Speaker 1: Hello, Stevie Lane.
Speaker 2: Hi Jonathan.
Speaker 3: So you you've been a producer at the show how
Speaker 3: long now? For four and a half years, and how
Speaker 3: many times have you watched me strut into the studio,
Speaker 3: grab hold of the microphone and thought to yourself, I
Speaker 3: could do that.
Speaker 2: Today is your day for all of that.
Speaker 3: I am asking you to take over forever for an episode.
Speaker 3: I have for you a Stevie Lane exclusive.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 3: It takes place in the art world, and you are
Speaker 3: an artist. I make jewelry, You make ear rings. I
Speaker 3: do you make regular rings?
Speaker 1: I make regular rings.
Speaker 3: Have you ever made a toe ring?
Speaker 1: I've never made a toe ring.
Speaker 3: How about a toe ring connected to a chain that
Speaker 3: runs to the belly button?
Speaker 4: Ring?
Speaker 1: That seems that seems dangerous.
Speaker 2: I hope that this has nothing to do with the
Speaker 2: story you've brought me to.
Speaker 3: No, No, But it's about art. It's about art.
Speaker 1: Do I get to do I get to introduce the show?
Speaker 1: Absolutely hit me from Gimblet Media. I'm Stevie Lane and
Speaker 1: this is heavyweight. That was great.
Speaker 3: Just maybe like a little more energy, a little brighter,
Speaker 3: like you're baptizing as ship, like you're calling bingo numbers,
Speaker 3: project your voice all the way to the back of
Speaker 3: the room.
Speaker 1: From Gimblet Media.
Speaker 2: There, I'm Stevie Lane. And from Gimblet Media, I'm Stevie Lane.
Speaker 2: And this is Heavyweight Today's episode Mark right after the break.
Speaker 5: Whoop here, I'm here.
Speaker 2: This is Mark and is Michigan, where he lives and
Speaker 2: works as an artist. His studio is littered with spools
Speaker 2: of wire and buckets of paint and huge paper mache
Speaker 2: heads because Mark makes giant puppets. How are you doing today?
Speaker 5: Better than that sharp stick in the eye.
Speaker 2: Mark is a lot like a puppet. He's goofy and
Speaker 2: enjoys joking around. He even sounds like a puppet. But
Speaker 2: before Mark started making puppets, his dream was to be
Speaker 2: a famous painter. It's a dream he missed out on
Speaker 2: by only an inch, literally one inch. Mark's story begins
Speaker 2: forty years ago. He was in college studying fine art.
Speaker 5: And part of the program was that you got to
Speaker 5: go to New York City and apprentice with an artist,
Speaker 5: and this was supposed to be a kind of launching
Speaker 5: point for your career.
Speaker 2: This would be Mark's chance to work alongside a real artist,
Speaker 2: someone who would help him make connections and eventually discovered.
Speaker 2: So the fall of his senior year, Mark set off
Speaker 2: to New York City in pursuit of his dream.
Speaker 5: This was nineteen eighty one and New York was just
Speaker 5: almost a caricature of itself. It was like, you know,
Speaker 5: I got there during a garbage strike, so when I arrived,
Speaker 5: the streets were literally filled with piles of garbage ten
Speaker 5: twelve fifteen feet high. Right. I remember my first day.
Speaker 5: I got there and I put all my clothes in
Speaker 5: the wash machine of this you know, flea bag hotel
Speaker 5: they put us up in, and I went down to
Speaker 5: get my clothes and they were all stolen. Right, So
Speaker 5: I guess I'll be wearing these clothes I have on
Speaker 5: for eternity.
Speaker 2: So it wasn't these clothes that Mark showed up for
Speaker 2: the first day of his apprenticeship with an artist named
Speaker 2: Joe Zucker, whose art today can be found in the
Speaker 2: collections at MoMA, the met and the Smithsonian. Joe's studio
Speaker 2: was in a Tribeca lat where he lived with his girlfriend.
Speaker 5: When I first showed up to Joe's studio, I brought
Speaker 5: my portfolio with me. You know, I don't know what
Speaker 5: I thought they were gonna do, Like Oh my god,
Speaker 5: your art's so great. Here takeover for Joe.
Speaker 2: You know, like Joe did not ask Mark to take
Speaker 2: over for him. He didn't seem very impressed by Mark's
Speaker 2: portfolio or by Mark.
Speaker 5: From the get go. I just didn't get off on
Speaker 5: a very good foot, you know, like if you go
Speaker 5: into a room and you can just tell like someone's
Speaker 5: told a story and it's not in your favor.
Speaker 2: Had they had apprentices before or were you there first?
Speaker 4: Yes?
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, they made that clear. They had somebody right
Speaker 5: before me who was great, you know, Richard, He was
Speaker 5: the best. I can never live up to. Whoever this
Speaker 5: mythical person was. So it was intimidating.
Speaker 2: But most intimidating of all was Joe's girlfriend, Britta Levey
Speaker 2: Britta LaVey, as glamorous as her name.
Speaker 5: My sense was that her job was to be a
Speaker 5: firewall between anybody else and Joe and his work. You know,
Speaker 5: she was kind of a gatekeeper, and honestly, I don't
Speaker 5: you know, I don't think she liked me.
Speaker 2: At the time Mark showed up on his doorstep, Joe
Speaker 2: Zucker had been hard at work for months on a
Speaker 2: series of fifteen six by six foot paintings about boxing,
Speaker 2: each representing a round in a match, and the fifteen
Speaker 2: completed works were to be displayed in a solo show
Speaker 2: at the Holly Solomon Gallery. The self proclaimed princess of
Speaker 2: pop art, Holly Solomon launched the careers of artists like
Speaker 2: Robert Maplethorpe and was famously the subject of an iconic
Speaker 2: portrait by Andy Warhol. She was a taste maker in
Speaker 2: the New York art world and had recently set her
Speaker 2: sights on Joe.
Speaker 5: So this was a big deal. These one person shows
Speaker 5: could make or break you. You get plenty after that
Speaker 5: at or could be the end of your career.
Speaker 2: Joe tasked Mark with building the wooden frames that would
Speaker 2: go around the paintings.
Speaker 5: It was labor intensive, but completely brainless. You know, he
Speaker 5: is needed something to keep me occupied.
Speaker 2: A few weeks into Mark's apprenticeship, it came time for
Speaker 2: the show at Holly Solomon's. Joe and Britta were moving
Speaker 2: the paintings to the gallery and Mark came to help
Speaker 2: pack them into the truck.
Speaker 5: But when I arrived that day, there was tension in
Speaker 5: the air. I could tell something wasn't right. And it
Speaker 5: turns out that the paintings are too big to fit
Speaker 5: down the freight elevator. You know, it's sort of like
Speaker 5: we built this boat in a basement, right and then
Speaker 5: tried to get it out, and nowhere along the way
Speaker 5: did someone go, hey, you know what, that elevators about
Speaker 5: the same size as these paintings. Maybe we should check
Speaker 5: this out make sure they fit.
Speaker 2: How close was it?
Speaker 5: My guess is they did fit before or the frames
Speaker 5: were put on.
Speaker 2: That is, those frames that Mark had built. They were
Speaker 2: one inch thick, and they made the paintings one inch
Speaker 2: two wide. The paintings were also too big for the stairwell,
Speaker 2: so Mark says Joe and Britta were frantic trying to
Speaker 2: figure out another way to get them down from the
Speaker 2: fifth floor. They had a number of increasingly outlandish ideas,
Speaker 2: like removing a window and getting a crane to lift
Speaker 2: them out, or busting a hole in the side of
Speaker 2: the building with a wrecking ball.
Speaker 5: It was hair brained. I mean, let's just be honest here.
Speaker 5: That was not a good idea. But the next idea
Speaker 5: wasn't so great either, and it was my idea.
Speaker 2: It turns out, while Joe and Britta argued, Mark went
Speaker 2: over to the elevator. It was an old elevator, the
Speaker 2: kind with caged accordion doors who had to manually shut it.
Speaker 2: Didn't even have buttons, just two ropes, one for up
Speaker 2: and one for down. Mark opened the cage doors and
Speaker 2: pasted out.
Speaker 5: And I was like, wait a second, he's painting so fit.
Speaker 5: We can't put all fifteen in it once, but we
Speaker 5: could take him one at a time. We just got
Speaker 5: to put him in on a diagonal and they stuck
Speaker 5: out a little bit right, so you couldn't close the
Speaker 5: accordion doors. But I saw that there were some latches
Speaker 5: where if we pushed those latches it would fool the
Speaker 5: elevator into thinking the doors were closed.
Speaker 2: Mark laid out his plan, and to a surprise, Joe
Speaker 2: agreed to give it a go. And how did you feel,
Speaker 2: I mean, were you sort of like I was.
Speaker 5: Totally triumphant, but a great idea. I saved the day.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean they were about to smash a hole
Speaker 2: in this building. So Mark and Joe brought the first
Speaker 2: painting into the elevator. Mark stood on one side of
Speaker 2: the painting, Joe on the other. They couldn't see each
Speaker 2: other over the top. Joe and Mark each held the
Speaker 2: caged accordion doors open to accommodate the slightly too large frame.
Speaker 2: Then Mark reached for the rope.
Speaker 5: And we sharked to go down, and we're going down
Speaker 5: a couple of floor and I'm like, oh, this is
Speaker 5: gonna be great.
Speaker 2: For the first time since starting his apprenticeship, Mark felt useful.
Speaker 2: And then and then.
Speaker 5: On one of the floors, the landing stuck out just
Speaker 5: a little further than the rest of the landings did,
Speaker 5: and as we went down, it caught a hold of
Speaker 5: the corner of this painting that was sticking out about
Speaker 5: an inch right that inch, and then the elevator just
Speaker 5: kept going and it just crushed this painting.
Speaker 4: Oh my god.
Speaker 2: Because the painting was like a wall in front of him,
Speaker 2: Mark couldn't see anything. So most of what he remembers
Speaker 2: about the next few moments are the sounds, the sound
Speaker 2: of canvas ripping, the sound of wood splintering and cracking
Speaker 2: like breaking bones.
Speaker 5: But the sound I heard next, like, I didn't hear
Speaker 5: anything on the other side of the painting for little bit,
Speaker 5: and then I heard weeping. You know, I heard crying
Speaker 5: on the other side, and I didn't expect that, And
Speaker 5: I didn't know what to do about that. You know,
Speaker 5: it was just sort of like it just it was horrible. Britta,
Speaker 5: who was up three floors, was yelling through the doors
Speaker 5: down into the elevator shaft.
Speaker 6: What happened? What happened? What's going on down there?
Speaker 5: And Joe's like, come on, come on, we gotta go
Speaker 5: back up. We gotta go back up now. Of course
Speaker 5: you know where this story is going, right. I got
Speaker 5: the two ropes there, and all of a sudden I
Speaker 5: get this like dyslexia. I know one is for up
Speaker 5: an the other one is down, but I, for the
Speaker 5: life of me, I'm like, I'm paralyzed, And so I
Speaker 5: pull one of the ropes and it's the wrong one.
Speaker 5: And if the painting wasn't crushed before, well, when we
Speaker 5: dropped down another six feet, this thing was mangled. What
Speaker 5: had once been a six foot painting was now crushed
Speaker 5: to about two feet tall. Oh my god, it was
Speaker 5: irreparable practically. At that point, it was just, you know,
Speaker 5: it was just, yeah, that wasn't good.
Speaker 2: That was bad. When Mark finally got ahold of the
Speaker 2: right rope, he and Joe rode the elevator back up
Speaker 2: to Brita and removed the mangled painting. Joe and Britta
Speaker 2: were fuming.
Speaker 5: They said, you know, you might as well go home.
Speaker 2: Joe and Britta told Mark they would call. So Mark
Speaker 2: returned to the Fleabag Hotel, tail between his legs and
Speaker 2: spent the next few days in his room, waiting by
Speaker 2: the phone, willing Joe and Britta to reach out. But
Speaker 2: they never did.
Speaker 5: They just you know who could blame them, And that's
Speaker 5: the last I ever saw of them.
Speaker 2: For Mark, the elevator didn't just crush a painting, It
Speaker 2: crushed his dream. His plan had always been to move
Speaker 2: to New York after graduation and become a painter whose
Speaker 2: work would hang in galleries or museums, basically to follow
Speaker 2: in Joe's footsteps. But because of the elevator incident, Mark
Speaker 2: never went back to New York. And so here is
Speaker 2: the question that he's left with.
Speaker 5: If I had not crushed a painting in the elevator,
Speaker 5: would I be living in New York now somehow having
Speaker 5: followed that trajectory of the life of an artist in
Speaker 5: New York City? Yeah, I don't know.
Speaker 2: Why have you been thinking about this again?
Speaker 1: Now?
Speaker 5: Okay? So I saw this thing called the Miniature Puppet
Speaker 5: Theater Workshop, I think it was called, and so I
Speaker 5: signed up for it.
Speaker 2: The class assignment for this Miniature Puppet Theater Workshop was
Speaker 2: to make a puppet show based on an event from
Speaker 2: your life, and the first thing that popped into Mark's
Speaker 2: head was the elevator incident, which isn't that surprising. Mark
Speaker 2: has told the story a lot over the years to
Speaker 2: family and friends to make them laugh, but it's only
Speaker 2: in working on his puppet show this last year that
Speaker 2: he's begun to think about it differently. There were two
Speaker 2: people in the elevator that day, Smasher and Smashy. Mark
Speaker 2: is making a Mark puppet, but he also has to
Speaker 2: make a Joe puppet, and the Joe puppet has to
Speaker 2: have something to say. And that's where Mark is stuck.
Speaker 2: He's struggling with writing the Joe puppets lines.
Speaker 5: I feel like half of this is missing without knowing
Speaker 5: Joe's perspective. It's like I'm going back to the scene
Speaker 5: of the crime, and I need the witnesses, the other witnesses.
Speaker 5: Otherwise I'm just I'm just rehearsing the same old lines
Speaker 5: in my head I've had for forty years.
Speaker 2: What about Joe? What about the show at Holly Solomon's.
Speaker 2: The last time Mark saw Joe, he was weeping in
Speaker 2: an elevator.
Speaker 5: I wasn't thinking this at the time. I was thinking
Speaker 5: only about myself. But now, years later, I hope, you know,
Speaker 5: I hope that me crushing his painting didn't derail him
Speaker 5: in any way. I could just track him down, get
Speaker 5: his phone number, call him up right, But a little
Speaker 5: bit of me scared.
Speaker 2: Mark doesn't think Joe and Britta have necessarily softened in
Speaker 2: the intervening years. Case in point, Mark read in Hampton's
Speaker 2: Cottages and Gardens magazine about the dream house Joe and
Speaker 2: Britta built after moving out of the city.
Speaker 5: It contained no guest room.
Speaker 2: In the magazine, Britta is quoted as saying, guests are
Speaker 2: completely out of the question. It makes it easier, so
Speaker 2: they're not like the warmest. If we take their house
Speaker 2: as a metaphor.
Speaker 5: For who builds a house without a guest room. If
Speaker 5: you're building it and designing, you I mean.
Speaker 2: Someone who doesn't want any disturbances, which is exactly what
Speaker 2: Mark wants me to be.
Speaker 5: It's all in your hands now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, I'm not used to being the puppet master.
Speaker 5: Just we'm going to pull the right strings exactly.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna label them up and down. I'll tell you
Speaker 2: that much. After the break, I roll down my sleeves
Speaker 2: and get up to business. No wait wait, I roll
Speaker 2: up my sleeves and get down and get down to business. Right, Yeah, yeah, yeah, sorry.
Speaker 2: I roll up my sleeves and get down to the business.
Speaker 2: After the beating page, I've never fun owned a famous artist,
Speaker 2: and on the whole they strike me as a pretty
Speaker 2: scary bunch, cutting off their ears, collecting mommafied feet, living
Speaker 2: in addicts, and murdering people on tennis courts. So to
Speaker 2: calm my nerves, I remind myself why artists make art
Speaker 2: in the first place. They're sympathetic to the human condition,
Speaker 2: I say aloud as I pick up the phone. They're
Speaker 2: sensitive to the struggles of their fellow man. I take
Speaker 2: a deep breath and dial.
Speaker 7: Hell.
Speaker 2: Already, I feel like the call is going poorly. Hi there,
Speaker 2: I'm calling for a mister Joe Zucker. Is this the
Speaker 2: right number?
Speaker 8: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Oh, hi, mister Zucker.
Speaker 8: Why are your call?
Speaker 2: It's a good question, I guess to ask a famous
Speaker 2: artist to be on my internet radio show to talk
Speaker 2: to an apprentice who mashed his painting in an elevator
Speaker 2: and is now immortalizing the incident in a puppet show.
Speaker 2: My name is Stevie Lane, and I actually wrote you
Speaker 2: in a voice that sounds like a small dog rolling
Speaker 2: onto its back and exposing it's vulnerable underbelly. I explained
Speaker 2: to Joe who I am and why I'm calling. I
Speaker 2: am a producer of a podcast.
Speaker 8: I'm not. Don't do things like that. I've got enough problems.
Speaker 2: Okay, I just want to make sure this you do.
Speaker 2: You remember you did have apprentices forty years ago when
Speaker 2: you were Yes, okay, so this is with regards to
Speaker 2: one of your old apprentices who who wanted to get
Speaker 2: back in touch with you?
Speaker 5: Oh?
Speaker 8: Is that one of.
Speaker 2: His name is Mark.
Speaker 1: I don't want to.
Speaker 8: Deal with him. These sounds are the person that I
Speaker 8: had a problem.
Speaker 2: Talking to Joe. I learned that he and Britta had
Speaker 2: a number of apprentices, the majority of whom Joe says
Speaker 2: were great. In fact, he and Britta are still in
Speaker 2: touch with one I assume Richard to this day.
Speaker 8: But one of them and sounds like Jim loved to
Speaker 8: jerk talk to my wife about us. She handles all
Speaker 8: of the things that I do TV interviews, right shows.
Speaker 8: I just do the work.
Speaker 6: So if you call her.
Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, hi, hi, Hi, suddenly out of nowhere, Britta Levy, Hi, Hi,
Speaker 2: is this miss LaVey?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: And you are.
Speaker 2: An absolute nobody. I feel like saying Britta is Kurt.
Speaker 2: She sounds like someone who has better things to do,
Speaker 2: like dog nap one hundred and one Dolmatians for a
Speaker 2: fur coat. But I finally muster the courage to tell
Speaker 2: her about Mark, though not quite enough courage to get
Speaker 2: into the details of the elevator incident. I keep things
Speaker 2: pretty vague. He would like to reconnect with mister Zucker
Speaker 2: to sort of like understand, and before I know it,
Speaker 2: this pops out to apologize for the way things went. Huh.
Speaker 2: Although Mark hadn't explicitly charged me with promising an apology
Speaker 2: per se, he did say he wanted Joe's perspective that
Speaker 2: he felt bad about how things ended. It's not that
Speaker 2: big a leap anyway. I got flustered at the mention
Speaker 2: of a carte blanche apology, though brittish tone shifts.
Speaker 9: Yeah, well, if that's how he feels, you know, one
Speaker 9: certainly wouldn't all object to that. I'm sure we can
Speaker 9: figure this out.
Speaker 2: Forty years later, Britta is still Joe's gatekeeper, and just
Speaker 2: like that, the gate swings open.
Speaker 1: Hello.
Speaker 10: Hello, that's a journal.
Speaker 2: You're right back yet you got me there. I was
Speaker 2: like talking to you as though you were there. Hey,
Speaker 2: it's Stevie. I just want to let you know that.
Speaker 4: We're on Hi.
Speaker 5: What does Stevie want to talk about now?
Speaker 2: Stevie wants to talk about the upcoming conversation with Joe
Speaker 2: and Britta and the apology I promised I outlined from
Speaker 2: Mark the terms of our parlay. I ease into it.
Speaker 2: I mean, I hope it doesn't. I hope it's not
Speaker 2: what you don't want to say. I mean, I think
Speaker 2: my impression from like the last time we spoke was
Speaker 2: that it in part it is. But I think, and
Speaker 2: I'm not saying this, I mean, you know, I understand
Speaker 2: like accidents happen and stuff, and you know I'm on
Speaker 2: your side. But I think in terms of like sort
Speaker 2: of like setting this late clean for the conversation, my
Speaker 2: impression is that a sort of like an apology would
Speaker 2: be something that they would, you know, I think that
Speaker 2: would just be a nice thing.
Speaker 5: Sure, I mean, and I can see.
Speaker 2: That Mark is happy to apologize, but having to apologize
Speaker 2: it makes him realize that Britta and Joe still harbor resentment,
Speaker 2: which makes him nervous.
Speaker 5: I'm getting that feeling in my stomach like I used
Speaker 5: to get. You know, what was it not? Trepidation?
Speaker 2: Dread?
Speaker 5: Dread? I have a little dread here.
Speaker 2: I mean, you know, if you feel like you can't
Speaker 2: do this, then we should have that conversation.
Speaker 5: Do you have friends, Is this is what you do to them?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 4: I have.
Speaker 5: I have crushed paintings before my life. I can do this. Yeah,
Speaker 5: we're gonna crush this.
Speaker 2: We're gonna Scheduling for Joe goes through Britta, and in
Speaker 2: the coming days, I'm on the phone with her frequently,
Speaker 2: more frequently than anyone else in my life. I sort
Speaker 2: of feel like Britta Leave is my new best friend. Hello, Hi, Britta,
Speaker 2: how are you?
Speaker 6: Oh Stevie, how are you?
Speaker 2: I'm fine. Britta's working on a documentary about Joe, a
Speaker 2: book of Joe's work, organizing Joe's archives. Never once when
Speaker 2: I call is she just sitting at home relaxing.
Speaker 10: I'm driving around and everybody's going off to the beach,
Speaker 10: and I thought.
Speaker 1: What the fuck about me?
Speaker 6: Where am I going to the beach?
Speaker 11: You know?
Speaker 2: But as busy as she is, she always picks up
Speaker 2: when I phone, even if she's in the woods.
Speaker 1: I was trying to dig out some swamp plant.
Speaker 2: Wait, it's a week You're literally out in the woods
Speaker 2: with a shovel.
Speaker 10: Like yep, and was almost arrested because some asshole drove
Speaker 10: by on her bicycle and you saw me it was
Speaker 10: the big shovel.
Speaker 1: I'm going to call the police. Don't you have anything
Speaker 1: better to do?
Speaker 2: Britta has strong opinions and isn't afraid to call people out,
Speaker 2: like at one point, she tells me about another apprentice
Speaker 2: of Joe's, and keep in mind this is one that
Speaker 2: she actually liked.
Speaker 9: He was totally useless, and it was very sad to
Speaker 9: see this young, untrusted man child, you know, trying to
Speaker 9: find a place in Joe's studio.
Speaker 2: I'm the kind of person who will go to absurd
Speaker 2: lengths to avoid hurting someone's feelings. Once on a date,
Speaker 2: I made up a whole fake roommate and that fake
Speaker 2: roommate's fake sister, Lillian, who lived in Virginia Med School
Speaker 2: second year. But I was visiting and locked out of
Speaker 2: our apartment and needed my key, so I had to
Speaker 2: go just to avoid telling the guy I was bored.
Speaker 2: When I got back to my apartment, I half expected
Speaker 2: Lillian to be there, so I let Britta know that
Speaker 2: I admire her honesty. It's not so much that I'm honest,
Speaker 2: she says, but that I'm fearless. I've been that way
Speaker 2: since I was a young girl. Britta's father was wounded
Speaker 2: in World War Two and left with facial scars. People
Speaker 2: would gok, and even as a child, Britta would stare
Speaker 2: them down, unafraid, which is all to say. Though I
Speaker 2: admire Britta, I worry that when meeting Mark, she may
Speaker 2: be overly fearless and underly sensitive.
Speaker 5: Okay, my hands are a little clammy. I don't know why.
Speaker 5: Why am I like twenty one?
Speaker 2: All of a sudden again, on a Friday after work,
Speaker 2: Mark and I get into a video call. Mark is
Speaker 2: in his basement, his son's drum kit behind him. His
Speaker 2: beard looks freshly trimmed. Britta and Joe arrive right on time. Well,
Speaker 2: it looks like Britta's entered the room. I think I'm
Speaker 2: going to admit her.
Speaker 4: You ready.
Speaker 2: Whenever you are countdown like three, two, one, So they're connecting.
Speaker 6: Hello, Hello, Hi Hello.
Speaker 2: In the frame, Britta and Joe are seated side by side.
Speaker 2: Britta has greta garbo eyebrows rounded like question marks punctuating
Speaker 2: the question, and you are. Joe is in his early
Speaker 2: eighties now. He has artsy glasses, and, like Mark, a
Speaker 2: gray mustache and goatee.
Speaker 5: Hi Mark, Hello, Britta, Hi Joe. Been a while, no
Speaker 5: forty years? You guys look great. You look as young
Speaker 5: as you ever did it.
Speaker 11: Flattery gets you every So.
Speaker 2: Joe remembered Mark's name on the phone, he doesn't seem
Speaker 2: to remember Mark's face.
Speaker 12: You were from the great Lyrics Hard Association, That's right, Yes, yeah?
Speaker 10: Did you get to pick Joe's studio?
Speaker 5: I don't think I did you. You probably didn't get
Speaker 5: to pick me either.
Speaker 6: No, no, we didn't. We just got what we got.
Speaker 2: After exchanging a few more semi pleasantries, Mark dives in.
Speaker 5: First of all, I want to just say thank you
Speaker 5: so much for offering to be here today. I'm so glad.
Speaker 2: Then he doesn't bring up the crushed painting. He doesn't
Speaker 2: make the apology, I promised. Instead, he makes the artistic
Speaker 2: choice to begin with a flashback. A flash way back.
Speaker 5: Okay, so I grew up in Rotlan, Vermont, and.
Speaker 2: I was you know, no sooner than he gets started,
Speaker 2: and Mark is already getting sidetracked, talking about going to
Speaker 2: a museum for the first time when he was nineteen,
Speaker 2: about a job he had as a caddie when he
Speaker 2: was a kid.
Speaker 5: And I pulled the cart across the green didn't know
Speaker 5: you weren't supposed to do that.
Speaker 2: To be honest, there are moments when I just have
Speaker 2: no idea what he's talking about.
Speaker 5: Pretty nice now I've walked by them. They're lovely condos now.
Speaker 2: But in that time, I feel like I'm watching a
Speaker 2: filibuster on c SPAN. As puppet master. I wish I
Speaker 2: could stick my hand up his butt like the open
Speaker 2: end of a sock puppet and make his mouth say
Speaker 2: I'm sorry. I'm growing impatient. And it seems Joe is too.
Speaker 5: Laurie Anderson, she just was coming out with her first
Speaker 5: album that year, nineteen eighty one.
Speaker 12: What event are we talking about? The serve a specific
Speaker 12: event that you can nailed down.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I seize the opportunity. I feel like there's
Speaker 2: this elephant in the room, the thing that we're not
Speaker 2: talking about, which is really the reason why we're here. Mark,
Speaker 2: if you want to remind Joe and Britta why you
Speaker 2: know you were thinking about them again.
Speaker 5: So I was in your studio the last day. I
Speaker 5: was in your studio actually.
Speaker 2: And so finally Mark gets to it, bringing it back
Speaker 2: to the elevator incident.
Speaker 5: And there was this two rope system, one rope to
Speaker 5: go up and another one to go down. Well, you
Speaker 5: know what rope I pulled right, the wrong rope.
Speaker 2: I've heard Mark tell this story a lot, and every
Speaker 2: time it makes me laugh. But listening with Britta and
Speaker 2: Joe is like sitting through your favorite movie with your parents,
Speaker 2: seeing it for the first time through their eyes. The
Speaker 2: funny parts seem kind of crass, the raunchy parts cringe worthy.
Speaker 5: And I crushed your painting, Joe, And that is what
Speaker 5: I'm here, is what I'm here to apologize about.
Speaker 2: On the screen, Joe and Britta look confused, even more
Speaker 2: confused than a few minutes ago when Mark was monologuing
Speaker 2: about the vagaries of Manhattan real estate.
Speaker 5: What I realized over the years was you gotta go back,
Speaker 5: you gotta say you're sorry.
Speaker 11: You know, no, why are we talking about that paint
Speaker 11: because that's the painting he smashed in the elevator.
Speaker 6: Remember, I didn't even know that he did it.
Speaker 12: I thought somebody who was taking it going to take
Speaker 12: it to the Delaware broke the penict In the all
Speaker 12: of it, I.
Speaker 6: Didn't even know that it was Mark.
Speaker 12: I never remember him doing the damage to the pain.
Speaker 2: In fact, when Joe thinks of the damage to the
Speaker 2: boxing paintings, it's not the elevator story that sticks in
Speaker 2: his mind at all.
Speaker 4: Really.
Speaker 2: Right before the opening at Holly Solomon's, it came time
Speaker 2: for Joe to sign his work.
Speaker 12: I forgot the I was used and felt tip marker
Speaker 12: where she goes through canvas, and when I signed the paintings,
Speaker 12: it came through felt tip marker.
Speaker 6: Was the cultra.
Speaker 2: Joe's signature bled through to the front of the painting,
Speaker 2: So just days ahead of the opening, Joe and Bretta
Speaker 2: had to find an art restore to fix it, which
Speaker 2: is also what they did to fix the painting Mark
Speaker 2: had mashed, and as it turns out, that painting made
Speaker 2: it into the show. Was there to complete the series
Speaker 2: as Joe intended, no one could tell it had practically
Speaker 2: been through a garbage compactor, in other words, no derailment.
Speaker 2: In fact, in a review of the opening, one critic
Speaker 2: even claimed that the power of the paintings lay in
Speaker 2: their hidden violence, if only she knew how violent their
Speaker 2: creation really was.
Speaker 6: It was an accident. There's no sense to fix things
Speaker 6: like that. Happen.
Speaker 10: Stuff happens, you know, yeah, and you know, no apology necessary.
Speaker 2: But if it wasn't about the painting, what was it
Speaker 2: that made Mark quote the one Joe had problems with.
Speaker 2: What did Mark have to apologize for?
Speaker 6: It was mostly out of too He didn't like this.
Speaker 6: He didn't like that.
Speaker 2: Mark didn't like being told what to do, didn't like
Speaker 2: taking things too seriously. Mark admits that he made glib jokes,
Speaker 2: which annoyed Britta and Joe.
Speaker 5: I was trying to act like I was cool and sophisticated,
Speaker 5: and I think I was on the defensive at first.
Speaker 2: And the thing that really bothered Joe, it seems, is
Speaker 2: that after the elevator incident, Mark disappeared after forty years.
Speaker 2: The specifics are fuzzy, but here's what I gets from
Speaker 2: Mark's perspective. When Joe and Britta said we'll call you,
Speaker 2: it meant we'll call you and don't come back until
Speaker 2: we do. But from Joe and Britta's perspective, we'll call
Speaker 2: you was more of a this is a nightmare. We
Speaker 2: don't need you here right now, but see you tomorrow.
Speaker 12: You have to realize I was dealing with Holland Solemon,
Speaker 12: which is an added part of the whole misery, because
Speaker 12: she was very difficult.
Speaker 2: Holly was to Joe what Joe was to Mark, someone
Speaker 2: who could make or break him. Joe and Britta weren't
Speaker 2: thinking about Mark when they had Holly to worry about,
Speaker 2: so they weren't thinking about how Mark was feeling, but
Speaker 2: today they are.
Speaker 10: I'm really sorry we didn't have the where was all
Speaker 10: to see that the student had issues, had problems, you know, yeah,
Speaker 10: And I mean I would have been devastated if I
Speaker 10: would have ruined some artists work. That would have been
Speaker 10: very difficult to overcome. So I'm really sorry that happened.
Speaker 2: Britta isn't afraid to call people out, including herself, and
Speaker 2: as always, Mark isn't afraid to make jokes.
Speaker 5: And I'm sorry that I crushed a painting in the elevator.
Speaker 5: So I guess we're even. I was imitating a lot
Speaker 5: of stuff, you know, because I was young, and I.
Speaker 10: Think I think we need to stop.
Speaker 2: About an hour into the conversation, Britta interrupts Mark. On screen,
Speaker 2: Joe takes a hold of his walker and slowly rises
Speaker 2: to his feet. He turns away from the camera, calling
Speaker 2: out goodbyes as he moves down the long hallway behind them.
Speaker 2: Britta looks concerned.
Speaker 10: Because Joel had hip surgery and I can see he's
Speaker 10: not sick, feeling well.
Speaker 6: I needs to laid down.
Speaker 5: Well, thank you Joe so much for the time that
Speaker 5: you were able to spend with us, and maybe we
Speaker 5: can do this again.
Speaker 10: Yeah, I think that might be a nice idea. Mark,
Speaker 10: please be in touch.
Speaker 2: Bretta rushes to Joe's aid. As gatekeeper, she has spent
Speaker 2: years protecting Joe's art. Now it seems her main job
Speaker 2: is protecting Joe by everybody. I'm with that the gate
Speaker 2: swings shut. Can you move the mic a little closer? Oh,
Speaker 2: I'm sorry, that's much better. After the conversation with Joe
Speaker 2: and Bretta, Mark and I debrief.
Speaker 5: If you go back to the scene of the crime
Speaker 5: and the victims don't remember, and you say you're sorry
Speaker 5: to them, You know, what are you really doing? You're
Speaker 5: just sort of assuaging your own guilt. But I don't
Speaker 5: think it was really doing anything them because they couldn't
Speaker 5: remember it.
Speaker 2: Joe seemed angrier at the Felt tip marker than he
Speaker 2: was at Mark, maybe because the marker was in his
Speaker 2: own hand. Those are the mistakes that are hardest to
Speaker 2: forget our own.
Speaker 5: So in some ways I think that you know, the
Speaker 5: person I should be saying I'm sorry to was my
Speaker 5: younger self.
Speaker 2: In fact, the puppets Mark has been making for that
Speaker 2: puppet show. He made the Mark puppet to look like
Speaker 2: himself around age twenty, but the Joe puppet doesn't look
Speaker 2: like Joe. Instead, Mark made it to look like himself
Speaker 2: now at age sixty. So in the scenes where the
Speaker 2: Joe puppet is yelling at the Mark puppet making him
Speaker 2: feel like he's no good, chastising him for crushing the painting,
Speaker 2: it's actually present day Mark yelling at his younger.
Speaker 5: Self, that little twenty year old Mark. I think my
Speaker 5: older self blamed him for a road that I didn't
Speaker 5: I didn't take, didn't travel down.
Speaker 6: And then maybe my younger Mark can.
Speaker 5: Let the older Mark off the hook too.
Speaker 2: What would the younger Mark be letting the older Mark
Speaker 2: off the hook for?
Speaker 5: Well, I think for you know, maybe a dream that
Speaker 5: I didn't follow through on.
Speaker 2: Mm hmm.
Speaker 5: But you have to make sacrifices if you're going to
Speaker 5: be a kind of blue chip elite artist in New York,
Speaker 5: which was a dream of mine. But I would have
Speaker 5: given up so much to do that. I had to
Speaker 5: give it up so much to do that.
Speaker 7: Like what, Oh my god, I have my family, you
Speaker 7: mean yeah.
Speaker 2: Mark grows quiet, looks down.
Speaker 5: I am so lucky that the art I ended up
Speaker 5: doing could involve my own family.
Speaker 2: Mark got to share his art with his three sons
Speaker 2: as they grew up. He helped them with elaborate Halloween costumes.
Speaker 2: He hosted birthday parties for them in his studio, surrounded
Speaker 2: by all his giant puppets. His sons participate in an
Speaker 2: annual street puppet festival Mark founded fifteen years ago called Festivals.
Speaker 2: One Son is a playwright. Might even help him with
Speaker 2: the Elevator puppet show, of which.
Speaker 5: Holly I told her before not to send these philistines
Speaker 5: to my studio while I'm in the middle of working
Speaker 5: on a show, a show for you.
Speaker 2: When Mark first reached out to me, he was struggling
Speaker 2: with his puppet show. But since the conversation with Joe,
Speaker 2: he's made progress. He's writing new scenes, new dialogue, and
Speaker 2: he's made another puppet.
Speaker 5: We have a new character too that we were going
Speaker 5: to introduce today.
Speaker 2: Can you guess who?
Speaker 6: Okay?
Speaker 5: Now who? The microphone just said little bit? Okay, do
Speaker 5: you want to say, like, you know, maybe you're sorry.
Speaker 4: Or something anything?
Speaker 6: Okay, let's just take it again.
Speaker 4: From now that the Fernitures returning.
Speaker 2: To it's good Will home.
Speaker 4: Now that's the lash. Monstrand is scheming with the damage
Speaker 4: to take this moment.
Speaker 1: To do so, if we ment, if we track.
Speaker 4: Felt around for far too.
Speaker 2: Acid. This episode of Heavyweight was produced by me Stevie Lane,
Speaker 2: along with Mohemy mcgauker and Jonathan Goldstein. Our senior producer
Speaker 2: is Khalila Holt. Special thanks to Emily Condon, Alex Bloomberg,
Speaker 2: Phoebe Flanagan, Rayhan Harmancy, Andrea B. Scott, and Bobby Lord.
Speaker 2: Bobby Lord also mixed the episode with original music by
Speaker 2: Christine Fellows, John K. Sampson, Michael Hurst Sean Jacoby and
Speaker 2: he himself Bobby Lord. Additional music credits can be found
Speaker 2: on our website, gimlimedia dot com slash Heavyweight. Our theme
Speaker 2: song is by The Weaker Thens, courtesy of Epitaph Records.
Speaker 2: Follow us on Twitter at Heavyweight or email us at
Speaker 2: Heavyweight at gimlipmedia dot com. Jonathan will be strutting back
Speaker 2: into the studio for our season finale next week