Speaker 1: I have a friend who was like a professional squash
Speaker 1: player when she was younger, like a champion, I'm not sure,
Speaker 1: like some international squash champion. It's like how she got
Speaker 1: into college and and now her daughter, who's the same
Speaker 1: age as Indie, is playing squash and getting very good
Speaker 1: and already touring the country. And you know, and we
Speaker 1: went down to the Queen Mary and where they have
Speaker 1: in Long Beach, and they set up a halloween like
Speaker 1: a whole it's called the Dark Harbor, and you have
Speaker 1: made every year. It is so awesome having been to yeah,
Speaker 1: having this year, having been to Universal Horror Nights, Haunted Haybrides,
Speaker 1: and the Dark Harbor. Dark Harbor was by far my favorite.
Speaker 1: Ye same kind of thing, like they have mazes and
Speaker 1: you know, it's just so much fun.
Speaker 2: And you don't believe in this stuff, but apparently one
Speaker 2: of the most haunted places in all of California.
Speaker 1: He's right, Queen Mary. It's so fun. It's so fun.
Speaker 1: So we went down with this friend and her daughter
Speaker 1: and we all got rooms, so we like stayed overnight
Speaker 1: and we had a last but one of the things
Speaker 1: that they had at the carnival was acts throwing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I had the funniest moment because you know, like with Indy,
Speaker 1: like India is exhibiting a lot of performance talent, Like
Speaker 1: he's very much an actor. He just wants to make
Speaker 1: people laugh. He can sing really well, he can play piano,
Speaker 1: and you know, I've always had this sort of like
Speaker 1: relationship with it where I kind of just want to
Speaker 1: get out of his way, you know, like I don't
Speaker 1: want to put pressure on him. I don't want to,
Speaker 1: you know, because there's obviously both of his parents are actors.
Speaker 1: Whenever he does anything like he doesn't play, everyone's like wow,
Speaker 1: because of your parents, we can see where this comes from,
Speaker 1: you know. So I've always just like let him do
Speaker 1: his thing, let other teachers talk to him about it.
Speaker 1: Like I don't engage, you know, I'm just like yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I we play together and we made movies together.
Speaker 1: But other than that, like I don't you know hands,
Speaker 1: I don't give him notes, I don't you know. I
Speaker 1: just let him do his thing. I was watching my friend, Oh,
Speaker 1: we get up there to do ax throw it, and
Speaker 1: so we wait in line, and then India and I
Speaker 1: are up and you only get like five throws, right,
Speaker 1: So I throw my axe just flails. Indy throws his
Speaker 1: it flails, and I'm like, okay, let's try your good,
Speaker 1: you know, and we're both trying. We get five shots.
Speaker 1: I think like maybe I sunk like two of them.
Speaker 1: You know, Indy, it's all just bouncing off. We're horrible,
Speaker 1: and I'm just like, ah, that's fine. We walk off.
Speaker 1: And then I watched my friend get up there, my
Speaker 1: friend Ivy and her daughter, and they throw the first
Speaker 1: axe and Ive's immediately like all right, Loretta, come on,
Speaker 1: you can get that ax in there. You can do this.
Speaker 1: Come on, girl like and immediately starts coaching, and I
Speaker 1: watched the two of them get like better and better. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like I see this day this like mother daughter dynamic
Speaker 1: where I'm like, oh, this is what it's like when
Speaker 1: they play squash, right, Like she is like champion, bro dude,
Speaker 1: she is like raising a champion like. And it was
Speaker 1: like immediately like, oh, we're gonna do this. We're gonna
Speaker 1: do this right and Loretta, you're gonna focus and we're
Speaker 1: gonna And I sat there and I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: that's like this whole other side of parenting that like
Speaker 1: I've just totally like so now I'm like, what is
Speaker 1: the equivalent where I can like coach and yeah, how
Speaker 1: can I be like, all right, what's your objective in
Speaker 1: the scene, buddy, what do you what's your motivation? We're
Speaker 1: gonna all right, all right, acting is reacting. Let's see it,
Speaker 1: let's see it. Come on, let's do another take. Okay,
Speaker 1: you can do better. I want to see tears. I
Speaker 1: want to see it. Okay, come on, can you get this?
Speaker 1: But there's like part of me that was a little like,
Speaker 1: oh right, I feel this pressure to like not engage.
Speaker 1: But there's the other side, which is if you see
Speaker 1: somebody has an ability you coach, you know that, you
Speaker 1: know because I do know a lot, like we do
Speaker 1: know a lot about this. I direct, I know how
Speaker 1: to talk to kids. And I was like, oh, maybe
Speaker 1: I should should be engaging more actually doing this. But
Speaker 1: call that you call that, yeah, I think it'd be
Speaker 1: great exactly. Anyway, So now I'm trying to I'm trying
Speaker 1: to incorporate like coach, acting, coach, writer dad, that's like
Speaker 1: my new my new things. I was like, you know,
Speaker 1: there's a there's a there's a little bit of like, hey, buddy,
Speaker 1: you can do better or whatever. You know, without being
Speaker 1: too judger to judgmental, not without making him feel bad,
Speaker 1: but also you know, coaching like encouraging and being like
Speaker 1: you can I know you can do this, I know.
Speaker 2: I always thought coach was a weird term for something
Speaker 2: to do with acting, Like acting, teacher, I think works
Speaker 2: better than coach because coaching, it's like.
Speaker 1: There is a at least with a lot of sports
Speaker 1: like acts.
Speaker 2: Throwing is a perfect example. It's repetitive. There is a
Speaker 2: like a mechanical muscle memory, and it's muscle memory, and
Speaker 2: it's counting the number of flips and it's so it's
Speaker 2: like you can drill that and drill that and drill that.
Speaker 2: But it's so much more abstract with acting that it's like, yeah,
Speaker 2: you can do scene studies at night if you want
Speaker 2: to be that. I remember dating a girl that that
Speaker 2: was the first night we went out after dinner.
Speaker 1: I was like, so what do you want to do?
Speaker 1: She's like, do you want to go home to your
Speaker 1: house and do some scene study? I was like, I'm
Speaker 1: hoping that's you from it was Carrie Russell.
Speaker 2: No, but like that's what she wanted to do when
Speaker 2: we got together, was scenes. She then went out to
Speaker 2: become a very successful.
Speaker 1: Act because Meryl Street exactly, but so there is I.
Speaker 2: Mean, I but coaching always seemed to me like they
Speaker 2: were going to be there, like exactly like I said.
Speaker 1: Like, cry, come on, I don't believe. I don't buy it.
Speaker 3: Well, but I also run. You run.
Speaker 4: There's a risk you run as being parent slash coach
Speaker 4: because eventually you look at you know, Tiger Woods or
Speaker 4: the Williams sisters. If you start to resent the the
Speaker 4: sport or the activity, and then it's your parent who's
Speaker 4: pushing you, you blow that line. Like to me, I
Speaker 4: would think, all right, I do know a lot, but
Speaker 4: there are also acting teachers who know a lot, and
Speaker 4: I can put them in with an acting teacher where
Speaker 4: maybe if I'm just the parent, I don't have to worry.
Speaker 4: I don't have to take that risk of my kid
Speaker 4: eventually resenting me.
Speaker 3: They can.
Speaker 1: This has been my that's been my approach all the
Speaker 1: way along. But I also, I mean, yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm joking, but I also have just realized like I
Speaker 1: should open up to Indye a little bit, like I
Speaker 1: should talk to him about it, like the things I
Speaker 1: do know, like that I have discovered where you know,
Speaker 1: it's like I don't know, like maybe every take can
Speaker 1: be different. Maybe you don't need to lok, you know,
Speaker 1: I don't know, just like little notes that I can
Speaker 1: or things that.
Speaker 2: I can throw out, you could because so come at
Speaker 2: it from what do you wish you had?
Speaker 1: When you exactly Well, that's what I realized, is like, uh,
Speaker 1: I had a lot of bad acting teachers. And I
Speaker 1: think maybe he does too, you know, because a lot
Speaker 1: of like I think about how many people talk to
Speaker 1: us and gave us notes that didn't know what they
Speaker 1: were talking about. Of course they would just be like
Speaker 1: you know, and and I remember sitting in classes like
Speaker 1: not things that I would stay in. But you know,
Speaker 1: because we were very lucky, I got kind of out
Speaker 1: of that scene. But like if you stayed in like
Speaker 1: local theater or local they would give you the word.
Speaker 1: Like I remember the first time my brother and I
Speaker 1: had an audition and our agent or local agent invited
Speaker 1: us to our office because we were going to meet
Speaker 1: Warren Batty for Dick Tracy, like were screen testing for
Speaker 1: Dick Tracy. I had only put myself on tape and
Speaker 1: sent the vhs down to LA and then they were
Speaker 1: screen testing me and Shiloh. So that morning our agent
Speaker 1: we were flying down to la and our agent, our
Speaker 1: local agent at Santa Rosea, called us and was like,
Speaker 1: we need to talk. We need to you know, make
Speaker 1: sure you guys know what you're doing. And of course,
Speaker 1: like she brought in her like somebody who had worked
Speaker 1: with her. I think it was like a family member
Speaker 1: or whatever who had worked on films, and he was
Speaker 1: going to give us notes. He literally explained how to
Speaker 1: hit your mark. He was like, they're going to draw
Speaker 1: a tea on the ground and you're gonna walk to
Speaker 1: that and don't say your lines until you hit the tee.
Speaker 1: And we were like, oh okay, And of course went
Speaker 1: down to meet Warren Batty and they started improvising and
Speaker 1: we were a complete mess, and it was all did
Speaker 1: you hit the tea?
Speaker 5: I did not.
Speaker 1: There was no mark, was no mar There was no mark.
Speaker 1: I mean basically, this guy had been an extra on
Speaker 1: some things, you know, or worked in commercials, and like
Speaker 1: that was the extent of his like professional knowledge to
Speaker 1: give us, which is, you know, I don't blame him,
Speaker 1: but it was like here we were at ten, like
Speaker 1: going to.
Speaker 4: Do these rending time right before you go into a
Speaker 4: meeting learning about something that's not even going to be there.
Speaker 1: Nope, and not even that important. Like that's the easy
Speaker 1: part of acting to teach, that's that, you know. The
Speaker 1: hard part is like just be yourself, just relax, just express,
Speaker 1: just you know, all the things and feel free and
Speaker 1: there's no wrong answer, there's just have fun and all
Speaker 1: those things. So yeah, I think about like what I
Speaker 1: can start having the conversations I can start having with
Speaker 1: India about like what it's what's actually like to act
Speaker 1: and maybe just share some wisdom. I swear to God,
Speaker 1: when you started the story, I thought you're gonna be
Speaker 1: like an Indie is amazing at squash.
Speaker 3: Yeah exactly.
Speaker 1: No, No, believe it or not. My kid is not
Speaker 1: into sports. Guy, that's weird. That's weird.
Speaker 3: I find it hard to believe. I think Indy's going
Speaker 3: to grow.
Speaker 1: Up to love sports ball.
Speaker 2: By the way, Danielle, I do have to say, I
Speaker 2: know you're dealing with a little sickness today.
Speaker 1: Makes the voice sexy.
Speaker 2: I gotta say sorry, you got the cat like the
Speaker 2: Kathleen Turner rasp going on just saying.
Speaker 1: Thanks will, Hey, honey, what are you doing? You got
Speaker 1: another pall mall. That's right. I go non filter.
Speaker 5: If you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: It become New Yorker parent.
Speaker 3: Everyone from you.
Speaker 1: You never call my boys sexy when I'm sick, Will it's.
Speaker 2: Because it's your voice is sexy all the time, and
Speaker 2: I can't keep saying it.
Speaker 3: We're tired of hearing it.
Speaker 5: You know.
Speaker 3: Welcome to bod Meets World. I'm Daniel Fischel.
Speaker 1: I'm a right as strong and that was sexy.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Wi, as you could probably guess. Producer and husband
Speaker 4: of this podcast, Jensen will not rest and tell everyone
Speaker 4: who's had a character name on Boy Meets World joins
Speaker 4: us to talk about the show.
Speaker 3: I can't talk.
Speaker 6: About the shoot. You got to talk about the shoal
Speaker 6: about you did the loop dip. That's one of my
Speaker 6: favorite stories.
Speaker 4: With my friend Brandy and I drove from drove from
Speaker 4: Vancouver to Banff and we were two girls before good navigation,
Speaker 4: just lost in Canada, driving around and I was like,
Speaker 4: I don't I think we're not on the right I
Speaker 4: don't think we're this is the right thing. I think
Speaker 4: we're in the wrong spot. And she kept saying, no,
Speaker 4: let's just keep going, keep going going. Finally, we come
Speaker 4: like for miles of not seeing anything. We come across
Speaker 4: this tiny little like gas station, one pump and convenience
Speaker 4: store thing and I'm like, we have to go in
Speaker 4: and ask for help. And we go in and I'm like, Hi,
Speaker 4: we are trying to you know, showing her the map
Speaker 4: which we're coming from here, we're trying to get to here,
Speaker 4: and she goes, oh ah, you took the loop. Yeah,
Speaker 4: you talk the loop. No, you're not supposed to take
Speaker 4: the loop.
Speaker 3: We talked about him for the rest of the trip.
Speaker 1: Finish the loop.
Speaker 3: I was like, how do we unloop? Can you unloop us?
Speaker 5: Us?
Speaker 3: And he get us back and yeah, I live here now.
Speaker 3: Anyway back to it.
Speaker 4: So, anyone who's had a character name on Boy Meets
Speaker 4: World joins us to talk about the show, and boy
Speaker 4: are we thankful for it? This week we're chatting with
Speaker 4: a name that made all of us perk up during
Speaker 4: our season two recaps. It rang many bells, and for
Speaker 4: many reasons. First off, he played the hilariously named Ubaldo
Speaker 4: in Boy Meets World's season episode The Uninvited. He's the
Speaker 4: overly eager partygoer who somehow scores an invite to Melissa's
Speaker 4: exclusive Sean Free Hangout. Secondly, he shared the same childhood
Speaker 4: theater role of one Right or Strong Just a Southwest
Speaker 4: flight away from San Francisco in The La Company. And thirdly,
Speaker 4: how can you forget the kid who was the voice
Speaker 4: of fiveful Mouskowitz in the Iconic and American Tail Movies.
Speaker 3: With a credit like that, you are forever goaded.
Speaker 4: Now he's behind the camera, producing movies and joining us
Speaker 4: internationally from set.
Speaker 3: If you can believe it? Can we take.
Speaker 4: Credit for his modern day Hollywood success because of his
Speaker 4: early turn as Ubaldo.
Speaker 3: No, but we will anyway.
Speaker 4: Welcome to Pod Meets World, Philip Glasser, Yah.
Speaker 1: Go on, how you doing good? How are you?
Speaker 4: It's a long time, It's been a long time. We
Speaker 4: are told that you are joining us from London on set.
Speaker 3: Basically I am, I'm in my trailer little well, well,
Speaker 3: we are very appreciative.
Speaker 4: I think it goes without saying that whatever you are
Speaker 4: currently producing is not as important as talking to us
Speaker 4: about the one Boy Meets World episode where you played
Speaker 4: a character named Ubaldo at a house party.
Speaker 3: Obviously obviously not.
Speaker 4: We will eventually talk about what you're producing, but not
Speaker 4: to start to start, I want to talk about your
Speaker 4: Hollywood origin story. I know you're a valley kid, like
Speaker 4: most child actors at a time, but how did you
Speaker 4: convince your parents to find an agent and then sit
Speaker 4: in one on one traffic for auditions?
Speaker 5: You know, it was it was a family thing. So
Speaker 5: my brother, an older brother, is about seven years older,
Speaker 5: and he acted, so, you know, like every kid brother,
Speaker 5: you want to do what your big brother does. And
Speaker 5: I was only four years old and somehow, you know,
Speaker 5: I was that kid who was always waving his hand
Speaker 5: and get crazy. And my brother's agent said, oh, he's
Speaker 5: got a good personality, he should try. From addition, so
Speaker 5: my mother knew a little bit about it, she was
Speaker 5: a casting director. So I went out for a Wells
Speaker 5: Fargo Bank commercial my very first I did. I got
Speaker 5: the part, so I'm like, okay, that's an interesting and
Speaker 5: then literally, yeah, like a year or two later, I
Speaker 5: was five and a half, maybe about to turn six,
Speaker 5: audition for this cartoon movie for Steven Spielberg. And I
Speaker 5: had no idea that I was about to become a
Speaker 5: crazy character that would be around for a very long time.
Speaker 1: You were you were six years old when you recorded
Speaker 1: fivele I.
Speaker 5: Started recording at six. I did it so I was eighteen,
Speaker 5: so coly was a little slow for me.
Speaker 3: My gosh.
Speaker 5: Wow.
Speaker 4: So your first job was a national Wells Fargo commercial
Speaker 4: and your next job was a Steven spiel Berg movie Bible.
Speaker 5: Wow.
Speaker 2: Okay, yes, I think that sounds like the normal trajectory
Speaker 2: for most actors in the industry.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 5: The problem is I peaked at like eight though I
Speaker 5: speaked way too.
Speaker 1: It's all downhill from there.
Speaker 3: Did you read for Spielberg?
Speaker 5: So I actually put myself on tape, okay, and then
Speaker 5: and then I came back in and I did Actually
Speaker 5: I never went in and met them and did another
Speaker 5: tape like in a booth they put me and then
Speaker 5: they said you're in, and this time you have to remember.
Speaker 5: So this was like nineteen eighty four. Animation movies weren't big,
Speaker 5: Like I want to say. Snow White was the highest
Speaker 5: grossing movie at all time, and it made like twenty
Speaker 5: something million dollars. You know, Don Bluth was an iconic
Speaker 5: animator from Disney's and all the Disney movies and Pete's
Speaker 5: Dragon and everything, And he teams up with Steven to
Speaker 5: tell this story that was essentially somewhat about Stephen's grandfather,
Speaker 5: whose real name was Bible, I was Spielberg. Yeah, and
Speaker 5: you know, we do this movie and then all of
Speaker 5: a sudden, they were the first guys to really bring
Speaker 5: celebrities because he had Don Bluth, he had Madeline Kahn,
Speaker 5: Christopher Plumber and then Amy Irving were all in the movie.
Speaker 5: And that wasn't a common thing back then to have
Speaker 5: celebrities and animated movies. And this movie comes out eighty six,
Speaker 5: it makes like seventy million dollars, which were probably like
Speaker 5: close to a billion dollars in today's world, and everyone's like,
Speaker 5: whoa we get nominated for the Oscar for somewhere out there,
Speaker 5: and it was just absolute chaos ever since.
Speaker 4: Wow, oh my gosh, So how did you how did
Speaker 4: you know what to do in the in the studio?
Speaker 3: Like it's your first voiceover job.
Speaker 4: Other voices in this movie, Madeline conn Christopher Plumber, Don
Speaker 4: Delawiz and here you are a six year old with
Speaker 4: your first trech voiceover job.
Speaker 3: How did you? How did you know what to do?
Speaker 3: Who helped you?
Speaker 5: Well, you know what I mean. Stephen and Don were
Speaker 5: in every one of my recording sessions, so that was
Speaker 5: super helpful. But what they did for me is because
Speaker 5: I was so young, So was Madeline Kahn, so is
Speaker 5: Christopher Plummer. I recorded with them my lines, so I
Speaker 5: always had someone to sort of react with, which is
Speaker 5: super uncommon when you're doing voice Yeah, so I had.
Speaker 5: I was really spoiled. I got to work with all
Speaker 5: these iconic legends, you know, as a little kid who
Speaker 5: made it super easy for me.
Speaker 4: And so what happens when the movie takes off is
Speaker 4: every like, is everyone at school freaking out that they
Speaker 4: know Fible.
Speaker 5: There was a little bit of that. I think there
Speaker 5: was some bullying too. I think people are looking for
Speaker 5: a tale. You know, kids are interesting. Oh yeah, so
Speaker 5: you know I was still you know, going to like
Speaker 5: la Us the public school, right, you know, and it
Speaker 5: wasn't you know, it wasn't a thing. And then after
Speaker 5: that just voiceovers became such a big part of my life.
Speaker 5: I was doing like four cartoon series at the same time. Wow.
Speaker 5: So I went from that the Tiny Tuons Christian he
Speaker 5: put me on that for a while, and then I
Speaker 5: was on Pound Puppies, the original one if you remember,
Speaker 5: with Ruth Buzzy. Yeah, yeah, they did Creepy Crawlers, PJ
Speaker 5: Sparkles and like a do other stuff, and men got
Speaker 5: into the ADR world and joined like one of these
Speaker 5: loop groups, and it was just I literally worked almost
Speaker 5: every day, which was absolute chaos.
Speaker 1: Well it was.
Speaker 2: It was a great time in the industry because it
Speaker 2: was it was one of those times where and then
Speaker 2: they got out of it and now they're slowly starting
Speaker 2: to get back into it in voiceover where children actually
Speaker 2: did children's voices. Yea, so it's like you would listen
Speaker 2: to Charlie Brown and all those and the Peanuts gang
Speaker 2: were all kids. And then after a while they were like,
Speaker 2: well we should get adults to do kids, especially in
Speaker 2: that kind of early eighties era, and so eighty four
Speaker 2: eighty five they did start casting kids again. And it
Speaker 2: makes a huge difference when it's a kid doing a
Speaker 2: kid's voice.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's so true. And they were everything was authenticity
Speaker 5: with Steven and Don Like their big thing is you
Speaker 5: had to be able to sing, Like that was a
Speaker 5: big thing. They weren't going to do the Disney model
Speaker 5: where you can get somebody else to read. If you
Speaker 5: couldn't sing, you couldn't do the role. I had to
Speaker 5: like sing somewhere out there. The very first time I
Speaker 5: went in like, no, thank you. So it was it
Speaker 5: was crazy. I had no idea what it was going
Speaker 5: to become. Nobody did. But you know, the thing that
Speaker 5: actually came out of it, besides all this other great
Speaker 5: voice overtook as something that writer and I, you know,
Speaker 5: share is I got a call from Cameron McIntosh's office.
Speaker 5: They said, who does the voice for Fible? They called
Speaker 5: my agent and they said, we want you to audition
Speaker 5: for this show Lame is Roll. And I heard of
Speaker 5: it because it was in New York. This is nineteen
Speaker 5: eighty seven. American Tale came out in November of eighty six,
Speaker 5: and I went in and met with like Cameron Richard,
Speaker 5: g Alexander and John Caird And the next thing I know,
Speaker 5: I'm at the Schubert Theater doing a week absolute kay off.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, and then you and then it went
Speaker 1: to you. Yeah, I was up in San Francisco. But
Speaker 1: but before that, I want to go back. I just
Speaker 1: want to hear what it was like to work with
Speaker 1: with Spielberg and Don Like, what were they like as
Speaker 1: far as giving direction and how were they to work
Speaker 1: with they?
Speaker 5: You know, they were awesome. Stephen was. I want to
Speaker 5: say his son, Max was not that much younger than
Speaker 5: me at the time. He was like a dad. He
Speaker 5: would show up in at and the first meeting we
Speaker 5: ever had was at his office at Amblin, which is
Speaker 5: one of the cool offices, and you know, he was
Speaker 5: just like we hung out and like he has this
Speaker 5: video arcade of all of his movies that are made
Speaker 5: into video games, and we literally like played video games,
Speaker 5: like hung out, like he was talking with my dad
Speaker 5: was showing us like all the charts and you know,
Speaker 5: all the pictures and like sort of treatments and what
Speaker 5: they were doing with the characters. And we just started recording.
Speaker 5: And back then it would take a good two years
Speaker 5: to make an animated movie. So we'd record a bunch,
Speaker 5: they'd animate some, we'd record some more animate, you know,
Speaker 5: sing the songs, and then do very little ad R.
Speaker 5: The neat thing they really did is they would video
Speaker 5: this is back with the old huge DHS cameras. They'd
Speaker 5: video your recording sessions to really make the intimation of
Speaker 5: your mouth correct. When they wanted your lips bringing the
Speaker 5: apps that was in Bond blue like special to be perfect.
Speaker 5: So they'd watch us record the lines and video us
Speaker 5: so really help with the animation, which is really neat.
Speaker 3: That's so cool, so cool.
Speaker 2: Yeah, mouth people don't realize how important mouth they called
Speaker 2: the mouth flaps are in animation. Yea, where if you
Speaker 2: get a breakdown because a lot of the animator is
Speaker 2: the thing that maybe not back in the day, but
Speaker 2: now a lot of the animators don't speak English because
Speaker 2: they're being animated in Japan or Korea or China, and
Speaker 2: so what will happen is they literally just have a
Speaker 2: chart of what the mouth looks like when it makes
Speaker 2: certain letters. So an O makes this letter, an A
Speaker 2: makes this letter, so they can animate around the actual
Speaker 2: vowels that you're saying, and so by filming you doing
Speaker 2: it there literally can animate the actual mouthflap to match
Speaker 2: the word, which again you can tell the difference when
Speaker 2: you see one of those schlock Fest eighty cartoons that
Speaker 2: I loved, where it was the mouthflap would just be
Speaker 2: doing this and a voice would come out and sometimes
Speaker 2: it would stop talking and the voice would still be
Speaker 2: going yeah, or a different voice would come out of
Speaker 2: the mouth flaps like they just didn't care, And you
Speaker 2: can tell it makes a big difference, the attention to detail.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you're one hundred percent right, all right.
Speaker 1: So singing this iconic song, how was it were you?
Speaker 1: Did it just come out or was it like a
Speaker 1: long time lots of takes?
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean they came over to my house and
Speaker 5: taught it to me, you know, at like you know,
Speaker 5: James Horner came with. I think the writers were Berry
Speaker 5: Man and Cynthia while cract and they write, and they
Speaker 5: taught me how to singer. I sing like four songs
Speaker 5: in the movie, but this one was like the big one,
Speaker 5: and I'll never forget it. I did the first take
Speaker 5: my voice cracked, and that's the one they actually ended
Speaker 5: up using because and I'm like, no, no, I'll do
Speaker 5: it again. I'll do it again. I think I did.
Speaker 5: But it was so authentic and Stephen like absolutely loved it,
Speaker 5: and he's like, no, that's it. That's exactly why we
Speaker 5: want someone to really sing it themselves, because you're in
Speaker 5: that character. Now we've established it, and that's the one
Speaker 5: that kind of went. I had no idea that we'd
Speaker 5: be playing still at weddings, probably still to this day,
Speaker 5: you know, And you know, it was the most unique
Speaker 5: thing and I still get it to stay every once
Speaker 5: in a while from people. Is you know, shortly after
Speaker 5: the first movie, we had the first Goal four and
Speaker 5: that song was such a big song for people whose
Speaker 5: parents were deployed constantly. People always coming up to me
Speaker 5: saying that song was so important to me during the
Speaker 5: war when my mom or dad was over in Iraq,
Speaker 5: and you know, and then anything like that makes me
Speaker 5: feel so good about anything I could have done that
Speaker 5: could have helped somebody else. Yes, I still to this day,
Speaker 5: like comic cons people will tell me about it, you know,
Speaker 5: and still so it's uh. I had like once again,
Speaker 5: I had no idea anything that's gonna come up and
Speaker 5: then oh cool, I get to work with the guy
Speaker 5: who made Jaws and e T. I think it's the
Speaker 5: coolest thing in the world. But I had no idea
Speaker 5: what it would become.
Speaker 2: I have I have a question for you from the
Speaker 2: the technical side of it, because back in the day,
Speaker 2: I mean now, as a voiceover actor, I mean, you
Speaker 2: know this as well as anybody else. We do four
Speaker 2: hour sessions. It's they don't want to beat you up
Speaker 2: too much. You're gonna do four hours and you're gonna
Speaker 2: be out. Was it the same back in the day,
Speaker 2: especially as a young performer whose vocal cords hadn't really
Speaker 2: yet developed. You're singing, you're doing your vo Are they
Speaker 2: giving you two three hour sessions or are you there
Speaker 2: all day?
Speaker 5: You know, I think it varied. I think sometimes, you know,
Speaker 5: this songs took a little bit longer because you know
Speaker 5: that you have you're saying with somebody else and they
Speaker 5: have to get it right too, it's not just you.
Speaker 5: And some of the sessions, probably because of my age,
Speaker 5: took a little bit longer, you know. I mean I
Speaker 5: could read, but you know, I wasn't a thespian at
Speaker 5: this point. I'm six, right, So you know, I think
Speaker 5: they had to be patient, and it was it was
Speaker 5: so much. It was a tremendous amount of dialogue. Yeah,
Speaker 5: I mean, you know, so they had everything on like
Speaker 5: these poster boards in big lettering to make it super easy,
Speaker 5: and Don would go through with me, and so with
Speaker 5: Steven sometimes and the other actors. Like I said, they
Speaker 5: were just it was like having a bunch of like parents.
Speaker 5: They were so kind, like Don Delaise, you know, it
Speaker 5: was one of the sweetest human beings I've ever worked with.
Speaker 5: In my life, and he was like just having this
Speaker 5: giant eddie bear of an uncle that would just make
Speaker 5: everything fun. He'd tell a joke, he would make the
Speaker 5: entire experience fun, just like he is in all this.
Speaker 1: Character that's so cool.
Speaker 4: That is amazing and so mixed in with other voiceover
Speaker 4: gigs and an eventual American Tales sequel and TV show.
Speaker 4: Is your start in live action TV? Guest starring playing
Speaker 4: a young Danny Tanner.
Speaker 3: On Full House?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 4: Do you remember working with Bob Zagat at all and
Speaker 4: what it was like playing a younger version of him?
Speaker 5: I did, I did. It was during lames. So the
Speaker 5: big thing is they wouldn't cut my hair because that
Speaker 5: was the big thing. To get rash you had to
Speaker 5: work like a straight urgent. You couldn't get your haircut.
Speaker 5: They had to pin up a bunch of stuff. But
Speaker 5: it was supposed to be, you know, back in the
Speaker 5: sixties or seventies when they grew up, so it wasn't
Speaker 5: a big deal for the flashback, and it was, I mean,
Speaker 5: it was awesome, It wasn't great. I think it was
Speaker 5: like season two. It wasn't a very old show. Maybe
Speaker 5: season three. Yeah, And you know, I went on was
Speaker 5: able to do the show. I had my undershody cover
Speaker 5: my performances that I couldn't do that week, and it
Speaker 5: was It was awesome. Bob was great, everybody in the
Speaker 5: cast was great. They talked about like bringing us back
Speaker 5: for another one, and then I just never ended up
Speaker 5: happening because it was such a cute episode showed how
Speaker 5: we all met, how they became brands.
Speaker 1: All right, so I want to I want to hear
Speaker 1: about your lam Is experience. So what was that like?
Speaker 1: Was that your first like theatricals was the first time
Speaker 1: on stage? First time? And how was it my first time.
Speaker 5: On stage of it Is? I had no idea what
Speaker 5: it was going to be. It was a new thing.
Speaker 5: I went to this place. It was this church somewhere
Speaker 5: off sense of Bovard. Sorry I lost my train of
Speaker 5: thought earlier. And they had like a church and they
Speaker 5: took a big square put the big circle thing like
Speaker 5: with the automatic turntable on it, and we just went
Speaker 5: in there and then all of a sudden they're like, okay,
Speaker 5: you do this, You do this, and you get the stuff.
Speaker 5: You start meeting all the Pupil's a lot of people
Speaker 5: that came from New York because it was the third
Speaker 5: show went London, that's New York, that's Los Angeles, and
Speaker 5: we trained there with I think William Solo was our
Speaker 5: Valjean Jeff McCarthy was the javert, and k Cole was
Speaker 5: our our miss Tardier, and then Gary Beach who on
Speaker 5: a few tonys was our mister Thenardier. And we just
Speaker 5: started training and the next thing you know, we're opening
Speaker 5: up at the Schubert Theater and it was just once again,
Speaker 5: I had no idea. I didn't even know what the
Speaker 5: show was. I had no clue. I'd never done it.
Speaker 5: But I'm like, oh, this is fun. And you got
Speaker 5: to go around, run up and down, you know, barricades,
Speaker 5: and sing all these songs. Back then, you know, everything
Speaker 5: was still in it with the turntables. When they got
Speaker 5: rid of the turntable, you know, you didn't have the
Speaker 5: Gavroche death scene, all the big stuff.
Speaker 1: I know they cut it out. Now, my god, he
Speaker 1: dies London. It's so frustrating because they used to. They
Speaker 1: used to. The whole like conceit of the original show
Speaker 1: is that they the whole stage would rotate and lazy
Speaker 1: Susan right, it was incredible, like the so the show
Speaker 1: was just this flaw. So what what that meant is
Speaker 1: that the barricades came in and created a wall halfway
Speaker 1: through the stage, but it could rotate to show you
Speaker 1: the other side. So the key moment when Gavroche decided
Speaker 1: to go and volunteer to like get more bullets for
Speaker 1: them because they're running out of AMMO. He goes over
Speaker 1: the barricade. The whole thing turns and then it's this
Speaker 1: incredibly tense scene where he's like singing to himself acapella
Speaker 1: while he's like gathering bullets and he gets shot and
Speaker 1: dies on stage. It's like one of the coolest and
Speaker 1: as a kid, it was the greatest thing to play.
Speaker 1: Got to Die, And nowadays they just cut it out.
Speaker 1: You just see GeV Rush go over the barricade. You
Speaker 1: hear it, and it's like, oh, so those kids are
Speaker 1: missing out. Man, they don't They don't have the glory
Speaker 1: like we did.
Speaker 2: Yeah again, if you can't, you can't do kid murder
Speaker 2: on stage anymore?
Speaker 1: Where are we?
Speaker 5: It was the best part. I mean throwing there's this
Speaker 5: thing when you're dying and you have to try to
Speaker 5: throw the bag back over the get the bullet bag
Speaker 5: back over the barricade, which was all part of you know, competition.
Speaker 5: For me, as like an eight year old, I thought
Speaker 5: it was the coolest thing in the world. Trying to
Speaker 5: have to do it tonight. I mean, it doesn't change
Speaker 5: the scene. Just getting that from the barricade, it's a
Speaker 5: big Oh.
Speaker 1: Did other cast members offer you rewards if you did it?
Speaker 1: That's the way to do. For me, they were like,
Speaker 1: if you make it, you get a candy bar. And
Speaker 1: so it was like and there was like which and
Speaker 1: like me and then I and my the other Gevro,
Speaker 1: she had like his favorite candy bar.
Speaker 5: For me.
Speaker 1: It was like dark chocolate milky ways. And I knew
Speaker 1: that if I could make.
Speaker 2: The eight year old, are you eight years like a
Speaker 2: dark chocolate mound, dark chocolate milky way.
Speaker 1: Man, I only got it a few times. I've never
Speaker 1: made it. I never made it sports ball exactly, sports
Speaker 1: ball throw.
Speaker 5: A baseball practice, all right?
Speaker 3: So I want to get into Boy Meets World.
Speaker 4: You appear in our second season episode The Uninvited, all
Speaker 4: about Sean not getting a house party invite while Corey
Speaker 4: does get one.
Speaker 3: Do you remember auditioning for the role?
Speaker 5: I did? I did I auditioned for it? You know,
Speaker 5: I remember who your casting director was, Sally Dally Seiner. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 5: you know what audition like everyone else, like full House
Speaker 5: or anything. And I called that I knew the show.
Speaker 5: I met Ben before because we grew up not far
Speaker 5: from each other.
Speaker 3: Oh okay, and then obviously after that.
Speaker 5: Showing, I became really good friends. You know, Ben was
Speaker 5: on my altar my wedding for a moment, so complicated story.
Speaker 3: Wait wait wait, okay, so you auditioned for you auditioned
Speaker 3: for the role.
Speaker 5: I just running on.
Speaker 3: Can No, that's okay.
Speaker 4: So you get the role, you come on to set,
Speaker 4: you you you do the week. Do you have any
Speaker 4: specific memories about the week other than maybe you obviously
Speaker 4: became close to Ben.
Speaker 3: So did you spend a lot of time with Ben?
Speaker 5: Yeah? I spent some time with him, you know, I
Speaker 5: mean I think I met all you guys. You know,
Speaker 5: we did the show. As we did it was that
Speaker 5: like little thing. I knew the girl Jonna Stewart, I
Speaker 5: think it was her name that played like the girl
Speaker 5: that was throwing the party. I knew her because we
Speaker 5: did another job together. Okay, and uh, you know it
Speaker 5: was just it was. It was cool. It was a
Speaker 5: fun show to be on. You know, I got to
Speaker 5: play like door key number seven or whatever the nerd
Speaker 5: at a party, and you know, worked that great. It
Speaker 5: was fun. The show. You guys are all awesome. The
Speaker 5: show was easy to do. It was fun. Everyone was nice.
Speaker 5: And and then Ben and I just kind of stayed
Speaker 5: in contact through the years, you know, because we lived together,
Speaker 5: we had a lot of mutual friends, especially the oak Woods,
Speaker 5: and then we kind of re met through life because
Speaker 5: I moved into the oak Woods and that was kind
Speaker 5: of it. And then we became really good friends for
Speaker 5: a long time.
Speaker 3: And then Ben was in your wedding.
Speaker 5: He was supposed to be in my wedding, but just
Speaker 5: kind of I don't know. We were best friends for
Speaker 5: a long time and then just kind of disappeared kind
Speaker 5: of one day, and I still don't know what happened.
Speaker 4: Oh, we can't relate to that, so sorry, I'm just
Speaker 4: going to glossy.
Speaker 2: Phil and I had a long talk about this at
Speaker 2: a at a convention where we were just kind of
Speaker 2: commiserating about the loss of a friend. I guess understood
Speaker 2: way to put it, where the unexplained loss of a friend.
Speaker 2: Let's put it that where you just kind of don't
Speaker 2: know what the hell happened.
Speaker 1: So yeah, hil, Yeah, So wait, did you you moved
Speaker 1: into the oak Woods as your first apartment, like on
Speaker 1: your own?
Speaker 5: So I did. I moved there my first year. I
Speaker 5: was sixteen when I moved out. Wow. I remember they
Speaker 5: had all those Jackie Cougan laws back then where they
Speaker 5: would lock up your money in a lock box for
Speaker 5: like sixteen and eighteen, so, you know, sadly for my parents,
Speaker 5: I woke up at sixteen and I had like seven
Speaker 5: figures in my bank account. Was just a terrible, terrible
Speaker 5: young sixteen year old that graduated high school a semester earlier,
Speaker 5: a year early. And I moved in with these two
Speaker 5: other actors, got in Ki Erickson, who was the kid
Speaker 5: from the Commission if you remember that, Jeff, and then
Speaker 5: this other guy named Chap that's last name. He married
Speaker 5: Sybil Shepherd's daughter, Okay, and we lived there, you know,
Speaker 5: during pilot season, and it was just absolute chaos.
Speaker 1: I always asked your remember your building? Do you remember
Speaker 1: what you were in?
Speaker 5: So the first building I was in E and the
Speaker 5: moved by the South Clubhouse the next time, I lived
Speaker 5: in a studio with two other guys, two other.
Speaker 1: Peter studio.
Speaker 5: Studio apartment. It was too bad. But the Murphy so
Speaker 5: this guy named Stuart Stone, well, yeah, sos Stu and
Speaker 5: I lived in the bed and his buddy that that
Speaker 5: I met from him, Devin Salo, lived on the couch.
Speaker 5: The three of us literally lived in an apartment together. They
Speaker 5: had just literally got off the boat from Canada. It
Speaker 5: was it was very different. They were now the oak Woods,
Speaker 5: though in itself was absolute chaos. Like everyone I felt
Speaker 5: like lived there. It was me. It was like Jessica
Speaker 5: bial was living there, Brian it was who was it?
Speaker 5: I was talking with Ben Foster and Jewel State. I
Speaker 5: was actually saw Ben in New York a few weeks
Speaker 5: ago and we were literally talk having the conversations like
Speaker 5: you were like the first person I met. I moved
Speaker 5: to LA I hope that's you. We were just crazy.
Speaker 5: We were just kids that you know, and made this
Speaker 5: money when we were kids from acting. There were no
Speaker 5: absolutely no roles.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was like the Island of the Lost Boys.
Speaker 1: It was Thunderdome. It was great.
Speaker 5: Yes, that's exactly right. That's a great analogy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, do you remember Edd Bevis.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, it was los en Aga, right, it was
Speaker 5: right next to the primary place.
Speaker 1: Yep, the Stinking Rose.
Speaker 5: Yeah, what was the primary place called that?
Speaker 3: Lowry's have Lowry's? Does the Stinking Rose still exist?
Speaker 1: I think so? Maybe not.
Speaker 3: It's gone.
Speaker 1: It's been twenty years since I went there.
Speaker 5: God, so crazy, I've been there forever.
Speaker 2: Well.
Speaker 4: We also recently watched a Halloween episode of Sabrina where,
Speaker 4: for an unexplained reason, all the kids from her school dressed.
Speaker 3: As James Dean and you were one of the James Dean's.
Speaker 4: Did anyone else think it was weird that dozens of
Speaker 4: boys dressed as James Dean in the late nineties?
Speaker 5: On set, it was, you know, I think there was
Speaker 5: a bunch of us in white T shirts, so like
Speaker 5: the folded up shirt and jeans and okay, it was
Speaker 5: a blast. She was the first season of the show,
Speaker 5: and I knew Nate a little bit who was on
Speaker 5: the show. And then they brought me back for another
Speaker 5: episode that was a totally different role. Oh smart, So
Speaker 5: I ended up doing two roles in that first season.
Speaker 5: I was kind of always in a scene with the
Speaker 5: Harvey character who Nate Richard played, Yeah, but then that
Speaker 5: was it after that season. But another show that was
Speaker 5: just you know, super fun to do, great cast. Actually
Speaker 5: Melissa's kids and Eye her kids and my kids go
Speaker 5: to the same school. I've seen her floating around a
Speaker 5: little bit in Nashville now. But that's been a small world.
Speaker 5: A lot of people have moved there. Ben Foster moved
Speaker 5: to Nashville now, and it's it's become quite quite a
Speaker 5: hum for people.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but how much more fun was Boy Meets World
Speaker 3: than Sabrina?
Speaker 5: Though? Way more fun?
Speaker 4: Yeah, Okay, I just wanted to make sure that we
Speaker 4: got that out of the way. So you also end
Speaker 4: up on a show that comes up a lot on
Speaker 4: this podcast, a Saved by the Bell style sitcom about
Speaker 4: basketball Hangtime alongside Dick but Kiss, Reggie THEUS, and our
Speaker 4: pal Hillary Tuck. But this one had so many cast
Speaker 4: shake ups. Were you safe from those recastings or is
Speaker 4: that what happened to you too?
Speaker 5: I was the end, so I did the last three seasons,
Speaker 5: so I ended the show, so I didn't have any recasting.
Speaker 5: But I came after Anthony Anderson, so I was with
Speaker 5: Jay Hernandez, who was kind of the big became the
Speaker 5: big name after the show, so it was myself. It
Speaker 5: was still like Danielle Tucher, Danielle Ducher who ended up
Speaker 5: marrying Jay Hernandez in real life. That started. That romance
Speaker 5: started behind the scenes of the show. Then there was
Speaker 5: Megan Parlan was I think one of the originals. Those
Speaker 5: were the only two that I think, and Adam Frost
Speaker 5: that stayed through all six or seven seasons. But it
Speaker 5: was you know, it was part of the TGIF or
Speaker 5: Whenever not TJF, Saturday Morning, RUC Thing Peter. There was
Speaker 5: like City Guys and Stay by the Bell of the
Speaker 5: New Class and One World and we were just one
Speaker 5: of those shows. We filmed at Sunset Gower Studios and
Speaker 5: tapes every week. You know. It was a blast. I
Speaker 5: mean I enjoyed it. I got to play kind of
Speaker 5: this idiot role named Eugene Brown and it was kind
Speaker 5: of the goofball. But for whatever reason, I always got
Speaker 5: really good looking girlfriends. Yeah, it was. It was an
Speaker 5: absolute blast. I mean we had lots of NBA stars
Speaker 5: that guest star in it, so it was pretty cool.
Speaker 5: Like Kobe Bryant was on it. Wow, Tim Hardaway was
Speaker 5: on when I was on it was. It was. It
Speaker 5: was pretty fun. I mean we literally played basketball and
Speaker 5: got to act and then you know those live but
Speaker 5: you guys did it for so many years. Those live
Speaker 5: audience shows are an absolute blast, especially when you record.
Speaker 3: Did you like playing basketball? Were you an athletic kid?
Speaker 5: I enjoyed it. I wasn't great in it. I played
Speaker 5: more hockey than anything growing up, I was, which is
Speaker 5: such a random sport for a valley kid. But I yeah,
Speaker 5: there was this it's a plexwim it opened there and
Speaker 5: like was that North North Hills or somewhere in there,
Speaker 5: like Roscoe and haven Hurst, And I used to always
Speaker 5: just like to play. When you know, when Gretzky came
Speaker 5: to LA, hockey got huge. Yeah, I became a huge fan.
Speaker 1: And it sounds like you kind of an honorary Canadian.
Speaker 1: You have so many Canadian friends. This was I did.
Speaker 5: I found the two Canadian guys. And by the way,
Speaker 5: the first two guys, kai And and Chad were also Canadian.
Speaker 5: So that's what a lot of the oak Woods were though.
Speaker 5: There was a massive Canadian population because that's where everyone
Speaker 5: would like come for pilot season and audition.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I guess you could say, Canadian.
Speaker 7: I lived with those guys, second with Devin and Stewart
Speaker 7: for almost three years. Because we moved out of the
Speaker 7: oak Woods to this I bought a town home and
Speaker 7: in sinow.
Speaker 5: Man. You know, it's pretty crazy there as well.
Speaker 3: I can only I can imagine. Are you still in
Speaker 3: touch with either of them?
Speaker 5: I still talked to Stewart all the time. I talked
Speaker 5: to Devon here and there, not as much as I
Speaker 5: used to back in the day, but I still talk
Speaker 5: to him. But Stewart and I will main friends for
Speaker 5: a long time. You still He's a directs a show
Speaker 5: now wrestling show. He travels to the country view it.
Speaker 3: I know, and I Stu and I have been in touch.
Speaker 3: I love Stu.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Stu. Stu is like the guy that you there's
Speaker 5: something wrong with if you don't like Stewart. It's the
Speaker 5: nicest human being. He's a good say. Him and I
Speaker 5: have always remained friends like we all still get along,
Speaker 5: you know, obviously, I just don't. I just don't see
Speaker 5: that this much anymore. He's he's When I left California, man,
Speaker 5: I moved to Tennessee. It was in the proof all
Speaker 5: I saw where like Stuart did a bunch of my movies.
Speaker 5: When I started producing.
Speaker 3: How did you make the jump to producing?
Speaker 5: You know, I was doing after Hangtime ended. I was
Speaker 5: a little kind of like acting. It wasn't like the
Speaker 5: most exciting show in the world to do. It wasn't
Speaker 5: Boy Meets World. Naturally, you guys asked me to be
Speaker 5: a regular. So I went and did a movie that
Speaker 5: I got from the show, which was called Poolhall Junkies.
Speaker 5: It was a really fun movie I did with Michael
Speaker 5: Roseenbaum Christopher Walking, and it was actually Steiner's last movie,
Speaker 5: and it was so much fun to make this movie.
Speaker 5: It became like a really cool independent movie, more of
Speaker 5: a cold class than a big release. I'm like, you
Speaker 5: know that this is a great way to go out.
Speaker 5: Movie's awesome. I'm in my early twenties and my brother
Speaker 5: had already moved on to behind the scenes. And you know,
Speaker 5: I did really well in like international sales, and I
Speaker 5: went to ask his advice. I was going to film
Speaker 5: school at UCLA, trying to do all this at the
Speaker 5: same time, of course, which was hard, right, And I
Speaker 5: asked his sort of advice, like what do I do?
Speaker 5: Should I you know, I'm thinking I tried doing directing
Speaker 5: the film school wasn't really my thing, not much of
Speaker 5: a writer. But he's like, look, you could produce and
Speaker 5: I said, okay, cool. So I said, well, how do
Speaker 5: I do this? And he's like, I going to help
Speaker 5: you get a job in international sales. And I'm like,
Speaker 5: I don't want to do international sales. I want to produce,
Speaker 5: and he's like, trust me do international sales. So kind
Speaker 5: of after going back and forth, he said to me,
Speaker 5: what do you think is the most important thing about
Speaker 5: being a producer And I said, making a good movie,
Speaker 5: says incorrect. He's like, making your investors money back, yep,
Speaker 5: that's how you keep producing films. And I'm like it
Speaker 5: was the best advice I ever got, and I did it.
Speaker 5: I took his advice and I sold international licenses for
Speaker 5: movies for about eighteen months to two years, and then
Speaker 5: that company got bought by a German company that I
Speaker 5: was working for called Splendid Pictures. I went in and
Speaker 5: moved over to their production side and just kind of
Speaker 5: worked my way up on that side from the studio level,
Speaker 5: and they were part of They had to deal with
Speaker 5: MGM Wow, and the first movie I was working on,
Speaker 5: my boss I was, you know, essentially his junior executive.
Speaker 5: But and so usually you go to set, you know,
Speaker 5: and sort of be the studio producer whenever. And I
Speaker 5: get set sent in this movie called narc with Raleiona
Speaker 5: and Jason Patrick. Sure. I had no idea. I've never
Speaker 5: done it before a producing perspective, and I just kind
Speaker 5: of figured it out, you know, sometime was the best
Speaker 5: way to learn is just to put yourself there. Yeah,
Speaker 5: And I was the studio sort of representing for the film.
Speaker 5: The movie obviously gets in the sun Dance and some
Speaker 5: awards then came out in theaters. It was Joe Carnahan's
Speaker 5: first movie that they ever directed, and it was just
Speaker 5: from there on, I just kind of wok with it
Speaker 5: and I just fell in love with it. I'm like,
Speaker 5: this is kind of like, to me, movies as a
Speaker 5: producer was like a giant messed up Ribbik's cube. The
Speaker 5: more messed up it was, the more exciting was to
Speaker 5: sort of put back together. And that's just sort of
Speaker 5: got me into it. And I just started working and
Speaker 5: doing it and doing one after the other, first for
Speaker 5: the studios, and I went out independently and then started
Speaker 5: doing overhead deals with studios and I did it for
Speaker 5: it's been almost twenty years now.
Speaker 1: All right, So it's it sounds like you've done all
Speaker 1: different types of producing and I mean, you know, producer
Speaker 1: is one of those titles that like I feel like,
Speaker 1: you know, people in the industry kind of understand, but
Speaker 1: even even within the industry, it's hard to understand. But
Speaker 1: certainly outside of the industry, it can mean a variety
Speaker 1: of different roles. It's a catcher, yeah, right, So it's
Speaker 1: coming from like the executive side or the studio side,
Speaker 1: and you've also have been like an on set producer.
Speaker 1: It sounds like, so what do you what is what
Speaker 1: do you like to do, what kind of producing do
Speaker 1: you love to do? What do you try? And like
Speaker 1: what is your goal?
Speaker 5: I have to be there to get my hands dirty,
Speaker 5: to be on set, I think to me, as an actor,
Speaker 5: I hated producers that were mailing it in or we're
Speaker 5: sitting in their trailer or not. They weren't good enough
Speaker 5: to come to set for that day when the star
Speaker 5: wasn't there. I don't work that way. I've always operated
Speaker 5: different that when I start a movie, you know, I'll
Speaker 5: meet with my top sort of five or seven leads,
Speaker 5: dinner with them and just have a conversation with them
Speaker 5: and say, like, what kind of set do you like,
Speaker 5: what's your world, what's your environment, Just to get to
Speaker 5: know them a little bit better because we all have
Speaker 5: different personalities, and because that's the one thing no one
Speaker 5: ever did for me as an actor. Obviously a big
Speaker 5: enough starter warrant that, but it's so important because we
Speaker 5: have such different lifestyle that we all come from. But
Speaker 5: to me, if you can get that right and I
Speaker 5: can help lead my crew to have a better understanding
Speaker 5: when the show starts, it makes a much different show.
Speaker 5: People work better together, you can understand people like stuff
Speaker 5: goes wrong. But you know, we're dealing with the show
Speaker 5: that I'm working on right now. You know it's I
Speaker 5: came and I did the same exact thing, and it's
Speaker 5: been such a great from what I've heard from last
Speaker 5: season to this season, not into the first season of
Speaker 5: the show. It's such a different environment.
Speaker 3: What show are you working on right now?
Speaker 5: It's it's a show on Paramount Plus called mob Land,
Speaker 5: Oh with Tom Hardy, Helen Muir and in Pierce Brosan.
Speaker 3: Wow, people love this.
Speaker 5: Yet it's a great show. It was a monster last year,
Speaker 5: big hit, and I was doing another show for the
Speaker 5: company called Mayor of Kingstown, the Jeremy Renner. I produced
Speaker 5: that last season. So we did really good with our
Speaker 5: numbers and they said, hey, do you want to come
Speaker 5: produce one, but you have to go to London. I'm like, absolutely,
Speaker 5: you know, I love the show and it's been here.
Speaker 5: We started filming a couple of weeks.
Speaker 2: Ago and yeah, Phil, Phil told me at the convention
Speaker 2: we were at that he was going to go with me,
Speaker 2: and at the last second they decided Pierce Brosnan was
Speaker 2: the way to go for the crazy.
Speaker 5: We had to go a little older.
Speaker 1: I fig and I get it.
Speaker 2: No no, no two good looking for cameras when I
Speaker 2: think you said for me, yeah.
Speaker 5: Oh man, craziness.
Speaker 4: Well, one of your other first big producing credits was
Speaker 4: on The Illusionist, starring Ed Norton, Paul Jamadi, and Jessica Biel.
Speaker 1: Or was it, Danielle.
Speaker 4: I know, I want to know how much of your
Speaker 4: time back then was spent explaining to people that The
Speaker 4: Illusionist and The Prestige were different, different movies.
Speaker 5: That was, and by the way, that was the box
Speaker 5: office success of The Illusionists. It was a smaller company
Speaker 5: that released it, and they knew if they wanted this
Speaker 5: movie win, they had to release it first. That's really
Speaker 5: the truth. They both were excellent movies, but the Illusionists
Speaker 5: got to the box office first, and that's why I
Speaker 5: crushed the Prestige.
Speaker 2: So this was an Armageddon deep impact kind of situation.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Correct. We had an independent studio versus studio. It was
Speaker 5: this group called Yari Film Group and nobody really ever
Speaker 5: heard of. And you know, we made other good movies
Speaker 5: there because I had overhead deal there, and like Crash,
Speaker 5: they made Crash, they made, you know, a bunch of
Speaker 5: other good stuff. This movie. I made another movie with
Speaker 5: them with Jamie Kennedy called Kicking It on School there
Speaker 5: and they're like, oh, we got to get this out quick,
Speaker 5: otherwise we're going to get crushed. It was Christian Bale
Speaker 5: and Prestige Coming Out was also excellent. Both good movies,
Speaker 5: and we filmed them pro in Prague and it's literally
Speaker 5: it was such a regunion because I hadn't seen Jessica
Speaker 5: Bill since the Oak years and we we we we
Speaker 5: ran into each other on that so it was kind
Speaker 5: of fun see everybody and just it was an astonishing movie.
Speaker 5: It was really good. No idea.
Speaker 2: As you're sitting on these sets, You're you're sitting there
Speaker 2: with you know, these huge actors and these these you know,
Speaker 2: big productions. Do you ever get the itch is the
Speaker 2: hands start twitching again where it's like, oh, man, I
Speaker 2: maybe I would have done that part a little differently,
Speaker 2: or if I could just jump in front of that.
Speaker 1: Camera one more time. Is that something you ever deal with?
Speaker 5: It's come up a lot. It's usually one of the
Speaker 5: other actors because search do two lines of this just
Speaker 5: my director, and I'm like, you know, I can't. I
Speaker 5: just you know what, it was a chapter. It was
Speaker 5: an amazing part of my life. I wouldn't be doing
Speaker 5: this now if it wasn't for first, first and foremost
Speaker 5: Boy Meets World, then Fible whatever.
Speaker 1: Really did it for you?
Speaker 5: It did Listen they said, you know, look you're good. Great,
Speaker 5: that's why that's why you're not a regular well you
Speaker 5: to Peter Endel, so like, you know, it just it
Speaker 5: was that thing that I'm just like, you know, I
Speaker 5: was so happy with everything that I accomplished, you know,
Speaker 5: my first twenty years doing being in the show business
Speaker 5: and being an actor, that there was nothing to look
Speaker 5: back at. I started to feel it. Obviously, it's later
Speaker 5: in years, my later acting years. It was actually I
Speaker 5: think the last time I saw you, Danielle was at
Speaker 5: in Sync concert when you were dating. Yeah, I came
Speaker 5: to Universal Amphitheater and then I came and like, look
Speaker 5: this up. We went backstage and everything, and that sort
Speaker 5: of like for me, I was a few years older
Speaker 5: than Ben, so I was just like, you know, I
Speaker 5: don't know of acting then, not that I started to
Speaker 5: like sort of feel up there and I was still
Speaker 5: doing a show. I was on hang Time at the time,
Speaker 5: but that was kind of like one of the first
Speaker 5: things that I'm like, I don't know if this is
Speaker 5: my thing. I love all the stuff that comes with it,
Speaker 5: but I don't know if it was designed for me.
Speaker 5: And then I kind of was waked watching people do things,
Speaker 5: and I started paying more close attention to producers to
Speaker 5: directors as I was getting older in my early twenties. Yeah,
Speaker 5: I'm like, yeah, maybe this is for me. And like
Speaker 5: I said, my big brother, who's had a massive success
Speaker 5: in this business, you know, was my sort of my
Speaker 5: guiding lights kind of point me that way.
Speaker 4: So great, awesome, everyone is obviously concerned about the future
Speaker 4: of Hollywood. You have made both studio films and independent movies.
Speaker 4: Where do you see things going.
Speaker 5: Well, Look, it's it's harder to make an indie movie nowadays,
Speaker 5: but the studio movies aren't made like they used to be. Obviously,
Speaker 5: streamings kind of taken over the platform as we've seen,
Speaker 5: and the streaming has become the new sort of television.
Speaker 5: And you know by a lot of the shows that
Speaker 5: I've been working on, we're bringing the movie stars into
Speaker 5: TV now.
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker 5: So it's making it a little more difficult to do
Speaker 5: these movies because they'd rather do these TV shows. They
Speaker 5: do ten episodeses and make the same money they're going
Speaker 5: to make, if not more, on a movie that they
Speaker 5: have to spend six months doing, right, we can shoot
Speaker 5: them out in three or four months. So it's hard.
Speaker 5: I mean, Look, the biggest key that I think they're
Speaker 5: doing a really good job to try to keep off is,
Speaker 5: you know, keep AI under control, and that could be
Speaker 5: that could be obviously a concern for everyone. But the
Speaker 5: competition of the TV show now, it's it's so different
Speaker 5: from when we were doing it growing up. It's like,
Speaker 5: I make a movie every week on this show, I
Speaker 5: don't make a TV show. You the first two episodes
Speaker 5: of the season, Guy Ritchie is directing. So you have
Speaker 5: this massive director directing. Who's he's you know directing? You know,
Speaker 5: these massive budgets with three movie stars, right, And then
Speaker 5: I sit there and I watch behind the monitor and
Speaker 5: I'm first of all, I'm like, still like a kid
Speaker 5: in the Candy Star. I'm like, I'm working with three
Speaker 5: movie stars. Yeah, who are Just to watch the chemistry?
Speaker 5: I mean, Helen Mirren blows my mind. I think the
Speaker 5: balanted my wife.
Speaker 2: My wife often says I'm the She's the only one
Speaker 2: that she's worried about for me leaving her is Helen Mirren.
Speaker 5: You know what's funny. I get this from all my friends.
Speaker 5: You're not wrong. They all they'll make the same They're like, dude,
Speaker 5: Ela Miron is so hot. Dude, you're so lucky. I'm like,
Speaker 5: you know what, Yeah she is. You're right, She's an
Speaker 5: absolute sweetheart.
Speaker 1: That's awesome.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's been. It's been a blast.
Speaker 3: Philip.
Speaker 4: If you could go back in time and tell young
Speaker 4: Philip on the set of Boy Meets World, completely immersed
Speaker 4: in the role of Ubaldo, if you could tell him
Speaker 4: one thing, what would you go back and tell young you,
Speaker 4: I should have.
Speaker 5: Done something to become a regular on this show. I
Speaker 5: think I could knocked into you, Baldo, because I loved
Speaker 5: working on your show. I think that's why I really
Speaker 5: screwed it up. I didn't show anything where Michael went. Yes,
Speaker 5: that's sick Glass. I see what Spielburg saw. I think
Speaker 5: if I would have on back, I would have. You know,
Speaker 5: maybe maybe some Shakespeare classes got a little bit more
Speaker 5: thespian into you. Ball though, should really take him over
Speaker 5: the top.
Speaker 4: Is there something about the three of our careers that
Speaker 4: make you think you could have done better had you
Speaker 4: been a regular on.
Speaker 1: Boy Meets World.
Speaker 3: I'm a little.
Speaker 4: Confused about why that feels like such an accomplishment.
Speaker 1: You too, could be on Dancing with the Stars right now.
Speaker 4: You could have been eliminated from Dancing with the Stars
Speaker 4: in week eight while hosting multiple podcasts and being said.
Speaker 3: True, I mean, you couldn't be doing this.
Speaker 2: I've been in the same underwear since last week, so
Speaker 2: you know what, I.
Speaker 5: Just think I was watching you guys. You guys have
Speaker 5: such a good vibe on that ship.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we are going back.
Speaker 5: You know, I come back for other tapings just when
Speaker 5: I was just through the years, I'd come to see you guys,
Speaker 5: you know, just being friends of bed whatever. You guys
Speaker 5: are doing your take guide and watch and then we'd
Speaker 5: go out after or something like that. But you know,
Speaker 5: you guys just always nice. You like, you know, you
Speaker 5: do a lot of these shows and you're a guest star.
Speaker 5: At times, it started the showing to talk to you. Yeah,
Speaker 5: you know you can get on some of these shows.
Speaker 5: You guys weren't like that at all. I like literally
Speaker 5: remember talking to you, talking to Will then writer and
Speaker 5: I were talking about Lia Miz. Like, you know, there
Speaker 5: was instant stuff to talk about with people, and you
Speaker 5: know that's a super comfortable thing when you're a guest star. Yeah,
Speaker 5: you don't get that on every show. I promise you that.
Speaker 3: Yeah that makes sense.
Speaker 4: Well, Philip, thank you for taking some time out of
Speaker 4: your very busy schedule working on a most credible show
Speaker 4: with absolute movie stars. I am just so grateful you
Speaker 4: came and spent your time. It was nice to reconnect
Speaker 4: with you, and gosh, I hope we get to see
Speaker 4: you again in person when we have our next pod
Speaker 4: meets World, slash Boy meets World Shindig hangout, which will
Speaker 4: either be at writer or Will's house.
Speaker 3: We hope you'll We hope you'll be there.
Speaker 5: I would love to. I'm here. I'm here in London
Speaker 5: till March, and then I'm back in the States for
Speaker 5: a bit. Otherwise my wife will stab me.
Speaker 4: Yeah right, say that's a long time. You're there till March.
Speaker 4: Does she get to come visit?
Speaker 5: Yeah? So I have three boys. My oldest is twenty
Speaker 5: and twenty one. Both those guys live in New York
Speaker 5: and I have a thirteen year old that we adopted
Speaker 5: at birth. He's still in school and so he's a
Speaker 5: he plays football and he loves football. But they try
Speaker 5: to come, like you get like the four day weekends
Speaker 5: for the flat for that because you can fly next
Speaker 5: thing now, Nashville is so big, you fly straight on
Speaker 5: them from there. Yeah, they're going to come to Thanksgetting
Speaker 5: week and then we're going to go down to Paris
Speaker 5: or take to take my little guy to euro Disney.
Speaker 5: He's never been there.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, the week, it's going to be so great.
Speaker 5: Yeah. So it's it's you know, and I try to
Speaker 5: get home when I can. This show is just so
Speaker 5: complicated to figure out my schedule with but I try
Speaker 5: to get home as much as I can. It's it's worked.
Speaker 5: I've been doing it three much of their life, you know,
Speaker 5: producing all these films and stuff and tea. Get a
Speaker 5: little bit more of an organized schedule, which I like
Speaker 5: more than an independent movie. You have no idea what happened, right,
Speaker 5: but it's been great. It's you know, I've been married
Speaker 5: twenty five years. Super happy about it.
Speaker 3: Congratulations, what a success.
Speaker 5: Thank you, thank you very much. Thanks for having me on. Well,
Speaker 5: thanks for reaching out.
Speaker 1: This is of course. Of course we'll keep talking.
Speaker 2: And my wife and I love London, so the next
Speaker 2: time we're there, hopefully you'll be there and we'll go
Speaker 2: to jim Conna for the night.
Speaker 5: Listen. I have a two bedroom apartment. You got a
Speaker 5: three room to stay.
Speaker 1: Oh that's awesome, Marl.
Speaker 3: Thank you, Philip. It was great to see you.
Speaker 1: Good to see you man.
Speaker 5: It's great seeing you guys.
Speaker 4: Okay, bye, Wow to hear he is a twenty two
Speaker 4: year old and a twenty one year old.
Speaker 5: I know.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, so it's so smart to have kids younger.
Speaker 3: God didn't do so much.
Speaker 1: There's one thing to do with than that.
Speaker 5: Even Yeah, the kids at all.
Speaker 1: I know, we know, we know, we know, but man,
Speaker 1: what a career.
Speaker 3: Here's what a career.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean the fact that he went from I
Speaker 1: mean because his brother was absolutely right. International sales is
Speaker 1: where you learn the nuts and bolts of like how
Speaker 1: movies actually get financed, how movies actually make money. It's
Speaker 1: so smart. The fact that he went there first and
Speaker 1: then went back to set worked his way back to
Speaker 1: being on set means that he's got like the ultimate
Speaker 1: producer's overview, like he's experienced it all right. And I
Speaker 1: love that his attention is still about actors on set
Speaker 1: and artistry like being there. It's so impressive. What a
Speaker 1: cool dude he is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we hung out. I forget where we were. It
Speaker 2: might have even been in Nashville, but he was great.
Speaker 4: It's so amazing how many different jobs in the entertainment industry.
Speaker 4: If you've been an actor first, just it completely changes
Speaker 4: the way you approach what you do. Yes, and that
Speaker 4: so much of what that entails is setting the right environment,
Speaker 4: absolutely creating an atmosphere on set that people want to
Speaker 4: work hard to be a part of.
Speaker 5: YEP.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you know, like I was thinking about even him
Speaker 4: just saying he takes he takes a few people to dinner,
Speaker 4: five to seven people to dinner and talks to them
Speaker 4: about where they're coming from and what kind of environment
Speaker 4: they want to have on set. Think about how just
Speaker 4: that one meeting maybe three to four hours, if you're
Speaker 4: having a real long dinner, three to four hours of
Speaker 4: your time and maybe some you know, a little chunk
Speaker 4: of change on a nice meal changes your entire production.
Speaker 4: You now go into this feeling like a part of
Speaker 4: a team where someone has your back, and even if
Speaker 4: something does go wrong, you're like, we can.
Speaker 3: Make it work.
Speaker 4: I just you know, like it just creates it changes everything.
Speaker 1: Yeah. No, when my brother and I were directing a
Speaker 1: pilot and we had a twelve year old kid starring
Speaker 1: and he was like in every scene, and like the
Speaker 1: second we got the kid cast, we were like, all right,
Speaker 1: we got to go to dinner with him and his parents.
Speaker 3: Uh huh.
Speaker 1: And our producers were like what why, And even the
Speaker 1: parents were like, wait, the directors want us to be there,
Speaker 1: and we were like, yes, we want to go, and
Speaker 1: we did. We had like the greatest dinner with his
Speaker 1: mom and his dad and him and like everything else
Speaker 1: was gravy. Like the rest of the production was so
Speaker 1: smooth because we could just turn to them and be
Speaker 1: like hey, and it was like this instant camaraderie in
Speaker 1: the sense of like we're on your side, parents, and
Speaker 1: we're on this kid's side, we have his back. And
Speaker 1: then they were committed and we were just it was
Speaker 1: off to the racist, but it was one of those things.
Speaker 1: It's like we only knew that because we had been
Speaker 1: kids where our parents had been ignored on a set
Speaker 1: or we had not felt welcome or comfortable, and it
Speaker 1: changes everything.
Speaker 3: Yeah, totally, totally.
Speaker 5: Wow.
Speaker 4: Well, thank you all for joining us for this episode
Speaker 4: of Pod Meets World. As always, you can follow us
Speaker 4: on Instagram pod Meets World Show. You can send us
Speaker 4: your emails pod meets World Show at gmail dot com,
Speaker 4: and we've got.
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Speaker 1: Thank you. I thought you were just sing somewhere out there.
Speaker 1: I don't remember it. Oh yes I do. We're loveking
Speaker 1: something because I'm a man. Buye some merg I remember
Speaker 1: what it is? Yeah, something about it? Yeah exactly.
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