Monthly Archives: June 2013

The Apology Line

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The original “Apology Line” from 1980-1995 was the brainchild of conceptual artist Allan Bridge, who posted fliers in New York City requesting that people call his answering machine to confess to anything they felt guilty about.

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The fliers prompted a flurry of phone calls to his machine, which led to a magazine (“Apology”), an HBO film based on the project (“Apology”) with Leslie Ann Warren and Peter Weller, as well as several different projects over the years where the calls were played.  The calls ranged from the mundane (lying about going to a family gathering) to the truly criminal and scary (rapes, murders).  Since it was all anonymous, it’s not clear how much was true and what wasn’t.  However, if you want to examine the human mind at its darkest, this is a good place to start.

A sampling of the original calls can be found here:

A segment on the Apology Line from a past episode of Ira Glass’s “This American Life” can be found here … with additional calls:

http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/277/apology?act=2

I first heard about the Apology Line back in the fall of 1984 when the USA cable network’s late night show “Night Flight” featured a short documentary about the Apology Line where several of the calls were played.  It was probably one of the most disturbing things I had ever encountered at that point.

Allan Bridge was accidentally killed by a jet skier while diving in the mid-1990s (the sad irony was that the jet skier who killed him was never found).  However, the legacy of the “Apology Line” continues today.  First of all, with a new play based on the project, written by Greg Pierotti, who co-wrote “The Laramie Project”:

http://www.apologyline.com/index.html

There’s also a new “Apology Line,” based in England, which inspired the James Less directed documentary, which you can view below:

Please note that none of what you’ll see or hear is safe for work or little ones.  You are literally hearing the darkest parts of the human soul being expressed here … so be warned.

Phil Hendrie interview with Marc Maron on WTF

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http://wtfpod.libsyn.com/episode-393-phil-hendrie

Phil Hendrie is, hands down, the funniest human being on radio.  While I think Howard Stern may be the funniest “off the cuff” humorist on radio, Hendrie is a true artiste and what he does night after night is nothing short of brilliant … almost at an Andy Kaufman-level of comic genius.

If you’ve never heard of Hendrie, here’s the premise of his show:  Hendrie plays himself as a frustrated straight-man radio host interviewing people who are … to put it kindly … some of the most repulsive human beings who have ever existed.  Among the wretched that Hendrie has interviewed:  a man who believes you should protect children from predators by forcing them to never bathe and get fat; a man who wants to sue his wife and children for not letting him take the family savings to Norway so he can “get his head together for six months … to five years” because he fears a terrorist attack; a pornographer upset because the City of New York has denied him a permit to make a porn film at Ground Zero called “9 or 11 … Take Your Pick … Let the Healing Begin”; a woman who wants to sue her neighbor for choosing not to have a C-section because her neighbor agreed to let the woman use her baby in a “prettiest baby” contest and the woman is afraid the baby will be deformed because it’s coming out of a … well … narrower opening … and so on … and so forth.   The big “secret” is that Hendrie also plays the people he is interviewing.  Who’s not in on the joke?  The callers who call in to tear these “guests” apart.  Hendrie’s show is, hands down, the best satire of talk radio that’s ever been conceived.  And every single one of shows has left me convulsing in hysterics.

As always, Maron delivers a GREAT interview with Hendrie.  Hendrie dishes not only about his history and how he developed his comic genius over the years, but also gives his assessment on the current state of talk radio.  If you have any interest in comedy, talk radio, technology, or media studies, this interview is essential.

And please … if Hendrie interests you at all … throw him some money at his website and get access to not only his current broadcasts and podcasts, but some of his classic shows from over the last 15 years or so.  Or you can listen to some freebies through iTunes (download anything that has “Classic Phil Hendrie” in the subject line).  Some may sneer and say this is just the radio version of trolling, but I would vehemently disagree.  Holy mackeral, trust me when I say that this is some next level s–t!

http://philhendrieshow.com/