What’s it like to be a clothed extra at a porn shoot? How about a member of the most hated church in America? A carney? O.J. Simpson’s hired sidekick on a reality TV show? Harmon Leon’s gone undercover to get answers, and thank God he’s willing to do it because let’s face it, you couldn’t pay most sane people to join any of these grim demographics (welllll, maybe the porn extra, but Leon’s here to tell you you’d regret it.)
Leon has written about his adventures for VICE, published five books about them, and tours with his always-evolving one-man show, coming to The Unicorn Saturday and the Kraine Theater Tuesday. On stage he uses video and other multi-media elements to give audiences a close-up look at what it’s like to infiltrate of some of America’s most fascinating subcultures. Leon took a few minutes to chat with us about, yes, the aforementioned stunts, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg–he’s been doing this a long time.
It’s hard to know where to start! I’ll just ask: what’s one recent experience you’d like to share?
Well recently I tried to infiltrate Jerry Springer—and people’s reaction to that is usually “Jerry Springer is still on the air?”—but yes, he is. I recruited some actor friends to try to get on the show, and what we found out is that the show is not only sleazy on-air, but the producers are really sleazy. They call to see if they want you on the show, ask you all these questions and open up horrific wounds in these people’s personal lives, and then they just suddenly stop calling. They would be like, “you’re going to be on tomorrow!” and then we never got on. If we were actually those people we claimed to be it would have been horrible.
You mentioned you spent time as a carny. Is it as horrible as people imagine?
Yeah, I was a carny in rural Indiana, sleeping in a carny trailer behind the tilt-a-whirl, and there’s basically like a carny sort of hazing period. They just kind of mentally know how to try to break you down. Then when the guy who was sort of the head carnie offered me a corndog, that’s when I knew I was OK.
Almost every stereotype about carnies is true. It’s this job where you can be so off the grid; no one asks for a social security card or an ID. A lot of guys are just out of prison, but they’ll still hire you. All they really care about is if you work hard.
What’s the key to infiltrating a group? What would be your one word of advice?
Do the research. Know the lingo, know the backstory, commit to the story, commit to the character. Everyone has a common denominator. With every group I felt at least a twinge of something that I have in common with them. And people warm up to funny people, you know? Like, I’ve shared laughs with the Westboro Baptist Church. [We’re not linking to their homepage here because let’s not give them page views, but if you’re not familiar a quick Google search should be enough to give you chills of rage]. At home eating dinner they’re like the Brady Bunch, even though they’re a hate group. Like little family in the West.
So what’s typical dinner conversation like for a family of Westboro Baptist Church members?
They kind of have this sort of like weird gallows sort of humor. It’s strange, because they’re the most hated people in America; people drive cars at them and throw bricks at their houses, so they have developed their own sense of humor.
Really? What kinds of jokes do they tell? Okay, so they probably don’t tell jokes, but what makes them chuckle?
Oh, they chuckle about these song parodies they write for their pickets–they have a recording studio in their house. Or they chuckle about being banned from Canada. They showed me the workshop where they keep their signs, and they have an archive of all the old signs they’ve used through the years. They think they’re just at the peak of humor with their signs.
O.J. and Leon (Photo courtesy of Harmon Leon)
In an upcoming episode of This American Life, airing in August, you tell the story of playing O.J. Simpson’s prankster-in-crime in a Punk’d!-style prank show called Juiced. What was he like behind the scenes?
I spent two weeks with O.J pulling pranks. He’s such a sociopath, because he has that superficial charm, so at first it’s like, OJ likes me! When he walks into the room he shakes everyone’s hand, and it would be like, how could a person like that kill two people? But then by the end it was like, OK, he’s a sociopath. He was so egotistical. The young film crew was making barely anything, he was showing up late and being really arrogant and missing the shoot.
He would make these jokes. One time were all in this little room, and OJ getting makeup applied to him so that he would look like an old white man in one of the jokes, and instead the makeup just made him look kind of like a murder victim, unintentionally. While he was getting the makeup applied we’re all just hanging around, and he made the joke, “who’s the first Jewish guy to get a Heisman Trophy? Fred Goldman, [father of Ron Goldman] because he’s got mine.” [Simpson was court ordered to sell his Heisman to pay for legal fees incurred when Goldman won the civil suit related to his son’s murder].
Another time, OJ was posing as a used car salesman on a used car lot in Los Vegas. When unsuspecting prank victims came looking for cars OJ would steer them towards a white Ford Bronco, and he actually ad libbed and said the line “it has great escapablilty.”
Have you ever felt uneasy while infiltrating a group, or like you were in danger?
One of them in particular, when I went around with a repo man in Reno, Nevada. So basically repo men, they can legally steel people’s cars in the middle of the night when they fall behind on their payments. So we would even be on the outskirts of Reno and just go up in the middle of the night and he would pull up with his tow truck and just, you know, pull the car out, and usually the people would come out screaming. He was telling me that on his first job a guy came running out of his house with an ax. Nevada has very relaxed gun laws, and all they see is someone pulling up to their house and towing away their car.
The other time that was scary, I went with this squatter activist group in San Francisco called Homes Not Jail, and they basically would break into houses in San Francisco and set them up as squats. So again, you know, your adrenaline’s going, but chances are when the police come you just have to explain you’re a journalist.
Have you ever been arrested or had to explain you’re a journalist?
Not to the police, but there’s only one time I got outted in the middle of infiltrating a group, and that was when I infiltrated a celebrity impersinators’ convention posing as an Austin Powers impersinator, and they actually found out I was a journalist and they made me get out of my Austin Powers costume. And I was being screamed at by an angry Joan Rivers and Cher impersonator.
How did they know?
I think they did a little Internet research because I had to register for the convention. I also think I was sort of ratted out by the other Austin Powers impersonator there because I think I was, like, maybe hamming it up a little bit too much.
Ah, you were stealing his thunder.
Yeah, it’s very cutthroat.
It’s in the title of your play, and I have to ask: what was it like to be the fully-clothed porn extra?
It was a porn shoot in North Hollywood, and in summery, you would think that would every red blooded American man’s dream, but it turned out to be one of the most depressing scenarios I’ve ever been in. First of all, the set is just inhabited with this large group of leering old men who would just, like, breathe heavily in unison like they have emphysema and just ran a big group 5K fun run. And the part actors were just completely freaking out in the middle of the shoot–I won’t tell you why so your readers can come see the show, but it was one of the most grim situations I’ve ever been in, and this is from a guy who’s rented the Sopornos 1,2, 3 and 4.
Porn, Corn & Body Slamming for Jesus, Saturday, Aug. 1, at 8 p.m. at The Unicorn (LES) and Tuesday, Aug. 4, at 7 p.m. at The Kraine Theater (East Village).