thatcher.

And certainly if you're Irish, culturally,

you know,

something you've absolutely grown up with.

I do think it's a sort of indefensible thing to say, you know, in the context, I get why you say it, I get why nobody would complain in that audience.

So do I.

And I think putting, you know, fuck Israel up on

your backdrop at Coachella, you obviously are wanting them to pull the live stream and you are obviously wanting them to censor you.

You are obviously wanting that.

That is very calculated.

The other stuff I think is, it's hard, it's hard to know.

As you say, context is, there is a context and it's not, we don't all mean the same thing by context anymore.

I spoke to

my old pal, the professor Alan Finlayson, who's one of our great sociologists and

is amazing about context.

He said, look, it's all very well saying you said it in context, but someone is able then to click that and show it to Katie Amis, who's David Amos' daughter.

And once that happens, then

context is absolutely no defense.

That's a real thing that you said and that's been shown to someone who was deeply, deeply affected by it.

And of course, in that context, it is deeply offensive.

And as a band, you have to think about that.

And I think that NECAP, I think the real kind of judge of what's going to happen is what do they do next?

Because if they're true great artists, this is something they will think about, learn from, and maybe come back with something very interesting.

And maybe they'll be able to actually add something to this debate about what we are and what we aren't allowed to say, what we should, what we shouldn't say, what sort of culture we live in.

When at one level, we're completely siloed, and then on another level, everything we say is available to everyone.

You know, if they come back in six months' time with with you know some incredible work about that then i think that would be very interesting but at the moment it's one of those things that you can see the car crash in slow motion you can see every single thing that's added up to it every single bit of the jigsaw that was there and then they all slotted into place but around it around

the nugget of truth at the middle of it which is probably It's not the smartest thing to have said.

And their apology, what it hasn't really been accepted,

I think they probably do understand that it wasn't a smart thing to say.

And I think they probably do feel uncomfortable about any hurt they've caused.

And they've always, you know, espoused pacifist causes.

They've always played with the idea of nationalism and sectarianism, all those things.

But

they seem to be deeply pacifist in their way.

What happens next will be interesting from them as a band.

And as you say, they're not in their early 20s, they're late 20s and mid-30s.

So, you know, they've got a few miles under their wheels.

And maybe maybe they'll come back with something interesting.

But at the moment, we're in a, I was talking to

an Irish friend yesterday,

and he was saying, just this idea of politicians saying that kneecap need to tell us what their stance on Hamas or and Hezbollah is, it's like asking scouting for girls, what their view of the gut trade talks are.

I mean,

it isn't a thing.

It's not, they're a band,

they have a certain cultural job, and their job is not to talk to Keostana.

Any politician who spends one nanosecond more of their time on the public purse discussing this in any way is wasting the public's money and has charges to answer themselves.

Spend your time on Frank Hester.

Spend your time on donor money coming into politics that says that if you have to spend it on that sort of thing.

And it is so counterproductive.

I can't even explain to you.

As I say, you know, they've had a boost in streaming and what have you.

I genuinely think that that thing that they've had a boost in stream and this is good for them is not right.

I genuinely think that this has been chastening for them.

I think probably they'll emerge from it slightly differently and will emerge from it thinking about who they are and what they do slightly differently and thinking about the platform they now have.

You know, that's the thing with bands and the thing with TV stars and anything.

You start off doing anything to get attention and you don't realize when you've reached the tipping points that, oh no, we've got lots of attention now.

And sometimes you keep using the same tactics you use to climb up the pole when you're at the top of the pole and you can't.

And I think if NECAP worked that out and tell us something intelligent about it and are genuine in their apologies for some of the things

they've said, I think that

it could be healing for everybody.

But you can very easily see how there is pressure clearly.

And it's because politicians are focused on small and irrelevant things because they can't make the big things move.

You can see how there will be pressure put on the Trump administration to say, you know, you've got to cancel their work visas and they can't cut they've got to sell out US tour, I think.

And you can see how something like that would be done.

But these are kind of meaningless wins in a war where we're facing much bigger losses.

The world is in a very, very difficult place.

And I honestly think if you retreat into these tiny cultural skirmishes, then you're admitting defeat on the much bigger stuff.

Now, Richard, have you got any recommendations?

I do indeed.

The assembly, which we talked about before, when they did a one-off version of it on the BBC, which is it's a chat show.

We have one guest and all of the interviewers are neurodivergent and it's just a brilliant way of interviewing someone because there's no filter.

The filter is completely off.

Sheen did the one on the BBC.

ITV have now picked it up as a series.

I'm genuinely shocked that the BBC, David Tennant did the first episode, which is great.

Jay Thurwell's just on one as well.

I think Gary Lineke is coming up.

But it's just a really, really lovely bit of television that not only gives you something completely new, but also makes you feel a little bit better about the world and gives you more information about guests than you might get on other shows.

I hate that I'm doing this because I've got something that doesn't make you feel, I've got two things that do not make you feel better about the world.

Two documentaries that were really interesting.

I will have to say that groomed a national scandal, which is the Anna Hall documentary about the grooming gangs, the rape gangs story, which is on channel four,

is

it's sort of extraordinarily tough.

And I think it's very important and I think remaining focused on that story is very important.

So I would recommend that.

I also would recommend Bad Influence, The Dark Side of Kid Fluencing, which is about the story particularly of one child YouTuber and her exploitative mother, Piper Roquelle, and her so-called squad.

I mean it is utterly grim, the sort of life in the content minds of YouTube, particularly for children.

And I'm afraid I made my children watch this with me, even though there are aspects of it which you might find very unsuitable for your children.

But it is the reality behind the kind of perfect, sunny smiles of being a YouTuber.

I mean, really, very grim and a really interesting and unregulated world.

I mean, it's an incredibly compelling story that I'm afraid because I don't watch child YouTubers, I just wasn't across.

And this kind of scandal and how it unfolds is really interesting.

So I'd recommend that that's on Netflix.

Marina, thank you.

People only did not need to know that my internet dropped out about 19 times during that, so it's been a struggle.

But thank you.

Your struggle is real to me always.

I will see you on Thursday.

See you on Thursday for a Q ⁇ A.

Of course, anyone who ever wants to send a question, they can do that.

At the restters entertainment at goalhanger.com.

On Friday, we're going to have a bonus episode for our members club, which you can join at the resttersenttertainment.com.

It's 50 years since the launch of Monty Python, and we're going to have a little bit of a series exploring where that moment of comic rock and roll went.

Where it came from and where it went.

Thank you, Marina.

See you on Thursday.

See you on Thursday.

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

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