I get it, I think
One man and his wife journey to Hollywood for an audience with Dr. Phil
Did he just say, “Let’s break up this ugly"?
I am so far out of my element that concentrating long enough to process humor is near impossible. Standing behind the giant plywood walls of a Hollywood soundstage, with assistants and engineers buzzing to one another through their headsets, and me trying to suck in my gut and look cool in my shiny, blue, tucked-in shirt while getting my picture taken, my perception begins to blur.
So, by the time I really hear what the six-foot-four-inch Dr. Phil McGraw has said, as he shuffles my wife and me around to “break up this ugly” by standing her between him and me, the flash goes off and I’m wondering whether it’s too late to laugh or not.
“Can you believe that last girl?”
He’s talking again. This time he leans down to our elevation and lowers his Texas drawl to gossip volume to share his amazement at the predicament the last guest of this morning’s taping of The Dr. Phil Show put herself in. My wife and I look at one another, snap out of our trance, and begin to have a brief conversation with America’s most famous doctor about the young guest who was planning to marry the Internet boyfriend who, for the five years of their relationship, had refused to meet her face to face.
A few hours later, as we drive past the runaway-truck ramps along the Grapevine, heading home from our journey to Hollywood and that taping of The Dr. Phil Show, it occurs to me that we have just been sized up and analyzed. While our social skills were atrophying in front him, Dr. Phil “got real” (as he is known to do) and broke the ice with some actual conversation. In fact he was probably thinking something like, “These kids are stuck on pause, and I gotta push the dang button!”
Going to see Dr. Phil was my idea, and it was actually really simple. I went to www.drphil.com and followed the links to “join the studio audience,” and within a week someone from the show called to confirm my reservation. “Cool,” I said to the friendly staffer and called to tell my wife to start planning what business attire (no light colors) she was going to wear and that no cameras or Dr. Phil books would be allowed in the studio.
Now, I was not that excited or impressed with the prospect of viewing a taping of The Dr. Phil Show, but to say that my wife had exactly the opposite reaction to the news would be an understatement. Saying Dr. Phil is like her surrogate father figure would be an overstatement, but not by much. So when I told her a few days later that I’d talked with the show’s publicist, and that he’d arranged for us to get a tour of the studio and the Paramount lot and to actually meet with Dr. Phil after the show, her anticipation level was somewhere around the 5-year-old-going-to-Disneyland mark.
We had to be there early Thursday morning, so my wife packed up her Dr. Phil books and her camera and we got in the Honda early Wednesday morning and stayed in it for the next 10 hours.
Paramount Studios is the only original Hollywood studio still in Hollywood. The towering warehouse soundstages with enormous billboards on the sides advertising its current slate of television programming (Sisters, It’s all Relative and of course The Dr. Phil Show, to name a few) give way to palm trees and the familiar Paramount water tower as you make your way up to the indelible, picturesque Paramount gate at the Melrose entrance.
Since 9/11 the studio no longer allows tours to the general public, and as we slowly nudge our road-filthy Honda ahead of an Escalade and a shiny expensive convertible (that’s right, VIP parking for the Chico News & Review), the security guard runs a mirror under the carriage of the car and has us open the trunk for a quick look-see.
Parked in space 28, we shove the camera and Dr. Phil books deep inside my wife’s bag and follow the map past a giant painted sky on the side of a four-story building and make our way through “the lot” to the Mae West building.
The audience greeters we meet there call inside the building for our escort to come fetch us and then have us visit the security team and metal detector while we wait. The security personnel are friendly and thorough as they itemize the contents of my wife’s bag, carefully packing away her cell phone, my tape recorder, and of course the camera and Dr. Phil books to return to us when we are ready to leave.
No pictures for me, no autographs for her. No problem. As we are led past the studio audience waiting in the wings to be seated, into the cold studio inside the gymnasium-sized soundstage, the familiar, squeaky clean set is oddly mesmerizing. We wait happily with the seven cameramen, assorted assistants and the guy who follows the camera around and wraps the cord up so no one trips.
Oprah Winfrey and Dr. Phil are inseparable. She hired him to help prep her for her court battle with the cattle industry; she had him solve problems for people who needed help on her show; he got popular enough for his own show; she produced it; and she continues to reserve a column for him in her popular O magazine.
The separation between fans and detractors for Dr. Phil fall pretty much along the same lines as those for Oprah, with the detractors mostly just distrusting the mass-marketing of it all. I wasn’t exactly sure what I thought. I’ve seen the show a few times, and his advice always sounds logical.
It was also hard for me to see how a product of the Hollywood machine could be subtle enough to help a wide-range of people with very different lives and very different circumstances that have led to their crises. How can a guy give decent advice in a 15-minute segment of a one-hour show?
This weighs on my mind as Dr. Phil’s accommodating publicist, Chandler Hayes, gets us out of our seats and nonchalantly shows us all the behind-the-scenes action a mere 20 minutes before taping.
“Here’s the control room.” Chandler motions toward a small room with a couple dozen TV monitors and a hundred blinking lights. The show’s stage manager, “Bones"—whom my wife recognizes as the guy who Dr. Phil gave $100 in pennies in a jar of honey when settling an on-air bet—is unbelievably calm as he jokes with us while we invade his workspace, now only 15 minutes before show time.
By now we know that today’s show (which aired Wednesday, Jan. 21) is about “true love” and is a tie-in with an online survey and an article in the February 2004 edition of O magazine. Before the cameras roll, one of the pre-show cheerleaders gives the minimal instructions of not chewing gum or picking our noses on camera. The whole production then just takes off, moving with a fluidity that balances the technical crew, Dr. Phil’s teleprompted lead-ins, video tie-ins, three segments’ worth of guests and audience participation, all in real time without second takes, so effortlessly you’d swear we were on live.
The “true love” question, whether it’s magic or a choice, is explored (with copious plugs of the O article) through three stories: a married couple in crisis; a 38-year-old woman about to turn to plastic surgery to help her find love; and the sad young woman who “loves” the guy she knows only from the Internet.
Dr. Phil’s approach to each case is of course based on extensive pre-screening and research, but his methods really rely only on the background to have a fact stockpile to draw from. He knows what each person needs the minute he or she sits in the chair: “You need to stop.” “Get real.” “You either get it, or you don’t.” He doesn’t try to engage in a therapy session; he merely puts a mirror up and shows them what everyone else can see. Any change is up to them.
As the theme music sends Dr. Phil backstage—hand in hand with his wife Robin of course—Chandler whisks us to meet the good doctor at the pre-determined spot. Like clockwork photos are snapped, books are handed out (and signed!) and Dr. Phil resists the bustle, leans down, and with one warm, natural gesture makes a little breakthrough with a married couple he’s never met before.