Heavyweight - Why Is Mason Reese Crying?

Episode Date: October 8, 2020

Mason Reese was the biggest child star of the early 1970's. Recently, he posted a YouTube video of himself crying. Jonathan sets out to discover why. This is a story Jonathan made for Reply All in 2015. The new season of Heavyweight starts next week. Credits This episode was produced by Jonathan Goldstein, along with Chris Neary, Tim Howard, Sruthi Pinnamaneni, PJ Vogt, and Alex Goldman. Editing by Alex Blumberg. The show was mixed by John DeLore and Bobby Lord. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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 2015 for a then little-known podcast called 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 Rees Crying? Right after this very important message from our sponsor. FanDuel Casino's exclusive live dealer studio has your chance at the number one feeling, winning. Which beats even the 27th best feeling, saying I do. Who wants this last parachute?

I do. Enjoy the number one feeling, winning in an exciting live dealer studio exclusively on FanDuel Casino, where winning is undefeated. 19 plus and physically located in Ontario. Gambling problem? Call 1-866-531-2600 or visit connectsontario.ca. Please play responsibly. and see what crypto can be. Not investment advice. Crypto trading involves risk of loss. See kraken.com slash legal slash ca dash pru dash disclaimer for info on Kraken's undertaking to register in Canada. 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 pried from my hands, I'd say, you must be describing utopia. And this is where I find myself. Wednesday night, 2.30 a.m., utopia. Now this all-time heavyweight championship fight ready to go. There's the bell and here's Guy LaBeouf. There are things from my childhood that I've seen on YouTube that I thought I'd go to my deathbed

without ever getting to revisit. The two only undefeated heavyweight champions of the world. Like the fake boxing match between Muhammad Ali and Rocky Marciano that special effects wizards put together in 1970 to determine who was the greatest fighter of all time. Off the ropes again. A good body rally by Marciano. I often turn to it long after I should be in bed.

Muhammad Ali seemed to draw gasps of breath as he moved back to the center of the room. There's the bell ending 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, culled from late hours punching away at whiskey-soaked keyboards, are what we really are,

the self that is led by desire rather than decorum. Clay will sow a knockdown and Marciano down for a breakout. He appears all right. He will take the mandatory eight count. It looked like a right to the jaw. After watching Ali and Marciano for a couple rounds, I think, wasn't there a song about Muhammad Ali I'd once heard? Muhammad, the black superman. rounds, I think, wasn't there a song about Muhammad Ali I'd once heard? 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 acapella spiritual intended to rouse the faithful to action. I might as well jump, jump! Might as well jump! 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 a mustachioed, leather-vested janitor named Schneider

allowed himself into her family's apartment whenever he pleased. Hey, sex symbol, how you doing with the quarterback? I hope you're not letting him score any touchdowns. You know! Schneider, 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 70s,

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 I looked like a munchkin. Well, I look like a munchkin. Well, this is what a munchkin looks like. In the 70s, Mason Reese was an advertising phenomenon

who appeared in dozens of commercials for everything from Dunkin' Donuts Do I look like a munchkin? to Raisin Bran. This seal's got a lot, a lot of delicious raisins. And the Underwood Chicken Spread ad. Let us on chicken spread. With this adorable spoonerism that became a 1970s catchphrase.

Like I told her, Mom, you plus Underwood is like having a boogish board. Lately I've been trying to explain Mason Reese, 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 lady doesn't use ivory stone? There was something uncanny about Mason Rees. 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 sad-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 70s. 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 blare American Pie.

His face is the smell of my grandmother's kitchen, of crayons, comic books. Except in the past year, new Masonry's 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 rocking one of my favorites, Leonard Nimoy. And then there's this. It's just not right, a man that old and an eight-year-old boy. An ABC sitcom pilot simply called Mason, where he plays a friendless child genius who brings home a 35-year-old man in safari shorts he met while wandering the streets of New York. Well, for all we know, he's a pervert. Oh, I don't think Mason leans that way.

Well, you wouldn't even let him sleep over. But amidst this trove of new material, I found something else. And he's doing something, I understand, 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. Do you want to tell us what the song is, or do you know?

I don't, I mean, is it that song? You know what it is. No, I don't want that song. Why, Mason? You're not putting it on that song. Why? Because you're just not. Oh, he's very touched by that song.

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. I know what song it is. Oh, you know what song it is? Well, maybe we ought to bring the guy with the worms back. Come on, pal. Oh, come on over here. Come on over here and sit with Uncle Mike while this is...

You 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 Cats in the Cradle. Harry Chaffetz. Harry Chaffetz. This is for my kids and for Mason. Thank you. .

. And as Harry Chapin sings the quintessential song of complicated father-son love, Mason cries inconsolably. And he was talking for I knew it And as he grew, he'd say I'm gonna be like you, Dad You know I'm gonna be like you

And the cat's in the cradle and the silver spoon. Little boy blue and the man in the moon. When you're coming home, daddy don't know when, but we'll get together then, son. 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, offstage 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 twerp 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 Rees. I now had many questions. Why would Mason Rees 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, 40 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 seven now, I've been acting three years. That would mean you started when you were about four.

And I'm home. three years. That would mean you started when you were about four. And a half. What we were hoping to do was to actually look at some of the clips with you. Yeah, I don't mind doing it. That's very interesting. Fanduel Casino's exclusive live dealer studio has your chance at the number one feeling winning which beats even the 27th best feeling

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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 going to let that go. Why are you barking? The haircut's almost the same. I don't know who that could be calling.

The red hair, the eyes, the expressions. It's all there. Looking at him is intense, like seeing an old friend. Every now and then, by the way, you might hear a fire engine or something go by. That's New York, baby. That's exactly right. He's living in Manhattan. 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 1973 Clio 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...

Bob, I want to interrupt you quickly. All of these pictures that you see of me with the Batmobile and Peter Lupus from Mission Impossible and Leonard Nimoy and William Shatner and all these, you know... Cover of TV Guide. Cover of TV Guide and the book I published when I was seven. That's what I have in my living room. Yeah.

In my bedroom, there's not one picture. Uh-huh. 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 50 year old man that's my private area this is my public area

and in private, this is not who I am but is this here for like for us? or is this here for you? both, both because it's a great reminder to me of what I've accomplished in my life. Mason Rees is 50, 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 Rees is

Mason Rees. And the world seizes 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 meat spread. 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 Mord Productions. And why did he post the videos now, 40 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 was to actually look at some of the clips with you.

Oh, yeah, I don't mind doing it. Yeah, that's very interesting. We start off with perhaps the greatest hit of them all, the Underwood Deviled Ham commercial. Cranberry sauce and lettuce on chicken spread. Chuckie peanut butter and apple sauce on this one. Ethan made a nifty stuffed tomato salad, like I told her. Mom, you plus Underwood is like having a Borgishmord.

So the whole Borgishmord thing at the end, I mean, that ended up being the money shot, as they call it. You know, that was it. That was the big one. It wasn't a mistake. It was planned, but it... It was? Yeah, and I'll tell you how. So Andy Doyle, who was the ad exec for the company,

came up to me and he said, Mason, we would like you to mispronounce the word smorgasbord. That's interesting. And I said, well, but Andy, I know what the real word is, and I don't want an American 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 pad of paper, and he wrote down all these words that sounded like smorgasbord. And I picked out borgasmord. like smorgasbord and i picked out borgasmort so andy looks at me goes mason you are really incredible you're not going to believe this borgasmort is smorgasbord in swedish

but it's not right smorgasbord is swedish yeah so he lied to me so the bottom line is the ad exec lied to a six and a half year old kid. And that commercial literally launched my career. That's what made people like Dick Cavett and Mike Douglas and all the others call me on the phone and say hey, this kid is something

a little different. And we want a piece of him. Let's take a look at another ad. Dunkin' Donuts. Yes. People kept telling my mother I looked like a munchkin. Yeah, that was one commercial that I actually kind of regret doing.

Why? Well, let's watch it. Yeah. And at the tagline, I'll tell you why. The big munch basket or the great big super munch basket. Tell me, do I look like a munchkin? The only reason why I'm not particularly fond of that commercial was the fact that the tagline was,

don't tell me I look like a munchkin. Well, what do you think happened? Every fucking place I went, you know, oh, that's the munchkin. what do you think happened every fucking place i went yeah you know oh that's the munchkin yeah for a year that was just abuse after abuse after abuse um do you want to just take a look at the um the harry chapin no i'm not oh really yeah yeah i mean it was i'll tell the story behind it. Okay. You know, for some reason, and to this day, I don't know what the reason is, because my father and I were very close.

That song, Cats in the Cradle, has a really hard effect on me. So people always say to me, oh, did you have a strained relationship with 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 going to be singing 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 figure out, well, did he lie to me? And that's what I must have been thinking as a young kid. And I literally just broke down and fell apart. Because you had been lied to or because that song was going to be played? Yes, because the song was going to be played. But I'm sure part of my mind was, well,

why would Harry say no? I literally just broke down into hysterics. And nobody understood why, except me, my parents, and probably Harry. You know, it was a 90-minute show back then. And there was probably a good 30 minutes left of 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 stories involve his 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.

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? This is not rocket science. You're both a child and an adult. Well, I didn't have a childhood. All of the 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 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 & 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 have very unique circumstances. My mother and father, every day of my life, said I love you to me. And every day of my life would give me a kiss and a hug and just tell me that they love me. And like my mom called me this morning and she wanted me to,

I was with her yesterday for three hours, literally like vacuuming the floor and cutting her toenails. Oy, you know, that's not what a son 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 could just watch the one with your, where your mother comes on the show. Sure, yeah, I could watch that. Yeah. Here you go. When did you first discover, Mrs. Reese, that this young man was a bit precocious? My mom was a good-looking broad. She's a beautiful woman.

Let's see. He was born April 11th. I'd say April 12th. He is, to say the least, an unusual child. How do you and he get along? Fabulously. We yell, we fight, but we love each other a lot. I want to bring his father out.

Okay, Mason? You want to bring your dad out? Believe me. Will the real Bill Reese please stand up? You're welcome, Bill Reese. Will you sit here, please? Take the hot seat. Tell me about his reading habits. He reads at what level?

Between 10th and 11th grade. Oh, 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 pace. Well, again, you know, I mean, to some extent. I mean, I think he's a good reader.

I think he's a good reader. I think he's a good reader. I think he's a good reader. I think he's a good reader. I think he's a good reader. I think he's a good reader. I think he's a good reader. I think he's a good reader. I think he's a good reader. I think he's a good reader. I think he's a good reader. I think he's a good reader. Why do you think you're welling up? 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. 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 harkens back to a

simpler time. More carefree, perhaps. Even though I had a job to do, it was still more carefree, because I was a kid, and a lot of responsibilities had 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. 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 1977, 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 8.30 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. 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 70s without you. This episode was produced for Reply All by me, Jonathan Goldstein, along with Chris Neary, Tim Howard, Sruthi Penamaneni, PJ Vogt and Alex Goldman

It was edited by Alex Bloomberg John Delore and Bobby Lord mixed the episode We'll be back next week with a brand new episode of Heavyweight