John Safran Reveals What It Was Like Squatting In Kanye West's Mansion

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
It's Robin and Keid for breakfast.

Speaker 2 (00:04):
Great.

Speaker 3 (00:05):
Great, you're listening to the Robin Kick podcast.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
Great, probably great colony, Good Day, Day Kuss.

Speaker 1 (00:15):
He is ninety seven three. It's Robin and Kip. Our
next guest is a journalist and Larriken. You might remember
him from his time on Race Around the.

Speaker 2 (00:24):
World, where he was pulled in by security and ruled
for hours apparently being a blonde Melbourn Jewish black contestant
with a camera passing through from Lebanon.

Speaker 1 (00:31):
It was clear grounds for suspicion.

Speaker 2 (00:33):
Then the security guards discovered this cute little business card
that John got made up before he left that reads
John Saffron terrorist and heroin trafficker.

Speaker 1 (00:43):
All that time he's slipped women's underwear in the name
of science.

Speaker 2 (00:47):
To cut a long story short, I didn't procure Penny
Wong half Chinese underpants.

Speaker 1 (00:53):
All right, it can take your blindfold off. There's a
clear pattern.

Speaker 2 (00:56):
You prefer uration smell.

Speaker 1 (00:58):
Does that surprise you?

Speaker 2 (01:00):
No? No, no, not really at all. But it was
good to have it confirmed.

Speaker 1 (01:03):
Oh okay, And now he's back with his new book,
squat A week Squatting at Kanye's mansion. Today, Robin and KNT.
Welcome John Sarre. Hello, Hello, Now are you a radio guy?
Did you start radio?

Speaker 3 (01:18):
Oh?

Speaker 2 (01:18):
I didn't start. Well, I guess like if I go
back to university days on university radio, on how far
back you go? I probably pretended I was on a
radio station as a little kid, playing my friend like
fantasy thing.

Speaker 3 (01:34):
Yeah, I feel like it feels like you've been around
for as long as I've been around.

Speaker 1 (01:38):
And this new book that is being released squat, You're
a brave man doing this.

Speaker 3 (01:45):
So what's the idea is that you went over and
found Kanye West's empty house?

Speaker 2 (01:51):
Yeah? Well, you know, I was pretty sure it was
empty before I went in there.

Speaker 4 (01:55):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:56):
I needed a writer's retreat too, because I'd gone over
there to chase the Kangne story when he'd come out
in support of Adolf Hitler. I was like going, oh,
this is kind of interesting, and it seems if people
are familiar with my work, it seemed really on point
with the kind of thing i'd be fascinated with being
Jewish myself. And then also because he's like a mainstream

(02:18):
American celebrity, why is he talking about Hitler? And also
like he's a black American and he's not a white American.
I feel like he only read the first paragraph of
the Wikipedia entry about nach on the Nasies really don't
like the Jews, and if he would have just gone
to the second one like that crashot on black people either. Yes,

(02:41):
I went to over there and I chased a story,
got all these interviews and that, but then I needed
someplace to write it, and I just discovered he had
this mansion there and his neighbor had said he hadn't
been seen there for months and months and months and
months and months, and then added, oh, but you know
has security and one guy drives out, an other guy
drives in every night. But then he added the navy goes.

(03:02):
But even that wrapped up two weeks ago. So I
was like, oh my god, there's this big, empty celebrity
mansion in LA that I can go in and spend
and write my book in. So yeah, I made my
way in that's the legal term, and then spent a week.
You're squatting in Kanye West's mansion in Calabasas in Los Angeles.

Speaker 5 (03:24):
I mean it is a breaking enter.

Speaker 2 (03:27):
What is break what is enter?

Speaker 5 (03:31):
It's illegal?

Speaker 2 (03:32):
Yeah, well, well the thing is, it's not a crime
because I haven't been arrested for a crime. And You're
going to go, well, what about John, if you wrote
a book about, you know, murdering someone, I'd be like, whoa,
can we just calm down here? And this is like
not really as dramatic as that.

Speaker 5 (03:50):
Okay, let's start at the beginning of your squatting journey.
So you get into the house, yes, and no one
spots you, no, and so then what do you do?

Speaker 2 (04:01):
Well, the first well, I arrived and it was nighttime.

Speaker 1 (04:04):
Of course, because it's better not to be seen.

Speaker 2 (04:08):
And the way because it's in a rural part of
Los Angeles, and there's a big forest behind it, right,
and so the way you get in if anyone's interested,
is you have to go behind and you kind of
go through this forest and then you're at the back
of the mansion. And then I kind of dropped into
that one of the patios.

Speaker 1 (04:24):
Was it completely blacked out? No, was there any lights
on or anything there?

Speaker 2 (04:28):
Well, there was electricity and no water, And that actually
is one of the first freakouts I have when I
met the back of the mansion and I realize there's
a porch light, Like I'm like why is there a
light on here? If I'd been kind of prepping the
whole week psychologically that I'm going to be staying in
an empty mansion, which is like freaky enough. But then
when I arrive at the back, I'm in the patio

(04:50):
and there's a light on, I'm like, is that because
someone's inside he's turned on the light?

Speaker 1 (04:56):
And the states you're allowed to shoot an intruder.

Speaker 2 (05:00):
Yet, well I didn't. Really that's a very good point.
But where were you all those months ago when I
sort of start I could have used it like the
many him. I didn't really think about, such as, oh
if I get in trouble, like this is calling the
Australian embassy type thing. But I didn't get it. So
it's all fine. I'm back here, and.

Speaker 5 (05:21):
Like Kip Weightman, you just remember the things you want
to know.

Speaker 1 (05:25):
Was there furniture in the house and things like that.

Speaker 2 (05:27):
Yeah, he used it as far as I know for
two things. So on the outside of the property had
this wooden amphitheater that he used for his Sunday services.

Speaker 1 (05:36):
Yes, I remember that.

Speaker 2 (05:37):
Yeah, So there was that. And so the mansion generally
was more like after the Sunday church services, come on
in and there will be like a buffet or whatever.
But after he broke up with Kim Kardashian, he started
going out with his Russian model and he was using
the place then as a bachelor pad. So there's like
a big bed there and there's all sorts of nick

(05:58):
knacks all over place and kitchen. Thank you, Kanye. I
brought my own food, by the way, because I mean,
how obnoxious would it be? Like, yeah, eating there was,
there was, and I did. I did have like some
pasta and stuff. The place was.

Speaker 1 (06:14):
That's some gangs pasta.

Speaker 5 (06:15):
Yeah, the place was.

Speaker 2 (06:17):
It was very good. Like the place was sort of
falling apart in places like and rain water kind of
had come in, and the forest was starting to eat
away inside the mansion, like weeds coming through the skirting boards,
and there was like mushrooms and stuff. So it was
like this confusing combination of like this lush, celebrity mansion
and also this dilapidated.

Speaker 3 (06:39):
Something out of a zombie movie when they go to
these places that are falling apart and getting eaten by
the woods.

Speaker 2 (06:44):
Yes, so that's you know, that's like bad in it.
But if you're writing a book, that's good. So that's
my general theory, like bad for the world, good for
the book. But one of the scariest things was out
the front of the mansion. Even though there's a fence
and a gate, I can't see the street on the
other side of the road, like some of the houses
were like a bit raised, So I had to make

(07:07):
sure I wasn't in the site line of any of
the neighbors when I was in when I walked out
the front of the mansion. And on top of that,
I had talked to this neighbor beforehand who talked about
how one of the neighbors had a lookout on the
other side on a hill, and he'd been the guy
on the lookout. A neighbor had been taking pictures of
Kanye with a long lens camera and giving them to

(07:30):
TMZ so because he didn't like because Kanye was built
doing all sorts of dodgy building things that and this
neighbor didn't like it. So I was trying to get
Kanye in trouble. So basically the whole time I knew
that there's the possibility of a neighbor at the lookout
with a long lens camera, So that added to my discomfort.

Speaker 1 (07:51):
And who's bed to just sleep well?

Speaker 2 (07:53):
To be fair to me, I did sleep on the
floor in the one of the big rooms in the
mansion on the first night, because I didn't know what
was going on. I'd come there at night. It's all dark,
and I didn't know how to explore things or whatever.
Inside the mansion, it's all painted blue on the inside,
like the Heart's Sake, like all the ceilings, wall, everything's blue.

(08:15):
And so I lay in this big room and water
was raining and there was skylights, but he didn't have
perse specs. Is that what it's called. They didn't. They
didn't have plastic in the skylights. It just had plastic
sheets over it. And all these acorns and all this
debris from the trees was distending it, and water was
coming in and I had to lie underneath where like

(08:37):
the beam was in the middle of the roofs I didn't.
So that was that was my first night, so you
can understand. But by my second I thought I'd kind
of try to improve thing. So as well as the mansion.
Next to it was a two story house, and in
the two story houses.

Speaker 1 (08:50):
Where the bed was the big yeah, the king bed.

Speaker 4 (08:54):
So I did I know people are going to go Jesus,
you know this is going too far. I did move
into the bed. You slept in Carno's bed, Yes, but
I think that's fair enough.

Speaker 5 (09:05):
Okay, of all the things you've just described, sleeping not
the thing you should be worried.

Speaker 2 (09:10):
Oh really No, No, I think break and entering the anyway.

Speaker 5 (09:16):
Did you write your book?

Speaker 2 (09:17):
Yes, of course, yes, Okay.

Speaker 5 (09:19):
So you spent two weeks, ten days a week.

Speaker 2 (09:23):
I only spent a week in there, and then yeah,
why didn't you leave? Why did I now it's gone
from why did you break into like pretty soft John?
Only there a week? Why didn't you stay longer?

Speaker 5 (09:35):
Yeah, but I'm trying to understand the ideology of it,
because I would have thought every minute would be freaky. Yes,
so you've stayed a week.

Speaker 2 (09:44):
Yeah, that was just like I had to get back
to Australia. It was all that kind of stuff, and
it's called said coming. Yeah. Oh that was another thing
there was it was it was in the hills and
there was no coverage, so I was Yes, that was
another thing that was really freaky. Like if I would
have broken my leg or whatever, I don't know what

(10:04):
I would have done and with no water.

Speaker 1 (10:06):
So you said there was no water at the start,
so no flushing.

Speaker 2 (10:09):
Toilets, No, no flushing toilets. So luckily I had prepared
for that right Well, when I say I'd prepared for that,
there was an other Australian writer. She didn't come in
with me or whatever, but she was there in La
Antoinette Barbuddhas and she she did say, John, you have
to like prepare things like have a little shovel and
have a sleeping bag. I was like all willing to

(10:31):
break in without even thinking of all these things. I
don't even know what I was thinking. But so luckily
I did have a shovel, and yes I had to Yeah,
I had to dig my whole morning.

Speaker 1 (10:40):
Answering the question does John Saffron shoot in the woods?

Speaker 2 (10:44):
The answer yes, yeah, And there were there were like
wild animals in the woods. I didn't. I only saw
a couple or but that was a real thing. Back
because I'm so urban, I couldn't. My brain is not
wired to fear animals. It's always like I can't believe it.
It'd be almost like saying, hey, John, watch out, there's
dragons or there's unicorns, like there's bears in the forest,

(11:07):
there's snakes, there's all these things. But I, for some reason,
I couldn't get scared. My brain had been so wired
that to just like, oh, I'll be okay. I live
in the city all the time, and I couldn't. Yeah,
I couldn't rewind my brain.

Speaker 5 (11:21):
The weirdest thing you found the well.

Speaker 2 (11:24):
He had like art that I presume other artists had
put there. So in one he had this one big
room and it was so freaky when it was so
I slept in the mansion on the first night, and
then I went to explore the house next door and
I opened the door and it's dark, and I think
I can see a person sitting against one of the walls,

(11:44):
and I'm like, what the hell? And then I look
and then i'm and the person's not moving. I'm going
it's not like a dead I was like freaking out.
But then I opened it up and he had these
life size like rag dolls and the size of a
person in the canvas, except there's sort of They looked
half like bears, teddy bears, half like monkeys, and had

(12:04):
long arms and tails, and there was a little pyramid
in the center of the room of these rag dolls
and then some of them sitting around on the walls,
and I was confused, and I was like, oh, this
is art, you know, like some artists come in and
this is an installation. So that was pretty weird, pretty rich.
He had Bible quotes written on the walls as well,

(12:27):
so that in chalk, so that sort of entertained entertaining.
That didn't help with the whole I'm not in a
haunted house. I feel that seemed to kind of add
to it.

Speaker 3 (12:38):
So writing the book and having the experience in the house,
did you come out with any sort of a better
clue on Kangne and what's going on, because it seems
like we're watching someone losing their mind.

Speaker 2 (12:48):
Sure, I mean there's different layers to him. I think
definitely just being rich and like really rich and being American.
But let's concentrate on the rich. He could in dulge
these kind of thought bubbles he has, Like, for instance,
you might go, I'm going to build a shelf this weekend,
and you start and after forty five minutes you just

(13:08):
lose interest, get lazy, and you just leave it like that.
He's like that, but he has hundreds of millions of dollars.
So for instance, he'll have a thought bubble that he
wants to build a Christian school for little kids, and
then he can get things going. And in another part
of Los Angeles, another rural part, he'd like built this

(13:30):
school in the woods at this this Matt Black School
in the just in the middle of the woods. This
is a different location to what I've been talking about. Yeah,
and it's just like and I went there and got
in there and it's just like, oh, this is like
and there's no one there here, there's no one there. Now,
he just had this thought, It's like, I want to
do this, and it can be organized. I spoke to,
for instance, one of these the person who was helping

(13:54):
him like with his school ideas, and one time he
just thought, oh, he was going to the Paris Fashion
Show and to show he's easy wear, and he just said,
I want to bring fifty kids or one hundred and
fifty kids with me that and he just can organize.
It's like these kids that don't have passports, they've never
been outside of America. But he has so much money

(14:15):
that he can organize like that within half a week
to get like fifty kids to appear for one song
off for his runway show in Paris and put them
up at these five star hotels and then just come back,
of course, him in a separate jet to the kids
and Kim in a separate jet to you know, Like
it's that kind of thing. So, yeah, he just has

(14:37):
these flaws that I think a lot of us have.
But when you have hundreds of millions of dollars, you
get to sort of.

Speaker 5 (14:44):
Those floors become more pronounced.

Speaker 2 (14:46):
Yeah, like he burns a lot of people. This is
like quite apart from him being like, oh he's he
a racist or like, quite apart from that, just on
this human level. Like I got to see how he
just burns people by getting them excited about something into
and then as soon as he's bored, he just sort
of likes and like people are just on some real
human level like that that whole thing of like transactional friendships.

(15:08):
It's like again, it's like he's so rich he can
sort of really make people wounded and hurt because it's like, oh,
I thought I thought we'll got collaborating and I thought
this was going to be like the change in my life,
and now you've just dumped me, you've me, you've been
interested in me for a week and a half an
now I'm yeah, So he's definitely. I mean that's the

(15:29):
way we all are. I guess in a way we've
got elements of that. So I'm not really But again,
he's just so powerful. He can just really his jerkness.
When you have like one hundred million dollars, your jerkness
just can have so much more of an impact, more power.

Speaker 5 (15:44):
Yeah, so does he know that you broke into I
don't read want a book?

Speaker 2 (15:48):
No, not at this time. I did see this little
clip from what ten years ago where he's telling an audience.
He goes, oh, listen, I only get all my quotes
from the movies. I don't read books, and I was
going on few. Thank god. I don't know. I don't
know if he's read the book. I think he's got
bigger fish to fry, unfortunately for me, because it would

(16:10):
be good. I mean, I'm sure, you know, imagine if
I could come in here and go, hey, guys, okay, guys, yeah,
just be careful. He's down there, he's downstairs. He's about
to push the button on the lift and come up.

Speaker 5 (16:21):
You know.

Speaker 3 (16:22):
So yeah, so the chances are that you're not You're
not going to get in trouble for this because he's
got too much other things to.

Speaker 1 (16:27):
Do or what do you think?

Speaker 2 (16:28):
I hope so well, I am going with the legal Yeah,
the legal opinion president of bigger fish to fry. So
when I have to represent myself in court, yes, and
I'll be going. But your honor, don't you have bigger
fish to fry? And miss the West over there? Don't
you have bigger fish to fry?

Speaker 1 (16:47):
So are you sad of him?

Speaker 2 (16:49):
Ah? No?

Speaker 5 (16:50):
Not?

Speaker 3 (16:50):
I mean no.

Speaker 5 (16:54):
I did.

Speaker 2 (16:55):
I did meet his father in law before I went
over there, before I even knew what the book exactly
was like, because he's to and this was like before
because I didn't think about the whole mansion thing when
I went over there, and I definitely wasn't thinking about
it here and when I was just kind of digging around,

(17:16):
snooping around, Yeah, I found out where her dad was
worked in Melbourne. That's where I'm from. And I just
like drove to his little his shop in semi industrial
Melbourne and it's like an arcade supply shop, you know,
like plaw machines what you call iron air hockey and

(17:37):
he supplies them to amusement parks. So I just kind
of gone in there and sort of, yeah, Squeak.

Speaker 5 (17:42):
Got big fans of Kanye?

Speaker 2 (17:43):
Though?

Speaker 3 (17:43):
Are they?

Speaker 2 (17:44):
I don't know. I was very confused when like what
I should be when I met him, Like should I
be playing down that? Like should I be going, oh,
I'm not really interested in the whole Kanye thing, or
should I be playing like I was very I was
very confused.

Speaker 1 (17:57):
About did you get do you feel like that they
were fans of Kanye?

Speaker 2 (18:03):
And he well, he wasn't a fan of He was
very nice to me personally, but he wasn't a fan
of like a writer coming out of the blue right too? Yeah,
into his wife, especially after all the Yeah, because they're
a pretty interesting family. The sen stories are they Yeah,

(18:25):
I'll leave it at that.

Speaker 1 (18:25):
Okay, interesting, fair enough.

Speaker 2 (18:28):
So he was very confused why some out of the
blue writer was suddenly interested in their family and stuff.

Speaker 1 (18:35):
He's got several mansions, hasn't he? Kanye? Because I know
that there's another one on the water in.

Speaker 3 (18:39):
LA which is Beachfront, which from melib Is that the
one that's made out of concrete. It's like a piece
of art and it was worth twenty million plus and
he gutted it.

Speaker 2 (18:48):
Yep, I did ring on the bell of that one did. Yes,
he wasn't there, and the neighbors in the street did
not like him. He's you can see, like, if you're
a regular person, you can see why people don't like him. Yeah,
it's pretty much starts and ends with the whole hard
to get past, the whole pro Hitler thing, like if

(19:08):
you're right, if you're like me and you're writing a
book and you're like, oh, well, you know, like but
what about all the good things? But if you're just
like a regular Joe, it's really hard to get part
that street.

Speaker 3 (19:20):
Well, if you live on the street and the nicer
is out in the street gets bought by someone, they
gut it and then leave it as a wreck for years.

Speaker 1 (19:26):
Yeah, you'd hate them for that before you bring in
the Hitler stuff.

Speaker 5 (19:29):
I know.

Speaker 2 (19:30):
But yeah, exactly another one of his kind of thought
bubbles and and yeah, in that case, he's like ruining
some great architecture so he can't even say, oh, I'm
I'm an artist or like no classic Kanye art so
important arts, and then in practice he screws up this
great architecture that someone else had worked on.

Speaker 3 (19:49):
Yeah, so it's full of water now, strange man, This
will be a great read. John Saffron.

Speaker 1 (19:55):
The book is called Squat. You're listening to the Robin
and Ki podcast.