EP.233 - MARINA HYDE

Adam waffles with British journalist, screenwriter and co host of The Rest Is Entertainment, Marina Hyde Plus, more uplifting movie picks from friends of the podcast. Conversation recorded face-to-face in London on 9th April, 2024 CONTAINS STRONG LANGUAGE Thanks to Séamus Murphy-Mitchell for production support and conversation editing Podcast illustration by Helen Green https://helengreenillustration.com/ RELATED LINKS 'HOW COLUMNIST MARINA HYDE BECAME BRITAIN'S CHRONICLER-IN-CHIEF' https://www.vogue.co.uk/arts-and-lifestyle/article/marina-hyde-book-interview- 2022 (VOGUE) UPLIFTING MOVIES ADAM'S PICKS CRIP CAMP https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRrIs22plz0 (TRAILER) Directed by Nicole Newnham and Jim LeBrecht - 2020 (YOUTUBE) MIDNIGHT RUN https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khVFiUShfR8 (TRAILER) Directed by Martin Brest - 1988 (YOUTUBE) BENGA AND RAVI ADELEKAN'S PICKS TRANSFORMERS https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1RPVQ_SWxI (FULL MOVIE) Directed by Nelson Shin - 1986 (YOUTUBE) TROLLS WORLD TOUR https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cCoDDhFpmY (TRAILER) Directed by Walt Dohrn - 2020 (YOUTUBE) INSIDE OUT 2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LEjhY15eCx0 (TRAILER) Directed by Kelsey Mann - 2024 (YOUTUBE) RAVI'S STORY https://ravisdream.com/my-story/ LIANNA LA HAVAS' PICKS SISTER ACT 2: BACK IN THE HABIT https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_QcgjGyRnuw (TRAILER) Directed by Bill Duke - 1993 (YOUTUBE) RICHARD DAWSON'S THE INTERN https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZU3Xban0Y6A (TRAILER) Directed by Nancy Meyers - 2015 (YOUTUBE) GOOD MORNING https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=43gHCJe1OcU (TRAILER) Directed by Yasujirô Ozu - 1959 (YOUTUBE) BUENA VISTA SOCIAL CLUB https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vc2okbnxBtI (TRAILER) Directed by Wim Wenders - 1999 (YOUTUBE) HAPPY GILMORE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y1emDAYCfVQ (TRAILER) Directed by Dennis Dugan - 1996 (YOUTUBE Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Adam Buxton?

  I added one more podcast to the giant podcast bin. Now you have plucked that podcast out and started listening. I took my microphone and found some human folk. Then I recorded all the noises while we spoke. My name is Adam Buckston, I'm a man. I want you to enjoy this, that's the plan.

• 0:31Adam Buxton?

  Hey, how are you doing, podcast? This is Adam Buckston here, taking a walk with my best dog friend, Rosie. How are you doing, Rosie? Cold. Well, yes, it is cold, two degrees Celsius as I speak. But the sun's out, the sky is blue, the light is very clear and beautiful. I'm glad that Rosie's come along. I don't know if she's that excited to be here. I think being curled up by the fire in the office of my wife was probably a bit nicer. But we'll get back there soon, don't worry, Rose. We've got to get out and get some exercise, though. Munch on some of that delicious vitamin D. How are you doing, podcast?

• 1:14Adam Buxton?

  I hope things are not too bad for you, wherever you are. I'm doing all right, trying not to get too stressed on the Christmas ramp. You know how it is. Still working on my book, not quite finished. But all in all, can't complain. So let me tell you a bit about podcast number 233. This one features a rambling conversation with English journalist and screenwriter Marina Hyde. She's been a columnist at The Guardian newspaper since the year 2000. And she still produces three articles each week for the paper's comments section, where she writes about current affairs, celebrities and sports.

• 1:57Adam Buxton?

  Her sports writing has earned her numerous prestigious awards, including the Sports Journalist of the Year Award at the British Sports Journalism Awards in 2020. She was the first woman A woman. ever to win in that category. Her first book, Celebrity: How Entertainers Took Over the World and Why We Need an Exit Strategy, was published in 2009, and in 2022, a compilation of Marina's best Guardian columns was published under the title What Just Happened? Wow, look at this, some big ice chunks here.

• 2:44Adam Buxton?

  Ooh, glassy.

• 2:48Adam Buxton?

  Whoa, nice ice Foley. In 2023, Marina and media behemoth Richard Osman started hosting The Rest Is Entertainment, another podcast from Gary Lineker's company Goalhanger, that has, in recent years, cornered the market for enjoyably informed waffle with other The Rest Is podcasts, including The Rest Is Politics and The Rest Is History, of course. Marina was also on the writing team of the HBO series The Franchise. You can see it on Now and Sky TV, I think. And it follows the crew of an unloved franchise movie fighting for their place in a savage and unruly cinematic universe.

• 3:32Adam Buxton?

  Haven't seen it yet, looking forward to checking it out. My conversation with Marina was recorded face to face in London back in early April of this year, 2024, and we talked about the state of modern TV and movies. We talked about why multiple versions of the same stories keep getting told. When I saw Marina, I had just watched Scoop on Netflix, billed as an insider account of how the women of Newsnight secured Prince Andrew's infamous 2019 interview about his friendship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. And Scoop focused on the personalities of Newsnight guest producer Sam McAllister,

• 4:14Adam Buxton?

  played by Billy Piper, and presenter Emily Maitlis, played by Gillian Anderson, who, of course, played Mrs Thatcher in The Crown, very effectively a couple of years back. A few months ago, as I speak, in September, another dramatization of the Prince Andrew interview story came out on Amazon Prime this time. That one was called A Very Royal Scandal. And that one was more from the point of view of Emily Maitlis, that time played by Ruth Wilson. Here's Ruth Wilson's Emily Maitlis.

• 4:46Speaker 01

  Your Royal Highness, we've come to Buckingham Palace in highly unusual circumstances.

• 4:53Adam Buxton?

  That's Ruth Wilson. She really throws herself into it. Quite accurate, though, I thought. Here is the Maitlis of Gillian Anderson.

• 5:01Speaker 02

  Your Royal Highness, we've come to Buckingham Palace in highly unusual circumstances.

• 5:10Adam Buxton?

  Maybe a bit more drama there from Gillian. Anyway, I didn't only talk to Marina about Emily Maitlis dramas. Marina also told me why having children turned out to be good for her career, how much of an alpha Richard Osman really is, and why I need to revive my brilliant idea for a low-budget sci-fi film. Back at the end with more uplifting movie recommendations from friends of the podcast, but right now with Marina Hyde. Here we go.

• 6:20Adam Buxton?

  Have you heard the podcast before?

• 6:21Speaker 03

  Yes, I've heard the podcast.

• 6:22Adam Buxton?

  So it's...

• 6:23Speaker 03

  Huge amount. I love the podcast.

• 6:25Adam Buxton?

  Oh, that's very nice.

• 6:26Speaker 03

  I'm most honoured to be on the podcast. Let me just say that. I would probably say that on the podcast.

• 6:31Adam Buxton?

  I was delighted when you said that you would do it.

• 6:34Speaker 03

  I couldn't believe I was being asked. So grand. It's by far the most exciting place I've ever appeared. Let me assure you of that. But I do appear on places like the Guardian comment pages, so.

• 6:43Adam Buxton?

  Sure.

• 6:43Speaker 03

  It's not maybe.

• 6:45Adam Buxton?

  Well, I hope this will be less stressful than the Guardian comment pages.

• 6:49Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, I find it quite low maintenance, my work for the Guardian comment.

• 6:52Adam Buxton?

  Oh, yeah, do you?

• 6:52Speaker 03

  But yes, because I just send it in and there it goes, but, you know.

• 6:57Adam Buxton?

  Well, I wanted to start by asking you, like, what are your stress levels like? You seem to be at a point in your career where you're incredibly busy. Is this like peak Marina?

• 7:09Speaker 03

  I'm sure many people would hope that it's been Marina. I don't know, I am quite busy at this exact period that we're talking, I must say. Because I have my normal Guardian work and I'm also doing a podcast, but I'm also filming a TV show. Um, that I write on, so it is a particularly busy time at this moment, but it will become less busy, hopefully, soon. Although I have other things that I think I'd better get started on when it becomes less busy, but yes.

• 7:37Adam Buxton?

  Wow.

• 7:38Speaker 03

  That was a ramble.

• 7:39Adam Buxton?

  No, that's good.

• 7:40Speaker 03

  Sorry.

• 7:41Adam Buxton?

  Don't worry. This is a very informal podcast, Marina. We accommodate any.

• 7:46Speaker 03

  I'm sorry.

• 7:47Adam Buxton?

  Sidebars, incidental action, Marina is frantically texting like a character.

• 7:52Speaker 03

  I know, I'm really sorry.

• 7:53Adam Buxton?

  From a Netflix drama about a busy journalist who is doing a podcast.

• 7:58Speaker 03

  No, okay, sorry, I was just liaising with the Guardian. Comment desk on my headline for my comment, I can't hardly call something that's incredibly facetious about The Rock. Um, not, not a, you know, lump of mineral, but the former pro wrestler, the man, the legend, the former pro wrestler.

• 8:16Adam Buxton?

  Is he still the?

• 8:17Speaker 03

  Future president, who knows?

• 8:19Adam Buxton?

  He is not still the world's number one paid actor, is he?

• 8:22Speaker 03

  He goes up and down, but I think, I have to say, I think that time has slightly, I think that moment has passed.

• 8:28Adam Buxton?

  I listened to you and Richard the other day discussing who were the top paid actors and I've forgotten who it was at number one.

• 8:34Speaker 03

  Well, uh, hang on, let me think who's at, who is at number one, um.

• 8:38Adam Buxton?

  It was someone unexpected.

• 8:39Speaker 03

  It's Adam Sandler, because, and he barely gets theatrical release, yeah. It's interesting, people who are in franchises, although interestingly not particularly Marvel franchises, things like that get, um, uh, uh. But if you've got a returning thing, and basically if you're a darling of the streamers, it's slightly shifted from theatres to streaming, because Adam Sandler is number one.

• 9:02Adam Buxton?

  First of all, have you seen the new Adam Sandler, one of his art house efforts?

• 9:07Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 9:08Adam Buxton?

  Spaceman?

• 9:08Speaker 03

  No, I haven't. I feel I've seen quite a lot of sad men in space, but look, there's, I've always got room for another. And when I become slightly less busy, yeah, I'm gonna be a completist on sad men in space, but I have seen quite a few sad men.

• 9:21Adam Buxton?

  Which are the other sad men in space?

• 9:23Speaker 03

  Well, Matt Damon's been sad in space, hasn't he?

• 9:26Adam Buxton?

  He was resourceful, though. That was inspiring.

• 9:29Speaker 03

  Yeah, he, he is, of course.

• 9:30Adam Buxton?

  You'd be sad if you got marooned on Mars and everything blew up, your potatoes.

• 9:33Speaker 03

  Listen, I'd be gutted. Adam, I'd be gutted.

• 9:35Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 9:35Speaker 03

  But yeah, no, I think there's, there's a sort of general genre and we must see it and I will see it. I will see Adam Sandler doing this.

• 9:42Adam Buxton?

  Because sad men in space, I didn't realise it, but it might be my favourite genre.

• 9:47Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 9:48Adam Buxton?

  I think it.

• 9:48Speaker 03

  Well, it speaks to the times in some weird way. I'm not quite sure what way, but perhaps you've got a better idea on that.

• 9:53Adam Buxton?

  It speaks to the times. I think it speaks to something peculiarly male as well. And if I was being down on myself and my guys, I would say that it is, because I, I tried to write a thing years ago that was a lonely man in space thing.

• 10:09Speaker 03

  Oh, did you?

• 10:10Adam Buxton?

  Yeah. And it, in my mind, it was about the experience of being a parent of young children. And feeling that I wasn't really up to the job and feeling that I just wanted to go backwards. I just wanted to have the romance of the sci-fi world. I wanted to be in space. I wanted to be doing a job in space, looking after my family on earth without actually having to be with my family. You know what I mean? Is this making any sense?

• 10:38Speaker 03

  Yeah, no, it really is. I, I mean, I now want you to revive your sad man in space thing. Or you could take it on as a comedy show. Maybe you could try and clash it with some other genre. I've always felt like, you know, if you clashed a number of the male genres, I feel the Have You Go Lucky Chancellor golf movie.

• 10:55Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 10:56Speaker 03

  If only that could be melded with the sad men in space genre, you could have perhaps the most powerful entertainment product.

• 11:03Adam Buxton?

  Happy Gilmore in space, zero G golf with everything just floating around, the balls floating around.

• 11:08Speaker 03

  Ting cup, you know, all of, I've got a weakness for those.

• 11:12Adam Buxton?

  I haven't seen Tinker.

• 11:14Speaker 03

  Have you not seen Tinker? That's Kosner. That's a classic Kosner, yeah. Yeah, no, that sort of sense of, yeah, the, the, the underdog thought that that sort of underdog spaceman, we, something could be made to work there.

• 11:25Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, because you know, the quintessential lonely sad man in space was Zayvid Bowie and Space Oddity was all about that.

• 11:31Speaker 03

  Yeah, I heard. I heard.

• 11:35Speaker 03

  Tell you what, tell you what else has been sad in space. Killian Murphy's been sad in space.

• 11:38Adam Buxton?

  Oh, yeah, what was that one?

• 11:39Speaker 03

  That was called Sunshine, that was Danny Boyle.

• 11:41Adam Buxton?

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 11:42Speaker 03

  He was sad as, I mean, in a way, he was almost ecstatically sad again.

• 11:45Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, but he was a bit crazy in space. That's a slightly different, going crazy in space doesn't really count, like, I also.

• 11:51Speaker 03

  I think it plays tricks on the mind. I think we'd all go crazy in space.

• 11:54Adam Buxton?

  Sure, but I liked a film called Dark Star.

• 11:57Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 11:58Adam Buxton?

  Directed by John Carpenter when he was still at.

• 12:00Speaker 03

  I love John Carpenter.

• 12:01Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 12:02Speaker 03

  That's, I have not seen that in many, many years. I love John Carpenter, so I will like it.

• 12:07Adam Buxton?

  It's very good. Have you seen, now you have to tell me at some point, I'm going to step on Richard Osman's toes and there will be things that I want to talk to you about that you have earmarked for the podcast.

• 12:18Speaker 03

  We never earmark anything till about, you know, we'd, no, we haven't earmarked anything, so I'm sure there won't be.

• 12:23Adam Buxton?

  Okay.

• 12:24Speaker 03

  Ask me.

• 12:25Adam Buxton?

  What about Scoop? Have you seen Scoop?

• 12:28Speaker 03

  Yes, I have seen Scoop. It's interesting, this, isn't it? It's, to me, it epitomizes that thing that you have nowadays where you see the real life thing and then there's a book about it, then there's a documentary about it, then there's a rival documentary about it, and then eventually they make a Netflix adaptation of it. In this case, there's going to be two versions of that interview.

• 12:50Adam Buxton?

  So we should explain, this is.

• 12:51Speaker 03

  We should say, this is, one of them is written by Sam McAllister, who was the booker at Newsnight, who sort of did a lot to get that interview. And the other, but I don't think Emily May, Emily May just obviously did the interview. I think Emily May this is will be more, more of a story of her kind of career. She wrote a really good book called Airhead, so I think it may not be specifically dueling about the same thing. They're always called dueling documentaries, aren't they, in the sort of tabloid parlance of our times? But I don't think they'll be about the same, exactly the same. I did sort of feel I was detecting a slight backlash this past week since it's been out. What maybe people are just starting to find. That we're living so close to these events that are then being

• 13:34Speaker 03

  had the books and then the and then then being dramatized. I wonder whether people are starting to think whether or not they can entirely support the weight of what is being put on them. Constantly to have events that we've almost just seen and which were pretty entertaining slash eye popping at the time.

• 13:51Adam Buxton?

  I liked the scene in Scoop with Prince Andrew getting annoyed with the maid for putting one of his toys in the wrong place on the bed.

• 13:58Speaker 03

  I mean.

• 13:59Adam Buxton?

  And I said to my wife, do I was like, come on, did that happen? And she said, probably he really cares about his stuffed toys. That was my wife's verdict.

• 14:11Speaker 03

  I mean, you think quite possibly, quite possibly.

• 14:14Adam Buxton?

  He told off the maid and he says, he he gets really shirty.

• 14:19Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think he's a very shirty man and a very infantilized man. I mean, it's not a sort of.

• 14:23Adam Buxton?

  Well, that point was made.

• 14:23Speaker 03

  And the trouble is that all all along, you know, these people tell the royal family that, and it's really quite hard not to think that you're an absolute genius. When he was a trade envoy, trade envoy, I'm just, which is, I think, a job just invented to excuse the fact he was basically being flown around various golf courses on military helicopters. And I think he thought he did really, really well for the country and that he was like a really, just a massive asset of soft power.

• 14:49Adam Buxton?

  The Queen, rest her soul, she thought he was the best.

• 14:53Speaker 03

  Yes, well, yes, I, yes.

• 14:57Adam Buxton?

  But do you know Emily Maylis yourself?

• 14:59Speaker 03

  I do. She's absolutely terrific.

• 15:02Adam Buxton?

  And do you know what she thinks of Scoop? Does she think?

• 15:04Speaker 03

  I haven't asked her. I was actually going to be in touch with her this week and ask her what she thought of it.

• 15:08Adam Buxton?

  Right. What did you think of the portrayal of her in that thing? Did you think that was realistic?

• 15:13Speaker 03

  She's not very, she, I, you know, no disrespect to Gillian Anderson, who is, you know, a fine actress, but I I don't think of Emily Maylis as sort of wintry and, you know, that you like.

• 15:25Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, yeah, she was that you like and.

• 15:28Speaker 03

  It's hard to shed. Once you've played Thatcher, you sort of need to go into a decompression chamber for about six months and like not be that very well. And obviously, I think from The Crown, you know, you're still carrying quite a lot of thatch with you and you just sort of need to de-thatch. And no one's really successfully, you know, it happened to you, it happened to Patricia Hodges, it happened to a lot of people, you know, Merrill, I mean, can happen to the best of us. You've got to de-thatch and I'm not sure whether it has to, anyone has totally successfully worked out the formula, the quick antidote.

• 15:56Adam Buxton?

  She just. It was um, it was such thick thatch as well when she did it in the crown.

• 16:02Speaker 03

  I know. She actually was doing late stage that strangely in a, in a, in a kind of mid-stage thatch, but. Again, it's not a documentary.

• 16:11Adam Buxton?

  Well, it does have that same sort of feel about it, doesn't it, Scoop? Um, that crowning.

• 16:18Speaker 03

  I suppose we're doing a lot of, as I say, there's a sort of trend, isn't there? We're doing a lot of events that we've either all lived through or can even closer can remember very quite well now. So, um, and sometimes the events have happened really very, very recently, so.

• 16:34Adam Buxton?

  Did you watch the final series of The Crown, speaking of which?

• 16:39Speaker 03

  I, I mean, I've, I feel alone with my views on the, I, I find it absolutely hysterical. I, I mean, I can't, sorry, I, I, I, I, I find it a huge hoot.

• 16:51Speaker 03

  Great to see Princess Di's ghost to get a run at.

• 16:53Adam Buxton?

  She was there in, I haven't seen it. I watched the first two.

• 16:58Speaker 03

  You can't believe it's happening. It's like, on, you, you really saying, like, you, you, Prince Charles, that he looked really good looking in the mortuary. When he was identifying her body, I thought, I can't, is this, is this, is this prestige TV? I, I'm, I mean, I love it.

• 17:12Adam Buxton?

  What was that scene?

• 17:13Speaker 03

  She, she, her ghost, um, says to Prince Charles that he looked really sort of good in the mortuary, I think, when he was. I don't know why I'm laughing. I mean, I can't, I mean, they have made it, in, in my view, slightly humorous by. Yeah, the appearance of Princess Di's ghost was to me very special.

• 17:31Adam Buxton?

  Wow. So who would play you?

• 17:35Speaker 03

  Nobody would play me.

• 17:36Adam Buxton?

  The Hyde production, at some point, if you, if you carry on on your current trajectory, you carry on getting more and more successful. At some point you will implode, you'll do it spectacularly and then they'll do the drama.

• 17:50Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 17:50Adam Buxton?

  And then who's gonna play you?

• 17:52Speaker 03

  Well, I guess it depends what I get cancelled for, doesn't it? What's, what's the sort of, can you get decancelled and sort of put back into the bloodstream quite quickly these days? Cause like, there's a lot of the guys now where I'm like, did he, was there a, and then you look it up and like, no, I mean, they're, they're back on the circuit. There was some stuff. It didn't really go anywhere.

• 18:14Adam Buxton?

  Really, I don't get that impression. There's always a taint thereafter, isn't there? There's always gonna be people who go, no, no, you stink. I think to get cancelled, you have to, at a certain point in your life, get kind of radicalised by something.

• 18:27Speaker 03

  Don't you get radicalised by yourself and your sense of your own importance? I think that's probably what connects most of them.

• 18:34Adam Buxton?

  Yes.

• 18:36Speaker 03

  Oh, I see. On causes you can. Oh, I mean, the sexual cancelling.

• 18:39Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, well, there's led, of course.

• 18:41Speaker 03

  Been radicalised by their sense of self.

• 18:43Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, there's the Weinstein style cancellations where you're a monster.

• 18:48Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 18:49Adam Buxton?

  And then I'm thinking lower down, you get radicalised, you get, um.

• 18:56Speaker 03

  Yeah, maybe those can, maybe you can get cancelled on those things.

• 18:58Adam Buxton?

  You start making pronouncements.

• 19:00Speaker 03

  You can probably do that in an afternoon. I could definitely carve out a few months off this.

• 19:03Adam Buxton?

  You start recommending books that you're not supposed to recommend.

• 19:06Speaker 03

  Maybe haven't even read.

• 19:09Speaker 03

  I think people who supposedly cancelling people, kind of online mobs, all these sorts of things in lots of ways. I think those people have so little power in the economic system in which they're required to live, but not really have given any stake in when, until they're really quite old, if at all. I think there's a whole generation of people who have just been sort of shut out of capitalism and are still expected to sort of love it. Whereas someone like Thatcher understood that if you want people to support capitalism, it's probably better if they have a stake in it. Now, wherever you stand on people being able to buy their own house or wherever it is, you can't deny that a lot of young people these days would also like that thing. And I think if you're just totally shut out of capitalism and you have no economic power at all,

• 19:55Speaker 03

  then what little power you have, you might exercise it in any way you can. It's, it's, it's a sort of cry of rage, isn't it really? It's a sort of form of like very, very, very, very mild terrorism, um, which is also pretty sort of, I don't know. Illiberal and puritanical and all those sort of funny things. And I'm not saying that calling out people for whatever their perceived bad behaviour is is the same as terrorism, literally. But it is a, there's a, there's a sort of metaphorical commonality there. And I do think that if people have no stake in the market that dominates everything, then they are going to try and lash out in one way or another.

• 20:32Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, because as well as the things that they have, that people have every right to get indignant about are a whole bunch of other, much more minor infractions. I mean, how do you feel about YouTube? How much time do you spend on YouTube? Because that seems to be driven more and more by tapping into the worst impulses of all of us, really.

• 20:57Speaker 03

  What, the algorithm and the way it pushes you?

• 20:59Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, the desire to see people fail, the desire to see people judged and humbled and humiliated one way or another. And a weird strain of, I mean, it might just be the way my algorithm is, is serving me up stuff, yeah. But a weird strain of amateur sleuths, like people doing investigations on celebrities.

• 21:21Speaker 03

  There's a lot of that on TikTok as well, but yeah, there's, there's a, there's a lot of, I mean, I think something very odd about, you know, that tragic case last year of that woman who fell into the river, Nicola Bulley. And the fact that the police had to sort of issue orders to clear the village because there were so many people who'd gone up with their cameras and thinking they're doing investigation. That absolutely blows my mind. Something really toxic has happened and they have no sense of humanity or what people might actually want to happen when a member of their family is missing in that absolutely horrific way. Yeah, that really worries me, that sense of, I suppose it's like, we talk about that thing where we say about the sense of an online mob, you know, no snowflake, that saying, no snowflake thinks it's part of an avalanche.

• 22:06Adam Buxton?

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 22:07Speaker 03

  But really. It's funny that people have sort of lost the ability and they sort of disconnected and they can't see that they're part of a bad thing and that doing that is bad. Lots of investigative journalists and journalists covering crimes in the past have made plenty of mistakes. And there'd be many people who would say that they didn't behave any better, but there were definitely fewer of them, which helps.

• 22:31Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, because I suppose they feel that they're doing something kind of noble and in their minds, they're sort of like crusading journalists. They're going out and doing something.

• 22:40Speaker 03

  I just think they're doing it for clicks and clout, actually. I think people, what people will do for clicks. I, you know, you see people leave up, I don't know, tweets or whatever posts that are inaccurate. And they've had someone has explained to them it's inaccurate, but they're probably thinking, yeah, but that's the only time I've ever had like forty eight thousand views on my thing. So I'm not gonna leave it up. Yeah, I don't watch that. I mean, I watch, I, I am forever mining for old clips of this and that. And documentaries and things on YouTube. I mainly watch the YouTube my children watch. So I watch a lot of things like Mr. Beast. And I think those people are sort of incredible and the things they do are quite amazing, really.

• 23:22Speaker 03

  And that type of creator, I mean, for a long time I thought, oh yeah, but the production values are so rubbish, but they're not really now, are they? The things that Mr. Beast does are so unbelievably enormous and costs so much money. They cost more than a sort of network TV show, I imagine.

• 23:37Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 23:38Speaker 03

  Um, and I think those sort of people are interesting. So those types of creators. But it's funny how far the phrase creator goes. There's a lot of people who are called creators who I would not describe as particularly creative.

• 23:49Adam Buxton?

  I wanted to give you, Marina, a practical, uh, tip, which seems obvious, but didn't occur to me until a week ago. Which was to download a plugin from the Chrome store. I use Google Chrome. Other browsers are available. But it enables you to block the YouTube sidebar. Why didn't I do that?

• 24:07Speaker 03

  I think we both know that I am going to have to get a child to do this for me. I'm, I'm essentially someone who types on a spinning Jenny. It's not really like the tech revolution didn't happen. It's like the industrial one didn't happen for me. I'm really.

• 24:19Adam Buxton?

  It's really easy.

• 24:20Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 24:20Adam Buxton?

  It's literally like, do you use Google Chrome?

• 24:23Speaker 03

  I get that a lot. It's really easy. And then it's like, come on, if you come downstairs and do this for me, please.

• 24:28Adam Buxton?

  Well, the kids could definitely do.

• 24:29Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's great. I mean, I have three technicians.

• 24:32Adam Buxton?

  May I ask what browser you favour?

• 24:34Speaker 03

  Chrome?

• 24:35Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, there you go. So this would work. I'll send you the link.

• 24:38Speaker 03

  I think that, okay, brilliant. If you send me the link, I, oh, I can click on something, Adam.

• 24:42Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 24:42Speaker 03

  I'm pretty sure I can take care of that.

• 24:44Adam Buxton?

  Is this something that you would use or do you like to be available to everything that the algorithm throws up?

• 24:50Speaker 03

  Honestly, I'm not on it that often because I'm mostly going in for something specific. So I'm trying to find a particular.

• 24:55Adam Buxton?

  All right.

• 24:56Speaker 03

  Documentary or whatever.

• 24:57Adam Buxton?

  And then you don't find yourself getting distracted by it?

• 24:59Speaker 03

  Generally not.

• 25:00Adam Buxton?

  Oh, my God, this is why you're successful.

• 25:02Speaker 03

  No, no, I can get distracted by other stuff. I'm trying to think what the other things are, but I try generally. At the moment, I, I mean, in general, I'm on really tight time schedules for the things I'm doing.

• 25:13Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 25:14Speaker 03

  So I try not to get distracted. But actually, you know, funny enough, having children was the biggest. Anything good I've ever done, I've done after I've had children. And I think the reason for that is that. First of all, I became incredibly efficient at working and I thought I, and I really wanted to like. Pick them up from things and be, you know, and just be very present as much as I could be. And because I had the sort of job that I could technically sort of make that happen. I, um, I became incredibly efficient.

• 25:43Adam Buxton?

  Wow, that's not.

• 25:43Speaker 03

  I didn't even have my first child until I was thirty six. So it's, it really made me very efficient.

• 25:49Adam Buxton?

  That's impressive.

• 25:50Speaker 03

  And, um, funny enough, I met a, I think that Natalie Masner, who used to started Net-a-Porter. She used to really like to hire pregnant women. And I met somebody else, a TV producer, who said, oh, no, I only hire pregnant women. They're really efficient and they're like really, you know, and then that, that, once they've had the child, then they really want to come back to work. But they're really, really efficient with their time and they're just very, very good at getting things done.

• 26:11Adam Buxton?

  So are you shaming women who are overwhelmed by having children and who don't have the time?

• 26:15Speaker 03

  God, no. I would, you will never find me shame a mother. No way.

• 26:19Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 26:20Speaker 03

  Um, no way. I'm not at all. I'm just saying that it's a thing that people don't often hear, hear. Because I suppose when I was younger, I, you, you hear an awful lot of people saying, oh, right, well, when you have children, you're, you know, you, you can't do your job. You can't do all of these things. I'm just putting an alternative view, my view, that actually. It has, it has been helpful to me professionally, which is really weird. I just became a much more efficient writer, a much quicker writer.

• 26:46Adam Buxton?

  It's very nice to hear. It is one of the things that used to bug me. I'm not personally a woman. I haven't given birth.

• 26:52Speaker 03

  What? I only go on women's podcasts. I don't understand. Sorry. Have I been misled?

• 26:56Adam Buxton?

  Uh, I am entirely cis male het, cis het fuck boy.

• 27:02Speaker 03

  Right, yeah, okay, of course. Yeah, it says that on the doorbell, actually.

• 27:05Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, but you know, I am ashamed to say that I felt beleaguered and had that sense of, you know, the pram in the hallway. Who was it that said that? Cyril Connolly or something like that?

• 27:17Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 27:17Adam Buxton?

  Said, you're never getting anything done if.

• 27:19Speaker 03

  Get the feeling he was a complete fucker, but yeah, but yeah, hence sad man in space.

• 27:24Adam Buxton?

  Sad man in space, exactly. It was all.

• 27:27Speaker 03

  I bet he'd be so unproductive sad man in space. Like he would maybe grow some seedlings.

• 27:31Adam Buxton?

  That's why he's in space.

• 27:32Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 27:33Adam Buxton?

  Cause he feels like he's doing a job, but he's not. He's just drifting around, feeling sorry for himself, feeling all disconnected and listening to a lot of Radiohead.

• 27:40Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 27:41Adam Buxton?

  And, um.

• 27:42Speaker 03

  But he's not writing Radiohead songs. I don't think he's creating. I just don't think he's creating.

• 27:47Adam Buxton?

  Well, in my idea, the guy was like an intergalactic cable guy. So he's flying around and he's hooking people up with, um, internet and satellite services, like the space version thereof.

• 28:02Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 28:03Adam Buxton?

  So he will, yeah, just, just fly around. People will phone him up. They'll see that he's in their sector. And then he goes up, he connects them to all the streaming services they need on their spaceship. Then he buggers off. So, you know, he's connecting people, but it's in that way that the internet connects people while simultaneously isolating them.

• 28:23Speaker 03

  Atomizing them, yes.

• 28:24Adam Buxton?

  And making them lonelier. I mean, this is, as I'm describing it to you, I'm thinking.

• 28:28Speaker 03

  Better get that dust down that square.

• 28:30Adam Buxton?

  Didn't I finish that off?

• 28:31Speaker 03

  I like it. I really like it.

• 28:33Adam Buxton?

  Scooped up a lot of awards for that one.

• 28:34Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 28:35Adam Buxton?

  And it would be funny. It wouldn't be all sad.

• 28:36Speaker 03

  No, no, I get that it's obviously like, I know that you would level that with comedy. Yes, I do.

• 28:41Adam Buxton?

  That would be funny.

• 28:42Speaker 03

  Get it back out.

• 28:43Adam Buxton?

  But it would be poignant as, as fuck.

• 28:45Speaker 03

  Yeah, of course. I don't even want to think of the last episode. People just going, wow, what did I just watch?

• 28:51Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, there would be pushback, obviously. People would go, why do we need to see another cis het fuck boy moaning about how lonely he is? A poor me, I'm out in space, not doing my duty to my family. But the Adam Sandler fans would like it.

• 29:09Speaker 03

  And as we've established, there's quite a lot of them.

• 29:11Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 29:40Adam Buxton?

  I've written too much down. Sometimes I'm underprepared with you. There was so much I wanted to waffle with you about because I thought, you know what? I bet Marina would have an opinion on this. By the way.

• 29:51Speaker 03

  Opinions for hire. Yeah, no, I've got a lot of opinions. I honestly don't think I hold them. If a column I would write at 10:00 in the morning might be completely different by supper, really. I, I, they're passing through my transom, the opinions, and then moving along. I've had some this morning. What am I having an opinion on now?

• 30:09Adam Buxton?

  Um, here's what I've written. Why is watching films so much less rewarding than it used to be? Am I just getting old? That's part of it. Yes, tastes have moved on without me, but I also blame postmodernism, I've written here. Everyone wants to deconstruct. Everyone wants to be meta. The art of a straightforward thriller, which personally in the 90s was my favourite genre. Something that hits satisfying beats and is just tight and solid. That seems to have totally gone. And I, and from listening to you.

• 30:39Speaker 03

  I mean, thrillers have become 10 part, 10 part thrillers, 10 one hours. And so that, that, that, that sort of tight one hour 50 of a thriller, it doesn't, you don't see that really theatrically, do you anymore in, in terms of cinemas?

• 30:53Adam Buxton?

  I mean, what are some good examples of that genre? Like films like that that really worked and were just fun and? Rollicked along. I mean, I quite like, even though it's not very short, I liked things like um The Firm.

• 31:09Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 31:10Adam Buxton?

  Tom Cruise.

• 31:11Speaker 03

  Yes. Air Force One, Patriot Games, any of the old Ford ones. I'm talking about Harrison, obviously not John.

• 31:17Adam Buxton?

  Sure.

• 31:18Speaker 03

  What else? Um I mean, you know, those kind of, yeah, thrillers of those type.

• 31:22Adam Buxton?

  Even The Fugitive.

• 31:22Speaker 03

  Douglas has done a couple. Uh yeah, the Fug- oh, The Fugitive, again, Ford.

• 31:27Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 31:28Speaker 03

  Uh terrific.

• 31:29Adam Buxton?

  Jagged Edge.

• 31:29Speaker 03

  Yeah, oh, yes. Yeah, Jagged Edge is good.

• 31:32Adam Buxton?

  Is it just an economic thing that they don't get made anymore, everything?

• 31:35Speaker 03

  Well, it's interesting. I mean, I suppose tha- that kind of mid-budget movie, as we say mid-budget, you know, but a some- a movie between sort of sixty and a hundred million in today's money. It's pretty hard to get made and it's sort of gone away that. It's the money's been in television and people have gone there and also people have liked being told that they can take a long time to tell a story. But the economics of that, you know, getting out to people at the cinema, cinema's in a lot of trouble, as your listeners will already know. But and it's in even more trouble than it was in last year. I thought the lots of the.

• 32:09Adam Buxton?

  I thought Barbie saved cinema.

• 32:10Speaker 03

  Well, no, it didn't, I'm afraid. It was a deceptive year last year and obviously a lot of people have seen two, at least two of the movies on that ten movie best picture list. So they'd seen Barbie and they'd seen Oppenheimer. And that was, that's actually quite unusual because really what happens is that the movies that people go to the cinema to see have been over the last few years. Superhero franchises, which with the one weird exception of Black Panther, which was never going to win best picture, but was nominated for it in a ten, ten movie list. Those, so there's been a big disconnect between what people will go and watch. But honestly, you know, The Godfather now would be a niche film and very few people would see it. They would not go out and see it. The, the tastes have changed.

• 32:56Speaker 03

  I don't think for the better and I'm kind of with someone like Martin Scorsese or Coppola who say, you know, I don't recognise these superhero movies as cinema at all. I mean, they're more like a thrill ride. They're a huge drag in terms of length. I've, I, because I'm working on a show that's to do with a malfunctioning superhero franchise movie. I have watched all the superhero franchise movies and many of them are like three and a quarter hours. It's an absolute joke and, you know, it's just. You're just, they're just fight, fighting over an energy source for three and a half hours and then doing some really bad quips.

• 33:28Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 33:28Speaker 03

  And it's really not Apocalypse Now.

• 33:31Adam Buxton?

  No, it's not, but the fans get very upset when you say that because it's such.

• 33:37Speaker 03

  Fuck them, really, grow up. Didn't, someone didn't like your movie about, you know, the grownups in, in their tights who saved the world, but, but don't have sex.

• 33:47Adam Buxton?

  It's a very densely woven intricate universe.

• 33:52Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah, the Easter eggs, yeah, tell me about it, yeah.

• 33:54Adam Buxton?

  Themes.

• 33:54Speaker 03

  But you know, let me tell you what, what's the big missing theme, okay, let me tell you something in this movie. There is no romanticism, there is no love, there's like very, very few. There's no instances of sex, I think really early in One and the Iron Man, you kind of are meant to think that Tony Stark has maybe just had sex. And then in the Eternals, like really right down the other end, they kind of were they're getting like Chloe Zhao to come in on our Oscar and direct a Marvel movie. The one guy who has sex in that.

• 34:21Adam Buxton?

  Was that Chloe Zhao?

• 34:22Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, and it is bad. Uh, the one guy who has sex in that has to like be immediately fired into the sun about 15 minutes later. These are sexless, a-romantic universes. And, um, funny enough, I was talking to Adam Curtis about, um, a while ago about this sort of thing. And at the time he was looking into cosplay a bit. And he said, um, cosplay really took off in Japan after the Japanese financial crisis. And it, which was obviously in, in early, very early nineties, nineteen ninety. And it was a sort of sense of a retreat from the real world and institutions of the W C failed. But it was allied with, and that people are dressing up as kind of, kind of bland and whatever, but it was very simple.

• 35:02Speaker 03

  It was manicare and good and evil and allied to a huge a-romanticism and asexual, you know, a sexlessness. And that's what I find really weird in those, in all superhero franchise movies really, is that no one ever does anything. You've removed one of the main reasons people do things in movies, which is for love or lust or whatever, they don't. So they've kind of just got revenge, they've got, they don't do things for money because they all seem to have money. You know, money is not a motivation in these movies, so money. Revenge and sex. They've only got one left. They've got revenge, basically. And they'll sit there and Kevin Feige, who runs Marvel, will tell you, oh, you know, we've got all the genres. We've got a legal drama with She Hulk. We've got, no, no, no, you've got superhero genre, okay?

• 35:43Speaker 03

  You know, I've made one of your superheroes a lawyer. That's fine, but you haven't got a legal drama. Okay, you've got a superhero show. And it's actually incredibly flattening and deadening. And the idea that you can tell all of the stories through these same kind of slightly weird prism of movies that to some extent, like growing up, what are you doing? It's fun. I listen, I love a lot of silly things and I love action movies and I love all of this sort of stuff. But the idea that this this genre has sort of eaten cinema and now they've killed cinema. Now that everyone's a bit worried because there's a sort of fatigue with that genre and cinemas are collapsing and becoming like climbing walls and soft play areas. And and no one quite knows what's going to fill them.

• 36:23Adam Buxton?

  And there's no chance, you think that it'll swing back, that there will be a response against all that and people will start investing in films that are led more by good old emotions.

• 36:34Speaker 03

  Listen, I I really loved what Corr Jefferson said. He he wrote the screenplay for um American Fiction and directed it. And I I really like what he said in his speech, which was, you know, it's a risk, making a two hundred million dollar movie is it or more is a risk. Why don't you make ten movies for twenty million or twenty movies for ten million dollars? Because I doubt his movie cost very much to me. And maybe we can get something going again, but it seems to me very limiting that that has been our whole culture, our cinematic culture. And that other things have found it very difficult to get in round the edge of that. Um I hope horror does well still. Horror really does well theatrically still and people will go and watch it and young people will go and watch it.

• 37:16Speaker 03

  And they make them for very little money and that's kind of exciting to me. So, yeah, it's not, it's not dead, but you've really got to look after any shoots that there are.

• 37:28Adam Buxton?

  Yes.

• 37:32Adam Buxton?

  Yes, please.

• 37:37Adam Buxton?

  Yep.

• 37:41Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 37:42Adam Buxton?

  I read a Vogue interview with you from 2022.

• 37:46Speaker 03

  Oh my god, I did a Vogue interview when my book came out.

• 37:48Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 37:49Speaker 03

  And I was dressed in clothes.

• 37:50Adam Buxton?

  Yes, you were. You were style.

• 37:52Speaker 03

  And I went to a photo shoot. It was absolutely hilarious. And I was like, these earrings are so nice. Where are they from? And they were like, all right. And I said, because I was thinking they'd be about like a hundred quid or something like expensive, but like maybe if my book did well, I'd treat myself. And then there was this like guy, they were in a sort of locked away. I was like, oh, I see. They're like actual diamonds. I thought they were quite sparkly.

• 38:14Speaker 03

  They took them off and took them away.

• 38:15Adam Buxton?

  Was this in the US?

• 38:17Speaker 03

  No, it was here in London.

• 38:18Adam Buxton?

  Oh, right. Okay.

• 38:19Speaker 03

  In London, not too far from here somewhere. I can't quite remember. Anyway, yes, I was in a, I was in a Vogue interview.

• 38:25Adam Buxton?

  You looked good.

• 38:26Speaker 03

  Oh, fine. I mean, you know, as I can say, it just took like 450 people to do that to me. Yeah.

• 38:33Adam Buxton?

  Well.

• 38:33Speaker 03

  I mean, there are a lot of people there.

• 38:35Adam Buxton?

  In this interview with the journalist Olivia Marks, she was called, you are quoted as saying, you've heard of a face for radio. This is an accent for print. And.

• 38:45Speaker 03

  Oh, yes, I do think, yes. And now I'm doing a podcast, which is so sort of, I've never did. Yes, I do think, I think they're just another sort of slow ranges on the television, aren't they? But I mean, I do, you know what I mean? I just, and I also think I'm a terrible broadcaster, really. And I'm not really, it's not really my thing. But funnily enough, I have really enjoyed, I did, I said yes to doing a podcast because I felt, not your podcast, but to doing the one I do. Which was, I said yes, because I thought, when I made a transition to also doing screenwriting, I was really.

• 39:20Adam Buxton?

  When did that happen, by the way?

• 39:21Speaker 03

  God, I'm trying to remember now, like a few years ago. And I, what I found when I was doing was I was much more busy for obvious reasons. But that in a weird way, it made me feel younger because I was scared again. And I really enjoyed that feeling of like, I don't know what I'm doing. I think I'm potentially extremely bad at this and I'm like scared the whole time. There was something about that that I'm not saying that, you know, oh, I don't, I never feel that in journalism, because of course, you know, there's millions of times you think, oh, I don't know, you know. But having said that, I've just done it a lot longer. And so I knew what I was doing. And so doing something that was sort of disruptive in that way, I thought found

• 40:00Speaker 03

  really sort of energising and great. And so I was looking for something, again, to think, I'll always try a new thing now. Again, that's another thing I felt since having children. Sorry, I'm really rambling now, but another thing I felt since having children is that it made me much more of a professional risk taker, because I suppose you suddenly think, oh, I see, you're by far the most important thing in my life. So, I mean, what, I do this thing, it goes wrong? I mean, these are not important things in life, so it doesn't matter. So I became someone who was more willing to think, yeah, I mean, this will probably be a disaster, but so what? It's not, it's very far from the most important thing in life. And I suppose that has always been the case, and I've never really taken any of my jobs particularly seriously at all, and I still definitely don't, I just can't say any of it seriously.

• 40:45Speaker 03

  But nonetheless, so I was looking to do a thing, and that's why I did the podcast really, because I thought, I don't know what this will be like. It will not be like doing the kinds of broadcasts that I'd done before, which I didn't like at all, and like actively refused to do. I never, I had a thing written on my journalist contacts at the BBC saying, I don't do any television or radio, because I just, I don't really like punditry.

• 41:07Adam Buxton?

  Did you have bad experiences doing that?

• 41:08Speaker 03

  No, first of all, I think it takes quite a long ti- you know, you've got to go there, you've got to wait and do it all and and also it's punditry and I didn't really enjoy, I especially didn't enjoy promoting something I'd done, like my book or things like that, but I did it because it would be a bit rude to say to the publishers, yeah, thanks for printing this. I'm not actually going to do any publicity for it, but you know, please make sure it sells well. So I thought, no, I'm, obviously I'm going to do, I'm going to bite, you know, bite back my fears and and feeling of like, oh, I don't like doing this. But I thought, oh, I'll do a podcast because I had a feeling it might be a little bit like writing newspaper columns, but just talking them out loud.

• 41:46Speaker 03

  And so it has proved, and I have really, really enjoyed it. But a huge part of that is that I absolutely love talking to Richard Osman for however long each week. And I find him really interesting, and I think the things he's done are interesting, and I will enjoy, you know, it will be a really nice kind of date every Monday morning.

• 42:05Adam Buxton?

  How much do you prepare for that show? Because it sounds like a lot of work goes into it.

• 42:09Speaker 03

  It's an area that I am have spent a huge amount of time very interested in in my life. And so I've sort of know all those things, but it's a bit like writing newspaper columns. What you're doing is that you're, in fact, it's very like writing newspaper columns. You are always preparing. You are reading all the week and you're reading all the time in general and you're reading in that area. So when the time comes to talk about it, ideally you would be, I mean, I'm using sarcastic air quotes, quite well read on that particular issue. Um. And so you'd be able to chat about it as if you were as a sort of slightly industry-ish.

• 42:43Adam Buxton?

  And do you, are you good at retaining info?

• 42:46Speaker 03

  I'm good at retaining mad little bits about politicians and stuff that, you know, stupid things that they've, you know, what was their ringtone or stupid? I mean, nonsense like that, because I started, when I first came to The Guardian, I worked on the diary column. And it's really helpful if you're writing a, and we didn't really have stories as such. We made a big virtue of the fact we didn't have any stories, but we had sort of run returning characters who were, those are the new Labour politicians of the the age. And if you can remember sort of funny things that people said, then it will, it really helps with that type of writing. So I've always had that, but in terms of anecdotes, I mean, God, you know, sitting in writers' rooms. The showrunner of the show I'm working on, John Brown, is absolutely incredible.

• 43:26Speaker 03

  He has a for, I mean, his memory, his mind palace is like Sherlock Holmes, but for anecdotes. And so he can remember, he can remember tiny little things that you, tiny little anecdotes that you've seen on a documentary about some absolutely obscure thing. That was now only be available on YouTube ten years ago. And he can remember little emotional beats in those weird documentaries about whatever it may be.

• 43:52Adam Buxton?

  He wrote on succession, didn't he?

• 43:53Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. And Tony Roach, who also wrote on succession, him and I often say to each other, like, how can John remember everything? And we can't remember the thing, we can't remember anecdotes that happened yesterday. I can retain retain some information, but then people remind me of a funny thing, I think, oh, yeah, I should have probably mentioned that in the writers' room, because that would have been quite funny. Or sometimes I remember when I get home.

• 44:13Adam Buxton?

  Right.

• 44:13Speaker 03

  And then I have to come in in the morning and say, hi, just everyone, I would like to let you know that this was relevant to our discussion yesterday. Sorry not to have brought it up in the moment.

• 44:21Adam Buxton?

  How did you find the transition from being a journalist, writing a column to to screenwriting? I mean, have you, what lessons have you learned?

• 44:31Speaker 03

  Well, I'll tell you what the difference is. I really write very quickly for my columns in some ways. And I have, as I say, but weirdly, the quicker I wrote, that it tied in with that thing about efficiency I was saying earlier. And then they did become better at a certain time. Maybe I was just becoming efficient at that time and what have you. But I really write to length and then kind of put the handbrake on it, whatever it is, 1200 words or not. Sometimes it's 950. And that's sort of it. And then obviously with comedy writing, you are doing, and I worked on a show with Amanda Iannucci, you're doing, I mean, so many drafts and so.

• 45:07Adam Buxton?

  Which was the show you did with Amanda?

• 45:09Speaker 03

  Avenue Five, which was set, which, speaking of sad people in space.

• 45:13Adam Buxton?

  Sure.

• 45:14Speaker 03

  Yeah, they were sad people in space. But that was extraordinary. You know, when you had lots of writers and he doesn't do a writer's room, though. He does it a different way. He's got his own process and but you are doing masses and masses of drafts again. And you become very on. And I suppose there's something about the columnist, isn't there, that's so sort of wanky? I mean, I'm against picture bylines in general, but the column is you've got your name, it's quite big, you're a big byline. I, I mean, I've never been like a big fan of all of that. But this is much more, you're in a group, your stuff is going to get rewritten loads of times, you're going to rewrite some of your comedy heroes stuff and think, oh, my God, I can't change a single word of this. This is written by someone who's written all my favorite shows.

• 45:52Speaker 03

  But in the end, you do. And it's much more of a team. And actually, you don't feel so much, oh, it's my name above the door. You feel it's much more of a team. For the showrunner, I can't speak for that because that person has got so much on their shoulders. But for everyone else, you feel like if there are mistakes in this, we'll all catch it together. And it's really nice. But it's a, you know, it's a long term project. What I always think about journalism is it's like, this is where people with no attention span or in some ways, you know, it's all over by the afternoon. And then, you know, if you've done brilliantly one day. You could have an absolute shocker the next day and, you know, get a massive legal and something go wrong with your collar, whatever it is. Whereas on, this was the equivalent of long term. I used to go to the pub with all my friends who'd be working on whatever business they were in.

• 46:36Speaker 03

  Long term projects, I would say, you know, not all of their stuff was finished by the end of the day and then they had to reimagine and rebuild it all up again the next day. And then it was all finished again. So it's quite a good job for the short attention span, John, isn't it? But you need to keep a longer attention span and a bigger picture thing on other types of writing. So again, it's been good though. It's disrupts you in a way that, you know, you can do a different thing.

• 47:00Adam Buxton?

  And then what does a typical day look like? For example, when I think of writing for TV, I imagine someone sitting there trying to think of a story and what, and trying to think of characters and what will the character say to the other?

• 47:13Speaker 03

  Well, you know, I mean, it is a bit like that, but it depends how it's done and how your show is organised. And obviously, I'm working on a US show, which is why they have HBO, which is why they very kindly have enough money to have a writer's room for a long time.

• 47:30Adam Buxton?

  So the production is based in the UK. Oh, okay, right.

• 47:32Speaker 03

  Because I guess the writers are based in the, well, we have two American writers.

• 47:36Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 47:37Speaker 03

  And then the same way that Succession, the writing was in the UK because Jesse is from the UK.

• 47:43Adam Buxton?

  Yes, that was HBO as well, isn't it?

• 47:44Speaker 03

  That's also HBO. But US television is different and they can in many ways afford to have these writers rooms, although the writer's strike was about, you know, erosions of those rights to writers rooms.

• 47:57Adam Buxton?

  They have like twenty people in a room sometimes, do they? Right.

• 48:00Speaker 03

  And they have, and it goes on for many months. But they've always done that because what they really want is they want something different to what you, you know, you think of UK TV and lots of our best comedies are like two, three seasons and that's it. They want to get, they always had to, I think the rule was, didn't you have to get to a hundred and something episodes, maybe like a hundred and two or something?

• 48:21Adam Buxton?

  To go into syndication.

• 48:22Speaker 03

  To go into syndication. And if you didn't, then your show was going to be, so they really needed to get there. And they also needed you to have, I don't know, twenty five episodes of this thing in a season or twenty episodes of this thing in a season, whereas we had, were quite happy with six half hours. So that's different and that is far more labour intensive. But it's, it's, it's a sort of, you know, it's a question of scale and scalability.

• 48:44Adam Buxton?

  And how many in, in your writer's room currently?

• 48:46Speaker 03

  In ours were, um.

• 48:50Speaker 03

  Seven of us and then those two, a script coordinator and a writer's assistant.

• 48:54Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 48:54Speaker 03

  You're kind of all in the gang together.

• 48:56Adam Buxton?

  Feels like a good number.

• 48:58Speaker 03

  Yeah. Well, it's an eight episode season.

• 49:00Adam Buxton?

  Oh, okay.

• 49:01Speaker 03

  You see, yeah, if you go bigger at any scale, and also if you do more than a half hour, that's for a half hour comedy. If you're doing an hour, you need more.

• 49:08Adam Buxton?

  And is it a bit like succession in that you divvy up the episodes and you'll say, okay, Marina and so and so, you can be mainly in control of number four and is it like that?

• 49:17Speaker 03

  From what I can see, anyone who has been in Jesse Armstrong's succession room, strongly wishes to replicate that working experience on their own projects. And lots of them are in charge of their own projects now. And I think lots of them think that was a really functional way of working. You talk about the, no, you don't do any writers writing in the writers' room, apart from on the walls. So you write all this stuff down, but only at the end of the writers' room will people go off to be writing drafts of their episodes.

• 49:44Adam Buxton?

  Oh, I see. So in the writers' room, it's all.

• 49:47Speaker 03

  It's just hours and hours of talking and, and the, and John, our showrunner, writing on the wall. Yeah, God, I mean, it's great. Georgia approached it to me about the succession room. She's, he's a fantastic comedy writer. She said, oh yeah, we'd always used to get to the end of the succession room and think, oh gosh, you've got to go and write it now.

• 50:04Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 50:05Speaker 03

  Because they'd had so many months, just like crying with laughter all together for many hours a day in a room. And then suddenly thinking, okay, right, now we have to write it.

• 50:11Adam Buxton?

  Yes, I think I would be good at the talking part. And I would struggle a little bit with the actual writing things down.

• 50:18Speaker 03

  I think the person who is marshalling it, the showrunner, I think that's really hard. Yeah, being one of the, one of the people who's there to talk is a lot easier than being the person trying to sort of

• 50:30Adam Buxton?

  Right.

• 50:30Speaker 03

  channel the discussion and manage it. I think that's a huge sort of constant creative burden. And obviously, you know, a lot of writing with a whiteboard pen on the walls. So that's a lot of writing burden.

• 50:42Adam Buxton?

  Yeah. You see, the thing is that I'm thinking like about the snacks.

• 50:47Speaker 03

  Oh yeah, the snacks are great. And someone gets you lunch. It's really nice.

• 50:50Adam Buxton?

  Do you always have the same lunch or do you?

• 50:52Speaker 03

  No, different every day.

• 50:54Adam Buxton?

  Hmm.

• 50:54Speaker 03

  Yeah. I mean, I really, it's, it's a cold, cold day when you have to return to your own kitchen and think, all right, where was lunch? Sorry. We're not ordering it.

• 51:05Adam Buxton?

  Yeah. Now, in the, you talk about Richard and your successful relationship with him, which is a joy to listen to.

• 51:15Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's so interesting. I mean, he knows a million things. I just, I love it.

• 51:19Adam Buxton?

  He does know a lot of stuff and he's very confident. I think he is a good demonstration of the value of just, just not being hesitant and talking as if you are absolutely sure of, of how to do things.

• 51:33Speaker 03

  Yes, I think you're right, yeah.

• 51:34Adam Buxton?

  Especially in the creative world. It's such a valuable thing because the creative world and trying to make something from nothing is so nebulous in all sorts of ways. And to have someone like him who goes, this is how you do it. This is what you need. This is what you should never do. It's so seductive. It's like, oh, yes, tell us what to do.

• 51:54Speaker 03

  Equally, I think what he has is, which I think is a really great thing always in life, is that there's a dissonance between how he looks and how he might present. And actually, the type of person you see, a lot of people think, oh, I really like him. He's the sort of, you know, but he's a kind of nerdish. He's a statistician. He's on pointless or whatever. He's the, but actually, Richard is a total alpha.

• 52:18Adam Buxton?

  Oh, of course.

• 52:19Speaker 03

  And so that there's something, I, I really like that in life where there's just a slight sort of like, oh, I see you're a surprise. Yeah, he's a constant surprise, which I really like.

• 52:29Adam Buxton?

  No, the loudest aspects of his personality for me are the alpha aspects.

• 52:33Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 52:33Adam Buxton?

  Because, because I do envy that level of certainty. And also a kind of reliance on stats. But you have that as well. Am I right in thinking that you?

• 52:45Speaker 03

  I don't think I'm very good at stats, but I know a few.

• 52:47Adam Buxton?

  But you're aware of the technical stats for, for example, your Guardian column. I think I'm right in saying.

• 52:54Speaker 03

  Yeah, no, I'm, I'm glad of that, yeah.

• 52:55Adam Buxton?

  You stay across that stuff. You engage, you have to sort of engage as a journalist with comments and opinions about your work. And has that always come easily to you or?

• 53:07Speaker 03

  Richard said to me the other day, criticism hurts when it's right. And if I felt like I've really, I can't think, it sounds quite bad. I can't think of any specific criticism that's really got to me, but it wouldn't have been for quite some time, then it's probably, it will have been probably because it's right or I felt that thing. And, you know, I felt it keenly because it was raw, because they were, they were right about what they were saying. In general, I.

• 53:34Speaker 03

  I I have to say, I do feel still that I work to live rather than necessarily live to work. Um although I really like my work, I I can't really take a lot of this super seriously. And I find it quite embarrassing. I maybe that's an unattractive aspect of a certain type of Britishness, but I find aspects of really giving too much of a shit quite embarrassing about work. And there's a certain sort of, you know, this is why American journalism, I was finds so self regarding, because you see the difference between us and American journalists is that we know we're scum. The British journalists, they actually at some level know that's got, whereas Americans are always involved in this kind of higher calling.

• 54:16Speaker 03

  I don't think any of my work is a higher calling at all. It's really fun to be involved with, but in the end,

• 54:25Speaker 03

  I can't take any of it too seriously.

• 54:27Adam Buxton?

  How about when you look at the stats, the actual numbers that show your engagement with your readers, how does that affect what you actually write?

• 54:35Speaker 03

  Oh, I don't write according to what I think will be a ideally, hopefully, my instincts are not allied with like the number one story that would trend on the Guardian website because you can't really judge it on that anyway. I think you've just got to sort of slightly do what you feel because it is an opinion thing. But in in general, I do mind about the numbers because I think I am, I think columnist more than anyone else. I think it is a numbers game. You know, I've got friends who do incredibly important work and they might cover obscure foreign conflicts or whatever it is, and that is far more important than any nonsense I'm saying about The Rock or whoever it is today, far, far more important.

• 55:17Speaker 03

  So for them, it is nothing to do with a numbers game. And I really like being in a media sort of ecosystem in my paper where all of that stuff is covered. And it may not do the biggest numbers, but it is far more important than what I'm doing. But what I would say about my thing is that it matters that it does. Decent numbers, because otherwise, what are you really there for?

• 55:38Adam Buxton?

  Can you think of a time?

• 55:39Speaker 03

  Sacked after this. I'm sorry, I try my best.

• 55:42Adam Buxton?

  Can you think of a time, though, when, because of the stats, you have thought, oh, I won't do that again?

• 55:47Speaker 03

  No, never, because I've, in general, I would say my stats are are are all right.

• 55:53Adam Buxton?

  So you're just sort of.

• 55:54Speaker 03

  If I do one that people aren't necessarily, I will have normally done that because sometimes I will feel like I want to cash in my chips writing facetious things about this or that. And for instance, on things like the post office before, I know it's great now that everyone is writing about it. And by the way, I'm extremely a come lately person to it myself, but there was a period where I liked to cover it and others didn't cover it necessarily. And this is long before the drama and things like that. And so I feel like doing those things every now and then is a good use of chips, as they say.

• 56:26Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, and so in that instance, you would have looked at the numbers and thought, okay, people are engaging with this.

• 56:32Speaker 03

  Funny enough, those columns did well. I did look at the numbers because I thought, oh, this will go right down because people don't care about this thing. Or they don't understand it, or they see the words computer terminals and goes over. But it was a real, I tried to write it in a way that was just like from the first paragraph. Hey, don't go away, this is actually really important. Sometimes you have to write about those things in a way that isn't your normal voice, I think, in the paper. Because you're saying, hi, you're effectively saying, I'm cashing in my chips for those other things. But can you please pay attention to this because I think it's really important? Yeah, so that I've tried to write about this in a specific way, but people were interested, funny enough, and they did get shared a lot. It's it's interesting, there's a lot of these things, if you build it, they'll come. And there are plenty of other scandals a bit like that.

• 57:15Speaker 03

  You know, ITV have got one coming up about the infected blood inquiry, which I think, you know, if you go to the post office inquiry, you come out of the lift, you turn right for the post office and left for infected blood, which is a shot.

• 57:26Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 57:26Speaker 03

  In a in a drama about it, anyway, and it's there's lots of things, the loan charge scandal. There are many, many things that I want to write more about that are on, you know, there's kind of slightly forgotten things to some extent, that when you hear about them, you genuinely can't believe they're true. The infected blood story, if your listeners want to Google it, I genuinely can't believe, you can't believe it happened. And it's so shocking and.

• 57:49Adam Buxton?

  Is that your phone?

• 57:52Adam Buxton?

  Or is that mine? Oh, it's mine. I apologize. Where's mine? Oh, it's on the table. That's my son.

• 58:02Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 58:04Adam Buxton?

  What's he gonna be saying?

• 58:05Speaker 03

  How, what are your children? What have you got?

• 58:08Adam Buxton?

  Uh, I've got a nineteen year old boy who was just calling me there.

• 58:12Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 58:12Adam Buxton?

  And a twenty one year old boy, man, mainly boy, and a fifteen year old daughter.

• 58:21Speaker 03

  So you've got two boys and a girl? That's what I've got.

• 58:23Adam Buxton?

  Oh, yeah, that's the best.

• 58:25Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's a good combo, two, the, but, two oldest boys and youngest girl.

• 58:28Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 58:28Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 58:28Adam Buxton?

  Same as yours?

• 58:29Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 58:29Adam Buxton?

  Ah, yeah, that was quite, it worked out quite well, actually, because, um, well, me talking about struggling as a young parent and wishing I was in space. That changed when our daughter came along and suddenly, maybe just because some time had gone by and I felt a little bit more confident and calm and was no longer tortured by the pram in the corridor and all that bullshit. Plus the fact that it was a girl, I don't know. I mean, for a dad, it's a peculiar kind of relationship, I suppose. And she just transformed everything, really, not to say, guys.

• 59:07Speaker 03

  Tied the room together. That's what ours did. Yeah.

• 59:09Adam Buxton?

  You know, I love you, boys. Don't listen to this one day and think, oh, yeah, so dad didn't really give a shit about us.

• 59:15Speaker 03

  We're looking right over at pictures of you and it's absolutely lovely. Yeah, I know, you know, I know what you mean.

• 59:21Adam Buxton?

  But, yeah, it was, it, it was pretty amazing. There's something, well, yeah, it was totally different energy from a little girl and I think they might be cleverer than boys. I don't wanna, I don't wanna, uh, go too deep down that rabbit hole. But, um, yeah, it was great. It's really nice.

• 59:40Speaker 03

  Lovely.

• 59:41Adam Buxton?

  Okay, I'm aware that we have to wrap up.

• 59:44Speaker 03

  In order that I can take one of those children to the dentist.

• 59:47Adam Buxton?

  So you have to go and take your son to the dentist?

• 59:49Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's, it's, it's just the brace's dentist, so it's not a hugely long appointment, but something's broken, so it needs fixing.

• 59:55Adam Buxton?

  I've got to go to the dentist tomorrow. I haven't been for a few years and I got a reminder. It is a little bit stressful. Pretty sure he's gonna find some terrible things. Like dentists can diagnose serious problems as well with the rest of your body, can't they? Because it, sometimes it shows up in your mouth.

• 1:00:11Speaker 03

  Wow, well, you've just laid something on me there that I'm now gonna be thinking about next time I go.

• 1:00:21Adam Buxton?

  Wait. This is an ad for Squarespace. Okay, we'll return to the AI apocalypse in just a wee wee moment, but first I wanted to talk about Squarespace. Do you know about Squarespace, Steve? Uh, yes, Monty. I think I might even be a little bit more tuned into modern tech, websites, et cetera, than you. I don't know, just guessing. Oh, Steve, I love this dynamic. I'm old and conservative and you're young and progressive and that's what makes the Newswind podcast such great listening. But yes, you're right. I must admit, I didn't know much about Squarespace. But because my new grumble book, Hell in a Handcart, is out this month, and I look forward to getting enraged by that, so I should hope. Em, um, um. Anyway, the publishers, Bluestar and Dogwhistle, made a beautiful website for the book using Squarespace. I know, I got the newsletter that you sent out using Squarespace and the website

• 1:01:03Adam Buxton?

  does look great. Videos of you airing your views, members' areas for your mad fans. You've even got a merch store, I see. That's right. The Union Jack top hat is a big seller. But they constructed it all so fast with Squarespace. They did most of it over one lunchtime, Steve. Well, you wouldn't want to spend much longer on it, would you? Shut up, Steve. But here's the thing. Anyone listening to this can start a free trial right now at squarespace.com/boxton and see how easy and versatile Squarespace is. And when they're ready to launch a new website or domain, they can save 10% off their first purchase by using the offer code BOXTON at checkout. Right, well, maybe I'll visit squarespace.com/boxton and start a new website just to refute all the nonsense in your new book. Oh, don't do that, Steve. I will. Oh, shut up, Steve. Uh. Shut up. Now, back to more depressing matters on Newswind.

• 1:01:49Adam Buxton?

  Continue.

• 1:02:00Adam Buxton?

  Hey, welcome back, podcasts. That was Marina Hyde talking to me there back in April of this year. And I'm very grateful to her for making the time in her ludicrously busy schedule to come and waffle with me.

• 1:02:17Adam Buxton?

  So I wanted to share a few more of the messages I got back from friends of the podcast. When I asked them what their go to uplifting movies were a couple of weeks back. And the other day I was worrying about this. As you know, I like to worry about almost everything. And the worry I had the other day was that throwing a load of recommendations for uplifting movies during politically turbulent times. At my listeners could be seen as promoting apathy or denial. Oh yeah, that's exactly how I saw it actually. You see, that's what Rosie thought, but I would say that times are always turbulent, aren't they? One way or another. And you've got to remind yourself now and again what it's all about so you can prevent.

• 1:03:03Adam Buxton?

  A terminal slide into the slough of Despond. What do you think about that, Puglegs? I've done a lot of poos in the slough of Despond. I thought you had. Obviously, watching films isn't the only way of preventing a terminal slide into the slough of Despond. But you know, it's one thing that it's relatively easy for most of us to do. All right, Buckles, that's enough overthinking, just share some of the suggestions. All right, before I share a few recommendations from friends of the podcast. I wanted to share a recommendation for a documentary that I found very uplifting and inspiring. And it's called Crip Camp.

• 1:03:44Adam Buxton?

  Came out in twenty twenty, directed by Nicole Newnham and Jim Lebrecht. And it starts in nineteen seventy one with footage shot at a place called Camp Janed. A camp for teens with disabilities. That was running at the time. And the camp was created to be this utopian environment. To bring able bodied and physically handicapped people together. To give them new and different and positive experiences. And the first act of this documentary, Crip Camp, is made up of footage. That was shot in the early seventies and it's really joyous.

• 1:04:26Adam Buxton?

  There's just some great moments that capture the personalities of the people there and getting on with each other. If you've ever been to a summer camp. And had a good time, because I know you can easily go to a camp and have a bad time. But if you've been lucky enough to do that kind of thing, spend a few weeks. In your teens, suddenly off the chain, hanging out with a new group of people and you have a very intense and memorable experience. And that's what you see these people doing in this documentary. It's just very nostalgic, but also very inspiring as well to see that environment that's been created there. And anyway, the second half of the documentary

• 1:05:10Adam Buxton?

  is more about some of the people who happened to be at that camp, Camp Janed, and how their lives progressed from that point, especially one of the camp councillors, was called Judy Heumann, H E U M A double N. She used a wheelchair after contracting polio when she was two. And the second half of Crypt Camp shows how Judy went on to become one of the world's most prominent and respected advocates for disability rights. And that stuff is very sobering, but very inspiring. So anyway, I recommend that as a film that will leave you, I think, ultimately feeling positive about people. But anyway, on to a few recommendations

• 1:05:52Adam Buxton?

  from friends of the podcast, beginning with one from Benga Adelakhan. Benga is a member of the band Metronomy, who I love. And you may have heard him on episode 195 with his son Ravi, who's also going to give us a recommendation. But here's Benga.

• 1:06:10Speaker 04

  Hey there, Adam. This may not be the most uplifting choice. It's something that I watched for the first time when I was eight years old. This was in the eighties. It's Transformers, the movie, the first animated Transformers cartoon. And it starts with Autobot City getting completely destroyed and Optimus Prime being killed. But it's got, for me, kind of the most amazing soundtrack, and it's like visual comfort food. And it all comes good in the end, and really reminds me of a very kind of happy, carefree time. Also has what I believe was Orson Welles's last movie credit. He did the voice of Unicron,

• 1:06:53Speaker 04

  which was a planet that ate other planets.

• 1:06:56Adam Buxton?

  Benga also said he liked Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, but I thought Transformers was a bit more of a deep cut. Now here's Benga's son Ravi with a couple of films that always hit the spot for him.

• 1:07:08Speaker 05

  Hi Adam, this is Ravi and my uplifting films are Inside Out 2 and Trolls World Tour. Why is that? Because I find them very funny, interesting and they're just fun movies to watch, especially as a family.

• 1:07:24Adam Buxton?

  There we go, Ravi. Thank you so much to Ravi and Benga for their suggestions. Now, here is friend of the podcast, Leanne La Havas, super talented singer-songwriter who was a guest on episode two back in nineteen, nineteen twenty-five, no, back in twenty fifteen. She told me about working with Prince and she played an amazing version of her song Grow. And right now she is out in Brazil on tour. But she left me a short voice message to say that as well as Sideways and Spirited Away, there's one film that always makes her feel better about the world.

• 1:08:04Speaker 06

  The first one that I thought of, like the actual, as soon as I was asked this question by you, Adam, the first one I thought is Sister Act 2. I stopped myself from watching it a lot because it makes me cry. But that speaks to me like directly as a vocalist.

• 1:08:28Adam Buxton?

  And what a vocalist she is. Thank you, Leanne, very much. You know what? I've never seen Sister Act 2 or maybe even Sister Act 1. So it's time I sorted that out. I'll add it to the list. Now, finally, here is friend of the podcast, a brilliant musician who appeared on podcast number one hundred and ninety-four, who has been described by some as a British Captain Beefheart. I don't know how pleased he would be with that comparison, but anyway, when I asked Richard for his uplifting movie recommendations, he recorded a voice message late one night after his partner and frequent musical collaborator Sally Pilkington had gone up to bed and Richard was downstairs.

• 1:09:13Adam Buxton?

  Keeping his voice down on the sofa curled up with his cat Trouble. And by way of an example for an uplifting film, I had said to Richard that I always love. Midnight Run, the film with Charles Grodin and Robert De Niro. If you've never seen Midnight Run, come on, mate, that's gonna sort you out. One of the best comedy thrillers ever made. Anyway, Richard is a big cinephile. He came back with a lot of recommendations for uplifting films. And here is a selection of some of those.

• 1:09:45Speaker 04

  Hey, Adam, I'm just here with Trouble. Here she is.

• 1:09:53Speaker 04

  That's Trouble. My first choice of an uplifting film is, well, I was pleased with your choice of Midnight Run. That's a great film. And mine also stars Robert De Niro, but I think objectively probably isn't a great film. I was trying desperately to think of something else, but I decided to go with honesty. And one of my ultimate pick-me-up films of the last few years is also a bit of a guilty pleasure. And that is The Intern with Robert De Niro and Anne Hathaway.

• 1:10:32Speaker 04

  And it's kind of incredibly slick, sickly sweet, but vomit-making. But when I've had a cold or maybe if I've been hungover or something, it's a kind of hideous but soothing balm that I could just sort of smear over my eyes and mind. I can't recommend it wholeheartedly as a movie, but it does something for me. You've got to park cynicism at the door. Otherwise, it's it's not gonna work. And there's probably a thousand films I would recommend that you watch before it.

• 1:11:11Speaker 04

  But this is the truth anyway. My ultimate pick-me-up film is The Intern. I also wanted to mention a film by Yasjiro Uzuo called Good Morning, which really is a good film. It's a masterpiece, as well as being very daft. It's also really warm. The photography is absolutely beautiful, and it's got the most fantastic child actors in. And also a repeating fart gag throughout the film, but they always just use the one fart sound effect. And it's a it's a very good, a very funny film and very moving.

• 1:11:56Speaker 04

  And I'd also like to mention Buena Vista Social Club, which is a very uplifting movie, and I found it really inspiring. As a musician, especially the sort of end passages when they go and get to play Carnegie Hall. And there's this slow motion shot of Abraham Ferrer intercut with him talking about his mother, and then him looking out from the stage at these people giving him a wild ovation. And that was just like, wow, this is what dreams are made of. And finally, just a quick mention to another go-to favorite, which is Happy Gilmore.

• 1:12:38Adam Buxton?

  So there you go. It all comes back to Adam Sandler, you see. It's almost as if there's some structure in the podcast. Thank you so much to Richard Dawson for all his recommendations there and for his honesty when it came to The Intern. I have seen The Intern, but only once, and I have to be honest that I don't remember being very uplifted. I was disturbed by one scene when Robert De Niro, who is playing this man who has to go back into the workforce in his later years, I can't remember exactly why, and he's in this office surrounded by groovy younger people.

• 1:13:19Adam Buxton?

  And I think I'm remembering this right, Anne Hathaway at one point gives him a massage and he gets a boner. That's uplifting in a way, isn't it, for his trousers? But um, no, I will go back. I'm sure, you know, Richard, I think was clear that he's not claiming masterpiece status for the intern. I'll go back and give it another go. But thanks, Richard. Really appreciate it, man. Beautiful recommendations. We'll check out that Ozu film, and it's been years since I saw Buena Vista Social Club, so I'll see that again. I'll put links to the trailers for some of these films in the description of today's podcast if you want to be reminded.

• 1:14:00Adam Buxton?

  Okay, that's it for this week. Thanks to Seamus Murphy Mitchell for his invaluable production support and conversation editing. Thanks to Helen Green. She does the artwork for this podcast. She's just done a new illustration of my older face for the cover of the book, which I've just seen. And it's good. I guess it'll be the face for the podcast as well next year after the book comes out. Thanks to all at Acast for all their hard work liaising with my sponsors. But thanks especially to you for listening right to the end. Come on. You are gonna get a hug off this middle-aged guy. So if that sounds appalling, switch off now.

• 1:14:44Adam Buxton?

  Come here. Good to see you. And until next time, we share the same sonic space. Please go carefully. I love you. Bye.