564: Too Soon?

Sarah Koenig

Right after September 11, we created a brand new criminal justice system at Guantanamo Bay. A prison and a court to deal with people we suspected of being terrorists. To do what we wanted to do at Guantanamo. We pushed aside the old rules for detaining prisoners of war so we could interrogate people how we wanted and hold them indefinitely without charging them with a crime. Maybe you have an idea of what it's like to work at Guantanamo Bay.

Put that aside for a second. You know, you're on 42 sq. Mi. You've got like five great beaches. I partied my ass off in Gitmo first.

Ira Glass

Everyone was getting drunk and getting laid. I mean, I love Gitmo. Like it's. It's la la land. We're like a Disneyland employee.

Sarah Koenig

Hmm. Let's talk about that comparison there. Oh, no, that was a joke. Definitely a joke. It's nothing like nothing like Disneyland.

Harmon Leon

Our mission today is to provide safe. Humane, legal and transparency. The US government has its own story about what's been happening inside Guantanamo all these years. Legal, transparency, transparent care, costing in control. But we wanted the people who served at Guantanamo and survived Guantanamo to tell their stories.

Sarah Koenig

Now that they've left Guantanamo, what would they say now that they couldn't say then? A lot, as it turns out. Chaos. Simply put, it was chaotic. You think your Allah is gonna help you?

OJ Simpson

You think your quran is correct? You know, it's a bunch of garbage. It's a pop up, right? What right? Nobody knows you exist here.

Harmon Leon

He wasn't tortured. He wasn't physically beaten. He wasn't tortured. He was beaten. In the respect that we won, he lost.

OJ Simpson

So when you are tortured by someone who doesn't believe in torture, how can this guy who believes in human rights doing this to me, this is something that they would never have made public. But the day of the riot, morale was never higher because we got to kick their asses and get away with it. And that's the God honest truth from. Cereal productions in the New York Times, this is serial season four Guantanamo, hosted by me, Sarah Koenig and Dana Chivis. Listen on the New York Times audio app or wherever you get your podcasts.

Is gimmel even still open? Oh, are you asking? Are there still prisoners there? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Oh, my God.

Ira Glass

A quick warning. There are curse words that are unbeeped in today's episode of the show. If you prefer a beeped version, you can find that at our website, thisamericanlife.org dot. Jordan did not love the idea of coming into the studio to tell the story. The very first thing he said to me when he sat down was, I.

Jordan Riley

Am curious of all the stories, like, why this story? Cause it's not my particularly proudest story. In fact, the only reason that he agreed to the interview is that he's good friends with the little brother of one of our producers, Miki. They all grew up together. And this story happened when he was going into his senior year of high school in small town Utah.

Ira Glass

Jordan and his buddies all lived together in a house that summer, daring each other into jackass style pranks and stunts. For instance, there's this time they drove a car into an orchard. There's the bike accident that gave Jordan one huge, swollen testicle. There's the time they peed into a seven up can and Miki's mom accidentally drank out of it. I'll tell you, it was not my pee in the seven of Ken.

All right? And I feel like to talk on public radio. There's a part of me that would rather tell America at large about my swollen testicle story. But this is the one that I feel I tell the least. The story that he tells the least, the one that he's about to tell you right now is about how he did not become Mister Ginolo in the Mister Genola contest.

Genola is a farming town, population 1300. And the contest was a pageant for guys. There was no Miss Genola pageant. And it was a brand new tradition only in its second year. And it was not a serious contest like the winner of the first year for the town competition ate a frozen burrito while it was still frozen.

Like that was his talent. Jordan's friend, who was also named Jordan, had competed that first year wearing a blow up butterfly float during the swimsuit competition and singing Pearl Jam to his dead frog in the town section. And he's deciding that we're going to enter the Mister Janola contest and volunteers me to be the participant, the single participant out of our house. And just so you can picture this, they did have an audience of a couple hundred people because it was scheduled as part of the annual Ginola Days celebration, which has a rodeo and a greased pig chase and a town dinner and a parade. And in the middle of a public park, they took a bunch of wood apple bins and flipped them over and put some plywood across it and made a stage.

Jordan Riley

And then probably eight contestants, all high schoolers. We're honored to be the MC's for. The Mister Genoa pageant. We hope you understand this pageant is not a scholarship pageant. In the video of this you can see two teenaged MC's dressed in spoof award show wear.

Ira Glass

A girl in a checkered jacket with a comically wide lapel, and a boy in formal tails and a vest, no shirt at all, bow tie and cowboy hat. Jordan and I went right to the part where he comes on stage. Fifth contestant is Jordan Alberto Riley, son of Alan and Chris Riley. We couldn't find anything special about him. So they just announced me.

Jordan Riley

And, you know, it's a small town. They tell me who my parents are, and I come up on the stage and I'm wearing a shirt with sleeves cut off, and I've got some long hair and a hat. And then I bring up a wheelchair. Go backflip.

Ira Glass

Jordan had used a wheelchair for a little while after an injury once. Now he starts showing off the tricks he learned then popping wheelies and spinning. I just was spinning faster and faster until me and the wheelchair all spun off to the side with tumbling backwards.

After a few more wheelies, Jordan gets up from the chair, flexes his muscles. Heavy metal music kicks in, and his buddies carry an old door on stage. This door that has a big pane of glass in the top third, Jordan grabs the mic to explain what's gonna happen. I'm pretty much just breaking a window. That's about it.

Jordan Riley

Now I'm pumping myself up by flexing and shaking my head, and I run at it and give it a good punch through the window. And then I stepped back and I looked at this window, and there was a triangular piece of glass right in the middle of it. And I looked at that and I thought, that's funny. I don't remember that glass having blood on it before I punched through it and step back, and I'm just looking at the audience, and I looked down right at my forearm, like, almost to my elbow, and there was a hole. And, like, in that moment in time, it was like when things go in slow motion.

I remember a severed muscle hanging out.

And I'm looking at my forearm, and I think about this time that we went hiking in the narrows of Zions National park, and I was carrying a rambo knife, and I went to go catch a snake, and I cut the side of this snake and his. You could see, like, some stuff coming out, this gash. And I. And. Which I immediately regretted, but.

But I stood there and I thought about that snake as I looked at my forearm. Yeah. And then it seemed like, bam, fast motion happens. And I turn around and blood is just like, just splatting on the floor and the Mc steps in and I'm showing her my arm and I'm saying, call an ambulance. And she says, is that real?

Ira Glass

And, oh, she thought it was a prank. She thought you like, you were just like, you have fake blood or something. Oh, totally. Everybody did. And one of my friends tears off his t shirt and then tourniquets around it.

Jordan Riley

They're like, he's turning white. He's turning white. Just lay him down. Kids start rushing the stage to see. We actually talked to one of those kids who's grown now, and he said that he figured it was fake blood and a really cool prank.

Ira Glass

And then he got near and saw that it was real. And the next thing he knew, he was waking up under a tree with an oxygen mask. Jordan and his friends believe a few people fainted. Ladies and gentlemen, we're getting this cleaned. Up as soon as we can, please.

Amy Silverman

That happened totally on accident. I didn't know he was doing that and we probably wouldn't allowed it. So for the judge's information, we're gonna have Mike Whewell go before Clark Davis. Because Mike's singing and Clark's dancing. So we can put the stage dry for a minute.

Ira Glass

Jordan says that this girl Mc later said how mad she was that he ruined her pageant. But at this moment, she and the other teenaged MC had to ad lib their way through this situation that I think even a very experienced public speaker would find challenging. There's a man on stage with them mopping up blood, like with a mop, there's so much blood. And they have to fill time. All right, well, how are, how's you?

OJ Simpson

The show so far.

Ira Glass

That goes over surprisingly well. And so to stop for time, they run through what apparently is the only standby material they have. The boy on stage pulls out a fistful of pages. All right, here's something a man named John put on his answering machine. It says, hi, this is John.

OJ Simpson

If you are the phone company, I already sent the money. If you are my parents, please send money. If you are my friends, you owe me money. If you are a female, don't worry, I have plenty of money.

Here's another one. Hi, I am probably home. I just, I'm just. They never did another Mister Janola contest. This pretty much killed it off.

Ira Glass

The ambulance came. Jordan didn't lose an arm. He's fine. He's in his thirties now. And the phrase that he uses for what he's become now is contributing member of society.

He's settled down, he's a farmer, grows apples, cherries, peaches. With a family, a young daughter. He hasn't lived in Ginola since that summer, but now and then this just happened. At a farm stand a month ago. He runs into people who say to him, aren't you the guy who almost cut off his arm in that pageant?

That's what they know him for. Well, in the town of Ginola, that's my badge to wear. Yeah. They know me as the guy who did the Mister Ginola pageant.

It's been over a decade and he still doesn't ever watch this video. Too soon, still makes him wins. I asked him when he will be able to watch this and not wince, and he said he thinks it pretty much always will be too soon for this one. Yeah. Like I say, this was not the proudest story.

Jordan Riley

And just seeing us at that time in those teenage, it's just painful to watch. I'm not a fan of that guy. What a day. On our radio program. Too soon.

Ira Glass

Sometimes it will always be too soon, but sometimes you can imagine a world where the thing that you're remembering really will become much less of a big deal. And you'll be able to think about it without cringing. If you're lucky, maybe it'll even start to seem funny. We have two stories for you today. In each of them, there is a piece of video that is capturing a moment.

And in each of them, the past crashes against the present in this way that is really kind of mesmerizing. From WB easy, Chicago, it's this american life. I'm Ira Glass. Stay with us.

So Jordan's story was about a prank gone wrong. And you could say, this next story is like that, too. Except in this next story, it is not just one prank. And wrong does not capture the sheer wrongness of what youre about to hear. Nancy Updike tells the story.

Sarah Koenig

Harmon Leon is a writer and comedian whose cocktail party story about the weirdest gig I ever did is more weird by a lot than anyone elses that ive heard. He answered an ad for a job several years ago that called for a comedian who would be the hilarious sidekick to a celebrity on a new hidden camera prank tv show. It was on the Los Angeles craigslist ad. I'm thinking, oh, it's a celebrity hidden camera show. I've done a bunch of prank stuff, so I sent them like my prank reel.

Harmon Leon

I got the job and they said they couldn't disclose who the celebrity was. Harmon rolled his eyes. Well, just people say that. It's like, oh, when we tell you who the celebrity is. You're not gonna believe it, you're not gonna believe it.

And your mind just goes, you know, you're Jamie. I probably believe it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like, is it like the other Hilton sister, or is it vanilla ice? My bar was so low to what it actually turned out to be.

Sarah Koenig

Yeah. And he goes, okay, are you ready? Are you ready? Cause it's OJ Simpson. A prank show with OJ Simpson.

Ira Glass

Ok, I'm just gonna jump in here for a second. Today's program is an episode that we first broadcast back in 2015, and we decided to rerun it today because, of course, the news about OJ this week, that he died. And when that happened at our show, we remembered this story that Nancy did that very vividly captures some things about him and what he became, who he was in his post acquittal life. And we wanted to go back to it. So, okay, you have the setup.

This white comedian, Harmon Leon, is asked to do pranks on a show with this complicated, iconic black american figure, OJ Simpson. Harmon thought, that's a terrible idea for a tv show, and I'm definitely taking this job. So it was, the shooting was in a week. So I drove down from San Francisco to LA, I get out of my car, I go to the production office, and the first thing the producer says to me, you know, Harmon, we really can't mention the murders. Okay, anyone over 30, please bear with me for a minute.

Sarah Koenig

And for the under thirties, here's the OJ Simpson recap. Handsome, charming, famous football player, Heisman Trophy winner whose nickname was juice after he retired, became even more famous doing commercials, Monday night Football, movies, tv shows, Saturday Night Live. And heres the part you probably do know, even if you think you know nothing. In 1994, he was accused of killing his ex wife, Nicole Simpson, and another person, Ron Goldman. You know that because he became a national obsession.

95 million people, give or take, watched the live broadcast of his white Bronco, driving the LA freeways with police cars chasing him. That was more than the Super bowl audience. That year, 150 million watched the verdict in the trial where he was acquitted of the murders. This prank show was being filmed about ten years after that. OJ Simpson had been mostly out of the public eye for those years.

Most Americans at that time, 78%, believed he either probably or definitely killed his ex wife and Ron Goldman. He lost a civil suit that had found him liable for the deaths. And so this would be the next step in his career, doing a zany hidden camera prank show entitled Juiced Juice. Incredibly, this exists. It was a one time special on pay per view, just one episode, about an hour long.

And I've got the DVD on my desk right now. Here's a description on the COVID Witness OJ Simpson performing hilarious practical jokes and shocking hidden camera stunts on unsuspecting real life people all across America. No one is safe because the juice is loose. Again, my first question when I saw it was, why does this exist? Which is a dumb question.

Reality shows exist because they're cheap to make and people watch them. Maybe a better question is, why isn't this hidden camera prank show from 2006 as well known as scrutinized as every other part of OJ Simpson's public life? I'm here to say I think it's worth a look. Here's a show that was never meant to be taken seriously. And because of that, we get these strange, revealing glimpses of OJ goofing around in front of the camera, chatting with strangers, riffing.

It's an hour with him, unlike any hour you've ever seen. I also think it might be the most mystifying celebrity comeback vehicle ever made.

The show is a whole bunch of short prank scenarios, one after another in different locations. Fast food, food place, golf course, bingo parlor. Sometimes OJ is in disguise, sometimes he's not. The idea was OJ would be someplace doing something, and Harmon's job was to help piss off the people around them. Or in prank show lingo, try to elevate the action.

Exactly. For instance, on a golf course. So the gag was, OJ will keep golfing with his. And then I run on the golf course with a video camera, pretending I'm paparazzi trying to film OJ. There was no script, but also sometimes not even a roadmap.

Sometimes the producer would jump into the scene himself to elevate the action even more, or mercifully, to help conclude it. Like at the golf course that just. Ended with me and the producer of juice rolling around on the golf course wrestling. Cause we didn't know how to end it.

Here's the thing. Pranks might be a misleadingly precise term for what happens in the show. It's more like low level harassment of random civilians. And also, OJ Simpson is here. Let me walk you through one prank to show you how it goes.

This one starts like all of them do, with OJ Simpson just dressed as himself, sitting in a chair, explaining the idea for the upcoming scene. Set up a situation at an open house. I was visiting the house, looking for a house with my alleged girlfriend. Then Harmon jumps in to explain his role in the scene. I played disgruntled house owner, and then I played party guy.

And then the prank starts. The scene. For this prank, Blake, OJ said, is an open house.

There's a realtor, she's in on the prank. Hi, come on in. Hi, Julie, I'm long blonde hair, strapless top, it's all very southern California, and she's showing it to people, including a couple named Christy and OJ. Hi, OJ, it's nice to meet you. I was getting ready to say he looks just like OJ Simpson.

Another woman and a man, who are also looking at the house recognize OJ right away and they shake his hand warmly. They're surprised that he's there, but not weirded out. And then they all keep looking at the house. Then the realtor, who again is part of the prank, knocks over a vase and blames one of the people looking at the house. He broke it.

Then Harmon, playing the homeowner, comes out and gets angry. Why are you coming in my house? I'm sorry. Then there's an argument, or an attempt at one, but a lot of people are just more patient and reasonable than you think they're going to be. So it doesn't go anywhere.

She broke it accidentally, and people have accidents. I work with this realtor, she doesn't lie to me. Then the camera cuts to a topless woman who is topless outside, jumping on a trampoline, which the realtor works into the cell. The backyard is fabulous for entertaining, and which OJ jumps in to comment on. Jesus, it looks rather entertaining to me.

Then the topless woman enters the house, swishes her way through everyone. There's a quick cut to her running through the house in slow motion. Then another broken vase, another accusation, another vase. Then a guy who's in on the prank throws up. Oh, Jesus, man.

OJ Simpson

Sweetheart, come on. Jesus, man. If this makes no sense to you, you're following it perfectly. I've shown this prank to a lot of people and every time they look at me helplessly like, what's going on here? Who's even getting pranked?

Sarah Koenig

There are interesting moments in the scene when a few people looking at the house notice OJ and react to him. One couple is signing in at the kitchen counter and the woman whispers to the man, it's so quiet they had to put subtitles on the screen. She whispers, OJ Simpson just came in. Then she says, did you hear me? OJ Simpson is right behind you.

The guy with her glances over and then they just keep looking around. Another guy did a double take when he saw OJ and then went back to signing in, like, be cool, celebrity nearby, who is OJ Simpson? But a lot of people seem oblivious. It's just one more freaky open house with a topless woman on a trampoline and a lot of broken vases until finally OJ steps in with the catchphrase. You've been juiced.

OJ Simpson

I'm OJ Simpson, I know you, you've been juiced.

Harmon Leon

It just didn't have any payoff of anything. It was just like all set on the whole premise of something happens. No, J. Simpson, they didn't think it out further than that. And every gag was just based on that premise.

Sarah Koenig

Right? Can you believe this guy's here? Yeah, yeah. Cause he's that guy for real. I know.

Harmon Leon

But yet in the producer's mind, they were like, you know, oh, this is great. They kind of got into it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So other people on the set, they thought, oh, this is going well, this is funny. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Sarah Koenig

I told Harmon that I figured as I was watching the show that the producers had just edited out any moments where people got annoyed or uncomfortable when they got juiced or pulled away, when OJ went to hug them or recoiled. And I was completely wrong about that. Harmon told me that during the two weeks of filming, as far as he could remember, no one reacted that way. Other people on the set told me the same. There were no moments like that to cut out.

Harmon Leon

I thought, oh, man, there's gonna be like just outraged people or people freaking out. And that was actually the most mind numbing part about the two week production, was that people just were actually thrilled when they find out they've been juiced by OJ. I got juiced. I've been juiced, I been juiced. You know, like, we were in Las Vegas filming and people would just swarm in off the streets to get photos with, with OJ.

Like mothers and daughters requesting photos. This kid, he started like rapping for OJ and he like, high fives his friend. He goes, I just rap for OJ, man, that's as big as it gets. And it was like they would just be laughing aside, whoa. Hope he doesn't kill anyone while we're here.

Sarah Koenig

Ha, ha, ha. Did anyone say anything like that? I would hear people off to the side saying that, but they wouldn't say it like angry. They would say it like, oh, he's just funny, OJ, he just like became like, he's like this funny cartoon character, so he's like the Santa Claus of murder.

Whatever charisma was working in person doesn't come across on the screen. In fact, let me step briefly outside Harmon's story of what it's like to make juiced to talk more about what it's like to watch Joost, I've shown this now to so many people, and the sheer scope of the chaos in the show is disorienting. Not just to me, watching the show feels like being winked at from across the room by someone who may be flirting with you or maybe messing with you, or may just have a tick. It's not clear what to make of anything that's happening in between the pranks induced, there's a scene changing package that includes, for some reason, a gunshot sound effect, whatever that's supposed to mean or not mean. And 20 to 30 seconds of music during which OJ is surrounded by strippers.

Sometimes he's rapping dressed as a pimp. Big fuzzy black hat, zebra striped lapels. Why do people wonder about my intentions? Why do people ask me so many questions about how I made it to the top? About all the times I made those teeth defensive style?

There's pole dancing, they give him lap dances. And again, this scene is in between nearly every prank. And hes surrounded by dancing women who mostly have long blonde hair and dont not resemble his dead ex wife. And hes mugging to the camera with that expression like, how great is this? But before you can decide what that means, if anything, besides just the demographics of who was available to shoot this scene, its on to the next puzzling moment.

For instance, in the open house prank, at one point, Harmon, playing the angry homeowner whose house is being looked at, tries to blame OJ for breaking one of the vases. Did you do this? Can you just pay for my vase please? Can you just pay for my vase, sir? I wasn't around.

OJ Simpson

I get blamed for nothing else, all right? In my life I've been blamed for enough shit. Take a look at the bag. When OJ says I've been blamed for enough shit, he sounds genuinely angry, which means I think hes mad at being fake. Blamed for breaking a vase in a prank because it reminds him that he was on trial for murder ten years ago.

Sarah Koenig

Theres a prank where OJ pretends to be having an affair with another mans wife and the man gets really angry. Theres a prank where OJ plays himself, but a homeless version of himself selling bags of oranges by the side of the road oranges from OJ. OJ right here. Is that an edgy comment on his fallen status? Or just another look?

What this celebrity is willing to do in our reality show moment. No time to think. The show plows onward to smaller moments of just raw unlikableness. In one prank, OJ is dressed as an employee of a fast food place, and he's working the drive thru window. A woman pulls up in her forties, maybe early fifties.

Amy Silverman

Large fries. Large hard fries. You sure you want those large fries? You know what they say about fast food making you fat. The woman whos ordering is overweight.

Sarah Koenig

So thats the joke. Shes fat, shes ordering fries. Induced. OJ has plunged himself into reality tv, a genre that has no allegiance to the idea that the star has to come out looking good. But theres something off about this show that goes beyond that.

For all the frenzy on the screen, all the invitations to gawk or be titillated or outraged, or just shake your head in wonder, mostly it felt empty. It's tiring to watch. Strangely tiring. When I talked to Harmon, he said that during the filming, there were moments unlike any other reality show he'd worked on. Unsurprisingly.

For starters, as far as he could tell, everyone had been told the same thing. He don't bring up the murders or anything related to them, and no one did except OJ. Before one prank, OJ was being made up to look like an 81 year old white man. The makeup took 3 hours to apply. While he's getting the makeup applied, he has the tv turned to court tv, you know, and I thought, don't mention OJ.

Harmon Leon

Court tv. Don't mention OJ. He's saying this to the tv. No, no, I'm saying this to myself, like, oh, court tv, don't, please don't mention OJ. Because I don't know how he would react.

But he was actually just like, he kind of wanted them to mention him. He's like, how are they going to work me into this? You know? You know, during my trial, my lawyers watched my back, you know, so he. Okay, so it was, it was sort of reminiscing.

Sarah Koenig

Yeah. Yes. While the women are putting the makeup on him. Yeah. He said he really liked watching court tv.

Harmon Leon

Again, when he was getting the makeup applied, he would actually tell OJ jokes. So we had the pleasure of hearing like OJ jokes from OJ himself. What's an OJ joke? He actually said this. He goes, who's the first jewish guy to get a Heisman trophy?

Fred. Goldman, because he's got mine. Because the Goldman's brought a civil suit. Against him and took his prize money as Heisman. And so, you know, everyone just kind of uncomfortably just shifted around and looked at their shoes and contemplated career choices.

Sarah Koenig

The cinematographer of juice, Luke Nicknare, told me there was a split in the crew. Some people thought, look, this man was a great athlete and a big star, and he was acquitted. And that's that. And that's how I see this. And others who thought, yeah, he was acquitted, but I still have other thoughts about what may have happened.

OJ Simpson

Definitely two schools of thought. Uh huh. Yeah, there are definitely two schools of thought. And would people argue about it? We talked about it privately, actually, at the end of the shoot, this was a really messed up thing.

They decided to shoot interviews with every one of the crew about our experiences. And then at the end of the interview, they would say, guilty or not guilty. Oh, my God. That did not get on the DVD. None of that got on DVD.

And what was I on camera myself? What did you say? Guilty. And is that what you thought going in? I didn't know what to think.

That's why I did the job. You know, I secretly want to know. It's like. And here I was going to be given an opportunity to go and shoot this deranged project, and I decided to do the gig.

I mean, I thought about it. Then when I was involved with it, I thought about that. It's like people are going to study this project and all of a sudden you call me ten years later.

Sarah Koenig

Harmon and Luke also said, las Vegas, where they did the second week of shooting, is where things really turned sour and dark. They just seemed to sort of give up on ideas, and OJ just got less and less interested in it. He didn't show up. And then when he showed up, he was just like, really drunk. Like OJ was supposed to play a wacky motel clerk.

Harmon Leon

You know, like, look out, here comes wacky motel clerk. OJ, you know, that's the premise of that gag. But, you know, he was just like completely drunk. And that was like the first time they just sort of propped him up in the corner, like on a stool and just let him be sort of near the pranks. Harmon said he.

Sarah Koenig

Harmon ended up playing the wacky motel clerk. And sometimes he even had to be the one to tell people, you've been juiced, whatever that means when the person doing it is not OJ Simpson. After I like juice a couple OJ's in the corner drunk, and he would lean in to the couple go, hey, I'm OJ. Hey, do you recognize me? OJ Simpson's lawyer, who handles media requests, didn't respond to my emails and phone calls about Joost.

I did reach the executive producer of Joost, Rick Marr. We talked on the phone. After months of unanswered voicemails, texts and emails from us, then out of the blue, a legal document from him, just a little heads up. Then a series of very friendly but off the record conversations mixed in with two taped interviews that he only agreed to if he could approve every quote. So here's what he approved.

He said, I had it all wrong when I called Joost the worst celebrity comeback vehicle ever made. It was never meant to be a comeback vehicle for OJ or try to turn him into a mainstream star again. We were tasked with creating a reality show that cut through the clutter that everybody would be talking about, really, during an era when there was a reality tv boom and there was a lot of one upsmanship in the marketplace. He said the goal was just to let the cameras run whether OJ looked good or not. He said the show being a pile on of one thing after another, that may or may not make sense.

The blonde strippers, the dead end pranks, the weird little verite moments, that's not a fumble. Its exactly what they were going for. Their business model was get people talking. So pile it on. He said, look, this wasnt designed to win emmys.

Its supposed to be a nonstop barrage of craziness. You know, id be the first to say its not everybodys. Its not everybodys cup of tea. Nielsen, the ratings organization, told me the juice DVD sold fewer than 100 copies, one of which I own. Rick told me, yeah, he buried the project on purpose.

OJ Simpson

We had the blinders on to make one crazy reality tv show. After we did it, and I think we did that after we did it, there was a part of me that said, what the hell did we just do? Joost was coming out around the same time that OJ released a book called if I did it. Huge outcry. The woman who was publishing the book lost her job.

Sarah Koenig

A two hour fox special was canceled. And we pulled it. We pulled it from circulation and it's been gathering dust until now. Yeah. You were surprised when I told you that I had a copy.

OJ Simpson

I was. Rick didnt want to say if juiced was OJs idea or not. When I asked if OJ was paid for it, he said OJ did this because he wanted to do it. He said his understanding is that OJ did see Joost every frame and approved it before it went out. When I asked Rick if OJ had ever said, look, this is how I want to be portrayed in this show, Rick said the answers to what OJ wanted out of Joost, or why he did it in the first place are locked in OJS head.

Sarah Koenig

All he, Rick could say is how unworried OJ seemed to him while they were filming. Like any way they put the footage together would be great because it was OJ. I think history has shown that OJ Simpson is his own boss, and OJ is going to do what OJ is going to do.

Harmon Leon

OJ Simpson is with us. You ever had any trouble? Speeding tickets, that kind of thing? OJ. I don't know if I should say this.

OJ Simpson

I got stopped. This is OJ on the Letterman show in 1989, five years before Nicole Simpson and Ron Goldman were found murdered. And I'm just playing it because listen to how big his world was back then, how the audience loves everything he says. Nobody else was on the road and I was going, I think I got it up. Oh, you don't want to hear this.

Yeah, no, that's it. Yeah, I got it up pretty fast. I got it up to about 170 miles an hour.

Harmon Leon

And give me your license. Give me your license right now. 170. Well, this car is really safer, this Testarossa. It really is safer.

OJ Simpson

You should have been with me this morning. I bet that to a very famous person, losing the love of the general public feels the way aging can feel, an unfair changing of the rules, too big to accept. And so maybe its not that surprising that OJ put himself in a prank show ten years after the trial, basically saying, remember me? Still charming. Watching Joost sometimes felt like seeing a beautiful older actress trying to apprise the exact role that had made her famous when she was younger, as though nothing has changed.

Sarah Koenig

Remember earlier I talked about juiced, feeling empty, how the show keeps urging viewers to be scandalized and outraged. But mostly I just felt tired watching it. I think I figured out why. While I was watching and rewatching this last scene, I want to play for you the most stunning one in juiced. It starts with OJ explaining the prank that's about to happen, which takes place at a used car lot.

OJ Simpson

I actually sold the worst used car ever, and this was a bronco with a bullet hole in it and seats with holes in it. Watch this. Yes, the Bronco. OJ is posing as a used car salesman selling a white bronco. Not the white bronco, just a white bronco that for some reason has a bullet hole in the side.

Sarah Koenig

And while they're filming, OJ signs his name right above the bullet hole. Now, this is a Bronco signed by OJ Simpson with a lethetic bullet hole in it. The scene is a mishmash of people who seem to have no idea what's going on, and others who bring up random parts of the Bronco story or the trial, as they remember. And OJ is just surfing all of it. Say, $10,000 in here.

OJ Simpson

Uh, nope, nope, nope, no, no. They say that I was carrying about $3. Yeah, that's why they never brought it up in court. A woman shows up to look at the Bronco, so there's some flirting. And you're gorgeous, incidentally.

Amy Silverman

Thank you. I appreciate it. When you see a girl in a car like this, you say, her man ain't doing nothing for her. You know you got a chance, right? And after a little of this, a little of that, OJ seems to settle down into his sales pitch for the Bronco.

OJ Simpson

It was good for me, got me out of harm's way. Just sit in it, okay, I'll sit in it. Just sit in it. Even if there was a dead body in it. Yeah.

Well, hopefully there's no bodies in this thing. And I can guarantee you the car has escapability. I mean, if you ever get into some trouble and you got to get away, it has escapability. A car that I personally made famous, it has escapability. That's the main thing, and I know it.

And if we wanted to get away, it was easier to get away. It's interesting because he did this thing with the Ford Bronco, which blew us away. This is Luke, the cinematographer, again, and finds it. He keeps talking about how it has great escapability.

Sarah Koenig

Did he ad lib that? Yes, he did.

And so, I mean, all of the moments over the course of the show, in the different pranks, where he's referring to other points in his life, to the Hertz commercials and to his sports career, but also to the trial and to the murders, was the idea, okay, you know, OJ, throw in a reference here, or was he just supplying those himself? He was all on his own. He just was saying those things. All him? Oh, my gosh.

OJ Simpson

No, that's all him. Let's set aside the question of taste, because the whole scene is freakish on its face, but it's a lot more freakish when you set it next to what actually happened in the Bronco. The real Bronco. Escapability. OG Simpson didn't escape anything in the white Bronco.

Sarah Koenig

The Bronco is what he stepped out of into police custody, got him out of harms way while he was in the Bronco. He was suicidal. He had a gun to his head. I want to play you a recording. Its not so well known, it didnt become public till a year and a half after the trial.

Its what OJ Simpson was saying while he was in the Bronco, its conversations between him and an LAPD detective named Tom Lang who reached him on his cell phone. OJ didnt know he was being recorded. Hes not performing for an audience and a warning. This is a suicidal person talking at length about wanting to kill himself. Just throw the gun out the window.

OJ Simpson

This is for me, this is not to keep you guys away from me. I know that. Nobody's gonna hurt you, okay? It's for you. I know that, but think of your kids.

Please, just toss it out. You're scaring everybody, man. I'm not gonna hurt anybody. I know you're not gonna hurt anybody. I can't take this.

Oh, yes, you can. Yes, you can. You got your whole family out here, they love you, man. Don't throw this away. Don't do this.

Just throw it out the window. Nobody's going to get hurt. I'm the only one that deserves. No, you don't deserve that. You do not deserve to get hurt.

You do not deserve to get hurt. Don't do this. All I did was love Nicole. All I did was love her. I understand.

I love everybody. I tried to show everybody my whole life that I love everybody. We know that. And everybody loves you, especially your family, your mother, your kids. I'm just gonna leave.

I'm gonna go with Nicole. That's all I'm gonna do. That's all I need. Don't give in now.

I am so tired. I know, I know. I just want to be with Nicole. This had to have been one of the most terrifying, inconsolable moments of OJ Simpson's life. As he makes clear with every word, every groan and watching, just.

Sarah Koenig

I kept looking for not even any specific emotion, but just any sign at all that this event had happened to him, that it affected him in some way. I didn't see one. It was good for me, got me out of harm's way. A car that I personally made famous. The boy, Al Collings, was driving this thing.

OJ Simpson

And if we wanted to get away, it was easier to get away. The way he's talking about the Bronco, there's no trace of what he experienced a decade before inside the Bronco, inside his own head. Instead, he seems to be remembering it. He seems to be seeing it the same way we remember seeing it on tv, looking at it from above on the highway as it drove mile after mile, the emptiness induced. It's OJ.

Sarah Koenig

He's not there.

Ira Glass

Nancy Updike, she's one of the producers of our show. Again, today's episode was first broadcast almost ten years ago. We're rewriting it today because OJ Simpson died of cancer earlier this week. He was 76. Coming up, a video that shows up too soon, and then it is no longer too soon.

That's in a minute from Chicago public radio, when our program continues.

Just american life from Ira Glass. Each week on a program, of course, which is a theme. Bring you different kinds of stories on that theme. Today's show, too soon. So my dad died about ten years ago, very suddenly.

Zoe Chase

And it was very terrible and shocking. Back when we first made this episode, we were talking about today's program around the office, and one of our producers, Zoe Chase, remembered this story. It happened when she was right out of college, and she got the call. Her dad, out of the blue, had a heart attack and died. And her best friend Rosa, came and got Zoe from Ohio, which is where she was living, and brought her back to New York City where her family was.

And it was awful. You know, it was just grim darkness. But then somehow, like, the next day, Rosa was just pulling stuff out of the fridge to feed me with. And she pulls out the butter dish, you know, like a glass butter dish, and it just shatters all over the floor. You mean she drops it?

Ira Glass

She drops it. And I just look at her, and I'm like, that was my dad's. Just. It's, like, horrified. And my sister starts laughing.

Zoe Chase

And I started laughing. Cause it's not my dad's. It's just like a crappy butter dish from Ikea. And it was the first. I think it was the first joke.

I remember it as the first joke of when my dad died. How many days? It was like a day. It was like the day after. So the whole idea of, you know, the old saying, like, comedy equals tragedy plus time.

Ira Glass

Like, there was no time at all. Not at all. Yeah.

There's a study where scientists actually tried to quantify exactly how much time has to pass after tragedy before comedy kicks in. And although nothing is more tedious than people sitting around theorizing about what is funny, it's interesting to see somebody get, like, super brass tacks about this and try to actually define this thing that our whole program is about today. These researchers had over 1000 people rate how funny some joke tweets about Hurricane Sandy were at different points in time and before the hurricane hit land, people thought the tweets were funny. And then, unsurprisingly, while the hurricane was destroying homes and knocking up power and killing people, and in the immediate aftermath of all that, the tweets did not seem funny and in fact, seemed kind of offensive. And then it took.

They have a number. It took 15 days. 15 days after the hurricane struck, the tweets started to seem funny again. Because the researchers, Peter McGraw, Lawrence Williams and Caleb Warren, theorize, for something like this to be funny, it has to seem threatening, but not too threatening. Once it stops being threatening, it stops being funny.

And in fact, there comes a point after the storm struck. It is 36 days after the storm struck that people start finding the tweets less and less funny. And to get back to Zoey, Zoey says, yeah, it was only a day after her dad's death that she joked about the butter dish. But the worst had already happened. The threat had passed.

If her dad had been alive and in imminent danger of dying, she said, she couldn't have made the joke, wouldn't have had the impulse to cause, that. Just sounds so scary that that'd be all you were doing is being afraid. But now, or right at that moment that I was in, immediately after he died, immediately after, I mean, nobody had been themselves or said anything funny or laughed about anything. It was super helpful. Helpful how?

Zoe Chase

Because I felt like myself and it felt like my family. You know, it was. We're not such a sincere group of people. And so to have that level of sincere emotion was pretty uncomfortable.

Ira Glass

Wow, this has gotten so real.

Which brings us to this next story of a family and something being too soon and then knowing the right moment for the something to happen. We've arrived at act two of our program, act two, pink slip. When Amy Silverman was in her twenties, she had this friend who would go to LA sometimes and bring back these videos. And Amy and her friends would show the videos at parties on vhs. This is way back in the prehistoric days, before YouTube.

Amy Silverman

This was the nineties, but in Phoenix, so it's probably like the eighties somewhere else. And one of the films the guy would bring around to parties was called pink Slip. Amy says she easily saw it a half dozen times. Maybe it was more like a dozen. Always killed.

Ira Glass

Everybody liked it. It was an instructional video, and its lead character was this girl named Jill who was just reaching puberty. I've never been able to figure out when exactly it was made, but probably, like, late sixties, early seventies, kind of groovy living room. And they have very outdated hair, very, very obviously staged. And that was what was so funny about it, really.

The film is about menstruation. And so if you're listening with a little kid right now, and you do not want to get into that subject with them right this second, take that into advisement. Okay, here's a clip. Suzy, do you have periods? Do I have periods still?

Amy Silverman

All women have periods about every four weeks for three or four days. When I'm on my period, blood from inside of my body comes outside from an opening between my legs. Well, sissy, what about my teacher? Does Miss Jones have periods? Yes, jo, your teacher misses Jones does have periods.

All women have periods about every four weeks for three or four days. Hi, girls. Hi, dad. What have you girls been talking about? About periods?

Daddy, dad doesn't curl. Have periods. Yes, Jill, all women have periods about every four weeks. So it's very repetitive. And we would watch it and shriek with laughter.

OJ Simpson

That's right, honey. Men do not. Not proud of it. But that is what happened a lot. Blood from inside a woman's body comes outside from an opening between her legs about every four weeks.

Amy Silverman

Put the blood. Won't it get on my clothes? No, it won't. Because you use a sanitary pad. Sanitary pad.

Ira Glass

Amy says it did register with her that there was something up with that girl jill, something different. But she never really gave it much thought. And she and her friends would drink, and they would watch this kitschy old film. And years later, when Amy was 37, she had her second child, a daughter, Sophie. And Sophie had down syndrome.

Amy Silverman

So when Sophie was, like, two weeks old, all of a sudden, I was driving down the street one day and I went, oh, my God. Pink slip. And suddenly it all came together for me. And I realized that that video had been about a girl with down syndrome. And now I had a baby with down syndrome, and someday I was going to have to figure out how to teach her about puberty.

And then as quickly as that thought came into my head, I shoved it out and replaced it with, you know, like, I don't know, a need for diapers or something.

Ira Glass

Years passed, and by the time Sophie was ten, she had seen her older sister become an adolescent. And Sophie was obsessed. She had a bra collection. She had a deodorant collection. Not that she needed a bra or deodorant just yet.

Amy says there was one false alarm where it seemed like she was growing hair in new places. And she started jumping up and down. She ran down the hallway naked into her sister's room to show her. She grabbed my cell phone and called one of my friends and she raced around the kitchen table as fast as she could, again and again. You know, just talking about her hair with my mom, with my friend, with my husband.

Oh, she really wants to hit puberty. She really wants to hit puberty. Amy and her husband decided to enroll Sophie in a class about puberty, a one time seminar for kids with down syndrome to answer their questions and teach them what they needed to know about what was going to happen to them. Taught by this woman who's an expert on all that. And it was okay.

It was fine. They didn't do the job for Sophie. Sophie was, you know, she was about to turn twelve and she was still asking questions. What were the questions she was asking? She wanted to know the basics about her period, about where the blood would come out, what she would use.

Amy Silverman

Just basics. And I thought, you know what? Maybe I should show her a big slip. This is honestly something she had never considered before. She'd never taken that video seriously.

No. No. We made fun of it. So we got. I got the video up for her, for her to see.

Ira Glass

Now, I know you recorded a conversation with her before you showed her the video. Let me just play that piece of tape. Here we go. Do you remember what we're talking about today? Periods.

Amy Silverman

Yep. And now do you feel like you already know everything about them? Yeah. Because. Yes.

Cause last year I did a puberty lesson and they sang a song dose around the corner. She's saying, last year, they did a puberty lesson and they sang a song just around the corner. That's how she knows everything. Amy put a pink slip on her phone. Cause, of course, it's on YouTube.

And unlike me, Sophie loves to watch videos on YouTube. So she grabbed it and watched it. And so that's the video. So let's watch the video. Yeah.

Yes. What about periods? Do you have periods? In the recording that Amy made of Sophie watching pink slip, there is a moment where they both laugh. It's the most shocking moment in the film, and it really is kind of shocking.

Ira Glass

Again, if you are listening right now with a small child, know that I am about to say something very frank about menstruation and just decide if you want to keep listening. The moment that Amy and Sophie laughed at in the video is one that Amy remembers very well from back when she used to watch the video with her friends at. It's kind of the big moment in the film. Well, this was like the grabber at the parties where Jill would say to Susie, you know, I don't understand, or something. And Suzy would say, well, come into the bathroom with me, Jill.

Amy Silverman

I have my period right now. And then sit down and pull down her pants and show her bloody pad. This is a used sanitary pad. Look, there's blood on it. See?

You mean the blood's coming from inside your body now? That's right. Blood coming from inside my body through an opening between my legs. For the record, I laughed first. Yep.

Ira Glass

Just a minute later, after the sister shows the girl in the film how to throw away a used pad and start using a new pad, Sophie watches intently and quietly says, I get it now. Back at the parties that Amy used to go to, when the scene drew the biggest laughs and the most comments. It was just too soon. Yeah. For Amy to get what the video would be good for for a girl like Sophie.

What was it like watching her watch this video that you knew so well? Completely surreal. Completely surreal. I mean, embarrassing. Why was it embarrassing?

Amy Silverman

Oh, I was embarrassed. Cause I used to make fun of. It, but Sophie didn't know that.

No, but I don't feel like that really honored her, you know, my prior behavior. Oh, I see what you're saying. Here you are, you've got this little girl who you love, and now with her present, you're returning to the scene of the crime. Yeah. I felt more ashamed than embarrassed, but I had to stop and think, huh.

Maybe the person who made that video really knew what they were doing. Yeah, that's the thing I was wondering is, did it give you respect for the video? It did. It was really weird. And so all the corny repetition in the whole thing, that's totally right for her.

That's what she needs. It just has to be slowed down. The learning has to be slowed down. Do you feel like a certain amount of being a parent is realizing what an ass you were before you were a parent? Yes, absolutely.

I mean, I was the one who. I always tell people this. I was the one who would switch lines at Safeway if there was a person with a developmental disability bagging groceries, because I just didn't want to deal. It would have taken, what, 15 seconds to nod and smile and be a human being about it, not me. Amy's thought about showing pink's lip to Sophie again.

Ira Glass

It's been a few months and Sophie still has not gotten her period, though Amy's not sure what Sophie would think of the video today. Cause Sophie's able to tell that the girl in the video has down syndrome. And Sophie is going through a thing right now where she does not like to identify herself that way. Not to go all. Not to get all serious on you.

Amy Silverman

But Sophie is starting to realize that she's. She's not gonna have. She's not gonna ever have some of the things that her sister has. So recently she asked me, am I gonna have down syndrome when I grow up? And I said, you are.

And she said, I don't want to. I don't want to have it. Oh, yeah. So what does her sister get that she doesn't get that she sees right now?

She gets to go to a fancy art school that won't take Sophie. She gets to dance on point in ballet, which Sophie doesn't get to do because her feet aren't strong enough. She gets sleepover invitations Sophie doesn't get.

And she gets that life in front of her. You know, she. Sophie told me the other day that she doesn't want to have an aid at school anymore because she wants to practice walking to class by herself for college. What Sophie will get that her sister got, and she'll probably get it pretty soon, is her period. And Amy might show her pink slip again.

Ira Glass

Amy tried once to show the video to Sophie's older sister, and the older sister got to the part with the bloody pad and then tossed the phone back to Amy. But Sophie's different, and she liked the video. Pink slip was what she needed.

OJ Simpson

It's too soon to tell. Too soon to tell too soon to tell.

Ira Glass

Well, broguing was produced today by Nicky Meek. The people put together today's show include Lys Bergerson, Zoe Chase, Sean Cole, Emily Condon, Stephanie Foo, Kimberly Henderson, Hannah Joffy Waltz, Seth Lynn, Jonathan McIver, Brian Reid, Robin Semyon, Alyssa Ship, and Nancy Updike. Our editor for today's show was Joel Lovell. Other editing help today from Neil drumming, Julie Snyder. Production album Lily Sullivan, Elna Baker, scout stories for our show.

Fact checking help today from Christopher Surtalla and Michelle Harris. Music help today from Damian Gray, from Rob Geddes. Additional help on today's rerun from michael. Comedy Catherine Raimondo, Safiya Riddle, and Matt Tierney. Special thanks today to Rich Josowiak, Kid Fury, Nick Kroll, Peter McGraw, Betsy Kagan, and Jude Joffrey Block.

Amy Silverman came out with a book about her daughter Sophie. After the show was first broadcast. It's called my heart. Can't even believe it. Our website, thisamericanlife.org, comma, where you can listen to our archive of over 800 episodes for absolutely free.

This American Life is delivered to public radio stations by PRX, the Public Radio exchange. Thanks as always to our program's co founder, Mister Tory Malatia. You know, when he hears the credits to our program begin, every single program, the only thing that goes through his mind is how are they going to. Work me into this? I'm Erin Glass.

Back next week with more stories of this american life. It's too soon to kill hair too soon to tell, too soon to tell. My close.

Sarah Koenig

My close.

OJ Simpson

My close.

564: Too Soon?

Primary Topic

Episode Summary

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Episode Chapters

1. Jordan's Story

2. The "Juiced" Prank Show

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