November 6, 2025 • 55 mins
The landscape of existence can sometimes feel like a cosmic play—actors shifting between roles, creating stories that ripple through time. On today's episode, we welcome Phil Proctor, an artist whose life weaves a tapestry of creativity, resilience, and humor. Known for his work with the legendary Firesign Theatre and an illustrious voice acting career, Phil has left an indelible mark on the worlds of comedy, film, and beyond.Phil Proctor is not merely a performer; he’s a storyteller who transcends mediums. Reflecting on his career, Phil shared how the Firesign Theatre’s surreal humor was designed not only to entertain but to provoke thought. “We were asking, ‘What is reality?’” he explained. “It’s the question you should ask every day when you get out of bed.” These words capture the essence of his work—a blend of laughter and philosophy that challenges conventional perspectives.Phil described how technology has transformed his craft.
From the days of live radio to recording film dialogue remotely, he marveled at the evolution of his industry. With characteristic wit, he recounted a time he dubbed a French comedy for Mel Brooks, only to find the humor lost on American audiences. “The test audience thought we were speaking French!” he laughed. Moments like these underscore Phil’s adaptability and humor in the face of creative challenges.Phil also opened up about the impact of his voice acting roles, such as his long-running portrayal of Howard DeVille in Rugrats. He reflected on the joy of connecting with audiences worldwide, even decades after the show’s heyday. From cartoons to video games like Assassin’s Creed, his performances have reached far and wide, bridging generational gaps.One of the most profound parts of our discussion was Phil’s recollection of surviving the Golden Dragon massacre in 1977. Amidst the chaos, he found solace in an unexpected synchronicity: learning that his wife was pregnant with their daughter. “Life has a way of balancing tragedy with joy,” he mused.
This event, along with its psychic premonition, became the foundation of his memoir, Where’s My Fortune Cookie?Phil’s stories often ventured into the metaphysical. He shared how the Firesign Theatre’s comedy sought to “deprogram” audiences from societal conditioning, offering a fresh lens to perceive reality. This philosophy—wrapped in humor—resonates deeply in today’s fast-paced, media-saturated world. “We were making funny connections,” he said, “exercising the brain to see the world anew.”Beyond his creative endeavors, Phil’s zest for life shines through in his personal anecdotes. Whether reminiscing about working with Mel Brooks or delighting in his grandchildren’s fascination with technology, he embodies a boundless curiosity. His ability to balance the absurd with the profound makes his journey a testament to the power of humor and resilience.As the episode drew to a close, one thing became clear: Phil Proctor is more than a performer; he is a philosopher of humor, an explorer of reality, and a living reminder of life’s intricate, interconnected dance. His stories inspire us to embrace curiosity, resilience, and a healthy dose of laughter.
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/bulletproof-screenwriting-podcast--2881148/support.
From the days of live radio to recording film dialogue remotely, he marveled at the evolution of his industry. With characteristic wit, he recounted a time he dubbed a French comedy for Mel Brooks, only to find the humor lost on American audiences. “The test audience thought we were speaking French!” he laughed. Moments like these underscore Phil’s adaptability and humor in the face of creative challenges.Phil also opened up about the impact of his voice acting roles, such as his long-running portrayal of Howard DeVille in Rugrats. He reflected on the joy of connecting with audiences worldwide, even decades after the show’s heyday. From cartoons to video games like Assassin’s Creed, his performances have reached far and wide, bridging generational gaps.One of the most profound parts of our discussion was Phil’s recollection of surviving the Golden Dragon massacre in 1977. Amidst the chaos, he found solace in an unexpected synchronicity: learning that his wife was pregnant with their daughter. “Life has a way of balancing tragedy with joy,” he mused.
This event, along with its psychic premonition, became the foundation of his memoir, Where’s My Fortune Cookie?Phil’s stories often ventured into the metaphysical. He shared how the Firesign Theatre’s comedy sought to “deprogram” audiences from societal conditioning, offering a fresh lens to perceive reality. This philosophy—wrapped in humor—resonates deeply in today’s fast-paced, media-saturated world. “We were making funny connections,” he said, “exercising the brain to see the world anew.”Beyond his creative endeavors, Phil’s zest for life shines through in his personal anecdotes. Whether reminiscing about working with Mel Brooks or delighting in his grandchildren’s fascination with technology, he embodies a boundless curiosity. His ability to balance the absurd with the profound makes his journey a testament to the power of humor and resilience.As the episode drew to a close, one thing became clear: Phil Proctor is more than a performer; he is a philosopher of humor, an explorer of reality, and a living reminder of life’s intricate, interconnected dance. His stories inspire us to embrace curiosity, resilience, and a healthy dose of laughter.
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/bulletproof-screenwriting-podcast--2881148/support.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
You are listening to the IFAH podcast Network.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
For more amazing filmmaking and screenwriting podcasts, just go to
ifahpodcastnetwork dot com.
Speaker 3 (00:12):
Welcome to the Bulletproof Screenwriting Podcast, Episode number four forty four.
Your dream doesn't have an expiration date, Take a deep
breath and try again.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
KT Whitten broadcasting from a dark, windowless room in Hollywood.
Speaker 1 (00:26):
When we really should be working on that next draft.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
It's the Bulletproof Screenwriting Podcast, showing you the craft and
business of screenwriting while teaching you how to make your
screenplay bulletproof.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
And here's your host, Alex Ferrari.
Speaker 3 (00:41):
Welcome, Welcome to another episode of the Bulletproof Screenwriting Podcast.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
I am your humble host Alex Ferrari.
Speaker 3 (00:46):
Now, today's show is sponsored by Bulletproof Script Coverage.
Speaker 4 (00:50):
Now.
Speaker 5 (00:51):
Unlike other script coverage services, Bulletproof Script Coverage actually focuses
on the kind of project you are in the goals
of the project you are, so we actually break it
down by three categories micro budget, indie film, market, and
studio film. There's no reason to get coverage from a
reader that's used to reading temp pole movies when your
movie is going to be done for one hundred thousand dollars,
(01:13):
and we wanted to focus on that. At Bulletproof script coverage,
our readers have worked with Marvel Studios, CIA, w MEE, NBC, HBO, Disney,
Scott Free, Warner Brothers, The Blacklist, and many many more.
So if you need your screenplay or TV script covered
by professional readers, head on over to covermiscreenplay dot Com.
(01:34):
Enjoy today's episode with guest host Dave Bullis.
Speaker 6 (01:39):
On this episode, I have a hell of a guy.
He is just full of life. He honestly, he just
brims with life and I love having people like this on.
He is a founding member of the legendary fire Scign Theater.
He is a voice actor in movies like master Z Inc,
Toy Story, Inside Out, TV shows like The Rugrats.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
He was philin Lil's Dad Howard.
Speaker 6 (02:00):
He does video games that call Duty Events, Warfare, Assassin's
Creed Brotherhood.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
He's even embedded into the Apple os.
Speaker 6 (02:07):
Can you believe that he actually pulls out the phone
and we're gonna go over that too. I didn't ask
me if it gets free iPhones, though I probably should
have asked that.
Speaker 1 (02:14):
Damn. Without further ado with guests, Phil Proctor.
Speaker 4 (02:19):
We thank you very much. It's really good to be here. Well, actually,
it's always good to be here because I'm at home
today here in Beverly Hills, adjacent in a nice overcast
Los Angeles weather.
Speaker 6 (02:34):
It isn't technology wonderful, phil Where you can do interviews
from the comfort of your own home, now, it's amazing.
Speaker 4 (02:40):
Right, Yeah, Not only that, but you can do auditions
from your laptop, which I do regularly now for voiceover
work or animation work. And I've actually which we can
talk about, I've actually done jobs for movies from other
parts of the country on my laptop, which is unheard of.
(03:02):
You know, like five six years ago, you'd have to
go to a studio and have a link up with
the satellite to be able to do, you know, a
commercial or something if you were in New York and
they wanted to and they cast you from California. But
the technology has really taken over the industry, and sometimes
for the good, sometimes for the worst.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
You're very very Philly.
Speaker 6 (03:26):
It's technology can be a double edged swords sometimes, and
you know, I do want to talk about, you know,
obviously doing things for movies from across the country because
I've kind of gotten to that point as well, where maybe,
like you know, I can help out somebody from like
for instance, and I'm not to segue too far off,
but I've been able to actually help friends of mine,
(03:46):
not even you know, not even just like you know,
maybe recording something, but actually being able to help them.
And they're across the country filming a movie and you
know we kind of like, you know, do a FaceTime
chat or something like that.
Speaker 1 (03:56):
And I'm able to actually do stuff like that.
Speaker 4 (03:58):
Yep, that's very true of actors audition now by not Skype,
but they'll record their they will record their audition, you know,
using the camera built in to their machine, and then
send it to the Cashi record. I just had lunch
with a fabulous friend of mine named jim Meskamon, who,
(04:19):
if you know his career at all, is a master
of a million voices. Jim Meskamon, if you want to
google him, you'll be constantly surprised and amused. And he
got a job doing a Johnny Carson imitation in a
film about Gore Vidal with Kevin Cotton, not Kevin Cassner,
(04:39):
with a famous star whose name will come to me
in a minute. And he did it, you know, remotely
by sending in a tape. They cast him off of
the tape and he flew to Rome and did you
know two and a half days in this film, So
all those wonderful things can happen now, and here comes
the garbage.
Speaker 6 (05:02):
They don't recycle me, No, Phil, they will. You're a treasure, Phil,
They won't. They won't take you away.
Speaker 4 (05:12):
Can you hear the wonderful sounds of the garbage truck
in the back?
Speaker 1 (05:17):
I absolutely can. This is funny to see. This is
kind of like Steve Allen's Man on the Street. It's raw.
Anything would happen you.
Speaker 4 (05:26):
I often feel as though my whole career is recycled.
You know. I've been in the business for sixty about
sixty five years. I started as a child actor on
a television show in New York called Uncle Danny Reads
the Funnies. Elliott Gould was also on that show, and
we basically would improvise in this little kind of a
(05:49):
closet of his studio with a big old Dumont camera
with three lenses on it, and we talk about the
cartoons in the New York Daily News. Okay, and there'd
be a girl and a guy and a guy and
a girl, and that's how I got my start on
local television, local live television.
Speaker 6 (06:12):
So anyway, well, I mean that's something I wanted to
actually talk about too.
Speaker 4 (06:16):
Phil.
Speaker 1 (06:17):
Was you have such this illustrious career.
Speaker 6 (06:19):
I mean, you've been in the business for over fifty years,
and I mean you've seen, you know, all sorts of things,
seeing the ups and the downs. You've seen, you know,
how things have evolved where you know, I mean, let's
just you know, like like Uncle Dudley reads the Funnies,
you know.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
That that was.
Speaker 6 (06:34):
I mean there's probably I don't know how many channels
when that started, and now you know, going to now
and now there's Netflix YouTube, and then there's all there's
like you know, you turn on your your your TV
and there's like one thousand and one channels.
Speaker 4 (06:45):
But we remember Procter and Bergmann predicted that in TV
or not TV in like nineteen seventy three or something
like that. We predicted hundreds and hundreds of channels. We
didn't think that there'd be thousands and thousands of channels,
but then we didn't account for inflation. So there you go.
For those people who might not know who I am
(07:06):
talking about and who you are talking to. I'm a
member of a group called The Fire Sign Theater, which
was a four man satirical comedy group. Sadly, two of
our members have now left us for parts unknown, and
only I and another partner named David Osman remain, so
(07:26):
we now call our group the Fire Sign Theater or
something like it, which is a parody of our first album,
which was Waiting for the Electrician or someone like him. Okay,
And the next time that what's left of the group,
which had a fifty year career, is going to perform,
will be on September twenty eighth at the Library of Congress,
(07:48):
where David and I will be doing the history of
the art of radio, followed by some excerpts from our
home movies which have been released on a two DVD
set called Everything You Know Is Wrong the Declassified Fire
Sign Theater, and then we'll have a Q and A
with all of the people who are there. We're happy
to say that our appearance sold out in like three days,
(08:11):
which of course was helpful the fact that it's free,
But nonetheless we were pleased to see that there, you know,
was enough demand for us that the tickets went very quickly,
and it'll also be I believe, simulcast and you know
archive because after all, it is the Library of Congress.
They inducted another one of the Fire Sign Theater albums
(08:33):
called Don't Crush That Dwarf Hand Me the pliers into
their hysterical recordings up for me their historical recordings back
in like two thousand and seven, and so they are
now in the process we hope of acquiring our archives,
the Fire Sign Theater archives. So if you don't know
the Fire Sign Theater, go to fire Sign Theater dot
(08:54):
com or just google us and who somebody just did,
and you'll find out all kinds of crazy things about us,
and you'll be able to see stuff that we've done.
And here's stuff that we've done on the web and
it is And there's also twenty four hour, seven day
a week Fire Sun Theater radio site you can go
(09:15):
to where there's a constantly again recycled playing of our
radio shows and records and things and excerpts from our records.
We also have a book which you can get at
our site called A Duke of Madness Motors, which contains
an MP three of eighty hours of our radio shows,
(09:39):
and it's a very colorful book with interviews and pictures
and collages and things about our radio years, because that's
how we got started. We started on local radio KPFK
listener supported radio in Los Angeles back in like nineteen
sixty four or something like that.
Speaker 3 (09:59):
We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor,
and now back to the show.
Speaker 4 (10:08):
And that led to a career in recording with Columbia Records,
and then touring and films and oh fifty years of
tom fulry and fun.
Speaker 6 (10:22):
You know, you mentioned the prediction phil of all the
different TV stations. Did you ever think that that, you know,
there'd be so much like reality TV?
Speaker 1 (10:31):
Did you ever you know what I mean? Like, I
don't think that that is something that came out of
left field for me.
Speaker 4 (10:36):
Yeah, it's true. Now, I was the announcer on Big
Brother for three years in the early years of Big Brother.
I think it was in their fourth season, fourth, fifth,
sixth season or something like that, And to me, that
was the best of the reality television because before it's
gotten very kind of convoluted and more produced these days,
(10:59):
although still a fun show, but in the early days
it was more about real people, you know, who wanted
to put themselves into this game like situation and compete
with other people. And it was a lot. And they
were all isolated in this wonderful crazy house with the
cameras all hidden behind it. I could walk around and
(11:20):
look through the two way mirrors and see what they
were doing in there. It was really a gas. But
reality television has indeed taken off to the extent that
we now have a reality president. We have a reality
TV president, and that is the most unreal thing of all. Right, Yes,
(11:41):
you know, the lines between entertainment and reality have become
a news and you name it, have become more and
more and more and more blurred, so that there the
Fireside Theater asked in one of its very earliest albums,
I Think and Don't Crush the dwarfind Me the Pliers
the question what is reality? It's the It's the major
(12:02):
question you should ask yourself every day when you get
out of bed. What is what is my reality? Today?
For me? What is reality? And that's become an increasingly
difficult question to answer, uh in the face of our uh,
the the media overload, the world of the Internet. Our
(12:23):
second album is called how can you be in two
places at once when you're not anywhere at all, And
that's exactly where we find ourselves now. In fact, you
and I are representing it as we speak.
Speaker 6 (12:36):
Yeah, very very very true phil you know, and you
touched on something too. I often find, you know, that
comedy as a whole, you know, it can be so philosophical.
But sometimes you know, during award seasons and stuff like that,
comedy sort of gets you know, pushed aside for the
drama or or something like.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
You know of that nature.
Speaker 6 (12:53):
But you know, somebody, by the way, it's somebody that
you mentioned in your book, by the way, you mentioned
mel Brooks, and you know he has taken that too
to say what you have where It's like, if you
want to, you know, you can make a really great
philosophical statement, but also if you wrap it in comedy,
I think the message just gets through so much better,
you know what I mean?
Speaker 4 (13:13):
Yes, certainly, And of course Woody Allen is another classic
example of that. But mel Brooks is more of a
surrealist than Alan is. In The Blazing Saddles, he absolutely
exploded all of the precepts of the classic Western movie,
you know, to make all kinds of wonderful social and
(13:36):
satirical points, and that's what endeared me to him certainly.
And of course The Two thousand year Old Man is
another classic example of that kind of wonderful surrealistic comedy
that he and his dear partner Carl Reiner put together.
We Fire Sign Theater have been nominated for Grammys three
times for Best Comedy Recording, and we lost to The
(14:00):
two thousand year Old Man at one of the ceremonies.
But hey, we've lost to weird Al who's another great
surrealist and a friend, and to mel Brooks at Carl Ryder,
so you know, it's not exactly chopped Liver, It's okay.
I did a film with Brooks which was an overdubbing
(14:23):
of a very famous French comedy called The Visitors Les Visiteur,
which was a hit for Beaumont Production Company in France,
the biggest grossing comedy in the history of French cinema
back in what the eighties maybe early nineties, and they
decided to overdub the film in English, so they hired
(14:48):
the mel Brooks and he cast a bunch of people,
a lot of my friends and myself, and he thought
it would be funny if we overdubbed it with a
French accent, because you know, of course, the French accent
is very funny. You know clues, Oh it's not my dog,
you know, he's a funny accent. So we all are
speaking like this with a French accent. The problem is
(15:11):
that you are putting word into the mouth of character
on the screen. What are all ever talking? Are already talking,
you see. And in this particular film, the French that
they were using for the most part was a very
fast Parisian French on Pac Disa, and so everything was
(15:32):
very fast. So we had to speak very quickly with
a French accent in order to make it match with
the moving of the lips. Well, when they finally finished
the film, they showed it to a test audience in
Encino and they thought we were speaking French. The film
was never released. It's it's Bell's only failure, my only failure.
(15:56):
But it sure was fun to do. God, it was
fun working with him.
Speaker 6 (16:01):
So how like, for instance, Phil, how would you go
about like even even being like approach for something like that.
Does Melk finds you and say, you know, Phil, we
got to work together on something and then you just
sort of go and you basically of course you're going
to say yes, and you just and.
Speaker 1 (16:14):
You and you just go from there. Or was there
like a whole audition process for that.
Speaker 4 (16:18):
It's always an audition process. It's it's it's humiliating, debilitating.
It is seldom. I wouldn't say it's not now. I
think it's a little different. But back then, Uh, even
if they knew the fire sign theater and knew the
capabilities as a voice actor, there are other people in
(16:41):
the chain of command who may say the fireside, what okay?
So Mel said, oh you should. This guy is great,
he can, he'd be great for it. So we'd have
to do an audition, and then they could. Mel could
play the audition for the producers and I produced to say, okay, Mel,
I got it. You hire it, okay, And that happened
more often than not now. For instance, I was in
(17:03):
a film called The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle okay,
which what was his name anyway, which was directed by
a fellow who hired me des mccannoff, that's his name.
I was hired to read the part of Boris Badenoff
with various actresses who were auditioning for the role of Natasha. Okay,
(17:28):
so I am doing Buddies badinoff and reading the lines
from the script, you know, and these and these famous
actresses were coming in and reading for the part. I mean,
top notch, a rated actresses. Renee Russo finally got it
and she was hysterical in the part. I think that
that she was probably the best thing in the in
(17:50):
the film. But I was astonished that I was reading
with these tremendous actresses. Some of them came in and
they'd memorized the material. Some of them came in with
just the script pages in their hand. Some of them
came in with the script pages written out in their
own hands so that they could read it more easily,
you know. But they were all reading for the role.
(18:12):
And that's and that's the nature of it, you know.
Speaker 6 (18:17):
Yeah, It's it's amazing though, when when you just you're
part of the addition process and you know, you don't
know who's going to come through that door sometimes, you.
Speaker 2 (18:24):
Know what I mean.
Speaker 6 (18:25):
And and I've actually, you know, I've been on both
sides of that as well too, Phil, Yeah, and it's
just you know, you just sometimes you're like, oh my well,
this person's auditioning.
Speaker 1 (18:34):
Well, my god, why don't they have more stuff?
Speaker 6 (18:35):
You know?
Speaker 1 (18:36):
And it's a listen.
Speaker 4 (18:38):
There was a time. Now, first of all, I have
to say, uh, I don't know if you know this,
but yesterday Dick van Dyke performed at a club out
here in the valley called Vitello's with a band of
his own assembling. And he's ninety two years old, okay,
Dick van Dyke. But there was a time, maybe thirty
(19:00):
years ago, when I went in to read for a
television show which had you know, like twelve lines or
something like that, and Dick van Dyke was sitting in
the hallway with the other actors reading for this tiny role.
So you see, it's it's indiscriminates sometimes. But as everybody says,
(19:23):
what's the secret to being a success in our business,
persistence and confidence? Right.
Speaker 6 (19:32):
I have that first part down, phill, But that second
part that's very elusive.
Speaker 4 (19:36):
Well, it's like groudshow. Marx used to always make wise
cracks all the time. Wherever he was, his brain was
always in the comic groove and he was always in
effect trying out material. And his excuse for this was,
you know, like being always on. Was that he even
(19:57):
though maybe sixty percent of what he said fell on
deaf ears, wasn't funny.
Speaker 3 (20:04):
We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor,
and now back to the show.
Speaker 4 (20:13):
That forty percent that worked was his trade. Okay, it
would go into a show or into a movie, right,
And so in a way, you have to just kind
of let it flow, let it happen, and be confident
that eventually somebody's going to hire you. I remember when
(20:33):
I was a commercial actor, and I did a lot
of TV commercials and scores and scores of radio commercials
at the height of my career. But the television commercials
are the hardest because you you'd have to go in
physically auditioned, and the people who are casting you would say, okay,
you have to come in dressed like a fisherman, or
(20:53):
you have to come in your pajamas, you know, because
it's a And you go, why why I come in
looking like a fisherman or you know, looking like I'm
in my pajamas. But no, no, no, you know, the
casting director our agents would say no, no, they want
to see you in character. Okay, so you're doing all
the work for them. Well, at a certain point I
(21:15):
got burned out. I said, I just can't do this anymore.
It's humiliating, and I wasn't getting any jobs. So I
looked back at my date book and I looked at
how many commercial auditions I had to go on camera
auditions I had to go on before I got one,
and it was something like, oh, I don't know, let's
say twenty three. And I looked at how many I
(21:37):
had gone on, and I'd gone on like twenty one.
So I said, okay, I'll go on a couple more auditions,
and wouldn't you know it, I got the next two
jobs I read for. So you see, it's a question
of attrition as well. You see, if you go in
and you read for something, the guy who is perfect
(21:58):
for the part, the guy who is always in his
pajamas and looks like he just got out of bed,
he's gonna get the job. He's also going to get
a job as a you know, I'm talking about guys
who are either character actors or all American looking guys
and gals. Right, they're gonna get a car commercial, fast
food commercial, a breakfast food commercial, you name it. They're
(22:21):
gonna get it because they look the part and everybody
loves them all right, But then they can't do that anymore.
They've got a car commercial, they've got a breakfast commercial,
they've got so and so and so and so. So.
When you go in, if you're second, their second choice,
you become the first choice because they're out of competition.
(22:42):
And that's how it happens. You see.
Speaker 6 (22:47):
That's a great way to think about it, Phil See,
because because you've been around for so many years, you
know those secret ingredients, you know, persistence, confidence, and think
of it as a war of attrition.
Speaker 1 (22:57):
I'm going to keep that fill. That's a really great
way to think of it.
Speaker 4 (23:00):
Since I know your show, you get into the nuts
and bolts of various aspects of the business, the film business, uh,
you know, from editing to acting to lighting and you
name it. But the other little secret about it is
you have to you have to know how to use
a variety of skills to get the work. I would find,
(23:21):
for instance, when let's say the acting gigs dried up
for me because maybe the nature of television had changed
and I wasn't getting as many guest starring parts on
shows like all in the family, which I which I did,
and other you know, top rated shows. I would say,
what the heck am I going to do? And that's
when I turned my attention to voiceover work. I'll concentrate
(23:44):
on the voiceover work. I'll get myself an agent, and
I'll put together a tape and I'll go out and
I'll aggressively pursue that line of work. And then that
paid off for me. And when if that dried up,
I go, well, let's see what's happening in the acting business,
and maybe I can get on stage in a play.
And I got on stage and a play. Another skill,
(24:04):
I have a musical. I can sing, so I get
seen in a musical singing, and I get a musical commercial. Okay,
So one you must use as many skills as you
have and juggle them and feel free that when one
area dries up, turn your attention into another. That's why
I've never really had a manager, which is a good
(24:25):
thing and a bad thing. But because it's good because
I get to keep most of my money. It's a
bad thing because managers can do a lot for you,
especially in a film career. And I regret the fact
that one point in my career. I turned down management,
but I manage my own career okay, and being a
renaissance man, I was able to apply my skills and
(24:48):
focus my skills to the various areas of the business
that seem to be opening to me at the time
during my long career.
Speaker 6 (24:58):
And also too though I've noticed too is you've taken
the bull by the horns, so to speak. And you know,
when maybe you if there wasn't an audition happening, you know,
you worked on your own, your your own material in
you know, maybe you know the Fireside Theater. You know,
you basically you casted yourself. There was a there was
(25:18):
an episode, episode ninety nine, I had on Morgan J.
Freeman and he has a great saying, green light yourself.
He goes, if you have a script, green let it
yourself and don't wait for anybody else. Just take the
bull by the horns and just go for it.
Speaker 4 (25:31):
Absolutely correct. I saw a wonderful movie which I recommend
everybody called it In Search of Fellini, which is written
by Nancy Cartwright the voice of Bart Simpson and Nancy.
It is a film which is a true based on
a true story that she is a young girl in
(25:52):
Ohio became enamored of the films of Frederico Fellini and
decided to go over to Italy her own, supported by
her mother, in order to meet the great man. And
this extraordinary film, which is both beautifully, beautifully made, funny
(26:13):
and heartbreaking at the same time, tells the story of
that adventure. Well. Nancy first translated this into a one
woman show maybe twenty five years ago, okay, and then
based on that show, which she taped and studied and everything,
she decided to make this movie. And now because of
(26:33):
the great success of The Simpsons, she's able. She was
able to create her own production company, Spotted Cow Productions,
and she was able to put the financial energy as
well as her brilliant artistic energies into the creation of
this movie. An absolute example of what you just spoke
of in terms of Fire Sign Theater. One of the
(26:56):
reasons I became I committed myself to the lunacy, to
the mad House. Of the four other Fire Signs, I'm
a Leo two Sagittarians in an Ares was because we
could be our own boss. We were our own producers. Basically,
we'd hire a producer for ears and to help us
with the work we were doing. But we were writing it,
(27:19):
we were acting in it. We were doing almost all
the voices except for a lot of the women when
we could cast women, but we did. We did a
lot of money python women's voices too, as you know.
And we could control the budget, lay out the budget,
we could hire the studio we were working in. We
could control the sound effects and the music, all the
elements of the production so that there wasn't anybody from
(27:42):
the outside telling us what we had to do. We
were creating our own movies for the mind, with all
of our own skills, and that was very satisfying. And
that's one of the reasons why I gave up other
aspects of my career, like a movie career and more
television and more of stage, because The Fire Sign ultimately
(28:05):
kind of satisfied all of those cravings. Since we toured,
we performed all over the country, and then later as
Procter and Bergmann, a two man act half The Witch
of the Fire Sign theater, we were able to tour
even more easily and play places like Canada and How
I Eat. Because in our group, one of the members,
(28:25):
Phil Austin, who is unfortunately one of my late partners.
He didn't like to fly, so he would put his
dogs and his wife into a van and they would
drive from one venue to another when Fire Sign Theater
was touring okay, and that meant that the rest of us,
the other three guys, we could fly into a venue,
(28:47):
go on a radio show, promote okay, and then Phil
would catch up with us in time to do the show.
We made it work, but it's still it limited the
range of success that Fire Sign Theater could have.
Speaker 6 (29:05):
So and now if you if you were to have
like started something like Fire Sign Theater today, you know,
as we talk about technology, it's almost like what some
others have done where you could actually just you know,
record an episode uploaded to your website or you know,
your stuff, like all that stuff like that that they
I see more and more artists doings. The guys from
(29:25):
Mister Science Theater, they've done stuff like that. But but
you know, but as you you know, as you toured
you know, all all around you know, all around the
country too. And then as you toured around we I mean,
what was your your your reaction to to the response
of everything. I mean, well, you were you were you
like just blown away about you know how big this
had become.
Speaker 4 (29:45):
Well, it's a good question, Dave, Yes we were because
we didn't. Your question actually has created several little paths
I'd like to touch upon, and imn have to ask
you that ask the question again.
Speaker 3 (29:59):
We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor,
and now back to the show.
Speaker 4 (30:08):
But basically our success on records. We were given a
spoken arts record contract after our first album, Waiting for
Electrician or someone like Him, by a producer at Columbia
named John McClure, very respected producer, because they were going
to drop us from the album. You know, four guys
(30:29):
doing crazy surrealistic comedy, what's that all about? And he said,
these guys are geniuses. They're they're revolutionizing the recording of
comedy in the industry, and you've we've got to keep
them on, So I'll give them a spoken arts concert contract,
which meant that we got free, unlimited studio time, and
(30:50):
that's what allowed us to write our albums, go in, record,
go back and write some more, go in and record,
and that's why we could make these layered, complex, surrealistic albums,
surrealistic in the style of the goon shows. And later
not Ey Python, who were also surrealistically oriented. But we're
(31:12):
lucky enough to be able to do it visually. So
when we started to tour, because we became successful, people
were playing our records uncensored in their own homes. Right.
We never expected that we'd be broadcast because we were
using obscene language and things sweet language, i should say,
(31:32):
And our albums were very revolutionary and sometimes you know,
touched on social issues that were touchy during the Vietnamese
War period. But all of a sudden, a little thing
called FM radio appeared, and suddenly, in college stations all
over the country, kids could play a forty minute side
(31:55):
of our record without commercial breaks. And people started listening
to us in the college dorms and saying, who are
these guys? Then they go out and buy our records,
and you know, and and and we became famous because
of that, and that's what allowed us to tour and
to meet our our audience. Okay, So it was a conflux,
(32:19):
a confluence congress, if you will, of uh of of
technology that allowed us to reach a particular audience, which
I call a bad head cult. Basically, you know, hip
hip pockets on the backside of America all right, because
we were also the only comedians who were were uh,
(32:41):
reaching to a higher level of comedy nobody else was doing.
You know what Bergmann used to call college boy comedy
okay arcane comedy. Uh. And even though we you know
we were, we were not. We would shame shamelessly stooped
(33:01):
to punning whenever we possibly could. Most of our albums,
in the storytelling had were redolent and redundant, with many, many,
many levels of meaning and understanding. So you could put
our records on and play them over and over again
and get different messages and different meanings and different jokes
(33:22):
out of them. And this is even true if you
played the record in a group of people, because there
were people in that group who would get certain jokes
that other people wouldn't get, and somehow, through the brain
meld of being in their presence, it became funnier for
you as well. See. So that's why I always consider
(33:43):
what we do to be kind of mind messed, mind
manifesting comedy or brain exercising comedy, because we're making funny
connections in the comedy that we're writing. In the writing
itself that exercises your brain to make synapses. That is
the way the brain works. The brain works by making
(34:03):
unconscious and conscious connections to everything, and that's what we do.
We do we did in our writing and Fire Sign Theater.
Speaker 1 (34:14):
It's like, you know, comedy and you're able to put
that idea.
Speaker 6 (34:17):
Like we were saying earlier, that's what I really liked too,
Phil is you know, you're you're you're.
Speaker 1 (34:21):
Able to make a joke. But people say, hey, you
know what, there's some truth to that.
Speaker 6 (34:23):
There's some truth to what they're saying, you know, and
then they sort of, you know, they start thinking more
and more, and you know, as we talk you know this,
you know stuff about the you know, Fire Sign Theater
or even as we were discussing mel Brooks, you know,
a lot of you know, there was there was that satire,
there was a surrealism where on the surface it made
you laugh, but then as you start to sort of
dig a little deeper, you're like, oh, there's a lot
(34:44):
more going on here than you But.
Speaker 4 (34:46):
One of the other things that we did very consciously
was to parody commerc regular commercial radio, news radio or
i should say news broadcasts, uh and standard forms of
entertainment films and television. The album that was our breakthrough
album was Nick Danger Third Eye, Okay, because it was
a parody of a noir detective radio show, and everybody
(35:10):
in our generation who grew up on the radio could
identify with that format. Okay. But what we were often
doing in all of our albums, including I Think We're
Allbosos on this Bus, which predicted by the way, the
computer revolution and was and was and picked up as
a fan Steve Jobs, and I'll demonstrate something bizarre that
(35:32):
came out of that. We were actually deprogramming you. We
were unbrainwashing you, because people who had been raised in
the commercial society at that time in the sixties, particularly
sixties and early seventies, were you know, we're taking for
granted in a way that everything that we heard on
(35:54):
the radio that was selling us things was true. You know,
we had bad breath, we had under our we stank,
our feet didn't smell, they smelled bad. We needed a
fancy car, and we needed a new refrigerator with an
ice maker and all. So we'd use those forms in
order to kind of say no, you don't, no, you don't.
(36:15):
You might need something more important than that, like maybe
a good marriage you know, or a girlfriend you know
or a boyfriend I don't know, but it's yours. What
is reality? What is your reality now? In the terms
of the of the album, uh, I think We're all
Bosa's on this bus. I'm going to I have in
(36:37):
my hand an iPhone and I'm going to ask a
question of Siri. Here we go, Here we go, or
I'm going to make a statement to Siri. This is
worker speaking Hello, Clem, what function can I perform for you?
L Hello, a Clem, what function can I perform for you?
(36:59):
Lots of laugh. This is a reference to a character
that I created in this album I Think We're all
Boso's on this Bus, which is a character named Clem,
and I am a The backstory is I was a
worker at this future fair, which is a government fair
that is designed to sell people on the idea that
(37:21):
everything is going great and there's no unemployment and you know,
there's going to be a job for everybody in the
world of the future. Everything is going to be great,
and it's like a Disneyland that the government creates with
holograms walking around making it happy, and all kinds of
rides you can go on. And I come in because
(37:43):
I've been fired, and I become a hacker, and I
plant a virus in the mainframe computer, which is the
direct readout memory computer, doctor memory, and I bring the
whole system down. Nineteen seventy one, we predicted all of that. Okay. Now,
(38:04):
Steve Jobs, I met him. He was a fan of
this work and it helped to inspire him to continue
to develop the home computer. Okay. And I met him
when I did voices for It's a Bugs Life, which
Dave Osman did voices for as well Pixar, because he
bought into he bought stock in Pixar. And I met
(38:25):
him at the opening night party up in San Francisco,
and he came up to me, or I came up
to him to say, mister John's, nice to meet you,
and he said, I'm a big fan of yours. And
that's when I learned he was a Fire Sign Theater fan.
So he put this hello a clem, what function can
I perform for you answer into Siri as an homage
(38:46):
to the Fire Sign Theater. Talk about cultural impact.
Speaker 6 (38:51):
I was just about to say that Phil, I've never
of anyone have had on the show. I've never had
anybody who has been embedded into the to the Apple
iOS or you to have you know, I mean that
that is that.
Speaker 1 (39:06):
Is freaking phenomenal. That is mind blowing.
Speaker 4 (39:08):
It is. And the other thing, the virus that I
planted in our album is a question that the computer
can answer with a yes or a no. And the
question was why does the porridge bird lay his egg
in the air? Okay, it's a zen question. If you
buy my book Where's My Fortune Cookie, which will be
(39:29):
on Amazon after the twenty eighth, you'll find out the
reason behind that particular koon. But if you say that
to a Siri, she will often say to you, you
can't shut me down that easily. So it's really exciting,
you know, to be a part of the culture like that.
Speaker 6 (39:50):
Yeah, yeah, that's absolutely amazing. Do you like do you
show that like to to you? I don't know if
your grandkids, but I don't know if you do, you
show that to them?
Speaker 4 (39:59):
Or I show it when I go in to a
max store.
Speaker 3 (40:05):
We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor,
and now back to the show.
Speaker 4 (40:14):
Anywhere in the world, you know, to get a battery
or something, I always show it to the people. The
person who's waiting on me. Okay, I share it with
with one of the one of the workers at the
back store. My grandkids. I have two grandkids, Bowen who
is eight and Audrey, who is six, and they live
(40:34):
real close to me now, which is wonderful. Uh. My
daughter Kristin, Kristin Proctor was an actress. She's been raising
her kids now. So but you can google Kristin Proctor.
She was on the wire and uh even topless. She's
a beautiful, beautiful girl and now an even more beautiful
woman of my Norwegian wife. So she's you know, a
(40:55):
honey blonde. But anyway, those kids, they know much more
than I do. You know, their faces are in these
machines all the time, so much so that Jeffrey and
Kristen have to wean them away from the iPads or
from the games. You know. Their favorite show that they
(41:17):
like to watch online. I guess it is is a
show where these two characters, Jen and Ben I don't
know who they are, are talking while they're playing video games.
Do you know about that?
Speaker 1 (41:32):
Yeah, I've actually I do know about that.
Speaker 4 (41:34):
Okay, that's their favorite show. That's their favorite show. Besides
playing video games. They like to hear these two imaginary characters,
these two people reality television, okay, playing the games and
making comments on it. So reality television has even invaded
that area. Now. The other thing is, of course I've
(41:56):
done voices for all kinds of video games, and my
longest run was as Doctor Vidick in Assassin's Creed. And
what was fun about that was that I would wear
this helmet that was developed in Montreal that has, you know,
a feature capturing capabilities, computer capabilities, and so my facial
(42:20):
expressions as I'd read the lines for Doctor Vidick, the
villain in Assassin's Creed, would be translated into a computer
rendering of my head and my face, and then they
would lay the character's face over my face. So when
you play that game, all the expressions that Doctor Vitick
is making are my expressions. That's another what is reality
(42:44):
for you? And I guess the thing that most people
out there would know me best for is that I
was Howard on the Rugrats for fourteen years. I'm the
father of philin lil Okay, and we did what three
movies and and fourteen years or we had a little break,
so maybe seven or eight years of cartoons on Nickelodeon.
(43:07):
They're still being aired, and they're aired all over the world.
I get a request for autographs from China, from Poland,
from Russia, from South America, I mean, England, Australia. You
can't so many countries where unexpectedly they're showing this cartoon.
And I speak seven languages, so it's really fun for
(43:29):
me to be able to write back in Russian to
these people and communicate in all these different languages, or
to learn, you know, a little bit from a new
language so that I can communicate to them in their
own tongue. And it's just really fun. And I get
I got a stack of residuals today from Rugrats. Now
(43:50):
the residuals, because it's not a network program, are like
a dollar fifty six, ten, fifty nine, twelve, thirty sixty
two cents. You know, it does add up, and it's
thrilling to see that I get a stack of these
residuals showing that it's still playing in the United States
and all over the world.
Speaker 6 (44:13):
Yeah, you know, I do. I actually I was a
big fan of Rugrats growing up. Phil and uh, you know,
I I do remember you actually playing the the the
dad of Phil and Lil and.
Speaker 4 (44:23):
Uh, lots of other parts too that you probably don't
know the same. Nancy Cartwright. You know, she she plays Bart,
but she plays a slew of other parts as well.
You know. They they take advantage of our voice talents
as often as they can and give us multiple fun
roles to play.
Speaker 1 (44:42):
Yeah, and very true.
Speaker 6 (44:43):
I've noticed that too with kangas Area, who's also in
The Simpsons. And uh and obviously you know you've done
work on finding Nemo. Uh you know, and uh, you
know a couple of Disney films and I mean, you
know again, it's just it's you never know. That's why
we say, Phil, That's why I I was familiar with
your work and I was.
Speaker 1 (45:01):
Like, you know what he does? He Phil, You've done
more than I thought you did. I was like, I
might even paying attention. He's showing up everywhere and I'm
not even I'm not even noticing it.
Speaker 4 (45:09):
Well, the fun thing was besides getting a chance to
do the first the first Disney film I did wash
the what's it called the something down under the not
the Remainders down under the the Oh, Well, anyway, you
know what I'm talking about. This the DNA doas down Under. Oh,
I can't remember anyway. It was followed by Beauty and
(45:31):
the Beast. Okay, and Beauty and the Beast was the
breakthrough computer animation movie, and it was astonishing to work
on that film. And then the Pixar movies started coming
in Toy Story and as I mentioned, well, I just
mentioned a bunch of monsters incorporated, uh finding Nemo later on,
(45:53):
the most recent film I did for Disney Pixar was
Inside Out. Okay, But my days doing all kinds car
of animated voices and voices for movies and television ended
about i'd say five or six years ago. You can
hear my voices tired today, but that's just because I'm
(46:15):
talking a lot. But for the most part, it's okay.
I had a terrific run doing voices. I started actually
on a show in New York called He I Think
Here and Now. No, it wasn't called You Are There
something like that. I did a Russian accented voiceover for
a segment about the Second World War, and I was
(46:38):
I was twenty two years old, fresh out at college.
I was playing a juvenile delinquent on a soap opera
called Edge of Night. Okay, and then later went on
to understudy Ralph the Singing Nazi on the Sound of Music.
But I go into a studio in New York and
I worked for fifteen minutes and I made three hundred
and sixty five dollars. And that's when when I first
(47:00):
went to myself, there's something to look into here. But
it took me many, many more years before I was
able to really get into the voiceover industry seriously. And
it happened pretty much after the Fire Sign Theater. But
I'm very grateful for all those wonderful years that I
worked with with great improv groups, adding crazy voices and
(47:24):
different languages and different accents to the Muppets movies and
my goodness. If you go and see my list of credits,
you'll see that. You can also visit me at Planetprocter
dot com, where I post a weekly monthly blog now,
but I've been doing that for twenty years and it's
one way of keeping up with what I'm doing. I'm
(47:46):
also on television right now. I should mention on a
PBS documentary about Francis Scott Key by Philip Marshall, called
Francis Scott Key after the song It's a three part
documentary done in an interview style with the ghosts of
famous people who lived in Francis Scott Key's time, including
(48:10):
a character named John Randolph of Roanoke, who's the character
I play, and Marshall interviews us as ghosts in our
own words. We're speaking pretty much our own words. John
Randolph had a high voice, almost annoying, and he was
quite a character. He was a senator in Virginia for
(48:31):
many years and he would hold forth on the floor
of the Senate with his two white Afghan hounds and
his black serving boy, his black servant dressed in Chinese
in a Chinese costume. And you'll get to see all
of that in this amazing documentary. I can't tell you
(48:52):
when it'll be on your local PBS station, but if
you go to the website fs key after the song,
you'll find out. And it's really something something to see.
It's a revolutionary documentary.
Speaker 6 (49:07):
Yeah, and I'll look on the lookout for that, Phil,
And you know I am going to link, by the way,
everybody to all the things that Phil and I are
talking about, all the websites, everything in the show notes.
By the way, I'm always very good at that film.
I'm always very good at linking everything in the show notes.
Oh but by my pleasure, Phil and I and I
know we're we're we're starting to run out of time film.
(49:28):
So I just want to ask, you know, obviously your
book is coming out September twenty eighth of this year,
twenty seventeen, where's my fortune Cookie? You have quotes on
the back from from weird Al Yankovic Pendulette, and I'm
you know of all you know, all these these these
are great you know people you know have you know,
giving you all these these quotes.
Speaker 4 (49:49):
Tom and Tom Heikman too.
Speaker 3 (49:52):
We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor
and now back to the show.
Speaker 4 (50:02):
Yeah, yeah, politically one of my heroes. And I tell
all these people which is great.
Speaker 6 (50:09):
Yeah, that's actually was going to ask you, was you
know of you know of all the things in the book.
You know, I mean you touch on so much because
like like for one, I mean I had in my
listener to talk about but I know you had amish
upbringing and I was gonna try to touch on that.
But where you know, you see how quickly these interviews go,
It's like your blink fill and they're over.
Speaker 4 (50:29):
Well, I'm seventy seven years old. I've got a lot
to talk about because I can still remember it. That's
the good part. And yes, I'm of Amish Irish ancestry.
And if you want to read about that, you can
go online and find a book called Rosanna of the Amish,
written by my great uncle Joseph Yoder, which tells about
the roots of that Amish Irish connection back in the
(50:52):
nineteenth century, which is very unusual. And I guess that's
why I'm so unusual.
Speaker 6 (51:00):
Yeah, there's always amazing tie tie in, Phil, there's always
amazing tie ins. And about the book too, is there anything?
Is there any story you know, just to as you
talk about the book, as we said of wrap up
this whole interview, is there any sort of one story
that really stands out that you really you just couldn't
(51:20):
wait to retell?
Speaker 4 (51:22):
Sure? Well, the fact is the book is called Where's
My Fortune Cookie? It has on the front cover a
picture of Peter Bergman and myself hiding under a restaurant
table with Chinese food on top of it. It relates
to the fact that Peter and I survived the Golden
Dragon massacre in San Francisco, five killed, eleven wounded back
(51:45):
in nineteen seventy seven, I think it was. And that
particular gang Lend shooting that we were unfortunately in the
middle of and not hiding under the table, occurred on
the same day that I learned that my Norwegian wife
Barbreau was pregnant with my daughter Kristen, who is living
(52:08):
nearby now. And the really weird thing about it, which
is all recounted in the book, is that it was
psychically predicted to me by a friend about a month
and a half before it happened. But all of this
is in the book. And it's called Where's My Fortune Cookie?
Because when Peter Bergmann, who died of leukemia about five
(52:30):
years ago, at one of his memorial services, a friend
of ours, one of the patrons of the Firesign Theater,
made it passed out fortune cookies to everybody with Peter
Bergman's date of birth and death and aligne a title
of one of the Firecient Theater albums. And I asked her,
I said, Gretchen, that was really sweet of you to
(52:51):
do the fortune cookie thing. And I said, you did
that because of the Golden Dragon massacred, didn't you? And
she said, what I said, You know, Peter and I
survived a Chinese gangland shooting. She said, you did. I
never heard of that. I said, well, well why did you?
Why did you make the fortune cookies? Then she said,
(53:16):
Peter came to me in a dream and he told
me I never got my fortune cookie. And it's all
true that the book is filled with stories like that.
Things like that have happened to me my entire life,
and it ain't over yet.
Speaker 6 (53:37):
You'll have to come back on Phil when you write
this sequel, for the next for the next fifty years
that you're in show business.
Speaker 4 (53:44):
Well, listen, when the book comes out, I'll be back
in town, probably at the end of October. Yeah, So
maybe when we get into the holiday season we can
figure out another excuse to talk together again.
Speaker 1 (53:59):
Phil.
Speaker 6 (53:59):
I would love to talk to you anytime, because, like
I said, there's a bunch of questions I didn't get
to ask you, But I would love to chat again.
And just in case people didn't hear it the first time, Phil,
where can we'll find you out online?
Speaker 4 (54:12):
Planet Procter dot com is the best way. And if
you like what you see there and you want to
subscribe to the newsletter. It's free. You just send me
there's my email address there, and you just send me
your address and say I want to want to become
a planeteer, send me the planet and I'll see that
you're in a mailing group.
Speaker 1 (54:33):
And everyone.
Speaker 6 (54:34):
I will link to that in this show notes, along
with the link to pre order Phil's book Where Is
My Fortune Cookie, out September the twenty eighth of this year,
twenty seventeen. Phil Procter, It has been an absolute blast, sir.
Speaker 4 (54:46):
Thank you very much. I hope I didn't talk your
ear off.
Speaker 1 (54:49):
No, not at all, not at all.
Speaker 4 (54:51):
Great talking to you, Dave saying.
Speaker 1 (54:54):
Oh, thank you so much.
Speaker 3 (54:55):
FO.
Speaker 6 (54:55):
It was great talking to you as well. And you
know I'm going to be on the and whenever you're
in town, everyone to come back.
Speaker 1 (55:00):
Please let me know.
Speaker 4 (55:01):
Thank you, we'll do it again. Okay, bye for now.
Speaker 3 (55:05):
I want to thank Dave so much for doing such
a great job on this episode. If you want to
get links to anything we spoke about in this episode,
head over to the show notes at Bulletproof Screenwriting dot tv.
Forward slash four forty four. Thank you so much for
listening to guys.
Speaker 1 (55:17):
As always, keep on writing no matter what, I'll talk
to you soon.
Speaker 2 (55:21):
Thanks for listening to the Bulletproof Screenwriting podcast at Bulletproofscreenwriting
dot tv.
You are listening to the IFAH podcast Network.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
For more amazing filmmaking and screenwriting podcasts, just go to
ifahpodcastnetwork dot com.
Speaker 3 (00:12):
Welcome to the Bulletproof Screenwriting Podcast, Episode number four forty four.
Your dream doesn't have an expiration date, Take a deep
breath and try again.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
KT Whitten broadcasting from a dark, windowless room in Hollywood.
Speaker 1 (00:26):
When we really should be working on that next draft.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
It's the Bulletproof Screenwriting Podcast, showing you the craft and
business of screenwriting while teaching you how to make your
screenplay bulletproof.
Speaker 1 (00:36):
And here's your host, Alex Ferrari.
Speaker 3 (00:41):
Welcome, Welcome to another episode of the Bulletproof Screenwriting Podcast.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
I am your humble host Alex Ferrari.
Speaker 3 (00:46):
Now, today's show is sponsored by Bulletproof Script Coverage.
Speaker 4 (00:50):
Now.
Speaker 5 (00:51):
Unlike other script coverage services, Bulletproof Script Coverage actually focuses
on the kind of project you are in the goals
of the project you are, so we actually break it
down by three categories micro budget, indie film, market, and
studio film. There's no reason to get coverage from a
reader that's used to reading temp pole movies when your
movie is going to be done for one hundred thousand dollars,
(01:13):
and we wanted to focus on that. At Bulletproof script coverage,
our readers have worked with Marvel Studios, CIA, w MEE, NBC, HBO, Disney,
Scott Free, Warner Brothers, The Blacklist, and many many more.
So if you need your screenplay or TV script covered
by professional readers, head on over to covermiscreenplay dot Com.
(01:34):
Enjoy today's episode with guest host Dave Bullis.
Speaker 6 (01:39):
On this episode, I have a hell of a guy.
He is just full of life. He honestly, he just
brims with life and I love having people like this on.
He is a founding member of the legendary fire Scign Theater.
He is a voice actor in movies like master Z Inc,
Toy Story, Inside Out, TV shows like The Rugrats.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
He was philin Lil's Dad Howard.
Speaker 6 (02:00):
He does video games that call Duty Events, Warfare, Assassin's
Creed Brotherhood.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
He's even embedded into the Apple os.
Speaker 6 (02:07):
Can you believe that he actually pulls out the phone
and we're gonna go over that too. I didn't ask
me if it gets free iPhones, though I probably should
have asked that.
Speaker 1 (02:14):
Damn. Without further ado with guests, Phil Proctor.
Speaker 4 (02:19):
We thank you very much. It's really good to be here. Well, actually,
it's always good to be here because I'm at home
today here in Beverly Hills, adjacent in a nice overcast
Los Angeles weather.
Speaker 6 (02:34):
It isn't technology wonderful, phil Where you can do interviews
from the comfort of your own home, now, it's amazing.
Speaker 4 (02:40):
Right, Yeah, Not only that, but you can do auditions
from your laptop, which I do regularly now for voiceover
work or animation work. And I've actually which we can
talk about, I've actually done jobs for movies from other
parts of the country on my laptop, which is unheard of.
(03:02):
You know, like five six years ago, you'd have to
go to a studio and have a link up with
the satellite to be able to do, you know, a
commercial or something if you were in New York and
they wanted to and they cast you from California. But
the technology has really taken over the industry, and sometimes
for the good, sometimes for the worst.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
You're very very Philly.
Speaker 6 (03:26):
It's technology can be a double edged swords sometimes, and
you know, I do want to talk about, you know,
obviously doing things for movies from across the country because
I've kind of gotten to that point as well, where maybe,
like you know, I can help out somebody from like
for instance, and I'm not to segue too far off,
but I've been able to actually help friends of mine,
(03:46):
not even you know, not even just like you know,
maybe recording something, but actually being able to help them.
And they're across the country filming a movie and you
know we kind of like, you know, do a FaceTime
chat or something like that.
Speaker 1 (03:56):
And I'm able to actually do stuff like that.
Speaker 4 (03:58):
Yep, that's very true of actors audition now by not Skype,
but they'll record their they will record their audition, you know,
using the camera built in to their machine, and then
send it to the Cashi record. I just had lunch
with a fabulous friend of mine named jim Meskamon, who,
(04:19):
if you know his career at all, is a master
of a million voices. Jim Meskamon, if you want to
google him, you'll be constantly surprised and amused. And he
got a job doing a Johnny Carson imitation in a
film about Gore Vidal with Kevin Cotton, not Kevin Cassner,
(04:39):
with a famous star whose name will come to me
in a minute. And he did it, you know, remotely
by sending in a tape. They cast him off of
the tape and he flew to Rome and did you
know two and a half days in this film, So
all those wonderful things can happen now, and here comes
the garbage.
Speaker 6 (05:02):
They don't recycle me, No, Phil, they will. You're a treasure, Phil,
They won't. They won't take you away.
Speaker 4 (05:12):
Can you hear the wonderful sounds of the garbage truck
in the back?
Speaker 1 (05:17):
I absolutely can. This is funny to see. This is
kind of like Steve Allen's Man on the Street. It's raw.
Anything would happen you.
Speaker 4 (05:26):
I often feel as though my whole career is recycled.
You know. I've been in the business for sixty about
sixty five years. I started as a child actor on
a television show in New York called Uncle Danny Reads
the Funnies. Elliott Gould was also on that show, and
we basically would improvise in this little kind of a
(05:49):
closet of his studio with a big old Dumont camera
with three lenses on it, and we talk about the
cartoons in the New York Daily News. Okay, and there'd
be a girl and a guy and a guy and
a girl, and that's how I got my start on
local television, local live television.
Speaker 6 (06:12):
So anyway, well, I mean that's something I wanted to
actually talk about too.
Speaker 4 (06:16):
Phil.
Speaker 1 (06:17):
Was you have such this illustrious career.
Speaker 6 (06:19):
I mean, you've been in the business for over fifty years,
and I mean you've seen, you know, all sorts of things,
seeing the ups and the downs. You've seen, you know,
how things have evolved where you know, I mean, let's
just you know, like like Uncle Dudley reads the Funnies,
you know.
Speaker 1 (06:33):
That that was.
Speaker 6 (06:34):
I mean there's probably I don't know how many channels
when that started, and now you know, going to now
and now there's Netflix YouTube, and then there's all there's
like you know, you turn on your your your TV
and there's like one thousand and one channels.
Speaker 4 (06:45):
But we remember Procter and Bergmann predicted that in TV
or not TV in like nineteen seventy three or something
like that. We predicted hundreds and hundreds of channels. We
didn't think that there'd be thousands and thousands of channels,
but then we didn't account for inflation. So there you go.
For those people who might not know who I am
(07:06):
talking about and who you are talking to. I'm a
member of a group called The Fire Sign Theater, which
was a four man satirical comedy group. Sadly, two of
our members have now left us for parts unknown, and
only I and another partner named David Osman remain, so
(07:26):
we now call our group the Fire Sign Theater or
something like it, which is a parody of our first album,
which was Waiting for the Electrician or someone like him. Okay,
And the next time that what's left of the group,
which had a fifty year career, is going to perform,
will be on September twenty eighth at the Library of Congress,
(07:48):
where David and I will be doing the history of
the art of radio, followed by some excerpts from our
home movies which have been released on a two DVD
set called Everything You Know Is Wrong the Declassified Fire
Sign Theater, and then we'll have a Q and A
with all of the people who are there. We're happy
to say that our appearance sold out in like three days,
(08:11):
which of course was helpful the fact that it's free,
But nonetheless we were pleased to see that there, you know,
was enough demand for us that the tickets went very quickly,
and it'll also be I believe, simulcast and you know
archive because after all, it is the Library of Congress.
They inducted another one of the Fire Sign Theater albums
(08:33):
called Don't Crush That Dwarf Hand Me the pliers into
their hysterical recordings up for me their historical recordings back
in like two thousand and seven, and so they are
now in the process we hope of acquiring our archives,
the Fire Sign Theater archives. So if you don't know
the Fire Sign Theater, go to fire Sign Theater dot
(08:54):
com or just google us and who somebody just did,
and you'll find out all kinds of crazy things about us,
and you'll be able to see stuff that we've done.
And here's stuff that we've done on the web and
it is And there's also twenty four hour, seven day
a week Fire Sun Theater radio site you can go
(09:15):
to where there's a constantly again recycled playing of our
radio shows and records and things and excerpts from our records.
We also have a book which you can get at
our site called A Duke of Madness Motors, which contains
an MP three of eighty hours of our radio shows,
(09:39):
and it's a very colorful book with interviews and pictures
and collages and things about our radio years, because that's
how we got started. We started on local radio KPFK
listener supported radio in Los Angeles back in like nineteen
sixty four or something like that.
Speaker 3 (09:59):
We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor,
and now back to the show.
Speaker 4 (10:08):
And that led to a career in recording with Columbia Records,
and then touring and films and oh fifty years of
tom fulry and fun.
Speaker 6 (10:22):
You know, you mentioned the prediction phil of all the
different TV stations. Did you ever think that that, you know,
there'd be so much like reality TV?
Speaker 1 (10:31):
Did you ever you know what I mean? Like, I
don't think that that is something that came out of
left field for me.
Speaker 4 (10:36):
Yeah, it's true. Now, I was the announcer on Big
Brother for three years in the early years of Big Brother.
I think it was in their fourth season, fourth, fifth,
sixth season or something like that, And to me, that
was the best of the reality television because before it's
gotten very kind of convoluted and more produced these days,
(10:59):
although still a fun show, but in the early days
it was more about real people, you know, who wanted
to put themselves into this game like situation and compete
with other people. And it was a lot. And they
were all isolated in this wonderful crazy house with the
cameras all hidden behind it. I could walk around and
(11:20):
look through the two way mirrors and see what they
were doing in there. It was really a gas. But
reality television has indeed taken off to the extent that
we now have a reality president. We have a reality
TV president, and that is the most unreal thing of all. Right, Yes,
(11:41):
you know, the lines between entertainment and reality have become
a news and you name it, have become more and
more and more and more blurred, so that there the
Fireside Theater asked in one of its very earliest albums,
I Think and Don't Crush the dwarfind Me the Pliers
the question what is reality? It's the It's the major
(12:02):
question you should ask yourself every day when you get
out of bed. What is what is my reality? Today?
For me? What is reality? And that's become an increasingly
difficult question to answer, uh in the face of our uh,
the the media overload, the world of the Internet. Our
(12:23):
second album is called how can you be in two
places at once when you're not anywhere at all, And
that's exactly where we find ourselves now. In fact, you
and I are representing it as we speak.
Speaker 6 (12:36):
Yeah, very very very true phil you know, and you
touched on something too. I often find, you know, that
comedy as a whole, you know, it can be so philosophical.
But sometimes you know, during award seasons and stuff like that,
comedy sort of gets you know, pushed aside for the
drama or or something like.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
You know of that nature.
Speaker 6 (12:53):
But you know, somebody, by the way, it's somebody that
you mentioned in your book, by the way, you mentioned
mel Brooks, and you know he has taken that too
to say what you have where It's like, if you
want to, you know, you can make a really great
philosophical statement, but also if you wrap it in comedy,
I think the message just gets through so much better,
you know what I mean?
Speaker 4 (13:13):
Yes, certainly, And of course Woody Allen is another classic
example of that. But mel Brooks is more of a
surrealist than Alan is. In The Blazing Saddles, he absolutely
exploded all of the precepts of the classic Western movie,
you know, to make all kinds of wonderful social and
(13:36):
satirical points, and that's what endeared me to him certainly.
And of course The Two thousand year Old Man is
another classic example of that kind of wonderful surrealistic comedy
that he and his dear partner Carl Reiner put together.
We Fire Sign Theater have been nominated for Grammys three
times for Best Comedy Recording, and we lost to The
(14:00):
two thousand year Old Man at one of the ceremonies.
But hey, we've lost to weird Al who's another great
surrealist and a friend, and to mel Brooks at Carl Ryder,
so you know, it's not exactly chopped Liver, It's okay.
I did a film with Brooks which was an overdubbing
(14:23):
of a very famous French comedy called The Visitors Les Visiteur,
which was a hit for Beaumont Production Company in France,
the biggest grossing comedy in the history of French cinema
back in what the eighties maybe early nineties, and they
decided to overdub the film in English, so they hired
(14:48):
the mel Brooks and he cast a bunch of people,
a lot of my friends and myself, and he thought
it would be funny if we overdubbed it with a
French accent, because you know, of course, the French accent
is very funny. You know clues, Oh it's not my dog,
you know, he's a funny accent. So we all are
speaking like this with a French accent. The problem is
(15:11):
that you are putting word into the mouth of character
on the screen. What are all ever talking? Are already talking,
you see. And in this particular film, the French that
they were using for the most part was a very
fast Parisian French on Pac Disa, and so everything was
(15:32):
very fast. So we had to speak very quickly with
a French accent in order to make it match with
the moving of the lips. Well, when they finally finished
the film, they showed it to a test audience in
Encino and they thought we were speaking French. The film
was never released. It's it's Bell's only failure, my only failure.
(15:56):
But it sure was fun to do. God, it was
fun working with him.
Speaker 6 (16:01):
So how like, for instance, Phil, how would you go
about like even even being like approach for something like that.
Does Melk finds you and say, you know, Phil, we
got to work together on something and then you just
sort of go and you basically of course you're going
to say yes, and you just and.
Speaker 1 (16:14):
You and you just go from there. Or was there
like a whole audition process for that.
Speaker 4 (16:18):
It's always an audition process. It's it's it's humiliating, debilitating.
It is seldom. I wouldn't say it's not now. I
think it's a little different. But back then, Uh, even
if they knew the fire sign theater and knew the
capabilities as a voice actor, there are other people in
(16:41):
the chain of command who may say the fireside, what okay?
So Mel said, oh you should. This guy is great,
he can, he'd be great for it. So we'd have
to do an audition, and then they could. Mel could
play the audition for the producers and I produced to say, okay, Mel,
I got it. You hire it, okay, And that happened
more often than not now. For instance, I was in
(17:03):
a film called The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle okay,
which what was his name anyway, which was directed by
a fellow who hired me des mccannoff, that's his name.
I was hired to read the part of Boris Badenoff
with various actresses who were auditioning for the role of Natasha. Okay,
(17:28):
so I am doing Buddies badinoff and reading the lines
from the script, you know, and these and these famous
actresses were coming in and reading for the part. I mean,
top notch, a rated actresses. Renee Russo finally got it
and she was hysterical in the part. I think that
that she was probably the best thing in the in
(17:50):
the film. But I was astonished that I was reading
with these tremendous actresses. Some of them came in and
they'd memorized the material. Some of them came in with
just the script pages in their hand. Some of them
came in with the script pages written out in their
own hands so that they could read it more easily,
you know. But they were all reading for the role.
(18:12):
And that's and that's the nature of it, you know.
Speaker 6 (18:17):
Yeah, It's it's amazing though, when when you just you're
part of the addition process and you know, you don't
know who's going to come through that door sometimes, you.
Speaker 2 (18:24):
Know what I mean.
Speaker 6 (18:25):
And and I've actually, you know, I've been on both
sides of that as well too, Phil, Yeah, and it's
just you know, you just sometimes you're like, oh my well,
this person's auditioning.
Speaker 1 (18:34):
Well, my god, why don't they have more stuff?
Speaker 6 (18:35):
You know?
Speaker 1 (18:36):
And it's a listen.
Speaker 4 (18:38):
There was a time. Now, first of all, I have
to say, uh, I don't know if you know this,
but yesterday Dick van Dyke performed at a club out
here in the valley called Vitello's with a band of
his own assembling. And he's ninety two years old, okay,
Dick van Dyke. But there was a time, maybe thirty
(19:00):
years ago, when I went in to read for a
television show which had you know, like twelve lines or
something like that, and Dick van Dyke was sitting in
the hallway with the other actors reading for this tiny role.
So you see, it's it's indiscriminates sometimes. But as everybody says,
(19:23):
what's the secret to being a success in our business,
persistence and confidence? Right.
Speaker 6 (19:32):
I have that first part down, phill, But that second
part that's very elusive.
Speaker 4 (19:36):
Well, it's like groudshow. Marx used to always make wise
cracks all the time. Wherever he was, his brain was
always in the comic groove and he was always in
effect trying out material. And his excuse for this was,
you know, like being always on. Was that he even
(19:57):
though maybe sixty percent of what he said fell on
deaf ears, wasn't funny.
Speaker 3 (20:04):
We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor,
and now back to the show.
Speaker 4 (20:13):
That forty percent that worked was his trade. Okay, it
would go into a show or into a movie, right,
And so in a way, you have to just kind
of let it flow, let it happen, and be confident
that eventually somebody's going to hire you. I remember when
(20:33):
I was a commercial actor, and I did a lot
of TV commercials and scores and scores of radio commercials
at the height of my career. But the television commercials
are the hardest because you you'd have to go in
physically auditioned, and the people who are casting you would say, okay,
you have to come in dressed like a fisherman, or
(20:53):
you have to come in your pajamas, you know, because
it's a And you go, why why I come in
looking like a fisherman or you know, looking like I'm
in my pajamas. But no, no, no, you know, the
casting director our agents would say no, no, they want
to see you in character. Okay, so you're doing all
the work for them. Well, at a certain point I
(21:15):
got burned out. I said, I just can't do this anymore.
It's humiliating, and I wasn't getting any jobs. So I
looked back at my date book and I looked at
how many commercial auditions I had to go on camera
auditions I had to go on before I got one,
and it was something like, oh, I don't know, let's
say twenty three. And I looked at how many I
(21:37):
had gone on, and I'd gone on like twenty one.
So I said, okay, I'll go on a couple more auditions,
and wouldn't you know it, I got the next two
jobs I read for. So you see, it's a question
of attrition as well. You see, if you go in
and you read for something, the guy who is perfect
(21:58):
for the part, the guy who is always in his
pajamas and looks like he just got out of bed,
he's gonna get the job. He's also going to get
a job as a you know, I'm talking about guys
who are either character actors or all American looking guys
and gals. Right, they're gonna get a car commercial, fast
food commercial, a breakfast food commercial, you name it. They're
(22:21):
gonna get it because they look the part and everybody
loves them all right, But then they can't do that anymore.
They've got a car commercial, they've got a breakfast commercial,
they've got so and so and so and so. So.
When you go in, if you're second, their second choice,
you become the first choice because they're out of competition.
(22:42):
And that's how it happens. You see.
Speaker 6 (22:47):
That's a great way to think about it, Phil See,
because because you've been around for so many years, you
know those secret ingredients, you know, persistence, confidence, and think
of it as a war of attrition.
Speaker 1 (22:57):
I'm going to keep that fill. That's a really great
way to think of it.
Speaker 4 (23:00):
Since I know your show, you get into the nuts
and bolts of various aspects of the business, the film business, uh,
you know, from editing to acting to lighting and you
name it. But the other little secret about it is
you have to you have to know how to use
a variety of skills to get the work. I would find,
(23:21):
for instance, when let's say the acting gigs dried up
for me because maybe the nature of television had changed
and I wasn't getting as many guest starring parts on
shows like all in the family, which I which I did,
and other you know, top rated shows. I would say,
what the heck am I going to do? And that's
when I turned my attention to voiceover work. I'll concentrate
(23:44):
on the voiceover work. I'll get myself an agent, and
I'll put together a tape and I'll go out and
I'll aggressively pursue that line of work. And then that
paid off for me. And when if that dried up,
I go, well, let's see what's happening in the acting business,
and maybe I can get on stage in a play.
And I got on stage and a play. Another skill,
(24:04):
I have a musical. I can sing, so I get
seen in a musical singing, and I get a musical commercial. Okay,
So one you must use as many skills as you
have and juggle them and feel free that when one
area dries up, turn your attention into another. That's why
I've never really had a manager, which is a good
(24:25):
thing and a bad thing. But because it's good because
I get to keep most of my money. It's a
bad thing because managers can do a lot for you,
especially in a film career. And I regret the fact
that one point in my career. I turned down management,
but I manage my own career okay, and being a
renaissance man, I was able to apply my skills and
(24:48):
focus my skills to the various areas of the business
that seem to be opening to me at the time
during my long career.
Speaker 6 (24:58):
And also too though I've noticed too is you've taken
the bull by the horns, so to speak. And you know,
when maybe you if there wasn't an audition happening, you know,
you worked on your own, your your own material in
you know, maybe you know the Fireside Theater. You know,
you basically you casted yourself. There was a there was
(25:18):
an episode, episode ninety nine, I had on Morgan J.
Freeman and he has a great saying, green light yourself.
He goes, if you have a script, green let it
yourself and don't wait for anybody else. Just take the
bull by the horns and just go for it.
Speaker 4 (25:31):
Absolutely correct. I saw a wonderful movie which I recommend
everybody called it In Search of Fellini, which is written
by Nancy Cartwright the voice of Bart Simpson and Nancy.
It is a film which is a true based on
a true story that she is a young girl in
(25:52):
Ohio became enamored of the films of Frederico Fellini and
decided to go over to Italy her own, supported by
her mother, in order to meet the great man. And
this extraordinary film, which is both beautifully, beautifully made, funny
(26:13):
and heartbreaking at the same time, tells the story of
that adventure. Well. Nancy first translated this into a one
woman show maybe twenty five years ago, okay, and then
based on that show, which she taped and studied and everything,
she decided to make this movie. And now because of
(26:33):
the great success of The Simpsons, she's able. She was
able to create her own production company, Spotted Cow Productions,
and she was able to put the financial energy as
well as her brilliant artistic energies into the creation of
this movie. An absolute example of what you just spoke
of in terms of Fire Sign Theater. One of the
(26:56):
reasons I became I committed myself to the lunacy, to
the mad House. Of the four other Fire Signs, I'm
a Leo two Sagittarians in an Ares was because we
could be our own boss. We were our own producers. Basically,
we'd hire a producer for ears and to help us
with the work we were doing. But we were writing it,
(27:19):
we were acting in it. We were doing almost all
the voices except for a lot of the women when
we could cast women, but we did. We did a
lot of money python women's voices too, as you know.
And we could control the budget, lay out the budget,
we could hire the studio we were working in. We
could control the sound effects and the music, all the
elements of the production so that there wasn't anybody from
(27:42):
the outside telling us what we had to do. We
were creating our own movies for the mind, with all
of our own skills, and that was very satisfying. And
that's one of the reasons why I gave up other
aspects of my career, like a movie career and more
television and more of stage, because The Fire Sign ultimately
(28:05):
kind of satisfied all of those cravings. Since we toured,
we performed all over the country, and then later as
Procter and Bergmann, a two man act half The Witch
of the Fire Sign theater, we were able to tour
even more easily and play places like Canada and How
I Eat. Because in our group, one of the members,
(28:25):
Phil Austin, who is unfortunately one of my late partners.
He didn't like to fly, so he would put his
dogs and his wife into a van and they would
drive from one venue to another when Fire Sign Theater
was touring okay, and that meant that the rest of us,
the other three guys, we could fly into a venue,
(28:47):
go on a radio show, promote okay, and then Phil
would catch up with us in time to do the show.
We made it work, but it's still it limited the
range of success that Fire Sign Theater could have.
Speaker 6 (29:05):
So and now if you if you were to have
like started something like Fire Sign Theater today, you know,
as we talk about technology, it's almost like what some
others have done where you could actually just you know,
record an episode uploaded to your website or you know,
your stuff, like all that stuff like that that they
I see more and more artists doings. The guys from
(29:25):
Mister Science Theater, they've done stuff like that. But but
you know, but as you you know, as you toured
you know, all all around you know, all around the
country too. And then as you toured around we I mean,
what was your your your reaction to to the response
of everything. I mean, well, you were you were you
like just blown away about you know how big this
had become.
Speaker 4 (29:45):
Well, it's a good question, Dave, Yes we were because
we didn't. Your question actually has created several little paths
I'd like to touch upon, and imn have to ask
you that ask the question again.
Speaker 3 (29:59):
We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor,
and now back to the show.
Speaker 4 (30:08):
But basically our success on records. We were given a
spoken arts record contract after our first album, Waiting for
Electrician or someone like Him, by a producer at Columbia
named John McClure, very respected producer, because they were going
to drop us from the album. You know, four guys
(30:29):
doing crazy surrealistic comedy, what's that all about? And he said,
these guys are geniuses. They're they're revolutionizing the recording of
comedy in the industry, and you've we've got to keep
them on, So I'll give them a spoken arts concert contract,
which meant that we got free, unlimited studio time, and
(30:50):
that's what allowed us to write our albums, go in, record,
go back and write some more, go in and record,
and that's why we could make these layered, complex, surrealistic albums,
surrealistic in the style of the goon shows. And later
not Ey Python, who were also surrealistically oriented. But we're
(31:12):
lucky enough to be able to do it visually. So
when we started to tour, because we became successful, people
were playing our records uncensored in their own homes. Right.
We never expected that we'd be broadcast because we were
using obscene language and things sweet language, i should say,
(31:32):
And our albums were very revolutionary and sometimes you know,
touched on social issues that were touchy during the Vietnamese
War period. But all of a sudden, a little thing
called FM radio appeared, and suddenly, in college stations all
over the country, kids could play a forty minute side
(31:55):
of our record without commercial breaks. And people started listening
to us in the college dorms and saying, who are
these guys? Then they go out and buy our records,
and you know, and and and we became famous because
of that, and that's what allowed us to tour and
to meet our our audience. Okay, So it was a conflux,
(32:19):
a confluence congress, if you will, of uh of of
technology that allowed us to reach a particular audience, which
I call a bad head cult. Basically, you know, hip
hip pockets on the backside of America all right, because
we were also the only comedians who were were uh,
(32:41):
reaching to a higher level of comedy nobody else was doing.
You know what Bergmann used to call college boy comedy
okay arcane comedy. Uh. And even though we you know
we were, we were not. We would shame shamelessly stooped
(33:01):
to punning whenever we possibly could. Most of our albums,
in the storytelling had were redolent and redundant, with many, many,
many levels of meaning and understanding. So you could put
our records on and play them over and over again
and get different messages and different meanings and different jokes
(33:22):
out of them. And this is even true if you
played the record in a group of people, because there
were people in that group who would get certain jokes
that other people wouldn't get, and somehow, through the brain
meld of being in their presence, it became funnier for
you as well. See. So that's why I always consider
(33:43):
what we do to be kind of mind messed, mind
manifesting comedy or brain exercising comedy, because we're making funny
connections in the comedy that we're writing. In the writing
itself that exercises your brain to make synapses. That is
the way the brain works. The brain works by making
(34:03):
unconscious and conscious connections to everything, and that's what we do.
We do we did in our writing and Fire Sign Theater.
Speaker 1 (34:14):
It's like, you know, comedy and you're able to put
that idea.
Speaker 6 (34:17):
Like we were saying earlier, that's what I really liked too,
Phil is you know, you're you're you're.
Speaker 1 (34:21):
Able to make a joke. But people say, hey, you
know what, there's some truth to that.
Speaker 6 (34:23):
There's some truth to what they're saying, you know, and
then they sort of, you know, they start thinking more
and more, and you know, as we talk you know this,
you know stuff about the you know, Fire Sign Theater
or even as we were discussing mel Brooks, you know,
a lot of you know, there was there was that satire,
there was a surrealism where on the surface it made
you laugh, but then as you start to sort of
dig a little deeper, you're like, oh, there's a lot
(34:44):
more going on here than you But.
Speaker 4 (34:46):
One of the other things that we did very consciously
was to parody commerc regular commercial radio, news radio or
i should say news broadcasts, uh and standard forms of
entertainment films and television. The album that was our breakthrough
album was Nick Danger Third Eye, Okay, because it was
a parody of a noir detective radio show, and everybody
(35:10):
in our generation who grew up on the radio could
identify with that format. Okay. But what we were often
doing in all of our albums, including I Think We're
Allbosos on this Bus, which predicted by the way, the
computer revolution and was and was and picked up as
a fan Steve Jobs, and I'll demonstrate something bizarre that
(35:32):
came out of that. We were actually deprogramming you. We
were unbrainwashing you, because people who had been raised in
the commercial society at that time in the sixties, particularly
sixties and early seventies, were you know, we're taking for
granted in a way that everything that we heard on
(35:54):
the radio that was selling us things was true. You know,
we had bad breath, we had under our we stank,
our feet didn't smell, they smelled bad. We needed a
fancy car, and we needed a new refrigerator with an
ice maker and all. So we'd use those forms in
order to kind of say no, you don't, no, you don't.
(36:15):
You might need something more important than that, like maybe
a good marriage you know, or a girlfriend you know
or a boyfriend I don't know, but it's yours. What
is reality? What is your reality now? In the terms
of the of the album, uh, I think We're all
Bosa's on this bus. I'm going to I have in
(36:37):
my hand an iPhone and I'm going to ask a
question of Siri. Here we go, Here we go, or
I'm going to make a statement to Siri. This is
worker speaking Hello, Clem, what function can I perform for you?
L Hello, a Clem, what function can I perform for you?
(36:59):
Lots of laugh. This is a reference to a character
that I created in this album I Think We're all
Boso's on this Bus, which is a character named Clem,
and I am a The backstory is I was a
worker at this future fair, which is a government fair
that is designed to sell people on the idea that
(37:21):
everything is going great and there's no unemployment and you know,
there's going to be a job for everybody in the
world of the future. Everything is going to be great,
and it's like a Disneyland that the government creates with
holograms walking around making it happy, and all kinds of
rides you can go on. And I come in because
(37:43):
I've been fired, and I become a hacker, and I
plant a virus in the mainframe computer, which is the
direct readout memory computer, doctor memory, and I bring the
whole system down. Nineteen seventy one, we predicted all of that. Okay. Now,
(38:04):
Steve Jobs, I met him. He was a fan of
this work and it helped to inspire him to continue
to develop the home computer. Okay. And I met him
when I did voices for It's a Bugs Life, which
Dave Osman did voices for as well Pixar, because he
bought into he bought stock in Pixar. And I met
(38:25):
him at the opening night party up in San Francisco,
and he came up to me, or I came up
to him to say, mister John's, nice to meet you,
and he said, I'm a big fan of yours. And
that's when I learned he was a Fire Sign Theater fan.
So he put this hello a clem, what function can
I perform for you answer into Siri as an homage
(38:46):
to the Fire Sign Theater. Talk about cultural impact.
Speaker 6 (38:51):
I was just about to say that Phil, I've never
of anyone have had on the show. I've never had
anybody who has been embedded into the to the Apple
iOS or you to have you know, I mean that
that is that.
Speaker 1 (39:06):
Is freaking phenomenal. That is mind blowing.
Speaker 4 (39:08):
It is. And the other thing, the virus that I
planted in our album is a question that the computer
can answer with a yes or a no. And the
question was why does the porridge bird lay his egg
in the air? Okay, it's a zen question. If you
buy my book Where's My Fortune Cookie, which will be
(39:29):
on Amazon after the twenty eighth, you'll find out the
reason behind that particular koon. But if you say that
to a Siri, she will often say to you, you
can't shut me down that easily. So it's really exciting,
you know, to be a part of the culture like that.
Speaker 6 (39:50):
Yeah, yeah, that's absolutely amazing. Do you like do you
show that like to to you? I don't know if
your grandkids, but I don't know if you do, you
show that to them?
Speaker 4 (39:59):
Or I show it when I go in to a
max store.
Speaker 3 (40:05):
We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor,
and now back to the show.
Speaker 4 (40:14):
Anywhere in the world, you know, to get a battery
or something, I always show it to the people. The
person who's waiting on me. Okay, I share it with
with one of the one of the workers at the
back store. My grandkids. I have two grandkids, Bowen who
is eight and Audrey, who is six, and they live
(40:34):
real close to me now, which is wonderful. Uh. My
daughter Kristin, Kristin Proctor was an actress. She's been raising
her kids now. So but you can google Kristin Proctor.
She was on the wire and uh even topless. She's
a beautiful, beautiful girl and now an even more beautiful
woman of my Norwegian wife. So she's you know, a
(40:55):
honey blonde. But anyway, those kids, they know much more
than I do. You know, their faces are in these
machines all the time, so much so that Jeffrey and
Kristen have to wean them away from the iPads or
from the games. You know. Their favorite show that they
(41:17):
like to watch online. I guess it is is a
show where these two characters, Jen and Ben I don't
know who they are, are talking while they're playing video games.
Do you know about that?
Speaker 1 (41:32):
Yeah, I've actually I do know about that.
Speaker 4 (41:34):
Okay, that's their favorite show. That's their favorite show. Besides
playing video games. They like to hear these two imaginary characters,
these two people reality television, okay, playing the games and
making comments on it. So reality television has even invaded
that area. Now. The other thing is, of course I've
(41:56):
done voices for all kinds of video games, and my
longest run was as Doctor Vidick in Assassin's Creed. And
what was fun about that was that I would wear
this helmet that was developed in Montreal that has, you know,
a feature capturing capabilities, computer capabilities, and so my facial
(42:20):
expressions as I'd read the lines for Doctor Vidick, the
villain in Assassin's Creed, would be translated into a computer
rendering of my head and my face, and then they
would lay the character's face over my face. So when
you play that game, all the expressions that Doctor Vitick
is making are my expressions. That's another what is reality
(42:44):
for you? And I guess the thing that most people
out there would know me best for is that I
was Howard on the Rugrats for fourteen years. I'm the
father of philin lil Okay, and we did what three
movies and and fourteen years or we had a little break,
so maybe seven or eight years of cartoons on Nickelodeon.
(43:07):
They're still being aired, and they're aired all over the world.
I get a request for autographs from China, from Poland,
from Russia, from South America, I mean, England, Australia. You
can't so many countries where unexpectedly they're showing this cartoon.
And I speak seven languages, so it's really fun for
(43:29):
me to be able to write back in Russian to
these people and communicate in all these different languages, or
to learn, you know, a little bit from a new
language so that I can communicate to them in their
own tongue. And it's just really fun. And I get
I got a stack of residuals today from Rugrats. Now
(43:50):
the residuals, because it's not a network program, are like
a dollar fifty six, ten, fifty nine, twelve, thirty sixty
two cents. You know, it does add up, and it's
thrilling to see that I get a stack of these
residuals showing that it's still playing in the United States
and all over the world.
Speaker 6 (44:13):
Yeah, you know, I do. I actually I was a
big fan of Rugrats growing up. Phil and uh, you know,
I I do remember you actually playing the the the
dad of Phil and Lil and.
Speaker 4 (44:23):
Uh, lots of other parts too that you probably don't
know the same. Nancy Cartwright. You know, she she plays Bart,
but she plays a slew of other parts as well.
You know. They they take advantage of our voice talents
as often as they can and give us multiple fun
roles to play.
Speaker 1 (44:42):
Yeah, and very true.
Speaker 6 (44:43):
I've noticed that too with kangas Area, who's also in
The Simpsons. And uh and obviously you know you've done
work on finding Nemo. Uh you know, and uh, you
know a couple of Disney films and I mean, you
know again, it's just it's you never know. That's why
we say, Phil, That's why I I was familiar with
your work and I was.
Speaker 1 (45:01):
Like, you know what he does? He Phil, You've done
more than I thought you did. I was like, I
might even paying attention. He's showing up everywhere and I'm
not even I'm not even noticing it.
Speaker 4 (45:09):
Well, the fun thing was besides getting a chance to
do the first the first Disney film I did wash
the what's it called the something down under the not
the Remainders down under the the Oh, Well, anyway, you
know what I'm talking about. This the DNA doas down Under. Oh,
I can't remember anyway. It was followed by Beauty and
(45:31):
the Beast. Okay, and Beauty and the Beast was the
breakthrough computer animation movie, and it was astonishing to work
on that film. And then the Pixar movies started coming
in Toy Story and as I mentioned, well, I just
mentioned a bunch of monsters incorporated, uh finding Nemo later on,
(45:53):
the most recent film I did for Disney Pixar was
Inside Out. Okay, But my days doing all kinds car
of animated voices and voices for movies and television ended
about i'd say five or six years ago. You can
hear my voices tired today, but that's just because I'm
(46:15):
talking a lot. But for the most part, it's okay.
I had a terrific run doing voices. I started actually
on a show in New York called He I Think
Here and Now. No, it wasn't called You Are There
something like that. I did a Russian accented voiceover for
a segment about the Second World War, and I was
(46:38):
I was twenty two years old, fresh out at college.
I was playing a juvenile delinquent on a soap opera
called Edge of Night. Okay, and then later went on
to understudy Ralph the Singing Nazi on the Sound of Music.
But I go into a studio in New York and
I worked for fifteen minutes and I made three hundred
and sixty five dollars. And that's when when I first
(47:00):
went to myself, there's something to look into here. But
it took me many, many more years before I was
able to really get into the voiceover industry seriously. And
it happened pretty much after the Fire Sign Theater. But
I'm very grateful for all those wonderful years that I
worked with with great improv groups, adding crazy voices and
(47:24):
different languages and different accents to the Muppets movies and
my goodness. If you go and see my list of credits,
you'll see that. You can also visit me at Planetprocter
dot com, where I post a weekly monthly blog now,
but I've been doing that for twenty years and it's
one way of keeping up with what I'm doing. I'm
(47:46):
also on television right now. I should mention on a
PBS documentary about Francis Scott Key by Philip Marshall, called
Francis Scott Key after the song It's a three part
documentary done in an interview style with the ghosts of
famous people who lived in Francis Scott Key's time, including
(48:10):
a character named John Randolph of Roanoke, who's the character
I play, and Marshall interviews us as ghosts in our
own words. We're speaking pretty much our own words. John
Randolph had a high voice, almost annoying, and he was
quite a character. He was a senator in Virginia for
(48:31):
many years and he would hold forth on the floor
of the Senate with his two white Afghan hounds and
his black serving boy, his black servant dressed in Chinese
in a Chinese costume. And you'll get to see all
of that in this amazing documentary. I can't tell you
(48:52):
when it'll be on your local PBS station, but if
you go to the website fs key after the song,
you'll find out. And it's really something something to see.
It's a revolutionary documentary.
Speaker 6 (49:07):
Yeah, and I'll look on the lookout for that, Phil,
And you know I am going to link, by the way,
everybody to all the things that Phil and I are
talking about, all the websites, everything in the show notes.
By the way, I'm always very good at that film.
I'm always very good at linking everything in the show notes.
Oh but by my pleasure, Phil and I and I
know we're we're we're starting to run out of time film.
(49:28):
So I just want to ask, you know, obviously your
book is coming out September twenty eighth of this year,
twenty seventeen, where's my fortune Cookie? You have quotes on
the back from from weird Al Yankovic Pendulette, and I'm
you know of all you know, all these these these
are great you know people you know have you know,
giving you all these these quotes.
Speaker 4 (49:49):
Tom and Tom Heikman too.
Speaker 3 (49:52):
We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor
and now back to the show.
Speaker 4 (50:02):
Yeah, yeah, politically one of my heroes. And I tell
all these people which is great.
Speaker 6 (50:09):
Yeah, that's actually was going to ask you, was you
know of you know of all the things in the book.
You know, I mean you touch on so much because
like like for one, I mean I had in my
listener to talk about but I know you had amish
upbringing and I was gonna try to touch on that.
But where you know, you see how quickly these interviews go,
It's like your blink fill and they're over.
Speaker 4 (50:29):
Well, I'm seventy seven years old. I've got a lot
to talk about because I can still remember it. That's
the good part. And yes, I'm of Amish Irish ancestry.
And if you want to read about that, you can
go online and find a book called Rosanna of the Amish,
written by my great uncle Joseph Yoder, which tells about
the roots of that Amish Irish connection back in the
(50:52):
nineteenth century, which is very unusual. And I guess that's
why I'm so unusual.
Speaker 6 (51:00):
Yeah, there's always amazing tie tie in, Phil, there's always
amazing tie ins. And about the book too, is there anything?
Is there any story you know, just to as you
talk about the book, as we said of wrap up
this whole interview, is there any sort of one story
that really stands out that you really you just couldn't
(51:20):
wait to retell?
Speaker 4 (51:22):
Sure? Well, the fact is the book is called Where's
My Fortune Cookie? It has on the front cover a
picture of Peter Bergman and myself hiding under a restaurant
table with Chinese food on top of it. It relates
to the fact that Peter and I survived the Golden
Dragon massacre in San Francisco, five killed, eleven wounded back
(51:45):
in nineteen seventy seven, I think it was. And that
particular gang Lend shooting that we were unfortunately in the
middle of and not hiding under the table, occurred on
the same day that I learned that my Norwegian wife
Barbreau was pregnant with my daughter Kristen, who is living
(52:08):
nearby now. And the really weird thing about it, which
is all recounted in the book, is that it was
psychically predicted to me by a friend about a month
and a half before it happened. But all of this
is in the book. And it's called Where's My Fortune Cookie?
Because when Peter Bergmann, who died of leukemia about five
(52:30):
years ago, at one of his memorial services, a friend
of ours, one of the patrons of the Firesign Theater,
made it passed out fortune cookies to everybody with Peter
Bergman's date of birth and death and aligne a title
of one of the Firecient Theater albums. And I asked her,
I said, Gretchen, that was really sweet of you to
(52:51):
do the fortune cookie thing. And I said, you did
that because of the Golden Dragon massacred, didn't you? And
she said, what I said, You know, Peter and I
survived a Chinese gangland shooting. She said, you did. I
never heard of that. I said, well, well why did you?
Why did you make the fortune cookies? Then she said,
(53:16):
Peter came to me in a dream and he told
me I never got my fortune cookie. And it's all
true that the book is filled with stories like that.
Things like that have happened to me my entire life,
and it ain't over yet.
Speaker 6 (53:37):
You'll have to come back on Phil when you write
this sequel, for the next for the next fifty years
that you're in show business.
Speaker 4 (53:44):
Well, listen, when the book comes out, I'll be back
in town, probably at the end of October. Yeah, So
maybe when we get into the holiday season we can
figure out another excuse to talk together again.
Speaker 1 (53:59):
Phil.
Speaker 6 (53:59):
I would love to talk to you anytime, because, like
I said, there's a bunch of questions I didn't get
to ask you, But I would love to chat again.
And just in case people didn't hear it the first time, Phil,
where can we'll find you out online?
Speaker 4 (54:12):
Planet Procter dot com is the best way. And if
you like what you see there and you want to
subscribe to the newsletter. It's free. You just send me
there's my email address there, and you just send me
your address and say I want to want to become
a planeteer, send me the planet and I'll see that
you're in a mailing group.
Speaker 1 (54:33):
And everyone.
Speaker 6 (54:34):
I will link to that in this show notes, along
with the link to pre order Phil's book Where Is
My Fortune Cookie, out September the twenty eighth of this year,
twenty seventeen. Phil Procter, It has been an absolute blast, sir.
Speaker 4 (54:46):
Thank you very much. I hope I didn't talk your
ear off.
Speaker 1 (54:49):
No, not at all, not at all.
Speaker 4 (54:51):
Great talking to you, Dave saying.
Speaker 1 (54:54):
Oh, thank you so much.
Speaker 3 (54:55):
FO.
Speaker 6 (54:55):
It was great talking to you as well. And you
know I'm going to be on the and whenever you're
in town, everyone to come back.
Speaker 1 (55:00):
Please let me know.
Speaker 4 (55:01):
Thank you, we'll do it again. Okay, bye for now.
Speaker 3 (55:05):
I want to thank Dave so much for doing such
a great job on this episode. If you want to
get links to anything we spoke about in this episode,
head over to the show notes at Bulletproof Screenwriting dot tv.
Forward slash four forty four. Thank you so much for
listening to guys.
Speaker 1 (55:17):
As always, keep on writing no matter what, I'll talk
to you soon.
Speaker 2 (55:21):
Thanks for listening to the Bulletproof Screenwriting podcast at Bulletproofscreenwriting
dot tv.
Popular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Ruthie's Table 4
For more than 30 years The River Cafe in London, has been the home-from-home of artists, architects, designers, actors, collectors, writers, activists, and politicians. Michael Caine, Glenn Close, JJ Abrams, Steve McQueen, Victoria and David Beckham, and Lily Allen, are just some of the people who love to call The River Cafe home. On River Cafe Table 4, Rogers sits down with her customers—who have become friends—to talk about food memories. Table 4 explores how food impacts every aspect of our lives. “Foods is politics, food is cultural, food is how you express love, food is about your heritage, it defines who you and who you want to be,” says Rogers. Each week, Rogers invites her guest to reminisce about family suppers and first dates, what they cook, how they eat when performing, the restaurants they choose, and what food they seek when they need comfort. And to punctuate each episode of Table 4, guests such as Ralph Fiennes, Emily Blunt, and Alfonso Cuarón, read their favourite recipe from one of the best-selling River Cafe cookbooks. Table 4 itself, is situated near The River Cafe’s open kitchen, close to the bright pink wood-fired oven and next to the glossy yellow pass, where Ruthie oversees the restaurant. You are invited to take a seat at this intimate table and join the conversation. For more information, recipes, and ingredients, go to https://shoptherivercafe.co.uk/ Web: https://rivercafe.co.uk/ Instagram: www.instagram.com/therivercafelondon/ Facebook: https://en-gb.facebook.com/therivercafelondon/ For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iheartradio app, apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.