Clooney vs Trump

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

I'm Marina Hyde.

And I'm Richard Osman.

We have lots of your questions.

Thank you so much for...

We get so many.

So many.

We get an unbelievable amount of emails now.

So apologies if we don't get around to yours, I hope, but sometimes they're on similar subjects, and we'll choose the one that's kind of the most.

Or they become topical again.

Or they become topical again.

Anyway, it's the rest as entertainment at goalhanger.com.

And I'm afraid I'm going to have to begin immediately with a question on nepo babies.

I always used to say nepo babies because from nepotism, right?

Yeah, I guess, but we can call it nepotism.

Patrick Farrell would like to know: do you think that Hollywood is run by nepotism, especially in acting?

Do you think it helps or hinders the child in the long run?

Helps.

What's the next question?

Yeah, it's fascinating, isn't it?

Because there's so much talk about nebotism, nepotism.

You know, even like Patrick Schwarzenegger in The White Lotus recently has come out and talked about the kind of years of kind of acting training he did and the small parts he did and things like that.

And, you know, and he says, oh, you know, it's hard to have my surname.

And you think, yeah,

and I get it, by the way, because every single time he's interviewed, someone says, ask him about.

you know, Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Also, by the way, he's absolutely amazing in The White Lotus.

But of course it helps.

And of course it helps.

But, you know, if you think that children of actors going into acting is bad, then, you know, let me tell you about capitalism.

Nepotism is not just a thing in the movie industry.

You know, if you like all of Murdoch's children have gone into, you know, huge media roles.

I'm not sure they would have done.

And

they're not going to be able to do it in the line of succession.

Are they serious people?

I'm not saying they're not serious people.

But, you know, I mean, I think I think they're serious people.

So it's a whole series of things.

Firstly, it's the way that...

Also, you know, finance.

Go to any of these places.

They've all, you know, walk around the city of London and, you know, throw something quite hard if you can.

And

you're going to hit someone who's been helped by nepotism.

Yeah.

And you look at a private bank that's been passed down generation after generation after generation.

These people are not natural bankers.

It's just that's what their dad did.

That's what their mum did.

Yeah.

It's, you know, nepotism is the way that capitalism has always worked.

And the pre-Reformation Catholic Church.

It was one of the problems.

Oh, my God.

Yeah, one of them.

Mephetism.

Simony.

We'll get into entertainment simony later, but anyway.

What's simony?

Simone.

What was simony?

I love you looking at Joey.

If we have a question during the podcast, like about Sabrina Carpenter and we want something checked, we'll ask Joey.

Like, simone in the pre-Reformation church, I mean, he's good, Joey.

Is that where we get siminal cake from?

No, and I don't think that's from Lambert Siminal either.

But we can't get into that.

That's too much of a sidebar.

Simony was the selling of, you know, blessings or pardons or whatever, sort of offices of the church.

Yeah.

Okay, I understand.

Yeah.

Sorry, what were we talking about?

Sorry, we're talking about

nepotism, the other one.

And yeah, listen,

and it's always been around.

You know, you know, Angelina Jolie, Nicholas Cage, Michael Douglas, Carrie Fisher, Jamie Lee Curtis, people we think of absolutely in their own right as huge stars, you know, all come from showbiz entertainment.

families and a number of reasons for it.

Often we do the thing that our parents do because we see what it is that they do.

We either love the thing that they do or we live somewhere where the thing that they do is actually the easiest thing for us to get into when we leave school as well.

You know,

following one's parents into a job is more prevalent now than it's ever been, really.

But Hollywood is a very, very visual representation of that and of the unfairness of that.

You know, because it's all very well saying nepotism's everywhere and you look at bankers and look at the Murdochs.

It isn't particularly fair.

You know,

it's not a meritocracy.

No.

But at the same time, so many of these stars are amazing.

It's primarily about contact.

It's about

being able to get in front of you.

I mean, you know, I remember when Brooklyn Beckham's legendary, for all the wrong reasons, book of photography was brought out.

I think it had one of its launch parties was at Christie's in New York for out-of-focus pictures of elephants.

I think you've got, I think, Mel B's daughter, I think, from the Spring School, she did a documentary on this recently for Channel 4.

And I think she was trying to get an art exhibition.

And it was trying to say, you know, can I get an art exhibition?

And no one was interested.

And then she said, I'm Mel B's daughter.

Can I get one?

and then she could so we know this it's contacts by the way it's also money if you've if you've come from a successful family that's like all of these things as everyone knows you can afford to

keep waiting for your break it's money it's access it is of course some talent you know yeah patrick schwarseneger is a talented actor oh yeah you're not going to make it if you're not talented i do think that it's primarily contacts and access yeah the main people you can't blame are the kids themselves no because you grew up in the world you grew up in and you take the opportunities you're given and no one's saying that they're not working hard because they are.

You know, they're absolutely putting the hours in.

So of course they're going to take it.

Was he putting the hours in with the elephant photography?

It is one of the ones, bless him, bless him, that I have to say, no, that wasn't acceptable.

You ordered his delivery, though.

You have to have talent.

Well, you don't, actually.

Yeah.

I ordered his delivery, I mean, which I now don't need to even cook it.

So I would say

it has ever been there.

And, you know, you've got to look at a family like the Scars Guards.

I love to look at them.

Yeah, exactly.

But they're all, everyone loves the Scars Guard.

Everyone's got their favourite Scars Guard.

Yeah.

He could send me a block of his blood anytime.

That's from succession.

It's not literally, he does that to people.

I just want to make that very, very clear.

Look at the Coppolas, you know, Francis Ford, Sophia, Nicholas Cade, Roman Coppola.

I mean, Jason Schwartzmann.

I mean,

there's these dynasties of families, as you say, as there are in banking, as there are in the auto industry, wealthy families who pass their jobs down through the generations in pretty much every industry.

It's just, we really, really see it.

If it is something that you get exercised about,

and I absolutely understand why people do, you really have to look at everything in the way that we run capitalism.

You look at so many things about how wealth is passed down and how privilege is passed down, and

how opportunities are passed down, and how companies are passed down, parents to children.

That's the world we live in.

And there are many, many, many, many more billions being squirreled away in the world of media and

cars and all all those things.

I do think it's a useful representation.

It is clearly not fair.

It is clearly not an even playing field.

If you're a kid from England and you want to be a movie star or you want to be an auto executive or you want to be a media executive, the easiest way to do it is to be born into a family that already do that job.

At a very high level.

Listen, if we want to dismantle capitalism, okay, let's have a chat, count me in.

There's ways and means we could do it.

I think it's one for a spin-off podcast.

Do you think

absolute sidebar?

The rest is dismantling capitalism, I think.

The rest rest is dismantling capitalism.

It's a really good idea.

Why don't you ask me a question about something utterly frivolous?

I have a question here on

the purges of Stalin.

It's from I don't really.

No, sorry, not the purges of Stalin, actually, dust covers on books.

Thank you.

Finally, something important.

Graham May has this question.

Graham May says, Would you mind explaining to me?

That's a hell of a way to start a question, Graham, isn't it?

That's literally like someone, that's like a parent coming into a room.

Would anybody like explaining to me

why there are Cheerios on the kitchen floor?

Would you mind explaining to me, Marina, why books have a dust cover?

Are people actually worried about dusty books?

Is it some publishing/slash marketing ploy?

I'd much rather have a nicely designed hardback, and my four-year-old will rip off the outer cover of any book she has.

So that's two votes against them.

Greta,

listen,

that's quite an unusually angry way of asking that question.

And the four-year-old is always ripping stuff off.

It's good though.

It's passionate.

Yes, it's passionate about dust jackets which is exactly the the intellectual space of this particular podcast this is interesting because they they were they bec

they weren't around on original books but you you couldn't print directly you couldn't you now can obviously print directly onto a with modern techniques onto a hard back think of what a dust jacket gives you because it gives you those two flaps are quite important you know the back has got some advertising it's got blurbs maybe it's not you and then the front has got whatever it is something to make you want to buy the book,

the front cover, and then you've got a synopsis maybe inside, and you've got something about the author.

The flaps are important, okay?

But in the early 19th century, people used to sort of, you'd buy a book and it would come to you, and it didn't have anything we would recognize as a cover.

It was, that was it.

They were unbound.

And it was William Pickering, the publishing house, who thought, tell you what, what about we put some cloth, some leather, and we make a little bit of a thing of this thing.

And well done.

They were innovative in a number of ways.

You could eventually print on those cloth bindings.

And I've got some books which are really old, which have like

an Art Nouveau, but which is all printed on that.

But anyway, let me tell you who often understands more than, and you know this better than anyone, authors really care how their books are sold.

They often think, this is stupid, we could do something better here.

It was Lewis Carroll who wrote to his publisher in 1876 and he said, Can you print the title of The Hunting of the Snark down the spine on my dust jacket?

So he said, on the spine, the paper wrapper, he called it, so that the book will remain cleaner and in a more saleable condition, and also that people could see it.

Yes, when it's in there.

Yes, I mean, that seems fairly obvious.

Printing on the spot, the name of the book on the spine.

Huh.

Okay.

So.

You could even put the publisher's logo on there if you wanted.

But it's in the 1850s, between the 1850s and the 1880s, dust jackets as we know them turn up.

It's very, very hard to print an interesting design on a cloth cover or a leather cover.

It can be artistic, it can be art nouveau, like I'm saying.

You can do whatever you can do,

you can advertise whoever you want, you can make it, you can brand it however you want.

It just gives you like a blank canvas to do anything you want to sell your book.

Yes, but then by the 1940s, these dust jackets are hugely popular.

And actually, antiquarian books sellers will say, certain books are worth whatever without.

A friend of mine is an anti-aquarian books seller.

You surprise me.

Certain books are worth something, but if they happen to have the dust jacket,

then they are worth multiples, multiples, multiples more.

If you're on the tube or a plane and someone's reading a hardback and they've taken the dust cover off, so it just looks like they're reading like a 19th-century book.

Yeah.

To me, it's like you have to be really careful around them.

Yeah.

That feels like psychopathy to me.

I'm sure it's not.

And I also want to know what the book is.

You can usually, usually, they have it like

it's not great on the tube to begin like that.

I personally don't find it.

I try to avoid doing it.

But actually.

That's one for YouTube.

But how but okay, anyone else can ask a question about why books are that particular shape and size, because even that's not normal.

Ask that in another week and we'll talk about that.

Because even that is not.

That's a great way to get your question on.

So

the exact question you want is...

Why are books rectangles?

Why are books rectangles?

That's a question you want.

I know that sounds stupid, but it's quite interesting, and we'll do it on another occasion.

You could start your question with, would you mind explaining to me?

So if you like the question, would you mind explaining to me

why the hell books are rectangles?

Yeah, but then we'll read that.

Thank you.

When you get sent all the kind of proofs through, for you know, they'll send you what the cover is, but also that all the inside flap stuff is all on there as well.

And you have to approve every single bit and every quote you can possibly have.

There's quite a lot of real estate on a dust jacket, I think, is exactly.

And it's really significant.

When I go into a shop and if I don't know what I'm going to read, I've read all of that if I'm going to buy it.

Often, you might know what you want to order, but if you're not, then those things are so, so important to sales, and there's a reason we do them like we do.

I'm just at the stage now where I'm getting lots of the foreign editions of We Solve Murders over because they tend to come out a few months after in some of the territories.

And the Slovakian one arrived this morning, and you know, you can just explore it, the dust jacket, and they've got lovely

sprayed edges as well.

They've got like a gun on the edges and like a picture of a cat on the edges.

Yeah, it's lovely.

Why have the Slovakian spent all that money?

And then that's cool.

That's why haven't you got any books in it?

Because you simply sell too many of them.

Yeah, we had sprayed edges as well.

But like sprayed.

Oh, you see,

I have a group copy.

Yeah, exactly.

You can't actually have the original.

Okay.

You've got some loser one.

Yeah.

Authors are obsessed over their dust jackets, and it just gives you so much scope to do things on a hardback.

And paperback doesn't matter because paperbacks don't need them, and you know, they're printed on something you can just print onto.

But yeah, just the old school thing of they've always had dust jackets, everyone gets excited about a dust jacket.

It's just an awful lot of real estate.

But yeah, absolutely take care of your dust jackets because your books are worth an absolute fortune with an extant dust jacket.

And if it doesn't have one, they're worth about a tenth of the amount.

I even, here's a question for people at home as well.

I, for years and years, you know, if you buy from, you know,

a shop that often have stickers on it.

If it's Waterstones, it might be, you know, two for one, or if it's an independent, it might be, you know, independent bookshop week, something like that.

And I would always peel them off.

But actually,

they're such great social history.

Now I leave them on because in 30, 40 years' time, and you see the kind of font and the independent book week or the two-foot buy-one, get one-free from WH Smith.

No, you leave them on because

they're going to look like curios.

And also, I suspect they might be worth more money with the stickers.

I could be wrong about that.

I love that you're going to be selling editions if you're.

I think you're going to be okay.

I don't think you're selling old editions of your books, but you know, if it comes to it, why have I only got a proof?

I need to get some more.

Yeah, just go.

I'll go out and buy all of your books all over again, but not in the proof form, Richard.

Yeah, they are available in shops.

Shall we go for a break?

Let's do that.

This episode is brought to you by Sky, where you can watch unmissable shows, which includes the new season of the multiple Emmy Award-winning Hacks starring Gene Smart and Hannah Einbinder.

We love Hacks so much.

Absolutely love it.

So looking forward to this new series.

For people who don't know Hacks, Marina, talk us through it a little bit.

It's focused on the relationship between the older comedian who's played by Gene Smart, Deborah Vance, who's one of those real old showbiz troopers.

She plays Vega, she sort of does residency, she's sort of, yeah, almost like a Joan Riversy type character.

She's the boomer, and Hannah Einbinder is a kind of Gen Zero.

It's really interesting on the stuff between the ages.

Yeah, so she plays Ava Daniels, who's essentially becomes Deborah Vance's writer.

Yeah, so she writes for very cool.

She's also been cancelled for a joke at the start.

So we start in the culture war and we continue in it.

But what I love about the show particularly is the absolute reverence for comedy and the graft and the craft of it, and what a tough kind of man's world it remains.

Definitely, definitely.

And so, how hard it is to be a woman in that male-dominated industry.

Yeah, amazing on Showbiz, amazing on comedy, amazing on the industry, but also just the relationship between the two of them is a really lovely generational sort of it's like a sitcom thing.

It's very dramatic, but a lot of comedy in there as well.

They've got some terrific guest stars in this season.

They've got Helen Hunt, Tony Goldwyn, Eric Balfour, and obviously the returning cast who are peerless.

Yep, the mix of comedy and drama is spot on.

You can watch season four of the Emmy Award-winning hacks right now on Sky.

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Welcome back, everybody.

I have a question, Richard, that has your name written all over it and also some other words in the form of a question.

It's about badminton scoring.

Oh, wow.

Thanks, Hank Grover.

Hank Grover?

I mean, that.

Come on, man.

First of all, you've got a great name.

Hank Grover, Grover, Badminton Scoring.

Yeah.

I mean, that's

my sweet spot.

That's every single Henn diagram.

Badminton is considering changing its scoring again to better appeal to a TV audience.

The last time they did this, they adopted a system very similar to volleyball, which I know Richard has some strong views on.

I think we all can sense that he does.

What is the secret behind a good scoring system for sport?

Oh, my God.

Listen, it's...

It's enough podcast.

Sport.

God bless everyone who works in sport and administrates sport.

It is an entertainment.

Leisure sport, fine, go and play badminton, or you like play whatever rules you want to.

If you want to raise money for English badminton, whatever, then it's TB rights and it's people coming through the door.

Okay, so we accept we're in that commercial world.

If you want to go and play badminton.

We're not with the badminton purists, Richard.

Don't worry.

Carry on.

Exactly.

Then you must play badminton how you want.

If you want to sell badminton, then your job is to look at the format.

Badminton is that thing where, you know, Sir passes across and all that kind of, you know, and it's just volleyball is like endless.

Sport has to be an entertainment.

It is, of course, these people are incredibly skilled.

Of course, they are.

But you want to show that to the maximum amount of people, the maximum amount of time, and for those people to be paid the maximum amount of money.

Badminton, by the way, they're fine because it's massive in Malaysia.

And so, I don't want anyone shedding tears for badminton players.

They're doing perfectly okay.

But if you are a smaller sport, if you're a British volleyball player, the more exciting and entertaining you can make your sport, the more money you are going to make.

You know, you're competing against everything in the world.

You're competing against video games.

You know, people can't can't just go, ah, but it's very, very interesting to see the ebb and flow of this game.

And really, it's just like a chess game, this game of volleyball.

Doesn't matter.

I've said a million times before, darts is the absolute, is the perfect version of scoring, which is, you know, a few legs when a set and a lot of sets.

So there's always, always in darts, moments of jeopardy, all the time.

The skill is exactly the same, but they maximize the amount of jeopardy they have all the time.

And the wonderful thing of finishing on a double is absolutely the perfect format.

You don't have to make them shorter, but you have to give us moments of jeopardy all the time because otherwise you just switch off.

You know, I've got in trouble of talking about tennis before and just saying, make it first to four in each set.

But it's brilliant.

So I know on Tuesday we were talking about other jobs you could do and like, you know, not necessarily running a train of Midwest cinemas.

You could run a consultancy explaining how to make sports more televisable without any question.

And you would love it.

Well, the beautiful thing is lots of sports have worked it out.

You know, T20 cricket, whatever the purists think about it, it's bought a huge new generation to cricket.

It's bought a huge huge amount of money into cricket.

Michael Johnson has just set up a new athletics league because athletics is a weird thing and that you've got these incredible people, you say people who can do these extraordinary feats.

And actually, it's sort of dwindling as a TV spectacle.

We watch lots of these things, including Badminton once every four years.

And you get really into it and you're suddenly like, you know, everything about handball.

Yeah.

And then you don't think about it again.

But now he's got the, you know, the grand slam of athletics.

And, you know, it's just making it more exciting, just packaging it in a different way.

And all sports can do that.

There's always room for Test cricket and the World Snooker Championships and stuff like that.

But then you have a thing like the T20 or you have the snooker shootout, which is an amazing tournament.

And it brings a new group of people into a game.

People who love their sport have to accept that most of it is quite boring.

Even, listen, I love football, but we spend most of a football match, most football matches, you're just chatting to the person next to you.

There's moments of excitement.

I can just use the Alec Baldwin character in Glen Gary Gamross going into these sports to say, right, the first thing I'm going to say is, everyone finds your sport very boring.

Football, I wouldn't change.

Football football is absolutely,

but there are plenty of sports.

So, you know, volleyball is not boring.

Okay, volleyball is not, but there's a huge amount of action in volleyball.

There's a huge amount of athleticism in volleyball.

It's a great sport.

That's in Top Gun.

I know this.

Exactly.

But what it isn't is a great format.

And you need to have a great format.

You need to have just something.

If I switch on for two minutes, people watching with their kids and just, you have to.

You want to switch on for two minutes and not be able to switch off for 40 minutes at least exactly because you keep being asked questions and you keep being shown moments of jeopardy you keep being shown moments where this is a huge point you know a huge point is what you need all the way through sport if you want to sell your sport for television if you want to keep it just for yourself absolutely play it like it always has been but if you want it to be a huge entertainment and for the people who play it to be huge stars then you have to think about how other people watch sport it's insane what darts has done in the last 20 years and how big it has got as a live event and as a T V sport event.

It's extraordinary and it shouldn't.

There's no reason why it would be.

It's got great characters, but it could so easily be very niche.

You cannot be bored because someone is always winning or losing.

No, and you can get it very quickly.

You can get it very quickly.

That's the other thing.

It's not like incredibly arcane, which is another thing that puts lots of people off other sports.

I do think that there is a new generation of sports administrators who get that Rory McElroy's kind of golf league and all this.

It doesn't always work in the way that it should do, but everyone is trying stuff.

Everyone's working out that athletes have extraordinary skills, but there are different ways to showcase those skills.

You know, when we made International King of Sports

for Channel 5, it was essentially people who are amazing at athletics, but hadn't quite found the one thing they were best at, so we invented new things.

And it is that.

There's a million quiz shows for people who are really good at trivia, many different ways of doing it.

But these people are incredibly good at sport.

So let's find loads of different ways of testing that.

Gladiators, you know, it's a way of testing people who are really good at physical things.

That's where I'd place Jason Momoa, actually, as a...

I mean, he would have just been a sort of great gladiator.

That's about the life.

Amazing gladiator.

Just in the biggest movie of the year so far.

But that's where I'd have placed him.

I mean, listen, he's an incredible gladiator.

He's no nitro, but he'd be an incredible gladiator.

No, he's no nitro.

Our hero.

So yeah, listen, any sports come.

No, again, I can't.

I don't, I don't have the bandwidth.

But I'm glad to see there's a generation of people who are going into sports and working out that you can make them as entertaining as you possibly can while still keeping the skills that make those sports so important.

All right.

Leonie Beck has a question for you, Marina.

My husband and I have what is now a 10-year plus dispute argument

on what it means for a celebrity to be considered an A-lister.

Please can we have your definition and what factors would you use to determine that?

Box office, social media following?

Ron.

Here we go.

A-list actor or A-list celebrity.

I think they're different and some people have crossed over from one to the other.

Okay.

It's harder now because not very many people can open a movie.

IP opens movies.

It's interesting that Tom Hanks, Tom Cruise, Julio Roberts, Denzel Washington, they've all had misses, by the way, and people, you know, but that doesn't mean you never have a miss.

And it's very significant that the same people who people will still go out and see are from 20 years ago and in some cases, 30 years ago.

But the biggest grossing stars now are all in like IP movies.

So, you know, is Robert Daniel Jr.

A-list?

I guess he is.

He's in the biggest, he's been in the biggest film series and he was the kind of biggest character in it.

Samuel L.

Jackson, who just happens to be in all the Marvel movies.

Chris Pratt, Scarlett Yahsen.

But they've been in IP movies.

Something Trump said recently.

Judd Trump, the snooker player.

Not Judd.

Donald, the president one.

George Clooney made some comments on press freedom.

And Trump called him a second-rate movie star and failed political pundit.

Well, as is occasionally the case, I backed him on this.

No, Clooney's not an A-list movie star.

I think he's like an A-list celebrity now, which is part of the problem.

But first of all, he was always a television star and he did become a movie star.

I get it.

But, you know, he was in ER or whatever, and then he jumped over and he did become, you know, but it was a while ago.

And I would say he is B-list now.

I mean, okay, okay.

Wolfs.

Wow.

Wolfs with Brad Pitt.

Both of those have made the jump, in my view, from he's still an A-list celebrity.

I would definitely say that.

Will Smith is still an A-list celebrity for various reasons, good and bad.

Is he an A-list movie star?

I mean, because of what happened.

I suppose he's had one here.

Sorry, were you just, I think we skirted over the fact that you were suggesting that Brad Pitt also wasn't an A-list movie star?

I think he's now B-list.

Wow, Brad Pitt is a circumstances movie.

It's harsh.

It's harsh, yes.

Because I don't believe he can open a film in the same way that he used to be, he used to be able to.

I'm sorry.

And you can come out of the categories.

Otherwise, it's a meaningless category.

And I mean, in terms of whether Clooney's a failed political pundit, I keep now thinking Clooney's running, don't you?

Yeah, he might do, right?

Let me talk to you about the Kardashians.

Kim is A-list.

This is hardcore, but this is the reality.

Because I say it is.

Kylie's B-list.

Yeah.

Kendall's maybe BC.

I don't even know why I'm saying that.

Kendall's C.

That's the end of it, even if she is the world's highest paid mom.

Chris is C,

and Courtney and Chloe are D to E.

I mean, really.

I don't make the rules.

Yeah, yeah.

Clearly, I'm making them.

Do you think Millie Bobby Brown's an A-list star?

She's one of the biggest stars on Netflix.

She is in all their biggest things.

She's huge for Netflix, although that electric state has crapped the bed, let's face it.

But anyway, so if she were to be in a movie that opened in theaters, I don't think she'd get loads of people out there.

Jenna Rottega is interesting.

She is a star on Netflix, but I think she's becoming, I just think there's something about her.

She's going to be a movie star.

Yeah, she's going to be, she is A-list.

Well, I think if at any given time there's 20 A-list stars,

20 football teams in the Premier League, then there's teams in the playoffs, Minnie Bobby Brown and Janet Ortega, who are in the playoffs to go up.

They're going to go up.

There probably aren't 20 A-list stars, right?

Charlemagne Zender, these are A-listers.

Chalamay's A-list.

But without question, they have both shown that lots of people are going to see.

Bless him.

I mean, Glenn Piles is

a V-movie star.

But he so wants to be A-list, and that's, you know, part of his mesmerizing charm for me.

Where do you stand on like Paul Mescal, Barry Kyogan, Joseph Quinn

Dickerson?

The Beatles movies.

So there's the four of them probably as I say apart from Shannon the four biggest male young male stars there are out there at the moment.

Joshua Connor.

I don't know.

But anyway we won't go into Austin Butler.

Anyway, but you know he's not the leading gladiator Paul Mescal.

He's not the one who's in the movie.

He's off A-list though, is he?

No, no.

And maybe the sum of their parts in the Beatles is going to be because that's

between them.

The point is that there's that's an A-list lineup.

Yeah, absolutely.

And it's kind of fascinating to see them all together and et cetera, et cetera.

But the days that, you know, Traders would say Stallone, Stone, and you'd be like, okay, here we go.

This is, you know, people who open movies by themselves.

Statham, he'll open a movie by himself.

He's A-list.

Yes, he is.

I think he is.

I mean, in a sort of slightly ridiculous way, but yes.

My definition of A-list would be, are they next to Graham on the Graham Norton show?

And, you know, are you excited about that?

Yes.

You know, so, you know, if Reynolds is on, great.

A-list.

Streep.

Reynolds is A-list.

Street.

A list.

But there's not a lot of movement in the A-list.

And that's what we've said, is that it's quite hard for people, you know, the young teams, to break through against these established hegemonies.

And so, yeah,

it's helpful when Will Smith slaps someone because that's helpful.

Not to them.

I mean, I think it, you know, didn't do Chris Rock any harm, but, you know, obviously it was bad that it happened to him.

But it's helpful because there has been such kind of stasis in that category.

With it, as I say, it's, you know, it's Tom Cruise, it's Julio Roberts.

Are we saying stasis instead of stasis now?

I say stasis.

I'm probably saying it wrong.

Stasis.

It feels American.

No, anytime you ever say anything, I assume it's the right way to do it.

No, don't.

Stasis feels American to me, but I'm literally I'm flying blind here.

Yeah, listen, let's not get onto hegemony.

Yeah.

It's interesting.

Leonie does not absolutely outline what the argument she has with her named list husband is, but I hope that's been helpful in some way or another.

Because as you can hear, I could go on all day long just categorize the endless taxonomy no yes no no it's a good thing perhaps we should put together

why don't we put together like like the football league tables of who's a list and who isn't a list that'd be quite a fun thing to do yeah for comic relief I just sit in a darker room don't for God's sake televise this it's unwatchable and just be shown pictures of people a

b

c minus doesn't rate said oh that's great

i'll tell you what for next week maybe i'll bring some flash guards along we'll do that for YouTube.

I'll just get a a series of pictures of movie stars.

And you tell that you put them.

And I'll just say a lot of them.

And you place them into piles.

Okay.

I'd love that.

Okay, that's it.

I'd love that as well.

Let's do that.

Thank you, Leonie, for inventing that game.

Thank you very much.

Marina's taxonomy of celebrity.

People always ask this, Richard.

It's about hiring your house out for filming.

Kate Flower says, while working from home on an average Monday, a location scout from the BBC called round out of the blue.

They're apparently filming a long-running drama series and were interested in using using our house for filming.

We decided against it as we were worried they'd mess up our property and it would be too much hassle.

Did we miss out on a good payday?

Well, listen, there's two parts to this answer.

I mean, yes, you missed out on a good payday.

Even just absolute starting point, £100 an hour, eight hour day.

Usually a film day would be about 10 hours or so, so you're going to get a grand a day.

Very, very rarely get the whole thing done in a day.

Usually there's a prep day as well.

So you get paid for all of that and you're not really having to do anything.

And, you know, the gig is that they tidy everything up for you and they leave everything exactly as it was.

Whether that always happens is a moot point.

So, yeah, it's definitely...

But they will put it back for you.

If you say you've tripped all the paint on my staircase,

they will have to redo it.

And also, every single film crew is full of amazing tradespeople.

So, you know, they don't have to kind of ring up a carpenter.

They've got people, in fact, they can make your house even better.

You could just say, oh, by the way, you've knocked a slight hole in between the kitchen and the dining room.

I wonder if you could just turn that into a serving hatch and they'll do that for you.

So it is a good payday.

I would say a couple couple of things about it.

It is quite intrusive.

You know, film sets, as we know, and TV sets, and you know, commercials, anything like that, they do need things to be exactly as they need them.

There is a lot of heavy equipment, there are a lot of lights, there will be a lot of chipped paint.

It is quite an invasive procedure.

If you're away on holiday, then you know, it sort of seems like a good way of doing it.

But it is quite hard to film for sort of four days on something and leave your house exactly as it was found.

You know, there's a different thing if they're asking for it to be in a long-running show, because that's super, super lucrative for you.

Obviously, it's sort of quite hard for you to live there, but if you know they're filming for three weeks a year, every year, then you're going to make a load, like those people who rent out their houses at Wimbledon.

The downtown.

But the stately homes which have been basically saved by them, like Downton Abbey at Highclear Castle, I mean, that really, when you've got something that you're basically just going to have to sell, because just keeping it up costs however many millions a year, that's really, really helpful.

See, if you're in a castle for sure, or a stately home, that's easy because everyone's going to want to film in there.

The interesting thing is, why do they want your house?

You don't want to do it, and suddenly you watch TV and it's a drug den, and they haven't changed it at all.

They just sort of know that, oh my god, this is absolutely perfect for our villain to live in.

There can be issues if you are in a long-running series.

The big issue is if it becomes a huge hit.

I know the Twilight movies shot in a place called The Hope House in British Columbia.

It's a beautiful old house, and

it is besieged, or it was besieged for many years.

It was a head of innovation at the time.

Oh my god, by Twilight fans, because that's quite a lot.

Really?

Yeah, but who would be very good and invite people that people could have their photos taken.

But they sold it recently for $15 million.

And the new owners put up enormous metal gates so no one can get near it.

Carnots.

It was just, yeah, exactly.

It was just constantly besieged.

Funnily enough, it was a lady called Joanna Quintana who was exactly in the same situation that Kate Flower was in.

Someone knocked on her door, said, I wonder we could use your house.

We're filming a series.

Here's the money we'll offer you.

And she's like, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, that sounds a lot of fun.

What's the name of the show?

And they go, listen, it's a new thing.

It's called Breaking Bad.

So essentially, she owns Walter White's house in Breaking Bad.

And she said, like, her life was sort of ruined by people just driving by, people throwing pizza onto the roof, people having pizzas delivered.

I mean, it was an absolutely non-stop.

So she made money out of it, but she was besieged.

She sold the house.

$4 million.

Thank you very much.

So you do have to be...

There are some real chiselers out there.

You know, I had a story about someone on a show.

It's the weekend.

And it was the idol on HBO, which as you know i've

regarded as one of the worst uses of television i'd ever seen but i can't remember whether it was his house that's being used as her house lily rose up's house or whether it was actually even his house i can't remember anyway i think he said the crew had like ruined the one of the wall you know like had ruined one of the walls and the repaint job on it was going to cost three hundred thousand dollars i'm sure the weekend would deny that story for the benefit of tape just something i heard i'm sure that he would deny that story but yeah i guess if someone wants to hire your home for a dairy league commercial for three days it's a bit of of fun.

Yeah.

It's a bit of cash.

Adverts are great.

Lots of people do adverts because it's obviously very time limited and you know what you're getting.

I would say long-term drama series harder, more lucrative, but harder.

I mean, because the thing is, the longer that show runs for, the more money you make.

But the longer it runs for, the less privacy you have.

Because if it's running for a long time, it means it's been a hit.

And if it's been a hit, people will find out where you live and they will drive past and they will take photos of it.

And some people like that.

Some people invite them in for a cup of tea, but if that's not your bag, then you've certainly turned down a sum of money, money, but maybe you've kept your sanity.

The best one is the Taskmaster house.

Oh my gosh.

Which was sort of for sale in the first series that they said, oh, can we film it?

And now it's sort of constantly rented out to Taskmaster.

It has been for kind of 10 years now.

It's been a huge money spinner and they don't even live there.

That's the dream.

that you're trying to sell a house that no one wants to buy because it's in such a weird place and it's such a weird house.

And a production company says, look, could we rent it while you're trying to sell it?

And you go, yeah, sure, I guess you could have it.

And then 10 years later, you think, well, I don't need to sell it.

I've made about five times more than I would have done if I'd sold it.

So, you know, that's the dream.

But if you think it sounds fun, do it.

It probably won't be left exactly as you hope it to be.

And there might be, you know, someone who's parked a van on your front garden.

And lovely though crews are and talented though they are, they are not always the people that I would trust with my china.

Thank you so much, everybody.

We covered a lot there, didn't we?

We did.

A lot of passion.

A lot of from the questioners and from us.

We have a bonus episode for members, which is about the life and works of Val Kilmer.

That'll be out on Friday.

If you want to sign up to the club, it's the restorsentertainment.com, and you can have ad-free listening, these bonus episodes, there's our Discord, etc.

If not, the rest of the gang will see you all on Tuesday.

See you next Tuesday.

Well, that wraps up another episode of The Wrestlers Entertainment, brought to you by our friends at Sky.

Now, what have you got on your must-watch list at the moment, Ray?

At the moment, the White Lotus enjoying the latest season.

Oh, it's such a treat.

Oh my god, it's incredible.

It's so good.

A dark treat.

A dark treat.

The visuals are really great, and with your Skyglass TV, you'll be able to enjoy it all in its 4K glory.

And also, the built-in sound bar means you can also listen to it in its full whatever the sound version of 4K glory is.

But it sounds immense, I'll say that.

It is indeed.

It brings everything to life and it really gives that cinema experience at home.

It feels like Jason Isaacs is in your house.

Like sometimes I go downstairs, I'm like, Jason Isaacs, come on, man.

Cup of tea, please.

But he's not there.

No.

But for our listeners who want to experience this with Skyglass 2, visit sky.com to find out more.