The Daily Beast Podcast - Jerry Stahl Was Mistaken for ‘Kramer’ While at Auschwitz

Episode Date: July 3, 2022

Author Jerry Stahl didn’t know what his experience visiting Auschwitz would be like, but taking selfies with teenage strangers who had mistaken him for actor Michael Richards, who played Cosmo ‘Kramer’ on Seinfeld, was definitely not on the list. On this bonus episode of The New Abnormal, the writer tells Molly Jong-Fast about the trip, and his conflicting thoughts while there, which are also part of his new book “Nein, Nein, Nein: One Man’s Tale of Depression, Psychic Torment and a Bus Tour of the Holocaust.” Plus! The one person Stahl has spent his life trying not to become. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Molly Zhang Fast, no relationship to Kim Jong-un. I'm a left-wing pundant and a writer at the Atlantic Info. And I'm Andy Levy, former Fox News and CNN HLN guy and current cable news conscientious objective. And I'm producer Jesse Cannon, and I'm here to make sure things don't go too far off the rails. We're here to have fun, smart conversations with the wisest and funniest and funniest people in science and media and politics that help make what's happening today clearer. Our world has been turned upside down, and on the new abnormal, we'll talk about the people who got us into this mess and how we'll hopefully get ourselves out of it. Hello, and welcome to another Sunday bonus episode of The New Abnormal, and we thank you so much for being here. Today we have an extra special guest with Jerry Stahl, who's, of course, a screenwriter and a novelist, who you may know from movies like Permanent Midnight, and we're going to talk to him all about his new book, 999, one man's tale of depression, psychic torment, and a bus tour of the Holocaust. But first, let's have some fun.

Are y'all ready to listen to some clips? Yes. You say y'all? He's southern now. Molly has met him. My childhood next door neighbor moved up to New Jersey from Texas, and it really had an effect on me in a young age. Okay.

Let's all. We all are ready. Yes, yes, yes, yes. Okay, so the clip of the week, we started off the week very strong. Representative Mary Miller had a little bit of a weird question. that we're going to listen to. Oh, I remember it well. President Trump, on behalf of all the MAGA patriots in America,

I want to thank you for the historic victory for white life in the Supreme Court yesterday. White life. Well, she's not wrong. I know that white life is the one that we should be horrified by, but I'd like to come back to MAGA Patriots as well. Solid points. You wondered how it could get worse than MAGA. Right.

You know something good is coming after you hear MAGA Patriot. Yeah, it's never, never good. Obviously, she's saying that she meant to say right to life. But the people who cheered when she said white life don't seem to care. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And that I think is a really important detail. Yeah.

You know, if they're clapping, that's, as we say, in the business, a towel. A tell, yes. What I'm really impressed with is that, you know, the only other time we heard from her was like literally her first day in Congress where she got caught praising Hitler. Well, she said you shouldn't praise Hitler, but. Yes, but. There was that one thing. It's easy enough in life to never say you shouldn't do something nice about Hitler, but. Just don't say Hitler.

It's so easy to just not see Hitler as a politician. You don't got to got to hand it to Hitler. No, we don't. Under no circumstances. So the daughter of former Oklahoma governor turned White House press secretary who's now running to build out issues, she has some thoughts about abortion as well, you know, and that's going to be the theme for our first few clips. We will make sure that when a kid is in the womb, they're as safe as they are in a classroom, the workplace, a nursing home. because every stage of life has value.

No one greater than the other. Listen, man, safe as a classroom. So there's 70 lockdown drills later. Yeah, safe as a classroom, a workplace or a nursing home. Because as we know from COVID, the safest place to be is a nursing home. Also, how many kids does she think are in nursing homes? Well, the ones that have COVID,

The problem is when you only care about the life of a blastula or fetus and nothing else, you sound like a fucking hypocrite. Yeah, and an idiot, which is what she sounds like here. Yeah. Problem is they don't care about life in the classroom. No, or the workplace or the nursing home. I really want to know if there was any pushback in the speech room at all on that one, like or if it was just like, nope, nope, no notes.

It's pretty funny, though, that they decided to cook that one up. I have to say she's very likely going to be the governor of the great state of Arkansas, no doubt. And it's funny because I always think about like those Trump kids could have really, and I say this is a beneficiary of nepotism myself. Really the one place that nepotism will still absolutely do it for you is in this Republican Party. Unless you're a Giuliani. Oh, good point. Oh, good point. Big head.

Poor big head. Well, you almost. did it. We should say we tape this on the day after one, Andrew Giuliani, and he goes down to total, just boring as person ever, Lee Selden. Yeah, but I will say Lee Zeldon was at least in Congress. I think you give Rudy Giuliani another year or two, and he can win a Republican. Andrew, oh yeah, Rudy, but in another year or two, he'll be in jail, Rudy. But hopefully, anyway, Andrew seems undoubtedly will eventually win a primary in our blue state so that he can lose a general. If he's smart, he'll move upstate or to Long Island and run for like the house or something like that.

He could probably win there pretty easily. I figured the reason they were in Staten Island the other day is they're coming for Militicus's seat. Oh, that's an easy one. Staten Island also a good call. Yeah. Isn't it Micka Tacos? Yes. Maya tacos.

Here's the one thing. you fact-checking me on the pronunciation of a name is not one of them to take with a lot of weights. I'm assuming the moon is about to crash into the earth at this point. You know, I'm taping this from a foreign country. It's true. You are. Yes, yes, yes, yes. You now only know how to pronounce Boris Johnson properly.

That's right. Well, now you just gave away the foreign country. Speaking of names that might not get pronounced right, Republican congressional candidate Yesly Vega, who's running against Abigail Spanberger in Virginia, she went with the call in politics the full Aiken.

No, the left will say, well, what about in cases of rape or incest? I'm a law enforcement officer. I became a police officer in 2011. I've worked one case where as a result of a rape, the young woman became pregnant. Really?

And it's my job, number one, as a believer, right? give you all of the resources available. Right. If you decide to deviate and do something else, we don't stop loving you. Right. That's when you need even more support, right? Because of the data that we have, it's been proven that women that do move.

Wait, I didn't hear the most important part. She said that basically no one ever gets pregnant from rape. Yeah, that makes sense. I've been told that too. Many doctors are saying. Molly, I just would like to point out she was a law enforcement officer, so she knows which he's talking about. Yeah, right.

As we call the Eric Adams defense. I think it's important to point out here that these Republicans seem to not know a lot about science at all or like biology or how the human body works in any way, shape, or form. It's a bit of a theme. I mean, I don't know. It just seems like, you know, the people who don't understand how viruses spread and don't understand how masks work also seem to not understand how babies are made. Yeah, and they're proud of all of that.

That's the weird thing is that they're not like, I don't know. When I don't know something, I look it up. I want to know it. They are just, they're proud. They're proud of what they don't know. They're proud of believing things that aren't true. It's a lot of fun to deal with. Yeah.

Speaking of people who have really, really demented views. Self-described in-cell and leader of the America First Movement, Nick Fuentes, has a thought on what America is about to get and how excited he is about. The Supreme Court has a blueprint to revisit all those decisions and say, guess what? It's not in there. So that means that banning gay marriage is back on the menu. Banning sodomy is back on the menu.

Banning contraceptives is back on the menu. And basically, we're having something like Taliban rule in America, in a good way. We're having something like a Catholic Taliban rule in America. Yeah. Okay, first of all, that's like the worst restaurant ever. I don't know. I mean, I love that he was like, the Taliban is good. First of all, I want to point out, again, the idea that evangelical Christians ruining America is not disturbing enough.

you know, oh, we have to pull in other cultures. No, they're bad themselves. They drowned women in the Salem witch trials. They, you know, there's a long history of terrible behavior by puritanicals in this country. You don't have to bring other countries into it. Let's just, there's been so much American cruelty. Also, he's just giddy with the idea of them banning birth control. I'm sorry, but I don't see how this helps him.

He literally describes, like, he got to remember he throws people out of, his group that sleep with women, and he literally, like, won't touch a woman because he hates them so much. Oh, all right. Well, that seems good. He's a good guy. Sometimes it is really easy to believe that the original white people who came here were the Puritans.

We're kind of not recovered from that. Yeah, yeah. That's a solid point. Okay, to round things out. So there was really explosive testimony from the January 6th committee yesterday, but Tucker Carlson had better things to discuss as compiled by Media Matters. Here's the compilation of his show right after all the blockbuster testimony yesterday. Dick's sporting goods will pay you $4,000 to abort your baby.

How great is that? More solitude, less human connection, less meaning, fewer babies, brunch on the weekends and Netflix and white wine at night forever until you die along with no descendants to remember you. That's exactly why they're so desperate to take your guns away. Yeah, very damaging to the economy. having all those children, all that new life. Why don't you go ahead and chemicallys castrate them?

For the Haitians huddled underneath the bridges at the border in South Texas, they've got a ton of kids too. SSRIs in the water supply. You pampered First World Karen! You expected to eat meat for dinner. You thought you could load your car in the Safeway parking lot with groceries you could afford without being shot to death by armed robbers.

In Nigeria, all of this is normal. An entire nation of desperately unhappy grad students. Stop whining and eat your bugs. Shut up and abort your child because times are tough. are tough and you've got to get back to work. There's a war on. Do your duty. That's amazing. They're cut up in strange ways, though. I mean, I never want to defend Tuck-Tuck, but there's some strange cuts there. But I think it's just showing that he spent an entire hour talking about those weird little bizarre, mostly untrue things and did not talk at all

about Hutchinson's testimony. Yes. Well, why would he? No, he wouldn't. Really, the only time you see people on Fox News talking about the testimony is when they're part of the testimony. Well, or also when they think it's punishing the Democrats, then they'll talk about it. Yeah. Like the Mueller testimony where things went really wrong that they were happy to talk about that on air. It's when things go well that they just ignore it. Jerry Stahl is a screenwriter and novelist and author of his list.

latest book, 999, One Man's Tale of Depression, Psychic Torment, and a Bus Tour of the Holocaust. Welcome to New Abnormal, Jerry Stahl. Pleasure to be here. You're having a tough day, understandably. But we're very excited to have you, and I'm really excited about this book. Explain to us how you write a Holocaust memoir, it was a little bit of humor. How does that happen? I don't think it's something you can plan.

I decided to go visit the site of some of the greatest crimes of the 20th century, the Dachau, Buchanwald, and Auschwitz wanting to feel this great well of emotion as one does. And I get there and the first thing I see is the Auschwitz snack bar and the people having a notch after they come like, you know, toddling out of the ovens. And it just blew me away. and it accidentally became as much about that aspect as about the undeniable tragedy of the thing itself. Yeah. I know I have like an internal dialogue which is like, oh, I'm going to write about this.

You want to tell us a little bit about how you sort of started doing this too? Sure. I think everybody has that. Like, oh, my God, I can't believe I signed on for this. The real brief background is in about 2016, you know, I come from a family of depresses and suicides, not the Brad, and that was sort of locked in pretty hard. And I thought, what about going somewhere where complete and utter bone deep despair is entirely appropriate? What occurred to me was, why not go to the camps?

I got Vice Magazine, the print, the online mag, not the TV version. And to send me over there, I did a six-part series. And the horrifying thing about it before I even got to the camps is that I signed on for a tour by bus so that I had to overcome my lifelong fear of buses after having some traumatic, you know, 30 Sanchez-esque experiences as a youngster riding buses with a group of strangers, many of whom who had never even seen a Jew. So there was a certain terror about that before I even got to the site of the real terror. And once I got there, I realized there was this whole other level of reality. If this makes sense, beside the camp, you know, we've all seen the photos, the movies. How can you say anything new about this, needless to say? But what was new for me and almost accidentally is one of the first things,

things that happened when I got to Auschwitz is I hear this group of young Filipino girls, like 14 or 15, and they're coming at me with their phones out screaming, Kramer, Kramer. Oh, they think you're Kramer? They thought I was Michael Richard, which is bad enough. I'm being asked to take a selfie at Auschwitz, which seems to be a thing. I'm being asked to do it as a celebrity who I'm actually not. And, you know, what would Emily Post say about that? So rather than create a big drama, because there's kind of a language bearer, I just went ahead and did the... And pretended to be Michael Richards.

Well, I just let them think I was Michael Richard. I didn't like do a stick or anything. And meanwhile, this is about the first day or, you know, with this group of people I'm touring with. And they're looking to me like, you know, what the fuck wrong? What's wrong with this guy? I'm over here taking selfies with like teenage girls. Right. It just kind of catapled and onward from there.

Like with many stories, what you think you're going to do and going to say is completely different from what you end up saying and doing. I'll say, I'm still kind of shocked by the idea that you pretended to be Kramer. Now, I'm just kidding. No, I know. I did not. I have my defense. In my defense, I did not pretend to be Kramer, but it would be more of a drama to try to explain. Yes. Once I realized what they were saying, did I want to consult like Google translate to explain that I'm actually not, you know, the actor Michael Rich. Some MOOC who happens to be going to, you know, on a Holocaust bus tour. And I didn't. So yeah, in that sense, I guess I played along, you might say. Why not give the kids this. thrill. Yeah, I'll say. It was mortifying. Once you realize that like I have this, I mean,

it's not like there's a dress code, but I mean, people are walking around like, you know, family fun day in Orlando Disney World, you know? Yeah. With the I was stupid t-shirts, the mega-deaf t-shirts and little short pants and, you know, the backwards baseball hats. And I just, there was such a disconnect between not just what I felt, but what I thought I should feel and the reality on the ground with these other tourists going for the post chamber pizza nosh. Right. That's what it is, right? I don't know.

The idea that you don't feel how you're supposed to feel is a super interesting trope. Can you explain to us? Did you feel when you were in the sort of one of the most tragic places in history? Were you able to match your internal sorrow with the external sorrow? around you or now? That is a great question. I think one feels obligated to have these deep sort of soul-destroying reactions. And what I felt was nothing I feel or think I feel is worthy of what really happened

here. You know, you feel like you're stepping on the bones of the dead. And there's just a sense of the complete lack, a lack of sanctity, you know, a, of lack of the sense of what this is because, you know, people are just lining up. They're slapping on, you know, the first thing that happened to me is I was waiting in line. I got sunburned on the back of my neck because it was Poland in September. And for some reason, it was just really sunny and hot. And I realize I'm like bitching about getting burned in outfits and I felt horrible. But I think the human condition is like you feel what you feel. And however whole,

inappropriate that might be, that's just how it shakes down. And I've always been a believer in the school of writing. I don't know if you've ever heard of this guy, Bruce Jade Friedman, New York novelist and playwright, Jewish writer. And I interviewed him once and he said, you know, if you write a sentence that makes you squirm, keep going. In other words, the writers I love, the artist I love are the ones who say the unsayable. You're not trying to look good, obviously, and I certainly don't look good. I was going through a lot of weird shit and a lot of personal baggage. And one of the questions I have about these camps is like, how long after just some regular Joe or Yosef gets to the camp, do they start, you know, all this stuff about, you know, my ambition, my marriage, my kids,

money, success, you know, how soon does that disappear and you become just about survival? And so as a visitor in my own weird way, I sort of went through that, you know, how soon do you end up forgetting your own ship when faced with the massive trauma? And the reality is, it's always kind of there with you, short of just jumping on the ground like renting your hair and rolling on on ground glass, there is no appropriate response. It occurred to me, they should just fence the thing off and people can walk by and look from a distance because my gut was you're dishonoring the dead by being here, buying refrigerator magnets. But on the other hand, you know, who am I the judge?

Did you feel like you were appropriately miserable for the place, or did you feel just something completely different. Well, happily, you know, I packed my misery with me. At the same time, I was there. I had been asked to do something for ABC based on a book of mine about being an older father with a younger kid. You know, hygiene and sue. It's happy. It's great. And what happened is by the time I was supposed to write this pilot, the marriage had fallen apart. The kids living in Austin. You know, it's just a complete utter change from what they bought. And I'm, and I am trying to fake this happy thing as I'm at Auschwitz and Dachau. And I'm like stepping out of Block 10, the torture wing at Auschwitz, and unable not to answer my phone. I answer the phone and it's like some creepy

exec from ABC saying, can you make Jerry less creepy? I'm dealing with that level of abysmal and kind of mortifying reality, even as I'm going through this. And I think the lesson is, if there is, if there is one is that you bring your humanity with you. And I absolutely felt the kind of majesty of the torment and the sadness. But at the same time, you know, it's like that old Mel Brooks line, you know, tragedy is I get a hang nail, you know, comedy is you fall in a manhole and die. There's a certain horrific reality to that, which I, without realizing or intending to, I think, I certainly proved. It is an interesting idea.

It's funny because I went and heard you interviewed by Ben Stiller, who's a famous movie star, but has also been on this podcast before. And a big fan, by the way. Oh, well, I'm a big fan of his. But also quite smart, which as an actor is, you know, not the norm. Is that fair? Can I say that? I think if what you say is true, they won't understand what you're saying.

Quite smart. And you guys were talking about a book that I read because maybe. you told me to read it years ago, which is what makes Sammy Run, which is this very amazing novel about Sammy Glick and Hollywood. And it's part of this genre of these really great 1920s. Is it 1920s, 1930s, 1940s? Yeah, 20s or 30s, you know, great Bud Schulteberg book. Yeah. Yeah. Great early Hollywood novels like Day of the Locust, that kind of thing. Written by Jews. Yeah, written by Jews. And you guys have been trying to make it into a movie for a long time. I think I read, did you say this in an interview or you said this to me,

is that you can't ever make it because it's such an anti-Semitic picture of Jews? Well, I believe the unnamed head of a certain studio said to either Ben or I, my memory is a little shaky, probably to bed, you know, do we need another movie about an ugly Jew? You know? Yeah. And I think the answer was, apparently we don't. So that, you know, there's just a stack of them that don't get made. But that was the first thing I ever wrote.

I didn't even know how to like indent, you know, on a screenplay would have been to do that. It was when the money for permanent midnight fell out. We had like a year to kill. So we went off and tried to write the thing. But it's a heartbreaker because a million people have tried to do that. So what are you working on now? I've got another book called How to Be Depressed. which is, you know, another laugh riot writing from some of the involuntary research I've done over the years,

working on another movie, but a paying gig, which I hate to talk about because I think it's the kiss of death to ever mention anything because then it's like, hey, whatever happened to that thing? And it's like, what usually happens to those things. That's what happened. Right, exactly. I'm always working. I mean, at my age, you know, I'm closer to dead than 40. You know? How old are you?

I am 100 years old. Yeah, that makes sense then. That's good. Yeah. No, I'm fucking 68. I mean, I'm embarrassed to still be alive. You know, it's pretty bad for your ex-dote-thene credit. Right, to live so long. Not to die young. You just look stupid. But what can you do? I also was very disappointed to live this long. And I'm telling you that when I turned 21, I thought, oh, well, this is a fluke. And then 30, I thought, oh, no.

And now I'm 43. So I'm like losing well into middle age. I can't even remember 43. But, you know, God bless. Yeah. So what happened? Is there a happy ending to the story of your life since you're so old or now? I'm extremely grateful.

I hate people who march out the G word, you know, gratitude. Yeah, things are much better than they have any right to be. I have a couple of great daughters, neither of whom hate me, which is plus. Yeah, I love your older daughter. She's great. Stella is amazing. And I couldn't be prouder. Absolutely. It's just amazing to still be above ground. And I find myself just writing as fast as I can because you just don't know. I mean, I had the same feeling at 28, mind you. But now it's like a tad more realistic. I don't know how it is in your world. But, you know, people start dropping.

I'm much younger than you are. But certainly, I'm kidding. I am though. But yes. You can brag. I mean, I would if I were. How long do any of us have? have on this earth to be unhappy. None of us know, right? Well, you know, I realized a long time ago, you know, I don't know that I will ever be happy, but you know what I'm going for? I'm going for not making you unhappy by being around me. You know, I had a mother, my mother, God rest her, tormented soul. She can walk into a room and suddenly everybody would be like, oh my God, I hate myself. And it was like the world's most annoying superpower, you know? So I have spent the bulk of my psycho-emotional work on this earth,

try not to be that person. Energy vampire. Oh, beautifully put. Yeah. Yes, well, I watch a lot of television. That's great. Yeah. Thank you so much, Derry Stall.

It's a pleasure. On that note, we'll wrap this episode of the new abnormal from The Daily Beast. In future episodes, we'll be talking to smart folks from the Daily Beast and beyond from media, culture, politics, and science. will help us understand what's happening to our country and the world. We hope you'll subscribe to us on your favorite podcast app and share the show on social media. Thanks so much for listening and we'll see you again on the next episode. Want more great listens?

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