Speaker 1: Pushkin.
Speaker 2: I'm excited to share an episode from one of my
Speaker 2: longtime favorite podcasts, Heavyweight, a new addition to the Pushkin
Speaker 2: slative shows. Heavyweight is hosted by Jonathan Goldstein and creates
Speaker 2: space for difficult conversations and resolving long standing regrets and
Speaker 2: unanswered questions, balancing humor and empathy. Host Jonathan Goldstein that
Speaker 2: helps his subjects pinpoint the moment things went wrong and
Speaker 2: joins them on a quest to make them right. The
Speaker 2: episode was sharing today features Michael, who, as a high
Speaker 2: school senior, got his lucky break the chance to star
Speaker 2: in a big budget movie shooting Raped. The premiere date
Speaker 2: was set, and then he found out that his success
Speaker 2: was all based on a lie. Find Heavyweight wherever you
Speaker 2: get your podcasts.
Speaker 3: Hid Happy birthday to me.
Speaker 4: It was your birthday last week, wasn't it.
Speaker 3: It's kind of why I was phoning I.
Speaker 5: I'm sorry, buddy.
Speaker 3: It lose to something. When you have to call a
Speaker 3: week later to receive to get your own your own
Speaker 3: birthday wish from someone you know, it hurts.
Speaker 4: Okay, honestly, I feel like your birthday is that important
Speaker 4: to you?
Speaker 6: Am I wrong?
Speaker 3: Well, it's not as important to me. As the first
Speaker 3: night of Kranuka and the second night, not the third night.
Speaker 3: I hate the third night.
Speaker 7: You know what.
Speaker 3: As a birthday present to myself, I'm going to hang
Speaker 3: up on you. Happy birthday to me. Indeed from Pushkin Industries,
Speaker 3: I'm Jonathan Goldstein and this is Heavyweight today's episode The
Speaker 3: Messenger right after the Break. As a kid growing up
Speaker 3: in Cleveland, Michael loved acting. The only problem I wasn't
Speaker 3: very good. In fact, he stank in every summer camp show.
Speaker 3: He was placed in the back row in a children's
Speaker 3: production of The Hobbit the Musical. Backstage, a kid dressed
Speaker 3: as a dwarf told Michael, my mom says, you're singing
Speaker 3: is awful. But it didn't stop Michael. He nursed his
Speaker 3: acting bug all the way through senior year, when one
Speaker 3: day he heard about a movie being filmed in Cleveland
Speaker 3: and the director needed lots of teens to be extras.
Speaker 3: Straight after school, Michael made his way to the auditions.
Speaker 3: He was shown into a room with the director and
Speaker 3: some of the crew. They gave him a script and
Speaker 3: he started acting.
Speaker 8: And their eyes lit up and I was asked to
Speaker 8: keep reading, And so we did the scene again. We
Speaker 8: did it again.
Speaker 3: And again and again, and all the while Michael was
Speaker 3: overcome by a curious feeling.
Speaker 8: I was doing a good job.
Speaker 3: Had you ever experienced this before, been in an audition
Speaker 3: where people were responding this way?
Speaker 4: No?
Speaker 6: No.
Speaker 8: I was usually in auditions where they're like, we can
Speaker 8: make him a tree.
Speaker 3: At the end of the audition, the director told Michael
Speaker 3: that he was not going to be an extra. Michael
Speaker 3: was going to be the star of the whole movie.
Speaker 3: Why was he going to be the star of the
Speaker 3: whole movie? Was it his brando esque brooding? Is shia
Speaker 3: la buffi in intensity?
Speaker 8: They showed me the storyboard and I looked exactly like
Speaker 8: the kid in the drawings of the storyboard. That's the
Speaker 8: reason I got it. They were just like, you look
Speaker 8: like the kid we drew.
Speaker 3: The film was called The Messenger, based on a true story,
Speaker 3: and the true story it was based on was a
Speaker 3: little known World War II anecdote about a teenager named
Speaker 3: Thomas E. Jones. Jones was a telegram messenger in Washington, DC.
Speaker 3: On August fourteenth, nineteen forty five. He was sent to
Speaker 3: deliver the telegram that announced Japan's unconditional surrender to the Allies,
Speaker 3: but on the way to deliver the message, he got
Speaker 3: pulled over for an illegal U turn, and thus the
Speaker 3: end of World War Two was delayed by ten minutes.
Speaker 3: Michael played the role of Thomas as he navigated that
Speaker 3: fateful day.
Speaker 8: I show up to set and I just was immediately
Speaker 8: involved in the magic of film, and they had to
Speaker 8: fake the daylight by putting lights outside the window. And
Speaker 8: I remember being like, Oh, you're not just like capturing
Speaker 8: a moment, You're creating a moment.
Speaker 3: And the custodian of this exciting new world. The director
Speaker 3: of the movie was a twenty five year old wonder
Speaker 3: kid named Quincy. Quincy took to Michael immediately. Throughout the production,
Speaker 3: he check in with Michael on the phone and take
Speaker 3: him out for wings. Michael looked up to Quincy.
Speaker 8: You meet someone who was orchestrating this giant production, and
Speaker 8: then for him to take time talk to me, I
Speaker 8: felt part of.
Speaker 3: Even after filming wrapped, Quincy stayed in touch, calling Michael
Speaker 3: with updates about the movie's release.
Speaker 8: We were going to premiere at the Philadelphia Film Festival.
Speaker 8: I learned that it was a big production, one hundred
Speaker 8: thousand dollars short film, which is a lot of money
Speaker 8: for a short movie. The executive producer was this man
Speaker 8: named Pat croche Pad pad.
Speaker 3: Pad if you don't know the name. Pat Crochey was
Speaker 3: a media presence, an entrepreneur famous in the world of
Speaker 3: sports because he owned the Philadelphia seventy six ers in
Speaker 3: the late nineties. He was a motivational speaker.
Speaker 7: Get up, I slap my palms together, It's going to
Speaker 7: be a.
Speaker 3: Great day, a noted pirate enthusiast.
Speaker 7: People ask me if I'm a pirate, and I say yes,
Speaker 7: but three hundred years too late.
Speaker 3: And the kind of beloved pre me too. Macho man
Speaker 3: would show up unannounced on the set of the local
Speaker 3: news just to scoop the anchor woman up into his arms.
Speaker 4: Accident on the jersey term, I could.
Speaker 3: My god, because when you have that much jouas de viva,
Speaker 3: what choice do you have? You know, whenever Pat comes
Speaker 3: in the room, you never know what's gonna happens, because
Speaker 3: Pat Crochey, because he's involved.
Speaker 8: The movie gets a lot of press.
Speaker 3: For a short film by an unknown director. The Messenger
Speaker 3: received an unheard of amount of press. ESPN carried a
Speaker 3: story with footage of Michael on set, and there was
Speaker 3: a huge write up in USA. Today.
Speaker 8: My dad was flying that day, you know, he was
Speaker 8: in an airport. He picks up the US head Today,
Speaker 8: he flips it open and sees a two page spread
Speaker 8: with my picture on it. So the family's excitement, the
Speaker 8: friend's excitement, everyone starts to just be like, this is
Speaker 8: a very big deal.
Speaker 3: Michael was planning on college in the fall, but as
Speaker 3: anticipation around the movie grew, he started to reconsider.
Speaker 8: Leading up to the Philadelphia Film Festival, talking to Quincy,
Speaker 8: He's like, Tom Hanks wants to meet with you. This
Speaker 8: is a real chance, this is a real opportunity. This
Speaker 8: is bigger than I imagined. I was like, maybe maybe
Speaker 8: I try and pursue acting.
Speaker 3: Maybe Michael had been wrong all these years, Maybe everyone
Speaker 3: had been Maybe he really was a good actor and
Speaker 3: it took Quincy to discover it. Michael couldn't wait to
Speaker 3: walk the red carpet, see himself on the big screen,
Speaker 3: and enjoy a virgin appleteini with Tom Hanks.
Speaker 8: Did your parents come with you to the premiere? Well,
Speaker 8: we didn't make it to the premiere. The movie was canceled.
Speaker 8: So the week before the Philadelphia Film Festival premiere. I
Speaker 8: got a phone call from Quincy and he was clearly crying,
Speaker 8: and he told me that the movie wasn't going to
Speaker 8: come out and nobody was going to see it because
Speaker 8: it turns out that Quincy had lied and had told
Speaker 8: a really big lie.
Speaker 3: The Liemichael's referring to had nothing to do with the
Speaker 3: historical anecdote itself. That part was true, but over the
Speaker 3: end credits, Quincy played footage of the actual present day
Speaker 3: Thomas E Jones being interviewed on his deathbed. The only
Speaker 3: problem that guy was an actor. It seems Quincy had
Speaker 3: just found a random old man, slipped him into a gown,
Speaker 3: strapped him into a hospital bed, and christened him Thomas
Speaker 3: E Jones. But there was one thing Quincy wasn't counting on.
Speaker 3: Because the movie.
Speaker 8: Had received so much attention, Thomas E Jones's real family found.
Speaker 3: Out, and Thomas E Jones's real family wasn't happy, because,
Speaker 3: as it turned out, the real Thomas E Jones was
Speaker 3: very much alive, breathing, eating, sleeping, and not on a
Speaker 3: deathbed but just a regular old bed bed, and so
Speaker 3: Pat Crochey decided to pull the movie.
Speaker 8: I mean, it was crushing disappointment. I had the ticket
Speaker 8: to go, I had the suit, I had all the
Speaker 8: expectation I had in my brain, everything that could be
Speaker 8: possible after and it's all gone, it's all it vanishes.
Speaker 8: And then it's a wave of embarrassment because I have
Speaker 8: to tell everybody.
Speaker 3: Michael had to go back to his friend's, his grandmother
Speaker 3: who had been clipping every article about the movie, and say,
Speaker 3: remember how I was going to be a big movie star.
Speaker 3: It was all a fraud. And the guy who thought
Speaker 3: I had talent also a fraud.
Speaker 8: And I never talked to Quincy again.
Speaker 3: Michael abandoned his dream of becoming an actor, but his
Speaker 3: time on The Messengers still had its impact. It allowed
Speaker 3: him to realize how much he loved being on a set,
Speaker 3: loved the magic of creating a whole world from thin air,
Speaker 3: and that pushed him towards a career in TV, writing
Speaker 3: for shows on Disney and Nickelodeon. Meanwhile, Quincy's IMDb credits
Speaker 3: have grown sparse.
Speaker 8: I always wonder what happened to Quincy, because I looked
Speaker 8: up to him. There was part of me that wanted
Speaker 8: to tell him that I've succeeded, that I've pursued movies
Speaker 8: because of him.
Speaker 3: But along with that, Michael has a lingering question for Quincy.
Speaker 8: I never understood why you would take such a big
Speaker 8: risk like that to make such a big line. It's
Speaker 8: like you've set up a film crew to film this
Speaker 8: guy on his deathbed and it wasn't like it just
Speaker 8: seems like a bad plan.
Speaker 3: As Michael has climbed the ranks of show business, this
Speaker 3: question has only gained in poignance. Why risk your reputation,
Speaker 3: especially when the story was good enough.
Speaker 9: As it was?
Speaker 3: Why did you lie? After the break searching for Quincy
Speaker 3: to become the messengers messenger? But first the best messages
Speaker 3: of all promotional messages from our cherished sponsors. We really
Speaker 3: do love you, guys ill two gross.
Speaker 7: It's a little gross, eh.
Speaker 3: Keep it in. Why did Quincy lie? The more I
Speaker 3: think about it, the less sense it all makes. Why
Speaker 3: go to the trouble of hiring an old man and
Speaker 3: building a hospital set? Why not just use the real
Speaker 3: Thomas E.
Speaker 5: Jones?
Speaker 3: Hello, Oh Hello, my name is Jonathan Golds. I've so
Speaker 3: far been unable to contact Quincy, so I reach out
Speaker 3: to someone else who might have the answer. I was
Speaker 3: looking for a Thomas E.
Speaker 7: Jones.
Speaker 9: He's deceased.
Speaker 3: Oh, I'm very sorry.
Speaker 9: Yes, I'm his widow. When he died, we would have
Speaker 9: been married almost seventy years.
Speaker 3: Thomas's widow, Nancy, is eighty nine years old. She says
Speaker 3: she doesn't know why Quincy didn't just go to Thomas himself,
Speaker 3: But we get to talking and she tells me the
Speaker 3: story of how she first met Thomas. It was through
Speaker 3: his work as a messenger. It turns out Nancy's father
Speaker 3: was Thomas's boss at the telegram office. Tells me how
Speaker 3: in nineteen forty five, there was a dedicated telegraph machine
Speaker 3: standing by for the sole purpose of awaiting the Japanese surrender.
Speaker 9: And when that machine started ticket my father, he handed
Speaker 9: his message first to my husband, who was a bicycle
Speaker 9: messenger at sixteen years of age.
Speaker 3: Since the bike was too slow for such an important message,
Speaker 3: a coworker agreed to drive Thomas in his car. Unfortunately,
Speaker 3: he set out in the wrong direction, and thus the
Speaker 3: most famous U turn in American history, or at least
Speaker 3: the only one I've ever heard of, and I've read
Speaker 3: Mike Howard Zinn. The U turn got Thomas and his
Speaker 3: driver pulled over by a cop.
Speaker 9: Of course, they were saying, we've got the Japanese piece
Speaker 9: a render message here. Yeah, I've heard a lot of stories,
Speaker 9: but the police realized it was the truth. They just
Speaker 9: pore up the ticket.
Speaker 3: Wow, what a story is. Yeah, and it's a pretty
Speaker 3: different story than the one in the Messenger. Not only
Speaker 3: were the jones Is angry about the fake Thomas, but
Speaker 3: they were also angry about what they considered the fake story.
Speaker 3: In Quincy's version of events, Thomas is in no hurry
Speaker 3: to deliver the message. He makes a casual pit stop
Speaker 3: at a diner where he hits on the waitress and
Speaker 3: enjoys a large breakfast of pancakes, all while the war
Speaker 3: rages on. The Jones Is read about that scene in
Speaker 3: the media coverage of Quincy's movie, newspaper write ups with
Speaker 3: headlines like boys pancake breakfast delayed the end of World
Speaker 3: War Two.
Speaker 9: Well, you know, my kids were just serious about that.
Speaker 9: Sports talking about kids, We're talking about people now sixty
Speaker 9: years old.
Speaker 6: We were outraged. The kids were outraged.
Speaker 3: This is Victoria Jones. She's one of Thomas and Nancy's
Speaker 3: six children, all of whom, when it came to the Messenger,
Speaker 3: were in agreement.
Speaker 7: Which was unusual for the six of us.
Speaker 3: This is Thomas's son, Mike. He says that the only
Speaker 3: one inclined to let the whole thing go was Thomas himself.
Speaker 5: That was kind of my dad's attitude, like, oh, don't
Speaker 5: make a big deal, don't get this person in trouble.
Speaker 6: We said, no, this is altering history.
Speaker 5: It just kind of portrayed him like as the slacker,
Speaker 5: you know, like, oh, the heck with that, I'm going
Speaker 5: to go and flirt and eat pancakes.
Speaker 3: Victoria says that although Quincy never reached out to her father,
Speaker 3: he easily could have.
Speaker 4: Just like you found my mother by getting a few
Speaker 4: phone calls, Quincy could have found my father and he
Speaker 4: never tried.
Speaker 3: When she found out about the movie, Victoria messaged Quincy
Speaker 3: several times, but she says he grew defensive and eventually
Speaker 3: stopped answering.
Speaker 4: And then when my father died, I sent him a
Speaker 4: message and said my father is now deceased.
Speaker 3: Oh, and he did not respond to that.
Speaker 6: No, I should go back and look. He might have
Speaker 6: said I'm sorry.
Speaker 3: And that was it. I tell the Joneses the story
Speaker 3: about Michael and how I'm trying to reach Quincy myself.
Speaker 6: Good luck with that one.
Speaker 9: I'm sure he'll say this better left of dead story
Speaker 9: out too.
Speaker 3: It turns out Nancy Jones is right. When I finally
Speaker 3: get through to Quincy via email, his response is emphatic.
Speaker 3: I'm not interested in talking about that project anymore, he writes,
Speaker 3: And that's the last I hear from Quincy. What happens
Speaker 3: next is years go by, unrelated to my failure to
Speaker 3: speak with Quincy. But you never know. Heavyweight is canceled
Speaker 3: and I lose my job. And while the story never
Speaker 3: entirely leaves my mind, without an ergonomic office chair and
Speaker 3: a long distance phone plan, there's not much I could
Speaker 3: do about it. And then one day, while trying to
Speaker 3: decide on a fun font for my resume, I receive
Speaker 3: a message from Michael. He says he has an important
Speaker 3: update to share. Hey Jonathan, Hey Michael, how are you good?
Speaker 8: How are you doing?
Speaker 3: It's been almost three years since Michael and I have spoken.
Speaker 3: You have a son.
Speaker 8: Now I've got a wife, I've got a son.
Speaker 3: The whole family is currently in New York, where Michael's wife, Katie,
Speaker 3: is producing a movie. It turns out that Katie's movie
Speaker 3: is the reason for Michael's update.
Speaker 8: An associate producer on the movie, his name's Dan.
Speaker 3: Michael explains that while out for dinner with Dan, they
Speaker 3: started talking about the industry, by which I mean the
Speaker 3: show business industry. And one of the things people in
Speaker 3: the industry enjoy chatting about most is how they got
Speaker 3: into the industry industry. So Michael told Dan the story
Speaker 3: of the Messenger, about the director Quincy, about the producer
Speaker 3: Pat Crochy.
Speaker 8: And Dan is from Philly. Dan's parents are family friends
Speaker 8: with the Crochees.
Speaker 3: You're kidding. Show biz connections in this life, there's not
Speaker 3: a thing that doesn't come down to show biz connections.
Speaker 3: It's not what you know, when you know, where you
Speaker 3: know it, or why you know it, but whom you know.
Speaker 3: Pat Crochy was the executive producer on the movie, the
Speaker 3: one who ultimately shut it all down. So with Quincy
Speaker 3: unwilling to talk, he's our best shot at figuring out
Speaker 3: why Quincy had lied. At some point, Pat had to
Speaker 3: have demanded an explanation from Quincy. Dan agrees to talk
Speaker 3: to his mom, who agrees to talk to Pat's daughter,
Speaker 3: who agrees to talk with Pat, who then agrees to
Speaker 3: talk with me. Mister Crochy, call me Pat. This is Pat, Pat,
Speaker 3: Pat Crochy.
Speaker 7: One thing I like to say about your heavyweight podcast
Speaker 7: is that it always inculcates a high vibrational frequency.
Speaker 3: Can you say more about the high frequent see well.
Speaker 7: In the realm of form, if we're going to transcend form.
Speaker 3: Pat Crochy has a white goatee that ends in a
Speaker 3: point at his chest. He's in the Zenden, a large
Speaker 3: room above the barn on his fifty three acre estate.
Speaker 3: His walls are covered in Chinese and Tibetan calligraphy. He
Speaker 3: says that these days he seldom makes any media appearances.
Speaker 3: Is there any reason for that?
Speaker 7: Ah, it's a great question, you interviewer. You well. Ten
Speaker 7: years ago something happened. My mind cracked.
Speaker 3: Pat's mind cracked in a meeting for one of his
Speaker 3: restaurants he owned several, among them the Rum Barrel, which
Speaker 3: is pirate themed.
Speaker 7: And I'm sitting there think it to myself, what the
Speaker 7: hell am I doing here? I don't really give a
Speaker 7: shit about the next great grouper sandwich. This is just more.
Speaker 7: I always was seeking more, another win, another standing ovation,
Speaker 7: another best seller, another another more more. It there was
Speaker 7: never enough, never what.
Speaker 3: Pat realized was that in spite of all his successes,
Speaker 3: he wasn't really happy, and so he tried to change
Speaker 3: his way of thinking, but it was a slow process.
Speaker 10: The ego in me was, if I can change my mind,
Speaker 10: that'd be another great bestseller, and I would go back
Speaker 10: on the speaking gain. It was all ego, all commercial,
Speaker 10: but that's how Grace hooked me.
Speaker 7: Everything that unfolds is perfect. I have this adage the
Speaker 7: past has served his purpose perfectly, but most people are
Speaker 7: cherry pickers. Well, I wish that would have changed, or
Speaker 7: I wish this or no. The purpose of the past, Jonathan,
Speaker 7: There's only one purpose to bring you and me right
Speaker 7: here and now. Okay, The past to me is smoke
Speaker 7: off the end of my cigar.
Speaker 3: For me, the past is also smoke off the end
Speaker 3: of my cigar, juicy wafts of pressure smoke to be
Speaker 3: hysterically clod at, like a rabid raccoon attacking a helium
Speaker 3: filled garbage can. And so I asked Pat to go
Speaker 3: back to the past and explain how he became involved
Speaker 3: with Quincy, Michael and the Messenger. He says it all
Speaker 3: began in Key West at the pirate themed museum. He
Speaker 3: owned that sat beside the pirate themed restaurant he also owned.
Speaker 7: And you get to know all the piratical personalities on
Speaker 7: that island, one of which was Reef. And Reef is
Speaker 7: a salvager and he's really got a piratical nature. He
Speaker 7: would even dress as a part and I really loved him.
Speaker 3: One day, Reef ast Pat for a favor. Could Pat
Speaker 3: meet with his son, Quincy, who wanted to make a movie.
Speaker 7: And we got talking and he turned me on to
Speaker 7: this script that he has been writing.
Speaker 3: And you liked it?
Speaker 7: Oh? Sure? Are you kidding me? It's talking about this
Speaker 7: young boy who has an effect on the ending of
Speaker 7: World War two?
Speaker 3: And you hadn't known that story. I hadn't known that story.
Speaker 7: Oh no, I had never heard of it.
Speaker 3: Your impression of Quincy when you first met.
Speaker 7: Him, Oh, I liked him and so and I believed
Speaker 7: everything Quincy told me.
Speaker 3: When Quincy's lie came out, Pat was furious.
Speaker 7: Prior to ten years ago, before you know, my minecrack.
Speaker 7: He's lucky he didn't cross my path, or else he
Speaker 7: wouldn't be walking.
Speaker 3: Do you mean that you mean that literally?
Speaker 7: Uh, let's say no.
Speaker 11: Since this is being taped, I'm pretty street savvy. I
Speaker 11: couldn't believe that I got Buffalo like this as someone
Speaker 11: I thought was a friend, you know, a friend, a
Speaker 11: Key West friend.
Speaker 7: I was so hurt that I was angry. And when
Speaker 7: I'm angry, the old pack croa cheap the old corner
Speaker 7: guy man. Not only did I lose the money, but
Speaker 7: all the context that I made for him to get
Speaker 7: him in USA. Today, I opened all these doors, through
Speaker 7: all my relationships, and then all of a sudden, when
Speaker 7: I realized that it was fraud, that it was phony.
Speaker 7: I mean, I had to go and apologize to everyone.
Speaker 3: But Pat says that these days he doesn't have time
Speaker 3: for rumination or regret.
Speaker 7: And even though I am here at peace, my body
Speaker 7: has spell marrow cancer. I'm on chemo every twelve hours
Speaker 7: of chemo mets incurable. However I don't regret that I
Speaker 7: don't nothing. Oh wow, Jonathan, it's only my body, It's
Speaker 7: not me.
Speaker 3: Before we get off, I asked Pat Michael's burning question,
Speaker 3: why did Quincy lie? But Pat says he doesn't ask
Speaker 3: the why questions only Quincy. Pat says, if he goes deep,
Speaker 3: can answer that. Patt and Quincy haven't spoken for decades.
Speaker 3: Their last interactions were angry ones. Right after Quincy's lie
Speaker 3: came out all the same, Pat offers to reach out
Speaker 3: to Quincy. He contacts a friend who he thinks might
Speaker 3: have Quincy's phone number. I don't have high hopes, but
Speaker 3: Patt and Quincy do end up speaking, and afterwards, for
Speaker 3: reasons I can't discern, Quincy agrees to speak with Michael.
Speaker 3: A video call between Michael and Quincy is arranged, and
Speaker 3: while we wait for Quincy, I ask Michael the opening
Speaker 3: question I learned in jayschool. Are you in a bathroom?
Speaker 5: Now?
Speaker 8: This is our tiny little kitchen in our apartment.
Speaker 3: It's late at night, and Michael gives me a tour
Speaker 3: of his darkened New York apartment.
Speaker 8: And there's our Carson's little lunchbox.
Speaker 3: Very sweet. Where is he right now?
Speaker 8: Carson is asleep?
Speaker 3: What are lazy bones? And then hello? Quincy enters the chat.
Speaker 3: It's been almost twenty years since he and Michael were
Speaker 3: together on set. Quincy was twenty five at the time.
Speaker 3: He's in his forties now.
Speaker 5: It's nice to see Michael's face. I haven't seen his
Speaker 5: face in a long time, and.
Speaker 8: It was good to see you.
Speaker 3: Michael and Quincy begin by reminiscing about their time together
Speaker 3: about making the movie.
Speaker 5: There were two scenes that really stand up for me.
Speaker 5: One is when all the kids are in the.
Speaker 3: Diner and they exchange memories from what feels like unfraught
Speaker 3: territory stuff like the casting and the fun of being
Speaker 3: on set.
Speaker 8: My favorite scene was doing the U turn. You had
Speaker 8: me drive stick shift and I lied when I auditioned.
Speaker 8: You're like, can you drive stick? And I was like,
Speaker 8: I can drive stick. I couldn't drive stick. I was
Speaker 8: really I never heard that, I know, and I was
Speaker 8: like stalling out, like grinding the gears.
Speaker 3: It feels like Michael is trying to make Quincy comfortable,
Speaker 3: show that Quincy wasn't the only one capable of lie.
Speaker 5: Into the car from like pulling his hair out to
Speaker 5: I thought the kids could drive.
Speaker 3: But it doesn't take long before the conversation turns to
Speaker 3: the elephant in the room and it's Quincy who brings
Speaker 3: it up.
Speaker 5: I remember wanting to reach out to you in years
Speaker 5: that past. Yeah, I felt a lot of guilt because
Speaker 5: like this film, everybody had put so much sweat and
Speaker 5: tears into it, and uh, it was just nothing like evaporated.
Speaker 5: And I thought, my god, I failed every single person,
Speaker 5: and then I became like national news, and then the
Speaker 5: blogs were writing about.
Speaker 3: Me because the Messenger got a colossal amount of press.
Speaker 3: When the truth came out, Quincy received a proportional amount
Speaker 3: of backlash. Similar to how the title wave of The
Speaker 3: Messenger's success hit Michael, the bad news about The Messenger's
Speaker 3: failure hit Quincy. He was at the airport reading that
Speaker 3: day's newspaper over someone's shoulder and.
Speaker 5: They were reading the article about me and how I
Speaker 5: had lied, and that hit me like I'd say a
Speaker 5: ton of bricks, but a ton of bricks would have
Speaker 5: felt like a pillow compared to what that was.
Speaker 3: How are you coping?
Speaker 5: I was in denial. I kept going back to this
Speaker 5: like excuse of well, the Titanic, right, the Titanic, it's
Speaker 5: a fake movie. It's based on a true story. There
Speaker 5: was no Jack and Rose, and yet what I had
Speaker 5: done was totally different. I mean I was literally trying
Speaker 5: to pretend that this other actor i'd hired was Thomas Jones.
Speaker 5: And it took me a year or two to sort
Speaker 5: of come to terms and just be like, man, I
Speaker 5: really fucked up.
Speaker 3: Which brings us the question of why why swap a
Speaker 3: random old man for Thomas E. Jones. To explain, Quincy
Speaker 3: starts with how he came to the story of The
Speaker 3: Messenger in the first place.
Speaker 5: I'd been working that summer at the Truman Little White
Speaker 5: House in QS and sort of in my onboarding at
Speaker 5: that museum, they told us to read David McCullough's Truman biography,
Speaker 5: and it was in that book that I saw this
Speaker 5: one sentence about Thomas E.
Speaker 3: Jones and The Messenger, And it was literally one sentence,
Speaker 3: one sentence in parentheses, in the middle of a thousand
Speaker 3: page book.
Speaker 5: And I thought, God, what an amazing story.
Speaker 3: But Quincy thought, you know what would make it an
Speaker 3: even more amazing story if he could find Thomas E. Jones,
Speaker 3: interview him, and include that interview in the movie. And
Speaker 3: in Quincy's telling, he did look for Thomas Jones.
Speaker 5: I had hired literal investigators to go find this person,
Speaker 5: two different guys, and they both said, like, you know,
Speaker 5: we can't, we can't find them, but we found these
Speaker 5: two death certificates that kind of match up.
Speaker 3: So the death certificates felt like enough. Quincy concluded that
Speaker 3: the Thomas E. Jones he was looking for probably was dead.
Speaker 5: And I didn't share that with anybody because in my
Speaker 5: head I just saw the story rolling out. It's like
Speaker 5: we were going to tell the story and then the
Speaker 5: end you saw the real guy and that I couldn't
Speaker 5: get away from that story.
Speaker 3: And in the absence of the real guy, the next
Speaker 3: best thing was a fake guy.
Speaker 5: Oh well, to decease Thomas Jones will never know and
Speaker 5: anybody that sees the movie, it's gonna be so great
Speaker 5: and they're gonna be crying and laughing at the end
Speaker 5: of it that they won't care for this role.
Speaker 3: There was no casting, no auditions. In fact, the part
Speaker 3: of Thomas E. Jones wasn't played by an actor at all.
Speaker 5: He was actually a tour guide at the Truman Little
Speaker 5: White House.
Speaker 3: Quincy had asked a work friend from the museum to
Speaker 3: do the job.
Speaker 5: And then the real Thomas Jones found me and I
Speaker 5: remember that feeling. It was like a disgust I felt
Speaker 5: for myself.
Speaker 3: In the aftermath, Quincy left the film world for many years.
Speaker 3: He was fired from his job at the Truman Museum.
Speaker 3: He eventually found work clerking in a bookstore and making
Speaker 3: wedding videos. Well, this was the first time a live
Speaker 3: Quincy's had been so brutally exposed. He admits that the
Speaker 3: lying itself was something he'd been leaning on since his
Speaker 3: teen years.
Speaker 5: You know, I had come from a fairly poor family
Speaker 5: in Key West, and I had attended a very exclusive
Speaker 5: prep school up in western Massachusetts called Deerfield Academy, where
Speaker 5: I had no business being there, and so I felt
Speaker 5: this sense of just like always needing to exaggerate. People
Speaker 5: would be like, oh, I'm going to Paris for winter break,
Speaker 5: and I'd be like, oh, gosh, yeah, Paris, It's great.
Speaker 5: You know, I didn't even know what country it was in.
Speaker 5: It was like a daily thing. Freshman. Someone had to
Speaker 5: picture Jimmy Hendrix a poster, and I remember looking at
Speaker 5: his name and thinking it looked kind of French, and
Speaker 5: I was like, oh, I love gy My Hendrye. And
Speaker 5: I remember him looking at me and being like what.
Speaker 3: For Quincy. Lies became a beautiful wall between himself and
Speaker 3: everyone else. Lies protected him but also isolated him. It
Speaker 3: took the collapse of the Messenger to finally get him
Speaker 3: to stop.
Speaker 5: And it was actually very relieving because it took a
Speaker 5: lot of weight off my shoulders that I didn't have
Speaker 5: to make every story ten percent better. I didn't have
Speaker 5: to do as hard as that was. That was the
Speaker 5: most important, lesson, full stop period of my life.
Speaker 8: After we did The Messenger, I didn't take that as
Speaker 8: anything that stopped me.
Speaker 3: When Quincy is done sharing the effect The Messenger had
Speaker 3: on his life, Michael shares the role that played for him.
Speaker 8: Seeing the camera, seeing the crew, it blew my mind.
Speaker 8: I didn't know that this was possible. I didn't know
Speaker 8: that this is what it looked like. And I was in.
Speaker 3: It's Quincy and The Messenger that inspired Michael's career. But
Speaker 3: it isn't just that Quincy gave him a professional life.
Speaker 3: He gave him a life.
Speaker 8: I married this beautiful person who she's a movie producer,
Speaker 8: and we have this amazing kid called Carson who's two
Speaker 8: and a half years old. And all of this life
Speaker 8: that I have, this partner, of this career, this kid,
Speaker 8: it comes from this wild, weird, random moment in Cleveland,
Speaker 8: Ohio where you decided to cast me in this short film.
Speaker 8: And it's all this to say, like I never got
Speaker 8: to just thank you. I've always appreciated that door that
Speaker 8: you showed to me and allowed me to walk through
Speaker 8: moment that time, that invitation that you gave me to
Speaker 8: be on set changed the entire direction of my life.
Speaker 5: That means a lot to me. I I look back
Speaker 5: on that time and totally with totally different eyes. It
Speaker 5: was one of the most difficult things in my life.
Speaker 5: And I can't tell you like how meaningful it is
Speaker 5: to me to hear that someone had something good come
Speaker 5: out of it, because it certainly didn't feel like that.
Speaker 5: I was convinced that it would ruin everyone's life, because
Speaker 5: that's what I was feeling at that moment.
Speaker 3: Quincy just assumed anyone involved with the Messenger would still
Speaker 3: be furious with him, and so a few weeks back,
Speaker 3: when he saw Pat Croche's name pop up on his phone,
Speaker 3: he says he almost felt too scared to pick up,
Speaker 3: but when they spoke, instead of yelling at him, Pat
Speaker 3: told him it was time to let it go.
Speaker 5: As soon as he said that those words let it go,
Speaker 5: I just sat out in front of my house and
Speaker 5: cried for a good twenty minutes. I didn't know before
Speaker 5: we talked today, actually genuinely what you were going to
Speaker 5: say today.
Speaker 8: You know you were I met you as this person
Speaker 8: I looked up to.
Speaker 5: You're gonna make me cry. I'm really, really genuinely happy
Speaker 5: for you.
Speaker 8: Thank you for taking time just to talk to me,
Speaker 8: but really thank you for the life I got to
Speaker 8: have because of it.
Speaker 3: Recently I got to share in that life. One day,
Speaker 3: leaving our New York studio, Michael says he's af to
Speaker 3: meet his wife Katie. Her crew is filming just a
Speaker 3: few blocks away, and Michael asks if I'd like to come,
Speaker 3: and I say sure. On the corner of twentieth Street
Speaker 3: and Seventh Avenue, shooting is in full swing. The movie
Speaker 3: stars John Taturo as an aging pickpocket who ends up
Speaker 3: with a thumb drive containing a crypto wallet on it.
Speaker 3: Michael and I are waved past the protected perimeter and
Speaker 3: Katie gives me a pair of small headphones. As I
Speaker 3: watch take after take of John Totruro slamming down a
Speaker 3: payphone and screaming fuck in fake fury, I feel like
Speaker 3: a ten year old on a field trip. All around us,
Speaker 3: the city bustles as normal while we are tucked away
Speaker 3: in our make believe world, watching make believe things. It's
Speaker 3: all a lie, of course, but one that we're all
Speaker 3: in on.
Speaker 1: And how good now that the fern ures Riff turning
Speaker 1: to its.
Speaker 4: Goodwill home, now that the last month's rent is scheming.
Speaker 6: With the damage to posit take this moment to dissolve.
Speaker 5: If we ment, if we tried to.
Speaker 7: Remember felt around for far tis.
Speaker 1: From things that accidentally.
Speaker 3: This episode of Heavyweight was produced by Khalila Holt and
Speaker 3: me Jonathan Goldstein, along with Moheeney mcgauker and Phoebe Flanagan.
Speaker 3: Our supervising producer is Stevie Lane. Editorial guidance from Emily Condon.
Speaker 3: Special thanks to Lucy Sullivan, Karen Schakerji and Nazanin RAFs
Speaker 3: and Johnny Our production council is Jake Flanagan. Emmamonger mixed
Speaker 3: the episode with original music by Christine Fellows, John K.
Speaker 3: Sampson and Bobby Lord. Additional scoring by Blue Dot Sessions,
Speaker 3: Bobble Principal and Shanghai Restoration Project. Our theme song is
Speaker 3: by The Weakerlands, courtesy of Epitaph Records. Follow us on
Speaker 3: Instagram at Heavyweight Podcast or email us at Heavyweight at
Speaker 3: Pushkin dot Fm. We'll be back next week with a
Speaker 3: new episode.