Tuesday, March 12, 2019

Pheaturing Rupert Holmes


If you like Piña Coladas, and getting caught in the rain, if you're not into yoga, if you have half a brain, if you like making love at midnight, in the dunes of the cape, I'm the love that you've looked for, write to me, and escape. Ha! I love that song. Hey, kids, welcome to the Phile for a Tuesday. In the Piña Colada song, the guy wants a girl with half a brain. Is she likes getting caught in the rain, she is half-brained. By the way, I love doing this blog thing more than Rupert Holmes likes Piña Coladas and getting caught in the rain.
How rude! Nearly fifty people, including actresses Felicity Huffman and Lori Laughlin, have been indicted by the FBI and the U.S. Attorney's office in Boston for allegedly bribing college athletics coaches and entrance exam administrators to get their kids into elite American universities. A tale of vast wealth, fraud, and privilege... not to mention the "Desperate Housewives" and "Full House" connections... have turned this absolutely bonkers indictment into the new Fyre Festival. People have to laugh, or else they'll cry about the myth we've been sold known as "meritocracy." The details are pretty insane. According to the indictment, Huffman (aka Lynette from "Desperate Housewives") participated in a scheme to get her daughter extra time and an answer-correcting proctor, and when she learned that the high school provided a presumably non-criminal administrator, she responded, "ruh ro!" like Scooby Doo. Other parents also Photoshopped their childrens' heads onto athletes' bodies to pretend that they could join the school's varsity teams, while also allegedly bribing the coaches. People are having fun with Huffman's old tweets, particularly this one...


There is always a tweet. Donald Trump Jr. tried to dunk on Huffman, forgetting that he's Donald Trump Jr. 


Some of you may recall that Huffman is married to fellow actor and now unindicted co-conspirator William H. Macy. According to the indictment, he was frauding with the fraud, too. The bribe to the proctor was laundered through a charity, because that's way easier than just making their daughter learn the word "lugubrious." One could say that William H. Macy... has no shame.
If you have yet to tumble down the rabbit hole of the Melania Trump body double conspiracy theory, then let me tell you, it's a beautiful chunk of the Internet to experience. Regardless of whether or not the theory holds water (my soul is firmly convinced that it does), it's deeply entertaining to examine the photos that keep this theory going. Over the weekend, Internet detectives beheld a new image that suggests maybe, just maybe, Melania has a stunt double for PR purposes. Over the weekend, Donald Trump and Melania visited Alabama to pay respects to the twenty-three people who died in a deadly tornado. While there, they had a photo taken in front of the memorial...


The photo quickly went viral due to how "off" Melania looks, and many feel it is further proof that she has a body double. People have really done their homework on this body double theory, so we can each truly study it and make up our own minds. Mostly though, people saw the photo as another fresh opportunity to make jokes about the theory. After all, who doesn't love a good conspiracy theory now and again?! If you look at history and all the shenanigans that have gone down, a lot of conspiracy theories don't feel out of left field. This goes double under the Trump administration. If there IS a body double, or multiple, the people of American are beyond ready to hear their testimonies. If they exist, I am beyond ready for Melania's body doubles to step forward and spill the insider information. I have a feeling Mueller would be more than down to interview them as well.
Chris Evans, aka Steve Rogers aka Captain America, is consistently hailed as a "woke bae" for his anti-Trump tweet, but recently had a slip up when he smiled with a controversial Republican congressman who loves his character. Rep. Dan Crenshaw is famous for having been made fun of by sex symbol Pete Davidson, but is also known in other circles as the moderator of a Facebook group that promoted the deadly right-wing Charlottesville rally and was a home for Pizzagate conspiracy theorists and racist fun. Evans yukked it up with Crenshaw, who showed off his glass eye sporting Captain America's logo. Many of Cap's fans were not impressed. Maybe Crenshaw should refresh himself on Captain America's antifa history. It doesn't get anymore "antifa" than this.


Tucker Carlson, a hate-mongering TV host who looks like an evil Snoopy balloon, makes his living telling your racist uncle and grandparents to be afraid of anyone who isn't Donald Trump. According audio uncovered by Media Matters, before Carlson was mainstreaming conspiracy theories like "childcare is a globalist conspiracy theory endangering white people," he was sharing his thoughts on underage girls and sex with Bubba the Love Sponge. Like Trump himself, Carlson called into shock jock radio shows to share his views on "young girls sexually experimenting" and the right of adults to marry 15-year-olds. Among his hot takes, Carlson defended Warren Jeffs, a convicted pedophile who married underaged girls off to adult men. He also has a lot of thoughts on the "sex lives" of 13-year-olds, saying that a teacher who molests 13-year-old boys is, in fact, doing a favor for 13-year-old girls "So my point is that teacher’s like this, not necessarily this one in particular, but they are doing a service to all 13-year-old girls by taking the pressure off. They are a pressure relief valve, like the kind you have on your furnace." he said. Rather than apologize, Carlson invited anybody who doesn't appreciate his thoughts on children to come debate him on TV for ratings. If you're a woman who dares to challenge him, prepare to be called ugly and the C-word.
An Illinois grand jury indicted fake hate crime actor (who has also appeared on "Empire"), Jussie Smollett, adding to the frenzy around the hate crime that wasn't. The grand jury charged Smollett for disorderly conduct and filing a false police report, in two separate sets of charges for each time he spoke to the police. Each felony carries a maximum of four years in prison, so yeah, Smollett is looking at up to 64 years (!!!). That's a lot of years, especially considering the fact that Trump's campaign manager Paul Manafort was sentenced to only three years for literally conspiracy against the United States.
Do you kids like Hot Pockets? Have you seen the new one that just came out? No? Here it is...


"There's literally just a fucking dog in there." Hahahaha. I'm laughing. So, if I had a TARDIS I would go fly in a plane in the early 1960s...


It'll be just me and six flight attendant's. Did you see the State of the Union a few weeks ago? Not only did some Democrats give shady looks but Republicans did as well. Like Rep. Rashida Tlaib for example.


There has been some satisfying clapbacks at Fox News in Internet history. Check this out...


"You’re a millionaire funded by billionaires... and what they want you to do is scapegoat immigrants instead of talking about their tax evasion" was such a good read that Tucker Carlson refused to air it. It's so warm down here in Florida and so cold up north right now. Did you know that minus four degrees looks like a dude taking a dump? No? Take a look...


Ha! Told you! I know, that's so stupid, that's as stupid as...


Okay, let's have a laugh, shall we?


Seventy-year-old George went for his annual physical. All of his tests came back with normal results. Dr. Smith said, "George, everything looks great physically. How are you doing mentally and emotionally? Are you at peace with yourself, and do you have a good relationship with your God?" George replied, "God and me are very close. He knows I have poor eyesight, so he's fixed it so that when I get up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom (poof!) the light goes on when I pee, and then (poof!) the light goes off when I'm done." "Wow," commented Dr. Smith, "that's incredible!" A little later in the day Dr. Smith called George's wife. "Thelma," he said, "George is just fine. Physically he's great, but I had to call because I'm in awe of his relationship with God. Is it true that he gets up during the night and (poof!) the light goes on in the bathroom, and then (poof!) the light goes off?" Thelma exclaimed, "That old fool! He's peeing in the refrigerator again!"




Go ahead, treat him like furniture. He’s too exhausted from dedicating his entire life to your well being to do anything about it, you ungrateful jerk! Hahahaha.



If you spot the Mindphuck let me know. Okay, not long ago I introduced you to this guy who likes to get into fights for no reason. Well, he got into a fight earlier today and wants to tell us about it. So, please welcome to the Phile once again...




Me: Hey, Porkchop, what's up?

Porkchop Eddie: I got inna a fight earlier almost.

Me: So, what happened and with you?

Porkchop Eddie: I was headed to a concert. Crossing at a crosswalk, a car aggressively pulled up on me and I screamed it was disrespecting me and tried to fight it. Tried to fight a car.

Me: Oh, Eddie, who among us hasn't tried to fight a car?

Porkchop Eddie: I know, right? I'm gonna go to the bar and have a brewski, wanna come?

Me: Uh, no, I have a blog to finish. Rupert Holmes is here. Portkchop Eddie, kids.



Ohhhhh, man, this is so cool. The 95th book to be pheatured in the Phile's Book Club is...


The great Michael Caine will be the guest on the Phile in a few weeks. Can you believe it?! I can't. Now for some...


Phact 1. Imported wines are often giant “boxed wines” when they’re shipped. They are a huge bag of wine traveling inside a cargo container.

Phact 2. Vodka was originally produced in the 8th century in Poland.

Phact 3. Police broke up a Lego heist ring last year for stealing $40,000 worth of bricks and found that one of the suspects was also in possession of another $160,000 of bricks, which was 18 pallets worth.

Phact 4. The above ground section of rail track between Bondi Junction and Edgecliff was meant to be Woollhara Station.

Phact 5. In order for NASA to recognize you as an astronaut, you must travel higher than 50 miles from the Earth’s surface.



Today's pheatured guest is a British-American composer, singer-songwriter, musician, dramatist and author. He is widely known for the hit singles "Escape (The Piña Colada Song)" and "Him" (1980). His latest release is a box set titled "Songs That Sound Like Movies: Complete Epic Recordings." Please welcome to the Phile... Rupert Holmes.


Me: Hello, Rupert, welcome to the Phile. How are you?

Rupert: I'm thrilled to be here.

Me: When I read your bio I was surprised we have a few things on common... we were both born in England then moved to Long Island. You're not British, right? Where in England were you born? 

Rupert: I lived outside of Manchester. There's milage saying I'm British even though I didn't sound British at all. I was born in a town outside of Manchester in a town called Northwich, and most people from England correct me and say, "You mean Norridge." But no, actually it's Norwich. It's an ICA factory town and I grew up on a street that looked like the opening credits for "Coronation Street." I remember at the end of the street there were these three Ica brick chimneys spouting soot into the air. The air had beautiful kind of scent to it which was probably killing people but I loved it. I really loved being there and I actually have memories of age three and I remember Guy Fawkes Day there, and the bus that took us there. The bus felt like a living room, had nice little lamps inside. I wondered how were we moving in a living room. It was a green double decker bus.

Me: How and when did you move to Long Island?

Rupert: My dad was an American G.I., he was serving in England after the war, he met my mother there who was a beautiful literate British girl and they fell in love, they were married and I was born there. When I was 3-years-old my parents said we were going to move to a place called Long Island. I thought Long Island... pirates and palm trees, but it was Nanuet, a really tattered suburb of New York. The first words that were said to me, I must of had a British accent for about two months, were "get off my property!" My English accent went out the window in about a week. I still grew up saying "coffee" and "dog" and I got beaten up for that.

Me: I first moved to America when I was five and the first thing we did was go to Jack in the Box and I freaked out when we went through the drive-thru and the "clown box" talked to us. Was it a big culture shock for you being in America then, Rupert?

Rupert: Well, I had a split personality. I didn't fit quite well on wither side, I felt a little bit like Lawrence of Arabia, when he went back to England and couldn't quite fit in, he wasn't quite the Arabian horseman that he thought he was.

Me: Who were your influences with songwriting and telling stories?

Rupert: My mother raised me to believe the American revolution was a diplomatic blunder on the part of George Washington and all would be remedied, so she fed me tons of British creativity. I grew up with a lot of Noel Coward, Oscar Wilde, I loved the short stories by G.K. Chesterson about Father Brown, which is now a TV series that doesn't resemble those stories. Yet I was an American growing up with the Everly Brothers and Elvis and all that stuff. I certainly took to the writings of Raymond Chandler who by the way was British, a lot of people thought he was an American writer. He wrote the kind of stuff my song "Brass Knuckles" is made off.

Me: Okay, so, when I got the request to interview you I thought, yeah, I can ask you about that  Piña Colada song and Guardians of the Galaxy, which it was in, and I didn't know what else to talk to you about, even though you have a new box set out. Then I read all the stuff you've done and I was like wow. I never realized you wrote the play The Mystery of Edwin Drood. What was that about?

Rupert: Ha ha. It was based on an uncompleted novel by Charles Dickens. As far as the Piña Colada song I sing "I thought it wasn't half bad." It's not really an American expression, it's more of a British thing.

Me: With the song "Brass Knuckles" did you write it as a story first then turned it into a song? 

Rupert: That's an interesting question that no one ever asked. Ummm... to some degree yes, in other words with the lyrics of "Brass Knuckles" the sentences are quite long. It's a very simple rhyme scheme. I can write about three quarters of the sentence if I was writing a pulp novel, then I'd say, "Oh, God, what rhymes with 'love'? Comes to shove, wings of a dove, I'm not going to say love." So to some degree I will start to unspool the song as if I didn't have to worry about it rhyming.

Me: That's a cool way to write a song. Okay, so, back to you writing Broadway musicals... was it hard for you to write for Drood?

Rupert: When I started writing my first Broadway musical, Joe Papp, it's producer, who produced The Chorus Line said to me, "Great, you will write the songs, who will write the book?" I said, "Well, I thought I would." The book is the script, there actual dialogue in case your readers didn't know. He said, "Can you write a book of the musical?" I said, "My God, I had to do complete movies in three minutes where everything has to rhyme. For me to write something that doesn't have to rhyme, that's the most liberating thing I'll ever experience in my life! It should be a breeze."

Me: So, your new box set is called "Songs Like Sound Like Movies." Do you always write songs that are stories, Rupert?

Rupert: Yeah, I always wanted to be a story teller and I always wanted to be a composer. When I was growing up and was 18-years-old I thought is there someway I can have my cake and eat it too. Which by the way is a completely logical goal, cake wise. To have ones cake and never to eat it seems misguided. Eating without having it is lunacy so it's really not overreaching to say "have my cake and eat it too." How can I be a story teller, I didn't know anyone in musical theater, but I was an 18-year-old guy with hair down to my shoulders and I played a lot of instruments and tin pan alley was a free market at that time. I could intrude my way into that world and I thought I could make mini movies in three minute songs. That was my long term goal. Let me tell stories and view the lyrics as a script and the arrangement as the cinematography and find the instrumentation that fits that story and don't worry what I'll do about for the next story. With my first album it doesn't have the same band or accompaniment. One story is about a saxophone in the 1940s that never takes a solo so I reassembled the Glenn Miller Orchestra. Another song would be an opera and require a cinematic operatic nature, and another one would be solo on piano because that's what the song requires. It was all part of the attitude I had going into making my own music. I didn't get to do that in the beginning, in the beginning I had to do what people paid me to do to get my toenail into the door.

Me: I looked at your titles of your songs like "I Don't Want to Hold Your Hand," "Everything Gets Better When You're Drunk" and "Studio Musician." Do you think about the titles when you write? 

Rupert: I say nine out of five times out of ten the title proceeds everything. "Brass Knuckles," "Widescreen," "Second Saxophone," very often it's the topic of the song. My biggest hit, "Escape" the last words I ever wrote for that song were " Piña Colada." That one needed a parenthetical, so hence in parenthesis "The Piña Colada Song." That's one where I didn't start with  Piña Colada's as an idea. The idea was the couple was looking for some sort of escape.

Me: Do you keep a book of song ideas and titles?

Rupert: I usually take the idea and write the song or put it away thinking someday I'll go into that "trunk" and bring it to life. Usually I don't, I got to write it in real time. I've been trying to write a song for centuries now it seems called The Cruelty of Mirrors. It's about someone walking through a day thinking he looks pretty good and he looks at his shadow and it looks like there's a pretty stealth guy there. Then he turns and accidentally passes a mirror and there's this schlub. Sometimes this reality has this terrible way slapping you in the face. It's like that's not me in the picture, is it? I've never been able to make a song out of that. There's ones that start and I could never get past the first verse. One a few occasions I've written the first verse, set the song aside for a few years and then finished it. My second biggest hit, "Him," I wrote the first verse but didn't have the chorus for it for two years.

Me: Okay, so, I have to ask about "Escape (The  Piña Colada Song)" which you already mentioned. How did that song come about and how did it get to be the ONE?

Rupert: The evolution of the song is such daft. I was making my fifth album and I was a successful songwriter at that time. My first album Barbra Streisand discovered it and recorded some of those songs, and although I had success as a songwriter at that point I had yet to have a real true hit record from my first four albums. I had one from my fourth album that started to climb the chart but as it did the record label went out if business and that kind of killed any chance there. I was finishing up work on this fifth album called "Partners in Crime" which was mostly misadventures of couples. I had a song called "People Need Other People" that I liked and I decided to record that to balance out the many ballads on the album. I did the recording session and my drummer on that album, Leo Adamian, said, "You know, I could use a second drummer on this." I said great, and so we got a second drummer and usually when we did a second take of a song we do take one and everyone rushes into the control room to hear how it sounds, to hear how the drums are miked, bass is boomy and has a nice sound to it. We'll do some adjustments and go out and do another take in earnest. We came in to listen to take one and the take was sloppy, it was a mess. I knew we could do better than that take. I looked and that second drummer we bought in was passed out on the floor. He clearly was not going to be playing any other songs that evening and we had to pack up and put it to bed. I'm running out of time on the album and definitely running out of budget. I didn't have enough money to book another session with more musicians, I didn't know what to do. I found in that first sloppy take sixteen bars of music that were tight, where the track had really good pocket. I did something at that tight was not heard of but is now common in rap... but I had to do it analogue, not digitally. We duplicated those sixteen bars which was tight to another twenty-four track master machine over and over and over again and then with razor blade and tape we cut together sixteen bars until I ended up with a four minute loop of those sixteen bars. If you listen carefully to the record you'll hear those guitar riffs repeat every sixteen bars. Now I had a track which was good, I didn't have to record a new track. But now I had to have a new song to fit that track. I knew it had to be a story song because the main track wasn't that diverse, so I had to make the story the key feature of the song. I wrote a lot of lyrics to try to fit it, I wrote lyrics that sounded too much like a Billy Joel song to me. The night before the last day I'm booked to record the last cut on the album, it's 1 a.m. and I don't have a song. I look across the table I'm working at in my apartment and I see the Village Voice newspaper which at that time had a ton of personal ads in it. Personal ads always amused me, I'd read them for story ideas for songs, and what always amused me was no one ever took a total ad that said "loser seeks someone of equal despondency," actually if they did they might do well. But people describe themselves glowingly. I always think if they're so wonderful why do they need to place an ad, couldn't they just walk down the street and attract people? Then I thought play fair, don't be cynical, maybe this person is placing this ad because their life is dull and they want this adventure of meeting someone this way and discovering what might be there. Then I thought, what I often think when I'm writing lyrics, if I'm this person, because I'm not usually this person telling the story, people think I am that guy in the  Piña Colada song. They think it's about me and my wife... people, it's not about me. It's about the character. That Agatha Christie, is she blood thirsty or what? I wouldn't want to be alone with her for a second. Anyway I think if I were this character what would be the logical outcome knowing my luck and fate and life, and it occurred to me and I thought that could work. I wrote this lyric at one in the morning and the chorus went "if you like Humphrey Bogart and getting caught in the rain." I go into the studio that day and my guitarist, Dean Bailin, who appears in tons of my work, he's there because he's going to be sweetening whatever I put down on this track. He's there and I think the song has a twist ending, my big fear was the twist ending was obvious. So, I said to the engineer I'm going to sing this song all the way through, start to finish, don't stop the tape for anything. If I make and mistake I'm just going to plow ahead, because I had to find out in real time if my guitarist got ahead of me, if he got the ending of the story before I got there. What you're hearing when you hear that song is the very first time those songs crossed my lips. I've read it the night before, but I haven't vocalized it. What you're hearing is an ad lib, like a jazz scat singer, having to get all those syllables in. I sang the whole song through without any thought that would be the vocal. It was just for the benefit of my guitar player. When I was done I asked him did he get it and he said no, it fooled him. I said, good, now we'll sweetening it. The one key thing which is terrifying how someone's life can turn huge corners based on the quick decision that's made. Just before I was going to sing the song for him I looked at the lyric on the music stand and I thought it was so dry, I've done so many movie referencers in my work, I thought maybe I shouldn't do that, maybe I'll need something more colorful. This couple wants an escape like their on vacation, but when you go on vacation and go to the island and you go on a pink beach one day and someone comes over and say what would you like to drink you don't say I'll have a Budweiser. You're on vacation and you want a drink that announces this is the official beginning of you having escape from the humdrum daily life. I thought what are the "escape" drinks, and as I reviewed them I realized I never had any of them.  Piña Colada... I never had a  Piña Colada in my life, but I like the sound of it. So, I changed those two words for another two words and my fate was sealed.

Me: I think that's the longest answer I ever received. Are any of your songs about you, Rupert? 

Rupert: Some of my of course creeps in there, I take some portion of my ego or my id and make that into a full formed character hopefully. But like all my songs they're a narrative and about somebody with a choice in life.

Me: Cool. Okay, so, how did you first get your own record deal, Rupert?

Rupert: I was hired by Epic Records to be the non-existent voice of bubble gum groups, or pop groups. The groups didn't exist, and I would write the arrangements, sometimes I'd write the songs but not always. I would go in and try to sound like a 17-year-old or 18-year-old lead singer of a pop group. I was about twenty-two at the time. They wanted me to do more of the same, on a more classier level, and I had some songs that fit that bill. Then I thought to myself I'm making all these records to keep myself in the mix of the record business and to stay empaled by the way, and to put food on the table, and to get to know more people in the music business. But one of these days I had to make a record that spells out what I want to be first as a writer. What kind of of stories I'd like to tell. I had this one song that was exactly not what Epic Records wanted me to record, it was obviously a song sung by a singer/songwriter, an individual person. It was him telling a narrative about his life. I said I'm going to throw this into the mix, I'm going to add this and see if they throw me out of the room. Or of they say I wanted all their money, this is not what we hired me for. I was going to be a group called Rosebud and if the record was a hit they would have created a group to be called Rosebud, and go out and be Rosebud. I made this record called 'Terminal," and they heard it and said they didn't want to put it out as Rosebud. They wanted to put it out as Rupert Holmes. Then I came to a tough decision, almost as tough as the fellow in the song. I said here's the problem, I always said if I was going to record under my own name it would be only the kind of songs and the odd stories I want to tell and it would have to be an album. I can't just take one shot as a 45 and if it doesn't work it's all over. I have to have a chance to do a range of songs where a critic might revoke the album and they said they weren't prepared to make that commitment. I thought okay, I'll wait another year. They called back a week later and said they thought about it and they'll give me a budget and I can make an album as Rupert Holmes. That album became "Widescreen." They didn't oversee anything, I had total creative freedom. That album "Widescreen," the first of the three on the Cherry Red collection was a huge gateway for my career all because I made that choice of saying this is not what they wanted.

Me: How did you first get in contact with Barbra Streisand, Rupert?

Rupert: She called me out of the blue. Can you imagine? She was not only the biggest recording star but the biggest actress in Hollywood. I picked up the phone and I head a voice that said, "I have been listening to your album and I would like to record some of these songs. I see you do all your own orchestrations so I guess you should come out here and orchestrate an album for me. I'm working on a movie called A Star is Born, you probably could write a few songs for that." I said, "This is the worst Barbra Streisand impression I've ever heard. Who is this really?" It turned out to be her.

Me: Another thing we have in common was both our fathers were musicians... what did your father do?

Rupert: My father was a classical musician who studied at Julliard. He was a big band musician, he was the lead alto in the big bands when he was 19-years-old. That got interrupted by World War II where he was an infantry band leader, he worked at NBC radio in the early 50s in the pop realm and then he became a school teacher. He had a nervous break down, he couldn't take the competition when radio transitioned into TV.

Me: Awe. You write so many different genres, Rupert. Why do you think that is?

Rupert: I was exposed by age five to so many different kinds of music. By the time I was five I knew Robert Farnon. Nobody knows who Robert Farnon was. He was a wonderful British composer who wrote all kinds of white frothy journey into melody songs. I had all these Duke Ellington records that my father owned that I listened to and Count Basie and Jammie Lunceford I also new Mozart's 40th by the time I was five before it became a ring tone. I was brought up with Duke Ellington's philosophy that there are two types of music... good and bad. I was an equal opportunity enjoyer of every style of music. There is nothing in the musical world that I don't have some favor songs or cuts from including rap today. I always thought how do they do that, ho do they get that sound.

Me: You worked with Marvin Hamlisch on The Nutty Professor. What was that like, working with somebody else?

Rupert: They are times where I am the lyricist and the composer and there are times where I am just the lyricist and sometimes the way Marvin and I worked, we would talk about the song and what it should feel in its mood and sometimes he would go away and write a theme. He would hand it to me and my challenge would be to hang words on that existing theme like ornaments on a Christmas tree. Would be contained and defined by the melody and the rhythm of it what he already written. We worked well collaboratively, and half the time I would write the lyric first. Obviously if I'm writing the lyrics to someone else's theme I'm probably going to do something different than if I was writing the music myself. I find that very exciting and it keeps me on my toes and allows me to write type of songs that I may not have written otherwise.

Me: You also wrote a TV series, right? What was that like?

Rupert: Yeah, it was called "Remember WENN" for American Classics and I wrote fifty-six episodes. It was a wonderful job I had. It was s series with no commercials, no laugh track, set in 1939. Sometimes a script we were looking for from somebody else didn't arrive or wasn't filmable I had to write a script that I wasn't anticipating writing. I would have to write a script on a Thursday for a TV episode that would be filmed on a Monday.

Me: Cool. Rupert, thanks for being on the Phile. I hope this was fun, sir.

Rupert: It was a pleasure, you asked questions I don't normally get asked and I'm sorry my answers were a lot longer than you expected. Jason, nice talking to you, thanks for your support, I really appreciate it.

Me: Thanks, Rupert, please come back again.

Rupert: Yes, I hope we can do this again sometime. Bye for now.




That about does it for this entry of the Phile. Thanks to my guest Rupert Holmes. He did a great job. The Phile will be back next Tuesday with TV producer and director Rob Burnett. Spread the word, not the turd. Don't let snakes and alligators bite you. Bye, love you, bye.


































I don't want you, cook my bread, I don't want you, make my bed, I don't want your money too, I just want to make love to you. - Willie Dixon

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