#60 The Messenger

Pushkin.

Hi, dear.

Happy birthday to me.

Oh, my God.

It was your birthday.

It was your birthday last week, wasn't it?

It's kind of why I was phoning.

Happy birthday.

Oh, fuck.

I'm sorry, buddy.

It loses something when you have to call a week later to receive, to get get your

own birthday wish from someone, you know.

It hurts.

Okay, honestly, I feel like your birthday is not that important to you.

Am I wrong?

Well, it's not as important to me as the first night of Chanuka

and the second night,

not the third night.

I hate the third night.

You know what?

As a birthday present to myself, I'm gonna hang up on you.

Happy birthday to me, indeed.

From Pushkin Industries, I'm Jonathan Goldstein and this is Heavyweight.

Today's episode, The Messenger.

Right after the break.

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as a kid growing up in Cleveland Michael loved acting the only problem I wasn't very good In fact, he stank.

In every summer camp show, he was placed in the back row.

In a children's production of The Hobbit the Musical, backstage, a kid dressed as a dwarf told Michael, my mom says your singing is awful.

But it didn't stop Michael.

He nursed his acting bug all the way through senior year, when one day, he heard about a movie being filmed in Cleveland, and the director needed lots of teens to be extras.

Straight after school, Michael made his way to the auditions.

He was shown into a room with the director and some of the crew.

They gave him a script, and he started acting.

And their eyes lit up, and I was asked to keep reading.

And so we did the scene again.

We did it again.

And again, and again.

And all the while, Michael was overcome by a curious feeling.

I was doing a good job.

Had you ever experienced this before?

Like been in an audition where people were responding this way?

No.

No.

I was usually in auditions where they're they're like, we can make him a tree.

At the end of the audition, the director told Michael that he was not going to be an extra.

Michael was going to be the star of the whole movie.

Why was he going to be the star of the whole movie?

Was it his brando-esque brooding?

His shia lebuffe and intensity?

They showed me the storyboard, and I looked exactly like the kid in the drawings of the storyboard.

I think that's the reason I got it.

They were just like, you look like the kid we drew.

The film was called The Messenger based on a true story.

And the true story it was based on was a little-known World War II anecdote about a teenager named Thomas E.

Jones.

Jones was a telegram messenger in Washington, D.C.

On August 14th, 1945, he was sent to deliver the telegram that announced Japan's unconditional surrender to the Allies.

But on the way to deliver the message, he got pulled over for an illegal U-turn.

And thus, the end of World War II was delayed by 10 minutes.

Michael played the role of Thomas as he navigated that fateful day.

I show up to set, and I just was immediately involved in the magic of film.

They had to fake the daylight by putting lights outside the window.

And I remember being like, oh, you're not just like capturing a moment, you're creating a moment.

And the custodian of this exciting new world, the director of the movie, was a 25-year-old Wunderkin named Quincy.

Quincy took to Michael immediately.

Throughout the production, he'd check in with Michael on the phone and take him out for wings.

Michael looked up to Quincy.

To meet someone who was orchestrating this giant production and then for him to like take time, talk to me.

I felt part of.

Even after filming Rapped, Quincy stayed in touch, calling Michael with updates about the movie's release.

We were going to premiere at the Philadelphia Film Festival.

I learned that it was a big production, a $100,000 short film, which is a lot of money for a short movie.

The executive producer was this man named Pat Crochie.

Pat!

Pat!

Pat!

If you don't know the name, Pat Croce was a media presence, an entrepreneur famous in the world of sports because he owned the Philadelphia 76ers in the late 90s.

Oh, what a play by Iverson!

He was a motivational speaker.

I get up, I slap my palms together, it's gonna be a great day.

A noted pirate enthusiast.

People ask me if I'm a pirate, and I say yes, but 300 years too late.

And the kind of beloved pre-Me Too macho man who'd show up unannounced on the set of the local news just to scoop the anchor woman up into his arms.

Accident on the jersey turnpike is

my god.

Because when you have that much joie de vivre, what choice do you have?

You know, whenever Pat comes in the room, you never know what's gonna happen.

He just doesn't have any rules.

Because Pat Croce,

because he's involved, the movie gets a lot of press.

For a short film by an unknown director, The Messenger received an unheard of amount of press.

ESPN carried a story with footage of Michael on set, and there was a huge write-up in USA Today.

But as anticipation around the movie grew, he started to reconsider.

Leading up to the Philadelphia Film Festival, talking to Quincy, he's like, Tom Hanks wants to meet with you.

This is a real chance.

This is a real opportunity.

This is bigger than I imagined.

I was like, maybe, maybe I try and pursue acting.

Maybe Michael had been wrong all these years.

Maybe everyone had been.

Maybe he really was a good actor.

And it took Quincy to discover it.

Michael couldn't wait to walk walk the red carpet, see himself on the big screen, and enjoy a virgin apple teeny with Tom Hanks.

Did your parents come with you to the premiere?

Well, we didn't make it to the premiere.

The movie was canceled.

So, the week before the Philadelphia Film Festival premiere, I got a phone call from Quincy and

he

was clearly crying.

and

he told me that the movie wasn't going to come out and nobody was going to see it

because it turns out that Quincy had lied and had told a really big lie.

The lie Michael's referring to had nothing to do with the historical anecdote itself.

That part was true.

But over the end credits, Quincy played footage of the actual present-day Thomas E.

Jones being interviewed on his deathbed.

The only problem?

That guy was an actor.

It seems Quincy had just found a random old man, slipped him into a gown, strapped him into a hospital bed, and christened him Thomas E.

Jones.

But there was one thing Quincy wasn't counting on.

Because the movie had received so much attention, Thomas E.

Jones' real family found out.

And Thomas E.

Jones' real family wasn't happy because as it turned out, the real Thomas E.

Jones was very much alive, breathing, eating, sleeping, and not on a deathbed, but just a regular old bedbed.

And so Pat Crochie decided to pull the movie.

I mean, it was crushing disappointment.

I had the ticket to go.

I had the suit.

I was, I had all the expectation I had in my brain, everything that could be possible after, and it's all gone.

It's all, it vanishes.

And then it's a wave of embarrassment because I have to tell everybody.

Michael had to go back to his friends, family, his grandmother, who'd been clipping every article about the movie, and say, remember how I was going to be a big movie star?

It was all a fraud.

And the guy who thought I had talent, also a fraud.

And I never talked to Quincy again.

Michael abandoned his dream of becoming an actor.

But his time on The Messenger still had its impact.

It allowed him to realize how much he loved being on a set, loved the magic of creating a whole world from thin air.

And that pushed him towards a career in TV, writing for shows on Disney and Nickelodeon.

Meanwhile, Quincy's IMDb credits have grown sparse.

I always wondered what happened to Quincy.

Because I looked up to him, there was part of me that wanted to tell him that I've like succeeded, that I've pursued movies because of him.

But along with that, Michael has a lingering question for Quincy.

I never understood

why you would take such a big risk like that.

To make such a big lie.

It's like you've set up a film crew to film this guy on his deathbed and it wasn't him.

Like it just seems like a bad plan.

As Michael has climbed the ranks of show business, this question has only gained in poignance.

Why risk your reputation?

Especially when the story was good enough as it was.

Why did you lie?

After the break, searching for Quincy to become the messenger's messenger.

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Why did Quincy lie?

The more I think about it, the less sense it all makes.

Why go to the trouble of hiring an old man and building a hospital set?

Why not just use the real Thomas E.

Jones?

Hello.

Oh, hello.

My name is Jonathan Goldstein.

I've so far been unable to contact Quincy, so I reach out to someone else who might have the answer.

I was looking for a Thomas E.

Jones.

He's deceased.

Oh, I'm very sorry.

Yes, I'm his widow.

When he died, we would have been married almost 70 years.

Thomas's widow, Nancy, is 89 years old.

She says she doesn't know why Quincy didn't just go to Thomas himself.

But we get to talking and she tells me the story of how she first met Thomas.

It was through his work as a messenger.

It turns out Nancy's father was Thomas's boss at the telegram office.

She tells me how in 1945, there was a dedicated telegraph machine standing by for the sole purpose of awaiting the Japanese surrender.

And when that machine started ticking, my father, he handed the message first to my husband, who was a bicycle messenger at 16 years of age.

Since a bike was too slow for such an important message, a co-worker agreed to drive Thomas in his car.

Unfortunately, he set out in the wrong direction.

And thus, the most famous U-turn in American history, or at least the only one I've ever heard of.

And I've read my Howard Zen.

The U-Turn got Thomas and his driver pulled over by a cob.

Of course, they were saying, we've got the Japanese peace surrender message here.

Yeah, I've heard a lot of stories, but the police realized it was the truth, and they just tore up the ticket.

Wow, what a story.

Yeah.

And it's a pretty different story than the one in The Messenger.

Not only were the Joneses angry about the fake Thomas, but they were also angry about what they considered the fake story.

In Quincy's version of events, Thomas is in no hurry to deliver the message.

He makes a casual pit stop at a diner where he hits on the waitress and enjoys a large breakfast of pancakes, all while the war rages on.

The Joneses read about that scene in the media coverage of Quincy's movie, newspaper write-ups with headlines like, Boys' Pancake Breakfast Delayed the End of World War II.

Well, you know, my kids were just serious about that.

We're stopped talking about kids.

We're talking about people now 60 years old.

We were outraged.

The kids were outraged.

This is Victoria Jones.

She's one of Thomas and Nancy's six children, all of whom, when it came to the messenger, were in agreement.

Which was unusual for the six of us.

This is Thomas's son, Mike Jones.

He says that the only one inclined to let the whole thing go was Thomas himself.

That was kind of my dad's attitude like oh don't make a big deal don't get this person in trouble we said no this is altering history but just kind of portrayed him like as the slacker you know like oh the heck with that i'm gonna go and flirt and eat pancakes

victoria says that although quincy never reached out to her father he easily could have just like you found my mother by getting a few phone calls quincy could have found my father and he never tried.

When she found out about the movie, Victoria messaged Quincy several times, but she says he grew defensive and eventually stopped answering.

And then when my father died, I sent him a message and said, my father is now deceased.

No.

Oh, I should go back and look.

He might have said, I'm sorry, and that was it.

I tell the Joneses the story about Michael and how I'm trying to reach Quincy myself.

Good luck with that one.

I'm sure he'll think this is a better left-a-dead story, don't you?

It turns out Nancy Jones is right.

When I finally get through to Quincy via email, his response is emphatic.

I'm not interested in talking about that project anymore, he writes.

And that's the last I hear from Quincy.

What happens next is years go by.

Unrelated to my failure to speak with Quincy, but you never know, heavyweight is cancelled and I lose my job.

And while the story never entirely leaves my mind, without an ergonomic office chair and a long-distance phone plan, there's not much I could do about it.

And then one day, while trying to decide on a fun font for my resume, I receive a message from Michael.

He says he an important update to share.

Hey Jonathan.

Hey Michael, how are you?

Good, how are you doing?

It's been almost three years since Michael and I have spoken.

You have a son now?

I've got a wife.

I've got a son.

The whole family is currently in New York, where Michael's wife Katie is producing a movie.

It turns out that Katie's movie is the reason for Michael's update.

The associate producer on the movie.

His name's Dan.

Michael explains that while out for dinner with Dan, they started talking about the industry, by which I mean the show business industry.

And one of the things people in the industry enjoy chatting about most is how they got into the industry.

So Michael told Dan the story of The Messenger, about the director Quincy, about the producer Pat Crochy.

And Dan is from Philly.

Dan's parents are family friends with the Croachies.

You're kidding.

Show Biz Connections.

In this life, there's not a thing that doesn't come down to Show Biz Connections.

It's not what you know, when you know, where you know it, or why you know it, but whom you know.

Pat Croce was the executive producer on the movie, the one who ultimately shut it all down.

So with Quincy unwilling to talk, he's our best shot at figuring out why Quincy had lied.

At some point, Pat had to have demanded an explanation from Quincy.

Dan agrees to talk to his mom, who agrees to talk to Pat's daughter, who agrees to talk with Pat, who then agrees to talk with me.

Mr.

Croachy?

Call me Pat.

This is Pat, Pat, Pat, Croachy.

One thing I like to say about your heavyweight podcast is that it always inculcates a high vibrational frequency.

Can you say more about the high frequency?

Well, in the realm of form, if we're going to transcend form.

Pat Crochy has a white goate that ends in a point at his chest.

He's in the Zenden, a large room above the barn on his 53-acre estate.

His walls are covered in Chinese and Tibetan calligraphy.

He says that these days, he seldom makes any media appearances.

Is there any reason for that?

It's a great question, you interviewer, you.

Well, ten years ago, something happened.

My mind cracked.

Pat's mind cracked in a meeting for one of his restaurants.

He owned several.

Among them, the rum barrel, which is pirate-themed.

And I'm sitting there, thinking to myself, what the hell am I doing here?

I don't really give a shit about the next great grouper sandwich.

This is just more.

I always was seeking more.

Another win.

Another standing ovation.

Another bestseller.

Another.

Another.

More.

More.

It.

There was never enough.

Never.

What Pat realized was that in spite of all his successes, he wasn't really happy.

And so he tried to change his way of thinking, but it was a slow process.

The ego in me was, if I can change my mind, that'd be another great bestseller.

And I would go back on the speaking game.

It was all ego, all commercial, but that's how Grace hooked me.

Everything that unfolds is perfect.

I have this adage, the past has served its purpose perfectly.

But most people are cherry pickers.

Well, I wish that would have changed or I wish this were.

No!

The purpose of the past, Jonathan, there's only one purpose, to bring you and me right here and now.

Okay.

The past to me is smoke off the end of my cigar.

For me, the past is also smoke off the end of my cigar.

Juicy wafts of precious smoke.

to be hysterically clod at like a rabid raccoon attacking a helium-filled garbage

And so I asked Pat to go back to the past and explain how he became involved with Quincy, Michael, and the messenger.

He says it all began in Key West at the pirate-themed museum he owned that sat beside the pirate-themed restaurant he also owned.

And you get to know all the piratical personalities on that island, one of which was Reef.

And Reef is a salvager and he's really got a piratical nature.

He would even dress as a pirate.

I really loved him.

One day, Reef asked Pat for a favor.

Could Pat meet with his son Quincy, who wanted to make a movie?

And we got talking, and he turned me on to this script that he has been writing.

And you liked it.

Oh, sure.

Are you kidding me?

It's talking about this young boy who has an effect on the ending of World War II.

And you hadn't known that story.

I hadn't known that story.

Oh, no.

I had never heard of it.

What was your impression of Quincy when you first met him?

Oh, I liked him.

And so, and I believed everything Quincy told me.

When When Quincy's lie came out, Pat was furious.

Prior to 10 years ago, before you know, my mind cracked, he's lucky he didn't cross my path, or else he wouldn't be walking.

You mean that?

You mean that literally?

Let's say no, since this is being taped.

I'm pretty street savvy.

I couldn't believe that I got buffaloed like this as someone I thought was a friend, you know, a friend, a Key West friend.

I was so hurt that I was angry.

And when I'm angry, the old Patrochie, the old corner guy, man,

not only did I lose the money, but all the contacts that I made for him to get him in USA Today.

I opened all these doors through all my relationships.

and then all of a sudden when I realized that it was a fraud, that it was phony.

I mean I had to go and apologize to everyone.

But Pat says that these days he doesn't have time for rumination or regret.

And even though I am here at peace, my body

has bone marrow cancer.

I'm on chemo every 12 hours of chemo meds.

Incurable.

However, I don't regret that.

I don't, nothing.

Oh, wow.

wow.

Jonathan, it's only my body.

It's not me.

Before we get off, I ask Pat Michael's burning question.

Why did Quincy lie?

But Pat says he doesn't ask the why questions.

Only Quincy, Pat says, if he goes deep, can answer that.

Pat and Quincy haven't spoken for decades.

Their last interactions were angry ones, right after Quincy's lie came out.

All the same, Pat offers to reach out to Quincy.

He contacts a friend who he thinks might have Quincy's phone number.

I don't have high hopes, but Pat and Quincy do end up speaking.

And afterwards, for reasons I can't discern, Quincy agrees to speak with Michael.

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A video call between Michael and Quincy is arranged.

And while we wait for Quincy, I ask Michael the the opening question I learnt in J school.

Um, are you in a bathroom?

No, this is our tiny little kitchen in our apartment.

It's late at night, and Michael gives me a tour of his darkened New York apartment.

There's our Carson's little lunchbox.

Very sweet.

Where is he right now?

Carson is asleep.

What a lazy bones.

And then...

Hello?

Quincy enters the chat.

It's been almost 20 years since he and and Michael were together on set.

Quincy was 25 at the time.

He's in his 40s now.

It's nice to see Michael's face.

I haven't seen his face in a long time.

I know, it's good to see you.

Michael and Quincy begin by reminiscing about their time together, about making the movie.

There were two scenes that really stand out for me.

One is when all the kids were in the diner, and they exchange memories from what feels like unfraught territory.

Stuff like the casting and the fun of being on set.

My favorite scene was doing the U-turn.

You had me drive stick shift and I lied.

When I auditioned, you were like, can you drive stick?

And I was like, I can drive stick.

I couldn't drive stick.

Really?

Oh, I never knew that.

I know.

And I was like stalling out, like grinding the gears.

It feels like Michael is trying to make Quincy comfortable, show that Quincy wasn't the only one capable of a lie.

I was like, oh, fraud.

I mean, it was this guy who rented the car from was like pulling his hair out too.

I I thought this kid could drive.

But it doesn't take long before the conversation turns to the elephant in the room.

And it's Quincy who brings it up.

I remember wanting to reach out to you in the years that passed.

Yeah, I felt a lot of guilt because like this film, everybody had put so much sweat and tears into it.

And it was just nothing.

It like evaporated.

And I thought, my God, I failed every single person.

And then I became like national news.

And then the blogs were writing about me.

Because The Messenger got a colossal amount of press, when the truth came out, Quincy received a proportional amount of backlash.

Similar to how the tidal wave of The Messenger's success hit Michael, the bad news about The Messenger's failure hit Quincy.

He was at the airport.

reading that day's newspaper over someone's shoulder.

And they were reading the article about me and how I had lied.

And

that hit me like

I'd say a ton of bricks, but a ton of bricks would have felt like a pillow compared to what that was.

How are you coping?

I was in denial.

I kept going back to this like excuse of, well, the Titanic, right?

The Titanic,

it's a fake movie.

It's based on a true story.

There was no Jack and Rose.

And yet what I had done was totally different.

I mean, I was literally trying to pretend that this other actor I had hired was Thomas Jones.

And

it took me a year or two to sort of come to terms and just be like, man, I really fucked up.

Which brings us to the question of why?

Why swap a random old man for Thomas E.

Jones?

To explain, Quincy starts with how he came to the story of the messenger in the first place.

I had been working that summer at the Truman Little White House in Key West, and sort of in my onboarding at that museum, they told us to read David McCullough's Truman biography.

And it was in that book that I saw this one sentence about Thomas E.

Jones and the messenger.

And it was literally one sentence.

One sentence in parentheses in the middle of a thousand-page book.

And I thought, Todd, what an amazing story.

But Quincy thought, you know what would make it an even more amazing story?

If he could find Thomas E.

Jones, interview him, and include that interview in the movie.

And in Quincy's telling, he did look for Thomas Thomas Jones.

I had hired literal investigators to go find this person.

Two different guys.

And they both said, like, you know,

we can't find him, but we found these two death certificates that kind of match up.

So the death certificates felt like enough.

Quincy concluded that the Thomas E.

Jones he was looking for probably was dead.

And I didn't share that with anybody because in my head, I just saw the story rolling out.

It's like, we were going to tell the story, and then at the end, you saw the real guy.

And that I couldn't get away from that story and in the absence of the real guy the next best thing was a fake guy oh well the deceased thomas jones will never know and anybody that sees the movie it's going to be so great and they're going to be crying and laughing at the end of it that they won't care for this role there was no casting no auditions in fact The part of Thomas E.

Jones wasn't played by an actor at all.

He was actually a tour guide at the Truman Little White House.

Quincy had asked a work friend from the museum to do the job.

And then the real Thomas Jones found me.

And I certainly remember that feeling.

It was like a disgust I felt for myself.

In the aftermath, Quincy left the film world for many years.

He was fired from his job at the Truman Museum.

He eventually found work clerking in a bookstore and making wedding videos.

While this was the first time a lie of Quincy's had been so brutally exposed, he admits that the lying itself was something he'd been leaning on since his teen years.

People would be like, oh, I'm going to Paris for winter break.

And I'd be like, Oh gosh, you know, Paris is great.

You know, I didn't even know what country it was in.

It was like a daily thing.

Freshman year, someone had a picture of Jimi Hendrix, a poster, and I remember looking at his name and thinking it looked kind of French.

And I was like, Oh, I love Jaimai Hendri.

And I remember him looking at me and being like, What?

For Quincy, lies became a beautiful wall between himself and everyone else.

Lies protected him, but also isolated him.

It took the collapse of the messenger to finally get him to stop.

And it was actually

very

relieving because it took a lot of weight off my shoulders.

That I didn't have to make every story 10% better.

I didn't have to,

as hard as that was, that was the most important lesson, full-stop period of my life.

After we did the messenger, I didn't take that as anything that stopped me.

When Quincy is done sharing the effects the messenger had on his life, Michael shares the role it played for him.

Seeing the camera, seeing the crew, it blew my mind.

I didn't know that this was possible.

I didn't know that this is what it looked like, and I was in.

It's Quincy and the Messenger that inspired Michael's career.

But it isn't just that Quincy gave him a professional life.

He gave him a life.

I married this beautiful person who she's a movie producer, and we have this amazing kid called Carson, who's two and a half years old.

And all of this life that I have, this partner, this career, this kid,

it comes from this wild, weird, random moment in Cleveland, Ohio, where you decided to cast me in this short film.

And it's all this to say, like,

I never got to just thank you.

I've always appreciated that door that you showed to me and allowed me to walk through.

That moment,

that time,

that invitation that you gave me to be on set

changed the entire direction of my life.

That means a lot to me.

I look back on that time totally, with totally different eyes.

It was one of the most difficult things in my life.

And

I can't tell you

how meaningful it is to me to hear that someone had something good come out of it.

Because it certainly didn't feel like that.

I was convinced that it would ruin everyone's life

because that's what I was feeling at that moment.

Quincy just assumed anyone involved with the messenger would still be furious with him.

And so, a few weeks back, when he saw Pat Croce's name pop up on his phone, he says he almost felt too scared to pick up.

But when they spoke, instead of yelling at him, Pat told him it was time to let it go.

As soon as he said those words, let it go, I just sat out in front of my house and cried for a good 20 minutes.

I didn't know before we talked today, actually, genuinely what you were going to say today.

You, you know, you were, I met you as this person I looked up to.

You're going to make me cry.

I'm really, really, genuinely happy for you.

Thank you for taking time just to talk to me, but

really thank you for

the life I got to have because of it.

Recently, I got to share in that life.

One day leaving our New York studio, Michael says he's off to meet his wife Katie.

Her crew is filming just a few blocks away, and Michael asks if I'd like to come, and I say sure.

On the corner of 20th Street and 7th Avenue, shooting is in full swing.

The movie stars John Taturo as an aging pickpocket who ends up with a thumb drive containing a crypto wallet on it.

Michael and I are waved past the protected perimeter, and Katie gives me a pair of small headphones.

As I watch take after take of John Taturo slamming down a payphone and screaming fuck in fake fury, I feel like a 10-year-old on a field trip.

All around us, the city bustles as normal, while we are tucked away in our make-believe world, watching make-believe things.

It's all a lie, of course, but one that we're all in on.

And

action.

Now that the furniture's returning to its goodwill home

Now that the last month's rent is scheming with the damaged deposit

Take this moment to decide

if we meant it if we

This episode of Heavyweight was produced by Khalila Holt and me, Jonathan Goldstein, along with Mohini Medgauker and Phoebe Flanagan.

Our supervising producer is Stevie Lane.

Editorial guidance from Emily Condon.

Special thanks to Lucy Sullivan, Karen Shakurji, and Nazanin Ravsanjani.

Our production council is Jake Flanagan.

Emma Munger mixed the episode with original music by Christine Fellows, John K.

Sampson, and Bobby Lord.

Additional scoring by Blue Dot Sessions, Baubble, Principal, and Shanghai Restoration Project.

Our theme song is by The Weaker Thans courtesy of Epitaph Records.

Follow us on Instagram at Heavyweight Podcast or email us at heavyweight at pushkin.fm.

We'll be back next week with a new episode.

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