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Doyle & Debbie


A Conversation with Bruce Arntson  (continued)

PM: So are industry types across the board flipping out about the show? Is everybody who sees it going, "Well, that's a hit"?

BA: Well, not quite that way. Would that it were that way... They all seem to really like it as their own personal little show. If you want insider stuff, it's there for you. I feel like you don't have to know anything about country to find it funny, but nonetheless there are a lot of insider musical jokes and things that songwriters and record producers find fun and personally titillating for themselves. But--

PM: Do some people think it's too inside?

BA: No. Well, actually, when we first put it up it was more inside. And a couple of people whose opinions I trusted gave me some really good advice about where it got to be too inside. And so I reeled it in considerably since then. No, people don't--I think Music Row and the entertainment biz here has really whole heartedly embraced it, and that's been really fun. And they are as much of repeaters as anybody. And a lot of artists--Rodney Crowell and Delbert McClinton and Gary Nicholson--a lot of folks, they come back and back and back with their buddies. And Brenda Lee was there last Tuesday night.

PM: Oh, yeah, that's right, the night I was there Brenda Lee was there. I heard that later.

BA: Yeah, Bobby Cudd brought her. [laughs]

PM: Now, has Jim Lauderdale or Marty Stuart seen this show yet?

BA: No. Actually Jenny Littleton has done shows with Jim Lauderdale, and they're still good friends. He just has not had a Tuesday night open one week.

PM: Because he's going to freak out.

BA: [laughs] I can't wait for him to see it--and actually Marty Stuart, too, who I don't know at all, but I can imagine--

PM: He's a real prince. He'd love it, too.

BA: Yeah, that's the way it seems. Yeah, I'd love to meet him under those circumstances.

PM: Wow. So after being a working musician all your life and doing all the things it takes to stay afloat, it must be amazing to, at this point, have what looks like a hit on your hands, right?

BA: Yeah, it is. It's really fun. Years ago I would have done something like this and I would have done it for a while and said, "Well, I've done that," and moved on. And now being older and wiser, I really do have an appreciation of what a gift this whole situation is. And honestly, it sounds silly, but it's the most fun I've ever had on stage. And Jenny is just a dream partner. And so just performing in general you appreciate when you have a situation like this how much fun--you need to really enjoy this while you can.

PM: Right.

BA: And so that's the main thing. We both really feel like we've got something that we can ride for a long way and it could take us to a lot of new places. But by the same token we both feel like it's going to be a really fun ride no matter where it goes.

PM: Right. Jenny seems like a really solid person, a really solid partner.

BA: It's unreal. She really doesn't have a diva bone in her body.

PM: That's amazing. It's so rare.

BA: Yeah, yeah. It is. She's just a gem. And her comic instincts--well, actor, too. Go see her in any--she's going to do John Patrick Shanley's Doubt at Tennessee Rep in March. And jeez, I mean, she's just incredible. And she doesn't have to be country. She can be British, she can be 80 years old. She's an amazing actor.

PM: Oh, I got to get up with that, and I got to see that play, too.

BA: Yeah.

PM: And her body language is hilarious. I'm glad I was sitting back by the elevated sound booth, because I just had to keep standing up to make sure I could see every part of her that I could. And I might have stood up if I was in the middle of the room, I think, because it's like, no, no, no. I got to see how her knees are knocking right now, or I got to see if her feet are moving.

BA: Oh, I know. She's so thorough, so in the moment. She is just hilarious to me.

PM: Although it's very hard to pick favorites among the many great songs, the outrageous nature of "I Ain't No Homo," really kills me.

[laughter]

PM: I keep singing that one today. How did that song come about. Do you recall?

BA: Yeah.

[laughter]

BA: I don't know how interesting it is. But I do know that--I've got an old roommate who actually lived with us when I was still married to Denise, and we had my son, who is now 17 years old. And he lived in the upstairs apartment of our house on Cedar Lane. And I mean, we'd been friends forever. So he was a longtime good friend, and now he was helping raise our son. And in fact, our son used to think that every kid had a mom, a dad, and a Ned in the house.

[laughter]

BA: And so he and I were driving along before they had the roundabout at the end of Music Row.

PM: Before the naked people, yep. [At the roundabout on Demonbreun Ave. in Nashville, there stands a very controversial classical type sculpture that includes semi-clad figures.]

BA: Yeah, exactly. We were driving by--do you remember when the Hank Williams house--

PM: Sure.

BA: That nothing little ranch house was relocated there?

PM: Absolutely. Gherm Row.

BA: Okay. So somebody was cooking barbecue out on what would have been the driveway.

[laughter]

BA: And there were a bunch of, you know, good ol' boys, fairly redneck looking good ol' boys, but very friendly, out doing barbecue and drinking beer. And there was obviously going to be some music happening there. And of course there was a stoplight right there. So I was stopped in my van, and my gay friend Ned was sitting in the passenger side. And this was a beautiful summer afternoon. And one of the guys yelled, "Hey, y'all want to come here and hear some music and eat some barbecue?"  And Ned says, "No, thanks. He's a vegetarian and I'm a homosexual."

[laughter]

BA: But anyway, it just got to be an inside joke for Ned and me whenever we would see a handsome man he'd say something about how good looking he was. And I'd say, "Well, I ain't no homo, but I'll tell you what..."

[laughter]

BA: And so that got to be a little catch phrase along with, "He's a vegetarian and I'm a homosexual." That's where it came from, basically, was through those little incidents. And then I've got a lot of gay friends who I knew--who I needed to write a song just for them. And for a lot of gay men, it seems to be a cliché that they figure that the vast majority of men are actually gay and in denial.

PM: Yeah, right. Everybody is bisexual according to any bisexual.

BA: Exactly. And so it's sort of in that spirit, too. And I don't know, and then beyond that it's just a fun little jumping off point for some silliness.

PM: It's just really, really funny. So what are the 2008 plans for The Doyle & Debbie Show? Have I heard rumblings, for instance, about a possible HBO interest?

BA: Last fall we shot a little 12-minute trailer to indicate what a pilot might be like in the world of Doyle & Debbie. And so in essence I was looking at it very much like TheLarry Sanders Show, where a little--

PM: Oh, a show inside a show.

BA: Exactly. So we had a little show called Nashville After Hours, which was based on The Ralph Emery Show on TNN, where Debbie and I were the hosts. And then all of that backstage kind of hand-held verite--

PM: Right, hillbilly verite.

BA: Yeah. Of all of the goings-on back there, and all the soap opera southern Gothic intrigue that unfolds in their lives. So we shot this little thing to indicate that and put a little pitch package together. I've got management in New York and then Paradigm, Bobby Cudd's company is very present in New York and Los Angeles. They were going to help us with the pitch. Then right about the time we were ready the Writers Guild went on strike. So that's the long answer to, basically, yes, we've got a TV show we're dying to pitch, and our dream place would be HBO, but there's a lot of places it would work. But we're stuck until the strike is over. [Which has since occurred.]

PM: And once the strike ends, I mean, isn't there going to be a big glut of stuff to like happen before anybody can get their project on the table, too. Isn't there a whole rubber band effect to a strike like that ending?

BA: Yeah. It's hard to say what's going to happen. There are a lot of things shifting in TV that have nothing to do with the strike, and that are exacerbated by the strike.

PM: Right.

BA: One thing is that pilots are so expensive to shoot, like three to 10 million dollars for your average pilot.

PM: Holy jeez.

BA: And the networks generally produce like a dozen or more pilots a year, and then out of those maybe three or four actually become shows. And that's just a huge investment for them. And so they're starting to order up shows instead, where they like order six, eight shows instead of a pilot and just hope for the best, because it's too damn expensive.

PM: Right. That makes a lot more sense, especially if you farm out a reasonable budget these days with indie production and so forth the way it is, you might get six or eight shows for what you used to get a pilot for.

BA: Well, absolutely, because you can amortize your set and everything else. It's that first time in just is what kills you. So yeah, that's absolutely right. So there are lots of different things that could work for us and could work against us. And still, it's such a crap shoot. But one thing is in our favor is we've got these characters that we've now tested and proven for a couple of years, and that goes a long way. In the same way that you would take a standup artist who's got a really great shtick that would translate to a half-hour television show, and they've been out on the road honing it, so you know that they can come with the goods when the cameras are on.

PM: Exactly. Come on, it's a no-brainer, this guy is kicking ass on the road all year long, right.

BA: Yeah. So hopefully some of those things will work in our favor, and we'll get to do something with Doyle & Debbie on TV.

PM: Well, what about the other side of the coin? Are there plans for touring in the works as well?

BA: We are trying to do that right now. I mean, even when you do the showcase in New York, and you get some folks representing performing arts centers out in the hinterlands who love you, but then it's just a matter of how adventurous are they? How good a salesman are they to sell this to their subscriber base or whatever?

PM: Yeah, their constituency, right.

BA: Because nobody is going to know who we are, obviously. You can tell them that we were on Conan, then, whoop-ti-doo. But still, until--it's really like going out with an indie band on the road. If I were 25 it would be a no-brainer, we'd all hop in the van and go. But now everybody has got house notes and kids and stuff. So it's a little harder to make inroads into other markets. But that's Bobby Cudd's job, and he's working hard at it. So we'll figure that out.

PM: Right. And so I guess it's TV that fuels the PR, that fills the venues on the roads, and so you just got to get those two things working together, and it sounds easy, and it's not at all.

BA: Yeah. But obviously a TV show would change everything, and everybody, all of a sudden; they know who you are, and you're legitimized. You must be good because you're on TV, kind of thing.

[laughter]

PM: Yeah. Well, I certainly have become one of the great believers in the show. And I think that the legs that this show and that this act has are the best of legs, and that it's just really begun to be the hit that it's going to become.

BA: Oh, thanks, Frank.

PM: I think it's going to become literally an institution in the next five, ten years. And it couldn't happen to what seems to be a nicer guy.

BA: [laughs] Well, I appreciate it.

PM: So thank you so much for spending some time today, Bruce. And I look forward to sitting down sometime over a cup of coffee and hearing about the screenplay side of things, and a little more of your film scoring.

BA: I'd love it.

Bruce Arnston

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