MICHAEL MOORE x OJ SIMPSON: True Story

     One of my favorite scenes in one of my favorite movies is Rutger Hauer’s “Tears in the Rain” monologue from Blade Runner. It begins with the line “I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe.” Over the past 45-plus years, I too have “seen things” – some terrible, some sublime and others that are utterly inexplicable. Near the top of that last category would be my attendance of Michael Moore’s live 1997 interview with OJ Simpson in front of a studio audience. 

     At the time, I was working for Jim Henson Productions in New York City and we were finishing up the first season of production on The Wubbulous World of Dr. Seuss, a Muppet-ized version of Dr. Seuss-inspired stories for Nickelodeon. Being near the end of the season, some of my colleagues were jumping ship to take gigs on other shows. A friend and colleague of mine left and went to work on a pilot for a talk show that was being hosted by Michael Moore and would be run on Fox. It should be remembered that in the 1990’s, Fox was the scrappy, also-ran 4^th network in America and was mostly known as the home for irreverent and satirical comedies like The Simpsons, Married…with Children and MADtv. Michael Moore’s style of cheeky outrage was on-brand for Fox as they continued to look for cheap ways to score ratings. 

      A few days before the pilot episode was to be taped, my friend called and invited me to be in the audience. “You should come to the taping. The special guest he has is… well, it’s crazy.”

     My kneejerk reaction was, “Who’s he got, OJ Simpson? (chortle chortle)”

     There was dead silence on the other end of the receiver. OJ had been acquitted nearly two years earlier, was now a complete pariah and effectively shadow banned from any sort of news cycle. I’m still not sure why I guessed him, but it was clear from her stunned reaction that I my wild guess was actually correct. “Just come to the taping,” she said. 

      So, I went. The show was being taped in a space on the West Side of Manhattan somewhere in the West 40’s. I’m not sure it was a studio regularly used for television and the whole operation was a bit spartan. If there was any kind of set, I don’t remember it. My recollection is that it had more of an MTV Unplugged vibe, which seems likely given the popularity of that show and its’ aesthetic in the late 90’s. I don’t remember who the advertised guests were. The all-knowing Internet tells me that I saw Jon Stewart, Molly Shannon, Kevin Smith and Sheryl Crow. I do remember seeing Sheryl, in part, because she performed. (I will say in hindsight that this was a great line-up and I wished I remembered it.) There was no mention of OJ Simpson beforehand.

       The first part of the show was something of a dud. Michael Moore was not a very compelling interviewer in front of a live audience. Perhaps he was just nervous. The only piece that resonated was a pre-taped segment about the atrocities being committed in Louisiana’s notorious Angola prison. He also did a piece on gun control which he set-up by taping fake guns under every seat in the audience, Oprah-style. (“And you get a gun, and you get a gun and you get a gun!” It is worth noting here that this taping took place about 18 months before the Columbine Massacre.) Overall, the show was running pretty long and was fairly dull up to this point. Michael Moore was aware of this and after the main part of the show had concluded, he got up and begged the audience to stay with him as there was one more special guest to come. 

      I held my breath. Remember, my friend had not actually confirmed my suspicion and no one in the audience appeared to be remotely aware of what was about to happen. Sure enough, after an excruciating pause, Michael Moore came back out on the stage and announced that his next guest “was the winner of the 1968 Heisman Trophy.” It seems likely that I exhaled with an audible, “Holy shit, it is OJ.” For the rest of the crowd, it took a few moments to register what was happening before their eyes. I have never before or since witnessed the air sucked out of a room more quickly and more completely than it was in that moment. 

     After the initial shock of Simpson’s entrance passed, there was a fair bit of booing, hissing and the occasional cry of “murderer.” In hindsight, I do wonder what kind of advance security precautions the production team had taken. This had every possibility of going sideways and devolving into a uncontrollable scrum. Plus, everyone in the crowd now had a fake gun. Moore made a passing attempt to settle the crowd and then started awkwardly asking OJ some football-related questions, choosing to dress those questions up with some aggressive modifiers like “cutting” and “slashing.” This line of questioning did not last long and Moore quickly pivoted to the Big Question, asking OJ Simpson directly, “Did you kill them?” 

     Simpson declared his innocence, of course, but surprisingly allowed Michael Moore to keep asking questions for what felt like an hour. I honestly don’t remember any details that were discussed. Nothing that Simpson said convinced me of his innocence, nor he did provide any new information or context that hadn’t been made public through the trial and the media circus that had engulfed America from the time of the murders until he was acquitted in October of 1995. What was made apparent from the interview was that OJ himself had reached a mental state where he truly believed that he was innocent. That part was fascinating to observe. 

      After Moore was done asking him questions, he ratcheted up the insanity one more notch by LETTING THE AUDIENCE ASK OJ SIMPSON QUESTIONS! Seriously. They put a microphone out in the audience and people were able to get up and ask OJ Simpson questions directly about the murder and the trial. And he answered them. It was wild. Again, I can’t recall the questions or the answers. I think I was in too much shock about the whole thing. When the Q&A was halted and the audience dismissed, some of the crowd actually went up on stage with Simpson and Moore. A couple of them had disposable or point-and-shoot cameras with them and were taking the 1990’s equivalent of selfies with OJ Simpson. Nearly thirty years later, my mind is still reeling. 

     If you’ve read this far you have a lot of obvious questions, the top two being “why did OJ agree to this interview?” and “what happened to the footage?” Michael Moore has occasionally and briefly answered those questions, including once on The Late Show with David Letterman that you can watch here. According to him, Moore simply called up OJ at home and invited him on. (Bizarrely, Moore claims that Simpson and his family were watching the movie Selena about the murdered singer at the time.) Moore claimed that he would give Simpson the platform to tell his side of the story, and I think, to some extent, that is why Simpson agreed to it. Fox being Fox wanted to go huge on this interview and sensationalize it to the nth degree. Columbia, who apparently owned the show, wanted no such circus and buried it. To this day, I do not believe any part of the OJ Simpson interview has ever seen the light of day. 

     Personally, I want to see the whole un-edited show. That is, I want to see the raw footage from every camera. I know I was there, but I can’t remember what was said, how it was said and how it was received by the audience. It’s like I was in a bad car accident and survived, but don’t understand how. Additionally, I hope someone will eventually make a documentary about the interview. This one hour of lost television history contains many layered volumes of insight on American sociology, pop culture, crime and the psychology of collective memory. It remains one of the most surreal things that I have ever witnessed.

I hope to never experience anything that surpasses it.