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