August 1, 2025 • 30 mins
Phil Stark talks about writing and learning it wasn’t really his dream, telling patients to find their bliss, deciding joy wasn’t in the writers room, writing “Dog With A Blog”, treating writers who are panicking about work, writer’s block, and where’s the best Tex Mex in Houston.
Bio: Screenwriter (Dude, Where’s My Car?) turned therapist (Dude, Where’s My Car-tharsis?) Phil Stark sees clients virtually from all over the state of California. He also writes about mental health and personal growth as experienced through talk therapy.
Bio: Screenwriter (Dude, Where’s My Car?) turned therapist (Dude, Where’s My Car-tharsis?) Phil Stark sees clients virtually from all over the state of California. He also writes about mental health and personal growth as experienced through talk therapy.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Straw Hut Media. I'm Phil Stark.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
I'm here with Ja Cogan and Don't Be Alone with
Ja Cogan, and I'm concerned that he doesn't want to
be alone, so I'll be with him and hopefully one
of you will be able to tag in for me soon.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
Don't be this episode. Hey guys, welcome to Don't Be
Alone with Jake Cogan. I'm Jay Cogan and I'm glad
(00:35):
you're here. I want to encourage everybody to write to
me at dbawjk at gmail dot com. The whole point
of the show is that I connect with somebody or
something out there in the world that means you. I'd
love to hear what your thoughts are about the show.
I'd love to hear what your compliments are, what your
notes are, if you think we could do something better.
(00:55):
I really really want to hear your questions for the guests.
Please write questions with the guests. I need them desperately. Also,
if you like the show, tell a friend. That's how
the audience can grow. And if the audience grows, then
I will get a better seat in a restaurant the
next time I try to make a reservation. So please
tell a friend today, We've got a very interesting show
(01:15):
and it comes at an interesting time. A lot of
people in show business are worried show business is over.
And our guest today is as a former writer who
turned into a therapist. So it's an interesting question is
when is the job that you're in actually no longer
the job you should be in. When should you switch
over and do something else. It's very hard to make
(01:37):
that switch if you've dedicated your life to being low
one thing, and then you have to decide, ah, now
I'm going to try to do that other thing. His
name is Phil Stark. He's a comedy writer. He wrote
some comedy movies and comedy TV shows, including the movie Dude,
Where's My Car? And he worked on that seventy show
in South Park. He wrote this great book called well,
(01:59):
I assume it's great. I haven't read yet, but it says, dude,
where's my Catharsis? Because he wrote the movie Dude, Where's
My Car? And here it is this book and he said,
there's just fifty short, little short chapters on how to
improve your life. What could be bad? Where's the bad?
So we're going to talk to Phil about when it
right to change your career and how you can achieve
happiness by doing it right after this. Your story is
(02:28):
that you were a professional writer working in the industry.
You've written movies, Dude, Where's My Car? You've helped create
a TV show, Dog with a blog. Yes, and then
you also became a shrink. How the hell did that happen?
Speaker 2 (02:46):
Well, sort of like Hemingway, going broke right slowly and
then all at once.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
Right.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
I worked for many years as a screenwriter and television
comedy writer, and I long story show. I started to
get unhappy with it.
Speaker 1 (03:02):
I didn't enjoy it.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
I was working less, I was making less of money,
and it took me a while to figure out how
I might change that.
Speaker 1 (03:08):
And that was a longer period of.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
Time, and then eventually I decided to go back to
school get my license. I'm a therapist now and I
work with all kinds of people, but especially people in
the entertainment industry who sort of going through now what
I went through.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
Then, well, what possible problems could people in the entertainment
industry have right now? I don't even understand. That makes
no sense?
Speaker 2 (03:28):
Yeah, yeah, well, apocalyptic is a word I hear thing
about a little bit.
Speaker 1 (03:32):
No it's been it's been rough going rough sledding in
the entertainment industry for a little while. So I also
wrote it. You wrote a book called you'rede a movie
called Dude, Where's My Car? And they wrote a book
called Dude, Where's My cath Right right?
Speaker 2 (03:44):
There's also a children's book called Dad, Where's My blanky okay,
because I'm really determined to squeeze all the juice I
can out of that. Uh, you know, I wrote the
movie Dude, Where's My Car? And when I became a therapist,
I still wanted to write, except I'm not thinking about
pilots or features. I write about mental health with my voice.
The same voice was in my scripts. Now it's with
this nonfiction. So this title due Where's My cartharsis. I
(04:11):
had to do something with that, right, I mean, it
took me a while figure ou actually what the book
would be about. But once I had the title, it
was clear that was the direction I wanted to go in.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
It takes so long to pursue the dream of becoming
a writer. You have to think about it. You have
to practice writing, you have to get good at it.
You have to figure out how to sell things. You
have to get and then to get into the club
of writers who actually work, which is a very limited
group of people, and then you sort of go through
(04:38):
that and you could help create a show that's another
rarefied group of people. To get to the point where
you think, I'm going to give away give up all
that sort of sweat equity I put into getting here
to do that other thing you said you know you
were not enjoying yourself is that you know a lot
(05:01):
of writers don't don't enjoy themselves. That's part of the profession. Well, yeah,
it's true.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
I mean, listen to I always tell people to break
into the business, you need equal parts of talent, hard work,
and luck, right with the sprinkling of kutzba of course,
and I had that, and I had a long career.
I did eight seasons on that seventies show. My first
job was on South Park. You know, everything was going perfectly,
but then, like a lot of people are experiencing now.
(05:25):
You know, when I was starting out, overall deals were
handed out willy nilly, and overall deal met You just
sat in a bungalow at Radford and wrote. Right then
they started saying, you know, we'd actually like you to
work on a show, and that was like amazing, much different.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
But after that.
Speaker 2 (05:40):
Seventies show, reality TV was really starting to take over
multi cameras, sitcoms were falling out of fashion.
Speaker 1 (05:46):
There was less work. I was just.
Speaker 2 (05:48):
Writing pilots, pitching pilots, writing features, writing specs. I started
to feel like I was gonna have to break in
all over again, right, And it's really hard, especially once
you've had success, to not expect that success to happen again,
especially when you have wonderful people in my life, my
wife at the time, my family, my friend saying you're
so talented, you've done it before, Certainly you'll be able
(06:09):
to do it again. But at a certain point, the unhappiness
I had with what I was doing started to outweigh
the equity i'd built it in. The difficulty of changing that.
Speaker 1 (06:19):
Was there a epiphany, a moment where you just went like,
I've done with this. Well.
Speaker 2 (06:26):
It was really long and slow, and I will say
I was exploring graduate school while sort of making lateral moves,
like exploring maybe working and advertising or writing in some
of the capacity instead of pitching shows to networks. And
I had an agent at the time who took a
spec i'd written and had found an actor who was
interested in who was willing to maybe self finance it,
and she's asked me to make a deck and I
(06:48):
was like, fine, I'll make a deck. And I made
this sort of half assed deck that wasn't so great,
and then I gave it to this agent and she
called me. She said, you know this deck is sort
of half assed. It's not that great, and I said, yeah, yeah,
I agree, and she said, well, can you make it better?
And I was like, yeah, I don't really think I
want to, and she said something the defective, Well, why
wouldn't you want to? If this sells, you can be
(07:09):
the showrunner. And in that moment I realized, you know,
I don't want to be the showrunner. You know, eight
years on that seventy show of Carci Warner, my dream
and what people had done before me, was you get
the overall deal. You write a pilot, you get to
run the show the way you want, in that great
family atmosphere of supporting people, and then it syndicates and
then maybe you retire or maybe you superviso.
Speaker 1 (07:27):
Right.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
It took me a long time to realize that what
my ultimate dream was was different. It had changed, and
one of the reasons why I was so unhappy was
that it was very incongruous what I was doing now.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
With what I wanted to do back then. So what
was the dream.
Speaker 2 (07:42):
Well, the dream was just to come out here and
become a comedy writer.
Speaker 1 (07:45):
Period. But when you were a kid, like you're watching
TV thing, I could do this. I know you went,
you went to UT and you've gotten the television radio
department there.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
Well, I didn't even I didn't really have an inkling
that I would be a writer. I just knew I
wanted to do something creative. I didn't know if it
was be comedy or not. I think I gravitated to
writing because it's something I could do on my own
I could have control over. So when I moved out
here in ninety five, I just wrote. I got Sidfield screenplay,
had to write a screenplay. In twenty one days. I
got a job at a cafe, and I just wrote
(08:14):
and wrote and wrote. Then I had a friend who said,
you're pretty funny. You want you write something funny, So
I wrote a Simpson Speck, I wrote a Seinfeld And
then the luck part of that equation was that a
good friend of mine got me a job on a
show that was going to be produced. It was like
a six month gig and for Comedy Central it turned
out to be South Park.
Speaker 1 (08:31):
Oh fantastic.
Speaker 2 (08:32):
So I had an amazing launch to my career and
everything really went very easily and well for a long time.
Speaker 1 (08:38):
Was that a fun crazy writers experience? It was amazing.
Speaker 2 (08:41):
It was amazing be cause Matt and Trey are just
such geniuses and it's so funny.
Speaker 1 (08:45):
And that first.
Speaker 2 (08:46):
Season, Comedy Central encouraged them to do things like a network,
you put together a writer's room, you read all these scripts,
and they brought in all these writers, and ultimately Matt
and Trey's way of doing things was really there. They
didn't have a traditional writer's room. They ended up bringing
in some people who they thought were really funny that
they melded well with to help them, but they didn't
bring any of the writers back. And I had hut
(09:08):
sped my way into writing a script finishing a script.
Actually I was the writer's assistant. I pitched myself as
the writers and they let me finish a script. And
when I got that credit, I was really bummed that
I wasn't going back to South Park, and then I
met on that seventies show, and then I saw what
the guild minimums were, and then I get an office
and everything, and then I realized that this was going
to be for the best.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
Yeah, this is not on topic, but they make their
shows in a week. Yeah, it was crazy. They did
back then too. Oh yeah, they wrote, recorded, and animated
and so great instantly. How the fuck did they do that? Well?
Speaker 2 (09:39):
It was everything was right there, all the animators, the
audio upstairs, downstairs, everything they needed was right there, and
people were there around the clock and they would see
something funny and make an episode about it. And then
if the best thing I took away from that experience
was that if anybody ever told Matt and Trey, like
the network said, you know, you can't do that instantly,
that's what they were gonna do. Fuck that that guy
told us, we can't do the fuck that guy. And
(10:01):
the whole ethos of the show, I felt was always
about saying the things that people said that they can't say,
but in a really clever and funny.
Speaker 1 (10:06):
By the way, that fuck that ethos doesn't really work
anywhere else but Southwark, Like still you still have to
accommodate your bosses in other venues. Yeah, not on South Park,
but other venues. All right. So then you moved on
from South Park to the seventies seventy show, which had
been was it just starting or had been steaming along.
(10:27):
I was there when we shot the pilot. They hired
me very early on that credit from South Park.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
I mean, I had a really lucky start where people
ask me how do I get an agent? And I say, well,
just get a job on a hit show and get
a credit, right, because I had people calling me.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
But that is how you get an agent.
Speaker 2 (10:40):
It's true, get the job and the agent's come.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:43):
And so I started on the first things of that
seventies show, and I really grew up through that show.
We did eight seasons. It was a wonderful environment. Everybody
at Carsey Warner very family, really supportive, and I was
so Ultimately, I am disappointed that I never got a
chance to implement what I learned about running a show
from those people on my own show.
Speaker 1 (10:59):
Right when Dog with the Blog You came on. You
were not able to.
Speaker 2 (11:04):
Oh the story behind Dog with the Blogs that I
had written one of the many specs. It was a
really Blue like Swingers version of a Buddy melticem except
instead of Vince Vaughn, it was a dog with Vincepaugh
and it was the dog talk, the dog who took
bong hits, the dog gave sex advice, was.
Speaker 1 (11:19):
Really blue, and I was like ted, yeah, and I was.
Speaker 2 (11:22):
Always waiting for somebody to ask me if I had
a talking dog show. Unfortunately, that meeting was at Disney
Channel right, and it wasn't quite right for them, but
they had the title already, so I ended up writing
the pilot. Ultimately, they passed on me running it and
then ended up giving it to somebody else who then
wrote a different pilot who then ended up running the show.
So in the guild you know arbitration version of it,
(11:42):
I've co created it, but I never really had.
Speaker 1 (11:44):
Anything to do with the show itself. Okay, so now
that you're a therapist, does anybody did Michael Kaplan from
Dog with the Blog Coming procure you as a as
a shrink? No?
Speaker 2 (11:55):
No, most of my work does not come through my
former you know, workmates, but there certainly is a specific
you know type and an experience of working in the
creative arts, and I work well with people in that capacity.
Speaker 1 (12:07):
So tell me about that. So now I've I started
seeing a psychiatrist not that long ago, and I've been enjoying.
My relationship with that psychiatrist has been interesting. And I
specifically asked another writer turned the therapist named Dennis Palombo.
Speaker 2 (12:25):
Oh, Dennis plumba legend.
Speaker 1 (12:27):
Yeah, yeah, I said, who'd be a good shrink for
a writer? And so he recommended this shrink and I'm
going to it. And for a million reasons, I said,
I want to be I want to feel more inspired creatively,
I wanted to think. There was a lot of things
that I was, I was and am working on. So
what do you bring to the table as a therapist
to people in the creative arts? What like? What? What? How?
(12:49):
How do you see your special your niche or your gifts? Well?
Speaker 2 (12:53):
I relate well, I think to artists and writers because
oftentimes the issues that they deal with involved the imposters
anddrome or the inner critic. Now that's not to say
everybody doesn't have that, but when you write, produce something,
act in something, and you have a piece of yourself
that you're giving to people, it's very easy to internalize
the any like one thing I work with people on
(13:14):
is taking notes. I'm not noting you, I'm noting the scripts.
So one thing that can really paralyze people in that
sense is their own self criticism and.
Speaker 1 (13:24):
Sort of the idea of the project.
Speaker 2 (13:26):
Whatever criticism they have about themselves onto the people around
them will ultimately makes it difficult to have the kind
of work we want.
Speaker 1 (13:31):
Right, How many of your clients are writers or people
in the industry? A good amount. It's not all in
a number specific number four and a half. Okay, a
good amount.
Speaker 2 (13:42):
It's not my entire practice, but it's certainly something I'm
leaning into now based on my own experience in the
industry and also with what's going on in the industry
now as well.
Speaker 1 (13:50):
How can people have even afforded a shrink? It's true,
It's true.
Speaker 2 (13:54):
It's not cheap, and it's often the first thing to
cut in the budget.
Speaker 1 (13:57):
What happens. What happens. You see a client, it's for
a little while, and I say we're moving to Albuquerque.
Speaker 2 (14:02):
Well, I've met clients and seen them and then they've said,
you know, it's too expensive, I can't afford it anymore.
I've met clients, work clients. You're right, like I'm out
right right, or I sold a pilot right, So everybody's
certainly different. But the themes the purchases I sold the
pilot isn't delusional.
Speaker 1 (14:19):
How do you know that?
Speaker 2 (14:20):
Well?
Speaker 1 (14:21):
I just I am to be them immediately out the session.
It's interesting because I'm at the age now where I've
had a very nice, long run, nice career, and I
think about other things, like I don't know what it
would be that I would do other than what I've done.
I like writing, I like directing, but I mean I'm podcasting,
which is not anybody's idea of a vocation. It's like
(14:45):
if you want to make no.
Speaker 2 (14:46):
Money podcasters on some drop down menus, I bet.
Speaker 1 (14:48):
Yeah, you know. I mean, it's like if I was
podcasting at a time machine, if I started podcasting fifteen
years ago. So maybe podcasting is my thing. But I
(15:15):
didn't start doing it because I thought it was a
road to riches. I kind of did it because he
was something fun to do.
Speaker 2 (15:23):
Well, you know, no matter how much success I think
you have in a career, I think everybody experiences a
phase of life where they stop and they look back
and they see where they've come from and where they're
going and wonder if they still are happy on that path.
And sometimes they stay on it, sometimes they veer a
little bit, sometimes they really change it up. I think
it's very natural to have that kind of a moment
where you question what you're doing.
Speaker 1 (15:40):
It is. My father is a writer, and he had
he worked well into his seventies. So the image I
have of a writer somebody who just writes, starts writing
when they're twenty years old and stops writing when they're
like seventy eight. Yeah, I mean that was the thing.
Speaker 2 (15:56):
I mean for a while, for a long time, I
thought I would retire as a television comedy and then
it became clear that wasn't gonna happen. It took a
while for me to accept that and then decide to
do something else.
Speaker 1 (16:04):
How do you view the change as as a growth
and that failure.
Speaker 2 (16:11):
Personally, Yeah, I'm happier now than I've ever been, right,
And I think a big part of it is that
it sort of felt like I was a wind up
toy walking along doing great, and then I hit a
wall and just winding up right into that wall, wall, wall, wall.
So finally I turned it, and you realize that you
can go around this wall, and that's where I'm at.
Speaker 1 (16:30):
Now. Did you ever have the experience where you thought, well,
I'm happy, But how do I express to my friends
or other people who knew me from the old life
that I really am happy.
Speaker 2 (16:40):
Well, it's interesting because you know, I have so many
friends who are still working in the industry, still comedy writers,
and they would read my shows, they would put me
up for jobs. Everybody was very supportive, and when I
decided to make this change, nobody said you're crazy or
what are you doing with your life. It was like,
good luck, and you should write a book, and here's
(17:01):
what the title should be. So I still have great
relationship with those people and they're all supportive and and
of course they're referral sources for me as well.
Speaker 1 (17:10):
Right, has the book helped you get clients?
Speaker 2 (17:13):
I maybe the book is a shiny thing that I
use in my pitch. You know, it's not a book,
a best seller. I've made a bunch of money off
of it, but it encapsulates some of my thoughts about
therapy in general. It's actually a practical and engaging guide
to talk therapy, divided into fifty short chapters, exploring metaphors.
Speaker 1 (17:30):
We often see it and talk therapy.
Speaker 2 (17:32):
But it's a way I can different friendship myself as
a therapist and use to pitch people.
Speaker 1 (17:38):
What do you find is the most successful you've been
as a therapist, Like, I imagine that therapy is a
having experienced it, it's slow, steady, hopefully there's two steps forward,
one step back kind of thing. You have to have
a lot of patience as a when you're going through it. Yeah,
I assume you have to have a lot of patience
(17:59):
as a therapist. How do you judge your success level
with patients?
Speaker 2 (18:03):
Well, everybody has a different experience in therapy. People often
want to know how long do I have to do this?
Some people come to therapy in a crisis situation, They
overcome that crisis, and then they love coming every week
just to talk about what's going on in our lives.
Some people, after ten sessions, I think I got this.
But what people often don't understand about therapy, and what
therapists often don't do, is say I think you're done.
Speaker 1 (18:24):
Maybe we're done with therapy, which.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
Is a good conversation I have And the most rewarding
experiences are when I'm working with a client on an
issue that we've addressed. I feel like they've processed it,
they feeling better, And then we keep going a little
bit and then I'll say something like, you know, you
seem pretty good. We addressed X, Y, and Z that
you mentioned in the beginning.
Speaker 1 (18:40):
What do you think?
Speaker 2 (18:41):
Do you think we need to keep doing this?
Speaker 1 (18:42):
And they might say you think I'm done? Could I
be finished?
Speaker 2 (18:46):
And I'm actually getting goosebumps right now, because that is
the most rewarding part of it, when somebody acknowledges that
it's helped and they're ready to sort of go on
in life without me.
Speaker 1 (18:55):
What makes a good client? I ever thought about that?
What makes a good patient a good client?
Speaker 2 (18:59):
Or is somebody who is committed, somebody who is there
because they want to be Well.
Speaker 1 (19:05):
You've got a lot of people mandated by the courts
to talk.
Speaker 2 (19:07):
To, you know, but that's a common thing on People
who are mandated for therapy are often not really into
being there, and it can certainly kill the vibe and
sometimes people might not want to be there after.
Speaker 1 (19:18):
Having been there for a little bit. In private practice too, Yeah,
how do you know it's a good fit.
Speaker 2 (19:22):
It's a lot like dating, especially with the online component nowadays,
both dating and therapy. You can go online, you can
click by area code, you can look at pictures, you
can read on them, and it can seem really great,
but you really need to sit down at that Starbucks
with that person and you know very quickly, oh my god,
I want to see this person for a second date.
So I always tell clients whether I'm seeing them or
(19:43):
I'm referring them to see somebody else.
Speaker 1 (19:45):
It's like dating, and you need to find something you.
Speaker 2 (19:47):
Click with, because ultimately, I think what really affects the
success of the therapeutic relationship is just the relationship itself.
Speaker 1 (19:52):
I went into my third date with my therapist thinking
there's gonna be sex. Was that wrong?
Speaker 2 (19:58):
That's a little too fast, that's the hippas standard.
Speaker 1 (20:02):
Okay, ten sessions? Well, all right, And you know, people
I know are lately have been doing a lot of journaling,
and people I know who are sad are doing gratitudeless.
Do you find any of those things helpful? Absolutely?
Speaker 2 (20:16):
In fact, mindfulness is a huge thing. And oftentimes people
think mindfulness is just meditation, and it can be, but
mindfulness is just doing any activity that prevents you from
ruing the past or anticipating in the future, whether it's
meditating or walking, or exercising or drawing or yoga, anything
that can help you develop that sense of presence can help.
Speaker 1 (20:38):
Do you think that experience of talking to people and
delving into their personal lives in a very deep way
would make you a much better writer? Now? Absolutely?
Speaker 2 (20:46):
In fact, when I talk to screenwriting clients or teach
or talk I talk about as when I was starting
out as a writer, there were people who are like, oh,
I sit and I let the characters tell me what
they want to do, and I always that's bullshit. I
need them to pick up the book and go to
this next scene so that it's you know, I need
them to set this up. Then I started to realize
that when I saw that representative in TV and film,
(21:08):
I thought it was bullshit and I didn't like it
because the character wouldn't do that. So now I can
appreciate that it all starts with character, and the reasons
why they do anything is because of the understanding of
their characters. So yeah, it's it's almost like entertainment to
see these clients and understand who they are as characters.
Speaker 1 (21:24):
And now I appreciate.
Speaker 2 (21:25):
When I like a movie or a book, it's because
it's very real and everything that the character is doing
is based on who they are.
Speaker 1 (21:33):
What do you think is the is the is the
like the top five things that we should get from
your book? What are you proudest of in the book
that you sort of were able.
Speaker 2 (21:44):
To write well?
Speaker 1 (21:45):
The book?
Speaker 2 (21:46):
The book is a collection of fifty short chapters that
each one has like a metaphor for something we talk
about in therapy. So, for instance, there's a chapter on change,
which I experienced myself and I share with clients, which
involves the idea of you're standing on top of a
dam and the water is rising, and you know the
water is rising, and you know your feet are going
to get wet. You know you should get out there
and do something else, but you're just not ready yet.
And sometimes only when the water touches our feet are.
Speaker 1 (22:08):
We ready to act.
Speaker 2 (22:09):
And I talk about that with clients in the sense
that some of them might not be happy with their jobs.
They're not getting a lot of work, it's all going
to Canada, or the pay is less, and they're frustrated
not only because of that, but because they aren't acting
they're not doing anything to change, but I encourage them. Hey, listen,
don't beat yourself up not being able to change. You
might just be ready accept it, sit with it, and
eventually it'll feel right to make this change.
Speaker 1 (22:31):
Right. I don't know what that is about the human nature,
where you're frozen in fear for a brief moment until
such time as the clock or other circumstances sort of
forces your hand.
Speaker 2 (22:44):
And oftentimes those clients what makes them feel really bad
is their self flagellation for not being able to act right.
And that's sort of the double arrow. It's like you're
getting shot by the industry. Don't go ahead and shoot yourself.
Give yourself a break, right. Somebody who's very self critical
might never be satisfied with their work, and that ultimately
might make their work great. And so in that way,
sometimes our superpower, which can make us succeed in work,
(23:07):
might be not a superpower in our life or our
personal life.
Speaker 1 (23:11):
Or well. I have the opposite honestly, where I write
something and I love it so much that when I
get a note, even a legitimate note from somebody saying
I'm not crazy about this, it's like a little dagger
it's a little arrow like and I know if I
change it and fix it and it'll be better.
Speaker 2 (23:28):
Well, you have the experience now you can just pluck
it out and take it out. Some people walk around
with that dagger in their back just feeling it, but.
Speaker 1 (23:35):
Their front depending on it still hurts in that moment,
it still hurts, like, Ah, you don't like that thing
that I liked. That's sadness for me.
Speaker 2 (23:43):
But you're handling a great because ultimately people sometimes think,
I don't want to feel that way. What can I
do to change that? But the real trick of it
is to accept that you feel that way and that
somehow lessens the power of it.
Speaker 1 (23:54):
This has been very interesting. So my issue you're helping
me to solve is like, and here's the big question,
when should I leave show business? Like my show is
always about what solving my problem? When should I give
up on being right well a creative person in the
(24:17):
way that I knew it before?
Speaker 2 (24:19):
Well, you know, if you've got a point in your
career where you found yourself pitching a show or developing
a scene and felt a queasy feeling in your stomach
and wished you were doing something else, I would take
that as a sign.
Speaker 1 (24:29):
That maybe you don't maybe want to do that anymore. Ah,
but that happens a lot, and then then when I
get something successful on I feel much better about it.
Speaker 2 (24:38):
Well, you know, for me personally, you know, I had
that experience as a working writer. But by the end
of my writing career, it was really clear I was depressed.
I was sad, I felt ashamed. I mean, it was
exponentially more than that what we might talk about just
having to rewrite an outline.
Speaker 1 (24:52):
Or well, I'm not there yet. I feel like I've
got to get room. I got room to grow. But
then then I'd have to figure out you've you found
a different dream. I would have to find my dream.
How do you decide what the next thing is?
Speaker 2 (25:06):
I don't know exactly how to decide, but I do
know that if you hold on too tightly to what
your previous dream was, then your hands aren't available to
grab what your next dream will be, right, right, So,
just being open to change and being accepting the fact
that you might not know what that changes or know
what you want to do, that can be really liberating
and sort of help you along the way.
Speaker 1 (25:23):
Right. I mean, I've always you know, I've been in
the world of even since I was five years old,
saying I'm going to be in the entertainment industry somewhere.
Your dad, my dad, he had an interesting, fun world
that he worked with writing his writing job seem horrible.
Speaker 2 (25:39):
Well, I'm curious if your dad has ever talked about
with you, like the idea. Did he ever think he
would do something else or would it end at a
certain point.
Speaker 1 (25:47):
I've asked him what you would be doing if you
weren't if you hadn't been a writer, and he says,
I maybe he was sell office supplies somewhere, and his
father ran a polo shirt company, so maybe worked for that.
He was kind of vague about it.
Speaker 2 (26:01):
Is this new thing called staplers, I probably would have
gone into.
Speaker 1 (26:03):
He sold all of Eddie typewriters for a long time,
Like maybe maybe that was his thing, so that's what
he would do.
Speaker 2 (26:09):
But I would also say it's never too late to change.
And people often think, well, I have so much equity
built up in this career, how could I ever change it?
And then invariably, if they do take steps along the way,
they look back and they say, I can't believe I
didn't try that sooner.
Speaker 1 (26:23):
So if I wanted to become an Olympic basketball player
and just pursue that exclusively as my dream.
Speaker 2 (26:29):
First find the country with the shortest average height, right, okay,
and get get residency.
Speaker 1 (26:34):
It's going to be it's gonna be a high percentage
Jewish country. So I don't know. If Israel. What's the
Israel basketball team? They're tall? Pretty yeah, I don't know.
Then maybe I won't work on that so well, and
I have a terrible outside game and a really bad
inside game. So but but I can work on it. Yes,
I can work on it. I don't know. Uh, all right, well,
(26:54):
this has been fascinating. I have some questions for you.
It's a listener maile question that I want to to
help me with. Now it's time for listener man. So
JP writes, which episode of this podcast did you most
recently watch or listen to, either for routine subscriber delight
or in desperate preparation for today, and what part of
(27:17):
the conversation resonated with you most.
Speaker 2 (27:20):
I just listened to the Brian Kranston episode yesterday.
Speaker 1 (27:22):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (27:23):
I was struck by his realization early in life that
you can outwork people and that work is a quality
that is a talent and that some people don't have,
and and how that has sort of informed his acting career.
Speaker 1 (27:36):
Yeah, he is a delight, I must say.
Speaker 2 (27:40):
And his willingness to commit. Yeah, especially when you're working
with actors. People who commit either in life or you know,
in acting, it's joy and it's positive and it's admirable.
Speaker 1 (27:52):
He was one of those people who if you told
him to do something, ask him, you know, do something
crazy that character, your character is going to be doing
competitively eating hot dogs. He'd figure out how to competitively
eat hot dogs. He'd practice it and practice it and
practice it until he got it down great, like unbelievable,
Like it sounds like torture to some people, but he
(28:13):
saw it as a as a great opportunity. All right, well,
this has been great, Phil, I really appreciate it. Was
with great meeting you or seeing you again. If we
worked together in the rear room. How was I in
the rewrite room? Do you remember? You know?
Speaker 2 (28:24):
I can't say specific were you. I just have a feeling, well,
I was horrible. I was so desperate to be hired.
And the worst thing you could do when you're pitching
jokes desperation. Yeah, but I feel like you having worked
at Carcon Warner. I think I must have walked past
you on the third Rock Bridge.
Speaker 1 (28:38):
So I worked at I definitely worked at at Radford
a lot. Yeah, so we passed each other in the halls.
That was a fun lot.
Speaker 2 (28:45):
It was great.
Speaker 1 (28:46):
You could see. It was very social, likes like go
in high school.
Speaker 2 (28:48):
Yeah, a lot a lot of shows that had a
lot of the log runs and a lot of people
there for a long.
Speaker 1 (28:52):
Time, comedy writers. You'd see all kinds of comedy writers
and run into them again and again, just like in
high school. In New York Street. Yeah, fantastic park on
New York's all of it.
Speaker 2 (29:00):
Put mail on the fake mailbox and then realize that
it's not getting mailed.
Speaker 1 (29:04):
I didn't put fake mail in the mailbox.
Speaker 2 (29:06):
I know a guy who who Well maybe it's a
legendary story, I know if it's true. But they were
parking there and they were putting their electric bill in
the mailbox, and then after about a month or two,
their electricity got cut off, right and they realized it
was a prop mailbox.
Speaker 1 (29:18):
Sure, he didn't realize that on the studio on New
York street, a fake street.
Speaker 2 (29:23):
Fake man spent a lot of money on parking too.
Speaker 1 (29:25):
Oh all right, well I blame him, Yeah, I gotta
blame him. Well, Phil, thank you for being here, and
thank you for sharing your stories with us. And and
if anybody wants to read your book, it's called Doude
Where's my Cartharsis? And if anybody needs a therapist, absolutely
you just you have an email or google Phil Stark
(29:47):
and i'd a writer or therapist will pop up. Okay,
And thank you for being here, and thank you for
being here. Please write to me at DBA WJK at
gmail dot com with any of your questions or concerns.
Are you concerned about me? Are you worried about my
mental health and well being? Write in, give me advice,
give me some help, and don't be alone. I want
(30:07):
you to not be alone. Spend some time with somebody
you're interested in or care about, and share that experience
with other people and I'll see you next time. Don't
be alone, don't be in geog
Straw Hut Media. I'm Phil Stark.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
I'm here with Ja Cogan and Don't Be Alone with
Ja Cogan, and I'm concerned that he doesn't want to
be alone, so I'll be with him and hopefully one
of you will be able to tag in for me soon.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
Don't be this episode. Hey guys, welcome to Don't Be
Alone with Jake Cogan. I'm Jay Cogan and I'm glad
(00:35):
you're here. I want to encourage everybody to write to
me at dbawjk at gmail dot com. The whole point
of the show is that I connect with somebody or
something out there in the world that means you. I'd
love to hear what your thoughts are about the show.
I'd love to hear what your compliments are, what your
notes are, if you think we could do something better.
(00:55):
I really really want to hear your questions for the guests.
Please write questions with the guests. I need them desperately. Also,
if you like the show, tell a friend. That's how
the audience can grow. And if the audience grows, then
I will get a better seat in a restaurant the
next time I try to make a reservation. So please
tell a friend today, We've got a very interesting show
(01:15):
and it comes at an interesting time. A lot of
people in show business are worried show business is over.
And our guest today is as a former writer who
turned into a therapist. So it's an interesting question is
when is the job that you're in actually no longer
the job you should be in. When should you switch
over and do something else. It's very hard to make
(01:37):
that switch if you've dedicated your life to being low
one thing, and then you have to decide, ah, now
I'm going to try to do that other thing. His
name is Phil Stark. He's a comedy writer. He wrote
some comedy movies and comedy TV shows, including the movie Dude,
Where's My Car? And he worked on that seventy show
in South Park. He wrote this great book called well,
(01:59):
I assume it's great. I haven't read yet, but it says, dude,
where's my Catharsis? Because he wrote the movie Dude, Where's
My Car? And here it is this book and he said,
there's just fifty short, little short chapters on how to
improve your life. What could be bad? Where's the bad?
So we're going to talk to Phil about when it
right to change your career and how you can achieve
happiness by doing it right after this. Your story is
(02:28):
that you were a professional writer working in the industry.
You've written movies, Dude, Where's My Car? You've helped create
a TV show, Dog with a blog. Yes, and then
you also became a shrink. How the hell did that happen?
Speaker 2 (02:46):
Well, sort of like Hemingway, going broke right slowly and
then all at once.
Speaker 1 (02:50):
Right.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
I worked for many years as a screenwriter and television
comedy writer, and I long story show. I started to
get unhappy with it.
Speaker 1 (03:02):
I didn't enjoy it.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
I was working less, I was making less of money,
and it took me a while to figure out how
I might change that.
Speaker 1 (03:08):
And that was a longer period of.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
Time, and then eventually I decided to go back to
school get my license. I'm a therapist now and I
work with all kinds of people, but especially people in
the entertainment industry who sort of going through now what
I went through.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
Then, well, what possible problems could people in the entertainment
industry have right now? I don't even understand. That makes
no sense?
Speaker 2 (03:28):
Yeah, yeah, well, apocalyptic is a word I hear thing
about a little bit.
Speaker 1 (03:32):
No it's been it's been rough going rough sledding in
the entertainment industry for a little while. So I also
wrote it. You wrote a book called you'rede a movie
called Dude, Where's My Car? And they wrote a book
called Dude, Where's My cath Right right?
Speaker 2 (03:44):
There's also a children's book called Dad, Where's My blanky okay,
because I'm really determined to squeeze all the juice I
can out of that. Uh, you know, I wrote the
movie Dude, Where's My Car? And when I became a therapist,
I still wanted to write, except I'm not thinking about
pilots or features. I write about mental health with my voice.
The same voice was in my scripts. Now it's with
this nonfiction. So this title due Where's My cartharsis. I
(04:11):
had to do something with that, right, I mean, it
took me a while figure ou actually what the book
would be about. But once I had the title, it
was clear that was the direction I wanted to go in.
Speaker 1 (04:18):
It takes so long to pursue the dream of becoming
a writer. You have to think about it. You have
to practice writing, you have to get good at it.
You have to figure out how to sell things. You
have to get and then to get into the club
of writers who actually work, which is a very limited
group of people, and then you sort of go through
(04:38):
that and you could help create a show that's another
rarefied group of people. To get to the point where
you think, I'm going to give away give up all
that sort of sweat equity I put into getting here
to do that other thing you said you know you
were not enjoying yourself is that you know a lot
(05:01):
of writers don't don't enjoy themselves. That's part of the profession. Well, yeah,
it's true.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
I mean, listen to I always tell people to break
into the business, you need equal parts of talent, hard work,
and luck, right with the sprinkling of kutzba of course,
and I had that, and I had a long career.
I did eight seasons on that seventies show. My first
job was on South Park. You know, everything was going perfectly,
but then, like a lot of people are experiencing now.
(05:25):
You know, when I was starting out, overall deals were
handed out willy nilly, and overall deal met You just
sat in a bungalow at Radford and wrote. Right then
they started saying, you know, we'd actually like you to
work on a show, and that was like amazing, much different.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
But after that.
Speaker 2 (05:40):
Seventies show, reality TV was really starting to take over
multi cameras, sitcoms were falling out of fashion.
Speaker 1 (05:46):
There was less work. I was just.
Speaker 2 (05:48):
Writing pilots, pitching pilots, writing features, writing specs. I started
to feel like I was gonna have to break in
all over again, right, And it's really hard, especially once
you've had success, to not expect that success to happen again,
especially when you have wonderful people in my life, my
wife at the time, my family, my friend saying you're
so talented, you've done it before, Certainly you'll be able
(06:09):
to do it again. But at a certain point, the unhappiness
I had with what I was doing started to outweigh
the equity i'd built it in. The difficulty of changing that.
Speaker 1 (06:19):
Was there a epiphany, a moment where you just went like,
I've done with this. Well.
Speaker 2 (06:26):
It was really long and slow, and I will say
I was exploring graduate school while sort of making lateral moves,
like exploring maybe working and advertising or writing in some
of the capacity instead of pitching shows to networks. And
I had an agent at the time who took a
spec i'd written and had found an actor who was
interested in who was willing to maybe self finance it,
and she's asked me to make a deck and I
(06:48):
was like, fine, I'll make a deck. And I made
this sort of half assed deck that wasn't so great,
and then I gave it to this agent and she
called me. She said, you know this deck is sort
of half assed. It's not that great, and I said, yeah, yeah,
I agree, and she said, well, can you make it better?
And I was like, yeah, I don't really think I
want to, and she said something the defective, Well, why
wouldn't you want to? If this sells, you can be
(07:09):
the showrunner. And in that moment I realized, you know,
I don't want to be the showrunner. You know, eight
years on that seventy show of Carci Warner, my dream
and what people had done before me, was you get
the overall deal. You write a pilot, you get to
run the show the way you want, in that great
family atmosphere of supporting people, and then it syndicates and
then maybe you retire or maybe you superviso.
Speaker 1 (07:27):
Right.
Speaker 2 (07:28):
It took me a long time to realize that what
my ultimate dream was was different. It had changed, and
one of the reasons why I was so unhappy was
that it was very incongruous what I was doing now.
Speaker 1 (07:38):
With what I wanted to do back then. So what
was the dream.
Speaker 2 (07:42):
Well, the dream was just to come out here and
become a comedy writer.
Speaker 1 (07:45):
Period. But when you were a kid, like you're watching
TV thing, I could do this. I know you went,
you went to UT and you've gotten the television radio
department there.
Speaker 2 (07:53):
Well, I didn't even I didn't really have an inkling
that I would be a writer. I just knew I
wanted to do something creative. I didn't know if it
was be comedy or not. I think I gravitated to
writing because it's something I could do on my own
I could have control over. So when I moved out
here in ninety five, I just wrote. I got Sidfield screenplay,
had to write a screenplay. In twenty one days. I
got a job at a cafe, and I just wrote
(08:14):
and wrote and wrote. Then I had a friend who said,
you're pretty funny. You want you write something funny, So
I wrote a Simpson Speck, I wrote a Seinfeld And
then the luck part of that equation was that a
good friend of mine got me a job on a
show that was going to be produced. It was like
a six month gig and for Comedy Central it turned
out to be South Park.
Speaker 1 (08:31):
Oh fantastic.
Speaker 2 (08:32):
So I had an amazing launch to my career and
everything really went very easily and well for a long time.
Speaker 1 (08:38):
Was that a fun crazy writers experience? It was amazing.
Speaker 2 (08:41):
It was amazing be cause Matt and Trey are just
such geniuses and it's so funny.
Speaker 1 (08:45):
And that first.
Speaker 2 (08:46):
Season, Comedy Central encouraged them to do things like a network,
you put together a writer's room, you read all these scripts,
and they brought in all these writers, and ultimately Matt
and Trey's way of doing things was really there. They
didn't have a traditional writer's room. They ended up bringing
in some people who they thought were really funny that
they melded well with to help them, but they didn't
bring any of the writers back. And I had hut
(09:08):
sped my way into writing a script finishing a script.
Actually I was the writer's assistant. I pitched myself as
the writers and they let me finish a script. And
when I got that credit, I was really bummed that
I wasn't going back to South Park, and then I
met on that seventies show, and then I saw what
the guild minimums were, and then I get an office
and everything, and then I realized that this was going
to be for the best.
Speaker 1 (09:27):
Yeah, this is not on topic, but they make their
shows in a week. Yeah, it was crazy. They did
back then too. Oh yeah, they wrote, recorded, and animated
and so great instantly. How the fuck did they do that? Well?
Speaker 2 (09:39):
It was everything was right there, all the animators, the
audio upstairs, downstairs, everything they needed was right there, and
people were there around the clock and they would see
something funny and make an episode about it. And then
if the best thing I took away from that experience
was that if anybody ever told Matt and Trey, like
the network said, you know, you can't do that instantly,
that's what they were gonna do. Fuck that that guy
told us, we can't do the fuck that guy. And
(10:01):
the whole ethos of the show, I felt was always
about saying the things that people said that they can't say,
but in a really clever and funny.
Speaker 1 (10:06):
By the way, that fuck that ethos doesn't really work
anywhere else but Southwark, Like still you still have to
accommodate your bosses in other venues. Yeah, not on South Park,
but other venues. All right. So then you moved on
from South Park to the seventies seventy show, which had
been was it just starting or had been steaming along.
(10:27):
I was there when we shot the pilot. They hired
me very early on that credit from South Park.
Speaker 2 (10:31):
I mean, I had a really lucky start where people
ask me how do I get an agent? And I say, well,
just get a job on a hit show and get
a credit, right, because I had people calling me.
Speaker 1 (10:38):
But that is how you get an agent.
Speaker 2 (10:40):
It's true, get the job and the agent's come.
Speaker 1 (10:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:43):
And so I started on the first things of that
seventies show, and I really grew up through that show.
We did eight seasons. It was a wonderful environment. Everybody
at Carsey Warner very family, really supportive, and I was
so Ultimately, I am disappointed that I never got a
chance to implement what I learned about running a show
from those people on my own show.
Speaker 1 (10:59):
Right when Dog with the Blog You came on. You
were not able to.
Speaker 2 (11:04):
Oh the story behind Dog with the Blogs that I
had written one of the many specs. It was a
really Blue like Swingers version of a Buddy melticem except
instead of Vince Vaughn, it was a dog with Vincepaugh
and it was the dog talk, the dog who took
bong hits, the dog gave sex advice, was.
Speaker 1 (11:19):
Really blue, and I was like ted, yeah, and I was.
Speaker 2 (11:22):
Always waiting for somebody to ask me if I had
a talking dog show. Unfortunately, that meeting was at Disney
Channel right, and it wasn't quite right for them, but
they had the title already, so I ended up writing
the pilot. Ultimately, they passed on me running it and
then ended up giving it to somebody else who then
wrote a different pilot who then ended up running the show.
So in the guild you know arbitration version of it,
(11:42):
I've co created it, but I never really had.
Speaker 1 (11:44):
Anything to do with the show itself. Okay, so now
that you're a therapist, does anybody did Michael Kaplan from
Dog with the Blog Coming procure you as a as
a shrink? No?
Speaker 2 (11:55):
No, most of my work does not come through my
former you know, workmates, but there certainly is a specific
you know type and an experience of working in the
creative arts, and I work well with people in that capacity.
Speaker 1 (12:07):
So tell me about that. So now I've I started
seeing a psychiatrist not that long ago, and I've been enjoying.
My relationship with that psychiatrist has been interesting. And I
specifically asked another writer turned the therapist named Dennis Palombo.
Speaker 2 (12:25):
Oh, Dennis plumba legend.
Speaker 1 (12:27):
Yeah, yeah, I said, who'd be a good shrink for
a writer? And so he recommended this shrink and I'm
going to it. And for a million reasons, I said,
I want to be I want to feel more inspired creatively,
I wanted to think. There was a lot of things
that I was, I was and am working on. So
what do you bring to the table as a therapist
to people in the creative arts? What like? What? What? How?
(12:49):
How do you see your special your niche or your gifts? Well?
Speaker 2 (12:53):
I relate well, I think to artists and writers because
oftentimes the issues that they deal with involved the imposters
anddrome or the inner critic. Now that's not to say
everybody doesn't have that, but when you write, produce something,
act in something, and you have a piece of yourself
that you're giving to people, it's very easy to internalize
the any like one thing I work with people on
(13:14):
is taking notes. I'm not noting you, I'm noting the scripts.
So one thing that can really paralyze people in that
sense is their own self criticism and.
Speaker 1 (13:24):
Sort of the idea of the project.
Speaker 2 (13:26):
Whatever criticism they have about themselves onto the people around
them will ultimately makes it difficult to have the kind
of work we want.
Speaker 1 (13:31):
Right, How many of your clients are writers or people
in the industry? A good amount. It's not all in
a number specific number four and a half. Okay, a
good amount.
Speaker 2 (13:42):
It's not my entire practice, but it's certainly something I'm
leaning into now based on my own experience in the
industry and also with what's going on in the industry
now as well.
Speaker 1 (13:50):
How can people have even afforded a shrink? It's true,
It's true.
Speaker 2 (13:54):
It's not cheap, and it's often the first thing to
cut in the budget.
Speaker 1 (13:57):
What happens. What happens. You see a client, it's for
a little while, and I say we're moving to Albuquerque.
Speaker 2 (14:02):
Well, I've met clients and seen them and then they've said,
you know, it's too expensive, I can't afford it anymore.
I've met clients, work clients. You're right, like I'm out
right right, or I sold a pilot right, So everybody's
certainly different. But the themes the purchases I sold the
pilot isn't delusional.
Speaker 1 (14:19):
How do you know that?
Speaker 2 (14:20):
Well?
Speaker 1 (14:21):
I just I am to be them immediately out the session.
It's interesting because I'm at the age now where I've
had a very nice, long run, nice career, and I
think about other things, like I don't know what it
would be that I would do other than what I've done.
I like writing, I like directing, but I mean I'm podcasting,
which is not anybody's idea of a vocation. It's like
(14:45):
if you want to make no.
Speaker 2 (14:46):
Money podcasters on some drop down menus, I bet.
Speaker 1 (14:48):
Yeah, you know. I mean, it's like if I was
podcasting at a time machine, if I started podcasting fifteen
years ago. So maybe podcasting is my thing. But I
(15:15):
didn't start doing it because I thought it was a
road to riches. I kind of did it because he
was something fun to do.
Speaker 2 (15:23):
Well, you know, no matter how much success I think
you have in a career, I think everybody experiences a
phase of life where they stop and they look back
and they see where they've come from and where they're
going and wonder if they still are happy on that path.
And sometimes they stay on it, sometimes they veer a
little bit, sometimes they really change it up. I think
it's very natural to have that kind of a moment
where you question what you're doing.
Speaker 1 (15:40):
It is. My father is a writer, and he had
he worked well into his seventies. So the image I
have of a writer somebody who just writes, starts writing
when they're twenty years old and stops writing when they're
like seventy eight. Yeah, I mean that was the thing.
Speaker 2 (15:56):
I mean for a while, for a long time, I
thought I would retire as a television comedy and then
it became clear that wasn't gonna happen. It took a
while for me to accept that and then decide to
do something else.
Speaker 1 (16:04):
How do you view the change as as a growth
and that failure.
Speaker 2 (16:11):
Personally, Yeah, I'm happier now than I've ever been, right,
And I think a big part of it is that
it sort of felt like I was a wind up
toy walking along doing great, and then I hit a
wall and just winding up right into that wall, wall, wall, wall.
So finally I turned it, and you realize that you
can go around this wall, and that's where I'm at.
Speaker 1 (16:30):
Now. Did you ever have the experience where you thought, well,
I'm happy, But how do I express to my friends
or other people who knew me from the old life
that I really am happy.
Speaker 2 (16:40):
Well, it's interesting because you know, I have so many
friends who are still working in the industry, still comedy writers,
and they would read my shows, they would put me
up for jobs. Everybody was very supportive, and when I
decided to make this change, nobody said you're crazy or
what are you doing with your life. It was like,
good luck, and you should write a book, and here's
(17:01):
what the title should be. So I still have great
relationship with those people and they're all supportive and and
of course they're referral sources for me as well.
Speaker 1 (17:10):
Right, has the book helped you get clients?
Speaker 2 (17:13):
I maybe the book is a shiny thing that I
use in my pitch. You know, it's not a book,
a best seller. I've made a bunch of money off
of it, but it encapsulates some of my thoughts about
therapy in general. It's actually a practical and engaging guide
to talk therapy, divided into fifty short chapters, exploring metaphors.
Speaker 1 (17:30):
We often see it and talk therapy.
Speaker 2 (17:32):
But it's a way I can different friendship myself as
a therapist and use to pitch people.
Speaker 1 (17:38):
What do you find is the most successful you've been
as a therapist, Like, I imagine that therapy is a
having experienced it, it's slow, steady, hopefully there's two steps forward,
one step back kind of thing. You have to have
a lot of patience as a when you're going through it. Yeah,
I assume you have to have a lot of patience
(17:59):
as a therapist. How do you judge your success level
with patients?
Speaker 2 (18:03):
Well, everybody has a different experience in therapy. People often
want to know how long do I have to do this?
Some people come to therapy in a crisis situation, They
overcome that crisis, and then they love coming every week
just to talk about what's going on in our lives.
Some people, after ten sessions, I think I got this.
But what people often don't understand about therapy, and what
therapists often don't do, is say I think you're done.
Speaker 1 (18:24):
Maybe we're done with therapy, which.
Speaker 2 (18:25):
Is a good conversation I have And the most rewarding
experiences are when I'm working with a client on an
issue that we've addressed. I feel like they've processed it,
they feeling better, And then we keep going a little
bit and then I'll say something like, you know, you
seem pretty good. We addressed X, Y, and Z that
you mentioned in the beginning.
Speaker 1 (18:40):
What do you think?
Speaker 2 (18:41):
Do you think we need to keep doing this?
Speaker 1 (18:42):
And they might say you think I'm done? Could I
be finished?
Speaker 2 (18:46):
And I'm actually getting goosebumps right now, because that is
the most rewarding part of it, when somebody acknowledges that
it's helped and they're ready to sort of go on
in life without me.
Speaker 1 (18:55):
What makes a good client? I ever thought about that?
What makes a good patient a good client?
Speaker 2 (18:59):
Or is somebody who is committed, somebody who is there
because they want to be Well.
Speaker 1 (19:05):
You've got a lot of people mandated by the courts
to talk.
Speaker 2 (19:07):
To, you know, but that's a common thing on People
who are mandated for therapy are often not really into
being there, and it can certainly kill the vibe and
sometimes people might not want to be there after.
Speaker 1 (19:18):
Having been there for a little bit. In private practice too, Yeah,
how do you know it's a good fit.
Speaker 2 (19:22):
It's a lot like dating, especially with the online component nowadays,
both dating and therapy. You can go online, you can
click by area code, you can look at pictures, you
can read on them, and it can seem really great,
but you really need to sit down at that Starbucks
with that person and you know very quickly, oh my god,
I want to see this person for a second date.
So I always tell clients whether I'm seeing them or
(19:43):
I'm referring them to see somebody else.
Speaker 1 (19:45):
It's like dating, and you need to find something you.
Speaker 2 (19:47):
Click with, because ultimately, I think what really affects the
success of the therapeutic relationship is just the relationship itself.
Speaker 1 (19:52):
I went into my third date with my therapist thinking
there's gonna be sex. Was that wrong?
Speaker 2 (19:58):
That's a little too fast, that's the hippas standard.
Speaker 1 (20:02):
Okay, ten sessions? Well, all right, And you know, people
I know are lately have been doing a lot of journaling,
and people I know who are sad are doing gratitudeless.
Do you find any of those things helpful? Absolutely?
Speaker 2 (20:16):
In fact, mindfulness is a huge thing. And oftentimes people
think mindfulness is just meditation, and it can be, but
mindfulness is just doing any activity that prevents you from
ruing the past or anticipating in the future, whether it's
meditating or walking, or exercising or drawing or yoga, anything
that can help you develop that sense of presence can help.
Speaker 1 (20:38):
Do you think that experience of talking to people and
delving into their personal lives in a very deep way
would make you a much better writer? Now? Absolutely?
Speaker 2 (20:46):
In fact, when I talk to screenwriting clients or teach
or talk I talk about as when I was starting
out as a writer, there were people who are like, oh,
I sit and I let the characters tell me what
they want to do, and I always that's bullshit. I
need them to pick up the book and go to
this next scene so that it's you know, I need
them to set this up. Then I started to realize
that when I saw that representative in TV and film,
(21:08):
I thought it was bullshit and I didn't like it
because the character wouldn't do that. So now I can
appreciate that it all starts with character, and the reasons
why they do anything is because of the understanding of
their characters. So yeah, it's it's almost like entertainment to
see these clients and understand who they are as characters.
Speaker 1 (21:24):
And now I appreciate.
Speaker 2 (21:25):
When I like a movie or a book, it's because
it's very real and everything that the character is doing
is based on who they are.
Speaker 1 (21:33):
What do you think is the is the is the
like the top five things that we should get from
your book? What are you proudest of in the book
that you sort of were able.
Speaker 2 (21:44):
To write well?
Speaker 1 (21:45):
The book?
Speaker 2 (21:46):
The book is a collection of fifty short chapters that
each one has like a metaphor for something we talk
about in therapy. So, for instance, there's a chapter on change,
which I experienced myself and I share with clients, which
involves the idea of you're standing on top of a
dam and the water is rising, and you know the
water is rising, and you know your feet are going
to get wet. You know you should get out there
and do something else, but you're just not ready yet.
And sometimes only when the water touches our feet are.
Speaker 1 (22:08):
We ready to act.
Speaker 2 (22:09):
And I talk about that with clients in the sense
that some of them might not be happy with their jobs.
They're not getting a lot of work, it's all going
to Canada, or the pay is less, and they're frustrated
not only because of that, but because they aren't acting
they're not doing anything to change, but I encourage them. Hey, listen,
don't beat yourself up not being able to change. You
might just be ready accept it, sit with it, and
eventually it'll feel right to make this change.
Speaker 1 (22:31):
Right. I don't know what that is about the human nature,
where you're frozen in fear for a brief moment until
such time as the clock or other circumstances sort of
forces your hand.
Speaker 2 (22:44):
And oftentimes those clients what makes them feel really bad
is their self flagellation for not being able to act right.
And that's sort of the double arrow. It's like you're
getting shot by the industry. Don't go ahead and shoot yourself.
Give yourself a break, right. Somebody who's very self critical
might never be satisfied with their work, and that ultimately
might make their work great. And so in that way,
sometimes our superpower, which can make us succeed in work,
(23:07):
might be not a superpower in our life or our
personal life.
Speaker 1 (23:11):
Or well. I have the opposite honestly, where I write
something and I love it so much that when I
get a note, even a legitimate note from somebody saying
I'm not crazy about this, it's like a little dagger
it's a little arrow like and I know if I
change it and fix it and it'll be better.
Speaker 2 (23:28):
Well, you have the experience now you can just pluck
it out and take it out. Some people walk around
with that dagger in their back just feeling it, but.
Speaker 1 (23:35):
Their front depending on it still hurts in that moment,
it still hurts, like, Ah, you don't like that thing
that I liked. That's sadness for me.
Speaker 2 (23:43):
But you're handling a great because ultimately people sometimes think,
I don't want to feel that way. What can I
do to change that? But the real trick of it
is to accept that you feel that way and that
somehow lessens the power of it.
Speaker 1 (23:54):
This has been very interesting. So my issue you're helping
me to solve is like, and here's the big question,
when should I leave show business? Like my show is
always about what solving my problem? When should I give
up on being right well a creative person in the
(24:17):
way that I knew it before?
Speaker 2 (24:19):
Well, you know, if you've got a point in your
career where you found yourself pitching a show or developing
a scene and felt a queasy feeling in your stomach
and wished you were doing something else, I would take
that as a sign.
Speaker 1 (24:29):
That maybe you don't maybe want to do that anymore. Ah,
but that happens a lot, and then then when I
get something successful on I feel much better about it.
Speaker 2 (24:38):
Well, you know, for me personally, you know, I had
that experience as a working writer. But by the end
of my writing career, it was really clear I was depressed.
I was sad, I felt ashamed. I mean, it was
exponentially more than that what we might talk about just
having to rewrite an outline.
Speaker 1 (24:52):
Or well, I'm not there yet. I feel like I've
got to get room. I got room to grow. But
then then I'd have to figure out you've you found
a different dream. I would have to find my dream.
How do you decide what the next thing is?
Speaker 2 (25:06):
I don't know exactly how to decide, but I do
know that if you hold on too tightly to what
your previous dream was, then your hands aren't available to
grab what your next dream will be, right, right, So,
just being open to change and being accepting the fact
that you might not know what that changes or know
what you want to do, that can be really liberating
and sort of help you along the way.
Speaker 1 (25:23):
Right. I mean, I've always you know, I've been in
the world of even since I was five years old,
saying I'm going to be in the entertainment industry somewhere.
Your dad, my dad, he had an interesting, fun world
that he worked with writing his writing job seem horrible.
Speaker 2 (25:39):
Well, I'm curious if your dad has ever talked about
with you, like the idea. Did he ever think he
would do something else or would it end at a
certain point.
Speaker 1 (25:47):
I've asked him what you would be doing if you
weren't if you hadn't been a writer, and he says,
I maybe he was sell office supplies somewhere, and his
father ran a polo shirt company, so maybe worked for that.
He was kind of vague about it.
Speaker 2 (26:01):
Is this new thing called staplers, I probably would have
gone into.
Speaker 1 (26:03):
He sold all of Eddie typewriters for a long time,
Like maybe maybe that was his thing, so that's what
he would do.
Speaker 2 (26:09):
But I would also say it's never too late to change.
And people often think, well, I have so much equity
built up in this career, how could I ever change it?
And then invariably, if they do take steps along the way,
they look back and they say, I can't believe I
didn't try that sooner.
Speaker 1 (26:23):
So if I wanted to become an Olympic basketball player
and just pursue that exclusively as my dream.
Speaker 2 (26:29):
First find the country with the shortest average height, right, okay,
and get get residency.
Speaker 1 (26:34):
It's going to be it's gonna be a high percentage
Jewish country. So I don't know. If Israel. What's the
Israel basketball team? They're tall? Pretty yeah, I don't know.
Then maybe I won't work on that so well, and
I have a terrible outside game and a really bad
inside game. So but but I can work on it. Yes,
I can work on it. I don't know. Uh, all right, well,
(26:54):
this has been fascinating. I have some questions for you.
It's a listener maile question that I want to to
help me with. Now it's time for listener man. So
JP writes, which episode of this podcast did you most
recently watch or listen to, either for routine subscriber delight
or in desperate preparation for today, and what part of
(27:17):
the conversation resonated with you most.
Speaker 2 (27:20):
I just listened to the Brian Kranston episode yesterday.
Speaker 1 (27:22):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (27:23):
I was struck by his realization early in life that
you can outwork people and that work is a quality
that is a talent and that some people don't have,
and and how that has sort of informed his acting career.
Speaker 1 (27:36):
Yeah, he is a delight, I must say.
Speaker 2 (27:40):
And his willingness to commit. Yeah, especially when you're working
with actors. People who commit either in life or you know,
in acting, it's joy and it's positive and it's admirable.
Speaker 1 (27:52):
He was one of those people who if you told
him to do something, ask him, you know, do something
crazy that character, your character is going to be doing
competitively eating hot dogs. He'd figure out how to competitively
eat hot dogs. He'd practice it and practice it and
practice it until he got it down great, like unbelievable,
Like it sounds like torture to some people, but he
(28:13):
saw it as a as a great opportunity. All right, well,
this has been great, Phil, I really appreciate it. Was
with great meeting you or seeing you again. If we
worked together in the rear room. How was I in
the rewrite room? Do you remember? You know?
Speaker 2 (28:24):
I can't say specific were you. I just have a feeling, well,
I was horrible. I was so desperate to be hired.
And the worst thing you could do when you're pitching
jokes desperation. Yeah, but I feel like you having worked
at Carcon Warner. I think I must have walked past
you on the third Rock Bridge.
Speaker 1 (28:38):
So I worked at I definitely worked at at Radford
a lot. Yeah, so we passed each other in the halls.
That was a fun lot.
Speaker 2 (28:45):
It was great.
Speaker 1 (28:46):
You could see. It was very social, likes like go
in high school.
Speaker 2 (28:48):
Yeah, a lot a lot of shows that had a
lot of the log runs and a lot of people
there for a long.
Speaker 1 (28:52):
Time, comedy writers. You'd see all kinds of comedy writers
and run into them again and again, just like in
high school. In New York Street. Yeah, fantastic park on
New York's all of it.
Speaker 2 (29:00):
Put mail on the fake mailbox and then realize that
it's not getting mailed.
Speaker 1 (29:04):
I didn't put fake mail in the mailbox.
Speaker 2 (29:06):
I know a guy who who Well maybe it's a
legendary story, I know if it's true. But they were
parking there and they were putting their electric bill in
the mailbox, and then after about a month or two,
their electricity got cut off, right and they realized it
was a prop mailbox.
Speaker 1 (29:18):
Sure, he didn't realize that on the studio on New
York street, a fake street.
Speaker 2 (29:23):
Fake man spent a lot of money on parking too.
Speaker 1 (29:25):
Oh all right, well I blame him, Yeah, I gotta
blame him. Well, Phil, thank you for being here, and
thank you for sharing your stories with us. And and
if anybody wants to read your book, it's called Doude
Where's my Cartharsis? And if anybody needs a therapist, absolutely
you just you have an email or google Phil Stark
(29:47):
and i'd a writer or therapist will pop up. Okay,
And thank you for being here, and thank you for
being here. Please write to me at DBA WJK at
gmail dot com with any of your questions or concerns.
Are you concerned about me? Are you worried about my
mental health and well being? Write in, give me advice,
give me some help, and don't be alone. I want
(30:07):
you to not be alone. Spend some time with somebody
you're interested in or care about, and share that experience
with other people and I'll see you next time. Don't
be alone, don't be in geog
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