Phil Hall in Rick’s Room

In this episode of Rick’s Room, Rick Grant sits down with longtime journalist, broadcaster, film critic, and actor Phil Hall for a conversation about a career that has taken some unexpected turns. Hall’s career connects journalism, business reporting, radio, movies, acting and cultural criticism — all driven by an enduring curiosity and willingness to keep exploring new forms of storytelling. By the end of this conversation, it will be clear that a 15-minute episode can barely scratch the surface. 

Transcript Highlights

Rick Grant: Hi, and welcome back to Rick’s Room. Phil Hall, for those of you who know him in our industry, has been a reporter for decades. But there’s an entirely different population that knows this man for all of his work in film and other publications.

We’re going to get to the bottom of all of that today as we welcome Phil Hall to the show.

Phil, thanks for being with us.

Phil Hall: Hey, Rick. Thanks for having me.

Rick: I think we’ve known each other for at least 25 years, and I still feel like I’m learning new stuff about you every day. I learned about you as a reporter covering financial services, which you’ve done very well for years. But you were a reporter even before that, right?

Phil: Yes. My professional reporting career began when I was 19 years old. It was an internship.

I went to Pace University, and I had a professor there named Moses Schonfeld who had a one-man radio bureau out of the United Nations. Pace University was in White Plains, New York, and he invited me to be an intern that summer. It was 1984. You can do the math to guess how old I am.

As an intern, it was mostly gopher-type work — delivering tapes back and forth and bringing guests into the UN complex.

A few weeks into the internship, my boss had to go into the hospital for quadruple bypass surgery. He said to me, “Well, you’re going to have to run the radio service while I’m in the hospital.”

And I was like, “What?” I was a 19-year-old from the Bronx, and my only experience in radio was calling up the DJ and asking him to play a song. I had never been on radio and, quite frankly, I sounded like a 19-year-old from the Bronx. So I had to give myself a crash course in diction in order to sound somewhat older and more distinguished. After all, I couldn’t go on the radio from the United Nations sounding the way I did.

That’s why I have the voice I have today.

When my boss got better, he kept me on for two years as a radio reporter at the UN. I got to meet a great many dignitaries, and that was my introduction to the world of journalism.

Rick: Talk about a crash course. That’s amazing. I know you didn’t stay in radio, but you’re back in radio today, right?

Phil: When I graduated from Pace, I didn’t want to go into broadcasting. I wanted to be a writer because I was on my college newspaper.

Thanks to Moses Schonfeld, I started pursuing freelance writing for money, which is always quite nice. In 1985, my first professionally published piece appeared in the New York Daily News. For a few years I contributed arts essays to the Daily News, and I liked seeing my name in print. It’s a bit of an ego thing.

At the time, I was under the impression that something in print would have more of a life than something on the air. You listen to a radio show, and it disappears. You buy a newspaper, put it aside and save it, and it will always be there. That was the logic back then.

I wasn’t in radio again until about 2014, when I joined an internet radio show out of Connecticut called PPRN Radio. This was yet another side of me because we were doing comedy that could charitably be described as X-rated.

I wound up being the producer of the show for a few years. As producer, I was able to bring in several prominent people. We had a lot of fun doing it.

After that gig ended, I had a podcast for several years called The Online Movie Show, where I discussed movies. After that ran its course, I was on a radio comedy/drama program called Nutmeg Junction out of WAPJ in Torrington, Connecticut. Sometimes we did comedy shows and sometimes dramatic shows. I wrote a radio adaptation of Moby Dick for that program and played Ahab, which was very well received.

Then I took over the Nutmeg Chatter weekly talk show, and I’ve been doing that for several years now.

That, in the proverbial nutshell, is my broadcasting career.

Rick: Wow. But during all that time you were still getting bylines for business reporting, right?

Phil: Yes. Going back to the late ’80s, I was with the American Bankers Association’s magazine for a few years.

I’ve also written for publications from a company called Zackin Publications, which sadly is not with us anymore. I was the editor of Secondary Marketing Executive and Servicing Management and the MortgageOrb website. I also wrote for several other real estate-related publications.

I was an editor at a company called Westfair Communications, where I covered the Fairfield County and Westchester County markets, which are suburbs of New York City.

In addition to that, I did freelance writing over the years for publications including the New York Daily News, The New York Times, Wired magazine, the Hartford Courant, and even some funkier publications like Cowboys & Indians magazine.

I’m also currently doing book reviews and film reviews.

Rick: When do you ever sleep, Phil?

Phil: I don’t. I’m a very poor sleeper.

Rick: You’re like the epitome of the broadcasting person in all of its forms. And yet you go beyond that because I know for a fact you’ve been in movies as an actor. Tell me about that.

Phil: I’ve been in about 25 films. Being a film critic got me into acting. Some of the filmmakers whose work I championed wanted to say thank you by having me appear in their films.

Much to their surprise and my surprise, it turned out that I could act.

Most of these filmmakers specialize in no-budget horror movies. For whatever reason, they decided I’m very well cast as the creepy villain who gets badly killed at the end of the movie.

In the course of my film career, I’ve been disemboweled with a claw hammer. I’ve been vivisected by a mad scientist. I’ve been shot in the head. I’ve been killed in a car crash — mercifully offscreen.

In one of my favorite films, I was actually the hero. I was playing a transgender ex-Marine assassin. I got to wear a nice blonde wig and lipstick and a dress.

I showed that film to my mother, and her reaction was, “Thank God your grandmother’s not alive to see this.”

Rick: I haven’t seen many of the films you’ve been in, but I did see one short you did. You were on a bench, and I remember you telling me that was all ad-libbed. Is that true? Because that was amazing.

Phil: The movie in question is called Uncorked, and you can find it on YouTube. It was directed by Eric Michael Schrader, who afterward went to Hollywood and won several Emmy Awards. Aaron Sandler was working the camera.

That film was shot in a single take. There was no written script. I kept rehearsing it over and over for weeks before doing the film. Eric and Aaron were very brave to trust me with this because I didn’t rehearse it for them. I just told them what the idea was.

We went to a park in New Haven, Connecticut, on a Sunday afternoon in the winter. There was almost nobody there. I played a drunk sitting on a bench.

The whole idea is that a camera crew comes along, the drunk notices them, and he starts talking and talking and talking. It becomes obvious that this drunk is a malcontent, an ex-criminal who sponges off his wife.

It got a very positive response. I believe it played at the New Haven Underground Film Festival, which is where you saw it, and it’s been nicely reviewed.

It’s a 37-minute film, and it was shot in a single take.

Rick: One of the really interesting things you do — which doesn’t seem to line up with anything else you do, but is so cool — is that you have critiques of every Bugs Bunny episode. Tell me about that.

Phil: I’m also an editor at Cinema Crazed, which is a website that covers cinema. This was not something I intended to do, and I wish I wasn’t doing it, unfortunately, because it was started by our publisher, Felix Vasquez Jr.

It was called “Every Bugs Bunny Ever.” He started from the very beginning, and each week there would be a review of a different Bugs Bunny film in chronological order.

Two years ago, Felix passed away unexpectedly. He left the series unfinished. I thought that, to keep his legacy going, I would finish “Every Bugs Bunny Ever.”

So each Wednesday on Cinema Crazed, you’ll see a review of a Bugs Bunny film as they were released in chronological order. I have to research the history of each animated film — when it came out, when it was made, how it was made and how it stacks up against the others.

It’s been a labor of love, not only because of my devotion to Bugs Bunny, but also my devotion to Felix Vasquez Jr., who was not only my publisher but a very dear friend whose presence I greatly miss.

Rick: You’re a good man for doing that, Phil.

We’ve been visiting with Phil Hall. He’s an old friend of mine and should be a friend of yours because he does just about everything interesting.

We’re going to have to talk to you again about some of this stuff, Phil, so I hope you’ll agree to come back on.

Phil: My pleasure, Rick. Thank you.