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Outside Magazine September 2003

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Mr. Big (Cont.)

WITH THAT, PHILLIPS excuses himself and slips out of the booth. As soon as he's gone, Nagle leans over the table and says, almost whispering, "He's really painfully shy."

This is our first moment together without his boss around, and it seems that Nagle wants to explain, if obtusely, why he was so evasive when I first asked to interview Phillips. Not that I doubt what he's just told me: Everything I've observed or learned about Phillips—from his delicate handshake to his downcast eyes and quiet voice—has told me that this is a guy who's far more comfortable hanging out with his own ideas than with strangers.

In that light, his Oz-like orchestration of Body-for-Life suddenly makes sense. Phillips is shy, sort of, and the shyness has helped drive his uniquely successful style, allowing him to develop a self-hyping system of exercise, diet, and inspiration, then deliver it in a package that is accessible, highly desirable, and perfectly timed. This is the formula that distinguishes him from the others who've built careers helping Americans shape up: Tony Little, Billy Blanks, Chuck Norris, Denise Austin, Robert Atkins, Barry Sears, Bob Greene. They offer a workout, or a diet, or motivation, but not all three, artfully spun together in a plan so simple and obvious that its only truly miraculous quality is that it didn't happen sooner.

Above all, the triumph of Body-for-Life freed Phillips to pursue the ultimate question: What, in the end, makes us change? Bodybuilding had unveiled a foolproof plan for working out and feeding yourself, but those aspects were just physiology, the mechanics of alteration; they weren't the source of it. He mastered the science, but it deposited him at the foot of something much larger and more complicated.

Here loomed his great mystery, the wellspring of transformation. The foundation was emotional, not physical or intellectual, and it required Phillips to keep generating new means of inspiration, to "reach people's hearts instead of their heads." He was no longer just a coach; he now saw himself as a sage.

"I want to touch," Phillips had told me earlier, "not teach."

Phillips returns, and Nagle looks at his watch. "So what's next, after the books?" I ask.

"Well," says Phillips. "I'd like to write a screenplay—I will write a screenplay. Something like what Sly did with Rocky."

"Any ideas?"

"I know it'll be a success story of some kind. Inspirational."

"Based on your life? Like 8 Mile?"

"I don't know," he says. "Maybe. I didn't see that one."

"We need to go," says Nagle.

We stroll out into the bright Colorado sunshine and walk to Phillips's new ride, a hulking black Cadillac Escalade SUV, fully kitted with leather upholstery, in-dash satellite TV, and wireless Internet.

Phillips halts. "How about this," he says. "Small-town kid—not me, someone else—grows up and invents something that helps everyone in the country live healthier, better lives."

He absently wipes a smudge off the door of the giant, glistening car.

"Don't you think that would make a great transformation story?"

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