Phil Rosenthal

it didn't happen. Okay, so I'm a little peeved, a little annoyed. Dot tell you was getting some coal and you're stocking. Is you there, Satan, Nicholas, Chris Kringle, I mean names you got anyways, sort of think that maybe you're not real whatever? Rolling This is a Wells cast with Wells atoms and I heart radio. Podcast. That is true. That is what it is. It is a podcast tosted by your truly atoms. I'm so excited about today's show.

I think you guys will be as well. Everyone that I talked to on this show has a job that you probably with Shad. Let's be fair. Everyone's either a famous musician or famous actor, or a model, or a famous chef or famous athlete. And I imagine a lot of people that listen to the show I think themselves. Man, I would love to be them, And I agree with you. Here's the thing, of all the people that I've had on this show, I think that this guy is the guy whose job I want the most. No joke. His

story is crazy and extremely diverse. His resume is packed to the brim of everything Hollywood. He's a New York boy who had the hofstra. He wanted to be an actor. He hustled New York and eventually he found his little niche in writing. He wrote on the show Coach Craig T. Nelson. He wrote on a short lived show called baby Talk. He acted in projects for Um Spanglish, the Simpsons movie,

Curb Your Enthusiasm, Dirty Rock, and much more. But the thing that kind of propelled him into big time Hollywood he was the writer. He was the creator, the brain child behind the show. Everybody looked Frank, it's probably way I still one of the best. He's done it all well, I guess, except for starring in his own show, which he does now our guests today gets to travel around the world and eat amazing food. It is the job that everyone in the world wants. Everyone on their deathbed.

When you asked them most one thing you wish you did, they will inevitably say, I wish I traveled more, I wish I experienced more things. And literally, Netflix is paying this guy to live all of our dreams. The star of the Hitch Show on Netflix, Somebody Feed Phil, is our guest today on The Wells Cast. I'm telling you, guys, he's one of the nicest, sweetest and funniest dudes you will ever meet. This is an episode I promise you

are not going to want to miss. All Right, back on the Wells Cast, very excited to have a man who literally has done everything but now gets to do the greatest thing. Phil Rosenthal of Somebody Feed Phil, Yes, exactly, said nobody ever. Oh no, it's gonna be happening a lot more. You're gonna see after this thing takes off. Wait,

just you wait. You know, I come from the reality TV world, and I've pitched shows left and right, and I think that after Bourdain passed, everybody wanted that gig and I feel like you're the one guy who got the greatest reality TV gig ever with somebody feed Phil. How did this come about? You're right, that is the greatest gig ever. I was doing it while Bourdain was with us, but I will say this, he was the

number one influence, right. I mean everyone who travels or eats, not just on TV but in life owes a debt to Mr Bourdaine. Here's how I sold the show, by the way, with one line, I said, I'm exactly like Anthony Bourdain if he was afraid of everything, and and I've been wanting to do this show for a long time. When I was doing Everybody Loves Raymond, we did an episode where, uh, we went to Italy and ray did

not want to go. That was actually the impetus for the episode was I asked him where he was going to go on its vacation in between seasons the first year, and he said, oh, I go to the Jersey or And I said, well, that's nice. Have you ever been in Europe? And he goes no, I said, why not? He goes on, I'm not really interested in other cultures.

So that's when I thought we gotta do that show where we go to Italy, his own culture that he's not interested, and we send him over there with that attitude of I'm not really interested, and we send him back as me, someone excited about traveling and especially Italy. I mean, come on. So I write the episode about Ray the character getting awoke, okay, when he goes to Italy. And what happened was that thing that I wrote for the character where he gets it. I saw Ray Romano

get it when we were over there. He was like, oh my god, Philip, you tried this gelato, It's unbelievable. Have you tried the pizza? Oh my god, the pasta's crazy. I'm like, yeah, that's why we go what I had no idea. So now he's changed, and I thought, this is amazing. I love doing this. I love turning. I would dare say, that's why you do what you do. You like turning people onto stuff you like, right, And

so that's that. That feeling got in really deep with me, and I thought, wouldn't it be great to do this for everybody? And so since then, and I'm talking about twenty years ago, I had that experience with Ray, and ever since then, I wanted to do this show Raymond ended five years after that, and from that time it took me ten years to get the show. So it wasn't just like I can do whatever I want, Hey,

I'd like to do a food and travel show. No, it took ten years of really trying to sell this idea to people, because they don't just hand these out shows like this, and I had to convince them. I made little tapes, I made little you know, videos and stuff. It took a long time. Is was it worth it? Yes? Yes it was really. So did you go film essentially

a pilot episode to pitch two different networks? There were things like I got asked by American Express once I was putting it out there that I that I wanted to do this. They said, well, we saw you in this movie. I did a movie called Exporting Raymond where I went to Russia and because they wanted me to help them make Raymond over there, they wanted to make Everybody Loves Kostia, and so that movie is a documentary about me going over there and trying to help them

do a sitgun which they don't usually do. And so that was that was my first time on camera. So American Express when they heard I wanted to do something in the food and travel space. They said, hey, do do this thing for us, for our you know, platinum card members or whatever. Go to London with a famous chef and we'll film it for a week and we'll have these snippets too, you know, we'll have this film to show our card members and have a dinner around there.

Something something for rich people. But this was going to be the pilot for a show that they were gonna sponsor. No, they just wanted these clips for rich people. But what I did was I made my own clips of that and that was my kind of audition. That was my kind of pilot, right, And I went all over town trying to sell it. And it wasn't until PBS said, we've been looking for a food and travel show with humor for a long time. And I called my brother,

who's a producer for other TV shows and commercials. I said, I got this, I got this job. He goes what I said, PBS is gonna give me six episodes on the air where I go around the world and try to get you to travel by showing you the best places to eat. And he said, really, they've given you that show. I said, yeah, because what are. They're gonna call the show the Lucky Bastard and I said, quit your job, Richard and produced the show with me, and

we'll call our production company lucky Bastards. That's what it is. That's what it is. And that show was called I'll Have What Phills Having? I'll Have What Phils Having? You can see that on iTunes now or Amazon Prime. And then Netflix saw it and they said come to Netflix and do uh do you have to change the title? I said, all right, So I changed it to somebody Phil. I got Lake Street Dive to do a new theme song, which was nominated for a naming the theme song. Very

proud of that. I wrote down some lyrics and I sent it to them. I knew the band, and they expanded on the lyrics and change them a little bit and made that tune, which is like the most danceable theme song. It's so good. I'm so proud of it, and I'm proud of them so great. It's probably the show's success is the theme song. But when you look at like some of the great shows of all time,

the theme song is definitely iconic. Seinfeld with the bass, you know friends obviously, yeah, and I didn't know it's Lake Street. I love those guys that that's amazing. I would tell everybody if you if this is the first time you're hearing that name, go on Spotify, go on iTunes, and just download some of their records because that they are fantastic. So you guys are in your fourth season

of Somebody Feed Phil. It did Hawaii, Rio de Janeiro, San Francisco, Singapore, and the Mississippi Delta, which I love. By the way, I'm from California, but I went to school of Mississippi, so I used to go down to the Delta a lot with some of my friends and see where they grew up. I'm so glad. Did you go to some of the places that that are in the show? Not where you went, but I've been all around, you know, in Greenwood and Rosedale and Cleveland, all those

like Mississippi Delta towns. You didn't go to Doze Eat place. Funny you say that, because there's a Doze Eat place where I went to college in Oxford, Mississippi. But it's not I guess that's not the original one, which is I didn't even know they were. There were multiple locations or at least another one. I didn't even know that until recently. When I was down there, I thought that this wasn't one of kind. By the way it feels one of a kind. I must that that is the

original and it is spectacular. It's one of the best steakhouses in the world, don't you think. Oh yeah, for this most recent season, did you have a favorite locale that was one of them? Mississippi Delta. Because it was such a surprise, I thought, listen, I'm a nice Jewish boy from New York. I don't go to the Mississippi Delta. It's like for me, it was like going into deliverance. I didn't know how they would take to me, right, I thought. I thought I was gonna just going to

be honest. What's presented on TV and the media, it's like redneck centrol. Right. I didn't know where I was going and how it would be treated. And you see the show the sweetest, nicest, greatest people, so inviting, so warm. Was that your experience when you went to school there? Obviously there's some history that's kind of hard to get around. For the most part, everyone was super nice, super hospitable.

I was from California. I was one of the first people from California to go to Old miss They called me a Yankee, and I was like, you guys are very you have no idea what maps look like. I am the I'm actually further from a Yankee than you are, to be fair. But no, I loved it, and I did love you know, the Delta. I have an emphasis in blues anthropology, and so I would sit in the mezzanine in our library and I would listen to old

blues records, records that don't even exist anymore. And then we would go down to the Delta and and we'd go to these juke joints and watch these old timers play absolutely amazing blues music in these ramshackle, pre Civil War era jew joints. If you had a chance to go back, you should go to a place called Poe Monkeys. It's in Marigold, Mississippi, and it's one of the coolest pieces of Americana left in the world. You'd love it. I'm glad that you have a good experience down there

as well. It was wonderful and I would surprised at like the modernity of the food as well. Yes, you have your greatest hits, your your fried chicken and ribs and all that great soul food, and I had like stuff like chicken fried lobster tail, which when it comes to the table, you're like, really, people, do we have to chicken fry everything? Yes, you know, can't. Can't we

just have a steam blobster. No. What I realized was when you chicken fry that lobster tail as well, you get that amazing seasoning that batter, but it steams the lobster meat in the shell surrounded by the batter, so you actually get the perfect steam on it. It's so tender and so juicy and has the flavor from the batter.

That's one of the best lobsters. Like, right, how hands on are you with the production of the show the bits in between where you're going, are you able to see like how listen, guys don't want to do that? Or are you like that would be funny, let's do it. Well, since it's my brother producing. If it was my brother he before with me left and right. That's why I asked the question, then you already have the answer because

that's exactly what happens. And he'll say, for instance, we're in Vietnam, and they say, Okay, tomorrow, you're getting up at four in the morning and we're gonna go to this island in the middle of the river and in the middle of the islands a swamp lake, and you're gonna go in there and hip waiters and you're gonna pick lotus roots with the family and and pick snails out of the thing. I'm like, you lost me at four a m I'm not doing that. Nobody needs to

see that. Oh, it's not fun for me, and and it's not fun for the people watching because you're doing it. I'm like, I'm not doing it. I don't want to do it. I'm old, and I'm not going in some lake that I don't know what's in there. Sure enough, I did it, and it was one of the great experiences of my life because it was first of all funny. Second of all, the family, the family, the family. It's always about the people you meet right in the experience.

And it was gorgeous because I was there, why before before before sunru and I've got to see the sunrise over this thing. And if you see that sequence, it's kind of spectacular. And he was right. Don't tell him that he was right, But the time he's right because he knows me, and he knows it will be first of all funny and second of all worth doing because I'm stepping out of my comfort zone, which is all I want people to do. You know, this show is for people who don't travel. Not two thirds of us

don't have a passport in America. So if I'm trying to get you to travel, I'm starting with what I think our Earth's greatest hits, the stuff that's going to be accessible where a lot of people speak English there. And there's gonna be a hotel. You don't have to sleep in a tree, right, There's gonna be restaurants with food that you recognize, right, and and yet once you're there, you might be tempted to try something new. So that's why.

So if you see me going out of my comfort zone, if you just see I think if people say, if that Puts can go outside, make I can't too write I love that man, and I do. I love to travel as well, and I like to do weird and eat weird stuff. I'm definitely like a when in Rome type of guy. But I guess I have my limits. I heard that you don't eat before you film. You know how they make a dog fruit commercial. They don't think the dog un told the commercial, so the dog

looks excited to eat. That makes practical sense, doesn't it. If I went to Vietnam and they said, here's this guy makes this dish. He's been doing it for sixty years, and here it is, and I went, it's all right, that's not a good show, is it. Now? I'm not acting. I really do feel excited, but I'm extra excited maybe because what you see me eating in each scene is probably the first thing I ate that day. Yeah right, So it looks like I'm a pig and I eat NonStop.

But you're seeing a week's worth of filming condensed into an hour, and that those scenes there's maybe one or two of them a day. So that's it. And and I learned, by the way, from doing that American Express thing in London. They booked us on that gig. They booked us into twenty seven restaurants in seven days, and because I was with a famous chef, they were all like white tablecloth, fancy meals. So when the food was coming, I was like, oh no, like I have to eat again.

You don't want that. You want to go oh yeah, not oh no, So that I learned that you you pace yourself, you don't finish anything. First of all, I have a crew there who's looking at me like this, uh, you know, while I'm eating, so it would be cruel not to share it with them. I love sharing it with them because it's fun to see their faces light up. And what that also does is it saves my belly for the next thing I'm gonna taste, right, So I want to taste as many things as possible because you

never know where that home run is gonna be. Right. Somebody said it looks like Phil likes everything. It does mean not like in it. Yeah, you don't see that, then it shows if I don't like it, it's not in the show. I'm trying to get you to travel.

I'm trying to show you the best stuff. There's no reason to show you the stuff that's just okay, we're bad, right If it's really bad, like the thousand year old egg I ate in Hong Kong, which almost killed me, then you hear my brother laughing on the other side of the camera. We leave that in. It's funny that I almost died. Do you have any limits if it's so disgusting, And by disgusting, everybody has their line for disgusting, right, So I think I'm like most Americans who don't want

to eat bugs and snakes. I think that's fair to say, right, And that's an American thing. In other cultures and other countries,

you know, they do that. My friend told me he was the guest of honor at a in a rural dinner in China, and because he was the guest of honor the American, they brought over a poisonous snake to the table live and held it off next to him and took out a knife and cut open the snake while it's alone, pulled out the gall bladder of the poisonous snake and squeeze the gall bladder into a glass, and gave it to him to drink as the guest of honor, to which I say, please don't honor me,

because I would faint in that situation. I would faint. First of all, I would run screaming out of the restaurant at the side of the live snake. Second, cutting it open, faint. Third, squeeze the gal about a fat give me the glass faint. I would never recover from this, I asked my friend, So, so why didn't you just say, you know, I physically can't. I'm gonna be he goes.

That would have been the greatest insult to them, because they were doing this special for me I had to do, I said, and he goes, I drank it, and I go and he goes. It was much grosser than you think. Well, then that is off the charts gross because I'm thinking it's going to be really gross because you know what the worst part was. It was warm. Of course, of course it's warm. It's really so I see your face.

I know. So these are things that most people from America wouldn't do, but in another land and another culture. I'm not disparaging them at all. That is their thing. That is like the height of I don't know, virility, honor. For you to have that very special thing. I don't know what I would do in that situation, other than not get myself into that situation right so that I don't have to insult anybody, because that's the last thing I want to do. I have tried a bug or

two in the show. When pushed right, I've gone a little out of my comfort zone. And I can tell you that I'm eaten an ant or two write because it's been served to me this way. This one Japanese chef said, try this and it tastes like lemon, to which I said, in that case, could I please have lemon? And he said, I want you to try this ant. And because the person I was with, this nice lady, did it, I mustered up all my courage to take

that ant and put it in my mouth. With all the courage I could muster bite down on that and then damn if it didn't taste like lemon. And so now the questions, okay, chef, what did you do based this in lemon so that it tastes like me? Just know these ants, not every ant, these particular ants from this particular part of this forest in Japan tastes like lemon. I don't know who was the first guy to discover that, but but that was interesting and it didn't kill me,

and it was something cool. And I have a story to tell you, right, the gallbladder story. There's a part of me that thinks that they're like, hey, here comes a stupid American. Let's let's just see if he'll do it. Nope, I know that's what it must feel like, like a prank, but a really that you know. Again, we can't disparage. We can't. We can't say or judge because the cultures are different and we we the whole point of the

show is to be more accepting and understand. There's just things that I know that I'm a woss and I'm not doing. Um. I mean, you've been all over Where are places that you've kind of pinned on the map that you want to go for future seasons? Oh? I haven't, you know, I haven't scratched the surface of the earth. Right, So we've done twenty two somebody feed fills. In six I'll have what fills having. That's twenty eight places. There are a hundred and ninety countries and thousands of cities

in those countries to see. So I haven't been to India yet, have you? So I got to see that. I've been to Australia. I've been to Sydney once in my life, but not on the show, So I got to do that. And the rest of us Australia is spectacular. New Zealand I haven't been. I haven't been to Greece or Turkey in my life. I got to do that so I could keep going. I mean, there's there's million places to to go. I just need Netflix to let me keep doing it and for COVID to be over

so I can go. I guess this logistically. Did you film this last season right before COVID, right before we finished in mid January? Just under the wire? Really? I mean if you look at that Rio show that was mid January, we filmed that and there's five hundred thousand people out on the beach dancing for Carnival. Yeah. Man, I'm so jealous of you. I also wanted to talk about your charity, Somebody Feed the People. Oh thanks, that's great.

So Somebody Feed the People dot org. I started because I saw it started from I guess you would say it's political, but it's not. It's just human people being forced to wait online because they were shutting the polling places, which is not right. We have a right to vote, that's what makes us America. And I thought, what could we do to make this these long lines more tolerable?

What if we fed the people? So always started Somebody Feed the People dot org and we were getting with the world Central Kitchen and other organizations, food trucks and restaurants, local restaurants out to feed the people online, just a small act of kindness. But then I thought, while this was going on, you know, after the election, there's a lot of hungry people, not just because of COVID, but because of all the other reasons that people are hungry.

So I'm gonna keep this going. And I want your your listeners to know that if they go to somebody feed the People dot org and contribute to World Central Kitchen through that portal, I'm gonna match their donation. That's what i want to do. So that's that's somebody feed the People dot org go give I'm gonna match it. It's a nice way to help people in this terrible time. That's amazing, man. And also is it true you write

in a book? I mean it makes sense. I suppose people need a blueprint of where the hell to go, so tell everyone about the book. Sure. Well, they have a website called Phil Rosenthal World dot com and you can get merged there that and that goes to charity

as well. It's also practical because it's a website that has everywhere we go on the show, not just every place, but everywhere we ate and what we ate, and the websites within those of where you can just now have this instead of watching the show and writing stuff down right and then now. Simon and Schuster asked me to do a companion book to the series. Somebody feed filled

the book. That's gonna have stories and behind the scenes photos and most impartently favorite recipes from everywhere we went. Have you tried to recreate some of these weird recipes? I cannot. I'm not a show, I'm not a chef. What I do is sometimes that there's like a condiment or some item that I didn't know, I can bring that home and remind me of the place. I love doing that. And the other thing about traveling is you

must do this too. Let's say you go to Thailand, for instance, and you have, like I had this dish that I didn't know about, caw soy, this incredible fresh handfulled noodle bowl of coconut curry with whatever meat you want in there and then crispy noodles on topics. So one of the best things I ever eat, And across a dollar when you're there. So I wrote down the name of that dish cowsoy k h A O s O. And when I got to Los Angeles. We're lucky to live in Los Angeles because why we have the most

diversity of every any other place on Earth. More people live here outside their native lands than anywhere else on Earth. For example, we have the biggest Korean population in the world outside of Korea, the biggest Chinese population outside of China, the biggest Mexican population outside of Mexico. It's here. So I go on Google cowsoy Los Angeles fifteen places at least that have it. So that's how if you ask me, do I cook from the thing? No? I find the

place that takes it. Well, these are Thai people who came here and make sy for me. This portion of the podcast brought to you by Postmates. I love that, man, and I just love that. The whole concept of this show, I think is so cool. The concept that you and your brother are getting to do it together is just it's just so fun. Thank you. And by the way, since we're in this terrible time of COVID and we can't travel, you you mentioned Postmates, but that that's that's

a real way to travel. You see why I can't pick a restaurant tonight that maybe of of a cuisine you haven't tried. And all I'm asking is, look at look at the men on your phone, just look at the menu. You're gonna find something that sounds interesting to you that you want to try and try it. That's how you spice up this time at home by ordering something other than the usual. Now you have like an event. That's how you make things exciting, keep it fresh. Right.

I love that people knew you as the guy who created Everybody Loves Raymond, and now everyone knows you as the guy for somebody feed Phil Bick story. I'm in the airport right before lockdown, right, and I'm waiting for my bag, and somebody comes up to me goes, hey, you're the food guy, And I said, oh, thanks. I guess I always wanted to be known as that. I guess right, And he goes, hey, listen, I'm just the guy. So I learned something, Right, If you're recognized for anything,

it's a nice thing, right. It doesn't matter what you're recognized for. If he wants to call me the food guy, that's very nice. Yeah, I'm just the guy. What brings you or brought you more joy being the guy who created an iconic sitcom or being the food guy. I'm gonna say both, and I know that's a cop out, but here's the thing. At that point in my life, my thirties and forties, making Raymond was the absolute pinnacle

of my life. To that point, it was phenomenal to be part of something like now I've taken ten years later, fifteen years later, everything I've learned about how to make a show right, how to tell a story, and it's now in the service of everything else I love in life. What's that family, friends, food, travel, and laughs? Right, and add to that everything else I love about show business, which is the writing, the directing, the producing, the performing.

Now even right in it, being in it is really fun. They're editing every I love everything about show business except the business. The business part of show business is the part that prevents you from doing the show part of show business. Right, So once you get past the business, show business is great and I love that. This is this time in my life. Now I just have to keep doing it. I want to keep doing it. Netflix

hasn't said I get to yet. They don't let they don't have shows a run a long time now right that they only renew five percent of their existing series. So if you're listening to this and you like the Joe called Netflix and say yes more please, I would like to do more. I would like to order seconds please. I know that's greedy. Listen. I thought after we filmed the first scene of the first one of these that we ever did, I thought if it ended now, I'd be happy because I felt so lucky to get to

do this. Look, I got a flight to Spain and I got to eat this boot. Wow. For it to happen seven more times, that was pretty good. That was pretty good. So if it ended now, I can't complain. But I promise you this, I'm gonna find a way to keep doing this, whether it's to their or somewhere else. I'm gonna find the wet of it so much, and I feel like it's important. We've got a message to give, which is a message of love and tolerance and and

happiness and exploration, and that's what life's about. We see how quickly it can be taken away. I'm not too worried for you, Phil, because every time I open up Netflix, you're one of like this adjusted for me and like top trending on Netflix and everything. So I think the show is doing very well. So congratulations. And if Netflix doesn't pick it up, one they're stupid, and two I think someone else will. Well thanks, Could you run Netflix for me? Yes, I'll call him up and I let

him know. The great thing about them, they're very supportive and they let you do the show you want to do. And when you deliver five or six episodes to them, right they push a button. It's on d ninety countries around the world, so that, I mean, there's nothing that compares to that, So I want to stay there. Is there anything that I didn't ask you or talk to you about or that you wanted to promote before we

kind of switch gears. No, just if people want to keep up with me, they can go to my Instagram, build Down Rosenthal and Twitter Phil Rosent. That's it. Okay, quick break. When we come back, we're gonna do the Wells Cast. Phil, We're gonna find out where the hell you came from and how the hell you got here? You ready for that? Stick around all right? Back in

the Wells Cast. Very very happy to have the star of Somebody Feed Phil, which is on Netflix right now there in the middle of season four to show you absolutely have to watch Phil just going over your bio. It's bonkers. You've literally done everything in show business. I need to know how the hell this all happened. So let's go back to the beginning. Phil, Where are you from? I was born in Queens, New York, Jamaica. Hospital. You know who else is from Jamaica? Donald J. Trump? Yeah, yep,

that's why I'm exactly like then. I lived in the Bronx for a while, and then uh, Rockland County, which is a half hour north of the city, and then I went to Hops University on Long Island, and then moved into Manhattan and tried to make it in New York. And uh, it was horrible for me because it was I had nothing but jobs and terrible experiences. I loved every second of it, by the way, because I loved I've talked about this. The pursuit of happiness is its

own thing, right. We're lucky to live in the land where we get to pursue what we want. Imagine living in a country where you'll do what your father did or you do what your mother did, and that's it. You don't have a choice. Right. Look, I was happy having really crappy jobs in New York and my twenties out of college. Why because I could at least pursue what I wanted. Job. First job being a theater major. Right. I sold farm and implement cleaner on the phone in

a boiler room um Park Avenue South. Boiler room is a giant room of poor schmucks on phones trying to sell. That's what I did. I did that lasted about four months. Then I was a guard at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, a guard, and at one point I was working the midnight shift, the midnight the graveyard shift they call it, from midnight to eight in the morning. And I was fired. You know why? They found me at five am asleep in a gallery on a three hundred year old bed. Yes. Uh,

that was terrible moment in my life. And then I was I managed a deli per year. That was better. I gained fifteen pounds doing that. I was at temp. I was a bartender. I was I worked in offices and law offices, putting legal inserts into the books. I did all kinds of crappy jobs. But in the meantime I was also trying to get an agent and be in plays and do you know, do the New York

theater thing. And it wasn't until some friends of mine and I wrote a show for ourselves to be in that it occurred to us that you do write your own ticket. And that became successful, and that was my transition to writing. And and then I moved to Hollywood and uh, and then I started writing sitcoms, working on other people's shows. And then finally I got this tape of this Ray Romano fellow who had been on Letterman, and they Letterman and said, after six minutes, there should

be a show for this guy. So they looked for a writer to create a show for Ray Romano, and I met with him and we hit it off, and that was that. What were some of the sitcoms you wrote on before Everybody Loves Raymond? Have you ever heard of Robert Mitchum forties and fifties. He was a film noir actor who played like Philip Marlowe in movies. He was, you know, a tough guy. He was the first actors to be arrested for smoking marijuana in the fifties. He

was really cool and really tough. However, in nine when I first got to Los Angeles, they were doing a sitcom for him, and I got hired. That was my first job was being a staff writer on the Robert Mitchum sitcom. It lasted seven episodes, and I learned a lot, because what you can learn from your first show, you can learn from any show. And so I learned at least the workings of a sitcom. I went from that to the TV version of Luke Who's Talking? Remember that

movie The Baby Talks? It was called Baby Talk. I met an actor there who was it was his first lead in a sitcom, and his name was George Clooney. And we started there and to this day when we see each other, we hug and we say we survived Baby Talk. I also read that a lot of the dynamic between Ray and his wife was real life situations that you dealt with, Yes, because the writer has to write you know what they know, and this was a

perfect show to do that for. You know, Carl Reiner, who did the Big Fan Dye show, he would ask his writers, what happened at your house this week because he was doing a show about a family. And I thought, this is how we're gonna do my show. This is how we're gonna do it. We're gonna go home every night for dinner. We're gonna make sure we're home because that's where the stories have You worked for me, your job was to go home, get in a fight with your wife, come back in and tell me about it,

because that's where the show was coming from. And so I used everything I had, and and every rider used everything they had, and Ray too, And so that's why the show seemed real because it was well, I mean, you've done everything projects like Spanglish by the way, my fiance's brother was in Spanglish, Curb thirty Rock. Obviously, you are now an author, you are doing this travel reality show. What's been like the career highlight for you? This right now?

This your show? Yeah, yeah, this is It doesn't get better than this because and and I'm only half joking because you are reminding me and we're talking about where I am at this moment in life, and right now is the best time as awful as this is. Yeah, COVID, I have a lot of hope and I have a lot of positivity about the future. The vaccine is here, We're all going to get it, and the world will be returned to us. Here's what I say. We're going

to appreciate the world so much. We're gonna be so grateful and so happy, and that feeling is gonna last two weeks. Yeah, and then we're all going to go back to complaining. Hey, this coffee is cool, right? Phil? I know, I gotta let you go. I could literally talk to you for hours, year and absolute delight before you go. Do you have time for some rapid fire questions? Anything you want? My friends? Okay, rapid fire questions with Phil Rosenthal? Number one? What's your favorite pizza topping? Do

you have a favorite book? I just read Woody Allen's autobiography. It's hilarious. Who was your first quest, Laurens? Was the first concert you ever went to? The Fifth Dimension at Carnegie Hall? First job you ever had? First job, camp counselor what was the camp? The Y M Y W ch and rock count? First car, make model, Plymouth's biggest pet peeve, noise in the restaurants when it's too loud. Most famous person in your cell phone contact. Let's say

Ray Romano, first record set vinyl CD that you bought. Oh, that's a great question. I'm gonna say the monkeys. Yeah, that was a record, right, I think? So the monkeys meet the monkeys, favorite superhero Superman. We're the superstition that you have. I should work out every day. What's one thing that's always in your fridge? Oh? Why is that? Taking along leftovers? There's always leftovers in my fridge. How would you describe your high school self? Nerdy shrimp e shy?

Who's your celebrity crush? Sound mahiak. That's a good one. And lastly, one piece of advice you'd give to someone that wants to be successful like you do the show you want to do, because in the end they're going to cancel you anyway. Bill Rosenthal, thank you so much for being on the Welles cast. You are awesome. You're even more rad than I thought you would be, and I thought you were going to be pretty awesome, so thanks for living up to it. Everyone go watch Somebody

Feed Philip's out now on Netflix. Call Netflix and tell them that phil needs a fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth season. And when when Phil finally dies years from now, that I get to take over the show. It's a deal, alright, buddy. Happy holidays to you, and yours and hopefully when this is all over, you know we can go get a bite. Where are you, Studio City, not far from some of the best sushi in the world. Very true, very true. All right, I hope to see you. Thanks for having me,

Thanks for being so nice. Thank you, Phil, you rock Man, take care. All right. Well, he's the coolest dude I've ever met in my entire life. And that was awesome and I really really really really really really really enjoyed that. I also really would like that job. So there's that. I'm gonna go order that dish that he was talking about with the noodles and stuff because I want that now, all right, see you guys. Subscribe to wellscast on iHeart Radio,

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