July 15th, 1815. Rochefort, France.

Our first movie this week is 2023’s Napoleon, and the event from this week in history starts at about two hours and 22 minutes in.

Before we hit play, let me take a moment to describe today’s opening scene in the movie.

It’s daytime. Overcast. 

The scene in the movie is focused on a huge wooden ship, although there’s another in the background as well. Both ships are docked along a long, cobblestone area that’s taking up most of the camera’s frame in the foreground. Imagine two ships docked in the harbor of a city in the year 1815, and you’re about there…haha!

Right in the center of the frame, layered on top of the large ship is text from the movie that gives us the date and location…similar to what we just heard at the beginning of the segment, although the movie says we’re in Plymouth in July of 1815, instead of giving us the day of the 15^th. But, that means this isn’t actually France we’re seeing, and I’ll explain that once we start fact-checking this, because the movie give us something else I haven’t mentioned yet, and that’s the name of the ship: HMS Bellerophon.

With a British flag on her stern, Bellerophon is moored in the bay, with sails all put away leaving the stereotypical lines of ropes connected to the three masts on Bellerophon. On the cobblestone in front of the large ship are a handful of British soldiers in red uniforms scattered along the cobblestone area.

As we hit play on the movie, the only movement to be seen is on the left side of the frame when we see beautiful white horses can be seen pulling a white carriage up to a ramp on the ship. Behind the carriage are two more soldiers on brown horses, along with what looks like three men on the carriage and four more sailors looking on from in front of the white horses.

After the establishing shot, the movie cuts to inside the ship, now, as we see a man walking into the ship. He’s taller, so he has to duck to get through the doorway without hitting his head. He’s holding his military hat in his right arm, and he’s wearing a blue cloak with a British uniform underneath.

He enters the ship from the right side of the movie’s frame, greeted immediately by a sailor in the center who is saluting at attention. Then, on the left side, we can see a row of sailors at attention.

Although we can’t see him yet, we can hear Joaquin Phoenix’s version of Napoleon Bonaparte speaking in the background. After a moment, the camera cuts to where Napoleon is at—and he’s having breakfast aboard the ship. As he’s eating, he’s continuing to talk and explain what sounds like some sort of military strategy. Another brief moment, and the movie shows us who he’s talking to. Lined up watching Napoleon eat are nine young British sailors…some of them are very young, and quite honestly, I’d be surprised if they’re teenagers yet. They’re eagerly soaking up the knowledge that Napoleon is sharing with them.

Just then, we can hear the man who just boarded the ship enter the room. As he does, we can see a little easier now that this is Rupert Everett’s character, the Duke of Wellington.

As Wellington enters, the young sailors clear the room to allow him to talk to Napoleon without anyone else there. Now, it’s just the two men: In his French uniform, Napoleon sitting at the small, wooden table with his breakfast on it. Standing in his British uniform is Wellington, who pulls up a chair and sits down across from Napoleon.

For a bit of a visual aid, the room is lit from the wall of windows across the stern of the ship that, since we’re inside, we can see on the right side of the camera frame. The wooden walls of the ship’s interior are a light, teal color, with an off-white ceiling and black and white checkered tiles on the floor.

As Wellington sits, he helps himself to what looks like some tea from the table. The British government won’t let Napoleon stay in England, Wellington tells him. Instead, Wellington informs Napoleon that he’ll be going into exile on an island called Saint Helena. He’ll be under the watchful eye of Governor Hudson Lowe and his family.

Napoleon gets a glass of water as Wellington continues to give him more details about Helena—it’s an island, but there’s not much on it. It’s a thousand miles from the mainland of Africa, so it’s out of the way. You’ll have time to reflect, Wellington continues.

Joaquin Phoenix’s version of Napoleon just looks ahead with a blank stare as he processes the news.

The true story behind this week’s event depicted in the movie Napoleon

Right away, I’ll be the first to admit that the scene I just described did not happen this week in history—because that scene didn’t happen at all…which is also why our opening date in the segment didn’t have to be entirely on point, but we’re talking about it anyway because that fictional scene I just described was very loosely based on something that did happen this week in history.

We just have to unravel some of the facts from fiction…which is pretty much the case for the entire 2023 Napoleon movie if you’ve listened to the deep dives we’ve done into that film.

But for this week’s event, let’s start with the most glaringly painful issue with that scene: The Duke of Wellington was not on HMS Bellerophon on July 15^th, 1815.

And if you think about it, the Duke of Wellington was in the British Army, not the Navy. And so, it’s probably not too much of a surprise that the real person who was on HMS Bellerophon with Napoleon that day was the captain of Bellerophon, a man named Frederick Lewis Maitland.

That tells why the scene is fictional, since it was someone else completely who was really there—Maitland instead of Wellington. But, then again, the real discussion wasn’t about Saint Helena, either.

And that’s the other major thing I wanted to bring up as being inaccurate with the movie’s scene is the topic of the discussion. It wasn’t about Napoleon being exiled to Saint Helena. He wasn’t informed of the exile until August, though, so not this week in history.

So, what really happened?

The true story also explains why I started the segment in Rochefort, France, while in the movie the text places Wellington and Napoleon on the ship in Plymouth—or Plymouth, England.

The reason for that is something the movie never talks about, they started in France but ended up in England.

So, let’s back up a few days to last week in history, July 10^th, 1815, because that’s when Napoleon’s entourage first arrived at Bellerophon. That’s what we see when the movie shows the carriage pulling up to the ship…although it wasn’t a carriage in the true story, it was another ship.

As the story goes, the British didn’t know about Napoleon’s plans to surrender. He was defeated at Waterloo on June 18^th, so a little under a month earlier. He’d been forced to abdicate the throne, though, so he wasn’t welcome back in France. So, that brings us to July 10^th, when a French ship with a flag of truce approached HMS Bellerophon while she was in the port of Rochefort.

That’s where Captain Maitland welcomed Napoleon aboard Bellerophon. If you want to learn more about that, Maitland actually wrote a book about it afterward called The Surrender of Napoleon, and since it’s hundreds of years old you can find it in the public domain. I’ll link to it in the show notes if you want to read it.

Initially, though, it wasn’t even Napoleon himself who approached Maitland. The first people aboard Bellerophon was a small delegation of two men sent with the announcement of Napoleon’s intention to surrender. One of those was the Comte de Las Cases, or Count of Cases, who wrote a book about the encounter later. That was a common thing, people writing books about their interaction with Napoleon, so of course it happened around the surrender, too.

Over the next few days, negotiations between the French and British continued until, on July 14^th, the Count of Cases came over to Bellerophon with General L’Allarand along with a letter from Napoleon himself indicating his desire to discuss surrender terms. That was in the morning, at about 7 o’clock, which is important to the story, because the Count of Cases returned to Bellerophon at about 12 hours later, at 7 o’clock in the evening with another letter—that one was from another French General, Count Bertrand, and told Maitland that Napoleon was prepared to surrender.

The logbook for HMS Bellerophon offers us the documentation of what happened the next day, July 15^th.

“At 7 a.m. the French frigate L’Epervier, having a flag of truce, anchored near us. At 11 a.m. the Emperor Napoleon came on board to claim the protection of the British flag.”

Of course, that’s the short entry you’d expect from a ship’s log, and not something from a movie—we don’t get the details from dialogue between two people like in the movie. But, as I mentioned before, it seems like everywhere Napoleon went, people wrote about their meeting with him, so as the story goes, Napoleon asked for transportation to North America. He was interested in living out the rest of his life in the United States. Maitland refused, in a move that many suggest might’ve been due to orders from his superiors.

The day after Napoleon surrendered, Maitland sailed Bellerophon with Napoleon on board from Rochefort, France, to Torbay, England. That was on July 16^th.

And that’s where he stayed, basically, until the British government could figure out what to do with him. But, news of Napoleon’s capture spread, so later in July the English moved Bellerophon to Plymouth to avoid the public eye.

The movie is correct to mention the name of Saint Helena. That’s a 47-square-mile-island—one of the most remote in the world, way out in the middle of the South Atlantic Ocean. Oh, and 47 square miles converts to about 122 square kilometers.

To give you an idea of how remote, Saint Helena actually just started getting some tourism in 2017 thanks to a new installation: An airport.

Well, technically, the airport construction finished in 2015 and it opened in June of 2016, but the first commercial flights began on October 14^th, 2017.

That’s right, the first flights to and from Saint Helena were just a few years ago…and this is an island that was discovered by the Portuguese in 1502. It only took 515 years later for commercial flights.

As crazy as that sounds, not having an airport for so long makes sense when you know that Saint Helena is over 1,200 miles away from the closest land mass. That’s about 2,000 kilometers, so for a long time the only way you could get there was by ship. Which, of course, is how Napoleon got there, and being that remote is exactly why Saint Helena was chosen for him. After all, the British didn’t want to risk the chance of his escape—remember, Napoleon had escaped exile once before on Elba.

We learned earlier that Napoleon didn’t learn about Saint Helena aboard Bellerophon in July, that really happened in August, which is also when he transferred him from Bellerophon to another ship HMS Northumberland.

Then, along with a smaller escort ship called HMS Myrmidon, the British took their prisoner to Saint Helena. They left Plymouth on August 8^th and arrived in Saint Helena on October 14^th.

That’s all part of a story outside this week in history, though, so if you want to continue this part of the story, first go check out the 2023 Napoleon movie if you haven’t seen it yet. The scene from this week in history starts at about two hours and 22 minutes into the movie.

Or if you don’t mind the spoilers, you can jump right into the true story because I’ve talked to two different historians about the Napoleon movie.

I’d recommend checking out my chat with Alexander Mikaberidze first, because my chat with him was more focused on straight up separating fact from fiction…then for my chat with Louis Sarkozy, I had already talked with Alexander, so I was able to go deeper into different topics.

…and you can find both episodes with Alexander and Louis in one place over at basedonatruestorypodcast.com/napoleon

 

July 16th, 1969. Florida.

Our next movie is that classic film you think of first when you think of ‘based on a true story’ movies: Men in Black 3!

Haha! Okay, so, I kid—well, about the movie being the first one you think of as being a ‘based on a true story’ movie, but I’m not kidding about the fact that Men in Black 3 actually shows us something from history, and we’re actually going to wait on watching that movie together until tomorrow.

This’ll be something new for Based on a True Story, so let me explain.

Apollo 11 hit Range Zero on the countdown timer on July 16^th, 1969, at 13:32:00 GMT, or Greenwich Mean Time.

That means if you’re listening to this episode on the day it’s released: Tomorrow is the 55^th anniversary of the Apollo 11 launch.

Actually, I know I just used GMT, but they took off from Florida in the United States, so just for consistency and also because sometimes my brain has a hard time calculating my local time zone from GMT, I’ll use Eastern Time throughout this story—local time for the launch, so that’s 9:32 AM Eastern Time, 6:32 AM Pacific—and I’ve got a link in the show notes to help you convert to your local time if you want. I’ll also include a link to the show notes for a great e-Book from NASA that has all the time, too, if it’s easier for you.

What that means, though, is the countdown timer was already started on this day, July 15^th, in preparation for the launch tomorrow.

NASA started that yesterday, July 14^th at 5:00 PM Eastern/3 Pacific.

Well, yesterday in 1969, not 2024—you know what I mean, haha!

On July 15^th, they did a planned hold of the GET, or Ground Elapsed Time that NASA used to track the mission, at 12:00 PM Eastern. They planned for an 11-hour hold, and as expected, the countdown resumed 11-hours later at T-9 hours.

As a side note, you know how you hear T minus 9, 8, 7, so on for the countdown? When that hits zero, that means the GET is at Range Zero, or exactly 00:00:00, then from there the timer counts every second of the Apollo mission to keep track of what happened when.

So, let’s pretend we’re in Florida 55-years ago as the excitement around the Apollo 11 mission’s launch is taking hold. Right now, we’re in the midst of the countdown hold. The CBS broadcast that would end up showcasing Neil Armstrong’s first steps on the moon hasn’t quite started yet; it’s scheduled for 6:00 AM Eastern in the morning for a planned 9:32 AM Eastern launch.

Will the Apollo 11 mission launch on time?

Or will it be delayed by the evil alien named Boris the Animal and his plan to prevent the ArcNet from being deployed, killing anyone who tries!?

Okay, I’m sure you already know the answer to that.

But, I hope you’ll join me tomorrow anyway in a little minisode just to cover the true story of the Apollo 11 launch as it was shown in the movie Men in Black 3.

That episode will publish at exactly 55 years after the Range Zero GET countdown hit 00:00:00.

Or, in other words, since Boris the Animal’s plans are not based in reality and Apollo 11 did launch on the scheduled time: Wednesday, July 16^th, 2024, at 9:32 AM Eastern, 6:32 Pacific.

What goes up must come down, at least it’s supposed to when it comes to Space, and we know from history the GET’s final count for the Apollo 11 mission was 195 hours, 18 minutes, and 35 seconds.

Doing a little math on that: 195 hours into 24 hours per day is eight days with three hours leftover, so then the 18 minutes and 35 seconds. So, that means Apollo 11’s mission comes to a close eight days later, so next Wednesday, on July 24^th, we’ll complete this little minisode miniseries by how 2018’s First Man shows the Apollo 11 mission ending at 12:50 PM Eastern that day.

And we’ve got a couple other episodes between now and then, so maybe we’ll check-in from time to time, as well.

 

Okay, so that’s what we’re doing around Apollo 11’s launch starting tomorrow! But, that’s just one event from this week in history! Let’s queue up our next movie…it’ll be the animated movie Anastasia, so if you want to watch it along as I describe, queue up about four minutes into the movie, and we’ll hit play after the break!

 

July 17th, 1918. Yekaterinburg, Siberia.

Our next movie to watch this week is the animated cartoon from 1997 called Anastasia. About four minutes in, the movie places us in a dimly lit room with an eerie red glow. The architecture is reminiscent of an ancient castle or a wizard’s lair, with towering stone pillars intricately carved with arcane symbols and patterns.

At the heart of the scene stands a mesmerizing, fiery pillar of swirling red energy, that’s where the eerie red glow comes from in the room. This pillar seems to be the focal point of the chamber, radiating a sense of powerful, magical energy. The surrounding walls are lined with bookshelves, filled with ancient tomes and scrolls, hinting at a repository of forgotten knowledge and secrets.

To the left, a large globe sits atop a cluttered desk, alongside scattered books and parchment, suggesting ongoing studies or experiments. The right side of the image reveals a grand staircase leading to a lofted area, adding to the room’s sense of depth and mystery.

A lone figure, draped in a flowing red cloak, stands near the fiery pillar, their face obscured by shadows.

We hear some voiceover explaining what’s going on as more magical elements are swirling around angrily in the shot…almost like a tornado.

The voiceover says that Rasputin was consumed by his hatred of Nicholas and his family and sold his soul for the power to destroy them. Ah, that’s who the cloaked figure is near the pillar performing some sort of ritual. He’s getting sucked into the tornado, leaving only his skeletal bones behind. The cartoon skeleton is outlined in a glowing blue that contrasts against the red lighting.

Just then, a glass vial wrapped with what looks like a snake with a skull on top appears in the air. Inside the glass vial is some sort of a green magical element floating. The blue skeleton grabs it, and we can see it forming around the skeleton.

Then, we see the evil-looking Rasputin again, his face lit by the green magic. Under his breath, he mutters to the magical green element that it must, go and fulfill its dark purpose—to seal the fate of the czar and his family once and for all.

The green element oozes out of the glass vial as it leaves the room and to the streets outside. The voiceover says from that moment on, the spark of unhappiness across our country was fanned into a flame, and on the screen, we can see the little green magical elements doing something that seems to be spreading into people rioting, revolting, and tearing down statues.

The true story behind this week’s event depicted in the movie Anastasia

What the movie is setting up here is how Rasputin betrays and kills Czar Nicholas and his family, allowing only Anastasia to survive.

That is not at all historically accurate to what really happened. What is true is that the last Czar of Russia, Nicholas II, was killed along with his family in Yekaterinburg on July 17th, 1918.

Since the movie’s version of this event is highly fictional, let’s get a quick summary of what really happened.

To understand this, we have to realize that in mid-1918, the Great War was still raging. What we now call World War I. Of course, we know now that it ended in November of 1918, but in July of 1918, they didn’t know that for sure. What they did know was that things were going badly for Russia in the war.

They were one of the first countries to join the war in 1914, and almost right away the Russian armies were not doing well. They were being defeated so badly that Nicholas II decided to take personal control of them. His advisers didn’t like this idea, but he did it anyway, and for the next few years he spent most of his time away from the government running the military during the war.

That’s important to the story because of the other character we see in the movie: Rasputin. He was a real person, although he wasn’t necessarily the evil mastermind behind the demise of the Czar and his family.

That said, Rasputin was…well…there are a lot of questions around the real Rasputin. We do know he was a self-proclaimed holy man. He was a mystic. So, obviously, the cartoon movie takes those things to the extreme by making him some sort of a magician when in reality he was probably more of a religious figure—a prophet of sorts.

We do know he was a friend of Nicholas II and the rest of the imperial family, and he helped with the imperial family’s only son, Alexei, who was sick a lot due to hemophilia. So, Rasputin acted as a sort of religious healer for little Alexei which meant he was around quite a bit.

Meanwhile, when Nicholas II went away to lead the Russian army in World War I, as the months and years dragged on, Empress Alexandra relied more and more on Rasputin’s advice.

A lot of people in Russia didn’t like Rasputin and saw him as nothing more than a fake, a fraud, a charlatan. As his influence over the empire grew, so, too, did the unhappiness within the Russian public about how the Empress was allowing him to influence her decisions.

On top of that, Nicholas II was not doing a good job leading the Russian army in the war. They were suffering huge loss of life and the cost of the war weighed heavily on the economy. High inflation and lots of poverty became the norm in Russia.

So, the riots and unrest we see happening in the movie really did happen, but it wasn’t because of some magical power by Rasputin, but instead it was because the Russian people were fed up with the way the Czar was leading the country. The riots that broke out in February of 1917 were so bad that Nicholas II had no choice but to abdicate the throne—he did that on March 15th, 1917. That formally ended the monarchy in Russia that had been established back in 1721.

So, to back up with a little historical context: World War I is still going on. Russia is in the war. Meanwhile, back at home, Russians are without the monarchy that has led the country for hundreds of years. There was a provisional government in place, but that was overthrown by Vladimir Lenin’s Bolshevik party in the fall of 1917.

Meanwhile, Nicholas II and his family had already left the palace after Nicholas II abdicated, and they were placed under house arrest.

At this point, essentially Russia was entangled in a civil war on top of World War I still going on, too. For the purposes of our story today, though, Lenin, had to figure out what to do with the former monarch and his family. Well…we wouldn’t be talking about it if we didn’t already know what they decided to do.

What’s tricky about this part of the story, though, is that there has been a lot of conflicting reports and sources about exactly what happened. As they say, history is written by the winners, and in this case, much of the history that survived is written by those who made sure the Romanov family did not survive.

The gist of the story, though, is that out of fear of approaching anti-Bolshevik forces nearing where the Czar and his family were being held, Nicholas II and his family were woken up in the early morning hours of July 17th, 1918 and led to the basement of a house. It was for their own safety against the oncoming forces. At least, that’s how the story goes for what they were told. Instead, though, the entire family was executed in the basement.

Or was it? Did their youngest daughter, Anastasia, survive? Some say she did.

Because of what I just mentioned, this version of history being written by the winners, the true story of exactly what happened in that basement has been studied, debated, and researched by historians ever since.

If you want to watch the story, this week is a great one to watch the 1997 animated cartoon simply called Anastasia. The sequence we started this segment with is right at the beginning, at about four minutes into the movie. And if you want to learn more about the true story, we dug deeper into what really happened back in episode #94 of Based on a True Story, where we learned what is most likely the true story of what really happened to Anastasia.

 

Let’s move onto our next segment now, where we learn about historical figures from the movies that were born this week in history.

On July 18th, 1895, George Kelly Barnes was born in Memphis, Tennessee. Or, maybe not. To be honest, we don’t know exactly when he was born. Some sources say he was born on July 17, some say July 18, some say it was 1895, some say it was 1897, some say it was 1900. But, regardless, George Kelly Barnes was born sometime this week in history. He was perhaps best known by his nickname, “Machine Gun” Kelly. He was a prohibition-era gangster who robbed banks and became famous after kidnapping an Oklahoma oil man for ransom.

He was played by Charles Bronson in the 1958 biopic about his crimes simply called Machine-Gun Kelly.

Oh, and if you’re thinking of the musician who goes by the name Machine Gun Kelly, his real name is Colson Baker and according to my research it seems Baker got the nickname because his rapping style was shooting off fast, like a machine gun. So, perhaps the nickname for the musician is inspired by the gangster, but that’s where the relation ends.

On July 19th, 1860, Lizzie Andrew Borden was born in Fall River, Massachusetts. She’s best known for the axe murders of her father and stepmother, although she was officially acquitted of the crimes…Her story was told in the 2018 movie simply called Lizzie where Lizzie is played by Chloë Sevigny.

On July 20th, 356 BCE, Alexander III was born in Pella, Macedonia. Or, maybe it was the 21^st. Or maybe it wasn’t this week in history at all, and it was the 23^rd…as you might imagine, tracking birthdays back in 356 BCE wasn’t an exact science, but nevertheless, this was probably the birth week of the great the king of Macedonia known as Alexander the Great. He conquered much of the known world at the time, a story that was told in the 2004 film simply named Alexander with Colin Farrell playing the lead role. We covered that movie back in episode #157 of Based on a True Story.

Oh, and as a personal note, my mom’s birthday is also this week on July 19th, and I know she listens to the podcast so happy birthday, mom! I love you!

 

Onto our segment about ‘based on a true story’ movies released this week in history, can you believe this week marks the one-year anniversary of Barbieheimer?

That’s right, it was on July 21^st, 2023, that the Barbie movie and Oppenheimer both opened in theaters.

While Oppenheimer is obviously more of a historical movie than Barbie, if you saw Barbie then you’ll know that about an hour and 40 minutes into the movie, an older woman named Ruth reveals herself as the creator of Barbie.

In the movie, Ruth is played by Rhea Perlman, but the character of Ruth is for Ruth Handler, who really was the woman who created Barbie. But the real Ruth Handler passed away in 2002, so obviously she couldn’t be in the movie herself.

Originally, Ruth and her husband Elliot were interested in making furniture, which they did with a business partner named Harold Matson. During World War II, their furniture sales declined, and they tried making toy furniture instead. It worked! In fact, it worked so well, they shifted entirely and that’s how Mattel got into toy manufacturing.

Oh, and the name “Mattel” comes from mixing Harold Matson’s name—his nickname was “Matt” with Elliot Handler’s name. Matt-El. I guess they couldn’t get Ruth’s name in there.

Despite not having her name on the company, Ruth was very much involved in Mattel.

At the beginning of the movie, we hear Helen Mirren’s voiceover talking about girls playing with baby dolls and they could only play at being mother. On the screen we can see a bunch of little girls playing with baby dolls. Then comes Barbie, and in the movie we can see a huge version of Margot Robbie’s Barbie wearing a black-and-white striped bathing suit, towering over the little girls playing with the baby dolls.

Once we get past the fact that it’s a highly stylized interpretation of things, that’s actually not a bad version of how Ruth came up with the idea for the Barbie doll. It is true that in the 1950s, most little girls in the United States played with baby dolls as a way of preparing them to be mothers later in life. But, one day, Ruth saw her daughter and friends playing with rolls of paper they were pretending were them—and they were roleplaying being adults.

So, Ruth had an idea: What if we make a toy for girls to roleplay what it’s like to just be an adult woman? A mother, maybe, but there’s a lot more to what women can do than being a mother, so why not let little girls use their imaginations?

Where the movie stretches things a little bit with that introduction is that it gives the idea little girls only ever played with baby dolls—that there was no such thing as anything but a baby doll. Which simply isn’t true. In fact, when Ruth had first pitched the idea of the adult-looking doll for little girls, other executives at Mattel rejected the idea. Then, in 1956, when Ruth was on vacation in Europe with her family, she came across a doll called Bild Lilli. That was a German doll based on a comic strip character named Lilli. And the newspaper the comic appeared in? Bild. Hence the name of the doll, Bild Lilli.

You can find images of that doll online if you want to see what it looked like.

In the movie, Rhea Perlman’s version of Ruth tells Margot Robbie’s version of Barbie that she named Barbie after her daughter, Barbara.

And that’s true. Ruth Handler named the Barbie doll after her daughter, Barbara.

That brings us to another little tie-in to history from the movie because when Barbie first premiered to the world on March 9^th, 1959, she was wearing a black-and-white striped bathing suit. That’s the same bathing suit Margot Robbie’s version of Barbie is wearing in the movie when we see her for the first time in the introduction.

And just like the movie was a hit so, too, was the doll back in 1959. Barbies were flying off the shelf. I would highly recommend you look up a photo of the original 1959 Barbie doll and compare that to what the Bild Lilli dolls looked like? You can see just how much Ruth was inspired by the Bild Lilli dolls for Barbie.

In 1961, Ruth and Elliot introduced Barbie’s boyfriend, Ken.

While we see Ken in the Barbie movie, Ruth doesn’t talk to Ken so she doesn’t mention where his name came from…but, in truth, just like Barbie was named after Ruth’s daughter, Ken got his name from Ruth’s son, Kenneth.

Although it’s worth pointing out that Barbie and Ken only got their names. Everything else about Barbie and Ken, from how they look to their backstories, and so on, that’s not based on the real Barbara and Kenneth.

Oh, and as a fun little fact, Mattel actually bought out the rights to Bild Lilli in 1964 and instead sold Barbies in their place.

But, going back to an hour and 40 minutes into the Barbie movie, we have a few more historical elements to pull from dialogue in this scene.

The first is when Ruth tells Barbie, “Baby, I am Mattel. Until the IRS got to me but that’s another movie.”

But…actually, let’s skip this one because the movie circles back to it later, so we’ll do the same.

Another line of dialogue is a clever nod to the real Ruth Handler not being in the movie, because when the character of Ruth in the movie who, as I mentioned before, is played by Rhea Perlman…when she comes out and tells Barbie that, “I’m Ruth Handler, the creator of Barbie.”

Everyone around gasps and Will Ferrell’s character mentions her ghost keeps an office on the 17^th floor. I thought that was a smart bit of dialogue to allude to the fact that the real Ruth Handler is gone.

Then, our last bit of dialogue to examine is what Ruth says next. She says, “You guys, you think the lady who invented Barbie looks like Barbie? Ha! I’m a five-foot-nothing grandma with a double mastectomy and tax evasion issues.”

And all of that is based on truth, because the real Ruth Handler was all of those things. Well, I guess, I found sources that said she was actually 5’ 2”, but she was a grandma—I couldn’t find if Barbara has children, but Kenneth did. The double mastectomy mention is also based on reality because Ruth Handler was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1970, and then had a mastectomy. To add something the movie doesn’t mention, Ruth’s experience having the mastectomy led to her not being satisfied with the options for breast prosthesis available, so she invented her own.

But then that leads to the final mention in the movie’s dialogue: Tax evasion issues.

And this brings us back to a moment ago when I mentioned Ruth’s line, “Baby, I am Mattel. Until the IRS got to me but that’s another movie.”

I’m sure Ruth Handler’s life could be turned into a movie—although there’s not a biopic about her that I’m aware of.

But, the movie was correct to suggest that was the reason why Ruth left Mattel.

That happened in 1978, when they were indicted by a federal grand jury for conspiracy, mail fraud, and giving the SEC false financial statements. After pleading no contest, Ruth received a fine of $57,000, sentenced to 2,500 hours of community service—and she resigned from Mattel.

Oh, and her husband, and other executives, too, it’s not like Ruth was the only one affected by this. But the movie focuses on her more, so that’s why I was doing the same.

After she left Mattel, she focused on her prosthesis company for women—called Nearly Me—which she ran until she sold it in the 1990s and retired. Ruth Handler passed away on April 27^th, 2002, from complications during a surgery for her colon cancer.

So, that’s one half of the Barbieheimer that released one year ago.

The other movie, of course, is Oppenheimer, about the life of Julius Robert Oppenheimer.

Surprisingly, I haven’t covered that movie, and it probably could stand to have its own episode—let me know if you want that to happen—but for today, let’s cover a few of the movie’s major plot points, starting with probably the biggest thing you’ll think of when you think of Oppenheimer: The development of the atomic bomb.

According to the movie, another famous name was involved in that: Albert Einstein. There’s a scene about 54 minutes into the movie where Oppenheimer goes to Princeton to visit with Einstein to get his thoughts on whether or not an atomic explosion would destroy the world.

The movie is correct to show Oppenheimer and Einstein meeting—in fact, they had more than just one conversation. For a time, Oppenheimer and Einstein had offices just down the hall from each other, so who knows how many times they talked?

Unfortunately, those kind of conversations aren’t the kind that get documented, so what they specifically talked about—we don’t know. So, while the movie is correct to show Oppenheimer speaking with Einstein, the specifics of what they’re saying is all made up for the movie.

Speaking of the movie, can we take a step back from this movie for a moment? Because, did you realize we’re doing our own little Barbieheimer combination this week, talking about both movies…and since Oppenheimer was directed by Christopher Nolan, have you seen that other blockbuster movie of his: Inception?

Well, this is a bit of Oppenheimerception because not only did the Oppenheimer movie release this week in history, but one of the major plot points in the movie also really happened this week in history.

And since we’re not doing a full event from the Apollo 11 launch today, let’s make up for that pulling an event from this week in 1945 in the Oppenheimer movie that released this week in 2023.

 

July 16^th, 1945. Southern New Mexico.

We’re in a barren landscape stretching out as far as the eye can see. The ground is dry and dusty, with sparse vegetation dotting the desolate expanse. The sky above is overcast, and at the center of this image is the only sign of civilization, a solitary structure—it looks like an industrial rig or tower of some sort. Surrounding the tower, a few vehicles are scattered, connected by dirt roads that crisscross the otherwise empty terrain. These vehicles hint at human activity, but their small number emphasizes the remoteness of the location.

The movie cuts closer now, to the base of the rig, where an Army truck is unloading something big—something we can assume is a component of the bomb. They take it into a tent at the base of the tower. We also see Cillian Murphy’s version of J. Robert Oppenheimer figuring out calculations; how far people had to be away from the bomb’s test. For example, Oppenheimer determines that without high winds the radiation clouds should settle within two to three miles, so in theory anyone further than that should be safe.

Then we see what I’m guessing is the nuclear core being carefully placed in the large device they took off the truck and into the tent at the base of the tower. It seems to be a case of some sort, protecting the smaller core inside. Once inside, they seal it up and raise it by wires to the top of the tower.

But they don’t drop it right away. The movie has a lot of lead-up to the test that helps build tension, and I won’t describe it all here because it’s about ten minutes of movie runtime so that could be well over four or five times that to unpack it for our purposes, but eventually, at about an hour and 55 minutes into the movie, we hear the countdown: 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1…

Any noise in the movie disappears.

What used to be nighttime looks like day as spectators donning welder’s glasses watching from a long distance away. There’s still no noise, just an unnaturally bright light as the movie shows people gazing in wonder. Huge plumes of fire rise into the dark sky. The movie mentioned something about 5:30, but the bright, orange ball of flame is a stark contrast against the pitch-black sky, so I’m guessing it’s 5:30 in the morning.

Then, the sound comes back with a roar. The violence of the explosion rips through scenes of different people at different times as they hear it where they’re at. After the bright light fades away, not much time passes before sunrise, and everyone starts to cheer the successful test.

The true story behind this week’s event depicted in the movie Oppenheimer

In the interest of being up front, the establishing scene that I described of them taking the device off the truck probably didn’t happen on July 16^th. That’s when the test happened, but even in the movie after they put the core in the casing there is some time that passes until the actual test.

That test is the event from this week in history, and if you’re not familiar with the Trinity Test, that was the first successful detonation of a nuclear weapon, marking the dawn of the atomic age.

In the true story they nicknamed what the movie shows as a silver device the “Gadget’s” core. The bomb itself didn’t have a name, really, so they just called it the “gadget.” So, that sequence of putting it in the device and raising it up the tower was just a few days earlier than the test on the 16^th.

To be more specific, it was on July 12^th that the core was taken to the test area. On the 13^th, the non-nuclear components were taken to the test site and assembled with the gadget’s core. For a bit of geographical context, the test site was located in a region called Tularosa Basin, the Trinity Test Site is located on White Sands Missile Range, about 230 miles away from the Los Alamos Laboratory in New Mexico where they built the device. That’s over 370 kilometers.

It’s now a National Park that’s usually closed to the public, but every so often they have open houses for the public. As of this recording, the next public open house is on October 19^th, 2024, so if you want to learn more about that check out the link in the show notes for the U.S. Army’s Trinity Test Site.

After a couple days of assembling the device, it armed and ready by the evening of the 15^th.

Oh, and something from the true story we don’t see in the movie, they had a pile of mattresses underneath the gadget as it hung over 100 feet from the tower. The idea was it’d break the fall if the cables snapped and the device fell to the ground…thankfully that didn’t happen, but I’m guessing the mattresses wouldn’t have saved the nuclear device had that happened.

Just like we see in the movie, at 5:29 AM on July 16^th, the Trinity Test was performed. And just like we see in the movie, it was a massive explosion of nuclear destruction.

But, the reason for going so far into the middle of nowhere was for safety. That’s what the movie is implying when it shows Oppenheimer trying to calculate the safe distances for people to observe.

And while that did happen, the calculations they came up with simply weren’t enough.

Some have estimated about 500,000 people lived within 150 miles of the nuclear detonation. Most weren’t informed of the test. They didn’t evacuate. But, they did see the bright flash. So they knew something was going on…but the U.S. government insisted the explosion they saw was an accident. Just some ammunition that blew up.

By the time the truth came out about what it was, it became so hard to prove deaths were a result of the test. Some have reported a spike in child deaths soon after it, though. And even though we’re talking about history, we’re not talking about ancient history…for example, a new group was started in 2005, with this purpose:

Tularosa Basin Downwinders Consortium

Seeking justice for the unknowing, unwilling and uncompensated, innocent victims of the July 16, 1945, Trinity test in South-Central New Mexico.

I pulled that quote from their website, and you can learn more about their work at trinitydownwinders.com. I’ll make sure to include in the show notes. And while you’re in there, if you want to watch Oppenheimer, Barbie, or any of the movies from this week in history, you’ll find where to watch them on streaming with the links in the show notes.

Dan LeFebvre  03:13

Let’s start by looking at the movie overall to get an idea for how well it does capturing the essence of the true story. If you were to give war dogs a letter grade for historical accuracy, what would it get?

 

David Packouz  03:25

A letter grade…I would give it a “C.”

 

Dan LeFebvre  03:28

A “C”, okay.

 

David Packouz  03:29

I see. Yeah, I would say it’s it the broad strokes of the story are true. Even a lot of the details are true, but there are some major changes that they made. Some character changes. Some some things they put in there that never happened. And they left out plenty of things that did happen. So I would say I would give it a “C” maybe maybe a C+, I’ll give it a C+, generous. Be generous. Nice. Yeah.

 

Dan LeFebvre  04:02

Well, near the beginning of the movie, it kind of sets everything up to show how your character in the movie then becomes a gunrunner. It starts with Miles Teller’s version of you working as a massage therapist Miami 2005 and trying to start up a business selling bedsheets to retirement homes. Then there’s a sequence of events that lead to working with a DUI as an arms dealer starts in a movie with a childhood friend Efraim Diveroli, he moves back to Miami runs into you at a funeral doesn’t seem to be coincidental according to the movie. After that, Iz gets pregnant. That’s your character’s girlfriend in the movie and since the movie the bedsheets business isn’t really taking off from offers a job at his company at why and we find out that’s a one-man operation. Meanwhile, he wants to bring you on according to the movie, you know, it’s basically he’s okay with getting living off the crumbs as he puts it in the movie. You know, there’s these big government contracts and he’s just this one-man thing but he brings you on and he mentioned that he makes like $200,000 in the past eight weeks. So with a child on the way that becomes very tempting offer How well did this movie Deuce kind of setting up this scenario to you working at AEY?

 

David Packouz  05:14

it’s overall true. But there are some significant differences in what actually happens. At the time that I, first of all, I didn’t meet Efraim at the funeral. You know, it’s a cool scene in the movie, but I actually bumped into him. So we had known each other since we were kids. That is true. We went to the same synagogue, and neither of us like to pray. So We’d sneak out during prayers and hang out on the basketball courts and with all the other kids who didn’t like to pray, which was most of them. So, so that’s how we knew each other. But when he was 16, he got sent over to work for his uncle in LA, his uncle owns a big pawn shop. And that’s how he got obsessed with guns and government contracts. And he learned the business from his uncle. When he was 18, he came back to Miami, he claims his uncle screwed him out of a whole bunch of money. His uncle claims that he screwed him at a bunch of money. They’re both well known scumbag. So, you know, I believe both of them. And, and he started his own business in in Miami. Well, he took over his dad’s business at AEY Inc, which does stand for something by the way, unlike Stanford, yeah, exactly. So AEY stands for the initials of his dad’s three sons of Rummy, F from Ania Shaya, so the E and a y is f firms initial. And so yeah, he named it after his three sons. And a Y was being his dad incorporated to use as some sort of like label printing business, but hadn’t been doing any business with the corporate structure. So he’d let it like, go dormant. And so when EFRAIM came back, he took over the company and registered with the federal government started bidding contracts, and started doing really well. This was like 2004, right after the invasion of Iraq. So there was lots of lots of government spending going on in Iraq. And a lot of it was going to small business because the whole scandal with like Halliburton with Dick Cheney was the Vice President of the United States. And he used to be the CEO of Halliburton, and they gave Halliburton a whole bunch of multibillion dollar contracts without any competition and so they increase so to to, to counteract that the increased the amount that was set aside for small business, which of course, EFRAIM qualified, so So you started doing really well about after about a year of him working on his own in Miami is what I bumped into him. And I bumped into him at a mutual friends of ours, a house, and we were both smoking weed with our mutual friend. And he asked me, Hey, you know, what you’re doing these days. And so I told him, I was at the time I was in college, I was studying chemistry. And I had a few businesses going, I was working part time as a massage therapist. That part is true. I did have occasionally have gay clients do inappropriate things, but nothing too crazy. That towel thing did actually happen to me. That did happen. A very, very rarely it was it was very rare. But by and large, all my clients were very respectful and, and professional and but but I had my my main businesses at the time was selling SD cards online. I was buying them in bulk from China and selling them on eBay. And through that, I got into selling bedsheets and linens and towels. Because one of my friends said hey, I know you’re doing SD cards you have experience in finding suppliers overseas and importing things and I’m selling. I have a distribution business selling bedsheets and towels to nursing homes. So if you can get me a better price than my distributors, I’m happy to buy from you. So I started researching it. I found a bunch of manufacturers got really good prices did arrange logistics and started selling it to him and in real life. I was actually selling successfully bed sheets and linens and I never took delivery of them. I never filled my house up with boxes of bed sheets that never happened. Pretty much I was just a broker I would make a deal with the buyer and make a deal with the supplier and just do the do the deal. I never even took possession. I didn’t even have to put up my own money. It was a transferable letter of credit they call it which so it’s just the bank held the money in escrow and released it to the seller as soon as the goods were were confirmed to be loaded aboard the ship. So I was doing pretty well actually, at the time, I had about $200,000 to my name, which is not bad, especially for someone who’s 23 years old. It was way more money than most of my friends had. And I thought I was hot that I thought I was like, you know, pretty good at this business thing. And then I bumped into from and he asked me, you know what you do? And and so I told him, and he’s like, oh, you know, that stuff that’s actually very similar to what I’m doing, you know, finding suppliers overseas, arranging logistics, licensing, you know, import export permits, figuring out the financing, setting it all up. You know, you’re doing pretty much everything I’m doing, except that I’m making way more money than you. And I’m like, oh, yeah, he’s like, Yeah, I’m making way more money than you. So you should like, you know, I’m actually looking for some good, somebody to work with me could use a guy like you, you know, like, you’re smart guy, I can trust you. We’ve known each other forever. You know, come work with me, and we’ll make way more money together. And I said, Well, I mean, that’s interesting, but how much money have you made. And so he opens up his laptop and shows shows me his Bank of America bank account. And he has $1.8 million of cash in the bank. And he was 18 years old at the time. He’s actually younger than me. He’s he’s about four years younger than I was 22. He was 18. We’re both about our birthdays are close to each other. So he was about to turn 18. I was about to turn 23. And so he, I couldn’t believe it, because I knew that he had made that money on his own. I knew his family. I know. They’re not like his parents aren’t rich. His grandfather’s a billionaire, but his grandfather is one of these insane people who gives nobody anything like even his own, like ex wife, he tried to screw her out of like giving her any alimony at all. After they’d been married for like 40 years. It’s a famous case. He’s a very, very screwed. He’s Iranian, his grandfather, and his grandfather was married to his grandmother, his little side story. His grandmother was married to the grandfathers married his grandmother for like, I think 40 years, they had like eight or nine kids together. And then she decided to divorce him, I think, because she claimed he was like physically abusing or something like that. And, and so she tried to divorce him. And it turned out that they had never been legally married. They had just been, she didn’t realize it. And but they had never been legally married. They were only religiously married. And even though they had like, like nine kids together, according to the state of California, they’re not legally married. So so he decided that he was going to give her zero, like 00 Money, zero help anything. And so she sued him, it was the biggest alimony lawsuit in history. I think she sued him for like $700 million. Yeah, so anyway, that’s that’s the family he comes from, but, but I know that his grandfather, if it won’t give anything to his ex wife doesn’t give anything to anyone else. So so I knew he had earned that money himself. And, and I couldn’t believe it. I mean, I thought like my 100 grand in the bank was amazing. And way better than everyone else my age. And that that is true. Most people who are 22 years old, don’t earn $100,000. But, but it was nothing compared to 1.8 million, and I wanted to know what he was doing. I wanted to know, I figured this guy knows how to make money. And I want to learn. So I told him, yeah, amen. Let’s do this. And so that’s how I got into it.

 

Dan LeFebvre  13:50

Yeah, I mean, that makes sense. And it’s very different than the idea that we get in the movie of like, all the bedsheets stacked up and everything like yeah,

 

David Packouz  13:58

And yeah, my daughter wasn’t even I didn’t even know my girlfriend was pregnant at that, by that. Okay, that happened later. Okay. Yeah, yeah, they shifted the timeline around so that would be more dramatic. Okay.

 

Dan LeFebvre  14:12

And in the movie since obviously, we know you are real. Speak speaking of a girlfriend in the movie, the character’s name is Iz and then there’s another one that is kind of a big part to the way this is set up. But Ralph Slutsky who is a drycleaner owner and kind of put some money back in to the deals in exchange for 25% of the company. Are they based on real people too?

 

David Packouz  14:32

They are. My ex girlfriend, Iz is based on my ex wife Sarah. That’s her real name is Sarah. And, yeah, and she didn’t look anything like Anna dharma. So I’m sorry to disappoint everybody. But she was very beautiful. She was but she looked a lot more like Haileybury than, than Ana de Armas. My ex wife Sarah she was half black. Oh, Um, so she she’s a mulata her dad was like a white Spaniard guy and her mom was from Equatorial Guinea area, which is near Nigeria. So, and she did grow up in in Madrid. So she does have the same accent as Ana dharmas. So at least they got that. But, but yeah, but it’s, uh, she looks very different. Just very different skin color, I should say, is the main thing. But Ralph is based on a real guy. In the movie, his name is Ralph Slutsky. And he’s a Jewish drycleaner owner. In real life, he is his name is Ralph in real life. Actually, they didn’t change his first name, but his last name in real life is Meryl. And he is a Mormon machine gun factory owner he doesn’t own any dry cleaners. He owns a machine gun factory out in Utah. And and so that’s how he got connected to EFRAIM through EFRAIM’s dad, actually, EFRAIM’s dad was doing some business and got in contact with this guy and introduced him. And so Ralph was a firm’s first investor. And when EFRAIM one is first federal contract Ralph, finance the contract. And so that’s how they got started.

 

Dan LeFebvre  16:16

That actually makes a lot more sense than dry cleaner owner. Yeah, being honest to that was like,

 

David Packouz  16:23

yeah, exactly.

 

Dan LeFebvre  16:27

Yeah. One of the big the first big contracts that we see happening after you join a why is the movie calls it the Beretta deal. It’s as the movie sets it up. It’s a $600,000 contract sell 5000 Beretta pistols to the US Army in Baghdad during the Iraq War. But then there’s a problem. Of course, there’s always problems that happen in movies. And this happens just before the deal is about to go through through Italy passes some legislation banning arm shipments to Iraq. Berettas are an Italian gun so they can’t be sent directly to Iraq. So instead, in the movie, Efraim has the idea to ship the guns to Iraq’s neighboring country to the West Jordan, and then from there, take them to Baghdad. And another problem pops up when the Jordanian customs sees the shipment because of a permit issue. So then we see Efraim and yourself in the movie fly to Jordan to try to fast track this new permit ends up with the two of you and a local driver named Marlboro actually driving a truckload of Berettas, from Jordan to Baghdad, nearly getting killed in Fallujah in the process. How well does the movie do showing this Beretta deal?

 

David Packouz  17:37

So the Beretta deal was real. We really did have a Beretta deal, and it really did get stopped by the Italian legislation. However, what Efraim tried to do was not ship it from Jordan to Iraq. He he tried to get the government to take a alternative gun. A I think it was like a Brazilian gun. I think he actually mentioned it in the movie.

 

Dan LeFebvre  18:04

There’s one line, I think he’s on the phone with the military guy.

 

David Packouz  18:09

Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And they rejected it as they did in the movie. But then he didn’t, we did not we didn’t manage to deliver on that. In fact, we defaulted on that contract. So that contract failed. So yeah, we did not deliver that successfully. However, the story of going through the Triangle of Death is real. But it didn’t happen to us. It happened to the screenwriter of the of the word dog screenplay, Steven chin. So Steven chin, who is a, you know, Asian man from California. He, he originally got the he got the job. He got the contract to write the word dog screenplay, because he had written another screenplay prior to that called Iraq, Iraq. And that screenplay, which was never turned into a movie, it was, but it was a well regarded screenplay. It was about another set another two American guys who were government contractors working in Iraq at the time. And this was in 2003. And right after the invasion, and Steven wanted to write the screenplay about them, and he wants to go interview them and see, you know, how they were doing. So, of course, he couldn’t get a commercial flight to Iraq. So he flew to Jordan. And he hired a driver to drive him to Baghdad. And that driver decided to stop in Fallujah to get some free gas because no one was manning the gas stations. And they got shot at by insurgents and made a run for it. And they got saved by the US Army, just like in the movie, so that that story is actually true. It just happened to the screenwriter of a screenplay not to us, and when so when he was writing the screenplay, Todd Phillips, the director, you know, tell So, you know, these guys are just sitting behind desks too much. We need some action in there, you know, why don’t you put your story about getting shot at in Iraq and into the story and and so that’s how that got into the movie.

 

Dan LeFebvre  20:10

Well, I was gonna ask about in that, like in the movie, of course, maybe it wasn’t you driving through the Triangle of Death, but there was a scene where that happens where your character just kind of reflects on me and six months ago, I was a massage therapist and now I’m driving a truckload of guns through the Iraqi desert was can you kind of give us what your mindset was like in those early months? Like, did you kind of realize this whirlwind of events or things that were happening like the movie seems to imply?

 

David Packouz  20:39

Yeah, absolutely. I would say that my biggest kind of like, shock or, you know, realization that I was in a very different world was when we were was our first trade show that we went to. So we went to like, just in the movie, they call it in Vegas sex. But in there was a trade show in Vegas called the Shot Show, I believe it’s still going on. But it’s not actually a military focused trade show. It’s it’s more of a commercial hunting, shooting sports trade show. So people gun manufacturers do go to that trade show, but it’s more aimed at the civilian market. Henry, the guy played by by Bradley Cooper didn’t meet us there. We did, we did. But we had known him like well, before that we’d been doing business with him over the phone and by email for like, a good bunch of months before we met him. But we did meet him in person there. So he also attended that trade show. But the the trade show that they that they make it look like is not the Shot Show, they make it look like more of a military trade show and a defense industry trade show. And I believe that they’re basing it more on a trade show, such as Euro Satori, which is based in Paris, and that’s the one we went to first. That was our first military trade show. In Euro Satori in Paris, happens every year. There’s there’s a bunch of these trade shows that happen all over the world. But it really does look like what they portrayed in the movie with like, you know, tanks and, and aircraft and attack helicopters. And pretty much every major arms manufacturer has like a booth there and, and they have outside in the field, they have live demonstrations of like live fire drills with like attack helicopters and tanks, jumping sand dunes and stuff like that. And drones, you know, so they really do have that. And so when I was like walking through that show, and like, I was like, Holy crap, this is like a whole different world than what I’m used to and where I’m where I’m coming from. So that’s when it really hit me. Okay,

 

Dan LeFebvre  22:47

okay. Well, I’m curious about something. In the movie, the Beretta deal, you said that, that that failed. So maybe things were a little bit different. But in the movie, after that, we see a DUI is expanding nice new offices, more employer employees being hired. And that was kind of confused with how the movie was telling the story here. Because on one hand, we see from in the movies, telling new employees that they have to watch the website all the time for contracts. We also see the employees aren’t really doing any contracts themselves, the movie shows you being the one to find the next big contract the Afghan contract, as it’s called, on the government website. And we’ll talk a little bit more about that in a in a bit. But after the Beretta contract, it sounds like that that fell through was there a big contract that changed to see a why expanding or what were things like after that time?

 

David Packouz  23:40

So our first really big contract that we won? Well, I should say, after the Beretta deal, was the Afghan contract now, we didn’t actually hire anyone, and we’re even get at office until after we won that contract. So yeah, the timeline is a little off in the movie, but like, before we won the Afghan contract, we were working out of EFRAIM’s apartment. And it was only after we won the $300 million deal that he felt comfortable spending like $2,000 a month on an office. And yeah, I know. And, and so yeah, once we won that deal, he we rented an office and then he started hiring people. And at our peak, we probably had around like 15 people working in the office. And so yeah, I mean, and that by that point, I was just concentrating on working on the Afghan deal and he was getting all the other people in the office to try to get other deals and new deals and and he was also doing some commercial deals like importing ammo for the shooting sports commercial market and getting them to sell it to like gun shops and stuff like that.

 

Dan LeFebvre  24:54

I want to talk about the the Afghan contract and in the movie, the way that sets up out I’ll talk about how that sets it up. It shows that there’s this big deal for 306 360,000 sniper rifles over a million grenades, 45,000 rockets, 100 million rounds of AK 47 ammunition. And the reason it’s called the Afghan deal is nickname for it because this is all for the US military to rearm the Afghan army. According to the movie, it mentions all those guns and stuff at first, but then it really just kind of focuses on the 100 million rounds of ammo for the rest of the movie. Were you involved in the whole contract? Or was it just the ammo? Can you kind of clarify what your role was in that?

 

David Packouz  25:36

Yeah, so I was involved in the whole contract. And it was about 30 different it was all munitions, it wasn’t any weapons. It was all munitions. So all the stuff that goes in the weapons. And it was everything from like, as you mentioned, you know, like, it was everything from like Pistol ammo to machine gun ammo to grenades to anti aircraft, rockets, mortar rounds, tank rounds. So there was a pretty much every bit of munitions that an army or police force would need for like the next 30 years was the plan. That was that was what they were going for. And because the Bush administration thought that that, you know, they were very unpopular at the time, and they figured the next president would be a Democrat, which they were right, Obama was next, but they thought that, that the next Democratic president would pull out of Afghanistan immediately, and which they were wrong took until was 2020 Biden pulled out. And, and so their plan was to arm the Afghans for like the next 30 years, so they wouldn’t run out of ammo if they got abandoned by the United States. And so that’s why they had such a large variety and quantity of munitions for this contract. The I was working on the entire thing, and we had sources all over to get it. In fact, the AK 47 Ammo was one of the lowest margin items on on the list. So we were making the least amount of money on that ammo was the most it was the largest quantity and largest logistics challenge because it was high volume, low value. But the grenades were making us way more money. So we and the grenades were brand new manufacturing, I’ve, you know, one of my contacts in Bulgaria was manufacturing, brand new, and they had really, really good prices. And so we were making way more money on the grenades and on the AK 47 ammo and the grenades had no legal issues whatsoever. Because they were brand new, right out of Bulgaria. So So yeah, I mean, I was working on all of it. It was just got focused on the the AK 47 animals because it was the famous logistics issues that we dealt with the whole repackaging situation. Okay,

 

Dan LeFebvre  27:58

okay. Yeah. And because the impression that I got from the movie because it really only focuses on the ammo, but it also shows like The the Albanian warehouses full of stuff, I was just like, well, maybe they just got all the other stuff from here, too. It was just like a big, everything all in one from these warehouses.

 

David Packouz  28:15

No, most of the stuff we got that other than the AK 47. And some of the machine gun ammo, the 760 by 54 ammo. We mostly did that was mostly from other places. So it was just really the AK 47 and machine gun ammo, the AKM ammo that we that we got from Albania. And another difference in real life. They didn’t store all that stuff in a warehouse. They stored it underground in these huge, really long bunkers. And Albania. As they mentioned in the movie, it was run by this paranoid dictator for most of the Cold War, who he withdrew from the Soviet Union and the Soviet Union that tends not to like that. So he thought that he would get invaded by the Soviet Union. And because he was a starch, communist, staunch communist, he thought that that the that NATO would invade them too. So he thought he was going to get invaded by the world’s two superpowers, and he’s a tiny little country near Greece. And so he allied himself with the Chinese and got a massive amount of ammo from the Chinese, and weapons and stuff. And that’s how all that ammo ended up being Chinese. And what he did was he built this huge underground network of of bunkers, so that ends and put all the ammo and weapons in there and so that they would be safe from Buckmark bombardment from the air. And his plan was that if he got invaded, the entire population would become soldiers and everyone would fight to the death he called it his plant total war plan. Yeah, that was his plan. So of course the war never came. So after the Cold War ended, all the those weapons and ammo were still in those books. occurs. And by 2007, NATO really wanted to join up. I’m sorry, Albania really wanted to join NATO. And one of NATO’s requirements is that Albania get rid of all their old ammo and weapons. So they were going to have to pay to dismantle all of it, which is going to cost them a lot of money. And so they were thrilled to sell it instead. Because then they make money instead of lose money. And so that’s how we got such an amazing price.

 

Dan LeFebvre  30:26

We had talked about this a little bit before we you mentioned, Henry Gerard and Vegas accent in the movie, we see how the Afghan deal is going to be completed. It mentions Henry Gerard, Bradley Cooper’s character, and you’re meeting with Gerard at Vegas X. And he says that he’s going to supply all 100 million rounds of ammo for the Afghan deal from that military surplus in Albania. But Gerard can’t bid on the contract himself, because he has been added to the terrorist watchlist by the US government. So basically, he’s going to sell the ammo to AI, who then turns it around and sells it to the US government. And that’s how the movie sets up that. Basically, that was how you’re going to complete the Afghan deal. Was that a pretty good interpretation of how it really happened?

 

David Packouz  31:10

More or less? I don’t think he was if he was on a terrorist watch list he was on. Like, I don’t know what the official one would term was, but he was like, on a list of concern, so to speak, by by Amnesty International, right. So not by the US government. So Amnesty International, had published some things about him that they suspected him of being involved in the arms trade to Africa, and to some warlords, and obviously, that would be bad. But I don’t think anything was ever proven. And so he was not like, legally. I don’t know exactly why he he never, like registered with the federal government and did any of these things himself, but he was he was dealing with, with quite a few different contractors, it wasn’t just us, he was also selling to other American companies as well. And we just happened to be very competitive with the other items on the contract, not just those items. So we had really good prices on grenades and, and that helped us win. And as well as other things, we just had better an overall package than our competitors. And that’s how we want it wasn’t he wasn’t really the magic bullet that took care of everything. He really just took care of the AK ammo, and the and the machine gun ammo.

 

Dan LeFebvre  32:35

Okay, because that’s exactly what he seems like is the magic bullet like, Oh, he’s going to, he’s got everything. And he’ll give you everything for you know, for a deal. Yeah.

 

David Packouz  32:44

I mean, it was an important very important component of the of the contract. But But yeah, it was not as they portrayed in the movie, like a turn key thing where he took care of everything. And, and we didn’t have heat, we only had one supplier. And it was him that that wasn’t the case. He was just the supplier of those items. He gave us quotes for the other items, but he wasn’t competitive on some of those other items. So we got that from other people.

 

Dan LeFebvre  33:09

Okay, okay. Yeah, that paints a very different picture than the one that I got from watching the movie. Right? Yeah, one thing we do see in the movie is you actually go to Albania to inspect the bullets. And there’s a screen that and then after, after that, we see that you guys bid on the Afghan deal, there’s a screenshot I paused the movie to look at it in Excel. And here we can see the total bid a little over $300 million dollars. And the movie also mentions three separate audits and an in person interview before actually getting the contract. The movie doesn’t really focus on it much. But it does mention that that has to generate you know, years of paperwork or at out why should say has to generate years of paperwork for those audits. Because you I didn’t keep any records. So now that they have these government audits have to do all that. And then basically, while you’re there, you have to go to I think it was Rock Island, Illinois and the movie The once you to actually talk to people, you and EFRAIM go there, kind of get high in the car beforehand, because it’s it’s a very stressful situation. So that’s understandable. But then while you’re there, you find out that you got the contract, but you also undercut the bid by $53 million. So then everyone was all upset. That’s an overview of how the movie shows you why landing that huge Afghan contract. How close to the true story is that? So

 

David Packouz  34:33

As with everything else is partially true. The we really did have it was I think, like five different audits. One was financial, where they they want to see that we had the money capabilities. One was accounting, they want to see that we had like the record keeping thing and that’s what we had to and we really did. So at From hired an accountant who just had happened to have been in federal prison, right? He just liked to have these guys. And that guy created like years of records by hand. So to make it look like he had been doing the accounting properly for the past few years, and so yeah, that guy, I think it took him like a good like two weeks to do that. So he created the the other records going back. And they they actually sent a group of nice middle aged ladies to our office that they were from the government, they were actually super nice. And we were super nervous because the government is going to come to visit the office, they’re gonna see where a couple of kids and you know, just and so, you know, we both wore suits and, and, you know, we had our, you know, our secretaries looking really busy and stuff, so we would look professional. And of course, everyone’s a real, he’s a real charmer, you know, he can be he’s a very, very personable person. So, he starts joking with them. He’s like, he’s like, like, oh, ladies, you know, I knew that you were, you know, I knew that, you know, over the phone. I could tell you were smart. But I didn’t know you were so beautiful. I mean, you know, if it wasn’t so illegal, like, definitely be buying your diamonds right now. And so they’re all laughing, you know? So he charms them, and they get us actually pretty high marks in that audit. They wanted us to come to the Rock Island Arsenal, which is where the contract was being managed. And Efraim told me is like, hey, you know, we’re a couple of kids, we probably should, it probably would not, might not look too good. So I’m gonna go with Ralph, because Ralph’s an older guy, Ralph’s, like in his 60s. So so I didn’t end up going to that meeting, because everyone wanted Ralph to be there to give him additional legitimacy. I don’t know whether or not he smoked weed. Before going into that meeting. I didn’t ask him, but it wouldn’t surprise me in the least if he did, or even if he snorted a line of cocaine, because he was doing a lot of that back then. So in fact, I’d be surprised if he didn’t snort a line of cocaine before that meeting. But when we did that, we were told that that, that we were $53 million under the next or 52, I don’t remember, under the next bid, but it didn’t happen at that meeting. It actually happened is actually the guy told me, the contracting officer told me over the phone, so and the way it happened was he I’m trying to remember what we were discussing, but we’re discussing something like I was asking him, you know, whether we could do something or other. And he’s like, Yeah, you know, we’re really happy to help you guys out. You guys were just like, you know, so competitive. You know, you guys really kicked ass, you know, of all your competitors. And I was like, really? And he’s like, oh, yeah, you guys were so much lower than everyone else. And I’m like, really? How much lower? And he goes, he’s like, Listen, I’m actually not really allowed to legally tell you this. But since we’re just talking over the phone, I’m gonna deny it If you tell anyone okay, but we’re talking over the phone. I’ll tell you all right. He’s like, you guys were $53 million under the next people. And I was like, holy shit. And so like, I you know, I spend like, well, you know, we’re just trying to get a good, you know, a good deal for the government’s because, you know, we’re, you know, we’re responsible contractors like that. And so of course, I tell that for him, and he was pissed. He was like, throwing things at the wall. He was screaming, he’s like, these motherfuckers could have made $50 million more got that, you know, and he just, like, he was like, he was pissed for like, a whole day. Because of that. He was just like, fuming and fuming. And then, of course, I think that had to do some of it, you know, he started, you know, scheming of all different ways we could like increase the profit margins and, and, and that’s kind of what got us in trouble later, when he when he tried to cut Henry out of the deal. By the way, Henry’s real name was not Henry Gerard it was Henry tau May th o m e t. Tau May. He’s a Swiss guy, and looked very different than Bradley Cooper in the movie in real life. You look more like a clean cut. Swiss banker then. Then the way Bradley Cooper portrayed him.

 

Dan LeFebvre  39:33

Most of us look different than Bradley Cooper. So yeah, well, I

 

David Packouz  39:37

mean, Bradley on I think Bradley, I read some interview with him that he was kind of trying to look like more hard ass in that movie. So like, that’s why he’s like all unshaven and he’s got those super thick glasses and like bloodshot eyes. And, you know, so he was kind of trying to do more of like an underground, like criminal kind of vibe. But Henry actually was the opposite of that. He was is very, very clean cut professional never raised his voice about anything very quiet calm and ended every sentence with the word. Okay, for some reason you’d be like so the price for the AK set for the AKs are good. Okay, I can I can, I can supply them by the middle of March. Okay, you know, so it’s like that. Yeah, everything was okay. Okay. Okay. Yeah, exactly everything was like that. And he’s very, very calm, never never raised his voice never screamed or, or went nuts or anything like that, like Bradley does in the movie but but yeah, I mean, he’s, he’s been doing it. Henry has been in the arms business since he was like 18. And he was in his 40s at the time. So he’s one of the most connected people in that business of anyone, particularly in Eastern Europe. But yeah, but he tries to keep as low of a profile as possible for for good reasons. So he’s, there aren’t many pictures of him out there. I think there’s maybe one YouTube video of him giving some speech somewhere. So it’s not like he’s completely anonymous on the internet. But but there, I think that’s the only thing that’s out there as far as you

 

Dan LeFebvre  41:12

maybe you already answered my next question. But when Efraim gets all upset about losing that, that $50 million. That kind of goes to contrast earlier in the movie when he’s talking about being happy living off crumbs and things that the other big defense contractors didn’t want. And now with this afghan do the movie even pointed out says this is the whole pie. Was there something maybe that the movie doesn’t show? Or was it that 50 missing out on that $50 million that he found out that was kind of like this change in being happy? You know, from going, being happy with the crumbs? Do I want the whole pie?

 

David Packouz  41:49

Well, I mean, I would say that EFRAIM’s driving force, at all times was greed, I mean, greed and power. I mean, that’s kind of like what he lived off. And he was never happy with a deal. Regardless. I mean, he was not happy with the crumbs, he was always trying to get more crumbs he was always trying to, and the way he worked was that it wasn’t really so much about the money. I’ll give you a story that kind of illustrates his character. When I first started working with him within like, the first two, three weeks, I saw him you know, we worked in the in out of his apartment, right in his living room. And he would always talk on the phone with the with the phone speaker on side hear both sides of the conversation. He I guess he just didn’t like holding the phone up to see or whatever. And I remember seeing him once get on the phone with AT and T and start is, you know, screaming and shouting and stuff, because he felt like he was there was like a $5 charge on his bill that he felt should not have been there. And he kept on insisting you know, they said, Well, you know, they kind of pushed back well, you know, this is our policy, whatever. And he’s like, I want to speak to your manager, you know, and he kept him like, insisting on going up the chain of command. Eventually, I think he got the $5 removed from his bill, but it took him like 45 minutes. Right? And, you know, like, and it was like a whole drama, like he was yelling and screaming and the whole thing. And I told them afterwards, after you hung up, I’d said, you know, EFRAIM, why are you spending so much time and effort on $5 overcharge, you know, you could spend that time making God knows how much money doing pretty much anything else? And you know, why are you wasting your time here. And he goes to me he’s like, it’s the principle of the matter and nobody see nobody. So like to him, you’d like it was is much more of an ego thing than anything. And like I’d seen him like screw someone over through some various tricky means, where the he ruined the guy, the guy was crying on the phone that his business was going to go bankrupt and, and like, you know, his wife is going to leave them and the CEOs kid is sick and whatever. And Efraim eventually used that whole thing in his own schpeel when he tried to convince the government of things but but you know, but this guy seems to be legitimate. and EFRAIM just he just didn’t care and all the only difference to for EFRAIM he was after he hung up the phone with them. keys like well, I just made another 3% on my contract. And I’m like, Oh, you did all that you screw this guy over your ruins and for an extra 3% And it’s like, that’s not going to move the needle for him. You know, he’s not he’s already got millions of dollars in the bank. You know, what’s a few extra $1,000 It’s not going to do anything. But for him it was about winning. That was what it was all about. It wasn’t about the money. It was about winning. I mean, he was he hated spending money. He barely spent it at all, especially in the beginning. Later on. He started spending it when he knew he was going to go to prison. And then he started spending a lot of it. But but in the beginning, he, he like, was very cheap, like he would eat at cheap restaurants. He, you know, like didn’t want to spend like he barely had any clothes. He was driving like a, like a secondhand used car and living in an apartment that was you know, not not terrible, but not nothing compared to what he could afford. So, yeah, I mean, he just had this kind of like sickness that he just needed to, like, have just as much money in his bank account as possible. And it was he wanted to win. And that was that was really what it’s all about.

 

Dan LeFebvre  45:35

Okay, that’s, again, seems a little different than I think it was after the I think it was after the Beretta deal in the movie where it shows his character and your character in the movie getting like matching portion on elevens or something like that. And he was like, Oh, we got this huge deal. And then, you know, start spending some money. So it seems like he’s okay with spending money.

 

David Packouz  45:55

Yeah, well, we actually so we didn’t have matching Porsches. But we did. We did both of Audi’s he, it wasn’t they weren’t matching. He had an ace six and I had an a four sided i the less expensive version. But we did have matching Audi’s I guess you could say, and we also did move into the same building. It wasn’t as fancy as they show in the movie, but it was it was a pretty nice condo complex. Yeah.

 

Dan LeFebvre  46:19

Okay. Okay. So, you know, make it it’s going to be on filming the movie.

 

David Packouz  46:24

Oh, no, no, no, yeah. The building they show in the movie wasn’t even built at that time. I know what building they’re talking about, in fact, that that apartment, I saw it go on the market and what the marketing they use for it was this was the apartment that was in featured in the film War Dogs. Yeah, that’s how the agent was selling it. Yeah. But yeah, that that building was not it was not even constructed at the time that this story took place.

 

Dan LeFebvre  46:52

In the movie, it’s your character that goes this go back to Albania to help actually facilitate this deal. And with the logistics of it, I just see a character that notices that all the bullets are Chinese. And that means it can’t be sold to the US government because of an embargo against China. So then EFRAIM comes up, he shows up in Albania. And he has this idea of taking bullets I I worked on the exact number they mentioned in the movie 68,520 wooden crates, and he wants to put them into corrugated fiberboard boxes to help make it cheaper on shipping. And then we see a wise hiring a team of like 50 people to repack the ammo over the course of eight weeks costing $100,000. So there’s no more Chinese label on the outside also saves $3 million in shipping costs going from the wooden crates to the lighter boxes seems like a good deal. Except of course, repacking is not necessarily legal going around that embargo. So how well does the movie do showing the situation with the ammunition for the Afghan deal?

 

David Packouz  47:55

So it was pretty close? Yeah, I mean, I so I didn’t go to Albania. Yeah, the guy who we so we sent. So we realized that the way it happened was that in early 2007, there was a huge spike in oil prices. And Efraim had not bought any, he didn’t hedge his bets, he didn’t, he didn’t buy any insurance. So to speak a big company, if you have, if you’re really relying on a large transportation contract, you know, like, if you if you’re about to, like, you know, book 100 aircraft loads have to ship something, usually what they do is they buy insurance in order to to counteract the movements of the oil markets, because like the vast majority of the cost of air freight is in oil is in the fuel. And if the oil price significantly moves, then you could your your transportation costs could significantly change, which is what happened. So of course, effort didn’t buy the insurance, because that’s just not how he rolls. And, and so we were kind of stuck in a situation where we could not deliver this ammo at a profit. And so the AK 47, ama from Albania, the grenades, we were able to because there was low volume, high margins. And you know, one aircraft load of grenades was like $3 million worth. And but an aircraft load of ammo was under $300,000, where it says literally 1/10 the price so that the air freight costs change put us underwater on those on the on ammo deal. So I realized, you know, air freight is based on weight, primarily. And so if we could reduce the weight, we could save money and maybe get this section of the contract back into profitability. And I you know, we had gotten pictures from the Albanians of the Alamo and it was all packed in these very heavy looking wooden crates. And so I told Mmm, like, hey, you know, if we remove these crates, the ammo still in these sealed metal tins, they call them sardine cans. We can just ship the sardine cans and and get rid of all this wood and maybe that’ll be enough to make it profitable. And he’s like, Oh, that’s a great idea. But we’ll Yeah, but that’s like a pretty big operation to repackage this stuff. So we need somebody on the ground. He’s like, you know, you just like David, you know, you’re you, I need you here in Miami, because you’re dealing with the government, you’re dealing with all the other suppliers for the other aspects of the contract. I don’t want you to go in anywhere. But let’s get someone else to go there. And so we decided to hire my friend Alex, Alex Paretsky, who was my childhood friend, we’ve known each other since like third grade. And Alex had he’s dual citizen with in, in France, with French France. And he had spent some time in the French military. He speaks English, Spanish and French. So he’s his, you know, three languages. Very smart guy, very, very responsible and capable person. And so I said, Hey, you know, Alex is actually, he had just graduated, he has a master’s degree in international relations. So and he’s a smart guy, military experience, why don’t we hire him? And so EFRAIM hired him put him on salary sent him over to Albania. And we got picked email back from Alex saying, hey, you know, this is the situation with the ammo because he had majored in international relations, he knew that there was an issue with Chinese ammo. And that’s how we found out so so yeah, it wasn’t it wasn’t me. Who was there?

 

Dan LeFebvre  51:43

And it was seems like it was a lot more complex than the movie shows, which happens with movies.

 

David Packouz  51:47

Yeah, they have to I mean, they have to simplify. There’s only so much you could put in an hour and a half. I mean, this is this is like two years of of events compressed into an hour and a half. Right,

 

Dan LeFebvre  51:58

right. And characters to like with with with Alex and you know, just compressing it into okay, you’re the one going because you already been introduced. Exactly.

 

David Packouz  52:05

That’s what the screenwriter told me. He’s like, you know, we we don’t want to introduce another character here. It’s already you know, well into the movie and, and so just keep the story simple. And that’s why they sent me in the movie. Well,

 

Dan LeFebvre  52:18

things don’t go so well in the movie. Once EFRAIM finds out that any drive paid two and a half cents per bullet for the Afghan deal. Well, then he then he turned around in charge at y 10 cents per bullet. So the way the movie sets this up, it’s against your characters wishes in the movie Efraim tries to cut Gerard out of the deal. We don’t exactly see how he went about doing that because the movie follows your character in Albania. Well, FGM is in Miami. But we do see the result of it happening. You get kidnapped from the hotel stuffed in the trunk of a car driven to a deserted lot with Gerard threatens you with a gun in your face. That’s the scene the movie actually starts with. And then it comes back near the end of the movie to show that did that actually happen? No.

 

David Packouz  53:01

Yeah, that that never happened. And neither it didn’t happen to Alex either. I mean, he didn’t get kidnapped either. EFRAIM did try to cut Henry out of the deal if that is true. So and the real numbers were actually that he was buying it from the Albanian Ministry of Defense for two cents around. And he was selling it to us at four cents around. So he was doubling his money. But we were selling it to the US government for 10 and a half cents around. However, this airfreight was costing us I think, like five and a half cents around so we were still pulling in. Then that was after the repackaging. So before the repackaging it was going to cost us like 14 sets around or something like that. And so we were going to lose money. But after the repackaging it was. I mean, in total, before, in in after the repackaging, we were paying, I think about five, five and a half cents of round and shipping costs. So we’re clearing about a center round, which gives it about a 10% profit margin. That was after the repackaging. So yeah, the what happened was, after we got the repackaging going, Alex found this guy named Kosta, the box guy. And it started the repackaging things were going well Efraim decides that he wants to make more profit on this deal, like he does with everything. And so he decides he’s going to try to cut Henry out of the deal and deal directly with the, with the Albanians. And so he tells me, he’s like, he’s like, Okay, I’m going to flat Albania and I’m going to convince them to give us a better price. He’s like, what I want you to do is I want you to take he’s telling me, he’s like, I want you to take all the quotes that you got from from other people from other sources. And I want you to doctored the documents and change it. So it looks like we got much better prices from those other alternative sources. And so he saw I’d do that for a minute. It wasn’t particularly hard to just get a PDF editing program and change the numbers. You know, it wasn’t hard. And print out the documents for him. He goes to Albania. He talks to the lead Albanian guide, Nick I named Philippe Inari. And he’s like, he’s like, look, I have these these other quotes. Alex was telling me this later because Alex was there. He’s like, he’s like, look, I have all these other quotes. You guys gotta give me a credit, better price and and Pienaar, he looks at him. He’s like, those documents are all fake. Don’t show me your fake documents. He knew right away, he knew right away. He didn’t even like look at it. He was like, he’s like, I know, you’re foolish, you know? And so he refused to give him another a better price. And eventually, you know, everyone kept on bugging him. Eventually Pienaar, he’s like, Okay, fine. You know, I’ll tell you what, I’ll make a meeting with the guy who can make this decision. And so he sets up a meeting with a guy named Billy Yorkie, who we found out later turns out to be part of the Albanian mob. And this meeting took place in this, this construction zone, it was like a building that was under construction. And they go into the construction zone. And then like they opened the door and suddenly, it’s like a beautifully furnished office, like out of like Wall Street. And, and there’s the Albanian Gaya, dill Yorkie at this table. And, and Alex told me that the second Diveroli walks into this meeting, he immediately got quiet, because diversity is a very brash and loud person always talking and always kind of like, you know, joking around and kind of, and he also bullies people. He, you know, he’s a big talker. But Alex told me that, you know, the second he walked into this office and saw this guy, he knew that he couldn’t do that with this guy, you know this with this mobster. He got really quiet and very respectful, which is very out of character for him. And the Albanian says, Look, I know that you want better price, but we can’t give you better price. But we know that you are repackaging ammo, and you pay this men to repackage ammo, and why don’t you give this contract for repack to us, we make money and repack and then I give you a better price because we make more money from repack. And they were always like, yeah, that sounds like a great idea. Sure. That guy’s fired. You’re Hired, you know. And, and Costa Of course, got really upset about that, because he got taken off the contract. And he calls me up and he’s like, Hey, listen, you know, I get it. It’s business. You got to go with the person who gives you the better price. I understand. But can you at least by my extra boxes from me because I have I made a whole bunch of boxes for you guys for this contract. But now you’re kicking me off the contract. I am stuck with $20,000 worth of boxes. So you’re going to need these boxes anyway. Why don’t you buy it from me? And I said, okay, yeah, that’s very reasonable. I you know, appreciate you being you know, cool about this. And so I call it that from like a f from you know, why don’t we just buy these boxes from Costa and everyone’s like, yeah, yeah, okay, no problem. I’ll do it. I’ll do it. Okay, yeah. Tell them I’ll do it. So I tell Costa Yeah, he’s gonna do week goes by Costa Causton facts like Hey, I from hasn’t bought the bus. I call him like, Efrain by the system. You’re like, Yeah, I’m gonna doesn’t do it right. A third time that he calls me up. He’s like, I still like like, I really need you to guys to buy these boxes, and EFRAIM’s like, yeah, you know, I talked to dilla Yorkie and they don’t want to deal with them. So, you know, just let it he can keep the boxes we don’t need. And I’m like, Efraim just pay the guy. He knows everything. You know, he’s knows why we’re repackaging the ammo, you know, he can, he can destroy us. And he’s like, yeah, that guy’s not going to do. Don’t worry about him. You know, of course, that was the big mistake. And that guy did do something. He called up the the Feds and told them what we were doing. And he called up the New York Times and told them what we were doing. And his biggest mistake was that he called up the Albanian press and told them that that, that the Albanian politicians were getting kickbacks from this deal, which we didn’t know whether it was true or not. But we assume that’s probably how Henry got such a good price. And also probably why the Albanians refused to cut Henry out of the deal. Even though Efraim asked them because they were getting their kickbacks from Henry. Now, we didn’t have proof of this. Henry never admitted this to us because it is illegal to bribe foreign officials. Even if it’s not your own country, you can get arrested in the United States for bribing a foreign official. So it’s probably a good thing. We didn’t know about it. But and Henry didn’t. We didn’t ask and Henry didn’t tell. But we but we we assume that’s probably what was happening in retrospect. So yeah, eventually, so a few weeks after he He told the Albanian press that he ended up dead, the box guy. So it was the box guy that ended up getting killed, not the driver, there was no driver in, you know, in the movie, it’s the driver that gets killed for some try to scare us or something. That’s not what happened. There was no driver, there was just the box guy got killed. And that was because he ran his mouth to the Albanian press. And, you know, the powerful people in Albania didn’t want someone claiming that they’re corrupt. Because corruption is like the number one political issue in Albania. It’s a huge problem over there.

 

Dan LeFebvre  1:00:34

Well, for your storyline, as far as you know, the end of the movie, we see things very quickly dissolve you were in Albania with with the whole getting kidnapped scene. But then after that, you head back to a wise office demand your percentage of the Afghan deal about $4 million, according to the movie, you also want to leave the company. But the contract wasn’t completed yet. So EFRAIM’s like, I don’t have that money to pay you right now. And then your character in the movie says, Well, I’m willing to accept you kind of negotiate and when do you know 40 cents on the dollar, like 1.6 million. We also see, the movie makes a point of this written contract of a 7030 partnership between you and EFRAIM. And then it just mysteriously disappears from your desk drawer. The movie doesn’t show it but we saw it from looking at it while you were in Albania. So very heavily implies that he took that. And then later with there’s the box guy thing and then also we see Ralph Slutsky mediating a talk between your character and air from, from offense, like $200,000 Split up over the next four years, partly the amount owed. And so in a fit of rage, your character then tells Ralph about the repacking the Chinese Mo and Albania, something he didn’t know about. And then everything is just a whirlwind at the end. All of this really could be expanded a lot more in the movie, I’m sure but it happens so quickly. Because we find out that Ralph was wearing a wire, we find out that the box guy in Albania never got paid. And so he called the Pentagon, which oversimplification based on what you’re saying there, but basically, that’s how the movie shows you and from getting arrested, it seemed like a whirlwind ending to me, that was like just a few minutes of movie time. Seems to me that you’re wrapping everything up in the movie. Yeah,

 

David Packouz  1:02:16

they had to wrap it up. I mean, that was changed dramatically of how it happens. So yeah, I mean, I as I said, I didn’t go to Albania. So I was still in Miami. Uh, once we, I think it was about a few months after the whole repackaging situation happened and effort went to Albania to negotiate he made this new deal with the Albanian mob and, and started getting them to do the repackaging. And so things were starting to, like we’re starting to fly like three aircraft loads a week of this ammo into out into Afghanistan. And, and that was on top of all the other stuff. So this is like from Albania, we also had a grid like aircraft coming from Bulgaria, every one to two weeks with grenades and from various from Hungary and from various other places. And things were starting to really go smoothly and, and it was just really a matter of management, managing the contract, making sure all the documents were in the right place at the right time, etc. And so this was like the first time in many, many months that I was able to have like a breather, you know, it was like, I wasn’t working 18 hour days, like I was for the last like five months. And so I started coming into the office less, right? Because I didn’t need to. And so one day, the contract was going well, everything was going well. Efraim comes into my office, it was late in the day, because I was staying there late because I had to make some calls to overseas. And he comes everyone else in the office was gone for the day. And he walks into my office, and he’s like, hey, you know, a lot of the guys around the office are telling me that you’re not pulling your weight around here anymore. And I’m like, What are you talking about? Who’s saying that? Right? Because I was good. I was on great terms with everyone with all our employees, I was known as the nice boss. And he was known as the asshole. Right? So like, everyone would come to me and complain about him. Right? So I was like, there’s no way they’re talking behind my back to this guy. There’s this there’s not a single person in the office who would do that. And so I’m like, who’s saying that? You know, and he’s like, it doesn’t matter who’s saying it. Don’t worry about that. But you know, the thing is, you’re not really helped. You’re not You’re not pulling your weight. I’m like, What are you talking about with the cont the Afghan contract is going great. We’re delivering on consistent basis. The government is thrilled the money’s coming in. And he’s like, Yeah, I know, the Afghan contracts going great, but like, you know, was really struggling with the Iraq contract and you’re not helping with that. And I said, but I’m not part of that contract. I’m working on commission only here, right? I’m not I don’t have a salary, I’m not responsible for every contract the company does. And he says, Yeah, but you know, if if those contracts fail, the company could go under, and then that takes your afghan contract with it. And I said to him, Well, in that case, you want me to be you want me to like work on everything, you, you want to give me a piece of the company? And he’s like, Oh, well, you know, I wouldn’t usually offer this to anybody, but you’re my best friend. And you’re the only guy I would even consider doing this for, you know, so why don’t we do this, I’ll give you a very generous $100,000 a year salary as an executive v y. And you get 1% of the company. And I said, 1% of the company, I mean, 90% of the company’s profits, for the next two years minimum is going to be the Afghan contract. And you owe me actually 25%, not 30, you owe me 25% of that, of that contract. So I think I’ll stick with my 25% of the 90% of the money, then 1% Of all the of 100% of money. And he’s like, he’s like, Well, you know, that’s just not going to work. We can’t do that. And I said, Well, I mean, we have an agreement. And he’s and he says, Well, you could take it or leave it, how about zero. And I said, Okay, if that’s how it’s gonna be, I’ll see you in court, you piece of shit. And I walked out. And I was extremely tempted to punch him in the face. And, you know, it’s just like, the smug look on his face. And I was obvious I so he hadn’t paid me anything until this point, because all the money that we had made in previous contracts together, he rolled into the next contract, because the way he put it, what he was like, hey, you know, I’m using my own money to finance this deal. As you make money, it’s only fair that you use your money to finance the deal to, you know, to the best of your ability. And I was like, okay, you know, I mean, I guess that kind of makes sense. You know, I mean, it’s not that much money comparatively, but you know, so I agreed to do that. But because of that, I didn’t have a penny from all the work that we had done in the last two years. And I had been living off my savings that 100 grand was down to 30 grand at this point. So and dwindling fast. And at this point, my daughter was, like six months old. And so I had, I had a kid to support. And so it was, I went from thinking I was going to be very shortly going to be a multimillionaire, to about to go literally bankrupt. And, you know, going down to zero. So it was a huge, huge shock and a huge, like, blow. And I was like, depressed for weeks after that. It was one of the hardest times in my life, because I was just didn’t know what to do. I was like, I got to get a lawyer, but the lawyer needs to get paid, and I don’t have money to pay a lawyer and, and all this stuff. And I was like, is he just gonna, like, walk away and get away with this. And eventually, my, one of my dad’s good friends, was a very high powered lawyer and agreed to take on my case, and started negotiating with him. And we we negotiated. to, like, we did go, he owed me about $5 million, it was about 5 million that he owed me, and we negotiated, and he was willing to give me 300,000. And obviously, that’s ridiculous. But at this point, I was like, you know, what, 300 if, rather than going through a lawsuit, which could take years and who knows if I’ll ever end up collecting, because who knows, this guy could end up dead, he the way he does business, he could end up bankrupt the way he could end up in prison. I mean, that’s all those are all very good possibilities. So better to have $300,000 now than maybe nothing later. And so I agreed to it, just to be able to have something so I wouldn’t go bankrupt and be able to support my kid and move on with my life and start a new a new chapter in my life. And we’re about to sign the contract to get to do that agreement. And the day we were supposed to sign the contract, I get a phone call from one of the secretaries at the office. And she tells me, Hey, I just wanted you to know, I hadn’t been working at the office for two months at this point. This is two months later, and I want you to know that. But I was still on good terms with all the all the employees, you know, so she called me up. She didn’t have to, but she called me up and she’s like, I want you to know that the federal agents just raided the office. And they told everyone to step away from their computers and get out of the office and, and they’re collecting everyone’s computers and all the filing cabinets. They’re boxing everything up. So just want you to know, and I was like, Holy crap, you know, the shoe has dropped. We’re, we’re screwed. And so I call up Alex who’s Well in Albania, and you know, Alex is my best friend. And so I tell him Hey, Alex, you know, I just want you to let you know that, that, you know, the Feds raided the office. And he’s like, what? It’s like, he’s like, why? Because like in Alex’s mind, it wasn’t even necessarily illegal what we were doing, right, because we, I mean, yes, there was an embargo against Chinese ammo. But the ammo that we were buying from Albania had been given to the Albanians in the 70s, before 1989, which was when the embargo was put in place. So it was actually legal when they gave it to the Albanians. And so you can buy Chinese ammo legally in the United States or Chinese weapon legally, as long as it’s imported before it was made illegal before the embargo. So technically, as far as the embargo was concerned, this ammo was legal. However, our contract with the US our commercial contract with the US Army specifically stated, no Chinese ammunition can be delivered either directly or indirectly under this contract. So so that was the so that, because now it was they put that in there because of the embargo. But they didn’t actually mentioned the embargo anywhere in the contract. It just says no Chinese mo period. So we figured, oh, this is probably just a violation of our commercial contract terms, which is not necessarily criminal, right? It’s just a commercial, it’s a breach of contract really, is what it was. And so in Alex’s mind, you know, he was like, Well, you know, I mean, it’s a might be a breach of contract. But that’s a firm’s problem. He owns the business. I’m just an employee, he could deal with the lawsuit or whatever the army wants to, if they even care, right, which they really didn’t.

 

David Packouz  1:11:44

Until, until they had to that is, and so, so out, but then he realized, hey, the feds are raiding the office. So he calls up. So he’s like, Okay, let me see what’s going on. He calls up the office. He calls up Danny, Danny is the guy who Efraim replaced me with after I left. And so he calls up Danny, and he says, Hey, Danny, I need you know, these documents to Ford. There’s an aircraft landing in a couple hours, I really need these documents in order to take care of the export permit. Can you get me these documents? Because he knew that everyone had been forced out of the office by the feds. So he’s like, I need these documents, just to see what would happen. So Danny t here’s the Alex told me this later. Alex, here’s Danny cover the mouthpiece of his phone, and whisper to EFRAIM Hey, hey, Everett’s It’s Alex. He, he won’t he needs these documents, or what should I tell him? And he hears EFRAIM going? Oh, well, we can’t get this document. Now. The feds are there. So why don’t you tell them that? Yeah, there was a bomb threat? Yeah, tell him there was a bomb threat at the office. And so we all had to leave. And so we can’t get them the documents now. But we’ll get it to him in a few hours. Okay. Yeah, tell him there’s a bomb threat. And so Danny gets back on the phone. He’s like, Yeah, there was a bomb threat. So we’ll have to give that to you later. And Alex’s thinking, why is that from lying to me? Right? Why doesn’t he tell me the truth. Maybe he’s planning on blaming me for everything. I’m making me me be the fall guy. I mean, I’m the guy on the ground. I’m supervising the repackaging operation EFRAIM’s going to claim he didn’t know anything about this, and this is all my fault. I’m not going to take the fall for this mother. You know, so he’s on the next plane back to the United States. And then I get a call from the federal agents. And they say to me, they’re like, hey, you know, we interviewed some of the other employees at the, you know, at your company, and they said that you had left on bad terms, we would love to talk to you. So, of course, I call up, you know, I hire a defense attorney, a criminal defense attorney, and I say, What should I do? Should I talk to the Feds or not? And my defense attorney says, well, first thing you have to do is you have to go through your emails and your text messages and search for all the keywords of all the things that you think you did wrong. And, and see see what kind of evidence there is see what kind of things they’re working with here. So I I, you know, searched in my email I searched for Chinese ammunition repack, and it turns out, there was quite a lot of evidence there was there was direct emails from you know, F from to Alex with me copied on it saying, Make sure you remove all the Chinese documents from inside the thing. We can’t have any Chinese markings, you know, like it was very, very blatant. And so I realized, well, they’ve already got all the evidence, you know, so there’s no way we can deny that we were doing what we were doing. And I told my lawyer then my lawyers will look if the evidence is rock solid, then your best bet is to just cooperate you can’t you can’t fight them, you know, because they are they’re gonna you if you fight them, you’re gonna get destroyed. And And anyway, do you have a few $100,000 to A good defense attorney for your for your case. And like no, I don’t I have less than 30 grand to my name, he’s like, Well, in that case, it’s not even a choice. You don’t you can’t even even if you were innocent, you could defend yourself. So. So and and he’s like, and you know, you’re not innocent, so just, you know, come clean, and hopefully it won’t be too bad. And so I, you know, we set up a meeting with the feds. And they, they the way the way they work is they tell they tell you, they interviewed Alex and me separately, of course, but they tell they, you know, so they can verify our stories against each other. And they tell me, you know, it’s like, this is the way it works. If you’re going to cooperate, you’re in 100%, there’s no half cooperating, you tell us everything. And if we find out that it was like, you know, if you cooperate and you do everything, well, we’re gonna go eat, we’re gonna go as easy as we can on you will tell the judge to go easy, and you’re, in fact, we don’t even plan to charge you, you know, we’re not even gonna bring charges against you, you’re just gonna be a witness, you didn’t benefit financially from this. So, you know, we see no reason to make you a target of this investigation. But if you lie to us, or if you leave anything out, right, and if you omit any information that we know, you know, and we can we think that you’re hiding it from us, your deal isn’t valid, and then we go hard after you and we’ll try to do as hard as we can. Right? And so I was like, Okay, I’m sufficiently scared. You know, let’s, let’s do this interview. And I told them everything I knew. And at the end of them at the end of the interview there, they like both, just so you know, because I ended the whole interview with the whole issue with the Chinese ammo. And I was like, oh, that’s the main most serious thing I can think of that what we’re doing is so Chinese ammo thing. And they’re like, you know, just, uh, you know, we knew about the Chinese ammo, because when we raided the office, we found a to do list on efforts desk in his handwriting. And one of the items in the To Do Lists was repackaged Chinese ammo, Albania. It’s pretty obvious. Yeah. So it was, so he’s like, yeah, he’s like, we knew about that, you know? So. So anyway, after that. So they told us, okay, you know, you gave us all the info, that’s fine. We’re still not sure what we’re doing about this case, we’ll do our best not to charge we don’t think that you deserve to be charged or not a target. So I’m, like, great. So I, so you know, I start, I set up my own company, to do government contracting, I figured, you know, if I, if I know this business, I might as well do it. As soon as the Feds raided the office, my lawyer says you can’t take a penny from Efraim, you know, this deal is done, you know, until all the legal issues are resolved. Because the last thing you want is for it to look like he’s paying you off to keep quiet. So. So you know, so that destroyed that. And so I had to, I had to get a job, you know, but I also started, I worked I got a job at a food bank.

 

Dan LeFebvre  1:17:59

So this is before he got that 320,000 that you already agreed to then?

 

David Packouz  1:18:03

Yes, exactly. I didn’t get I still didn’t get a penny for him, okay. And then my lawyer says you can’t take anything from him until all legal issues are resolved. And so I had to get a job. Because, you know, I was quickly running out of money. And, and I started my own company on the side, and it was working on winning government contracts. And about six months later, we, you know, we hadn’t heard from the agents and months, you know, I figured out that maybe they’re not going to do anything about this investigation. Maybe they’re just going to let it slide. I mean, who knows, you know, they’re just not doing anything. So, about six months later, I get a phone call. And it’s a New York Times reporter. And he says this guy named CJ shivers. And he says, Hey, we are investigating the story about EY delivering Chinese ammunition to the US Army in Afghanistan. He’s like, Do you have any comments on that? And so I quickly hang up the phone. And I call up my lawyer, and I tell him, Hey, I just got a call from the New York Times. What should I do? And my lawyer says, absolutely don’t talk to any reporters ever. Don’t talk to any reporters, you know, we That’s the worst thing you can do. So I said, Okay, I want to talk to any reporters. About a week later. The New York Times publishes a front page article, and it has my mug shot and EFRAIM’s mug shot side by side on the front page that the New York Times next to a picture of rusty looking ammunition. And they are in the New York Times article said that we were delivering all the ammo we were delivering was rusty and low quality and, and we were and it was dangerous. And we were putting our Afghan allies in danger by delivering this low quality stuff. And it just proves how incompetent the Bush administration was because they give a couple of 20 year olds this enormous contract and look what happened etc, etc. You Now, in reality, that ammo that they had on the cover of The New York Times was not even the Chinese ammo. It was Bulgarian ammo. And there was only about 30,000 rounds of ammo. We’re talking about of like 150,030,000 rounds of ammo that this that that, that this stuff was. And the reason the reason it got there was because Efraim had found this, this ammo in Bulgaria at a super, super, super cheap price. And it wasn’t really it was such a small quantity of ammo, it wasn’t really worth flying there to inspect it. And we already had extra room on the plane coming out of Bulgaria because we had a grenade shipment. So his thinking was, you know, roll the dice or buy the stuff, stick it on the aircraft is that if the government inspects it and accepts it great, we just made it great profit margin. Because this stuff is so cheap, if they reject it, no big deal. It’s super cheap anyway. And so the government inspected it, and of course, it was junk. And so they rejected it. They didn’t pay us for it. But of course, Afghanistan has no ammunition recycling facilities, so they had nowhere to put it. And so they put it to the side of the airport. And when the New York Times came to investigate, and they started asking questions about us, someone pointed out that ammo, they’re like, oh, yeah, that’s some of the ammo a wide delivered. And so of course, that’s where the picture came from. And the implication by the New York Times was that all the ammo we were delivering was this low quality stuff, which was not the case. The government was very happy with the quality of the ammo, they issued it to the Afghan allies. And, and it was used. So after that New York Times article came out, suddenly, the the Army made a statement, you know, we had no idea any of this was happening. We’re going to we’re going to remove this car, we’re going to take this contract away from a why and put it out for open bid on the market again, and, and the Justice Department one week later, decided that they they were going to charge us with fraud for defrauding the United States by lying that it was Chinese that it was not Chinese ammunition while it was Chinese ammunition now during the legal Fallout, so actually, so Ralph was portrayed very wrongly in the movie because he was the only guy who didn’t plead guilty. So I pled guilty. To Alex pled guilty, Efraim eventually pled guilty as well, because he knew there was just no way to avoid it. And but Ralph decided that he was going to fight it in court. So actually pretty much the opposite of what they show in the movie in the movie. He’s, he’s wearing a wire and trying to entrap that from in me, you know, but like, that’s not actually it’s actually the opposite. Ralph fought them in court. And he ended up losing, he actually had to go to trial twice, because the first trial was a hung jury. And then they had to do it again. And he got convicted on the second trial. And he, you know, he claimed he had nothing to do with it, he had no idea but unfortunately for him, there was a whole bunch of email evidence stating otherwise. In fact, there was an email from him with detailed instructions of how to erase Chinese markings from wooden crates. And he even had like, like pictures of like, how it would be done with like a wood sander. You know, there was really solid evidence against tutorial on how to do this. For real. I mean, he literally, that was one of the evidence, emails they used in court. And I mean, I think it was a big mistake on his part to fight them. He ended up losing, he ended up serving four years in prison. And but what if he had pled guilty, you probably would have gotten just, you know, probation or house arrest, which is what I ended up getting. So yeah, I mean, the way the way it worked was so while during the trial during the trial, it came out in court, that that the army was informed immediately by the Justice Department right after that raid about what was happening. They were informed there was an email going from the Justice Department to the to the army, saying, hey, this ammo you’re taking delivery on this contract is originally Chinese, you should know that. You know, perhaps you should stop taking delivery of that ammo, and the army responded to them. This all came out in court, these emails, the army responded to them saying the the, the this ammo is critical to the mission in Afghanistan. And if you want us to stop taking delivery on it, we’re going to need a letter instructing us to do so from the Attorney General of the United States. And the Attorney General of the United States, who was the head of the Justice Department never sent that letter. So for what reason we don’t know but he never sent the letter. So the army kept on taking delivery of the Afghan of the of the Chinese ammo from Albania. Well, after they found out it was Chinese for For the next six months, they took deliver, they kept on taking delivery for six months after they found out. And then as soon as the New York Times article comes out one week later, they’re like, oh, we have no idea. We had no idea. Of course, they knew the whole time, and they didn’t really care. It was they were getting good quality ammo at the best possible price. And that’s what they wanted. It was only the New York Times forced them into it, because it became a huge political scandal. So when they decided to charge us the way, the way they worked was they said, they said to me, and Alex, Hey, guys, you know, we know that we told you that, that we weren’t going to charge you, right? Unfortunately, we think you guys were just too involved in the whole in the whole scheme. So we can’t charge effort without charging you too. We’re very sorry. But you know, keep on cooperating. And we’ll ask the judge to go as easy as possible on and, and, and these are your options, you know, the way they put it was you guys delivered 71 aircraft loads of this Chinese ammo. And each aircraft that you delivered, had a document that went along with the shipment called a Certificate of conformance. And the certificate of conformance had listed on it the type of ammunition that was in the plane, the quantity of ammunition, the year of manufacture, and the place of origin. And in place of origin, we put Albania and EFRAIM signed the document, and I submitted it to the government and the and they said in you guys knew that this was false, you knew that the original price place of origin was China. And not only did you know, but you had this whole elaborate Apple operation to disguise that fact. And therefore, we consider each document that you submit an act of fraud. And you did this 71 times so that 71 acts of fraud, and each act of fraud can give you up to five years in prison. So potentially, you’re looking at a 355 year sentence. And so I was like holy shit, I can spend the rest of my life in prison. And then they’re like, but if you plead guilty, we have the leeway as prosecutors to combine all these 71 acts of fraud into one act of fraud. So the max you you’ll be able to get is five years in prison. And because you’re cooperating and you pled guilty, will tell the judge to give you the low end of the guidelines. So maybe we’ll do a year in prison, maybe you’ll do nothing, you know, we’ll you know, maybe just probation. And so that was the choice, either the rest of your life in prison, or maybe nothing, but as long as you plead guilty. And so of course, I mean, with those kinds of choices, we pled guilty, all three, three of us pled guilty, and Efraim probably would have gotten so I ended up getting sentenced to seven months of house arrest, which was a huge relief. I thought he was gonna get like a decade or two in prison and, and ended up just getting seven months of house arrest and do any prison time. I’m extremely grateful for that

 

David Packouz  1:28:06

effort and probably would have gotten somewhere in the same neighborhood maybe a little more, but you know, nothing too crazy. But he while he was awaiting sentencing. So it was a three year period from when the New York Times article came out until we got sentenced. And the reason it was so long was because Ralph decided to take it to trial. And then they had to do the whole trial preparation, and then the trial and he had a hung jury is that to do another trial. And and so that’s why it’s stretched out to like three years. But during that that period, we were out on bond, right? So we had to go down to the courthouse, they arrested us for like a few hours. And then we had to post bail and so but part of the bond agreement is that you can’t leave the district you can’t leave South Florida. And they also told us you guys can’t do any business in this industry. You can’t do any business in the in the the defense industry, and which really sucked because I was about to win my first multimillion dollar contract. I was like literally again one day away from I was in the final stages of getting this contract awarded to me I was gonna make like a million dollar 1.5 million and a half a million and a half on it. And the day that I was about to like, get the contract awarded, The New York Times article came out. And so then the army put that contract on hold and eventually cancelled it because of the pending illegal issues. So yeah, so once again, I was so close to making a lot of money and it was just snatched away from under me. And so of course you know, I couldn’t we couldn’t be in that business. And but Efraim, of course being from decided that he’s going to stay in the business just do that do the business under someone else’s name. So he got a new guy I had already screwed over Danny and the guy he replaced Danny with, he just went through people, you know, one after another. And he had a new guy that he was going to work with. And he registered a company under that guy’s name and started doing deals under that company. And eventually, he tried to do a deal with someone in with a knight industries, I think it was, it was based in like Central Florida, and EFRAIM’s, like such a control freak that when it came down to negotiating the details of the business, he couldn’t let his friend who was the frontman do the talking, he insisted on getting on the phone himself, and doing the negotiations himself. So he, so the guy eventually finds out who he is, and Google’s him and realizes that this guy’s got, you know, he’s already pled guilty to this, and he’s probably, you know, it’s pending sentencing. And so the guy who’s talking to is prob, I assume, was thinking, well, he’s probably trying to entrap me into something in order to get his sentence reduced. So the gun dealer who he’s talking to, calls up the ATF, right? The alcohol, tobacco firearms administration, who’s in charge of regulating guns. And he tells them about what’s going on. And the ATF tells him, Oh, that’s really interesting. Why don’t you introduce one of our undercover agents as your business partner. And so he introduces the undercover agent, the undercover agent insists the EFRAIM come up to Orlando to do to shake hands to meet in person to do this deal, knowing that Efrain was not legally allowed to leave South Florida. So Efraim agrees to come up to Orlando. And the agent tells him, hey, you know, why don’t you bring some of your hand guns with you? You know, because he knew that effort, you know, as as a as a convicted felon, you’re not allowed to be in possession of a firearm, that’s a felony, you can get up to 10 years in prison for that. So the agent is like, why don’t you bring up some of your handguns, we’ll go shooting at the range. and EFRAIM tells him he’s like, look, you know, I can’t be in possession of a gun. I already pled guilty, you know, so don’t ask, I can’t I can’t bring anything. I’m not gonna bring anything. He’s like, Yeah, come on, come on. Let’s do it. Let’s do it. And he’s like, no, no, he’s like, stop doing this. You’re gonna ruin the deal. You know, don’t don’t keep insisting I bring guns to the meeting. And he’s like, okay, fine, fine. Just come to the meeting. Comes goes up there. The agent, the undercover agent, you know, shakes his hand, he’s like, hey, you know, it’s like, Hey, I didn’t know you didn’t bring any guns. But check this out. I just bought this latest HK handgun is the latest cool thing on the market. Check this out. and EFRAIM is like, oh, yeah, heard about that. That’s super, super cool. Oh, I’m so glad you brought that is like, he’s like, let me see that thing. And he picks up the gun. And he’s like, Oh, I gotta shoot this thing. Let’s go to the range and pop off a few rounds. It’s like goes, What can I say, you know, I mean, once a gun runner, always a gun runner, am I right? And the agent slaps cuffs on him, and he’s like, you’re a felon in possession of a firearm, you’re under arrest. And so he got arrested for that. And he could have gotten 10 years in prison for that one thing, plus an additional five years for the fraud charge, which he had pled guilty to. He hired the best attorneys in Miami spent like $2 million on attorneys. And got it negotiated down to four years. So he ended up serving four years in prison. And now he’s out and about screwing people left and right as he usually does, he I every once in a while someone contacts me. It’s like, oh, I just got I just got screwed over by effort. I tried to do this deal. And now I have to sue him like, yeah, you you’ve got yourself into that you didn’t know that you didn’t know that about him before you got into business with this guy, you know, so he’s still hips, old self is still doing deals. I heard that, that currently, he’s mostly involved in funding lawsuits, because he so many people have sued him and he sued so many people that he’s really well versed in the, in the legal system. So So now he’s in business of funding lawsuits, and I’m sure he takes 90% of the money and probably 100% When all is said and done, because that’s just how he rolls. But yeah, I mean, that’s that’s that’s how that ended. But for me, it’s it actually was a huge blessing. Because while I was under house arrest, it house arrest actually set me up for the business on it, which which is a really amazing turn of events. Because while I was under house arrest, I was obviously I had like the ankle tracking thing. And if I like once left my apartment to go throw the trash down the garbage chute and I get a very angry phone call from like my, my probation officer, you latitude and so that you’re not allowed to be out of you know. And so anyway, I was you know, at home bored, and I’m a musician I play guitar, I’m a singer as well and, and I was playing a lot of music to pass the time inviting my musician friends over, it is not like a COVID lockdown, you can have people visit you, you know. So it’s not so bad, definitely has a million times better than prison. And,

 

David Packouz  1:35:22

and so I invite my friends over. But of course, you know, none of my drummer friends were going to bring their drum set. So because that’s a huge pain in the butt to move and I was living in a small apartment, it would, my neighbors wouldn’t have been happy about it either. So I bought a, a drum machine, which is an electronic device, it goes on the table and has a bunch of buttons on it, you can make different drum sounds with it and make a beat out of those sounds and play it back in a loop so that you can play your guitar to it. And so I did that. But every time I wanted the beat to change, I had to stop playing my guitar, press a button on the machine to change the beat and go back to playing my guitar. And it just interrupted the flow of the music. And so I thought, Man, I really need this drum machine in like a pedal format. So I could use my foot to change the beat and not have to stop playing my guitar. If I was sure someone made something like this, so I went online to look for it, but couldn’t find anything like it. And so I asked my musician, friends if they’d seen anything like it. And they they said all of them said like, I haven’t seen anything like that. But let me know when you find it because that sounds super cool. I want one too. And so I figured, well, if everyone wants it, nobody’s making it. This is you know, this is a huge opportunity. So it took me eventually it took me three years. But I had it made it was it’s a product called Beat buddy like your buddy that plays the beat, you can Google it one word beat buddy. And it’s the world’s first guitar pedal drum machine that allows you to control a beat hands free while you play. And you can be a one man band. So it’s a lot and it has, you can do that for the musicians in the audience. You could do drum fills by tapping the pedal, you hold the pedal down, it does a transition fill, you let go it goes to the next beat. So you can you can control the Beat LIVE while you’re playing. You could also add your own beats on it with comes with software, you could add your own drum sets to make different sounds. So it’s a pretty complex device. I mean complex in I should say sophisticated, but simple to use. And we won. I of course, I had no money to do this, I was completely broke from paying all my lawyers to keep me out of prison. So I launched a crowdfunding campaign for it. And I’m extremely lucky the crowdfunding campaign did really well raise $350,000 In one month, it would became like a record breaking campaign in the music world. And that launched my company singular sound. And since then, come out with six other music related products. For the musicians in the audience, I’ve mentioned what they are, because no one else will know what I’m talking about. But it we have the world’s most advanced Looper pedal, it’s called the aero sleep studio, we have the world’s most versatile and easy to use MIDI controller called the MIDI Maestro cable management device called the Keightley. You can find it all in singular sound.com. It’s all if I do say so myself brilliant products that musicians will really enjoy the one issue. So about five years ago. My brother and I, who helped me my brother, I got into business with my brother when I started singular sound. And you know, I figured I you know, I’m done with these nasty partners, I need someone I could absolutely trust with my life. And so I started that business with my brother. But one thing we were always complaining about to each other anyway, is that the music business the I should say the musical instrument business, which is you know, the business aimed at musicians is relatively small, because it’s only like maybe 10% of the population would consider themselves musicians. And we make, you know, high end products. So only a portion of those musicians can afford our products and are interested in our products. So it’s a very niche market that we’ve done very well I’m not complaining, you know, we’ve won a whole bunch of awards, I’ve got to meet very famous rock stars who I admire who use my products and that’s super cool. And, and so yeah, and I’ve made literally millions of dollars from this company. I’m not really not complaining, but there is a limit to how much a company like that can grow. And so we were always thinking we need to come up with a product that is relevant to the to the general market, not to the musician market, we need something that anyone can use. And so one day we were hanging out at my house and we’re smoking weed as we do and got the munchies and started eating mangoes because their mangoes are juicy and delicious. and sweet, great, great food for when you have the munchies. The problem with mangoes is that they have a very fibrous, so you get these fibers stuck in between your teeth. And so my brother asked me, he’s like, Hey, and do you have any dental floss, I need to get rid of these fibers in between my teeth. So I’m like, Yeah, I need some to. So we go to my bathroom, we’re both flossing our teeth in the mirror. And I’m, and I’m complaining them. I’m like, Man, this is such a pain in the butt. Like, if we could invent a machine that can floss your teeth for you. We would make so much money, everyone would want that. And he looks at me he’s like, yeah, that is the ultimate general market product, we have to come up with something like that. And so we start brainstorming, and we come up with all these crazy ideas. That would have never worked. But event, but eventually, we come up with with a design, and I’ll show I’ll show it to you, I’ll hold it up to the screen. For people who are watching this on video. It’s called the Insta floss like You’re like Instagram, but flossing, and what it is it’s uses 12 water jets, it’s in an H shaped manifold, it shoots the water jets both from both sides from the outside of the teeth and the inside the teeth both top and bottom rows. So you just have to bite into it like this. And it turns so it swivels with your teeth. And you’re done. Right. So 10 seconds, you just slide it across your teeth. And, and the water jets, get rid of all this stuff in your teeth. So in 10 seconds, you can have a full floss. So it’s the floss, it’s the floss.com. Tell your friends. Check it out online. So we’ve been working on that for five years. And it was the hardest product I’ve ever created. Because it’s a lot of water pressure and vibrations. And we had a lot of issues with making it not leaking and making it function properly. And the water droplets had to be shaped in certain ways. The channels is actually way more complicated than we thought going in. But that’s everything. But we are just starting to deliver it we actually just delivered to the first 5000 customers. So we did a crowdfunding campaign to for that. And we raised a million dollars for that product. Yeah, so it was a very big success. And we just delivered to the first 5000 people who supported us in the campaign. And so now and now we’re getting ready to ramp up. So anyone who’s interested in its to floss, go to Insta floss.com. And recently, I just started my latest venture, which is more relevant to the word dog story. So one of one thing ever since the movie came out, I’ve had a lot of people contact me, like send me like messages on Instagram, and you know, various other places. And nine out of 10 times people are they’re like, please, he’s like, they’re they’re like I, you know, I want to learn the business, please teach me the business, you know, I’ll work for free, I’ll give you 90% of the profits. I don’t care. Just teach me you know, and I, you know, I’m running these other businesses singular sound, and it’s the philosophy, I don’t really have time to take on apprentices. And anyway, I’ve been banned from doing government contracting for 15 years. That was part of my sentencing is I was not allowed to do government contracting. I can now in 2022, is when it expired at the end of 2022. So I am legally allowed to do it now. But but you know, I’m busy with my other businesses. But then I get in about six months ago, I get a message from a guy named Logan. And he tells me and his message was different than the usual he tells me, it’s like, you know, hey, I just want to let you know, that, that my partner and I both watched war dogs around six years ago. And when we were both 21 years old, and we were so inspired by the movie, we figured if these guys can do it, and they’re our age, why can’t we do this? So we went in we we started got into it, and we bashed our brains against the wall for like six months, until we finally won our first contract. And ever since we’ve been winning contracts, and nowadays we have a multimillion dollar government contracting business. And it’s all thanks to the inspiration for more ducks. So just wanted to reach out and say thank you. And I was like, Holy crap, that’s amazing. You know, that’s, that’s really incredible that they managed to do it on their own without anyone’s help. And, and, you know, and so and so they were like, you know, maybe we can do something together. And I said, you know, I have so many people who want to learn how to do this business want to learn how to do government contracting, and you don’t I mean, there’s the vast majority of government contracting is legal, right? I mean, all of it should be legal. If it’s you only find out if it’s illegal if someone got in trouble, but you know, but most of the stuff that even that we did you know as in with a Why frm and I, all of it was legal until it wasn’t. And it’s there, it can be argued that even the Chinese ammo should have been legal, because it didn’t really violate the embargo. So the federal government has a budget of like $6.7 trillion.

 

David Packouz  1:45:17

And they are the single biggest purchaser of anything on the planet. So if you know how to sell to the federal government, you can make a lot of money. There’s enormous, enormous opportunities. And so people ask me, you know, why would the federal government buy from some random guy, right? Why don’t they just go directly to the company, you know, who’s making it. And there’s a few different reasons for that. First of all, sometimes there’s goods on the market, that have just been sitting there that aren’t owned by the company that manufactured it anymore, you know, like, so for example, ammunition, ammunition oftentimes gets bought by militaries, just in case something happens. But most of the time that nothing happens, and their ammo starts getting older, and they aren’t comfortable having ammo beyond a certain date, and so they are willing to sell it. And so there’s all this ammo that’s being sold at well below the manufacturing cost by these different militaries. And sometimes other you know, like, in our case, for example, like for example, with the Albanian case, they were looking to get rid of all their ammo, because they wanted to join NATO. And the US Army was happy to take that ammo because they were giving it to the Afghans. And they didn’t have as stringent quality controls requirements for the Afghan allies as for their own US troops. So they were perfectly okay with taking ammo that was a few decades old, which to be clear, was fully functional, and it was good quality. And I’m not saying that there was any issue with the ammo. But but most first world countries do have requirements and how old they’re, they’re willing to give the ammo to their troops. So there’s opportunities such as that, where the government won’t get the best price from the manufacturer, they will get the best price from the open market. And sometimes they want to buy a whole bunch of things that not one manufacturer makes. So they’ll want to buy like 10 different items and have it all shipped to this particular place by a particular time. And there isn’t one company that makes all that so that opens the opportunities for middlemen to put together to find all the sources put together the package, figure out the logistics, and offer that to the government. And the way it works is they posted on the website on sh m.gov, everyone can go check it out, if you like sa m.gov, they post what they want to buy. And then if once you are registered properly with the government, you are qualified to make that bid. And if you have the best possible the best price, it’s not always the best price. Sometimes it’s a combination of factors. Sometimes they take into account delivery times and your past performance, your history of like, you know how reliable they think you are, and, and etc. And there’s a depending on each contract has its own set of requirements. But if you provide the best overall value to the government, as they call it, and then they award you the contract, then you can deliver those goods. And then 30 days later, they pay you that’s how it works. So it’s a pretty complex system, it’s not easy to learn on your own, which is why I was so impressed that Logan and his partner James taught themselves this on their own. So we realized that there is a huge need for for people who want to get into this business. And so we are launching word dogs Academy, and which is an online course, to teach people how to get into government contracting and how to be successful at it. We’re dogs academy.com, you could check it out. And we are not only building a course, but we’re putting up a forum so that we can create a community around it so that people can find potential business partners. And the biggest stumbling block for people getting into this business is financing because you have to pay your supplier in advance, and you have to pay your logistics provider in advance, but the government only pays you 30 days later. And so that’s something unless you have a lot of money or some or you know someone with a lot of money. Even if you win the contract, you won’t be able to deliver it unless you get it financed. So that’s another service that we are providing through word X for our students in Word X Academy is access to financing to investors to make sure that they are set up and the thing that’s beautiful about this is that we expect to make a lot more money from the financing than from the course. So we will only succeed if our students succeed so we have a very large incentive to help our students succeed in setting up a successful government contracting business. And so I’m really excited about this. This is brand new where it’s actually hasn’t launched yet. We are well, I don’t know when this podcast is going to be published. But it’s going to be launched in the next few weeks. But you could already you got already sign up to the course we actually have a little discount for people who sign up in advance. And just go to war dogs academy.com In fact, I’ve got some awesome yeah, yeah. The mugs there. I’ve got we’ve got the bling, the swag. Yeah, the swag. War Dogs. academy.com. Yeah.

 

Dan LeFebvre  1:50:37

Yeah, I’ll make sure to include a link to that into floss, as well as singular sound. I really appreciate your time coming on to chat. Before I do let you go. I want to ask. Because you with with singular sound being a musician, you actually do make a cameo in the movie itself at the very beginning. So do you have any fun stories from being on set that you would like to share? Sure.

 

David Packouz  1:51:02

Yeah, that was really cool, actually. So they offered me they offered to me to do the CAMEO and they wanted me to play as in the movie, don’t fear the Reaper, to a roomful of 90 year old people. Because that that was the that was the joke. I personally, I thought at the time, I’m like, oh, man, I’m a musician. I’ve also recorded original music. If anyone’s curious, you could hear it on Spotify, Apple Music, just search for my name, David packhouse. And I record so I’ve recorded I’m a original music recording artist. And so I figured, well, this is my big chance. There’s a movie being made about me. So I I insisted on playing one of my own songs. And I was like, I should I want to play you know, one of my own songs here. So I get my music into the movie. And they told me You either play don’t fear the Reaper, or we’re gonna get someone else to do this. This is not an option. This is not a negotiation. This is this you don’t have a choice. So I said, Okay, fine. I’ll do I’ll do don’t fear the Reaper find. And so that was cool. Went out to LA for like, for like three days. The way it worked is first recorded the song in the in a recording studio. And then on the day of the shoot, it was it was actually really cool. They had said that that scene is recorded in this old church in LA. And it doesn’t doesn’t look like a church in the movie, but like it was recorded in this old church in LA. And there it was on the second floor that and there was like steps going up to the second floor. And the staircase was like really nice and ornate wood. And they covered the entire pathway. From the front door of the building all the way to the room where they were shooting the scene with paper, like like the floor, the walls, the banisters, everything was covered in paper, like they taped it down so that all the people walking back and forth would damage the floor and the walls, because there’s literally hundreds of people walking back and forth. And so yeah, I thought that was pretty cool. They that the way they prepare it. And the thing that was that was really cool was they had outside of the building. They had these enormous like construction cranes, like three of them, holding these enormous mirrors that they angled to catch the sun and shine it and beam the sunlight into the windows. And then they sprayed like some like spray inside the the the room so that the sun beams would be very visible. So it was just amazing. Like that tiny little detail of just having some beams sunbeams through the window, they only see for a few seconds on screen. They had like three construction cranes, you know, it’s just like, it was just amazing the amount of money and effort they put into even the smallest little details. So yeah, so like I the way they did it was, you know, got up there with my guitar and pretty much did more or less karaoke, guitar karaoke, where they would play the song on like speakers, and I would like play along with it. And, and then while they were filming, at the end, after we were done at the end, they wanted to do a few more shots of me like some close ups and stuff. So they didn’t need the crowd. So they let all the old people leave. And but the only the only way to leave the room was they all had to file pass the stage password I was sitting, so they all were filing past me. And it was so funny. Like most of them just went right by and didn’t say anything, but a few people stopped and like one guy was like, Oh, I heard the lyrics of that song. I don’t think it’s very funny. I don’t think it’s funny. And I was like, Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t it wasn’t my choice. And another guy another guy had the exact opposite. He was like, he was like, Oh, I just realized what you were saying. That’s pretty good. Because we’re a bunch of old folks don’t fear the Reaper.

 

1:55:06

That’s a

 

David Packouz  1:55:08

good one, you know? And then some, like, older lady was like, do you

 

1:55:12

perform I would love for you to come living facility and give us a performance. Yeah.

 

David Packouz  1:55:17

And so yeah, it was really cute. It was it was really nice. So yeah, so that was really neat. Met miles Taylor. He’s super tall, by the way. He’s like, six, three or something. He’s like, ridiculously tall. Bradley Cooper is even like taller. He’s like, six, four. And so yeah, Miles was nice. And when they were filming in Miami, they invited me to go on set a few times, just to like, hang out. And that was cool. I was there for the scene where Dan was Arian punches Jonah Hill in the face in the nightclub, okay. Okay. She’s like, hit hit. Hit it on his girls girl. Yeah. Yeah. So that was cool that that scene was is so interesting to see them film that scene, because in the scene, they’re in a nightclub, and they’re like, you know, they’re talking to each other, like yelling over the music. They wanted to get their recording them they want to get the vocals really clear. So they’re yelling, there’s actually in real life. There was no music playing. It was dead silent. And they’re yelling as if there’s, there’s there’s talking over the music. And everyone in the club is dancing as if there’s music, but it’s completely silent. And all you hear is them yelling at each other in this in this room. It was so bizarre. It was so bizarre. And of course you know when in the movie it’s like comes out great. And yeah, and it looks like they’re in a nightclub and all that but it with like loud music and everything. But it was just so bizarre to see them like filming that. Yeah, and I was also there for the for for two other scenes. I was there for the scene where where they get arrested and get put into the cop cars. That’s actually where I met Ana de Armas. And I got my I got my picture with her had to write you know, my wife, right? Exactly. She was she. And people always asked me that asked me this and I can confirm she is just as beautiful in real life. She really is. You know, it’s not camera tricks or anything. The girl is dropped dead gorgeous in real life just as just as gorgeous. In fact, I would say even more gorgeous in real life because she’s you know, it’s real. So yeah, I mean, she’s she’s really stunningly beautiful. And, and very, very sweet and very nice. I mean, everyone was nice to me. But like, of course they would be why wouldn’t they be nice to me? I’m the guy that movie was made about. So I make no judgments on anyone’s characters based on the way they treated me in particular, but, but I have no complaints. They were all very, very nice.

 

Dan LeFebvre  1:57:50

Fantastic. Thank you again, so much for your time. And before I just real quick, can you give links to your what you’re doing right now again?

 

David Packouz  1:57:58

Yes, so my music company is singular sound.com Am I the flossing company is in stiff loss like Instagram, but flossing and stuff. floss.com. And if you want to be a word dog, you can join me at word dogs academy.com and learn how to do government contracting.

 

Dan LeFebvre  1:58:18

Fantastic. Thanks again so much for your time.

 

David Packouz  1:58:22

My pleasure.

00;02;37;16 – 00;02;47;16
Dan LeFebvre
Before we dove into some of the details about the movie, if you want to take a step back and give being the Ricardos a letter grade for historical accuracy, what would it get?

00;02;47;28 – 00;03;12;28
Michael Karol
Gee, I would probably give it a C-minus overall, maybe even at D or D-minus in certain areas. The screenplay makes noting that at one time Lucy aches to be known as a serious actress up there with Professor Davis. Hayward. Whatever. I’m just not sure how true that is. Lucy wanted success in her film career. Sure. An audience that would respond to her performance like any actress.

00;03;12;28 – 00;03;36;03
Michael Karol
But when she got one in the right medium television, she saw it like no one else before. Sense and Joan. Hardly any director. Our producer knew what to do with this. Number two. A conspicuously bad error. A historical error. Lucy sprints home to tell Desi. She got the part. The big street, one of her big, dramatic roles. The movie that could put her up there.

00;03;36;11 – 00;03;56;02
Michael Karol
And this is the movie talking with Judy, Rita and Betty. And Desi goes, What? Judy and Lucy answers Holliday. The problem is the big script was released in 1942, and Judy Holliday did not have a screen presence then and wouldn’t until 1949 with Adams writ. Hello, research.

00;03;57;08 – 00;04;01;02
Dan LeFebvre
That seems like a simple thing, that it’s all in dialog that they could fix.

00;04;01;02 – 00;04;21;07
Michael Karol
That film via RKO had a production who has the one firing Lucy after her big stage sets, which again, I don’t need to know if that’s true. Keeps throwing Judy Holliday at Lucy’s face, and it just wasn’t true. It never happened that Holliday was getting roles low secret at play. Dramatic license is one thing, but the Sybil effect and supposed to be factual.

00;04;21;07 – 00;04;22;19
Michael Karol
All right. So much.

00;04;22;25 – 00;04;23;08
Dan LeFebvre
Yeah.

00;04;23;22 – 00;04;53;20
Michael Karol
Also number three, throughout the movie, it is shown that Bob, Carol Junior and Madelyn Pugh, Lucy’s wonderful writers have been argumentative relationship. I’ve never heard that suggested in all the years that I’ve researched, written about what I call the Lucy versus including all the creators I’ve spoken to, like editor Dan Conn and director William Archer. And in their surviving film interviews, Carolyn, you sent very much at ease and comfortable as colleagues and writing partners.

00;04;54;05 – 00;05;14;29
Michael Karol
They look like they have a very nice relationship. And it’s odd to see Marathon Island constantly sniping at Bob as if he’s not worthy of being apart. And finally, Lucy always intimated that she had the most fun during the rehearsals and filming of I Love Lucy, that that was her forte. She especially love rehearsing with Beth Vivian Vance from this film.

00;05;14;29 – 00;05;35;07
Michael Karol
You’d think this was the most argumentative set ever. Everybody’s Lucy and Madeline. Lucy and Desi. Desi and Jess Oppenheimer. Lucy insists that Lucy and Viv, even Bill, Madeleine and Jess and Madeline and Bob at each other’s throats all the time. Where was the love that created this legendary sitcom with the word love in the title?

00;05;35;18 – 00;05;36;21
Dan LeFebvre
I mean, that’s a great point.

00;05;36;22 – 00;05;58;05
Michael Karol
I mean, I guess they went after the dramatic tension or whatever, but those characters, I don’t think were portrayed the way the real people were. Sure, there were times when there was tension that didn’t go on, especially Bill and Beth. But I mean, I never heard of, like I said, battle thinking so little, apparently right at this film about the right part.

00;05;58;14 – 00;05;58;21
Michael Karol
Hmm.

00;05;59;08 – 00;06;22;10
Dan LeFebvre
Yeah. And that’s a great point. At the movie’s time, timeline does bounce around a lot, but I wanted to kind of start with a natural beginning to the story. How it shows Lucille and Desi meeting. According to the movie, Desi Arnaz led his orchestra at zero as well. Lucy was under contract at RKO doing some minor roles, and as the movie shows, it they met seemed to fall for each other right away.

00;06;22;11 – 00;06;29;18
Dan LeFebvre
They eloped and seemed to be really happy, at least at first. How old did the movie do showing how Lucy and Desi met?

00;06;30;00 – 00;06;53;27
Michael Karol
Horrible. I think you might be able to tell already. I wasn’t real fond of this as the older versions of their characters are. And this interview to describe how Lucy investment. There’s another major error. Desi first laid eyes on heavily made up Lucy in the RKO commissary right after she’d shot a big fight scene with Mari Ara for the 1940 movie Dance Girl.

00;06;53;27 – 00;07;15;00
Michael Karol
That’s one of her best movies, whereas Linda Lavin as Marilyn Cue the older Matt says the first time Desi saw her, she was unrecognizable because her character, a burlesque girl, was not by her pals. That is actually a quote by Desi describing what Lucy looked like the first time you saw her, not how she got her fake black eye.

00;07;15;17 – 00;07;34;14
Michael Karol
What she said was she looked like a $2 or had been badly beaten. That’s shoddy research on Sorkin’s part. And Aaron Sorkin, the story is there for anybody to fight in those salient places. So, Lucy, does it first saw each other at the RKO commissary. Desi was there to shoot the movie version of this Broadway hit, Too Many Girls.

00;07;34;21 – 00;07;59;11
Michael Karol
When Desi later saw Lucy as she really appeared and as they acted together in the film, and interestingly enough, the first page shares Desi’s character fainting because Lucy’s going drop dead gorgeous. It was as they both upset love at first sight. They eloped six months later in November 1940, and they were happy at first. Any things conspired to put stress on their relationship?

00;07;59;12 – 00;08;23;02
Michael Karol
Some were typical show biz things that affect couples. Others were inherent to their own personalities and the way they acted. But Lucy’s career being bigger than it does is the fact that he was away much of the time touring with Bare Lucy and famously said, You can’t have kids over the phone. And the fact that they weren’t able to have children, which Lucy dearly wanted until ten years since they’re married.

00;08;23;06 – 00;08;40;17
Michael Karol
I love Lucy, beginning with the pilot and early fifties and the show to CBS becoming TV’s biggest hit ever. Plus, the two children they had by that certainly extended the marriage, made it more viable because let’s face it, how could they break up? They were America’s couple.

00;08;40;21 – 00;08;58;12
Dan LeFebvre
Yeah, they were kind of in the spotlight for sure of terribly. Well, you mentioned Lucy’s career there, and I wanted to ask because the way the movie kind of portrays this, at least when they meet, there’s a line of dialog in there where Lucy talks about how, you know, she’s a contract player at RKO and her career has reached cruising altitude, as she says it, moving.

00;08;58;19 – 00;09;06;25
Dan LeFebvre
She seems to be at peace with that. Again, according to the movie, can you give a little more historical context, I guess, around Lucy’s career? Up until she met Desi.

00;09;06;29 – 00;09;31;13
Michael Karol
That’s the right way. For that, she was an RKO contract player. They’re saying, is that Lucy? But what? She had gone as far as she could and she was kind of content with that. No, that’s very wrong. This came to Hollywood in 1933 as a Goldwyn Girl, first girl. She was immediately employed as a chorus girl or extra or bit part player and then graduated during the years supporting parts.

00;09;31;23 – 00;09;55;10
Michael Karol
Most likely due in large part to her attitude. She would do anything asked of her. It would help further her career. Like, for example, being the only one of 12 chorus girls willing to take a pie in the face in the 1933. And I used to sing quotes comedy Roman scandals, which so the legend got has prompted legendary director Busby Berkeley to say to star Eddie Cantor, Get that girl’s name.

00;09;55;10 – 00;10;18;20
Michael Karol
That’s the one it’s going to make. And her best first her first best part of Arcadia was in 1937, staged at. Ultimately she was playing lead some of the excerpts. The fact is Lucy’s presence elevated every picture she was in because she was that good and that noticeable. And ultimately, as I said, no one knew what to do with Lucy.

00;10;18;21 – 00;10;40;15
Michael Karol
She was a pretty woman who could play comedy, do slapstick and excel at drama. And apparently the studios thought they had all the great actresses they needed as she was cracked as a second tier star and gave her parts that didn’t begin to scratch up her talents at RKO. She finally had reached her personal zenith, or as far as the studio would allow, so to speak.

00;10;40;23 – 00;11;07;23
Michael Karol
She’d film no less than 14 movies between 38 and 1940, eventually rising to the top and respectable B-plus or even A-minus pictures and ending her tenure. RKO with two literary classics. I think I mentioned both of them already leading roles in Dance Girl Dance from 1940, which is now preserved in the Library of Congress, the National Film Registry House movie at Spence and 1942 is the big screen with time date.

00;11;07;23 – 00;11;36;01
Michael Karol
Henry Fonda proving Lucy could emote with the best of them as a nasty cripple nightclub singer. I love this one review of that by James Agee and Time magazine. Well, ready, Lucille Ball, who was born for the parts Ginger Rogers frets over tackles. Her emotional role is for sirloin and she didn’t care who was looking. So it was just the big street that caught everyone’s attention, especially the folks at MGM, which is often referred to as the Tiffany of Movie Studios.

00;11;36;17 – 00;12;09;07
Michael Karol
They offered her a contract, which was a definite step up. So she wasn’t cruising, you know what I mean? Yeah. And granted, MGM mostly didn’t know what to do with her either. They cast her as herself in decent roles. But as for that, as a brassy chorus girl or in flashy Technicolor cameos in films like Chicago Follies and Thousands Cheer, but no matter, Lucy met and again learned or called around with silent film legends Harold Lloyd or Buster Keaton, also languishing at MGM at the time, sadly underused.

00;12;09;07 – 00;12;31;10
Michael Karol
Who taught her about comedy? That was Lloyd who directed her, I think, at once, and how to use props. That was Buster Keaton on one very, very important bank. Also at the MGM, the resident hairstylist, Sidney Aguilera, to say that Louis’s hair was brown, but her soul is on fire and both gave her a unique red orange, apricot tin.

00;12;31;24 – 00;12;55;26
Michael Karol
That was the first step in becoming her most famous character, that wacky redhead. Talk about what’s your card? Now, Lucy, Natasha, as I said, in 1940 at RKO, and they sold that fluffy college musical to many girls after they married, Jessie was playing with the band gigs all over the country, swooning Ella while Lucy’s career had ratcheted up that constant tension not being together.

00;12;55;26 – 00;13;17;21
Michael Karol
And she was on the road and set this movie career, basically never taking off. But a little show called I Love Lucy would change all that. So while MGM didn’t use Lucy and films as I have, and she did have a handful of great roles and best foot forward, the guy was the lady without love with Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn stole the movie and easy to wet.

00;13;18;11 – 00;13;38;11
Michael Karol
It was a big step in preparing her for us to come. I wouldn’t say at all that she was losing out at altitude and pretty content with her career when she met Desi now. Lucy always wanted more. But more importantly, she was always learning and starring that knowledge for future use and in good stead in the late forties and especially during the show 1950s.

00;13;39;01 – 00;13;56;08
Dan LeFebvre
Yeah. And it sounds like just from the amount of movies that she was doing and the type of movie like moving up to to MGM like she. Yeah, it definitely wasn’t at cruising altitude like it says in the movie, like, okay, this is where I’m always going to be and I’m okay with that. So that’s the impression I got from the movie.

00;13;56;08 – 00;14;10;21
Michael Karol
Was I never read that particular attitude and all the stuff I found out where her attitude was are now more full steam ahead. And I say It’s got to be better and I could do this and that, whatever.

00;14;12;07 – 00;14;29;07
Dan LeFebvre
During one of the scenes in the movie, we see Lucy performing in a show called My Favorite Husband on CBS Radio. And then we, as the movie portrays it, they want to turn that into a television show. And she agrees as long as she can cast her real life husband, Desi Arnaz, as her husband on the TV show.

00;14;29;26 – 00;14;48;20
Dan LeFebvre
And she gets a lot of kickback for this, as the CBS exec in the movie says and I’ll quote here, it says, We cannot have an all-American girl married to a man who is not American. And Lucy points out that Desi is American. He was even a sergeant in the U.S. Army and served during the war. But he’s also of Cuban descent.

00;14;48;20 – 00;14;57;15
Dan LeFebvre
And so in the movie, they clearly don’t like that idea. How did the movie do showing this transition from my favorite husband to I Love Lucy?

00;14;58;05 – 00;15;23;08
Michael Karol
Well, like a lot of things that happen and Lucy does, whose lives it was given the shortened prefab version, I guess necessary because it constrictions but it’s skipped over a lot of important events in the pair’s life. Lucy at Tired of making movies by the late forties. She knew that MGM was going to really do anything with her and that contract was over, so that were of little consequence to her career.

00;15;23;08 – 00;15;42;05
Michael Karol
So in 1947, she took a chance and a star dark comedy called Dream Girl on a very successful national tour. She got rave reviews as a woman who daydreams her way into various scenarios. It was like a part that was made for her. And during the tour, Lucy discovered something that would impact your career in a great way.

00;15;42;13 – 00;16;07;14
Michael Karol
She loved performing in front of a live audience. He loved making people laugh and reacting to their reactions. Everything she learned from Lloyd came from comic timing, using props, slapstick was put into that play on stage, and the end result was her being offered a radio show. The sitcom My Favorite, which very importantly was filmed before a live audience furthering Lucy’s direction.

00;16;07;16 – 00;16;29;14
Michael Karol
That that was how she was met. Yes. Since the radio show was a success, CBS brass wanted it was on CBS. They wanted to move it to TV. And yes, no one except Desi wanted Desi to play her husband. As you said, there’s someone else who would believe one of the exactly the best that all America. Lucy be married to a foreign to which Lucy would respond.

00;16;29;14 – 00;16;50;26
Michael Karol
But he is my husband. Lucy Desi took their act on the road as sort of a promise to CBS to show them public with love or did love and a vaudeville type. They performed in movie theaters around the country and it was a huge success which led to the pilot, the pilot and the eventual groundbreaking TV show. I don’t think that was in the movie.

00;16;51;28 – 00;17;14;16
Dan LeFebvre
No, no, it wasn’t. And it’s something I am curious about. As you’re as you were saying that with with her, obviously not at cruising altitude like we were talking about. How did she perceive the move from doing movies like this to then doing a radio show? Was that seen as kind of a step down in her eyes, like her career was kind of moving backwards?

00;17;14;17 – 00;17;38;14
Michael Karol
Well, she knew that her as I said, that her movie career was was it was. I’d say she had done radio for many years on different shows, different she’d done USO stuff. And so she was familiar with the medium. And I think she liked the sitcom that she was going to go to. I don’t so I don’t think she considered this set down the fact again that it was going to be before a live audience.

00;17;38;21 – 00;17;47;03
Michael Karol
That totally appealed to her after joining the show. So she did that. And fortuitously, that led to the development of the TV show.

00;17;47;14 – 00;18;06;18
Dan LeFebvre
Okay. Okay. That makes sense. If we go back to the movie, most of it does take place during one specific week during the filming of I Love Lucy. There’s text on screen for each day. You know, Mondays the table read, Tuesdays blocking rehearsal. So on to the taping on Friday we’ll get to some of the things that the movie depicts.

00;18;06;18 – 00;18;25;14
Dan LeFebvre
And but I wanted to ask just the amount of things that happened in this week to me as I was watching this, I was like, this just has to be Hollywood timing to have so many things happen in a single week. Is the movie actually showing an actual week or is it taking a bunch of different things and throwing them into a single week?

00;18;25;14 – 00;18;48;10
Michael Karol
No, it’s totally what you just saw. The single week format was more to make it easier to frame the entire story, I think, than the actual fact that everything in the movie happened during this one week. It most assuredly did not. They did, as you say, take different events and meld them into a week format or as I like to say, at W a format, if you will, based on Lucy.

00;18;48;10 – 00;19;10;27
Michael Karol
I Love Lucy. A shooting schedule. They also threw in flashbacks, some of which, as I know, that are absolutely historically not correct, making it even harder to follow this story in a linear way. So, I mean, I understand the show business constrictions, the constrictions of doing a two hour, 15 minute or whatever movie as opposed to, you know, anything longer.

00;19;10;27 – 00;19;14;11
Michael Karol
I mean, whatever. But you still need to play with the facts.

00;19;14;26 – 00;19;31;24
Dan LeFebvre
Right? Sure. Especially in that way. I mean, with the restriction of a medium like movie, right. You you are covering a lot of, you know, years of somebody’s life in in a couple hours. But with the way that they did it here, that’s why I had to ask about the week thing, because it makes it seem like they’re not covering years of somebody’s life.

00;19;31;24 – 00;19;33;07
Dan LeFebvre
Really? That they’re covering a week.

00;19;33;15 – 00;19;48;29
Michael Karol
No, I think that’s why they got the Lucy movie career so wrong, because they just needed sort of to dance around to these little pop bites, like, oh, Judy Holliday got all the roles that that no, that’s not.

00;19;51;10 – 00;20;14;03
Dan LeFebvre
One of the things that does show during that week that causes a lot of stress for Lucy Desi. And really everyone on the show is when the movie depicts this rumor of Lucy being a member of the Communist Party. As the movie shows it, it comes from a radio program by Walter Winchell where he says, and I quote again, something from the movie that one of television’s most popular stars was confronted with her membership in the Communist Party, end quote.

00;20;14;17 – 00;20;31;12
Dan LeFebvre
And according to the movie, Lucy never denies it. She says the man who raised her was your grandfather, Fred Sea Hunt, and he was a member of the party. So in 1936, she checks the box to please him. How well did the movie do with the whole Lucille Ball being a member of the Communist Party storyline?

00;20;31;23 – 00;20;36;25
Michael Karol
Well, if you allow me a little here before I get to the actual Communist Party accusation.

00;20;37;04 – 00;20;37;26
Dan LeFebvre
Oh, yeah. Yeah.

00;20;37;27 – 00;21;05;15
Michael Karol
Okay. So the first table read is shown early on. It’s a monday morning test of that week. I love seats for Fred and Ethel fucked with everybody at the table except the stars. And there you see Ali at Shawkat. That’s your name? Jake. Let’s see. Tony Hale, the fifties versions of Madelyn Pugh and Bucktown, junior and executive producer Aesop and including Nina Arianda and Jake Simmons as Vivian Vance and Mike Frawley.

00;21;05;25 – 00;21;25;23
Michael Karol
They’re arguing about seven year old Rusty Hamer on the Danny Thomas show being forced to sign a loyalty pledge and the ongoing Red Scare and the particular ness of it all. Frawley, who’s ignoring bats by reading the paper and not really listening to her while engages in conversation, I still have no idea what she’s talking about. Yielding one pretty funny exchange.

00;21;26;03 – 00;22;01;12
Michael Karol
Vance to Frawley. Are you drunk? FRAWLEY Sarcastic. Well, it’s 10 a.m. there. And so, you know, of course and although that’s kid these kinds of exchanges as far as I know between between bill never occurred they just didn’t really interact with each other. But there’s so much arguing between the cast writers and Oppenheimer, as I note, that the viewer can only come with the thought at least that this retelling that just played by the usually wonderful Tony Hale as a whiny put upon college senior trying to represent any disrespectful theater underclassmen into shape.

00;22;01;25 – 00;22;34;14
Michael Karol
I’m not really much in charge as pubescent tells him to shut up. I don’t think that would have had real life as just off where they’re being grilled by attorneys are people on Philip morris and CBS. Kidman does a palatable job of relating the story how Lucy registered as Communist in 1936 to placate her socialist grandpa. But here, as in many other seats, I was noticeably cut off by Kidman’s physical appearance as Lucy, in the sense that her face is too skinny or contoured and her body not voluptuous enough.

00;22;34;16 – 00;22;56;29
Michael Karol
Lucy’s way more fill that curvy. Nicole delivers the story of Lucy’s Communist Party membership very matter of factly to the men in the row. And though it’s impossible to know exactly what happened in that room, if indeed it did happen like that in that room, I’d like to think that Lucy was slightly a bit more emotional. As for Desi, happy about them as perfunctory?

00;22;56;29 – 00;23;19;10
Michael Karol
Very to the point, noting that after the original broadcast, Owen picked up the story. Lucy had already been cleared by a few act, very little emotion more like this situation is nothing lo everything and okay, that’s one way of playing it. But you know, if Desi Arnaz, when it comes to this topic, particularly he was quite emotional, perhaps a bit lacking in emotional deliver.

00;23;19;24 – 00;23;46;23
Michael Karol
Desi was so proud to be an American and the career that he was allowed to pursue as foreigner in our country, he took this issue very seriously. More so than how it was played. So I guess you could say that they didn’t blow it. And recounting the communist reveal. But it’s hard to confirm exactly what happened. And the lead performances by viewers are likely not much the way that the understandably emotional real life Lucy Desi reacted.

00;23;46;26 – 00;24;01;04
Dan LeFebvre
Okay, that makes sense. I mean, yeah, if we don’t know 100% what happened behind closed doors. But I like how you took context from the real people and how they probably would have actually been if they were in that sort of situation. It sounds like it would have it would have been different than what we saw on screen.

00;24;01;16 – 00;24;26;01
Michael Karol
The real thing that set Lucy would split by 1953. That show was already the super hit, that it would stay for the next four years. And the public was really in love with all of that, not just the chimpanzee, but Bette and Bill and anyone associated with the show. So it would have been very difficult because the way that Lucy did register as communists was an innocent thing.

00;24;26;01 – 00;24;34;22
Michael Karol
She did it for her grandfather. It would have been really hard to convince the public that she was anything negative in that sense.

00;24;34;22 – 00;25;01;11
Dan LeFebvre
That makes sense. There is another major event that happens in that same week that we’re talking about in the movie, and it’s when Lucy announces that she’s pregnant, not on the show, but she announces it to Desi and then the staff kind of behind the scenes. And according to the movie, this is a big deal. The executives from CBS and Philip morris seem to be concerned that people will wonder how Lucy got pregnant, thinking about the idea of Ricky and Lucy sleeping together.

00;25;01;11 – 00;25;18;13
Dan LeFebvre
And that’s just too much for TV. I think there’s another quote I pull from the movie is from CBS executive Howard Winkie in the movie, and he says, quote, We’ll be putting our foot down on this one. We can’t do it. And, quote, Did Lucy announce her pregnancy to the staff during this chaotic week like the movie shows?

00;25;19;10 – 00;25;45;14
Michael Karol
Probably not. And 1933, that’s when that particular scene plays. But during that same week as Communist Party, I doubt it very much so. It was a revolutionary concept at the time, especially on TV’s number one show. So naturally there was a major respect network and sponsors. The movie kind of tells the actual story, but in the film, Sorkin gives the credit to Desi Arnaz.

00;25;45;25 – 00;26;09;07
Michael Karol
And Arnaz was truly a television pioneer, and you might even call him a genius in that meeting, he changed the way the industry made television shows forever. He created the river, but Sorkin’s felt as doesn’t see breaking the news to the writing staff. And Oppenheim, who aren’t all that thrilled. After all, they might be fearful of their job since the idea is the next by the network or sponsors.

00;26;09;20 – 00;26;33;22
Michael Karol
Still desi a positive. Lucy will have her baby. This is in the movie and that it will be filmed for TBS. Lucy Ricardo, however, in her own autobiography, Lucy’s version of events differ. She says in this quote, In May 1952, Desi and I both Fox. It’s just Oppenheimer’s slated she wrote. Well, amigo Desi told just I just heard from the doctor.

00;26;33;22 – 00;27;05;10
Michael Karol
Lucy’s having another baby in January, so we’ll have to cancel everything. That’s the end of the show. Just stop looking at us. Silo. Then he remarked casually, I would suggest this to any other actress in the world. But why don’t we continue the show, have a baby on TV? And the L.A. Times noted that CBS and that and I’m sure the pronunciation of this by O.W. age that see it the one which represented a sponsor Philip morris bio maybe I don’t know, we weren’t excited by the idea, but they went along with some conditions.

00;27;05;11 – 00;27;29;23
Michael Karol
The advertisers originally stipulated that they would only agree to one or two episodes about pregnancy. Arnaz wrote a letter to Phillip morris, Chairman Alfred Lyons, reminding the executive of the success the show had delivered to date under their creative decision making and suggested not so subtly that any changes to that now would warrant a shift in culpability for any subsequent failures of the show because of it.

00;27;29;28 – 00;27;52;10
Michael Karol
And if I may read it for my book, The Final Word from Lucy Ever seen Lucille Ball Encyclopedia? When Lucy became pregnant during the second season of her hit show exec producer Just Offenheiser, Oppenheimer and Arnaz in on the idea of writing it into the script as a way of keeping the show going without interruptions at that time, performers couldn’t even say the word pregnant on TV.

00;27;52;20 – 00;28;29;17
Michael Karol
It was expected or expectant was about as risque as Arnaz smartly decided to get stripped approval to select clerics of all faiths and thus one of the CBS networks. Okay, go ahead. Storyline The night Lucy gave birth to Little Ricky on air January 19th, 1953, Desi Arnaz Jr was delivered by sharing a section in Los Angeles. The Birth of Little Ricky episode was the sitcoms most watched ever, eclipsing President Eisenhower’s inauguration the next day and remained a benchmark for upsets tuned to one show until the sixties.

00;28;29;28 – 00;28;53;12
Michael Karol
It garnered 44 million viewers, 72% of every TV home at the time, a figure that would be coveted today by any TV executive and virtually impossible to achieve except for an event like the Super Bowl due to the fractured nature of the viewing audience, thanks to the huge amount of viewing choices now available at just three networks, for example, but streaming and all of that, too.

00;28;53;24 – 00;29;10;05
Michael Karol
And it remains one of the most watched episodes of primetime television ever broadcast. Years later, Arnaz learned that Phillip morris as chairman. Lyons sent out a confidential memo to his staff to whom it may concern Don’t screw out the Cuban.

00;29;10;05 – 00;29;30;24
Dan LeFebvre
I think they show that in the movie, don’t they? At some point I seem to remember him saying that. So now I was convinced with the popularity of that if the sponsors like Phillip morris and stuff didn’t want they didn’t want that, but then they pushed for it and they got it and it was so successful. Did that have a big impact outside?

00;29;30;24 – 00;29;43;08
Dan LeFebvre
And a movie doesn’t really touch on this because it just focuses on on I Love Lucy. Did it have an impact on how they were able to do episodes in the future, like without as much pushback since obviously they got it right.

00;29;43;17 – 00;30;17;16
Michael Karol
Yeah, absolutely. That was a total thing. But I think more importantly, Lucy and big picture of Desi, a little picture, Lucy made the first national cover of TV Guide and the headline was Lucy’s $50 Million Baby. Now, all the merchandizing for the kid and for the Ricardos, for the family furniture paid dolls, living room sets, etc. That all speaks to the enormous influence that Lucy and Desi as the Ricardos and their show the public.

00;30;17;25 – 00;30;20;10
Michael Karol
And I don’t think anyone is going to scribble out that.

00;30;20;28 – 00;30;39;29
Dan LeFebvre
Much money talks. I guess the end of the day right throughout most of the movie, there is some tension that we see between William Frawley, who plays Fred Mertz, and Vivian Vance, who plays his wife, Ethel Mertz. And I Love Lucy. William is drinking all the time. You mentioned earlier, you know, it’s like I am. Yeah, of course I’m going to be drunk.

00;30;39;29 – 00;30;55;19
Dan LeFebvre
And then Vivian goes on a diet to make herself feel better because she’s being cast as someone married to her grandpa, as she says in the movie, pointing out the age difference between Fred and Ethel characters in the show. Was there really that tension between those two actors that we see in the movie?

00;30;55;24 – 00;31;24;28
Michael Karol
Yes, it’s really well known that it’s been written about a lot. Frawley was known to be a heavy drinker, which, as you said, I alluded to already at that table and not much for him either. It’s reported that you had cut out his lines in the script so that you would know his lines. Then when it came to rehearsing and then filming and the lines got huge laughs, you really wouldn’t understand why they did because you didn’t know what the was in his drinking.

00;31;24;28 – 00;31;46;01
Michael Karol
That was just a weird thing that he did. Frawley had pledged to Desi Arnaz before they would sign him to this show that he would never let his drinking interfere with this performance. And as you said, the first time it’s done is you’re at it. You’re at all indications it never did. Finally, it creates the fiction and the friction.

00;31;46;03 – 00;32;06;14
Michael Karol
Media brought up St Vincent’s wallet and the story is overheard. Were complaining early on, maybe the first season about playing the wife of such an old man. He’s old enough to be my father during early rehearsals and it was all downhill from there. They were not friendly off camera. Vivian, for her part, did not stand being identified as the wife.

00;32;06;14 – 00;32;32;17
Michael Karol
Some looked and acted like Fröhlich was indeed old enough to be her father. I think grandfather’s stretching and she especially despised having to kiss Sara, climb into bed with them. But they were both professional enough and fond enough of their paychecks apparel to keep all of that off camera. The real life tension between the two actually worked to help create the realness of the quarrels of marriage of merchants.

00;32;32;28 – 00;32;42;24
Dan LeFebvre
Okay. Okay. So they they kind of played off it, even though he may not have known why it was so funny. I like that bit about cutting out the the line.

00;32;42;29 – 00;33;01;15
Michael Karol
You know, they were offered a spin off at the end of the half hour show or maybe, oh, really? Of the hours just featuring the Nazis. But he refused it. And that’s really why he began to hate her for that that he wanted he would deliver to die, and it would have made them both a lot of money but that Ian rats was just.

00;33;01;15 – 00;33;03;22
Michael Karol
No, that was it. She was going to act with him.

00;33;04;10 – 00;33;22;21
Dan LeFebvre
I want to ask about there’s an episode where they’re filming throughout the week in the movie and that episode, according to the movie, is directed by Donald Glass. And the movie makes it very clear that Lucy does not like him as a director. Everything is going on that week that of course, we know now was not actually happening that week.

00;33;22;21 – 00;33;45;27
Dan LeFebvre
But in the movie she takes it upon herself to start to direct a lot of the scenes. At one point we see she even calls in William and Vivian down to the stage at 2 a.m. to practice the dinner scene to get it just right. As I was watching the movie, I wasn’t sure if they were trying to really suggest that Lucy was only being so picky because of the stress of everything going on that seems they’re saying is going on in this week.

00;33;45;27 – 00;34;01;14
Dan LeFebvre
Or if they were trying to suggest that she was always that picky about getting everything right, that she would basically take over directing duties if she felt the director wasn’t doing their job. Was Lucy that involved in the direction and production of episodes as the movie shows?

00;34;01;14 – 00;34;19;29
Michael Karol
Did Lucy need to be so much in charge, even at that point in her career, that she’d corralled her costars and tell them to do anything at any time of the day, and they do it. This movie makes a hard point about that. Certainly that control trait has been remarked on by many costars and friends during Lucy’s post.

00;34;20;03 – 00;34;43;10
Michael Karol
I Love Lucy career, The Lucy Show and here’s Lucy. This might be the one thing this movie got somewhere right, though. Maybe her saying to Bill and Viv after giving them direction particular scene that I am the biggest asset in the portfolio, the Columbia Broadcasting System. Philip Arthur CIGARETS Westinghouse is taking that a bit too far. Still, Bill does tell her before the show and this fictional exchange.

00;34;43;10 – 00;35;18;25
Michael Karol
I believe that after her notes, the dinner scene is inarguably better. But the bottom line Lucy know her stuff, how to get a laugh timing. How long to wait until continuing where one’s best lighting was, where your key shot was? The use of props and on and off, all from her 20 year apprenticeship in the movies. When she directed People and I mean not as the director, but on the set, including big stars like her friends Jack Benny and George Burns on her future shows, they may not have liked it, but 99% of the time was.

00;35;18;26 – 00;35;46;23
Michael Karol
That’s right. So I also wrote about this issue and Lucy Agency Bill Asher yeah he William Ash Sugar directed Bewitched later on and married at Starbucks with Montgomery for example found out on his first day of work that rumors I would say no testing her coworkers to see how much they could take were true. Asher took over directing I Love Lucy after the first season and was the director for the whole series through its conclusion, directing a total of 102 episodes.

00;35;47;08 – 00;36;11;23
Michael Karol
As she remembered the account her as Lucy giving him too much direction. Lucy, as she recalled saying during a Jamestown, New York Lucy festival in the, I guess early to mid 2000. If you want to direct, go ahead and you won’t have to pay anyone. At which point, he says. Lucy broke down in tears about the set and she retired to the men’s room because he didn’t yet have an office.

00;36;12;08 – 00;36;31;27
Michael Karol
He finally returned to the set. I met Desi, who started yelling at him in Spanish until Asher said, Desi, give it to me in English, please. After hearing the story, Desi was very understanding. I think he saw a friend action and agreed with Asher, but told him to find Lucy in her dressing room. Bring her back to the set, as she says I did.

00;36;32;00 – 00;36;52;08
Michael Karol
She and I looked and cried for a few minutes. Then Lucy, pull yourself together and my back to work after that. But I never had enough. So I think a lot of the time she was testing people to see how far she could go and how much they would take. Some people were okay with that. Some people just sloughed it off like Jack Benny.

00;36;52;25 – 00;37;22;11
Michael Karol
I think that I needed another Lucy show and she was pregnant about something just calm down that it’s your show, okay? And some people walked off Joan Blondell after Lucy, she was being sort of auditioned to take the place of Vivian Batts, either late in the Lucy Show or on today’s Lucy. And in the episode, this one episode, apparently, Lucy didn’t like what she did, so she mind flushing a toilet like that.

00;37;22;11 – 00;37;32;23
Michael Karol
It was crap, I guess. Well, Blondell Kolchak walked off the set, never came back. So there was all different kinds of reactions to what Lucy’s tired persona was.

00;37;32;26 – 00;37;58;17
Dan LeFebvre
Was that more after she became so famous? I mean, you mentioned that that scene where she talks about, you know, she’s the biggest asset in the portfolio. Did she did she feel that sort of stress that she had this successful show with I Love Lucy and then outside the timeline of the movie? But, you know, with the shows after I Love Lucy, that she wasn’t able to get that same thing back or she felt she had to try to get that same success.

00;37;58;20 – 00;38;21;18
Michael Karol
Yes, I think absolutely. And after Desi was on the show for the first like 13 or 14 episodes and then he left and then she ended up buying shares as they were became the first woman to control the studio. So a lot of responsibility. And she had to greenlight shows and tell people now and and put people out of work its head.

00;38;21;28 – 00;38;40;01
Michael Karol
But she had to do it and she did it. She famously Carol BURNETT, who’s a good friend of hers, that kid is when they put the S at the end of my name, Lucille Ball. I don’t like strong women back then her to I guess you.

00;38;40;01 – 00;38;57;08
Dan LeFebvre
Well it makes sense though I mean if she’s having to do the business side of things and she’s you know as as an actress and just as a creative sometimes as the business side is not what they like to do. I mean. Yeah, and fair enough. I mean, it’s not easy.

00;38;57;15 – 00;39;10;29
Michael Karol
No, but she did a great job and she was the first one to handle that role in a studio and such. That’s, you know, which is pretty substantial. So you got to give her credit for sure.

00;39;11;14 – 00;39;34;22
Dan LeFebvre
Near the end of the movie, Desi’s plan to make the whole Lucy being a communist and the press go away is to invite the press to a taping of the show before they begin. He shows everyone. The Herald Express newspaper in the movie has big red letters and it says Lucille Ball of Red. I think even there was a line a dog was like, I didn’t even know the newspaper had red print.

00;39;35;24 – 00;39;56;01
Dan LeFebvre
The studio audience there gasps when they see the headline, and then he takes a phone call from a man that verifies that the FBI has no reason to believe Lucy is a communist, and that man identifies himself. J. Edgar Hoover. The plane works, everyone. Cheers, Lucy. The press writes about it, and according to the movie, they save the show.

00;39;56;15 – 00;40;04;21
Dan LeFebvre
The Desi Arnaz really talked to Hoover on the phone to confirm that Lucy wasn’t a communist for the live studio audience like you see in the end of the movie, right?

00;40;05;07 – 00;40;27;12
Michael Karol
According to many sources, Desi didn’t call Hoover in earshot of the studio audience, and some also claim in front of her gathered reporters and that the FBI director stated, like, sent your wife cleared of any charges, 100% clear. But other respected sources like the L.A. Times say no. And I’m quoting here In reality, there was no call from Hoover.

00;40;27;12 – 00;40;53;13
Michael Karol
The ball’s name was cleared before an episode solving Representative Donald L. Jackson, chairman of the House un-American Activities Committee, held a press conference in Hollywood at a hotel room publicly absolved Ball of any wrongdoing. As the film shows, Arnaz did address the studio audience before the filming that night, reading from a speech he typed, what he said was, Lucy has never been a communist, not now and never will be.

00;40;53;25 – 00;41;15;28
Michael Karol
I was kicked out of Cuba. It continued because of Tommy you despise everything about it. Lucy is as American as Bernie and Eisenhower. And finally, as she wrote in his memoir, he introduced Lucy before the taping that now I watch their Me I favorite wife, my favorite red hat back. That’s the only thing I read about her. And even that’s not legitimate.

00;41;16;12 – 00;41;23;16
Michael Karol
Lucille Ball and that Lucy, with tears in her eyes, came out and received a standing ovation from the studio audience.

00;41;23;16 – 00;41;31;21
Dan LeFebvre
So it seems like they they picked pieces of of things. But yeah. Yeah, it sounds like it was a little different than that.

00;41;31;28 – 00;41;35;02
Michael Karol
Just a little. Yeah.

00;41;35;02 – 00;41;54;13
Dan LeFebvre
At the very end of the movie, again, it’s around the same time like as they’re doing the show, like Lucy confronts Desi about him cheating on her. She has some lipstick on a handkerchief. And I think he says something about, Oh, that’s yours. And then she pulls out another handkerchief with lipstick and this one’s mine. And then finally he admits that he is cheating.

00;41;54;19 – 00;42;19;09
Dan LeFebvre
He says it really meant nothing. They were just called girls. Then she says they have a show to do. So forget about this for half an hour. And that’s how the movie ends. There’s some text at the very end that says, March 3rd, 1960, Lucy filed for divorce from Desi the morning after their final performance together. So the impression that I got from the movie was their marriage only stayed as long as the TV show did.

00;42;19;12 – 00;42;25;13
Dan LeFebvre
So maybe it was more about a business relationship than a true loving marriage at the end. Is that right?

00;42;25;13 – 00;42;49;27
Michael Karol
I don’t think so, no. There was actually a real true love between Lucy and that’s it. But like you said, by the mid-fifties, following that enough arnaz’s drinking and philandering still dissolving. I Love Lucy would have put so many people out of work and caused so many problems. And Lucy also truly loved that show and performing. She loved performing and rehearsing for it every week.

00;42;50;05 – 00;43;13;10
Michael Karol
It was kind of a tonic to her, so she stayed on long enough to see I Love Lucy finished its run and cement its place in history. In fact, it’s been noted that Lucy and Dusty were happiest and only really civil to each other during this time when the cameras were rolling. They weren’t Lucy and Desi, but rather Ricky and confidential rat as his wild night out.

00;43;13;10 – 00;43;38;27
Michael Karol
That was the headline in the early years of their marriage before the launch of I Love Lucy wrote in her autobiography While I Was Knocking Myself Out, We’ll be making a Bond tour as my marriage crashing fast, Desi’s nightlife and even blasé Hollywood talk so everybody knew about it. Confidential magazine, other story about a Palm Springs weekender is this to her millions duplex during the summer of 1944?

00;43;38;27 – 00;44;11;12
Michael Karol
Does each stop coming all one night I tossed sleepless there until dawn. One drink. But our marriage had gone awry and what I had done wrong. And this was the mid-forties so that but they did reconcile set of divorcing. But does his self-destructive behavior continue? It got worse. As she got more successful, it became worse years later. Confidential rat, another nasty piece headlined this Desi Really Love, See Reporting Quotes, all of Desi’s indiscretions and his January 1985 KO.

00;44;11;23 – 00;44;29;27
Michael Karol
Now, at that point, I Love Lucy was in its fifth next, the last half hour season. And by the way, the series was the first to go out on that one. Ratings. So Brad Sawtelle Order for Confidential wrote behind the scenes Arnaz’s a Latin lover who loves Lucy most of the time, but by no means all of the time.

00;44;30;01 – 00;44;50;03
Michael Karol
But there’s this interesting tidbit that she told one of his Palm Springs side dishes. According to the article, that is still leprosy. This rings true, as I noted before, throughout their lives. Even after the divorce, Desi and Lucy remained very friendly and relied on each other for advice on different things and recalled the loves of each other’s lives by close friends.

00;44;50;03 – 00;45;17;24
Michael Karol
And then later, People magazine, a little more respected than confidential, ran a cover piece after Lucy died called The Untold Story of Mickey and Desi the Booms, The Brawls, the other one that began by noting the irony of Sam testing eating at the set of an RKO film titled Two Girls in the piece, Lucy’s longtime publicist, Charles Pomerantz, recounted his client’s reaction to the article, noted that she did it with humor.

00;45;18;11 – 00;45;34;19
Michael Karol
He says, I gave an advance copy of the confidential story to Jessie. And then she said, I want to read. This story was during a rehearsal day. She went into a drugstore. Everyone was frozen on the set. She finally came out, tossed the magazine that it said, Oh, well, I could tell him or not, and I love Lucy.

00;45;34;19 – 00;45;53;27
Michael Karol
Director William Asher told people they were having the baby and we did the show about the birth of Ricky that she was terribly emotional about her. He really was crazy about you could feel how they felt. And Madelyn Pugh Davis added in the same article, Desi was a charmer. We used to call him the Cuban R because it burns.

00;45;54;00 – 00;46;17;07
Michael Karol
I’m afraid you’d say, Listen, amigo, you were done for. But the reality was that, sadly, according to Island biographer Farr, Daniels wrote what first book was I that you see? She told me that by 1956 there wasn’t even a marriage. They were just going through a routine for the children. She told me that for the last five years of their marriage, it was just gruesome broads that was in her divorce papers.

00;46;17;07 – 00;46;41;22
Michael Karol
This matter of fact, so soon as he did remain married for five more years, finally divorcing in 1968, she married at 20 years marriage in November of 62 ball aunt as it sure does sit there are 3 billion it took over the couple first launch of major Hollywood studio. It was thanks to Lucy that Star Trek Mission Impossible and Mannix greenlit got their chance at shine comforts.

00;46;41;25 – 00;46;48;09
Dan LeFebvre
So it sounds like their marriage. Yeah kind of went did go downhill towards the end there sure.

00;46;49;08 – 00;46;57;05
Michael Karol
Lucy tried her hardest thing and she forgave a lot. And I think the worst part of it for her was public humiliation.

00;46;57;05 – 00;47;08;06
Dan LeFebvre
Yeah, well, they were. I mean, the number one show. So, I mean, I don’t know if they call them paparazzi back then, but I mean, just the amount of public spotlight that they’d have.

00;47;08;10 – 00;47;19;11
Michael Karol
Yeah, I think that it was basically only confidential and other spurious magazines that were even worse and confidential that would dare to publish anything like that about as they were.

00;47;19;11 – 00;47;22;21
Dan LeFebvre
So it was confidential, kind of like a tabloid then.

00;47;22;29 – 00;47;32;02
Michael Karol
It was it wasn’t spies, it was a magazine, but it was read out. Now, Lawrence was very tabloidy and content. Yeah.

00;47;32;15 – 00;47;52;00
Dan LeFebvre
I don’t remember the exact dialog, but I remember some dialog from the movie where I think it was Desi that was talking about gave the impression that Confidential was not as reputable of news source. And it’s like, oh, it’s, you know, it’s, it’s an I got the impression that they were kind of the grocery store tabloid type news source of.

00;47;52;05 – 00;48;02;06
Michael Karol
One child of one of the most popular accents of the country. So lots people read it, but they didn’t go there for regular readers. They read it for Hollywood gossip or celebrity gossip.

00;48;02;07 – 00;48;10;10
Dan LeFebvre
Yeah. How old do you think the movie did with Nicole Kidman portrayal of Lucy and Javier Bardem as Desi Arnaz.

00;48;10;26 – 00;48;33;18
Michael Karol
As the star duo Enter the Round Table starts at the beginning of the film. There’s a lot of a lot more spiteful backbiting. That’s what I was saying before that. Just like what kind of a set the sister picked. I’m not one of them is really portrayed as actually likable, although Javier Bardem is just he starts to get into character about 15 minutes and he addressed themselves.

00;48;34;02 – 00;48;53;03
Michael Karol
I’m the president. I see they’re speaking to you right now. For the next 30 minutes. All I went to Girl was the script. I kind of like that. That was authority. It felt like something touching my tits. But then as the scene shifts from the table, read to the actors in black and white doing scenes actually at the show, can it shall we hear Kidman’s Lucy Ricardo voice?

00;48;53;03 – 00;49;21;03
Michael Karol
And it took me right out of the film, just as her not quite there. I look as Lucy too many times. It was obvious Kidman was trying to get a higher register as Lucy, but it didn’t work for me. Her entire you see Ricardo performance at the start is too cute. Yeah. It’s obvious that she studied Lucy’s mannerisms as she Ricardo, and how she spoke and moved and her facial expressions, etc. There’s some work, but that’s okay.

00;49;21;03 – 00;49;40;28
Michael Karol
But after all, Kidman’s that actress, so you would expect her to do that research. What she doesn’t capture is the essence of I do still balance Ricardo to that point. And for most of the film, Kidman does a bit better as the movie goes on. Like Lucy, recreating the great stopping episode tells the truth, and especially in the Fred rapport.

00;49;41;13 – 00;50;19;08
Michael Karol
So she totally gets his voice right as the characters are devastated, less convincing at the extreme show as Desi, the musician slash entertainer, looking down via an analogy, getting a feeling not sexy. What we created, she could shake her maracas. That abstemious was extensive and I got it wrong. A similar set or demonstrate actor. But it’s another Desi’s easy charm and Grace Bardem is more appealing as desi scene Babalu at Ciro’s, but he still can’t recapture the sexiness, realness and emotional impact of the actual Desi performing his signature song.

00;50;20;03 – 00;50;39;18
Michael Karol
And Kidman, a great actress as Lucy made up with the black eye or whatever, is so nasty and off pretty verbally, almost dark and playful would have been the way to go. You have to wonder, why would Desi ever have been interested? I unfortunately are. None of us can go back in time when real life versions of these events.

00;50;39;24 – 00;51;13;28
Michael Karol
But I have seen I’m sure you’ve seen everyone sent Lucy and gathered together many times in various film appearances. The game shows, publicity around movie premieres and their easy, genuine bachelor was nothing like what is portrayed. Which it does is combustible attraction. Physically and emotionally is a very important component. And CNBC and Lucy Ricky relationships. Almost everyone that knew that in real life, as I’ve said, including the IRS, maintains that despite their divorce, they remained the love of each other’s lives.

00;51;14;04 – 00;51;16;01
Michael Karol
It’s not really evident here in this film.

00;51;16;12 – 00;51;28;14
Dan LeFebvre
Yeah, that’s interesting. Would you say that that’s one of the bigger inaccuracies in the film is how they were portrayed? Or is there something else that you kind of just stood out as one of the most inaccurate things about the film?

00;51;28;28 – 00;51;54;04
Michael Karol
Yes, absolutely. But just the alarming liberties with the truth in general, facts that were out there. Anyone, especially a TV luminary like Aaron Sorkin, they were not hidden. They were ignored. They may have nailed a few tenths. The actors playing Vivian Vance, Lynn Frawley. Right. Although I doubt that Frawley had such a close relationship with Lucy, as intimated by several conversations that they sure she Vivian were way closer.

00;51;54;15 – 00;52;16;22
Michael Karol
Nina Arianda J.K. Simmons as Bill and Bill for best out of all the actors, each putting correct and easy shades of their characters mostly. Thanks for watching Simmons get up from the reading table and flipping his hat on. Was Kendall watching Bill Frawley and Arianda very subtly conveyed your agony? I think that dishwater of what you have thought.

00;52;16;22 – 00;52;39;25
Michael Karol
She breathes in a red cocktail dress that Lucy not to suddenly Kate is not for Ethel talk. The Mertz actors really got their counterparts dislike of each other, coupled with the willingness to do what they had to to make the show. The scene between Lucy and there, just before the filming of the episode, Sweet and Touching, both actresses rocked at a cop.

00;52;39;25 – 00;53;06;18
Michael Karol
Ed Murdoch says by the time the movie got to filming, actual episode had met him. Bardo groaned on me a little. The movie picks up noticeably in the last half hour because the two hour actors are not trying to be the characters inhabit them had previously. So I think being the Ricardos, it’s not a big sloppy mess, but it played with the facts and there’s a reason on Earth it should have.

00;53;07;03 – 00;53;30;24
Michael Karol
Lucy Nancy are two of the most written about people who ever lived. There’s plenty of documentation of anything you care to know. So again, my bestselling book, Lucy to See Them, was so upset with the bottom line was I didn’t like it. Lots of things were wrong or off. A few were. Some fewer things were right. Good. If you’re a Lucy completist or you’ll have to see it for us.

00;53;30;24 – 00;53;50;05
Michael Karol
But we’re still waiting for an idiot biography. Let’s get Dusty played by real actors. Where are we? Actually, I’m not. I’m. We’re the content. Lucy at Desi Abdullah have Howard countless hours of film that never get old. May they continue to keep us laughing. Best medicine, right? For Altman? Yeah.

00;53;50;13 – 00;54;00;25
Dan LeFebvre
Yeah. My final question for you might be the most difficult one yet. If you could change one thing about the movie to make it a little closer, what really happened? What would that one thing be?

00;54;00;27 – 00;54;36;02
Michael Karol
Well, it’s not difficult at all, but could it be two things? And this is a subject for all the historical inaccuracy. It’s like mention. But there are two major things that would have made an infinitely better film. I would recast it, possibly with Cate Blanchett, who was originally attached to the projects, but certainly with an actress, were physically akin to the real Lucille Ball and ditto with DC cast the Latino actor more closely resembling that’s not as physically and temperamentally an extremely handsome, sexy and disarming fellow, something that Bardem, as good an actor as he is, could capture.

00;54;36;07 – 00;54;50;09
Dan LeFebvre
Interesting dynamic that makes sense that would be it’s it’s interesting to hear you talk about that because Nicole Kidman and Javier Bardem they are they’re good they they’re good at what they do. But they just didn’t capture the essence. It sounds like they didn’t.

00;54;50;15 – 00;55;11;07
Michael Karol
Were I don’t think they were right for either either was right for that particular role. I can understand why they would have taken that, because it’s a very high profile project. But everyone that’s tried to play Lucy over the years of various TV movies and even on sitcoms, nobody can get it right. There’s no other Lucy, there’s no other destiny, there’s no other Ethel or Freddie.

00;55;11;16 – 00;55;15;25
Michael Karol
So why not watch The Real Thing? Who needs the biography?

00;55;15;25 – 00;55;17;09
Dan LeFebvre
They go watch the real thing first.

00;55;17;12 – 00;55;19;19
Michael Karol
So much written about by me.

00;55;19;19 – 00;55;34;10
Dan LeFebvre
So it was a speaking of which, thank you so much for coming on to chat about being the Ricardos. You have written a lot about Lucille Ball, so for listeners who want to learn more about her, can you give a recommendation for which of your books to start with and where they can get a copy of it?

00;55;34;15 – 00;55;57;03
Michael Karol
I’d love to, Lucy to see Lucille Ball and see Encyclopedia is my magnum Opus 50 greatest match. As my dear late friend author Craig Hamer used to call it. It’s extremely comprehensive as pictures of people who knew and work with Lucy, and it’s arranged alphabetically. So it’s not like your typical biography could jump around or to entry level.

00;55;57;03 – 00;56;28;21
Michael Karol
One thing leads to another. It’s an index so you can follow whichever of your favorite performers, and it has separate bios, all of the big four, as I call them, CTC, William for all in advance. And there was just so I mean, when I went to the New York Library, the Performing Arts, which is where I did most of this research, and I asked for the files on Lucille Ball, the press clippings, huge thousands of files that were like two or three inch thick or more that obviously haven’t been looked at in years.

00;56;29;03 – 00;56;50;25
Michael Karol
And my feeling was when I saw a lot of the stuff, I was like, well, whether Lucy loved badminton or not, you know, there’s a picture of her playing. And I’m like, you know, if I don’t know that stuff, then a lot of her fans aren’t aware of it any more either. So that’s why I like books. So there was so much info and press stockings left over from the original and trivia that was just hanging out by branch.

00;56;51;02 – 00;57;18;01
Michael Karol
I channeled that into four other books, the Lucy Book of Lists that was in honor of her 100th birthday. I see them print, which covers print articles, didn’t make it easier to see less reports. I’m too little known is written about. I Love Lucy. Vivian Vance The Lucy I Love Lucy play. It was at a time when you had a successful entity and some media and they just automatically like wrote a play about it.

00;57;18;01 – 00;57;38;28
Michael Karol
Like, Let’s see if we can make this a success. It’s really interesting. I found it at the New York Public Library and I stayed there for a half an hour and Xeroxed the whole thing so I could read it was the star and then the final book I wrote the comic DNA of Lucille Ball interpreting the icon that you can find them all at Amazon.

00;57;38;28 – 00;57;51;23
Michael Karol
Barnes Noble good reads for any online bookseller as well as a few brick and mortar stores. But if they don’t carry them, just go up to the counter, asked them to order the books, point them to my Amazon page and you can buy them that way.

00;57;52;07 – 00;57;59;21
Dan LeFebvre
And I’ll make sure to include a link to them in the show notes for this episode too. If you’re listening and looking for those. Thank you. Thank you again so much for your time, Michael.

00;57;59;25 – 00;58;08;26
Michael Karol
It was my pleasure.

Dan LeFebvre  2:22 

Since filmmakers always need to change things around in order to fit years of someone’s life into just a couple hours, if you were to take a step back and give the movie and overall letter grade for historical accuracy, what would it get?

 

Mark Jason Murray  2:37 

That’s really something that’s kind of hard to do, because it’s not a documentary. Now, people have to remember that. Even on my own accounts, I’ll admit that having worked on Rudy story for 30 years, I was very detail oriented in all of my research, and it was very hard for me to let go of those details. When they had finished their script, Scott and Larry, who wrote the film, went down and sat in their office and they let me read, read the script. And I remember specifically, we sat down on their couch and you know, what did you think and, and one of the first things that I said was, you know, you got Rudy, referencing Deep Throat here, but deep throat was in 1972 yet eat out more often the album that he recorded was in 1970. And, you know, I was even guilty of the, you know, being so detail ingrained in the details that they basically sat, you know, kind of sat me down and then said, you know, Mark, you know, we have a lot of stuff to go through in this movie, you know, we have to we’re trying to give it a point of reference, etc, etc. And, you know, that was a good I got talked down off the ledge a little bit there by Scott and Larry. But as far as a letter grade is concerned, honestly, I don’t really know how to answer that. It I think it makes that too definitive of a of a grade, we’ll say, you know, you do have quite a bit of material and people to introduce, in that that two hour film. You know, and, and, you know, the average film runs an hour and a half, yet we get, you know, two hours worth of Rudy story. The film itself, if I were to put it in, in a timeframe would be late 1969 through the mid 1975. After the film dole in my head, it’s theatrical, full theatrical national release. Originally, when I saw Edward heard that Scott Alexander and Larry Curzio ski wrote for Tim Burton, as they believe that was 1996. I was a big fan of Edward still am. Had a lot of knowledge of him and his work at that time. So when I saw that film, I was like I understood what they were doing. There’s there were certain things in that movie where you have Bill Murray’s character of John Breckinridge, who is in the entire film, as part of Edwards crew. But yeah, in reality, he only showed up for the filming of plan Nine from Outer Space, because I think he was a roommate of somebody and they just needed somebody to play that part. So I started to kind of understand the way that they they functioned when they were writing. Another perfect example is when they did people vs. Larry Flynt, which is another spectacular film. In their commentary for the movie, I believe it’s Larry that mentions that Edward Norton is really just a combination of multiple lawyers that Larry Flynt had, you’re not going to spend half of a movie introducing a brand new lawyer every time Larry goes to court, you know, so there, there has to be some of these things that that, you know, I’ll say are stretched for entertainment purposes. Some of the things that are inaccurate in dolomite is my name. I really think that Scott and Larry brilliantly brought those things together. If I could point out maybe, you know, one specific thing that I that I just I love in the movie is when the crew meets Doraville, Martin. In the film, they they come across him in a strip club. And the reality is that Jerry Jones already knew Doraville, Martin, and had brought Doraville in as director, because Durval had yet to direct a film. So Durval saw this as an opportunity to direct something. But Rudy was smart enough to know that Derval already had some type of marquee name, having appeared in movies with Fred Williamson and Pam Greer. So Rudy said, you can direct but I also want you to co star in this with me.

 

Mark Jason Murray  7:33 

But that’s not as exciting as coming across Doraville in a strip club. You know, and, and having Wesley Snipes, do you know that incredible impersonation, or however you want to put it of, you know, the personality that he brings to dervishes character? Wesley was kind of the, the unknown gem of the film. When you see it, you know, I was actually a little bit. Again, I’m so detail oriented in the first time I saw it, it was like, just Whoa, you know, this is not the durable Martin that I would have expected. You know, I never was able to speak with him. He died early on. So he wasn’t, of course available for for my book. But that performance that he gives is, is just brilliant. And I think a lot of the reviews that people almost say that he kind of almost stole the movie.

 

Dan LeFebvre  8:38 

You mentioned the the dates there. And I wanted to ask you about that. Because at the beginning of the movie, we see Rudy working at a record shop called dolphins, and he kind of seems to be disappointed with how his life is going. The impression that I got was he’s pretty much just paying the bills, and he can’t really he’s not really achieving what he wants. So we don’t really get a lot of backstory to Rudy up until the timeline of the movie, which I believe is what you just said, like starting in maybe 1969. Can you give us an overview of his life up until the timeline of the film?

 

Mark Jason Murray  9:10 

Well, Rudy’s entire life was performing, I guess you could say since the time he was 15. I mean, he had even sang and read poetry in church when he was a child. But he went to Cleveland when he was 15 and entered a talent show. And that was kind of like where the book started. And further the rest of his life. He was an entertainer. He had done anything for you know, some of his early things were were little scams I guess you could say like he would do fortune telling you know to do they would do tea leaf tellings where they would put the tea leaves in the in the tea and then they pour out the water and however the the formation of the leaf stuck on the cup would be how they would determine what your fortune was. You know One of the he usually, he admitted, and we discussed this in the book that usually knew the people that he was telling the fortunes on or they weren’t aware. But so he, you know, had insider information that he was giving them that that, you know, work worked in his favor. He was some sort of a dancer, Rudy always like to embellish his greatness. He sometimes he was his greatest PR agent. He would do what he called Adagio dancing. And they mentioned that in dolomite as my name, or he would just do these kind of wild African dances, I don’t believe that they really had anything that we could remotely consider rhythm. They were more just like these wild shoulder shaking, head shaking dances that he would do with sometimes with another with a female. Rudy was known for standing on his head and doing a split in a chair or something like that. He was always doing something that was, I guess you could say, outrageous. He tried his hand at singing. In the in the 50s. And 60s, they mentioned that, of course, in the film. He had already recorded a couple comedy albums, by the time dolomite as my name starts, but at the time that that the movie does take place, when it does start, his career was was dead. It was completely stagnant. He had not had any kind of releases in a few years. I think by that point, she hadn’t had a mobile 45. And about five years. His he hadn’t had a comedy release, I think, since 66. And that was a dud. So he really was down and out. He did have his his, you know, hosting, he was pretty much a host at the California club. But he he wasn’t really doing doing anything. So as far as his mindset at that time, he was feeling forgotten. He was feeling like his his career was over. And, you know, it’s true. Like, is this where I’m at? Am I just a manager of a record store? Now? The movie does

 

Dan LeFebvre  12:21 

kind of hint at some of that. I think it was a conversation with his aunt that she mentioned, you know, yeah, that’s the singer, the fortune teller all these different things that that he’s tried. So I got the impression that his life up until that point was very colorful. Yeah, he did a lot of different things. And was, was he bouncing around between those different things because he wasn’t really happy with just one of them? Or did he really just enjoy all of them and just wanting to simply perform for others didn’t almost didn’t really matter how he was performing. He just loved to perform.

 

Mark Jason Murray  12:54 

I guess if you break Rudy down, his ultimate goal was to be a star. He thought he was a star already wanted to be a star. However, that might have come about whichever avenue that took off, was the one that he pursued, he would have preferred to have been a singer, being a singer was his, I guess you could say his great performance love. broody wasn’t, I guess you could say that great of a singer, you know, he wasn’t up there with, you know, Little Richard and James Brown. And, and but I do truly believe that Rudy’s vocal material does have some some value. And he was he was kind of he was at the right place at the right time. And he would mentioned to me that, you know, in kind of a, you know, in sadness that he felt like he was he was, he was there when he needed to be and he believed that he had the formula that he needed to break through. And I will say that Rudy isn’t necessarily original. He’s not very original, so to speak, and I’ll and I’ll use that. And not not a not detrimentally. But you know, when he saw a trend happening, then he won’t he would follow that trend. You know, we can use I think some of the examples I use in the book is, you know, Little Richard has a song and then Rudy does one like, you know, Robbie Dobby. And so he just kind of, he kind of plays off of what’s popular at that time. And when you when you put him in, in chronology of when his vocal recording started. His first one came in in I believe it was January of 1956. He was on federal records, which also had signed James Brown. And I believe if myth memory is correct, and I don’t want to be the guy that just says you know, I think I say it in the book. But of course, all of this and more More is in the book. But chronologically by catalog number, I believe James Brown’s first single was the one just prior to Rudy’s first single. So he was right there at kind of the birth of this to a degree, and he just he just couldn’t, couldn’t make it hit. But he was always constantly trying to make something happen. He sort of fell into doing the comedy. When he was in the military. And he worked. He was in a special forces unit that were just going around and entertaining servicemen through Germany, and such. And one time, there was an actor that was late coming on stage, and someone from the crowd yell, you know, tell a joke. And Rudy was familiar with a woman named Caledonia Young, who had done comedy. And she, I guess she was a contortionist and other things. And famous in that, that Cleveland area. So Rudy told a joke that he had known from her material. And he said, he, it went over really well. And so that kind of planted the bug for him to start doing comedy. He sort of would, would put that in his act a little bit here and there, you know, break up the just wasn’t just singing a song after a song. And, and, you know, I mean, back in those days, they had what you guys you would call floor shows, you wouldn’t have what we have today, where, you know, an artist comes out and plays their hour set, and that’s the end of their, the end of their, their gig. Many of these were in clubs, where they would have three or four shows a night, you know, you might have a eight o’clock and a nine o’clock and a 10 o’clock and sometimes these will go until, you know, one or 2am Usually the set would be about 15 minutes. So, so sometimes Rudy as a host, like at the California club would come out and do a little bit of his stuff, and then he introduced the next act, and then maybe an hour later, he come back on. So he would use the comedy within that. It wasn’t until 1961 that he did his first comedy album, which was released on do toe records, which at the time, had all of red foxes material and is very mild. You know, I guess we could say it was risky for the time, it had double entendre type of material, you know, where you would call a cataplexy or, or things like that.

 

Mark Jason Murray  17:43 

But nothing too explicit. And he did a couple more couple that he actually released on his own. One was called the beatnik seen that he did in 62. Which, which I kind of note that it was probably outdated before the record even hit the shelves, you know, beat neck material. I mean, it was you know, most people if ever think of beatniks I guess they think of me energy cribs from the Dobie Gillis TV show, you know that that was on in the 60s. But, I mean, he just he, he, What actually had happened was that he as the movie shows of Rico, the Wine Oh, did did come into the store. And as Rudy would make the comment, he put the touch on me, meaning that he was begging for money. And Rudy would give him a quarter or two. And Rico would tell these tales. And that did inspire Rudy to do that. And and what actually happened and they show this in the film as he did go and record some of them. But Rudy was also he wanted to take things to a different level. So, but he was he was nervous. You know, there were there were artists and record companies who had been in some legal trouble for risque material. And, you know, Lenny Bruce had been arrested for things that he said on stage. George Carlin had, you know, and within a couple years of Rudy’s eat out more often had been arrested. So so there was some fear of, you know, potential legal issues. But Jimmy Lynch had an album that was selling really well at dolphins. And the punch line on the record. I mean, the whole record is is is risque, but it didn’t until the very end. There’s a joke about a guy who’s essentially just having sex with a gorilla and the gorilla has a mug The line, and the big punch line, the build up is something to the effect of that he’s enjoying it. So he says, you know, take the muzzle off the motherfucker, I’m gonna kiss it. And that was selling really well at dolphins. So that piqued Rudy’s curiosity. And so he went and met Jimmy Lynch, I believe it was in Detroit. And when he got there, and he, you know, he asked, Jimmy, you know, have you had any issues with this? And Jimmy said, you know, no, and, and Rudy’s? You know, I’m a comedian, you know, I’m a singer, and I’m looking for some new material. And I think this is a direction that I want to go. And, you know, Jimmy just said, Well, you know, go along with it. And so, but Rudy didn’t want to just throw in one F word, and he wanted to take it all the way as far as he could. And, you know, they show that in the film, where he, he can’t really get anybody to support his, his album. And when he recorded that it was recorded in his apartment, you know, similar to what the, the movie shows, they give a good nod in that scene, when they kind of unveil Rudy after the little introduction, and he has a turban on because when he would sing in the 50s, he would wear a turban, and he called himself Prince dumar. So that gives a good reference to that, you know, old period, before when he was being trained to be a singer. You know, and there’s a lot of little little details in dolomite as my name that I’m very impressed by, for example, when they go to record, that album, you kind of see them walking up some stairs going to the apartment, and at that time, whether it was intentional or not, but Rudy did live on a second floor apartment, he had a big apartment upstairs above a restaurant, I believe it was, and he was renting rooms to Ben Taylor, and T Tony. And some other comedians would come and go, that he had produced albums for, but I guess it had this kind of like big open living room space. And that’s where, where he would set up and, and recorded that there was not a live band performing, you know, in the background for that. They, he went and recorded that music after the fact, to mix it in.

 

Mark Jason Murray  22:38 

But, you know, one thing that that is very impressive to me about that album, and what he he got. And what he built out of that and continue to have success for for a few years, was it was very, it was very planned out. You know, and, and, you know, to, I guess to take a peek behind the curtain, it has the appeal that it was recorded in a live club. It has the, there’s, it feels like it’s, there’s spontaneity to it. But in all actuality, it was a pre planned thing. Rudy did have a party for his friends, he vodka and orange juice and, and, you know, we were having a party. So and in one way, it truly is a party record, like they actually had a party when they recorded it. And, but they knew what they wanted. And at certain points, they would kind of point to, you know, everybody needs a laugh. And you know, not that they’re holding up a sign that says applause or anything, but if something similar to that, where they were, were making it do what it needed to do. And although the film shows him performing it live, he never actually had performed that material live. But that does give a really great it is really great moment where you can see people kind of go wait a minute, you know, what is this? And and I think that’s what people were doing when they heard those albums. And it was kind of funny because I actually was down on set for the film. When they were shooting those early scenes at the very beginning of the movie when he’s in dolphins and, and, and there was lunchtime or something and I was sitting there with Larry one of the screenwriters. And I hadn’t mentioned that I was I was kind of planning on making a like a YouTube video because I have all the the individual track breakdowns of a lot of those albums. So I have, you know, just the, the crowd response and before it’s all mixed together, so I can hear, I can hear everybody’s little bits as they needed and I had made a comment that I wanted to kind of take take that and make a video where you have, you know, Rudy starting to do his material, and then the music kind of fades into it. And then you had to have the crowd fade into it. So you can see like the, you know, all those pieces melting together to make the final product. And, and Larry just looked at me, so why we did that in the movie, you know. And that’s that’s kind of that scene where, where he goes up on stage and starts to do the signifying monkey. And then Ben Taylor shows up and starts to add a little piano to it. And you know, and it was the same thing. So it was like we were on the same wavelength, you know, in a certain way, to kind of show how that all came together.

 

Dan LeFebvre  25:38 

Which, of course, in a movie, yeah, that’s, that’s a great way to do that to visually see that as opposed to, I mean, it’d be more difficult to do that in a movie where you were like, on an actual album, where the person that’s listening to it is not there while it’s being recorded. So when in a live setting, you kind of see all that at the same time. And people’s reaction to it, like you were saying, in that way, make it sounds like not necessarily how it happened. But great, a great way to show that.

 

Mark Jason Murray  26:06 

I think if anybody was going to be overly critical about dolomite dolomite is my name, it would have been me. It actually took me several viewings to just let it go a little bit. I mean, again, I’ve lived with this for for almost 30 years. And so not that I did not enjoy it when I first saw it. And to be honest with you, I actually cried. You know, I had a private screening at Netflix before the movie came out, which was a really cool experience. And I just kind of sat there and there was a couple scenes where I just I just started crying because it was, it was on my own side, it was this was a personal journey that I always wanted to see fulfilled. And not that it happened to because of me. This was kind of like the culmination of, of all of the things that I’ve been trying to get going. And in all the promotion that I’ve done for Rudy over the years, even actors asking, and I just imagined, like, you know, how he would have felt, seeing, seeing this, you know, and it was hard not to get choked up, about, about all of this happening.

 

Dan LeFebvre  27:25 

You mentioned a few things in there, I wanted to touch on one being like the Ricoh and, and the telling the stories and really recording it. And then, you know, going back and turning him in the movie, it looks like he’s taking these stories and kind of old jokes, including signifying monkey and, and Dolomites and things that seem to the impression I got from the movie, at least were there beforehand, but he then he kind of takes it and makes it his own. And then we do see that the first time that he brings the Dolomite character out, you know, he’s he’s wearing a tux and a wig. And he just immediately catches the attention. What was what did he perform it live at all was like the first time that people saw this, what was the reaction?

 

Mark Jason Murray  28:12 

Well, it wasn’t until people heard the records that they started calling him to come out and perform those those pieces. So at that point, when when it became such a huge success, you know, that will became the core of his of his material. And that album eat out more often, that they show it as fairly accurate to where they’re, you know, stamping it with a hand stamp and in his living room and assembling the records. Was was essentially what Rudy did, he only had a few $100 to, to press up. I estimate probably 3000 copies that he pressed up, they were actually blank sleeves, and he had a rubber stamp for everything. When was that little devil logo, which you know, as they say, you know why the devil logo? Well, I want these things to look illegal, like you’re not supposed to have it which which to to Rudy’s credit like that was a huge selling point. And, and, and, you know, all of these were just hand stamped on the cover, and he did sell them while he was in dolphins were under the counter and any other place locally, they had them they were they were under the counter Rudy was concerned, again, that he could get busted for this. But some of the chronology in the film is a little bit different that he had already released his own version. When he took it to laugh records. And his what happened was laugh wanted to give him I don’t know $1,700 or $2,000 or something, something small like that. And they wanted to put Johnny Otis his name on here because they were working with Johnny Otis, who’s a famous singer bandleader. You know, he did the song the hand jive and Johnny Otis is a real The fascinating figure if you want to go back and look at someone from that time period, but he was kind of having these, I guess you could say showcases that were being recorded and released on laugh records. You know, Johnny Otis presents skillet Leroy and things of that nature. So they wanted to throw Johnny Otis, his name on Rudy’s album as well. And really, just like, why would I? Why would I sell you my record for two grand or $1,700, or whatever it was, when I already have orders for like 1000 records from another distributor down the street. And Rudy was Act was really in tune with the music industry, at least in Los Angeles at that time, much different than than the way things were, even in the 80s. And of course, now, but because he worked at dolphins, he knew all the record distributors in the area, he knew where to go, you know, adult John dolphin had his own record labels. So Rudy knew everything that John would do, where he would get records, records pressed, where he get the labels made, where you take them to, you know, the distributors that he would pick up records from and drop off records from. So he already he already had all those details. So he was he was very well informed. And it wasn’t super difficult for him to, to get that record around, locally. But he realized that, you know, if you’re offering me $1,700, or whatever it was that it’s got to be worth a lot more than that. And he really claimed that he felt like he had a hit within 20 minutes. Because he did play it in the store in dolphins. And he said that, within 20 minutes, he had 10 people coming in saying whose record you’re playing, I want to, I want a copy of that. And he was smart enough to realize, like, I I’m onto something. And kind of going back to your your comment, a lot of these were pre existing stories. And they can go back, if you take the signifying monkey, there’s a book written, it goes back something like 500 years, the origin of that story. And most of these were were tall tales, and brags that were primarily told, you know, on street corners, and barber shops in jail, you know, guys would be out, you know, playing Dyson in both. And it was just in some ways, you could say it was a rite of passage. It was just a way for guys to kill time. And when

 

Mark Jason Murray  32:35 

the the, he was encouraged to embellish on these, these stories, so kind of the best storyteller would be like the cool guy of the group. So if if you weren’t the best at telling it, you know, it, you wouldn’t be the one who they’d be like, nudging saying, dude, you know, hey, hey, tell, you know, tell tell, pull, shoot monkey, you know. And so there were a lot of these, and some of them had been documented in believing the 60s by a couple of professors. And there are a few books about them. And there had already been a couple instances where these tales had been recorded. And actually, this takes us back to Johnny Otis, he had a group called What were they called? snatching the Poon tangs, which was a kind of a, a, you could say, a proto funk band that did a version of shine in the great Titanic, in some other tales on there more as musical numbers. And so this wasn’t completely unknown material, especially within the black community. You know, culturally, there were a lot of people that that, of course, had maybe heard their uncles or their fathers or, or people in the neighborhood telling a lot of these these stories. So one of the things that I that I attribute to part of the success of those is the, there’s sort of a familiarity to them. You know, the these are, these are tales that people grew up with, that people may have even recited to others. You know, and and if we go back and we look at it, Rudy was the first one. Well, he wasn’t the first one to commercialize it, but he was the first one to be successful. I believe that commercializing it, you know, like I said, that’s an action that poontang album had a couple of those, those tracks on there, which came out in 69, I believe it was, which predates Rudy’s album, you know, more often by a year, or technically, probably just a couple of months. But, you know, we have to remember that records came out so quickly back then, and when Rudy knew he had that success, just like it shows in the movie, he hooks up with camera. records. But can’t records wasn’t unknown to him, Rudy had already had his 1962 beatnik scene album was on Kent records, he had a couple of vocal 40 fives, not a lot of material from Kent. But they already knew him. And when they saw that he was making him he was selling all these records locally, that’s when they they brokered a deal with him. And pretty much just said, do whatever you want, we’ll release it. And they gave him interestingly, they gave him like the California distribution. So he had his own label, his comedian international label, and then Kent would distribute it nationally. And so if you, if you get real deep into collecting Rudy’s material, you will, you’ll find the majority of those comedy albums, there’s a version it’s on comedian International and then went on can’t, although they’re, they’re identical in, in material and almost in their artwork. You know, usually it’s just a transposition of of a logo between which one and and generally speaking, if you have those that are on comedian, you’re going to have a more rare version because those weren’t pressed in, you know, nationally distributed numbers.

 

Dan LeFebvre  36:23 

There is a person in the movie that we haven’t talked about yet. And it’s a woman named Lady read, she goes by this stage name queen bee. And she opens for dolomite in a lot of shows, but we don’t get a lot of information about kind of who she was similar to, I guess the way they did it for Rudy, you know, they don’t show a lot of backstory for some of these characters. Can you fill in her story and how she got associated with Rudy.

 

Mark Jason Murray  36:46 

Unfortunately, there’s not really a lot known about her name is Nancy, Nancy read. And she had passed before I really got into working on this book. I mean, my introduction to Rudy was when I was 17 years old, in 1991, a couple years after that, I was able to make contact with him. And then in 2001, I basically said, Rudy, I’m writing a book about you. And that’s when it, you know, officially started from there. But you know, she had already passed, Rudy, often, if he was, you know, if he felt hurt by something, you know, if he, if there was a lot of emotion involved in things, he it would be very hard for him to, to, you know, open up. And I remember, he had told me once that, that after, you know, we’ll just call it lady read after lady read it passed, I believe he wasn’t even notified by the family, or invited to, to her funeral. And, and so that hurt him so much, because they were incredible friends. And so it was always very hard for me to get full details about her. And, and even those who were in that that group, often didn’t really have a lot of background about her. So it’s kind of the majority of what you see in the movie where she talks about, you know, being a background singer in New Orleans, and, you know, having a young son, you know, that’s relatively like the majority of what was known, or what I was able to find out about her, I believe she had come to California for some type of inheritance. And the way that they actually had met was, she was kind of hanging out with other friends, and would show up at Rudy’s gigs. And she was kind of interested in what he was doing. And then they became friends. And so he produced a couple of albums for her. She wrote a piece called my day has arrived, that he that he recorded. And but they were, they were really close friends. And, you know, it’s a shame that, you know, I wasn’t able to uncover more about her. You know, I mean, she gets she gets her do she’s in the movie. And, you know, she was a, an integral part of, of that crew that Rudy had.

 

Dan LeFebvre  39:11 

The next major plot point, we do see her with Rudy and Jamie and Ben, and they’re going to see a movie a comedy called the front page. And throughout the whole thing, it’s kind of funny, everybody’s laughing. And these four friends are just like, they’re just, they don’t find it funny. It’s not funny at all. But Rudy is very intrigued because he gets the idea that movies will let him be everywhere all at once, and there is no need for touring. But he can’t convince the studio to make movies. So just like he did with the comedy album, he decides he’s gonna put up the money himself. He figures $70,000 is what he can get. And what’s made plus the record company kind of send some money as well. How well did the movie do? Portraying Rudy? Basically taking the reins to make his own movie

 

Mark Jason Murray  40:00 

But again, they, you know, I’m gonna just keep gushing about the film. I mean, I tried truly I just love the movie and in any way that they, you know, modified things, you know, I think was brilliant, you know, the idea that they went to this theater and saw this just, I mean, the whitest of white movie they probably could have, could have went and saw. You know, and I just I love those reactions when it comes to this book, you know, it wasn’t titties or Kung Fu, or, like, this movie sucked.

 

Dan LeFebvre  40:30 

This is supposed to be a comedy didn’t laugh the entire time.

 

Mark Jason Murray  40:34 

Yeah, like this. Yeah, this was not funny at all. And that’s not really that’s not the reality of, of what happened, you know, it wasn’t like, they went and saw a movie and really just had this, this grand idea, like, but the way that that, that they present that it, you know, is brilliant, you know, you see that light coming down. And you think like, you know, just like, I mean, the, the way those guys write things, and I’ve just, I’m always in awe of the work that they do. So, I mean, I couldn’t be more happy that they were the ones that wrote this, nobody could have done it the way that Scott and Larry did. But the reality is that Rudy, had already had plans to make films by 72. And also by 72, he already had, like, a couple dozen records out, he was putting records out like every three months. I mean, there was an avalanche of, of Rudy Ray Moore records, you know, Rudy was smart enough to go like, you know, it’s hot right now. So I’m just gonna, you know, we’re just gonna keep keep unloading on people. And, and, and so, in 72, he had an idea, you know, I want to get myself on on the screen. Not really, with any true idea of what that would be just thinking like, you know, I should be in a movie. I believe he may have gone to American International pictures at one point early on, and discussed it, they were pretty much the, I guess, you could say, the primary blaxploitation studio, they were doing all the jack Hill movies, and Pam Grier, and in, you know, Fred Williamson, and so all the, all the best stuff was coming out through AIP. But as with everything else that he’d ever done, nobody really supported him. And so he knew, again, that he had to pay me, he told me flat out, no one was going to put me on the screen, so I had to do it myself. And so he got the ball rolling. And actually, that would have started at the tail end of 1973, where he got the idea for for, you know, to make a film, didn’t know what it was going to be. And there’s some some key players in here that that, you know, are missing from the film and, and justifiably so because they just, even though parts of there, they are integral to the progression of things, you’re not going to introduce a character for, you know, three lines of dialogue, and then never see them again. But Rudy had a friend named Jeanne Marie. And there is a reference, we could say to Jeanne Marie in the film, where when Rudy introduces lady read, and they sing that song, you know, if I was a little bitty girl and had a lot of money, that song was actually sang by Rudy and Jeanne Marie on the eat out more often now. But again, that’s a great way to introduce lady read to the, you know, to the crowd and show that she’s going to do some, some raunchy stuff herself. And, and, you know, they kind of, in a way, she was one of the boys. But Jeanne, Maria and Rudy were friends for a long time, and she kind of worked as a secretary for him for many years. And she was really integral because she had met Jerry Jones. And so she introduced Rudy to Jerry Jones, saying, you know, my friend really wants to make a movie, your screenwriter, or you know, you’ve written plays and such and brings Jerry Jones into the fold. Now, the the way they meet Jerry in the movie a game is not is not accurate. But it you know, it’s I love that scene too. And, and I will say that, you know, Jerry Jones was a close friend of mine, and many of the people portrayed in the film Jimmy Lynch, Ben Taylor Are you know, are still close friends of mine unfortunately lost Jimmy last year.

 

Mark Jason Murray  44:32 

But it when it comes to portrayals of the people I see the most of Jerry Jones in in that portrayal. You know, Jerry was very matter of fact, and serious, took his work serious, but not but not too serious. But, you know, when I see that it really makes me think like, you know, like, you know, there’s Jerry, you know, and And so it just it sort of went from Jerry had a, an acting school that he ran. So Jerry came in to write the script, Jerry was involved heavily in the casting, because he had that acting school where he brought a lot of people in. Jerry, also, as I said, brought in Durval, Martin, Jerry also knew Nick von Sternberg, who shot the movie, because they had worked together on a previous project. So he brings in, in Nick. So it ultimately, Jerry Jones may be the most integral figure in the creation of dolomite than anybody, you know, he really was the one who brought so many of those elements together. To do that, of course, Rudy had to be the one to finance it. And like they like like in the film, he was able to get an advance on his royalties and money that he already had. And he thought he was going to be able to make that movie for $70,000. It did run out of money, not necessarily the exact same way that it shows in dolomite as my name, I believe they had they completed the filming. But sort of as they hint in the film, there was no money to edit it, or do sound or any poster or anything like that. So they don’t really they don’t really show the struggle that Rudy had, and there’s so many things you got to cover in the film, you’re not going to have 40 minutes of Rudy struggling to do things, you know, it just did, you know, it would just be boring as hell. But in reality, it took Rudy 13 months, traveling the country doing his his material, you know, performing gigs, and such, and whatever money he was still making off of his records, which wasn’t as much as he was earlier in the 70s. Because, you know, his sales had had dropped off incrementally, you know, throughout the years, of course, you know, he floods his own market, but then you also, everybody else goes, I’m not going to go to jail, if I say the F word 1000 times on a record, so everybody follows suit, you know, and now not only his Rudy flooded his own market, but everybody else is doing is doing that, too. So, he ended up having to, basically, you know, he says, You know, I walked to the country to finance that, that movie, and he was able, he made a couple grand, send it back home, he added a little bit, they maybe shoot a couple scenes that they needed. And finally, after 13 months, I think the ultimate budget came out to twice that it was 140 grand, when he was finally able to complete it. And depending on Rudy’s mood, or what the conversation was, he would either be a champion to that low budget, or he would be embarrassed by it. So it just depended on you know, how, how that broke down? You know, yeah, if you look at 140 grand to make a movie, you know, the, the stuff that AIP was doing is probably 300,000 400,000, you know, for their low, their low end, you know, here you got somebody who’s doing something that’s like, a third third of that. You know, and, and, it’s, it’s a shabby, it’s a shabby movie. You know, no one knew what they were doing really, on the film. No one really had much, if any professional experience, you know, and it shows, but, you know, people like to say, you know, that it’s that it’s a bad movie, you know, always go back to when people would say that, you know, Edwards plan Nine from Outer Space is the worst movie ever made. You know, maybe they’re, maybe they technically suck, but they’re not. You know, there’s entertainment value there. You know, sometimes, and I’ve often commented that dolomite isn’t, you can laugh at and laugh with, because there’s a lot of things that just are absurd, or hokey, or maybe just don’t work.

 

Mark Jason Murray  49:10 

You know, the, the martial arts is is choppy, there’s, you can see scenes where the, you know, the foot is six inches away from the face when they’re when they’re kicking, and, you know, but when I first saw dolomit, it was it was, I mean, obviously, I guess we could say it’s a life changing experience, because I spent the next 30 years trying to find out who this man was and everything that he had done in his life. But, you know, it was like a bomb went off. It was something that is is unexplainable. And, but I was just so intrigued. It was it was just cool. And it was weird. And and it was just kind of like, What in the hell is this? You know? Yeah. And so Prior to in the show this in the film, you know, Rudy does what, what they call for walling. And again, this was another one of my kind of bonehead moments when I was with Scott and Larry going over the script. I’m sitting there saying, like, he really knows what for Walling is like, why are we why, why are we telling this is like, well done, Mark, the audience doesn’t know, what for Walling is. So we’re going to have the theater owner explain this to Rudy. So the crowd under, you know, it’s like, you know, and, you know, the and that’s what he did, he showed it in Indianapolis. You know, they they show that we’re in he did play at Gordy’s lounge just like they show in the film. And it went over well, and then he showed it again, at the end of March. These were both in in March, March of 1975. And then, at the end of March, he showed it at another location, and then he took it back. He went back to Los Angeles. And he really only took it to two studios, he went to American International pictures, they turned it down. Rudy always would tell the story that supposedly the they had, you know, a black man that would watch the potential blaxploitation product? And he would say, yes, or no, you know, he was kind of like their gatekeeper of what was good and what wasn’t. And then that person turned it down. And according to Rudy, and who knows if this is just true, or, or if it’s just one of Rudy’s great stories, that after dolomite became a success, that they supposedly fired that guy at American International, I’m gonna say it probably more so, you know, one of those stories are really like to tell versus, you know, I think I joke in the book that who knows, maybe the guy should have late too many times to work or, or got fired on his own. And it wasn’t just because dolomite became successful. But Rudy always liked to tell great stories. But yeah, the second place that they took it to was dimension pictures, you know, who, who released it? nationally. And, and, and I will say that the, sometimes if, and if they go back, and we sort of compare, and there are comparisons that we can make with dolomite as my name and it would, not just by the screenwriters, but also the some, some critics had said, you know, this is kind of like it was part two, because they have similarities in their, in their careers where nobody would, you know, nobody supported them, but just through like, you know, sheer force of will, they were able to complete, you know, whatever it is that they were trying to do. And, you know, while the ending of Ed Wood is this, you know, triumphant

 

Mark Jason Murray  52:42 

premiere of plan Nine from Outer Space, and everyone’s giving him a standing ovation. And it’s like, this amazing bang, guy, that’s not something that ever happened in that film. To me, that’s, that’s sort of like Ed woods. Dream, you know, he’s, he’s imagining, like, my movie is going to premiere and everybody’s gonna cheer and it’s going to be like, the greatest thing ever. But for dolomite is my name, when they show that premiere at the end of the movie that’s accurate. That was at the woods theater, there were people lined up around the block for hours. And as they say, like, you hear the theater manager say something like, you know, we’re going to show another showing it too. And, and they kept that thing open for, like three or four showings more than what, what was happening. And I remember Jerry Jones telling me about that night, because it sort of similar to how they’re driving it. Holy shit, like looked at all the people out here. The theater owner had called Rudy in the hotel room, and was like, there’s all kinds of people out here, you know, then they want you, you guys should come down. And so he looks at Jerry and says, you know, like, they they want us to go and Jerry’s like, let’s go, man, let’s go down there. And when Jerry got out of the car, I’m specifically remember him telling me, there were so many people there and there was so much energy, that he felt like he just floated out the car, you know, just, like floated out of the car into the theater. And, you know, I mean, imagine, you know, it’s kind of emotional. If you think about it, everything that Rudy went through, just to get that movie on the screen. And then to have an experience like that, where, where, I mean, people were, according to a lady read, I think there was, you know, they were circling the block three or four times people waiting for that, for that movie to play. And Rudy did just what is shown in dolomite is my name, he hung outside, he entertained people. He told me that he walked through that line and shook everybody’s hand, saying thank you for coming to see my movie.

 

Dan LeFebvre  54:54 

I mean, that’s a testament to the kind of person that he is today. I mean, because you think about it. A lot of stars today, you know, go in their movies, they’re not out, you know, shaking everybody’s hand and all that kind of stuff outside the theater, that’s for sure.

 

Mark Jason Murray  55:10 

Some of it, you know, of course, it’s genuine appreciation. I mean, imagine if you had pretty much everything in your life riding on something, you know, if this movie failed, Rudy was done, you know, who knows if he would have ever recovered financially from the CEO, he lost his own investment, like they show in the movie, he would have, you know, he would have been in debt to the record company, for future royalties. So he bet everything on this. And, you know, and he always was a showman. You know, this is a guy who, who spent his life you know, performing and the Chitlin Circuit, I believe there was a part in the movie that they had cut out. I’d love to see that footage someday, if if they ever make it available, but I think there’s a scene where they go, and they actually are walking through like a cow pasture. You know, Rudy and Lady read. For dolomite is my name, they’re walking through a cow pasture to perform in a bar. And they had performed in the barn. Anywhere that they could have a performance was where, where they would go. And, you know, that’s really all Rudy ever knew, was, you know, pounding the pavement. That’s how he made his records of success. You know, it wasn’t just that he, he found success. You know, with eat out more often in Los Angeles, he drove around the country. And you know, where you kind of see him in, in dolomite is my name where he’s selling records out of his trunk. You know, that was, that was Rudy’s reality, he drove all over the country. And he would oftentimes, without even a gig booked, he would show up in town, book himself a gig. You know, he would find people he would pass out records, he would say, you know, he may be late. If we put a timeline on it, let’s say, he shows up in a town on a Monday. He goes, who knows, he goes to the truckstop, he goes where, you know, into the the African American section of town, and he would find like pimps and hookers and people that he the thought were like fun loving looking people. He’d give them record saying, you know, go play this, share with your friends. And by the way, Friday night, you know, I’ll be performing at such and such a club. And so the he just built word of mouth, constantly, everywhere he went, and it’s, you’re not seeing eat out more often being advertised to any great degree in magazines, or it’s not getting played on the record on the radio. I mean, there’s almost nothing out there. That’s that’s propelling this record forward. Other than Rudy, you know, and for that for, for Etown. More often to place on, they had a soul charts at the time in Billboard magazine. It broke the top 50 in the soul charts. I you know, there was I believe it was a comedy chart at the time, but because Rudy stuff was so out there. You know, he wasn’t appearing in the same categories, the Bill Cosby. So they were putting him in the soul charts. And when he did his his next album, which was called this belongs to me, that even got into the charts. So he was the first what he calls soul comic to have two albums at the same time charting on the soul album charts. So it’s just I mean, I, the more I learned about him, I mean, how can you not admire his tenacity in his drive? I mean, this guy was just, I mean, his career was his entire life. You know? It was it meant everything to him. And it’s unfortunate that he never was able to bask in his own glory, so to speak, you know, he never he never got rich. You know, there’s this, this one of those similar stories, as so many artists have had where, you know, people end up making all the money off of you, you know, Rudy, Rudy was so busy putting out material that he wasn’t necessarily paying attention to the business side of things, you know, I’m, without a doubt, I know that, that he was probably owed quite a bit more than he received. You know, and, in my eyes, he should have been living in a mansion, you know, up in the Hollywood Hills, but you know, you had a guy who, who was just kind of like living in an assisted living retirement place, you know, close to the end of his life and, and

 

Mark Jason Murray  59:51 

the fact you know, it was very kind of hurtful to him. And when you get used to you start to more mortality. sits in, you start to get to the, you know, the twilight years of your life, and you’re reflecting on things and, and, you know, there, it’s kind of like with the budget of dolomite. You know, Rudy was proud to always have been, you know, pounding the pavement and making everything that happened in his life happened, basically, you know, through his own inertia. But there’s a sadness to that too. Like, you know, How hard have I worked and misses all that I’ve gotten out of it? Or, or at this point, you know, like, like, where is the money, like, I still have to go out and work to survive, you know, and, and you have a guy who’s still basically doing the same thing, you know, in the early 2000s, as he was doing it 70s playing a small club, and, and, you know, but that’s what Rudy was, you know, he wasn’t an arena performer. You know, and so, you know, it’s sad in some ways, but it’s also, you know, it’s it, there’s a brilliance to him and what he did, and, and I think it’s amazing that it’s that from my own latitude, you know, that I was able to document that and it’s able to be presented in this film. You know, the, that’s people like that. That’s a dying breed. You know, that’s that stuff does not happen anymore. And same thing with Jimmy Lynch, you know, and Jimmy Lynch is actually probably the biggest. What’s the word I want to use here? I guess you could say having Jimmy Lynch in the movie is maybe the biggest exaggeration that they use in in dolomite is my name. And when I say that is he absolutely deserved his character to be represented in that film. But the reality was that Jimmy was never there. During the making of dolomite. He actually shows up for like a cameo in the original dolomit and gets a name drop. Because Jimmy was only in town for like, one day, we’re filming. And each shows up and did that, because Jimmy himself was a singer, and a comedian and an entertainer. And he was on tour at that time, when Dola Matt was being filmed. So he just happened to be coming into town. When they were shooting, it was able to make a cameo. But Jimmy was instrumental in Rudy’s entire career. I mean, not only the fact that, that when they met, you know, he had already done you know, a mother, or on a record that inspired Rudy to take it further. But Jimmy was always there to help Rudy with his material, help him with all of his films. Jimmy was a set designer he can carpenter, he could do everything he made his own clothes. So when you the following movies like human tornado PDB, Tron disco Godfather, and even when Rudy did is dolomite explosion film, you know, Jimmy was a big part of all of that. And when you when you got those two together, and if you if you add Cliff Rockmore, who was the director of human, human tornado, and Petey wheat straw, and also worked on disco Godfather, like the three of them, when they’re all together, in their own ways, I think we’re able to make magic. So it’s great to have Jimmy represented in the film, although he wasn’t there at the timeframe that the film takes place. But you have things like, and this is another say poetic license that they used in dolomite is my name, where they show the bed shaking scene where the ceiling falls down and everything that actually was from the second movie, The Human tornado, and in some ways people criticized them for including this. And I agree with with Scott and Larry of how could they not have included that, that that is probably the most iconic and hilarious scene out of any one of Rudy’s movies. You know, how could you not include that, and there’s no way that we’re going to be able to make a movie where they show every one of these movies being made, you know, it’d be a six hour film, and it would be the same story of, I don’t have any money and how are we going to make this happen? And, you know, I mean, that’s every time Rudy had a new project, it was it was like starting over from scratch, you know, but to include that it had to be there and that that is one of the funniest scenes in the film, and I particularly loved the way that they present it when you kind of have

 

Mark Jason Murray  1:04:34 

the Durva Mark characters currently, you know, looking around like with the beds, kind of the rooms kind of falling apart. It’s just like, What the hell’s going on in here, you know, and you know, they just did a brilliant job on but that was actually the whole bed shaking and all that stuff. That was all Jimmy’s creation. He was the one who, who put the bed on casters and cut out the ceiling and put it on wires and they got the the flash power We’re in. And so that whole setup from the human tornado was, was basically like Jimmy’s creation, you know, so, so he had to be in there. So I’m really glad that he was a part of that. And, you know, I will say one of the highlights of my life was being able to sit there privately with, with Ben Taylor, and Jamie Lynch, we saw another advanced screening of the movie at Netflix before the premiere, and also having them at the premiere with us, you know, they they got their due, and they deserved it as well.

 

Dan LeFebvre  1:05:33 

At the very end of the movie, there’s some text that says dolomite that the movie dolomiten was one of the biggest hits of the year. And then in the early 1980s, early rappers universally acclaimed Rudy as the godfather of rap. So can you give us an overview of Rudy’s career kind of after the timeline of the film and some of the impact that he had?

 

Mark Jason Murray  1:05:53 

Yeah, and it’s actually a really interesting, and it was, in some ways, easy. And this was, it book was probably the most difficult thing I’ll ever do in my life. But it was easy to kind of compartmentalize his life because it seemed like everything kind of happened in a decade increments, you know, so, so, like 70s was was comedy, but primarily, like, the films. So he did all of his films. And then he had done disco Godfather in 1979. And it was kind of an attempt to make a PG film. Clean up Rudy a little bit, it’s a message movie, there’s a there’s, you know, he’s, he’s, he’s a disco DJ, you know, disco is, is the big thing at the time. And there’s also a PCP problem locally. So Rudy as the disco Godfather, you know, goes out and trying to put an end to the angel dust. It’s infiltrating the area. Unfortunately, the for that movie, I mean, it is the weakest of Rudy’s movies. It’s got some pretty interesting items in it, but it’s sort of this mishmash of horror elements in disco music and, and a bunch of stuff that that now we can look back at it and say, you know, this movie is out of its mind. But at the time, people were going like this, you know, the hell’s really doing wearing like a disco outfit. And, you know, there was a little history to in, I think it was July of 79, there was this big thing that they had at Comiskey Park with this DJ named Steve Dahl, who had basically made it his life’s mission to destroy disco music. So they had this event at Kaminski park where people could bring disco records. And for like, I think it was 98 cents, they could get into the baseball game, which was like the call letters of the radio station you worked for. And so during during the break between it was a doubleheader. So in between the two games, they took this giant bin of all these people’s disco records out into centerfield and exploded them. And the place erupted in like in a total riot. So it became this huge thing. They call it a Disco Demolition night. And, and although you can’t necessarily credit that specific event for like the death of disco, but I mean, you had like 30,000 people that were just like, we hate disco, and we’re here to destroy it. They weren’t there to watch a baseball game. They were there out of their hatred for for disco music. And if you look at the, like the Billboard charts, it was like, just before that happened, pretty much everything in the top 10 was a disco song. And within like a week or two of that there was like no disco on the charts. So I mean, you can draw your conclusions that seems like that was that might have been like the moment where it just kind of like that was kind of a definitive moment where disco kind of was on its way out. But Rudy’s movie doesn’t come out until like September. So not only are you not Rudy Ray Moore, you’re also doing a theme that is now you know, no one is interested in. So his movie was outdated before it even came out. He credited that movie, as you know, the one that ruined his film career. And I don’t know if I could say specifically that that destroyed his film career. I mean, it definitely hurt his film career. But, you know, 1980 comes along Reaganomics. So musics dramatically changing. You know, the, the cultural climate is is like, almost night and day from the 70s. Where would Rudy have been? You know, there there really wasn’t anywhere for him to go all his material was dated, his comedy materials dated, his films were dated place the majority of the places that his films had been playing throughout the years, like the drive ins are drying up, you know, you were gonna go down your local multiplex and see any movies, movies. You know, the box office blockbusters are starting to happen, you know, drive ins are being tore down. So he had really nothing, yet no outlet for his, his material. So he almost like became irrelevant. Overnight, when the 80s hit. It was a really, really tough part of his life.

 

Mark Jason Murray  1:10:40 

He did still have his comedy material to go back on. And he did continue to tour as much as he could and perform. You know, he’s a road performer, he, he always was on the road. So at least he had that to, to continue, you know, you think about some of the some of the black action stars of the 70s. You know, when those movies dried up, they have another career to fall back on. You know, at least Rudy had comedy, and film. So he there was he had a little bit of, of a variation of what he could do. But he also had, at the end of shooting disco Godfather, he shot a small live film in a live performance film. And it took them a couple of years to get that thing completed. I think it was 82. And it finally was able to be shown. But again, he was back to back to square one driving around the country with a film print in the back of his car, trying to get that movie shown. You know, and he was he was he was down and out. By the mid 80s. We’ll say like 86, you know, my timeline might be off by a year or two. People start to remember, Rudy, and a lot of this is with hip hop and rap and people starting to sample things and records. And you have all these young artists who, who actually grew up on Rudy’s albums, whether they were supposed to or not, a lot of them were sneaking, sneaking listens to them, and their parents weren’t around. But, you know, a lot of these these artists don’t really recall, Rudy’s material, and you just really made an impression on them. Even even Steve Harvey had noted that he, he does these things, because he has a talk show and he does these little like things where he talks to the crowd beforehand and, and before the show starts, and they would put him on his website and stuff. And there was one that he did, where he talked about Rudy Ray Moore. And when he was a young boy, his mother had bought him a a tape recorder. You know, there’s little single little handle, you press play and record at the same time, and the little door flips open. So he he for fun. The first thing he did on there was he recited I think he was said he was like 10 years old, he recites the st. Rudy Ray Moore’s version of signifying monkey into the recorder. And his mother somehow plays it and hears it, and you know, oh, my God, you know, freaks out on him. And so, something like the story is, you know, Dad’s I can Wow, punish him, but his dad actually took Steve down to the barbershop and was like, Yo, you gotta hear money, you gotta hear my son. Do you know Rudy Ray Moore signify a monkey, you know, like, and so. So you had this, this generation that, that, you know, it’s kind of like, you know, when I was young, like sneaking, sneaking a peek at dad’s Playboy magazines, you know, we’ve all had those kiddos kind of like, it’s just kind of like a rite of passage, you know, so their thing was looking at Rudy Ray Moore’s record albums and go, you know, here’s this bunch of girls with titties out, you know, like, and, and what is this crazy stuff. So, obviously, that has an impression on them. And so these these groups start, start sampling these things. And it was primarily a two Live Crew. And Rudy had nothing, he said he had nothing going on, and struggling to survive. And so to live true, starts to sample in all these other groups starts to sample. And at first, it was just people just were liberally pulling from these old comedy albums, to have true most of their samples all came from actually laugh records, because they were sampling the one two page scale and Leroy early Richard Pryor, all that stuff had been out on laugh records, and the only other artists that even like man 10 Morley, and then they’re also sampling Rudy stuff. And so since that sampling was kind of new people were just doing whatever they wanted. And then after the fact, when they found out that people were sampling then you Rudy and whoever was working with him at the time would kind of go back and be like, hey, you know, you’ve sampled our, our album, you know, and so they would give Rudy a little bit of money. And, and he just started to, like, he became like the main guy to sample. I think, I think the top three people that are sampled are, I don’t know what the order would be, but it’s Rudy, James Brown, and Parliament Funkadelic, you know, anything like George Clinton related, you know, you got to think about

 

Mark Jason Murray  1:15:33 

like, Dr. Dre is the Tronic album, which is like the highest selling most regarded hip hop rap album of all time. That thing is primarily just a bunch of Parliament samples. It Rudy appears on there. And so they just all started to give him that credit. And the the idea that he’s kind of this Godfather, some of that is, is propelled by his own ego. You know, but there, there is some truth to it. And I and I discussed this at length in the book, because I want you know, I tried to give everything that he’s done some cultural and contextual, you know, places so that it’s valid, you know, I’m not just saying Rudy helped originate rap, you know, I’m, I’m proving it in my writing. But the idea that he, he was doing these raps, if we could call them raps, they rhyming, and he’s got music in the background, although it’s not like it’s not hip hop beats or anything like that. It’s sort of like this funky freeform jazz kind of stuff that’s going on back there wasn’t recorded, specifically to rhythmically accompany Rudy’s verbalizations that were just background music. But it gives us idea that music and rhyming and all of the stuff is coming, coming together. And, and everybody just took it and went in and ran with it. And it almost became like, you know, if you want credibility in your career, you either need to name drop dolomite, or reference, you know, one of his his comedy albums, and he just became like, the go to guy. And you not only were people sampling him, but he would start to make appearances on albums by two Live Crew, Dr. Dre is out when Snoop Dogg in videos. You know, he did the Big Daddy Kane vs. dolomite song. And, you know, the thing that I love about that song is that, you know, you got Big Daddy Kane and dolomite kind of rap battling against each other. And at the end, you have big dedicated, like, you know, screw mount, you know, and that’s like, their way of giving him props, like, you’re not going to win if you go up against dolomite, like, he’s dolomite, you know, so they, they really embraced him. And and, you know, beautifully that was able to resurrect his his career, and, and pretty much solely the resurrection of his career at that time. Like I said, he had nothing going on. And a lot of people have forgotten about him, you get to the point where it’s like, I guess still alive, you know, like, he’s not dead. And so he was able to, to just just work off that momentum, and keep that rolling, you know, throughout the 90s. And that’s, that’s essentially what, what sustained him because album sales are low, you know, he’s not, he’s not making any money off of album sales anymore. In early 1980, or 81 ish, Kent records, I believe that they completely gone out of business. And they, they returned all of Rudy’s masters to him. So he owned all of his own material, but there was no real market to reissue those, you know, and ultimately, Rudy’s entire career is kind of a niche of a niche. And in the 80s, and 90s, that niche didn’t even exist anymore. So what where does he go, you know,

 

Dan LeFebvre  1:19:12 

times have changed. And it sounds like not only not only that, but the the way that just the music industry is be marketed or, you know, comedy or mood, like, all that change, too. So his way of marketing and it’s not the same anymore.

 

Mark Jason Murray  1:19:30 

Well, and you got to think of it too, like he kind of pioneered things that the rapper’s later, later, you know, took to and I think that’s the, the it’s that street hustle. You know, Rudy sold his records out of the back of his truck. He may have been the first artists to ever do that. You know, I’m certainly not familiar with anybody else who’s driving around the country. You know, listen to my filthy record. I got a I got a copy here in the trunk if you want to buy it. You know, nowadays if somebody came Up to you, you’d think they were gonna kidnap you or something like that, like, you want to buy some speakers. You know, I remember those things when I was a kid. No. But, you know, that’s how NWA and Eazy E got started selling records out of the back of their trunk. You know, so, I, the thing that that I think that all of those artists really identified with is just that hustle. You know, you gotta hustle to make it happen. You know, and, and when, when they achieved their success, you know, they were very gracious to Rudy. You know, even easy. He has Rudy on a, on an intro to a song. And Eric B and Rakim have Rudy doing videos. And so they just started to, to bring him along for things and Rudy was really appreciative.

 

Dan LeFebvre  1:20:48 

Well, thank you so much for coming on to chat about dolomite is my name. Your book is called thank you for letting me be myself the authorized biography of Rudy Ray Moore, aka dollar night. I’ll include links to that in the show notes for this episode. So anyone listening can learn more about the true story. But before I let you go, can you give us a little teaser of your book, maybe a favorite story about the real Rudy Ray Moore that didn’t make its way into the movie? Well,

 

Mark Jason Murray  1:21:11 

I think those are, those are the personal stories. Obviously, Rudy was one of a kind, you know, it’s everybody that knew him. There, there’s an affection for him. I mean, he’s just, he is truly one of a kind. One of the things that I always thought was hilarious about him, as he always had nicknames, people. And it was just whatever it was, it was either his way of remembering or whatnot. But he, my first introduction to him was I was doing a little fanzine called shocking images, where it was horror movies and other stuff. And so when I contacted him to do an interview for that, I wanted to include him in in every issue that I was doing. And so whenever I would call you, Rudy, it’s marking a mark from images that are shocking. You know, and so, for so for, for almost forever. That’s, that’s who I was. So he had like a nickname for everybody. And he always had weird hours, he seemed like he would be up all night long. And there were times when he would call me at two, three o’clock in the morning. And he would sometimes pretend in these different voices, like one time he was pretending to be like, Chinese or something really terrible. attempt at a Chinese accent, AI. You know, like this hammer thing? And it’s like, really? What the hell are you doing? You any we upset? Like, how’d you know? It was me? You know, as like, like, the road like, come on Rudy, like, you know, and, and one of the things that I that I really love about the the nostalgia that people feel about Rudy is, anytime someone that new view, is telling the story about him. They always have their own kind of impersonation of him, because he had this this just one of a kind, deep, baritone, slow voice that was just his, and everyone always, like you can’t help it like, like, somehow Rudy channels through you. When you’re saying something that he had said it, you know, it’s, I think, I think it’s just kind of beautiful that that happens every time. And when people start to remember him or things that they’ve said to him.

 

Dan LeFebvre  1:23:27 

Yeah, well, maybe that lends to why he influenced so many other creatives, they just wanted to mimic him and be like him.

 

Mark Jason Murray  1:23:35 

Yeah, I’ve always said that, that Rudy had the it factor. Although he was the only one that knew he had it. That’s great. You know,

 

Dan LeFebvre  1:23:49 

I thank you again, so much for your time. I really appreciate it.

 

Mark Jason Murray  1:23:52 

Thanks for having me on. I appreciate it

Dan LeFebvre  01:43

The movie opens with a spoof on the birth of baby Jesus, three wise men show up at two o’clock in the morning to worship the baby. They explain to Mandy, the baby’s mother, that they were led there by a star. She’s about to shoo them away when one of the wise men says we must see him. We have presence, gold, frankincense, myrrh, and Mandy’s replies like, oh, well, why didn’t you say so? He’s right over here. And then we find out the baby’s name is Brian. But what did you think of that opening sequence? In the movie? Looking at it from a historical perspective?

Adele Reinhartz  02:16

Well, first of all, it’s 100% hilarious. And it shows us the character of Mandy right away. And then of course, at the end of this season, they realize they see another another major, who lit up, and they realize they’ve been at the wrong place, and they take their gifts back. So that’s kind of funny. From a historical point of view, it’s it’s very difficult to assess this is based on the account in the Gospel of Matthew in the infancy narrative about the Magi coming to visit. And we don’t know the historicity of that, but the scene itself and in the movie, is really a take off on how that scene is presented in Christmas cards, in Christmas pageants and in other Jesus movies. So you’ve got the star making its way slowly across the sky. And then, you know, this atmosphere of reverence with the sacred music, and then you’ve got Mandy. So it really sets up that record the still is going to be about or at the film is going to do, which is essentially take some of the building blocks both of the Gospels, but also of Jesus movies, and Jesus and popular culture, and make fun of them.

Dan LeFebvre  03:40

Now, one of the overarching themes throughout the movie, of course, is the idea that Brian gets misidentified as Jesus was that a common thing misidentification back then?

Adele Reinhartz  03:50

I think that that’s really a part of the film’s comic premise. And it allows them to be free and how they portray Brian. The film is interesting the film was, they had a hard time getting it released commercially. And in the end, I think it was triggered through the intervention of George Harrison, it finally did get released. And the reason was that people were worried that it was blasphemous or that it portray Jesus in a negative light. If you actually see the film Jesus is in the brief moments when Jesus is there on the screen is completely reverential. The fun is with Brian, and I think that’s really why they did it not so much because misunder mis identification was a common theme. But because it allowed them a certain freedom to portray Brian without the constraints that filmmakers face when they try to portray Jesus.

Dan LeFebvre  04:53

That’s that’s a good point. I didn’t I didn’t think about that. That would free them up a lot. Yep.

Adele Reinhartz  04:58

I mean, you know, Jesus has to be in the Jesus movies, Jesus has to be presented as this kind of pure, asexual, perfect character, you know, film character, which makes him uninteresting. Because the characters that we enjoy watching on film are those who change who make mistakes to, you know, allow themselves to get emotionally involved, and so on and so forth. And so the only way really to have fun with this whole theme is by finding somebody else as a as a standard.

Dan LeFebvre  05:38

That makes sense. You mentioned blasphemy there. And that is something that comes up in the movie as well. I love movies do this all the time with the the the texts to set up the time and place and I love how that how they did that in here, you know, saying it’s Judea 33 ad Saturday afternoon, but tea time. And then we see the the blasphemy you know, there’s a man being stoned because he said the name Jehovah and that leads to a lot of other people being stoned. Is there any historical truth to that sort of punishment for blasphemy in that time?

Adele Reinhartz  06:12

Again, it’s hard to know, you know, historical truth when we’re talking about this period, is very hard to establish because the sources that are at our disposal, certainly don’t provide a full picture. According to Leviticus, Leviticus 2416, if anyone wants to look it up, and I’ll just quote here, one who blessed schemes, the name of the Lord shall be put to death. The whole congregation shall stone the blessed schemer, aliens of Willis citizens when they blaspheme the name they shall be put to death. So the idea of stoning as a punishment for blasphemy is there in Leviticus in the Bible, however, we don’t know whether this was applied to people? Their honor, and I mean, there’s a passage in the Gospel of John and chapter 10, that talks about Jews picking up stones to stone Jesus, I mean, they don’t in the end. So perhaps, you know, there is some hint that this did take place on occasion. But I think that the main will, again, when the main, the main objective of any Monty Python film, entertain it to be funny. And that certainly is a hilarious scene, although, you know, of course, he does die at the end, the guy who’s being stoned for Boston, so but I think it is based on this passage and with this idea of

Dan LeFebvre  07:42

speaking of punishment, another hilarious one, of course, with Monty Python, we’re getting a lot of that. There’s the scene where the Roman soldiers are correcting the the Latin grammar of the graffiti that’s going on, it just reminded me of days, you know, where teachers would make a student write the same sentence over and over on a blackboard, you know, as a form of punishment. Do we know if that was also a form of punishment that they had,

Adele Reinhartz  08:10

we actually don’t know. This singing when my kids were did studied Latin in high school, the teacher would show this scene played really well in Latin class, and studied primarily for comic effect, their graffiti was very well known, we have a lot of graffiti from the Roman period, what we don’t know is whether people were punished for it. If they, you know, it would be punished. If it was punished at all, it would be under the laws of vandalism. And there are probably one could imagine, although I, you know, I don’t have the sources here in front of me that painting graffiti on a temple or some other sacred site would be problematic. Whether that would apply to public buildings, as we see in in the film, I don’t really know. But I think it probably was not a major punishment, and it would not have been punished by that it was covered the entire. So the main point of the scene really, it’s a it’s a spoof, on the English public school system, that is their private school system, where Latin and other classical languages were taught. And there were very sort of traditional forms of rote learning, and of punishment, the writing out of line. So I think that’s the context. And in fact, a stoning scene that we talked about earlier also has elements of that, you know, where people who are disturbing in the front gets sent to the back of the, of the class of the mob, and so on, but there is that thread as well. And I’ll just say two things. Parenthetically. The one of the aspects of Monty Python’s genius is really This ability to be humorous on several different levels. So there’s the humor involved in the reenactment, or the ancient setting of the scene is just so incongruous with the mode of punishment, you know, reading out lines on a so called Blackboard. But then it also refers to the English public school system, which is a major source of some of the class divisions in British society. And so that’s part of their genius. The other thing I would say is that Roman Italian cities have graffiti all over them. So we’re living right now in Rome. And there’s neighborhoods in Rome that are entirely covered with graffiti. And the other day, we visited Naples, and I don’t, it doesn’t seem like there’s a single surface on any building an impulse that isn’t covered with graffiti is kind of jarring to the I need to get used to it. But I think this is a very ancient, and perhaps somewhat respected form of public expression. Here

Dan LeFebvre  11:01

is so much history that, you know, it kind of makes sense that over time it would happen. I mean, I know it happens here in the US

Adele Reinhartz  11:10

to see it. I think in North America as more anomalous, you know that there’s graffiti and it’s a violation of public space. And it might not be punished in any way. But they’re often efforts to remove it. But here in Italy, you don’t really see that you don’t see the efforts to remove it. It’s just there. How do you Well,

Dan LeFebvre  11:34

do you think the movie did just portraying Romans occupying Judea doesn’t really give a lot of explanation as to why we’re just kind of thrown into that. Can you fill in some more historical context around that? Yeah,

Adele Reinhartz  11:46

well, the Judea came under Roman occupation, I think in the first century before the Common Era. And it continued for some centuries after that, with punctuated by by revolts. So in that sense, you know, so during the time of Jesus, we know that Judea was under Roman occupation, under the leadership of a governor, in this case, pilot, conscious pilot. And, you know, there are there are descriptions of this and your sources and in the writings of Josephus, but again, here, I think that the primary inspiration for how the film depicts this is other Jesus movies. Do you have movies, like the greatest story ever told from the mid 60s and the king, king of kings, also the epic for the mid 60s, and other films that and films like Ben Hur, you know, that portray this in a particular way? And I think the Monty Python still lives with Brian takes its cues from that portrayal.

Dan LeFebvre  13:04

Okay, so yeah. And that makes sense that they would spoof a lot of the movies that people expect to see, you know, those visuals, those visuals are kind of expecting

Adele Reinhartz  13:15

at the speed of visuals. And so in some cases, I’m not sure in this case, whether Life of Brian is spoofing back for trail is taking over that portrayal, although, although scenes of them chasing each other around, chasing the goose rebels around or vice versa, you know, in the depths of the, of the palace. You know, there’s certainly humor, humor in that.

Dan LeFebvre  13:41

In The Life of Brian, we do see him joining a group called the People’s Front of Judea. They’re trying to fight back against the Romans. Was there actually resistance against the Roman occupation?

Adele Reinhartz  13:53

Yes, there was resistance against the Roman occupation. And so we know about this from the writings of Josephus, who was a first century Jewish historian wrote a set of books called the Jewish War, which talks about the lead up to the first revolt against Rome, which took place between 66 and 73. And he also also wrote a wrote a set of treatises called the Jewish antiquities, where he added in the later books of that he also talks about the various social movements that led to the revolt. So he refers there to a group called the Sicarii. This was a Jewish group of really rebels against Rome, kind of guerrilla fighters, we, we might see them as are from a Roman perspective, they would have been terrorists. And the term Sicarii refers to this kind of very sharp knife that they carry in their robes. You know, as far as we know, wouldn’t we see this in the film and we have kind of statuary evidence of this, as well. The dress was robes with lots of fun Also things like that. And there will be pockets and so on easy to hide things. And so Josephus talks about these rebels as hiding their knights in their robes. And then, you know, stabbing people sort of randomly. And so they were among those who spearheaded the revolt against Rome.

Dan LeFebvre  15:20

So it sounds like there was more organization to it that well known Peoples Front that we see in the film, perhaps, but more than just randomness. It sounds like there was some organization to it.

Adele Reinhartz  15:32

Yes, there were groups, there were definitely groups. And there may have been more than what Josephus tells us about as well. There was a matter of controversy among the different groups that we know about or that Josephus tells us about from this period for the first century, there was controversy around whether it was a good idea to revolt against Rome or not in Rome was this mega power. Judea, you know, was a tiny sliver of land occupied, you know, populated by people who didn’t have armies and legions and so on. So how could they actually revolt against this big power, and there was, you know, quite a lot of controversy as to whether this was a good idea or not, I mean, in the end, people did revolt, I’m sure there were those who disagreed with that. And what’s interesting is that, you know, the revolt began around 66. But it wasn’t fully quashed until 73. That’s a long time. So that’s kind of interesting in the course of that, that the Herod’s Temple was destroyed. So this is the destruction of the temple. That’s a real watershed point. In Jewish history, the way that Jewish history is talked about is the destruction of the of the Second Temple. So that happened in approximately 70.

Dan LeFebvre  16:53

So you said it started in year 66. So it would have happened, at least at the timeline of the movie, it would have happened after all of that.

Adele Reinhartz  17:01

Yes, that would have happened after you want to at least still, I think we can speculate that even during the time that Jesus, which was about three or four decades earlier than that there was unrest, I think there’s no question that there was a certain amount of unrest, and there might have been an organized kind of attempts at resisting or at, at revolting. In a wintry we might see the passion story, as some evidence of that as well. Where the other person, the Barabas, who was ended up being released is described as a kind of a robber. But the term in Greek that is used there, refers more to we might call it a brigand, you know, somebody that is kind of engaged in, let’s say, terrorist activities against the ruling power. So that gives us a bit of a hint that perhaps there were resistance movements already at the time of Jesus, we don’t know. Exactly.

Dan LeFebvre  18:06

We do see that sort of happened in the movie with the releasing of the prisoner. In the scene in the movie, of course, they you know, they turned it into a joke and go through the list of names. You know, there’s Roger Roderick, all of these are not actual prisoners. They’re just trying to get pilots to say ours. But, but it sounds like it would have been something that actually happened that he would have asked the crowd to release a prisoner.

Adele Reinhartz  18:35

Well, it says so in the gospels in the Gospel versions of the passion story, in all four versions, I believe, pilot does ask the crowd, whether they want ease, he says, you know, it’s the customer at Passover, to release a prisoner. Do you want Jesus to be released? Or do you want Barabas to be released in the crowd chooses Baraka us. So that’s a poignant moment and effect. I think the Brian movie captures that very beautifully, because in the end, they want to release Brian, but everybody’s claiming to be Brian, the real Brian is being released. Do I really like this guy? Well, I couldn’t have gotten off, you know, gotten off the hook on this one. But we don’t know. As far as I know, there’s no historical evidence outside of the Gospels for that practice. So we don’t know whether this was an invention of the gospel tradition. It’s there at all for them. So it’s not an invention of any of the individual writers. But it is, you know, we don’t really know a lot and to my knowledge, we don’t have any external corroboration for that practice. The

Dan LeFebvre  19:47

impression I would I would get from that would be almost appeasing the crowds, which would kind of go back to there are some uprisings or you know, unhappiness going on. Why else would you ask the crowd What prisoner they want to release?

Adele Reinhartz  20:01

Oh, that’s right. And in, in the Gospel of Matthew, it’s very clear that Pilate was worried about a right. You know, again, you know, there are different versions of this story. And I tend to be historical skeptic. So I hesitate to ascribe historicity based on the gospel stories alone, but when you imagine it, and so in that context, it one could also imagine that in order to appease the crowd, or to keep a riot from happening, that he would offer the release of a prisoner. But again, we don’t know whether that was historical, the portraits that we get a conscious pilot in the Gospels is very different from what you learned about Pilate from other sources. In the Gospels, it seems like he’s really concerned to avoid trouble. And he actually sort of worried about condemning an innocent man. And he feels that he’s been his arm has been twisted into ordering his execution. But in other sources, he comes across as ruthless. That’s really, you know, it’s hard to make these two pictures mesh with each other. In other sources, he doesn’t hesitate to do any of this. And so we don’t know how much of this portrait was sort of massaged by the tradition, you know, by the fall followers of Jesus, who ended up writing down these stories.

Dan LeFebvre  21:35

If we go back to the movie, there’s another funny sequence. They’re all funny sequences. But this is when we see Brian starting to get his followers and the way the movie portrays this, you’re just, there’s Roman soldiers trying to find him. And so he’s just coming up with random sayings. And people start following him, they start worshiping the gourd that he just happened to have, or his shoe falls off. And they all it’s a sign we must do the same. Of course, the impression I got was it super easy to get people to believe whatever it is, you’re saying? I think there’s outside of Brian, we in the movie we see there’s there are other people there that are also just saying things and have their own little followers. Is there anything to suggest that Jesus got followers as quickly as we see Brian doing in the movie, it’s really

Adele Reinhartz  22:23

hard to say mean, the Gospels stories portray him portray Jesus as wandering around in the Galilee, for the most part, or the Gospel of John, he goes back and forth between the gallery and Jerusalem. And he does miracles. And he makes speeches. And at each point, the Gospels refer to the crowds that are legion him or the crowds that followed him. So again, we don’t know whether that’s, you know, it’s all written down after the fact. So we don’t know how quickly this would have happened. Was it within the space of a few days? Which is what it seems like in the in the film, or did this take place over a period of months? Or are the gospel writers exaggerating the impact that he had? So it’s very hard to know. But again, these scenes like especially the scene in the movie, where Brian, I guess he falls out a window, right? He’s escaping, try to stay for the Romans and he falls out or will grow. And he ends up standing on this kind of a stage or a platform, along with a bunch of other people and everybody’s making a speech and everybody, you know, pontificating and he just stands there and says this nonsense, and the crowd gather. So, again, there’s a two fold sort of comic element to that. On the one hand, it does reflect what we know from Roman sources as to how people disseminated their beliefs and how people disseminated the things that they wrote. They stood in a public place, usually in a market, often on a platform like that, maybe not quite so crowded together. And they would read their stuff out or they would proclaim their stuff. And as people walk by, they would stop and listen kind of like buskers today, right, if a busker in the subway station or busker out in a here in Italy in a piazza. And people walk by and they stop and listen, and maybe they stay for a long time. And maybe they just walk on by so this is from what we know about ancient Rome. This was taking place through the Roman Empire, as well. But it also takes place in London in Hyde Park. If you ever go to Hyde Park, you will see that same thing that people stand on their soapboxes and Proclaim Care their ideas or their writings. And so you have that double edge, kind of contemporary and ancient reference point.

Dan LeFebvre  24:54

I guess I’d never heard of that. Just like saying their own beliefs. I know I’ve heard stories, you know, like reading newspapers or telling the news and things like that, you know, town criers, and that sort of sort of thing is a similar concept.

Adele Reinhartz  25:08

Right? It’s a similar concept. I mean, we’re talking about, you know, we’re talking about tiny town criers, it’s more, I suppose, the medieval period that we think about with that, but these are all a kind of societies with low levels of literacy societies where people didn’t really absorb their information by reading it, as you would have. Let’s say somebody wrote a treatise or a book, well, how would they get their work known. We don’t have printing presses, we don’t have easy ways, you know, agents and publishers, and so on that get our, you know, get our work out there. And they would stand in the marketplace and read up their materials. And that’s how work kind of got, you know, published or they would have reading circles where somebody who could read, you know, would read stuff out loud. So that’s how ideas got circulated. I think that’s probably how the Gospels themselves originally circulated and smell and some sort of oral kind of public proclamation

Dan LeFebvre  26:07

is something that we see in the movie is when the Jews want to be separate from the Samaritans, when they’re crucified, like separating them there at the end, where they’re really separations

Adele Reinhartz  26:18

like that. Yeah, I don’t know what but on the crucifixion field, kind of how that would have worked. But yes, there is a lot of evidence for tensions between Jews and Samaritans. So Samaritans are a different group. They’re not Jewish, they are Samaritan, but it’s likely that they originated from some similar Millia, as did the ancient Israelites. So they have a Samaritan Bible, which is similar to the Bible that we know Hebrew Bible or Jewish Scriptures, Old Testament, you know, whatever, however you refer to it, but not identical. And they maintain certain practices, for example, sacrifices of Passover and so on. But the ancient sources do agree that there were social divisions between Jews and Christians, you probably wouldn’t have marriage be Jews and Samaritan story, you wouldn’t have marriage to my knowledge between Jews and Samaritans. The Gospel of John refers to says it’s very strange that Jesus asks the Samaritan woman for a drink of water because Jews and Samaritans wouldn’t share drinking vessels. The Treatises of Josephus also referred to tensions between Jews and Samaritans. So the movie is accurate in at least, signaling that tension, the white signal is really, again, a spoof on the British class system, or even in crucifixion, you wouldn’t want to be beside somebody who wasn’t your social status.

Dan LeFebvre  27:59

Yeah, I guess I could see how it’d be there being crucified at that point, that would be up to the Romans, and I have a feeling that they wouldn’t have much choice.

Adele Reinhartz  28:07

No, they wouldn’t have much choice. No, one doesn’t imagine so.

Dan LeFebvre  28:14

Well, speaking of being crucified, at the end of the movie, we see there’s like 140 people that are being crucified at the same time, where they’re such large numbers crucified like that, at the same time.

Adele Reinhartz  28:27

There’s no Yes or mask crucifixions are the one that seems to be the most famous took place during the Spartacus revolt, the revolt instigated by Spartacus and 71. Before the Common Era slave revolt, where according to sources, it says 6000 People were crucified at once again, whether that’s historical, it’s hard to say. But there are other references as well to mass crucifixions of three, four or 500 people, or more at a time. And the Gospels also give us this indication that other people were crucified at the same time, it refers to the people on either side of Jesus. But it’s quite likely that there was a large group that was crucified at that time. It was very common. I mean, this is the Romans did this kind of they didn’t need much. It was a way a good way of solving problems if your problems were caused by other people.

Dan LeFebvre  29:29

Yeah, I guess that you said goes back to if it’s if crucifixion is that common, then that’s only going to make people want to revolt even more.

Adele Reinhartz  29:37

Yeah. I mean, it’s an example of the kind of oppression that Rome was capable of exerting on people.

Dan LeFebvre  29:45

I know in the gospels, obviously, of focusing on that particular area, but Rome owned a lot. A lot of land. Did they do that pretty universally across their entire empire?

Adele Reinhartz  29:55

As far as I know they did. Yeah. The Roman Empire was vast. You know, we had Roman. I mean, it extended up to Great Britain. Well and further east from Rome, and, you know, it was, it was huge was absolutely huge. Whether it was this was done everywhere or uniformly I don’t know. But it’s likely that it wasn’t only in Judea. I mean, we know that it wasn’t only in Judea that the system was something about

Dan LeFebvre  30:27

the movie that it got right about history that probably surprise people.

Adele Reinhartz  30:33

So there’s one particular moment where the, the sell of the copy was the Popular Front. People’s Front of Judea. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s probably six or seven people. So there’s one really hilarious thing. What have the Romans ever done for us? This is when the leader of this group is trying to foment their rebellious nature against foment rebellion against Rome. They’ve bled a swipe the bastards they’ve taken everything we had, and not just from us, from our fathers, and from our fathers, fathers. And then others go on from our father’s father’s father’s father’s and, and then he asks, Reg asks, and what have they ever given us in return? And it turns out, they all pipe up is a long list of benefits that the Romans bestowed on Judea, the aqueducts, sanitation, roads, irrigation, medicine, education, wine, public baths, public safety. And then finally, the leader says, all right, but apart from sanitation, the medicine, the education and so on, What have the Romans ever done for us? And one person says, broad peace, and Rich says, Oh, shut up. So this is funny. It’s very, very funny. That actually, as far as I know, it’s based on a passage in the Babylonian Talmud. Now, I should say, I don’t know that they read that passage in the Babylonian Talmud. All I will say for sure is that there is a similar passage in the Babylonian Talmud, which is the Babylonian Babylonian Talmud, is a sixth century, massive compilation of legal sources, stories, all kinds of material. And they’re in the tractate, called Shabbat or Sabbath. There’s this exchange between the number of rabbis and when the rabbi says how pleasant are the actions of this nation, the Romans, they established marketplaces, they built bridges, they established bath houses, and then you know, other things. So what’s surprising about it is that idea of appreciation, the idea that Roman occupation didn’t bring only high taxation and misery, which I think it probably did, surely did. But also certain benefits. They the Romans were quite advanced in terms of some of their public sanitation, their their understanding of hygiene and sanitation. And you can see that in archaeological remains in Judea, by the way, as well as in Rome, and Pompeii and other other sites, it Roman sites in Italy, where they had, for example, bathhouses that would have a cold room, a tepid room and a hot, like hot steam bathroom, with the piping going underneath, and ways of draining the water out and all these different things. When I first encountered this in the film, you know, I was surprised then to realize the that there are ancient sources as well that corroborate that. On the whole, in my view, The Life of Brian is probably the best researched of the movies that base themselves on the life of Jesus. And although a lot of it is a spoof, and it’s a brilliant comedy, but it gets more things right, than most other films do. So, I respected for that, and the amount of research that went into it. A few years ago, there was a conference in London University College London, on the Life of Brian and history that brought a whole bunch of people together, myself included, to talk about the historical aspects of the Life of Brian. And we were really privileged to have John Cleese with us for the whole time, as well as the editor, the person who had edited the film and had a couple of other people who had been involved with their part time. And what we learned from them was really the amount of research that went into this. They really studied. They studied scholarship, they went back to the primary sources. And they incorporated the things that suited their purpose. And so, and I think one of the reasons that they

Adele Reinhartz  35:27

did this, well, first of all, they were just really interested in it. This is what John Cleese really emphasized that if he just found it fascinating, so he was studying this out of his fascination, but also because they weren’t trying to make a Christian film. So they were less constrained. As we talked about earlier, they were less constrained by what they themselves might have learned in Sunday school as as children or what it is that might appeal to somebody who’s coming at this from the perspective of Christian piety. And so they just went back to the historical sources and, and made use of them, I think, to that effect.

Dan LeFebvre  36:16

Yeah, that’s, that’s fascinating that I guess I wouldn’t have expected life of Brian to be one of the most well researched

Adele Reinhartz  36:25

I made just by naming him Brian. So I mean, again, I think this is part of the brilliance of the film, that it takes some of the historical materials but then also, you know, it’s referencing other Jesus movies, it’s referencing the, the Christmas industry, it’s referencing aspects of British education in British society, and weaves all that together. And that’s, that’s really why it’s just so hilarious. And it’s fun to watch. I’ve watched I don’t even know how many times I’ve watched it. It’s fun every single time.

Dan LeFebvre  37:05

Oh, it was a blast. It had been a little bit since I’ve seen it but about preparing for this. There’s a lot of little things in there that that like the little details, you know you because you do see Jesus here every so often, you know, in there, like at the very beginning, you know, as as he’s preaching little things like that, that they that I completely forgotten. Were in there you watch it again. It was little, the little details in there. Yeah, for sure. But thank you so much for coming on to chat about Life of Brian, I know you’ve written extensively about Jesus and film. So for someone listening to this, who wants to learn more, which of your books would you recommend they start with to start digging deeper beyond the movie?

Adele Reinhartz  37:46

Well, I’ve written a book on Jesus movies that’s called Jesus of Hollywood. That’s published by Oxford, and you can get it from their website and Amazon, of course, that came out about 15 years ago now. More recently, I’ve published an introduction to Bible and film that has a chapter on the Jesus movies but chapters on other kinds of movies as well as well as on the use of the Bible, in just regular fictional feature films, not in Bible movies as such, but the ways in which the Bible is used in other kinds of other kinds of movies. That’s called Bible in cinema. An introduction. The second edition just came out at the end of March. That’s published by Rutledge. I’ve done other things on Bible and film, but those are the two that have the most information about the Jesus movies.

Dan LeFebvre  38:46

Awesome. Yeah, I’ll make sure to add links to those in the show notes for this episode. Thanks again so much for your time.

Adele Reinhartz  38:51

Thank you. It was a lot of fun.