Pushkin. Hey everybody, it's been a few months since our last check In episode, and since then we've been hard at work on a new season of Heavyweight. There will be four new episodes coming out, some funny, some sad, plus some bonus content like the check ins, which we think you'll really enjoy. The first new episode launches next week. But today I thought i'd share a story I made way back in twenty fifteen for a then little known
podcast called a Reply All. These were the early days of Gimlet, and I was in the middle of developing what would eventually become Heavyweight, and in a lot of ways, the story that I'm about to play for you would form a kind of blueprint for Heavyweight. And like many Heavyweight stories, it began with a personal obsession, a hunger for answers, and a need to insinuate myself into the
personal lives of strangers, one stranger in particular. Without further ado from the Gimlet media vaults, here is why is Mason Reyes crying right after this very important message from our sponsor. If as a child, I'd been told of a future world where there dwelled a magical TV that could play anything I wanted an infinite television jukebox that I could watch all night without ever having the remote pride from my hands. I'd say, you must be describing utopia,
and this is where I find myself. Wednesday night, two thirty am Utopia.
Now this all time heavyweight Champnea fight.
Letty to go.
There's the bell and here's guile Abel.
There are things for my childhood that I've seen on YouTube that I thought I'd go to my deathbed without ever getting to revisit. Or two only undefeated everyweight champions of the world, like the fake boxing match between Muhammad Ali and Rocky Marciano that Special Effects Wizards put together in nineteen seventy to determine who was the greatest fighter of all time.
Off the Ropes again, Good Body Rally by marciall.
I often turned to it long after I should be in bed.
Alisi the draw gasps of breath as he moved back to the center of the ways.
There's the bell, Andy round one.
Our bookshelves are where we project our tastes, where we announce to our dinner guests that, of course we enjoy Faulkner, the Golden Age of comics and the essays of Montaigne. But if our bookshelves are where we telegraph a version of who we want to be, then our YouTube search histories called from late hours, punching away at whiskey soaked keyboards are what we really are, the self that is led by desire rather than decorum.
Play will so Love God, Am Marcil, break, will break the armory Jump.
After watching Ali and Marciano for a couple of rounds, I think, wasn't there a song about Muhammad Ali? I'd once heard the.
Black Superman?
And then Superman makes me think, of course, of David Lee Roth heroically bounding around in leather spats and fishnet bikini underwear, and so I seek out his haunting, isolated vocal tracks that make Jump sound like an a cappella spiritual intended to rouse the faithful to action.
Ah, might as well jump, job, might as well Job.
The clip recalls a time when Eddie Van Halen and Valerie Bertinelli reigned as the Kim and Kanye of their day. Eddie played guitar and Valerie starred in One Day at a Time, a sitcom in which mustachioed, leather vested janitor named Schneider allowed himself into her family's apartment whenever he pleased.
Very sex symbol. How you doing with the quarterback?
I hope you're not letting him score any touchdowns? You know? I know?
Will you keep your nose out of this?
This is Julie's problem.
Even though we can see almost anything we want on YouTube, there's something about the endless possibility that can cause anxiety, and so we just circle back to the clips that deliver the dopamine of childhood nostalgia. We all have that sweet spot, and for me, it's the early seventies when my first memories of being alive were beginning to form.
And the figure who most perfectly evokes this time the ten letter late night search term I inevitably keep coming back to more than any other, is Mason Reese.
People kept telling my mother, all, I look like a munchkin. Well, this is what a munchkin looks like.
In the seventies, Mason Reese was an advert tizing phenomenon who appeared in dozens of commercials for everything from.
Duncan Donuts, Do I Look like a Mudskin?
To Raisin Brant and the Underwood chicken spread as on chicken spread with this adorable spoonerism that became a nineteen seventies catchphrase, like I.
Told her mom, you posada words like having a burgish board.
Lately, I've been trying to explain masonries and I keep coming up short on analogies. He was like the Wendy's Where's the Beef Lady, I say, or Mikey from Life Cereal, But it isn't quite true. While they were limited to one product and one memorable slogan, Mason advertised everything, and he went from being a TV commercial star to being a star star. When he walked down the street, people asked for locks of his signature red hair and blessings
for their babies. One mother even named her twins after him, calling one Mason and the other Reese. When I bring him up to my mother to see if she remembers, she says, wasn't he the little boy who was so homely? He was cute?
How come every writing come with you?
I wish though there was something uncanny about Masonriese because of his precocity. He didn't quite track as a child, and some people even thought he was a little person dressed in children's clothing who after a day's shoot, sparked up a stogie and poured himself a bourbon. The little old man's sat eyed face, the prince valiant haircut, the scrunchy voice that sounds as though spoken underwater in a tub of buttermilk. The hair that only seemed to grow
so bright red in the seventies. Mason Reese is as synonymous with childhood as the memory of sitting in a wet bathing suit on the hot vinyl backseat of my father's Pontiac while listening to an AM radio Blair American Pie. His face is the smell of my grandmother's kitchen of crayons comic books. Except in the past year, new Mason rees videos began to appear things from TV I don't
recall ever having seen. It was as though my very desire was somehow having an incantatory effect, summoning deeper cuts from the past. Mason on afternoon talk show The Mike Douglas Show, tap dancing to singing in the rain, introducing Leonard Nimoy and hamming it up like an old pro.
Please join me in rocketing one of my favorites, Leonard Neimoy.
And then there's this it's just not right.
A man that old and an eight year old boy.
An ABC sitcom pilot's simply called Mason, where he plays a friendless child genius who brings home a thirty five year old man in safari shorts he met while wandering the streets of New York.
For all we know he's a pervert. Oh, I don't think Mason leans that way.
Well, you aren't even let sleep over.
What kind of a companion.
But amidst this trove of new material, I found something else.
And he's doing something I understand. It's that you especially like a song that you especially are fond of.
Yes.
In this clip, Mason is co hosting The Mike Douglas Show and Harry Chapin is being introduced.
You want to tell us who what what the song is?
Or do you know? I don't? I mean, you know what it is?
No, I don't want that song.
Why Mason, you're not putting on that song?
Now he gets he's very touched by that song.
But maybe Mason, seated on his mini director's chair, just can't take it and drops the facade of the precocious TV broadcaster and collapses his face into his hands and weeps.
Oh you know what song it is? Well, maybe we ought to bring you the guy with the worms back. Come on Pale, Oh, come on over here, Come on over here with uncle Mike. What I said, You're gonna be all right. This song is very touching and as you can see, and Mason's very touched by it. Is it okay? It's called Cat's in the Cradle Harry Chapin, This is for my kids and for Mason. Thank you.
My child arrived just the other day, came.
And as Harry Chapin sings the quintessential song of complicated father son loves Mason cries in console and he was.
Talking for I knew it.
And as he grew, he'd say, I'm gonna be like you.
You know, I'm gonna be like you.
And the Cats in the Cradle and.
A little boy blue of the Man of the Moon when you're coming home that I don't know. When we get together, then this time, you know we'll have a good time.
Then YouTube is a cultural repository, but it's full of fragments, broken and left over, like Roman ruins. Was there something that took place before the Harry Chapin introduction, something that was happening just outside the frame, off stage and unseen. There wasn't much context to be gotten from YouTube commenters either, most of whom were just mean, saying things like what the hell is that red haired thing?
Wow?
He was more horrifying than I even remember. I hated this ugly tour when I was a kid, But there was this one thing, and when I first discovered it, I couldn't believe it was true. Looking more closely at the user account the person uploading these new videos, I noticed the name was Mason Reese. I now had many questions. Why would Mason Reese upload a video of himself crying? Myself crying as a child, should such footage exist? Would be the kind of thing I'd probably never even show
my closest friends, let alone the whole world. Why was Mason doing just that? And why did he post the videos now? Forty years later? These were questions I couldn't answer by just tweaking my search terms by adding more tabs to the browser window. What I wanted most wasn't to expand the frame, but to pass right through it entirely. In short, I wanted the real world.
How long have you been.
Acting in commercials?
Well, since i'm so now I have been acting three years.
That would mean you started when you were about four.
What we were hoping to do is to actually look at some of the clips with you.
Yeah. I don't mind doing it. Yeah, that's very interesting.
Yeah, so I've started rolling you do.
Hello.
Hello.
Mason lives in a modest, two room apartment on New York's Upper West Side. When he greets me and my producer Chris at the door, I'm surprised by how little he is.
We're gonna let that go.
What are you about.
The haircut's almost the same. I don't know, the red hair, the eyes, the expressions, it's all there. Looking at him is intense, like seeing an old friend.
Hebe now and then by the way, you might hear a fire Injine or something go by. Because New York. That's New York, baby, that's exactly right, living Manhattan.
Yeah, Mason seats us in his living room, which is a shrine to his child star. There's a photo of him co hosting a telethon with Henry Winkler, a nineteen seventy three Cleo Award for Best Actor in a Commercial, and a photograph of himself jogging in Central Park with Andy Warhol and Grace Jones and looking around like you've got all of this, You've got all these photos of
yourself as a kid and a lot of memorabilia. In some ways, do you feel this responsibility to that kid in a way or like, do you feel like.
You're all of these pictures that you can see of me with the Batmo Bill and Peter Lupis from Mission Impossible and Leonard Nimoy and William Shatton and all this, you know, cover of TV Guys, cover of TV Guy in the book I published an I A seven. That's that's That's what I have in my living room. Yeah, in my bedroom there's not one picture. Why is that Because that's where I'm an adult. That's you know what I'm saying, And to me, that's very important. I'm a
fifty year old man. That's my private area. It's just my public area. Yeah, and in private, this is not who I am.
But is this is this here for like for us? Or is this here for you both?
Both? Because it's a it's a great reminder to me of what I've accomplished in my life.
Mason Reese is fifty, but he doesn't look it. He doesn't look it in the way his Pomeranian doesn't look his age or any age, because a Pomeranian is what it is, and Mason Reese is Mason Reese. And the world seeses on all those who are singular, unique, those who are what they are, and the world celebrates them the best it knows how, by nailing them to a crucifix, by sticking them in front of a camera, to hawk fried dough and canned meatspread. Mason hasn't made a commercial
since his teens, but his life seems pretty okay. In the intervening years. He's opened a few bars and even runs his own entertainment company, borges Moord Productions. And why did he post the videos now forty years later? Mainly, he explains to me because a friend of his put together a DVD of Mason Reese's greatest hits and he thought he might as well share it with people who might be interested. Chris sets up a laptop on the
coffee table. What we were hoping to do is to actually look at some of the clips with you.
Yeah, I don't mind doing it. Yeah, that's very interesting. Yeah.
We start off with perhaps the greatest hit of them all the Underwood doubled hand, I'm commercial.
Granburry sauce and red is on chicken spread, Shorty Peter burn apple sauce on this one even made a nifty suest tomato salad. Like I told her mom, you post other words like having a burgish word.
So the whole borgoschword thing at the end, uh, I mean that ended up being the money shot, as they call it. You know, that was it? That was that was the big one. It wasn't a mistake, it was planned, but it was. Yeah, And I'll tell you how. So Andy Doyle, who was the ad exac for the company, came up to me and he said, Mason, we would like you to mispronounce the word schmorgasport.
That's that's interesting.
And I said, well, but Andy, you know, I know what the real word is, and I don't want America to think that I'm not smart enough to know the real word. So what he did was he went and he got a yellow pan of paper and he wrote down all these words that sounded like schmart sport and I picked out borgosmort. So Andy looks at me, goes, Mason, you are really incredible. You're not gonna believe this. Borgus schmort is morgasbord in Swedish, but it's not right. Schmorgasbord
is sweeh. So he lied to me. So the bottom line is the ad exact lied to a six and a half year old kid, and that commercial literally launched my career. That's what made people like Dick Havin and Mike Douglas and all the others, uh, you know, call me on the phone and say, hey, this kid is something a little different, you know, and we want to we want a piece of him.
So, yeah, let's take a look at another ad.
Duncan Dunas.
Yes, people kept telling my mother I looked like a munchkin.
Well, yeah, that was more commercial than I actually kind of regret doing. Why Well let's watch it, yeah, and you'll no at the tagline, I'll tell.
You why a big bunch basket or a great big super munch basket. Tell me do I look like a munchkin?
Oh? The only reason why I'm not particularly fond of that commercial was the fact that the tagline was don't tell me I looked like a munchkin? Well, what do you think happened? Every fucking place I went, you know, oh, that's the Munchkin For a year. That was just abuse after abuse after abuse.
Do you want to just take a look at the Harry chapin no.
Dot or not? Oh?
Really?
Yeah? Yeah, I mean it was I'll tell the story behind it, you know. For some reason, and I to this day, I don't know what the reason is. Because my father and I were very close, that song Cat's in the Cradle has a really hard effect on me. So people always say to me, oh, did you have a strained relationship your father? Was he always away? And the answer was no, My dad was always around. So I never really understood why I identified with the song other than the fact that I was a sensitive kid
and Harry was on the Mike Douglas Show. I was the co host, and I asked him, are you gonna be seting cats in the Cradle and he said no. They asked me to do another one of my newer songs. Oh okay. So I was not prepared for him to do that, and at the age of seven, I wasn't able to, you know, figure out what did he lie to me? And that's what I must have been thinking, you know, as a young kid, and I literally just broke down and.
Fell apart because you had been lied to, or because because I wasn't gonna.
Be yes because the song couldn't be played. But I'm sure part of my mind was, well, why would Harry say no? I literally just broke down into a step and nobody understood why except me, my parents, and probably Harry. You know, it's a ninety minute show back then, and there was probably a good thirty minutes left in the show. And I refused to come back. And I just went down into the commissary, which was in the basement of the building, and I sat there and I had a soda or something.
And.
You know, I just refused. I didn't want to go back anymore.
A lot of Mason's stories involved as being lied to by adults, which is sad. But what was it about Cats in the Cradle, in particular, a song to make cry if anyone neglectful dads not little boys? Is it possible? In a way, it was as though like it was sort of like you singing the song to yourself. You're both you're both a child and I don't have a childhood.
All of these stereotypical things that kids do and did I didn't do. I mean I never went to a prom, I never played sports, I never took extracurricular after school activities. Did I sacrifice anything? I know you didn't ask that, but that's a log But that's a logical question. Well, I don't know, did I I don't think so. I often tell people that when you've written an elephant in the Barnum and Bailey circus, been an NBC correspondent for the News, piloted the Goodyear Blimp. I wasn't in the
Goodyear blimp. I flew the Goodyear blimp. When you've gotten to do all the things that I did, algebra is pretty fucking boring. I'm a very unique circumstances. My mother and father every day of my life life said I love you to me, and every day of my life would give me a kiss and a hug, and this coming that they loved me. And like, my mom called me this morning and she wanted me to I was wondering yesterday for three hours, literally like vacuuming the floor
and cutting her toenails. You know, that's not what some wants to do to a nine year old mother, but I was doing it because I'm a nice boy.
I just thought, just in light of what you were saying, if we just watched the one with your where your mother?
Sure I could watch them.
Yeah, there you go. When when did you first discover missus? Reeve said, this young man was a bit precocious.
My mom was a good looking, broad beautiful. He was born April eleventh, I'd say April twelveth.
He is, to say, the least, an unusual child.
How do you and he can on fabulously? Yeah?
We yell, we fight, but we love each other a lot.
I want to bring his father out. Okay, Mason, do you want to bring your dad? Huh?
Believe?
Will Bill Reese please them?
Yeah? Tell me about his reading?
He reads it?
What level between tenth and eleventh grade?
That's incredible.
Does he attend a public school?
He attends a Montessori Method school. Why do you think you're welling up?
Allows him to progress pretty much at his own case?
Well again, you know, I mean to some extent because my mom and dad probably still loved each other at this point in our lives. You know, things were a lot simpler maybe for me. My parents had not divorced yet. My two brothers and my sister and I were all very close. We still all kind of lived together for
the most part. So yeah, I think that a lot of it is uh, hearkens back to a simpler time, more care free perhaps though even though I had a job to do, it was still more care free because I was a kid and a lot of responsibilities have not been put on my head yet. You know, it's funny my mom doesn't understand YouTube, you know. I mean, she kind of gets it, but doesn't really fully understand it. I showed her this clip and I jokingly said to her, but maybe it was true. I said, that's probably the
last time you ever kissed dad. Well, and I do love my dad.
No, God, when you're a kid, you cry because you feel lied to, because life is unfair and you don't understand anything. And then as an adult, you cry because life still isn't fair, but you do understand it. You cry because you do understand it. By nineteen seventy seven, Mason's dad would begin spending more and more time at the company he started, and eventually he'd convert part of his office into a living space where he could spend nights.
In his early teens, around the time the commercial offers started to dry up, Mason's parents would divorce, and Mason would move into the office with his dad At eight thirty in the morning. When employees began to show up, Mason would sometimes still be lounging around in his T shirt and underwear.
We're going to visit more with the Reese's following this, We'll be right back.
At one point, while watching the videos, Mason tells me that he realizes the commenters can be mean. Oh my god, what a freak. He was so ugly. What kind of talent did this kid have? He says, quoting them, I'd be a liar if I said it didn't affect me. When I ask him why he hasn't disabled the comments for his videos, he seems genuinely surprised that you could do such a thing. He pauses to consider it, but as of today he still hasn't done it, and I don't think he ever will. It would mean not being
able to receive any of the nice comments like this one. Hey, Mason, thank you for these. They would not have been the seventies without you. This episode was produced for Reply All by me Jonathan Goldstein Will, along with Chris Neary, Tim Howard Struthie Pennaminini, PJ Vote, and Alex Goldman. It was edited by Alex Bloomberg, John Dolore and Bobby Lord mix the episode. We'll be back next week with a brand new episode of Heavyweight