House Of Hammer - Part 4

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

Episode Transcript

(00:08):
How's your Saturday going, guys,Mine's great. I'm TC Fleming. By
the way, you're listening to ninetyseven one The Freak. This is the
dirt Back Culture hour, available everySaturday from two until four. That means
the show is almost done. Homestretch. Josh Campbell's in for Jordan because

(00:29):
Jordan's having a tough time medically.I've been dealing with kidney stones. The
stones are out, problems persist.We're talking about the documentary House of Hammering,
documentary that Jordan watched and was veryexcited to discuss until these extra probably
is a bladder infection of some kind. Yeah, yeah, it's a that's
a total different kind of growing distress. Doesn't sound good. But yeah,

(00:57):
So Jordan had turned me on tothis documentary and I loved it. I
thought it was great and yeah,so he wasn't able to talk about it.
But but Josh watching didn't that wecan discuss it. It's talking about
Army Hammer, the actor you're surelyfamiliar with. He had everyone seen Man
from Uncle. That's that's really That'sthe other thing. I think Social Network

(01:19):
is the only thing I've ever seenthat he's been in. I don't think
any of the other movies they listed, and they were like, and then
he had these series of flops,and I was like, I didn't even
That's why I think that there's somethingelse that he did that he was big
in, Like it was like akey role. I'm trying to remember what

(01:41):
it was. Yeah, No,this is just Lone Ranger. Yeah,
Lone the Lone Ranger where Johnny Deppplayed Tonto Sorry to Bother You? He's
great in did you see Sorry toBother Yeah? I did see Sorry to
Bother You? I guess I didn'tthink. I didn't place him. I
mean, he's I don't remember itexactly, but I remember the general like

(02:02):
it's very easy to imagine where hefits into that, right, Yeah.
Yeah, because like he's he's agreat job of being like the face of
you know, the things that hisgrandfather represents. Yeah, rich playboy grandfather.
Yeah. Yeah, I'm trying toremember. No, I didn't read
that his first leading role was inthe Billy Graham biopic. He played Billy

(02:25):
Graham, and his mom like boughtout a theater for all of her three
hundred church lady friends to go andsee her son play the great Billy Graham
because she's a big evangelical church.Yeah, yeah, yeah, it aising.
Oh yeah, they loved it becauseit was very pro billy I believe.
But then you know, she didnot rent out a theater for three

(02:49):
hundred of her church ladies for CallMe by Your Name. In fact,
she was like, I don't knowif we can talk for a while.
Yeah, it's kind of against God. What the movie you just made.
I don't like to hear that he'sin the Entourage movie. Okay, I
never saw that. That's your loss. It's an exceptional work of American art.

(03:10):
But yeah, they're talking about hishis family. All the men in
his family seem to have some realhard time, starting with a grandfather who
you know, had a rapacious spiritbut a certain ability, and then everyone
else after that it's just the rapaciousspirit. Yeah. Well, and so

(03:31):
Armand has Julian and but he hasthem with his wife in Russia, with
his wife Olga in Russia. Yeah, and he he in order to start
his new life in America, wherehe's trying to like shake off his dad's
old founder of the communist party thingand become American capitalist businessman. He thinks

(03:53):
it's too much baggage to have aRussian wife and a Russian kid. Yeah,
so he goes to great length totry to get paternity tests to prove
that that Julian is not his son, so he doesn't have to bring them
over with him to America. Yeah, Julian's existence is merely an inconvenience on
all. Yeah. Yeah, Sothe fact that whether or not you think,

(04:14):
you know, do you think thatmade Julian turn out good or bad?
But probably pretty bad. And butthat's a that sort of decision of
the relationship with that first wife andson that armand has is the cascading event
that precipitates all the next generations.Yeah, Like Army doesn't even get born

(04:36):
if he doesn't bring over Julian.If he decides no, I don't want
this Russian baggage and just cuts tiesand comes over. Yeah, like there's
none of this other stuff ever evenhappens. Yeah, that's true. So
talking about Julian a little bit more, the main person who's willing to speak
frankly about what happened is Army's aunt. She's a producer on the documentary.

(04:59):
I learned in the segment, andhere's her talking about in an incident that
she witnessed between Army's dad and Army'sgrandfather, who is Julian, the man
that we've been talking about. Julianwas very jealous of Michael that I saw.
He was very jealous. He wasvery rough on Michael, very mean
to Michael. I did see apattern there that Julian I think was hard

(05:25):
on his children because Armand was hardon Julian. The second trip I took
from Washington down to visit my father, everyone was drinking way too much and
my father offered my brother a milliondollars for his girlfriend. Come on,

(05:46):
yeah, my brother. It waslike a monster unleashed. They both said
I'm gonna kill you and they ranoutside, and when I finally circled the
building, I saw police had separatedthem. The cops didn't arrest either one

(06:08):
of them and let them both driveaway intoxicated as they were, and Michael's
girlfriend ended up going with my fatherquote unquote to tame the situation. She
was older than most of the girls, probably nineteen. She ended up living
with my father for like another eightmonths. What there like, she just

(06:33):
has no agency in this. Thecops are like, you go with the
father, you go with Julian.I don't know if it's suation, but
yeah, I kind of thought itwas her being like, yeah, you
know, Mike, I think I'lljust I'd probably make this easier if I
just went with him. I'll gowith your dad. He did say he'd

(06:55):
get me a million dollars. That'snot like a big don't pay you know
what, forget I said that,But I'm just gonna I'm gonna go with
him. He's like, you've seena disc in decent proposal, right,
That's a story is just packed withamazing detail. Like you you would normally
think that the offer of a milliondollars for your girlfriend is the most insane
thing, but it keeps ratcheting fromthere. Uh, you know, the

(07:18):
cops being like, all right,walk it off or drive it off drunk,
don't you guys are fine? Idon't care. And that's that's a
big recurring theme in this is thatany time that the police do show up,
they're aware of who arm and Hammeris and so they you know,
they're like not inclined to make troublefor anyone. Like this is not the

(07:43):
first time they talked about Julian gettingaway with murder because he literally got away
with murder. Yeah yeah, yeah, he got drunk and before that,
yeah yeah, his friend came tocollect on a gambling debt of four hundred
dollars or three hundred dollars or something. I think I think the friend owed
Julian four hundred. No, it'sthe other way around. Julian owed.

(08:03):
That's why he shot him. Idon't know. Maybe he's like he don't
know anybody anything. It's not whatI heard, but doesn't matter. But
the so there there they said acouple of times, you know, like
Julian just lived this life free ofconsequence. And I understand what they're saying.

(08:24):
And it is my deep and sincerewish that the justice system functioned in
such a way that all the lawsapplied equally to everyone, and that people
would not be able to stay outof jail if killing their friends just a
little accountability. But the idea thathe was without consequence, I think is
ignoring all of the facts of hislife pretty severely. You get consequences from

(08:46):
that brother, like he didn't havejail time, but you know what else,
he didn't have any love or satisfactionin his life. It is true.
True, But what happens then isthat that gets taken out on a
lot of other people downstream. Yeah, it's better if you just do things
in the normal order. But likeyou know, the idea that that he

(09:07):
just got off Scott free. Ijust I just want to impress to everyone
you never get off Scott free foranything. Ever. He lived a self
destructive life and it worked. Yeah. Yeah, he left destruction in his
wake. Yeah, yeah, itwas. It was terrible forever and around
him, but most of all itwas terrible for him. He was miserable
the entire time. It's pretty clearwhich goes which is funny? How and

(09:30):
Armand's like final quote, you know, before he dies, he's like,
I'd like to think that I leftthe world a little bit better place than
I found. Uh, you failed. He failed pretty bad if by ruining
I don't know, thousands of lives. Yeah, just a ceaseless resource extraction,

(09:54):
corruption of all levels of government thathe can get his hands on.
Terrible, terrible dealing with his family. But he established an art museum at
UCLA. Yeah, yeah, yeah, who's to say it's uh he originately
Michael, Let that go to theLet that go to UCLA because he didn't
want to pay the last million dollarsof the endowment that armand had promised to

(10:18):
it. So he's like, ah, just take the name off. Yeah,
I'm not going to pay the lastmillion. Yeah. So there was,
uh, you know, like Julian'sbehaving this way and like this this
stuff with the cops, you know, like they were very much greased to
not cause problems whenever these guys werebreaking the law and this, they donate

(10:43):
a ton of money to the police. Yeah, and like Army Hammers still
does to this day. They donatea bunch of money to the police.
I'm sure that he is ken befamiliar with the upside of yeah, yeah,
although you know, got to bediminishing returns at this point. It
feels like it used to be easierto get out these sorts of thing.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, likeyou know, Army, I mean,

(11:03):
he got off of the lap theinvestigation, right or is that stuff?
I think he's just not making movies. He has not. I don't think
he's criminally charged or anything right now. Yeah, but it feels to me
like he's suffered more concrete personal consequencesthan anyone else in his family. I
feel like that is the direction ofsociety trends and we have more accountabilities.

(11:26):
I think they said that he wasselling time shares in the Cayman Islands.
That is a story that came out. I was very keenly interested in it
when I did. But his auntworks in the kitchen department of the home
Depot in San Diego. Does shereally Yeah, that's her job. Oh,
it's talking the thing. Okay,Yeah, did she say that that's

(11:48):
in that's in the Vanity Fair article. Okay, because I thought maybe I
recently watched the Man Tait documentary andthe person who made his fake girlfriend also
works of the home depot or similarexcellent, So a lot of time on
your home depot. But yeah,so uh yeah, because you know that

(12:09):
that was a whole big part ofthe thing is the way that the like
whenever it came time to read thewill, whenever this billionaire's very succession style
reading of the will. Yeah,yeah, when when was the signed?
When when did this When did thisversion get signed? Yes? I remember
this version. Yeah, and it'suh, his son gets enough to pay

(12:31):
off his house. His son's daughtergets a two hundred and fifty K and
the rest goes to Army's dad,although even that is only forty million.
I thought you were a billionaire.Where's all the money? Yeah, they
said he'd been giving it away alot without telling anyone. But like,

(12:54):
I'm also very interested in what you'retalking about of like he's been squirreling at
different parts away for their was likea big case that had it was a
multiple cases that got filed against Michaeland Michael's business partner forgetting the guy's name
right now. But right after thewill happens, that business partner on his

(13:15):
passport ends up with twelve different tripsabroad that lasts less than thirty six hours,
and he on the last one,he gets caught with sixty thousand dollars
in undeclared cash coming back into NewYork. And that's the assumption is that
Michael knew where a bunch of thelock boxes were for the bribe money stashed

(13:37):
around the world, and the goalright upon the death was go grab as
many of those as you can.Yeah, And that was that guy's task.
And so there were I think fouror five different court cases and like
the last one was dealt with inNew York back in like twenty fifteen as
recently as twenty fifteen about Yeah,that's great insight. But yeah, so

(14:01):
talking about armand you know that he'she's very much got the police department set
up to treat his family in avery forgiving fashion. He also, their
detail and documentary had intense surveillance ofhis own family that he tapped all their
phones. He had people following themwhenever they would go out, and like

(14:26):
old school homing devices on cars evenin like the nineteen fifties. Yeah,
like the No Country for Old Men, how sugar tracks the money, that
kind of stuff. So that tome was like it's very meaningful, Like
it really paints a picture where it'sthe stuff that I've talked about earlier on

(14:48):
this episode and the stuff that Italk about a lot whenever I'm talking,
you know, trying to examine thehuman psyche of He's gotten instinct. It's
a good instinct. It's got apurpose, it's useful, it's good to
have it. He's worried about thesafety of his family, he's worried about
his image. You know, likeif you don't worry about this stuff,
it's going to become a problem foryou. But he's in a situation where

(15:11):
he has so much money and evenmore than money resources power, you know,
like he says, I don't wantto be president of the United States
because there's not enough power in it. That's that is what he literally said
to his family and so these It'slike, it's a gift to you to

(15:31):
have things that stop you from indulgingyour in your desires too much, your
instincts too much. It's like weall should embrace it. It's it's good
because if you don't, then youend up like this dude that is just
you know, like doing everything hecan't Like he's he's just he's consumed by
it. Like it just seems likea big hassle to even tell someone else.

(15:54):
I've got to have tabs on everybodyall the time. No, where
all my mistresses are, where he'smy family is. He's being imprisoned by
it. Yeah, he's being consumedhis life that he could be spending literally
any way he wants to. He'sjust spending most of his day worrying,
like listening back to the phone callsand other people get dirt on Prince Andrew

(16:15):
yet Yeah, no, his stuffwith Prince Charles is crazy. We can
hop into that here. So hegets popped in the seventies is part of
Watergate and so awesome. Obviously,like direct money that he gave to the
Nixon campaign to pay for the coverof Yeah, Yeah, Yeah, and

(16:36):
so that that kind of gives hima black eye in the public, and
he's like, well, I don'thave to just take this lying down.
I know what I'll do to kindof, you know, reassert myself on
the world stage. I'll give PrinceCharles so much money that he'll do anything
I say. I'll be his bestfriend because I'm just the money spigot that
he can't turn off. People loveDie, Diana want to come to all

(17:00):
my parties. Diana stops this,but he was very nearly named William's godfather.
Yeah, just because of how muchmoney he's giving Charles h This does
eventually turn out to be useful becausean oil platform that occidental operates in the
area around Scotland. He causes whatI believe is still like the greatest disaster

(17:25):
in the history of oil. Onehundred and sixty five men burned to death
whenever the safety mechanisms fail on thisplatform. It's a huge thing it's called
a piper alpha the platform. Andso this was a part of the documentary
that just like I don't know ifyou guys are interested in how this stuff
works, like who these people reallyare, Like this didn't even care about

(17:48):
the army hammer stuff anymore. Yeah, yeah, yeah, this is just
cards on the table how power worksin the world. And so they're they're
the guy who's like his political advisorat the time is the one talking on
the documentary, like the guy who'stelling him, if you want to escape
any accountability for this, here's howto do it. And so he's talking
about how he goes and gives aspeech where he's like, buck stops here,

(18:11):
I'm going to take care of allof this, and it's just like
just bowling people over with lying tothem about how he's going to conduct himself
in the face of this investigation.In the end, he receives no punishment
whatsoever. There's all kinds of evidencethat his company ignored warning sign after warning
sign that would have saved these onehundred and sixty five men from burning to

(18:33):
death. They didn't do a thingabout it, and he didn't and because
he just like did this shock andawe campaign of like, I'm a good
guy, you can trust me.Lies. He just was so successful at
that that he escaped any that heescaped having to actually be the good guy.
And the political advisor describes the scene. We went to the airport.

(18:56):
Prince Giles and Princess Diana came tothe airport to meet him. They came
striding towards him with their faces akind of picture of sorrow and grief.
Prince Charles had his hand out toshake arm on Hammer's hand. He said,
you mustn't blame yourself. He shouldblame himself. Go on, and
Hammad called to the guys on theplane. He said, let's have champagne

(19:19):
and caveat. We've had a greatdate. Just don't beat yourself up.
So to enlist Prince Charles as hissupporter had paid off. There were no
direct consequences whatsoever in terms of punishmentsfor arm on Hammer or the board of

(19:41):
Occidentally, Hammad took no interest whatsoeverin the survivors or their families, families
of the dead. So that's theother one. Yeah, What it establishes
if the primary patriarch of the familylives in such a way where he is

(20:03):
not only avoiding consequences. He's activelytrying not to do it. He's actively
almost immune to the accountability. Yeah, and then and then whenever he makes
it so that he doesn't have tosweat a bit that one hundred and sixty

(20:25):
five men burn to death and theirfamilies don't have fathers anymore, he's like,
bust out the champagne boys. Timeto celebrate. We did it,
We did the only good thing thatthat was a huge succession vibe, Like
I just can see that scene onthe private plane on the way back.
They almost wouldn't go that over there. They would be like, no one

(20:45):
could believe this. If the kid, if the if the Prince of England
comes out, and no, they'renot gonna buy that. Can't yeah that
far, Yeah, dude, thathe's he's walking from shaking the hand to
the head of state, like,don't blame yourself. He's like, I'll
try not to. And then thissecond he's on the plane, the cork
pops. It's like, it's amazing, dude, It's it's what a scene.

(21:14):
Yeah. So documentary's House of Hammer. It's on Max. It's got
a lot of a lot of amazingscenes in it, and real view into
a lot of different parts of thehuman psyche. I had a great time
watching it. It was very muchfun, and thank you for having me
on. Thanks for coming on,man, I'm really glad that we're able
to do this. You know,you've been on before, and I'm sure

(21:34):
you'll be on many times in thefuture. So all the well delicious to
George's speedy recovery, absolutely absolutely.I think he's got something special planned for
next Saturday too, so please tuneinto that. This is ninety seven one the Freak