Speaker 1: I am all in again.
Speaker 2: Oh that's just you.
Speaker 1: I Smell pop Culture with Eastern Allen and I Heart
Speaker 1: Radio Podcast. Hey everybody, Easton Allen, I am all in Podcast,
Speaker 1: one of the productions I Heart Radio, I Heart Media,
Speaker 1: I heart podcasts. Hey listen, I got it. I got
Speaker 1: a hot tip for you. I got it.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: They told me not to say this. They told me
Speaker 1: not to say anything, but I gotta tell you. Get
Speaker 1: really close to this is a secret. Okay. I smell
Speaker 1: pop culture. Isn't that crazy. That's some hot gossip, baby,
Speaker 1: I smell pop culture. That's what we do on this show.
Speaker 1: Gilmore Girls. We love it. We love the Gilmore Girls.
Speaker 1: And they talk. They reference pop culture every single episode
Speaker 1: so many times. And we're going peace by piece. We
Speaker 1: are scrolling through. We are digging like a guy in
Speaker 1: a gold mine. We're looking for the gems. We're looking
Speaker 1: for the dirt. We're looking for the pop culture nuggets.
Speaker 1: We are going to explore them. We're gonna see what
Speaker 1: makes them tick and talk to the people behind these
Speaker 1: pop culture moments. Today we are talking to aj Benza.
Speaker 1: If you don't know who aj Benza is, you should.
Speaker 1: He is the king of gossip. He ran a gossip
Speaker 1: column in the New York Daily News, he was on
Speaker 1: the Gossip Show on E and most importantly, he was
Speaker 1: mentioned in Gilmore Girls. That's why we're talking about today,
Speaker 1: Season two, episode two, Hammers and Nails. Okay, so here
Speaker 1: you go, close your eyes. I'm gonna set the scene
Speaker 1: for you. It's right at the beginning of the episode.
Speaker 1: The opening credits end. We're at Chilton. Louise, Paris, and
Speaker 1: Madeline are talking about their academic performance. Madeline says, maybe
Speaker 1: I won't go to college, and Louise says Princess Grace
Speaker 1: didn't go to college, to which Paris adds, thanks for
Speaker 1: the history lesson aj Benza. Aj Benza isn't a typical historian,
Speaker 1: but he fits in right here on our journey through
Speaker 1: pop culture. He as I said before, he ran a
Speaker 1: gossip column in the New York Daily News. He had
Speaker 1: a show on E called Mysteries and Scandals that I
Speaker 1: loved growing up. Might I want to tell you get
Speaker 1: something really quick about my life. I don't know. You
Speaker 1: can skip ahead if you don't care about me, just
Speaker 1: skip ahead. But my dad is a He is a
Speaker 1: bodybuilder and he has a cop He's a very masculine person,
Speaker 1: very tough guy. He's like so tall, this giant man.
Speaker 1: He loved the E Channel. He was like obsessed with it.
Speaker 1: He would watch the E Channel constantly when I was
Speaker 1: growing up. He's loved The Gossip Show in particular. He
Speaker 1: loved the Gossip Show. He would watch it constantly. And
Speaker 1: I tell him about all the stuff I'm doing at
Speaker 1: work and he it kind of doesn't really care. It's neither.
Speaker 1: You're norther there. I told him I was talking to
Speaker 1: aj Benza. He lit up. He was so excited. But
Speaker 1: Aj Benza hosted a show called Mysteries and Scandals that
Speaker 1: I remember really liking when I was a little kid.
Speaker 1: Had this opening of someone making the title card out
Speaker 1: of like a ransom note. They was like, you know,
Speaker 1: take the rubber cement and glue the little cutout letters
Speaker 1: and say Mysteries and Scandals. I just thought that was cool.
Speaker 1: Aj bens has got this cool slick back hair. He's
Speaker 1: walking down a foggy alley. There's seem coming up. He's
Speaker 1: next to an old Cadillac, and he's like, not every
Speaker 1: story on the dark side of Hollywood ends with a
Speaker 1: star in the sky. But this week we're going to
Speaker 1: talk about Jane Mansfield or something like that. So cool,
Speaker 1: and he's still doing it, baby. He has a podcast
Speaker 1: out now called Fame Is a Bitch. That is a
Speaker 1: phrase that he coined. Fame Ain't at a bitch is
Speaker 1: a specific line. But he has a podcast down now.
Speaker 1: We still talks about celebrity gossip. We're going to talk
Speaker 1: to AJ Benza all about this. We're gonna find out
Speaker 1: how to keep a secret, how to find a secret.
Speaker 1: We're going to hear it all. He's coming up right
Speaker 1: after this stay with us. AJ Benza, thank you so
Speaker 1: much for doing this. We're so excited to talk to
Speaker 1: you today.
Speaker 2: Same here.
Speaker 1: I'm I'm a longtime fan. I watched Mysteries and Scandals
Speaker 1: on e I'm a big fan of yours. But I
Speaker 1: want to go back to the beginning. How did you
Speaker 1: get started as like a gossip columnist? How did that?
Speaker 2: Wow? Well? I was I was a sportswriter to begin with,
Speaker 2: and uh out on Long Island and a paper club
Speaker 2: news day, and then I got my first divorce and
Speaker 2: I began to go out at night and see all
Speaker 2: the night life that I wasn't seeing while I was
Speaker 2: married and a woman who was writing a gossip column
Speaker 2: for the New York Daily News. Uh liked my style
Speaker 2: because I was sending her tips here and there from nightclubs,
Speaker 2: and I saw a lot of things that she never
Speaker 2: had in her column. Supermodels making out together, I mean,
Speaker 2: drug sex, I saw everything. So she hired me on
Speaker 2: the spot. I became her partner on the gossip column
Speaker 2: at the Daily News, and then she left the business
Speaker 2: and I got the column, and that was another six
Speaker 2: years of me and my partner, Michael Lewiitis. And then
Speaker 2: came the E Gossip Show, which ran in tandem with
Speaker 2: the with the column, and and then after six or
Speaker 2: seven years, I got well, that wasn't far and I
Speaker 2: kind of I left because I got a TV opportunity
Speaker 2: to do mysteries and scandals at E. And it's funny
Speaker 2: because when I went out there, I still loved to write,
Speaker 2: but I knew so much gossip that I knew everybody
Speaker 2: in town, and they were kind of scared of me
Speaker 2: because I had written things about them in the past
Speaker 2: that maybe they weren't too you know, happy about. But
Speaker 2: power is something in Hollywood that people tend to back
Speaker 2: away from. And I kind of had some at that point.
Speaker 2: So I got through the velvet rope, so to speak,
Speaker 2: and I started getting TV shows. And it's funny because
Speaker 2: the Gilmour Girls and my career in Hollywood kind of
Speaker 2: took off at the same time. I was really busy.
Speaker 2: I knew it was a really tippy top show, and
Speaker 2: every girl I knew was watching it, including my nieces,
Speaker 2: you know, and my sister, and I had chances to
Speaker 2: see it in spots. But then when somebody told me
Speaker 2: I was mentioned on it, it blew me away. I
Speaker 2: had no idea that happened. So that was awesome.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was. I was going to ask how that felt.
Speaker 1: I mean, in The Sopranos, Misters and scandala Is in
Speaker 1: an episode of The Sopranos. I thought that was kind
Speaker 1: of cool.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was around that time. Two thousand. I was
Speaker 2: on SNL for that twentieth anniversary. I was on Family Guy,
Speaker 2: I was on Sopranos. I had a movie coming out.
Speaker 2: I had a book that just came out. It was crazy.
Speaker 2: It was wonderful, but just really hectic. Not to mention.
Speaker 2: Every night was you know, hitting the clubs, hitting the restaurants,
Speaker 2: and just wearing you know, lighting the candle at both
Speaker 2: ends and gasoline in the middle. It was wild.
Speaker 1: So I'm curious, like when you're when you're out there
Speaker 1: on the scene, getting the getting the dirt, you know,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of people that want to share with you,
Speaker 1: but then there's a lot of people that are going
Speaker 1: to be obviously so guarded around you. How do you
Speaker 1: how do you find the stuff that's verifiable? How do
Speaker 1: you like what's your strategy for finding that kind of information?
Speaker 2: Well, you know, I'm a good reporter. I have good intuition,
Speaker 2: and I made a lot of friends. I made it.
Speaker 2: I shook so many hens in New York and then
Speaker 2: la that somebody once told me, when you shake fifty
Speaker 2: hands in one night, you're really meeting five hundred people
Speaker 2: because they know people you can contact. So whatever there
Speaker 2: was a roomor that floated across my phone or my desk,
Speaker 2: I knew who to reach out to and say, Hey,
Speaker 2: you know that guy who works in DC blah blah
Speaker 2: blah or so and so at the hotel, can you
Speaker 2: hook me up with so ow and so? Can Can
Speaker 2: I talk to so and so? And that. I would
Speaker 2: get closer and closer to gossip but there's no question
Speaker 2: that when I was doing my job, I was both
Speaker 2: feared and accepted. But I also had a really good knack,
Speaker 2: especially in New York, to stay out as late as
Speaker 2: later than any other gossip columns tod out. You know,
Speaker 2: back then there were about fifteen gossip columns I think
Speaker 2: in America. I swear there were none in maybe one
Speaker 2: in California, Nikki Fink, who was great, But that said,
Speaker 2: it was New York, and one person in La So
Speaker 2: I just I knew so many people that when I
Speaker 2: got there, I was very different. I wasn't gay, which
Speaker 2: a lot of gossip commns saw. I wasn't some fund
Speaker 2: me from England. I wasn't an older woman like a
Speaker 2: Smith or Cindy Adams. I was a young, dashing, may
Speaker 2: I say, you know, hot, temperate Sicilian kid in the streets,
Speaker 2: dressing like the celebrities dating celebrities. I kind of fit in.
Speaker 2: And then if I stayed out as late as they did,
Speaker 2: which I always did, you know, loose lips sink ships.
Speaker 2: You just somebody told me a long time ago, an
Speaker 2: old journalist told me, listen with your eyes and here
Speaker 2: with you. No, listen with your eyes and see with
Speaker 2: your ears, all right, which is another way of saying,
Speaker 2: be really sneaky about what you hear. Don't let them hear,
Speaker 2: don't let them see you hearing what they say. So
Speaker 2: once I heard some things and saw some things, there
Speaker 2: was no stopping me. I wasn't afraid of anybody getting
Speaker 2: angry me. I must have had maybe three or four
Speaker 2: situations across fifteen years. One time I got punched out
Speaker 2: by Chuck Siedo, the legendary Hell's Angel. Yeah that was
Speaker 2: a bad one, but that was all because I was
Speaker 2: misquoted in New York magazine article. But when it came
Speaker 2: to gossip items, I mean maybe Ben Stiller got pissed
Speaker 2: or Matt Damon one, it's like nothing big. It was
Speaker 2: just like a sorry man, you know, I'm really sorry.
Speaker 2: I know, big deal, and they just walked away. You know.
Speaker 2: In fact, I think it helped me if i'd say,
Speaker 2: I mean, I did study acting, so I don't want
Speaker 2: to make out like I do nothing. But I got
Speaker 2: film work because some directors or producers like my appearances
Speaker 2: on television. They liked my personality. They thought, hey, he
Speaker 2: could play this role. And I began to get some
Speaker 2: film roles like that, which satisfied my acting bug. So
Speaker 2: it was great. I mean, I had a really great time.
Speaker 2: I'm still doing it on my podcast. I'm still doing
Speaker 2: gossip to this day. It's been about thirty five years
Speaker 2: of me, you know, still talking about movie stars and
Speaker 2: models and all sorts of people.
Speaker 1: I love it. The podcast is Fame as a Bitch
Speaker 1: with aj Benza. It's a great show, updating multiple times
Speaker 1: a week. I listened to it on the way to
Speaker 1: work this morning. It's a really fantastic program. You've done
Speaker 1: so many forms of media, I mean, print, radio, television,
Speaker 1: the internet. How is podcasting different for you from all
Speaker 1: those other methods?
Speaker 2: I like a deadline. You know, a lot of a
Speaker 2: lot of years in Hollywood, it's a lot of a
Speaker 2: lot of years are slow. Some months and weeks just
Speaker 2: fly by because you're so busy. Then there's a long
Speaker 2: wait time, and that tends to bore me. When I
Speaker 2: worked for a newspaper, deadline every day at the same time,
Speaker 2: and you have to produce, you know, a thousand words
Speaker 2: of gossip every day, no excuses. That's pressure. The podcast
Speaker 2: is the first thing I've done since since the daily news,
Speaker 2: where I know I've got to show up every day
Speaker 2: at a certain time. My head's got to concoct, not concoct.
Speaker 2: I've got to come up with the gossip I want
Speaker 2: to talk about. But then again, I also want to
Speaker 2: I also weave in my history with those people I'm
Speaker 2: speaking about. If that's the case. Like this morning, I'm going,
Speaker 2: what's tomorrow show going to be? I'm trying to figure
Speaker 2: it out. I'm looking out Justin Bieber's having trouble. Okay,
Speaker 2: that's I can start with that. Oh, Matt Perry had
Speaker 2: twenty seventh injections to a kedemy in the last three days.
Speaker 2: Was like, okay, wow, Tracktenberg died at thirty nine. Oh
Speaker 2: my god. These are all young actors who Wan's in
Speaker 2: trouble too are dead. And then I happen to see
Speaker 2: the movie Lolita, the famous movies from sixty two a
Speaker 2: few nights ago, and the young actress in that was
Speaker 2: seventeen playing a fourteen year old, and later in life
Speaker 2: she said it was the worst thing she ever did.
Speaker 2: She developed a very bad case of bipolarism, and she
Speaker 2: said that that movie destroyed my life. So I said, okay,
Speaker 2: there's my show. Young actresses and actors just having all
Speaker 2: the power. I think this is the greatest life in
Speaker 2: the world, but no one really takes care of them
Speaker 2: and looks over them.
Speaker 1: It's a shame, it really is. What do you think
Speaker 1: about the new generation of celebrity gossip like Crazy Days
Speaker 1: and Nights Domois, these like blind item things. What do
Speaker 1: you think of those sites?
Speaker 2: You know, I read them. I like Crazy Days and Nights.
Speaker 2: Although it's tough to read that site there's so many ads,
Speaker 2: but I do like it. I find myself. I actually
Speaker 2: I was just looking at it bef waiting for you
Speaker 2: to come on, just catching up on stuff. Dumois is
Speaker 2: a different type of guy. I wasn't a Perez Hilton fan.
Speaker 2: He did things very differently. He wasn't a journalist. When
Speaker 2: you come out like I did and study journalism for
Speaker 2: four years in college and you get your you know,
Speaker 2: get a press pass to enter buildings or crime scenes,
Speaker 2: I feel like I'm more equipped to write about this
Speaker 2: stuff than just a kid who sits at a coffee
Speaker 2: shop with the laptop and makes fun of Nicole Ritchie
Speaker 2: and Paris Hilton. So it definitely changed. I think it
Speaker 2: really changed a lot. A when Princess Diana died, and
Speaker 2: then when the Internet hit. When the Internet hit. Now
Speaker 2: we have about probably one point five gossip columnists in America,
Speaker 2: and believe me, most of them don't know anything about
Speaker 2: They're just taking other people's items and putting their opinion
Speaker 2: on them. There's no one they can call and source
Speaker 2: it out. They don't break stories. It's just a very
Speaker 2: different world.
Speaker 1: Now, it really is. Okay, let's say hypothetically, you're someone
Speaker 1: who has information about themselves that they would like to
Speaker 1: keep secret or private.
Speaker 2: Oh, that's happened. I've had to fix stories a lot
Speaker 2: for big shots. Yeah, yeah, I mean I think that's
Speaker 2: where you're asking me, right, if I had information on me?
Speaker 2: Is that right?
Speaker 1: I mean I was gonna ask, like, how do you
Speaker 1: how does one keep a secret about themselves?
Speaker 2: Well, you know, I always there's a famous quote again,
Speaker 2: you know, three can keep a secret if two are dead.
Speaker 2: People people love to talk, you know, people just love
Speaker 2: to be the per You can tell your best friend,
Speaker 2: I gotta tell you something you can't tell anybody, of
Speaker 2: course I would. Ever, within two weeks he's telling somebody,
Speaker 2: he just said, And if he's got a reporter like
Speaker 2: me on his back, he's gonna call it up in
Speaker 2: a day because guess what, he needs a favor from me.
Speaker 2: See what people don't get about gossip. In my day,
Speaker 2: a lot of publicists, they were so significant because they
Speaker 2: represented celebrities and businesses and rocket roll bands. They call
Speaker 2: you because they have another little project at work where
Speaker 2: they represent a shoe store. I need a shoe store
Speaker 2: in your column. You got to say that you know
Speaker 2: so and so is buying a Paramanola bloncs. I'm like, okay, fine,
Speaker 2: but I need a story from you. So you want
Speaker 2: that little shoe store story, give me something big. They
Speaker 2: call me back and I was like a you know,
Speaker 2: kind of a tough guy, and they were like, young girls,
Speaker 2: that's not good enough, goodbye boom. They would pad it.
Speaker 2: Then they go, okay, look please, okay. Naomi Campbell's having
Speaker 2: a big problem. She threw a phone and an assistant
Speaker 2: says it's gonna sue. No one's gonna have to pay
Speaker 2: her fifty thousands. So then I have these stories and
Speaker 2: Naomi Campbell never thinks her publicist did this. So a
Speaker 2: lot of it is quid pro quote. It's not as
Speaker 2: much reporting and digging as you think as much as Hey,
Speaker 2: I gotta tell you something you know and can someone
Speaker 2: back that story? Yeah, I'll call so and so well
Speaker 2: he can back it up, and then you have your item,
Speaker 2: and that Adam could be a big story. I mean, look,
Speaker 2: I always tell people that the Michael Jackson story, the
Speaker 2: whole thing about sexual abuse of the kids. We had
Speaker 2: a story because that old this is how thing's developed.
Speaker 2: An old man who represented the clothing Storre Manhattan, Bernie Bennett.
Speaker 2: He's long since gone. I think I have something you
Speaker 2: might like. Aja, what's that? He goes, how'd you like
Speaker 2: to hear about Michael Jackson taking a little teenage boy
Speaker 2: to Disney World and staying with them in the hotel.
Speaker 2: Are you kid? I said, Bernie, don't say another word.
Speaker 2: Meet me at this place for lunch. We go there.
Speaker 2: He finds out the story because his wife is friends
Speaker 2: with a woman who's friends with the kid's mother. It's
Speaker 2: so convoluted, but it all works out, and this woman
Speaker 2: would tell Bernie's wife stories every night. So we had
Speaker 2: the story. We broke the kid's name, Jordan Chandler. We
Speaker 2: mentioned with hotel, Michael sticks to the kid. The parents
Speaker 2: sleep in a different room, a different wing and suddenly
Speaker 2: the whole story blows up. And you know that comes
Speaker 2: from a little an old publicist who ran, you know,
Speaker 2: a little business on the side, and it becomes the
Speaker 2: biggest story in the world. So the more people you know,
Speaker 2: there's always somebody out that that's got the big story.
Speaker 2: So me, I always would meet as many people as
Speaker 2: I could, get drunk with them, shake hands to them,
Speaker 2: have a flame with them, whatever it took get me
Speaker 2: in there. Like when Ronald Reagan was getting ill, this
Speaker 2: is so bad, I had an opportunity to have an
Speaker 2: affair with his daughter Patty Davis. Wow, and I'm weighing
Speaker 2: the situation should I do it? And my editor Linda
Speaker 2: Stacey said, you have to do it. Dig of the pig.
Speaker 2: We need information on her father. So of course I
Speaker 2: did it. You know, I mean, that wasn't too painful.
Speaker 2: But sometimes you're gonna do things you don't want to do,
Speaker 2: but that one I enjoy doing.
Speaker 1: Now, especially with stories about these big celebrities, you're gonna
Speaker 1: get a lot of negative backlash from fans, from the
Speaker 1: general public. You have to deal with that a lot,
Speaker 1: I'm sure of the years. What keeps you coming back
Speaker 1: to this to this profession that must be so hard
Speaker 1: to deal.
Speaker 2: With the older I'm sixty two now, and I kind
Speaker 2: of feel silly sometimes talking about, you know, Sabrina Carpenter.
Speaker 2: It's just like, what are you doing? Your friends are
Speaker 2: millionaires with big houses and boats, and you're talking about
Speaker 2: Sabrina Carpenter. But I'm just good at it. Look, if
Speaker 2: you can wake up every morning and love to do
Speaker 2: what you do and it can support you and your family,
Speaker 2: there's no shame in that, I mean, and it freezes.
Speaker 2: We have to do a lot of other things on
Speaker 2: the side, like hosting a poker show in Las Vegas,
Speaker 2: writing my third book. You know, if there's a film,
Speaker 2: I can work my podcast in any part. Like I'm
Speaker 2: in Chicago now, I live in La I go to
Speaker 2: Vegas a lot. Just take my laptop, my headset my mic,
Speaker 2: and I'm ready to go. It's just a hard gun.
Speaker 2: So I come back to it because I really enjoy it.
Speaker 2: And even my friends are like, why do you know
Speaker 2: so much about these people? Because I'm just a voracious reader.
Speaker 2: I'm always interested in celebrity, and since I was there,
Speaker 2: I don't consider myself a celebrity, but I was in
Speaker 2: that pack. I ran with them, I did movies with them,
Speaker 2: Mel Gibson, sliced alone, Ron Howard, Julia Roberts. I was
Speaker 2: all around all of them, Bob, I've lived with Robert
Speaker 2: Evans and Beverly Hills for a while. Oh my god,
Speaker 2: So why not just, you know, expound on all those
Speaker 2: stories and legends and lore and the keep the good
Speaker 2: times rolling.
Speaker 1: I love it and the good times? Do you continue
Speaker 1: to roll on? Famous a bitch with aj Benza. You
Speaker 1: can get it anywhere you listen to podcasts. Thank you
Speaker 1: so much for your time today, a J's It's been
Speaker 1: so fun hearing your stories and getting to know you.
Speaker 2: Thank you very much. I talk to you man, have
Speaker 2: a good one. Take care of you too.
Speaker 1: Thank you.
Speaker 2: That game everybody, and don't forget. Follow us on Instagram
Speaker 2: at I Am All In podcast and email us at
Speaker 2: Gilmore at iHeartRadio dot com.