Transcript of South Beach Sessions - Phil Hendrie

You're listening to DraftKings Network. All right, bro.

What a magical thrill this is. There are so many things I want to say to you, and these people do not know how I feel about you, and I've never said them to you either. I've never met this man. He is a genuine hero of mine. Philhenryshow.com is where you go if you want to understand why it is people think he's a genius. But I want to thank you for making me somebody who understood the possibility of radio, because listening to you in Miami and discovering what you did How you did it opened up all the possibilities to me to transition from what had been a writing career to a radio career. So, thank you for that because—

You're welcome, brother.

I mean— I've never been able to say it to you, and you have been a genuine inspiration.

Oh, I appreciate it, man. I, you know, John Schroeder's a friend of mine. He's a writer on Bob's Burgers, and he sent me a text. He saw this doc they did on me. He goes, "Man, I was just like you. I was like this freaky kid, and I didn't want to let people know just how weird I was." And, you know, and we all kind of keep it repressed. And maybe the same thing with you, but you finally just give yourself permission to just— because if you don't, you're gonna— what are you gonna do with your life?

You know, I don't know that I've given myself permission to be as weird as I actually am. You should try it. Well, it took you forever. Like, you didn't— when did you break through on that discovery? Because you were bored before then.

I was 38, 39 years old.

Yeah.

And I read somewhere that that's kind of the age that happens, you know, in your late 30s. And I'd been a disc jockey for 17 years, and before that I was just this kooky kid, you know, and Every weird instinct I had, I shared with my friends, of course, and I wrote, but I didn't put it into my broadcasting career, 'cause I didn't want anybody to think I was, you know, I was raised to believe that you had to make people happy, you had to get people's admiration, so don't do anything that's gonna put them off. And so that's kind of what, and then I finally, I was 38 years old, I was going nowhere with my career, and I was going nowhere in my life, and I said, well, I'm gonna die having never really been Phil Hendrie. So, I made a promise to myself. I don't care where I wind up. I don't care if I'm in the smallest market making the smallest amount of money. I'm gonna do the kind of work that I wanna do. And so, I sent out this, the goofiest tape I could think to send out, you know, and Diane Rimm, the mother of Jennifer, heard the tape at WCAU in Philly, Big station, big talk station.

He goes, "Phil, this is the funniest stuff I've ever heard. I can't hire you." And I took that to be a good thing, you know? It was like finally somebody was hearing who I was. So I wound up getting this little gig up at Ventura, California, KVEN. They said to me, "Just prep your show like you're not gonna get one call." And so I did, and that's what, you know, I had to fill 3 hours, man, you know?

Well, let's, for the uninitiated, okay, because I'm listening to you in Miami, and at the time I'm a Miami Herald writer, and what I'm hearing on AM WQAM radio. I'm— I don't know anything about radio, don't come from radio, haven't trained in radio, I haven't listened to much radio. This is my first introduction, is, is hearing the way that WQAM is just crushing everything I'm writing, just destroying me. But there's this person amid the sports lineup, uh, who is creating these characters, and all he's looking for is one caller who can be a sucker so now he can entertain the audience with an assortment of characters, all of whom are you. All what, what you offered me was the idea that radio could be a theater of the mind, imagination, and you can go anywhere with it, right?

I was on WIOD, by the way.

No, I know, but I was on— I was on—

you were on QAM at the time.

I was— no, I wasn't on QAM. It was— but you were— I got it wrong because QAM became the sports radio station after WIOD.

Um, well, I I wasn't really looking to do anything other than— you know, when I started, just the instinct as a kid, because this all starts— I grew up in a home that was very volatile, you know, and crazy, and you always kind of hide from that shit. And the first thing you do is you go into your bedroom and you make up things. And I wanted to do this, I wanted to create a reality, and I couldn't hire actors, so I had to do it all myself, basically. I wouldn't even say I was trying to create theater, I was trying to create a reality. You know, what if people talk this way, and what if they did this and how would they sound? So, when I made the move to finally be Phil Henry, I began, I brought this tentatively to the air and I'd heard a guy during the Gulf War doing a serious interview with Saddam Hussein, only he was being Saddam Hussein, putting his voice through a filter. And here is this and this and that. What if I just talked to a character? That's what I did. I got on the air and I started talking to this guy named Raj Finnegan, a character I created for the Gulf War, and he's talking about George Bush, and, you know, "I'd like to put his face on toilet paper.

What do you think of that, huh? The way he's talking to my president." And we started getting calls, and this guy's like, "I am just driving through your burg. I don't know anything about you people, but you, how dare you?" Because my producer was going, "There's people calling. Do you want to bring them on?" That was an element I didn't expect. That was an element I did not expect at all.

The callers? So wait a minute, okay, so you start, for those that are uninitiated, Raj Fanin is the first of your characters, and at that time all you're doing is, I've gotta fill 3 hours, I've gotta figure out how to do this myself, and I don't have actors.

Right, so I began doing these different character voices and creating different scenarios, and I can't tell you what the basic sketches were. They had a lot to do with Operation Desert Shield, because that's what was happening at the time. So, you know, but my first day on the air I did Raj Fanin, so I didn't have to really go too far to know that there were people out there calling and they thought this guy was real. As my producer, a young guy named Greg Lasner, said, people think he's a real guy, do you want to talk?

Okay. So wait a minute, you don't know at this point? You've created a character, but you don't even know that you've created a character that people are going to think is real?

Not sure, wasn't sure. I was doing it for the reality. 'Cause to me there's nothing funnier than reality. So I wasn't doing broad sketchy stuff. I wasn't going, "Yeah, you know something? I'm going to get my camel and ride—" No, no, no. I was talking the way a guy would talk. Because to me that's a riot. You know, I just love it. And I guess I should have anticipated it, Dan, but I didn't. You know, I just was having a good time going back and forth with this nut. And then I'd bring another guy in. I invented Margaret Gray, who's this character, a female character. She was responding to a caller. 'Cause as soon as the calls came in, I thought, oh, this is some possibilities now. This is interesting. 'Cause I had a call from this young man who was at the CB base up here in Ventura. Or the Navy, I think it was at the Naval base. Yeah, I'm homesick, Phil, and it's great listening to you, man. You're making me laugh, I like it a lot. Okay, have a good day. Yes, sir. And right away I thought, Margaret is hot for this guy.

So I, hi Phil, it's Margaret. Oh, how are you doing? I'm good. "Hey, do you have the phone? This young man you just talked to is devastating. I don't know how— can I get in touch with him?" And so that kind of turned kooky, and so we went everywhere with it after that, in places that were probably pretty offensive, but I didn't intend to be offensive. I intended to make people laugh.

Well, but you can hide everything under the satire of all of it. Your characters could be so awful that, yes, some of the things that you're even saying now, I'm thinking that probably wouldn't go over right now in today's age, but in the '90s you could get away with some things because you were pushing all of the boundaries through satire.

Yeah, I mean, I was really happy to know that people dug listening to that kind of comedy. I just was happy that I was being Phil Hendrie because my buddy Don picks me up at the airport in San Francisco. I was visiting him and his wife, and we've been friends since we were 12. And I said, you know something, for the first time in my life I said this to somebody. I said it to him. I said, you know, I'm doing some really good stuff now. He goes, yeah? You ought to hear the show I'm doing now. I never said that to anybody in my life. When I was coming up in radio, if anybody said, "My buddy Phil's in radio," I'd always tell them, "Shut up, otherwise they're gonna start listening to me, and I suck." But that's 20 years, 15 years, what is the— 17 years, from 1973 when I was 20 years of age, all the way up until 1990, I was just a disc jockey doing, and I went from Orlando to Los Angeles. I mean, I was doing all the right things. I got to the L.A. market, afternoon drive, and an album rock station.

Did morning drive and album rock station. But you know, dude, I was just like playing the hits and doing stupid things like, hey, it's a payday in LA, and don't forget we got those Rolling Stone tickets. So I was doing everything that you were supposed to do, everything that sounded good, and I had all the DJs that I listened to were in my mind as my role models, but it all just really sucked. Because I wasn't being Phil Henry, and I knew that there was somewhere something inside of me that I had to get out, but I got fired multiple times, and I was on a train ride up to Portland to visit my girlfriend, Terri, and I looked out the window at the setting sun, and I made a promise to myself, I don't care if I gotta go to, I don't care what market I gotta go to, man, I'm gonna be Phil Henry on the air, I don't give a damn if I never make another dime. I'm gonna be that guy. That was the moment. And I went back to LA and I, you know, got the gig at KVN.

That moment was midlife crisis? Was I've been doing something soulless for 17 years?

Right on, bro, that was it, yeah. It wasn't so much my age, it was just like, goddammit, man, how long you gonna do this? Look at all these other guys that are funny and you know you're just as funny. Why are you not finding the vehicle? Why are you not finding the medium, you know?

But your dreams were to just be a DJ, no? Like, when you first start thinking about the magic of being on radio, the top of that food chain is being a DJ, correct? Well, at the time when I was coming up, yeah.

But I wanted to be Real Don Steele. I want to be Robert W. Moore. I grew up in LA. We had KHJ Boss Jocks. These guys were funny, they were quick, they were talking up the records, they were hitting the post. I wanted to be a writer. Dan, I wanted to be Jack Kerouac, really. So, I was hitchhiking all over California and writing in my journal, but I thought, "Well, I can make— I could support myself being a disc jockey, and I could be funny." And I got my first gig in radio, and I remember saying to somebody, "When do I start being—" I literally asked this cat, "Well, when do I start being funny?" The guy goes, "Whatever you decide to, Phil. I don't know how to tell you that," you know? Can you imagine? And so, I just— I would venture some things, but there's nothing more awkward than someone trying to be funny. There's nothing more awkward and nothing more flat than somebody, you know, and that's what my first few years in radio were like until I just pulled back and said, well, forget it, I'm just gonna be a straight disc jockey technically.

It'll be well-oiled, perfect technical disc jockey stuff, which I was just depressed throughout the whole thing, you know. 17 years of depression. 17 years of depression. Well, I had good times. I was a young man and I was, you know.

Oh, but what you're saying though is fascinating in retrospect because the fear of being cringey made you retreat into somebody you didn't want to be, and you got stuck in that prison for 17 years.

That's right. You know, you— especially raised the way I was, uh, ooh, don't do that, what will people think? That was how I was raised. And that had a big effect on me, man. You know, I never really knew that I was a pretty good-looking young man until I looked at pictures of myself within the last few years. I saw, that's Phil Henry in his 20s. I always thought I was very unattractive, you know, because I was always mocked for my looks within my family. So, what I, you know, what I look back now on when I see my career in those days, I realize I would have gotten fired, and I would have gotten fired a lot, but you would have been beginning the ball rolling, Phil, in the art that you wanted to practice, you know, the art form of being an improvisational performer on radio, which would eventually would evolve into being in front of the camera, which is probably what I should have done all along, you know. But I didn't do it. And so when I was pushing 40, 38 years of age, I said, well, you gotta be gonna do it now, man.

You're gonna do it and you're gonna like it.

You know, tell me about the existential crisis that is you getting to that point, because you clearly remember the details of how it is that you said to yourself, I am no longer going to care about anything other than being true to betting on myself. Yeah, you know, I did.

I got canned at KLSX, a classic rock station, in '87. I got another— then I got a talk show at KFI. And so great, this is talk radio that I don't have to play records. But I went about it very traditionally. I got a guest and I had opinions and I did the whole kind of fist pounding thing, and that really sucked. And I got canned from that job. So now there I was, you know, 17 years in, and as I was taking this train ride, I was going up to see this girl that I was dating at the time, and her name's Tori Reider. She's in this— the doc they did about me. Tori was on the air just opening up and not giving a shit what she was saying. She was being a real raconteur, improvisational, funny. That's what— that's it right there. And I knew her. So I could talk to her about it, you know. "Well, what do you do?" "I don't know. I'm just, you know, I just do it. I just—" Just give yourself permission, you know. And I think that was it, my relationship with her that I said, "Well, goddammit, you know, if she can do it—" And I'm not trying to talk her down.

I'm just saying that, you know, it was somebody in my life right there, tangible, doing it. I said, "I gotta be able to do this." So I was on my way to visit her when I made that promise to myself, you know. I guess it was just that, I hate to say this, if a woman can do it, why the hell can't I? Really? No, I didn't say that, you know. But Tori was one of these women, she said, "You know the problems we've had as women in broadcasting? It's all your fault," you know.

And it is, yeah, it's true. It has been. Absolutely, bro.

And they're right. Absolutely, brother. But her being in my life and listening to her every morning and hearing, for the first time, You know, that connection I had every day talking to her and listening to her and seeing the success she was having and really thinking she was great too. I thought she was funny as hell. Tori was fantastic.

Well, you should, you should know though that you gave me permission, like the way that you were doing. You didn't give yourself permission, but what it is you ended up choosing ended up giving me permission. And when in the small sphere where I was working, I don't have any training in this. I don't, I didn't grow up loving radio. So I'm just, I'm, you're literally the space where I'm saying, oh, this can be a creative playground. This doesn't have to be as stiff as what it is that I'm hearing in sports radio, where it is all pound the table, give an opinion.

Well, I'm glad to hear that, man. I really am. There's nothing— there's no point in living, man, unless you're actually imparting something to somebody. You know, I want to make people laugh. I don't need to be— nobody has to give me any glory and say, weren't you— you were just fantastic, Phil. I'm happy enough being happy doing my work. And to hear that I had— it's like this, man. People would say to me, my wife was— I had a guy say this to me and I laughed and I shouldn't. He said, my wife was in a coma, Phil, from an automobile accident. The first time she laughed in that coma was listening to your show. And I was like— but I thought about that and I didn't know how to respond to that because I've had people say to me, I was in the depths of depression, man, until I heard you. I, I really didn't know how to respond to that other than to say, I'm so happy that you're happy now, man. But by God, if you can have that kind of influence on anybody, um, that's good, man. You're sending, you're sending something out of the world.

Well, it's at least in part because of the intimacy of the medium, right? Like, you, you love radio. You've mentioned the doc here a couple of times, so I should tell people it's good. It's on Prime, and he gets knighted by the greats of comedy who understand.

I was trying to squeeze it in. Thank you.

No, I'm just joking. But Judd Apatow, like, there have been some —people who have such an appreciation for what it is that you were doing in radio in terms of moving, pioneering really, who's somebody that you've been stunned to meet because you can't believe that they had an appreciation for what it is that you were doing?

Henry Rollins, for starters. Henry was like a pioneer in punk rock. That's a cat that just went out. You talk about a guy that just hit the stage and said, "Okay, you know, come what may, this is what I'm gonna do." And to hear Henry say that he liked and he understood what I did. Henry's also a fan of my current stuff, which doesn't have phone calls. That's just me riffing in character and doing sketches. So, that blew my mind. Judd, I worked for the guy a couple times, and the guy's a renowned comedy director. To get that kind of— but all those cats in the movie, and this is going to sound kooky, but John Carpenter is a great director, and he came to watch the show, and he was with his wife, and I said, "Well, it's so great to meet your—" I was talking, "Well, this was his birthday present. He wanted to come and watch." I said, "You asked if you could?" "Yeah." I said, "Could John come?" He said, "Hell yeah." You know? That blew me away. You know, I don't know what— 'Cause I, believe me, Dan, I don't get on the phone and go, "Let's make this work for us.

Get John Carpenter's name. We'll have a Rolodex of names. We could really start to—" I don't know what to do other than to say, you know, if you're a fellow artist and you're creating and somebody appreciates that, you're on the right road. And, you know, and you can keep on doing whatever it is you're— you know, my feeling is, man, just keep it funny, bro, you know. And I laugh at some weird shit, but, you know, if I can entertain myself, then I figure I'm doing something right, you know.

Can you explain, though, the intimacy of the medium? Because The thing about whoever it is that's meeting you is they're not seeing you, and so all they're seeing is your talent. All they're seeing is your imagination. All they're seeing is your mind and the best parts of who you wanted to be seen when you felt soulless for 17 years doing radio. The reason that I've chosen to do what I do now in radio is because it's the most fulfilling and intimate there. I don't have anything else like television and even writing. Neither of these things— they had their fulfillments, but it wasn't connection to strangers who feel like they know you because you're developing a more intimate relationship because they can't see you.

Yeah. I got to tell you, when I'm doing my work on podcast or broadcasting, the first thing I'm thinking of is, is this working for me? You know, and if I'm having a good time, I know I'm touching somebody out there, you know. In fact, I've taken to leaving laughs in. If I'm laughing, if I bust up laughing, I just leave it on the tape and just— that's what happens, you know, we're all laughing. Because I know now that there's people, and I've heard it from more than one person, who, you know, they're struggling out there, man, and comedy, laughter, is a curative, you know, it really is. So, I think what I can do is even cats that I don't agree with, politically we're so freaking weird now in this country, but even people that may be miles away from me in terms of political things, I can make that guy laugh or that woman laugh. We have a commonality there, and man, we can start building that out a little bit. Okay, it sounds kind of goofy philosophically, Zen Buddhist thing, although Zlotyn Zen Buddhism I like, but It is how I see it, you know, that there's somebody out there, I'm making him laugh, and that dude may be like living on the other side of the world from me in terms of politics or philosophy, but I just connected to them.

'Cause I figure anytime I think something's funny, there's gotta be 1 or 2 or 3 or more people out there that think the same thing, you know.

I mean, we're all searching for connection, right?

I mean, are you talking drugs? Because, oh. Yeah, no, yeah. Dann, sure. We do want connection, especially women right now for me, because it's just— no, I'm a happy guy. My girlfriend's in Florida right now, so she's— yeah, no, we are. Aren't we searching for connection? I feel a warmth between us.

I think we're always— I think it's a basic human need to search for connecting places. And when you talk about how crazy it's gotten in the world, A very simple place is sharing a laugh.

Right on. Yeah, I agree. And seriously, I'm not happy, man, unless I'm talking to somebody, to be honest with you. I like my time watching TV, but I'm always reaching for the phone because I want to reach out and see how's everybody doing, what's going on.

So you've mentioned a couple of times the dysfunction that you grew up in and wherever it is that you were wearing costumes to escape or creating characters to escape. Some of what it is that we're doing here is meant to be biographical. So how deeply are you willing to get into your past on the places where you find the funny?

I'm cool. I'll go anywhere. I had the hots for my 7th grade nun, the teacher. I literally would sit there and try to make out her ass. I was 12. She was a very pretty nun, so I was trying to see if she had a body.

Yeah, that's just child testosterone. Yeah, that's not That's not really where I wanted to go, but you're starting to—

No, go ahead. Go where you want to go. Go where you want to go, Manny.

Well, let's start with the way that your father was making money and burning money. Yeah. What was happening in the house?

My dad was a— probably the one thing, and I say this with love, the one thing in life that I would look at him and say I'm proud of my father is a World War II veteran of the Canadian Forces. They were in Italy. They came home, moved the family to California, and I was born here 2 years later, my sister 3 years later. And for a period of time there, we had a good stable home in Arcadia where I grew up. I don't know what happened, or maybe it didn't happen, it was always there, but my father was a successful salesman and we bought a nice house and we had a beautiful home and we built a swimming pool and I was going to a Catholic school. Holy angels. And then all of a sudden I could hear the fighting and the anger and the rancor. And my dad was out, probably by that point cheating on my mom with 2 or 3 different women. The fighting, the kind of thing you don't want a kid to hear. I heard it all. You know, I heard my father leave. I heard my mother begging him not to.

All the cringy shit, you know. And when he left, and he abandoned the family, it took me a long time to to say, "That's what he did. He abandoned us." Because when my father came back from Europe, he was a salesman, I was glad to see him. I was happy. I was crying. And everybody told me, "You realize what your father did to you?" You know, "No, he, you know, my mother was the one. She couldn't get along with her." And that's what happens to us. That's what we do to kids, you know. We make them take these stupid sides. But I didn't trust family, money, or even love after that. I just went out into the world. I was a cynical, angry kid through high school. I stopped paying attention to my schoolwork, and I guess that's kind of a cliché, but yeah, I didn't give a shit about school, man. All I wanted to do was find something somewhere that was— that I wanted to be a part of a culture, and the first thing I found was the writings of Jack Kerouac and the beat poets of the '50s. This was late '60s.

The hippie culture was starting, but really the guys That's where I want to be because I don't have a family anymore. And by the time I was in high school, I was stealing food because my father was not sending money to the house. I don't know what my mom was doing with whatever money she had, but I told myself I was a rapscallion. I was kind of like Roger the Dodger. I was just being, you know, I was going to steal some food. Isn't this funny? I was hungry and I was stealing almost every day from the supermarket up the street. My kid sister told me She saw bags of groceries that she would steal on the step. This is all shit we never ever let ourselves believe or see, you know. When I finally realized that, I went through a heavy-ass period of anger toward my parents. My father died when I was 35, and I hadn't yet come to those realizations, but I did know that I'd been angry with him, and as he died, I told him I loved him and I forgave him, but I And I kind of went there with him.

I said, "You really were a shit father, man." "Well, you know, you're going to take me on now at this point in my life?" "Well, kind of, yeah. That's what I'm doing, Dad." And I realized that my mother was a victim of that. And I had the longest time, I had a hard time with my mom, man. I didn't get along with her. But now I feel so bad for Marjorie. I love her and I know what she— she had a serious bout with depression. Now I know that. So I'm glad I came to these realizations, you know, about myself and my life. And everybody's fighting their wars too. I don't think I'm unique.

How did you come by the realizations though? Like you're talking, I don't know what you learned from the specifics of telling your dad how you felt and forgiving him before he passed.

Well, I don't know that I forgave him, Dan, before he passed. I did know that I loved him, and I knew that he was an adopted kid. He had his life. But I was pissed at him. But I told him I loved him before he passed, and I watched him die. And my mother, I still didn't understand. I didn't understand him either, but I knew that I loved her. It wasn't until— God, dude, I don't know what gets us to that place. It was probably about 10 years ago. When I realized that I was stealing food because I was hungry, not because I was, you know, trying to be Oliver Twist's best friend. And that was sad, man, when you realize that. We went from being— my father was very successful to that, and I was angry with my dad about that. I forgave my mother right then and there. I realized that my mom had been through hell. But I knew that this hatred that I was harboring, and it wasn't even hatred, but this anger at my father I was harboring wasn't doing me any goddamn good. I can't go through my whole life hating people, you know.

So I recognized he was a flawed person, and goddammit, I love you anyway, Dad. You know, I'm not quite sure what you did that was good, you know, I think. But he gave me a little bit of my sense of humor, my brother too. But you must have been challenged, and you must have been in a lot of pain yourself, man. And I know he was adopted. He didn't find out who his real mother was until he got out of the Army. And I think that's why they left Canada. When he found out that his real mother was an American, I think that's when he packed up my mom and my older brother and sister and came to the United States, came to California.

The characters were an escape in your childhood? Yeah, yeah.

All of that stuff. I would watch TV and then I'd go back in the bedroom and pretend like I'm the host of The Ed Sullivan Show, you know? And I don't know that I gave them names, but I went into character. The first character voice I did was James Mason in the movie 55 Days at Peking. I watched this movie and James Mason was Chinese in this film, you know, and I just was starting to do this James Mason voice, you know, it's the first character voice I did. And then the next one you do is kind of hillbilly because that's an easy one and New York's very easy. So you go for all these easy dialects and you start to, you rope your sister in. I roped my little sister Mary Ann in.— and she was the best audience in the world. I would do these sketches where I would sit her down and say, "Okay, I'm gonna go into that office and I'm gonna tell that guy what I think." And I'd go into my bedroom, close the door, and then come out dragging my leg behind me, and she'd howl with laughter 'cause I just got my ass kicked by the guy behind the door.

So, that was Marianne, and we would go out with a little reel-to-reel tape recorder that I had, and I would interview her. I don't know what I was saying to her, but I would say, I actually played this for my father, and I said, please, Marianne, this is a family show. My dad roared at that line. I don't even know what the hell I said to her.

You love the voice actor work, right?

Yeah, man, I love the voice actor work. I like to— because you were anybody you wanted to be, you know, and you didn't need a stage necessarily, or lots of makeup, or hire other people, you know. Do you have a favorite?

I mean, among the voice work that you've done, I imagine Rick and Morty is the place that— is there Is there anything that gives you that sort of satisfaction?

Of the other profession? Of the other gigs I've done?

Yeah, just of the voice work that you've gotten to do.

Well, you know, my first job was King of the Hill and they let me do 3, 4 voices. That was a lot of fun. Um, Futurama let me do the old— I guess F is for family. I got to stretch a little bit there. Rick and Morty, I just do the one character, Principal Vagina. But, you know, it's more me than any of the other characters I do. I would say the most fun I've had stretching is doing my podcast and my radio show, you know, because you are setting the boundaries there. When you're working for other people, they go, "That's really funny, Phil, but we want to go here, not there, okay? But fantastic!" Okay, so that's how that is, you know. But I'd say all of the gigs that I've had in voiceover have been blessings, man, you know, and especially Rick and Morty. I was in the ground floor of that show, man, the first year it was on the air. Yeah, you know, the last voice session I did with Rick and Morty, I walked out of there with no throat because I was— they wanted me to scream as if I was falling off of a building.

That was fun. Anything you can improv is great. Working for Judd Apatow in This Is 40, that entire scene I did, was total improv. I like doing that, you know, and I understand, I respect writers and what they write, but anytime a director says, "You just go ahead and do what you want to do, we got to get the hell out of here, Phil," you know, so—

You like doing your stuff in your voice, with your control, with your sense of humor, without anyone editing, and you know what you want, you know how to make it, and it's yours.

I think that's it. That's right, yeah. In fact, even on camera, I wish the director would just piss off and let me just do my thing.

Well, you said a couple of things. You said you could have or should have been a writer, and you also, it felt like, could have or should have gone in front of camera instead of hidden.

Yeah, because that's where I'm winding up now. Look at our business. Look at radio. You know, radio's kind of going away, although the podcast universe has its own possibilities. Um, but yeah, I think probably maybe the way I got into it was better because it was fully— I was gainfully employed from the gate. Being an actor, which my brother Darryl went into, you even back in the— when there was lots of work, it wasn't necessarily steady. Um, and I had to get the hell out of California. I had to go and see the world, you know. I had to get away from where my family was. So, um, I kind of wish that I would have been on stage a little bit and done visual acting, because it would have prepared me a little bit more for this point in my life. But I don't know, man. I don't know that I had a choice. Well, you were ahead of the curve in podcasting.

Like, you got out of radio earlier than most, right? What was behind that choice?

Well, I mean, one thing about my radio show, everybody loved the show, but it was always a really hard show to affiliate. It was always a really hard show to sell. It was always a struggle. And by that point, I was getting offered these little pilots and acting jobs above and beyond the radio gig. So I thought, I can make this my future, but I gotta do something on the air. And by this time, guys that I knew, like— well, there were cats that I knew in the comedy business that were already starting a podcast. I'll do that. I can set a studio up in my house. So, it was just kind of like saying, I don't want to stop being creative, and this is going to allow me to be creative and make money and do whatever the hell I want to do. And the only restriction is somebody saying, you suck, I don't want to buy your podcast, as opposed to someone saying, don't do that, Phil, because our advertisers, this or that.

I would imagine, though, when you say it was tough to get you affiliated, that's frustrating for me, just hearing it, you knew how good it was. You knew it was smart. And are you angry at the industry for not being able to support it?

So, of course, I think any— I think a lot of guys in radio are angry at the industry for a lot of reasons. But I believe management— and I'm talking industry-wide now— as much as I love a lot of the cats that I worked for, okay, and I'm not blaming all of them individually, but I am saying that management, ownership, the people that ran our business ran it right into the ground. They didn't show any courage. They didn't show any real individual creative instinct. They didn't know how to sell, especially my show, they couldn't sell it, they couldn't affiliate it. Well, what the hell's the problem? Had I run iHeart or whatever it was at the time, Clear Channel, I would've said, "Okay, obviously we have a new format here. There's news talk, but there's also personality talk. What's that, Greaseman, me, Howard, Bubba, Dan, you know, whoever, that's personality, that's a whole other rail that we have to promote." And had we done that, it probably would have been the birth of podcasting much sooner, the more creative podcasting, but it would have been a parallel rail that we could have used as an advertising medium.

So you didn't feel supported, right? No. You always felt like you were fighting for your life. Absolutely.

Always. And I had people from the sales department tell me that. They would say to me, "Phil, you're lightning in a bottle, and they're just not pushing you, man." And I'm fortunate now, I'm with a great salesperson in Julie Talbot at iHeart Podcasts, and I have a great agent in David Katz, and these are people that work hard for you. But back then, low-hanging fruit, man, that was the name of the game.

But this industry is super frustrating in terms of whoever's running it. You talk about creative limitations, you're meeting very few people that you're connecting with creatively in your entire career in management, right? In podcasting? No, I'm talking about your entire life in radio, where it is you didn't feel supported because The executives needed to both see your genius and know how to sell it because it was going to be the future. Like, you have to— that can't be a niche thing. That's obvious that if I put that in front of discerning people, it will catch because it's funny and it's got range. Like, it's like nothing else on radio. And it had audience. You can't tell me it didn't have audience. They just didn't know how to measure it. Well, yeah.

And you're talking to David. He was right. We had good quarter hours, we had long TSL, time spent listening, we had big fat TSL. The CUME, people tuning in and tuning out, wasn't there, but I don't necessarily blame our show, I blame the radio station for that. I mean, you're relying on one show to pull in CUME listenership, which is basically people tuning in and tuning out, tuning in and tuning out. Quarter hour is my job, TSL is my job, but CUME, the station's gotta go out and get that audience, you know.

I always felt like you were surrounded by a whole bunch of people who weren't as creative as hard stop.

Well, I think you're right, but I love the support I got, like in Miami from Bob Green. We had a great general manager. I love the support that I got from our promotion guys. I'm not, I'm not blaming them for anything. I'm saying we had to kick the game up to a much higher level. We couldn't give up, and we were giving up all across the board in radio in those days. Just everybody's just throwing in the towel. Why? Why? You know, and you look at some of these guys that ran these companies from ABC, Cap Cities, and I know the names, I won't mention them. Actually, I don't know the names now, I forgot them. I drove them out of my mind. They were the most gutless people, worthless people, and decided, "Sure, let's flush an entire industry down the can." Because as I said, we were just talking this past weekend, in film you can give an award to a movie that doesn't make money, still give it an Academy Award. Why? 'Cause you appreciate the goddamn art. In television, Hill Street Blues got 5 Emmys, man, and they were about ready to bounce it off the air.

It wasn't getting a viewership. Only in radio is the making of money the only goddamn thing they care about, and the art, the content— So when you don't concentrate on content, you're only concentrating on making money, which means selling commercials, you're basically flushing the medium down the toilet. You got no— there's nothing to put the commercials in. So you're right when you say, "I didn't feel supported." You're right about that.

Well, that's why it feels like the lowest rung of the show business ladder too, because of everything that you just mentioned, and because of how hard it is to climb from there if you're going to be a rose growing in a sewer. Like, that's right, it's just— it isn't. But it also gave you the opportunity. I would have gratitude. It gave you the opportunity to do whatever the hell you wanted because there was nobody there doing anything interesting, right? And most of the people in charge don't actually know how to get people listening. So they're in charge, but they don't know how to help you.

No. Then, and, and you sure as hell, even if you suggest something, they're not gonna take the, you know, your suggestion. I mean, because everybody, like I said, was on their way out the door. It was like trying to get people to stay at the party, and they're all— they already have their gifts, and they go to the car.

But the thing that you had, when you say TSL, time spent listening, and when I talk about the intimacy of the medium The fact that people start with you here, if anybody who's listened to what it is that you do, and I don't know whether, you know, we're going to go on a zipline and I don't know if it's going to be 20 minutes from now or 40 minutes from now, but something dangerous is going to happen here, like something. And so they just stay with you and there's a stickiness with it until you get to the end of wherever it is your unspooling imagination is. Like, that's why Why I tell you you're an inspiration to me is because I could hear that joyride as you were on it, and I was on the outside at the beginning, like everyone else who listens to you, who didn't quite understand, uh, it— is this real? Is it not real? What is this? And then as you get more and more information, you become addicted to the, the time spent listening. You can't turn away because we want to see how far you'll take it, how far your, uh, your imagination goes.

Yeah, because you know, Dan, the best thing that I heard in those days was, "I was in the car, I didn't get out of the car, I didn't go to the house." Because I wanted— to me, to you, to anybody, that's TSL right there. That guy can't get out of his car because he wants to listen to the rest of the bit. That's man valuable. To an advertiser, that's gold, you know. And that's what we had. And they could not, for the life of them, extend the life of it. Yeah, just take it. Even when you don't get calls, and there were times you didn't get any phone calls. I was sitting in the studio one day doing this character named Ted Bell, and there was a crew from Channel 5 doing B-roll because they were going to do a thing. And these guys were laughing as they're— and Phil, I went to— I took her to the whatever, they had the Ellen Cottonwood in Santa Barbara, and my wife and I— why did you take her up there? Well, we wanted to have a romantic evening, but I didn't know— and now it's getting to the point I don't see any fucking calls because it's so corny.

What are you gonna call about? This guy's having a bad time with his wife. And I realized I went there. I said, "She slipped her finger into my ass and I just went outside and I wept." "Why?" "I just felt violated." And so it was this— I got guys from the channel 5 just— this kind of stuff. And, you know, people laughed.

I don't think you're allowed to put things in orifices on radio. I know. I think that's banned by the FCC. I think that can get you in a lot of trouble with the present administration. Yes, sir. Government.

Well, absolutely. And at the time, I don't know that I knew that though, but it was that zip line you're talking about. But I didn't do it to shock. I did it to make people laugh. I said, we gotta get some laughs going. And that was the most obvious place to go for the laugh. Isn't it interesting that the things we laugh the hardest at are the things that are illegal, you know, or just like— maybe it's like drugs, I don't know.

What do you love the most about radio?

Well, you are a movie. You're creating a movie with the sound effects, with the lighting, with the cameras, with the actors. You're creating the movie yourself. The first time I fell in love with radio, though, I was traveling cross-country with my family to Canada. I was 5 years old. We were going to visit my grandparents. My dad was awake and I was awake. The car radio was on, everybody was asleep, and I'm listening to this guy, you know, and it's 65 degrees here in Denver. We're gonna be going out to— Bill, you're out in— Here's this guy taking me on this journey, you know, I'm already in the car, but this guy's telling me all about Denver and they're gonna go here and they're gonna go there, and I listened to everything this man was saying to me. "Here's a song now called this and that," and the song, and then he come back, and I realized that this man was This is a whole other world. I'm in the car, but this guy's got another world that he's connecting me to, you know? And so I wanted to be that guy. I wanted to be in control.

I wanted to create that thing, whatever he was doing. I rode my bike to KRLA, which was our local station here in LA, and the Huntington Hotel in Pasadena to watch these. It was the first time I ever saw a radio studio. And Casey Kasem was on the air. And he came out, "How you doing, kids?" I was about— this is how short I was. Casey Kasem was like 6 feet tall to me. Well, hi, great, Mr. Kasem, this and that. Well, it's great, it's fantastic. And meanwhile, the out of KRLA in those days was Serving Southern California from Pasadena, KRLA. That was the out. He knew he should have been in the studio queuing a record up. As soon as he heard Serving Southern California, he dashes in, grabs a 45, and it's, you know, Casey Kasem with you, and he's talking, he's queuing a 45, and he's telling you all about the record, and bam. That was the greatest thing I ever saw in my life, and he was pissed. He turned around and slammed that door shut. But I didn't see the anger. I saw this brilliant improvisational performance from this already a big star, even he was just local in LA in those days.

But I wanted to do that, man. I wanted to have all those knobs and buttons and do what he just did, you know.

So what a great memory to have of specifically Casey Kasem. And I was hoping he was like smoking a cigarette and cursing because his his on-air character sounded so decent. He was. Yeah, I told him—

he worked at Westwood One for a while— I told him the story. He said, oh, you're one of the Green Porch people, huh? Yeah, yeah, you know. But I said, you were an inspiration, man, just that day you lost your temper. Well, goddamn, I don't know, you know.

Yep. And that's how you— that's where and how you grew to love it, the fact that you can have control. I wonder— yeah, I don't know how much pop psychology you've done with the absence of control in your own childhood and the idea that your creative births are— you have to control the all of it because then it can be yours. It seems like some of the stuff happening in your childhood was deeply unsafe.

Yeah, I think you're right. I never really— I do know that it was a world I could control. And also my friends, you know, I had good friends who thought I was a riot. Just a bunch of guys and I would say stupid stuff, so we all kind of bonded in terms of humor. My brother was a riot, so he would So, it would definitely, when you say controlling a world, you're right. I never saw it that way, but I did in my own way realize, I'm gonna pull this in, I'm gonna pull this in, I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do that, and I don't wanna go out and hire a bunch of actors, you know, I'll just do it all myself, you know?

But it sounded like, see, the thing that you were creating, one of the things that you were creating is that your imagination come to life sounded like a riotous group people. It sounded like a bit of a— it sounded like a creative party. Like, these are the things that were calling me. You have to understand, I have no experience with radio. I don't have any of your past when you're introducing this to me, because I don't have any of your past of dreaming of something I imagined and ad-libbing and 5 years old. None of that. I'm going to college for writing. I'm not paying attention to anything that's happening on the radio. I'm not dreaming about imaginary things. And then I hear your show and your show wasn't even, I don't think one of— no, it wasn't the feature, one of the featured shows. I think it was on it. Was it on at night?

When I first got to Miami, it was on at night. Yeah. Yeah.

And so it's on at night and, and I'm realizing that all you're doing is putting out a fishing line. It's your creativity, your creativity, putting out a fishing line so you can get one person to bite on the hook so the rest of us can laugh at the fact that that one person doesn't know that they're talking to only you. That person thinks sometimes— what's the most you've ever had in the room?— that, that person thinks sometimes that there are how many people in the room? What's the most you've ever had?

You mean characters? Yeah, probably 3 or 4 characters doing it once.

So, so all of us are listening and we're watching you. Basically what we're watching you do is, is paint on a canvas that we can't see. Yeah, yeah. And so we're watching an artist work. Well, Neil—

you remember Neil Rogers? Neil used to say— this guy, he used to— Neil didn't like anybody, but he God bless him, he supported me and said, "This guy puts a painting out." He said exactly what he said. "Phil's got a bare canvas every day he's gotta paint a picture on and what are you people doing?" You know how he used to scream at the audience. I never saw it that way other than the fact that this was me. This is really funny. Please let us get some calls on this, you know? That was kind of how I— and you got to learn the market. You learned that Miami is a sports market so I could do a lot of sports stuff. Oh, but we're a terrible market for you.

Not just the lack of education but the number of different ethnicities that you have there and languages make it very hard to connect with, to ever get the joke.

Yeah, today, today I think you're right. I think back then, don't you think it was a little bit more, uh, homogenized? I think '80s and '90s. Yeah, well, when— yeah, early '90s when I was in Miami in '94.

I, I could see where it is that your show would struggle in Miami just because of how weird the Miami audience is and because you'd need them to get the joke. Like, you're— and you need an executive team to have the patience to let you tell the joke until everybody got it, which took— I mean, it took me a long time. I'm listening to your show and I don't understand what I'm listening to. I know it's weird, but I, I don't— I don't even know how you indoctrinate people to this. It takes a minute. Like, you— why— you're not— you're never explaining the joke.

No, until I got to LA. And, uh, uh, Craig Kitchen is a great guy. He's one of the good management guys, Craig, Bob Green, you know, I can name some cats that were in my corner. But Craig said, we realized that something, something, we realized that the QM or something goes up when people know what's happening. I said, what would happen if I told people that I'm doing the voices? He says, why don't you try it? So we did that. I started saying, I'm Phil Henry, by the way, that was me doing that character voice. And then I'd move on very quickly. I don't know if it had any effect. Today, I don't think I would have done it. I think I would have just let the fantasy be the fantasy, just a bunch of weird asses, and let people figure it out on their own, you know. But, you know, everybody's in such a goddamn hurry, and in those days, especially now, I guess the same thing. Let's hurry and get those numbers. Let's hurry and get those ratings. Let's hurry and be successful and rich and famous. And, you know, certain things take a certain amount of time.

And I don't think that we were going slow. The guys in charge needed it to be fast because they were scared of it. Whatever Henry's doing, we better hurry up and see some results because goddamn it, I don't want to hear that shit. It's too freaking weird. I think Clear Channel said that. I think Clear Channel said, you know, there's a level of money that I should have been making that I didn't quite hit, and they didn't let the show develop. You know, they just said, well, okay, let's get out of here. The cat's weird, you know. He's, uh, I mean, I know I did a lot of stuff that baited management. Oh, I did one thing, you know. We went back, this is after the Janet Jackson thing, and Craig came back from DC. They called all these cats to DC, the Janet Jackson breast. I said, what's that got to do with us? That was TV. Well, they want us to tone it down. So Phil, would you beep out? And we had a jingle that said said, "Ted's of Beverly Hills, we wanna put our meat in your mouth," right? He says, "You gotta beep that out, Phil." I said, "Okay." So, instead of beeping out, "We wanna put our meat in your mouth," "We wanna put our beep in your mouth," we beeped out, "We wanna put our meat in your beep." And so, we beeped it out, but that's not what they wanted us to beep.

Yeah, we were always trying to do what they wanted, but also maintain an audience and maintain the entertainment value of it, for God's sake.

Well, I had a hard time— I don't know how much of this creeped into your work or your rebellion or wherever it is you were an anarchist. I just simply had a hard time respecting anybody in management. Just, it just— I respect them as human beings, obviously, but I'm just talking about respecting the judgment or taste of anyone in management. So a lot of the things that I would end up doing would be to mock them back. Kiss the mouth, yeah. Well, yeah, but what you're doing there, like, that's a level of subversion. You can't go into an office and say, well, we bleeped it, like, as if you didn't know what you were doing. Yeah, we bleeped it. Yeah, but it's a fundamental lack of respect you're showing there because you're surrounded by— I mean, look, you can be nice to some of them, but you're surrounded by fools.

Well, and you know, you're working your ass off too, Dan. You know this. You're working your ass off. I'm not going in there. I'm not some The thing that I resented more than anything was them thinking I was some kind of weed-smoking, dope, stupid, jive-ass comic guy that leaves the station, goes and have drinks at the bar, and goes with his girlfriend. I worked my ass off. I was a professional. I had— I won't say who, because I had a GM bring me into his office one day and say, people are saying you're getting stoned before the show. I said, you tell me who that is, because I'm A, I'm gonna go to the union right now. B, I'm gonna call my attorney. Well, you never saw a guy shit his pants quicker. Because GMs coming up when I was a kid, they pushed you around and just told you how it was gonna be. And by that point in my career, I wasn't gonna take that shit, especially saying to somebody I'm using drugs. I didn't so much as have a drink the same day I was doing a show, you know? I was a total professional all the way through, but because I was such a weird-ass, some dude on a sales staff someplace said, Henry must be smoking dope or something.

He must be taking drugs. And this fucking general manager listened to that, got baited by that, and asked me, are you using drugs? I said, not only am I not using drugs, I'm going to insist that that son of a bitch apologize to me now, or I'm taking this to the goddamn union. And he did.

I hate to hear all of that be so serious. I think I would have enjoyed the Phil Henry Show on drugs. I think that would have been— I think that would have been pretty fun to listen to.

I imagine I couldn't control anything I was doing on drugs. This is another thing that you're bringing up there. Maybe you being on drugs, that would have been a more entertaining thing to take the show from.

I think we need to allow more broadcasters the freedom of being on drugs so that they could be their truest and most reckless selves. But people don't understand how much you care, right? Like, what you're articulating there is, it may look to you like I'm just being a silly fool. You have no earthly idea that this is the most important thing in my life.

It's very disciplined, it's very structured, and I'm speaking on behalf of anybody that you hear on the air that does this work. Everybody takes it seriously, you know, and we're all, you know, effective in varying degrees. But how do you just go in and just act like some jackass beatnik, you know, when you got a major market gig and you're making all this bread and people are relying on you? It just doesn't happen. And you're realizing your dreams, right?

Because you— when did you when did you feel most successful? Like when on the path were you able to enjoy it the most because every day wasn't a fight, because you felt like you had the support of the people that you needed the support of, or you felt like you figured it out? That time might be now.

Yeah, well, I mean, in the professional realm, probably when I was at Premiere Radio and the early days of our syndication, 2000, 2001, 2002, that kind of thing. We really had it cranking, man. We really had it going. We had a great audience in LA, we were building our national audience, we had maybe by that point, maybe approaching 200 affiliates. And yeah, right then, but I'm not saying, you know, I had a lot of things were going on in my personal life. I had a marriage that was falling apart, you know. God help me, you know, I decided, "Well, I'm having all this great success, what good can I do for the world? I know, I'll get married, you know, and do that." And that was my Catholicism. The narcissism kicking in. I should have— what I should have done is just said, now I can party, I can party, you know? Let me just go out and be Phil and have a good time. But I always felt like I needed to pay the world back for whatever good happened to me.

Oh, so you're saying you went and you got professionally happy, but you weren't able to enjoy it because you weren't personally happy?

Right. I felt like, okay, now I need to go out and do some good. Look at the pinnacle you've reached, Phil, after all that work. After all that hard— after doubting yourself, and then you believed in yourself, you tried it, you took— you rolled the dice, you won, and look where you are now. By God, I must— I gotta do something to be worthy of it. Now, what kind of sick thinking is that? I kick— I think it's my Catholicism kicking in, and I went and I was in therapy at the time. This wonderful woman who looked like one of the fairy godmothers from Cinderella, her name was Lou Katzman, she's a great therapist, she said, Phil, she said, you grew up in a home that was busted up, 4 kids spread to the winds. What do you think you were going to do? I said, what do you mean? You were trying to save your family. You were trying to go out and recreate the Hendry family and make it work this time. And she said, it doesn't work that way, man. You know, you, you, you need to take care of yourself and feel your joy.

So, well, why would you feel worthy though?

Who in your house would have taught you what self-love looked like?

Right on. You know, and I'm not blaming anybody, but we— it was a— it was a home of such dysfunction that, uh, everybody suffered, you know.

And, uh, anyway, but when you're talking about that dysfunction, right, we haven't gotten into the details, but in order to take care of yourself, at some point in the home, wherever our patterns are, we learn whatever love is supposed to look or feel like. In your home as a child, you're not experiencing something that feels like love.

No, I think my folks were trying at it. They were attempting to make it happen. One of the things that— I don't know, man. I think my mother was depressed. My father was extremely angry. In fact, I used to love The Honeymooners because Ralph Cramden reminded me a lot of my dad. You didn't know who was coming through the door at night, a happy man or a really angry man. I did this thing, and this was my instinct, this is a pure instinct, as I must have been 10. I wrote a Magna Carta for the family. We will not fight anymore. I will— and I had everybody sign it. Now what the hell? I mean, that's a sad thing, man. But that tells you who I was at the age of 10. I was trying to pull everybody together. And I remember my father reluctant. He wasn't reluctant, I think he felt ashamed. Named, and he put his name to it. You know, I wanted our family to work. I wanted us to be happy. I didn't want the neighbors to hear my mom and dad screaming at each other, you know. And until finally I just gave up, you know, and you do, and you're a teenager, so there's all kinds of great things out there— girls, drugs, you know, being funny, going wherever the hell you want to go, doing what you want to do.

Stealing food if you have to.

It's a depressing end to what it is we've done here. Can I talk to Principal Vagina?

You may. Is he here? Well, he's here right now, and I can tell you, um, I wish I could remember some of the lines from the show.

It doesn't seem— it doesn't seem like you love Principal Vagina as much as I love Principal.

Oh well, I have to get into character though. But, uh, let me tell you something right now. The big sky— the big head in the sky You know, um, that's a character that isn't really— it's my voice, but Justin, uh, just wrote that character thing for me.

So it's your voice, but it's not your writing, and therefore you're not as proud of the characters you create. I love doing that character. I'm not saying you don't love doing the character. I'm saying you love most the Phil Henry-created, soaked in nothing but 100% Phil Henry characters. Those are the ones you love the most. I think so. Yeah, yeah. Meet them them all at philhenryshow.com. Uh, again, a huge inspiration for me. Uh, thank you so much for spending this time with us, and just thank you for the, for the permission.

Oh dude, oh, uh, you know, thank you, Dan, and, uh, thank you for telling me all this stuff because I never knew it. You know, you have no way of knowing it.

We were doing— we were working in different worlds, right? You're— I didn't— I'm telling you, I was fascinated by radio because of you, but I had no access to it. We all— I— my path was all print. It was all print stuff. It was all writing and stuff.

But look at how naturally you fell into it, man, and became such a superstar in your own right. And you unplugged a whole, uh, uh, rushing, uh, a river of creativity.

Uh, you say natural, but it was— yeah, like, uh, did you go through a period of, oh God, I don't know what I'm doing, I don't want to do this, this is scaring the hell out of Uh, well, I got to all of my dreams in writing, and it didn't feel like there was enough there just because the act of writing is so lonely. So I wasn't doing anything that was communal. I wasn't doing anything that was shared. It was just— I'd write something, it would be deeply fulfilling to write it well, but then once I got into, like, 10 or 15 years of doing it, uh, there were some moments along the way. I remember one more than any other. The Miami Heat had just won the championship in 2006, which is about the time that I was starting to do all of this. And Dwyane Wade's throwing the basketball up in the air, and that's just a giant moment. And as I'm writing it on deadline, I'm saying, I've written so many of these, like I've written some. And that is just not the emotion when you're writing for Miami and taking such pride in writing the moment of a championship.

Yeah. Oh, it was so— it was— I remember telling somebody afterward in the, in the postgame cocktail party, like, just sort of in a championship glow. Oh my God, I've got to figure out other things to do. I can't keep doing this this way.

That's a trip, man. That's the same thing you're saying.

17 years, right? Where you're like, wait a minute, this thing that I dreamt of, like, it's not happening, bro.

Yeah, it's not. I got to do something. Even if I— even if I die. I mean, that's really what it was. Even if I die, I gotta change this. I— if I go and I— and I'm Phil Henry for a day that'll be worth it, you know. So you do, you kind of, it's not a pact with God so much as a promise to yourself. You're going to, it's a life and death moment and you will challenge death just to get to where you want to be. I don't know if you, you probably were there, but you just don't want to admit it.

I didn't know it. I'm not sure I knew it, right? I'm sitting in a—

It's your life. It's your life, man. So naturally it's life and death. If I can't have my life, well, what's the alternative? So I gotta do this. Yeah. And you, dude, kicked ass. So thank you, sir. I'm proud of you too, man.

You kicked ass. You also kicked ass. We kicked ass.

Let's go out and do some more of that stuff, man. I like that. Yeah, kicking ass. Keep kicking ass.