Phil Ogden is a farmer, a family man, and the creator of The Thing, a monthly Zoom table read that features artists who are honing their craft in writing, acting, and directing. The Thing has blown up to such a degree that Phil has had to report some instagram accounts who were falsely claiming to be him. Nothing says you’ve made it more than being impersonated on the internet! I have been struck by Phil’s persistence to uplift the voices of the female writing community on Twitter, and he is always supporting and bringing an audience to those who have not yet been heard. In this article, Phil’s responses can be read as PO.
We started off talking about his family and the usual day to day in quarantine. His son is currently on the mend from breaking both arms and I wanted to know the status update on the recovery process! (He’s better now! Darn scooters!!!)
I initially asked Phil how he felt about being the “Twitter Dad” for the writing community. I often see writers going to him for advice and for a shoulder to lean on. On our Zoom call, he told me how taken aback he was by being told he was the “Twitter Dad” and that he doesn’t see himself that way.
PO: I would have never guessed that you would ask me that question because I know– and I have heard a lot of stories about this - that women have had to be very nice to keep people at bay.
Upon further discussion and reflection, Phil described a list of events - both personal and on the world stage - that have made him intolerant of injustice, ignorance, and plain old meanness. It is not unusual for Phil to go out of his way to tell someone they are important and that they matter. He is outspoken about how imperative it is to champion and uplift unknown voices and that just because someone is unknown, doesn’t mean they don’t count.
On our Zoom call, Phil recalled the dawn of IMDb back in the early 2000s and how he was so excited to find his favorite filmmakers online, all of whom happened to be male identifying. During the pandemic times, he began to question why that was. PO: I started asking myself, who is the female equivalent of Terrence Malick? Who is the female equivalent of John Seale? Who is the female equivalent of Charlie Kaufman? And then I was like, why am I asking myself this question? I’m so lazy! I need to do the work! The only reason I knew Steven Soderbergh had done all those films was because I had done the work of looking it up! There’s a whole wealth of content going on out there that I don’t know about and I’m tired of knowing about all the men stuff, I need balance! During quarantine, Phil began doing the work of researching female filmmakers on Twitter, dedicating himself to watching the works of female filmmakers who had linked their content in their Twitter bios. This is how Phil found me! I have some of my work linked in my very own Twitter bio and remember when Phil tweeted at me for the first time, unprompted, just wanting to know how I was doing. Tell me what you are working on! What is The Thing? How did it start? PO: It was at a point in March or April during the pandemic when people were really discouraged. Nobody knew what the virus did, and nobody had a firm grasp on when anything would be opening back up again. In our community, people were really discouraged about writing. There’s only so much you can do to support other writers before you yourself get frustrated, it’s like ‘shit, this is what I wanted to do and now I can’t even do that!’
Once upon a time, Phil had taken an acting class where the actors would do the thing: they would get up, perform a scene, the instructor would give direction, and the actors would do the scene again with the adjustment. Phil had an idea to do this over Zoom since no one could get together because of the pandemic. He sent out some inquiries about wanting to read some scripts and got a few responses. Linzmarie Schultz had submitted her headshot and reel to be a part of this project and helped Phil get the word out to her contacts. That really got the ball rolling.
PO: I said I have an idea, I think I can do it over Zoom, and I think there are enough people who would want to come to this. I didn’t want to read the whole script over Zoom, so I came up with the construct for this where we would only read a few scenes. Linzmarie Schultz sent me her headshot and resume to be a part of The Thing and told me that she knew a lot of people in Georgia who would want to be a part of this too, and I was like great! I’m thinking, this will take a few months at least to get organized, read through some scripts, cast, set up the zoom dates… it was one week later when the actors were locked in and the date was set, all thanks to Linzmarie. After the first Zoom table read, we began to collaborate on the next one together. I remember early on telling Linzmarie that I wanted to make sure she felt heard and included. I’ve heard a lot of stories from friends of mine who are female who have been in writer’s rooms where they work in pairs just so they can get their voices heard but the men in the room just shut them up anyway. I was thinking to myself about some of those stories, ‘what would it look like if you didn’t have to worry about that?’ I told Linzmarie that I wanted The Thing to be something that balances out the scale of what is out there in the real world. The first two episodes of The Thing featured female writers and directors. In my conversation with Phil, he spoke about his faith, farming (350 acres of almonds!!), and coming back to his love of film after not being around it for a while. He let me know that it’s okay to fall in and out of your passions and that there is nothing wrong with taking a break from something that used to mean the world to you. Phil’s love of movies came after seeing The Love Bug (1969). P.O: We had family friends who owned a TV repair shop in town, and they would let us borrow these video machines, they were called VideoDiscs. They looked like a laser displayer except the cartridges were basically like large CDs. That was the first thing I ever watched movies on. True story, later in life I ended up finding that VideoDisc format and The Love Bug at a thrift store and I now have it hanging in my garage!
Since its inception, is there anything you’ve learned from doing The Thing? PO: The amount of followers you have does not equal talent.
If you could go back and tell your past self some words of wisdom, what would you say? PO: Want me to stick to just one thing? (Laughs) Well, the first thing I would probably tell myself is to go get a psychiatrist. I’m medicated for ADHD and I’m medicated for anxiety. The anxiety was just this year, I didn’t know I had it, so I’m learning a lot about that this year – in good ways – but I can see a lot of years I spent not realizing I had it and it causing a lot of ripple effects. Being on medication for ADHD has been remarkable and being on medication for anxiety has been twice as good. So, that’s what I would tell myself. I think it would’ve saved me a lot of banging my head against the wall. Second thing I would say is that stories are not in the business of answering questions, they are in the business of raising questions. I wish I would have known that earlier. Art imitates life a lot in the sense that when you watch a film, it asks you all these questions and you feel confident enough to leave that movie pondering what it brought up. It’s sort of the same thing you do when you’re with people who really care about you and they sometimes bring up questions that you don’t know the answers to. I used to be so scared of the gray, but I feel so less scared of gray now. If I had something that was black and white, it made me feel like I needed to have it solved in a certain time period, and gray means that maybe not all the evidence is out. “Stories are not in the business of answering questions, they are in the business of raising questions.”
What has been your favorite moment of 2020 so far? PO: Taking Gale Hansen’s acting class. It was one of the most unique things I’ve experienced this year. Gale had attended The Thing and offered for me to come take a class. Being able to go to his class over zoom, it was really remarkable. We wrapped up our conversation much like how we started it, with Phil talking about his family. From discussing broken limbs to navigating how to best explain the political climate to his young sons, it is all bound with love and care. In his never-ending plight to support female filmmakers, Phil has invited me to host a panel at the end of this month featuring four female writers who will be talking about breaking story, collaboration, and inspiration. The only way we can lift others up is by hearing what they have to say, after all. Phil inspires me to delve further into the work and to figure out how we can make this business more balanced and concise in equality for all. The season finale of The Thing is Saturday December 5th. Be an audience member by clicking here!
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