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Transcript

Why Is Mason Reese Crying? · Heavyweight

0:15
Speaker 1: Pushkin. Hey everybody, it's been a few months since our
0:21
Speaker 1: last check In episode, and since then we've been hard
0:23
Speaker 1: at work on a new season of Heavyweight. There will
0:26
Speaker 1: be four new episodes coming out, some funny, some sad,
0:30
Speaker 1: plus some bonus content like the check ins, which we
0:34
Speaker 1: think you'll really enjoy. The first new episode launches next week.
0:39
Speaker 1: But today I thought i'd share a story I made
0:42
Speaker 1: way back in twenty fifteen for a then little known
0:46
Speaker 1: podcast called a Reply All. These were the early days
0:49
Speaker 1: of Gimlet, and I was in the middle of developing
0:53
Speaker 1: what would eventually become Heavyweight, and in a lot of ways,
0:57
Speaker 1: the story that I'm about to play for you would
1:00
Speaker 1: form a kind of blueprint for Heavyweight. And like many
1:04
Speaker 1: Heavyweight stories, it began with a personal obsession, a hunger
1:08
Speaker 1: for answers, and a need to insinuate myself into the
1:13
Speaker 1: personal lives of strangers, one stranger in particular. Without further
1:18
Speaker 1: ado from the Gimlet media vaults, here is why is
1:23
Speaker 1: Mason Reyes crying right after this very important message from
1:28
Speaker 1: our sponsor. If as a child, I'd been told of
1:33
Speaker 1: a future world where there dwelled a magical TV that
1:37
Speaker 1: could play anything I wanted an infinite television jukebox that
1:41
Speaker 1: I could watch all night without ever having the remote
1:44
Speaker 1: pride from my hands. I'd say, you must be describing utopia,
1:51
Speaker 1: and this is where I find myself. Wednesday night, two
1:55
Speaker 1: thirty am Utopia.
1:57
Speaker 2: Now this all time heavyweight Champnea fight.
1:59
Speaker 3: Letty to go.
2:00
Speaker 2: There's the bell and here's guile Abel.
2:02
Speaker 1: There are things for my childhood that I've seen on
2:05
Speaker 1: YouTube that I thought I'd go to my deathbed without
2:08
Speaker 1: ever getting to revisit. Or two only undefeated everyweight champions
2:11
Speaker 1: of the world, like the fake boxing match between Muhammad
2:14
Speaker 1: Ali and Rocky Marciano that Special Effects Wizards put together
2:18
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy to determine who was the greatest fighter
2:21
Speaker 1: of all time.
2:23
Speaker 2: Off the Ropes again, Good Body Rally by marciall.
2:28
Speaker 1: I often turned to it long after I should be
2:30
Speaker 1: in bed.
2:32
Speaker 2: Alisi the draw gasps of breath as he moved back
2:35
Speaker 2: to the center of the ways.
2:36
Speaker 4: There's the bell, Andy round one.
2:39
Speaker 1: Our bookshelves are where we project our tastes, where we
2:42
Speaker 1: announce to our dinner guests that, of course we enjoy Faulkner,
2:46
Speaker 1: the Golden Age of comics and the essays of Montaigne.
2:49
Speaker 1: But if our bookshelves are where we telegraph a version
2:52
Speaker 1: of who we want to be, then our YouTube search
2:55
Speaker 1: histories called from late hours, punching away at whiskey soaked
2:58
Speaker 1: keyboards are what we really are, the self that is
3:02
Speaker 1: led by desire rather than decorum.
3:06
Speaker 2: Play will so Love God, Am Marcil, break, will break
3:12
Speaker 2: the armory Jump.
3:14
Speaker 1: After watching Ali and Marciano for a couple of rounds,
3:18
Speaker 1: I think, wasn't there a song about Muhammad Ali? I'd
3:21
Speaker 1: once heard the.
3:25
Speaker 5: Black Superman?
3:27
Speaker 1: And then Superman makes me think, of course, of David
3:30
Speaker 1: Lee Roth heroically bounding around in leather spats and fishnet
3:34
Speaker 1: bikini underwear, and so I seek out his haunting, isolated
3:41
Speaker 1: vocal tracks that make Jump sound like an a cappella
3:44
Speaker 1: spiritual intended to rouse the faithful to action.
3:49
Speaker 2: Ah, might as well jump, job, might as well Job.
3:56
Speaker 1: The clip recalls a time when Eddie Van Halen and
3:59
Speaker 1: Valerie Bertinelli reigned as the Kim and Kanye of their day.
4:04
Speaker 1: Eddie played guitar and Valerie starred in One Day at
4:06
Speaker 1: a Time, a sitcom in which mustachioed, leather vested janitor
4:11
Speaker 1: named Schneider allowed himself into her family's apartment whenever he pleased.
4:16
Speaker 5: Very sex symbol. How you doing with the quarterback?
4:19
Speaker 3: I hope you're not letting him score any touchdowns? You know?
4:22
Speaker 3: I know?
4:23
Speaker 1: Will you keep your nose out of this?
4:24
Speaker 3: This is Julie's problem.
4:26
Speaker 1: Even though we can see almost anything we want on YouTube,
4:29
Speaker 1: there's something about the endless possibility that can cause anxiety,
4:34
Speaker 1: and so we just circle back to the clips that
4:36
Speaker 1: deliver the dopamine of childhood nostalgia. We all have that
4:41
Speaker 1: sweet spot, and for me, it's the early seventies when
4:44
Speaker 1: my first memories of being alive were beginning to form.
4:49
Speaker 1: And the figure who most perfectly evokes this time the
4:52
Speaker 1: ten letter late night search term I inevitably keep coming
4:55
Speaker 1: back to more than any other, is Mason Reese.
5:00
Speaker 4: People kept telling my mother, all, I look like a munchkin. Well,
5:04
Speaker 4: this is what a munchkin looks like.
5:06
Speaker 1: In the seventies, Mason Reese was an advert tizing phenomenon
5:10
Speaker 1: who appeared in dozens of commercials for everything from.
5:13
Speaker 3: Duncan Donuts, Do I Look like a Mudskin?
5:17
Speaker 1: To Raisin Brant and the Underwood chicken spread as on
5:23
Speaker 1: chicken spread with this adorable spoonerism that became a nineteen
5:28
Speaker 1: seventies catchphrase, like I.
5:30
Speaker 4: Told her mom, you posada words like having a burgish board.
5:36
Speaker 1: Lately, I've been trying to explain masonries and I keep
5:39
Speaker 1: coming up short on analogies. He was like the Wendy's
5:43
Speaker 1: Where's the Beef Lady, I say, or Mikey from Life Cereal,
5:47
Speaker 1: But it isn't quite true. While they were limited to
5:50
Speaker 1: one product and one memorable slogan, Mason advertised everything, and
5:55
Speaker 1: he went from being a TV commercial star to being
5:58
Speaker 1: a star star. When he walked down the street, people
6:02
Speaker 1: asked for locks of his signature red hair and blessings
6:05
Speaker 1: for their babies. One mother even named her twins after him,
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Speaker 1: calling one Mason and the other Reese. When I bring
6:13
Speaker 1: him up to my mother to see if she remembers,
6:15
Speaker 1: she says, wasn't he the little boy who was so homely?
6:19
Speaker 1: He was cute?
6:20
Speaker 4: How come every writing come with you?
6:23
Speaker 1: I wish though there was something uncanny about Masonriese because
6:28
Speaker 1: of his precocity. He didn't quite track as a child,
6:31
Speaker 1: and some people even thought he was a little person
6:34
Speaker 1: dressed in children's clothing who after a day's shoot, sparked
6:38
Speaker 1: up a stogie and poured himself a bourbon. The little
6:41
Speaker 1: old man's sat eyed face, the prince valiant haircut, the
6:45
Speaker 1: scrunchy voice that sounds as though spoken underwater in a
6:48
Speaker 1: tub of buttermilk. The hair that only seemed to grow
6:52
Speaker 1: so bright red in the seventies. Mason Reese is as
6:55
Speaker 1: synonymous with childhood as the memory of sitting in a
6:58
Speaker 1: wet bathing suit on the hot vinyl backseat of my
7:01
Speaker 1: father's Pontiac while listening to an AM radio Blair American Pie.
7:07
Speaker 1: His face is the smell of my grandmother's kitchen of
7:11
Speaker 1: crayons comic books. Except in the past year, new Mason
7:20
Speaker 1: rees videos began to appear things from TV I don't
7:25
Speaker 1: recall ever having seen. It was as though my very
7:28
Speaker 1: desire was somehow having an incantatory effect, summoning deeper cuts
7:33
Speaker 1: from the past. Mason on afternoon talk show The Mike
7:39
Speaker 1: Douglas Show, tap dancing to singing in the rain, introducing
7:44
Speaker 1: Leonard Nimoy and hamming it up like an old pro.
7:47
Speaker 4: Please join me in rocketing one of my favorites, Leonard Neimoy.
7:53
Speaker 1: And then there's this it's just not right.
7:56
Speaker 5: A man that old and an eight year old boy.
7:59
Speaker 1: An ABC sitcom pilot's simply called Mason, where he plays
8:03
Speaker 1: a friendless child genius who brings home a thirty five
8:06
Speaker 1: year old man in safari shorts he met while wandering
8:10
Speaker 1: the streets of New York.
8:12
Speaker 2: For all we know he's a pervert. Oh, I don't
8:15
Speaker 2: think Mason leans that way.
8:22
Speaker 5: Well, you aren't even let sleep over.
8:24
Speaker 3: What kind of a companion.
8:26
Speaker 1: But amidst this trove of new material, I found something else.
8:31
Speaker 2: And he's doing something I understand. It's that you especially
8:34
Speaker 2: like a song that you especially are fond of.
8:37
Speaker 3: Yes.
8:38
Speaker 1: In this clip, Mason is co hosting The Mike Douglas
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Speaker 1: Show and Harry Chapin is being introduced.
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Speaker 2: You want to tell us who what what the song is?
8:45
Speaker 3: Or do you know? I don't? I mean, you know
8:50
Speaker 3: what it is?
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Speaker 4: No, I don't want that song.
8:54
Speaker 3: Why Mason, you're not putting on that song?
9:00
Speaker 2: Now he gets he's very touched by that song.
9:02
Speaker 1: But maybe Mason, seated on his mini director's chair, just
9:05
Speaker 1: can't take it and drops the facade of the precocious
9:08
Speaker 1: TV broadcaster and collapses his face into his hands and weeps.
9:16
Speaker 2: Oh you know what song it is? Well, maybe we
9:20
Speaker 2: ought to bring you the guy with the worms back.
9:24
Speaker 2: Come on Pale, Oh, come on over here, Come on
9:26
Speaker 2: over here with uncle Mike. What I said, You're gonna
9:29
Speaker 2: be all right. This song is very touching and as
9:32
Speaker 2: you can see, and Mason's very touched by it. Is
9:35
Speaker 2: it okay? It's called Cat's in the Cradle Harry Chapin,
9:44
Speaker 2: This is for my kids and for Mason. Thank you.
9:58
Speaker 5: My child arrived just the other day, came.
10:02
Speaker 1: And as Harry Chapin sings the quintessential song of complicated
10:06
Speaker 1: father son loves Mason cries in console and he was.
10:10
Speaker 5: Talking for I knew it.
10:11
Speaker 1: And as he grew, he'd say, I'm gonna be like you.
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Speaker 5: You know, I'm gonna be like you.
10:20
Speaker 3: And the Cats in the Cradle and.
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Speaker 2: A little boy blue of the Man of the Moon
10:26
Speaker 2: when you're coming home that I don't know. When we
10:30
Speaker 2: get together, then this time, you know we'll have a
10:33
Speaker 2: good time.
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Speaker 1: Then YouTube is a cultural repository, but it's full of fragments,
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Speaker 1: broken and left over, like Roman ruins. Was there something
10:47
Speaker 1: that took place before the Harry Chapin introduction, something that
10:50
Speaker 1: was happening just outside the frame, off stage and unseen.
10:55
Speaker 1: There wasn't much context to be gotten from YouTube commenters either,
10:58
Speaker 1: most of whom were just mean, saying things like what
11:02
Speaker 1: the hell is that red haired thing?
11:04
Speaker 3: Wow?
11:04
Speaker 1: He was more horrifying than I even remember. I hated
11:08
Speaker 1: this ugly tour when I was a kid, But there
11:12
Speaker 1: was this one thing, and when I first discovered it,
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Speaker 1: I couldn't believe it was true. Looking more closely at
11:18
Speaker 1: the user account the person uploading these new videos, I
11:22
Speaker 1: noticed the name was Mason Reese. I now had many questions.
11:33
Speaker 1: Why would Mason Reese upload a video of himself crying?
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Speaker 1: Myself crying as a child, should such footage exist? Would
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Speaker 1: be the kind of thing I'd probably never even show
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Speaker 1: my closest friends, let alone the whole world. Why was
11:47
Speaker 1: Mason doing just that? And why did he post the
11:50
Speaker 1: videos now? Forty years later? These were questions I couldn't
11:56
Speaker 1: answer by just tweaking my search terms by adding more
11:59
Speaker 1: tabs to the browser window. What I wanted most wasn't
12:03
Speaker 1: to expand the frame, but to pass right through it entirely.
12:08
Speaker 1: In short, I wanted the real world.
12:12
Speaker 4: How long have you been.
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Speaker 2: Acting in commercials?
12:15
Speaker 4: Well, since i'm so now I have been acting three years.
12:20
Speaker 2: That would mean you started when you were about four.
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Speaker 1: What we were hoping to do is to actually look
12:32
Speaker 1: at some of the clips with you.
12:34
Speaker 3: Yeah. I don't mind doing it. Yeah, that's very interesting.
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Speaker 5: Yeah, so I've started rolling you do.
12:54
Speaker 3: Hello.
12:54
Speaker 2: Hello.
12:54
Speaker 1: Mason lives in a modest, two room apartment on New
12:57
Speaker 1: York's Upper West Side. When he greets me and my
13:00
Speaker 1: producer Chris at the door, I'm surprised by how little
13:03
Speaker 1: he is.
13:06
Speaker 3: We're gonna let that go.
13:08
Speaker 5: What are you about.
13:09
Speaker 1: The haircut's almost the same. I don't know, the red hair,
13:13
Speaker 1: the eyes, the expressions, it's all there. Looking at him
13:19
Speaker 1: is intense, like seeing an old friend.
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Speaker 3: Hebe now and then by the way, you might hear
13:24
Speaker 3: a fire Injine or something go by. Because New York.
13:27
Speaker 3: That's New York, baby, that's exactly right, living Manhattan.
13:30
Speaker 1: Yeah, Mason seats us in his living room, which is
13:33
Speaker 1: a shrine to his child star. There's a photo of
13:36
Speaker 1: him co hosting a telethon with Henry Winkler, a nineteen
13:39
Speaker 1: seventy three Cleo Award for Best Actor in a Commercial,
13:43
Speaker 1: and a photograph of himself jogging in Central Park with
13:47
Speaker 1: Andy Warhol and Grace Jones and looking around like you've
13:53
Speaker 1: got all of this, You've got all these photos of
13:55
Speaker 1: yourself as a kid and a lot of memorabilia. In
13:58
Speaker 1: some ways, do you feel this responsibility to that kid
14:03
Speaker 1: in a way or like, do you feel like.
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Speaker 3: You're all of these pictures that you can see of
14:11
Speaker 3: me with the Batmo Bill and Peter Lupis from Mission
14:13
Speaker 3: Impossible and Leonard Nimoy and William Shatton and all this,
14:17
Speaker 3: you know, cover of TV Guys, cover of TV Guy
14:19
Speaker 3: in the book I published an I A seven. That's
14:22
Speaker 3: that's That's what I have in my living room. Yeah,
14:25
Speaker 3: in my bedroom there's not one picture. Why is that
14:30
Speaker 3: Because that's where I'm an adult. That's you know what
14:34
Speaker 3: I'm saying, And to me, that's very important. I'm a
14:37
Speaker 3: fifty year old man. That's my private area. It's just
14:40
Speaker 3: my public area. Yeah, and in private, this is not
14:44
Speaker 3: who I am.
14:45
Speaker 1: But is this is this here for like for us?
14:48
Speaker 1: Or is this here for you both?
14:51
Speaker 3: Both? Because it's a it's a great reminder to me
14:54
Speaker 3: of what I've accomplished in my life.
14:57
Speaker 1: Mason Reese is fifty, but he doesn't look it. He
15:00
Speaker 1: doesn't look it in the way his Pomeranian doesn't look
15:03
Speaker 1: his age or any age, because a Pomeranian is what
15:07
Speaker 1: it is, and Mason Reese is Mason Reese. And the
15:10
Speaker 1: world seeses on all those who are singular, unique, those
15:14
Speaker 1: who are what they are, and the world celebrates them
15:18
Speaker 1: the best it knows how, by nailing them to a crucifix,
15:22
Speaker 1: by sticking them in front of a camera, to hawk
15:24
Speaker 1: fried dough and canned meatspread. Mason hasn't made a commercial
15:29
Speaker 1: since his teens, but his life seems pretty okay. In
15:32
Speaker 1: the intervening years. He's opened a few bars and even
15:35
Speaker 1: runs his own entertainment company, borges Moord Productions. And why
15:40
Speaker 1: did he post the videos now forty years later? Mainly,
15:44
Speaker 1: he explains to me because a friend of his put
15:46
Speaker 1: together a DVD of Mason Reese's greatest hits and he
15:50
Speaker 1: thought he might as well share it with people who
15:52
Speaker 1: might be interested. Chris sets up a laptop on the
15:56
Speaker 1: coffee table. What we were hoping to do is to
15:59
Speaker 1: actually look at some of the clips with you.
16:01
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't mind doing it. Yeah, that's very interesting. Yeah.
16:05
Speaker 1: We start off with perhaps the greatest hit of them
16:07
Speaker 1: all the Underwood doubled hand, I'm commercial.
16:09
Speaker 4: Granburry sauce and red is on chicken spread, Shorty Peter
16:13
Speaker 4: burn apple sauce on this one even made a nifty
16:16
Speaker 4: suest tomato salad. Like I told her mom, you post
16:19
Speaker 4: other words like having a burgish word.
16:23
Speaker 3: So the whole borgoschword thing at the end, uh, I
16:27
Speaker 3: mean that ended up being the money shot, as they
16:29
Speaker 3: call it. You know, that was it? That was that
16:30
Speaker 3: was the big one. It wasn't a mistake, it was planned,
16:34
Speaker 3: but it was. Yeah, And I'll tell you how. So
16:38
Speaker 3: Andy Doyle, who was the ad exac for the company,
16:43
Speaker 3: came up to me and he said, Mason, we would
16:47
Speaker 3: like you to mispronounce the word schmorgasport.
16:51
Speaker 1: That's that's interesting.
16:53
Speaker 3: And I said, well, but Andy, you know, I know
16:56
Speaker 3: what the real word is, and I don't want America
16:58
Speaker 3: to think that I'm not smart enough to know the
17:00
Speaker 3: real word. So what he did was he went and
17:03
Speaker 3: he got a yellow pan of paper and he wrote
17:05
Speaker 3: down all these words that sounded like schmart sport and
17:10
Speaker 3: I picked out borgosmort. So Andy looks at me, goes, Mason,
17:16
Speaker 3: you are really incredible. You're not gonna believe this. Borgus
17:21
Speaker 3: schmort is morgasbord in Swedish, but it's not right. Schmorgasbord
17:28
Speaker 3: is sweeh. So he lied to me. So the bottom
17:31
Speaker 3: line is the ad exact lied to a six and
17:33
Speaker 3: a half year old kid, and that commercial literally launched
17:36
Speaker 3: my career. That's what made people like Dick Havin and
17:40
Speaker 3: Mike Douglas and all the others, uh, you know, call
17:43
Speaker 3: me on the phone and say, hey, this kid is
17:45
Speaker 3: something a little different, you know, and we want to
17:48
Speaker 3: we want a piece of him.
17:49
Speaker 1: So, yeah, let's take a look at another ad.
17:53
Speaker 3: Duncan Dunas.
17:54
Speaker 4: Yes, people kept telling my mother I looked like a munchkin.
18:00
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, that was more commercial than I actually kind
18:03
Speaker 3: of regret doing. Why Well let's watch it, yeah, and
18:08
Speaker 3: you'll no at the tagline, I'll tell.
18:11
Speaker 4: You why a big bunch basket or a great big
18:13
Speaker 4: super munch basket. Tell me do I look like a munchkin?
18:17
Speaker 3: Oh? The only reason why I'm not particularly fond of
18:23
Speaker 3: that commercial was the fact that the tagline was don't
18:27
Speaker 3: tell me I looked like a munchkin? Well, what do
18:29
Speaker 3: you think happened? Every fucking place I went, you know, oh,
18:34
Speaker 3: that's the Munchkin For a year. That was just abuse
18:38
Speaker 3: after abuse after abuse.
18:41
Speaker 1: Do you want to just take a look at the
18:43
Speaker 1: Harry chapin no.
18:45
Speaker 3: Dot or not? Oh?
18:47
Speaker 5: Really?
18:47
Speaker 3: Yeah? Yeah, I mean it was I'll tell the story
18:51
Speaker 3: behind it, you know. For some reason, and I to
18:55
Speaker 3: this day, I don't know what the reason is. Because
18:58
Speaker 3: my father and I were very close, that song Cat's
19:01
Speaker 3: in the Cradle has a really hard effect on me.
19:05
Speaker 3: So people always say to me, oh, did you have
19:07
Speaker 3: a strained relationship your father? Was he always away? And
19:11
Speaker 3: the answer was no, My dad was always around. So
19:15
Speaker 3: I never really understood why I identified with the song
19:18
Speaker 3: other than the fact that I was a sensitive kid
19:21
Speaker 3: and Harry was on the Mike Douglas Show. I was
19:25
Speaker 3: the co host, and I asked him, are you gonna
19:29
Speaker 3: be seting cats in the Cradle and he said no.
19:31
Speaker 3: They asked me to do another one of my newer songs.
19:34
Speaker 3: Oh okay. So I was not prepared for him to
19:39
Speaker 3: do that, and at the age of seven, I wasn't
19:44
Speaker 3: able to, you know, figure out what did he lie
19:48
Speaker 3: to me? And that's what I must have been thinking,
19:51
Speaker 3: you know, as a young kid, and I literally just
19:54
Speaker 3: broke down and.
19:55
Speaker 1: Fell apart because you had been lied to, or because
19:58
Speaker 1: because I wasn't gonna.
19:59
Speaker 3: Be yes because the song couldn't be played. But I'm
20:01
Speaker 3: sure part of my mind was, well, why would Harry
20:05
Speaker 3: say no? I literally just broke down into a step
20:10
Speaker 3: and nobody understood why except me, my parents, and probably Harry.
20:15
Speaker 3: You know, it's a ninety minute show back then, and
20:17
Speaker 3: there was probably a good thirty minutes left in the show.
20:21
Speaker 3: And I refused to come back. And I just went
20:24
Speaker 3: down into the commissary, which was in the basement of
20:26
Speaker 3: the building, and I sat there and I had a
20:28
Speaker 3: soda or something.
20:30
Speaker 5: And.
20:32
Speaker 3: You know, I just refused. I didn't want to go
20:34
Speaker 3: back anymore.
20:36
Speaker 1: A lot of Mason's stories involved as being lied to
20:39
Speaker 1: by adults, which is sad. But what was it about
20:42
Speaker 1: Cats in the Cradle, in particular, a song to make
20:45
Speaker 1: cry if anyone neglectful dads not little boys? Is it possible?
20:51
Speaker 1: In a way, it was as though like it was
20:56
Speaker 1: sort of like you singing the song to yourself. You're
20:59
Speaker 1: both you're both a child and I don't have a childhood.
21:05
Speaker 3: All of these stereotypical things that kids do and did
21:09
Speaker 3: I didn't do. I mean I never went to a prom,
21:17
Speaker 3: I never played sports, I never took extracurricular after school activities.
21:26
Speaker 3: Did I sacrifice anything? I know you didn't ask that,
21:29
Speaker 3: but that's a log But that's a logical question. Well,
21:34
Speaker 3: I don't know, did I I don't think so. I
21:38
Speaker 3: often tell people that when you've written an elephant in
21:43
Speaker 3: the Barnum and Bailey circus, been an NBC correspondent for
21:47
Speaker 3: the News, piloted the Goodyear Blimp. I wasn't in the
21:52
Speaker 3: Goodyear blimp. I flew the Goodyear blimp. When you've gotten
21:57
Speaker 3: to do all the things that I did, algebra is
22:00
Speaker 3: pretty fucking boring. I'm a very unique circumstances. My mother
22:06
Speaker 3: and father every day of my life life said I
22:11
Speaker 3: love you to me, and every day of my life
22:15
Speaker 3: would give me a kiss and a hug, and this
22:18
Speaker 3: coming that they loved me. And like, my mom called
22:21
Speaker 3: me this morning and she wanted me to I was
22:22
Speaker 3: wondering yesterday for three hours, literally like vacuuming the floor
22:26
Speaker 3: and cutting her toenails. You know, that's not what some
22:30
Speaker 3: wants to do to a nine year old mother, but
22:32
Speaker 3: I was doing it because I'm a nice boy.
22:35
Speaker 5: I just thought, just in light of what you were saying,
22:38
Speaker 5: if we just watched the one with your where your mother?
22:41
Speaker 3: Sure I could watch them.
22:45
Speaker 2: Yeah, there you go. When when did you first discover missus?
22:50
Speaker 2: Reeve said, this young man was a bit precocious.
22:53
Speaker 3: My mom was a good looking, broad beautiful. He was
22:59
Speaker 3: born April eleventh, I'd say April twelveth.
23:04
Speaker 1: He is, to say, the least, an unusual child.
23:08
Speaker 3: How do you and he can on fabulously? Yeah?
23:12
Speaker 5: We yell, we fight, but we love each other a lot.
23:16
Speaker 2: I want to bring his father out. Okay, Mason, do
23:19
Speaker 2: you want to bring your dad? Huh?
23:20
Speaker 3: Believe?
23:21
Speaker 4: Will Bill Reese please them?
23:33
Speaker 2: Yeah? Tell me about his reading?
23:36
Speaker 3: He reads it?
23:36
Speaker 1: What level between tenth and eleventh grade?
23:41
Speaker 3: That's incredible.
23:42
Speaker 2: Does he attend a public school?
23:45
Speaker 3: He attends a Montessori Method school. Why do you think
23:48
Speaker 3: you're welling up?
23:50
Speaker 2: Allows him to progress pretty much at his own case?
23:53
Speaker 3: Well again, you know, I mean to some extent because
23:58
Speaker 3: my mom and dad probably still loved each other at
24:00
Speaker 3: this point in our lives. You know, things were a
24:03
Speaker 3: lot simpler maybe for me. My parents had not divorced yet.
24:10
Speaker 3: My two brothers and my sister and I were all
24:11
Speaker 3: very close. We still all kind of lived together for
24:14
Speaker 3: the most part. So yeah, I think that a lot
24:19
Speaker 3: of it is uh, hearkens back to a simpler time,
24:25
Speaker 3: more care free perhaps though even though I had a
24:29
Speaker 3: job to do, it was still more care free because
24:31
Speaker 3: I was a kid and a lot of responsibilities have
24:34
Speaker 3: not been put on my head yet. You know, it's
24:37
Speaker 3: funny my mom doesn't understand YouTube, you know. I mean,
24:43
Speaker 3: she kind of gets it, but doesn't really fully understand it.
24:46
Speaker 3: I showed her this clip and I jokingly said to her,
24:49
Speaker 3: but maybe it was true. I said, that's probably the
24:51
Speaker 3: last time you ever kissed dad. Well, and I do
24:59
Speaker 3: love my dad.
25:01
Speaker 1: No, God, when you're a kid, you cry because you
25:14
Speaker 1: feel lied to, because life is unfair and you don't
25:17
Speaker 1: understand anything. And then as an adult, you cry because
25:20
Speaker 1: life still isn't fair, but you do understand it. You
25:24
Speaker 1: cry because you do understand it. By nineteen seventy seven,
25:30
Speaker 1: Mason's dad would begin spending more and more time at
25:33
Speaker 1: the company he started, and eventually he'd convert part of
25:36
Speaker 1: his office into a living space where he could spend nights.
25:40
Speaker 1: In his early teens, around the time the commercial offers
25:44
Speaker 1: started to dry up, Mason's parents would divorce, and Mason
25:48
Speaker 1: would move into the office with his dad At eight
25:51
Speaker 1: thirty in the morning. When employees began to show up,
25:54
Speaker 1: Mason would sometimes still be lounging around in his T
25:57
Speaker 1: shirt and underwear.
25:59
Speaker 2: We're going to visit more with the Reese's following this,
26:01
Speaker 2: We'll be right back.
26:07
Speaker 1: At one point, while watching the videos, Mason tells me
26:10
Speaker 1: that he realizes the commenters can be mean. Oh my god,
26:14
Speaker 1: what a freak. He was so ugly. What kind of
26:18
Speaker 1: talent did this kid have? He says, quoting them, I'd
26:21
Speaker 1: be a liar if I said it didn't affect me.
26:25
Speaker 1: When I ask him why he hasn't disabled the comments
26:28
Speaker 1: for his videos, he seems genuinely surprised that you could
26:31
Speaker 1: do such a thing. He pauses to consider it, but
26:35
Speaker 1: as of today he still hasn't done it, and I
26:38
Speaker 1: don't think he ever will. It would mean not being
26:40
Speaker 1: able to receive any of the nice comments like this one. Hey, Mason,
26:45
Speaker 1: thank you for these. They would not have been the
26:48
Speaker 1: seventies without you. This episode was produced for Reply All
27:07
Speaker 1: by me Jonathan Goldstein Will, along with Chris Neary, Tim
27:10
Speaker 1: Howard Struthie Pennaminini, PJ Vote, and Alex Goldman. It was
27:14
Speaker 1: edited by Alex Bloomberg, John Dolore and Bobby Lord mix
27:18
Speaker 1: the episode. We'll be back next week with a brand
27:21
Speaker 1: new episode of Heavyweight