Should Children Watch The Shining?

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

I'm Marina High.

And I'm Richard Osman, and you are the stars of the show with your many, many questions.

I'm going to go straight in with Annie Ludlam.

Hello.

Hello, sorry.

Hello.

I'm right.

Okay, I'll smet you.

Okay.

Marina, I'll ask you a question.

How are you?

I'm fine, thank you.

How are you?

That's got out of the way.

None of your business.

It is none of your business.

She says, Annie says, it's from Annie Lovelam.

She says, the new Wuthering Heights trader is incredibly sexed up.

Would the Bronte estate have any control over the adaptation?

And how does Studio XX tell if an audience will enjoy something like this?

Okay, that I have seen this trader.

I've seen it a couple of times.

I agree.

First of all, it's out of copyright.

They're all in the public domain because copyright expires 70 years after the author's death.

So we're well past that period.

So it essentially means anything that's written by someone who died more than 70 years ago is absolutely fair game.

You can do absolutely anything with it, and there are certain anniversaries coming up of people.

That's why we can see so there's so many Sherlock Holmes movies and so many different versions of that Sherlock Holmes story is because anybody could do it.

You know, anyone at home now could film a Sherlock Holmes film.

I should say, if you don't know about it, it's

the Wuthering Heights.

It's directed by Emerald Finnell and it's got

Who did Saltburn and Promising Young Woman and it's got Jacob Alaudi and Margot Robbie as Heathcliff and Kathy.

First of all, I do find these things quite hilarious.

I love it when the trailer like this comes out

because you can just imagine the sort of frothing fury and, you know, people saying this is quite disgusting, you know, and it's kind of like, get over it, Grandpa.

Everyone's going to go and see it.

I don't know where they are, but I'm telling you right now that the Daily Mail are currently running about two articles about a week about a film that doesn't yet come out till February, Valentine's Day, obviously.

Oh, wow.

She's very provocative.

She's actually kicking, there's a Bronte Women's Writing Festival next year, so she's kicking that off.

I'm sure there will be some people who are absolutely furious about that.

But I do think if you're going to do the

classics, you should just redo them.

I mean, people were probably annoyed about Kate Bush doing it

in her inimitable style.

But it was bonkers and brilliant.

You know, she's got a real sort of talent for this kind of event thing, Emerald Final, and it's kind of transgressive and whatever.

And they've done a preview screening, I think, quite deliberately, because the leaks that came out of it were all like, oh, the first thing you see is a hanging, and there's

the person being hung ejaculates just before his death, and then a nun sort of gropes his corpse.

It's like, wow, this is, it's all, I don't want to say it's all seeping out after what I've just said, but it is all this information.

It starts with an ejaculating corpse.

I know.

I mean, like I said.

That's an idea for the next novel.

Yeah.

Divisive, but jolly.

See, I think the question is not what would the Bronte Estates make of it, it's what would Emily Bronte make of it?

And I would have thought she'd be delighted beyond words to still being, you know, written about all those years later and to have another artist do a different version of it.

What fun.

I mean, the last thing she wants to do is someone else has done a kind of dark and brooding adaptation.

You know, Emily Bronte is watching this.

Remote control in hand.

Yeah.

Bag on more teasers.

She's going, this is incredible.

Look at the hearts.

That hanging wasn't in the book.

I wonder where they're going with this.

Oh, okay.

I see where they're going with this.

Well, listen, in for a penny, in for a pound.

You've got to do it differently.

You've got to do it differently.

Yeah, I mean, and as for the question of like, does would audiences enjoy, how do they know whether audiences enjoy this?

There is a sort of technical answer to this, which is that when you're releasing films throughout theatrical, you do have things like preview screenings and you have screenings before the final edit is anywhere close to anything because a lot of directors find it quite helpful to see and you get audiences to fill in cards of how they felt and sometimes you can kind of shepherd them into asking particular questions and it lots of directors find this very helpful but audiences did enjoy something like this with Sortburn

and they in a way they enjoyed something like this not

as I've just described with Barbie which was obviously because this is Margot Robbie's production company yeah he's made this it's got the same opening scene yeah it's had the same opening scene with Ken they cut that out in the end in the end they just decided to go with the no-dental tiles thing yeah that was fine so they kept it canon.

But actually, I mean, people have always done these things.

They're those Pasolini films that are based on like the Canterbury Tales and the DeCameron and things like that.

And they've just kept all the raunchy bits and just got rid of all the sort of moral dimension.

I mean, Roman Polanski's Tess, I suppose.

I'm trying to think of other ones that have...

Anyway, but the point is, you know, you don't have to go and see it on Valentine's Day.

You don't have to see it at all.

Anything that can make newspapers write free articles about it

this many months, six months out or whatever we are from February the 14th is very, very, it's very, very helpful for filmmakers and there will be lots and lots of hype about this movie.

Whereas with Saltburn, it didn't do so well in theatres, but it suddenly became, once it got onto the stream, it was very quickly, it became a really big thing.

I mean, she has a talent for this kind of provocation, so I think we have to say that we know people like it and probably they will see it.

Yeah, and if you think it goes against the spirit of the book, well, I have good news, the book is still available.

Yeah.

You know, Emily Bronte's done her version of the story and she moved on quickly afterwards.

So she's done it.

She's told the story.

And it's absolutely always there.

It's in black and white.

You can read it forever and ever.

And for the next 500 years, people will go, do you know what?

There's something in that story that gives me a different idea.

So I'm going to use it as a springboard for something I want to say.

And that's all those films are.

But, you know, you cannot besmirch Emily Bronte's memory.

I never feel younger than when I don't care about things like this.

I just feel like, oh, shut up, grandpa.

All the moaning and the power clutching.

I never feel young.

These things sort of things make me feel young again when I see them because I don't care.

Yeah, an awful lot of people who haven't talked about Emily Bronte much for the last 30 years suddenly talking about Emily Bronte.

In a very protective way.

Oh, here's a question for you.

This is a little bit connected, so I'm going to ask you this one because it just forms part of a nice discussion.

Okay, Victoria Wallace says, why are there so many Stephen King adaptations each year?

Ah, and some of the greatest movies of all time as well.

Stephen King.

Well, you know, a number of reasons.

Firstly, he writes a lot of books.

And he writes a lot of short stories.

And they have incredible beginnings, middles, and ends, and they have incredible imagery.

So, you know, generations of screenwriters and directors grow up reading these books and the first thing they think about when they think, what would I like to film, is Stephen King.

So you have that in that the source material is fantastic and that he sometimes is hands-on, sometimes his hands off, and seems to be quite good at working out what to be when.

But the interesting thing with Stephen King, and this talks to the idea of, you know, if someone's been dead for 70 years, you can do their work for free.

You can almost do Stephen King's work for free.

So he has long had this idea.

He said that it was my idea and my accountant was absolutely furious about it.

But he has this thing which he calls his dollar baby project in the sort of 70s when he started getting big and students contacting him and saying, I love this short story of yours.

I'd love to adapt it one day.

And so he has said right from that moment, he said that, you know, whatever legal issues there are, he says, I will grant any student filmmaker the right to make a movie out of any short story I have written, not the novels, that would be ridiculous, so long as the film rights are still mine to assign.

I asked him to sign a paper promising that no resulting film will be exhibited commercially without approval and also that they send me a videotape of the finished work.

And so he now has a shelf of these of young student filmmakers who've adapted short stories of his.

He has a whole shelf of them and he calls them his dollar babies.

Firstly, that's, you know, it's indicative of there's something about his work.

that speaks to young filmmakers.

There's something about the spirit of it.

But secondly, on a very practical level, for example, one of the very first people to take him up on that offer, one of the very first people who wrote to him and was assigned the rights to something for $1 was Frank Darabont.

Oh, yeah.

So he made The Woman in the Room, it's in 1986 with some fellow NYU film students.

Wrote to Stephen King, said that we'd love to do a version of The Woman in the Room.

And Stephen King said, yep, there's the rights for you for $1, you know, under all the usual terms.

So Frank Darabont made that.

And less than a decade later, Frank Darabont gets in touch with Stephen King again because they've been in touch right they have a they have a commercial relationship already he can he can talk to him directly and Frank Darabont says um I've just been reading your uh the novella Rita Hayworth and the Shawshamp Redemption I would absolutely I just think I can uh do an adaptation of it and Stephen King's like I just don't see how that would be a film but listen I know you.

I like what you did before.

You're on my shelf of Dollar Babies.

You can have the rights to Rita Hayworth and the Shawshamp Redemption.

Charge him $5,000, which actually is much less than you would normally charge someone.

But you know, he knows Frank.

He thinks it's unfilmable anyway, so he says you can have the rights for $5,000.

There's a lengthy back and forth where I think Rob Reiner was originally going to direct Shawshamp Redemption, but Frank Darabont does it himself in the end.

And it's obviously one of the most beloved movies.

of all time.

It made the reputation of Frank Darabont.

Again, made huge amounts of money for everybody, is greatly loved and comes directly from Stephen King, letting student filmmakers pay just a dollar to adapt things.

Even the $5,000 that Frank Darabont paid Stephen King for the rights, Stephen King did not cash that check.

Instead, after the movie was made, Stephen King, he sent the check back, he framed it, sends it back to Frank Darabont, this $5,000 check with a note saying, in case you ever need bail money.

So that's a guy who understands filmmakers, who understands storytellers, and he works kind of hand in glove with him.

So there's lots of reasons why there are millions of adaptations.

There were four this year alone, which I think is amazing.

Long Walk, Life of Chuck.

You loved Long Walk.

Oh, my goodness, me.

I'm still harrowed by it.

Yeah.

Still deeply harrowed by it.

The monkey and the running man starring Glen Powell.

Your friend.

Oh, yes.

We're getting away from it.

Edgar Wright's directing it with Glen Powell.

Anyway, that'll be a lot of fun.

That's a good combination of people.

Yeah.

Edgar Wright and Glenn Powell.

And Frank Darabon, because we've also had a question, which we'll just deal with this very quickly.

Like, whatever happened to Frank Darabon.

He sort of just withdrew on purpose.

He had a a fallout over Walking Dead and things like that.

He is coming back because he's going to direct, I think, a couple of episodes of the final season of Stranger Things.

So lots of people have said, oh, where is he?

What's ever happened to him?

He is returning to our screens behind the camera in

not too long a time.

So he did the Green Mile straight after Shawshank as well, didn't he?

Yes.

Which felt like more of the same bird, but yeah, another great film.

Oh, that's great to hear.

What's your favourite Stephen King adaptation?

The Shining, which he hated.

The Shining.

Yeah, I just think it's.

I don't know about The Shining.

you don't think it's a good movie.

Oh my god, I can't start this just before, but probably why I go into it.

I don't hate it.

It's just not my sort of thing.

You know, I find it's a bit, you know, as soon as something becomes sort of magical realism.

And, you know, I just, yeah.

Do you know, Kieran's dad took him to the world premiere of The Shining when he was nine?

So honestly,

incredible parenting.

My husband, incredible parenting.

Some incredible parenting there.

Not the first or last, incredible parenting.

It was really.

That is amazing.

It's also an object lesson.

With a friend who I think still had to sleep with a light on, you know, by the time he was 30.

But it is an object lesson in parenting has very little impact on children because your husband could not be more level-headed.

He's not like a man who saw the shining when he was nine years old.

Although he very much did, and some other bad stuff, too.

But yes, it depends whether the child can take it or not.

I allowed my child to also see it when he was nine, but not all, yeah, not all of them would be allowed to

be just one of them.

Yeah, well, I mean, I'm

not letting my daughter see it at night.

She'd have an absolute, I mean, she gets scared from a lot of things.

Fake-off.

Yeah.

I'm not advocating showing The Shining to a 9-year-old.

By the way, it sounds a bit like you are.

Because, should I tell you what you did?

He loved it.

He loved it, Richard.

You told a cautionary tale.

Like, can you believe how awful my husband's father was that he took him to see the shining at age of nine?

And then literally within 30 seconds, he's saying, I told you.

I remember the payoff to the story.

The shining when he was nine as well.

I should have kept a secret, but I'll tell you what, I can't keep anything secret from you, Richard.

I've got to have it all out there, and that's the reality.

Yeah, I compromise myself in the same way.

Okay, okay.

What was that?

What's my favourite Stephen King adaptation?

Sorry.

Sorry.

Self-obsessed.

Sorry.

I'm just reflecting on my parenting.

What is your favorite Stephen King adaptation?

By the way, listeners, if you have let your child watch something more inappropriate at a younger age, do let us know.

That might not even be my worst.

I'd be amazed.

By the way,

I've just got to think it through.

Kids, kids, there's a new Wuthering Heights adaptation.

Come in.

Get around the television.

I think, listen, it has to be Shawshank Redemption.

Shiny wouldn't be anywhere close to the top three because you've got Misery and Stand By Me as well.

Okay, well, yeah, I wouldn't put Shawshank in it myself.

You would not put Shawshank in it?

Really?

No.

Really?

Any reasons?

You think it's Schmaltzy?

Yeah, I think it's Trite.

You think it's Trite?

Yeah.

But I love Trite.

I know.

Which means you know.

I'm just going to afraid.

I can't say, I'm going to get, I just can only say the wrong thing currently.

No, I love Shawshank.

I I think if you're gonna do schmorts, do it brilliantly.

Yes, you know, and I think if someone does schmorts brilliantly, then they've just made the best film of all time.

That's my opinion.

If you make the best schmortzi film ever made, you've just made the best movie of all time.

I think it's harder to make a great small sea film than to make a great art house film.

That might be the case.

Yeah, that might be the case.

I think we'll probably be right.

Okay, fair enough.

We can agree on that.

Draw veil over all my mistakes.

Okay, should we go to rate rate?

Let's do that.

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Welcome back, everyone.

Actually, that conversation we just had about showing children thing, there's a question which we'll do next week, I think, so I love it as a question, which is somebody who's got 11 and 13-year-old kids, and they're saying I want to educate them on the basis of good entertainment.

So can we pick a film, a TV show, and a book that we would show to an 11 to 13-year-old to put them on the right path?

Part of anything, as far as I'm concerned.

But

we'll do that next week, because that's a really lovely question.

But I have a question.

Instead, I have a question about football audio.

This is safer.

This is a lot safer.

Thank you listening, everyone.

And Natasha Boyd asked this question.

Natasha says, with football back on the telly and following the Lioness's roaring summer success, I have a question about the sound capture in games.

I've noticed that the noise of football players hitting the ball is often audible when watching football on the television, particularly during key moments like penalties.

You can hear a clear and satisfying thwack when the players kick the ball.

But how is the audio captured?

Well, you're right, Natasha.

It's got so amazing.

And actually, if you go back and you, you know, you watch old matches and stuff on YouTube, you're like, oh my God, I can't believe I listened to this or watch this.

It's so sort of basic.

It's become,

and particularly ever since

the money came in with the football rights and with the Premier League and with Sky, they've been able to make it so good.

Premier League production set it up at every game.

And you've got three mics on every

sideline, which are boundary mics.

In the 70s in football, there were three mics on every team, weren't there?

It's just, I mean, everyone.

Every on the score mic.

Sorry.

You've got, yeah, okay, very good.

You've got your boundary mic, mic boundary.

And then that picks up the ambient stadium sand.

Then you've got two mics on each goal, which is in the top left corner and the top right corner.

These are pressure zone mics, so that they can get that, you know, if it get gets hits the bar or else it hit hits the net, you can feel the sort of.

Oh, really?

Yeah.

Then there's one mic at each corner flag.

There are 360-degree microphones for crowd sound, and some of them have the big stadiums have them put into the roof already rigged.

There are four for general atmosphere, which are like ambisonic and surround sound mics.

And then there's one on the beauty shot camera, which gets up individual tackles and action

and then there's one on the steady cams for the technical area and when they're coming out the tunnel they're using shotgun microphones that's very important you're pointing at the thing that you want so they're incredibly directional yeah they're very very directional and they don't pick up the other stuff so you're thinking well that's a lot of sound so the real skill comes in the outside broadcast truck because there's a specific sound mixer who's taken all these different feeds and is they have to follow the state of play and then they boost and the dip the levels of all these I mean you can't imagine the stress?

I know.

That's amazing.

So if there's a penalty, then you want to dip the stadium sound and like bring up the behind the goal mic so you can hear it.

And then if you think the player's going to just, I don't know, like when Rooney slagged off the England fans, you want to make sure that that's brought up.

So you're mixing all these different audio channels all the time.

You've got commentary, crowd, pitch.

Tony Pasta.

our esteemed boss at Goalhanger.

He's the power button.

He's quite literally our lord and master.

Now, he says that the best net sound in the presence of...

Because he comes from a sporting background, Tony.

By which I mean sporting broadcasting.

Not sporting.

He didn't used to play cricket for England.

Although, you know, I believe he could have.

Oh, he could have.

Anything he sets his mind to.

He could do anything he wanted to.

Anything Tony sets his mind to.

But he was once doing the titles for Match of the Day, and he said the sound of curtains being opened really rapidly sounded much more like the ball fizzing into the back of the net than the real thing.

So that's what they used.

Oh, wow.

Just imagine.

I'm now just imagining Tony's in front of these things.

But we know a lot about these types of sound because I was talking to someone who was part of doing all the soundscapes for COVID because obviously, and by the way, you should be on a list if you watched it without crowd noise during that time.

It's like those people who say, I only watch sport without the commentary, because I don't need to.

You think, oh my God, really?

I mean, you don't like, they want to hear a human being.

No, it's just

they think of themselves as purists and it's unbearable.

I would rather hear Lee Dixon than Silence.

Oh, my God.

Absolutely.

But the soundscapes during COVID, they had to kind of create this thing from stuff that already existed because obviously once it was shut down, they couldn't record anything.

So they went to EA Sports and they got all the individual stuff for individual teams.

They got the chance because EA Sports had already

from FIFA had got lots of this stuff.

And then they kind of created these things to make it seem less horrific, which, as I say, you should be on a list if you didn't listen to those things.

But part of the whole thing about doing something like that is that audiences at home pick up on the queues from the stadium and are are led by them and actually you know we all have to admit that sometimes you're talking about your team or whatever or thinking about it or watching something online at the same time and there's something that pulls you back so the noise is actually the crowd noise they've tried tested it and done lots of research if you have it to kind of push down the crowd noise then people don't find that they don't know why but they didn't find the game as exciting but if they if they're being led by it that people are very very suggestible basically and so that swelling noise really makes people stop being distracted by whatever's happening in in their home when they're watching at home.

But it's quite a technical big business.

Do you know what I would like AI to do?

You know,

if you're ever out in the countryside or something on a Sunday going for a walk and you come across a game of cricket, or if you're walking past some playing fields and there's a game of football going on, if you could sit down, put your headphones in, and AI could do a commentary on that game, I would stay and watch the whole thing.

Because, you know, you sort of watch it, you know, oh, I wish I knew who was playing.

I wish I knew who it was to cheer for.

I wish I knew, you know, plot lines, which one of these slept with the other one's wife.

Yeah, I'd like to know.

That stuff.

If AI could do that,

in fact, if AI did that, you would have huge crowds at every single village cricket game, wouldn't it?

It'd be amazing.

Did you ever?

Yeah.

Oh, and then you're like, looking and goes, is that her?

I bet that's her.

That's her with the jammed hearts, I think.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

God, you know what?

You can tell.

You can tell.

Looks no better than she should be.

Yeah, how's that?

I'd like that.

Yeah.

Well, okay, another of your great ideas, just cast as pearls before.

It feels to me like that's less fully formed than some of my other ideas.

That's like me saying, why don't we invent a pill that cures all diseases?

Yeah.

That's what I really like.

And you just take it one morning.

It feels a little bit like one of the dreams you've had rather than one of the ideas you've had.

But yeah, I'll put it in your dream category folder.

Yeah, I was being reminded the other day of the perfect episode of The Bill that I dreamt, but I'll tell that story another day.

If anyone wants to ask me a question about the perfect episode of The Bill that I dreamt,

then do feel free.

Oh, okay, I do, but okay, we'll save it to next week in case somebody actually obliges us.

This is a question, but it's also therapy that I need you to give me.

It's about skipping bad books, and it's from Damien O'Rourke.

He says, Is life too short for a bad book?

Maybe it's a modern attention problem, but I find I have less tolerance as I get older.

Do you quit a book if you don't like it?

And if so, when or do you keep slogging at it?

Yeah, different people have very different views on this.

I'm afraid I do skip things.

I don't know.

I know it's great.

I wish you've only got so little time in life.

But also, I'm aware that some people might read the first chapter of one of my books and just go, you know what, this is not for me.

I know what I like.

This is not quite it.

And that's absolutely fine.

And if they're allowed to do that, well, then

when do you drop it?

Quite quickly.

Okay.

Because by and large, it's not always the story hooking me.

And it's how am I enjoying this writing?

There's always someone has a style.

And if I know the things that I like, I like things to be fairly direct.

I like beautiful writing, but I'm not sure I love dense writing unless it's got humour or something or a bit of a spark in something.

So, you know, very kind of flowery descriptive writing.

If the first three pages are describing a hedgerow, a bit of me is going, I just, I know there's going to be more hedgerow stuff in the rest of this book, and I don't know if I can handle it.

If after two pages of hedgerow description, like a car comes through the hedgerow and skids and someone fires out of the window, count me in.

Yeah.

Okay.

But if that car has not, if on page four the car comes through the hedgerow, I'm afraid I've switched off.

I think you can.

It takes a really, really long time to write a book.

So

it feels rude to not read.

Oh my God, I read all the way and I hate myself.

I mean, I read, I don't think I've ever not finished a book in my life.

But why?

What's the thinking?

I don't know.

It's like an obsession.

It's like a, no, no, it's like a, but, you know,

huge, like, 800-page non-fiction things.

Oh my God.

But I really want to stop doing it.

I really, it's almost, you know what I have?

I have that psychological feeling.

You know, say you've got a chocolate digestive and and you eat half and you put it down somewhere in the house because the doorbell goes or whatever.

I do not know that for the name though, but say the doorbell goes.

I agree.

But say it goes and you're aware that there's a psychological half a biscuit somewhere around the house and you don't know where it is.

And it doesn't matter that you've got a whole other packet and you could eat all of those.

It's the half that you've somehow got to just, you know.

complete and finish.

And these are all psychological half chocolate digestive biscuits, even if they're like 800 pages on something I'm not very interested in.

So you're charted.

What have you got?

And I need to stop doing it because it's a way because, you know, we have a finite amount of time on this hedger, blighted world.

Infested planet.

And I just...

Won't someone please destroy the hedgerows?

Burn them.

And

I need to learn to remove myself.

I think that's a nice flaw.

I think that's a nice flaw to have.

I would say, I think it's a good thing.

And it fills your brain full of things you wouldn't otherwise come across.

Because the reason I don't like not reading everything is I'm aware I'm missing out on some of the serendipity, some of the things where you discover something you wouldn't otherwise have discovered.

And sometimes if I'm giving up after five pages, perhaps it's because I'm five's hard.

I'm not so great at reading.

Do you know what I mean?

I wouldn't give up after five pages, but you know, after maybe 30 pages, when I know, I know this is...

I'm not interested in the story.

I don't love the writing.

I can see that other people might adore this.

I know the sort of books I like by now.

So yeah, it makes me miss out on broadening my horizons for sure.

But I think that maybe one in 20 of those books would broaden my horizons and make me a more interesting reader.

And 19 out of 20 wouldn't.

And I'm going to be here for 87 years or something.

And

I just do the maths.

And

I think I just let it go.

And so long as you put it down and pick up something else, you know, then I think it's okay.

And you read stuff that you love.

And so long as you never ever then write saying, oh my God, I hated that book.

You just got to let it but it's

not for me.

Read something else that you do love and tell people that you love that one.

I think it's okay.

I think it's okay to

not continue.

It's easy to do.

No one minds.

No one wants you to be reading under sufferance because you're not finishing it and thanking the author if you read it and didn't enjoy it.

I want people to finish a book and go, oh, I read it.

That was great.

I really, you know, that's made my life 0.0001% better.

Yeah, whereas I quite often think, thank God, that's over.

Thank God, the boring book is over.

I mean, that's exciting.

I told you I read this incredibly boring one about the whole history of HBO.

I don't know how they made it so boring.

And it was just referred to every night as my boring book.

I said, well, I suppose I've got to read my boring book then.

Oh my god, that's so, what is that?

I don't know.

Yeah.

Help me.

Do you know, but I think I

imagine it must do you great favours in other parts of your life, just that ability to see it through.

You're like Shackleton, but for books.

Where's my medal?

Yeah, where's your medal?

Thanks.

It should be nice to be nominated.

Yeah.

They should have the British Book Awards.

They should.

The person who's read the most boring books to the bitter end.

Yeah.

Ingrid at the moment.

It's a gold half-digestive biscuit on which we've mounted.

We call it a marina.

Yeah.

Ingrid at the moment is one of the judges on the comedy women in print prize.

And on that,

you have to read every moment of every book.

And funnily enough, that's instructive about what you're saying because she has enjoyed reading every moment, every book, because there are books there.

She said, I might not, yeah, there's a couple of ways.

She said, I don't know, would I put this down?

But she's read every bit of all of them.

My big worry is always I read a sort of chapter that I don't enjoy at all.

And so I put it down.

And chapter two is, aha, thought John, that's the end of my novel writing days.

And it was like, it was a chapter of a bad novel, and then someone comes in with a gun, and I'm like, I miss this book.

But that would be a very brave author.

He did that.

He did like a whole chapter of a bad book just to sort of introduce a character who's a bad novelist who then goes on to have a gunfight.

I think your editor would try and dissuade you from doing that.

Not yours, but whatever.

You're already mine would.

Yeah.

If there's one thing you haven't done with your books, it's that.

But, you know, maybe in the future.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, maybe I'll do that.

Just a whole series of really bad chapters by different characters.

You only discover in chapter six that it's a book club

and they're all writing stuff.

Not unreliable, boring narrators, a series of boring, relators.

Yeah,

reliably boring narrators.

Poorly written narrators.

It's interesting.

It's a very interesting example of the poorly written narrator, that book.

It's very harder to write in some ways.

Yes.

Like a terrible book.

When you had the chat GPT stuff or the

AI stuff in We Solve Murders, did you actually put that in?

No, I just

wrote it as I tried to write delivery.

Yeah, because it was funny and I was thinking,

has it become sentient?

Yes, because it's not.

Because it was funny.

Sorry, just there's a thing which is not spoiling a plot point in We Solve Murders where

in order to try and disguise the villain to disguise him or herself sends

all his communications via or her communications via ChatGPT.

Exactly, yeah.

So I just know if it had actually gone through ChatGPT, God knows what it would have been.

Did you even not try to see what it would look like?

No, God, no.

I just thought I wanted to write them blank first, and I wanted it to be entertaining, and I wanted to have some fun with it.

But yeah, it was fun just to write deliberately blank sort of prose for a bit.

But yeah, it makes you slightly ill after that.

In the character of a very polite English gentleman, which is slightly

that was the prompt.

So I think that it is okay to give up books after a while, but I admire people who don't.

But if you got to an AG, you sort of know sometimes.

You know, a book, some of the best books in the world I did not enjoy.

So I know they're amazing books.

I know they're, so I'm not giving them up because they're badly written.

I'm giving them up because, in the same way, I might switch a TV program off.

You're badly defective.

That's why you're not.

I'm defective.

No, I'm definitely.

And you are not defective.

And so you're able to.

It is a defect.

Give them up, Damien.

Just toss them.

I really wish I could do it.

I think we should probably wind this episode up, Richard.

How quickly do you switch off podcasts?

Is it okay to switch off after 35 seconds?

Well, do switch off tomorrow because you've got a really funny bonus episode on

Waterworld, just because the story of that waterlogged movie is very funny

for all our friends who like stories about movies on waters that go wrong.

Exactly.

And that is for all of our members.

Don't forget if you are a member, you get to add free listening and all that kind of stuff as well.

All right, then, everybody.

See you next Tuesday.

See you next Tuesday.

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