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Making Your Show with Phil Rosenthal

Phil Rosenthal is the host of Somebody Feed Phil and the creator of Everybody Loves Raymond. To offer your own advice, call Zak @ 844-935-BEST


ZAK: Today on The Best Advice Show, I talk to a dream guest, Phil Rosenthal. Phil is the host of the Netflix show, Somebody Feed Phil. It's a food/travel show and since we can't travel right now, the closest I get to travel is watching Phil's show. You should watch it too. Phil also created a little sitcom that you may have heard of, it's called Everybody Loves Raymond. Today on the show, we talk about TV and creativity and of course, food. It's Food Friday.

PHIL: The best single piece of advice I ever got was from an old show-runner named, Ed Weinberger who I asked for advice from when I was writing the pilot for Raymond and he said this, "Do the show you want to do because in the end they're gonna cancel you anyway." It's a way of life. Not just about the sitcom. We all get cancelled one day. hahaha. So live your life.

ZAK: And what's the alternative? What's the flip-side of that advice? Not making the show you want to make. What happens to you then?

PHIL: You take all the notes from the studio and then you're dead anyway because you took their notes and they made it terrible but they don't take the blame. They blame you. Sorry. Either way you're out of luck. Most things don't get on the air so they're gonna cancel you anyway. If you're not gonna get on, why do what they want?

ZAK: How do you think that advice applies to folks that don't make TV.

PHIL: Once you're in a position where you can call the shots a little bit. Where you've already worked on other people's things. You've worked for other people. If you were opening a store and it was finally your store and you saved up enough money, right? Would you take advice from everybody on what should be in that store? You might listen to everyone but at the end of the day, you put in that store what you want to put in that store! What you want to sell in that store. If you're making sandwiches, you're gonna make the sandwich the way you think it should be made. Not the way that guy thinks it should be made unless you agree that that's better. But if you don't think that that's better, why would you listen to that guy!? It's your store! It's your sandwich. Do the show you want to do because you're probably gonna fail anyway which is the joke part. The joke part is because they're gonna cancel you anyway, right? But it's only half a joke because most of the time businesses, all businesses don't make it. And it's rare to have wonderful success. But you don't have a chance at wonderful success if you take everybody's advice that goes against your own.

ZAK: So that leads me to my final question is, what is the greatest sandwich you've ever eaten.

PHIL: Ooooo, that's a very good question. The first thing that pops in my head is Howlin' Ray's hot chicken, fried chicken sandwich. It might be the best fried chicken I ever had. It might be the best sandwich I ever had. That's in LA. You know, sometimes it's the sandwich that you're having right now that is the best. People say, you say this is the best all the time. Yes! It is the best. I'm having it right now which makes it the best.

ZAK: My wife always makes fun of me for that. She says "You say every movie is the best." But that's an aspiration! Why wouldn't you want that?

PHIL: It is the best. It's the best of that thing. Right? Of course there's qualifiers but it's the best of that at this moment in my life. I can't judge it ten years from now or ten years ago. I'm judging it right now! Not it's the best. Warren Zevon went on David Letterman when he was dying of cancer. He knew he was dying. Letterman knew he was dying. The audience knew he was dying. We knew this was gonna be his last appearance. Here's another piece of great advice. Letterman said, "Do you have any advice being in your position?" And he said, "Dave, enjoy every sandwich."

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