House Of Hammer - Part 3

With Oatmeal Pizza's Josh Campbell in for Jordan, Josh and TC discuss Max's Armie Hammer documentary.

Episode Transcript

(00:09):
What you're listening to you right nowis the dirt Bag Culture Hour. I'm
TC Fleming, regular host of Thedirt Bag Culture Hour. Other regular hosts
Jordan Richardson not available. It's nota problem though, because we do have
oatmeal Pizza's Josh Campbell. Hello,how do you feel like it's going so
far? And as we ran intoour two? I think it's gone good.

(00:30):
I hope, I hope people arestill listening. I don't know if
I've got the same bellowy, warm, smooth radio voice that George's does.
Who does? So maybe you canadd a little low EQ, maybe down
pitch me a little bit. Idon't know. I don't go to that
level. Oh okay, well you'rejust gonna have to hear it the way

(00:50):
it sounds then, guys. Yeah, we're talking about the documentary House of
Hammer. It's about Army Hammer,the actor from the Social net work.
I don't know. I never sawcall Me by your Name, but it
was an interesting thread in here,is that call Me by your name?

(01:10):
Fans seem to treat some of theseaccusers pretty poorly. Yeah, yeah,
When when the characters that a personplays become the way, the only way
that you see them rather than whothey really are. I mean, I'm
sympathy for that, you know,like who who's not tricked? But like
you watch two hours of someone actinga certain way, you're like, yeah,

(01:34):
that's them. I don't know,you know, like I don't know
unless they're an actor like Jeff Goldbloom, where they're just Jeff Goldbloom and almost
everything they do, you know,then you're like, yeah, I know,
I know who Goldbloom. Doctor Malcolmis. Yeah, but yeah,
So the documentary was very interesting.Although I'm not going to give him full

(01:57):
credit for this in the I'll getinto it in a second, but they
had a full exploration of his family, which I kind of want in everything.
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, likeI need I need that context.
Yes, yeah, I need fivegenerations of context. I need your story

(02:21):
of how you your family came intoAmerica. I would like that. Yes,
I's gonna do a lot of explainingjust between TC and I, like,
that's a conversation that we have aboutour own families all the time.
Well, you have a very richhow my family got here. It's just
got some details that really pop.Yeah you want to tell it? No,

(02:43):
no, we'll save this one forArmy. We got a lot of
Army family to get it. Okay, I guess yeah. Like I said
this on my other show, it'sjust Banther available on any podcasting platforms that
you may be interested in. Wewere talking about the Johnny Man's l documentary
and like, I just want that's, like, you know, it's very

(03:06):
interesting hearing them describe the things thatJohnny's doing. It's like the what he's
doing, I like that much muchmuch more interested in the why he's doing
it, And that documentary has alittle bit of it, but it kind
of just seems incidental, Like,you know, as someone who's watching only
for that, I can pick upa couple of things, but it doesn't
seem like that's what they're trying todo. This was far more rich in

(03:30):
the how does a person become thisway, although again it sort of seems
to be a little bit of anaccident because the way that they like the
story they're telling about how they gethere and everything is basically that, you
know, like the documentary makers arefollowing the story and interested in the story,

(03:50):
and some of the people who areusing this to establish TikTok cloud catch
on to the fact that his aunthas published a biography that includes a lot
of damning things about what her experienceswere like growing up, and so they

(04:11):
kind of present all these scandals.And this is probably my biggest problem with
the documentary is that it seems muchmore to be trying to tar and feather
Army by association than to you know, like as a bridge then to use
it as like a bridge for empathyof like, look, what a tough
position he's put in. How areyou gonna end up any other than some

(04:34):
kind of sex freak that's out toher people. They do kind of just
gloss over parts of his childhood thatI would have liked to get more details
on, like oh, yeah,you know. Then his family moved to
the Cayman Islands and they just livedthere and they came back and because his
dad saw the firm and he likedthe amazing detail. He watched Tom cruise

(04:59):
in the firm and was like,and there's there's like one scene and the
scene is him cheating on his wife. Yeah, that's the Cayman Islands,
the firm, and the Dad's like, that place looks great, and I
do believe that it is great.I once asked my It's just Panther co
host Jake what his favorite vacation he'dever been on was, Uh, not
from like a you know, personalexperience, but just like, what's the

(05:21):
one place that you've seen that youwould say someone else has got us see
it? And he said Cayman's.Cayman's Great. Yeah, yeah, you
and your wife in there a coupletimes. Right, Yeah, we've been
there a couple of times. AndI went there with my dad after I
graduated high school and we went scubadiving. That's pretty fun. That was
the first time I ever drank withmy dad too, probably the only one

(05:42):
of like two times I've ever drinkwith my dad because the legal drinking age
is eighteen, okay, And uh, like we went to a burger King
there and with your value meal youcould get a Heineken. Wow. So
that's what I did. That waslike my first publicly bought beer legally was
getting a Heineken with my value mealat burger King in the Cayman Islands.

(06:05):
That's great. But yeah, souh that's that's the entry into it is
that his aunt wrote this book.You know, like some of the Tiktoker's
listened to the book and like,you know, playback key excerpts or whatever.
I don't know, you know,I mean like I guess to some
extent, that's what. To someextent, we are those TikTokers, right,

(06:29):
yeah, yeah, but like we'rediscovering the same detail as they did
when going like oh my gosh,yeah child, Yeah, I just I
don't know. I mean, Iguess I only saw the TikTok's to the
extent that they were included in thedocumentary. And I think that documentary makers
are interested in because they they interviewedsome of those people, and I think
a lot of it's just kind oflike moving it forward, getting the stuff

(06:50):
that's out in public, like findinga way to get it on the record,
like you just want someone saying it. Yeah. It was kind of
like, instead of doing the documentarychrono logically, so this would be like
this unfolding thing that we've found outabout, they used the TikTok people as
the thread that connected the different thingssince they were just jumping around the timeline

(07:12):
all over the place. Yeah.Yeah, here's Army in twenty twenty,
and this is a thing that happenedin nineteen thirty one like Okay, yeah,
they're they're kind of the narrators oflike it's it's more of the story
of how they found out about thisstuff, so like as they're finding out,
like that's that's the chronological Like that'swhat you're saying. Yeah, but
I don't know. I guess I'mjust interested in that. Like I just

(07:35):
think it's a fine line. Likeas I try to make stuff like this
show, you know, like I'malways asking myself, like should I feel
creatively fulfilled by what I'm doing?Is there a way that I could do
it that I would feel more creativelyfulfilled? And I think that, like
I feel like a lot of thestuff, you know, that I was
doing like ten years ago was morejust like just recite the details of a

(08:01):
thing that happened. And I've cometo take a pretty dim view of the
value of that because it's like,well, why didn't the person just read
the Wikipedia arcle themselves? Yeah?Do they need me to aggregate their information
for them? Yeah? So Idon't know. I've tried to, you
know, like turn towards having likesome of the analysis is the key thing,

(08:22):
Like you know, you're gonna needto relay some of the details to
be able to do it. It'slike to you know, to establish this
shared understanding that we're then going tobuild our analysis on top of. But
like the key thing is like,you know, trying to provide some thoughts
that aren't featured in the subject material. And I just I'm interested in the

(08:43):
degree to which these the zen Blondeis actually doing that. You know.
Well, the one thing when shewas talking about She's like, of course
I wasn't the first one to discoverthese things about his family. So I
started looking for other tiktoks to seeif anyone else had posted about this,
and I couldn't find anybody posting onTikTok about this. Yeah, so like
somehow she's the groundbreaking investigative journalists thatput that first put this thread together.

(09:09):
Yeah, there's a prior time inhuman history where journalism was not viewed as
just like reading other people's books andrepeating. Like the writing of the book
is the real valuable thing there.The reading and repeating I don't know,
But I, on the other hand, like it clearly does have some value

(09:30):
because it did popularize it. Yeah, it was definitely a book that was
not mainstream in the bookstores that everyonewas just like, oh yeah, let
me pick up that one. Itbecame a huge part of the conversation because
of her work, and then leadsto the woman who wrote the book Armies
and being heavily featured in the documentary, and then she gets other subjects into
the documentary, so like she's actuallyhas a production credit on the documentary.

(09:56):
Oh wow, so yeah, soyou know, she's doing a bit.
So like, I guess it's veryimpactful that she read this book and then
repeated it to a larger audience.So I don't know, you know,
maybe maybe I'm not right to entirelydismiss the the you know, usefulness of
the zen Blonde. I just can'tget over, Like, I mean,

(10:16):
whatever, it's fine, you know, Like I this is the society we
live in. I tried to comemy my one of my problems of the
documentaries that I feel like they werefrom more of a place of condemnation whenever
they could have chosen to come froma place of curiosity. Yeah, so
I tried to come from a placeof curiosity. And I'm just curious why

(10:37):
she wouldn't just like make her ticketTikTok account called like you know, Leslie
Smith or whatever her name, youknow, yeah, they said her name.
I don't recall it, but likeI like why why why does Zen?
And like how much how Zen?Is? She? Really? Like
I need some defense of this.She's like six parts into this expose on

(11:00):
the Hammer family and reading Army's aunt'sbook that's, you know, detailing all
the dirty laundry. When she finallyhas the moment where she's like, oh
my gosh, I'm just putting thiswoman on blast. Yeah, is that
a good thing? It turns aroundfine, but also, you know,

(11:24):
there is the They talk about itlater like all right, but you know,
just make sure if you notice thesame stranger in a crowd twice,
that's something to look out for.And uh, you know, make sure,
you know, locking all the doorsat night and locking your windows and
be beware and be aware or whatever. She told her. Yeah yeah,

(11:46):
so, uh you know the womanis uh armand Hammer's granddaughter, armand armand
Hammer's son is Julian Hammer, uhJulie Russian son. Yeah yeah, yeah,
the armand Hammer has told you.I mean, this is just yeah,

(12:07):
this is very much my stuff.The darkness at the heart of American
power like the corporate you know,the things that are like that are more
powerful in the government. Like youknow, this is all. This is
all what I do, ladies andgentlemen. So you know, very excited

(12:28):
to uh to get to this chapter, you know, the armand Hammer stuff.
He uh, he was born inwhat would eventually become the Soviet Union.
His dad was a founding member ofthe American Communist Party. And you
know, the Soviet Union's a bigplace. You know, it's a large,

(12:50):
complicated state, but they have solittle penetration into America, especially like
at the time that they're just beinga ablished that I think that like a
huge amount of their foreign presence inAmerica through any form just was a doctor's

(13:11):
office in the Bronx. Yeah thatyou know, like people that like it
was a place where you know,they could all kind of go to relay
messages, like goods are being transportedout of the United States into the Soviet
Union through this doctor's office in theBronx. And the doctor's office is Julius
Hammer's doctor's office. That's uh,that's armand Hammer's father. His name is

(13:33):
armand because arm and Hammer is theSoviet symbol. Yeah, yeah, that's
that's that's great. Yeah, andhis whole Arman Hammer's life is spent,
you know, floating between these variousstates, you know, kind of like

(13:54):
above all of them and uh,you know, just having a very like
having absolutely no scruples about working withanyone and having a good understanding of how
this international stuff really works. Yeah, he's he's basically a courier. Yeah,
Like he's a courier of information andmoney between America and Russia. Yeah.

(14:20):
Yeah, And you know, there'sthere's a lot of things that Russia
needed that America had, and there'sa lot of things that America needed that
Russia had, and there was notan easy way to be direcked about this
because of the political situation, andso all of it kind of flows through
him, and he skims a littlebit off the top, as it does
in you know, the Keith.All of this is uh, he's just

(14:43):
really good at bribes. Yeah,and well I think they touched on this
not in the documentary but in theVanity Fair article. But this is also
when he starts just stashing cash andlock boxes all over the world. What
a movie. So it makes itvery a bunch of crazy series of events

(15:05):
happen beyond what they talk about inthe documentary when he dies about trying to
find all this cash that he's juststored all over the place to be able
to like quickly get to and bribepeople and heads of state all over the
globe. Yeah. Yeah, Andthat's like, you know, whenever you
think about like bribing, you're like, how how complicated could it be?

(15:26):
Uh? And that's a very simplequestion, you know, like you're you're
not ready for the bribe game ifyou're asking that. And he just appears
to be one of the world's foremostunderstanders of how how to bribe, you
know, like this what you know, the various parts of the process.
He's innovated and perfected every single oneof those, and so occidental. The

(15:50):
company that he comes to control,they're big stuff to begin with, is
Libya that whenever Kadafi comes out,I think that they've got a good holding
before Kadaffi comes to power, andthen whenever Kadafi comes to very nationalizes half
of it. But then they,you know, are able to keep working
with him, and that stuff alljust strikes me as they understood how to

(16:11):
bribe. I don't think it wasjust an open contract process where everyone had
to submit their qualifications and it wasvetted by a big board. I think
that some of Momr Kadaffi's government hadhad a little bit of graft, That's
my suspicion. And so he's he'sdoing all this, uh, and like

(16:32):
this is always how this stuff works. Of like that demands a certain like
a hollowness at your moral center.Yeah, but it also demands like a
some amount of dedication and talent.And like you know, he's he's about
his work and and he obviously understandshuman psychology on the level where he can

(16:56):
manipulate people that are some of themost powerful people in the world. Like
he understands early on you record everything. Yeah, he's he has his cuff
links have microphones in them. Yeah, he has personal recording devices on him
at all times. The value ofthe bribe, to a large extent is
being able to later prove that someoneelse accepted it. Yeah. And yeah,

(17:18):
once you have them on tape,then you have them forever. Yeah.
And that's how he's got Kennedy andNixon and LVJ. And he's doesn't
seem like he had anything to dowith the Carter administration, though, that
wouldn't seem to get by him.Yeah. Yeah, Reagan, Yeah,

(17:38):
the Reagan guy. Yeah, andso, uh, you know, he's
got that going on, but likeit demands a certain thing of him,
like you know, Julius Hammer,his dad has a certain foothold. But
it's not like arm and Hammer isguaranteed anything close to the life that he
comes to lead by the to beinghis father's son. He's you know,

(18:03):
just to make it, He's gonnahave to he's gonna have to work hard.
But by the time he's done that, and he's worked hard enough that
he's got billions and billions lying around. Uh, no longer is that pressure
upon anyone else in the family.And then you get just the hollow moral
center. Yeah yeah, yeah yeah. And so that's where we're talking about

(18:30):
his son, who is armand Hammer, Army Hammer's grandfather. And uh,
the main person who's willing to speakabout this is Army Hammer's aunt, the
sister of Army Hammer's dad. Anduh, when we're talking about the kind
of lifestyle that she's leading or thatthat he's more being led around her,

(18:52):
uh cut off a clip that Ifelt it was it was the first time
in the documentary where I'm like reallyraising my eyebrows of like like because you
know, you already know the armyhammer allegations whatever, you know, like
they're shocking, but like the shocksweren't off a bit. Yeah, you're
not learning anything. This is thefirst time I was like, oh,
we're talking about that. Yeah,so her parents had become divorced, but

(19:15):
she's allowed to go live with herdad for a short time. This is
how it goes. Casey and Iwould go to Julian's, her father's house.
As you walk in, there wasa big bowl of cocaine and a
very kind of help yourself attitude.It was an environment where old man and

(19:37):
young girls and cocaine, and itwas shocking, your parents aren't supposed to
do that. One time at aparty, I'd come out of my bedroom
the next morning and everyone was passedout all over the floor. I remember

(20:00):
walking by the couch and there werepolaroid pictures of one of my father's housekeepers
and at the time I thought shewas eating. And it established earlier that
a housekeeper is a euphemism for teenlover. Yeah. Yeah, there's a
bunch of sixteen year old hot ladiesaround the compound and he's like, it's

(20:22):
my housekeeper. Yeah, yeah,an ice cream, because that's what you
did when you were little. Ikept looking at the pictures trying to figure
out what was happening, and that'show I realized that it wasn't an ice
cream, that it was attached toa man. One of the pictures in

(20:48):
the background was this figure in thecorner and a chair watching. I recognized
that that was my father quite nowallegation, And they do have an interview
with another lady who was actually kindof hired as a housekeeper by Julian.

(21:11):
Yeah, and the that is awild tale too, because he's like taking
her out and taking care of herson, like keeping them in a home,
and she's going on dates with themand basically in a relationship with him.
And after one date, he's like, let's stop buy this bar for
some drinks. How about a nightcap? And she's like, okay, that's

(21:33):
fine, nightcap, sounds fun,and she noticed they're in there, and
all she's like, I'm certain toget really jealous because all he's doing is
flirting with a bunch of guys.And that's when I realized we were in
a gay bar. They'll they'll gofor anything these folks. Seeah, we're
talking about House of Hammer. It'sa it's a documentary on Max. And

(21:55):
we'll continue these discussions with more audionext on ninety seven one The Freak