Episode 393 - Phil Hendrie

Episode 393 • Released May 29, 2013 • Speakers detected

00:00:00Marc:okay let's do this how are you what the fuckers what the fuck buddies what the fucking ears what the fuck nicks this is mark maron this is wtf thank you for joining me thank you for listening to my show i feel purged i feel relieved uh me and the uh me and the gal went to a little uh

00:00:26Marc:A couple's counseling hoedown.

00:00:29Marc:And I squirt out a few tears.

00:00:31Marc:I left feeling like my heart's asshole is bleeding.

00:00:36Marc:So that's good.

00:00:37Marc:That's a good session, man.

00:00:38Marc:I leveled it out.

00:00:39Marc:Thank God I got her there.

00:00:41Marc:And we're working stuff out.

00:00:43Marc:And as I told you before, we're actually seeing a couple of therapists who are a couple.

00:00:48Marc:It's fucking beautiful.

00:00:50Marc:It's like a very intense hour of cocktails.

00:00:56Marc:how would you describe it's not a dinner party it's not hors d'oeuvres it's not a snack it's um it's two couples sitting down to hash out one couple's problems uh while the other couple listens and they are professionals i know it sounds strange but it was pretty good

00:01:12Marc:And there's nothing wrong with crying in front of your girlfriend and another couple, you know, if you're paying for it.

00:01:20Marc:And it's helpful somehow.

00:01:21Marc:I guess we'll see in the long run if it is, you know.

00:01:24Marc:It's good to open that thing up.

00:01:26Marc:It's good to open the heart.

00:01:28Marc:you know, and let it just kind of bleed out a little bit, kind of purge its butt, you know, because I think the heart's got an ass and you've just got to, something's got, I don't know, maybe this metaphor isn't really holding up.

00:01:42Marc:I guess what I'm trying to say is, you know, I feel good.

00:01:46Marc:When I went in there, things weren't good because I'm nuts.

00:01:50Marc:and uh when i left uh i think i'm still nuts but i think i released a little bit i released a little of my craziness right out of my heart's asshole which is what the heart's asshole is for unfortunately it had to you know someone you know we all had to reach in there and get it so there was a little little tissue tear but uh i'm all right too graphic is it too graphic should i do it in another voice should i make a character up maybe i should make a character up that's my heart hey pal

00:02:18Marc:Don't try and fucking get in here.

00:02:20Marc:All right?

00:02:21Marc:This is on lockdown.

00:02:22Marc:All right, buddy?

00:02:22Marc:The only time I'm squirting out a few is for commercials, cat problems.

00:02:28Marc:And when you're talking to someone you don't know that well, it tells you a good story.

00:02:31Marc:Outside of that, nope.

00:02:33Marc:Not getting... Hey, ow!

00:02:34Marc:Ow!

00:02:35Marc:Who?

00:02:35Marc:Oh, God.

00:02:38Marc:Oh, God.

00:02:39Marc:Okay.

00:02:40Marc:All right.

00:02:42Marc:I'm fine now.

00:02:43Marc:I'm okay.

00:02:43Marc:I'm glad we opened me up.

00:02:45Marc:See, apparently my heart is a little effeminate.

00:02:48Marc:Don't tell anybody on the show today.

00:02:51Marc:Phil Hendry is here.

00:02:52Marc:Phil Hendry, the legendary Phil Hendry of radio, one of the great radio artists.

00:03:00Marc:I'd like to call him that a radio artist.

00:03:02Marc:He's a talk show host, but now he has his own podcast.

00:03:06Marc:But he's a pioneer of the medium in a lot of ways.

00:03:10Marc:He did something that he created an entertaining show that he peopled with voices from his own face.

00:03:16Marc:that you can't tell.

00:03:17Marc:It's a seamless transition.

00:03:18Marc:You can't even explain what Phil Hendry does.

00:03:20Marc:He takes colors and then he invents colors in the moment, improvises it all, and he interacts with the person he's creating in the moment by some tricks in the studio that are all sort of organic tricks.

00:03:36Marc:They're not complicated tricks.

00:03:37Marc:And then he lets that fake color that he's making up in the moment engage with the real color and himself.

00:03:44Marc:If you've never heard Phil Hendry

00:03:47Marc:You really got to listen to it because there's nobody quite like him.

00:03:49Marc:And this guy's been at it for years.

00:03:50Marc:He's a radio veteran and a fucking genius at it.

00:03:55Marc:And I think he's appreciated, but he's underappreciated in the way that not enough people know who Phil Hendry is.

00:04:02Marc:And I love talking to professionals, man.

00:04:04Marc:I like talking to professionals of any kind.

00:04:06Marc:You know, guys who have paid their dues and have a specific and honed and amazing talent, yet are just people.

00:04:14Marc:I think that's one of the interesting things that I learned the more of these shows that I do.

00:04:19Marc:I was telling you guys the other week, John Fogarty is another example.

00:04:22Marc:I've actually been fielding a little feedback lately that people are like, hey, you have no right to complain.

00:04:29Marc:You're living the life.

00:04:30Marc:I went to see John Fogarty the other night, but as some of you know who listen to the podcast, I was asked to introduce him.

00:04:37Marc:And I was under the impression that would be like just a straight up Bill Grammy kind of like, you know, ladies and gentlemen, please welcome.

00:04:45Marc:But no, they wanted me to take care of some business to set up the show.

00:04:47Marc:It was a record release party.

00:04:49Marc:It was John's 68th birthday.

00:04:51Marc:It was also the 45th anniversary of the release of the first Creedence Clearwater record.

00:04:56Marc:His family was there.

00:04:57Marc:You know, I set up a video and, you know, I didn't realize that that's what I was getting into.

00:05:01Marc:But.

00:05:02Marc:It was a pleasure to do it.

00:05:03Marc:And I got to see an amazing show.

00:05:05Marc:I mean, the guy is 68 years old and he rocked that fucking place down.

00:05:10Marc:And, you know, we're doing some rehearsals.

00:05:11Marc:I'm watching him rehearse.

00:05:12Marc:And then, you know, I got to talk to him.

00:05:14Marc:His kids were there.

00:05:15Marc:Two of his boys play on stage with him for a few songs.

00:05:17Marc:One plays a few other songs.

00:05:19Marc:But whatever the case is.

00:05:21Marc:whatever life that it may seem like I'm leading, like after an hour or two with somebody, you really are dealing with the person.

00:05:29Marc:This is a person with an extraordinary talent.

00:05:32Marc:Obviously, I love the guy, and obviously I fanboyed out a bit on the John Fogerty interview, but after a certain amount of time, the beautiful thing about people that you revere and that people that you put on a pedestal or people that you think are geniuses or inaccessible or anything else, they're just people.

00:05:51Marc:the best you can hope for is that they're decent people and they're they're pleasant you know all right before i forget i'll be at the ice house right here in the los angeles area in pasadena on june 2nd come out let's have some fun dave anthony's going to be there with me and next week next thursday i'll be in phoenix at stand up live on june 6th so those are two very immediate gigs

00:06:17Marc:The Ice House LA.

00:06:18Marc:I'll give you the rest of the dates later.

00:06:21Marc:A couple of things I want to get out there.

00:06:23Marc:Again, thank you for watching Marin on IFC.

00:06:26Marc:I'm glad those of you who enjoy the show enjoy the show.

00:06:28Marc:I'm getting a lot of wonderful feedback and it makes me happy that the show is resonating with you.

00:06:33Marc:Also, thank you for buying my book Attempting Normal.

00:06:37Marc:I appreciate that.

00:06:38Marc:That is still available.

00:06:40Marc:Okay?

00:06:41Marc:It's still available and I'd like you to have it.

00:06:43Marc:Phil Henry's on today.

00:06:46Marc:Phil Henry.

00:06:48Marc:I'll tell you, man, the first time that I heard Phil on the radio, I didn't know what the fuck was going on.

00:06:55Marc:But I was hysterical laughing.

00:06:59Marc:He had created a character about it.

00:07:01Marc:It was a father talking about his kid who didn't have spring in his step.

00:07:05Marc:And Phil just kept hitting this thing.

00:07:06Marc:It's like he's got no spring in his step.

00:07:09Marc:You know, like he just it was a repetition.

00:07:11Marc:He's just got an innate genius for improvising.

00:07:15Marc:I got to work on voices.

00:07:16Marc:I think that, you know, like after talking to Jonathan Winters, he talked to people, you know, Fred Armisen a bit.

00:07:20Marc:Anyone who does voices, they, you know, it'd be really nice to sort of just embody, you know, to live, you know, to sort of express the fragile or angry or whatever the parts of you that make you uncomfortable as a character.

00:07:34Marc:Would be amazing.

00:07:35Marc:I don't know.

00:07:36Marc:I think Phil does that to a certain degree.

00:07:37Marc:Certainly Jonathan did.

00:07:38Marc:He spoke to it.

00:07:39Marc:There's a therapy to it.

00:07:40Marc:I'm going to start working on a series of characters, you know, representing my character flaws.

00:07:46Marc:You know, like the fuck that guy.

00:07:50Marc:Fuck that guy guy.

00:07:51Marc:Yeah, I'm going to make that's it.

00:07:53Marc:The fuck that guy guy.

00:07:55Marc:Who?

00:07:55Marc:Fuck that guy.

00:07:57Marc:That guy?

00:07:57Marc:Fuck that guy.

00:07:59Marc:That's pretty good.

00:08:00Marc:It's a good start to a character.

00:08:01Marc:Look, let me get the pro on here.

00:08:03Marc:Let's talk to Phil Hendry.

00:08:08Marc:Well, you were talking just as we walked in here that no one knew that this was going to take off.

00:08:12Marc:I had no idea what it even was.

00:08:14Marc:I just knew I had to keep doing something.

00:08:17Marc:Yeah, yeah.

00:08:18Marc:But you have, Mark.

00:08:20Guest:You're, along with Adam...

00:08:22Guest:Chris Hardwick, Rogan, you guys are the monster four or the five.

00:08:27Guest:It's like the Premier League in English soccer, which for some reason I'm following now.

00:08:32Guest:There's four teams, and then there's a whole bunch of other stuff.

00:08:37Guest:But you guys are the big four.

00:08:38Guest:You're like winning the league every year.

00:08:41Marc:I'm trying to hold on.

00:08:42Marc:I'm just doing my little thing here.

00:08:44Marc:Can I ask you?

00:08:45Guest:In other words, what you did is you just did this because you had to do something.

00:08:49Guest:And you had a sponsor lined up or you were.

00:08:51Marc:Well, what happened with me was, you know, I had done a little bit of radio a couple of years and I took to it and I liked it.

00:08:57Marc:And then obviously in radio, as you know, you get fired and then you move on to some other microphone.

00:09:03Marc:And I'd been fired for the last time and I knew this existed.

00:09:06Marc:So when we started, there was no business model.

00:09:08Marc:There was no really expectation.

00:09:10Marc:I just knew that I had nothing else going on.

00:09:13Marc:And I knew comics were doing this.

00:09:15Marc:Yeah.

00:09:15Marc:So I was like, fuck it.

00:09:16Guest:i'm gonna i'm gonna try it and then things started to unfold when you when you got into it though have you been i mean you're you were at radio for a while oh yeah man i mean i've been doing this kind of show that i do i've been doing a comedy show if you want to call that satire for about 20 22 years no of course i know that and then uh i did podcasting as a way of of escaping radio i guess it's the same thing as you only i i um

00:09:41Guest:Got fired, or, you know, I lost my contract, and then I got in with a really horrible company, which I'm with right now.

00:09:48Guest:And I realized that there was this, as I was tied up with this freaking deal, the rest of you guys were out here, like, actually having fun.

00:09:54Guest:So I thought, well, I've got to do some of that, you know.

00:09:56Marc:Well, it's interesting how long it takes some of the radio warriors, the guys, because it's weird in radio.

00:10:04Marc:You get used to that system where if you've got a good audience and they're pulling numbers for the station, they fucking take care of you.

00:10:12Marc:And then all of a sudden, it becomes challenging for dudes who are ingrained in that to be like, so I'm just going to wing it now?

00:10:18Marc:I'm just going to...

00:10:19Guest:I'm going to wing it, and what do I do for sponsors?

00:10:22Guest:Well, just, you know, you're on your own.

00:10:23Guest:Go ahead, man.

00:10:24Guest:Go ahead.

00:10:24Guest:Call the guys.

00:10:25Marc:Call them up, yeah.

00:10:26Marc:They know who you are.

00:10:26Marc:Yeah, yeah.

00:10:27Marc:Have you found that you can do that?

00:10:28Marc:You can call the sponsors?

00:10:30Marc:It's me, Phil.

00:10:31Guest:I haven't really yet, because I'm still sort of half-locked into the radio.

00:10:36Guest:I would just as soon, if I was not going to offend anybody, call them up myself and say, hi, it's Phil Hendry, and generally, you know, I've got to watch it, because who knows?

00:10:49Guest:whenever i meet with grown-ups like i had a meeting with abc lloyd braun and those guys i meet up with these grown-ups and i said and there's these network guys go well my idea is to have a guy yeah uh who uh hates jews and uh so right away the whole room is gone and and i i walked out of there my agent said to me don buckwald he said uh well that was interesting yeah never seen that happen you know

00:11:12Marc:so it reminds me of a time i went in i was being looked at for a talk show i was early on in my career and i was full of rage and i was doing angry comedy and they were looking at me to do like a network talk show and i met bridget potter who was a big deal at nbc brought me into the to one of the big guys he's a yeah everyone knows that guy i don't remember his name it wasn't it was before sucker but he was a known guy yeah

00:11:34Marc:And he goes, well, what do you talk about?

00:11:35Marc:What are we going to do on this talk show?

00:11:37Marc:I'm like, you know, AIDS, war, abortion, the issues.

00:11:41Marc:Right.

00:11:42Marc:And there was a look on his face like I just kicked him in the soul.

00:11:45Marc:And that was it.

00:11:46Marc:That was the end of that.

00:11:47Marc:And Bridget walked out and said, no, that was very interesting.

00:11:50Marc:No, really, you showed who you were.

00:11:52Marc:Yeah, yeah.

00:11:53Marc:That's always important to show who you are.

00:11:54Marc:It takes a long time to realize that there's politics involved at every level.

00:11:58Marc:And there's a certain amount of diplomacy and things you shouldn't say to get what you want.

00:12:02Guest:Yeah, I wonder why that...

00:12:03Guest:I wonder, is the reality this, that they should accept what we're saying to them, or is the reality that we have to come around their way of thinking?

00:12:14Guest:I know what business is about.

00:12:16Marc:Well, let's look at history.

00:12:18Guest:But what's audience about?

00:12:19Guest:See, in other words, I know what business is about, but what's audience about?

00:12:21Guest:In other words, if everybody had said, I'll go back to Lenny Bruce, who sort of, to me, is like the...

00:12:27Guest:The beginning.

00:12:28Guest:Yeah, he's sort of the beginning of modern comedy.

00:12:30Guest:If they just had said, this guy's great, and let's let him just do what he does, and they hung with it, would they have been richer today than they are?

00:12:40Marc:Well, that's a good question.

00:12:41Marc:And it's also what culture will tolerate.

00:12:43Marc:I mean, I think the biggest fear, it seems, on behalf of corporations and whoever represents them, that there's always this second-guessing going on.

00:12:52Marc:Like, what's the audience going to like?

00:12:53Marc:Are we going to hear back from the people that hate this?

00:12:56Marc:Always the most vocal idiots that will derail anything are really the minority.

00:13:00Guest:That's what's happening in talk radio now.

00:13:02Guest:That's what's killing talk radio.

00:13:04Guest:I don't know if you know, but talk radio news talk is dying, and the word out there is that

00:13:09Guest:I just talked to Mike because my contract is coming up.

00:13:11Guest:Yeah.

00:13:12Guest:And I talked to my agent, a guy named Eric Weiss is a great guy.

00:13:14Guest:Eric said to me, in all candor, news talk is dead and sports.

00:13:19Guest:That's what they want now.

00:13:20Guest:So why is news talk dead?

00:13:21Guest:Because the sponsors are fleeing because I don't need the problem.

00:13:25Guest:Well, Eddie, it's only three guys.

00:13:26Guest:I don't care if it's three.

00:13:27Guest:I don't want it.

00:13:28Guest:I don't need it.

00:13:29Guest:Exactly.

00:13:29Guest:They're getting a lot of.

00:13:30Guest:Right.

00:13:30Guest:So they're going over to sports talk, which is is controversy free in that sense.

00:13:35Guest:But it's still active and it's heated and people are passionate.

00:13:38Right.

00:13:38Marc:Well, it's weird, though, because the sports model on radio, I just did a sports show because now when I go do comedy, they're like, well, we got the biggest show in the morning is a sports show.

00:13:47Marc:I don't fucking know anything out of sports.

00:13:48Marc:They're like, no, no, no, no.

00:13:49Marc:It's about everything.

00:13:50Marc:They're just calling it sports.

00:13:51Marc:They're calling it sports.

00:13:52Marc:Isn't that weird?

00:13:53Marc:Yeah.

00:13:53Marc:So they're integrating anything into that because they're all very, very right up front.

00:13:57Marc:They're like, no, we talk about anything.

00:13:58Marc:Yeah.

00:13:58Marc:And it just seems to be the model now.

00:14:00Marc:It's almost like we can hide.

00:14:03Marc:We can hide talk in a sports format.

00:14:05Guest:What they're hiding is the fact that it's not sports, but they're not going to tolerate if you got into AIDS, if you got into anything that's going to religion.

00:14:13Guest:The Mothers Against Mark, yeah, the religion.

00:14:15Guest:So what we're talking about really is guy talk.

00:14:17Guest:It's 2554 males.

00:14:20Guest:Right, right.

00:14:21Guest:And so, of course, sports is one of those areas.

00:14:24Guest:But as we used to say, Neil Rogers, I mentioned him earlier.

00:14:27Guest:He was a guy that was on a sports station middays.

00:14:29Guest:Yeah.

00:14:29Guest:This guy's gay.

00:14:31Guest:Neil was out gay.

00:14:32Guest:Yeah.

00:14:33Guest:But was a hockey fan and a Cubs fan and a harness racing fan.

00:14:37Guest:But he also liked Luis Miguel because he just had a fantasy about the guy, and he had a cardboard cutout in the studio.

00:14:42Guest:He said, I'm going to get up and mount that thing.

00:14:44Guest:Something good's happened to me today.

00:14:45Guest:I don't know what it is.

00:14:47Guest:Did his listeners know that?

00:14:49Guest:Everything.

00:14:49Guest:Oh, yeah.

00:14:49Guest:Oh, sure.

00:14:50Guest:Yeah.

00:14:51Guest:But Neil, it was amazing.

00:14:52Guest:He was an out gay guy, but very butch and very, you know, I went to a hockey game with him, and there he was in his jacket with his cigar and his boyfriend.

00:14:59Guest:Yeah.

00:14:59Guest:Suddenly it was all totally cool.

00:15:01Guest:Right, right.

00:15:02Guest:Yeah, this is my gay friend.

00:15:03Guest:Yeah, yeah.

00:15:04Guest:That's okay.

00:15:04Guest:Gay guys are like us.

00:15:05Guest:Yeah, yeah, sure.

00:15:06Guest:See?

00:15:06Guest:Yeah.

00:15:07Guest:So, but the point being, that was a guy that came on and lived his life on the radio.

00:15:11Guest:Right.

00:15:11Guest:But it was on a sports station.

00:15:12Guest:Right.

00:15:13Guest:And so, as long as you stay away from... Neil didn't do this, but as long as they're staying away from things that get sponsors crazy...

00:15:19Guest:So you're on that show.

00:15:20Guest:And if you were talking about anything, I had a sponsor call up.

00:15:23Guest:Oh, Christ, you'd have a general manager in the office, you know, in that guy's studio.

00:15:27Marc:So when you started, I mean, like I have not talked to a lot of radio dudes and having had some experience with radio dudes because I came into radio later in life.

00:15:36Marc:It wasn't and I liked it.

00:15:37Marc:You were doing comedy first, stand-up first?

00:15:40Marc:Yeah, I did a lot of stand-up.

00:15:41Marc:And then when Air America happened, I was out here and someone called me.

00:15:44Marc:It was sort of this ragtag bunch of comics and commentators who were now being offered a lot of liberal investor money.

00:15:52Marc:Yeah.

00:15:52Marc:and uh someone called me i think it was uh it might have been garofalo or somebody said you want to you want to be part of this and i'm like well yeah i don't like bush i'd love to have a voice in this and this seems like a good opportunity so that's what sort of started it but i was completely green and i was working with radio veterans and i had no idea i had no no idea for momentum or working or teasing or checking in with the time or or or any of these sort of reset you know the setting up people again after you know like i just had tsl all that shit none of the tricks yeah

00:16:22Marc:But dealing with them, it's a whole other world in itself.

00:16:26Marc:And it's an amazing business, but it's also a very powerful mic.

00:16:31Marc:And people who live on this mic, it's hard to say, as you'll notice with podcasting, everyone thinks they can do it.

00:16:37Marc:But what makes somebody come through, that's the lightning in the bottle.

00:16:41Marc:And you can't sort of see how that's going to go.

00:16:44Guest:That's what everybody would say back when I was struggling.

00:16:47Guest:I remember one of my program directors, Tom Yates, said to me,

00:16:51Guest:You've got to be heard above the noise, man.

00:16:53Guest:It's like, what can you do?

00:16:55Guest:And it's a great... I'm looking at what you do, Mark, and you're a comic, but you're also a guy that talks thoughtfully about things, and you engage people, so it's not like shtick-a-roo.

00:17:07Guest:No, no shtick.

00:17:07Guest:There's humor, but there's conversation.

00:17:10Guest:What it turned out for me was I knew that I was in love with doing radio, and I liked...

00:17:15Guest:doing characters, and that just came out not because I was sitting there thinking, hmm, I wonder what will win in this medium.

00:17:23Guest:I was thinking, how can I have some fun today, man?

00:17:25Guest:I want to come in and enjoy my life.

00:17:26Guest:Well, where did it start, though?

00:17:27Guest:It started after getting fired a bunch of times.

00:17:29Guest:Well, I grew up out here in Arcadia, not too far from where we are, and hung out in Pasadena and came from all of that stuff.

00:17:37Guest:Yeah.

00:17:38Guest:went to florida i was working in construction work and i followed a gig and yeah i was down in orlando something about florida things happen in florida and i saw that before most any you know now everybody says there even there's a florida file with fark you know there's you know the president and there's the economy florida yeah

00:17:54Guest:And when I was in Miami, I remember that was a gauntlet I ran that was as tough as any I've ever run in talk radio.

00:18:00Guest:Talk about the Wild West.

00:18:02Guest:Oh, these cats, radio listeners, people are in Miami for one reason, to get high, to enjoy themselves, to swim, to, you know, not to fucking talk politics.

00:18:10Guest:To be under the radar.

00:18:11Guest:Yeah.

00:18:11Guest:So you go on the radio down there, and you better bring something...

00:18:14Guest:that's pretty good and uh so you're working construction i was working in construction orlando and i i got into this little gig uh in orlando and i uh was a disc jockey gig you know and just spinning vinyl spinning spinning vinyl literally yeah and carts and and trying to find my voice as a radio personality as they call

00:18:32Guest:And this was on the FM dial?

00:18:34Guest:No, this was AM.

00:18:35Guest:In 1973, it was a very unfortunate caller.

00:18:37Guest:It was WBJW, 1440.

00:18:39Guest:And they also had a WKIS in town.

00:18:42Guest:So there's a kiss at 740, but you get a BJ at 1440, which is... So what were you spinning?

00:18:46Marc:Do you remember?

00:18:47Guest:Oh, yeah.

00:18:48Guest:Perry Como.

00:18:49Guest:No!

00:18:49Guest:Oh, yeah.

00:18:50Guest:I was just thinking the other day, the song that I came to hate... So easy listening.

00:18:54Guest:It was chicken rock.

00:18:55Guest:So we played... It would get as heavy as the Bellamy Brothers' Let Your Love Flow...

00:18:59Guest:It would go to, and then Delta Dawn.

00:19:01Guest:Now, Delta Dawn's a song that, it's very jarring.

00:19:05Marc:Delta Dawn.

00:19:07Guest:And every hour on the top of the hour, I was playing that.

00:19:09Guest:So I came to hit that.

00:19:10Marc:Who was that?

00:19:10Marc:It wasn't Bobby Gentry.

00:19:11Marc:Helen Reddy.

00:19:12Marc:Helen Reddy did Delta.

00:19:13Marc:That's right.

00:19:14Marc:I remember the 8M Reddy when I was a kid.

00:19:16Marc:Dude.

00:19:17Marc:So you're one of those guys.

00:19:17Guest:Yeah.

00:19:18Guest:And then I got into FM around 76.

00:19:21Guest:I was doing Oldies But Goodies, middle of the road.

00:19:24Guest:Did Oldies But Goodies in upstate New York.

00:19:25Guest:Came back to Orlando and did, then I got into Album Rock.

00:19:28Marc:Well, let's talk about that a little bit, because I remember when I was in seventh grade, so that would probably be 1975, 76, and we all listened to KQEOAM, Bobby Box.

00:19:40Marc:We had a dance at our school, and Bobby Box, you know, the voice, he was coming to host a dance.

00:19:45Marc:The man.

00:19:46Marc:The man turned out to be about five feet tall.

00:19:48Marc:He's wearing a plaid suit.

00:19:50Marc:He had big, blown, dry hair, and it was like, that can't be the guy.

00:19:54Guest:Oh, no.

00:19:54Marc:Did you have a moment like that where you were like, you know, you saw a radio guy and you were like, no, that is not the guy.

00:20:00Guest:And it got me excited.

00:20:02Guest:And that moment was when I rode my bicycle to KRLA, which used to be over at the Pasadena Langham.

00:20:08Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:20:09Guest:KRLA was there and I used to ride my bike over from Arcadia and I walked in there one day because they were used to kids just coming in in 1966.

00:20:16Guest:You listened to the station?

00:20:18Guest:I listened to it because we grew up out in the San Gabriel Valley.

00:20:20Guest:That was all KRLA country.

00:20:21Guest:Yeah.

00:20:22Guest:And what kind of music was that?

00:20:23Guest:Top 40, you know.

00:20:24Guest:If you lived out at the beach, out at the L.A.

00:20:26Guest:beaches, or in L.A., it was KHJ and KFWB.

00:20:29Guest:So I ride my bike, and I used to listen to a guy named Emperor Hudson, Bob Hudson.

00:20:33Guest:Yeah.

00:20:33Guest:And this is, get off the freeway, peasants.

00:20:35Guest:His Highness is coming, you know.

00:20:37Guest:And I'm in the leopard skin room.

00:20:38Guest:He did a little bit of a Jackie Gleason thing.

00:20:40Guest:Yeah, yeah.

00:20:40Guest:And Rosie, why don't you come in here and we'll rub ourselves together and make fire, all that stuff.

00:20:44Guest:Yeah, yeah.

00:20:45Guest:So I'm thinking there's a cat in a leopard skin room.

00:20:47Guest:I'm 12 years old.

00:20:48Guest:I get off my bike.

00:20:49Guest:I look through the glass.

00:20:50Guest:There's a guy in a sweatshirt.

00:20:51Guest:He's in his bedroom slippers because he's like, I'm not even going to get dressed.

00:20:55Guest:I'll just go into the station.

00:20:58Guest:It was Emperor Hudson.

00:20:58Guest:It was Bob Hudson.

00:20:59Guest:And I thought that was the greatest thing I'd ever seen in my life.

00:21:02Guest:You weren't disappointed.

00:21:03Guest:Not at all.

00:21:04Guest:I was like, God damn.

00:21:06Guest:I was a little white boy from Arcadia, but suddenly I turned into...

00:21:10Guest:uh just a kid right off the streets of harlem just damn yeah look at a man did this yeah you know i'm sorry son oh i'm sorry i forgot my roots but i i was fascinated i said i gotta do that i gotta this is great you can do all kinds you can create things right the power of the illusion of this yeah it's it's it's the only it's the only medium that you can pull it off in anymore at all because like

00:21:32Marc:When I first heard, on vinyl, I heard the War of the Worlds, the Orson Welles thing.

00:21:37Marc:Of course, yeah.

00:21:38Marc:And the precedent that that set, I mean, it never really was, I don't think anyone's approached it to quite the level.

00:21:44Guest:Not to a dramatic level, no.

00:21:45Marc:But the fact that, and that's why I like audio, that's why I don't do a video podcast or anything else, because the intimacy and the ability to create a world, and I don't do it, I don't do a lot of textures.

00:21:55Marc:I've had some guests where people didn't know if they were real or not, but-

00:21:58Marc:You can get away with murder, and people, they take to it because it's such a one-on-one thing.

00:22:04Marc:So your experience when you meet that guy is not like, I've been duped, but like, I'm going to.

00:22:09Guest:But I was coming at it the way probably you would have, and any other kid that was looking to get into entertainment on some level, you're looking almost like you're only 12, but you're still sort of a technician.

00:22:19Guest:You're kind of...

00:22:19Guest:you're in school.

00:22:21Guest:And you're going, wow, look what he did, and he's creating this thing.

00:22:23Guest:That is awesome, what he was able to... So I immediately realized that you can create a whole movie, just as you said, Mark.

00:22:30Guest:A $40 million movie with a couple of sound effects.

00:22:32Marc:That's it.

00:22:33Guest:It's fucking mind-blowing.

00:22:34Guest:Totally.

00:22:35Guest:And I got so disappointed, because when I got into radio in 73, it was when the computer list was coming in, and they were saying, just play the records.

00:22:42Guest:Just shut up and play the records.

00:22:44Guest:Boy, I used to piss me off hearing that, shut up and play the records.

00:22:46Marc:What was your, like, when you first started in 73 and you were just playing songs, I mean, how, what, because I'm trying to remember some of the dudes to sort of get in for a few minutes.

00:22:56Guest:Yeah, if you want to talk about the great personalities of the 70s, Don Imus.

00:23:00Guest:Right.

00:23:01Guest:And real Don Steele was still happening, although he was, you know, sort of, he's great.

00:23:06Guest:I mean, here in L.A., Don Steele was the, because that cat had timing and he could get in the call letters.

00:23:12Guest:Right.

00:23:12Guest:The Rascals' Good Lovin', which starts up basically, one, two, three, right?

00:23:18Guest:He could cram in KHJ Los Angeles in that one theater.

00:23:23Guest:But Jackson Armstrong up in Buffalo.

00:23:25Guest:Those are the skills.

00:23:26Guest:Yeah, those are the skills.

00:23:27Guest:And the ability to ad-lib and hit that post.

00:23:31Guest:You're vamping a song.

00:23:32Guest:You're ad-libbing.

00:23:33Guest:You're hitting the post.

00:23:35Guest:And you're doing it.

00:23:36Guest:You're not just hitting the post, man.

00:23:37Guest:You're doing it just cunt hair, just right up.

00:23:39Guest:And the timing is great.

00:23:40Guest:And you know where to hit the post.

00:23:42Guest:It's an amazing thing to hear when you understand it.

00:23:47Marc:The post being right before the vocal starts.

00:23:49Guest:When the vocal starts, yeah.

00:23:50Marc:See, I think the thing that people don't really understand about radio and about live radio, and one of the things that I learned...

00:23:57Marc:entering a morning show and you know i had you know i got chosen to drive this morning show granted was one that wasn't the most popular thing in the world i never really was a stern guy i didn't listen to stern you know i'm just a guy like i listen to the news right i don't listen to a lot of entertainment radio so i'm in this thing and this is having been a comic for a while and having done morning radio where you walk into a morning show and and you got to do something yeah

00:24:21Marc:But I never understood their side of it until I sat behind that mic.

00:24:26Marc:Because when you're doing a radio show and you got a crew and you guys are moving at a clip and you got a momentum going and it's fucking 6.30 in the morning and you got a guest coming in, that guy better not shit the bed on your fucking momentum or he can go fuck.

00:24:38Guest:himself right it's like you're on the mic do something yeah i'll do all i can but if you don't do something you're an asshole and you fucked up our morning and you will be called an asshole and you you're going to be burned down that's right for it you know you're that's right because you got to do something you got to make that happen a lot of what what uh the unfortunate part is if you're an artist if you're a radio artist an audio artist and thank god that we have podcasts because people are rediscovering there is an art form to it

00:25:03Guest:All right.

00:25:03Guest:That's one thing.

00:25:04Guest:Now, if you're dealing with radio executives and they know who they are and they're hearing me right now, you guys know who you are and you know that you're sexy shit and it's okay.

00:25:12Guest:You know, I still love you, but you guys don't understand what we do.

00:25:15Guest:You never fucking will.

00:25:17Guest:They'll come into the studio.

00:25:18Guest:While you're driving this bus, trying to make sure it doesn't careen off.

00:25:22Guest:And they'll say, why don't you try that?

00:25:24Guest:And why don't you do that?

00:25:25Guest:You know, Howard.

00:25:25Guest:And they'll do that to you.

00:25:26Guest:You know what Stern's doing?

00:25:27Guest:Yeah.

00:25:28Guest:So then you, because you're not Howard Stern.

00:25:30Guest:Right.

00:25:30Guest:You try to be Howard Stern.

00:25:31Guest:Right.

00:25:32Guest:Now you run afoul of the FCC, this, that, this, that.

00:25:34Guest:And that's the same fucking guy that came in.

00:25:36Guest:And now he's telling you you're fired.

00:25:38Guest:And now you develop an attitude.

00:25:39Guest:And then they wonder why you have an attitude over 20 years, you know?

00:25:43Guest:Yeah.

00:25:43Guest:What she should have done is said, get the fuck out of my studio or not get the fuck.

00:25:48Guest:Please, sir, leave my studio.

00:25:48Guest:You're fired because you didn't take my input.

00:25:50Guest:Yes, sir.

00:25:51Guest:OK, thank you.

00:25:51Guest:I know I'm fired.

00:25:52Guest:But you go to the next station and you still hold your ground and you still hold your ground.

00:25:55Guest:That's the way to do it, I thought.

00:25:57Guest:Right.

00:25:57Marc:Well, that happened later.

00:25:58Marc:But so when you're first listening to guys and you're understanding that there's a timing involved and there's timing and then people like Don Imus, all of them were working in between songs at some point in time.

00:26:07Guest:Talk radio did not exist, correct?

00:26:08Guest:Talk radio, not the way it does now.

00:26:10Guest:It didn't deal with humor.

00:26:11Guest:Talk radio dealt with, there were a couple of guys that were funny, but they were still talking about the issues.

00:26:17Guest:There were a couple of people who were outrageous, Joe Pine or Bob Grant, but they were still talking issues.

00:26:23Guest:When we got into the really stylized stuff, I would say, and you've got to separate the politics from the execution.

00:26:29Guest:Let's forget about Russia's politics for a minute, because I think that blinds people.

00:26:32Guest:but he was a music guy at first, right?

00:26:34Guest:He was a music guy.

00:26:35Guest:And when he started doing a talk show, he brought stuff to the table.

00:26:38Guest:That was, he brought, uh, drops, you know, the, the drop, you know, like, uh, uh, he brought the bits like a homeless update.

00:26:47Guest:He brought Mervyn Snerdly.

00:26:49Guest:He brought EIB.

00:26:50Guest:This is all visual, you know, stuff that we're talking about.

00:26:52Guest:Like, uh, um, uh, Emperor Hudson, no one in talk radio done that before.

00:26:56Guest:And this was before you

00:26:57Guest:started doing voices before it was before i started doing my show yeah yeah i heard what see i heard what rush was doing not his politics i didn't give a fuck about that but i heard that he was bringing personality back to radio by way of talk radio then i heard what howard was doing obviously i heard of cats like neil rogers in miami i thought this is what i got to do man i got to get out of and this is after doing uh right you know spinning discs for how long from 73 to 88

00:27:21Marc:So you were really in, you had been, and how many times you had to walk?

00:27:25Marc:How many times did you walk?

00:27:25Guest:Oh, dude, I've been fired from radio gigs for about seven, eight times.

00:27:29Marc:I mean, we should talk about that a little bit, because the only guy I really talked to about that was Jimmy Kimmel, and that people don't understand that when you have a mic, when you go to work, you don't know you're going to be fired until the end of your show, and then you are escorted.

00:27:43Marc:out of the building and you can't be on mic anymore that's right they're afraid of you being on mic this was the beautiful thing about the stupidity of liberal talk is that when i was there you know i knew i was going to get fired but they gave me notice so the ceo who was you know who was pushing me out let me he i stayed on the mic for another week and it was some of the best radio i think ever because i just shamelessly dude that's awesome it

00:28:08Marc:It was great.

00:28:09Marc:They were trying to do the right thing, but they were so clearly not in tune with the medium.

00:28:13Marc:So we just played it out.

00:28:15Marc:We did all kinds of riffs.

00:28:16Marc:We actually had an executive come in that I got into a physical fight with.

00:28:20Marc:Oh, no shit.

00:28:21Marc:Really?

00:28:21Marc:It was not real, but it sounded great.

00:28:23Guest:So were you bagging on Air America?

00:28:25Marc:No, I was upset because what we were trying to do was irreverent satire, and I had a whole crew of guys that were doing characters and that were writing bits, fans of yours, and we were really sort of twisting it and doing a very irreverent morning show.

00:28:42Marc:With some news, I had my guy...

00:28:44Marc:The guy I was partnered up with was a real radio guy, so we would crunch news, and he would educate, and I would ask questions.

00:28:50Marc:But then we had these bits with characters and stuff, and things that may have been real, may not have been real.

00:28:54Marc:It was beautiful.

00:28:55Marc:It was a beautiful thing.

00:28:56Marc:So this one CEO gets into place, this one executive, not a radio guy, music guy, Danny Goldberg.

00:29:02Marc:He comes in.

00:29:02Marc:It's like, it's too irreverent.

00:29:04Marc:I don't get it.

00:29:04Marc:We should be more like NPR.

00:29:07Marc:So my producer was like, there already is an NPR.

00:29:10Guest:Where thousands work, so hundreds can listen.

00:29:12Marc:Right.

00:29:14Marc:that's that's what we used to say about him that that so this is right when howard's leaving terrestrial like we we should have been like we should have taken over new york to or at least pulled a little bit right for the humor right and he fucking pushed me off what what what uh what station were you on in new york uh wlib was the original station is that long island no it was a new york station was an am station was originally a black station

00:29:37Guest:Was it up at the, what was the frequency?

00:29:39Guest:Oh, boy.

00:29:39Guest:I can't, it was, no, it was low.

00:29:40Guest:I wonder what kind of signal it had.

00:29:42Guest:They were all low signals, really.

00:29:44Guest:That's a good place on the dial for radio.

00:29:46Guest:For local, yeah.

00:29:47Guest:You know, all of my stations, like, for instance, now are like, 1,500 on your dial.

00:29:53Guest:There was the one when you were a kid.

00:29:55Guest:This is Tiger Radio.

00:29:57Guest:1,500.

00:30:00Guest:Yeah, baby, I'm going to do it.

00:30:02Guest:What the fuck is, you know?

00:30:04Guest:They're getting pieces of songs.

00:30:06Guest:Some guy working his ass off, too.

00:30:08Guest:You can hear him through the hiss.

00:30:09Guest:You can hear... Contest coming!

00:30:13Guest:He leaves the studio.

00:30:14Guest:He's got drenched in sweat.

00:30:15Guest:He's dead.

00:30:16Guest:He's drowning.

00:30:17Guest:Yeah, the signal got down to the Burger King, and that was it.

00:30:19Marc:Yeah.

00:30:20Marc:The guy's listening.

00:30:21Marc:Drowning in static, that guy.

00:30:22Guest:But that's, look, I mean, you guys were foreshadowing what's happening with podcasting.

00:30:28Guest:Podcasting came about because there's freedom.

00:30:30Guest:There's freedom to do any fucking thing we want, man.

00:30:32Guest:We can do, and I do a, I made up a football team and I do fake football games.

00:30:36Guest:I have a play-by-play guy, and I used the EA Sports program, and we did an entire 16-game schedule.

00:30:42Guest:We kept track of the league stats.

00:30:44Guest:I had people tuning in every week.

00:30:46Guest:And meanwhile, he's like face-fucking the owner of the team.

00:30:49Guest:That's what we did.

00:30:50Guest:In other words, gag-gag-gag, they're here, and...

00:30:52Guest:Are you in this fucking booth again?

00:30:54Guest:Everything I always wanted to hear when I listened to sports.

00:30:58Guest:Right.

00:30:58Guest:So you were able to.

00:30:59Guest:What commercial station is going to even.

00:31:01Marc:Well, it's done.

00:31:02Marc:It's over, Phil.

00:31:03Marc:I mean, and you can feel it's over.

00:31:05Marc:I mean, outside of drive time, you know, what are they going to do?

00:31:08Marc:I mean, what the fuck are they going to do?

00:31:09Marc:They're irrelevant.

00:31:11Marc:I mean.

00:31:12Marc:Pretty much.

00:31:13Marc:And some talk.

00:31:14Marc:But I think what you were getting into with Rush.

00:31:15Marc:Sports.

00:31:16Marc:Well, sports, yeah.

00:31:17Marc:But what you were getting into with Rush is an interesting topic for me because I had this weird moment where you start to realize, all right, there's plenty of wrong-minded assholes in the world, and there's plenty of provocateurs, and he did become somewhat of a shill.

00:31:33Marc:He became a partisan shill.

00:31:34Guest:I would agree.

00:31:35Guest:I'm saying when Rush...

00:31:37Marc:Well, yeah, that's what artistic peak.

00:31:39Marc:Right.

00:31:39Marc:Well, that's what I want to address is that you're dealing with a medium that requires performers.

00:31:44Marc:Yes.

00:31:44Marc:And he was a performer.

00:31:45Marc:Yes.

00:31:45Marc:I'll tell you, man, stylistically, his ability to pause and hold the pause is fucking mind bending.

00:31:52Guest:If you think about what he did, and this is what a lot of people don't understand.

00:31:57Guest:The regular radio listeners never going to understand if I sit there and I stand and I talk to listeners.

00:32:01Guest:Who do you like, Phil?

00:32:02Guest:I'll say, I like Rush, but hold on.

00:32:04Guest:It's not because of his politics.

00:32:05Guest:Oh, yeah, well, I don't like him.

00:32:08Guest:And they don't really get it.

00:32:09Guest:Think of the character he created.

00:32:11Guest:And it's a marvelous character.

00:32:12Guest:I am the authority.

00:32:13Guest:That's a character.

00:32:14Guest:Sure.

00:32:15Guest:He began to believe it.

00:32:16Guest:Well...

00:32:17Guest:But I love the whole, my parents thought I was special, and let's face it, I am pretty special.

00:32:22Guest:To me, that's funny.

00:32:24Guest:But yeah, the political part is hard to overcome.

00:32:28Guest:It's hard for us to appreciate the art, for the average person to appreciate the art, when you're hearing all of that bombast and all that shit.

00:32:35Guest:Could he do anything?

00:32:36Guest:If Rush was a sports host, it would probably be off the charts fucking brilliant.

00:32:40Guest:And if he never talked politics, he was just talking.

00:32:42Marc:I think that's true.

00:32:43Guest:Of course, he did get sports, didn't he?

00:32:45Guest:And he was like, Donovan McNabb is black, and therefore,

00:32:47Guest:Yeah, of course.

00:32:49Marc:Is this affirmative action?

00:32:50Marc:I would say yes.

00:32:51Guest:Yeah.

00:32:52Guest:Oh, God.

00:32:53Marc:But but I think it's an interesting idea in or even the exploration of the ego necessary to do radio is that, you know, you get that face in the crowd thing where where you get people like Glenn Beck, you get people like Rush.

00:33:05Marc:I mean, Rush at some point made a choice to do politics.

00:33:07Marc:And then he became, you know, I'm sure very consciously after a certain point, a sort of voice of right wing talking points in a very specific way.

00:33:15Marc:He was he was, you know, he was being groomed and being taken care of by big right wing entities eventually.

00:33:22Marc:But how could that not to be to to connect in radio?

00:33:25Marc:You have to have some fucking ego.

00:33:26Marc:This is the interesting thing I've always noticed about when I would go into towns and do morning radio.

00:33:31Marc:And on the way, the person driving me would say, this guy's the guy in four states.

00:33:35Marc:He's the biggest show.

00:33:36Guest:Here's the guy you're up against.

00:33:37Guest:Right.

00:33:37Marc:Right, yeah, he's the guy, and I would just be in a comic, and you'd walk in, you'd see this little guy, and you're like, that's the guy?

00:33:43Marc:That's the all-powerful Oz?

00:33:44Guest:Bill of Bellingham, yeah, yeah, the all-powerful Oz, yeah, exactly.

00:33:48Marc:But it's easy to see how that ego could get to a megalomaniacal point, which I think, but maybe I'm fucking wrong, and maybe I'm being a little lefty in that, because I look at personalities like Rush, and then his offspring, Glenn Beck, and they kind of play into the megalomaniacal disposition, but ultimately,

00:34:07Marc:They just like money.

00:34:09Guest:Exactly, man.

00:34:10Guest:And keep in mind, of course, that's all they like.

00:34:11Guest:And their bosses, more importantly, their bosses like money.

00:34:15Guest:Their bosses are there saying, this right-wing shit, this is fantastic.

00:34:18Guest:Yeah, exactly.

00:34:19Guest:The company I'm with right now, TRN.

00:34:21Guest:TRN decided somewhere along the line that right-wing radio is where it was at, so they started pushing all this right-wing shit.

00:34:26Guest:And now I think they're hiring, I think Louis Anderson has just been hired by them.

00:34:31Marc:For right-wing radio?

00:34:32Guest:No, I think it's for comedy.

00:34:34Marc:It's all of a sudden, it's like...

00:34:37Guest:In other words, I guess what I'm saying is their bosses started liking the money, and their bosses thought it was about the politics.

00:34:46Guest:No, it wasn't.

00:34:46Guest:It was never about the politics.

00:34:48Guest:In a way, it was.

00:34:49Guest:It was about right-wing radio never would have taken off had there not been an artisan like a Rush Limbaugh to give it its kickstart.

00:34:58Guest:That's what fooled people that shouldn't have been fooled, these so-called broadcasters.

00:35:02Guest:They thought, well, what we've got to do is get some right-wingers in there.

00:35:04Guest:No, what you've got to do is get some people who have got chops and then let them talk.

00:35:09Guest:Get a liberal who's got chops.

00:35:11Guest:Randy Rhodes.

00:35:11Guest:Randy is a great example.

00:35:13Guest:Stephanie is a pretty good example.

00:35:15Guest:I liked Randy because I worked with her, and she's just a great raconteur, and she flies solo.

00:35:21Guest:And she's a nutbag.

00:35:22Guest:She's a nut.

00:35:23Guest:She's a total nut and a great gal.

00:35:25Guest:But good broadcaster.

00:35:26Guest:Great broadcaster.

00:35:27Guest:And she went back.

00:35:28Guest:She was in Miami, and she decided to start all over again.

00:35:30Guest:She went up to West Palm Beach and started again in political radio, and that's really found her thing.

00:35:34Guest:But she's a real radio person.

00:35:36Guest:Absolutely, man.

00:35:37Guest:Absolutely.

00:35:37Guest:And you know what?

00:35:38Guest:I'll tell you an example of it, but it was unfortunate.

00:35:41Guest:Somebody at Air America had put a click of a pistol in a promo after a Bush thing.

00:35:46Guest:Right.

00:35:47Guest:And Randy was like, oh, fuck.

00:35:50Guest:She knows as a broadcaster that's...

00:35:52Marc:that's probably against the law yeah and uh but she got hung with that somebody said on the randy road show she's gonna kill the president yeah no right i remember i think i vaguely remember that but what where do you stand on the fact that like okay we know it's bullshit like i had this weird moment when i they pushed me out at air america and some people within the organization set me up at night at ktla and uh ktlk ktlk yeah

00:36:15Marc:So I get there.

00:36:15Marc:So they stick me in this night spot at 10 o'clock to go live, you know, if I'm not preempted by a Clippers game because they still had a sports contract.

00:36:22Marc:Yeah.

00:36:23Guest:Yeah.

00:36:23Guest:But but, you know, I got bumped out there because of sports.

00:36:25Guest:I got bumped out because of NBC sports.

00:36:27Marc:Yeah.

00:36:28Marc:And I would sit there waiting for a fucking basketball game.

00:36:30Marc:And eventually I'm like, I'm not going to fucking record these live.

00:36:32Marc:This is embarrassing.

00:36:33Marc:Yeah.

00:36:34Marc:But I was working with that guy.

00:36:35Marc:Who was the guy over there on the other side of KTLK?

00:36:37Marc:It was the right-wing side.

00:36:39Marc:Ziegler, was that his name?

00:36:40Marc:Oh, you mean KTLK or KFI?

00:36:43Marc:KFI.

00:36:44Marc:John Ziegler.

00:36:45Marc:Yeah.

00:36:45Marc:So, like, I end up in the bathroom with John Ziegler.

00:36:48Marc:You know, he's taking a piss.

00:36:49Marc:I'm taking a piss.

00:36:50Marc:I go, I'm Marc Maron.

00:36:51Marc:And he was, like, almost like Morton.

00:36:53Marc:You know, he was like, what's going to happen here?

00:36:55Marc:Ha ha!

00:36:55Marc:And by that point, I'd listen to his radio show and I'm like, you know, you're good, man.

00:37:01Marc:You're a good broadcaster.

00:37:02Marc:And he was like, why are you saying that?

00:37:04Marc:Aren't we?

00:37:05Marc:We're both on radio.

00:37:06Marc:Yeah, it's a professional.

00:37:08Guest:You know, he couldn't understand.

00:37:10Guest:Let me give an example of just how bad the fucking industry is.

00:37:12Guest:I was at a talk seminar in New York.

00:37:15Guest:And it was nothing but hosts.

00:37:17Guest:And you go to a talk seminar in New York and there's nothing but hosts there.

00:37:19Guest:You're thinking, let's talk some business.

00:37:21Guest:How are we going to make some money this year?

00:37:22Guest:Where are the advertisers at?

00:37:24Guest:What are the stations doing?

00:37:25Guest:No, what was this?

00:37:26Guest:A bunch of fucking people sitting there and talking politics.

00:37:29Guest:They were doing their shows for each other.

00:37:31Guest:And the only other guy that I remember, I looked at Lionel who was there, and he had this look on his face like, what are we doing?

00:37:38Guest:Why are we wasting our time?

00:37:39Guest:We got an opportunity here where we can actually think up some things we can do to make some money out of this.

00:37:44Guest:Save the medium.

00:37:45Guest:Save this goddamn medium.

00:37:47Guest:Instead, they're talking politics.

00:37:49Guest:So...

00:37:50Guest:And that's the industry, guys?

00:37:52Guest:Right.

00:37:52Guest:What has happened, man?

00:37:52Guest:Are these guys... Are we fooling ourselves into thinking that that's important?

00:37:56Guest:So when you said you stopped talking about politics, I made the same decision about three months ago.

00:38:00Guest:I just decided I was not even going to go near that shit.

00:38:02Guest:I'm just going to talk about stuff.

00:38:04Guest:Right.

00:38:05Guest:And concentrate on the art and concentrate on the humor and be done with that.

00:38:09Marc:But you weren't doing politics for very long, were you?

00:38:12Guest:Not really.

00:38:12Guest:I mean, political stuff would come up in the character sketches.

00:38:15Guest:Yeah.

00:38:15Guest:And then after 9-11, the biggest mistake I made was I...

00:38:19Guest:took big chunks of my show and gave it over to politics after 9-11 because I was super fucking pissed, like a lot of people were, and I really wanted to say something about it.

00:38:28Guest:And I got some encouragement.

00:38:31Guest:I'm not blaming people, but I felt I really damaged my show because it was a sort of split personality show.

00:38:39Marc:I remember when that happened because I remember hearing you, like, well, the weird thing is that I think a lot of radio executives, I think there is a lot of right-wingers, a lot of Republicans.

00:38:47Marc:Yeah.

00:38:47Marc:I mean, I think we've got to differentiate between what is characterized as right wing.

00:38:51Marc:You know, Republicans, you know, they're just about keeping their money for the most part.

00:38:55Marc:And I think that most liberals after a certain at a certain economic level are about that, too.

00:38:59Marc:But, you know, they'll throw some of it away to make themselves feel better.

00:39:02Marc:There's not a lot of difference.

00:39:03Marc:Right.

00:39:03Marc:But, you know, ultimately, my question to you before we get into your shift is just that, you know, because, you know, there's a lot of stupid people in the world.

00:39:12Marc:Yeah.

00:39:13Marc:And even if you know that Rush Limbaugh is a buffoon and Glenn Beck is misleading people with horse shit.

00:39:19Marc:I mean, I watch, you know, I'll listen to them to get a hate buzz going.

00:39:22Marc:I imagine they've got probably about, you know, 20 percent of their listeners are just liberals who like to yell at their radio.

00:39:27Marc:But what do you think about it?

00:39:29Marc:Whose responsibility is it after a point where you know that people are being misled?

00:39:34Guest:Well, I think that if a guy is on the air and he's lying about shit, you know, Thomas Jefferson, who everybody loves to talk about until you actually read about Thomas Jefferson and then you realize that he was a Nazi.

00:39:49Guest:No, he was not.

00:39:50Guest:Of course he wasn't.

00:39:51Guest:But he was very much a states' rights guy.

00:39:54Guest:They'll talk about how, well, you know, the tree of liberty is with the blood.

00:39:59Guest:I know there's a quote on the Internet that I read, but I'm not sure what it is.

00:40:02Guest:Okay, well, thank you very much, Glenn.

00:40:04Guest:I think when you say responsibility, you start to bring in something called the fairness doctrine and equal time, and that scares the shit out of these so-called right-wingers.

00:40:18Guest:Unless, of course, you're talking about obscenity, then they do want the FCC monitoring things, but that makes sense to them.

00:40:24Guest:And I would rather personally mark this.

00:40:28Guest:I would rather have the audience...

00:40:34Guest:I would rather have the audience be intelligent enough to know that they're being fucked with.

00:40:37Guest:Because if I bring in a monitor of some kind, if I bring in somebody, if I feel it's my responsibility, regardless of whether it's going to make money or not, to bring some guy in to balance it out, at the end of the day, what am I doing here, man?

00:40:49Guest:I'm getting further and further away from what we should be doing, which is really entertaining people.

00:40:53Guest:If we're going to inform people, then that's called a news department.

00:40:55Guest:Yeah, well, those don't exist.

00:40:56Guest:Yeah, if we're going to give opinions, then we should balance it.

00:41:00Guest:I would say that if you call yourself a talk station,

00:41:03Guest:And you're a conservative talk station.

00:41:06Guest:Well, okay, but then it's on you, man, if your people are lying.

00:41:11Guest:Can I sue a guy for saying that Obama's a communist?

00:41:15Guest:No, I can't.

00:41:16Guest:It's not true, and you've got to be the dumbest motherfucker that ever walked to think that A, communism's making a comeback, and B, that Obama's a communist.

00:41:26Guest:I don't give a shit.

00:41:27Guest:Who saw Alinsky, whatever that stuff is.

00:41:30Guest:But as far as whose responsibility is it?

00:41:33Guest:it's the responsibility of the consumer.

00:41:37Marc:Yeah, well, there you go.

00:41:39Marc:See, that is the most revealing, horrible thing about America in one way.

00:41:44Marc:It's like, hey, look, man, I can express whatever I want to to these people.

00:41:48Marc:It can be bullshit.

00:41:48Marc:It doesn't matter.

00:41:49Marc:I'm going to say it.

00:41:49Marc:I'm going to say it convincingly, and it's on them.

00:41:52Marc:And then when you see the number of people that are like, we want to see the birth certificate, you're like, wow, I overestimated.

00:41:58Guest:Let's talk about that.

00:41:59Guest:How many people are there really, though?

00:42:00Guest:Now, you and I were just talking about how a guy, three women can get a guy bounced off the air.

00:42:05Guest:I wonder how many birther people there really are.

00:42:07Guest:Because at the end of the day, man, Barack Obama got elected president.

00:42:10Guest:Big time, yeah.

00:42:11Guest:It wasn't the other guy.

00:42:13Guest:It was Obama.

00:42:14Guest:Two terms, you know.

00:42:15Marc:Well, I think that becomes a question about, I think what people really get aggravated about with the right is just how organized they are with their propaganda machine.

00:42:22Marc:With their bullshit, yeah.

00:42:23Marc:And yeah, yeah.

00:42:24Marc:And the fact is, you know, they they they sold those guys out.

00:42:27Marc:I mean, the birther was, you know, whatever the next evolution of the right to life movement was mixed in with a bunch of whack job, half ass libertarians and patriots, supposed constitutionalists.

00:42:38Marc:And they're like, let's just give these guys a little juice and they'll kind of juice us.

00:42:43Marc:Yeah.

00:42:43Marc:And then they let a bunch of them in the Congress.

00:42:44Marc:And all these old guy Republicans are like, what do we fucking let in here?

00:42:48Guest:Yeah, or... Now we've got to fight these guys?

00:42:49Guest:Or they say, hey, Bob, this is who we should be with.

00:42:52Guest:Hey, Tea Party guys, hi.

00:42:54Marc:Well, that's right.

00:42:55Guest:They did do that.

00:42:55Guest:Trump is a good example.

00:42:58Guest:Trump started out talking about oil, China, the trade ratio, the this, the that.

00:43:03Guest:I thought, boy, this is a cat who's talking about some shit here.

00:43:05Guest:I like to listen to the economic... Donald Trump is injecting the knowledge and intelligence of a businessman into issues like the Chinese trade deficit, blah, blah, blah.

00:43:14Guest:And as soon as the cat declared, he starts in with the birth certificate.

00:43:18Guest:Right.

00:43:19Marc:So he went stupid.

00:43:20Marc:I can't.

00:43:21Marc:Well, I don't know whether that was self-promotion or what he really thought he was doing.

00:43:24Marc:I think he was really trying to.

00:43:25Marc:Well, it definitely killed him.

00:43:27Marc:But I think in his mind, he was he thought he had a shot.

00:43:30Marc:He thought there was more of them.

00:43:31Marc:than there were.

00:43:32Marc:And there ain't.

00:43:33Guest:Yeah, I think that's probably true.

00:43:35Guest:That's the whole thing with that Pat Buchanan thing in the 90s.

00:43:37Guest:Buchanan was like, yes, the revolution is on.

00:43:40Guest:And when the primaries were over, nobody gave a shit.

00:43:42Marc:But he was a clown, too.

00:43:43Marc:That's the interesting thing.

00:43:44Marc:You see these guys get older, and as they mellow, and they just become these kind of aggravated old men.

00:43:50Marc:You're like, they knew it was a shtick.

00:43:52Marc:They were just playing the political game.

00:43:54Marc:It's all a fucking game, which is one of the reasons I got out of it.

00:43:56Marc:I said, look, I'm disillusioned.

00:43:58Marc:You get to a certain point where you realize, hey, you know what?

00:44:01Marc:I thought I had all these opinions and they were mine, but I'm carrying partisan water.

00:44:04Marc:And I'm a fucking comedian.

00:44:06Marc:I got to ride both sides of the fence here.

00:44:08Marc:And you cannot avoid carrying.

00:44:12Marc:All of a sudden, you realize that I'm getting my information from the same place.

00:44:15Marc:Who's distributing this information?

00:44:16Marc:The people that want you to talk like this.

00:44:18Guest:Yeah.

00:44:19Marc:And then you have to say, like, I fucked myself.

00:44:21Marc:How did that even happen?

00:44:23Guest:Well, but, you know, you're going to change minds when you are talking about stuff.

00:44:27Guest:And I talk and I listen to Mark Maron and I enjoy what Mark Maron is about.

00:44:31Guest:You're going to have more impact on me as a person that way than you are if you were just hammering some fucking point of view.

00:44:36Marc:Well, there's that moment where you realize you're not sure where you're like, what am I really?

00:44:40Marc:What am I?

00:44:40Marc:What do I really believe in?

00:44:41Marc:And I don't know if you had that moment, but I'm like, look, existential problems of just existing in this world with all its challenges as a guy my age or a guy your age is daunting.

00:44:51Marc:And it presents a whole world of frustrations that are that you can speak to every day.

00:44:55Marc:That's right.

00:44:56Marc:Yeah.

00:44:56Marc:And those are important because those are for everybody and everybody's experience.

00:44:59Marc:So let's stick with those.

00:45:01Marc:What do I got to split the room with bullshit for?

00:45:03Marc:Exactly.

00:45:04Marc:Stuff that I don't even know.

00:45:04Marc:I don't know if anything's going to change.

00:45:06Marc:Right.

00:45:07Marc:And they want us to fight each other.

00:45:08Guest:They, you know, the they.

00:45:10Guest:They want us to fight.

00:45:10Guest:They want us to think they're interesting.

00:45:12Guest:And so what happened, though?

00:45:14Guest:Here's what happened.

00:45:15Guest:As we get frustrated, talk radio is dead.

00:45:19Guest:It's now all about sports radio.

00:45:21Guest:And the political dialogue in this country is going to get a break.

00:45:24Guest:In other words, we can go back to talking to each other on a street corner or in a bar, and we don't have to... Did you hear what Bill Billingsley said today on K-Ass?

00:45:31Guest:Boy, I'll tell you.

00:45:32Guest:Who's that?

00:45:33Guest:Billingsley.

00:45:33Guest:You ever heard him?

00:45:34Guest:you know uh call him by his first name you know yeah did you hear theo yeah theo yeah um so and then we can just go back to sports and then it'll come back around people somebody's gonna go all we ever do is talk about sports in this country you're the real shit that's happening you know man well we had that conversation remember we fucked it up well so just cycles yeah but when you started doing the characters

00:45:56Marc:Yeah, like it seems to me that that, you know, you were a fan of the power.

00:46:01Marc:I mean, it was almost like, you know, you realize listening to comedy records or to comics or to people that influence you who took those kind of chances that there was no reason why you couldn't do it on radio.

00:46:10Marc:Sure.

00:46:11Marc:Who are your guys?

00:46:12Marc:Comics?

00:46:13Marc:Yeah, whoever influenced you.

00:46:15Guest:Well, it was Lenny Bruce.

00:46:16Guest:It was Jackie Gleason.

00:46:17Guest:It was Laurel and Hardy.

00:46:18Guest:And it was, to some extent, Jonathan Winters, but not as much, I'd say, as like the Lenny Bruce's.

00:46:23Guest:And then Frank Zappa, when I got into high school, I loved his satirical approach to rock and roll.

00:46:27Guest:It was so great.

00:46:28Marc:What specifically?

00:46:29Guest:Just that, you know, this amazing instrumentation with these completely... No, that he completely, as soon as rock and roll got all puffed up about itself, along comes Frank Zappa to say, Disco Boy, you know, this dandruff.

00:46:41Guest:on your shoulder yeah so uh you think about a rock and roll doesn't have that anymore rap really hip-hop doesn't have that to some extent maybe but uh that voice that that voice that'll come along and poke the holes cut through the bullshit so fucking necessary and zappa was so funny with that shit i mean reuben and the jets you know it's where we grew up yeah

00:47:02Guest:Reuben and the Jets bus, basically El Monte, some dude with a freaking processed jelly roll and the Chico Jr.

00:47:07Guest:boots and a car that's jacked up in the back, you know, two-toned Chevy.

00:47:11Guest:And it's just hysterical to me.

00:47:12Marc:So you like the guys that cut through the bullshit.

00:47:14Marc:Yeah.

00:47:14Marc:And who had a voice that sort of rose above the rest.

00:47:17Guest:Who made fun of the things that I saw every day.

00:47:19Guest:Because most of these comics were talking about, you know, my wife.

00:47:22Guest:Yeah.

00:47:23Guest:I don't know.

00:47:23Guest:But here comes a guy that's laughing about the dude on the corner who takes his car down to Lion's Drag Strip on amateur night.

00:47:29Guest:Yeah.

00:47:29Guest:And the drive train drops out as soon as the light goes.

00:47:32Guest:was green you know that's the stuff I would howl at you know and these guys are making fun of it so and then came of course credibility gap and fireside theater those were really big because those guys interested me in radio chops I could hear what they were doing in the studio and I know like Harry

00:47:47Guest:and Michael McKean, all those guys.

00:47:51Guest:Phil Proctor.

00:47:52Guest:Yeah, and Phil Proctor, who I've had an opportunity to talk to.

00:47:56Guest:And I know those cats are about... They get it about audio and about audio comedy, about sound effects and shit.

00:48:01Guest:So those guys...

00:48:03Guest:I started listening to that.

00:48:05Guest:I go, wow, this can be a radio show every day.

00:48:07Guest:And, of course, they did do it, too.

00:48:08Guest:Credibility Gap was on the air here on Carolee.

00:48:11Guest:That was Carolee's news.

00:48:12Marc:Was that Fred Willard, too?

00:48:13Marc:No.

00:48:14Guest:It was David L. Lander.

00:48:16Guest:It was Harry Shearer.

00:48:16Guest:It was Michael McKean.

00:48:18Guest:It was Lou Irwin and their guitar player.

00:48:20Guest:I forget.

00:48:20Guest:This dude wrote a new song for every newscast.

00:48:22Guest:And Harry still does it.

00:48:23Guest:Harry still does the show, and it's now a podcast over on Sideshow.

00:48:27Guest:Yeah.

00:48:27Guest:And yeah, I think Harry's always going to be.

00:48:29Marc:So do you remember the first time you like you like was the first character you did an impulse or was it you're like, I'm going to do this today?

00:48:36Guest:It was an it was something I've done my whole life.

00:48:38Guest:It was it was.

00:48:39Guest:In other words, I wanted to do voices.

00:48:41Guest:I just didn't know how because my instincts were so fucking weird.

00:48:44Guest:I didn't know how am I going to do what I really want to do on the radio?

00:48:46Guest:They're going to think I'm crazy.

00:48:47Guest:They'll put me away because that has to do with the way I was raised and the whole trauma of my upbringing, which was what?

00:48:52Guest:Well, I mean, I come from a background of manic depression.

00:48:56Guest:On what side?

00:48:58Guest:On both sides.

00:48:58Guest:Both your parents were manic depressed?

00:49:00Marc:Yeah.

00:49:00Guest:My mother was more depressed.

00:49:01Guest:My father was more manic.

00:49:03Guest:And the one thing the Hendry family needed to do out there in Arcadia, in the lily-white Arcadia in the 60s, was to appear normal.

00:49:09Guest:My mother was just... That's why this character I have, Margaret, she's always...

00:49:13Guest:And do you know that your father, he dated a Jew before he met me.

00:49:18Guest:Well, Mom, what are you whispering for?

00:49:19Guest:I'm not whispering.

00:49:20Guest:Were you ashamed of that?

00:49:21Guest:Of course I'm not ashamed of that.

00:49:23Guest:The man across the hall, he's so nice.

00:49:26Guest:He's a black man.

00:49:27Guest:Yes.

00:49:28Guest:And he brought me my paper.

00:49:29Guest:And I think he must have some white blood in him.

00:49:31Guest:well why is that mom well he's very handsome yeah well mom is that kind of racist how dare you yeah yeah right yeah so that was my mom yeah it was all about appearances and so naturally growing up about appearances the last thing i'm going to do is all these voices i wanted to fit in so bad man and finally when my radio career was just stalling i said well i'm gonna have to bring the weird out now man otherwise i got nothing going right and i brought the weird out and uh

00:49:55Marc:Were you at the end of your rope?

00:49:56Guest:I was at the end of my rope in a lot of ways.

00:49:58Guest:I knew I had more talent.

00:50:00Marc:It's an amazing moment, that moment.

00:50:02Guest:Yeah, and I was on a train.

00:50:04Guest:Yeah.

00:50:05Guest:I was on a fucking train going to Seattle to visit my girlfriend, and I remember thinking and looking out the window at a setting sun over the Pacific.

00:50:12Guest:I don't care if I have one listener.

00:50:14Guest:I don't care if I never make another nickel, but I'm going to...

00:50:18Guest:Let it out.

00:50:18Guest:It was Patton.

00:50:19Guest:I'm going to be allowed to fulfill my destiny.

00:50:22Guest:His will be done.

00:50:24Guest:And so, yeah, that was it.

00:50:27Guest:And I got on the radio and started doing it.

00:50:29Guest:And it's a funny thing.

00:50:30Guest:When you do that, and I mean, for all you young people listening, when you do that, great stuff happens.

00:50:36Marc:Really great stuff happens.

00:50:36Marc:Yeah, because you finally feel like you're in your body.

00:50:39Marc:You're honoring yourself and creativity.

00:50:41Marc:Yeah.

00:50:41Guest:And you're proud of yourself.

00:50:43Guest:Oh, that's a big one.

00:50:43Guest:You're making yourself laugh.

00:50:45Guest:Right.

00:50:45Guest:You know, I would go home and listen to air checks and go, God damn, that's funny.

00:50:48Guest:Where were you on the air when you did it?

00:50:49Guest:I was at KVN in Ventura.

00:50:50Guest:It was a little tiny station, you know, in a market of 600,000 people.

00:50:55Guest:And then I got hired to go to Atlanta.

00:50:57Guest:And then I got hired to go to Minneapolis and then Miami and then to L.A.

00:51:00Guest:And when I got to L.A.

00:51:01Guest:in 96...

00:51:02Guest:And every city was a gauntlet I had to run.

00:51:05Guest:Every city was a new thing.

00:51:07Guest:And, you know, I sat down.

00:51:07Guest:And were you still doing music?

00:51:08Guest:No.

00:51:09Guest:This was all talk radio now.

00:51:10Guest:I started the talk show in 90.

00:51:13Guest:And I remember sitting down with the sales staff at KFI.

00:51:16Guest:Well, yes, I know that your act worked in Miami, but this is Los Angeles.

00:51:20Guest:I think you'll find it's very different.

00:51:22Guest:And I remember saying, that's what they sell.

00:51:24Guest:Tell me in every town, man.

00:51:26Guest:Yeah.

00:51:26Guest:No, it was just taking the innate, it goes to what you and I were talking about.

00:51:31Guest:It takes the credibility that talk radio had or has still, I'm not sure, allowed me to do what I did.

00:51:37Guest:Police people believe it.

00:51:38Guest:People are going, oh, wow, there's a woman there, and I'm going to call her up and rip her ass.

00:51:43Guest:And what we did with the show is we realized that the little small percentage of people that call who are very myopic...

00:51:50Guest:you entertain, as they probably said to you, you know, you're doing it for the listeners, not the callers.

00:51:55Guest:And I took that to a literal extreme.

00:51:57Guest:We treated the callers like dog shit.

00:51:59Marc:Right.

00:51:59Guest:Like they're working for Scientology in the basement.

00:52:02Marc:Because there's like 15 or 20 of them.

00:52:04Marc:Yeah, right.

00:52:04Guest:And they're all very just...

00:52:06Guest:Yeah, hi.

00:52:07Guest:Look, some of these talk show callers think they're as important as the host, you know.

00:52:10Guest:I call all the shows.

00:52:12Guest:And what's your name?

00:52:12Guest:Billy from La Brea.

00:52:14Guest:Don't worry about it.

00:52:15Guest:So anyway, you know, and this guy right here.

00:52:18Guest:And so you want to say, Billy, it's a made-up voice.

00:52:22Guest:It's not even there.

00:52:23Guest:It's just me going...

00:52:25Guest:But why?

00:52:26Guest:You want to say it, but you don't.

00:52:28Guest:Right.

00:52:29Guest:You don't.

00:52:29Guest:I don't say it.

00:52:30Guest:And he's just like, and I can't.

00:52:32Guest:Well, my, you know, and my daughter died.

00:52:35Guest:And I love that when they try to manipulate the emotion of it.

00:52:38Guest:My daughter died in an automobile accident.

00:52:40Guest:What do you think of that?

00:52:41Guest:Was she a piece of ass?

00:52:42Guest:Yeah.

00:52:42Guest:You know, and you know, you're you just how dare you?

00:52:48Guest:And for me, it was just completely blowing up talk radio.

00:52:53Guest:It was attacking the very thing you and I are talking about.

00:52:56Marc:And the greatest thing about it is that because I remember the first time I listened to you, I was like, what is going on here?

00:53:02Marc:Because I just it was like, you know, it was in L.A.

00:53:05Marc:And I don't know if you were really on my radar.

00:53:06Marc:And it was at night.

00:53:07Marc:And I don't remember what time your show was on at night, right?

00:53:09Marc:Like 9 to midnight.

00:53:10Marc:Right, yeah.

00:53:11Marc:So I'm just listening.

00:53:12Marc:I don't know.

00:53:12Marc:I just came upon it.

00:53:13Marc:And I still remember.

00:53:14Marc:I think it was a father talking about his kid.

00:53:17Marc:And he kept saying spring in his step.

00:53:18Marc:He used to have spring in his step.

00:53:20Marc:He used to listen.

00:53:21Guest:love those terms yeah it was a great term like the term i'd never heard before i'm like i gotta remember that he's got no spring in his step you know and do you remember what i'm talking about i don't remember that bit no i i do i do recall we always i used to love to hold on to these phrases like you know boy she likes to stick it in and break it off stick it in and break it i melt that one one night and when a caller repeats it back it's gold because like

00:53:42Guest:And you're talking about sticking it in and breaking it off.

00:53:45Guest:I'll tell you what you ought to stick it and break off.

00:53:47Guest:It's just like a golden moment.

00:53:49Guest:And really, what you and I are talking about, taking all that self-important bullshit and blowing it apart, we did it every night.

00:53:54Guest:And to that extent, I guess maybe that's the best way of attacking it.

00:54:00Guest:I don't know.

00:54:01Marc:No, it is.

00:54:01Guest:We were on talk stations, and I got this.

00:54:05Guest:I don't know whether he's, what is it, fish or fowl?

00:54:09Guest:I don't know, is he fish or fowl?

00:54:11Guest:It's a comedy, it's a satire, you know?

00:54:13Guest:Oh, treat it the way they do Saturday Night Live on NBC.

00:54:17Guest:Well, television's slightly different, man, because they have all kinds of, they block program on television.

00:54:22Guest:They have news, they have comedy, they have drama.

00:54:24Guest:Radio doesn't.

00:54:25Guest:Radio has like, it's all drama, drama, drama, comedy.

00:54:27Guest:In other words, you walk into a store where they're selling tuxedos, and there's a guy in the corner selling really cool tie-dye shirts.

00:54:33Guest:And they're the best tie-dye shirts you've ever seen.

00:54:35Guest:But you really came into the store for a tuxedo.

00:54:37Guest:Right.

00:54:37Marc:That was kind of what happened to my show.

00:54:39Marc:And also with radio comedy, I mean, you know, I think even historically, it was so broad.

00:54:45Marc:And it was so sort of like, you know, fart noises.

00:54:47Marc:And you had two personalities have very defined roles in the situation.

00:54:51Marc:It's all pop culture driven.

00:54:52Guest:And very obvious comedy.

00:54:53Marc:Exactly.

00:54:53Marc:There was no sort of utilizing the potential of the illusion.

00:54:57Marc:So the fact that people were coming to this, and me included, where you could actually, no matter what, even now if you were on the radio, you would dupe people.

00:55:05Marc:And I'm sure there were people that listened to you for years that never knew that those were fake.

00:55:11Guest:For years, that would scare me if I met someone.

00:55:14Guest:I used to say to people, how long?

00:55:15Guest:I listened for six years, and I finally got it.

00:55:18Guest:And you just don't want to shake their hand.

00:55:19Marc:You want to...

00:55:20Marc:Okay, thank you.

00:55:21Marc:Well, there's also the divisive of how you do it.

00:55:24Marc:I mean, I don't quite know how you do it.

00:55:25Marc:After I knew that it was a shtick, you know, I couldn't quite figure out how you change the tonal texture.

00:55:31Guest:Well, what you're doing is, it really is just a telephone.

00:55:34Guest:For everybody that used to say, well, he has processing equipment.

00:55:38Guest:No, I don't.

00:55:38Guest:Okay, mister, you know, I've got audio equipment at home and that's my hobby.

00:55:42Guest:Right.

00:55:42Guest:No, it's not.

00:55:43Guest:It's a phone.

00:55:44Guest:We put it through a phone box.

00:55:45Guest:Right.

00:55:45Guest:Because you get a little more dirty noise with a phone box.

00:55:48Guest:I also have some sound effects.

00:55:49Guest:I have a loop that just continues of like a cell phone sound effect.

00:55:54Guest:So I'll use about, I got six or seven of those.

00:55:56Guest:And then it's just a technique of knowing how people speak, you know, and I've got my mic up and then I pull it down when I'm on the phone.

00:56:03Guest:So if I'm doing two voices...

00:56:05Marc:So you're going through the phone board or the telos or whatever.

00:56:07Guest:Yeah, when I'm on the phone.

00:56:08Guest:Right.

00:56:09Guest:When I'm on the mic, I'm on the mic.

00:56:10Marc:So you're just working the knobs.

00:56:11Guest:Yeah, what I'm doing is holding the phone far away from me when I'm on mic so it doesn't feed back.

00:56:16Guest:Right.

00:56:16Guest:Because I've got to leave the phone pot up.

00:56:18Guest:I can't work two pots, so I'm just working one.

00:56:21Guest:Yeah.

00:56:21Guest:And then it's just something probably I developed it as a kid when I used to love listening to people's conversations.

00:56:27Guest:And to me, the funniest thing in the world is the reality.

00:56:30Guest:That's funny.

00:56:32Guest:Reality's funny.

00:56:33Guest:And when it's a reality, like, you know, my father was the guy, my dad would be driving, and he'd be pissed, and he'd say to a guy, you better get out of the way, pal, you got an ass full of car.

00:56:42Guest:And he'd be, and he'd go, what are you laughing at, Philip?

00:56:45Guest:I'm like, ass full of car, are you kidding?

00:56:48Yeah.

00:56:48Guest:Ah, well, shit, you know.

00:56:49Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:56:50Guest:So to me, this was, so getting a guy on the radio and saying, and I can tell you right now, Mr. Henry, that my wife is very beautiful, but as the coach of a team, I, as the coach of a team, I don't want these young men getting ideas.

00:57:03Guest:Well, what was going on?

00:57:04Guest:Well, I've got these young men, and they're looking her up and down.

00:57:07Guest:And, well, you know, you tell them, I set them straight.

00:57:10Guest:I said, I'm going to tell you something.

00:57:12Guest:if any of you even lay a hand on her.

00:57:15Guest:Now, what team were you coaching?

00:57:17Guest:Well, it was a Little League team over here in the, you know.

00:57:20Guest:But you do it, you don't drop it quite so.

00:57:23Guest:Right, string it out.

00:57:24Guest:Yeah, what you're doing is people are finally going, a Little League team, and you're worried they're going to hit on your wife?

00:57:28Guest:Hey, let me tell you what.

00:57:30Guest:You know, now suddenly the guy, now his character really comes, oh, this guy is like paranoid, and he's possessive, and he's crazy, and no, I'm not, no, I'm fine, you know.

00:57:40Guest:I'm being reasonable.

00:57:41Guest:Yeah.

00:57:41Guest:Exactly.

00:57:42Guest:But is it all improvised?

00:57:44Guest:Yeah.

00:57:45Guest:You bullet point it.

00:57:46Guest:So you and I would sit down maybe, or you and your show, Mark, you sit down and go, oh, this would be really funny if a guy was super protective of his young wife around these sports teams.

00:57:58Guest:The bit was born out of the thought, gee, if I owned a team, that would be really cool.

00:58:02Guest:And I'd have a lot of money, and I'd have this really young, hot wife.

00:58:05Guest:Wait a minute.

00:58:06Guest:And then she's going into the locker room and seeing all these big dicks on these naked guys.

00:58:10Guest:Sure.

00:58:10Guest:And I thought, how funny would it be if that was a situation?

00:58:13Guest:Let's play with that.

00:58:15Guest:And then we got to this, what if it was a Little League team?

00:58:17Guest:Right.

00:58:17Guest:What if it was a high school team?

00:58:18Guest:Sure, sure.

00:58:19Guest:So how do we make that real?

00:58:21Guest:Sure.

00:58:21Guest:How do you make a guy like that, not a funny man, not a, not a sticky guy, but how do you take a guy who really believes that his wife will be hit on by little leaguers and that the little leaguers do it?

00:58:30Guest:What does he sound like in real life?

00:58:32Guest:Right.

00:58:32Guest:Well, he's like, now I'm going to tell you, you can go about it two ways.

00:58:35Guest:He can say, I know this is going to sound funny.

00:58:38Guest:You can go that way.

00:58:39Guest:Right.

00:58:39Guest:Or you can go this way.

00:58:40Guest:You can go, you don't know.

00:58:42Guest:Yeah.

00:58:42Guest:You don't, you don't see, you don't understand, you know.

00:58:44Guest:and and and and i and to me that's a i'm living this yeah i'm living i'm living it every day you know and to me that's a funnier way to go so what do you think what do you think's going on i can tell you right now these kids grow up very quick now i gotta what are you looking at you know that guy yeah this 11 year old kid is hitting on my wife and that's it's humiliating and

00:59:06Guest:And that touches something in any man.

00:59:09Guest:A man is going to say, yeah, that is humiliating.

00:59:11Guest:But this guy, he's fucked up.

00:59:12Marc:He's a little out there.

00:59:13Guest:But then you're in.

00:59:14Guest:You're like, this guy, he's a little nuts.

00:59:16Guest:And we got the call that I often say this.

00:59:18Guest:We get the opposite call of what most guys get.

00:59:21Guest:Most guys get, at first I thought you were serious, but now I know you're kidding.

00:59:24Guest:We did the opposite call.

00:59:25Guest:At first I thought you were kidding, but now I know you're serious.

00:59:27Guest:Because he took it to such a degree.

00:59:29Guest:Oh, I thought this was a joke.

00:59:30Guest:Right.

00:59:31Guest:No.

00:59:32Guest:You think that a man losing his wife to a 12-year-old is funny?

00:59:35Guest:Yeah.

00:59:35Guest:You think...

00:59:36Guest:Well, sir, you're a creator.

00:59:38Guest:Right.

00:59:39Marc:Because by stringing it along and playing it straight, the character has depth.

00:59:45Marc:And because of this microphone and there's nothing seen, that depth is a lot easier to get that deep that quickly.

00:59:51Marc:Yeah.

00:59:52Marc:Because it's really just about phrasing.

00:59:53Marc:And people are like, holy fuck.

00:59:55Marc:Did you hear how he said that?

00:59:56Guest:Yes.

00:59:56Marc:This is a real guy.

00:59:57Guest:He's really, you know, he's angry.

00:59:59Guest:Now, the problem with radio is the radio has a quarter hours and all this shit.

01:00:02Guest:So you got to string it out.

01:00:04Guest:And while you're stringing it out and telling yourself to hang on.

01:00:07Guest:Yeah.

01:00:08Guest:You also have to tell the audience, stay with this.

01:00:11Guest:It's going to be funny because during the opening monologue, they're thinking they're just hearing a regular show.

01:00:15Guest:And either it's interesting or it's not.

01:00:17Guest:And a lot of them will just go and go to another station.

01:00:19Guest:I don't want to hear about a guy and his wife.

01:00:21Guest:Right.

01:00:22Guest:podcasting affords the opportunity of people listening at their leisure, and there's nobody leaning on me saying, come on, Phil, hurry it up.

01:00:31Guest:You've got a quarter hour that you have to worry about.

01:00:32Guest:Reset, reset.

01:00:33Guest:Yeah, I'm going to fucking do this the way I want to do it.

01:00:35Guest:So when we finally get out of our current radio deal, and I'm seriously considering just chucking radio altogether and just doing exclusively a podcast show, and I can do the phone call show online,

01:00:48Guest:with a podcast, and have live calls.

01:00:52Guest:Sure.

01:00:52Guest:You just got to set up a time.

01:00:54Guest:And there's other techniques we can use.

01:00:57Guest:And people want to hear on demand.

01:00:58Guest:They want to listen on demand.

01:00:59Guest:I was talking about... Easier.

01:01:00Guest:Yeah.

01:01:01Guest:That's what's killing TV.

01:01:02Marc:Well, it's interesting that this was one of the great moments of...

01:01:08Marc:I heard there's a couple of dinosaur radio guys that were talking to some other comic that I know about podcasting.

01:01:16Marc:And, of course, it came down to the ego thing where it's like, they don't know what they're doing.

01:01:22Marc:I mean, I listen.

01:01:22Marc:They don't even reset.

01:01:24Marc:They don't reset.

01:01:25Marc:Why do we need to reset?

01:01:26Marc:You don't need to reset, man.

01:01:27Guest:People chose to listen to it.

01:01:28Guest:There's no resetting.

01:01:30Guest:There's no PPM here, man.

01:01:31Guest:Yeah, there's no fucking PPM.

01:01:32Guest:There's none of that shit.

01:01:34Guest:I'm a pro.

01:01:35Guest:I reset.

01:01:36Yeah.

01:01:36Guest:So when was... That's why... No, no, go ahead.

01:01:40Guest:Look at the podcast.

01:01:41Guest:Look at the top comedy podcasts on iTunes.

01:01:43Guest:They're all comics, with rare exception.

01:01:46Guest:There's a radio guy.

01:01:48Guest:You did radio.

01:01:49Guest:I think we were in there.

01:01:51Guest:Yeah.

01:01:51Guest:But mostly comics, and they're pulling down, you know, you guys are pulling down ad dollars, and hello, Mr. Radio Guy, these cats are making a success out of this medium, so it's time to stop asking yourself how, this is obviously where it's at, because you guys, they're not making money in radio anymore.

01:02:09Marc:Well, the weird thing, this is what I was telling you before, is these guys have been coddled for so long.

01:02:12Marc:It must be very frightening for a guy that, you know, and they're all tired.

01:02:16Marc:You know, these morning crews and stuff, it's like, you know, you walk into some of them and like, you know, the mics go down and they're, you know, they're on their phone.

01:02:23Marc:They're not talking to each other.

01:02:25Marc:Don't talk to each other.

01:02:25Marc:Yeah.

01:02:25Marc:It's almost heartbreaking that something that had so much juice at some other point in time was now just sort of this husk that was just running on fumes.

01:02:34Marc:But if they're holding a good share of the market, the programmers and the managers are going to keep them there at their nut, and they get spoiled.

01:02:41Marc:I mean, it must be frightening, even for a guy your age, I would imagine, you're about 10 years older than me, to all of a sudden say, well, I'm going to leave my parents' house.

01:02:49Right.

01:02:49Guest:Well, I've got no choice.

01:02:51Guest:I mean, I had a radio show that went as far as it could.

01:02:55Guest:I thought I could take it further by, you know, sort of reinvigorating it a little bit.

01:03:00Guest:But I know now that the industry is not prepared to support what I do.

01:03:06Guest:And the industry wants to go to a sports model.

01:03:09Guest:The comedy thing, they don't understand.

01:03:11Guest:They still don't.

01:03:12Guest:I don't know what their problem is.

01:03:13Guest:My agent said to me, can you do what you do, Phil, only with sports?

01:03:16Guest:I said, yeah, yeah, I guess.

01:03:19Guest:But why limit it?

01:03:20Guest:So I said, look, I'm going to send you a Milwaukee Lion podcast.

01:03:24Guest:See how they like that.

01:03:25Guest:How dare you come into my booth?

01:03:28Guest:And you did that, 16 of those?

01:03:30Guest:I did 16 games, yeah.

01:03:31Guest:We had pregame, postgame.

01:03:32Guest:We did the Dickman Bowl, which was the championship of the league.

01:03:35Guest:And it was always a play-by-play guy that I want to hear.

01:03:38Guest:No, it ain't scary to me because we've got a subscriptions site, so we make a pretty good income from that, and I can take the podcast thing and experiment with that.

01:03:47Guest:We also do video, which I know you don't do, Mark.

01:03:50Guest:Is that new to you?

01:03:51Guest:We've been doing a videocast since 2009.

01:03:54Marc:Yeah, and do you like letting people in on the... Because for what you do, I know they like... People like to see it.

01:04:01Guest:They like to watch the performing.

01:04:03Guest:They like to see me going into character.

01:04:05Guest:That's great.

01:04:05Guest:Yeah, but I think what you said was fascinating.

01:04:08Guest:I can do a videocast.

01:04:09Guest:They don't have to be looking at me.

01:04:10Guest:They could be looking at a slide of me, or I don't know, or maybe the ocean, you know.

01:04:14Marc:For me, it was like a lot of infrastructure, and I don't necessarily do what you do.

01:04:18Marc:I know that there was a time there where we used to hear rumors or stories of like, Howard Stern goes over and watches Phil whenever he's in town.

01:04:29Guest:Oh, no, just one time Howard came over.

01:04:31Guest:He came over when I was at KFI because his agent, Don Buchwald, was the agency that I was with.

01:04:39Guest:And Howard, at that time, was... What was he doing, man?

01:04:42Guest:He was setting up his network, which he eventually did do at Satellite.

01:04:46Guest:Yeah, he was a nice man, and he came in and watched, and he's a radio dog.

01:04:50Guest:Yeah.

01:04:51Guest:Howard's a, you know, he's real deal.

01:04:52Guest:He's the real thing, man.

01:04:53Guest:We were talking about production.

01:04:54Guest:We were talking about cutting tape.

01:04:55Guest:We were talking about voices.

01:04:56Guest:We were talking about, you know, uh, so, you know, he's on America's God.

01:05:00Guest:He's all that shit.

01:05:00Guest:But when you sit down and you can talk radio with him and, and I found him to be a terrific guy and, and very nice to me, you know, um,

01:05:09Guest:I know he can really rip some people.

01:05:12Marc:He's the standard.

01:05:14Marc:He's the deal.

01:05:16Marc:Howard is the deal.

01:05:18Guest:I don't blame him a lot.

01:05:19Guest:There's so many cats that are trying to do his act.

01:05:21Marc:He unleashed something in the world, but everybody does.

01:05:24Marc:But, you know, no one does it with the sort of finesse and the charm that he does, it seems.

01:05:29Marc:It's very, you know, shock jockeying or whatever it became.

01:05:33Marc:Because it's interesting when you see when Howard was cutting his teeth within FCC standards.

01:05:39Marc:Yeah.

01:05:39Marc:It was really challenging and interesting to watch.

01:05:41Marc:I always wonder about that sometimes when when you see like Bill Maher move from Comedy Central to HBO or you see Howard move from terrestrial to satellite where they no longer have to worry about saying fuck or being graphic.

01:05:53Marc:That's some of the some of the things that were challenging to do the type of comedy and to make it work within those confines, which was really not more compelling.

01:06:04Marc:But you knew less about who they really were.

01:06:06Guest:Yeah, and I heard people say when Howard got divorced, it really, you know, the women especially, they loved to know that he was, to hear about the family.

01:06:14Marc:Sure, and also that he was a good husband despite all his perviness.

01:06:17Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:06:19Marc:Fighting the good fight.

01:06:20Guest:Fighting the good fight.

01:06:21Guest:Well, I think that in life...

01:06:23Guest:people change, and I think in entertainment, you have to sort of move on.

01:06:29Guest:Not move on, but you have to evolve.

01:06:31Guest:I mean, can you think of people doing the same act for 60, 70, or 60, 70 years, 50 years or something?

01:06:39Guest:I don't know.

01:06:40Guest:How is that not a jail?

01:06:41Guest:Yeah.

01:06:42Guest:Yeah, I mean, I get that, yeah.

01:06:43Guest:Can't you change it?

01:06:44Guest:Yeah, he's doing a lot of stuff now that people are saying, Howard Stanisgad,

01:06:48Marc:but i think he'll find and and yeah sometimes it takes years he'll find something or he won't and he'll be fine and it'll be okay yeah that's the weird thing like there's some part of me it's like look if i had enough money to really call it quits yeah i would call it quits me too dude i do it once a week maybe once a month you know you see all these cats that are richer than god and they're out there strutting around and i'm like what do you go sit down yeah go sit down

01:07:11Guest:Like Buddy Rich.

01:07:12Guest:I got a home in Palm Springs.

01:07:13Guest:I could sit on my ass the rest of my life.

01:07:15Guest:I don't need you high school bastards.

01:07:17Guest:Yeah, right.

01:07:17Guest:Did you ever hear those Buddy Rich out there?

01:07:19Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:07:19Marc:You guys are blowing clams out there.

01:07:21Marc:I don't even know what that means.

01:07:23Marc:I don't know what that is, blowing clams.

01:07:24Marc:What are you blowing?

01:07:26Marc:Clams.

01:07:26Marc:Yeah.

01:07:27Marc:I don't even know what that was.

01:07:28Marc:Blowing clams.

01:07:29Guest:Right there is an FCC violation.

01:07:31Marc:Yeah, I think that's how I heard it.

01:07:34Marc:Perhaps I was wrong.

01:07:35Guest:Well, yeah, so I think...

01:07:39Guest:I think, like me, I don't get any phone calls anymore, man, because my contract's coming up, so the affiliates are falling away.

01:07:46Guest:The company's not holding on to them.

01:07:48Guest:So I'm just doing character voices, and I'm sort of, in other words, I've created a kind of a morning show in there with three imaginary people.

01:07:57Guest:But I listen to it, I listen to the air checks now, and it actually makes me laugh.

01:08:01Guest:And I'm wondering, am I finding something here?

01:08:03Guest:Because I've got people who...

01:08:04Guest:hit me up on Facebook.

01:08:06Guest:God, you were funny.

01:08:06Guest:I'm thinking, I bet you these are people who never heard the old show with the calls.

01:08:10Guest:There's a new audience.

01:08:11Guest:There's a turnover.

01:08:11Marc:The calls were a lot of juice.

01:08:13Guest:It's also what made the show extremely unique and got a lot of buzz going.

01:08:17Marc:That spontaneity thing.

01:08:19Marc:So that's when you put up the old episodes for everybody.

01:08:22Guest:I put up the old episodes and...

01:08:26Guest:Also, I took one of the characters, Bobby Dooley, and she's doing a podcast now.

01:08:31Guest:She's interviewing celebrities.

01:08:34Guest:You could start a whole network.

01:08:35Guest:You could just give all your characters shows.

01:08:38Guest:How many do you have?

01:08:40Guest:Do you have a count?

01:08:41Guest:Probably about 20 or 25 that we do solid a lot.

01:08:44Guest:That are in rotation.

01:08:45Guest:Yeah, and then probably about 40.

01:08:47Guest:I just found one the other night.

01:08:49Guest:I was just doing a voice, and...

01:08:51Guest:It was a female, but it worked.

01:08:54Guest:It was a male voice.

01:08:56Guest:I forget who the character was, but I just decided... I was doing... Steve Bozell was the host of the show.

01:09:01Guest:I'm Steve Bozell.

01:09:01Guest:I'm filling in for Phil Hendry.

01:09:04Guest:Okay, let's go to a call.

01:09:05Guest:I don't know how to do it.

01:09:06Guest:Hi, you're on the air.

01:09:07Guest:Hi.

01:09:09Guest:And you just kind of start to play with it.

01:09:11Guest:Hi, you're Mr. Bozell?

01:09:13Guest:Is that it?

01:09:14Guest:Because I've been listening here.

01:09:15Guest:Well, and I found out something.

01:09:17Guest:Yeah.

01:09:18Guest:It isn't the voice.

01:09:19Guest:Yeah.

01:09:20Guest:It's the pacing, the timing, the language you use and the ambience.

01:09:24Guest:You can get someone to believe that the voice that I have right now is a woman.

01:09:28Guest:Yeah.

01:09:28Guest:If you use the right kind of language.

01:09:30Guest:Yeah.

01:09:30Guest:If you've got a little bit of an ambient change, like maybe hold the phone a little bit further away.

01:09:34Guest:Right, right.

01:09:35Guest:And use a certain cadence.

01:09:38Guest:Mm-hmm.

01:09:38Guest:And people, yeah, they'll go with it.

01:09:40Marc:They'll go with it.

01:09:41Marc:Maybe she has a problem with her.

01:09:43Marc:Could be.

01:09:43Guest:Or she's just a cigarette smoker or something like that.

01:09:45Guest:I got on the air one night when I was in Miami and I said, we have Mark Furman with us, the LAPD cop.

01:09:50Guest:And I didn't change my voice at all.

01:09:52Guest:Mark, how are you?

01:09:53Guest:I'm fine.

01:09:54Guest:Well, that's great.

01:09:54Guest:Yeah, that's great.

01:09:56Guest:So how's things out in L.A.?

01:09:57Guest:Well, you know, we're trying to find a guy that killed, you know, whoever.

01:10:00Guest:There were people going, you had Mark Furman today, man.

01:10:02Guest:That was fast.

01:10:02Guest:That was great.

01:10:03Marc:Yeah.

01:10:04Marc:They want to believe.

01:10:05Marc:Isn't that the weirdest thing?

01:10:06Marc:Yeah.

01:10:07Marc:Is that we live in a culture as advanced as we are where psychics still hold sway.

01:10:12Marc:People still think they're going to win the lottery.

01:10:14Marc:That no matter how God-driven anybody is, this is the great thing about living in a nation of suckers is that we all are to a certain degree.

01:10:23Marc:You want to believe it.

01:10:24Marc:Why wouldn't you want to believe it?

01:10:25Marc:It's true.

01:10:27Marc:So you suspend your disbelief, and you're like, I want to engage with something real.

01:10:33Marc:And those are always the saddest when they realize it's not real.

01:10:36Marc:And some people get really pissed at you.

01:10:40Guest:Because they feel like you took advantage of it.

01:10:41Guest:Yeah, and some of them, they'll get pissed at you this way.

01:10:44Guest:They'll say, oh.

01:10:45Guest:that was really funny.

01:10:46Guest:You fooled me for how long?

01:10:48Guest:For a whole year.

01:10:49Guest:You know, that was really great.

01:10:50Guest:And then they start, you know, messaging you and they start saying, Oh, you're really funny.

01:10:53Guest:You're really funny.

01:10:54Guest:But there's something about them that's, you know, a little oppressive and you just don't want to talk to him.

01:10:57Guest:Right.

01:10:58Guest:And so now they say, not only did he fool me, but he doesn't think I'm a cool guy.

01:11:02Guest:And now they hate you.

01:11:03Guest:Yeah.

01:11:03Marc:Oh, yeah.

01:11:03Marc:Then the hate starts coming.

01:11:05Marc:I used to like you.

01:11:06Marc:Right.

01:11:07Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:11:07Guest:You used to be good.

01:11:08Guest:Yeah.

01:11:08Guest:You used to be a nice guy.

01:11:09Guest:Yeah, yeah.

01:11:10Guest:What happened?

01:11:11Guest:What happened?

01:11:12Guest:You apparently got.

01:11:13Guest:You happened, man.

01:11:14Marc:Something went wrong inside of you, buddy.

01:11:17Guest:Yeah.

01:11:18Guest:I got a death threat yesterday on Facebook.

01:11:21Guest:Yeah.

01:11:21Guest:And I said, here's what a death threat looks like, you guys.

01:11:24Guest:And I placed it up in a very prominent view.

01:11:26Guest:And I thought what was interesting about it was there's so many people that are not aware of that world at all.

01:11:31Marc:the trolls they're not aware of that death threat you know what we have to deal with on the dark side sometimes it's the scariest fucking thing in the world because you know not unlike anybody else in the world you know these kind of things happen all the time there's always a couple of loose screws out there right but like when you hear the stories and again you know we're victims of it too when you hear about identity theft and then all of a sudden then you really start to think about your life versus like a celebrity who can afford a bunker's life you know like you know if you if you do enough research you can find my name and address

01:12:00Marc:Sure.

01:12:01Marc:You know, it's very easy.

01:12:02Guest:Somebody put my name and address on Twitter.

01:12:03Marc:Right.

01:12:04Marc:I've had that kind of stuff happen.

01:12:05Marc:So then you get one of these death threats and it becomes a little harder to dismiss.

01:12:09Marc:Right.

01:12:09Marc:That is just some crazy.

01:12:10Marc:Then for two weeks, you're like, you're checking your locks.

01:12:13Marc:You're wondering what that noise was.

01:12:14Marc:How fucking crazy is this guy?

01:12:16Marc:Is he with other people?

01:12:18Marc:But maybe that's just me.

01:12:19Marc:I don't know if you go through that.

01:12:20Guest:Oh, you're putting on camo paint.

01:12:21Guest:You know, you're looking like you're going to get bin Laden.

01:12:25Guest:I'm on the roof now.

01:12:29Guest:No, you're right.

01:12:30Guest:But I've been at it for 40 years, and I've had probably an average of three death threats a year in my life.

01:12:38Guest:And at some point, I got really pissed off.

01:12:41Guest:And I became a little psycho.

01:12:43Guest:You know, one night I actually got in the car and everybody in the station said, no, Phil, don't do it.

01:12:49Guest:No, Phil.

01:12:50Guest:Like, remember in Cuckoo's Nest?

01:12:51Guest:No, Mac, don't do it.

01:12:52Guest:Mac, while he's choking her.

01:12:54Guest:I'm in my car going, I'm going to find this guy.

01:12:56Guest:Some dude says, I'm in a white Mercedes.

01:12:58Guest:So I got in my car and I saw a white Mercedes parked at the El Pollo Loco.

01:13:02Guest:And I hit reverse, and I pull up, and I sat there staring into this white Mercedes.

01:13:09Guest:And I sat, and I stared, and I sat, and I stared.

01:13:11Guest:This is a caller?

01:13:13Guest:This was a caller who said, I'm going to kill you, man.

01:13:16Guest:Well, the guy in the white Mercedes is like...

01:13:19Marc:the fuck yeah you know he's eating his chicken wasn't the guy it was some other guy he's waiting for his wife to come out you know and i'm just yeah yeah you know all of a sudden i became the crazy man that's happened that happened to me man and i've done it you know it not to that degree but i was just starting out in radio and i was getting mail about the show saying like get rid of marin he you know let it he shouldn't be sitting at the grown-up table and you know and he was and these emails kept coming and i

01:13:44Marc:I'm still real sensitive about this shit.

01:13:46Marc:Of course.

01:13:46Marc:So I started emailing this guy back.

01:13:48Marc:Well, what exactly did I say that upset you or made you think this?

01:13:51Marc:And then he's like, you're just not this and this, this and this.

01:13:53Marc:And then I go back again.

01:13:54Marc:It's like, well, I want to understand.

01:13:56Marc:And then it got to this point where he literally said, why are you still emailing me?

01:14:00Marc:Yeah.

01:14:01Marc:Well, I'm the guy.

01:14:01Marc:It's a game.

01:14:02Marc:But I'm the guy.

01:14:03Marc:Now I'm the asshole.

01:14:04Marc:But it's also the moment that you should realize that this is all they want.

01:14:08Marc:Yeah.

01:14:08Marc:That they want you to react.

01:14:10Marc:Yeah.

01:14:10Marc:And if you react, they win.

01:14:11Marc:They win.

01:14:12Marc:I still fight this fight every day on fucking Twitter.

01:14:14Marc:Yeah.

01:14:17Marc:For two hours today, some guy didn't even take that big a shot at me.

01:14:20Marc:He just said, you know, I listened to George Wallace on Jay Moore's show today.

01:14:23Marc:It was smart and intriguing.

01:14:24Marc:Marc Maron, not so much.

01:14:26Marc:Missed opportunity.

01:14:27Marc:So I didn't even know what it meant.

01:14:28Marc:I mean, I guess he listened to both.

01:14:29Marc:it's one of those dismissals that just kind of gets right in under your fucking fucking sensitive i can't seem to you know i know a lot of people are like you just got to detach from it it's like well you're not me i mean like if i if i was able to fully detach from this shit you know i don't know if i would still be you wouldn't be in the business

01:14:46Guest:You do have to ignore it.

01:14:47Guest:I'll tell you, just so you feel better, man, I had a friend.

01:14:50Guest:I was making a really good friend with someone in the business, a female, and I won't mention her name out of respect to her.

01:14:58Guest:And we were really having great conversations and, you know, making plans to kind of meet up and this and that.

01:15:05Guest:Then an interview with me came out.

01:15:08Guest:That was a good interview.

01:15:09Guest:Yeah, but she emailed me the Negative comments in the comment section.

01:15:15Guest:I didn't know if you saw this Yeah, yeah all day long.

01:15:17Guest:I've been getting people saying a good interview That's really cool comment sections.

01:15:21Guest:Yeah

01:15:22Guest:And this is my friend who's in the business.

01:15:25Guest:Yeah.

01:15:25Guest:Sends me these three comments.

01:15:26Guest:And I just... I said, gee, thanks a lot.

01:15:29Guest:And I don't have any idea.

01:15:31Guest:I reacted this way.

01:15:33Guest:Why would you do that?

01:15:34Guest:I was increasingly strident because I really honestly didn't know why.

01:15:39Guest:She would send it to you.

01:15:40Guest:She said to me...

01:15:41Guest:I want to know if people are saying negative things I want people to know that I why are you reacting this way well I honestly don't know one person in this business that would send me negative comments on the day I really could argue yeah what would you do you know however she did and I'm sure she was well intentioned yeah but that was the end of our fucking relationship man

01:16:01Guest:She wasn't even the troll.

01:16:03Guest:No, she was my friend.

01:16:05Guest:You killed the messenger, Phil.

01:16:07Guest:I don't know.

01:16:08Guest:And I feel bad about it, you know?

01:16:09Marc:Why?

01:16:09Marc:Because she can't, you know, you acted in such a way that it's just not, you can't, there's no coming back from it.

01:16:14Guest:Well, I did apologize, but I think she just said, but I still think to myself, why did she send those?

01:16:20Marc:Right.

01:16:21Marc:Yeah, I'm like that too.

01:16:22Marc:It's like, you know, there are those people that, you know, they sort of, they give you those compliments that end with, well, what'd you think?

01:16:29Marc:I thought you did a great job.

01:16:32Marc:How did you feel about it?

01:16:33Marc:How did you feel about it?

01:16:34Marc:Why don't you just leave it and you did a great job?

01:16:39Guest:I totally understand.

01:16:42Guest:And the best thing to do is to not read that shit.

01:16:44Guest:I mean, it's hard.

01:16:45Guest:When you go into your mentions, you're going to see it.

01:16:47Marc:Yeah, I'm getting better at it, you know, because because you start to realize that they're all hacks and it's about getting a reaction.

01:16:53Marc:Yeah.

01:16:53Marc:And it's all you know, it's all the same angle.

01:16:56Marc:You know, how do we push these guys buttons?

01:16:57Marc:And if you get a guy like me who is who has, you know, his console is always right out there in the open.

01:17:02Marc:They're going to fucking come at you.

01:17:03Marc:Yeah.

01:17:04Marc:Keep pushing buttons.

01:17:04Marc:Yeah.

01:17:05Marc:Yeah.

01:17:05Marc:Well, so what's going on with the acting?

01:17:08Marc:Is that still happening?

01:17:10Guest:That's an interesting question.

01:17:12Guest:Right now, I'm looking for... I have an agent, but they're not really theatrical agents.

01:17:17Marc:Didn't they build a show around you at some point?

01:17:19Marc:Yeah, I had a show.

01:17:21Marc:I had a pilot, two pilots.

01:17:23Guest:One was at NBC and the other was at Fox.

01:17:25Guest:One was animated and one was live action.

01:17:27Guest:That was a long time ago.

01:17:28Guest:Steve Levitan produced...

01:17:30Guest:my animated pilot yeah and then he went on to create modern family and now he's making a lot of money for other people so that's really great huh yeah uh yeah i'm just kidding steve i uh but yeah i'm looking for um when i get free of this daily radio thing that i'm doing right now i'm gonna have an opportunity to do more and that's what was happening when i left radio the first time we had a lot of pilots and did uh got a regular thing on the unit and all this shit now

01:17:54Guest:I need to find a theatrical agent and then get back into the rooms and read.

01:17:58Guest:I'm getting those auditions.

01:18:00Guest:I was talking to Jay Moore about that.

01:18:01Guest:Jay says, if you just go and do the job, you know you're going to be great at it.

01:18:05Guest:But no, you've got to go into that goddamn room first.

01:18:07Guest:And that's the place where you're just like, okay, let me just act natural now.

01:18:12Marc:With you six people.

01:18:13Guest:Six people are looking at you, wanting you to just show me some talent, man.

01:18:17Marc:You've been here like 30 seconds.

01:18:18Marc:Or just show me that you fit some idea we have that has nothing to do with you.

01:18:22Marc:Yeah.

01:18:22Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:18:23Guest:And sure, I'm willing to do that, but you've got to be in the room a lot.

01:18:27Guest:You have to be auditioning a lot to make sure you get your audition chops down, and this past year has been really thin, man.

01:18:32Guest:I got hired on New Girl, which was great.

01:18:35Guest:I'm grateful for that.

01:18:37Guest:I was 300 pounds when I got hired for that job.

01:18:40Guest:300 pounds, man.

01:18:41Marc:You got up that high?

01:18:42Guest:Yeah.

01:18:44Guest:The weight you see me, you didn't know me when I was fat, dude.

01:18:46Guest:I was like a big, fat tub of guts.

01:18:48Guest:How on go is that?

01:18:49Guest:a year ago really yeah how the hell did you get so fat uh i quit smoking i had pneumonia i was in the hospital and i'd already been heavy because i got i got married let's start right there and that was nine years of eating you know sure fattening food but then i uh stuffing those emotions yeah yeah sure honey that's exactly right you know

01:19:09Guest:And poor Maria, she put on the weight, too.

01:19:11Guest:Oh, yeah.

01:19:13Guest:So I got pneumonia, and I went in the hospital, and I gave up smoking after that.

01:19:16Guest:And when you give up smoking, it's what else is there.

01:19:18Marc:Dude, I've been on nicotine lozenges for years.

01:19:20Marc:Good for you, man.

01:19:21Marc:Yeah, I know, but is it good?

01:19:22Marc:Now I can't live without these.

01:19:24Marc:Is that seriously?

01:19:25Marc:I love it.

01:19:25Marc:Do you mind if I try one of those?

01:19:26Marc:Are you sure?

01:19:27Guest:Well, maybe I better not.

01:19:28Guest:No, I mean.

01:19:28Guest:Because I'll be reintroducing nicotine.

01:19:30Guest:Don't do it.

01:19:31Guest:Don't do it, yeah.

01:19:31Guest:Yeah.

01:19:32Guest:I love the spirit, though.

01:19:35Guest:But I, yeah, and then I started eating, so I got up to 300 pounds.

01:19:39Guest:How did you take it off?

01:19:40Guest:I just went on a 2,000-calorie-a-day diet.

01:19:43Guest:Just kept myself to 2,000 calories.

01:19:45Guest:And about three days a week, go out and run the beach.

01:19:47Guest:Yeah.

01:19:48Guest:Feel better?

01:19:49Guest:I feel great, man.

01:19:50Guest:I feel great.

01:19:51Guest:And it's not an ego thing at all.

01:19:53Guest:You just look in the mirror and go, oh, that's the guy I remember.

01:19:55Guest:That's the guy that I used to be.

01:19:57Marc:I'll tell you, carrying weight.

01:19:58Marc:And I'm nuts about it, so I don't ever get that high or high at all.

01:20:01Marc:But just that, literally, just to feel that on you, you don't know who you are anymore.

01:20:07Marc:You don't know who you are.

01:20:07Guest:You can't fit in any clothes.

01:20:09Guest:Yeah, it's...

01:20:09Guest:And when I went to the Portly shop, that was the end of that.

01:20:12Guest:And I did.

01:20:12Guest:What was I there for?

01:20:13Guest:I had to get a jacket.

01:20:14Guest:And the guy says to me, yeah, can't get you into this jacket, Phil.

01:20:19Guest:It looks like it's tall and portly for you.

01:20:22Guest:So I went, I found one in Camarillo, and it was sort of a dusty place with a guy coming out of the back with a tape measure.

01:20:27Guest:Oh, hi.

01:20:28Guest:You know, and just give me a jacket.

01:20:32Guest:And I was just a fat ass.

01:20:33Guest:And I said, no.

01:20:35Guest:And I messed with it.

01:20:36Guest:I didn't know how to do it.

01:20:37Guest:How do I exercise?

01:20:38Guest:What am I doing?

01:20:39Guest:Finally, a friend of mine said, it's the food you're eating, man.

01:20:42Guest:You can go out and exercise all you want if you're not.

01:20:44Guest:So that's when I said, well, all right, I'll just do the 2,000 calories a day.

01:20:47Guest:That's what I did.

01:20:48Marc:Good, man.

01:20:49Guest:And it's a bitch, but it works.

01:20:51Guest:It works, man.

01:20:53Marc:And, you know, everything's going to be better because of it.

01:20:55Marc:Right, you know.

01:20:56Marc:well jesus man i thank you so much for having me in man this is fantastic it was great talking to you we got a lot done got a lot covered i learned some things yeah and i think some people i i think you know it's interesting to talk to guys like you who who are real innovators and you know sharing some of your process i think because there are people i i that you've inspired there are people that do the type that want to do the type of radio and take the kind of chances with podcasts that that don't necessarily do it they don't quite realize how

01:21:23Marc:fucking easy it is i'll tell you though and you know this as well as i do that you know if you're going to do a podcast just get a good microphone yeah yeah well i'm glad you're still at it and i'm glad this whole new world is working for you thanks phil oh it's a great thing man

01:21:42Marc:That's it.

01:21:42Marc:That's our show.

01:21:43Marc:Thank you for listening as always.

01:21:45Marc:I appreciate it.

01:21:47Marc:Fucking love Phil Hendry.

01:21:48Marc:Go find his podcast, philhendryshow.com.

01:21:52Marc:He's got all his archives there, man.

01:21:54Marc:He's got it all.

01:21:55Marc:All of it.

01:21:56Marc:Go listen to a genius.

01:21:57Marc:Go listen to a wizard of the medium of radio.

01:22:01Marc:And where do you want to see me?

01:22:02Marc:Where do you want to see me?

01:22:03Marc:I'm going to be at the Ice House June 2nd.

01:22:05Marc:That's this Sunday in Pasadena, California.

01:22:08Marc:I'm going to be at Stand Up Live in Phoenix, Arizona, doing stand-up on June 6th.

01:22:12Marc:That's next Thursday.

01:22:13Marc:I'll be doing the book event in Washington, D.C.

01:22:16Marc:on June 11th at the 6th and I Temple.

01:22:19Marc:I will be doing a book event at the Barnes & Noble in Union Square in New York City June 12th, Wednesday.

01:22:24Marc:I'll be doing the Bryant Park Summer Reading Series.

01:22:29Marc:in New York, June 13th.

01:22:32Marc:I'll be at the Harvard Bookstore at the Brattle Theater, the Brattle Theater, where I saw Spalding Gray swimming to Cambodia when I was in college, June 14th, doing a book event.

01:22:41Marc:Going to do that Paley Center event with some of the writers of Marin here in Los Angeles on June 18th.

01:22:46Marc:Again, all these are available.

01:22:47Marc:All the links are available at wtfpod.com.

01:22:50Marc:Did I mention that?

01:22:50Marc:Go to wtfpod.com for all these links.

01:22:53Marc:I'll be at Helium Comedy Club in Buffalo, New York, June 20th through 22nd.

01:22:57Marc:I'll be Zany's in Nashville July 20th and July 21st.

01:23:01Marc:Look, go.

01:23:02Marc:I'll be at the main stage in Chicago in August the 1st through the 4th.

01:23:05Marc:Go to WTFPod.

01:23:06Marc:Get all your WTFPod needs met.

01:23:08Marc:WTFPod.com.

01:23:10Marc:Do that.

01:23:11Marc:Will ya?

01:23:13Marc:I'm gonna do some more characters.

01:23:15Marc:This is my Monkey the Cat character.

01:23:18Marc:What's going on?

01:23:18Marc:Where are we going?

01:23:19Marc:What's going on?

01:23:20Marc:What was that?

01:23:20Marc:What was that noise?

01:23:21Marc:What was that noise?

01:23:21Marc:Where are we at?

01:23:22Marc:How's it going?

01:23:23Marc:What's going on?

01:23:24Marc:That's Monkey.

01:23:27Marc:Boomer lives!