Pheaturing Emilio Estévez

 

Hi there, kids, welcome to the Phile for a Friday. How are you? In 2019, a Milwaukee father fatally punched his 5-year-old after the little boy ate a piece of his cheesecake. Now, Travis Stackhouse has pled guilty to the awful crime. During Father’s Day week in 2019, Travis Stackhouse was gifted a cheesecake by his family. But reportedly, the dad became upset when his three children were eating the dessert themselves; Stackhouse complained that he only had a single piece. Reacting violently, Stackhouse punched his small five-year-old son, Sir Amer Stackhouse… and the injuries proved fatal. After Stackhouse struck his son on the night of June 21st, 2019, it became clear that something was wrong. After the attack, Stackhouse went to a bar with friends and returned home at 2 a.m. the next morning. By that point, his girlfriend... the boy’s mother... had called 911 since her son was unresponsive. That’s when paramedics arrived to a horrific scene. The Milwaukee County Medical Examiner’s Office stated that he died from blunt force trauma to the abdomen, which caused a ruptured stomach, bruised kidneys, and a torn adrenal gland. According to The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, the details of this domestic abuse hell get even worse. Stackhouse additionally admitted to the police that he’d hit his son in the face as well, using the back of his hand and a metal rod for maximum pain. At first, however, Stackhouse lied to law enforcement saying that the boy had simply fallen down the stairs; the victim’s six-year-old brother told the truth though. And sadly, he also exhibited evidence of physical abuse: eye bruising, a lip cut, and a laceration on the sternum. From then on, it was clear that Stackhouse was the culprit. According to the complaint, he could not even correctly spell the names of any of his five children or list their birthdays. Prosecutors then charged Stackhouse with first-degree reckless homicide. The Milwaukee County Jail website listed that he was held on a $25,000 bond. Travis Stackhouse has now faced trial this week over the killing of his young son. After two days of witness testimony, the jury trial was cut short. The 33-year-old Stackhouse pled guilty to first-degree reckless homicide as well as to charges of child abuse and child neglect. According to The Chicago Tribune, Stackhouse faces up to 37 years in prison. His sentencing is on June 29th.  

Attention all women! If you start randomly bleeding from your eyes while you’re on your period, don’t be alarmed. Apparently, it’s not as uncommon as you would think, and it’s relatively less harmful than it looks and sounds. Even if your menstrual cycles are a pain in the ass, as it is for many of your female peers, know that you’re not alone. In Chandigarh, India, a 25-year-old woman stunned doctors when she walked into a hospital with bloody tears. Yes, I said bloody tears. According to Vice, she explained that although she wasn’t feeling any pain, this wasn’t the first time she was crying blood. Apparently, she experienced the exact same incident a month earlier, and as doctors tried to figure out what was going on with her, they were able to tie her bleeding eyes to her menstrual cycle. The woman underwent various tests, including ophthalmological and radiological investigations, but apparently, the results came back all normal. The woman didn’t even have a family history of ocular bleeding or hemorrhages, which occurs when the blood vessels leak. When they were able to make the connection to her period, they explained to her that she most likely had a rare condition called ocular vicarious menstruation. According to the British Medical Journal, ocular vicarious menstruation is a rare condition, “of cyclical bleeding outside the uterine cavity during a woman’s menstrual cycle,” as told by Vice. Those who have this condition normally experience bleeding in their lungs, kidney, lips, stomach, nose, or eyes. BMJ also published a study on the woman in Chandigarh, monitoring what happened while she was treated with a combination of oral contraceptives for three months, including estrogen and progesterone. The treatment apparently helped calm the eye bleeding, hopefully offering a solution to those who will later suffer from this condition. Apparently, this isn’t the first this has happened either. In 1913, a case in New Mexico reported a woman having ulcers in both her legs that would bleed and become extremely large while she was on her period. The condition thankfully disappeared after she had given birth, but the poor woman had to endure a very difficult pregnancy. And in 2014, the Ophthalmic Plastic & Reconstructive Surgery Journal, a 31-year-old woman actually sought out surgery to correct this condition. While it’s still unsure on what the correlation is between having your period and bleeding from your eyes, the favored answer is endometriosis, which according to the British National Health Service, is “tissue similar to the lining of the womb starts to grow in other places.” And not to save the scariest scenario for last or anything, but in 2016, a British teenager named Marnie Ray would actually bleed from many of her orifices while she was on her period. While menstruating, she bled from her ears, nose, mouth, scalp, and fingernails, and her condition was widely unknown. So again, ladies, don’t freak out too much if you start bleeding from wherever else while on your period. You are not alone, and although solutions are still yet to be found, you’ll most likely be okay. But, I do highly suggest you go to the doctor. That can’t be okay just left alone.

A California man was tragically struck by an alleged drunk driver just after leaving an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. According to local reports, Ray Galindo was a proud member of the program for the last 15 years. He was unfortunately killed on April 23rd in Modesto Bee when 22-year-old Braxton Howze allegedly ran into him. Fifty-eight-year-old Galindo had been speaking to a AA newcomer outside the living sober fellowship and was sitting on the tailgate of his pick-up. Authorities say that Howze, who was allegedly intoxicated, swerved off the road and hit him. An AA group leader, Mark G, told local news stations, “It’s like my heart sank in my chest. Ray was a standup guy, he was a very helpful person, he always wanted to lend a hand.” Galindo leaves behind three sons, two of who are adults and one 9-year-old. According to Dee Dee Leslie, the child’s mom, Galido was “a good dad.” She noted, “He wanted (his son) to have a good education and all the stuff he couldn’t have.” Howze, who according to police was allegedly driving on a suspended license from a previous DUI, is now facing charges including hit and run, gross vehicular manslaughter, and DUI. He appeared in his mugshot with blood and bruises, which was released by the Modesto Police Department. He is on a $1,000,000 bail and is due back in court on May 11th. According to Bankrate, Alcohol is known as a roadway killer. Drinking and driving allegedly kill 28 people a day in the United States, around one person every 52 minutes, according to the NHTSA. To put this in perspective, this is more than ten thousand lives lost each year to drunk driving. A drunk driver is considered legally impaired when their blood alcohol concentration, also known as BAC, measures 0.08 or higher. Alcohol-related traffic facilities make up under 30% of all traffic fatalities each year, with California being the highest driven fatalities each year.

Thirty-eight-year-old Dawn Marie Baye was arrested last Friday on ten counts of contributing to the delinquency of a juvenile and eight counts of indecent behavior with a juvenile. And the events which led up to that arrest are shocking in a scandal that’s rocked Chauvin, Louisiana… because Baye was the local school lunch lady. Dawn Marie Baye was a cafeteria worker at Lacache Middle School in Chauvin, Louisiana. Through that position, Baye met many teenage boys… and invited them to her house in Baton Rouge for X-rated sleepovers. The boys who partied at Baye’s home were aged 13-16 and police say those nights spent together included watching porn, drinking alcohol, and having unspecified sexual encounters. According to KLFY, Terrebonne parish sheriff’s office conducted a weeks-long investigation into the wild crimes, finding that the gathered information matched up with prior social media tip-offs. In response to the sensational story, Sheriff Tim Soignet is encouraging parents to understand exactly where their children are going when they head off for a sleepover. The (now former) Louisiana school cafeteria worker was arrested last Friday and sent to the Terrebonne Parish Criminal Justice Complex where she’s being held on $50,000 bail. Of Baye’s termination at Lacache Middle School, Terrebonne schools Superintendent Philip Martin told The Houma Courier, “She was a cafeteria worker and ‘was’ is the appropriate term because she’s no longer employed. When people make bad decisions there are usually bad consequences that go along with them.” 

Sunday is Mother's Day, kids! Mother’s Day is supposed to be a special day of celebration, commemorating an official holiday for mothers everywhere for everything they do for their kids. But for a national day that’s normally decorated with mother’s day gifts, its origin story is actually haunted by sadness and tragedy. So what is the heartbreaking story that paints the history of Mother’s Day? It all started back in the mid-19th century with Anna Jarvis. Although she was not shy about giving her own mother credit for coming up with the idea, Anna aimed to fulfill her late mother’s dream after she heard her mom, Ann Reeves Jarvis, recite the following prayer, “I hope and pray that someone, sometime, will found a memorial Mother’s Day commemorating her for the matchless service she renders to humanity in every field of life.” However, Ann actually had something a little different planned for this alleged “Mother’s Day” concept. According to Katharine Lane Antolini, an assistant professor of history and gender studies at West Virginia Wesleyan College and author of Memorializing Motherhood: Anna Jarvis and the Struggle for the Control of Mother’s Day, evidence suggests that the original idea for the national holiday implied a day for mothers, as in the word “mother” in plural form, meaning that it wasn’t intended for one’s own singular mother. The idea was for mothers to get together for one day to help out other mothers who were less fortunate than they were. Ann was inspired to do create this community because her own experience with motherhood was incredibly devastating. Characteristic to what the times were like during the 19th and early 20th century, Ann had 13 children, but only four of them actually saw adulthood. According to Time, that was pretty standard in raising families, considering, “an estimated 15 to 30% of infants in that Appalachian region died before their first birthday,” as told by Antolini. Before modernization took off, society was riddled with epidemics and poor sanitary conditions. So when Ann was pregnant for the sixth time, she asked her brother, Dr. James Reeves, to help organize events where doctors could lead discussions with local mothers to teach the best hygiene practices to keep their children healthy. The events would be known as Mothers’ Day Work Clubs. When it was time for Anna herself to lead the events, she couldn’t bring herself to do so. Antonini suggests that it most likely has to do with that she herself was not a mother, further explaining a more positive perspective of Anna’s, saying, “She didn’t want it to be turned into a beggars’ day,” Antolini said. “She thought even poor mothers were rich if they had their kids’ love.” However, people started coming forward claiming that they initiated the first Mother’s Day. “Battle Hymn of the Republic” writer Julia Ward Howe started “Mother’s Peace Day,” inspired by the Franco-Prussian War and the American Civil War, where mothers supported antiwar efforts in stopping their sons from dying prematurely. And President Woodrow Wilson signed a Mother’s Day proclamation in 1914 making the second Sunday of May, “a public expression of our love and reverence for the mothers of our country.” Other criticisms supported that the celebration of mothers had been talked about for decades, but a Mother’s Day holiday only started getting attention because women were starting to have careers outside of staying home and raising children. Some even offered that Mother’s Day celebrations were actually repercussions to these monumental changes for women. Nevertheless, Anna still proved her worth in initiating the commercialization of the holiday, much to her dismay, unfortunately. She started the Mother’s Day International Association, pushing the holiday outside of American borders, and partnered with florists and a successful letter-writing campaign to get state governors to recognize the holiday at both the state level and eventually the federal level. Yet, at the end of her life, she resented that florists, candy-makers, and greeting card companies were making tons of money off of her idea without crediting her, and according to the New York Times, she felt that the day was used as, “a means of profiteering.” She missed the innocence from when she had initially sent 500 white carnations to a church in honor of her late mother, before Mother’s Day had become so internationally official. What started as an innocent way to bring together communities and celebrate those who have sacrificed so much for the betterment of others stemming from sadness and tragedy, turned into more anguish as over-commercialization took away from the meaning of why we celebrate the holiday in the first place. So whatever official day it is, maybe it’s best if we continue to celebrate our loved ones as much as we can, letting them know how much they’re appreciated for all they’ve done. 

Any stroll through a store would have you believe that "pink is for girls" and "blue is for boys" are the associated gender roles are the very backbone of our society. Products from nail clippers to hand lotion are assigned genders when last time I checked, inanimate objects don't have gender identities.  Like this wall art...

Girls can't read books and boys can't laugh. Sorry, I don't make the rules. If I had a TARDIS I would like to go and meet Audrey Hepburn, but knowing my luck she'd be shopping with her pet deer Ip. 

Now, I’m as fond of Audrey Hepburn as anyone but… Never make a deer into a pet. There are numerous stories of people who have been killed by their pet deer, once the animal grew up. Deer have razor-sharp hooves, and are very dangerous and unpredictable. Even a deer that was raised from a fawn by the same person or people, have been known to turn on them for no known reason, and people die, especially children. It is a standard practice among people to keep something as long as it is cute, drop it off into the wild once it’s not, cry for five minutes, then go get a new something cute and forget about the last cute thing. Stuff like this is why in some large cities, there are sections overrun with half-feral dogs. Some people cannot be convinced to sterilize their pets... so they have the pet until they're children or they themselves get tired of it and then drop it off in a nearby canal. Said animal breeds with the other unsterilized animals that are dropped off by other people. Keeping up with the youngins and their lingo is tough. Kids these days like to use "emoji," which use small pictures to communicate how they're feeling... kind of like hyroglyphics. When using emoji, it's easy to confuse laugh-crying for just regular-crying, and these boomers and old folks made the unfortunate mistake of using the wrong face at the wrongest possible times. 

Hahahaha. It's nice to help your family with childcare if you can. But what if they don't want to repay the favor later on? One mom is asking whether she's in the wrong for expecting free baby-sitting from the sister whose child she helped raise. She emailed the Phile about the conundrum. The mom says her nephew was unexpected.

My sister gave birth to my nephew Luke when she was 20-years-old. It was an unexpected pregnancy and the father was married, so he didn't want any involvement his child. My parents and sister had to go to work so I was responsible to babysit Luke. It was never a burden, I have always loved kids and love my nephew dearly. So, for years I babysat every week, to the point that Luke calls me his second mother nowadays. Only when he was 12 my sister decided he was old enough to take care of himself so I stopped the babysitting. Now I have a child. Me and my husband having been very busy lately and stressful with work, so we decided to take a day off. I asked sis if she could babysit my daughter while we were off. She said okay, but I would need to pay her. I was very confused, even thought this was a joke but she was dead serious. I asked her about the time that I spent 13 years of my life babysitting her son for free since I was a teenager and she enumerated the reasons of why she is demanding payment: I was young, therefore more patient, while she is almost 40s, I have never complained and she didn't oblige me to babysit. She always brought gifts to me, so she considered this a payment. I was like what the hell??? I replied that sometimes she didn't even ASK me if I could take care of Luke, she just left me alone with him and only came back hours later. The "payment" was only some groceries, nothing expensive. And the babysitting also involved cooking, doctor appointments, etc. I had to postpone a lot of plans too, because "family comes first." She responded, "Okay. Go find someone else, then" and hung up. I don't know if I am being wrong because I didn't demand payment at the time. Am I wrong?"  Your sister is wrong. You have an extremely petty, selfish sister. All you should say in response to the sis is, "Sooooo it's okay for me to help raise you kid when I was a kid myself, however when I ask an adult you to watch my kid for one day it is too much and you deserve money?" Ask her son if he would babysit and pay him. One day versus 12 years really isn't asking much at all. Normally, I'd be on your sister's side but you babysitting her kid for free for 13 years completely changes everything. If you do something for someone for free and they don't reciprocate then they're wrong. You saved her thousands (maybe even tens of thousands) of dollars and this is how she shows her gratitude?! Holy crap! Never babysit for her again if she wants to do something out of town or she has another kid. Hire a sitter instead. At least the sitter takes the job seriously. If someone baby-sits your kid for years, you owe them the same in return. Guess no good deed goes unpunished. If you have a problem you want my opinion on then email me at thepeverettphile@gmail.com.   

Okay, let's take a live look at Port Jefferson, shall we?

Looks like a nice day there. Look at that sky. 

She might have been having a bad day. She might have been really been particular about the thickness of tomatoes. Whatever the reason, Judith Ann Black... a 77-year-old Florida woman... was angry enough to fling a Whopper sandwich and racist slurs at a Burger King employee. According to a police report obtained by The Smoking Gun, the Whopper attack happened on April 30th at a Burger King near The Villages, the retirement community where Black lives. A little after 6 p.m., Black became enraged at an employee because the tomato on her Whopper was reportedly sliced too thick. The employee told investigators that she told Black that she wouldn’t be able to help her solve her tomato slice emergency if she didn’t stop yelling. When the employee turned her back, she said, Black threw the Whopper at her, hitting her below the neck with the burger. The employee says she heard Black call her the N-word. According to the BK worker, Black also told her to “shut up you black bitch”. Multiple onlookers... including a fellow Burger King worker, customer, and manager... reported similar accounts, and surveillance video footage shows Black throwing the sandwich at the employee after her angry tirade. After throwing the Whopper, Black walked out to her husband’s truck, followed by her husband, reports say. Wildwood police officers were able to track Black down using the license plate on her husband’s truck. According to officers, they were able to confirm her identity by comparing her license on file and the surveillance footage. In the arrest report, police said Black spoke freely after they advised her of her rights. “Mrs. Black stated that she understood her rights and was willing to speak to me,” the report reads. “Post-Miranda she stated that she was upset about the thickness of the tomato on her sandwich and confronted the victim at the counter. She stated that she was angry that the victim was not fixing the issue and ‘had the burger in my hand and tossed it at her.’ When asked, Mrs. Black stated that she did hit the victim with the burger. Mrs. Black also stated that she called the victim a ‘stupid black bitch.’” According to the arrest report, Black would have been charged with a misdemeanor had she only thrown the Whopper at the fast-food restaurant employee. However, since she also used racial slurs, the charge was elevated to a third-degree felony, which carries a potential sentence of up to five years in state prison. She was booked in the Sumter County Jail before being released on bail a $2,500 bail, according to records from the Sumter County Sheriff’s Office. Originally from Mansfield, Texas, Black moved from Texas to The Villages, Florida, in 2015. The Villages is a planned community that bills itself as “Florida’s friendliest active 55+ retirement community.” The Villages was the subject of the documentary, Some Kind of Heaven, and has gained notoriety for being almost exclusively made up of white Republicans. According to The Washington Post, the community is 98.3 percent white” and “registered Republicans outnumber Democrats 2 to 1.” I am proud to say I was only there once. 

The 150th book to be pheatured in the Phile's Book Club is...

National treasure Dolly Parton will be on the Phile on Monday. 

Today's guest is an American actor, film director, screenwriter and producer. He is the brother of Charlie Sheen and son of actor Martin Sheen. He started his career as an actor and is known for being a member of the acting Brat Pack of the 1980s, appearing in The Breakfast Club, St. Elmo's Fire, and The Outsiders. In 2018, he released another feature film, The Public, starring Alec Baldwin, Christian Slater, Jena Malone and himself which he wrote and directed as well. Please welcome to the Phile... Emilio Estévez.

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

Emilio: I'm great, Jason. Thanks for having me here on your blog to talk about my movie The Public.

Me: You're welcome. So, what is the movie about? 

Emilio: It's a drama about a standoff between homeless people and the police that plays out in a Cincinnati library. 

Me: You wrote, direct and star in it, right? 

Emilio: Yeah, I play a librarian. 

Me: One of my best friends, Tracey, who lives up on Long Island is a librarian. Was it fun to play one? 

Emilio: Hello to your friend Tracey. A lot of people think librarians are meek shushy people who wear cardigans and giant glasses that have chains going behind them. Does that describe Tracey? 

Me: Ummm... nope. Not at all. 

Emilio: I didn't thinks so. Tracey would tell you the every day life of a modern day librarian is first responder and basically is the original Google. They were Google before Google. And understanding what that space is, that scared space between patron and librarian is something that was very new to me as I was doing my research. That space at the desk is on par with doctor/patient and lawyer/client. It's sacred and it's privileged. It's unwritten ion course but it's a sacred space. 

Me: Did you spend a lot of time in libraries going up? 

Emilio: I did. I spent a lot of time there, it was a safe place for me as a kid. I could get lost in the stacks My parents would drop me off after school and I would roam the stacks and look through index cards. I was pretty proud of myself as a 10 or 11-year-old kid that I could navigate my local public library. Of course years later I would find myself in detention in another film in a high school library. It's been 35 years since I've been in a film that took place in a library. But for me libraries were always that very safe place and it's where I could let my imagination and my curiosity sort of roam free. That is something that is lost on a lot of the youth today. 

Me: So, I take it you're a fan of books, am I right? 

Emilio: If you recall, I don't know how old you are, but I'm of a certain age that if I wanted to look something up in a dictionary and it was the end if the dictionary I may stop ten or fifteen times before I got to that word. Same thing with the encyclopedia. I'm looking got a particular subject I may stop along the way, God knows what I would discover just based on taking the time to go through the book. So I think the kids miss a lot of that, the age of instant gratification has been upon us for quite some time but I think it's no wonder we have started to and tried to capture a slower life either it's through slow food over rather going back to reading books instead on the Kindles. Actually feel and touch, I like the very tactile of the feeling of a book in my hands. I think that's coming back. It's no wonder Amazon is actually putting money into brick and mortar stores again because they realize people are missing the old days. The technology is getting away with slowly killing us. 

Me: Libraries are still being used though, right? 

Emilio: Yeah, they are still a big resource with children's programs and computers. My film is more about the library is more than loaning out books. 

Me: I know libraries are being shut down and closed though. Making this movie did it give you any perspective on that? How do you feel when you hear a politician wants to shut down a library to save a few bucks? 

Emilio: My initial reaction about something like that is that politician probably hasn't set foot in library in the last 20 years. Because I believe that every successful community, the center of every successful community is a public library. Anne Lamott, the writer/activist has a book out called Almost Everything which you should check out, she was credited with saving the John Steinbeck Library in Salinas, California many years ago when they were threatening to shut that down because the lack of funding. She's quoted saying, "Communities without libraries are like radios with batteries." I think that's a very accurate description of how vital a library is. If you want to check in on the health of a community check out a library and talk to the desk reference librarians, they'll tell you what's going on in her community probably better than law enforcement will. 

Me: So, was it hard to write this movie or easy? 

Emilio: I did a lot of research into the lives of librarians to get my depiction right but I also had the challenge of writing characters, people that are experiencing homelessness. So I had to do that though, as I mentioned with librarians without going onto stereotypes. 

Me: What did you want people to see in these characters? 

Emilio: Well, I wanted to personalize them. I wanted to humanize them. And I think that so often the individuals experiencing homelessness when depicted in a film are often timed stereotyped. Or they are depicted without any faults, sort of the noble poor. I felt that with THESE individuals in the film I wanted the audience be able to find something relatable to them rather than have them be repugnant. I think the very issue with homelessness now and I don't know if you're following what's been happening but Los Angeles is up alone 12% from last year in homelessness. It's a crisis, it's no longer a homeless situation. It's an absolute crisis. And so often it's looked at as a crisis that is just not sexy. I think there's got to be a way to embrace this because I believe the problem is solvable. When we look at how long we've have experienced homelessness in this country it's really only about 40 years. This began in 1979 and then of course in 1980 when we got the new administration which gutted hud by 70% which defended mental health intuitions and sent a lot of people out in the streets and back into our communities. So it's a problem that's only been around for 40 years so I think, again this in my own personal belief, is that if we get our arms around it, if we figure out a way to collective solve this we can and the first thing we need to do is start humanizing these people rather than criminalizing and dehumanize them which we so often do. 

Me: For a lot of marginalized people, homeless people, a library might be the key to the outside word. Libraries might have a very different meaning, right? 

Emilio: That's right. They offer an opportunity for them to write to their family... "hey, I'm still alive" or "send money." They offer an opportunity to get online and look for a job. For entertainment. Again if they are in a library a lot of times, again crowded libraries like the one we have in downtown L.A. there is limited time where they can get online and go on a compeer. So they are looking at two hours of time to which to get all of their news write to their family, look for a job, etc. So two hours a day to have access to that is not a lot of time when you consider most of us, and a lot of people reading this blog have access not only to a cellphone, an iPad, or a laptop computer. 

Me: Okay, is this the first film you directed? 

Emilio: No, my first film I directed was Wisdom in '86. You know, it's too bad we can't make something disappear. 

Me: Is it that bad? 

Emilio: It made me the youngest person to write, direct and star in a single major motion picture. Hubris, hubris, hubris. It should've been a triple hubris hyphenate. Ha ha ha. 

Me: That makes for a good t-shirt or band name. What was it like doing all that? 

Emilio: Oh, gosh, I was 23 and I was surrounded by an amazing talented group of people on the other side of the camera. I had Robert Wise who was my mentor, the director of The Sound of Music and West Side Story among many others. The editor of Citizen Kane and The Magnificent Andersons, he's on set as our executive producer. I had Danny Elfman who was our composer. 

Me: He was on the Phile before. He's pretty good. 

Emilio: Yeah, right. Michael Collins, Steven Spielberg's editor was cutting it. Adam Greenberg who just shot the Terminator was my D.P. Bernie Williams who was my producer that produced Clockwork Orange, so you can't imagine, or you can, this group of people now I had surrounded me but I had a terrible script, a wildly out of control ego and here I was on set telling all these people who knew better than I what to do. 

Me: Why did you have an out of control ego, Emilio? 

Emilio: I was 23. We all remember where we were when we were 23. Most of my friends had just graduated from college and I was't going to tell them anything. I was just young and stupid and driven by wanting to do more, wanting to be not just known as an actor, I wanted to branch out and frankly I just wasn't ready. 

Me: What would you as a director today tell that young director then? 

Emilio: Go back to the drawing board, work on the script a little more, streamline that, really prepare. One of the things that Robert Wise talked to me about was I have to anticipate and I have to communicate. I was at 23, as I'm sure a lot of young men were great communicators so I just wanted people to read my mind about what it was that I wanted. So it really is all about communication and anticipation and getting in front of things that I was left flat footed with. Many times on that film set. 

Me: I'm surprised you kept going. Why did you keep going? 

Emilio: You know, a lot of actors directed once and that's it. They recognized how difficult it is and just get beat up. I could tell you I got some of the worse reviews maybe ever written. There's a free publication in L.A. called L.A. Weekly which is an independent newspaper and they devoted three pages writing about how bad the movie was. And to use a Citizen Kane reference the title of the review was "Ain't No Rosebud." Ha ha ha. 

Me: Hahahaha. How did you not give up after that, man? 

Emilio: Well, I think there was no where to go but up. I think it couldn't got any worse, for better or worse I dug in and decided to do it again on another picture called Men At Work which I felt was okay. I'm going to take myself a little less seriously, I'm going to make this romp with my brother Charlie and going to have some laughs and we did just that. That has become a bit of a cult classic and a guilty pleasure for a lot of people and they've been a lot of calls for a sequel on that but I don't see that as a possibility. 

Me: Earlier you said this is not the first movie you made that's set in a library and you of course referred to The Breakfast Club. I've never seen that movie believe it or not. What do you think of that movie? 

Emilio: No diversity. That would be my first reaction look at that film now as a young person saying wait a minute, who's reflected in this movie, who is this movie for? Does it hold up for me in the same way it does for of my age who hold it in such regards? No. There's no diversity in the film, there's no people, no actors, no characters of color. That's my biggest takeaway from looking at the film now with a 37-year-old lens. 

Me: Do you ever look back at your films? 

Emilio: I rarely do. In fact if I'm channel surfing and a picture of mind comes up I generally go right through it and onto something else. 

Me: But some of those films gave you so much fame and success, Emilio. 

Emilio: Listen, from my perspective now it created a lot of opportunity. And some of that opportunity is what we talked about earlier, the opportunity to direct. And so when I'm young I don't obviously have the perspective I have when I'm older. The older Emilio looking back at that film and back to those times specifically would been "take your time, take your time a little bit more." I think I would have made different choices, smarter choices, rather than going for the money or what my agent thought was cool and hip. Because at the end of the day my résumé follows me the rest of my life. There's a lot of pictures on my résumé that I'm not proud of. 

Me: Emilio, thanks for being on the Phile. Please come back again soon. 

Emilio: Cool, I hope so.

That about does it for this entry of the Phile. Thanks to Emilio for a cool interview. The Phile will be back on Monday with Dolly Parton! Spread the word, not the turd. Don't let snakes and alligators bite you. Bye, love you, bye. Kiss your brain and hit your mom if you can.

Give me some rope, tie me to dream, give me the hope to run out of steam, somebody said it could be here. We could be roped up, tied up, dead in a year. I can't count the reasons I should stay. One by one they all just fade away...