Why Not Heinrich? One Man's Immersive Comedy Scandal

hooks and walking on eggshells. We're gonna meet a guy named high and Wreck who would like you to think what he does is funny, but fundamentally doesn't give a funk whether you do or not listen. Where the confessional professional EUGENEUS Robertson, that's me. Here. We are in the tender Loin in San Francisco, walking up to a guy named Heinrich. Now, just those of you who are listening

and not watching this like we are. Heinrich is dressed in full SS officer gear, swastika regalia, the whole bit in the middle of the tender Loin, which is like New York City ninety eight. So this has gotta be gotta be epic and if there's a story there's got to be told. I imagine he might be the one to tell it. Heinrich. First off, I don't have any money to give to your black lives amount of movement Creek. Heinrich came to San Francisco from from where do you hail?

They're originally I'm from Munich, but I was living in ze Berlin for the last ten years or so. Yeah, okay, so it's it's been kind of rough going for you in in San Francisco. I think you said that you went to uh Halloween gathering. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, fair. Uh there's many supporters to the Fourth Strike, and I was very surprised, you know a lot of people. They seemed very happy to have me there. And uh they're the very attractive women there buying me the drinks. I'm

not used to this. It's usually the young Arian boys. But also there's very many people giving me the difficulty. Did I read something online that you had some kind of problem, Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, this is true. Then I was going through the restroom to uh, you know, do the business as the man does. Uh. There was the boy he looked to me like the Arian boys. So this is why it's the most surprising. Owned. He says to me, how dare you do this? How dare

you come here looking like you do? I said, what, looking so perfect and beautiful? He said no, my my cousin's, uncle's, cousins, brothers, friends, grandmother knew. Somebody's asked with an Auschwitz, how dares you come here looking like this? And I said, look, my friend, I don't find any problems. Just let me do my business. But he would not leave me alone. I was at the urinal trying to do my business and he would keep talking to my back. Finally I gave himself owning.

If you keep bothering my way I'm doing my business, I will have to assort you in a very physical vey. He would not stop, so I was forced to do what I had to do. So I threw the eirbow into his chin and then even to sleep like the little girl. Yeah where I'm thinking, what if somebody comes in right now and they sees me? Heinrich is a perfect arian over the body of the of the dead little boy. Yeah, so I grabbed him by the boy.

How old was he? I don't own maybe twenties? Who so I grabbed him by Swans whom I grabbed him unto the stoll. The problem is, even after I closed the door, you could still see his little weak legs. He has a very small quad reception, no have muscles whatsoever on. So at that point I said that I'm going to leave wounds. Let's let's authorities figure outs the rest. Alright, So now now we've gotten in off the street. We're in uh Heinrichs Mountain Redoubt. Let's call it that. Maybe

I want to call it uh cos Heinrich. Thanks, right, House Heinrich. Okay, alright, alright, house House Heinrich. Here we are at House Heinrich. And why don't you you know? All right, Eugene fucking cut this ship, dude, Seriously, I've been doing this, as you're well aware of, for almost twelve years. Now you come up here to my apartment. You want to keep making a joke about this. You

want to interview me a what? Alright? So the line between acting like something and being something, maybe like acting crazy and being crazy starts to get blurry if you do either too long. I guess Damien north Bosh well out. He might have discovered the truth to that. I've I've been doing this. I have the uniforms, I have the scripts. I'm making infomercials. I've lost friends, I've I've alienated acquaintances. Well you, I mean you've been You've gotten into people

have attacked you on the streets. But you, I mean, what what what's the endgame look like? Have you at some point though, what's the payoff for you? Have you been able to pitch this to people or what's uh well, I mean, first off, this hasn't been twelve years, you know, continuous. I am you know, I'm embarrassed to admit that though I had the most sincere ambitions with the Heinrich project

from the beginning. Um, I did abandon it, but you know I did make a very conscious decision to bring it back about a year ago with Trump coming into office and everything else associated with him. But there is no endgame. Is there an endgame to comedy? Is there an endgame to any any you know artistic Uh? Yeah,

when you sell it, well that'd be nice. I was born in nineteen eighty in the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles, which at that time was you know, a more prestigious area of you know, of l A. My father, Um, he's Iranian. He left Iran at the age of sixteen, which was kind of unheard of at that time. That was, you know, pre revolution, that was still during the Shah's time. I've never been though. I'm unfortunately and I'm sorry to

admit this, I'm scared to go. He left at the time that that people just didn't leave, and he did it, as he told me, because he just didn't feel comfortable there. He left before the revolution. He left before the revolution. First he went to England. Uh. Then he went to Italy. He met my mom, who is an American, Um, a

Midwestern American who was on vacation. She's white, she's white. Yeah. Um. They got married and then they they came to the U. S. Which I can assume that was my dad's ultimate goal, which was to come to the US. So did you grow up with extended family from Iran? Uh? Yes and no. Um, you know, my dad in the eighties brought over a lot of his relatives, but we were never that close. Even though they lived in the in l A. M.

We were never that close. Uh. My dad purposely didn't want to teach me farcie just because he wanted me to be the all American you know. My dad had too, uh kind of high end leather retail stores. It was called Leather Conspiracy. One was in the Promenade Mall in Woodland Hills. Uh. The other was in Westwood and uh, the Westwood Store, not the Westrood, not their store, but all the stores around them. There was a rash of burglaries, and my dad said, you know, funk that we're not

gonna let anybody rob the store. So both he and my mom were in the Westwood store while I was in my mom's belly pregnant, to make sure nobody, you know, burglarized the place. And that's where my mom started giving birth in the Westwood store, and my dad held out to the last minute. Are you sure? Are you sure it's coming? Because those motherfucker's they could be anywhere right now. Now.

Damien is not just gallivant about the streets of San Francisco doing this for the amusement of onlookers and friends. He actually has put together several pilots of TV shows, most notably ones of which he pitched to Dave Chappelle. You're about to hear a clip of Damien as Heinrich watching the video of young Arian boys shirtlessly wrestling oil and and the dirt of of his pilot. Enter the fourth right everything menu. Well, hello, boys, who are you

fighting for? Yeah? Grab him? Grab him by them? Yeah yeah, grab his schnitze, y'all, y'all so funny. I love this video. Yeah, anyway, right now we are experiencing uh Nazi recreation, which includes mayor to mayor wrestling, which is my personal favorite. Yeah, yeah, you get all these handsome young Aryan boys are trying to be the best for your Look what a great time this was. Yeah, yeah, I'm going to go to the restroom for little beat y'all got you in his

sac mel Brooks pulled it off. Bob Crane. Hogan's Heroes World War Two is not exactly bereft of comedic potential, but if sig Hiler is your punchline, you might find it a hard road. The whole you have to understand that politically, politically, this has gotta be like probably the most uncomfortable form of comedy ever that you're that's that's the whole point. Tell me, so what what what is

the point? The whole point is that, look, you know, no matter, no matter what the state of affairs is, even if things are as honkey dorry as as they might seem on the surface. And right now, I think the collective opinion is that things are not honkey dorry in this country, in this state, in this on this planet. There's a lot of a lot of issues going on right now. Right everything's cool on the surface. Everything is

not cool on the surface. You know, there's always gonna be issues politically, There's always gonna be issues racially, There's always gonna be issues with religion and gender and and everything else that people constantly you know, taking opinions. You my dad who left Iran in when he was sixteen, you know, way before the revolution, before Omani all those guys, though he never felt comfortable in Iran. Though he never

you know, had this. Though he was never a Muslim, nor was the rest of my family, he still obviously had pride for being Persian. So, you know, fast forward to the late seventies, early eighties, you know, we have the Iranian hostage crisis, etcetera, etcetera. And he told me a story that in the early eighties, one day, um, two white women walk into the store and uh, you know my dad. My dad had lived in Florence before that, and he was by all accounts, a player and he

sucked as many women as he possibly could. Hats off, you know, and he said, even by that time, he's married, he has a young kid, he's still getting a lot of you know, you got a lot of attention at least. So these these two white women walking and they say, oh my god, you have such an exotic look. Where are you from? And he had no issues, even though this is post hostage crisis situation. He's not gonna lie. He said, Well on Persian, he said, oh my god.

And these these women said, my god, that's so interesting because we went to the store right down the street and we thought that those two guys that owned that store were Persian also, but they said their Egyptian. And my dad became so upset because he said, those two fucking assholes there are Ranians also, but now they're afraid of losing business, so conveniently, all of a sudden, there Egyptians.

And you know, even from a young age, I was kind of in a in a weird circumstance where I was white and I was living around whites, but I think I felt this. Everyone didn't see me as being white. Um. And albeit you know, in in the Center Final Valley in the early eighties, you had a lot of Jews, you had a lot of Persians, you had people you know, from all over the place, but the predominant group were Wasps.

And I was half Wasps and I was half something else but close enough that people still recognize me as being white. But I wasn't quite wasn't quite there, Okay, so I was other close enough but not. Um. So, you know, my dad, who was very much turned off by the l A scene, he wanted the exact opposite, and we ended up moving up to Mendicino County, which which was, for all intense of purposes, the exact opposite. And for me that that was culture shocked. Even though

everybody everybody spoke English, it was still culture shocked. Um. But there was still that that weird kind of phenomena going on where people kind of recognize me as being white, but it was still always that question what are you? And if your hair grows out, is it curly or is it straight? Oh it's cruely fucking Persian. Come on, I gotta shave that ship. Every day of my life. And the thing is this, I don't I don't reap

the rewards of being white. And I know this is this is a weird thing to say, and people, oh my god, what does that mean? But think about it. You're white, but you're not white. It's like being it's like being a celebrity but not really being famous, not being rich. Yeah, it's like me exactly. And I guess that's why you and me or friends here you go. Just because it's immersive comedy actually doesn't mean it's funny comedic.

You know, there's a sense listening to Heinrich that you're in on an in joke that you're not quite willing to be in on the whole point of Heinrich, and the whole point of Heinrich twelve years ago, and the whole point of Heinrich right now is to show that the absolute absurdity of taking an extreme stance on things, but also the extreme danger of extremes, the absurdity, and through the absurdity, also the uncomfortable humor. You know, in extremes.

You're you're twelve years in um, we're in the midst of the first Trump administration at the very least, and um, do you feel more or less emboldened to try to continue on which what seems to many to be kind of a exotic thing. I mean, we'll still the underlying question about why you think it's funny and why how you expect this to work? And that's that's the interesting thing that you know, when when I started the Hinwrich project, um, you know, over a decade ago. At that time, that

seemed like the most extreme thing to do. Uh mind you I live in San Francisco. Um. I mean, the whole, the whole genesis of this Hirich character came about in in the mid two thousand's or early two thousands. I'm sorry, when when I was living in Japantown, San Francisco, which at that time and still is, for all intensive purposes, a very kind of residential quiet, you know, peaceful neighborhood of San Francisco. You have a lot of tourists, you

have you know, a family, senior citizens. Um. One day, it was like the middle of a week, middle of the day, maybe one in the afternoon, I'm walking up Post Street and I see, uh to two middle aged white guys walking down the street wearing nothing but cock rings and uh boots and that's it. And uh, nobody gave them a second look. There was there was kids, there was families, there were senior citizens. Nobody gave these guys walking around naked in the middle of the day

a second look. And mind you, it wasn't you know, Fulsome Street Week. It wasn't Pride Week. You know, when you have Fulsome and gave Pride Week, you get stragglers that will wander off to other neighborhoods and whatnot. Um, this was none of that. It was just two guys that were walking around naked in the middle of the japan town of all places. And that was kind of the impetus this to this whole thing where I thought, is there anything that can really shock anybody in San Francisco?

And I really put a lot of fun into this. Is there anything, I mean, aside from the obvious and an act of violence or a car wreck or something like that, is there anything that that can shock somebody in San Francisco? And I kind of joking, I said to myself, well, maybe with the exception of a guy dressed in full Nazi uniform walking down the street, and that's that's kind of how the whole thing started out.

So at that time, dressing up like an s S officer, you know, from the forties, walking on the street, that was the most absurd, ludicrous, taboo and extreme thing I can think of. Now now we're in the era of you know, Steve Bannon, Richard Spencer, the right Milo, all these other guys dressing up like a like a Nazi in San Francisco, it doesn't really have the same I have to magic that that it did ten years ago.

I have to say, we we walked to get here, and I expected that there would be a greater amount of notice uh uh that you were dressed like an

SS officer. Um, but there was very little until we passed those German guys and you know, and that's that's unfortunately, that's that's a bad sign of times where what has for the past fifty sixty years at least been known as the most extreme thing you can do, which even ten years ago was the most extreme thing I could do, that no longer has the same It doesn't resonate the same way. UM. So you know, to answer your your

overall question, I don't know, I really don't know. I don't know what the endgame to the Heinrich project is. You know, I don't I don't know how much more absurd you know, comedy can become to to to overlap that of what how absurd reality has become. So there we go Henrich Uh. Coming up next on Ozzy Confidential, Karen Barnes and herson Dylan. They had a secret. They had a secret about Dylan's life as a woman. Tune

in next time for Ozzy Confidential. We go deep, deep, deep into the heart of the trans experience in America. Ozzy Confidential is produced by who Else Nay Eugene S. Robinson, an executive produced by Robert Coolos and this episode was sound designed, edited and mixed by Jamie con and Nick Johnson. For more Ozzy Confidential, check us out on Ozzy dot com. That's o z y dot com slash Confidential. We published editorial companion articles on Ozzi and photos videos for every

single score, so check them out. Go to Ozzy dot com slash Confidential, That's o z Y dot com slash Confidential. The Mass