Executive Producer of “LUV YA, BUM!” Vance Howard Joins The Show

Executive Producer of “LUV YA, BUM!” Vance Howard Joins The Show

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
You know that we do well. Oh Whisby True Goes.

Speaker 2 (00:14):
Love it my only football team that I ever loved. Yes,
now they're gutter trash in Tennessee. That's a different issue
at different time. When let's say hello to a first
time guest on the radio program. He is executive producer
of a brand new documentary that's going to be coming
out in November, late November. The name of the documentary
is love You Bum, and the executive producer of that

(00:37):
is Vance Howard here or the Matt Thomas Show.

Speaker 1 (00:38):
Vance, thank you for joining us. Good morning to you.
How are things that?

Speaker 3 (00:42):
Things are going wonderful? Thank you for having me on
the show. What an exciting day.

Speaker 1 (00:46):
It is November twenty fifth.

Speaker 2 (00:47):
It'll be available on digital and on demand platforms Apple, Amazon, iTunes,
and Google. I have started to watch it and today,
matter of fact, I woke up starting to watch it
and I wanted to finish it today. Unfortunately I had
to make an hour drive into this to the offices here.
First and foremost, tell me your background and Vance, what
made you think about a bum Phillips?

Speaker 3 (01:10):
Well, you know, my backgrounds pretty buried. We on a
large money management firm, but we got into production of
making films that inspired, educated enough lift people. And that's
what Love You Bomb did for us. And that's what
the Love You Blue did. When you look at bum
Phillips and all the things that he that he did
as a coach and as a human being, it's just
a wonderful story and I think it's going to make
people really feel something about, you know, the seventies Houston

(01:32):
Owlers and that great team that they had and a
great coach.

Speaker 1 (01:35):
Where'd you grow up?

Speaker 3 (01:37):
I grew up in Huspital, Texas, about seventy miles north
of Houston.

Speaker 2 (01:40):
All right, when a young Vance Howard go to a
lot of games with O A. Bum Phillips running the things.

Speaker 3 (01:47):
I was a great fan back then, and I still
am a great fan. But I mean, we the Houston
Oilers used to come up and actually practice their practice
season before they started the season was here in Hustbal,
Texas at sam Beaston State University. So we got to
see the old team when I was thirteen or fourteen,
all walking around Huntspital and they were practicing at Dan Pasterini,
Billy White Shoes, Johnson, you know, Robert Brazil. He had

(02:08):
all these wonderful players and wonderful human beings, and it
was really very I just loved it. It was just
great fun.

Speaker 1 (02:13):
Yeah, you got you're opening.

Speaker 2 (02:15):
A couple of minutes of the show went back to
nineteen seventy five when the Olders had all of their
coaching changes and they got Bum, who was the defensive
coordat at the time, to replace Bill Peterson. So you
have a lot of stock video, a lot of interviews
current guys that were covering the team or ex players
of his.

Speaker 1 (02:29):
But you had a lot of old stuff too. Where
did you were able to acquire that from?

Speaker 3 (02:34):
Well, we did a lot of historical research. We had
lot from Houston Chronicle. There was a lot of foot
film footage that were available. NFL Films clearly had a lot.
Amy Adams and the Houston Owlers were very helpful, they loved
them h So we were able to acquire a number
of these different film footages and stills that are in there.
And if you watch, if you finished watching the film today,
you're going to see Amy Adams in there. She was
very supportive of the film. But how can you not

(02:56):
how can you not support Bum Phillips. I mean, the
guy was just a Texas character. He was just an interesting,
interesting human being in his football team. His players loved him, loved.

Speaker 1 (03:08):
It is an understatement Advance. There were some early stuff
and I knew this.

Speaker 2 (03:12):
Even as a young man, as a family orders back
when I was nine, ten, eleven years old.

Speaker 1 (03:17):
He had such a family camaraderie with.

Speaker 2 (03:20):
His guys that it almost makes me feel like Vance
if we could show today's NFL players that I know.
It's big business and the dollars are two millionfold than
they were back when Earl and Dan were running things
in Robert Brazil in company, but they were still adults,
they were still fathers, they were still young men. They
needed fatherly influence. And it was a real sense of

(03:41):
family that Bum had, especially early as he was building
the Love You Blue teams.

Speaker 3 (03:47):
It was. And when you listen to the interview with
Robert Brazil, who's a Hall of Famer and he's just
such a wonderful individual, he talks about how I had
Bum brought him in under his wing and took care
of him as a young man who had come out
of college. He was in his early twenties and he
was with a football team in a big city, and
he made sure that some of these guys stayed in line,
but he did in the fatherly in a loving way
where it was more done on watching how he lived

(04:08):
his life. And they would inmulate Bum because Bum lived
his life with such a strong character, in such a
strong moral fiber. But he also made it fun. Football
should be fun. Sports should be fun, and if you're
playing the game should be fun. And I think he
brought that out with that Houston team back in the
seventies and early eighties.

Speaker 2 (04:24):
The name of the documentary is Love You Bum. It'll
be available on Remember the twenty fifth, Apple, Amazon, iTunes,
and Google will be among the variety of places you
can check it out. We're visiting with executive producer Vance Howard.
So you mentioned Amy Adams, and I did see her in.

Speaker 1 (04:37):
A couple of early clips.

Speaker 2 (04:39):
Obviously, the most controversial thing her father ever did, besides
moving the team to Nashville, was firing Bum. And again,
maybe I don't want to give away too much towards
the end, but how forthcoming was she about the last
days of Bum running the owners.

Speaker 3 (04:54):
You know, I don't know if she was really in
the mix with that. I mean, it might have been
before her time because Bud Adam's clearly on the team,
made a decision that he was going to let Bum go.
And I'll be honest with you, I don't think anybody
but Bum and Bud Adams know the reason why. I
just don't know what they did. And that's the way
it ended up. And as sad as it is, but
I wish it hadn't to happen. I wish the Oilers
were still in Houston, and I wish Bum was still alive.

Speaker 1 (05:16):
Well, for sure, Mike Renfro is in there.

Speaker 2 (05:18):
One of my favorite players, obviously Dan Pastor, and he's
still a part of the Houston Commutey was there somebody
you were able to chase down that you had not
heard or seen from in a long period of time.

Speaker 3 (05:27):
Well, you know the good part about when you look
at Renfro in there and you look at that fantastic
catch that he had against the Pittsburgh Steelers. What a
lot of people don't realize you learned this in the
documentary that was setting up for instant replay as we
see today, because he was clearly in when they had
the replay in the booth up top. And then you know,
after a commercial at that game, you could tell that
that repro made that catch. So I think it's interesting

(05:48):
that historically speaking, that was the start of instant replay.

Speaker 2 (05:52):
Oh for sure, that goes early without saying, because anytime
anybody brings up instant replay in the early eighties when
it first got going, they bring up the renfro what
was deemed a non catch. I thought through portrayal of
Houston with how these sports teams were growing as the
city of Houston growing was very interesting because back in
nineteen eighty and again eighty one, I'm nine and ten

(06:13):
years old at the time, so I'm not really reflecting
on the city.

Speaker 1 (06:15):
But you know, the old business was great.

Speaker 2 (06:17):
The downtown metropolis was building, the city was becoming one
of the biggest in the country, and all by the way,
you had this Dome stadium that it was relatively new
it was in nineteen sixties, but it was an area
that national attention finally came on the Houston sports scene.
A lot of it is because of what you know,
Love You Blue did, especially when Earl was doing his
things on Monday night football.

Speaker 3 (06:37):
It was great. You know, the astronom was what the
seventh Wonder of the world back in the seventies. But
when you look at what you look at the talent
that he had on that team. He didn't have a
lot of A players, He had a lot of B players,
but he took those B players, he made them into
a's and he almost took them to the super Bowl.
And I think there's some of the games and some
of the spirit and some of the heart that the
Houston owners had at that time. It's it's just unimaginable.

(06:58):
I mean, they lost a game and they filled up
the Astrodome and they filled up Houston, Texas to come
out and support bum Phillips and come out and support
Dan Pastoradi and Billy watch Shoes and all their efforts
and their courageous heroics on the field. They were just
wonderful men and they just fought so hard to win.
And I think that was the sphere of Houston at
the time.

Speaker 1 (07:17):
Vance do you like the documentary business? And if you do,
what's next?

Speaker 3 (07:21):
I love the documentary business. We just finished one on
a gentleman with stage four cancer and he cured it holistically.
But the one you're going to like the most is
we're starting a documentary. We started about a month ago
on the great cattle drives with a good knight and
loving and all the different cattle drovers that work back
in the eighteen hundreds, and how that affected the entrepreneurial
ship in the development of this great country that we have.

Speaker 2 (07:42):
I can't wait for you to find the video footage
of that. That's gonna be something to find.

Speaker 3 (07:47):
We'll have a lot of steel photos and put it
out there, but we're going to make it into a wonderful, educational,
inspiring documentary.

Speaker 1 (07:55):
All right, vance again, am I missing anywhere? Apple?

Speaker 2 (07:57):
Amazon, iTunes, Google, anywhere else that I would find this documentary?

Speaker 1 (08:00):
Love You Bum coming up on November the twenty fifth.

Speaker 3 (08:03):
Those are the main places to find it. But I
think that the individuals that want to watch this film,
I think it's going to uplift, inspire, but at the end,
I think it's going to bring you to tears.

Speaker 2 (08:12):
Well, it brought back amazing memories, a little bit of
what it could have should have, a little bit of
how things used to be. And I know that money
and power and technology has changed the world. But to
see bum Phillips coaching a game without a headset on
was probably the most interesting things to me because he didn't.
There were headsets back then, but he had no interest

(08:33):
in working him. He wanted to wear his cowboy hat
and he did too.

Speaker 1 (08:37):
Thank you, Vance for the time. We appreciate it.

Speaker 3 (08:40):
Hey, thank you, and have a good weekend.

Speaker 1 (08:42):
Thank you. Vance Howard.

Speaker 2 (08:43):
Executive producer of the love Ye Bum documentary with us
here and it's coming up on November the twenty fifth.
For any of you that are old school Order fans
like me, I'm sure you will want to watch it.