January 28, 2019 • 20 mins
Inspired by Sacha Baron Cohen and Andy Kaufman, the non-Jewish sometimes comedian and film student Damien Noorbakhsh decided on moving to San Francisco to go full-on transgressive with a hard, HARD turn to edgy in the age of Trump: he'd play a full dress German SS Officer confused about how far right things had swung. Hi- (and low-) jinx ensue.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
I don't know how much more absurd, you know, comedy
can become to to to overlap that of what how
absurd reality has become. Welcome back to Ozzy Confidential. I
am your host, Eugene S. Robinson as the next version.
(00:28):
It's kind of an interesting one. In the age of
snow flakes and the culture of outrage and nervous Nellie's
and stuttering muttering approaches to campus comedy, people dancing tento
hooks and walking on eggshells. We're gonna meet a guy
named high and Wreck who would like you to think
(00:51):
what he does is funny, but fundamentally doesn't give a
funk whether you do or not listen. Where the confessional
professional EUGENEUS Robertson, that's me. Here. We are in the
tender Loin in San Francisco, walking up to a guy
named Heinrich. Now, just those of you who are listening
and not watching this like we are. Heinrich is dressed
(01:14):
in full SS officer gear, swastika regalia, the whole bit
in the middle of the tender Loin, which is like
New York City ninety eight. So this has gotta be
gotta be epic and if there's a story there's got
to be told. I imagine he might be the one
to tell it. Heinrich. First off, I don't have any
money to give to your black lives amount of movement Creek.
(01:38):
Heinrich came to San Francisco from from where do you hail?
They're originally I'm from Munich, but I was living in
ze Berlin for the last ten years or so. Yeah, okay,
so it's it's been kind of rough going for you
in in San Francisco. I think you said that you
went to uh Halloween gathering. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, fair.
(02:02):
Uh there's many supporters to the Fourth Strike, and I
was very surprised, you know a lot of people. They
seemed very happy to have me there. And uh they're
the very attractive women there buying me the drinks. I'm
not used to this. It's usually the young Arian boys.
But also there's very many people giving me the difficulty.
(02:23):
Did I read something online that you had some kind
of problem, Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, this is true. Then
I was going through the restroom to uh, you know,
do the business as the man does. Uh. There was
the boy he looked to me like the Arian boys.
So this is why it's the most surprising. Owned. He
says to me, how dare you do this? How dare
(02:45):
you come here looking like you do? I said, what,
looking so perfect and beautiful? He said no, my my cousin's, uncle's, cousins, brothers, friends,
grandmother knew. Somebody's asked with an Auschwitz, how dares you
come here looking like this? And I said, look, my friend,
I don't find any problems. Just let me do my business.
But he would not leave me alone. I was at
(03:07):
the urinal trying to do my business and he would
keep talking to my back. Finally I gave himself owning.
If you keep bothering my way I'm doing my business,
I will have to assort you in a very physical vey.
He would not stop, so I was forced to do
what I had to do. So I threw the eirbow
into his chin and then even to sleep like the
little girl. Yeah where I'm thinking, what if somebody comes
(03:29):
in right now and they sees me? Heinrich is a
perfect arian over the body of the of the dead
little boy. Yeah, so I grabbed him by the boy.
How old was he? I don't own maybe twenties? Who
so I grabbed him by Swans whom I grabbed him
unto the stoll. The problem is, even after I closed
the door, you could still see his little weak legs.
(03:51):
He has a very small quad reception, no have muscles
whatsoever on. So at that point I said that I'm
going to leave wounds. Let's let's authorities figure outs the rest. Alright,
So now now we've gotten in off the street. We're
in uh Heinrichs Mountain Redoubt. Let's call it that. Maybe
(04:12):
I want to call it uh cos Heinrich. Thanks, right,
House Heinrich. Okay, alright, alright, house House Heinrich. Here we
are at House Heinrich. And why don't you you know?
All right, Eugene fucking cut this ship, dude, Seriously, I've
been doing this, as you're well aware of, for almost
twelve years. Now you come up here to my apartment.
(04:33):
You want to keep making a joke about this. You
want to interview me a what? Alright? So the line
between acting like something and being something, maybe like acting
crazy and being crazy starts to get blurry if you
do either too long. I guess Damien north Bosh well out.
(05:00):
He might have discovered the truth to that. I've I've
been doing this. I have the uniforms, I have the scripts.
I'm making infomercials. I've lost friends, I've I've alienated acquaintances.
(05:21):
Well you, I mean you've been You've gotten into people
have attacked you on the streets. But you, I mean,
what what what's the endgame look like? Have you at
some point though, what's the payoff for you? Have you
been able to pitch this to people or what's uh well,
I mean, first off, this hasn't been twelve years, you know, continuous.
I am you know, I'm embarrassed to admit that though
(05:42):
I had the most sincere ambitions with the Heinrich project
from the beginning. Um, I did abandon it, but you
know I did make a very conscious decision to bring
it back about a year ago with Trump coming into
office and everything else associated with him. But there is
no endgame. Is there an endgame to comedy? Is there
an endgame to any any you know artistic Uh? Yeah,
(06:05):
when you sell it, well that'd be nice. I was
born in nineteen eighty in the San Fernando Valley of
Los Angeles, which at that time was you know, a
more prestigious area of you know, of l A. My father, Um,
he's Iranian. He left Iran at the age of sixteen,
(06:25):
which was kind of unheard of at that time. That was,
you know, pre revolution, that was still during the Shah's time.
I've never been though. I'm unfortunately and I'm sorry to
admit this, I'm scared to go. He left at the
time that that people just didn't leave, and he did it,
as he told me, because he just didn't feel comfortable there.
He left before the revolution. He left before the revolution.
(06:46):
First he went to England. Uh. Then he went to Italy.
He met my mom, who is an American, Um, a
Midwestern American who was on vacation. She's white, she's white. Yeah. Um.
They got married and then they they came to the U. S.
Which I can assume that was my dad's ultimate goal,
which was to come to the US. So did you
grow up with extended family from Iran? Uh? Yes and no. Um,
(07:13):
you know, my dad in the eighties brought over a
lot of his relatives, but we were never that close.
Even though they lived in the in l A. M.
We were never that close. Uh. My dad purposely didn't
want to teach me farcie just because he wanted me
to be the all American you know. My dad had too,
uh kind of high end leather retail stores. It was
called Leather Conspiracy. One was in the Promenade Mall in
(07:36):
Woodland Hills. Uh. The other was in Westwood and uh,
the Westwood Store, not the Westrood, not their store, but
all the stores around them. There was a rash of burglaries,
and my dad said, you know, funk that we're not
gonna let anybody rob the store. So both he and
my mom were in the Westwood store while I was
(07:57):
in my mom's belly pregnant, to make sure nobody, you know,
burglarized the place. And that's where my mom started giving
birth in the Westwood store, and my dad held out
to the last minute. Are you sure? Are you sure
it's coming? Because those motherfucker's they could be anywhere right now. Now.
Damien is not just gallivant about the streets of San
(08:19):
Francisco doing this for the amusement of onlookers and friends.
He actually has put together several pilots of TV shows,
most notably ones of which he pitched to Dave Chappelle.
You're about to hear a clip of Damien as Heinrich
watching the video of young Arian boys shirtlessly wrestling oil
(08:43):
and and the dirt of of his pilot. Enter the
fourth right everything menu. Well, hello, boys, who are you
fighting for? Yeah? Grab him? Grab him by them? Yeah yeah,
grab his schnitze, y'all, y'all so funny. I love this video. Yeah, anyway,
(09:03):
right now we are experiencing uh Nazi recreation, which includes
mayor to mayor wrestling, which is my personal favorite. Yeah, yeah,
you get all these handsome young Aryan boys are trying
to be the best for your Look what a great
time this was. Yeah, yeah, I'm going to go to
(09:23):
the restroom for little beat y'all got you in his
sac mel Brooks pulled it off. Bob Crane. Hogan's Heroes
World War Two is not exactly bereft of comedic potential,
but if sig Hiler is your punchline, you might find
(09:44):
it a hard road. The whole you have to understand
that politically, politically, this has gotta be like probably the
most uncomfortable form of comedy ever that you're that's that's
the whole point. Tell me, so what what what is
the point? The whole point is that, look, you know,
no matter, no matter what the state of affairs is,
(10:06):
even if things are as honkey dorry as as they
might seem on the surface. And right now, I think
the collective opinion is that things are not honkey dorry
in this country, in this state, in this on this planet.
There's a lot of a lot of issues going on
right now. Right everything's cool on the surface. Everything is
not cool on the surface. You know, there's always gonna
(10:27):
be issues politically, There's always gonna be issues racially, There's
always gonna be issues with religion and gender and and
everything else that people constantly you know, taking opinions. You
my dad who left Iran in when he was sixteen,
you know, way before the revolution, before Omani all those guys,
(10:49):
though he never felt comfortable in Iran. Though he never
you know, had this. Though he was never a Muslim,
nor was the rest of my family, he still obviously
had pride for being Persian. So, you know, fast forward
to the late seventies, early eighties, you know, we have
the Iranian hostage crisis, etcetera, etcetera. And he told me
(11:11):
a story that in the early eighties, one day, um,
two white women walk into the store and uh, you
know my dad. My dad had lived in Florence before that,
and he was by all accounts, a player and he
sucked as many women as he possibly could. Hats off,
you know, and he said, even by that time, he's married,
he has a young kid, he's still getting a lot
(11:32):
of you know, you got a lot of attention at least.
So these these two white women walking and they say,
oh my god, you have such an exotic look. Where
are you from? And he had no issues, even though
this is post hostage crisis situation. He's not gonna lie.
He said, Well on Persian, he said, oh my god.
And these these women said, my god, that's so interesting
because we went to the store right down the street
(11:54):
and we thought that those two guys that owned that
store were Persian also, but they said their Egyptian. And
my dad became so upset because he said, those two
fucking assholes there are Ranians also, but now they're afraid
of losing business, so conveniently, all of a sudden, there Egyptians.
And you know, even from a young age, I was
kind of in a in a weird circumstance where I
(12:17):
was white and I was living around whites, but I
think I felt this. Everyone didn't see me as being white. Um.
And albeit you know, in in the Center Final Valley
in the early eighties, you had a lot of Jews,
you had a lot of Persians, you had people you know,
from all over the place, but the predominant group were Wasps.
And I was half Wasps and I was half something
(12:38):
else but close enough that people still recognize me as
being white. But I wasn't quite wasn't quite there, Okay,
so I was other close enough but not. Um. So,
you know, my dad, who was very much turned off
by the l A scene, he wanted the exact opposite,
and we ended up moving up to Mendicino County, which
(13:00):
which was, for all intense of purposes, the exact opposite.
And for me that that was culture shocked. Even though
everybody everybody spoke English, it was still culture shocked. Um.
But there was still that that weird kind of phenomena
going on where people kind of recognize me as being white,
but it was still always that question what are you?
(13:20):
And if your hair grows out, is it curly or
is it straight? Oh it's cruely fucking Persian. Come on,
I gotta shave that ship. Every day of my life.
And the thing is this, I don't I don't reap
the rewards of being white. And I know this is
this is a weird thing to say, and people, oh
my god, what does that mean? But think about it.
You're white, but you're not white. It's like being it's
(13:42):
like being a celebrity but not really being famous, not
being rich. Yeah, it's like me exactly. And I guess
that's why you and me or friends here you go.
Just because it's immersive comedy actually doesn't mean it's funny comedic.
(14:05):
You know, there's a sense listening to Heinrich that you're
in on an in joke that you're not quite willing
to be in on the whole point of Heinrich, and
the whole point of Heinrich twelve years ago, and the
whole point of Heinrich right now is to show that
the absolute absurdity of taking an extreme stance on things,
(14:26):
but also the extreme danger of extremes, the absurdity, and
through the absurdity, also the uncomfortable humor. You know, in extremes.
You're you're twelve years in um, we're in the midst
of the first Trump administration at the very least, and um,
(14:54):
do you feel more or less emboldened to try to
continue on which what seems to many to be kind
of a exotic thing. I mean, we'll still the underlying
question about why you think it's funny and why how
you expect this to work? And that's that's the interesting
thing that you know, when when I started the Hinwrich project, um,
you know, over a decade ago. At that time, that
(15:16):
seemed like the most extreme thing to do. Uh mind
you I live in San Francisco. Um. I mean, the whole,
the whole genesis of this Hirich character came about in
in the mid two thousand's or early two thousands. I'm sorry,
when when I was living in Japantown, San Francisco, which
at that time and still is, for all intensive purposes,
a very kind of residential quiet, you know, peaceful neighborhood
(15:39):
of San Francisco. You have a lot of tourists, you
have you know, a family, senior citizens. Um. One day,
it was like the middle of a week, middle of
the day, maybe one in the afternoon, I'm walking up
Post Street and I see, uh to two middle aged
white guys walking down the street wearing nothing but cock
rings and uh boots and that's it. And uh, nobody
(16:03):
gave them a second look. There was there was kids,
there was families, there were senior citizens. Nobody gave these
guys walking around naked in the middle of the day
a second look. And mind you, it wasn't you know,
Fulsome Street Week. It wasn't Pride Week. You know, when
you have Fulsome and gave Pride Week, you get stragglers
that will wander off to other neighborhoods and whatnot. Um,
(16:24):
this was none of that. It was just two guys
that were walking around naked in the middle of the
japan town of all places. And that was kind of
the impetus this to this whole thing where I thought,
is there anything that can really shock anybody in San Francisco?
And I really put a lot of fun into this.
Is there anything, I mean, aside from the obvious and
an act of violence or a car wreck or something
(16:47):
like that, is there anything that that can shock somebody
in San Francisco? And I kind of joking, I said
to myself, well, maybe with the exception of a guy
dressed in full Nazi uniform walking down the street, and
that's that's kind of how the whole thing started out.
So at that time, dressing up like an s S officer,
you know, from the forties, walking on the street, that
(17:09):
was the most absurd, ludicrous, taboo and extreme thing I
can think of. Now now we're in the era of
you know, Steve Bannon, Richard Spencer, the right Milo, all
these other guys dressing up like a like a Nazi
in San Francisco, it doesn't really have the same I
(17:29):
have to magic that that it did ten years ago.
I have to say, we we walked to get here,
and I expected that there would be a greater amount
of notice uh uh that you were dressed like an
SS officer. Um, but there was very little until we
passed those German guys and you know, and that's that's unfortunately,
(17:50):
that's that's a bad sign of times where what has
for the past fifty sixty years at least been known
as the most extreme thing you can do, which even
ten years ago was the most extreme thing I could do,
that no longer has the same It doesn't resonate the
same way. UM. So you know, to answer your your
(18:10):
overall question, I don't know, I really don't know. I
don't know what the endgame to the Heinrich project is.
You know, I don't I don't know how much more
absurd you know, comedy can become to to to overlap
that of what how absurd reality has become. So there
(18:31):
we go Henrich Uh. Coming up next on Ozzy Confidential,
Karen Barnes and herson Dylan. They had a secret. They
had a secret about Dylan's life as a woman. Tune
(18:56):
in next time for Ozzy Confidential. We go deep, deep,
deep into the heart of the trans experience in America.
(19:18):
Ozzy Confidential is produced by who Else Nay Eugene S. Robinson,
an executive produced by Robert Coolos and this episode was
sound designed, edited and mixed by Jamie con and Nick Johnson.
For more Ozzy Confidential, check us out on Ozzy dot com.
(19:40):
That's o z y dot com slash Confidential. We published
editorial companion articles on Ozzi and photos videos for every
single score, so check them out. Go to Ozzy dot
com slash Confidential, That's o z Y dot com slash Confidential.
(20:00):
The Mass
I don't know how much more absurd, you know, comedy
can become to to to overlap that of what how
absurd reality has become. Welcome back to Ozzy Confidential. I
am your host, Eugene S. Robinson as the next version.
(00:28):
It's kind of an interesting one. In the age of
snow flakes and the culture of outrage and nervous Nellie's
and stuttering muttering approaches to campus comedy, people dancing tento
hooks and walking on eggshells. We're gonna meet a guy
named high and Wreck who would like you to think
(00:51):
what he does is funny, but fundamentally doesn't give a
funk whether you do or not listen. Where the confessional
professional EUGENEUS Robertson, that's me. Here. We are in the
tender Loin in San Francisco, walking up to a guy
named Heinrich. Now, just those of you who are listening
and not watching this like we are. Heinrich is dressed
(01:14):
in full SS officer gear, swastika regalia, the whole bit
in the middle of the tender Loin, which is like
New York City ninety eight. So this has gotta be
gotta be epic and if there's a story there's got
to be told. I imagine he might be the one
to tell it. Heinrich. First off, I don't have any
money to give to your black lives amount of movement Creek.
(01:38):
Heinrich came to San Francisco from from where do you hail?
They're originally I'm from Munich, but I was living in
ze Berlin for the last ten years or so. Yeah, okay,
so it's it's been kind of rough going for you
in in San Francisco. I think you said that you
went to uh Halloween gathering. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, fair.
(02:02):
Uh there's many supporters to the Fourth Strike, and I
was very surprised, you know a lot of people. They
seemed very happy to have me there. And uh they're
the very attractive women there buying me the drinks. I'm
not used to this. It's usually the young Arian boys.
But also there's very many people giving me the difficulty.
(02:23):
Did I read something online that you had some kind
of problem, Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, this is true. Then
I was going through the restroom to uh, you know,
do the business as the man does. Uh. There was
the boy he looked to me like the Arian boys.
So this is why it's the most surprising. Owned. He
says to me, how dare you do this? How dare
(02:45):
you come here looking like you do? I said, what,
looking so perfect and beautiful? He said no, my my cousin's, uncle's, cousins, brothers, friends,
grandmother knew. Somebody's asked with an Auschwitz, how dares you
come here looking like this? And I said, look, my friend,
I don't find any problems. Just let me do my business.
But he would not leave me alone. I was at
(03:07):
the urinal trying to do my business and he would
keep talking to my back. Finally I gave himself owning.
If you keep bothering my way I'm doing my business,
I will have to assort you in a very physical vey.
He would not stop, so I was forced to do
what I had to do. So I threw the eirbow
into his chin and then even to sleep like the
little girl. Yeah where I'm thinking, what if somebody comes
(03:29):
in right now and they sees me? Heinrich is a
perfect arian over the body of the of the dead
little boy. Yeah, so I grabbed him by the boy.
How old was he? I don't own maybe twenties? Who
so I grabbed him by Swans whom I grabbed him
unto the stoll. The problem is, even after I closed
the door, you could still see his little weak legs.
(03:51):
He has a very small quad reception, no have muscles
whatsoever on. So at that point I said that I'm
going to leave wounds. Let's let's authorities figure outs the rest. Alright,
So now now we've gotten in off the street. We're
in uh Heinrichs Mountain Redoubt. Let's call it that. Maybe
(04:12):
I want to call it uh cos Heinrich. Thanks, right,
House Heinrich. Okay, alright, alright, house House Heinrich. Here we
are at House Heinrich. And why don't you you know?
All right, Eugene fucking cut this ship, dude, Seriously, I've
been doing this, as you're well aware of, for almost
twelve years. Now you come up here to my apartment.
(04:33):
You want to keep making a joke about this. You
want to interview me a what? Alright? So the line
between acting like something and being something, maybe like acting
crazy and being crazy starts to get blurry if you
do either too long. I guess Damien north Bosh well out.
(05:00):
He might have discovered the truth to that. I've I've
been doing this. I have the uniforms, I have the scripts.
I'm making infomercials. I've lost friends, I've I've alienated acquaintances.
(05:21):
Well you, I mean you've been You've gotten into people
have attacked you on the streets. But you, I mean,
what what what's the endgame look like? Have you at
some point though, what's the payoff for you? Have you
been able to pitch this to people or what's uh well,
I mean, first off, this hasn't been twelve years, you know, continuous.
I am you know, I'm embarrassed to admit that though
(05:42):
I had the most sincere ambitions with the Heinrich project
from the beginning. Um, I did abandon it, but you
know I did make a very conscious decision to bring
it back about a year ago with Trump coming into
office and everything else associated with him. But there is
no endgame. Is there an endgame to comedy? Is there
an endgame to any any you know artistic Uh? Yeah,
(06:05):
when you sell it, well that'd be nice. I was
born in nineteen eighty in the San Fernando Valley of
Los Angeles, which at that time was you know, a
more prestigious area of you know, of l A. My father, Um,
he's Iranian. He left Iran at the age of sixteen,
(06:25):
which was kind of unheard of at that time. That was,
you know, pre revolution, that was still during the Shah's time.
I've never been though. I'm unfortunately and I'm sorry to
admit this, I'm scared to go. He left at the
time that that people just didn't leave, and he did it,
as he told me, because he just didn't feel comfortable there.
He left before the revolution. He left before the revolution.
(06:46):
First he went to England. Uh. Then he went to Italy.
He met my mom, who is an American, Um, a
Midwestern American who was on vacation. She's white, she's white. Yeah. Um.
They got married and then they they came to the U. S.
Which I can assume that was my dad's ultimate goal,
which was to come to the US. So did you
grow up with extended family from Iran? Uh? Yes and no. Um,
(07:13):
you know, my dad in the eighties brought over a
lot of his relatives, but we were never that close.
Even though they lived in the in l A. M.
We were never that close. Uh. My dad purposely didn't
want to teach me farcie just because he wanted me
to be the all American you know. My dad had too,
uh kind of high end leather retail stores. It was
called Leather Conspiracy. One was in the Promenade Mall in
(07:36):
Woodland Hills. Uh. The other was in Westwood and uh,
the Westwood Store, not the Westrood, not their store, but
all the stores around them. There was a rash of burglaries,
and my dad said, you know, funk that we're not
gonna let anybody rob the store. So both he and
my mom were in the Westwood store while I was
(07:57):
in my mom's belly pregnant, to make sure nobody, you know,
burglarized the place. And that's where my mom started giving
birth in the Westwood store, and my dad held out
to the last minute. Are you sure? Are you sure
it's coming? Because those motherfucker's they could be anywhere right now. Now.
Damien is not just gallivant about the streets of San
(08:19):
Francisco doing this for the amusement of onlookers and friends.
He actually has put together several pilots of TV shows,
most notably ones of which he pitched to Dave Chappelle.
You're about to hear a clip of Damien as Heinrich
watching the video of young Arian boys shirtlessly wrestling oil
(08:43):
and and the dirt of of his pilot. Enter the
fourth right everything menu. Well, hello, boys, who are you
fighting for? Yeah? Grab him? Grab him by them? Yeah yeah,
grab his schnitze, y'all, y'all so funny. I love this video. Yeah, anyway,
(09:03):
right now we are experiencing uh Nazi recreation, which includes
mayor to mayor wrestling, which is my personal favorite. Yeah, yeah,
you get all these handsome young Aryan boys are trying
to be the best for your Look what a great
time this was. Yeah, yeah, I'm going to go to
(09:23):
the restroom for little beat y'all got you in his
sac mel Brooks pulled it off. Bob Crane. Hogan's Heroes
World War Two is not exactly bereft of comedic potential,
but if sig Hiler is your punchline, you might find
(09:44):
it a hard road. The whole you have to understand
that politically, politically, this has gotta be like probably the
most uncomfortable form of comedy ever that you're that's that's
the whole point. Tell me, so what what what is
the point? The whole point is that, look, you know,
no matter, no matter what the state of affairs is,
(10:06):
even if things are as honkey dorry as as they
might seem on the surface. And right now, I think
the collective opinion is that things are not honkey dorry
in this country, in this state, in this on this planet.
There's a lot of a lot of issues going on
right now. Right everything's cool on the surface. Everything is
not cool on the surface. You know, there's always gonna
(10:27):
be issues politically, There's always gonna be issues racially, There's
always gonna be issues with religion and gender and and
everything else that people constantly you know, taking opinions. You
my dad who left Iran in when he was sixteen,
you know, way before the revolution, before Omani all those guys,
(10:49):
though he never felt comfortable in Iran. Though he never
you know, had this. Though he was never a Muslim,
nor was the rest of my family, he still obviously
had pride for being Persian. So, you know, fast forward
to the late seventies, early eighties, you know, we have
the Iranian hostage crisis, etcetera, etcetera. And he told me
(11:11):
a story that in the early eighties, one day, um,
two white women walk into the store and uh, you
know my dad. My dad had lived in Florence before that,
and he was by all accounts, a player and he
sucked as many women as he possibly could. Hats off,
you know, and he said, even by that time, he's married,
he has a young kid, he's still getting a lot
(11:32):
of you know, you got a lot of attention at least.
So these these two white women walking and they say,
oh my god, you have such an exotic look. Where
are you from? And he had no issues, even though
this is post hostage crisis situation. He's not gonna lie.
He said, Well on Persian, he said, oh my god.
And these these women said, my god, that's so interesting
because we went to the store right down the street
(11:54):
and we thought that those two guys that owned that
store were Persian also, but they said their Egyptian. And
my dad became so upset because he said, those two
fucking assholes there are Ranians also, but now they're afraid
of losing business, so conveniently, all of a sudden, there Egyptians.
And you know, even from a young age, I was
kind of in a in a weird circumstance where I
(12:17):
was white and I was living around whites, but I
think I felt this. Everyone didn't see me as being white. Um.
And albeit you know, in in the Center Final Valley
in the early eighties, you had a lot of Jews,
you had a lot of Persians, you had people you know,
from all over the place, but the predominant group were Wasps.
And I was half Wasps and I was half something
(12:38):
else but close enough that people still recognize me as
being white. But I wasn't quite wasn't quite there, Okay,
so I was other close enough but not. Um. So,
you know, my dad, who was very much turned off
by the l A scene, he wanted the exact opposite,
and we ended up moving up to Mendicino County, which
(13:00):
which was, for all intense of purposes, the exact opposite.
And for me that that was culture shocked. Even though
everybody everybody spoke English, it was still culture shocked. Um.
But there was still that that weird kind of phenomena
going on where people kind of recognize me as being white,
but it was still always that question what are you?
(13:20):
And if your hair grows out, is it curly or
is it straight? Oh it's cruely fucking Persian. Come on,
I gotta shave that ship. Every day of my life.
And the thing is this, I don't I don't reap
the rewards of being white. And I know this is
this is a weird thing to say, and people, oh
my god, what does that mean? But think about it.
You're white, but you're not white. It's like being it's
(13:42):
like being a celebrity but not really being famous, not
being rich. Yeah, it's like me exactly. And I guess
that's why you and me or friends here you go.
Just because it's immersive comedy actually doesn't mean it's funny comedic.
(14:05):
You know, there's a sense listening to Heinrich that you're
in on an in joke that you're not quite willing
to be in on the whole point of Heinrich, and
the whole point of Heinrich twelve years ago, and the
whole point of Heinrich right now is to show that
the absolute absurdity of taking an extreme stance on things,
(14:26):
but also the extreme danger of extremes, the absurdity, and
through the absurdity, also the uncomfortable humor. You know, in extremes.
You're you're twelve years in um, we're in the midst
of the first Trump administration at the very least, and um,
(14:54):
do you feel more or less emboldened to try to
continue on which what seems to many to be kind
of a exotic thing. I mean, we'll still the underlying
question about why you think it's funny and why how
you expect this to work? And that's that's the interesting
thing that you know, when when I started the Hinwrich project, um,
you know, over a decade ago. At that time, that
(15:16):
seemed like the most extreme thing to do. Uh mind
you I live in San Francisco. Um. I mean, the whole,
the whole genesis of this Hirich character came about in
in the mid two thousand's or early two thousands. I'm sorry,
when when I was living in Japantown, San Francisco, which
at that time and still is, for all intensive purposes,
a very kind of residential quiet, you know, peaceful neighborhood
(15:39):
of San Francisco. You have a lot of tourists, you
have you know, a family, senior citizens. Um. One day,
it was like the middle of a week, middle of
the day, maybe one in the afternoon, I'm walking up
Post Street and I see, uh to two middle aged
white guys walking down the street wearing nothing but cock
rings and uh boots and that's it. And uh, nobody
(16:03):
gave them a second look. There was there was kids,
there was families, there were senior citizens. Nobody gave these
guys walking around naked in the middle of the day
a second look. And mind you, it wasn't you know,
Fulsome Street Week. It wasn't Pride Week. You know, when
you have Fulsome and gave Pride Week, you get stragglers
that will wander off to other neighborhoods and whatnot. Um,
(16:24):
this was none of that. It was just two guys
that were walking around naked in the middle of the
japan town of all places. And that was kind of
the impetus this to this whole thing where I thought,
is there anything that can really shock anybody in San Francisco?
And I really put a lot of fun into this.
Is there anything, I mean, aside from the obvious and
an act of violence or a car wreck or something
(16:47):
like that, is there anything that that can shock somebody
in San Francisco? And I kind of joking, I said
to myself, well, maybe with the exception of a guy
dressed in full Nazi uniform walking down the street, and
that's that's kind of how the whole thing started out.
So at that time, dressing up like an s S officer,
you know, from the forties, walking on the street, that
(17:09):
was the most absurd, ludicrous, taboo and extreme thing I
can think of. Now now we're in the era of
you know, Steve Bannon, Richard Spencer, the right Milo, all
these other guys dressing up like a like a Nazi
in San Francisco, it doesn't really have the same I
(17:29):
have to magic that that it did ten years ago.
I have to say, we we walked to get here,
and I expected that there would be a greater amount
of notice uh uh that you were dressed like an
SS officer. Um, but there was very little until we
passed those German guys and you know, and that's that's unfortunately,
(17:50):
that's that's a bad sign of times where what has
for the past fifty sixty years at least been known
as the most extreme thing you can do, which even
ten years ago was the most extreme thing I could do,
that no longer has the same It doesn't resonate the
same way. UM. So you know, to answer your your
(18:10):
overall question, I don't know, I really don't know. I
don't know what the endgame to the Heinrich project is.
You know, I don't I don't know how much more
absurd you know, comedy can become to to to overlap
that of what how absurd reality has become. So there
(18:31):
we go Henrich Uh. Coming up next on Ozzy Confidential,
Karen Barnes and herson Dylan. They had a secret. They
had a secret about Dylan's life as a woman. Tune
(18:56):
in next time for Ozzy Confidential. We go deep, deep,
deep into the heart of the trans experience in America.
(19:18):
Ozzy Confidential is produced by who Else Nay Eugene S. Robinson,
an executive produced by Robert Coolos and this episode was
sound designed, edited and mixed by Jamie con and Nick Johnson.
For more Ozzy Confidential, check us out on Ozzy dot com.
(19:40):
That's o z y dot com slash Confidential. We published
editorial companion articles on Ozzi and photos videos for every
single score, so check them out. Go to Ozzy dot
com slash Confidential, That's o z Y dot com slash Confidential.
(20:00):
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