Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: Does Hollywood have a problem with censorship?
The rest is entertainment is presented by Octopus Energy. Now, fan mail is one of entertainment's strangest bargains. You send total devotion one way and the understanding that nothing may come back.
Certainly in our day, you would write to a film star or a singer. I wrote to Howard Jones. And maybe three months later, a sort of signed photo comes back that's clearly pro forma, you know, that you know Howard's never really looked at.
Steve Martin used to have the performer sort of thing, which would just leave blanks, like insert, like small details to make a joke about how completely impersonal his personal reply to you was. It was just like a standard thing.
Impersonal is interesting. That's why we're talking about this, because with Octopus Energy, you always can reply to their emails. And not only can you reply to them, they will go to the same small group of people who always deal with you. That's like unbelievable.
Yeah. It's almost unprecedented that a company you're giving your money to will actually respond to you.
Are contactable in some way.
Hello and welcome to this episode of The Rest Is Entertainment with me, Marina Hyde.
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Chapter 2: Who is Andy Burnham and why is he considered cool?
And me, Richard Osman. Hello, everybody. Hi, Marina. How are you, Richard? I'm very, very well, thank you. I've been away for a week, which is absolutely lovely, but I'm delighted to be back.
Yes.
To talk about show business and billionaires. What are the billionaires up to?
What are the billionaires up to? Because we are going to be talking about Artificial, which is an almost completed film about Sam Altman. that Amazon have just dropped for reasons.
They'll have a good reason.
I'm sure they'll have a really great reason for doing that.
We're also going to talk about, we're about to have a new prime minister, as you know. What, are we? We're recording this on Monday.
Yes, I believe that today we will see the great drama addicted, drama afflicted British public will see that lectern for the seventh time in a decade.
But please don't panic because we are not going to talk about politics. We're going to ask the question, is Andy Burnham cool?
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Chapter 3: What did Quentin Tarantino say about movies post-pandemic?
He is, I think, potentially the worst, which really matters in that particular group. But he's the OpenAI sort of chief executive. OpenAI, obviously their most famous product is ChatGPT, but they have various other systems. Remember, it started OpenAI as a not-for-profit, sort of weirdly idealistic, altruistic enterprise.
And in 2016, Sam Altman was saying, anyone familiar with the 1930s, it's absolutely chilling watching Trump in action. Anyway, by the time of the second inauguration, there he was in oligarch's row. OpenAI is no longer a non-profit. It is a rapacious capitalist entity. They've accepted a number of defense contracts that even Anthropic said, we can't in all conscience do this.
Even anthropic.
Yeah. Anyway, so that's who Sam Altman is. And the film is called Artificial. And it is the story of, these are often quite helpful if you're trying to dramatize anything. There's five days in 2023 where Sam Altman is ousted at OpenAI. And then he comes back.
Spoiler alert.
Spoiler alert, if you're catching up with the last few years on Boxset, I'm sorry. This film is directed by Luca Guadagnino, who did Call Me By Your Name, Challengers.
He's absolutely the real deal.
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Chapter 4: What are the best films released since the pandemic?
Couldn't be more of a real deal of a director at the moment.
yeah it's written by Simon Rich who's a former SNL writer who's done various other things it stars Andrew Garfield as Sam Altman also I mean the cast is a joke it's not it's also Monica Barbaro Yuri Borisov from Anora from Anora yeah Ike Barinholtz As Elon Musk.
I have to see this. Ike Barinholtz, if people didn't know him, he's the guy who plays Sal Saperstein on the studio. I literally love him. And he doesn't look unadjacent to Elon Musk. I'd never noticed it before.
As soon as I read it, I was like, I can't wait to see it. Jason Schwartzman, Cooper Hoffman, Sasha Mamet, Chris O'Dowd, Mark Rylance. It's sort of long and strong, this thing. And it's nearly finished. It's at a sort of screening stage.
Long and strong, that's a cast list description.
Yes, like in a bridge hand.
Like the Man City bench.
In terms of what has happened, Amazon has dropped it. Amazon were making this film, I don't know what it's cost, something like Ā£40 million.
Ā£40 million they reckon.
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Chapter 5: How does Andy Burnham's music taste reflect his identity?
I think sort of 30 or 40, but 38 billion cloud partnership. And so, yes, I mean, it doesn't look great, does it? That they've got this far.
The story is they'd obviously commissioned this movie. They'd seen the movie and word from inside the Amazon campus, it was actually, it was a lot darker than, than we were imagining. And certainly the people who've seen it, they say the portrayal of Sam Altman and Elon Musk are particularly... I mean, brilliant is what people are saying, but particularly bleak and dark.
And so Amazon saw this and decided that maybe... Because, of course, 40 million is the budget of the movie. So you're now at the stage where Amazon go, well, we're going to put this on our platform. We're going to spend the marketing money, which could be another 40 million. So you're at that pivot point.
But they're going to put it in cinemas first because this is clearly... This would have awards chances. As we know, this is a sort of...
But if you're Amazon at that moment, this is a moment where if you can press the jettison button, you are not paying for the second half of that. And more importantly, if you have relationships with OpenAI, which clearly they do, you are not having to use your platform to constantly promote this thing.
And you're not having to have Amazon branding behind Ike Barinholtz and Andrew Garfield sitting there talking about the movie.
Some people have seen an early draft of this, so we should say a little bit more. It's obviously not a sort of hallmark hymn to Sam Hortman. And people who've read early drafts, which will have changed, but as you say, if it's got darker, it apparently portrays him, Sam Hortman, as sort of intensely manipulative.
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Chapter 6: What does Andy Burnham's album list reveal about him?
a schema, a sort of power hoarder, monomaniac, et cetera. And there are lots, obviously there are lots of walk-ons for other people, even including people like the Microsoft CEO, Satya Nadella. And I mean, there's just no way this can look good at all. And we have to think of it in the context of everything that has been happening recently.
First of all, you know, you think about that movie The Apprentice that starred Sebastian Stan as this sort of young Donald Trump and Jeremy Strong. That was going to be 100 percent in awards conversation, but it really struggled to get distribution, really struggled.
Even though it was quite clearly going to pick up some awards and it was nominated and it was going to be in all sorts of awards conversation. The problem is not with the creators. And a lot of people may think these people, these guys define our age. These guys are extraordinarily powerful. The problem is about them being tackled as subjects is absolutely not with writers and creatives.
I personally know a number of people who have projects about these guys in development. And there are film and TV projects about the attack barons in development, all of them, you know, we do know that the social reckoning is coming out.
Which is the follow up to the social network, what Mark Zuckerberg did next.
Yes, and the trailer's out and that's coming out in October. Aaron Sorkin, who has written and directed this time as well, said that, you know, we haven't heard from anyone except their lawyers saying just be careful. That's from Meta's lawyers. But we're yet to see any films about Peter Thiel in production. Even, you know, he's extremely litigious.
But he actually does literally believe in the Antichrist. So for me, you know, it seems like... Worth a shot at covering him creatively. This is a man whose companies are being knit tighter and tighter into the apparatus of a number of supposedly democratic states. I know so many people who've had projects. And it was really interesting.
After the election of Trump in 2024, a lot of those people, a lot of those companies, the big companies, called those people who had those projects and said, don't worry, we're still going to carry on with them. Okay, I haven't... seen any of those projects come out. They are not even greenlit. They're not.
And a lot of those people, the studios are going to... And these are not small spec script writers. These are people with big overall deals who are tackling the big subjects, the big people of the age. People are saying to them, have you got anything that isn't about Elon Musk or... Peter Thiel or whoever it is.
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Chapter 7: Why are cultural lists becoming so popular in media?
That's the point.
I don't think there is a financial counterculture. It's very, very hard. Why was it so hard for The Apprentice to find a distributor? I mean, it was an absolute uphill struggle for that. And it wasn't particularly expensive. It was very good. And they just couldn't seem to find anyone to take it on.
But even as you're saying that, all I'm thinking is, well, there's a gap in the market. And there's a very, very lucrative gap in the market. That's all I think. You might not be doing these through the legacy studios where something's costing you 75 million. But you can certainly, you know, if, you know, Blumhouse wanted to do a horror.
They should do a tech baron's horror.
But, you know, that feels to me like such an easy thing to do. I think when everything gets so calcified, when a culture gets so calcified and so in the hands of a very few people, which is exactly what's happened now, that's when the fight back begins. I always think that because creative people never change how they're creative.
Creative people never change the sort of stories that they want to tell. It's just that at the moment, someone's not going to give them $40 million plus another $40 million in marketing to tell that story. So creativity is still creativity. It will find a way through the dam. You know, the water finds its way through the concrete. And I just think that there's always a reaction to these things.
There is always a reaction, but you often have to live through a period of censorship or self-censorship first. And I worry that we're sort of living through that period. In fact, we clearly are. It's just a different calculus when people are talking about, oh, we can't make this project because of our cloud partnerships. I mean, this is something we haven't been thinking about before.
But you can see it across all sorts of things. You can see it across late night, across news, across now in cinema. Lots of people are just stepping back and saying, well, we won't do that. We'll do... Because these firms have become so completely powerful within their own business, not just like they're outside people in the culture that we might not want to offend.
They're so knit in to the delivery of your services that you don't really have another choice or they feel they don't.
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Chapter 8: What recommendations are made for movies and shows?
Sorry, everybody. But, you know, I do think that that kind of last swish of the dinosaur's tail sometimes is a real fillip for creativity and for where we go next in culture. And we live in these absurd sort of end times that... we live in as regards money and tech and art. I just don't think it can last. I think something else comes out of it that's interesting and intriguing.
And if I was a 21-year-old at home at the moment who's a filmmaker or a writer or a creator of any sort, well, I know what I'd be thinking and I know what I'd be And that's the next generation of art that we're going to get. I agree.
And I do think that there are exciting things that we can see already happening to co-opt the language of these tech firms, the disruptive. There's some really interesting disruptive creators in all sorts of different parts of the creative industries. But I'm not sure that they're politically disruptive so far.
Maybe that will come, but I think they're creatively disruptive and I think they're doing all sorts of other interesting things, but I don't see it coming in a sort of political way. And I think that that is, hopefully that will follow.
But we are 100% definitively in an era where American popular culture is under the yoke of about five people, all of whom are billionaires and all of whom have quite thin skins.
Yes. And it's interesting that so many people are moving away. We should do something on China maxing in a future episode because lots of the cultural, the cultural pull is moving past even somewhere like Seoul and it's just moving east. And I think that lots of interesting stuff or just compelling stuff for young people, Gen Z, but particularly Gen A, is now coming from China.
And I think that... But of course, because of all this nonsense.
Where, of course, they have no censorship.
Yeah.
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