'Everybody Loves Raymond' Creator Establishes Elite Inner Circle of Pizza Devotees
You know it's a cruel city when Ed McMahon — Ed Fucking McMahon! — can be in danger of losing his house while the man responsible for Everybody Loves Goddamned Raymond has built his manse's weekly "movie night" into an apparently newsworthy civic event. Indeed, notes the Times, the show's executive producer Phil Rosenthal has hosted the evenings for decades, starting modestly in New York and eventually moving on to first-come, first-served fêtes at the "Tuscan-style villa" that shitty television built.
There, every Sunday, Rosenthal welcomes 25 to 30 guests for wood-fired oven pizza (from the chef at Mozza!) and a movie ("Blu-Ray, when available"!) in his home theater. And while we know half the fun of making millions is to lavish them on your friends as frivolously as possible, a closer read flared full-blown sulphur plumes of class-consciousness around Defamer HQ. We don't even know where to start in relaying the horror of it all, so follow the jump and help us rank the transgressions in order of insufferability.
What's the Most Repellent Passage From "Everybody Loves Phil Rosenthal's Movie Night"?
1. "When I heard that Mario Batali, the greatest Italian chef in the world, and Nancy Silverton were going in together on a restaurant in L.A., I got on my knees and grabbed her leg and did not let go until she let me invest," Rosenthal jokes. "I did it so I could get in."
2. Gilma Repreza, who helps out on Sunday nights (and was nanny to Ray Romano's children), puts wineglasses, utensils and paper plates on the counter along with Silverton's chopped salads, served right out of their plastic takeout containers.
3. On weeks when he is in L.A., Rosenthal e-mails invitations to about 50 people; the first 25 who RSVP are in. Tonight Valerie Harper is here, just back from Chicago, where she was a guest on Oprah with the rest of The Mary Tyler Moore Show cast.
4. Rock 'n' roll writer David Wild — "You can say I'm a recovering Rolling Stone writer," he quips — corners Mike Viola, who wrote several songs for the movie. [The evening's selection was Walk Hard — Ed.] "I have more of your songs on my iPod than I do songs by the Beatles," Wild says.
5. Rosenthal marvels that a pizza with guanciale, radicchio, escarole and bagna cauda (a "warm bath" of garlic, anchovies and olive oil) has four eggs on top. "When you go to the restaurant," he says, "they serve it with only one egg."