Growing Up Richard Simmons

all i know about richard simmons is like sad things like melancholy things but i'm trying not to have like a melancholy tagline wow you really got surprised by this podcast i've been planning for like a month we keep pushing back oh oh oh oh well this one's bad but whatever uh welcome to maintenance phase the podcast that thinks tank tops and short shorts are appropriate for any weather yeah i like that one it was not very clever but it is accurate i'm aubrey gordon i'm michael hops if you would like to support the show you can do that at patreon.com slash maintenance phase you can also get bonus episodes through apple podcasts it's the same audio content and if you live in australia or new zealand you can see aubrey in other ways yes genie finley's documentary your fat friend about yours truly is in theaters now in australia and new zealand and as soon as it leaves theaters it will be joining doc play for all the details on that and all of the screenings you can go to yr fat friend film.com or there's a handy dandy link for you in the show notes aubrey down under something something lesbian joke something something michael today we're talking about richard simmons we haven't done a good old like influencer episode in a while just like here's a person how do you remember richard simmons i think i mostly remember him from late night tv appearances where he would show up on like jay leno to talk about stuff or i was really into those like best of johnny carson tapes that you could get he showed up on johnny carson a million times i've seen all of those like four thousand times him and like sam kinnison are like the people i modeled my personality after the thing is i don't think he was like that great of a presence and i think back i think a lot of those appearances were probably like low-key pretty homophobic oh baby and then i listened to the podcast about him dan taberski's i thought excellent but like complicated podcast about richard simmons and then he emerged to me as kind of like a more tragic figure well first of all those appearances were not low-key homophobic were they high-key homophobic one of the recurring bits that richard simmons would that people would call richard simmons onto their show to do would be to like be like you're gonna be a guest on the show and then they would hide cameras in his dressing room and do things to scare him oh so that he would like scream and like jump up and down oh and like in a feminine way yeah i mean i think i remember him the way a lot of people remember him which is honestly like i think societally we just kind of treated him like a manic pixie dream gay despite the fact that he never you know addressed his own sexual orientation right i'll say i just read as richard simmons reporting as i could get my hands on which is not a ton of reporting right including the recent wave of eulogies including missing richard simmons all of those were sort of written in the way that you and i are talking about remembering him right which is these sort of hazy fond memories yeah really light on details and none of them referenced uh his memoir still after all these years and when i read his memoir it was 100 things i had not heard oh really okay so this is part one of a two-parter today we're going to talk about richard simmons life sort of before he became a household name because there is a lot there so today is sort of about the messages he took in and next time is sort of like what he decided to do with those messages and the messages that he put out wait i just thought of a better tagline what his whole thing was like sweat into the oldies right yeah that's what we call it when people exercise while listening to maintenance phase because we're old and they're doing they're doing exercise so many emails from people who are five to ten years older than us look i am 42 i can do this a heads up before we get into it this story has some really dark moments so we're going to be talking about anti-fatness we're going to talk about anti-threatening and anti-physical assault so just like basically buckle up yeah so we're going to start out with richard simmons as you might remember him so here's a little refresh i'm going to send you a link okay wow what a beautiful healthy looking audience his energy this is insane when i heard that this is your 59th video 59 videos wow that's amazing swen to the oldies five i know but hey what are you sitting down for he thought it was like you thought we were serving something yeah yeah that's right he's gonna well first of all tell people everybody has you know i think aspirations to get in better shape what advice do you have for people number one love yourself have a lot of self-worth number two lower your calories and watch your portions and number one move those blinds can i tell everyone that what can i tell everyone mama wants to hear mama wants to see mama gypsy oh my god anyway uh it was from gypsy i know i know we can do you know gypsy yes anyway everyone the audience is getting my new sweat and fire okay this is the energy that richard simmons was operating with all of the time this is also the energy that ellen was operating on where she's like let's get this over with she's sort of officially joking but you can tell in her face that she's like this is annoying the shit out of me she hates it she hates shut up richard so clearly she hates everything about it i know and i think that's maybe the greatest indictment of her yet is like oh you don't like i know richard simmons i know the funny he's such a like ray of sunshine yeah but also because he's so loud because it's sort of so sticky you can find it grating yeah like this is projecting based on everything else i know about him but it people who act like this oftentimes are like covering up for something yeah to have this much energy and to be this on all the time just seems like it was a quote from billy eichner in one of the write-ups after richard simmons passed away he was very straightforwardly just like yeah richard simmons goes in the long line of gay men who made it through by making themselves the joke right like right yeah kind of people come up with strategies to fit in and you're like 12 when you're coming up with these strategies right because you realize you're gay and you're like oh fuck i have to like do something about this and oftentimes establish patterns that then are very hard to break right the the way that you fit in and social situations is like the the habits and the defense mechanisms that you developed by being in the closet and so i wonder if richard simmons started doing this to compensate for something and then just like couldn't break the habit yeah i mean i think part of the way that you make it through is by telling stories about yourself like fully concocted but it's also based on as you're saying your kid brain yeah so it's like as convincing as two kids in a trench coat yeah this was absolutely me in middle school guys were like oh she's hot i'm like yeah i want to poke her boobs i want to play her boobs like bongo drums so richard simmons for the uninitiated built a fitness empire in the u.s he had a chain of gyms at one point oh yeah he had 22 dvds and 38 home videos including sit tight which i think is kind of a great not gonna make a kj joke i'm not gonna make a gay joke i'm gonna be i'm gonna be very mature on this podcast i'm gonna stay very classy because he made sit tight dance your pants off and no ifs ands or butts oh that was actually pretty good that's very that's very wholesome he had one vinyl record with a bunch of ballads on it that he sang and he was an okay singer okay fair enough he also made one absolutely incredible music video and you and i are gonna watch it right now oh no okay oh my god something cute oh just look at you i think you need a new hairdo all right no shut it down shut it down shut it down shut it down we're stopping this episode we're done we're done for the day i'm not watching richard simmons rap look i hope you could tell this was recorded in the 2010s i don't want to make fun of this man aubry he's a tragic figure no it's like i really genuinely We enjoy this song and have been listening to it recreationally. There are a bunch of stories about later in his career about Richard Simmons showing up to his gym to lead classes in drag. Oh, and he does some drag in this video. To me, this feels like we're getting closer to how he saw himself. I love that you're trying to recast this as like an act of self-actualization when it's a music video called Hair Do and he's rapping. Get something cute. Get something girly. The thing is, I have exactly the same hair as him. Any jokes about his hair off limits. Michael, are you ready for story time? I know this man, but I don't truly know this man. So let's do it. Richard Simmons was actually born Milton Teagle Simmons. Okay. In the French Quarter in New Orleans in 1948. Okay. He was born to Leonard Simmons Sr. and Shirley Mae Simmons. His father was actually a professional entertainer. He was an emcee before he was born. So he has a background in rapping. And his mother was a fan dancer. What does that mean? You know the ladies who would dance like burlesque with big feather fans to cover up their bodies? Like, whoa, salacious. I know about that theoretically, not personally, but yes. Some sort of cracks started to emerge pretty early on in their marriage. So when Shirley became pregnant, Leonard decided that he needed to quit showbiz. According to his memoir, the day that his mother told his father she was pregnant, his father started gathering up photo albums and headshots and publicity photos, sort of anything from their showbiz careers. He gathered it all up in the backyard and burned it. This is a quote from Still Hungry After All These Years. He says, This bonfire was not to be discussed. My father made all the decisions. My mother watched from the kitchen window as he tore apart albums and tossed pages into the fire. With the fire still raging, he strode back into the house, not saying a word. He walked right past my mother and into the bathroom, shutting the door. While he was cleaning up, Shirley quickly went out into the yard, picked up a stick and poked through the fire. She managed to salvage some of the photos. Aw. Quickly, she trimmed the burnt edges from the photos and then hid them away, never saying a word again about the whole affair. So that's how I came to have a baby. I have no family history. Oh, God. That's so sad. So clearly this is like a third-hand story, right? Presumably his mother told him and then he told his ghostwriter. And here it is in book form, right? He was also, I should say, he was very open about his books being written by ghostwriters. He was like, I'm not a good writer. He's more of a rapper. He's more of a Sugarhill Gang type of figure in America. My guess here is. My guess here is that there is a kernel of truth to it or that it's just straightforwardly a real story. It's a really, it would be a weird one to make up for mole cloth, right? And it's painting a picture that resonates with how Richard saw his father, right? Which is kind of a storm cloud of a dude. And also when you have mercurial presences like that in a family, oftentimes the rest of the family adjusts to avoid these outbursts. So I can imagine a family based around not getting a baby. And not getting these weird blowups from his dad. Yeah, absolutely. Things are sort of engineered toward don't make dad mad. Yeah. So his dad quits his job as an emcee. Different places report different jobs for him. But the most common ones are that sometimes he worked in a thrift shop. But most of the time it seems he was just unemployed. So his dad is a storm cloud of a dude in the 40s and 50s. Right. Who is not providing for. Or his family. Right. That's also a cause of volatility often. Yeah, totally. If you have weird stuff about masculinity, especially in this era. Right. And you're not working and supporting your family, like that's only going to make that stuff gnarlier. Dudes are weird about it. After her years as a fan dancer, Shirley became a cosmetic salesperson, which also seems fitting for a parent of Richard Simmons. Yeah. Oh, first I was in burlesque. And then I started selling makeup. You're like, yeah. Did you invent the bedazzler also? Right. We all become a combination of our parents. And I think Richard did too. He had one older brother, Lenny, who Richard refers to as Mr. Perfect and Mr. Business. Those are like, those are like guess who characters. Okay. It's really clear that Richard and Lenny loved each other, but that Richard felt really pitted against Lenny. Richard thought that. But in his parents' eyes, he was always doing the wrong thing. And Lenny was always doing the right thing. It's that sort of sibling dynamic. Does he talk in the memoir about realizing he was gay? Or is this all under the surface? He never discusses his sexual orientation in the memoir. Oh my God. So like, listen, the backdrop of this story is that Richard Simmons' rise to fame almost exactly mirrors the onset of the AIDS epidemic. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're going on Carson, you're going on Letterman, you're going on all these shows. And you have this wide appeal coming out, puts you squarely in the middle of Pat Buchanan's culture wars, right? But then, do you get the sense that Richard Simmons, like, knew that he was gay and made a business decision not to talk about it? Or was he in denial about the fact that he was gay? I don't have any sense of any of it. Okay. According to some reports, he did have a long-term partner. Okay. That is the person who was sort of like saying that his housekeeper had kidnapped him in. Oh yeah. the missing Richard Simmons. the missing Richard Simmons era. Yeah. Right? So like, it's just all fraught. It's all unreliable narrators. It's all other people speaking for him. The thing that I feel really dead set on in this episode is Richard Simmons speaking for Richard Simmons. There's no chance that he's actually just an effeminate heterosexual guy, is there? Or is there? There's a YouTube video of outtakes and like pre-record from an interview he did at one point in like the 80s or something, where somebody said something about out of the closet. And he was like, well, I've been out of the closet for a long time. No, he hasn't. And I was like, you have not. Yeah. But also you sort of have, like, I see what he's saying. Yeah. Yeah. Especially in the 80s, people were not being like, well, actually he hasn't addressed it. I personally think Richard Simmons probably could have come out. I mean, everyone kind of knew already, but also it's like the psychology of this is so complex. I mean, this brings us to the next point in the story, which is that he and his brother were raised Catholic. Oh, good. Add that layer in there. He talks about thinking that it was weird that he and his brother went to Catholic school. They dressed up and went to mass every week. Lenny was an altar boy, but neither of them had ever been baptized and their parents never attended religious services or talked about religion. Oh, so they're like culturally Catholic, but not like actually beliefs. They don't believe stuff. So Richard sort of. Asked his parents and pressed about it and was like, why do we go to mass, but you don't go to mass? Why do we go to a Catholic school, but you're not, we don't seem to be Catholic. And his dad was like, look, it's a good school and it's three blocks away. It's where you go to school. Shut up about it. We want to instill in you a weird sense of constant shame. Yeah. We can tell how gay you are and we want you to feel bad about it forever. We are. This is a subsidy to your future therapist. In high school. In high school, Richard actually takes the plunge and fully converts to Catholicism. He gets baptized. He does the whole thing. He, at that point, strongly considers becoming a priest or even joining a monastery. Yeah. And that's like a thing for gay people back then. 100%. In his memoir, he says that he thought about becoming a priest because he quote, likes the outfits. God. Richard, you're not making this easy. We're trying to be sensitive to you. And the way that you wanted to be sensitive to you was because you were a priest. You wanted to be discussed. But it really seems like you want to tell the audience something and you're not telling them. It isn't until after he converts that he meets some cousins who live far away and they start talking about these bat mitzvahs that they've been having. And Richard is like, what's a bat mitzvah? And his cousins are like, oh, it's a Jewish thing because we're a Jewish family. Wait, what? You're Jewish? Wait, really? He's like secretly Jewish and he didn't know? His dad was raised Methodist and his mom was Jewish. Oh. And in Judaism, if your mom is Jewish, you are Jewish. Yeah. His parents never told them. That's fascinating. He found out through the grapevine that they were Jewish. The title of the chapter where he tells this story is A Catholic? Oy! That's the chapter. That is. In fact. That's the chapter. That's the chapter. I like this man. I like this man. So this is sort of like the tone and tenor of life at home. We're not talking about things. We're not showing affection. We're not letting you in on what's happening. He talks about his parents not really showing affection even to each other. Man, they really did lean into the Catholicism, didn't they? It's a really odd and sort of cold sounding household. To wit. Richard had had asthma. In his memoir, he writes that he had asthma at a time when people didn't really understand it, right? So we're talking about the 50s. And some people didn't even fully believe in it. Of course. According to Richard Simmons, one of those people was his dad. Nice. So he didn't get like an inhaler and stuff? Quote, well, my father didn't believe in all this asthma medicine. He secretly thought that my asthma would get better if I weren't such a brat. Oh my God, it's always the same thing. My dad also tended to be his own doctor. No matter what was wrong with you, he felt that it could be cured with one of the four remedies from his medicine cabinet. Oh no. Oh no. Camphofenic, cod liver oil, calamine lotion, or mercurochrome. Oh no. That's all you needed. I thought he was going to say the carnivore diet. We'd really go full circle. You didn't think we'd go full circle on mercurochrome? His relationship with his dad sounded like rough in a really deep way. Initially, I was going to say strained, but like that would be an improvement. Yeah. So I'm sending you another quote from his memoir. When I tried to one-up him, I was punished. This happened a lot when my mother was away. His method of punishment was perfect. He just ignored you. It was the punishment of silence. Very effective for a child who craves attention. You didn't exist. He didn't do your laundry. He didn't set a place at the table for you. Milton doesn't live here anymore. He had a short fuse, and if it went off, his words could be like daggers, cloaked in the most incredible vocabulary. His temper had style. Rather than being afraid of him, I wanted to see that temper in action and explore how I could twist it. So I'd push just to get him going. Oh man. So he's just like trying to get any form of attention he can. He's just trying to get a reaction. And his dad is like, that not setting a place at the table for you is like chilling. Brutal. I also appreciate about this quote that he lifts up his response to it where he's like, oh yeah, then I made it worse. Then I would go in and be like, what else can I get him to do? Right. So there's another little vignette in the book about his father ignoring him completely until Richard just starts singing show tunes at the table. Oh man. Until his father finally has to acknowledge him, even if it's just by being like, hey, stop it. That makes so much of his public persona. Makes sense. Yeah. Because it's like, he's just trying to get your attention. Yeah. And he's trying to get you to look at him. He's trying to annoy his way into your heart. Yeah. And his dad probably gave him his first ever Ellen face. One more thing about his dad. At one point in his childhood, his mother was rushed to the hospital and it turned out that she had an ulcer and they all go to the hospital together. They're in the waiting room and his dad immediately tears into him and says that, Richard is the reason that his mom is sick. Oh God. According to the memoir, he screamed at Richard quote, it's not Lenny, it's you. I'll spell it out for you. M I L T O N. No way. Jesus Christ. And then Richard turns it around on his dad and is like, no, you're the one who aggravates her. She's stressed out because she has to work all the time. Why don't you get a job? He says to his dad. Choke on a C O C K dad. So. Things were tough with his dad. Good with his mom. He loved his mom so much, really tough with his dad. And they're tough at school too. He's growing up in Louisiana in the fifties and he is not a Louisiana in the fifties kind of guy. He's more of a Portland in the 2010s kind of guy. More than 2024. He's got a huge personality. He's got big curly hair. He's super fat at the time. He's left-handed and he talks in the memoir about trying to correct every single one of those things. He's trying to be a silent mask Northpaw. 100%. He's looking for an extremely specific kind of conversion therapy. He is desperate to fit in and he is painfully aware that he fails to fit in with his family and he also fails to fit in with his peers. Right. Right. Those experiences of difference are most acute for him around his fatness. That difference plays out at home. He goes to the doctor when he's in grade school and the pediatrician gives him a lecture about weight loss and puts him on a diet. The way that he describes that meeting felt so familiar to me that you're like sitting in a doctor's office with this sort of authority figure. That's not just an authority over you, but is also an authority to your family. And I think that's a really good point. I think that's a really good point. Yeah. And they're reporting to your parent that your body is a failure. Also on top of everything else he has to be insecure about and he's getting shitted on for. It's like, oh, throw, throw fatness in there too. It's just like so much for one little guy to deal with. And again, this is all happening before he's like 10. Yeah. Yeah. So at that doctor's visit, the doctor hands him a photocopied piece of paper that lays out a diet for him to follow. Oh God. It's going to be bad, isn't it? You want to hear the diet? Yeah. Any guesses about what the diet is? Isn't it going to be some Scarsdale bullshit where it's like eat three blueberries in a bowl and then like salted ice cubes for lunch and then go jogging for dessert or something? Salted ice cubes is too light, but three blueberries is too heavy. Oh my God. Okay. Breakfast, one slice of dry wheat toast, a poached egg and quote a beverage. They don't really specify. And that seems like a real open. That's kind of weird. Yeah. Yeah. So milkshake is fine. Right. Lunch is three ounces of tuna that's been packed in water, drained and then dressed just with lemon juice. Oh, that's like the rocks diet. Oh, and two slices of rye crisp in case that wasn't dry enough for you. Your snack is one apple and your dinner is three ounces of lean meat and one cup of dark green vegetables. And again, a beverage. Yeah. God, it's like a YouTube challenge. It's like for dinner, eat six saltines and then afterwards fold a piece of paper more than eight times. So I looked at his diet and did a little rough estimate on the calories. If your beverages are water, this adds up to five hundred and eighty eight calories for the whole day. That's like prisoner of war rations. At this point, the Minnesota starvation study had already happened and that was at fifteen hundred and seven. Yeah. Yeah. I don't think leaving it up to his parents to enforce this, I guess. Which then just contributes to the bad relationship with his dad. Well, he also talks about sitting down to eat with the whole rest of his family and they're eating all of their normal dinner. Oh, God. And he's got like a little bowl of tuna. His sad little bowl of tuna. Yeah. Yeah. So he starts the diet food is terrible and he hates it. So he starts quietly feeding it to their dog under the table. That just means he's eating even less. Yes. And he starts just skipping meals. And the more weight he loses. The prouder his mom is of him. So he instantly gets the message that no one cares how you lose weight. It's just that you lose weight. I mean, it's bad for you at any age, but it's like to be doing this, this like important developmental time is like so dangerous and scary. I haven't I have nothing to say throughout this whole episode other than like, that's bad. That poor guy. I'm contributing nothing. So that difference around his size shows up for him in a big way at school. He talks about a rise in weight. And then he'd be like, no, I can't. I'm not okay. Like he would like be like, you're so right. This is how out of shape I am. So he's got the gay compensatory stuff and the fat compensatory stuff. So he's like establishing all these really harmful patterns. It's kind of the same skill set that he developed with his dad. Right. Which is just like, you just go over the top with it. You go when they go hard, you go harder. I'm imagining like maintenance phase listeners who saw like, they're doing a Richard Simmons episode. Now just sitting in their car staring into middle distance like, Oh God, I'm sad. I'm so sad about something that happened like 60 years ago. So at this point, when this happens, Richard's friends are all girls. Yeah. And they figure that if he isn't fat, this won't happen. Which is like rookie mistake, right? So they all raid their mom's medicine cabinets and bring in various diet pills. Oh, no, which was like fucking meth. Right. He doesn't name the pills, but he does describe taking a bunch of different colors of diet pills. This was a thing in the 60s. In particular, there was a huge boom in quote unquote diet pills, and they were sometimes called rainbow pills. Oh, there was very little information and research into their safety at this point. But pill mills started to pop up just fully walk in clinics. Yeah. Where patients would come in and be prescribed a quote unquote rainbow of pills that were supposedly like bespoke just for them and the patients would get a consult and a prescription usually a few prescriptions to be filled at a compounding pharmacy and the appeal the sort of selling point was that it was a medical solution and it was fully customized peter cohen a professor at harvard medical school told the smithsonian quote what they were really doing was selling stimulants combined with other medications to counteract the side effects of the stimulants oh so all they're doing is giving you amphetamines and then things to make the amphetamines less amphetamine also did i okay maybe we'll keep this maybe we won't did i tell you i once took one of my dad's antidepressants because i thought antidepressants were like happy pills i was in seventh grade oh no i was like oh if he takes them for depression then it'll make me extra happy so i took it but then it turned out they weren't antidepressants they were for his insomnia you just went to sleep it was like something like nuclear level sleeping pill and it was the day it was the last day of school for seventh grade and we were all going to a roller skating rink oh no and you wanted to be extra i wanted to be extra happy and so i sat down to lace up my skates and i was like i'm tired i'm gonna lie down and then i woke up at 3 15 when somebody was like shaking me the whole thing the whole day baby you took some trazodone there's none question in my mind i have no fucking idea what it was but i was also a tiny child and like the dosage was like also deranged and then also there was speaking of bullying there was a kid who had been bullying me all year and that was like his last chance to like beat me up and like as i was sleeping at some point during the day he like shook me awake and he's like come out back bitch i'm gonna beat your ass and i was i was too tired to deal with it i was like not right now man i'm too tired okay and he just never fucked with me again i'm too sleepy for you to mess me up it's such a wild like keep them on their toes what a fighting move so anyway could have been worse you could have been on amphetamines well yeah i mean that would have been way better and also i would have kicked the shit out of that guy so he keeps taking diet pills and he realizes that if he takes more pills he loses more weight of course he only stops taking the pills after he has a very intense episode of thinking and i quote that my heart would explode oh god so he backs off of the diet pills that freaks him out and he's like no no no never mind so he finds out that one of his friend's moms is going to weight watchers and he begs her to take him with her oh god uh this is early high school by this point she agrees and he's so happy that he runs home to tell his parents and he writes that when he told his parents they were really deeply proud of him oh more proud of him for going to weight watchers than like most other things right which scans the internet and he's like oh my god i'm so sorry i'm so sorry i'm so sorry i'm so with the experiences of a lot of fat kids yeah this is i mean some of these are parallels with your experience right 100 i was reading this and i was like i'm in this picture they're just like from a very young age this is like the overwhelming like issue that people talk to you about and give you shit about pretty much the only times he writes about his parents being proud of him or around weight loss oh god so he describes going to this first weight watchers meeting with his friend's mom everyone lines up and weighs in the group leader records everyone's weight and tells them how it changed from last week to this week if your weight goes down you get a star pinned to your shirt if your weight plateaus and stays the same you get a turtle which is like slow and steady whatever into your shirt and if your weight increases michael you get a fucking pig yeah god i was like oh it's not gonna be a pig is it oh yeah it was gonna be a pig or a cow or a everyone's weight loss or gain to the entire group and people clapped or did not clap and his friend's mom when he goes to the first meeting gets the fucking pig pinned to her shirt oh my god here is what he writes about that moment i held her hand she looked over at me for a moment and then she said something that i'll never forget you better do something about your weight now because it only gets worse later in life catch it now before it's too late i'll never forget the look of shame on her face here was this happy lady and one trip to the scale and 20 minutes later she's crying her mascara is running down her cheeks and she has a pig on her shoulder i knew from past experience that the system and reward and punishment probably wasn't going to work for me oh god it's like such a sad lesson for like a little kid totally and i think this is like where you start to see the birth of the richard simmons who stays up all night on the phone with people who watch his videos or come to his classes right yeah this is where you see the person who's just like i just don't want you to get wrecked by this right that's something i remember very vividly from the podcast that he has it like a deep well of empathy he seems to like really care about other people but then he also has like these weird blind spots where he sort of stops like it seems like he struggled to form relationships with people that weren't around like kind of rescuing them or like being a support for them yeah he he describes himself repeatedly in adulthood as someone who does not have friends right so he's just sort of doing this kind of like deep emotional support work right but he doesn't feel like a reciprocal relationship he doesn't feel you know that's how i took that and then you also think about this poor kid carrying around the fact that he's gay at the same time right it's like okay i have this fat thing that is like the number one thing that everybody is shitty to me about and then i have this big fucking secret that i have to keep to myself that i'm carrying around or at least this feeling i have that i can't put words to even if he hadn't sort of identified in himself yet and he's left-handed and he's left-handed so inferior so all of this all of the crash diets the diet pills the doctor's visits the weight watchers all of this happens while he is a child or a teenager he has not even gone off to college yet and he's already been through the ringer right so when it comes time for him to leave home he is he started at the university of louisiana at lafayette and then he transferred to florida state okay where he graduated interestingly enough with an art degree oh we could have had a richard simmons bob ross that's very fun for me to think about maybe there's a happy little tank top maybe there's a happy little tank top right here he wanted to be a painter and he studied abroad in italy okay and he loved it it oh he is there to make his dreams to be an artist come true but things take a very different turn when he's sitting at a cafe after class one day oh no all right there you go he says i noticed a table of men across the way staring at me i just assumed they must be admiring my gorgeous curly hair or my new paisley gucci knockoff overalls overalls okay yep he's he's all ready richard one of the men came over and introduced himself asking me if i knew fredrico fellini the italian director i said i didn't know him but i knew who he was well the gentleman who introduced himself was the casting director for the movie satiricon and fellini wanted me for a small role and he wanted me because i was fat but in italian it sounded so much nicer so richard simmons appears briefly in fellini's satirica wait this actually went through this actually happened it is a blink and you'll miss it kind of appearance no way he is there dude in his little overalls no but he is a little fat guy wait wait wait wait youtube has it youtube has it youtube has it richard simmons in fellini's satiricon exclamation point exclamation point exclamation point send me the clip hang on hang on hang on okay uh sending it to you this is fun richard simmons i would not in a million years have recognized that as him full beard definitely like a fat dude he looks like jack black he looks like a young belushi yes dude the uh one of the comments is my god the amount of people who think that's richard simmons is disturbing according to his memoir it is him i don't know somebody commenting without full context and information i don't know i don't know the youtube comment section that i know in a youtube comment so the satiricon role leads to a bunch more acting work in italy what mostly in commercial really in one he played a a bunch of grapes for an italian fruit of the loom commercial nice okay in another he played a dancing meatball that sings a jingle god now i'm imagining a a life for richard simmons where he just became a successful italian actor just only did commercials yeah just like a fat happy guy in it totally he did the skinny sad guy in america version like he did make his money off of commercials there's no question yeah this all leads to him becoming a little local celebrity in florence he's living there he's 20 years old he's supporting himself through acting he's going to school he's loving his life this whole chapter of his life makes me so happy for him dude i know it's like his eat pray love era and i just love that he gets this sort of era of appreciated as he is and celebrated as he is in his true form as a dancing meatball you know you're like yeah stay there richard freeze frame keep richard the happy meatball so good this is what we want for you richard so one day he borrows his friend's car to go grocery shopping his friend has a little tiny fiat and once again fat lady in a little car loves fat dude in a little car he goes grocery shopping he uses his friend's car when he comes out of the market to go to the car there is a note on the windshield this is a note that he cites throughout the rest of his career as like the turning point when he was like i finally have to do something about my weight oh no the note says according to his memoir richard you're very funny but fat people die young please don't die dude leave the happy meatball alone totally let him be a happy little meatball god that's awful so then like this act of bullying becomes like this crucial part of the story of his origin story well and he goes on to say in later interviews like i thought people just didn't like me because i was fat i didn't realize i was going to die because i was fat right so one of his big messages later on was like you gotta tell fat people they're gonna die god that's so sad so he goes on this real emotional roller coaster on this one like who wrote the note it's somebody who clearly knows or recognizes him it wasn't signed so he doesn't know who it was he gets way up in his head about like which way to go and he's like i don't know i don't know which way to go and he's like i don't know which way to go and he's like i don't know which way to go and he's like one of his friends probably wrote it say to my face motherfucker totally say so he writes about how he ultimately sort of processed all of this and this is how he dealt with the feedback from that note he says i knew i didn't want to die so who or what was the enemy i knew the answer food i knew what i had to do i had to stop eating that was it plain and simple and that's what i did i stayed very busy i drank water i walked everywhere and the weight began to come off and i do mean the weight began to come off almost like a sugar rush i began to feel a sort of heady euphoria it became a game every day i found new ways to avoid eating if i were going to a party or someone's house i'd fill up with water quickly drinking seven or eight glasses before i went every day i'd roll the dice how many days could i do this dude this sucks yeah and he's like now this is a strategy for my health yeah why can't people just be fat and you be fucking nice to them good enough for felini yeah i know jesus christ fat activist king frederico god so that's exactly what he does he stops eating and in two and a half months he loses over a hundred pounds no fucking way that fast michael this is how richard simmons quote-unquote loses the weight dude he's just straight up wild unchecked happily embraced anorexia i hope he's like lying or exaggerating about that i mean that's like so dangerous he talks about his nails breaking off because they're so brittle he talks about his skin thinning out and turning gray oh god he talks about finding clumps of hair on his pillow most mornings and one day he's out running errands and he starts feeling nauseated and dizzy and the next thing he knows he wakes up in a hospital and he's talking to the nurses about starving himself oh god the nurses start refeeding him and they explain to him that this is not the way to lose weight yeah he starts to slowly but surely come back a little bit from his disordered eating but he's what 12-step folks or aa folks might call a dry drunk right he's not in therapy he's not in he's not at peace with his body he doesn't have a neutral much less a positive relationship with food he's just like i'm eating because i'm supposed to eat leave me alone and probably all kinds of like still like guilt and shame about how much he's eating and when he's eating stuff like that nothing is resolved he's just managing to kind of bear down and knuckle through so he's just starting to come back from his eating disorder stuff and he gets a draft notice oh vietnam oh god i forgot this was taking place in like his history he's told to report to a center in new york city for duty he shows up but he is still very early in refeeding from his eating disorder god so he's still losing hair he still looks malnourished and he's given a deferral and doesn't serve right okay uh and he decides from there to move to los angeles and start working in restaurants is he attempting to become an actor at this point is that why he goes to la he doesn't really say why he goes to la it's odd i sort of thought oh maybe he's gonna pursue acting out there no no he just starts working in restaurants oh okay his longest stint is in a restaurant called derrick's which was a very cnb scene restaurant and its celebrity guests are like peak 70s he was like the people who ate at derrick's were dionne warwick tom jones johnny carson and friend of the show ed mcmahon aubrey we don't have time to tell all the youths who all these people are we now take an hour-long detour to describe the youths already know who dionne warwick is from her excellent twitter career oh that's true actually that is right yes and ed mcmahon our listeners will know from a previous episode scroll back our single least podcast popular episode you love bringing that up my number one favorite i love it so much it's your warm wars as you can imagine richard simmons is the maitre d and he is built for front of housework yeah he's an entj no this is we know this from the completely real categorization we now can diagnose him with one of the 16 people oh so like you he's an extrovert all right all right all right all right all right how dare you never bring that up again so he finds a way to supplement his income he makes jewelry okay and he models it at the restaurant and then people are like oh my god your jewelry where'd you get it and he'd be like i made it do you want some and would like pull jewelry out of his pocket this is like early instagram this like is he's like a little influencer he's totally an influencer but wait do you want to know what do you imagine let's just start here what do you imagine the richard simmons jewelry looks like i don't want to be mean i don't of his jewelry is anatomy oh what oh is it just like dicks no no not that kind of boobs boobs kidney earrings what wait liver brooches wait spleen hat pins are you sure you're not misreading are you having a stroke is this real a very special 24 karat gold uterus with opal ovaries some of those you wouldn't even know that it's the the part of the body the kidney necklace would just look like a bean i would well famously the tiffany design the classic tiffany design is just a little gold bean so like you know maybe it looks like knock off tiffany a uterus i feel like i would recognize because it has little ears anyway i can't express to you how much i would wear like pancreas earrings we have so many richards like it's like the the happy meatball richard we want the best for the artist richard the kidney gold maker the 24 karat gold uterus yeah richard one gallbladder please we want the best for all of these people and we got this totally different richard so while he's working in restaurants selling his wares he picks up some more extremely maladaptive weight loss methods right he's now working in restaurants he is surrounded by food and also he's in fucking la where like everybody has disordered eating so he's like i'm sure he's getting all kinds of tips a server at one restaurant where he works gives him a lot of food and he's like i'm gonna go to a restaurant gives him a tutorial on how to purge oh god another co-worker introduces him to abusing laxatives for weight loss and he was like i like that they tasted like chocolate oh my god at one point he notices some regulars are all at the restaurant all the time but they're rarely eating and they're very thin and they spend a lot of time in the bathroom and they come back having powdered their noses he's like so one day i just marched into that bathroom right behind them and he sees powder on the sink and he's like oh my god i'm gonna go to the bathroom and he's like oh my god what is this richard and you're like you live in la and you work in the restaurant industry with famous people in the 70s you know cocaine i have no experience with la or cocaine but i do assume that it was basically a snow globe at that time anyway that is a point at which he's like i actually don't think i'm gonna do cocaine to lose weight good call richard you should do cocaine because it makes you more fun to be around you should do it for the good reasons while he's living in la he is which is sort of a burgeoning leisure activity in la at this point oh right like the industry is forming yeah yeah this is the 70s we're not even into the 80s so this is like exercises for like jack lillane right and like strong men and that kind of thing and we're starting to move into like oh what if it's something that people do as part of their daily lives yeah so he tries out yoga and he's like not for me yeah yeah that does seem a little low energy for richard and then one day a friend recommends exercise classes at a place called body by gilda okay body by gilda was a studio run by gilda marks i would say based on what i've read that gilda marks is sort of like the exercise equivalent of that saying about the velvet underground like not everybody listened but everybody who did started a band right so body by gilda is where jane fonda started working out okay uh regular attendees also included bet midler and barbara streisand nice so richard goes to gilda's class in la and he talks about sort of all of the feelings of being a fat kid and learning that physical activity is a place where you get ridiculed or you get excluded or you get whatever and he's like this is the first time i didn't feel any of that and i got to be exactly as exuberant as i wanted to be i got to be exactly who i was someone was there playing the piano and they were playing like crowd pleaser kind of songs gilda is this kind of glamorous class leader she always has her nails done for her gym class and her hair is done she has like a signature red lip that she wears to the where i'm just like holy hell full face of makeup yeah jim look at you that doesn't like she looks like a salvador dolly painting by the end but i'm sure she was moving at work it's exercise but it's mostly about having fun he feels like he can really cut loose and be his whole self with his whole energy level and he leaves feeling strong feeling amped and with this sense that he really found the place for him so much so that he pre-pays for a whole series of 10 classes he's like okay sign me up he is also the only person in the class who's not a woman that night he goes to work at derrick's at the restaurant and gilda and her husband walk in the door of the restaurant and he thinks that they're there to have dinner he's really excited to see her and what she's actually there to do is give him a refund what and to tell him that he can't come back what and that the women in the class weren't comfortable with having a man in the class and he's straightforwardly in the memoir is like i don't believe her so what do you think it was i think probably like if you're not accustomed if you didn't sign on specifically for richard simmons level of energy yeah i could understand feeling like this is more than i'm up for i'm just like marveling at how like hurtful that must have been because like you finally find a place that you're comfortable and you're like oh i found my people and then an hour later they're like no yeah so this one he describes this one as hurting him in more depth and detail than any of the other previous hurts in this book yeah it must be yeah once again he's getting the message that he's not wanted yeah yeah so next in the book he tells this story of being out for dinner and running into a customer of his from derrick's from the restaurant like a lot of his customers this dude is wealthy and he's got a lot of money and he's got a lot of money and he's got a lot of money and as hell and they start talking and richard is like i think it's time for me to move on from restaurants and this customer says well what do you want to do and richard says i actually want to start my own gym so that's what did it he just like gets kicked out of one he's like i'm starting one he went to one exercise class he loved it and he was like oh you're gonna kick me out how about i start my own gym i need to know how many public figures launch their careers out of pure spite according to richard simmons in this memoir this strains credulity to me okay the customer at that dinner is like what a great idea i'll finance it yeah huh like it occurs to him and he has a you know a financing partner right just immediately it's there's this weird sort of way of storytelling that richard simmons has like he just keeps stumbling into major victories at one point he's like i never wanted to write a book and then i sat on a plane and i was sitting next to the vp of random house i'm like no you weren't also you wonder how much he was exploring the gay scene in la at this time for sure like it could have been somebody he knew from the restaurant it could have been someone he was dating it could have been like as soon as you leave out this huge part of your identity there's probably entire like entire people that you know that are not going to make it in your book and entire relationships and and subplots that just aren't going to be in there yeah i will say i did find a clip of an interview where he's being interviewed by huel hauser uh california listeners will be familiar with no idea huel hauser it's like dion warwick to our young listeners for the entire interview richard simmons is staring at huel hauser's chest and then he goes sorry there's a chubby little alligator on your shirt and then later he's like do you want to arm wrestle me oh my god simmons is working overtime to get laid and it's in an interview for cnn control your meatballs richard it's it made me it made me so happy i was gonna show it i was gonna play it on the show and then i was like do you know who huel hauser is if you were like i've never heard that name in my life and i was like well then it's not fun this is what i would be like if i was ever in the room with jeremy irons i'd just be looking at his neck veins oh you got a jeremy irons thing specifically jeremy irons from diehard with a vengeance where he's all ropey and mean so regardless of the origin of the book i'm not going to be talking about that is when richard simmons opens his first exercise studio this is the gym that is later known as slimmons okay it's pretty good so he opens his gym and he decides that it's going to be a gym that takes all comers you know okay and it really takes off with two demographics in particular gay men and fat women just like this show just like our just like our podcast we are the richard simmons demographic we cannot talk shit we cannot come for richard simmons lest someone come for us a number of gay men are into nautilus gyms at this point but those are described at the time as being kind of like nightclubs and sort of like hookup spaces yeah yeah so it's not uh everyone is welcome and you're here to exercise space my friend's gym in london which is like around soho has like a women's changing room a men's changing room and another men's changing room just like everyone knows that's like the gay sex changing room even though there's like not a sign and the women's room is just like a tumbleweed it's just storage they put keep like the paper towel in there there's no no one's ever been in there there are these nautilus gyms that are kind of like nightclubs there are bodybuilding gyms but if you're not a bodybuilder you're gonna feel so weird there oh right people use a particular phrase a lot when talking about the early years of slimmons and that phrase is quote you don't have to look like you are a bodybuilder you don't already go to the gym to belong there oh that's nice right yeah so he starts leading exercise classes at this gym and he starts getting pressed because he is richard simmons and i i left this out the gym despite being like come one come all outsiders hello the gym is in beverly hills okay and the classes were expensive in late 70s dollars it was a hundred dollars for 10 classes that's 650 dollars in today's dollars so that's 65 bucks a class yep damn he also starts getting press just for being in la and being richard simmons yeah that makes sense yeah there are a bunch of like little profiles of him that start to pop up there's an la times one where they call him quote a kind of freaked out jack lilley okay which jack lillane did not love yeah i'll bet yeah just say the gay version of me this is taking forever the gym takes off and it becomes a chain at this point the gym is not yet called slimmons oh also nowhere in the write-ups i'm like everybody was asleep at the wheel for these obituaries of him because no one mentioned that the original name of his gym was the anatomy asylum that's garbage so we're gonna watch an ad richard for the anatomy asylum that i found on youtube the man who brought us i'm a catholic oi also did a catholic yeah the anatomy asylum is so bad then wait until you hear the slogan it gets better slash worse oh god okay hi i'm richard simmons my first anatomy asylum in los angeles was a start of something great a great national network of 72 clubs in 13 cities including yours where people like you can lose weight look good and feel great now we've got the music the instructors and the facilities right here to help you get yourself back in shape join me in over 100 000 members all over the country isn't it time you were committed to the anatomy asylum join the anatomy asylum now and get two people for the price of one or 50 off the enrollment he saved it do you see what i did i'm both better and worse so we are at the beginnings of the richard simmons fitness empire it's happening and Next time, we're going to watch the empire sort of unfold in front of him, and we're going to see what Richard Simmons does when he stops being sort of the target of the messages and starts being the deliverer of the messages, right? Okay. We start seeing what he decides to do with the platform that he builds, and it's really interesting. So what was your takeaway from this section of the book? How did it change the way that you think about Richard Simmons? I felt honestly like a little bit embarrassed that someone who had been such a constant presence in my life had been given so little thought by me, but also just kind of by the culture at large. Right. It made me sad that I had to go back and read this book from 25 years ago to hear from anyone anywhere that he actually had a really rough time growing up and that he had different dreams than this. And that he thought he was going to be a priest, and then maybe an actor, and then maybe a painter, right? Like, all of this was new information to me. All of it makes sense. Right. And all of it makes me wish that we had been better to him when he was around to experience us being better to him. I mean, I do think next time we're confronted with a public figure like this, who's sort of happy-go-lucky almost to a fault, I think we should immediately ask ourselves, shouldn't you be a happy little meatball? Ha ha ha! Meatballing around somewhere in Italy? Thank you.