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Hollywood Science
Jonathan Hare and Robert Llewellyn Interview page 1 2 3
Jonathan: The combination of our personalities seems to work. I’m useless at presenting and Robert’s brilliant.

Robert: You’re getting worryingly good at it.

Jonathan: You make it easy for me. I couldn’t do this programme on my own.

Robert: I definitely couldn’t do it on my own as I wouldn’t have a clue what I was talking about. Even if there were someone clever telling me what to say it still wouldn’t work.

Jonathan: There’s synergy.

Robert: Yes, my word precisely. That’s what we have…synergy.

Q: What do you think the appeal of the programmes is?

Robert: It’s fun, as well as informative. To use films, which everyone knows something about, is a great bridge across which to talk about science.

Jonathan: On the series I make quite a few of the props and set up the experiments. Because I make them I understand them and can explain the science. I do a lot of talks and presentations to school kids and found that using my Hollywood Science 'tool kit' is a brilliant way of bringing science into the classroom - especially at GCSE level where kids want everything to be cool.

Q: Have you found that Hollywood always gets the science wrong?

Robert: When we start the experiments I’ll look at the movie clips and go: 'that’s rubbish, that won’t work'. Nine times out of ten, the one that I genuinely thought was a load of duff science proved to be the one that actually worked. That’s always a shock.



Robert and Jonathan testing the mangonel
Gross Out
Robert and John break the first rule, and talk about Fight Club in our consideration of Hollywood's scientific Gross Out moments.