Can The Rock Win An Oscar?

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Hello, and welcome to this episode of The Rest.

Actually, I can't do this.

I can't do this.

Hi, it's Glenn Powell, and you're listening to The Rest is Entertainment.

Are you kidding me?

I thought you'd messed up the intro.

I mean, listen, I don't wish to peek behind the curtain as you often do.

Wow.

Well, this show, as you know, is a peek behind the curtain.

And I do, yes, often mess up the intro, Richard, but.

So you're just back from L.A.

yesterday?

I'm back from the cursed city of Los Angeles, but there was a shining light in that city.

Can we hear it one more time?

Yes, Ms.

Oh my God, if you don't think you're going to be hearing this for the next six months.

Hi, it's Glenn Powell, and you're listening to the rest is entertainment.

I love that you've kept in your...

tiny little giggle at the end there.

That is...

You know how technologically proficient I am.

I'm amazed that actually recorded.

I mean, let's hope the interview interview did as well, because, you know, I'll have to write it up soon.

I am writing up, so we're not going to talk in depth about it, but when it comes out,

which is around the running man in about a month or so, we will get right into the weeds of it.

I will simply say that Glen Powell is a great sport.

Can I ask one question?

If it had been a date, would there be a second date?

Oh, my God, in a heartbeat, please.

Wow, next day.

You're literally texting on the way home.

I don't know if I've ever told you this, but there was a friend of mine once interviewed David Attenborough, and it was just a complete tech fail.

The entire tape was just completely corrupted and it didn't work.

Anyway, she rang him and told him and he said, just come back again tomorrow and we'll do it again.

Oh, that's a pro.

That's because that's happened to him before.

He's had like black bears who said, look, I'm so sorry.

I know you were having sex with your wife yesterday, but our cameraman went to the loo, we missed it.

And the bear will go, listen, you know what?

I'll do it again.

That's fine.

Absolutely.

Where do you need me?

Above all, they are professionals.

And national treasures.

Oh, that's so cool.

Yeah.

But you're over your jet lag.

I only went for like 72 hours, so I think I've had it in both cities.

Who could I possibly get to record an introduction to this show that would top Glen Powell?

I don't see it.

I think you've got to.

Mr.

Steven Spielberg.

You could have asked him.

Emily is fine in ADT, but he's no Glen Powell.

Nobody is.

That's the point.

I don't see who I could get, Sue Pollard, maybe.

If you get Pollard, then we'll talk.

I mean, I often think on this show of our references that

anybody under 40 is going to go, stop talking about Sue Pollard.

Anyway, what are we talking about this week?

And it is not a Heidi High revival.

Although I did see Jeffrey Holland in Sainsbury's the other day.

You didn't?

Yeah, Spike from Wow, you buried the lead with that one.

Didn't I, Just?

So it's not all Glenn Powell this week.

It's also been Jeffrey Hollow.

Did you stop and talk to him?

Again, everyone under 40 is going, what?

Sorry, who was joking?

Is there anyone who's going to be aware of?

What are we talking about this week?

Okay, we are talking about The Rock.

Heard of him?

Yes.

The Rock is in a new movie that's an A24 movie and he has Oscar bars.

So we're going to talk about when two forces collide, The Rock and an Oscar campaign.

And that will be very amusing to me, certainly.

We're also going to talk about MI6 have just agreed to Instagram.

We're going to talk about why they might have done that.

So what is it they're trying to do?

Are they trying to make spying cool?

What is the point of a security service having an Instagram account?

That's what we're going to talk about.

And we're also going to talk about, there's been a great streak of hits at Warner Brothers under the aegis of two executives.

Like a proper, a proper streak of hits.

A real streak, who most of the year people have said were going to be fired.

Yes, they say nobody knows anything, but sometimes I wonder if some people do know something.

Some people appear to have known some stuff, don't they?

And certainly if they do, Mike DeLuca and Pam Abdi would be high on that list.

We will discuss that.

But listen, I mean, I find it very difficult not to think about Glenn Powell, but let's take our mind off Glenn Powell with the rock.

This is a man who stood up at the 2019 MTV Movie Awards and said, you know, for a long time, who's obviously has been in everything hugely commercial.

And said, for a long time, you know, I worried was how I was going to conform to Hollywood, but then I realized I wasn't going to conform to Hollywood.

Hollywood was going to conform to me.

Wow.

What was he promoting?

Hubris 3.

Yeah,

which probably did really well.

Anyway, he's, as you know, he's been in huge kind of franchise movies.

He's at certain points attempted to reroute entire superhero franchise universes through himself, which we'll come to.

But he's now in an A24 movie called The Smashing Machine, which is directed by Benny Safi, written and directed by Benny Safdie.

It's about an amateur wrestler and

an MMA fighter called Marka.

And the rock has had to,

he says he's, you know, there were 13 or 14 prosthetics he had to wear to transform into him.

So that's how much acting there is, Richard.

That's how much act, that's how serious this is.

It's 13 or 14 acting.

And as I said, the movie has Oscar Buzz because it premiered at one of the big festivals where if you're going on an awards run that you want to be at and it premiered at Venice, he appeared on the red carpet, much less bulked up, but crucially wearing glasses.

Wow, there you go.

Oscar, hello.

After one of those meaningless 15-minute standing evasions,

he cried.

We're entering

the era of emo rock.

Did he have to take his glasses off to cry?

That's reacting.

When you take them off and you wipe and then you put them back on stoically.

There's a review which described this, used the words laceratingly humane.

So that's now the most overwrought thing he's ever appeared in since the uh the feud with Stone Cold Steve Austin.

My favourite type of humane as well.

Laceratingly so lacerating humane.

There's such a type of review writing, and that's

an unfortunate.

By the way, I know you're having fun with this, but I can see it.

I could, listen, I haven't seen the movie, but I could see the rock getting himself an Oscar at some point.

You know, some people, you know, look at Adam Sander.

I could see Adam Sander getting a getting an Oscar.

Yeah, I don't think he's going to get it for this, but we'll get to that.

But, you know, why might he?

First of all, the Academy loves a transformation.

You know, and ideally, you would be a woman putting on weight and looking ugly.

And then, like, you're, you know, the kind of the Charlize playbook.

Yeah.

Then you're definitely kind of locked on.

Some of them you can't do anymore.

I don't think you would have...

an able-bodied person playing a disabled person perhaps any longer but that has happened and that's one way of

a transformation weight loss dramatic weight loss that's another way for men but also there's not a lot of that about about in Hollywood these days, so it says.

No, no, no, anyone can do it now.

If The Rock,

53, wished to lose bulk, he could simply stop doing certain things.

But

yeah, he could simply stop doing it.

But anyhow.

Is he calling himself The Pebble now?

Yeah.

Well,

there is a bit of that.

So there is a bit of...

He has sort of lost some mass.

But actually, I think...

Wow, I haven't seen you in a while.

Have you lost some mass?

Have you lost some mass?

Well, that's how he talks, really, you see.

You have to remember that you've been in one A24 movie, movie, mate.

Sit down.

But he has to talk like he's always talked about mass and you know, better never stops, all the workout videos.

Have you lost some mass from your hair?

You lost some mass.

It looks lovely.

You lost some mass from that.

The real rock twist on the transformation is

he is transforming from someone who I used to just helm blockbusters and now I'm someone art has.

Yeah.

And I find it.

He said after Venice, after the premiere, you know, sometimes it's hard to know what you're capable of when you've been pigeonholed.

Oh my god, he's been pigeonholed.

Sorry, pigeonholed.

That'll lose weight.

You know, yeah,

that will certainly lose you weight.

He said, you know, you're doing what Hollywood wants you to do.

It's like, no, it's what you, the rock, wanted to do.

This is the big acting of this entire awards season.

It's The Rock pretending that his entire mega commercial career is just like something he was accidentally forced into.

He didn't, bear in mind, he wasn't just in these movies, like based on theme park rides or whatever they were.

He produced them as well.

Remember the last one that we talked about?

I think we mentioned Red One, the Christmas one.

And it didn't do that well.

In fact, it didn't do well at all theatrically, but they kept it on a really short window and put it straight onto Amazon.

Oh, he didn't win an Oscar for that.

He should have won an Oscar for this tweet, though, which was...

Our little Christmas movie, Red One, shattered a viewing record for Amazon Prime Video with 50 million viewers this past weekend.

Red One has a very long shelf life with multiple verticals.

Kudos to our Amazon partners for their strategic win that's just getting started.

Oh my god, this guy, this guy's been pigeonholed, has he?

Yeah, please, please.

Do you remember in Pretty Woman where Richard Gere says to the Jason Alexander character, I made you a very rich man doing exactly what you loved.

And that is, I'm afraid, what has happened with The Rock.

He's got the biggest animal agent in the whole of Hollywood, Ari Emmanuel, who's put him on the board of all, you know, brought back his name, The Rock, put him on the board of all these kind of UFC and things like that.

So we're now having to watch the spectacle of The Rock.

And we've got months of this, by the way, because it's, you've got, which, by the way, I'm in heaven.

Yeah.

Because this is what I want for my celebrities.

So he said, you know, sometimes it takes people who you love and respect, like Emily and Benny, that's Emily Blunt, who he is, who co-stars with him in this, to say that you can.

I know.

Well, she was last, I mean, I saw them in Jungle Cruise together, a movie based, I saw that in theatres, if you can believe it.

Movie based on a theme park ride.

So we're now going to have to watch him be, you know, the little superstar that could.

Yes.

And

we have to believe that he's been held back by self-doubt all these years.

The rock.

How can we believe that The Rock has been...

This is the real acting of awards season.

I truly believe it.

And he said,

I looked around a few years ago and I started to think, you know, am I living my dream or am I living other people's dream?

Your dream.

You were living your dreams.

Your dream was yours.

Listen, I've had a lot of dreams in my time.

None of them have been, I wish The Rock could get paid $25 million a movie.

Listen, I'm happy that he does, but it was never my dream.

No, unless you've buried it and you could have it kind of extracted from you via some sort of dream therapist.

But I don't think that any of us.

I hope, by the way, I haven't seen, I hope, when we do our QA episode this week, I said last week that I dreamt the perfect episode of The Bill.

And I'd ask the question.

Oh, I hope someone's asked that.

I'd ask people to ask the question, so I hope someone has.

Anyway, that's my dream.

The perfect episode.

He said to me the other morning, oh my God, I dreamt I was being forced to persuade David Hasselhoff not to wear blackface to a party.

party.

That was the first thing he said to me when I woke up.

Oh, wow.

So sorry, it's very early.

I mean, that's a very particular household.

It's a very particular dream.

And funnily enough, the day got really busy, and that's just come out of a memory hole, and I've realised I've never gone back to him.

I hope it didn't slip away in that kind of state, and he now can't remember the full details of the dream.

I hope, like, tomorrow, David Hasselhoff doesn't wear blackface to a party, and Kieran forgot to tell him.

That would be even worse.

Well, let's keep an eye on that.

Mark, that story is developing, Richard.

The rock is the guy who posts on Instagram about candy asses on the Fast and Furious franchise.

Remember, he hasn't written into his contract that he can't lose a fight.

Oh, that's clever.

Yeah.

Vin Diesel has that as well.

You have that on this podcast.

Yeah.

I wish I did.

But, okay.

So I can't explain how much I'm going to enjoy this campaign to get him an Oscar.

And it will stay with me so much longer than whatever the smashing machine turns out to be like.

I'm sure it's fine.

Because, by the way, people can turn into unbelievably great actors.

So you can have this incredible career and yet then you can do indie stuff I always remember Will Smith when he was in six degrees of separation everyone's going well this guy can't act and you think well he just hasn't done that stuff before but of course he can act and he senses that he can so he definitely could do it it's just how you go about letting the academy know that you are doing it yeah and I mean he's not going to do it quietly he's going to do everything to get this he will well because because he's been downtrodden for a long time sometimes if you've been oppressed and your voice is finally heard you know you shout well he's he's trying, what he's trying to do, do as well, which actors all, when they're running an offscore campaign, often do, is try and find a way to link it with them personally to make it this film is about my struggle too.

So he said, it's also a film about what happens when winning becomes the enemy.

And I think we can all relate to that, Pretzia.

First of all, no, most people in the world do not regard winning as the enemy.

Yeah, I'm a Fulham fan, mate.

I'll take a last-minute lead zone goal.

I really will.

But most people don't have that.

What he's trying to say is, yeah, no, I know I've been really, really successful, but sometimes that's the worst thing that can happen to someone.

So he really is trying to link that

in the academy's minds.

You have to slightly be an underdog.

And it's very hard for the rock to be an underdog.

And if, by the way, winning has become an issue for him or being a perfectionist or always being the very best of the very best, that's a simple conversation with your therapist.

You do not need to tell the rest of us that everyone's going through something.

The rock.

This is not unique to you.

You know, winning being a problem for you probably is fairly unique.

But we've all got something.

You know, where's our Academy Award?

Well, he's thinking, where's mine?

And he will, as I say, do anything to get it.

But what, so I like thinking about what's going to come next, because as I say,

we're only in September and it's quite a long...

Yeah, so what's the playbook?

So the playbook now, you have to do all sorts of different things.

And one of my favourite bits of it is the trade publications do round tables where people who have got buzz around them at that particular time

also the actors will all sit down together.

All the people who might be nominated.

Yeah, and they also do the actors on actors.

And those are the pairings, which I find, you know, and they sort of interview each other and have a conversation together.

That sounds unbearable.

Oh, no.

Okay.

Is this filmed, by the way?

Like, can we see it?

Yes, they're off, or they'll do a small bit for social media, but then someone will transcribe the conversation and they'll do it.

You know, the Hollywood Reporter does them, Variety does them.

There are various other ways to do it.

So actually, The Rock and Timothy Chalamet, because the other Safdy brothers doing Marty Supreme, which Timothy Chalamay might get nominated for.

What about The Rock and Russell Crowe?

I mean, oh my goodness, yes, please.

I mean, Big Rusty Crow and The Rock.

Can you imagine the Titanic struggle for that?

Yeah, he's because he's in Nuremberg, Rusty Crowe.

Is he?

Not literally.

They've restarted it just to deal with him.

So you do those sit-downs.

What else can you do?

How else are you winning over the Academy?

You've got an unbelievably long period of lunches.

That's the last thing he needs with the weight he's trying to lose.

I think that, you know, they probably just serve lettuce because everyone's on a Zempic now anyway, so it doesn't matter.

So there's all sorts of events

and interviews and kind of socialisers for months, basically, if you're going for it.

It takes a huge amount of time up if you really are kind of gunning for one of these things.

And as we've discussed before on the podcast, they put an enormous amount of money behind these campaigns.

I mean it really is incredibly inorganic.

We had the Emmys at the weekend as well and very, very rare that someone wins that you don't sort of know is going to win or hasn't been kind of out in front of the race.

It is incredibly inorganic.

And if you look at the trade publications, which are mostly free online, and you look at them in the months before, you will see just so many adverts, you know, quite sort of industry type newsletters or substats will suddenly become sponsored by adolescents or whatever it is.

And so you're constantly constantly putting those names in front of people.

Congratulations, by the way, to Owen Cooper and Stephen Graham and Aaron Doherty and

Philip Berentini, who we spoke to for all-winning Emmys.

Well, that was absolutely terrific.

Yeah, that was terrific.

And

it's very interesting how much that show has been put in all sorts of different industries, people's timeline, as it were,

virtual and real, over the past few months.

And that's what happens with an Oscar campaign is that there are so many different things.

It's almost like, especially if you're trying to go for the Oscar, the key is to say the thing, the absolute thing about me is I'm actually not Alpha.

All along, I wasn't Alpha, and so probably you should give me an Academy Award.

And that's a room where two Alpha males would desperately be trying to under-alpha each other.

Yeah, oh, I haven't.

The Rock and Leonardo DiCaprio together.

Oh, yes, please.

These are all people who are like, what are going to be in the mix for it this year?

The Rock, Leonardo DiCaprio, for one battle after another.

The Rock and George Clooney.

My personal dream for for the actor pairings is The Rock and Daniel Day-Lewis.

Please, please just let it happen.

I can't just imagine how sad the glasses would have to be.

He'd have to have the saddest possible glasses.

Honestly, I can see The Rock nodding now.

Oh, so can no, but I would have Stenthal syndrome.

You know what Stenthal syndrome is?

I don't.

Okay, Stenthal Syndrome is named after Stenthal, who

went to Florence and he saw like...

Is he a playwright?

No, he's not a playwright.

He's a writer.

Anyway, Stenthal, French writer, goes to Florence and he sees the Giotto frescoes and he's overcome.

Like, he's got like sort of palpitations.

He's basically fainting with delight at the beauty of it all.

And I'm going to get Stenhal syndrome for definite if I can see

an actors-on-actors pairing involving The Rock and Daniel DeLewis, both just like, you know, not in any way trying to win an Oscar here.

Wow.

Little laughs.

It's almost impossible to think of anyone that you wouldn't team up with The Rock, and it'd be an interesting thing to watch.

The Rock trying to be magnanimous the rock and jeffrey holland the rock and jeffrey holland you i mean i don't want to say he's a second tier character in high high but it this no he's not okay but jeff we could you think spike is a second tier character in heidy high no i don't remember the last time you said i mean literally couldn't be more top tier who's top tier

gladys ted i can't believe we're doing this spike gladys ted spike um Maggie Otter and Shaw, super hot.

Why can't I think of Simon Caddell?

What's the name of him?

Jeffrey Fairbrother.

Let's pull out of of this now.

But that's all I can say to you about the rock.

Are we finished talking about The Rock?

I think we are.

It's a watch this space.

But just keep watching it.

Just enjoy it.

This is the true acting of awards season, is watching The Rock pretend that everything that's happened to him, every DC universe he's tried to reroute through his own personage, every single gazillion dollar check he's made Ari Emmanuel get for him is just like an accident and if anything, a form of oppression.

And that actually what he really is, is an art house underdog who just deserves a nod.

Like Alexander Isak saying, I cannot believe the conditions I'm expected to operate under.

You want me to walk my contract, honor it?

How old is the rock?

Just out of interest?

53.

Well, there's your answer.

But I mean, you know what I mean?

He's done the same thing for a long time.

He's got enough money, he's thinking.

You think he's going to go into an art house era?

I don't think the rock will remain in an art in an art house.

I agree with that.

I think, though, he wants, he's got something missing.

One for them and one for me.

That's what he's going to do now.

He wants respect.

I think maybe.

Red one

somewhere on his radar.

And then remaking my dinner with Andre.

I mean, come on.

Do me a favour.

Thank God for midlife crises.

They're a lot of fun.

For example, say that for the smashing machine, Hollywood,

which I'd like to talk about in a bit, the actual film itself, because I'm rather looking forward to it.

But say that Hollywood recognises that the rock is doing something different.

It's a great performance.

It's a great film.

But they can't nominate him this time around.

They're thinking, do you know what?

There's other people in the queue, there have been other great performances.

Also, it's too much of a pivot.

We need to see his next art house movie, his next art house movie.

How many art house movies does The Rock do, do you think, before he gives up and just says

this is so?

I've been thinking about this.

I agree.

I don't think he'll get it for this for definite.

I'm pretty sure.

I mean, but you can see all sorts of funny things happen in the races.

And you saw last year what happened with things like Amelia Perez.

Suddenly, things can kind of well, Stallone was nominated for Creed and that was nearly what 40 years after you know his nominations for Rocky.

He'd really sort of put in a lot of work.

He'd done a lot of kind of Copland and movies like that before they finally gave him another nomination.

We'll see what The Rock's patience is for doing these types of movies that don't have great verticals.

If I can,

what is he talking about?

We'll see what his propensity for doing many many candy ass movies.

Yeah, before he does a sequel to Red One, which I'm assuming has to be called Red One 2.

Red One 2, yeah.

Doesn't seem right.

No, and then, I mean, let's just see.

I mean, he is a very determined human.

Yeah, he really is.

Breaking news.

You always come for the backstage gossip on this show.

The rock is quite determined, I can reveal.

But it does look like a good movie.

Although the guy who directed Uncut Gems, which some people love and some people took against, I'm in the latter camp.

I'm in the latter camp.

There's a HBO documentary called The Smashing Machine about Mark Hurt that's really, really good.

And the 13 or 14 prosthetics.

13 or 14.

So much acting.

Shall we go to a break?

I think we should.

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Welcome back, everybody.

Now, MI6 has joined Instagram.

MI6 famously has this incredible sheen of cool because it's the home of James Bond.

But of course, it isn't really the home of James Bond.

So, what is it they're trying to do?

Are they trying to make spying cool?

What is the point of a security service having an Instagram account?

That's what we're going to talk about.

They have recently launched, about a week ago, they've launched on Instagram MI6, the secret intelligence service, SIS, which sounds like a furniture superstore.

SIS, just off the M25, Pearly Way Croydon.

And they've launched on Instagram, and their first post was about James Bond, or was very much related to James Bond, because obviously the most famous person who ever worked for MI6

is James Bond.

And they said, lots of other people have told our stories.

Now it's time for

us to tell our own.

Now, first of all, why are they doing this?

Well, they are one of the most famous organizations in the world, weirdly, because of James Bond.

Yeah.

Is the truth, but what James Bond does, there's almost, I'm assuming, almost zero relation to what MI6 actually do.

I mean, maybe they're abstaining off dams and driving motorbikes off glaciers, but uh if it feels like they're probably not.

It feels like they're probably looking at online chatter and trying to um uh stop threats to national security.

But having had their story told for so long by other people and having seen the world in which we live, where transparency and authenticity seems to be the key to everything, I guess the most secretive organization in the world thinks it's time to be transparent about quite how secretive we are.

I think that's right.

I think that the two key reasons they do these things for, above all the most key reason, is for recruitment.

Because I think that you're just trying to look for different types of people.

There's such a perception that

I don't know, the security services for a certain type of people.

And I think that

if you're trying to get mavericks and people from completely different walks of life to notice you and to think of something that might be something that they can do,

then I think that is a very key way of being able to reach people in a different way.

Yeah, I think certainly they don't feel there's a shortage of white middle class people on their radar who they can recruit.

And so it's a very good way of getting out there and showing people that it's a it's an actual job and it's peopled by real actual human beings, I guess.

And there there have always been these sort of things.

I mean when Silence the Lambs came out

it was because the FBI want one of the reasons that they helped and cooperated in various ways is because they wanted to recruit more female agents.

That would do it.

Well,

I mean, strangely, these things do have a positive effect.

Top Gun, they had recruiting desks in cinema lobbies, the US Navy.

It wasn't made in order to rebrand the US Navy, but they cooperated with it because they realized that it would have a sort of useful effect.

I mean, that's like press ganging, isn't it?

That really is.

You know, when

the Navy would get you coming out out of a pub and you were drunk and they said, you want to sign up?

And, you know, they'd just march you onto a ship.

Like when you've just come out of Top Gun, one of the greatest movies of all time is

absolutely pumped.

And someone says,

would you like to do that?

Hell yeah, I'd like to do that.

Yeah, and before you know it, you're in Fort Worth.

Yeah.

I don't think always more transparency.

They are probably the most trusted, one of the most trusted.

government organisations and they have less transparency than any of the others.

Well, I'd be terrified to not trust them.

Yeah.

Well, absolutely.

Like if they say, say do you trust us?

Hell yeah, I trust you.

Well the other reason is I think that people that they might be doing you know you want to continue to retain consent or what you hope is consent for various types of surveillance programmes and other things like that.

Yeah, so if you're saying, listen, I absolutely recognize what you did there, but you're a lot of fun on Instagram.

So

I'm going to let you get away with it.

Well, GCHQ have gone, they went much earlier onto Instagram and they did a sort of I there was some you have to be quite careful and they're more code break-y more sort of listening and you have sort of intercepting messages and all that kind of stuff.

Yes and they did a post I think I want to say it was last Halloween where there were there were spooks and there was a sort of spooks

and I think some people thought it was facetious.

I know.

I think in general it's

always there's institutional resistance to doing things like this, but the prize of drawing completely different sorts of people into your recruitment process must be worth it.

Well, talking of spooks, you know, when Spooks, which was based on MI5, that was supposedly the kind of greatest ever recruiting campaign MI5 ever had.

I'm not saying they funded it.

I'm not saying they didn't fund it.

I'm just saying that weirdly,

since I was looking at this, I started watching Spooks.

I never saw it the first time around.

Ingrid was always saying, you must watch Spooks.

You've got to watch Spooks.

So before we go to recommendations later, it's so brilliant.

I mean, it's genuinely brilliant.

I know people over the years have said, Oh, you know, it's actually pretty good.

I mean, that cast

Keely Hawes, Matthew McFanchan, David a Yellow O, and I was watching one the other day, like a very young Benedict Cumberbatch turns up causing trouble.

It's but it's so good, yeah, it's brilliantly directed, it holds up.

If you haven't watched Spooks, the whole thing is available on iPad.

I know we're talking about MI6 on Instagram, but this is a it's not even a sidebar.

No, um, but watching it and, you know, reading that this was one of the greatest ever recruitment campaigns MI5 ever had, and suddenly applications to

join them went up, you're thinking, I mean,

there's a lot of people getting blown up in that show.

Yeah.

There's a lot of, and, and, and, a lot of, there's a lot of bad things happening, but we're all still going, oh, yeah, but be cool.

Yeah, absolutely.

And there's a, there's a guy actually called Tom Secker who runs a website called Spy Culture that tries to track the cooperation between various government agencies and in the entertainment industry.

So, there are lots of shows that are supported or at least advised by agency or former agency people.

It's very interesting when you see just how much cooperation there is, and there always has been behind the scenes.

The CIA have, I mean, cooperated and molded to some extent lots of Hollywood product for a very, very long time, going all the way back to the 40s, really.

And I think that those ways of drawing people in, I'm quite surprised that they don't do more podcasts in a funny kind of a way because I don't.

Well, no, it did.

But okay, there are some.

Okay, I've listened to one, I've listened to an FBI one, and it was quite boring.

Then there's a better one.

There's a CIA one.

I listened to like Ghosts of Langley and they were talking about stories of ghosts and that sort of haunt their halls and things like that.

Yeah.

And I it.

What are they covering up, though?

Well, I mean, that's the thing.

Okay, maybe they are or maybe they aren't.

But we know that young people like lots of short form video, but they also like long-form audio or

want to watch.

And they like the idea of spying.

Yes, and I think it's really interesting that, and I definitely think that lots of these people should move into because you can, there are ways of talking about

secret keeping that don't divulge any secrets.

Just the idea of how secrets are kept in so many is interesting.

There's lots of different ways that people could involve people and not make them dry.

It's quite hard not to, though, to make these things really, really, really dry because it has to always have to go through so many layers of bureaucracy to...

Yeah,

you can't really be sort of like having instant memes going out.

You can't be like the kind of Wendy's admin, you know, or Fulham's admin.

Yeah.

You do have to sort of take it quite seriously.

It's quite an interesting balance to have.

But anyway, I understand if people say, oh, they shouldn't be on.

you know, social media.

But if we think that spies haven't been on social media for a very long time, then we haven't understood the history of the 21st century.

Our entire entire political culture has been dominated by the fact that foreign agencies, our own agencies, absolutely have infiltrated social media.

They haven't just said, we're MI6, this is our Instagram account.

But, you know, like the CIA, for example, they put out these incredible recruitment videos.

They're all in Mandarin, posted on YouTube, they're posted on X, they explicitly target Chinese government officials, you know, talking about, you know,

corruption, you know, highlighting disillusionment, trying literally trying to recruit them.

So that's a very very overt way of doing it.

As you say, MI6 being on Instagram is a very overt way of recruiting the people as well.

But yeah, the whole history of our politics comes from troll farms and it comes from, you know, the Russians and the Iranians and I'm sure the Brits as well, by the way,

just leaking disinformation into foreign countries and foreign territories.

They've absolutely used Instagram and X and YouTube and the darker recesses of the internet for years and years and years and years now.

The world of security services on social media, this is the cuddly end of it.

But it's, I mean, that's been the big battleground in the last 25 years or so.

As a front-of-house thing, it is so hard to do well and to think, and to get what you want out of it.

And they will grow as a sort of posting force because they'll realise where lines are and how best to appeal.

I definitely don't think it's a stupid idea to do it simply because of recruitment.

And that's all it's for, by the way.

It's not, oh, God, are they trying to be trendy?

Are they trying to be woke?

They're literally thinking, no, we need really, really good, interesting people from places where we're not finding them.

I wonder if this is a good place to get them.

I was looking at who MI6 follow.

Oh, their first follow, this is so cute.

Their first follow is MI5.

Isn't that lovely?

Yeah.

But that's like really nice.

But also, if you're MI5 and, you know, their first, because I think their second follow is CIA.

But someone somewhere has had to go, okay, we're going to do our follows.

They would have had a big meeting about who they follow, right?

And they say, well, I mean, we've got to go in my five because they follow us and it'd be awkward.

CIA.

And someone goes, please do them in that order.

Please don't get these out of order.

They follow the family.

Someone else is like, oh my God, GCHQ are going to lose their mind if they're not third on the list.

Yeah, exactly.

But they only follow, I think, 10 people at the moment.

They should have had a, they should add, I would add a couple of randoms just to that's like me.

I follow, I have, I have a private Instagram account in which I follow 26 British interior designers and Glenn Powell no no plans to widen the catchment that's it really

oh that's very cool you're like um you're like mi6 yeah I am like mi6 but in some ways you know should be very much kept away from any form of recruitment process perhaps they follow thousands of people we just don't know about it because they just they've oh they've got a burner I mean I'm pretty sure they've got a burner which should I don't know I don't know much about the security services but I've got the get the vibe they've got a burner yeah I wonder if they've got an account like yours where they're where they're following interior designers.

Someone must have done the interior design for MI6, right?

Someone must have.

That's a hell of a gig.

Yeah.

I'm guessing it's pastels.

Yeah, just something really plain and simple.

What do you think?

Well, you just think it's a lot of chintz.

Yeah.

A lot of pastel chints.

Yeah, pastel chintz.

Well, you've got to hide bugs.

Yeah, you're right.

Yeah.

So to answer our initial question, are they trying to make spying cool?

Well, firstly, I think they're, yes.

I think they're trying to recruit people.

Of course.

Spying is cool, let's face it.

And anyone who does, i mean yeah

there have been a few negative stories about it but i think the bedrock is that we all think at some level spying is cool and we're sort of drawn to it yeah but then you watch kitty hawes on spooks and she can't remember who she is sometimes you know there's like days where she's three different people and you can see it's getting to her yeah oh then though then

but then she married matthew mcfadgin So that's nice as well because they weren't married when it started.

That's lovely to see as well.

Okay, now we want to talk about Michael DeLuca and Pam Abdi.

They are the co-chairs of Warner Brothers Film Division.

At the beginning of 2025, the trade press was full of stories that they were being fired.

David Zazlaf, who's the sort of Uber boss of the whole place, was interviewing everybody in the business.

There'd been a couple of big failures.

They only took over in 2022, I should say.

And they come as a pair.

And this year was their first full slate.

By the way, it wasn't just at the beginning of the year.

It went all the way through to late April, whatever.

and it's really this so this year was really their first full slate as in if you take over as a studio then obviously there are things in the pipeline that are going to come out so people are being interviewed to replace them because there's a series of flops but the thing is they were not their flops would I be right in saying that you yes you are you would be right in saying that and also there really weren't that many of them.

What was particularly interesting,

so by April this year, people, it was almost like a sort of fait de compli, it was going to happen.

But what to me was most interesting was people were saying on all these bets they've placed that are just too risky, but the films hadn't come out yet.

Listener, it turns out they weren't fired and they went on to have the greatest streak of hit movies almost in Hollywood history.

How on earth were they almost fired?

Well, what I find really weird about this story is that there was a sort of overwhelming chatter that they were going to be fired, that they should be fired.

It was a sort of a freedom frenzy.

A large amount of it was done on anonymous quotes.

Mike DeLucra actually ended up calling it the snark industrial complex because it was just a sort of overdrive of people saying, But to me, what's really interesting, this is a business in some form of emotional crisis if the movies haven't come out yet.

And you're saying they should be fired for these movies that are obviously going to be flops.

Okay, you should always want, you know, so there are a couple of movies that had flop that weren't theirs, right?

So, um, Mickey Mickey 17, the um Bong Jun-ho one with Robert Pattinson in.

Mad Max Furiosa, but

Joker Foliader, we talked a lot about how on earth did that happen.

But

the thing I would say is that Todd Phillips

has made some great movies.

He's really believed in himself on difficult things before and they've come off.

Great directors sometimes make flops.

That is just the reality.

And that you can't think of a single director and that's everyone from Spielberg, Schulzaze, Dammit, who hasn't made a big flop.

And it does happen.

And I think for people to just sort of, that's so much part of the culture nowadays.

In the old days, people were this was allowed to happen, and you understood that you were playing on a law of averages, and that over the long game, it's much better to be in business with, I don't know, Todd Phillips or whoever it is.

But everybody does this sometimes, and it's part of.

Yeah, and the playbook of these two, Mike DeLuca and Pam Abid, had always been to find great filmmakers and give them some money and give them a bit of freedom so Mike DeLuca had done what he was at New Line in his 20s he's he's the executive on Dr.

Moreau so he's he he did uh The Mask, Seven, Austin Powers, Boogie Night.

So these are all films that could have failed and didn't.

He also, as you say, did the island of Dr.

Moreau, which is, you can tell a film's bad when we've done an entire bonus episode about it.

But exactly the same thing.

See,

a series of films made by great filmmakers that did more money than you would think they were going to do, and then the odd flop.

So that's what they had.

So they were going to be replaced, then seven movies in a row over $40 million.

Shall we rename them just so people?

Well, it begins with Minecraft,

which was a lot over $40 million.

Oh, my gosh.

I mean, you know, as you know, I hated it.

Yeah.

But, but no one thought that would be a, that came sort of, no one thought that would be a huge movie.

Well, people thought, oh, I might make something, but it's not going to be the biggest movie of the year.

People are like, come on, they've got Minecraft.

It's not going going to be like Super Mario Brothers.

Oh, it is.

Yeah.

Then they've had Sinners.

Now, Sinners is they were totally taken to task for Sinners because they gave Ryan Kugler a special deal where he's eventually going to own the IP for Sinners.

Sinners is extraordinary.

It's got completely different audiences into cinemas.

It's done so unbelievably well.

It's an original IPA.

It's an original.

So, yeah, we'll get onto that.

Weapons, which is same thing.

Yeah, again, an original.

Conjuring Last Rights.

Which again is like about a nine-time sequel.

Final Destination sequel as well.

They just, again,

the people like Ryan Koogler, making Weapons and Sinners, which are original IP, then understanding which franchises there is a latent audience for, like Conjuring, like Final Destination.

They made bets on all of those things.

F1, the movie, Superman, things like that, which are slightly more traditional, Fab, but they have not.

They released F1.

Apple made it, but they released it.

But it's, it's been, I find this really annoying because, as I say,

take saying that people be sacked for things that haven't yet happened,

I can't get behind that.

And also, people are so wet.

They say that they want originals and they want commercial originals.

They dream of commercial originals.

And they say they want big swings.

And yet...

They want filmmaker-friendly executives.

They want all of those things.

And these,

Mike DeLucra and Pam Abdi did all of those things.

And the entire overwhelming chatter was that they should be sacked.

Now, certain executives, when you get to a stage, and this is not, you know, people will recognise this in their own businesses, it's nothing to do with entertainment.

You get to a stage and you'll get this executive position, and all that can now really happen is that can be taken away from you.

So, you become incredibly risk-averse.

And actually, when I was thinking about this before I came along, I was thinking of something that I think about all the time, which is

Diego Torres, the Spanish football writer, when he did a biography of Josie Mourinho, he kind of codified what Heath has said was Mourinho's playing philosophy.

And I absolutely love this.

I'm going going to read it out.

The game is won by the team that commits fewer errors.

Football favours whoever provokes more errors in the opposition.

Away from home, instead of trying to be superior to the opposition, it's better to encourage their mistakes.

Whoever has the ball is more likely to make a mistake.

Whoever renounces possession reduces the possibility, therefore, of making a mistake.

Whoever has the ball has fear.

Whoever does not have it is thereby stronger.

I think about that so much.

That particular form of like, actually, actually, it's just best if I don't really do anything and I allow,

and it's a form of kind of really kind of necrotic agency in itself.

And I think about it a lot in politics and definitely in terms of executives who have the power to greenlight things.

They did everything that Hollywood says it wants and they were like completely hung out to dry before the results were even known.

Because if you're a very senior person, so if you say you're David Zazaf at Warner's.

Who no one's, you know, who tanks the share price all the time who gets paid in bazillion pounds.

And we still have to talk about how much money Ryan Kugeler's been paid for sinners.

Well, so what?

And also, by the way, probably not someone who can wake up in the morning with a blank piece of paper and write down an idea and make a load of money.

But that's it's not what he does.

He's a business guy, and as you say, he's reached a stage in an organization where you think, well, I'm sort of in charge of everything now.

Where else do I go?

And I saw it when TB reconsolidated 10, 15 years ago.

Suddenly, people are being bought in who didn't understand what creativity was, but needed it, needed you constantly to come up with IP, needed you constantly to feed the furnace and make money, but didn't know how that was done, and yet somehow were senior.

Endermo, when I worked for years, had a long time when it was run by creatives, and that actually was the kind of most

profitable part of his time, and then it turned into something else.

So David Zazlaf does not know how he is going to have a hit.

doesn't know how to do it.

He's not capable of doing it himself.

And by the way, even if you are capable of doing it yourself, you still don't really know.

Oh, he's not because we actually have an example of a movie David Zadlath effectively personally greenlit this year called Alto Nights, which is Nick Pledge, who's the screenwriter of Goodfellas, among other things.

He, I think they have some like Hampton's house next door to each other.

And

he greenlit this film effectively himself.

And it has Robert De Niro in it.

It did so badly and it was really expensive.

So he does not know how to do that.

And by the way, that was one of the reasons behind him thinking, I need to sack Mike and Pam.

So he's got two jobs, really.

One, to sit around and keep his fingers crossed that they're going to be hits.

And the second there are hits, to be able to take credit for them and say, there we go, that's on my watch.

And, you know, the second you have a hit, the amount of people who claim credit for it, you think, wow, because just I just remember you going, this had better not fail.

Yeah.

That's all I remember you saying about that show.

And yet now you're kind of going, well, this is it.

You know, we give freedom to people and

it's just the way I run the business.

He either does that, but also being aware that sometimes you're going to have two flops or three flops in a row or something like that, you have to find your scapegoats.

So you have to kind of go, every time there's a hit, you go, I know how to run this business.

I know how to run Warner Brothers.

And when there are flops, you go, listen, we took a swing with Mike and Pam.

We took a swing.

And I don't regret it.

You know, you have to take swings in this business.

It's a creative industry, but they just, they threw the wrong amount of money at the wrong people.

And

we absolutely need a different course.

While your personal salary is something like $230 million a year.

Yeah, because you're not not going to get fired because you're in a, because who's going to fire you?

You.

You're the only person you can fire yourself.

So absolutely, your job is to you just got to wait around because you're going to have some hits because a stopped clock tells the right time twice a day.

But you have to then just feather your nests so that when you have the flops, it is somebody else's fault and you don't lose it.

They have a strategy, which is to be in business with the Mike and Pat.

Yeah,

to be in business with the best filmmakers.

And obviously, Warner Brothers had a big issue, which is that they lost probably the most reliable maker of commercial originals.

In fact, definitely.

They lost Christopher Nolan and they lost him in the pandemic because in 2021, when things were coming back, they said, oh, we're going to release all our stuff on day and date.

We're going to have, it's going to go onto a streaming service, HBO Max in this case.

And he was incredibly angry, and he's gone to Universal.

I surely believe that maybe they want one day him to come back, but there are so few.

Think who are the the who are the directors working nowadays who make big commercial originals which is what we always say we want and actually i'm trying to think who they are okay christopher nolan obviously yeah ryan kugler although he's you know done a lot of existing ip greta gerwig although you know greta gerwig barbie is a movie in the service of a toy company but it was so original i suppose in lots of ways it's people's template for like if you are doing it then you're going to do it that way she's doing narnia next so whatever um maybe paul thomas Anderson, but I'm not, you know, a bit iffy about how well one battle after another will do, which is the Leonardo DiCaprio.

So

that's the next one in Mike DeLuca and Pam Abdi's conveyor belt.

It doesn't matter.

As I said, you know, if it doesn't do as well, and it's possible, it's not tracking brilliantly, and if it doesn't do as well as, you know, when they took the big swing, are you really not going to green light movies with Leonardo DiCaprio and Paul Thomas Anderson?

All directors will make a flop from now.

And I'm not saying that's going to be a flop.

It may just not do as well as, you know, they dreamt it would, but I'm sure it'll do okay.

And you know, who I'm trying to think, who else makes original, maybe Emerald for now, maybe Jordan Peel, but there are very few people working who make original films, and they're trying to be, and Warners are trying to be in business with all of them, apart from the unfortunate business of Nolan, who's gone elsewhere.

Elsewhere, yeah.

Because we spoke at the very beginning of this idea of nobody knows anything, which I think William Goldman, the great screenwriter,

he said, and it's this idea that

hits come from somewhere and flops come from somewhere and no one knows he's not actually saying nobody knows anything and that's the point it is it has sort of come to infect an industry in a way that say oh I mean the thing is I mean no one really knows anything the truth is some people do know some stuff and Mike DeLuca and Pam Abdi do know some stuff and they understand how to work with screenwriters they understand how to work with directors they understand how to give people creative freedom and they understand what to back and what not to back as you say sometimes it goes wrong but they understand it enough that they will have more hits than flops which is all you can ever ask for because in this industry there are some people who really really do know what they're doing look at studio lambert in television and the string of hits they've had the traitors race across the world i mean just some people just do

what they're doing and it's it's not foolproof which is where

nobody knows anything it comes from but it can be done and there is a there is a class of people sitting at the top of some media companies who take advantage of this nobody knows anything thing to go yeah what can you do this business i mean it's it's a tricky one we tried our best with these people No, you employ good people.

Anytime we employed someone, it wasn't any good, everyone they employed wasn't any good either.

I agree with that.

But also the state of the business that they, that the level of anonymous briefing, presumably by rivals, really, at this stage in Hollywood's decline and crisis and whatever, everybody should be wanting everybody's movies to succeed.

And the idea that you're going to preemptively brief against someone for movies that haven't yet come out, there's a huge amount of anonymous briefing, particularly connected with this story.

And of course, it's a really bitchy place and people want to.

But actually, at this stage in the decline, I would be really wary of just constantly slagging people off and saying, oh, they're going to go, they're going to go when the movies haven't even come out yet.

Everyone should be reaching for all the movies.

Yeah.

And this constant thing of how do we save in the movie industry?

Great movies.

That's how you said it.

How do we have great movies?

Trust great people.

Who are those great people?

If you don't know the answer to that, you shouldn't be in charge of it.

And stop saying, we want to take risks.

we want originals we dream of all this commercial stuff and then when someone does it saying oh well they'll be out by you know they'll be out by summer so they've had this incredible streak so i just wanted to will end with i've looked through what i think are the greatest streaks in entertainment history like people who have just been on such an absolute flyer for like years at a time not making a single mistake and it's incredibly rare you know you look at even like madonna people like this where they have these string of singles this there's there's a duffer somewhere in the middle it's very very rare to have something like

this run that Warners are having at the moment, where everything hits at the same time.

Tom Hanks, 92-95.

This is a hell of a run.

League of Their Own, Sleepless in Seattle.

Philadelphia, Oscar.

Forrest Gump, Oscar.

Apollo 13, Toy Story.

I mean, that's a guy who's choosing well.

Again,

some people do know what they're doing.

And again, sometimes he chooses badly, but he chooses well more often than he chooses badly.

And that's the thing you've got to look for.

Rob Reiner, directing.

spinal tap sure thing stand by me princess bride when harry met sally misery a few good men all in a row and this is very very biddy wilder did something similar billy wilder did uh sunset boulevard static 17 sabrina the seven-year itch some like it hot the apartment um catherine hepburn did bringing up baby stage door philadelphia story a woman of the year in a row that's pretty good going i mean you've got the beatles and stevie wonder who just never released anything bad in their whole career But I think the greatest ever streak in entertainment history, I've gone to music.

And I've gone from 1977 to 1979.

And I've gone with the Be Gs.

The Bee Gees 1977 to 1979, 11 number one singles.

They wrote for other artists as well.

They wrote Theme Tune to Greece.

That was a number one in America.

11 number ones.

In 1978.

From March to July, there were five number one singles in a row that were all BG related.

They replaced themselves four times.

And by the way, after this, all they did was chain reaction for Diana Ross, Heartbreak of a Dion Warwick, and Islands in the Stream for Dolly Pot and Kenny Rogers.

That's got to be the greatest streak in the history of entertainment.

If listeners have a better idea,

well, I think, I have to say that I think Marvel 2008 to 2019, there's never been, there's nothing like it.

Pixar.

Pixar, all the way up to Toy Story 3.

But it's not as long and it's not as many films.

But the basic principle is in this industry and lots of people

will recognise it.

Some people do actually know what they're doing.

They actually do.

And they often have bosses who don't know what they're doing.

And if you're the boss of that boss, then maybe have a little think occasionally.

If everything is being filtered through that boss, have an actual think about what's going on and have an actual think about who can come into your office with a blank piece of paper and make you some money.

And don't don't fire Mike Teleca and Pam Abdi because you don't know what you're doing because they do.

I very much enjoyed that.

Any recommendations, Richard?

Yes, we talked last week about there being

the paucity of younger male writers.

I thought, oh, great, because I'd read this great book.

Then I looked him up and he's 44, but it's 10 years younger than me, so he counts as a younger male writer.

Benjamin Wood, who wrote a brilliant book that I loved a couple of years ago called A Station on the Path to Somewhere Better.

But his new book, Seascraper, which is nominated for the Booker Prize, is terrific.

I absolutely loved it.

And it's really short.

It's like 160 pages.

And

I think the era of the short book is upon us.

But it's really,

it's sort of in the 50s, and it's a guy whose job is to go out with his horse and cart and just get...

shrimp in from this huge kind of mile-long beach when the sea is out and then a Hollywood mogul comes up looking for a location for a movie and it's just it's very unusual

yes unusual things happen in there but he's such a brilliant writer Benjamin Wood Seascraper it's called but I don't get it today I recommend a station on the path to somewhere better but seascraper is shorter if that's important to you

how about you do you see anything in LA I really want to see demon slayer but I haven't seen it yet I'm going to see it maybe I'll see it tonight which is what we talked about which has had an unbelievable opening we talked about anime quite recently and on this podcast and said oh everyone's going to have to get into it well that has been an unbelievably massive.

And by the way, it is not K-pop Demon Hunters.

No.

It is Demon Slayer.

It is different.

It's a different thing.

Yeah.

And Demon and K-pop Demon Hunters is an anime, but yes, Demon Slayer, it looks absolutely amazing.

Actually, one of my children saw it yesterday, so it was terrific.

And

anyway, so that's what I'm going to see later today.

And so we'll see how good that goes.

Anyway, we will see you on Thursday, as always, for our questions and answers episode.

Shall we leave the last word to the greatest center of his generation?

Oh, we're going to be finishing with this so many weeks, let me tell you.

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From race day glare over Italian hills to the low-lit drama of Enzo's dining table.

Plus, crisp Dolby Sound delivers every roar, rumble, and whisper in rich cinematic detail.

Wire-spoke wheels hiss over wet tarmac, gear shifts crack like a starter's pistol, and quiet confessions carry the weight of a checkered flag.

And with your apps and channels all in one place, finding Ferrari or whatever you love is as quick and precise as a pit stop without the tire smoke.

Watch Ferrari on Sky Cinema now or visit sky.com for more information.

Requires relevant Sky TV subscriptions, broadband recommended, minimum speed 30 megabits per second, 18 plus.

UK, Channel Islands, and Isle of Man only.