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Chapter 1: What inspired Phil Rosenthal to create 'Everybody Loves Raymond'?
Kings Network. Do you know why you're here, Phil? Not on the planet, but do you know why I wanted to speak to you? I did something wrong? You did not do anything wrong. You've done much of life right. But the reason I wanted to talk to you, among other reasons, interesting people about interesting things, but also creative people about how they became creative.
And so I need your help right off the start. Sure. I've been doing like a ā I've been a bit of a dry cleaning bag at the beginning where I welcome people in. Welcome to South Beach Sessions. I'm Dan Levitar. This is Phil Rosenthal. He created Everyone Loves Raymond. He does the Netflix show Somebody Feed Phil. He writes children's books.
But I need some help with the open, like how would you introduce you? Oh, here's an old Jewish man. Okay, but that's not going to really sell what we're doing here.
No, that's not a big demand for that.
Well, there is a demand for an old Jewish man who writes and works with his family at all points. When I show you this book, because I mentioned all the other things you do, but this children's book, when I show you that on the top of it, Phil and Lily Rosenthal, what does that make you feel?
Joy, pride, luck, you know, to get to work with your kids. I work with Lily on this. I work with her at the diner that we opened. I work with my son, Ben, who's a little older. He's my tour manager.
But you also, yeah, you've worked with your father. With my parents, yeah. The food show, your brother works on it, right?
Yeah, I guess you'd say.
It's all family stuff.
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Chapter 2: How does Phil Rosenthal blend food, family, and humor in his shows?
For me, it was. And also being a little kind of skinny kid that got picked on a bit when he went outside, being inside was safer. And all my friends were on that box. And so I would watch the Honeymooners reruns and Jackie Gleason show, which was filmed in Miami Beach where they have the greatest audiences in the world, right? And I just... My dad was funny. And so...
Humor was kind of the currency of the house. When we weren't yelling, we were laughing. And so I wanted to be like him. And then I also wanted to be like every funny person I saw on TV. And that extended to... Anyone who went for a laugh and then later on the Johnny Carson show, you know, when they would all go on there.
I was just enamored with it and I wanted to be funny on stage like those people.
So is the box transporting you because the outside world is harder because you're getting picked on? You were just having trouble with just whatever was outside the magic box.
This was safer, easier, more fun for me. It's not that I didn't have my friends, but one of the things my friends and I loved to do was watch TV and laugh. And we would watch, you know, even the game shows that were on after school when we were, you know, now in like elementary school and junior high school. Those were funny. They were trying to get laughs too.
But you decided then I'm going to be in television? You decided as a kid I'm going to figure out a way to get there. Yes.
I had interest in being an astronaut because the 60s, every kid wanted to be an astronaut. But then I realized I think the best part of being an astronaut is that you get to go on the Ed Sullivan show.
Okay. So this was your North Star being on television. So what did your life look like in work before Everyone Loves Raymond?
Before that, I was in the school plays. When you're a kid, you don't know there's writing, directing, producing. So I watched The Honeymooners and I said, they're funny. I want to be like them. So I'd act out in class, and then the healthy alternative to getting thrown out of your classroom is to channel that into the school plays after school. And I was a very big star in school, in high school.
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Chapter 3: What is the significance of Phil's family in his creative process?
You were probably the star in your own vehicles the way you were imagining it, right?
Exactly right. I didn't realize it, but... All of life is writing. We're doing it now. we're writing what we say before we say it. Now, if we thought a little bit more, maybe it would come out better and we put it on paper. But all of life is an improvisation and all of life is writing. So you don't know that when you're a kid. You're not self-aware like that.
But when I went to college, they made me take all these other disciplines. My joke is, you know, they made me take all these courses I knew I would never use like English. But Writing, producing, and directing, now it came into play. And I started to get a very well-rounded education in the field of theater.
You know, when I graduated, I thought, oh, God, I've now graduated with a degree that's good for nothing. Theater. But looking back on it, theater is actually the study of everything. Right? We study all these worlds from all over the world. And it really teaches you how to be a human being if you pay attention.
Well, and also, I mean, when we're talking about the roots of your creativity, like obviously you're going to find it there more than just about anywhere, I would imagine.
I think so. Do you have a theory? No, no, I don't have it.
But I'm not really ā I love to write. Yes. But I am not a ā I don't ā I'm not a natural performer. Everything I've done after my newspaper career has been ā
kind of a happy accident that's performance but it started on like radio so radio you're not seen right you're not having a still a performance in a way it is performance but it's not they're not seeing you right like i'm i'm not uh i i did many years of television and i i was okay at it but it's not something that i love performing in front of people isn't something that i've necessarily craved i understand
But writing, yeah, but I would love for the talent, like what you did with Everyone Loves Raymond, if I could take what my hidden, you know, I'm not going to say a hidden talent, but a talent that's not seen by everybody. It's crafted before I present it to people.
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Chapter 4: How did Phil's upbringing influence his career in comedy and television?
I was coming from, naively, the lead in the school play. Now I'm fighting to be a nothing, literally.
But thinking it was going to be easy, right? Thinking it was going to be, when you say I was the star in my own show, like you really thought you were ready for stardom, right? You're thinking naively from the kid sitting in front of the television, oh, I'm going to get there, right?
Well, I think that's how you have to have what my theater professor called a healthy naivete. You don't know what you don't know. So why wouldn't you at least approach if you watch, you know, we're all watching the Olympics. All these people thought at some point they could do that. And then they did it.
I saw somebody great just say this really smart young lady who's got such a brain in addition to being this fabulous skier. She said, I became, you can change the way you think and you can make yourself be what you want to be. I am now the person that the eight-year-old me would have loved. would have wanted to hang out with, would have wanted to have become. We do have that power.
I think if you make something in your life a priority, you will not rest until it happens.
But your priority wasn't to make a hit TV show, right?
Not at all.
It was to maybe star in a hit TV show, right?
Originally, yes. But then after many...
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Chapter 5: What challenges did Phil face before finding success with 'Everybody Loves Raymond'?
Being young. The pursuit of happiness. I don't have homework anymore. My parents aren't telling me what I can eat and what I can't eat. Well, I can be free to do what I want. I'm a big boy. I'm an adult in the world. That's fun. And we live in a country still, knock wood, while we can. For the moment. We have...
The best line in the Declaration of Independence, we have the right to pursue happiness. What other country gives you that? That's like, you know, there's many countries where if your dad was a cobbler, you're a cobbler. And that's it. If your dad works in the mine, you work in the mine. So how lucky am I that I got to at least pursue whatever I wanted?
Well, and especially compared to what it is your parents had to endure so that you would have the freedom to do, to fail for a while.
And I never took that for granted. And I thought, don't waste this opportunity.
For those who do not know about Max and Helen, both who passed in their mid-90s, I would imagine, from what I've read about you, that the roots of your humor can be found, oddly enough, on the inscription of both of their tombstones.
True.
uh my dad loved very soft scrambled eggs more than anything more than his family every morning are my eggs fluffy he would say my mother and she would say max i've been making you eggs for 60 years you don't think i know how you like your eggs why are you bothering me when i'm listening to the opera don't you know that i know how to cook your eggs leave me alone max i'm listening to the opera he says i don't know how you can hear anything with all this yelling but
On his tombstone, it says, did you make the eggs fluffy? And on the tombstone next to him, it says, I'm listening to the opera. So the reason we put those there is because that's their lesson that they imparted to my brother and me. If you can find a simple joy in your life that makes you happy every day, maybe you'll be happy every day.
The diner that they have that bears their name here, wildly successful, like the food theme is a consistent one in your life.
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Chapter 6: What unique experiences does Phil share about traveling for 'Somebody Feed Phil'?
And I could see how the doing of the show and the need to make it continually be successful. There'd be a lot of joy around it, but I could imagine that there was a great deal of pressure too.
First year. First year of anything is very difficult because you're trying to find it, what's going to work. And of course there's a lot of pressure. It bears his name. And it bears a lot of pressure on me. I don't want to ruin this guy's life. And this is my shot to create, write, and run a show. It's a very big honor to have a giant network give you a television show and pay you to do that.
That show and employ 100 and 150 people, you know, and then be a building block on the network. It's a big responsibility. Now, all that goes away once you hear that people like it. But until you hear that, those first few months, especially now. I wrote a book about it. It's called You're Lucky, You're Funny, How Life Becomes a Sitcom.
And it was my way of paying this forward as we were wrapping up. I thought this is a it's a rarefied air, but it's a unique position to be in. Only a handful of people get to do this in the world. So why not impart whatever I've learned to the people out there who might want to pursue it? Now, the business is very different now.
But I think the building blocks of a show are the same no matter what kind of show you're doing.
You couldn't have imagined in your wildest dreams of becoming that. What did success look like when you started?
Success looked like, in high school, seeing my name on the cast list after auditioning. That first time when I had two lines in the big spring show of high school. That was success to me. I was never happier than that moment. And I believe that we chase that moment the rest of our lives. That first moment of acceptance at this thing you would love to do. Wasn't a paycheck even.
I would say the next Thing is getting the paycheck. The first one. Oh, my God. They like me enough to be in the school play next. Oh, my God. They like me enough to pay me for my stupid ideas or my, you know, comedy, whatever it is. Can't believe it.
It would never get better than that. That can't be true, though. You had the biggest show. I understand what you're saying, the wonder discovery of the first time. My dreams can come true, but you're not laughing at this. You're looking at me like, don't talk to me.
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Chapter 7: How does Phil define success in his creative endeavors?
I know what I was saying here. This felt better, and I was chasing that feeling for the rest of time.
I'm not saying better. I'm not saying that felt better. I'm saying it doesn't get better. That joy... is the same whether you get the smallest part in your first school play or you win the Emmy. I can't say I felt better. As a matter of fact, you win the Emmy, you're like, oh shit, I have to go on stage now and make a speech in front of the world. Terrifying.
But it's ameliorated by the fact that you won an Emmy.
Yeah, there is that.
There is that. But that, by the way, I don't wake up every day and go, I'm Emmy winner, so-and-so. I see that award in the house. It's on a high shelf because it's pointy and dangerous. It's only a souvenir of the time I had with my friends. Really.
Well, I believe you, but this is important to you to work with your family and friends, right?
Absolutely. Obviously. We're fun. Listen, I'm not trying to be a philosopher, but we're only here for a little while. Why not have fun at what you do? I would dare say you're doing this because you enjoy doing it. This is not, I'm sure you're not, you know, buying a giant house from this. No. But you like doing it. Isn't that worth a lot more? To go through life happy at what we do?
Are the eggs fluffy?
But not everybody gets to play this way with their family, though. Among the people you have worked with in your family, what has been the greatest joy?
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Chapter 8: What lasting message does Phil want to convey through his work?
Someone else in the writer's room suggested her for the first guest star role that she had in the first season as Robert's girlfriend, right? Well, let's, yeah, she is great. That's what attracted me to her in the first place. I saw her in your play and she was fantastic. And then we did a play together and we fell in love. But I wasn't going to impose her.
I wasn't going to be that guy who puts his wife in the show. Let somebody else say it. And then let's see how she does in a small guest role. Well, she scored. Now everyone else is saying, don't you know the president of the network? It was seasons later. I didn't know she was your wife. That's good. That's good because she made it on her own.
Do you have a family member that you regard? This is a difficult question to ask you, but just more fun working with for whatever the reason is, right? You can do comparison shopping, right?
You might be at an age where the doing of this, you have more of an appreciation for this because it's something different than the woman you love that you were making a sitcom that, you know, has been all over the world.
No, every, every person, I do the books with Lily. I do the diner with Lily. Great. I do the tour with Ben and hopefully other things with Ben to come as well. Great. They're all in the show sometimes in Somebody Feed Phil with me at times. Great. My brother is my partner in business now. Great. I love every aspect of everything I do with these people. I have manifested the dream. in real life.
So you don't, this doesn't come with difficulties for you. Cause I, I worked with my father on television for eight years and it had great joys. And in fact, I get, I became closer to him in adulthood than I was earlier for a variety of different reasons. But it also came with a great deal of frustration because I, I mean, this is,
it's too much to explain he's doing the show in his second language he doesn't know about sports and he is there to just to help me do he becomes the star of the show but there were a number of things that we had to do to put him in the correct positions okay so that it's so that the daily doing of it what had many frustrations in it it sounds you're describing a blissful romp through heaven with your family here that doesn't have any difficulties
I can't say there are any difficulties. I really can't. Other than the almost funny comical fights that I get into with Richard because he wants me to put on a clown suit in Cirque du Soleil or jump in freezing cold water or ride in a race car around the F1 track in Austin, Texas.
Make good television. Yeah, make good television.
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