Speaker 1: Ridiculous crime. It's a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Elizabeth Detton Zaren Burnett.
Speaker 3: I got a question for you. Yeah, thank god. Okay,
Speaker 3: you know what's ridiculous.
Speaker 2: Yes, I do brands. Brand Okay.
Speaker 4: So I've been begging for brands to like give me stuff, yeah, and.
Speaker 3: Even doing that forever. And before we have this show,
Speaker 3: you've been like going out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I just wanted to get sponsored.
Speaker 3: By some postcards.
Speaker 4: I really was hoping that Oscar Meyer would send me
Speaker 4: that hot dog straw.
Speaker 2: I don't care about.
Speaker 3: Keep talking about that. They're very rude walking around headquarters,
Speaker 3: always saying I want my hot dogs straw. If I
Speaker 3: only had a hot dogs jaw. Can you imagine this
Speaker 3: coffee with a hot dogs straw?
Speaker 4: Rawberry milkshake would do so well with a hot dogstra Anyway,
Speaker 4: So this brand called Awake reached out to me and
Speaker 4: they have like a pseudo mashup. No, it's kind of
Speaker 4: a mashup, but I really wouldn't qualify.
Speaker 3: The power is growing. Now they're bringing the mashups to
Speaker 3: not just the Elizabeth Army now it's the brand.
Speaker 4: Yeah, they just reached out. It's called so it's called
Speaker 4: a Wake. It's caffeinated chocolate.
Speaker 3: Well, I mean, I guess, okay, that's that's a mashup
Speaker 3: kind of.
Speaker 2: I have to be really careful. I have they send
Speaker 2: me some. Okay, So it's like there's two flavors, peanut buttered.
Speaker 4: Dark chocolate bite, and then what's this other one?
Speaker 3: Salt?
Speaker 2: There's like no sugar, no sugar, it's added.
Speaker 4: It's a chocolate with no sugar added, which, like, how
Speaker 4: does that work? I don't know, so I haven't had
Speaker 4: one yet. I waited for you. It's keto. I don't
Speaker 4: know what that means, the sense it has that I'm
Speaker 4: reading the side of this actual caffeine half a cup
Speaker 4: of Joe.
Speaker 2: Now I don't.
Speaker 4: I don't drink coffee anymore. So I'm going to be
Speaker 4: bouncing off the walls. Which one did you open up?
Speaker 3: Almonds? Sea salt?
Speaker 2: No bad, it's just dark chocolate. And then we're just
Speaker 2: going to be like buzzing.
Speaker 3: I can't believe I'm participating in this.
Speaker 2: You I can believe it.
Speaker 3: It's fantast You got me on the chocolate.
Speaker 2: I know that was my lure.
Speaker 4: So anyway, they're not paying me or anything, but I
Speaker 4: thought it was cool that they wanted to send me this.
Speaker 3: I don't believe they say no sugar was added. There's
Speaker 3: literally sugar.
Speaker 2: That's that doesn't really task.
Speaker 5: Now, when when a brand reaches out to you, does
Speaker 5: it look like Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel where there's like hand
Speaker 5: comes out their finger touches.
Speaker 4: I was going for a walk and a hand came
Speaker 4: out of the sewer. Sorry, wake, that's just I'm joking.
Speaker 3: And then a spark of white and chocolate appeared.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I don't know.
Speaker 4: They just said do you want this? And I was like, yeah,
Speaker 4: I'll take chocolate. So I don't know if they're listening whatever.
Speaker 2: Okay, well, gluten in it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that was I mean, it wasn't That was not bad.
Speaker 3: It was it was what it was. What it was.
Speaker 2: Yeah, full of caffeine too. So isn't there a caffeine
Speaker 2: and chocolate already?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: I think so, So now they're putting more. They had
Speaker 2: no sugar added, but caffeine. Yeah. Yeah, it's kind of ridiculous, right,
Speaker 2: this whole situation.
Speaker 4: The fact I participated, the fact that I got something
Speaker 4: like that for free, the fact that I made you
Speaker 4: eat it. That it's like caffeinated chocolate and a little
Speaker 4: piece is half the same as half.
Speaker 2: A cup of coffee.
Speaker 3: Yeah, car Ridicula.
Speaker 2: I gotta be.
Speaker 4: Careful because my nephew, he comes over every week and
Speaker 4: he has like terminator vision for chocolate.
Speaker 2: No, I don't eat a little four year old.
Speaker 3: You go to the bathroom, eats like four of them.
Speaker 4: That's what he would do too. He likes off the walls.
Speaker 4: He likes to eat four of everything because it's four.
Speaker 3: Of course. Anyway, got four fingers in the thumb. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I get it.
Speaker 2: It is ridiculous.
Speaker 3: Well, Elizabeth, you got a second, You got a second.
Speaker 3: Now they're all caffeinated and chocolate geeked up. I want
Speaker 3: to talk art, sir. You like art?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I love art.
Speaker 3: Yeah. You know how an artist typically chooses a medium
Speaker 3: they favor, Well, you know they might by medium, I
Speaker 3: mean like paint or clay or bass, guitar, mixtape, paper mache,
Speaker 3: or even say naked Europeans coded invasoline. Sure, what about
Speaker 3: Matthew Barney. So my point is there are also artists
Speaker 3: who don't settle on one media. They can do mixed media, right, Okay,
Speaker 3: So we have the visual collage artist, the sculptor, possibly
Speaker 3: the filmmaker. Definitely, the pop Dance Collective CNC Music Factory.
Speaker 3: Come on, Elizabeth. They combine dance people, video elements, and.
Speaker 4: Lycra people who dance while they're waiting for their popcorn
Speaker 4: to pop in the microwave.
Speaker 3: Yes, we'll count that mixed media. Now. My point is,
Speaker 3: artists often discover a medium one that allows them to
Speaker 3: speak to the world, to all of us in a
Speaker 3: new way, and they go, this is my voice, right.
Speaker 3: This is because this allows them to comment on the
Speaker 3: human condition, or on their own humanity, or on existence itself, Elizabeth,
Speaker 3: or just maybe a simple emotion. Elizabeth. Today, I'd like
Speaker 3: us to consider a very important, unique artist. Yes, one
Speaker 3: whose medium is carceral. These are non traditional artists, Elizabeth.
Speaker 3: Who'se medium this one is, it's a defiant act. They
Speaker 3: work in escape. Today we consider the prison escape artist. Oh,
Speaker 3: this is Ridiculous Crime a podcast about absurd and outrageous capers, heists,
Speaker 3: and cons. It's always ninety nine percent murder free and ridiculous.
Speaker 4: Yes, puppy, Now, mommy, you like the arts, right, you
Speaker 4: kind of fancy like that?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm so fancy.
Speaker 3: I hope you brought your big brain today because this
Speaker 3: will be a cultured affair. Wow, oh yes, today I
Speaker 3: want to speak of the metia of the prison escape artist.
Speaker 3: To put this outsider artist, if you will, into their
Speaker 3: proper perspectives. Let us first consider the mon art world
Speaker 3: x stant.
Speaker 2: Okay, okay, which is all just money laundering. But go on.
Speaker 3: Exactly now they're already criminals, but they're free. So now
Speaker 3: my point is this is I went and I was reading,
Speaker 3: you know, like Art in America, art World, art net online,
Speaker 3: and I found this is from Artnet's national art critic
Speaker 3: Ben Davis, and this is dated March third, twenty twenty one.
Speaker 3: He's talking about the state of the art world today.
Speaker 2: I love his clothes, right, yeah.
Speaker 3: Totally great. I mean went from making really great industrial
Speaker 3: workwear into commenting on contemporary now his articles the title
Speaker 3: get me in to start. Just listen to this title,
Speaker 3: Elizabeth Why causes? That's kaws apostrophe s Global success may
Speaker 3: well be a symptom of a depressed culture, a drift
Speaker 3: in nostalgia and retail therapy colon how to make sense
Speaker 3: of the popularity of an artist known for sad cartoons
Speaker 3: and collectible toys. I love that title. It's like a
Speaker 3: nineteenth century book title. So, now do you know the
Speaker 3: former street artist turned Galerust cause A W S all
Speaker 3: caps not familiar. You likely seen his work. He has
Speaker 3: what art critics call a signature motif. What's his motif?
Speaker 3: Great question? Elizabeth crossed out eyes. The eyes are xes.
Speaker 3: You see a big circle headed creature, eyes like crossed
Speaker 3: out eyeballs, and so his eyes are just singular excess.
Speaker 4: I love when people do that in drawings to signify
Speaker 4: someone is dead.
Speaker 3: I like it when they signify someone's blotted.
Speaker 2: Oh, that's a good one. That's exes for eyes.
Speaker 3: You like exed out eyes. You're so gangster. Now his uh,
Speaker 3: you know, he's probably a signature character. Think graffiti. It's
Speaker 3: known as Companion. It's this gray, big skullhead of a
Speaker 3: Mickey Mouse looking cartoon and he's got ext out eyes.
Speaker 2: Okay, then I have seen h right.
Speaker 3: Okay, that's cause. Now his work is very now right
Speaker 3: according to art net and I quote, the culture of
Speaker 3: Cause is closer to some general sense of what a
Speaker 3: very large and enthusiastic public wants from art. This is
Speaker 3: what the art people are saying, not me.
Speaker 2: We're all supposed to pause for the cause, Why is that?
Speaker 3: Why do people want this?
Speaker 4: All?
Speaker 3: They got the answers for you, Elizabeth, Here we go quote,
Speaker 3: So why what itch does it scratch? We live in
Speaker 3: an era of reboots and remakes of regurgitated intellectual property.
Speaker 3: The most mainstream layer of mainstream culture consists of things
Speaker 3: like comic book movies and Star Wars, reprocessing teenage affections
Speaker 3: in endlessly permuting ways. What in visual art hits the
Speaker 3: same nerve?
Speaker 2: Hm?
Speaker 3: Right, so he's like, oh yeah, blame the reboots now.
Speaker 2: Basically, in all.
Speaker 3: Honesty, this is a valuable question to consider. The folks
Speaker 3: over at artnet are kind enough to supply the antidote
Speaker 3: to our modern dilemma. They get to the heart of it,
Speaker 3: they tap that root, Elizabeth. The answer lies in one word.
Speaker 3: What is that word? Emotion? And how it is conveyed? Okay?
Speaker 3: Artnet argues that work like cause quote register and emotion
Speaker 3: without really making you feel that emotion. The work's very vacant,
Speaker 3: and its seems to suggest a low level depression running
Speaker 3: through society, so pervasive that deserves as a neutral sign
Speaker 3: of the arts nowness, rather than reading as a personal
Speaker 3: feeling expressed by the artist, So basically there is no
Speaker 3: there there as Yeah, exactly as Dorothy Parker would say,
Speaker 3: that personal feeling expressed by the artists. That's what we're
Speaker 3: after today, Elizabeth, that undeniable motion, that irresistible freedom. In
Speaker 3: this case, it is freedom itself, extant, big capital letters.
Speaker 3: How is freedom represented? How is it expressed? How is
Speaker 3: it felt by the intended audience? Elizabeth? I got a
Speaker 3: question for you. Do you have a favorite prison escape movie?
Speaker 2: No? No, favorite prison escape movie?
Speaker 3: Yeah, like people busting out of prison, you know, from
Speaker 3: I know, Tango and Cash to the Great Escape. You
Speaker 3: got choices.
Speaker 2: Let's say Great Escape.
Speaker 3: I'm really having catch onally break out of being imprisoned momentarily.
Speaker 2: But anyway, I just try to rack my brain, you know,
Speaker 2: you know I'm slow in the head.
Speaker 3: Princer Dash Sean Connery, The Rock Boom. There you go,
Speaker 3: and it's got a local angle for you.
Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, okay, let's say The Rock. Then it's always
Speaker 2: been my favorite. I'll argue that forever.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you were saying that the way into the office.
Speaker 2: You're like talking to myself outside.
Speaker 3: A producer, David, you have a favorite a prison escape
Speaker 3: movie or even just to escape from an incarceration movie.
Speaker 5: Uh, yes, I'm trying to think, well, like this, but
Speaker 5: it's proprietary. Yeah, I mean I can't tell you no.
Speaker 5: Uh what about like many favorites, you know, the World
Speaker 5: is my favorite? Uh, the Island, like the one where
Speaker 5: it's sci fi and they're trying to get off the entire.
Speaker 3: Island is a prison. That's a pretty good choice. Not
Speaker 3: a great movie, but a good idea. Yeah, there you go.
Speaker 3: That's the whole thing is you can get down to
Speaker 3: the essential with the prison escape movie. We all relate.
Speaker 3: You're like, I want to get the hell out of there.
Speaker 3: I get it. Yeah, right, Like Shawshank Redemption, how about
Speaker 3: that one, there's a great prison movie. People feel that ending.
Speaker 3: They're like, yeah, I'm rooting for that guy who may
Speaker 3: or may not have murdered his wife. By the end,
Speaker 3: we know he didn't, but still, okay, sorry I ruined
Speaker 3: that one anyway. But Migrate is the great escape. That's
Speaker 3: my favorite. Great It has everything. Elizabeth has Steve McQueen
Speaker 3: defeating smug Nazis. There's motorcycle jumps, machine guns. There was
Speaker 3: the Daring Tunnel escape. Of course, there's the French.
Speaker 2: Resistance all your favorite things, so totally.
Speaker 3: Charles Bronson in a rowboat, James Coburn on a on
Speaker 3: a bicycle, Yes, exactly, Bowser Dave gets it now. Second question,
Speaker 3: do you have a favorite real life prison escape.
Speaker 2: All the ones that we've done on this show.
Speaker 3: Way to handsome team player.
Speaker 2: No, I'm like Rob Low in the NFL. I like
Speaker 2: it all the concept.
Speaker 3: I just love escape now these days, the greatest living
Speaker 3: prison escape artist is the man el Myth l Legend
Speaker 3: El Choppo.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, oh yeah, those little cool tunnels totally.
Speaker 3: Joaquin el Choppo Guzman aka Joacine the Shorty Guzman aka
Speaker 3: the Chopped One. Well, he was known at his peak
Speaker 3: as a prison like a rank prison escape artist, just
Speaker 3: dude like he was like a rank bowl but ranked
Speaker 3: prison escape artist. El Choppo escape not once but twice
Speaker 3: from maximum security pri.
Speaker 2: Didn they have like cute little Tudeland machines.
Speaker 3: Yeah, tunnel, I was telling you about that. That's his
Speaker 3: best escape in my opinion. Occurred in July twenty fifteen.
Speaker 3: L Chopo. He's locked up in the alta Plano maximum
Speaker 3: security prison. Video surveillance shows l Choppo pacing in a
Speaker 3: cell right and then suddenly he lowers himself into this
Speaker 3: little hole in the shower area, slides down into some
Speaker 3: makeshift tunnel and disappears. Now he was in a tunnel
Speaker 3: that his men had been digging under the prison. They
Speaker 3: they've been, you know, waiting for him. They'd prepared was
Speaker 3: a motorcycle like and the motorcycle was a fixed to
Speaker 3: two rails like this own little personal railroad track totally right.
Speaker 4: And now the small it looked like one of those
Speaker 4: things outside of a supermarket that you can put exactly.
Speaker 3: So the chopped one he gets on this and the
Speaker 3: tunnel is low enough that he wont hit his cup,
Speaker 3: so it's like a short little tunnel. He's gotten on
Speaker 3: a little motorbike. He goes brim when he goes tootling
Speaker 3: off down that tunnel. Right, tunnels well made authorities. They
Speaker 3: had estimated it would have taken probably eighteen months to
Speaker 3: two years of like contract labor to get this done.
Speaker 3: His men got it done in sixteen months at the maximum,
Speaker 3: because that's when he went into the prison. Anyway, to
Speaker 3: hide their work, they had bought land and near the prison.
Speaker 3: Then they constructed like an anomaloust looking cinder block building.
Speaker 3: It was supposed to be ostensibly a budega to come.
Speaker 3: Then they use that to hide their work, which is
Speaker 3: like you know, earth movers and all sorts of stuff.
Speaker 3: The subterranean tunnel that they dug, it stretched more than
Speaker 3: a mile long, and then it gets under the tunnel
Speaker 3: right to where his little you know, shower stall is like,
Speaker 3: nailed it right now. Of course, when Choppo finds his
Speaker 3: waiting motorcycle, he revs it up. Of course, races off
Speaker 3: down that it's all lit up the tunnel. He gets
Speaker 3: to know, so he's like, it's a mile long ride,
Speaker 3: like it's like an amusement park ride for one right
Speaker 3: and boom he gets to the end. His waiting men
Speaker 3: are like, hey, el Choppo. And now he was recaptured eventually.
Speaker 3: You know, we know about that because his you know,
Speaker 3: his wife was just released from prison. But he's still
Speaker 3: in an American prison. Very little chance you will ever escape.
Speaker 3: The maximum super max prisons are a little bit different
Speaker 3: than like say.
Speaker 2: A Mexican in Colorado.
Speaker 3: I believe so. I do not know, but I think so.
Speaker 3: Now the chopped one, since you know, he's a real
Speaker 3: bad guy, so we will not be celebrating him. He
Speaker 3: would definitely smash our one percent rule on murder.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, like his stories.
Speaker 3: Any story about a Choppin is like sixty seven percent murder.
Speaker 3: Just anyway. Also, by the way, I look this up
Speaker 3: his uh this is kind of I thought ironic. His
Speaker 3: name El Choppo. It can mean many things, right, I
Speaker 3: say it means the chopped one. It doesn't really mean that.
Speaker 3: It's from the verb. The verb chapar chapar. It means
Speaker 3: to plate, right, but it means like to plate a meal, right,
Speaker 3: so you go, oh yeah, But it also means to play,
Speaker 3: as in to seal something like if you're to veneer
Speaker 3: a door. Right, So yeah's like chapar laparta. Right. So
Speaker 3: chappar also means to shut in or to lock up,
Speaker 3: so as in to lock up a criminal, like chap
Speaker 3: dela cuente. Right, So his nickname also means the locked
Speaker 3: up one.
Speaker 6: Oh anyway, moving on, I'd like to introduce you to
Speaker 6: a man more in line with the spirit of the show,
Speaker 6: the prison escape artist Alfred George Hines street name Houdini
Speaker 6: Hines his chosen medium prison escape Now.
Speaker 3: Born in nineteen seventeen, he hailed from a criminal artist family.
Speaker 3: His father was a practitioner of the light fingered arts,
Speaker 3: a journeyman of theft and robbery, but he made the
Speaker 3: mistake to work in mixed media and he became an
Speaker 3: armed artist. That choice cost his father his freedom and
Speaker 3: eventually left the young Houdini Hines with a father sized
Speaker 3: hole in his life. Yeah, so at age seven, Houdini hines,
Speaker 3: he hits the bricks. He ran away from the group
Speaker 3: home that he'd been housed after his father's incarceration, this
Speaker 3: newly minted street urchin or he goes in runn oft. Yeah,
Speaker 3: seven years old, right, but he doesn't have like the
Speaker 3: car and the little bricks under his feet. He's just
Speaker 3: on the streets now, Houdini hines. He gets into the
Speaker 3: family business, small time theft. He wasn't much better at
Speaker 3: it than his old man, and he gets caught stealing
Speaker 3: once when he was five well, no, sorry seven anyway.
Speaker 3: Jane's addiction lyrics socide Elizabeth Houdini hines. He gets locked
Speaker 3: up just like dear old dad right now, but he
Speaker 3: didn't like life on the inside. Now, so once again,
Speaker 3: what's he do? He are u n nft this time
Speaker 3: from prison he breaks out or you know, from like
Speaker 3: a group youth Home and anyway, it's like an institution
Speaker 3: for wayward use. Right, So what's next for old Houdini Hines. Well,
Speaker 3: he's British and there's a world war going on, oh,
Speaker 3: the second of his kind. He was born in nineteen seventeen,
Speaker 3: so at this point we're in the late thirties, are
Speaker 3: thirty nine forty, so the second war of this kind,
Speaker 3: World war. Since he's a fighting age that they're like, oh,
Speaker 3: we don't care if you've been in the stir you're
Speaker 3: near now in the army. Yeah, so he's off to
Speaker 3: the war. But just like prison, this doesn't work for
Speaker 3: old Houdini Hines. I mean one, he doesn't like uniforms. Two,
Speaker 3: he doesn't like being told what to do. He doesn't
Speaker 3: like being told where to eat, when to go to sleep.
Speaker 3: So this ruled out prison, ruled out the British Army.
Speaker 3: He's like, I got a bounce, right, So he's now
Speaker 3: at this point, what's he going to do, But he's
Speaker 3: in the Army's decide it's not going to work for him.
Speaker 3: Well you know the answer, he are U n n oft.
Speaker 3: He deserves the British Army. Now still rather young man
Speaker 3: with much life in front of him. Old Houdini hindes
Speaker 3: he needs to find a place for himself amidst the
Speaker 3: flow of life. Naturally, he gravitated back to the family business,
Speaker 3: petty crime, and he gets rested again. Let's take a break,
Speaker 3: and after this I'll tell you about how he launched
Speaker 3: his career as a prison escape artist. All right, Elizabeth.
Speaker 2: Zarin', they're so angry.
Speaker 3: I know. I'm fired up, dude. I love this prison
Speaker 3: escape artists. These are my people's I've been wanting to
Speaker 3: tell you about this.
Speaker 2: I am vibrating at a higher plane of caffeine.
Speaker 3: Oh there's that that too.
Speaker 2: I'm like a high hot wire.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm already like pretty high to high wire act.
Speaker 3: And then you added caffeine and chocolate, Like I'm buzzing
Speaker 3: enough to make cocaine nervous.
Speaker 2: How many of those you have you eaten so far?
Speaker 4: For?
Speaker 3: What is that bad? When to go? Tell me when
Speaker 3: to go?
Speaker 2: It's totally cool, legal cool anyway?
Speaker 3: So where was I? L's right? Who Denie Hines?
Speaker 4: Uh huh?
Speaker 3: Getting he's busted. He's no better at crime than his
Speaker 3: old man. So this is nineteen fifty three. At this point, he's, uh,
Speaker 3: this time he was busting on a jewel robbery charge.
Speaker 3: The store is actually a furniture business. I don't know
Speaker 3: British law. It was called a jewel robbery. Maybe there
Speaker 3: was like necklaces in the furniture store. I don't know
Speaker 3: this I was. I'm compiling it from news stories. Yeah,
Speaker 3: made no sense to me anyway. He insisted he was innocent,
Speaker 3: and not only that, he wasn't even there, Like, I
Speaker 3: don't even know. I don't even know those dudes my parents, Yes, exactly,
Speaker 3: I don't know how I could have been in these anyway,
Speaker 3: he promises. After, you know, denying he had anything to
Speaker 3: do with those chaps doesn't matter to the bobbies. They're like, yes,
Speaker 3: so you're going anyway back to prison? So whodini Hines
Speaker 3: is arrested, tried, convicted, done deal. Since twelve years in prison.
Speaker 3: While he's on the inside, he's confronted with a totality
Speaker 3: of himself and he's like, oh, alone with nothing but
Speaker 3: himself his time, he digs into what he knows, he
Speaker 3: pushes past and finds something a new Elizabeth. He finds
Speaker 3: his true artistic medium, prison escape, a way to express
Speaker 3: himself in his moment in the world and in his work, Elizabeth,
Speaker 3: we who appreciate this medium, we find a quote wonderful
Speaker 3: all over tactility, you know, Elizabeth, exactly, an undeniable jush. No, Elizabeth,
Speaker 3: there's an approachable immediacy to prison escape. You know. Yeah,
Speaker 3: the work. It both speaks to the essential and it
Speaker 3: heightens one's awareness of the poll of both time and tradition,
Speaker 3: as it equally valorizes that which we all hold sacred.
Speaker 2: Are you writing for Artnet Now?
Speaker 3: Our freedom, Elizabeth, our very lives, our essence, of me,
Speaker 3: of you, of us. We are free? Yes, right, okay. Anyway,
Speaker 3: as Houdini hines begins to play with form, he makes
Speaker 3: strident leaps. He's in a really quick study. He becomes
Speaker 3: a master almost immediately once he focuses on the medium
Speaker 3: of prison escape. You find him at the outset of
Speaker 3: his career, Elizabeth, like a church gargoyle pose there, familiar, repugnant,
Speaker 3: but yet he doesn't care, because he's busy watching you,
Speaker 3: stone cold, seemingly waiting for you to look away. Now
Speaker 3: Elizabeth nineteen fifty five rolls around. Finally someone looks away
Speaker 3: from this gargoyle, and Houdini Hines. He entered the art
Speaker 3: world with escape, and we'll call his first work the
Speaker 3: Key Be with Me. Okay with Me? Now that's my
Speaker 3: informal name for this work. That's not what he named it.
Speaker 3: But anyway, Whodini Hines was in Nottingham Prison, home of
Speaker 3: the Robin Hood at the time, and he was doing
Speaker 3: time twelve years. As I said right now, he had
Speaker 3: a stroke of genius. He's like, oh, I can become
Speaker 3: the key to my freedom. He began to focus his
Speaker 3: keen powers of observation on what mattered most, the key
Speaker 3: ring on the jailer's hip. Yeah, in particular, he studied
Speaker 3: the master key he knew promised him freedom. He studied it,
Speaker 3: and he studied it, he memorized it. Then he went
Speaker 3: to work in the prison shop and he copied the
Speaker 3: key from memory. What and he cut a new key
Speaker 3: from memory from memory. When he tested the fake key,
Speaker 3: he also had two other guys help him, so they
Speaker 3: were constantly kind of like judge each other's notes. Right,
Speaker 3: So he tested his fake key. He found his memory impeccable.
Speaker 3: The key worked perfectly. He walked right out of the
Speaker 3: prison gates, climbed up over a twenty foot prison stone wall.
Speaker 3: Freedo himself. He ran off to Ireland to keep his
Speaker 3: new found freedom. He found work in construction as a
Speaker 3: decorator and builder, got talented man, great eye. But it
Speaker 3: was a short lived taste of life outside, Elizabeth, because
Speaker 3: the detectives from Scotland Yard, the old flying squad boys,
Speaker 3: they caught up to him. Now Hodini Hines, he's captured
Speaker 3: nineteen fifty six, roughly eight months after his prison escape,
Speaker 3: Elizabeth Boom, freedom taken away, and by nineteen fifty seven,
Speaker 3: two years later, he's back in court in London working
Speaker 3: on his next great work. It was an impromptu piece,
Speaker 3: but yet again it spoke to his developing genius as
Speaker 3: a prison escape artist. Now where do you think he
Speaker 3: took his art for him? Elizabeth? You'll find this that
Speaker 3: this created maison scene and Houdini Hines's work. It is,
Speaker 3: if you will and pardon the expression, key to his work. Now,
Speaker 3: his prison escapes, they are highly imaginative, sure, but they
Speaker 3: are also highly idiosyncratic.
Speaker 2: Interesting.
Speaker 3: Yes, this is what gives his work such an irreverent
Speaker 3: sense of wonder and joy. It's a playful quality, Elizabeth.
Speaker 3: And now you know why he's doing what he's doing.
Speaker 3: But yet you also marvel at how Houdini Hines reaches
Speaker 3: his aim. You'd see it right there. You're like, there's
Speaker 3: no way, and yet yeah he's able to. Okay, let's
Speaker 3: consider his next escape. As I said, impromptu piece of work.
Speaker 3: He sued the prison authorities took him to He's like,
Speaker 3: I'm taking you guys to court. Take me to court.
Speaker 3: Take you to court exactly Whodini Hines demanded his day
Speaker 3: in court. He gets it. He claimed that the prison
Speaker 3: commissioners had illegally arrested Remember he said he was never
Speaker 3: in that furniture store. I don't even know those chests, right, No,
Speaker 3: So the lawsuit was just a ruse. It was a
Speaker 3: pure spoke screen. Now. It was a timeless illusion, meant
Speaker 3: to throw sand into the gearbox of mind, this bureaucracy, Elizabeth.
Speaker 3: It was. It was a gesture, you know, it was
Speaker 3: meant to help him get free again with just one life,
Speaker 3: affirming sparring with fate. Now Houdini Hines is in Courton,
Speaker 3: London with his lawsuit. He asked to use the little
Speaker 3: boy's room. Okay, Now, he was like me, you know,
Speaker 3: in the minister before record. Yeah, he's like pop skin
Speaker 3: out if I chop into the little boy's room. Now,
Speaker 3: I don't know how he said it. Anyway, two guards
Speaker 3: they escorted him. Now, once he's in the loo, if
Speaker 3: you prefer, the guards took off his handcuffs so he
Speaker 3: could handle himself. And that's when Houdini Hines sprung his trap.
Speaker 3: Now he shoved both of the guards into the toilet stall.
Speaker 3: Then he slapped a padlock down that he had secreted
Speaker 3: on his person, locked the padlock. There had been two
Speaker 3: islets placed by his confederates on the door so they
Speaker 3: would match with the lock. Then he casually walked out
Speaker 3: of the court building, rejoined the flow of Londoners on
Speaker 3: Fleet Street, and bone voila. Wow, he was free. Yes,
Speaker 3: he was a living reminder of the meeting of escape.
Speaker 3: Elizabeth Houdini Hines embodied the human desire to shake off
Speaker 3: the yoke of society and return to a Russoian state
Speaker 3: in accord with nature. He could once again feel the wind,
Speaker 3: is what I'm saying, So once.
Speaker 4: Anyway, Purple emanating from your laptop, I'm looking over in
Speaker 4: the Purple pros.
Speaker 3: A lot of art in America, a lot of I
Speaker 3: mean it's amazing stuff. Right Anyway, he's captured five hours
Speaker 3: after he escaped from the courtroom, picked up at the airport. Yeah,
Speaker 3: he's out for five hours. One year later, Houdini Hines
Speaker 3: would unveil his next great work, Elizabeth, You'll find a
Speaker 3: great prison artist is never satisfied. They long to perform
Speaker 3: if they are locked up, they yearn for freedom. Sadly though,
Speaker 3: they must be locked up in order for them to
Speaker 3: express themselves in their chosen medium. Ah Calira now smash
Speaker 3: cut Chelmsford Prison. Houdini Hine was back behind bars. He'd
Speaker 3: cast about for inspiration and then he found it. He
Speaker 3: decided for his next great work he would do a
Speaker 3: one man retrospective, a look back at his first great work. So, Elizabeth,
Speaker 3: remember the first great work he was predicated on.
Speaker 2: What the key?
Speaker 3: Now? Prison escape is a fragile medium, and the four
Speaker 3: one is to imitate one self, to repeat oneself. It's
Speaker 3: like trying to, you know, recreate the same bubble. How
Speaker 3: do you do that? Often you will find the prison
Speaker 3: escape work can appear overly wrought, maybe rushed, poorly conceived.
Speaker 3: Not definitely him, because you know it can't feel derivative,
Speaker 3: but even if you're quoting from yourself. Right, even in failure, right,
Speaker 3: it didn't. It doesn't matter because it inadvertently restores the
Speaker 3: calming order of status quo, so it reifies society. Elizabeth, anyway,
Speaker 3: who do you need Hyde, he repeated himself. You did,
Speaker 3: brother did so a greater success. This time he is
Speaker 3: able to once again copy a jailer's key, and he
Speaker 3: walks out of prison. He returns again to Ireland. He's like,
Speaker 3: I gotta get out of angles.
Speaker 2: That all went so well last time.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think they the Irish are like what another Englishman?
Speaker 3: I don't know if he's in the right part of
Speaker 3: Ireland anyway. I could not tell you that. But all
Speaker 3: of it was repetition, right, because in the latest iteration
Speaker 3: he recognized it. In every act of creation, Elizabeth, one
Speaker 3: can also find an active destruction. But in that we
Speaker 3: find the fuel for the creation of something new, the
Speaker 3: ecology of art, if you will. Now Whodini Hines realized
Speaker 3: he'd overlooked a key detail in his previous work. What
Speaker 3: was it that he looked over, Elizabeth.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 3: Creating a convincing new self.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, take.
Speaker 3: Out my prison outfit I need to reinvent strip. So
Speaker 3: this time he became William Herbert Bishop used car salesman. Yeah,
Speaker 3: so he We worked under this convincing new form for
Speaker 3: two years in Ireland. He was at the Similacrum until
Speaker 3: he was caught. How was he caught? He was driving
Speaker 3: a car with no license plates or registration. I couldn't
Speaker 3: quite I got two ways of tell him the story
Speaker 3: either way. Yeah, he didn't have his paperwork in order
Speaker 3: on a car. Remember, used car salesman. I think you'd
Speaker 3: have that covered. Anyway, He gets undone, not by bureaucracy,
Speaker 3: but rather by its absence, specifically the absence of paperwork. Elizabeth, Anyway,
Speaker 3: modern moment. Indeed, now in this details of Whodini hines work,
Speaker 3: we discover the vitality of life, but also the unceasing
Speaker 3: ironic humor of an unfeeling universe. You know what I mean? Anyway,
Speaker 3: In nineteen ninety six, Elizabeth, he finally did the expected. Yeah,
Speaker 3: he got a prison book deal.
Speaker 2: Yes, thank God to share his genius.
Speaker 3: Whodini Hines documented his art and his process in a
Speaker 3: book with the title Contempt of Court. I love that type. Now, okay,
Speaker 3: next time I got another one for you. This guy
Speaker 3: is the the creme de la creme. He is my man,
Speaker 3: Brian bow Larson, one of the truly great prison.
Speaker 2: Escap like Sampler, Oh my goodness.
Speaker 3: Yes, Brian bow Larson. He brings into thrilling, vivid detail
Speaker 3: and graphic focus the widely known fact that we can
Speaker 3: always feel the unmistakable impact of intention. Yeah right, you
Speaker 3: know it when you feel it? No, Elizabeth, you ever
Speaker 3: heard of? In my apologies to all the Danes listening
Speaker 3: and those who care about Danes, but I'm about to
Speaker 3: butcher this and so look, I swear I'm trying. But anyway,
Speaker 3: Vertous Lusi State Prison. Okay, okay, it's a charming spot,
Speaker 3: not at all really, but anyway, it's in alberts Lund
Speaker 3: and that is, if you aren't up on the latest
Speaker 3: in Copenhagen real estate. That's a suburb west of Copenhagen. Okay, yes, anyway.
Speaker 3: At the time, Brian bo Larsen, he was forty years
Speaker 3: old and he wanted to get free, Elizabeth.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we all do.
Speaker 3: Larsen committed artists, He's often worked with traditional tools. For instance,
Speaker 3: to get out of the Ritisli State Prison, Larsen turned
Speaker 3: to the tried and true and the traditional. What tools
Speaker 3: did he use, Elizabeth? What were his forms to shape
Speaker 3: and to mold? What did he choose to work with?
Speaker 2: A wooden spoon, hacksaw oh.
Speaker 3: Okay, and a rope ladder?
Speaker 2: Oh that's classic, told traditional.
Speaker 3: So there was a fifteen meter drop he had to negotiate.
Speaker 3: There were bars on his cell window he had to negotiate.
Speaker 3: These were his primary constraints, of which against he had
Speaker 3: to battle. He opted for a hacksaw to transform the
Speaker 3: iron bars into decorative elements no longer functional as prison bars.
Speaker 4: I thought he would like hack into his ribs so
Speaker 4: he could collapse his rib cage to slip through the
Speaker 4: bars internal to extra Yeah.
Speaker 3: Different, saw now. He also fashioned two rope ladders, one
Speaker 3: to climb up because this was his nod to the
Speaker 3: boldness of Icarus. The second rope ladder was to climb
Speaker 3: down to the other side of the prison walls.
Speaker 2: I didn't know there were upladders and down ladders.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, this he needed to He needed a nod
Speaker 3: to the childhood fable of Rapunzel. A down ladder and
Speaker 3: an up ladder. That was a nod to.
Speaker 2: I gotta find out if the ladder in my garage
Speaker 2: is an upper a down.
Speaker 3: Well, it depends on how you use them. If you
Speaker 3: have a wall and you put one on one side
Speaker 3: and one on the other side, and you're on this side,
Speaker 3: you got an up ladder down line.
Speaker 2: But if you put the up ladder on the wrong
Speaker 2: side and the down ladder on the other side.
Speaker 3: You gotta get some kind of help with that. He
Speaker 3: got a ladder, he's you grow now. What had set
Speaker 3: him off at the moment was a parole board hearing
Speaker 3: that determined he wasn't going to the outside anytime soon.
Speaker 3: He was like, no, no, no, no, Brian bo Larsan
Speaker 3: do not like that. So Brian bow Larson, he says,
Speaker 3: he went out and he bought himself some betting like
Speaker 3: that was he got out of a parole hearing. He's liked,
Speaker 3: pop up, get me some bedding the department store. Yeah, no,
Speaker 3: I actually have it from I got his words and
Speaker 3: he said, and that quote, and then I weave twenty
Speaker 3: eight meters of rope out of it. So he gets
Speaker 3: some stuff betting and he's like, I'm on it. Huh
Speaker 3: makes himself some rope.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 3: He wove his tool of freedom for his next great work.
Speaker 3: He lived in a ground floor cell, right, so without windows,
Speaker 3: so he would have to get up to the second
Speaker 3: floor in the inside the prison before he didn't even
Speaker 3: encounter away to get out. So the windows were only,
Speaker 3: as I said, on the top floor cells. But not
Speaker 3: only that, many of the windows they were already shattered
Speaker 3: and broken. A comment on the modern society anyway, left
Speaker 3: open to the elements. This was yet another punishment in
Speaker 3: the prison during wintertime. So Brian bow Larson, he sees
Speaker 3: this as a hint of freedom, punishment turned into liberation
Speaker 3: and yet another tool to express himself Elizabeth. So once
Speaker 3: his bed sheep rope was done, he braided a second.
Speaker 3: Then he ready two rope ladders up and down. Quote.
Speaker 3: I throw the rope out of window at seven o'clock
Speaker 3: in the evening, when it is dark. Down on the
Speaker 3: ground floor where I have the cell, I saw the beam,
Speaker 3: and at three in the morning, I go out, the
Speaker 3: beam being the spotlight of the prison. Yeah yeah, right,
Speaker 3: So he's outside now, but he's still not yet free
Speaker 3: because he's still in the prison grounds. He still has
Speaker 3: to climb off the roof that he is now on.
Speaker 3: He nearly falls because it's like winter time Slipper. He
Speaker 3: secures himself in his one true possession, his life, Elizabeth,
Speaker 3: and now his prison escape. I tied the rope but
Speaker 3: could see that it was very secure, but I chose
Speaker 3: to take the chance. Luckily, I managed to crawl over
Speaker 3: halfway down. He made it half way and then fate
Speaker 3: played a hand Elizabeth. Because he is an artwork, it
Speaker 3: is occurring with both the artists and the medium in
Speaker 3: the moment. It is a performance dance, if you will,
Speaker 3: a prison escape artist who is a performance.
Speaker 2: Artist, and it's ever evolving totally.
Speaker 3: As he explains it, quote, all of a sudden, the
Speaker 3: rope breaks, so I fell the last five or six meters.
Speaker 3: I landed on the asphalt on one foot and then
Speaker 3: on my tail. I can feel that something happened there
Speaker 3: that wasn't supposed to happen. I thought I wouldn't get
Speaker 3: back up, but you also want to leave, so I
Speaker 3: fought my way up and jumped in through some bushes
Speaker 3: and away. So actually busts his butt on his on
Speaker 3: the exactly and he's like, oh, my cocksacks. And then
Speaker 3: he's like, I need to lie down a while. But
Speaker 3: he's like, oh, I can't lie down here right outside
Speaker 3: the prison, and so he bounces for the bush is gone.
Speaker 3: His latest artistic expression was rousing, if painful success. His
Speaker 3: choice of tools worked brilliantly well, if only momentarily. One
Speaker 3: prison escape artist critic. We will call him the head
Speaker 3: of security of the Copenhagen West Regional Police, Kim Svinsingen.
Speaker 3: He said, we received notification on Saturday morning at eight twenty,
Speaker 3: but we do not know when he was last seen.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's not the best art criticism, but that's
Speaker 3: what they said. Anyway, Brian bo Larson was indeed free
Speaker 3: dazzling success. Now, in many ways, in a rather philosophical mood,
Speaker 3: one might say one might be amused how Larsion's latest
Speaker 3: work was both a wink and a nod to the
Speaker 3: power of the flexible rope to overcome the unbending iron bar. Right, Okay,
Speaker 3: In many ways, you might say that Larson's work is
Speaker 3: both satirical and imbued with a sense of the immediate
Speaker 3: and the timeless.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I would totally say that it's irresilient. I've been
Speaker 2: saying it in my head this whole time.
Speaker 3: It has a simplicity that speaks for itself. Yeah, completely,
Speaker 3: no keys from memory from him. He just plays a
Speaker 3: classics baby bed sheet, rope hacksaw. But for our next one,
Speaker 3: we bring in a new element, the bulldozer.
Speaker 2: Wait.
Speaker 3: Yes, His next break work was titled the Bulldozer. As
Speaker 3: with the rope, ladder and the Hacksaw, he again returned
Speaker 3: to a bold strength to remind us all of the
Speaker 3: power and joy of freedom. With this work, Elizabeth, he
Speaker 3: also maximized his planning and included a commentary on the
Speaker 3: meaning and the need for community.
Speaker 4: I much prefer his earlier works that were sort of
Speaker 4: a statement on the liminal quality of the.
Speaker 3: Space of the prisoner in what we would call a punishing,
Speaker 3: impunitive society.
Speaker 2: But you are you in the prison? Are you out
Speaker 2: of the prison? Are you in?
Speaker 3: Are we in a prison on the outside?
Speaker 2: Am I just a prison myself?
Speaker 3: Are we the prison guards of our own prison?
Speaker 2: Am I the prison of the prison? And the prison
Speaker 2: to a prison?
Speaker 3: Well? Think about that now, let that ruminate. So with
Speaker 3: a Bulldozer his next great peace, Brian bo Larson not
Speaker 3: only set himself free, but he did, as Audrey Lord
Speaker 3: would insist, he freed eleven others Elizabeth, as Lord said,
Speaker 3: quote I am not free, while any woman is unfree,
Speaker 3: even when her shackles are very different from my own,
Speaker 3: Brian bo Larson said, saying, brother, but for dudes in
Speaker 3: prison with me now, in nineteen ninety five, he unveiled
Speaker 3: as late as work. He orchestrated a triumphant act. He
Speaker 3: asked a buddy on the outside act against the walls
Speaker 3: that divided them. Yes, so his buddy went and fired up.
Speaker 3: But you guessed it a bulldozer, and he drove it
Speaker 3: down to the prison. And then what did he do, Elizabeth?
Speaker 3: He smashed the bulldozer right into the prison divided them,
Speaker 3: transforming it via his introduction of an aspirational nothingness, leaving
Speaker 3: behind a great hole in the wall. Now, with one
Speaker 3: great bum's rush, Brian bow Larson and his eleven disciples,
Speaker 3: his acolytes of freedom, they fled prison. Elizabeth, you can
Speaker 3: witness this work for yourself on YouTube. It has been
Speaker 3: preserved because there was someone on the outside recording it
Speaker 3: on video for posterity. What this document of freedom achieved.
Speaker 3: Clearly they knew it was going to happen. With a
Speaker 3: rough and barbaric yop, the newly freed shouted their brief manifesto,
Speaker 3: celebrating the thrill of their will to life. Their shared
Speaker 3: manifesto was just one word Elizabeth, Yes, now, Yoko ono.
Speaker 3: She would be pleased with the urgency of this and
Speaker 3: the fact that they had quoted from her. Now. Some
Speaker 3: have criticized this work for the risks and the shock
Speaker 3: of it all. But for me, Elizabeth, I'd argue that
Speaker 3: as a prison escape artist, Brian bow Larson owes us
Speaker 3: no sense of responsibility. He isn't and purely a devote
Speaker 3: of freedom. Now, Additionally, I would say the hyperrealism of
Speaker 3: this work, The Bulldozer, it does obscure some of the
Speaker 3: macro contemplation that arises from the questions considered. We lose
Speaker 3: sight of some of his commentary on life. It gets
Speaker 3: obfuscated by the unequivocally graphic. You know, the prisoner is
Speaker 3: rushing out of a dark hole. It's scarce and you
Speaker 3: cannot contemplate the truth before you. Now, it's like kind
Speaker 3: of like Maplethorpe's pissed crist of his Ubra, or it's
Speaker 3: his version of Madonna's book Sexy. It overcomes the message. Now,
Speaker 3: this is a danger of being such a prolific Artistly
Speaker 3: the Houdini Hines, he was more of a Beethoven to
Speaker 3: Larsen's Mozart. He like Houdini Hines, he only gave us
Speaker 3: a few great symphonies of freedom, while Brian brow Larssen
Speaker 3: he was prolific as that wicked, humored child Elizabeth. He
Speaker 3: gave us twenty two successful prison escapes twenty two. Now
Speaker 3: we won't cover them all, not all twenty two, but
Speaker 3: I do want to highlight a couple more of his
Speaker 3: greatest works. So let's take a little break, refresh, and
Speaker 3: I'll be back with more of Brian bo Larsen. Okay,
Speaker 3: Elizabeth art lover, We're back ready. Yes, I think that
Speaker 3: we've been discussing, you know, Houdini Hines, Brian bo Larsen,
Speaker 3: But I think to you know, kind of synthesize this conversation.
Speaker 3: We should also remind ourselves that to understand any artists,
Speaker 3: we must look to their home life, their beginnings, because
Speaker 3: that is where the artist is created in ways that
Speaker 3: even they don't understand. Now, what was it that first
Speaker 3: drove Brian bow Larsen to long for escape? His father, Elizabeth,
Speaker 3: a rough, brutish man violent to him and his mother
Speaker 3: in some ways. You would say that his father formed
Speaker 3: and shaped the prison escape artist as a young man.
Speaker 3: That makes sense, right as Larson had himself he has noted,
Speaker 3: and it came with a cost to become the prison
Speaker 3: escape artist that he is. Quote. Of course, I've missed
Speaker 3: out on a lot of things in this life, with
Speaker 3: all the years I've been in prison. But crying over
Speaker 3: spilt milk doesn't help. Now that said, Larson has confided
Speaker 3: that even if he could have lived the other life,
Speaker 3: it could well have happened. He knows that he could
Speaker 3: have gone the straight and narrow path. Sure with thenology
Speaker 3: he has today he says he still would choose his
Speaker 3: life as a prison escape artist. Really, he's true to
Speaker 3: the game. Despite all the risks, the times he nearly died,
Speaker 3: he would do it all again. This is the brave
Speaker 3: commitment that we require of a great artist, even the
Speaker 3: prison escape artist Elizabeth Now. In October two thousand and four,
Speaker 3: Larson had perhaps his closest run in with death and
Speaker 3: his own demise. Yes, I called this next piece the
Speaker 3: garden Hose. It involves a whole mess of manure. Larson
Speaker 3: was working in the prison yard. He was raking and
Speaker 3: shoveling up leaves into a wheelbarrow. He'd already planned his move,
Speaker 3: of course, and then the universe it winked at him
Speaker 3: this moment, His moment had arrived. So what do I
Speaker 3: mean by that? Well, Brian bowl Larson's about to get free.
Speaker 3: He's about a bus right back out. So at this
Speaker 3: point he's locked up in prison. But as he says,
Speaker 3: he has a job. Like many prisoners, his job was yardwork.
Speaker 3: So he's doing the leaves. But and I say leaves,
Speaker 3: I don't mean just raking leaves. He's got grass, sod.
Speaker 3: He's cutting up rolls of earth. Real prison yard.
Speaker 2: Who was a trustee who did that to the landscape?
Speaker 3: Yeah, and real like you know, curling up the saws.
Speaker 3: So in that mess of earth to be that he's
Speaker 3: right now moving, he spies freedom, Brian bolars and he
Speaker 3: climbs inside. He burrows down into this dirt to be
Speaker 3: and now with him. He'd also secreted a length of
Speaker 3: garden hose, so he gets set under this near crushing
Speaker 3: weight and he waited for the truck to come. They're
Speaker 3: supposed to pick up all this earth he set aside
Speaker 3: and lift the container and dump it into the back
Speaker 3: of the truck and then drive out of the prison
Speaker 3: and believe it to Brian Bolarsten to explain his work
Speaker 3: the garden hose. It all began with a prison sheet.
Speaker 3: Once again, this was a europe so it was a
Speaker 3: prison duvet cover. Quote. One day, I took a duvet cover.
Speaker 3: I had made a proper pile of soil and had
Speaker 3: two wheelbarrows of I crawled into the duvet cover and
Speaker 3: then I had my friend cover me with earth. This
Speaker 3: was risky because, as I said, Elizabeth, it's dangerous. The
Speaker 3: soil can crush you, shifts, it moves so as Larson noted,
Speaker 3: that kind of soil is heavy and you can't move
Speaker 3: it to the sides because of the container. So you're
Speaker 3: completely strapped down there. It was very difficult to breathe.
Speaker 3: You had to pull it really deep for you to
Speaker 3: feel like you were getting fresh air. I lay down
Speaker 3: there for twenty minutes. So twenty minutes, he's barely breathing
Speaker 3: through this garden hose. As I said, garden hose. So
Speaker 3: at one end, it's about forty centimeters long, so you
Speaker 3: can picture it right now. He was sucking clean air
Speaker 3: to that garden hose. But he can easily get blocked
Speaker 3: or clogged. You know what happens. Then you can't like
Speaker 3: just push up through the earth anyway. He's dancing there
Speaker 3: on the rim of life, buried in earth, already a
Speaker 3: premature grave, and he hears the joyous sound of freedom approaching.
Speaker 3: Then the truck came out. He gave an adrenaline rush.
Speaker 3: When you can feel that forklift grab you, and then
Speaker 3: you're on your way out of the gate. Oh so
Speaker 3: he's out, Elizabeth. He's free once again in his work,
Speaker 3: free as you and me, only he's more free. He's
Speaker 3: way more free than we are. He burrows out of
Speaker 3: his hiding place. He spotted though by the truck driver
Speaker 3: who's still behind the wheel. The guy was like taking
Speaker 3: a break or something. He's like, oh, oh, my timing's wrong.
Speaker 3: Huh so, Brian bow Larson, He doesn't hurt the truck driver,
Speaker 3: right said, He just runs away because he's not that
Speaker 3: kind of guy. Of course, he gets caught arrested a
Speaker 3: few months later, and he was not returned to the
Speaker 3: same prison. Instead, he was transferred to a place called
Speaker 3: Odense Arrest. Now he was not there long. You don't
Speaker 3: need to memorize this, but anyway, by this point he
Speaker 3: is a mid career prison escape artist and now he's
Speaker 3: working with the power and the confidence of one two
Speaker 3: thousand and five, one year after his previous escape, Larsen
Speaker 3: again longed for a deep, clean breath of fresh air,
Speaker 3: so he started to plot and plan. At first, I
Speaker 3: sat in another cell, and then I persuaded a guard
Speaker 3: to move me to the last cell because there's a
Speaker 3: toilet in the last cell, but it is not as
Speaker 3: long as the cell one and a half half meters
Speaker 3: of the cell is not actually the other outer wall.
Speaker 3: Then I hung up a flag with tupac. Wait, so
Speaker 3: what it is is he says he wanted to be
Speaker 3: on a cell right. That is uh, He's like, I
Speaker 3: want a longer cell, right. So the cell that he
Speaker 3: was in, he's like, I want to be on the
Speaker 3: very last cell on this row of cell blocks because
Speaker 3: there's a toilet there. And the guard's like okay, and
Speaker 3: he's like, yeah, now this cell it's not it's shorter
Speaker 3: because of the toilet, but that doesn't matter to him.
Speaker 3: So he has close he's closer access to the outer
Speaker 3: wall because the toilet has pipes running down the building, right,
Speaker 3: So then he hung up a flag with a Tupac
Speaker 3: as you do. Yeah right, I'm just I'm just laying
Speaker 3: out the facts. So, Elizabeth, I understand you may be
Speaker 3: wondering why a poster of Tupacy a poster. Well, it
Speaker 3: was a screen, Elizabeth, it was a mask. It was
Speaker 3: meant to distract with the provocation, much like Tupac's own
Speaker 3: use of his hyper masculinity to obscure his well developed
Speaker 3: feminine side. Right anyway, Brian bo Larson, he hung up
Speaker 3: his poster of Tupac, his screen, if you will, his
Speaker 3: mask on his prison wall, and he got to work.
Speaker 3: I put a little gizmo behind it so I could
Speaker 3: check if the guards or were checking the wall behind
Speaker 3: the flag. So that's what he wanted to do, was
Speaker 3: a test of the system, much like Tupac himself.
Speaker 2: That is spot on.
Speaker 3: The departed rapper would have likely appreciated this gestures what
Speaker 3: I'm saying. Anyway, after a few weeks the Tupac poster,
Speaker 3: it informs him that the guards aren't checking too closely.
Speaker 3: I grabbed a screwdriver from downstairs than the workshop and
Speaker 3: started digging. I got the screwdriver from another inmate. People
Speaker 3: want to help each other in prison, once again reifying
Speaker 3: the bonds of community. Anyway, in his work, he's established,
Speaker 3: as I pointed out, the bonds of community. But his
Speaker 3: escape was also his fellow prisoner's escape too, Elizabeth sure,
Speaker 3: whether symbolically or truthfully.
Speaker 2: I have a quick question, please, what was his original crime?
Speaker 4: It's like petty theft, remember, right, so, but has he
Speaker 4: done any other crimes?
Speaker 2: I'm just wondering if he keeps racking up Oh.
Speaker 3: Yes, every time you escape, that's a crime.
Speaker 2: Right So I'm just thinking, like he has the original.
Speaker 4: Crime and then years well, just because he keeps adding
Speaker 4: it to himself.
Speaker 2: He's doing this to himself.
Speaker 3: That's why I said, it's a commitment of an artist.
Speaker 3: He understands what he must work with and to point
Speaker 3: out the painful ironies of the bureaucracy, the greater criminals
Speaker 3: than he walked free. He must do this.
Speaker 2: It's a strong mission statement, thank you.
Speaker 3: So here's his latest escape, he said quote. I started
Speaker 3: digging on Friday Sunday night. I was done. My drawers
Speaker 3: and cupboards were filled with bricks. There was only an
Speaker 3: outer layer left, and I could look out to the
Speaker 3: supermarket on the other side. Of the prison. So I
Speaker 3: just sat there and enjoyed the huge hole in the
Speaker 3: wall and spoke a few bong heads. Oh yeah, So
Speaker 3: he's just smoking on a bomb, getting high with his
Speaker 3: Tupac poster and a little taste of freedom. Like I said,
Speaker 3: more free than any of us.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's getting free.
Speaker 3: A quiet moment, a true moment, Elizabeth. And then what
Speaker 3: does he do with this? Then I laid the bricks
Speaker 3: out on the floor like a big H and a
Speaker 3: big A. That's spelled up a ha right, his parting
Speaker 3: message to his captors.
Speaker 2: Amazing.
Speaker 3: So then I just dug out the last piece and
Speaker 3: he realized I can actually jump down directly from the wall,
Speaker 3: So he just jumps right onto the ground. He's done again, Elizabeth.
Speaker 3: He's free if only briefly he had made his escape.
Speaker 3: He hit out at this place of a friend of
Speaker 3: his that he knew, and then eventually he basically gets
Speaker 3: turned in by the friend. But the point is prison
Speaker 3: guards and the police that raid the friend's apartment and
Speaker 3: boom he gets apprehended. But in his work, the value
Speaker 3: of freedom was reiterated once again by its absence. Huh okay.
Speaker 3: The prison escape artists as an artist, Elizabeth, what do
Speaker 3: you like about their chosen medium?
Speaker 2: I like the immediacy and the emergency.
Speaker 3: Same same. I mean, it's undeniable, it's irresistible, and the
Speaker 3: freshness comes as part of.
Speaker 2: The form at the nowness of it.
Speaker 3: Exactly now at this point, Brian boy Larsen once again,
Speaker 3: He's in his forties on the lamb. After his most
Speaker 3: recent escape, the man now known as the Escape King
Speaker 3: was once again ready to gobble up all the life
Speaker 3: he could, all that was on offer while he was free.
Speaker 3: First up, he stole a car. You're asking about how
Speaker 3: he racks up charging but how.
Speaker 2: Can you call this man? I mean he escapes multiple times.
Speaker 2: He's not the king of it. The king is the
Speaker 2: one who escapes and is never brought back.
Speaker 3: Inferent views of kings. Kings are allowed to make mistakes,
Speaker 3: but it's constant victories I want from my royalty.
Speaker 2: Is he born to a line of escape kings? What
Speaker 2: do you?
Speaker 3: I don't know anyway, As I'm getting back to my
Speaker 3: metaphoric king, thank you and God, he is a king?
Speaker 3: You know, no, God, what's a god to a king?
Speaker 3: What's a king to a god? Elizabeth? Where was I anyway?
Speaker 3: Christmas time. So this Christmas time he's free. He stole
Speaker 3: a car, all right, so where is he? I do that?
Speaker 2: Every year is Christmas.
Speaker 3: I'm plenty of opportunities to do crime. Everybody's out there like, hey,
Speaker 3: take my car. I'm like, thank you, buddy.
Speaker 4: Anyway, and when people say oh, no, help, that actually
Speaker 4: means take my car exactly.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they're like, please help mey be free of this burden.
Speaker 3: So but rather than me tell you about all this, Elizabeth,
Speaker 3: just close your eyes a picture. The wind of speed
Speaker 3: rushes past two years. You are in a speeding car,
Speaker 3: top down convertible win. You are also on an island
Speaker 3: at the moment. It's fun and Iland, to be exact,
Speaker 3: the nation of Denmark. It has a number of islands,
Speaker 3: and Funnin is one. It's also where Odense Prisons is located.
Speaker 3: But you know that at this point, the escape prisoner
Speaker 3: Brian bow Larsen has yet to run. He's mostly just
Speaker 3: laying low. And at the moment you are with him.
Speaker 3: You are the sex worker that Brian bul Larsen hired
Speaker 3: to accompany him on his sojourn of freedom and mayhem.
Speaker 3: He seemed like a fun guy. You thought he wasn't
Speaker 3: like your typical John's now alone with him in his car,
Speaker 3: Brian bow Larsen seems to be driving around rather aimlessly,
Speaker 3: just out to enjoy his freedom. Oh and he's also
Speaker 3: let you know that the car is stolen, so you're
Speaker 3: in a hot car. Okay, so there's one other thing.
Speaker 3: He's also high as hell on hallucinages. He told you
Speaker 3: that you're not sure which ones. He didn't quite He
Speaker 3: wasn't exactly, but from what you were guessing, is probably
Speaker 3: magic mushrooms. It doesn't seem to be affecting his driving
Speaker 3: too much anybody. He is speeding though, As you stare
Speaker 3: up at the stars kind of blurring past you in
Speaker 3: the darkness above, you can hear the tires whirring against
Speaker 3: the road. That road hum familiar, friendly, steady, solid. It
Speaker 3: mixes with the soundtrack of music that Brian bow Larsen
Speaker 3: likes and is bumping in the stolen car. He turns
Speaker 3: up the classic Tupac he's listening to. Brian bow Larson
Speaker 3: laughs to himself as the cool night air rushes through
Speaker 3: your wig and chills your cheeks a bit. Then you
Speaker 3: hear it the wheels squeal. He misses a turn, The
Speaker 3: car slides off the road, catches some air, and slams
Speaker 3: back down to earth, crashing against the tree and some bushes.
Speaker 3: The radiator whistle and winds. The engine runs choppy and uneven.
Speaker 3: It finally cuts off. You shake off the cobwebs in
Speaker 3: your mind and you find you're surprisingly fine, no broken bones,
Speaker 3: no major injuries. Then you hear it. A car door opens,
Speaker 3: You turn and you watch a Brian bow Larsen does
Speaker 3: what he does best. He r U N n oft
Speaker 3: right out of there, but he doesn't get far because
Speaker 3: he's accosted. He swings at his attack. He ducks a
Speaker 3: blow and then another, but he's caught by his second attacker.
Speaker 3: The weird thing is that you don't see anyone else.
Speaker 3: It just looked like Ed Norton in the fight club
Speaker 3: and beating himself up in a parking lot. Brian bow
Speaker 3: Larson is clearly fighting amaginary people. The funniest part is
Speaker 3: that he's losing. He keeps getting knocked down by the
Speaker 3: imaginary people. Then he scrambled back up to his feet,
Speaker 3: only to be knocked down again by his drug hallucination.
Speaker 3: You want to laugh, but you're really not in the
Speaker 3: mood because everything's just too strange. Finally, Brian bow Larsen
Speaker 3: rakes fore of his imagined attackers and he tears off,
Speaker 3: disappearing into the night. You gather up your stuff. You
Speaker 3: phone a friend asked them to come gather you up,
Speaker 3: and now you say you'll be the one waiting in
Speaker 3: the car parked against a tree. After a little while,
Speaker 3: you see headlights approach. You're like, oh, thank god. You
Speaker 3: smile at your rescuer, but then your smile it falls
Speaker 3: fast because you see that it's not your friend, but
Speaker 3: rather it's the police. They question you. They find that
Speaker 3: your story is rather impossible to believe Elizabeth at first,
Speaker 3: but then they believe you after you tell them the
Speaker 3: story three or four times. You even act out part
Speaker 3: of the fight with the imaginary people. The police they
Speaker 3: release dogs into the darkness, certain that Larson can't be
Speaker 3: too far away if he's just run off with a
Speaker 3: head full of drugs, and they're right. The dogs quickly
Speaker 3: locate a man walking in the dark of night, and
Speaker 3: here he's wearing a brown wig. You hear over the
Speaker 3: police radio, which is about as convincing as I don't
Speaker 3: know an afro on Gwyneth Paltrow. Anyway, doesn't take long
Speaker 3: for the Danish cops to confirm this is indeed their
Speaker 3: escape convict. You hear on the radio back inside, Brian. Yeah, Meanwhile,
Speaker 3: this has been one of the most entertaining nights you've
Speaker 3: had lately, I hope now, as best as I can tell, Elizabeth,
Speaker 3: Brian bow Larson is currently detained as a prisoner in
Speaker 3: Odense Arrest Prison. He had the remainder of his prison
Speaker 3: sentence to do the original seven years, plus there were
Speaker 3: all the new charges from his various times on the
Speaker 3: lamb to consider, like this time with you and the
Speaker 3: Stolen Car. As a final statement on his work, Elizabeth,
Speaker 3: being that he is one of the most prolific escape
Speaker 3: artists of all time, it's important that we contextualize, I think,
Speaker 3: Brian bow Larsen, don't you. Yeah, let's describe his impact
Speaker 3: as influence as a prison escape artist. I mean, yes, sure,
Speaker 3: we could waste our time with statements of the profundity
Speaker 3: of his work, you know, but we could also sit
Speaker 3: here and attempt to justify the significance of what his
Speaker 3: work says. But what also what it urges us with is,
Speaker 3: as you would say, insist siren pop song.
Speaker 2: I say that all the time, right, Yeah, But.
Speaker 3: Also there are his skeptics. What about his skeptics? None
Speaker 3: of this will matter to them. To his fans, this
Speaker 3: all matters. But what about to us, Elizabeth, the professionals
Speaker 3: left to assess it?
Speaker 2: Tow it parse? Yes, impact?
Speaker 3: What criteria do we use to criticize this work? Well,
Speaker 3: to me, Elizabeth, I'll answer that question. A prison escape
Speaker 3: artist is far more valuable to society than say, the
Speaker 3: con artist. Think about it this way, the con artists,
Speaker 3: what do they do? They remind us that nothing is
Speaker 3: as it first appears, that nothing should be believed. This
Speaker 3: is an important lesson to keep up the four of
Speaker 3: your mind. Sure, whatever, But it's also not as important
Speaker 3: as what the prison escape artist teaches us. What do
Speaker 3: they teach us there? In great question, Elizabeth, They teach
Speaker 3: us that, just like the whispers in the wind from
Speaker 3: the legacy of the Right Brothers, you are as free
Speaker 3: as you choose to be, but also you must be
Speaker 3: willing to pay the price for that freedom. Freedom is
Speaker 3: not essentially no, you pay a hefty for the Wright Brothers.
Speaker 3: That meant crashing, possibly dying for him. He means slipping
Speaker 3: off a roof and having his rope a ladder brick. Now,
Speaker 3: nothing can hold you back, is my point. So no
Speaker 3: prison walls formed against you can prosper, Elizabeth, not against
Speaker 3: the full force of the focused human mind and the
Speaker 3: will to overcome adversity. That's what the prison escape artist
Speaker 3: reminds us. They reify our sense of freedom. Now, anyway,
Speaker 3: prison escape artists work. They do work in a medium
Speaker 3: that's not typically celebrated. I understand that they're not typically
Speaker 3: written about it and celebrated, warn't sure whatever, But at
Speaker 3: one time, Elizabeth, the same could be said of street art.
Speaker 3: You know that, before Basquiat and Keith Herring, nobody would say,
Speaker 3: let's take street art seriously, That's all I'm saying. So,
Speaker 3: of course, yes you can't buy a prison escape I
Speaker 3: mean you kind of, he kind of can't. But you
Speaker 3: know what I'm saying, The art market will continue to
Speaker 3: ignore them, to their great loss, which is also what
Speaker 3: makes them so special. They are there for us, the
Speaker 3: people to celebrate, unable to be touched and ruined by
Speaker 3: the market. And it's money, Elizabe, and that's what makes
Speaker 3: them the sort of thing we celebrate here on ridiculous crime.
Speaker 3: So what's a ridiculous takeaway.
Speaker 4: My ridiculous takeaway is that I do not celebrate them
Speaker 4: the way you do because it's so moronic that they
Speaker 4: they want freedom, yes, and they just set themselves up
Speaker 4: to have that freedom taken away because they thought and
Speaker 4: like they put all this energy into it, but it's
Speaker 4: never really thought all the way through. And so you know,
Speaker 4: it's like I'm gonna make this rope ladder, but it's
Speaker 4: really not long enough. I'll just drop and then I'm
Speaker 4: gonna hurt myself and I'm gonna go hide in the
Speaker 4: woods and then they'll find me in two days.
Speaker 2: And what did that hurt?
Speaker 4: You?
Speaker 2: More time? Less freedom? And they just keep racking up
Speaker 2: less freedom.
Speaker 3: So what matters most for freedom?
Speaker 5: Are you saying like it's a Sissyphian? I mean, isn't
Speaker 5: that the ultimate statement on the human condition?
Speaker 3: Thank you, Dave.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 3: I think he's on my sepe.
Speaker 2: I like my escape artists stay and escape. I dont
Speaker 2: know about y'all.
Speaker 3: But then so you're you're looking at more of the
Speaker 3: escape artists in their original natural form.
Speaker 4: The true kings, the true kings who get out and
Speaker 4: stay out.
Speaker 2: That's who I will applaud.
Speaker 3: You have a very high bar to Claire, I do well.
Speaker 3: I just think you know, hey, thanks for asking. Oh well,
Speaker 3: you know I no longer expected listenbit to be quite honest.
Speaker 3: I mean maybe it'd be more likely for producer Dave
Speaker 3: to ask me at this point. Anyway, my whole point
Speaker 3: is I just like him because they have fun. They're
Speaker 3: just like, no, you said, what, don't touch it. I'm
Speaker 3: touching it. That's what I like. Come about it. Anyway,
Speaker 3: that's my ridiculous takeaway. As always, you can find is
Speaker 3: online ridiculous crime, Twitter, Instagram, and always we look forward
Speaker 3: to hearing from you. For instance, we had one of
Speaker 3: our listeners I am Sparkle Loreene on Twitter known as
Speaker 3: road in London. They reached out to us and told
Speaker 3: me personally about the Sri Lankan national handball team. That
Speaker 3: turned into a great episode and I was passed a
Speaker 3: note from the interns that I totally forgot to mention
Speaker 3: that when I did the episode. So thank you. I
Speaker 3: am Sparkle Lorene and to the rest of you listeners,
Speaker 3: please keep them coming and we will give you. I
Speaker 3: won't forget again, all right, Thanks for listening. We'll catch
Speaker 3: you that Crime. Ridiculous Crime is hosted by elizabethdutt AND's
Speaker 3: Aaron Burnett, produced and edited by a resident prison escape collector,
Speaker 3: Dave Kustin. Research is by Marissa bad Bad, Lee, Roy Brown,
Speaker 3: and Andrea Like a Bird on a Wire song Sharpened Hear.
Speaker 3: Our theme song is by Thomas Don't call Me Bruce,
Speaker 3: Lee and Travis Only call me Bruce on Tuesdays. The
Speaker 3: host wardrobe provided by Botany five hundred. Executive producers are
Speaker 3: Ben Mama, I don't want to go Bowling' and No
Speaker 3: my favorite color is green, not brown.
Speaker 2: Cry Say It one More time.
Speaker 6: Crime.
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