Under The Skin with Russell Brand & Richard Ayoade

do you like DIY have you that not bad what's never say that let me talk about my DIY history yeah I built a pergola it's a corporate pergola pergola I don't know what that is well an outdoor swing it's sort of it's a glorified frame so you know those frames that are linked it's like a square then you'd hang hanging baskets of them and there they're big in the suburbs and you built one about one of those I sent up five still chief among your achievements it's on my CV I really yeah it's pretty good but uh I quite like DIY I like making things well I had to almost entirely overhaul my entire personality again middle aged but gross I dedicated my early life to the pursuit I don't know if you noticed or because you were busy living your own life but of celebrity and so I've sort of like zealously bought into the worst aspects of the ideals of our age I mean I I don't know the full story how did you exactly and walk a mile in my shoes but I'm aware that you were in papers yes with frequency but I mean who's to say why exactly that one that's right because we aren't responsible for the way that we are received Anna is subsequently rendered in secondary media and I think a lot of the mental illness we see from people in now should we call it an industry or should we call it a game their product it now frolic yeah is because I've been dominated or hypnotized by what happens in that secondary media space and you deal with it really interestingly firstly I'll say something disarmingly kind I thought you're gonna say badly and I would have gone along felt like you weren't the fence had the word bad on and you weren't interesting hahahahaha I think was what kind that was offensive this won't be your first act of kindness it comes the second okay thing I admire you I think you've doing really really interesting things I think you're brilliant well you're kind and lovely you're going to lie and but are you quite modest and shy really what are you becoming entertainer for then how I never entertained my life I mean people I mean generally I I'd advise people to tune me out but I don't feel I've entertained people I mean genuinely as in most things I've done people have gone no more of that please that's been the feeling I've had and quite rightly so I think and in a way I mean really English and yet that seems odd yeah because my parents weren't but hmm Englishness is quite strange isn't it what what what do you feel Englishness is to you because I didn't quite know what it is well this is an interesting time to assess it but when I use it to describe you there yeah I think that you're being modest disarming but I know that you were fiercely intelligent and I've seen you be eviscerating on the television so I know that there's an aspect of view that is I feel that perhaps you are cautious around sincerity and that that's an assessment I'm making from your brilliant work with like the gaff merengue stuff I was like a sublime irony and like I'm like I think that it was I think that you and Matt berry your sort of performance Styles they're like I thought it was really innovative and unusual for people to be so brazenly discordant and disregard conventions around acting even comic acting so flagrantly and brilliantly well you're kind to say I mean we were i certainly had the gift of being terrible already so I in a way no one I didn't feel anyone wants to be funny as the first thing they do in anyway generally you know Brad Pitt that's not the first thing he needs to try to do he can just be handsome and charming and that that's a good life I generally think that what I found funny is people really trying to be serious in a way and just people laughing that's all I think your your people work out there's something not right with you and they start laughing and you go if I pretend that I decided that you're going to laugh at me that might be better and so with that show I don't know I've never spoken about that show out of character in an awful way and because we did all of our press in character as these to it so yeah it's I don't presume anyone knows what it is this is like a spoof horror show in a certain way written by this pompous horror writer and so whenever we did interviews about the show which we didn't then where we did them as Garth in his publicity manager and because it seemed too much to do a show about people pompously talking about how great they are and then do interviews talking about how in a way great you were for coming out of who this think about people being pompously great asn't it seemed that seemed a bit too snake eating its own tail and also just I know it just didn't seem like it would be fun or interesting to talk about in that way so a loss of that show I think harnessed our own limitations that we had possibly that's true of even declared and overt great artists perhaps all of us are by definition ultimately it's our limitations that I suppose yes I mean I've been reading some set mom and the moon and sixpence have you read that that's right now it's really interested I think it's based on the life of Paul go-girl and about this stockbroker type of person in Paris you just one day decides to become a painter at 40 and just seems to completely change personality in this Ashley on uncompromising and he ends up being this genius and no one everyone just thought you're crazy for doing this but he's brilliant and his totally amoral and I think I'm just I'm interested and someone who does that and just is not that good that's that seems a more interesting story in a way to me like you just go I'm gonna be a painter and then you shouldn't be a painter and then some so think yeah I shouldn't have been a painter that seems I don't know there's something funny about failure in that way so yes I I always found it interesting people really reaching for something and missing because that is that's just what most experience I think is sort of missing its misalignment isn't it same kind I think her right but perhaps the the way that we construct like a perfect resolution yeah like a perfectionism yeah in itself is if not arbitrary it's it's impossible to fulfill and not only because of the requirements of the word perfect but also because I don't think that whenever you were arriving those places it never feels fulfilling I'm interested that you're more fascinated by mediocrity than genius because I like that that story of when people inadvertently happen upon genius like bullets over Broadway the Alan feel yeah yeah or like in like in Mozart in Amadeus yeah yeah like that genius might just visit so yeah thought with vulgar genius yes and it can be over there and yes this cultivated personally feels that they should have they just don't have it and I mean Woody Allen I think that he does believe that there is such a thing as genius and some people just born with it he doesn't think you can become funny I think yeah and you feel like that the the reason you moved into a sort of parody like these brilliant parody but parodic like scripted comedies like Garth merengue and that Rockhopper finger down laughs and the Dean Lerner chat show is because you felt that that's what you did anyway that those kind of performances because it is masterful in a way in a way it like to do something it's like say Dave Wrigley those the registrations definitely yeah just because something looks simple and basic that doesn't mean that it's easy to achieve and I've seen again we've you know when you have won awards for playing moss in IT Crowd you say like oh it's just by happenstance I'm incapable of expressing emotion I'm a membrane that rambling and pushes stuff through that's it's interesting I suppose that that makes me think you must be very self-assured man I I don't think I am more as and I don't I wouldn't know as and I wouldn't be closed to that being the case but my that doesn't feel like that from this side of the machine do you mean you worry and worry yeah I don't know not so much worried but as in more that I just know that I'm not so good at things and that's okay but it it doesn't I don't think that worries me too much that I but that's partly because a lot of the people I really like are beyond what I would be interested in doing you know they're they're so great that it would it's there's no disgrace and not being as good at velázquez look at that domain okay great um but I mean those shows I mean I had no interest in horror whatsoever and before doing that show and so in a way it was through map wholeness being interested in horror in that and coming and I always felt I was sort of more just operating as a fan of the people in the show and doing my contributing to that and my interest was in the gap between intention and execution I mean Susan Sontag was saying this thing about her book notes on camp why certain things seen us and I guess this was written in this when was it written the 60s maybe so it had a different idea maybe of what we currently see camp as being but somehow that there's a you you can tell what the intention of a work of art is versus how it's been realized and if there's a kind of dissonance between those two there's something enjoyable about that there's something enjoyable I mean I avoid like say blaxploitation films and there's something enjoyable about the scope about social commentary trying to really go into an area trying to really change things ostensibly but really it's people running along dots and flares with kind of wah-wah music and the dissonance between some quite lofty ideas and the housing of it just can be quite funny and pleasurable and in a way I suppose to take the example of someone doing something in it not telling out so well I guess what it shows is that the wrong intention that there's an intention to be great and that isn't a good intention because what is that you should be interested in the thing and who knows what it will be but to deliberately shoot for something and you can see that wasn't quite the thing it's fact I mean the very basic example is just someone really winding up for a penalty and missing there's something just the whole drama that build up the kind of self importance of seriousness to spotting and then just missing there's something and I don't think it's just a kind of I look at their mocking thing it's just a that's what life is yeah it's beyond schadenfreude ah and even bay force but it's the inability of human beings to at least consistently be beautiful or to be magical yeah exactly just how silly sometimes just occupying spaces this is ridiculous what is this and it's I I I feel really warm Lee to to things that would be considered and not maybe campy or or schlocky I thought to feel closer to the people who make those things and people who feel quite slick like Michael Bay or someone I go I just don't I just can't see that a person made this I have no connection to it whereas I really like Edward you know plan 9 from outer space I really feel in some way connected to that film yeah the fal ability the aiming and missing yeah and that beautiful hey what do you think of did you see when Grayson Perry did those free documentaries on class and taste all right yeah I thought well I saw the tapestry exhibition in Bristol so I haven't seen the shows but I saw that which I thought was brilliant right yeah I loved them and yeah the kind of progress of class and the bowls and the yeah it was amazing I thought was great he was saying that that sort of lower down the social hierarchy you are the more likely your taste is gonna be over and bling and gaudy and becoming becoming subtler as its of like as you have more access to wealth or state as well yeah but the thing that was I thought very interesting was a bit where he said liking that they had footage of a woman at a working men's club somewhere presumably in the north where a man was singing like a Delilah or whatever right and she was sort of like pissed and at the front and like a crying yeah and president Perry in the commentary he says like that how is that different from someone at Tosca having measure how we and and I wonder do you think it's somehow to do with this idea of well-executed intention is camp and Kitsch is about we understand reference AE is the aspiration to some can't form a recognizable classical greatness and the secondary component is the this is sort of a bundle together measurable mess you can sort of see how it's not Eve there well I I think it operates across class in the Art Deco is quite camp you know it's got a sort of lifelessness a kind of sort of weird I mean take all that burne-jones stuff that Andrew Lloyd Webber quite likes it's quite sort of camp and you know there's certain operas that feel like that and you know the fool do not seem camp you know in terms of it doesn't feel like they're going for something and they've missed it it's more your own yeah it's just showing your own hubris maybe is that it's kind of you see what someone's reaching for versus what they're actually doing and I guess that's an interesting thing to see I mean Aaron Sorkin his always kind of going well drums just intention obstacle so in a way in that sense intention is which I think Sicilian tension greatness and the obstacle is you funnily dramatic thing to see somehow you know and like yeah bullets over Broadway it's just I want to write this great play but I have to cast this person that's got terrible or sing in the rain that's just the great thing we want to do this musical we now want sound but the that the film star from the silent era who's now going to be speaking got this terrible voice and so this is going to make that film funny because she is all grateful and there's this voice coming up it's that this attention there that's fun without leaping into young do you reckon that that's resourced from our the peculiar fusion of the Simeon and the divine that somehow within us there is that aspiration to be whole and holy and beautiful and yet this gastric fluctuations and snot and stumbling that oh yeah and the bladder that must be drained you know that's never cost phrase you know the pencil that must be sharp and the bladder that must be drained yeah just that continual bodily limitations and yes just but also it's also people not being okay with it like why can't you be okay with your sort of limitations and your your flesh leanness your creatureliness in a certain way and so maybe it operates both ways maybe it's not that we should be reaching there and we're falling short it mate it should be also this is also a place that can be occupied in a fine wave don't you think it's better that they're not to Polo it's not like this is good or bad or whatever well I reckon to refer to some of your earlier ideas say like Michael Bay it's like we acknowledge there's an external metric this is what greatness looks like and people that are great seem to unconsciously be able to realize that without reference to in here I'm now striving for greatness it just flows through them and the sort of kitsch or camp or bad art yes is aware of that and is aspiring to this external thing you know and I reckon there's a correlation between that and civilizing influences that are you know primarily about the denial of our baser bodily nature's our appetites our drives that reveal generally out yeah well you in the source of it super-ego kind of way at and the stuff that comes out in dreams is that what you mean yes and I mean that as long as we as the most eye contacts I've ever been with in my life normally the eyes were then you've got up to here after 20 minutes but I'm really trying to focus here you're doing so well pretending to be a person no triumph this algorithm I will feed this back to my programmers tell them that this is hope cyber summit use this is a template a future of future appearance milk in a way and then you'll know it's got to stressful so far we can even amend that so the bit way vomited lactose yeah they just got that don't do that in your next venture exactly this is a simple and obvious problem that if you could just eliminate he probably did a bit too much eye contact in retrospect much that's the last thing you went to where I contact you much too soon loads milk yeah the hydraulic fluid just came spurting out it seems like a natural point to change the subject a bit so you've written this book then yes I would be on top and yeah what is it that's a good question research yes no no it is well this is what it is and I don't have a pitch for it which is a problem it is really about a film called view from the top which is a Gwyneth Paltrow s stewardess comedy that came out in 2003 my wife and I saw this film and never had a film baffled me more at each stroke of its existence and it seems so amazingly poor given the elements this I thought what what would happen if you pretended that everyone stood behind every decision in this film and so to treat this film like its Citizen Kane and write about it writes a serious analysis of this film as though it's the greatest thing that has ever been recorded because I mean you know so cliche no one sets out to make a bad film but I definitely think there are films were you know this might not be so good but in a way the problem with on top this is the thing I it it felt that everyone was filming it on their way to something else in a certain way you you felt that the first question was how long will this last and then okay I can I can maybe fit this in there's so many things Gwyneth Paltrow plays a blue-collar person so this is she plays someone who grew up in a trailer park so so there's that there's she not able to successfully deliver the idea that she's from that trailer park it doesn't sing no demeanor she doesn't alter her demeanor great it's it's hard to fathom exactly I mean who knows what the decisions were but it's a spirited performance in a search we um but and she's very dignified and she's she's got a sort of dignity and I think she's I think she's sort of nap it's how much she's known for this aspirational pet but I think that the thing that she's good at is um being disillusioned and and slightly unwilling to participate she's really good in Royal Tenenbaums I think she's quite good at being surly and sort of unwilling to be present in a way and so for her to look like she really wants also what is a relatively low level goal for a Gwyneth Paltrow type which is to become an air stewardess seems odd and also it feels incredibly patronizing here's the main thing that I found strange about the film I feel that there's a trope in comedies at the moment and there has been for a long time whereby you have a career driven person and at some stage towards the end of app two they have to decide look I really do want to spend more time with Chad I need to go to his piano recital because it means a lot to him and I can't just yes the Yamamoto corporation on my back and I've got to get this presentation in and my boss has been on my ass for a long time about this and I'm gonna lose my job and there's this guy he's coming up but family's more important and I'm going to go to that recital and Bob Chad is going to really like I watched change his name to Bobby could be interchangeable gonna play really well at that piano recital and we're going to hug and we're going to know that was the best thing and then at that moment the bottle say hang on that idea that we rejected on page 10 is actually really good and so now you can't have a promotion and it feels that there's essentially a thing in films whereby we the audience of being hugely patronized as people going to see these films which are expensive and being told to give up jobs at the same time as if there's a kind of inherent funniness to any activity that isn't creative because also that that film does not work if the guy's a brain surgeon you know there's no film where it says stop the cancer research you've got to spend more time here if Chad's piano recital and have a a more or less a fair attitude to brain surgery exact lighten up and there's a sense of oh we we the filmmakers who obviously hampt-inn our families while we're making the film about how you need to spend more time family we're involved in creative things and that's really important but view the Cota D in living out these kind of small lives don't get too involved and the unimportant things and it just doesn't feel that anyone doing it believes Nats I just don't it just didn't feel truthful and it doesn't feel sort of rigorous enough on the actual price you pay I think for being involved in relationships because I think it always has to have a kind of cake and eat it motive whereby somehow you spend more time with your family and you get richer in the commercial world and I don't know that that is the case yes and I'd be more interested in seeing something where someone gives up the path of riches and it just is they're poorer they're spending more time with that and that also is really hard or stressful it's when you see that you're not being treated truthfully by the maker of something but it just seems ridiculous yeah you think it's disingenuous and it's a kind of Mondial deus ex math you know like you can now no real reason have both of those things there I say rigid that would be not great pitch for the book no it's not because like I'll read it so you're incapable of promoting your own work it says here look Stephen Fry said it's a work of shimmering shimmering genius and Caitlin Moran has said it's hilarious but she was talking only these people have figure out the previous premise but already really yeah but nonetheless these these both of these remarks seem to indicate you're Merritt Allen I'm so sorry it's so hot in here the only way to cope shut down okay yes shut down like it does look like I'm under investigation I will shut down I'm trying to think of a better way to sort of talking about what bugged me because it seems so trivial it doesn't know I've got some points I would like to make they won't take long no I'd love know me I love this extinct man please he was mean to a continent oh here we go what is is if you I'm not suggesting this in the conspiratorial or even deliberate or conscious way but if you question what are the motives of the mainstream film industry perhaps from a say post-structuralist perspective what is the function and yet if the function is is that they are kind of a palliative a kind of dumb soothing force even two great blockbuster works of pop art like still ultimately a deeply formulaic that doesn't mean they don't occasionally touch on truth like great superhero movies or franchise movies it's a weird film and very specific like the first one is you know that's clearly the work of a slightly strange chap yeah okay that a little bit in a second but like what I reckon Richard is that what you are observing and breaking down is that sort of inhered within works of this nature is a kind of lumpin clumsiness and that there in my opinion there might be something quite malevolent about it if you regard it politically for a moment that message of you know you like even that dis sense of distinction that this is for you and these these are the lives you should aspire to and these the stories that are fit for you it's a sort of it's an enforcing a very I would say low-level dumb and largely and kind of stay in the audience I think it shows yes and there the disregard for the audience is present in this the motivating ideals of the film and in the way it's rendered in the case yeah yeah I think so and but also how it can be done by quite casually that you can drift into doing that and and it's not to say that somehow I outside of that and being a and somehow able to critique and go well you haven't achieved your artistic potential here but it's more there's more something about it that just feels that unless you feel the audience is far more intelligent than you you're well you're just wrong you were just factually wrong but he Wilder said this thing that individually the audience may not be brilliant but together they're a genius and I think there is that there's something audiences know if they're being cheated or if they're being condescended to and so it just seems very it's very fun to see something it's why people like watching those ads we're like the boss of the company decides to sell carpet so you just go I know what's happened here you've said it's fine I'll handle this I am carpet right but you know oh you didn't get the best person to do this you you made a mistake and everyone can feel it so this there's something just a silly about feeling how well the audience will buy this all the audience will take this the audience always knows more I think than you I mean this is just more of them for a start and they're just responding in real time they don't have all of your baggage they're not deluding themselves about whether this is interesting or not they have all of these advantages over you

Channel: Russell Brand

Views: 1,106,209

Rating: 4.9272242 out of 5

Keywords: russell brand, brand russell, russell brand podcast, russell brand interview, russell brand funny, richard ayoade, richard ayoade interview, richard ayoade travel man, richard ayoade countdown, comedy, comedy podcast, comedians stand up comedy, comedian, under the skin, under the skin russell brand, under the skin podcast, podcast, podcasts to listen to, podcast english, russell brand video, russell brand news, greatness, art

Id: dId6r2P4Ppg

Length: 30min 16sec (1816 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 14 2019

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[u/crankery]

Russell is starting to look like Brian Blessed.

[u/Katerinasixxx]

I like his comedy when it’s not spiritual. I can only hear the word “consciousness” so many times lol

[u/B1gWh17]

Are people from the UK as annoyed by Russell as most of the Americans I know?

I personally love Russell but many of my American counterparts find him annoying and "fake".