Documentary | 2024 | Unrated (R equivalent) | starring Phil Hendrie, Bill Hader, Judd Apatow, Henry Rollins | directed by Patrick Reynolds | 1 hr 43 mins | 3 1/2 out of 5 stars |
The Phil Hendrie Show was a radio show that’s sheer comic brilliance burned bright and fast. It existed in a singular time, the only time it could exist, and then one day it was gone. In its brief time on the airwaves, it influenced comedians of all stripes and produced millions of howling belly laughs for those fortunate enough to come upon it as they rode in or home from work. That was the thing about the show. You just had to just come across it. It wasn’t highly and properly advertised, it didn’t feature big names, it didn’t win big awards and even word of mouth was difficult to spread due to the show’s many twists best left for the listen to discover on their own. Patrick Reynolds’ documentary Hendrie doesn’t break any molds as a documentary, but it does do the essential work of chronicling this event in comedy history, dissecting the show and talking to those who it influenced, and later went onto huge careers in Hollywood. For those that didn’t discover Hendrie at the time, this will be a revelation, for those that did listen, it is a nostalgic stroll down memory lane for a time when Phil Hendrie produced one of the most unique, gut-busting pieces of media the world has ever seen. Yes, it was that good.
Reynolds’ film thankfully askew the viewpoint of most millennial nostalgia films where the movie becomes less about the subject and more about the filmmaker’s fandom of that subject. See Dear Mr. Watterson or the recent Chasing Chasing Amy for movies about filmmakers who think we care more about them then the subject we came to hear about. No, Reynold’s film unfolds like a Phil Hendrie bit itself, giving us the history of the show through interviews with its now-famous fans such as Judd Apatow, Bill Hader, Kevin Pollack, Dana Gould (The Simpsons) and Henry Rollins. Hader, from his obsession with Dateline’s Keith Morrison to his love for Preston Sturges screwball comedies to this, continues to be one of the most varied and interesting people in Hollywood. Much of the film is narrated by Hendrie himself from the front seat of his convertible cruising around Ventura, California in a Hawaiian shirt reminiscing about the hard times and getting a big kick out of remembering how far he took some of the bits. After his numerous on-air battles it’s great to see him looking at peace.
So, what the heck was this show. Now that the cat is out of the bag and left the building, Hendrie unpacks the show’s layers.
Level 1 – Phil Hendrie hosts a series of guests that come on talking about the issues of the day, say whacked-out things and plays ringmaster as callers call in to argue with them.
level 2 – None of the guests are actually real, they are voices being done as a comedy bit, a parody of talk shows and a prank on the audience that the callers think are all real.
Level 3 – Phil Hendrie, himself is doing the voices of the guests, moving back and forth between a phone and the studio microphone with such lightning speed you’d swear you just heard him talking over himself.
Level 4 – The guests aren’t just voices, but rich repeating characters that Hendrie has created entire lives and worlds for, that he then deploys on an unsuspecting audience for his and our amusement.
Hendrie’s philosophy with the show was that people who don’t listen to talk radio are dumb, people that do listen are smart, but people who listen and call in and participate are the dumbest of all. This was a daily radio play where no amount of Hendrie revealing on air that he was doing the voices of fake people could stop an onslaught of callers convinced that it was real. And Hendrie was so good at it that even knowing the twist didn’t prevent you from being thoroughly entertained by the theater of it all and the imagery Hendrie’s words conjured up in your head of what these guests looked like and how they lived.
The characters included the show’s breakout star Bobbie Dooley (and her husband Steve yelling in the background), president of the Western Estates Homeowner’s Association and the source of any bit that involved wealthy elites looking down on the rest of the population. Bobbie Dooley was the Queen Karen before the term was invented. We also had sexed up teenager R.C. Collins, Ted Bell of Ted’s of Beverly Hills Steakhouse, hyper-masculine football coach Vernon Dozer, stage mom Margaret Grey and her brat actor son Jason Jay Delmonico, neighborhood watch wannabe cop Jay Santos, lawsuit happy Steve Bossell and steroid-pumping bodybuilder Chris Norton. All of which were used to satirize a certain type of person that kept popping up in the news, skewing people who leverage masculinity, patriotism, activism, celebrity and every other social rot for laughs. Laughs above all. This show was hilarious. The movie takes us down memory lane with a few recorded bits and an animation of those bits. Something like The Ricky Gervais Show that animated the radio bits for The Phil Hendrie Show would be comedy gold.
The show was a script flip on the usual morning zoo talk radio phone prank. Where Howard Stern called up unsuspecting people and put them on the air, Hendrie’s show was honey to the wasps that inspired real people to pick up the phone and make fools of themselves. And even without the callers, the back and forth between Hendrie and the guests was funny enough, with Hendrie perfect suited for the role of straight man host often getting the biggest laughs feigning genuine outrage and what he just said.
Being a fan of this show was a life of suffering. Not only was it next to impossible to explain to people, but it bounced all over the dial. As Phil had internal fights with affiliates over content, its timeslot was moved around, if not yanked off the air all together for a local basketball simulcast or – even worse – a straight talk show the exact thing Hendrie was parodying. Long-suffering producer David G. Hall (who Hendrie turned into a character just to make things more surreal) is interviewed to discuss the affiliate fights and how he would prep affiliates taking on the show for the barrage of FCC complaints that would come in from idiot callers who couldn’t comprehend the joke.
Ultimately, the show burned out long before it was retired, killed off by a post-9/11 climate that wasn’t in the mood for this kind of serrated dark comedy that hit all sides. Now there were things you couldn’t joke about, people you couldn’t laugh at and parties you had to tow the line for. Hendrie himself became overly political, turning much of the show into a straight talk show and when he did do comedy bits, was clearly handcuffed by tighter mandates to hang a lantern on the joke more. Orsen Wells could have said War of the Worlds was fake every minute of the play and New Jersey still would have lost its mind. Hendrie himself would go onto have prominent voice roles in shows like Rick and Morty, Futurama and the movie Team America: World Police, but his attempts to bring this exact show into the mainstream continually fell apart. A Bobbie Dooley-centric pilot, Gated World, was produced and never picked up.
Hendrie is a minimalist documentary that gives fans of this show some much needed closure. For everyone else it’s still a must-see to get an idea of what is influencing some of today’s comedy. This show existed and it mattered. It inspired the comic imaginations of thousands or millions. In 2024, thanks in part to this documentary, Phil Hendrie was inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame.