Ok this is really pretty cool…

I’ve always known Patricia Heaton was one of the “good guys” in Hollywood, but I didn’t really know the extent of it until watching this interview.

And I want to share it with you because it’s incredible on a couple different levels.

We all know Hollywood is full of secret cults and cabals doing unknown untoward things, but what you might not know is Heaton and a few friends (including Kelsey Grammer) started up their own “club” to fight back and organize the good guys.

They called it FOA: Friends Of Abe.

She explains how the group eventually grew very large and became a tight-knit group, fighting back from within the bowels of the Hollywood cesspool.

So cool!

But perhaps even cooler than all of that is when she then pivoted to schooling the Atheist host (who seems like a very nice guy) on why Atheism actually makes no sense.

Not in a mean way…

Not scolding…

Not acting better than him….

Just nice.

Smooth.

Better than most pastors could do.

It was really impressive.

Watch here:

For those who prefer a transcript:

Chapter 1: Hollywood’s secret club: the explosive preview

We ended up having to make a secret group to talk freely without worrying about losing your job and to let other people know who was safe on a set. They asked that the organization provide all the names of who’s in it.

Wow.

You could say to somebody and if they said yeah then you knew I bet everyone watching this right now are watching god that’s me. I wish I had this. It was actually Gary Senise Forest Gump and it was like Kelsey Grammar and he was like how many people are you thinking 20 30 tops. It ended up being 2 to 3,000 members.

Wow.

The Wall Street Journal did an article where we were mentioned by name and this secret cabal. The younger writers in the room said you can’t write that because it’s homophobic.

Why is that necessarily homophobic if someone doesn’t like hugging? If you dismiss everything because it’s going to offend someone, then you’ve got a real problem trying to do comedy. Somebody said, “I can’t believe you’re working with her. We can’t work together anymore if you’re going to work with her.” How does that feel?

I don’t care.

Chapter 2: Patricia Heaton says “Hollywood’s dead”

You may have watched her on one of the biggest shows of all time. Everybody loves Raymond. And then the middle. What you didn’t know is that just to speak like a normal person, she had to start a club of secretly open-minded people in Hollywood. This is fascinating. If you get value from stories like these, please subscribe. It helps more than you might imagine. Patricia He, welcome to the show.

Thanks for having me.

I’m so happy you’re here. I watched every episode of Everybody Loves Raymond. Uh the middle is a brilliant huge thing. It’s huge in the UK as well. People, the taxi driver was taking photos with you.

Yes.

But you’re a rare gem in that you speak out often against some of the issues around Hollywood in particular uh comedy and what is and is not allowed to be said. I heard you speaking on Dave Rubin for example about uh the writer rooms and things like that. So comedy is it dead in in Hollywood? Is it starting to die?

Well, Hollywood’s dead. So for many other reasons. Um, I mean, the pandemic, the writer strike, the actor strike, uh, you know, everybody got these great new contracts and so the studio said, “Okay, well, we’ll go somewhere else to shoot because it’s now getting too expensive.” And streaming came in in a big way during the pandemic, and that just upset the apple cart.

And that was just a whole paradigm shifter that we’re still trying to figure out and recover from. Because on the one hand, we thought, oh, streamers are coming in. We’re going to have lots more content to make for all these things. And somehow it actually shrunk everything.

And we have writer rooms with two writers instead of eight writers. And you have eight episodes of a series instead of 22 or 24. And people are not getting paid as much. And they used to have series regulars who are now being uh getting contracts that are uh you know day players. So it’s really imploded generally. It’s not just comedy.

And I think here’s the other thing. Comedy is very hard to do well. And I just got so blessed that I got on Everybody Lo Raymond, which I knew was a fantastic script when I got the pilot cuz I was laughing.

And I didn’t think Deborah was that funny or that filled out as a character, but I thought if they can write this well for all these other characters, because those characters were based on their own families, Ray Romano and Phil Rosenthal, and so they knew those characters. So I thought if they can write that well for them, eventually they’ll figure out who Deborah is and she’ll grow and deepen, which did happen. Um, and so I I saw how funny that was.

And back in that day, so that was 30 years ago that we started that show. And at that time, a network would order 15 or 20 pilots. They’d shoot all of those. Then you hopefully you’ll find two or three that work, right? And that’s how you get friends or cheers or Seinfeld Raymond King of Queens.

So, you know, it’s just a different time now. And I realize we were kind of in the this second golden era of television that is not coming back. And so, it’s not so much political as it is economic.

Interesting. Yeah. And you wouldn’t have known in the moment you were in the kind of this glorious

No. You know what? I I didn’t really start my career to be able to make a living at it until I was in my 30s. And so I was so grateful every moment. I was like Pope John Paul II kissing the ground every time I got out of my car at Warner Brothers.

I was I couldn’t believe it. You know, I grew up in Cleveland, Ohio. There’s nobody around me doing what I was attempting to do. So to find myself on the Warner Brothers lot and I’d go to the commissary to eat and I’d see Michael Keaton driving in the Batmobile down this I would just be like I can’t believe this is where I come to work.

So is that all filmed like in where all the movies are and stuff?

Yeah. And and on every sound stage they always listed what other movies had been filmed in that sound stage that you were filming. And so it was really, you know, it’s just like old Hollywood and it’s all kind of disappearing. I just recently read that Paramount is being wooed by Tennessee to come to Nashville.

Wow.

Because of this whole buyout with um David Ellison, I think. Yeah, I think so. And um we were just staying like a block from Paramount Studios.

You were in LA.

And it’s like really it’s that very famous, you know, gate that Paramount gate that you go through. Yeah. And it’s enormous the whole thing.

Yes.

Right. It’s like it’s like 10 blocks of of this thing almost like a prison. And it’s it’s strange to think of that moving or or sitting empty.

You know, I I am in Nashville as my primary residence and the idea that Paramount would come to Nashville is great, but I’m also like but it’s supposed to be in Los Angeles. Like that’s Warner Brothers and Paramount are like two of the last studios left there. The death of Hollywood. Yeah.

Chapter 3: Why classic comedy couldn’t be made today

To about that the political side though you you have spoken about writer rooms becoming very tetchy about uh politics. I I think so many writers and actors would say they they can’t do the comedy today that they were able to do then. I think probably Seinfeld you’d hear the same thing.

Um, there’s these clips on YouTube of young people watching old segments of a show called All in the Family where Carol Oconor played a character called Archie Bunker who was really sort of racist and they can’t believe what they were seeing with of these clips. And I think the problem with that show, it’s not that racism was presented as something positive. It’s just that he was so lovable. You know, it was really weird that you just fell in love with this guy.

But it was just a really funny show and it really made fun of all that stuff and you can’t really make fun anymore. I mean, I think there’s a little push back now with stand-up comedians maybe. Um, but I think you know with Raymond and the middle those shows were very family oriented. So politics rarely came in never on Raymond.

You know Phil was very Phil Rosenthal the creator was very clear about never doing anything topical because he didn’t want to age the show. Not that he didn’t have his own political opinions. He just didn’t want the show to ever feel like, oh, that was back then in the ‘9s cuz that’s the way they that’s the things they were talking about. And as you see, the show continues to just go on and on and new audiences are finding it because it’s evergreen because family, marriage, kids, in-laws, those are things that the whole world can relate to everywhere in the world, every generation.

It doesn’t really change. And so that’s that’s the beauty and that’s really great writing. The same with the middle where it’s a family in Indiana and they’re just dealing with not having very much money and trying to raise their kids and and living from paycheck to paycheck and that’s really relatable and it’s but it’s still a positive show about how important family is no matter what your circumstances are.

I’ve seen people as you say they look online and they’re looking at friends as well and there jokes about the Chandler’s mother or father the trans father I think I think and things like that I suppose and it’s it’s looking dated to those people but I don’t know why they can’t understand it’s just of its time it’s a different thing right

I you know I’ve never watched friends

oh wow

because when was friends 90s

in the ‘9s

same time as Raymond I guess maybe started just before

yes

so I have four sons and they were born in 93, ‘ 95, 97, and 99. And I remember being in my car listening to satellite radio and I was going through there’s the 40s station and the ‘ 50s and the 60s and the 70s and I remember getting to the ‘9s and I was like, I don’t recognize a single song on this station and it’s because I was listening to Kitty songs cuz all my kids were born then. So I I I kind of missed the 90s because I was raising my kids and working.

Chapter 4: The joke young writers called “homophobic”

That’s mad. You mentioned young writers rejecting a character as being homophobic.

Yeah, there was one incident um that I heard about where a the character was like a former Marine who didn’t like hugging, was very uncomfortable with it. And and the younger writers in the room said, “You can’t write that because it’s homophobic.”

And the older writers were saying, but how is he going to make a journey to get to a place where he’s comfortable just hugging another person if you don’t start him there? You have to have the conflict. So that is that’s an issue where somebody doesn’t understand character development as a writer because your politics and your feelings are getting in the way of writing truthfully.

That’s a problem because comedy especially comes from pain. All comedy comes from pain and struggle. And the character is trying to get something and it’s difficult to get it or they’re trying to overcome something.

Raymond was all about struggling to make keep his wife happy to keep his parents happy to get along with his brother. The middle was all about not never having enough money and the kids not being Axel not being respectful and brick being crazy and Sue failing at everything. You know, it was always pain-based.

And so you have to have these things that are difficult for the character to go through. And the beauty of it is we all have that in our lives. And we like to see reflected back to us people who are also struggling but that are making us laugh and making us know that everything’s going to be okay.

So you have to have those struggles. If you dismiss everything because it’s going to offend someone, then um you’ve got a real problem trying to do comedy. And and why is that necessarily homophobic if someone doesn’t like hugging? Was he happy hug? Was he okay hugging women but not men?

Right. But even that’s not anti-gay, is right? He’s uncomfortable.

But if it’s sort of like what’s the phrase where if you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail to you.

Yeah. Yeah. Or if you’re a hammer, everything looks like a nail. So there’s a lens that a lot of young people see things through that isn’t necessarily a lens of reality of truth. I think we’re finding there’s not a lot of truth out there in a lot of different areas

postmodernism I suppose that is.

Yes. Yes. My sister is um a Catholic nun. I’m Catholic and the Dominican order and their motto is inveras which means truth and she was at Kent State University. There was a famous shooting at Kent State University in the 70s where a couple students were killed by the National Guard protesting Vietnam.

She was in Students for a Democratic society. She was in um some other radical group. And now she’s this nun in full habit. And my kids were asking her, “How did how did that happen?” And she says, “I was just always looking for the truth.”

So, if you’re always looking for the truth and not just looking for a narrative or an ideology or something to fill an empty space inside of you, um you’ll be okay if you’re always looking for the truth. But that’s not happening with people.

I feel like I’ I’ve seen it because I studied English literature at university. So, I was part of that kind of young people studying humanities. I imagine a large chunk of the people who are now writing whether it’s comedy or drama like the young script writers out of universities probably studied similar kinds of things and you’re taught to look through a book and find stuff that isn’t actually there and to presume

yeah you are

and and you end up you get such a dopamine rush when you’re reading one of these books and you go and you’ve made a link and you’re like oh that so then that and that’s what the intention is and I remember I think it might have been Hunter S. Thompson or one of those writers who replied to one of these students who who sent him a letter like, “Oh, I’ve realized that the red thing actually symbolizes communism and this and he replied like it’s a red truck. That’s it.”

Yes. Right.

And so if you’re taught to view the world that way, I think that then when they come out of university, they’re look they’re no longer looking for truth and what is real. They’re looking to make sort of obscure, bizarre, the most bizarre connections possible. And therefore, if there is a character who’s a bit insecure and doesn’t like hugging other men, aha.

Yes.

He’s he doesn’t like he must be homophobic. There’s a problem. We found the problem. Teacher, give me a right. Good grade.

Yes. That’s right. That’s right.

Chapter 5: Diversity rules inside Hollywood writers’ rooms

How can you have comedy when there’s that kind of Because did you say as well that that people were being introduced by their ethnic ethnicity and sexuality?

Yeah, we had there was one experience where the headwriters were telling us who they had hired and it was always prefaced by, you know, their gay or their what else was it? This person worked for Hillary Clinton or something. I mean, it was just like what does that have to are they funny? I kept saying, “Are they funny? What what show did they write on?”

You know, but but those writers were forced to do that by the network. The network required it. So that wasn’t the showrunner’s fault. They did their best to try to, you know, get the best people they could and still check off a lot of boxes, you know, of either it had to be the right race or the right gender or, you know, sexual orientation or whatever.

You just had to check a bunch of boxes. And so um I I think in a way the fact that the industry is now becoming more independent because studios are shooting less and less and people are are are having to just go their own way, raise money, shoot stuff, distribute it. Freedom may be coming back because of that freedom for artists.

You just have to do the work yourself. But you don’t have gatekeepers, you know, telling you you have to check off all these boxes in order to get your show produced if you’re doing it yourself and you can put it on YouTube or wherever and you can make a living that way.

I wonder are there sitcoms on YouTube? Would you would you be interested in doing?

Yeah, I would be interested in doing that. I haven’t seen it, but I wouldn’t mind being the first one to do the first to do a successful one.

Yeah, it’s it’s expensive. I mean cuz this is expensive this but this at least is just me and you sitting here and that’s it. If you’ve got people learning scripts, writing all of that.

Yeah. A a typical halfhour comedy multi camera which is cheaper than single camera. I think it’s like 2 million an episode.

Wow.

Cuz single camera just cuz people I I’m not familiar with the lingo. It actually means there’s lots of cameras or on the set somewhere but they’re being followed around and it’s more dynamic. Is that it?

Multi- camera is is you rehearse for four days like a play.

Yes.

And then the fifth day the audience comes in and you have four or five cameras shooting at the stage like a theater and the audience is in bleachers.

Are they actually there?

Yes, they’re there.

I always thought it was like cand but or or they’d sweeten it a lot.

But um Raymond was always a live audience and you shoot it from beginning to end. So you tell the story and it’s really fun. It’s like doing a little play every week. It’s a lot of energy, you know.

It’s every week doing a new one. So that’s multi- camera and you feel it. You feel the difference. Multi- camera is Friends. It’s Raymond.

Uh Seinfeld was actually a hybrid. They did it on stage and then they went out. And the middle is a single camera. So it’s shot like a movie.

it takes um many more hours to shoot because let’s say you and I are doing a scene together at the table. Um one camera over me to you. We turn around, change the lighting over you to me and then a wide and then a medium shot and the light has to change.

So you’re always sitting there waiting for them to do the lighting. And uh a day on Raymond, I’d get in at 9:30 and we’d be done by 4:30 or 5. And on the middle, I’d go in at 6:00 in the morning and work till 7 at night.

So, um, it’s because you’re just doing one camera. So, that’s why they call it single camera.

And that’s bloody expensive. What? Go on. Sorry.

Um, I was, uh, Modern Family was also single camera, but they use steady cam a lot, so they could move the camera, made it much, much faster. So, it was they we just were very jealous of this show.

Yes.

Chapter 6: Being Catholic and pro-life in Hollywood

When did you start to feel like uh your views didn’t fit in with a lot of people in in that kind of Hollywood world?

Well, I kind of outed myself early on because I I’m Catholic, so there are certain things I wouldn’t do because I’m pro-life. So, I remember just before I ever got Raymond, I did a show called Women of the House and it was a it was a political comedy and the wonderful, wonderful writer, showrunner, Linda Bworth Thomasson, who did Designing Women.

And I just said to her, I can’t do any pro-abortion stuff. I said that before I had the job. I just said, I just want to let you know that if that’s um a problem, I can’t do the show. And it’s not like I had tons of money.

I had, you know, I was I had a kid. Dave and I had kids and house, mortgage. So, but I have to answer to a higher person.

And so she said, “Ah, we’re not going to do anything about abortion. That’s not funny. We’re doing this is a comedy.”

And she was so wonderful and she was really lovely. and I ended up doing the show. It didn’t didn’t go for very long, but it was just so great to do it because it was Delta Burke and Terry Gar. We had a great time for the little amount we did.

So, I sort of myself always laid that out so there were no surprises. And people just knew I was Catholic and a Republican. But I didn’t grow up that way, though, because we’re Irish Catholic from Ohio, kind of working.

My dad was a newspaper writer, a sports writer. And so, um, I was a Democrat because we were all like Kennedy Catholics, you call them. You know, we all voted Democrat because we were working class and it’s all about the poor and Republicans were country club people, right?

It’s the same in the UK was that Labor was 20 years ago.

Yes. That’s what labor was.

Right. Right. So it wasn’t until I think the switch for me came when abortion was um you know was just people were able to get abortions but then it became part of the platform of the Democrat party.

So when it became officially part of their platform I couldn’t be a Democrat anymore because it went against my Catholic belief. So, so I I’ve always found myself a little bit in the middle, not like fully 100% Republican and you know, fully 100% Democrat.

And as time has gone on, the Democrats have gone further and further and further and further left. That it’s unrecognizable now, which I think is super unhealthy for America. We need two healthy, normal, middle-of the road parties to work together. We need that and we don’t have that right now.

So, so that’s a little tricky, but so when I was in Hollywood, um, and I think this is a misconception that people have. I I love Hollywood. I loved everybody I worked with.

So wonderful, very different political backgrounds, but really lovely people. And the point was just to go in, know your lines, be nice to the crew, respect the writers, and do a good job, and make it as easy as possible, and try to make the best show you could.

Didn’t matter what anybody’s political views were. That’s what you do on Raymond. That’s what we did on The Middle. We all had different, you know, we were going through Obama era and the Trump era. All the whole time I was working.

Um, there was though in Hollywood at that time, especially when Obama was president,

Chapter 7: Friends of Abe: Hollywood’s secret conservative club

it was kind of like Democrats ruled and there were a lot of people that felt like they couldn’t say anything who were conservative. And we ended up having to make a secret group. Did anybody tell you about this? Has anybody talked to you about it?

Called FOA, Friends of Abe, as in Abraham Lincoln. And so you might have talked about that on this show before. I don’t know.

No, I think you and I did over lunch a few weeks ago.

Right. So, you know, if you’re in Alcoholics Anonymous and you want to find out if somebody else is in it, you say, “Are you a friend of Bill?” Because Bill Wilson started, right? So, so a friend of an FOB, a friend of Bill is in Alcoholics Anonyas.

If you were gay in the ‘ 40s in Hollywood, they would say, “Oh, is he a friend of Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz?” So ours was Abraham Lincoln, who was our first Republican president. So we were friends of Abe.

So you could say to somebody, “Are you a friend of Abe?” Or, “Are you FOA?” And if they said, “Yeah,” then you knew there was another conservative or independent or uh, you know, or someone who is not a Democrat.

Yeah.

that you could talk to without feeling like you were going to get in trouble at your job.

That’s really interesting.

Yeah. When when you change from saying a Republican, it’s not necessarily a Republican or cons cuz I don’t even know anymore what it means in this like libertarians, independents, Republicans, or just, you know, anyone not sort of in the cult.

Well, I would call it the cult.

I love that. And I what I love most about that is I reckon I bet everyone watching this right now or 90% of them are are watching go, “God, that’s me. I wish I had this in my life. Whatever industry they’re in, wherever they are, how can I find other people who don’t?

Well, it just took a couple. It was actually Gary Senise, uh, the wonderful actor.

Yes.

Approached me and my husband and said, “Hey, would you guys host a couple just a couple people to come over?” And it was like Kelsey Grammar and John Voit and Ben Shapiro and

Oh, what I would have done to be there.

Yes. And he was like, “How many people are you thinking?” as it’ll be 20 20 people 30 tops. So 80 people later we had at our house.

Oh and you out you’ve outed them all as well.

Now people know Ben Shapiro is a conservative. Yes. Um and so it was really fun and all it was was fellowship.

We weren’t raising money for candidates. We didn’t go protest anything. It was just to go hang out, be able to talk freely without worrying about losing your job. and to um to let other people know who was safe on a set.

So people would come to these FOA meetings and they would see people that they worked with and they were like you’re FOA. They’d be like, “Oh, you’re FOA. My god.”

So because nobody would talk if you were a conservative, Republican or libertarian, you wouldn’t talk about it.

Chapter 8: 3,000 members, IRS scrutiny and career backlash

And so it was a really interesting time. It ended up being 2 to 3,000 members. Members, you would just pay a little bit of money and that was just so you could go have lunch together with a bunch of people, you know, and

where where was there like a central place? Cuz it couldn’t always be your house, could it?

No. No, there was no they they we ended up um arranging with a restaurant once a month you could sign up for a lunch and to to meet new people. so one of us okay people who had started it would host it and we’d have other members bring new people and all it was was just I want you all to be able to know who’s in the room so you know who you can talk to on set without worrying about it.

Could someone have come to that and said I really I really like this that that we can do this but by the way I’m pro-choice.

Yeah. I think there’s much more of a range of political opinions and views in the Republican party than there is in the Democrat party. You’re not allowed.

People on the Republican side might disagree a lot, but you’re allowed to disagree. So, it feels like there’s just more of an ideology that everybody has to be a part of or you’re torn apart. Like, you know, there’s that alternative to X called Blue Sky.

Yeah. Yeah.

Apparently, it’s brutal. I don’t know. I’m not on it, but I hear it’s really brutal.

So, I mean, I think that um is interesting. And what was strange is at that time the head of the IRS under Obama was a woman named Lois Lerner…

This is a Guest Post from our friends over at WLTReport. View the original article here.