The Most Bizarre Show on Talk Radio Has
A Pot of Gold For You, Amid The Absurdity
One of my guilty pleasures is listening to non-stop weirdness known as The Phil Hendrie Show. It's three hours, five days a week, and 100% spoof.
97 stations in 38 U.S. states carry it, as well as two Ontario stations in Canada. If you get XM Satellite radio, it's on channel 152.
What's so weird about this show? The guests. Not one of them is real, but every one of them is outrageous. All are offensive -- racially, or sexually, or socially, or religiously. No politically-correct stone gets left unturned.
But the most amazing thing of all about this show is...
... that the "guests" are all inventions of the host. He's a quick-change ventriloquist. He can play himself and up to four other characters at the same time, in rapid-fire sequence.
Sure, you do catch on after a while that every guest is a gag, a comedy routine.
But you might never realize that the voices are all the work of one person -- in real time.
I probably never would have figured it out if I hadn't read numerous articles on Hendrie's Web site that describe how he does it, in intricate detail. He's that good.
In fact, Hendrie was the voice of the computer "I.N.T.E.L.L.I.G.E.N.C.E." in the cut-up marionette feature film farce "Team America, World Police."
But the show's the thing. One reason it's so hard to figure out what Hendrie's up to is, not only do the "guests" have different accents, speech patterns, voice inflections and vocal tonalities, but they have distinct (and usually obnoxious) points of view that are consistent, intriguing, and up to a certain point, even believable.
Towards the end of their segment, each "guest" usually goes over the top, past the point of crackpot, into stark, raving absurdity. Stuff you couldn't get away with in a mental hospital. Beyond-nutcase material.
But -- and this is important -- always in a way consistent with the oddball person they started out to be.
You have "guests" like Jay Santos, of the "Citizens' Auxiallary Police," who goes around to tables at restaurants and tries to quell conversations that oppose the war effort in Iraq. Telling people to step outside if they want to discuss that topic.
Or Bobbie Dooley, of the "Western Estates Homeowners Association," who was "carded" (asked for age I.D.) at a liquor store, even though she's 45 years old -- and so, she convened a meeting of the Homeowner's Association to announce that fact.
And that's mild, compared to the high school football coach who feels entitled to sexual favors from the widowed mother who wants her kid to play in the starting lineup; the waiter who pours triple-shots into drinks of senior citizen customers to wheedle a bigger tip out of them (never mind the lives he's endangering when his customers get back in their cars); the private-school teacher who makes broadside racial slurs about his students... and the list goes on and on.
Hendrie is one talented guy. A character actor, you could say. Maybe a character actor on maniac-grade crystal methamphetamine, doing what Joanne Woodward did in "The Three Faces of Eve" -- in triple-time.
A dark, dark comic mind, but the funniest thing going on radio today.
So by now you must be itching with the question, what in blazes does all this have to do with writing copy?
Simple. Getting into the head of another person -- not necessarily a beyond-certifiably-insane one, like Jay Santos or Bobbie Dooley -- but another person, to the point where you can voice their opinion in a way that really sounds like them.
See, your copy is a conversation with your prospect.
It doesn't hurt if you sound a little like your prospect, or a little like one of their friends, in what you say.
But the real breakthrough comes when you can "mock up" an imaginary conversation with the prospect... hear their questions and objection in your mind, just the way they would say those things, and respond in a satisfying way.
Just save your walks on the wild side for other parts of your life. Comedy bits don't work too well in sales copy, unless you really know what you're doing -- and what not to do. And almost nobody does.
But real conversation -- ah, that's what they pay the big bucks for.
David Garfinkel
Publisher, World Copywriting Newsletter
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