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CAMA WORLD...

To Bob Geldof,

"You are one of Africa's
greatest Hero's."

Nelson Mandela,
Feb. 1, 2007

FEATURED ARTICLE

MEET PHIL AND MONICA
He co-created 'Everybody Loves Raymond.' She played Robert's
wife, Amy

By KEVIN D. THOMPSON
Palm Beach Post Television Writer
Friday, November 09, 2007

Monica Horan & Phil Rosenthal

Write what you know.

Sure, it's a time-worn cliché. But it's a time-worn cliché because that's exactly what most writers do.

Everybody Loves Raymond: Inside the Writers' Room

When:7:30 p.m. Saturday; 2p.m. Sunday.

Where: Kravis Center.

Tickets: $40 (Saturday), $35 (Sunday).

Phone:(561) 832-7469.

Online: www.kravis.org


Phil Rosenthal certainly did.

And millions of TV watchers are still laughing because of it.

Rosenthal was the co-creator of Everybody Loves Raymond, the classic sitcom about the wonderfully dysfunctional Barone family that ran on CBS for nine side-splitting seasons.

After a sluggish start in 1996 when the show debuted in 73rd place, Raymond went on to become one of television's most beloved comedies. Viewers will be watching the bickering Barones - henpecked sportswriter, Ray (Ray Romano); his nagging wife, Debra (Patricia Heaton); Ray's mopey cop brother, Robert (Brad Garrett); and their warring parents, Marie (Doris Roberts) and Frank (Peter Boyle) - 50 years from now thanks to that wonderful TV afterlife called syndication.

Phil Rosenthal & Monica Horan

Several days before television and film writers went on strike, we caught up with the couple who chatted about everything from how Raymond served as therapy for their marriage to why they think 30 Rock is hilarious.

Question: What are you guys doing this weekend at the Kravis?

Phil: It's a live sex act. They didn't tell you?

Monica: Nobody wants to see that, believe me.

Phil: We tell stories of the terrible fights we got into at home and then we show clips of the Raymond episodes these fights became.

Monica: We made money off our unhappiness. We love doing this. Doing that show was so incredible. It was such a part of our marriage.

Question: Tell me one of the stories.

Phil: I actually gave my parents a Fruit of the Month Club (gift basket) and they reacted as if I sent them a box of plutonium. That made it into the pilot.

Monica: I was so mad at them. How could you not be grateful that your son gave you this gift?

Phil: I never learned because it kept happening. It happened with a toaster I sent them. They exchanged it for a coffee maker.

Question: What have both of you been up to?

Phil: I wrote a book about the (series) called You're Lucky You're Funny: How Life Becomes A Sitcom. It's about my whole stupid life and how maybe you can make a show out of your whole stupid life. It's helped a lot of people. Jim Brooks (the Oscar and Emmy-winning producer, writer and director) optioned the book and I just finished the screenplay so it will be the first movie I'll direct.

Monica: In addition to being a full-time mother, I'm not embarrassed to say that I've become a philanthropist. We were very fortunate with Everybody Loves Raymond going into syndication, which tends to make one very, very comfortable. It was time to give back. It's become a full-time job and the greatest job I've had next to playing Amy.

Question: Raymond has been off the air for two years. Do you miss the show?

Phil: No. The truth is, I miss being in the (writers') room with the guys because that's where the fun is. And yet, I see them all the time, still. They're like my brothers. We travel together all the time. It's really nauseatingly sweet. What I loved the most is that we got out before the show became lousy. We knew we would all miss the experience and miss doing it, but it's better now to have the No. 1 syndicated show and not have the lousy episodes. I don't want the grandkids years from now watching the show on their wristwatch or on their spaceship and saying, "These are the ones grandpa just did for the money."

Question: When you watch the reruns in syndication, do you find yourself saying, "This episode could've been better" or "This joke could've been funnier?"

Phil: Sometimes there's a little bit of that. But when you're doing it, you're in the middle of this firestorm. The pace is so crazy. You have to do one every week and you're doing multiple things at once - you're writing the show at the same time you're filming one for this week and you're casting one for next week and you're editing the show from two weeks ago, so you're overwhelmed and you don't have this luxury of time to really, really craft the perfect thing. But I would say we got close on several.

Question: Your show worked on so many levels. It had a great cast, wonderful writing and it was a show just about anyone with a family could relate to. Why do you think it worked so well for so long?

Phil: There's one word: Relatability. That's what we hear more than anything else. We're in 140 countries and we get letters from Sri Lanka saying, 'That's my mother!' Now how do I know your mother in Sri Lanka? I was writing my mother. We took very, very sharp observations about what was going on in our own lives and writing about how we felt about them and how our wives felt about them. We tried to capture the real feelings that you would have.

Question: Since the episodes were based on real-life experiences, did that make things difficult at home? Monica, did you feel like you needed to censor yourself or act differently so you wouldn't give your husband new episode material?

Monica: I'll tell ya, he'd always joke and say if he needed a new episode, he'd come home and start a fight with me. But the reality was, if you can laugh at yourself, things will be better. And I think Phil is too smart to write something that would really lead to divorce. The show was very truthful and very honest.

Ray Ramano & Phil Rosenthal Celebrate with "Everybody Loves Raymond" Cast

Question: When you guys were having arguments, during that moment, were you like, "Man, this is going to make a great episode!"

Phil: One of the writers on the show, his wife would notice a look in his eye as they were fighting and she'd say, "This is not for the show!" Then he told her the amount of money he'd get for the script and she says, "OK, this one can be for the show." The show was therapy in a way.

Question: Do you miss having the show as therapy?

Phil: Yes! I have to take up some kind of abusive behavior at home.

Monica: He has to talk to me. He hates it. He actually must communicate.

Question: Talk about working in television and all the pressure that goes with it. What was the most challenging part and how did you deal with it?

Phil: First of all, the internal pressure is great because you want to do a good job. Then you meet people who have agendas which don't always mesh with yours. Sometimes they're hidden agendas and sometimes these people are saboteurs. I mean real saboteurs. People who are intentionally trying to sabotage your career because they want your job. I ran into that early on. That was the most challenging. But once we got over that hump and once we were somewhat successful, the saboteurs couldn't bother me.

Question: How did you deal with that?

Phil: Just by keeping the nose down, doing the work and making sure the work was undeniable so that nobody could mess with me.

Question: I've often called Raymond the I Love Lucy of our generation. It'll live in syndication forever because the issues your show dealt with will be just as easy to relate to in 50 years as they are today. What are your thoughts on being called the I Love Lucy of your generation?

Phil: It's a tremendous honor. It's more than we could've ever hoped for. All the stars and the planets have to line up for one of these things to get on the air. To get on the schedule, that's a miracle. When I wrote the pilot script, I was hoping maybe someone would like it. All of this is 100 percent gravy.

Question: Network sitcoms have been in a slump in recent years, but we're seeing some signs of a resurgence with shows like The Office, 30 Rock, How I Met Your Mother. Why do you think there are so many bad comedies on TV?

Phil: It's not just TV. What was the last terrific movie? What was the last great play on Broadway? How many works of art in a museum really speak to you? How many people do you really like? The short answer is because there's mostly lousy everything. For anything to be good is a rarity. A wonderful rarity.

Question: Which comedies do you find funny?

Phil: I love 30 Rock, The Office and The Daily Show. I just love them because they're funny. They're not that relatable. But if you don't have the relatability, then you really better be funny.

Monica: In my opinion, Tina Fey is The Great White Hope. She runs that show and she's the lead actress. It can be done!

Question: Asking a TV show producer to pick his favorite episode is like asking a parent to pick his favorite child. But I'm going to do it anyway. What are some of your favorite episodes?

Monica: They are all so special, but I love the Italy shows. It was so personal to Phil and executed so beautifully and it was hilarious. It had it all for me.

Phil: There was a poll that asked people what their favorite episodes were and I agreed with them. One of the episodes they picked was the PMS show.

Monica: I am not lying, there is a scene in that episode that goes on for 10 lines, maybe more, that's verbatim from my marriage. The great thing, I literally cried after seeing it and I think my PMS is cured.

Question: I loved "The Angry Family" and the one about the suitcase was one of the funniest episodes I'd ever seen. The fact that you could make a 22-minute episode about a suitcase left on a staircase funny was amazing.

Phil Rosenthal & Writers holding their Emmy's
for Best Writing "Everybody Loves Raymond"

Phil: That really happened to one of our writers. What was amazing about that episode was that seven years into the show, we thought we covered everything and every fight you could have and here was this beautiful new one which was so universal. Every marriage has this Mexican standoff where nobody says anything. What I loved about "The Suitcase" was that it was literally and figuratively baggage.

Question: Take me inside the writers' room. When you guys came in, were you like, "This is what happened to me last night." Is that how it worked?

Phil: That's exactly how it worked and I stole that idea from Carl Reiner who did The Dick Van Dyke Show. The writers would come in and he would say, "What happened in your house last week?" When I read that, I said that's exactly what I want our show to be like.

Question: Monica, what was it like working with Brad Garrett? Have you watched his show on Fox?

Phil: Monica is jealous that he got married to somebody else.

Monica: I have feelings. I'll tell ya the funniest thing. The first time I saw his picture with that other woman (played by Joely Fisher) on the buses and billboards, it was the oddest feeling. I felt like a divorced woman and they were parading the relationship around. I love seeing him in Raymond.

Question: What's next for you, Phil? Do you feel like you have to top yourself? How do you follow Raymond?

Phil: I play The Kravis Center in West Palm Beach, is how I top it all. I'm going to Russia to show them how to make sitcoms and they want to do a Russian version of Raymond. Sony Pictures is going to make a documentary of me doing that. I want to go before it gets 30 below. I don't want to die from going outside.

By KEVIN D. THOMPSON