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[ENGINE STARTING]
♪ Michael Brody, he's a brand new kind of man. ♪
♪ Brody, Brody, he'll help people if he can. ♪
[MUSIC PLAYING]
[TYPEWRITER KEYS CLACKING]
Michael Brody says he'll consider money requests from anybody.
He handed out $100 bills on the street this afternoon
and offered this reporter a million dollars
and a private jet flight to Tahiti leaving tonight.
He looked disappointed when he heard I had to work tomorrow.
To convince everyone, he gave his home and office address
and the phone numbers.
Brody's New York office has been flooded with phone calls from
money-hungry Americans, and the hall outside the office...
Dear Mr. Brody...
Dear Michael...
Dear Mr. And Mrs. Brody...
Dear Mr. Brody...
[NAME ECHOING]
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Now in its 22nd year, presenting the greatest
in World Entertainment...
The Ed Sullivan Show.
[APPLAUSE]
Now all over the world...
all over the world, newspapers are front
paging the story of 21-year-old Michael James
Brody of Scarsdale, New York, a youngster
who's giving away $25 million.
[APPLAUSE]
Come on.
Come on, come out here!
[MUSIC PLAYING]
[CAMERA FLASH]
This is Michael Brody.
[NAME ECHOING]
Less than 24 hours ago, he announced to the world at large
that he had $25 million to give away to anyone.
Well, I personally think that maybe I'll
be setting a new trend.
Like, I think if people like Onassis or the Kennedys
or some of these people use some of their money
and give to the poor, and if everybody just gave
$1 million... if every millionaire gave $1 million
to one foundation and said, look, let's really
go into this.
And let's really get the...
let's get food to the poor.
Dear Mr. Brody, I've read so much about you
in all the newspapers and magazines.
And I've seen you on TV.
I admire you and your wife very much.
Don't know how serious you are about all this jive,
but I get a feeling of your head pointing
in the right direction.
I'm going to give away, I think, $50 million
within the next year and set up a foundation,
like the Ford Foundation, and give money to the poor.
When I was a young girl, I used to watch The Millionaire
on TV, used to dream about him knocking
on my door with that cashier's check.
But nothing like that ever happens in real life.
I don't really just want to cure the problems of the United
States.
I want to try and cure the problems of the world.
I really don't know quite how to tell you the aim of my letter.
I'm sure you've gotten many just like it.
But you said you would give some of your money
to anyone who asked, right?
Well, I'm asking.
Why are you giving away all this money?
Because it's the only way to find peace.
I mean, I'm not giving away money.
That's... money's the least thing I'm giving away right now.
What I'm giving away is a good feeling to mankind.
Well, this is me.
The year was... it was '69.
So I was 20.
My boyfriend was selling hashish to people he knew in Scarsdale.
And that's kind of how I met Michael.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
He was supposed to deliver it to Michael, but he couldn't.
So I brought it there.
The door opened.
And he just did this big courtly bow.
I was like, "Oh."
There was a couple of people there.
And we, you know, hung out.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
He was just a beautiful person.
You know, we just got very close very quickly.
And he told me the story of his mother dying
when he was little and...
and being very lonely.
And I told him about my life, my history, where I grew up,
and you know, and being very lonely, basically.
All of a sudden, you have you know,
sort of a missing part of your life.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
The next day, my boyfriend didn't know where was I.
And he came to find me.
"Where is Renee?"
And I was like, "Uh-oh."
And Michael said, well, she's not... she's
...we're getting married.
She's staying here with me.
And of course, he asked me, "Is that true?"
You know, "Who is this crazy guy?"
I said, "Yeah."
[MUSIC PLAYING]
And we got married.
Mr. Brody, first of all, how much money are you worth?
And what do you intend to do with it?
Well, right now I'd say unlimited, because, I mean,
if I have to give you a figure, I'll just say $500 million, OK?
Just like that, you shrug it off?
Why not?
And what are you going to do with it?
Give it all away.
Why?
Because people need it more than I do.
I don't know.
Maybe there's a little guilt at having all that money.
Not exactly guilt, but, it just didn't feel right, you know?
There's a big disparity between the haves and the have nots.
And the extent of it really bothered him.
[INDISTINCT VOICES]
To convince everyone, he gave his home and office address
and the phone numbers.
Early today, at his suburban home, he was mobbed.
Scores of New Yorkers turned up, everything from hippies
to a dress manufacturer trying to save his business.
They all had a different reason why
the 21-year-old heir to an oleomargarine fortune
should help them.
What did... what did you say in the letter?
I asked him for a certain amount of money
to put my husband through college.
My wife and I would like to adopt about 25 children
and have a house in the country.
You know, we feel we have enough love and understanding
to give them proper guidance and raise them right.
Did you say how much you would like have?
No, whatever you could find in this heart to give,
I would greatly appreciate.
You think you might get it?
I don't know.
I hope so.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
It's like you're in a movie and you haven't seen the script.
And every day, the director gives you another page.
And you don't know where it's going.
So are we rolling?
Oh, OK.
So like, we'd walk down the street and everybody
would recognize him, because he was
on the front page of every newspaper in the world.
Somebody would see us.
And then 10 people would see us.
And then there'd be a bunch of people around us, you know.
Michael Brody says he'll consider money requests
from anybody.
And he claims that so far he's given away $60,000.
Did you give any money away today?
Oh, I gave away, uh...
I gave away at least $100,000 just in checks.
We'd get cornered, you know?
Like there would be a mob of people, you know?
Back it up.
Watch out.
And I became the bodyguard.
He handed out $100 bills on the street this afternoon.
And then he went down on Times Square
and started playing his guitar until police
made him leave because he didn't have a parade permit.
He was just riding the wave, going with it,
see where it took him.
He was just kind of living a dream, you know?
[MUSIC PLAYING]
[MICHAEL BRODY SINGING - BOB DYLAN, "YOU AIN'T GOIN' NOWHERE"]
He wanted to play music.
He got to play music.
He got a record contract.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
And that's when everything kind of took off and got crazy.
Michael Brody, the oleomargarine heir
who said he wanted to give away his fortune,
has signed a recording contract with RCA records.
What album are you going to make?
I'm going to write the music right now as I play it.
It'll be a brand new thing.
No one's ever heard the music before, not even myself.
You just have to dig it.
All of a sudden, we found we had all these hangers on
and potential managers and helpers and friends of friends
of Michael...
people at the house living there.
[SCHOOL BELL RINGING]
Dear Mr. And Mrs. Brody, you are doing
the grooviest thing for your fellow men
by sharing your money.
If it would be all right with you,
I'd like to start a fan club for you as soon as possible.
Please don't let me down.
He would just yell in the house, red alert, red alert, red
alert, you know, leaving right now.
And whoever ran, then got to go.
The manager kind of arranged that we would go to London
and meet with John Lennon.
At some point, he wanted to go to Puerto Rico.
We were invited to play with the Grateful Dead in Hawaii.
Of course, he didn't want to just play.
And then he's throwing money at the audience.
I mean, shoot, we did a lot of crazy things, you know?
I mean, fuck, to get Walter Cronkite stoned.
Come on.
How many people do that?
Walter Cronkite made an appointment
to come and interview Michael at the house.
And he showed up with a camera crew.
And they set up to do this interview.
And we were all smoking and passing joints around.
And Walter...
I don't think he was wasted, but you know, we had a buzz.
And that's the way it is, Friday, January 16, 1970.
This is Walter Cronkite, CBS News, good night.
[DOOR SQUEAKING OPEN]
No, I heard about this story a few years ago.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
There are no lights in here, right?
There should be.
There's this.
Luckily we have one light in storage.
So a few years ago, I was living in New York.
I was working for a film producer, Ed Pressman.
And I got to LA to visit his storage unit
where he had a bunch of papers from 80
some odd films that he's produced over the last thirty
years.
And while I was there, I noticed about 12 boxes
on the top shelf.
And they were all marked "Brody."
So this is one of the 12 boxes that
were in the storage unit filled with letters.
We actually are swimming in Brody letters here.
I asked Ed what the letters were about, how he got them,
and who was Brody?
I think I was introduced to Michael Brody in the early '70s
in New York.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
[CAR HORN HONKING]
[SUBWAY WHEELS CLATTERING]
I had done three films...
the early De Palma movie, Sisters
and Phantom of the Paradise, and Terry Malick's Badlands.
And it was during that period that we
got involved with Brody.
I recall working with Shep Gordon.
Shep was from the rock and roll world.
He managed Alice Cooper.
We decided to join forces and try to produce the film.
Michael Brody, to me, was always the story of an idealist.
I thought about calling the film The Last Flower Child.
The Ultimate Gift was actually the title we used.
Probably 1977.
There were so many letters.
I got the letters as part of the project,
because no one else wanted them.
He never made the project.
But he kept the letters.
And I'm talking thousands and thousands and thousands
of letters stacked in boxes.
They were all postmarked January, 1970,
all addressed to Michael James Brody Jr.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
And they were all unopened.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Come back to LA.
Unopened means unanswered.
[PAPER TEARING]
Dear Mr. Brody, I read about you in the paper.
The reason I'm writing is right now I have six children.
We live in an old log house.
The light bill is two months past due.
My husband has little work as he cannot read or write.
He doesn't know I'm writing this,
so please don't have my name published or anything.
If I could just receive some help from someone like you,
I would really appreciate it.
Anyone who knows us will tell you everything I wrote is true.
Everything I make will be for charity... records, movies.
I'm going to do everything I can do to make money
for anybody that needs it.
But it's not money, it's love that I'm trying to sell.
He... you know, I knew him for a couple of years in high school.
[SCHOOL BELL RINGING]
Michael, you know, entertained at his home
and played cards and lost.
You know, I knew people who went...
took their allowances to Michael Brody's house
to double or triple their money.
And Michael didn't care.
Michael just wanted the company.
So I was of course surprised, but not entirely,
when this came on the television.
And it was like, whoa, Michael.
Well, if somebody sends you a letter, for instance, saying
that they have a $12,000 mortgage they want to pay off,
you'll send them the money?
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes,
I will give you money, money, money, money, money,
money, all the money you could ever want.
Here was this promise of this hippie millionaire,
who was so imbued by love that he
was going to share his love with everybody by giving them money.
It was a classic '60s situation.
They were convinced that they were involved
in a cosmic connection, that their love was
so great that something else had to be working.
I figure that this is the Age of Aquarius
and within a very short time, the whole world
will be at peace.
What I saw was just a lot of energy, a lot of spontaneity,
a lot of innocence, a lot of goodness, a lot of sincerity.
I just want everybody to be as rich as I am,
that means to be as happy as I am, be as much in love as I am,
and when everybody is, then I'm going to cop out and split.
I figure this will take me about three months.
My relationship to the Brody story
led me on a very long journey, really, over 47 years.
I was 12 in January, 1970.
I can remember reading the very first story about Michael
and Renee.
It was on the front page of the New York Daily News.
They met, fell in love, and went on their honeymoon to Jamaica.
And then, after a week in Jamaica,
they fly back to New York in the chartered 707 and step
into the media limelight of New York City.
He decided it would be romantic if he had the whole 747
to himself and his wife.
So he bought every seat and came back.
He was the heir to a margarine fortune.
Years ago, most people never dreamed of eating margarine.
But times have changed.
Brody's maternal line, the Jelkes,
were the first to come up with a brand name for margarine.
They called it Good Luck Margarine.
That's what I've spread on my toast.
Good Luck.
New Good Luck Margarine gives you both, preferred unsaturates
and preferred flavor.
I always thought I would revisit it sometime later in my life,
like write a book or try to write
a book about those events.
I wrote a manuscript hoping to get it published.
It was not.
I called it The Oleomargarine Heir.
It's a classically American kind of story,
where Michael's mother is the daughter
of the oleomargarine king,
very accomplished and fabulously wealthy.
You know, she was a society debutante.
Michael James Brody Sr. was an extraordinary
physical specimen.
I think he came from very limited circumstances.
And somehow he made it from the steel mill in Dukane,
Pennsylvania to Harvard.
So he marries the heiress of the Jelke fortune.
And then she dies.
Michael's mother died when he was three.
He grew up in a situation... you know,
he was the poor, little rich kid.
And he grew up in a situation where
the only people who paid attention to him
were housekeepers.
His father, as far as I could tell, was pretty remote.
Brody's grandfather, John F. Jelke,
sells the company in 1948.
He dies in the early '60s.
About $3 million goes into a trust for his children.
That's the way fortunes are made.
They compound over decades.
Michael gets off the airplane.
OK, who is this kid?
As soon as he says, I am the grandson of John F. Jelke,
they know that he's part of a fortune.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Because I was so overwhelmed, in the beginning,
by the mass amount of letters, I started
to sort through some of them to kind of find
those really exciting ones, the ones that
were a little bit thicker, the ones that might have
a photograph or something else.
Dear Mr. and Mrs. Brody, mazel tov on your marriage.
All the happiness that you seek should be yours forever.
I've never seen a lot of money, but I've always
dreamed of having it.
Dear ma'am, I would like to have $6,000
to go to Japan this summer and make a movie on 16 millimeter
film.
Please send me $5,000 so I can continue my art classes.
My gift to you is this pencil drawing I did of your wife.
Some people sent religious pamphlets, books,
hospital bills, x-rays, photographs of themselves,
photographs of children.
It wasn't just a letter.
Dear, Mr. Brody, my name is Nancy.
And I'm eight years old.
Would you please send me some money to buy a Barbie doll?
Mr. Brody, dear friend, I'm an unmarried girl living
with my mother who is a widow of long standing.
She is sick.
Dear Mr. Brody, you have so much money,
you might even be able to stop pollution in the US.
You can invent an electric car or something.
Dear Mr. Brody, I could use some of your extra money
to help my three married children get out of debt.
I am on public welfare because my husband
is a drug addict serving sentences
in prison, because he got into trouble as addicts always do.
Here's a picture of my little boy.
Please keep a smile on his face.
Back in 1952, I started a boys club in my garage
from 12 and up.
Most of them have problems at home.
And here's a place for them to talk to someone
who believes in them.
I would like to have the pictures back.
They are the only copies I have.
We'd just sit on the floor in the living room in Michael's
house in Scarsdale.
And we'd just start opening them and reading these things.
Since you are a neighbor of ours, as well as a very wealthy
man, perhaps you would like to make a contribution
to a cause which most people have chosen to ignore,
schizophrenia.
Since schizophrenia strikes one out of every 100 persons,
chances are that there were several families
on Paddington Road that are touched in some way
by this disease.
The truth is, is that we would read the letters looking
for the fucking obvious frauds.
We would read the letters looking for the ones
that we could laugh about, because the other ones were so
fucking heavy that you needed something to "sfogarti,"
to get all of that shit out, you know?
[PAPER TEARING]
Dear Mr. Brody, my name is Ann and I'm 11 years old.
My father George died September 1st, 1969 at the age of 51.
For six months, I watched him suffer.
September 1st, he died at 2:35 AM of cancer.
My mother, brother, and I took it very hard.
This year we have many doctor bills to pay plus our mortgage.
Please, Mr. Brody, help us out.
And for my father's sake and other people's sake,
donate something to the cancer fund.
Mr. Brody, just starting from the top,
because I don't really...
I haven't gotten anything yet.
What has been the response to this rather unusual...
Well, a lot of people have sent me a lot of letters
to my own home.
And I've been taking those letters back down to my office.
And if you just send it to my office at 1650 Broadway,
Room 1409, they'll get answered.
But if you send them to my house,
it's going to take another day.
[PHONE RINGING]
Brody's New York office has been flooded with phone calls
from money-hungry Americans.
And the hall outside the office is
lined with people looking for a handout.
They all had a different reason why
the 21-year-old heir to an oleomargarine fortune
should help them.
I walk over there...
and you would not have recognized the block.
I didn't know all of the elevators had broken down.
All the way down the stairwells,
there were people lined up,
trying to get to this one little office.
It was a little bit bigger than this table.
What do you want the money for?
Get a home for my family.
How much are you asking for?
Only $3,000 or $4,000, just enough for a down payment.
And you?
Well, I've been out of work for about 17 months.
I had two big operations and
I'm going back for another operation.
I have four children.
And I want to give them a good Christmas
that I didn't give them.
What do you want the money for?
Well, I want the money because...
well, first of all, I'm here because I want
to be exposed to the public.
And second of all, I need money because...
What do you do?
I act and I dance.
And I am looking for exposure.
I think I'd like about about $5,000.
To look at that group of people and see
the excitement in their faces...
I'm getting ready to get rich.
I went, oh, my god, this is so out of control.
[PHONE RINGING]
Hello?
Sweetheart, not today... not right now.
Please give us seven days.
And I don't speak Spanish.
I'll have to... I can't... no comprende.
One day, I get a call from my mom.
And she says, "Look, I saw this guy, Michael Brody...
I think that's his name... came into a lot of money.
And I got a feeling this guy just
might be able to help me with the studio."
She was, as we would say today, quite a go-getter.
She was an owner of beauty shops.
Probably the most popular one was Bunny's Wig Wam.
She was never afraid to do something different.
And of course, being my mother, I loved her dearly.
It was mentioned that Michael lived in Scarsdale.
She went... had no idea what his address was...
went to several gas stations and pretended
to be a maid that was looking for the Brody house.
It's like the needle in the haystack kind of story.
Michael opens the door and says, who are you?
And she says, I'm who you've been waiting for.
Bunny, you were one of the beneficiaries
of Mike's largesse.
What happened?
Tell us about it.
Well, I called Mike.
He told me to come up to Scarsdale.
And I went up to Scarsdale.
And he was very interested in what
I was trying to do in Harlem.
She convinced him to become a partner
in what later would become Astral Recording Studios.
We're setting up Astral Sound Recording
Studios at 105 East 106 Street.
Mike come along and said he wanted to be my 50% partner.
And he cosigned the note.
And that's it.
So you have the budget all planned.
All planned, all set up when I met Mike.
And he's my God.
I say that at this point.
I'm going, "Whoa."
This is all in like two or three days.
Shortly thereafter, they go to the bank,
he takes out some serious money.
How soon do you think you'll be in production?
Well, if this keeps on, maybe tomorrow.
So he makes a major announcement that if anybody listening
to him needs money for a good cause, here's your answer...
Michael Brody.
And so someone yells, well, how do we do this?
And Michael looks at Bunny and he says,
what's your address again?
Bunny?
What's... well, I don't know the address there.
And she says 1650 Broadway.
And what suite are we in?
And she says, we?
All of a sudden we became we.
And he gives the address out.
1650 Broadway Room 1409.
Bingo.
Why are you here to see Mr. Brody?
My wife is expecting a baby, and after that, she'll
need an operation.
And I'd like to help my mother out.
She's still in the ghetto with my little sister.
What do you do for a living?
I'm a plumber's helper.
And you can't make the money, so you come here to get it.
They say nobody gives it to you.
I'm like, I got to see this.
There are people in my family that are starving in the South.
And I figured even if just a little bit, it will help them,
I'm glad to do it.
I mean, it's all I want.
And plus, well, I can use a few dollars myself.
But mostly for them.
Do you Mr. Brody is perhaps a little crazy?
No.
If he really means this, I think it's a wonderful thing...
if he really means it.
What are you here for, sir?
Well, I originally came here...
I came here to ask for money.
But by just standing here, I realized a lot of other people
need the money more than I do.
I've come to the conclusion that my problems
aren't half as bad as these other peoples' problems here.
I think that if he can give the money to more needy cases
than myself, then why would I take the money?
[MUSIC PLAYING]
[WATER RUNNING]
Dear Mr. Brody, I guess you might
figure me to be a freeloader.
It's not true.
Whenever possible, I too give to those I can help.
[BRODY ON TV] "I'm going to give away, I think, $50 million."
I'll gladly try to help your cause.
Enclosed, find all I can afford to give at this time.
I hope you'll understand this is from the heart, not a joke.
[PHONE RINGING]
Please leave a message after the tone.
[BEEP]
Hi, my name is Melissa.
I'm looking for a Holly Hodgkins.
I'm not sure if I have the right number.
I'm sorry to leave such a strange message
out of the blue, but if this is the right number for...
Hello?
No, you do not have the right number.
Oh, OK.
There's no Holly Hodgkins here.
OK, thank you.
Thanks.
Hi, I'm trying to reach Holly Hodgkins.
I'm not sure if I have the right number,
but I am looking for a Holly Hodgkins who lived in Concord,
New Hampshire, in 1970.
[PHONE RINGING]
The number you have dialed has been disconnected.
So those are the only three numbers
I have for Holly Hodgkins.
This person wants money for a trailer
so he can move away from his in-laws.
This man owes $2,000 to his pusher
from his years of taking dope.
This is a widow who owes a doctor money.
Her husband died of leukemia, and she wants to buy...
[PHONE VIBRATING]
[GASP]
[WHISPERING] It's Holly Hodgkins!
Hello?
So first off, thank you so much for calling me back.
And I just wanted to ask you if you remember someone named
Michael Brody who in 1970 announced that he was
going to give away $25 million?
[Laughs]
I wrote this letter to Mr. Michael Brody Jr.
I don't really have a real good recollection of writing
it, and I'm hoping when I read it,
it will jog my memory a little bit.
Aw.
Dear Mr. Brody, I have read and heard
that you have inherited a large sum of money
and would like to give portions of it to those who deserve it.
Who could deserve it more than the children who
are either deaf or have a hearing impairment
and other physical handicaps?
I am not an old lady preaching to you,
but I am a 14-year-old girl who is
a sister of a brother with a hearing loss.
People see handicapped children always seem to
pity them, instead of doing something about it.
This may be you too.
If you saw my brother, I'm sure you and those old ladies
wouldn't have pity.
He's the smartest, liveliest little devil
that, without his hearing aid, you would probably never guess
he lived in a world of silence.
[FILM ROLLING]
If you would like to help Andrew...
that's my brother... and all his little friends,
give a donation towards Easter Seal Rehabilitation Center.
If you could see what could be done, you...
you would be very gratified.
Goodbye and thank you for reading
this letter and good luck.
Sincerely, Holly Hodgkins.
Peace.
I remember writing this now.
Oh my.
I've had a very simple life, and money has never
been really a huge option to me in my adult life.
I just really wanted to have enough just
to get by and be able to do the things that I
wanted to do for my kids.
And I probably felt the same way when I was 14.
I wish that Mr. Brody had have read this.
Has this been an ordeal since your husband
made this announcement?
Has it been tough on you?
It hasn't been any tougher than people are making it.
Did you find that people are greedy?
I don't think anyone is inherently greedy.
It's just the environment now, the way it is.
People don't have enough.
You mean the whole world?
It's not greed, it's need.
There were times when all the people went away,
and it was just us in the house, and we'd just get up and have
breakfast and talk.
And on one of those days, this guy came to the kitchen door,
and he basically broke in, and he had a gun.
And he said, "You give me some money, or I'll shoot you."
Or whatever.
And I went into the closet...
there was an alarm that connected to the police,
but it didn't work.
And Michael started talking to the guy,
and he was a grave digger, and he was out of work.
He didn't have any money, and he was desperate and his family and...
so Michael gave him money.
And he felt bad for him, and he just wrote him a check.
So the guy put the gun away, went away, and that was it.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
[CHATTER]
Watch the way, watch the way.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
When he came out of his Manhattan apartment today,
the sidewalk was jammed with people
wanting a piece of the action.
And Brody's behavior was eccentric,
even for an eccentric millionaire.
Did you give any money away today?
Yeah, I gave about several hundred dollar bills away.
I get at least $60,000 away today.
But look, leave me alone, because if you take everything
I have from me right now, then I won't have anything to give.
Give me at least a month now, I say.
Everybody, stay away from me.
Do your job.
Within a month, you'll have all the things that you want.
If you want love, if you want money... whatever you want,
you'll have.
You'd think it would be fairly easy to give away money,
but it turns out even that can get complicated.
Since he said he wanted to get rid of most of those millions
to promote brotherhood, he's been promoting bedlam.
Dear Mr. Brody, as you embark on the road of utter exhaustion
and delusion, I pray for you, because you will
be envied, hated, and hurt.
The whole world will hear of your generosity,
and you know what they will think?
They will think that you have gone out
of your money-giving mind.
I don't have a cent right now... not until the banks open up
tomorrow.
So what can I do?
Now, I'm not going to give any money out...
first of all, if anybody bothers me anymore,
I'm going to cancel the whole thing,
just go down to the West Indies, and just be alone.
I'm not going to make any records.
I'm going to just tell the whole world to [BLEEP].
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
I believe that what you are doing
is right as long as you believe in it.
And I do hope that you will find a way
to get rid of your money in some other way
than doling it out in dribbles, because the masses can and will
get meaner.
[YELLING]
At the moment, his bank says he's overdrawn,
but that more cash may go into his checking account Monday.
Obviously, a lot of people certainly hope so.
We went back to his father's apartment on 62nd Street.
And at some point, somebody said,
Michael, look out the window.
We looked out the window, and there
were hundreds, thousands...
I don't know how many people were
in the street waiting for him to come out so that they
could ask him for money.
Whatever you do, please don't let those shouters
and screamers get you down.
Gnats!
Get away from it all before it's too late.
He took a handful of $20s and threw it out the window just
to watch the madness.
All people kept asking for was just money,
and no one was listening to the larger message.
Are you upset that people want money that badly?
Yes.
They're sick.
Why do you say that?
Because they don't need money.
What they need is food, shelter, and love.
And when they realize that, then the world will be at peace.
So I think he was getting exasperated at that point.
[YELLING]
He just enjoyed the spectacle.
He enjoyed standing in the window
and throwing $20 bills out in the street
and watching people knock each other
over trying to get to them.
[CYMBAL CRASH]
What I saw was a guy I know who was out of control,
and I wanted to tell that story.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
I thought I could write a really good script.
[TYPEWRITER SOUNDS]
Exterior clouds.
The berserk shriek of a 707 as it passes just over us
and casts a giant shadow on the golden clouds beneath.
Titles begin.
We talked about Richard Dreyfuss playing the Michael Brody part.
The people I worked with in '76, they
wanted John Travolta to play Brody.
I had been involved in exploitation pictures.
I'd written a picture called Acapulco Gold.
So I was ready to try to take the shot.
[GUN SHOT]
[SPLASH]
Billy Wilder.
Black comedy.
I was making a major motion picture.
I was basically going for the gold ring with this,
and it fell apart.
I assume we went through a couple of drafts
before we threw in the towel.
I kept the cartons of letters that were sent to Brody,
and every so often, I would go into a box and take a letter
and open it and was fascinated by what might be discovered.
Dear Mike, I'm the mother of a son named Paul, 21 years old
in Vietnam, risking his life, like many others,
for every one of us.
I thought I'd die when he left...
my pride and joy.
I pray God to help me and beg him to bring my son back home
again safe.
This picture of my son Paul and I
was taken the day before he left for Vietnam.
I guess it was too sad for Brody to keep reading these letters.
Dear Sir,
I know the possibility of you ever receiving
this letter are about one in a million,
but I'm so desperate at this stage for help
that I just got to try for the sake of my family,
as well as myself.
I have five children.
They're all good kids, and it hurts
to know they have to suffer for my stupidity.
I'm so in debt that I'm on the verge of a nervous breakdown.
Lately, I've even been entertaining the thought
of suicide.
But when I look at my wonderful wife and kids,
I just can't bring myself to do it.
We're existing, and that's about all.
We've reached the bottom and just about the end.
Respectfully yours and grateful to you
from the bottom of my heart, Donald Thomas Moore.
This is for you.
What do you possibly think she said in the letter?
I think that she wanted to make it funny
and wanted it to stand out, so of course she
mentioned her children, herself, and just maybe
her dreams and aspirations.
I mean, I was only two years old,
so I couldn't possibly imagine what
dreams... maybe another child?
She may have wanted... no, she didn't want another child.
She may have wanted a typing business.
Well, slowly just take it out.
Notebook paper, really?
And she typed it on notebook paper?
What is that?
A staple.
No it's not.
No!
That's hilarious.
That's her.
Oh...
A safety pin.
...my god.
[Laughs]
I am writing this letter in...
Louder.
I am writing this letter in response
to an article on you in today's edition
of the New York Daily News concerning your desire
to help others less fortunate than you.
I believe you are an answer to my prayers
and my last desperate attempt to revive the Badger Home Typing
Service business, which I started in March 1966.
My name is Jacqueline Badger, and my telephone
is disconnected, or else I would have called you up.
[SUBWAY CAR RUNNING]
This is East Harlem, El Barrio... it has many names.
Spanish Harlem, El Barrio...
Washington Projects.
This is where we lived.
This is where it all started for me.
I was born in this building, basically.
And we lived here for 35 years.
I need $100 and 10 new Remington Rand typewriters,
standard office size preferred, and other supplies
so that I can teach typing to residents of East Harlem,
so that mothers can get off of welfare and work.
Personally feel a commitment and duty is calling me.
If I don't do it, it won't get done.
I want to be a teacher more than anything else in the world.
You can read.
I must be successful in my mission.
I cannot accept failure or defeat.
Mistakes, yes.
Problems, yes.
Difficulties, yes.
But I refuse to give up my dream.
I hear you.
Mm.
Yep, that's her.
She refuses.
How much money in all is there?
It's an unlimited amount right now.
I'll tell you, it's unlimited.
It just depends on whether people will just
do their own jobs and leave me alone.
If they crowd me, I've got nothing.
Are people crowding you now?
They're trying to kill me right now.
What do you mean?
They're crazy.
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry to be in such a bad mood.
Let me... let me... no, that's OK...
I'm really tired.
I haven't slept for 60 hours.
If you don't let me sleep, I'm going to die of a heart attack.
I'm only human.
We appreciate you've been working hard too.
How do you think people have been treating you
since all this came out?
They shouldn't treat me any more than they
treat a bum on the street.
But you're richer than the bum on the street.
Well, if they started treating the bums on the street
like they treat me, then we wouldn't have anything
to worry about, would we?
I've got to cool it.
I'm tired.
Yeah, let him rest now.
Michael alternated between everyone
just loves me for my money and wanting their affection.
That had started in the press of the crowd.
That had started fairly early in this process.
They were being followed by at least two members
of the media...
Nancy Moran for the New York Times and Ed Bradley.
I never was able to access his reporting.
Have you?
Right.
I mean, I talked to him.
He told me things that I'm going to go to the grave
with, because I told him I would.
People are lighting up, smoking pot, and Ed's smoking.
I think Nancy might have taken a puff.
Nancy Moran came to the house and made a relationship with
Renée.
There she is talking to this friendly reporter
and being absolutely honest and absolutely straight.
And Renee thinks this person is a friend of hers.
Her article really focuses on the drug usage.
The whole thing was conceived on drugs.
He was just using everybody and pretending and he never
had any money and he wasn't going to give it away...
you know, a really nasty, nasty article.
So that was a big betrayal, and that really hurt.
That's what I think turns everybody away,
because the drug usage is linked to the giveaway, where Brody
says, I came up with the idea of the giveaway
while I was high on acid.
And I think people connected, "Ah, we've been hoodwinked."
[Country Joe and the Fish, "Acid Commercial"]
♪ Now if you're tired or a bit run down, ♪
♪ can't seem to get your feet off the ground, maybe you ♪
♪ oughta try a little bit of LSD. ♪
Dear Mr. Brody, why do you think that money is everything?
Maybe you could help the people on drugs.
After all, you know what it's like to be on that junk.
[DISTORTED MUSIC] ♪ LSD for you and me. ♪
Don't brag about being on drugs.
It's nothing to be proud of.
Michael Brody was stoned as hell,
and he wouldn't take it anymore.
I mean, how can you ignore a story that
comes at you on a Pan Am jet that the kid's rented
all for himself and his wife, lands at JFK,
and announces that he's got this fortune
and he's going to give it away?
I mean, it's a natural story.
It's one you want to follow.
Back in 1974, I was one of several people
who helped to launch High Times Magazine to promote and extol
the drug culture.
His story was wonderfully appropriate for High Times
because he was a culture hero of sorts.
To millions, he was fantasy incarnate... rich, reckless,
lovable, and blessed with an uncanny ability
to bamboozle the world.
To others, he was a true spawn of the '60s, heralding
the new decade with gonzo generosity.
And of course, he was famous for being high.
I think it's a cautionary tale...
a young man who had all these gifts...
he had this money, he had this opportunity,
he had all the attention...
how he went and let his chase for celebrity,
his chase for attention destroy him.
I intend to offer North Vietnam $10 billion
if they will finally quit fucking around with the war.
He released this statement that he had a plan
to end the war in Vietnam.
I offered the whole world $1 billion.
Nixon and the North Vietnam delegation
to share in my $1 billion...
they can all have it.
Michael plunks down maybe $650 to get a helicopter ride
from New York City to Washington.
We got on a helicopter at the 59th Street Bridge,
and he tells the pilot that he wants to go land
on the White House lawn.
He had a plan.
I think it was pay off the North Vietnamese... give them
money or something.
Brody had promised he'll confront
Nixon about the Vietnam peace plan
and why Nixon was standing in the way.
The altitude dropped to 5,000 feet.
As they approached Wisconsin Avenue,
a composed voice came over the copter radio.
[INAUDIBLE VOICE ON RADIO]
Now the guy is telling me, listen,
I'm getting messages here from the Secret Service.
It's telling me that if we attempt
to land on the White House lawn, they're
going to blow us out of the sky.
The helicopter pilot was getting these...
"Turn, sir!"
"Restricted area."
"Attention helicopter!"
Michael just kept giving him money.
"The airspace below 10,000 feet over the White House
is restricted."
No, no, keep going, keep going.
And of course, he kept taking it, going a little further.
"We repeat, if you enter the airspace,
we will have no choice but to blow you out of the sky."
And finally, I think, he realized he couldn't do this.
So he went to the airport.
We jump in a cab, and we go to the White House.
And we get to the White House, and he tells them
that we're here to see Nixon.
And...
[Laughs]
They were essentially told that President Nixon doesn't see
anybody without an appointment.
So they take us in a room and they question us, whatever.
And as it turned out, I had an outstanding warrant
from Las Vegas.
So Brody, you came down here today from New York.
Why?
I came down here today from New York
to offer to end the war in Vietnam.
I came down here with $100 billion worth of support.
I came down here with a sure-fire peace plan
has already been accepted by the North
Vietnamese, already been cleared through every channel possible.
But I came down here, and President Nixon
showed how much he cared by arresting the person that
came around with me by the FBI on a federal warrant
for something he did.
I'm just blown away.
I'm so distraught about the whole thing.
I can't believe that we're living in a country like that.
I came down here to give him $100 billion and a lot of love.
And what did he give me in return?
Eventually, I think, Michael went back to New York
and put up my bail.
But I did spend a day or two in the D.C. jail,
which wasn't great, by the way.
I don't recommend it.
[METAL SQUEAK]
All righty.
Thank you, ma'am.
Wow, you even had some pictures,
excuse me!
Dear Mr. Brody, you seem to be one
of the few people alive today that
have any true compassion for the Negro race.
That is why I am writing.
My name is Bruce M. Stephens.
I am a 27-year-old Negro beautician,
and I have been doing hair for five years.
I was originally born in Aiken County here in South Carolina.
We moved to Greenwich, Connecticut,
when I was six years old.
I became a beautician, a truck driver,
and I ended up a minister, and I'm here
with you guys this morning.
If you were willing to advance or arrange
a loan of about $10,000, I would be
able to open a very clean, well-ventilated shop with all
the modern conveniences.
It would be the first truly integrated shop in Westchester
with White, Black, and Spanish operators
so that we would be able to do all races of people's hair
in one place.
This would better prepare them to live in the world with peace
and happiness for by coming into intimate
and compromising contact with each other,
you learn that there is truly not much differences
in people on the inside.
And on the outside, it is only the difference
of color and hair.
Thank you for your patience and kindness.
Sincerely, Bruce M. Stephens.
Well, you see, I think we live under the illusion
that money will make you happy.
You see, most of us never have the opportunity
to find out that money won't make you happy.
So we're always in the pursuit of money,
thinking once we get the money, we'll be happy.
No, that's the biggest lie from the devil.
Numerous reports of unhonored checks and unfulfilled promises
began to trickle in yesterday in the aftermath of Michael James
Brody Jr.'s pledge to give his fortune to the needy.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Apparently, a bunch of his checks started bouncing.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
[CAR HORN]
[CHATTER]
Back it up!
[CHATTER]
What's a matter with you people?
Are you all insane?
Just back it up.
Let's go!
Back it up right now.
Back it up.
Please!
I haven't slept for 72 hours.
Right?
When there was no money, nobody cared.
I intend to answer every call.
It is.
Yes.
To bring peace to the world.
Dear Mr. Brody, I'm sincerely trying
to understand what it is you are doing.
Are you happy?
When the world realizes all it has is paper
and that they're killing each other over paper...
Is that what your attitude is about money, Mike,
that it's just paper?
Yes.
It's all just a lot of paper, and people
are silly to get this excited about it.
Yes.
What is happiness?
Can you make others happy, and not with your money,
but yourself?
Can you make me happy?
I am the phoniest thing that ever was.
Well, what do you mean by that?
Listen to this man right here.
I'm a big phony.
I am not going to do a damn thing for anybody.
You're right.
I'm a big phony.
Well what are you hanging out for, man?
I'm a big phony!
I'm not real!
If I die, the whole world dies.
So go ahead and kill me.
Well, here's today's installment in the strange adventures
of the 21-year-old oleomargarine heir, Michael Brody Jr. That's
the young New Yorker who professes to be trying
to give away his fortune.
Now, he claims he has ended the Vietnam War
and has 500 jets standing by to bring the troops home.
He also says, "I may be the greatest con man in the world."
Fuck it.
It lasted a week, basically.
He landed on Saturday the 10th, and by the 19th,
the whole thing collapsed.
It took a week.
Michael James Brody Jr.
I'd do it 10 million times over again if I had a choice.
It was a pretty intense 10 days.
[Laughs]
There's a lot of questions for Brody
about the size of his fortune...
$25 million...
$50 million...
Oh, I've got $100 million right now.
Maybe more... a billion, trillion.
How much money are you going to give away?
I hope to give a trillion dollars away this year.
Do you have a trillion dollars?
Not right now.
Give me a chance to make it.
He was not very good with numbers.
It was kind of like great PR.
What kind of tricks are you going
to do to get the attention, to get the interest in what you
want to do?
I think it was in the spirit of that.
How much money in all is there?
It's an unlimited amount right now, I'll tell you.
It's unlimited.
But it's not money, it's love.
I don't think he really believed that he had $100 billion
or $10 billion.
You need to know one basic fact about Mr. Money...
he's not a magician and can't pull money out of a hat.
I knew very shortly that he did not have $25 million
or anything like it.
I think he started out the whole adventure
with about $1.2 million.
Michael basically believed that he could actualize this dream
by proclaiming its reality.
He had actualized the record contract,
he had actualized The Sullivan Show,
he had actualised headlines around the world.
OK, look at this... anything can happen.
Basically, it's a fucking Andy Warhol
15-minutes-of-fame story.
And there's one of those every day.
This is the Rosebud Reservation here in South Dakota.
In its own way, it's beautiful out here
with just the openness, the serenity of it.
It's so calm.
But it's a hard life out here.
Dear Mr. Brody, I'm writing this letter in hopes
that you can help me.
I'm married and have four children.
I'm not one to beg for anything, but you have
offered to help poor people.
I need help very bad.
My husband and I came from the Rosebud Reservation
in South Dakota to make a decent living for our children.
It's been very hard, and we've always
managed to survive the hardships,
because we had faith in each other and a great deal of love.
Unfortunately, my husband had a nervous breakdown a month ago
and is unable to work.
I guess there was too much pressure on him.
We've lived in slums for so long that I'm
beginning to think we'll never live any better.
If things don't change, we have no choice
but to go back to the reservation
and be poor along with the rest of the Indian people.
Please help us.
Sincerely, Mr. and Mrs. Dewey Broken Leg.
My husband and I met in Hot Springs, South Dakota.
I was 17 and he was 18.
I fell in love with him.
That was my first impression.
I didn't know Dad had a nervous breakdown like that.
I just remember him as a kid all the time,
just getting up and going to work.
That's just... I'm just completely shocked.
Well...
My mom kept things...
didn't want us kids to worry.
I think that was probably at the turning point in my life
where I knew, as a woman, I had to be strong and do it.
I felt the Brody story had many things,
but I was always interested in Renee's story.
Renee and Michael met, I think, 18 days before they got
married.
And then, I think, it gets really wacky after there
for Renee.
And within a month, she's pregnant.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Well, he wanted to be pregnant.
We were in the post office up in Woodstock,
and I had birth control pills.
And he took them out of my purse and threw them
in the garbage can.
And he said, we're going to have a son.
And it wasn't very soon after I was pregnant,
and we had a son...
Jaime.
My father, Michael James Brody Jr., had a bit of fame
back in the early 1970s and had some ideas
and got them out into the wild world.
Well, this is a bit of my collection
here of Jelke and Michael Brody Jr.
materials that I've collected.
Over the years, I've collected quite a bit.
Press photos.
Here's some of the High Times.
Got a few of them over the years.
One promotional album.
The yearbook.
I play the game of life with a strong heart.
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10,
11, 12, 13, 14, 15...
there's like 40 or 50 of these in here.
They used to be in the shed in the back of my grandfather's
house.
As a little boy, I remember playing
on this mountain of mail.
When I met Jaime and Renee, I learned that Jaime had
letters as well.
And he took me to where he stored the letters,
and I saw that it was probably three or four times the amount
of letters that I had.
It's going to take an army to go through them all.
[RUBBER BAND SNAP]
Dear Mr. Brody, I am 17 years old, and in my 17 years,
I have lived in a world of fighting and destruction.
I have been taking nervous medicine
since I was eight years old.
And why?
Because I live with my mother and stepfather.
He's always drunk.
He's always drunk, and she's always getting
beat up, at least twice a week.
We hardly ever have nothing to eat,
and I do nothing but shake and cry.
I almost tried to kill myself a couple of times.
Before it happened, I realized that maybe someday,
I really have something to live for.
Please write back to me even if you
don't think that I need the money,
because I just want someone to talk to, to help me.
I need it.
God bless you always, Joanne Youngins.
Brought back a lot of memories.
Really did.
Yeah.
All this is very sad and it was very hard on me,
but I look at the person I am today,
and I'm very proud of who I am today.
I'm a good, decent, honest human being
that would help anybody, just like my mother.
And if it wouldn't have been for her,
I would probably never feel this way.
Oh, really?
My mother.
This is from my mother.
OK... I'm nervous.
Dear Mr. Brody, I read about you in the paper.
I have six children.
We live in an old log house.
The light bill is two months past due.
My husband does not know I am writing this,
so please don't have my name published or anything.
If I could just receive some help from someone like you,
I would really appreciate it.
Anyone who knows us will tell you everything I wrote is true.
God bless you for what you are doing, Isabelle Nave.
I had no idea she wrote to him.
I had no idea.
Let's see here.
It's from Michael James Brody Jr. Enterprises, 1650 Broadway,
and I think that's coffee that you're
getting a picture of as well.
In reply to your correspondence, you are probably
aware this office has been swamped with thousands
of letters regarding the promises of
Michael James Brody Jr.
Out of courtesy to the public,
Bunny Jones, assisted by a volunteer staff,
is answering as many letters as is physically possible.
We can do no more than ask you to believe in Mr. Brody
as we do.
He's not a phony.
He's for real.
The only thing people have to do is really believe in him.
If they believed in him and let him alone,
he'll really work out.
Miss Jones believes Mr. Brody will honor his commitments
and his promises to the fullest extent of his physical
and financial ability.
Any decision in this regard will ultimately
be made by Mr. Michael James Brody Jr.
Very truly,
Bunny Jones, which is signed by Bunny Jones.
I got a call from the post office
that it was either six 8-foot bags
or eight 6-foot bags stacked with mail from all
over the world.
We were told, "Look, if you guys don't come and get this mail,
we're going to have to burn it.
We can't be responsible."
And unfortunately, sadly, we couldn't do anything about it.
We just had nowhere to put it.
And then at that point, Michael had
started to get a little shaky.
I mean, if Michael Brody was just a pothead,
I don't think any of this would have happened.
Do you know much about PCP?
[TRIPPY NOISES]
Phencyclidine, PCP, is something that I wouldn't recommend
to anyone at any time.
[TRIPPY NOISES]
It makes you feel like you've got all this power and energy,
and you really don't.
[DRUMS PLAYING]
Michael had a big flaw, which was his consumption of PCP.
PCP absorbs all the niacin in your body,
and it throws your psyche out of whack.
And I used to give niacin pills all the time to counteract it.
Somebody should have done a serious intervention
to stop him.
Nobody did.
It seemed like everybody was willing to let it just
proceed and see what happened.
I think all these things...
it was just such a disillusionment.
He couldn't do what he wanted to do, and nobody believed in him.
And he just started getting very depressed and upset.
[MUSIC - MOBY GRAPE, "I AM NOT WILLING"]
It was very tumultuous.
He ended up in a mental hospital or a clinic or something,
and we kind of split up.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
I went to California in a VW bus with Jaime.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
I think he thought, why was I leaving and going
across the country?
But he was kind of forcing me to, because he was not
getting it together.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
I wanted us to be together, and I wanted things to get sane,
and I wanted for us together to have a life with Jaime,
and for him to get healthy and be happy.
That's what I wanted.
And then I got the call.
Michael James Brody made headlines in 1970
when he announced he would give away a $25 million inheritance.
Brody, who was then 21, wrote checks
to just about anybody who asked for one, until his hometown
bank refused to cash them.
Now, his story has taken a sad turn.
Federal agents arrested the youthful millionaire yesterday
at his home in Norwalk, Connecticut.
They said Brody made several threatening calls to the White
House, first threatening to set fire to himself,
then threatening the life of President Nixon.
Brody was released on bail, but today, he
was arrested again, charged with arson
after a real fire destroyed his $100,000 rented home.
This time, he was committed to a hospital for psychiatric tests.
He ended up in one of the sort of country club hospitals.
If there are any murderers out there,
if you want to stab somebody in the throat,
don't stab the person you're stabbing in the throat.
Call me and put me in his place.
I'll die for you.
So I struggled with that a lot, because the lens
we would now have, I think many people would just
say, he's mentally ill, right from the beginning.
There are signs there.
Give me a gun so I can blow out my brains,
so I can descend to hell, in three days
be resurrected in heaven, and be reborn into a better world.
The whole Messiah complexes and stuff... these things
are now defined as mental illnesses.
But back then, I don't know exactly what
they would have been called.
They started giving him Thorazine
so that he didn't have any episodes or psychotic events
or freaking out.
That really was the real end, was Thorazine.
[DISTORTED VOICE]
He was a mess.
He just couldn't pull back from that.
[TYPEWRITER SOUNDS]
Dear Michael, please excuse the informality.
Although you may not remember me, I took care of you
when you lived in Levittown.
I remember you as a very handsome, blond, curly haired,
little, unhappy boy.
Despite the numerous toys and bicycles that you had,
you always seemed very angry and irritable.
I was always struck by the absence of true concern
for your well-being.
And frankly, having met several of your nannies,
I could appreciate the loneliness
that you must have felt.
By now, you understand that money isn't gonna make you
happy, isn't gonna make you more secure within yourself.
It may even further demoralize you with all the greed.
For whatever it's worth, I would suggest
that you defer all decisions regarding
the distribution of your money and concentrate on coming
to terms with yourself.
Sincerely yours, Naftalie Rapoport, MD.
OK, so this is the last chapter, which is entitled,
"The War is Over."
January was gloomy and cold, and Brody
turned to drinking nearly a case of beer a day.
The Thorazine made him catatonic.
He did not like to get out of bed.
He lamented his condition, his lack of money.
Many days he had trouble dressing and bathing himself.
On January 26, Brody slipped out of the rented house on Glasgow
Turnpike in Woodstock.
Renee was upstairs with their son.
She didn't know Brody had left.
He turned on to Du Bois Road, and then after 100 yards,
into the driveway in front of the old farmhouse with a metal
roof tucked under several spreading maples.
Nobody was home.
Brody let himself in with the key
hidden above the front door.
He went to the closet in the upstairs hallway.
It was where Robert Du Bois kept this hunting rifles.
Across the backyard, a weathered wooden shed was visible.
It contained dozens of cardboard boxes
full of letters and telegrams Brody had
received three years earlier.
Only a few had been opened.
Nothing was working, and he just couldn't do it anymore.
And then one day, I just slept late.
I don't know how or why.
And the next thing I know, my father
called and said that he had gone over to his house,
taken his deer rifle, and shot himself, and he was dead.
And that was that, and it was over.
I don't think I can do this anymore more today.
That's OK.
Remember Michael Brody, the oleo fortune heir who in 1970 tried
to give away $25 million?
Well today, he was found dead in Upstate New York, apparently
from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Brody was 24 years old.
When Michael died, for me, it was total devastation.
My whole feeling was just like, go out in the woods
and just stop living.
Just go away.
I just can't do this.
I can't go on.
But then, there was Jaime.
There was just no way that I could not go on.
But it was really, really difficult for, I don't know,
a long time.
He came to me in the dream.
And I walked up these stairs, and he was there.
And we sat, and he held my hands,
and he talked to me for a long time.
But I don't remember anything he said.
I was very glad for that.
I don't know how much she's actually
dealt with this, because these things were not really dealt
with back in that time either.
Here's a picture of us together.
I don't know if there's any other real photos of us
together.
I mean, I certainly didn't grow up with very much information.
I didn't have photos.
I didn't have videos.
I didn't have much with regard to my father.
Well, everyone has their relationships
with their parents, and this is my relationship
with my parents.
When I look at it from the perspective of someone else,
I'm like, what a horrible story.
This is just not a good story.
This is just not a fun thing.
Some people love the past.
They look back, they remember all their happy times,
they're still having happy times.
But I don't find that to be true.
So many things I would have done differently.
That's not true for everybody.
So.
If you forget the money for a second,
what he was trying to do...
it had good intention.
Yeah.
But it's not money, it's love that I'm trying to sell.
Was it all an LSD trip?
Is at all a prank?
Is it a cruel joke?
Was he sincere?
Was he a victim?
Was he a victimizer?
It's a hard story to tell.
And what lessons can be learned of it, I still don't know.
[DOOR SQUEAKING OPEN]
I think that the best way to tell Brody's story
is by telling the story of the letters.
Well, look, that the letters are sitting in boxes in closets
somewhere is beside the point.
It doesn't mean a fucking thing to me.
What means something to me is that there's
that many needy people in the world
that we're not taking care of.
I think the letters are worth saving and worth
preserving, because when you turn the focus to the letter
writers, you're seeing into what is really happening
in the country and the world at that time,
and you're able to look at what's
happening now at this time, and you can see the parallels.
The fact that all of these letters were unopened
represents to me just thousands of voices
that were left in 1970 unheard.
My mother.
I want to open up every single letter.
I want to honor all of those people
by reading their stories, and I want to give them a voice.
Dear Mr. Brody, you are like a ray of light
in a world of darkness.
And even if you can't fulfill our wish, we want to thank you.
Thank you.
Thanks.
In the meantime, I would like to tell you
that I feel much better for just being able to write this down.
I just had a good cry.
Thank you.
Whether you help me or whether you will ever read this,
I don't know.
If you do, I would like to invite you to Dallas, Texas,
for dinner.
My wife is an excellent cook.
So even if you don't send me one penny, let me be a friend.
I feel so very much alone with no one to tell my troubles,
but I do make a great listener.
I have no idea if this letter will even get to you,
but I'm still hopeful.
You see, Mr. Brody, I am silly.
I still have hope and faith that love
can pull the human race through the giant mess it
has gotten itself into.
And if you don't give anyone anything else,
you have made a lot of people, me
included, stop and think, what is the most important thing
in life to me?
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Oh, that's the one.
Picture, maybe?
Something very interesting.
50-year-old rubber bands.
Still good.
So when you are opening a letter, if you could
be as careful as possible.
You just put the letter opener in as fast as you can.
Dear Mr. Brody, I am a 12-year-old boy
who has long since given up believing in Santa Claus.
Since reading about you in the paper,
maybe there is a Santa Claus.
Ooh, look at this one.
Oh boy.
What is that?
Sandpaper.
Dear Mr. Brody, as you can see, things are rough.
Oh, that's cool.
Dear Mrs. Brody, please don't think I'm some kind of nut
because I've taken the liberty of writing to you.
I would like you to consider appearing in a motion picture
I'm about to produce.
It's my fourth independent production.
The title the film is tentatively,
"Hell is a Private Affair."
[LAUGHTER]
Dear Michael and Renee Brody, I greet you.
I am Roger Sunderland, minister of words, emotional volcano,
sometimes pothead, digger of real communication,
mechanical and economic idiot.
I also paint.
And then there is a slide.
This person wrote a book.
Oh, wow.
It's a couple of pages, and then they
enclosed a bunch of envelopes.
I mean, I just wish there were more people like this today.
Suddenly, I feel like all of my problems are so small.
Dear Sir, as a general rule, it takes money to make money.
I have the ideas, you have the money.
One idea concerns the manufacture
of a cereal bowl constructed with a two level interior.
The cereal is placed in the upper level,
the milk on the lower level, assuring that it
will remain crisp and crunchy.
[LAUGHTER]
Michael, congratulations.
Happy bride, happy pair, happy all.
Our thing is to create an easy way for everybody
to be able to cultivate the highest quality marijuana.
We have already begun the research.
All right.
Dear Mike, my wedding is February 7 at 2:30 PM.
Stop by if you have nothing better to do.
Does she tell him where to go?
I don't think so.
Dear Mr. And Mrs. Brody Jr., I tried
to call you at home, but because of the great amount of calls
flooding the Scarsdale area, I received a wrong number.
And the poor guy who answered must have been getting calls
all night, because when I asked for Mr. Brody, he replied,
if I was Mr. Brody, I wouldn't give you a goddamn cent,
and hung up, which goes to show you there's humor in everything
if you can find it.
Dear Mr. Brody, I feel you will become an ideal and a leader
among young people.
You are so refreshing.
But I've been thinking of you and composed these
two enclosed songs about you.
Please, please give it a listen.
Oh.
Holy Shit.
Well?
♪ Michael Brody, jet king flies alone with love. ♪
♪ Brody, Brody loves the open skies above. ♪
♪ Michael Brody, he's a brand new kind of man. ♪
♪ Brody, Brody... he'll help people if he can. ♪
[MUSIC PLAYING]
[ENGINE REVVING]