Customer Reviews

Me, Myself, and Bob: A True Story About Dreams, God, and Talking Vegetables

5 star:		(23)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I was handed this book to read as I have made many people aware of my long train ride and constant need for new things to read. I love veggie tales but had no understanding of the company or its history, other than my sister taking a tour after winning a contest years ago. So I didn't know what to expect or why it would be worth publishing.

What a pleasant surprise!!! This has become one of my favorite books and I have since purchased many copies for gifts and lent my own copy out multiple times. Phil's writing style is easy to read and he is fantastically funny no matter how good/bad/normal/technical the content is.

There are many lessons to be learned through the roller coaster ride that the author and his company, Big Idea, went on. This is a must-read for anyone considering joining or starting a full time ministry, or for anyone about to embark in a leadership role of any kind. For the rest of us who grew up mesmerized by CGI, its a great and funny book.

I just got finished reading this and was totally blown away. I really appreciated his honesty and openness about what happened to Big Idea and this reaffirmed my feelings about the other so-called business books out there: it's easy to look like a genius when you study successful companies and draw contrasts, but the same methods don't work for every company.

Phil is a great storyteller, and I'm pleased to have been let into his world for a few hours.

As a Veggie fan since the inception of VeggieTales, I found this book riveting. The story of the spectacular rise of the Veggie kingdom and the lessons Phil V. learned along the way was interesting because I knew only parts of the whole story. The leadership lessons at the end were something I can apply to my specific situation. When some authors attempt to pass on wisdom they have gleaned, the book gets dry and boring. That didn't happen with this book, it was well-written all the way to the end. I can't wait to see what Phil Vischer comes up with next!

Bob the Tomato is a fancy vegetable.

So fancy, in fact, that he isn't really a vegetable at all! Like his partner Larry the Cucumber, Bob is technically a fruit, but who cares?

Phil Vischer is a creative guy who knows how to tell a story, and in this book, he tells the story of his creation of VeggieTales. As stories go, it's a pretty interesting one, documenting the meteoric rise and catastrophic collapse of the VeggieTales franchise, and its parent company, Big Idea Productions.

The story begins with events in Phil's life that shaped him and the quirky personality type that devises a wildly successful video series based on talking vegetables. From a pedigree that includes a great-grandfather who was a pioneering radio preacher, to the divorce that rocked his Christian family, to his expulsion from Bible college, there were many factors that influenced his dream to find a way to get a positive message into homes around the world, in a way that wouldn't feel "cheap" or "cheesy" like so many lame Christian productions.

(Having recently read Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers, I took special note of the seemingly unrelated things that ultimately led to Vischer spending most of his childhood tinkering with movie-making equipment and computer graphics programs, ending up with him uniquely positioned to take advantage of new technology at just the right time to make it big in the CGI video industry.)

No doubt about it: Phil Vischer is a talented guy, with a knack for generating great ideas and figuring out how to make them work. The success of VeggieTales was no accident! I was fascinated to see the behind-the-scenes stuff that went into making the videos, even though I'm not a huge fan of the series.

It was also fascinating, though, to read about how such a seemingly successful business/ministry was destined to fail almost from the beginning. For all his creative gifts, Vischer was seriously lacking in leadership ability. Without the know-how to set up a successful business model or the conviction to stick to his guns about the vision and direction of the company, Big Idea's success ended about as quickly as it began.

By the time he realized his mistakes, Vischer found himself surrounded by artists and businessmen who did not share his vision for the ministry impact of the company. Many on his staff, including the president he brought in to run the company once it began growing, were not even Christians. This quickly resulted in vision drift, and accounts for the feel-good, moralistic "theology" of many of the later videos (one of the main reasons I'm not a big fan).

In the end, Vischer totally lost control of his company, and was forced out altogether. He accepts the responsibility for this collapse, and ends the book with some good reflections to help other Christian business/ministry ventures avoid his mistakes. Most notable was the Walt-Roy dynamic modeled after the Disney corporation, where Walt was the creative genius, but could not have survived without his business-minded brother Roy. Vischer encourages Christians with creative gifts to seek out Christians with administrative gifts (and vice versa) to form partnerships that can be truly world-changing. This is something I've found invaluable in my own experience. I know I've got a lot of good ideas, but the church-based School of Performing Arts that I administrate would never survive without my reliance on the counsel of the members of our Advisory Board, who bring lots of business, accounting, marketing, and pastoral experience to the table.

This isn't a book that's going to change anyone's life, but it's a light, easy read that will benefit folks trying to walk the business/ministry line, and will hold the interest fans of VeggieTales. The writing gets a little clunky at times (especially as he describes the development of CGI technology and his role in pioneering elements of it), but on the whole, reading this book is a few hours well spent.

I'm a huge fan of VeggieTales, and this autobiography of its creator, Phil Vischer, explains the inception, rise, and fall of its company, Big Idea. I have to admit, I wasn't all that crazy about the book at first. While there were some interesting bits of information (like how he met his wife Lisa, "Larry" voice Mike Nawrocki, and composer Kurt Heinecke), a lot of the first half of the book was filled with technical details that made my eyes glaze over. The author also comes off as a bit whiny as he discusses the many people whom he felt betrayed him. However, the final few chapters of the book redeem any of its flaws. There is so much insight and beauty in the author's "lessons learned" section, and the final chapter is a wonderful picture of God's divine sense of humor and utter sovereignty.

So I would give the first half of the book about 2 stars, the last half 4 stars, and the final three chapters 5 stars. I'm averaging them out to be 3 total, but would encourage anyone who gets halfway through the book and considers putting it down (as I did) to push through to the very rewarding ending. Ultimately it's clear that God made Phil Vischer special, and He loves him very much.

This book really drew me in and I didn't want to put it down. Vischer takes us along with him on the emotional roller coaster ride that was his own meteoric rise and fall in the world of children's entertainment. His willingness to let us so far in to his own psychological state at so many points of the story is endearing and the humor with which the tale is told keeps the more heartbreaking parts of the story in perspective. Vischer's honesty and candor shine through and I think most readers will end up seeing themselves and their own ups and downs in his off-beat and sometimes even hilarious retelling of the story. Though I don't agree with all of the conclusions he makes in the end of the book, I do agree with his final assessment that we all need to rely more on God than on ourselves if we are to have any measure of success (and that success isn't always what we think it will be.)

Phil Vischer is a wonderful writer. He does a good job at sharing his life before VeggieTales, and how he was able to build this great company with many painful hours and sacrifice only to loose it all. But that is only the beginning and the middle of the book. The ending is where I fell in love with his story. It shows how God is always faithful and He is always pursuing a closer relationship to His people, even when He feels far away. Phil also shares how he learned to value God above the mission. I always had respect for what this company has given the children of today, and now I have respect for it's creator, due to his honesty and desire to help others see God even during hard times. A wonderful and easy read.

Phil Vischer may not be a household name...yet. But I believe he should be. He's the man responsible for creating one of the most popular children's shows...ever. You probably recognize the name Veggietales. Yep. Phil Vischer. He created Big Idea in a spare room in his house. He fought his way through trials and personal failure. Most people don't know that Big Idea went bankrupt at one point in time. But you can read all about it in Phil's book, Me, Myself and Bob. The book reads like a personal memoir, or a memoir about the company, mixed with an autobiography, mixed with a devotional book.

Like they said in that (awesome) movie, Amazing Grace, "You won't walk away clean" from it. And I hope you won't. Phil's voice is comical and entertaining, but his heart is bursting with the message he hopes you'll take away from his book.

I know I left that book a little different a person than I was before. And it's never failed to stick in my mind and bring me closer to God. So, uhm. I think you should probably read it.

I was wandering through our local library when I spied this book displayed in the biography section. Because I had always wondered about the story behind the fall of Vischer's Big Idea, I checked it out. All I can say is "Wow!". This is an account of Phil Vischer's journey with the God who loves him. Yes, it's about the rise and fall of Big Idea, and it's about the business/management lessons he learned along the way. But most importantly it's about the love and mercy of God --- so big and deep and expansive---that revealed truth and life to Phil.
It's well-written, witty, and at times suspensful. I just could not put it down --- even while wading through the chapter or so of Greek-to-me computer/CGI-speak. Phil Vischer writes candidly of his own life; hurts, joys, pride and humility, the heart-wrenching questions and eye-opening answers. He shares valuable business lessons and rich nuggets of truth. The last chapters are beautiful, as Phil describes the realization of God's love for and whole acceptance of and joy in him. This is a must-read for anyone who wants to love and serve people with integrity and humility, and especially for those who love God, whatever their place in life. I'll return the book to the library for someone else to enjoy, and buy one for myself! Thanks, Phil Vischer!

Much like the original VeggieTales stories, this is a well-written story told with lots of humor and with much more depth than you might think. On one level it's a fascinating story of the rise and fall of a media giant. I was fascinated on that level because I went right along with them - we had VeggieTales videos at our house before we even had kids because we saw them at the Christian bookstores playing on the VCRs in the back just in the way that Vischer describes in the book. Our house has the cool Pirates Who Don't Do Anything toy from the Jonah - A VeggieTales Movie, the Larry Mr. PotatoHead-type dress up character, stuffed dolls that talk, videogames (including a theme park game which is ironic considering that Vischer talks about how much he wanted to build a real one) and lots and lots of videos and DVDs from all of their various distribution deals that Vischer describes (Word, Lyrick, HIT, and so on). I even have a VeggieTales necktie - something that he brings up as maybe the strangest incarnation of VeggieTales mania.

So, following Big Idea on this story of its rise and eventual fall is and of itself interesting reading for a fan. But, like a VeggieTales video, there is a section at the end that tells you what you learned in this story. What Phil learns falls into two categories - how to run a business better and, more importantly, the folly of doing something to please God without actually doing something that God wants you to be doing (okay, I said that poorly, Vischer does a better job so read the book).

Highly recommended.