
·S1 E1
A Freakin’ Animal
Episode Transcript
Campsite Media.
Speaker 2It's nineteen eighty four and Paul Fisher is in an elevator at the Wellington Hotel in New York City going up to his room.
He's just a guy from the other side of the country, a twenty something from Ella's San Fernando Valley, rocking a Juvro.
He doesn't have much going for him, honestly, he's fueled almost entirely by his own absurd self confidence.
Speaker 1But Paul's done pretty.
Speaker 2Well in just a little time in New York.
He might look like a nobody, but he's heading up a modeling agency for.
Speaker 1High fashion runway models.
Speaker 2This guy with a bad haircut now walking down this semi decent hotel hallway is representing some of the most beautiful women on the planet and making a buck.
But today is not a good day for Paul.
A few hours before he came back to the Wellington Hotel, Paul decided to make a phone call, one that he'd been dreading.
It was to the backer of his modeling agency, the guy putting up the money.
This guy's name is Larry Lynd, and Paul says he's quite on savory.
Speaker 3I've seen Larry and his boys hurt people badly, badly, badly, put him in the hospital.
And there was always a pattern.
First he'd smile, they would think that it's cool, he's okay, and then he would send the boys in and they would just fucking knock the kids out.
Speaker 4I watched the shit.
That's part of it.
Speaker 2Paul doesn't want to be at Larry's modeling agency anymore.
They've been friends, brawlers at each other's side, both not developing the best reputations, and now Paul wants to go off on his own, to go legit, to conquer the modeling industry on his terms without Larry.
So earlier this day he made that call.
Speaker 3I told Larry, I said, hey, man, I love you, and I care about you, and you're my brother, and I love you, but and I appreciate you so much for turning me onto this world.
But I gotta do this myself.
You gotta let me go.
You gotta let me do my thing.
Speaker 4Brother.
I'm good at this shit.
You gotta let me do it.
And I'm begging you.
You gotta let me out, you gotta you gotta you.
Speaker 3Say you care about me.
You got let me.
Let me do this.
And he said okay, Fish, you got it.
You got it, man.
You go do your own thing.
Pack your shit, go do your own thing, start your own thing.
I'll have somebody else come in and run this shit.
Go do it, man.
It's okay.
I feel you.
I care for you now.
I don't know problem.
I got off the phone.
I pissed my pants.
I knew it he was coming after me.
Speaker 1It's a tense moment for Paul.
Speaker 2And after he hung up, he went to blow off some steam at one of New York's hottest night clubs, a CNB scene and fucking b fucked place called Area Bianca.
Jagger could be on the dance floor.
Andy Warhol standing by in a booth.
It's a place a guy like Paul Fisher would love to spend his last night on Earth.
But he had to go back to his hotel sometime.
Speaker 3And then I came home to my hotel room that night.
It's a Wellington hotel and five of Larry's that I knew.
Real well goons came out of the closets and they put me down on the ground, and they took down my pants, and they took a gun and they shoved it in my fucking ass.
I was scared out of my fucking minds.
And then the final door opened and it was Larry.
Speaker 2Larry's a big guy, a former football player.
Paul knows he was an idiot to think he could get out of business with him so easy.
Paul's future, if he has one, is working for and finding women for Larry lent from iHeart Podcasts and Campside Media.
I'm Vanessa Grigoriatis and this is Model Wars.
This is Paul Fisher's story, but it's also the untold story of what the modeling industry is really like, the ugly business of beauty.
It's full of competition, backstabbing, abuse and violence.
It's the background clashes behind famous models strutting on runways, posing in magazines and catalogs, being in movies and television, getting displayed on the racks in the checkout aisle of the supermarket, so that even some poor sucker who just wants to buy a box of cheerios in nineteen eighty two knows exactly what true beauty is supposed to look like.
As a journalist for Vanity Fair, who knows her way around a nightclub, I've been around the modeling industry for a long time.
I've met the huge models that Paul would eventually sign, Stephanie Seymour, Naomi Campbell, Carrie Young.
Even as big as they were, they still needed someone like Paul Fisher to get them on the cover of Vogue or land them a Chanel ad.
You had to have an agent like Paul and be in the right place at the right time to reach the mountaintop.
Today you could say that search for perfection in the female form has migrated to Instagram, everyone firing up their iPhones and launching themselves into the void that is the Internet.
But that classic hunt to define beauty and profit from your version of it is the same.
It makes sense the Paul Fisher would go on to become a powerful model agent.
Models set the mark for what we're aspiring to as a culture.
They reflecting back are aspirations and desires, and Paul has always just been so attuned to what the culture wants.
He's such a product of his era and its values.
He grew up in fertile ground for a model agent, the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles.
Speaker 1This was in the nineteen seventies and.
Speaker 2The valley was a vapid superficial consumerist paradise.
It's hot on the asphalt and there's lots of strip malls now.
Frank Sabba put out his song Valley Girl as an anti consumerist anthem in nineteen eighty two, but no one got the message.
Speaker 1The song became a chart topping hit, and.
Speaker 2It spread the insane wingo of the valley far and wide.
God Fast Times at Ridgemont High came out that same year and solidified the valley's reputation for casual sex and good times at all costs.
Speaker 1Head Paul grew up in a modest home of the valley, you know, at.
Speaker 3The time of valley girls and valley boys and all.
You know, that's where I think I got my mullet.
Speaker 2The Jewish kid with a curly mullet.
Thank God, every fashion comes back around again, so this haircut won't be lost to history.
Speaker 3We didn't grow up with money, that's for sure.
We had no cash.
There were you know, my mom and dad, they were always struggling for.
Speaker 1Money, mullet and all.
Speaker 2Paul was a true classic American high school archetype, the star baseball player dating the prettiest girl in school.
Speaker 1Her name was Sue.
Speaker 3We won class couple in junior high school and high school.
She was my girlfriend for like five years, and she was in junior high school.
She was definitely the prettiest girl in high school.
Everybody wanted to meet Sue.
She was really beautiful.
Speaker 2As will learn, Paul is persistent when it comes to women, and he snuck into Sue's house enough and was likable enough with the family that they just eventually let him stay over.
But if all this is sounding wholesome, don't worry.
Speaker 3Excuse my language, you guys.
I hate saying this word in front of you.
I was banging every girl on the planet.
Speaker 2Paul was not faithful to his class couple running me, and this gets an early paradox of Paul's life with women.
He was the devoted, protective older brother to two younger sisters.
Speaker 3I would treat my sisters different that I would treat other girls.
And you know, I was a pig in high school.
The whole in high school.
I didn't care.
I didn't care about anything except, you know, my own selfish desires.
Speaker 1And Paul turned out this way despite having a saint of a mother.
Speaker 5My name is Monica Fisher.
I'm eight or seventy seven years old.
Eighty seven.
Oh, I forgot, I forgot how old I was.
It's wishful thinking.
Speaker 2Frankly, Monica knew that Paul was going to be a challenge from the beginning.
Speaker 5Where my older son was very quiet and reserved and like to read and was just very easy, Paul was all over the place.
He climbed, he didn't stop moving and chattering.
Speaker 2Paul had his own sense of justice, especially when his mother and father, a wholesale liquor distributor with a temper, were fighting.
Speaker 5I didn't know how to get out of my marriage.
I was scared to death and scared of him.
Speaker 2Probably, Paul was always getting disciplined at school, but his mom tried to let it slide because he was getting good grades.
This trade off is familiar to anyone in the modeling industry.
You present yourself a certain way as intelligent, beautiful, whatever, and as long as you perform that ideal version of yourself for the camera, you can get up to all sorts of antics behind the scenes.
It's working well for Paul, these good grades in exchange for permission to act out.
But then one day Monica gets called by one of Paul's teachers for the one millionth time, and.
Speaker 5He says to me his grades were not good, and he would come in and entertain the kids, you know, and interrupt the class and etc.
Speaker 6Etc.
And I said, well, I don't know why his grades sound good.
His grade.
Speaker 5I get his report cards and he's on the honors list.
And the teacher looked at me and said, no, it's not only on his list.
Let me show you his brave missus Fisher, I don't know what you're looking at, the teacher said to me.
And I went in and it turns out he had gotten blank report forms and he had fortued him.
And I had no idea.
He said, your son, Paul, he's like a green apple.
He's tart.
He just makes me chase him all over the place.
The green apple is a pain in the ass.
Speaker 2Paul may have been tart, and he may have been a pig, but he was also a good guy.
Just ask his mother.
Speaker 6He had the best heart going.
Speaker 5He had such a good heart, and he just was very very mischievous, very mischievous.
Speaker 2And if his dad didn't find that irresistible, he'd find someone who did so.
Speaker 3Because my house was kind of volatile, and my dad was kind of volatile.
I would go down in the summertimes in my life in twelfth grade year and my best friend his dad was in the hair business.
The hair business is the horniest business in the freaking world.
They're freaking fucking perverts.
They're pervs.
They're working on your hair, they're pervs.
The hair business is full of pervs.
He introduced me to the hair world, and they were just these older women, and he was banging everybody.
And it was like I watched him and people like him became like my freaking role model, bringing home different women all the time.
He would just just would teach us, you know, we'd be smoking pot with them all the time, getting stole with them all the time, and he'd be just like, you know, he just was a player.
Speaker 2Paul learned quickly that getting women wasn't a competition.
Teamwork was encouraged, so he and his friend from high school got creative.
Speaker 3He was like the star football player.
I was a star baseball player, and I remember just we would go home to my house and bring girls home, cheerleaders home all the time.
Sometimes we'd make leup to the same girl.
I remember my dad walked him one day he thought I was gay.
Speaker 2Paul and his friend son of the hairdresser, were having a threesome with a girl.
Speaker 4And he's like, what the heck are you doing?
And we're like, hey, get out of here.
Speaker 1Paul's father just never understood him.
Speaker 4We're not doing each other, We're just with her.
Speaker 2Getting girls was always Paul's one true talent and his overall reason for being.
This trend persisted when he enrolled in college at UC Santa Barbara.
Speaker 3I knew that was the school I wanted to go to.
Why you see Santa Barbara freaking girls?
Speaker 1David Triton was one of Paul's college pals.
Speaker 7I think when I met him, he had a book with like hundreds of names of quote conquests.
I don't want to say how you put it.
And I was shocked when I saw when I saw.
Speaker 2That some colleges have honors dorms.
Paul was in the honors dorm for fucking.
Speaker 7There was an off campus dorm called Francisco Torres that was like a.
Speaker 8Really cool place.
There was a pool.
I know he lived there.
Speaker 7I couldn't get into that, so I was in another off campus dorm, but that tower was referred to as Sodom Goemora Tower by everybody.
Speaker 2Despite the distractions, Paul does well in college.
He makes it all the way to the final semester of his senior year.
Speaker 3I've got twelve units left.
I have a three point nine to six grade point average.
I'm going to go to law school become a freaking lawyer.
Speaker 2And then one day Paul has David and a few other friends over to watch a movie.
Speaker 3And we're watching this guy, Richard Gear in American Jigelow.
And he's like, he's cool.
He's like all the girls like him.
He's just he's just a cool cat.
He's like this.
He's like he's a player, and people are paying him for sex.
And me and my boys look at each other and then we go, we could do that.
Speaker 4We could do that.
Let's check it out.
Let's go, let's do that.
Speaker 1Paul knows he's finally found his calling.
Speaker 2After watching Richard Gear do his thing in American Jiglow, Paul, David, and the rest of the boys decide to drive from Santa Barbara down the coast all the way to La.
Speaker 7We had a cool yellow Volkswag it with flared wheels.
Speaker 8It was like very cool for what it was.
Speaker 2They apparently missed the part of American Jigglow that's a disturbing meditation on the cost of desire for them.
It's damn near a manifesto, or at least it's a roadmap.
Speaker 8I think it was.
Speaker 7Probably something, you know, that's just absolutely consistent with where his head was, when he was when that movie came out, and where we were at that time.
Speaker 6Often in these big hotels you run into women from the foreign countries who may need a translator or guide.
Speaker 1How much would you charge me.
Speaker 2There's this iconic scene in the movie where the Richard Gear character meets a beautiful older woman who's played by model turned actress Lauren Hutton.
It's set in the lounge of the Beverly Hills Hotel.
Speaker 3The famous freaking poll the lounge, which is the same place that Richard Gear was in the movies.
And we're looking at each other and we're like, we're like, this is it.
Speaker 8Man.
Speaker 2Paul and the boys make ge to the entrance and they walk through rows of pink banquette booths that have laced lampshades.
There's warm, seductive light shining on the tables.
Speaker 3It's just class.
It's full on class and elegance.
And I'm like, I'm just a kid from I'm living in Santa Barbara, driving my bike, wearing shorts every day and cut off T shirt every day, and I'm looking around going I'm digging this.
This is money.
Look at this shit.
I grew up, Remember I grew up.
My mom's making hamburger helper every other night.
This is money.
They're all looking like money, like they all got money.
They all they got tans, they got you know, boufonp freaking Hairdwes, they got you know, shirts that are open with gold in there.
We've freaking we've died and gone to heaven.
There's money, and there's older women, and people are all flirting with each other, you know.
Speaker 2And right there in the polo lounge, Paul has a revelation.
Speaker 3I felt like I belong there, like like I was made.
Speaker 4For this shit.
Speaker 1And now it's time for Paul to get to work.
Speaker 2His strategy is rather simple, rather work today, really, but it's highly effective.
You have to knock on one hundred doors to just get a couple sales.
Speaker 3I'm going up to every single one because I know you're not got enough of them, three or four of them, we're gonna say, you're a really interesting young man, and let's go to my hotel room.
Because you know, maybe the first four or five where you're going to hear nose, but sooner or later you're going to hear somebody go yeah.
Speaker 4I'm in it's a numbers game.
That's the that's the game.
Speaker 2So he's talking to a lot of women.
The night's going well, were having a.
Speaker 3Great time, and then I see these people staring at me.
I see this table and they're pointing at me and they're staring at me.
Speaker 1And it's dudes, not the people Paul is here for.
But they just keep looking at him.
Speaker 4They got gold on him.
Speaker 3A couple of the guys were really big, big, big beefy dudes.
Speaker 1Like former football player beefy.
Speaker 4And then one of the.
Speaker 3Beef dudes walks up to me and he says, hey, my boss wants to meet you.
And I'm like, yeah, yeah, thanks, Well I'm straight he no, no, no, no, just come on, just come meet my boss.
And I'm like, yeah, that's not going to happen, man, I'm straight not into it.
Speaker 4No, no, no, no, no, no.
Speaker 1But the beefy emissary was persistent.
Speaker 2He came up to Paul two or three times asking him to come meet his boss.
Speaker 3The guy that kept coming up to me, you could see he's like a bodyguard.
He's like a veto looking guy, like a big, huge freaking animal, which is you know, gold chain, just a beefcake dude, big freaking dude.
And I just you know, I'm just not into it.
Speaker 2By then, Paul's ready to call it a night.
Not bad for his first night in the big leagues.
The next day, Paul says he gets back in his yellow Volkswagen.
He's alone this time.
He's supposed to go meet one of the women he met the previous night, about a.
Speaker 3Mile away from the Beverly Hills Hotel on Sunset Boulevard, which is like, there's nothing there.
The freaking VW breaks down, so.
Speaker 2Paul says he huffs it to the Polo Lounge to use the payphone.
He's crashed out of the glamorous life.
He got a taste up last night.
He's just some schlub using a payphone looking for some help with his busted car.
Speaker 4I'm pissed off.
I'm in no mood.
Speaker 3Who walks up to me, the big freaking bouncer, the Veto dude.
He's like, Hey, I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, I'm on the phone Triple A.
Speaker 8What what?
Speaker 3What?
Speaker 4What?
What?
Speaker 3And he waits, so I'm off the phone.
He's very cordial, he's polite, and he goes, hey, listen, my boss wants to talk to you.
Speaker 2But it's what the boss wants to talk to Paul about that catches his attention.
Speaker 3He watched you last night, how you were with all these girls and these women, and you just like you, like you just would walk up to everybody and anybody, and he just wants to meet you.
Can you meet the guy?
Just just spend five minutes to meet the guy.
And I'm in a pissed off mood.
Now I'm waiting for Triple A.
So I said, okay, okay, okay, okay, who is he?
Show me what what?
So I walk up to the Guy's name's Larry.
Speaker 1Lynde in American Jigglow.
In the scene where Richard Gear meets Lauren Hutton at the Polo Lounge, he takes a seat at her table and they're framed with that almost smoldering, low warm light from the lamp.
They're like moths to the flame.
Speaker 6Mister k like another drink.
Speaker 2It's that moment when you meet someone and your life is forever changed.
And although Paul is very into women, exclusively into women, meeting Larry Lynd is kind of a moment of seduction for Paul because despite being a beefy, freaking animal with male sexual organs, it turned out that Larry did have something Paul wanted very badly.
Speaker 3Now, Larry Lynn looks like an older version of Elvis Presley, really cool hair.
You know, you could see he's put together.
You see he's rich.
You could see, you know, the gold big gold watch.
He's got a couple of bodyguards on each side.
And we just start talking and he just just listened.
Come out with me tonight.
We'll go to a couple of clubs.
You know, I'll get you eat.
You like pat, I'll get your potty.
You're like blow, I'll get you blow.
We'll go out tonight.
You'll come out with me and my bodyguards.
We'll go out to a club I heard about this place called whoah Lah.
You'll walk in, you'll sit with me.
We'll have a couple of drinks, you'll well, we'll talk to the girls.
Just come out with me one night.
Speaker 2The previous night, Paul had gone and played Make Believe in the Polo Lounge.
He went on vacation in someone else's life.
But this is Larry's life.
He can do this whenever he wants.
He holds the key, and he's inviting Paul along.
Speaker 4Change my life.
Speaker 3I never went back, so I went out with him that night, had a great time, brought girls back to the Beverly Hills Bungalows.
I was doing blow with him, getting high and ben.
Speaker 1Somehow things get even better.
Speaker 3A few hours later, he said, I just bought a brand new Ferrari three oah gts, it's downstairs.
I'm going to give you five hundred bucks and a plane ticket home.
Speaker 4Do me a favor.
Speaker 3Drive my Ferrari to Houston, Texas for me.
Speaker 1Shockingly, Paul says yes.
Speaker 2On the long drive from Beverly Hills to Houston, it may have occurred to Paul that he's now one of those people who can point to the exact moment he broke his mother's heart.
This joy ride to Texas, conflicted with Paul's prior obligation, his last semester of college.
Speaker 6I didn't even go to college.
Speaker 5I wanted so badly, but girls at that time, no, no, You learn how to type.
Speaker 6Go to night school and learn how to type.
Speaker 5So if your husband when you get married, if you have if he ever needs help, you can always be a secretary.
That's why I made sure that all my children were going to go to college.
Speaker 6No matter what I did.
Speaker 5And Paul was actually the only one that I was so disappointed.
He was afraid to tell me.
He drove up in this rent I forget what, a Ferrari or a little red sports car with a friend of his, and I knew the semester had just started, and he says, Mom, I'm packing bag, but what are you talking about.
Speaker 6You're in school.
Speaker 2But somehow school couldn't compete with Larry Lynd.
Paul recruited his pal David to join him.
Speaker 7And I came out of lax and there is Paul Fisher sitting in this brand new Target to Burgundy, red.
Speaker 8Doesn't even have license plates on it.
Speaker 7Three toa GTS Ferrari and I get in the car and he shows me he's got five hundred bucks, He's got a bag of roll joints, and off we go.
Speaker 3I was picking up on girls in Santa Barbara on a forty.
Speaker 4Dollars bike and an Afro with a mullet.
Speaker 3Now imagine that same guy with a Ferrari at five hundred bucks, Like, you kidding me, I'm not going to take advantage of that.
Speaker 1Lock up your daughters.
First stop camp Arizona.
Speaker 8We went to this bar and to get some food and shirt.
Speaker 7Up he lands this girl who's like a Siamese twin who just got disengaged from her sister, and she was showing.
Speaker 8Us a scar.
It was like, I mean a beautiful girl.
Speaker 7Like I'm like, oh, no way, And sure enough you know he you know, he spends time with her that night.
Speaker 3Now I got all the tools I need to go to any bar, any restaurant and do any I mean what, So we stopped everywhere we stopped.
We're getting laid.
Speaker 7If there's a woman that is so beautiful that most guys kind of they stare at her, they dribble around, they don't know what they're doing, right, And his whole thing was like, instead of looking at her like every guy would, he would look at her and dismissively put his head down and then he would stare right back at her again like with this.
And I used to call this the beam because I've seen her work a thousand times.
Speaker 8You know, like, no, I'm not just did he just like do that?
Speaker 7And sure, this woman who was surrounded by her boyfriend and all kinds of dudes at a bar, you know, like ends up he takes.
Speaker 8Her out of the bar.
In the Ferrari, it was the gravel road.
Speaker 4Who were going into bars, pulling girls out of the bars.
Speaker 3We had boys chasing a freaking cowboys chasing us down the freaking road because we're pulling their chicks out of the place, and we're driving away in our Ferrari.
It was the craziest road trip you could ever possibly imagine.
And then we drove into Houston, Texas and got there.
Speaker 8It was giant.
It felt huge.
Speaker 7There was freeways, it was flat, it was hot.
It was unimpressive from like a social cultural perspective.
It was Texas.
It was trucks, it was guys.
It was oyster bars and cold beer and buckets, and it was pretty pretty women.
We have friggin tight dresses and you know, giant booths sticking out.
Speaker 2As it turned out, This was the peak Houston's oil boom.
It's been up and down ever since, but at the time the party was in full swing.
They arrived at Larry's penthouse.
Speaker 7We get there at the Hook Condo and it's a freaking beautiful penthouse, top floor, massive.
There's a butler, Travis.
There's a maid and service lady.
Speaker 8Named Mary, sweetest could be.
They welcomed to.
Speaker 2Paul and David go out with some girls that night, and the next day Larry arrives.
Speaker 3He says, like, this is Paul Fisher.
He's like the greatest with girls and David's buddy.
But you got to watch Fish.
He's going to go out tonight watching with girls.
You never seen anything like it in your life.
He'll walk up to anybody, everybody, He'll create parties for us.
Speaker 4And I'm like what.
He goes, yeah, Yeah, here's what I want you to do.
Speaker 1Larry gives Paul his marching orders.
Speaker 3You're going to get to Limo.
You're going to go to this place called Bocaccio's.
You're gonna go there and we're going to create a party.
Bring back ten girls back here.
I'll get ounces of blow lots of alcohol.
I'm a bartender.
We'll have a big party here tonight because you guys are here in town.
Speaker 4I could do that.
Speaker 2So Larry Chauffeur drives them over to Boccaccio's, the highest of the high end clubs of the Houston Oil Boom.
It's a disco themed mansion with sculptural glass tabletops and these long, inviting plush booths.
Speaker 1They just make you want us snuggle.
Speaker 2Up with dozens of close fronts.
Speaker 3We're in Houston, Texas.
It's nineteen eighty one.
They never seen anything like me in their lives before.
These are freaking cowboys.
I got a napro mullet, my shirt pulled into my jacket, my collar up, and I got two bodyguards, one on the left, one on the right.
I pull up in a freaking limo.
I walk up to the the red rope and I'm said, I'm here.
Let me open the freaking door.
I want that table over there, bring me a couple of bottles, and you know that's what I want.
It was like like I had done it a thousand times.
Speaker 1Paul delivers Larry exactly what he at four.
Speaker 3I took ten beautiful, beautiful girls that you know I don't get mad at you guys this with me back then, I don't know if they could count to ten.
They weren't the bright, sharpest tools in the shed.
They were like Houston Kicks, the for the nineteen eighty.
These are not These are like not like girls from New York City.
Speaker 2And Larry soon introduces Paul to his business partner, who's a man named Michael Fitzmorris.
Larry's the party guy and Michael's the business guy.
And Michael has an explanation, or rather a rumor of an explanation for Larry's gold chain veto mystique.
Speaker 4I'm just going to put it like this.
Speaker 9There's a rumor that his family was mob connected, as a rumor that his great uncle was trying to Costello, who's the person that they wrote The Godfather about.
He's the one that control all the judges and stuff.
Speaker 4That's a rumor.
I'm not going to verify.
Speaker 1That's a rumor.
Speaker 2So that's the org source of all this party money.
Speaker 9Then all of a sudden, there were women coming in the office, you know, seven, eight, nine, ten a day, and then and then at the party apartment across the street that was filling up every Thursday, Friday and Saturday night two hundred and fifty to five hundred people to a thousand people.
I mean, it was just unbelievable.
And then Paul brought a couple of his friends and then what they were doing.
They were either in la for a couple of weeks a month, or they were in Houston for a couple of weeks a month.
And Larry was bouncing back and forth because he had to deal with me because I was screaming and yelling saying this is nuts.
Speaker 7It was awesome.
I mean we thought it was great.
It was like, you know, their party was on all the time.
You know, you wanted to bring a girl a dozen roses at a bar that you were trying to Like Larry Lynn thought he saw this girly.
Really really we had a pounding club.
Everything's going on.
He's like one to send her some flowers.
He would order out and a person would come with a wheelbarrow was full of roses and bring the whole wheelbarrow to her.
Speaker 8It wasn't like you give a dozen flowers to the girl.
Speaker 7I mean it was that excessive that there was NonStop whatever you.
Speaker 3Want, we just start partying every night.
That's what he does, he sends me out, go bring me back ten, bring back ten.
Speaker 4Let's have a party.
Let's have a party.
And that's what we did for two months.
Speaker 2You know, the saying, do what you love and have lots of rumored mob money and you'll never work a day in your life.
Speaker 9Larry Lynde had the most amazing eye for women of any one of them at my life.
Speaker 4And then Paul showed up.
Speaker 9And Paul and Larry were like, you know, all they would do is spend the day criticizing the look of this one, to criticize the look of that one.
If this one's eyes were you know, a perfect tea and straight and the forehead and you know they're going through the whole thing, then you know this this girl would be prettier.
And the Paul was going on meeting girls in Houston and bringing them in and you know, but Larry was enjoying that.
Speaker 1This goes on for a few months.
Speaker 3I'm having the greatest time of my life.
I'm twenty years old, I'm I'm a freaking I'm doing drugs, I'm smoking pot.
I'm just making love to every beautiful texting girl.
It's like, this is the greatest moment of my life, and I thought everything was mine.
Speaker 4Well I've been looking.
Speaker 3Back, not none of it was mine.
I mean, it was none of it.
It was a freaking illusion.
And then one morning Larry wakes up with blow all over his freaking nose and he walks into the room and he says, hey, listen, I want you to go to New York City and open up a modeling agency for me and Michael.
And I'm like, yeah, I don't know how to spell the word vogue.
Speaker 4But yeah.
Speaker 2Maybe Paul could have tuned into the signals that this wasn't really his life and that going deeper into Larry's world would only put him further in debt.
And maybe if Paul had finished that last semester of college, he would have learned the story of Icarus.
Speaker 1I'm talking about the Greek who.
Speaker 2Went higher and higher, past the high school threesome, past the Ferrari road trip, past the Conjoins twin hookup, flying ever higher over a mountain of cocaine, ignoring the warning signs of jingling gold chains, of guys with bodyguards.
Maybe he would have learned that Icris eventually had a terrible fall.
Speaker 1But how could he turn this down.
Speaker 3My job was trying to figure out what other people would think is beautiful.
Speaker 8In the modeling business.
Speaker 2You can be with any name brand, fancy agency you want to be with.
Speaker 8What does your agent love you.
Speaker 6Till this day?
Speaker 1Honestly, if I see a measuring tape, I fucking freak out.
Speaker 8I cringe, like I can't take because it just brought me so much stress.
Speaker 7Everybody was concentrating on the stars, quote unquote stars, But you have all these models that they need to work every day, they need to pay their bills.
Speaker 9Book, book, book, book, Come on, let's book, let's nightdeals, and let's get models in.
Let's get go gos.
Speaker 3It's a freaking war zone.
These people are animals.
There's no integrity, there's no loyalty, there's none of that.
Speaker 4That's all bullshit.
Speaker 3That's gow.
Speaker 1That's next on Model Wars.
Speaker 10Model Wars was a production of iHeart Podcasts and Campside Media.
Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Model Wars was executive produced and hosted by Vanessa Grigoriotis.
Our senior writer was Michael Kenyon Meyer.
Speaker 1Julia K.
Speaker 10S Levine was our producer and reporter.
Our senior producer was Lily Houston Smith and our assistant editor was Emma Simonov.
We had to and production help from Shoshi Shmulowitz, Ali.
Speaker 1Haney, and Blake Rook.
Speaker 10Our production manager was Ashley Warren and our studio recordist was ewan Lyi Tremuen.
Sound design, mix and engineering by Mark McCadam.
iHeart Podcasts executive producers were Jennifer Bassett and Katrina Norbel.
The show was also executive produced by Rachel winter In.
Campside Media's Josh Dean, Adam Hoff, and Matt Share.
If you'd like to access behind the scenes content from Model Wars and Campside Media, please go to join campside dot com.
That's j O I N C A M P s I d E dot com.
If you enjoyed Model Wars, please rate and review the show wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1Thanks so much for listening.