Name: What Louis Theroux Saw Covering America's Most Extreme Groups
Uploaded: 2024-07-01T20:18:32.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'What Louis Theroux Saw Covering America's Most Extreme Groups' from Theo Von Clips on Comedy Buff. Published 2024-07-01. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'What Louis Theroux Saw Covering America's Most Extreme Groups' from Theo Von Clips on Comedy Buff. Published 2024-07-01. Transcript available.

i'll say like you know because i came up as a you know from the outward
appearances being british
but then i got my break in america working for michael moore and then i was
doing story first one
of the first stories i did was about the ku klux klan and i was in yeah i'm
familiar with it okay
zinc arkansas and what the pro the show that i did or the or the phenomenon of
the clan or both
i'm familiar with the one where's the part where the guy you guys are at the
house and they ask
if you're jewish or the guy that was a different one because then it was like
it worked so then
that was also that was i was with the neo-nazis in california but the first one
was a guy called
michael low he lived in uh waco texas oh yeah and he said no sir and it was the
first time i found
i encountered that southern thing of being called sir but in a way that felt
formal to the point of
slightly unfriendly yes sir it's real nice come over here sir like it could
have felt like polite
but it felt like distancing you know what i mean no just like that and he was
showing me all his signs
and the site he would they were pretending not to be racist oh yeah i've seen
this but they're in the
ku klux klan so he's leaving out this stuff and it says and this is something
with an atom we use for
our world side sales and it's called for the discriminating shopper yes sir and
and it said
discriminating in red and i go um but why does it say discriminating in red you
know it's just like that
because it's kind of stands out and i said but does that mean you discriminate
no sir we do not
discriminate no sir and it was an odd thing but my point with the point i was
going to get to was
that uh when those shows go out in the u.s i'm thinking like i'm a i'm amer i'm
half american like
this isn't me making fun of american culture but some people didn't see it that
way and i always felt
like a very divine and i did one i had one where i went around um miami mega
jail like the big one of
the biggest jails in in oh yeah in dade county yeah miami dade or four fifth or
yes so you've
seen this stuff yeah yeah yeah yeah i'm familiar i don't want you to think that
i'm not familiar i
appreciate it so i thought it was a good show but then when it went out on netflix
uh most i guess most
people a lot of people liked it but some of the comments were like from people
i think black people
who are like why is this white british guy going in kind of making us look bad
which it's a valid
response but it's definitely not how how it was intended so i'm conscious of
that feeling of being
insider but outsider as well yeah you know it's fine i was thinking about that
i was like i wonder what
it feels like because once you kind of as somebody who's coming to look at
something and explore it
and see how you can be a filter or like a kaleidoscope for the other people
behind you that are going to
watch it what is that is it tough like at a certain point do you become a bit
of a jaded
kaleidoscope do you become like a do you like yeah how does your funnel change
over time just
because of doing it more and more and because it garner also there's it garners
esteem yes and so
that's it's it's just interesting how the different how different factors can
start i think the best
thing that the best thing that's happened to me is is is that i'm not that well
known in america and
and you know it's changed a little bit uh for various reasons so i have a
little bit of a profile but i
think the fact that i can go in where if i did a documentary in the uk i'd be
pretty well known
yeah and it's fine you could still do it in some ways it generates more goodwill
because they're
like oh we like louis we'll let him in and then off camera you're maybe doing
selfies and whatnot which
is fine although it kind of eats into your time a bit you think i'm supposed to
be a serious journalist
slightly flying under the radar and here i am doing selfies yeah at a riot do
you know what i mean i'm
like oh yeah i really need to be filming this right now so sorry someone's
being arrested over
there oh just a quick selfie come on mate and then in america however i'm just
i'm going around
miami jail no one's going to ask me for a selfie there do you know what i mean
and i i love that part
of it and i never get jaded as long as i feel i'm meeting new people the only
times where i felt
like the dynamic changes is if i go back and do a follow-up a couple of times
so i did a story about the
westboro baptist church yeah i'm familiar that's in louisiana right uh it's in
it's in uh kansas
topeka topeka kansas the capital i think we have a branch in louisiana i don't
think so really yeah
they don't really do branches it's really just a one a one-stop shop oh yeah
unless there's obviously
crazy i use the term crazy advisedly but uh there's other outfits there's
strange churches but i with
westboro there's only as far as i'm aware it's only ever been one of the guys
left and moved to
louisiana i wonder if that's what i thought they had a ford operating base or
something in louisiana
maybe like a little beachhead yeah like a yeah let's deploy from here uh they
um so when i went
back you know i did the first one i'm like hello how does it work like nice to
meet you so you carry
these signs what's that all about and then you made the program and then i went
and made a follow-up
and when you go back they kind of have your number and i don't mean number as
in like
they know you're a prankster or making fun of them it's more like they just
know who you are right so
they don't put up with any nonsense and you know who they are so the point the
word you used was jaded
you get a little jaded and that creates a different energy so you are sort of
saying
come on just stop it it's racist or it's homophobic it's anti-semitic and you
just cut to the chase
quicker which uh uh you know you have no camouflage so it doesn't make it
impossible to do work and as
so as long as i'm on a new story even if it's a related story to something like
if you put me in a
prison in the us tomorrow i'd be a very happy person wow but no i mean you're
like you're the p actually
that gets put in like you're the thing that has an effect on these i see yeah
yeah i've got the
distorting effect of being of mixing things up and and yeah i very much i do i
do like that i yeah i
don't know what else to say about yeah like what is that is it how did that
ever start start in you
that you desired like okay i like invisibility and i'm an anxious person and
because i grew up uh
always worrying about things um i felt if i was talking to someone who seemed
off beam or just in any
way like their mind works differently like i was maybe all kids are like this
but i was the kid
who if there was a homeless person with his mouth open and i was like five or
six years ago i'd be
like what what what's going on with that mom why is that man got his mouth open
what mom and they're
like you know things you're not supposed to talk about don't talk about it or
if you read about just
weird stuff happening like guys falling asleep and and and kind of getting you
know and then burning to
death because they were in the sun and they were wearing too much sun oil and
it's like what does
that feel like i was just kind of i think there were aspects of life that felt
so strange it took
me out of myself it and and whatever inner voices of anxiety and disquiet i had
they were silenced does
that make sense yeah yeah it's interesting so if you're on location you're
going and talking to
someone who like the first story i ever did was for michael moore and it was
called millennium and it was about
people who think the end of the world is about to happen and i my main anxiety
was um
i'm going to be terrible at being on tv right i just didn't think i had
whatever that gift is
like i was very nervous i thought i know i always think i know at least five
people who are way who
would be way better at this than me like my best friends were all really funny
people i grew up with
who went on to be comedians and talented performers right and i'm thinking i'm
the least funny one in my
friendship group and yet i was 23 years old and i've been given this break and
the only thing i had
that i was clinging on to that i thought but i i'm going to take this
opportunity of of being a network
you know being a correspondent on this new show because i want to meet these
people who are part of
these crazy cults who think the world is about to end yeah i just thought that
does sound like but that
sounds fascinating and i will enjoy that part of it and maybe in enjoying
speaking to them they'll get
some usable footage and that was really the launch pad like was the fact that i
just want to know like
why why do you think that like what what part of you you know like when is it
going to all happen when
is jesus coming back and what will he be wearing and is that a tuesday or a wednesday
and the concrete
detail or the ufo there were four different groups and there was a ufo group uh
they were landing in
southern california that the the spaceships were going to land in 2001 and and
uh and then there
was a group in western montana who who were a part of a neo-nazi outfit who
wear little nazi uniforms
and i remember it was day three first two days it went terrible it went
terrible it like i thought um
with the neo-nazis you mean no the day one was a harold camping he was he was a
fundamentalist
christian okay like this and then jesus is going to come back see yeah and then
day two was it was a
ufo group and they were all kind of touchy feeling like we're not preaching
doom and gloom we're not
fearful at all but it was kind of like they kept talking like i just didn't
feel like i was clicking
with them like they talked too much basically and i was too polite and scared
to interrupt but then day
three the nazis bizarrely were the most polite and the most sort of emotionally
available does that make
sense so they were just i think they were just so lonely and so bored living
like two guys living in
a trailer in western montana oh yeah the me arriving and they're like come on
in uh so great
to have you you know there's a lot of truth in the prophecies that are written
up in star wars the
movie star wars and what about star trek star trek's another one a lot of truth
in that different
planets for different races yeah and i thought like i was um i was i didn't
want to talk too much about myself because i thought
they'd probably assume i was jewish because a lot of people assume i'm jewish
and i thought that would
lead to an interesting dynamic right so i and and it was just really striking
how they were just thrilled
to be telling the good news about different races going to different planets
and how there was this
neo-nazi cosmic vision and i would just sort of go like wow that's fascinating
tell me more and
in in in the ambiance of of of kind of weird i don't want to say friendship but
this sort of weird
feeling of um warmth that infused the room and the ludicrousness of what they
were saying i thought
okay i'm i can do this like i can do my job right this is funny and interesting
and um that's cool man
i thought that was it i can now now not only did i think i've got this i
thought like i'm one of the
greatest tv performers of all time you know what i mean oh yeah like that i was
like this isn't a
segment this is a feature film and and and in fact michael moore better watch
out because i'm hot on his
tail i'm i'm way bigger than that yeah oh it's wild how you're three days in
three days in of course
i'm too big for this do you feel um accomplished
yeah but you're not supposed to say yes but i do i do because it's a really
cool thing to say i think
it's important i i don't think i you know there's people have done way more
obviously stuff than me
but because i've been so lucky with uh the career that i've had and i think
maybe because of that
when i came along it was like there was various things happening in tv and
documentaries and it was
kind of like it just there was an opening like there was no one who'd done kind
of like well
there was just wasn't that guy like that he's kind of a little bit cerebral but
he likes to joke
around and he's curious about this and he's a good listener and he makes and
then the bbc gave me like
they just like just keep making those programs and they didn't really even
check up on me and suddenly
like 15 years went by and i'd made 50 programs and i basically i'd covered
everything i mean there's
still stuff out there but there's so much i've cut yeah like i've done a prison
i've done jails i've
done a maximum security mental hospital for pedophiles i've done most of the
high crime areas like let's
say most of but i've done philadelphia milwaukee johannesburg lagos uh i've
covered so much
i feel like i've had this huge privilege this gift and uh it's pretty cool i
don't want that to sound
weird i don't think it does no no all right well it's just a lot of times
especially i think in the
u.s we don't feel that you never hear someone talk about okay i feel
accomplished but you know
my thing is i'd like to um i'd like to feel like i'm wise and i'd like to feel
like i've gone through
life um and i figured something out and you know i've been to extraordinary
places and delve deep into
human psychology and i've arrived you know like with some elder so some elder
wisdom yeah but i haven't
but i think people of respect that you're on the journey no doubt yes i'm still
on the journey i
think a lot of people see that if they pitch you they pitch you on the side of
the himalayas with
a backpack on and thank you

What Louis Theroux Saw Covering America's Most Extreme Groups

i'll say like you know because i came up as a you know from the outward
appearances being british
but then i got my break in america working for michael moore and then i was
doing story first one
of the first stories i did was about the ku klux klan and i was in yeah i'm
familiar with it okay
zinc arkansas and what the pro the show that i did or the or the phenomenon of
the clan or both
i'm familiar with the one where's the part where the guy you guys are at the
house and they ask
if you're jewish or the guy that was a different one because then it was like
it worked so then
that was also that was i was with the neo-nazis in california but the first one
was a guy called
michael low he lived in uh waco texas oh yeah and he said no sir and it was the
first time i found
i encountered that southern thing of being called sir but in a way that felt
formal to the point of
slightly unfriendly yes sir it's real nice come over here sir like it could
have felt like polite
but it felt like distancing you know what i mean no just like that and he was
showing me all his signs
and the site he would they were pretending not to be racist oh yeah i've seen
this but they're in the
ku klux klan so he's leaving out this stuff and it says and this is something
with an atom we use for
our world side sales and it's called for the discriminating shopper yes sir and
and it said
discriminating in red and i go um but why does it say discriminating in red you
know it's just like that
because it's kind of stands out and i said but does that mean you discriminate
no sir we do not
discriminate no sir and it was an odd thing but my point with the point i was
going to get to was
that uh when those shows go out in the u.s i'm thinking like i'm a i'm amer i'm
half american like
this isn't me making fun of american culture but some people didn't see it that
way and i always felt
like a very divine and i did one i had one where i went around um miami mega
jail like the big one of
the biggest jails in in oh yeah in dade county yeah miami dade or four fifth or
yes so you've
seen this stuff yeah yeah yeah yeah i'm familiar i don't want you to think that
i'm not familiar i
appreciate it so i thought it was a good show but then when it went out on netflix
uh most i guess most
people a lot of people liked it but some of the comments were like from people
i think black people
who are like why is this white british guy going in kind of making us look bad
which it's a valid
response but it's definitely not how how it was intended so i'm conscious of
that feeling of being
insider but outsider as well yeah you know it's fine i was thinking about that
i was like i wonder what
it feels like because once you kind of as somebody who's coming to look at
something and explore it
and see how you can be a filter or like a kaleidoscope for the other people
behind you that are going to
watch it what is that is it tough like at a certain point do you become a bit
of a jaded
kaleidoscope do you become like a do you like yeah how does your funnel change
over time just
because of doing it more and more and because it garner also there's it garners
esteem yes and so
that's it's it's just interesting how the different how different factors can
start i think the best
thing that the best thing that's happened to me is is is that i'm not that well
known in america and
and you know it's changed a little bit uh for various reasons so i have a
little bit of a profile but i
think the fact that i can go in where if i did a documentary in the uk i'd be
pretty well known
yeah and it's fine you could still do it in some ways it generates more goodwill
because they're
like oh we like louis we'll let him in and then off camera you're maybe doing
selfies and whatnot which
is fine although it kind of eats into your time a bit you think i'm supposed to
be a serious journalist
slightly flying under the radar and here i am doing selfies yeah at a riot do
you know what i mean i'm
like oh yeah i really need to be filming this right now so sorry someone's
being arrested over
there oh just a quick selfie come on mate and then in america however i'm just
i'm going around
miami jail no one's going to ask me for a selfie there do you know what i mean
and i i love that part
of it and i never get jaded as long as i feel i'm meeting new people the only
times where i felt
like the dynamic changes is if i go back and do a follow-up a couple of times
so i did a story about the
westboro baptist church yeah i'm familiar that's in louisiana right uh it's in
it's in uh kansas
topeka topeka kansas the capital i think we have a branch in louisiana i don't
think so really yeah
they don't really do branches it's really just a one a one-stop shop oh yeah
unless there's obviously
crazy i use the term crazy advisedly but uh there's other outfits there's
strange churches but i with
westboro there's only as far as i'm aware it's only ever been one of the guys
left and moved to
louisiana i wonder if that's what i thought they had a ford operating base or
something in louisiana
maybe like a little beachhead yeah like a yeah let's deploy from here uh they
um so when i went
back you know i did the first one i'm like hello how does it work like nice to
meet you so you carry
these signs what's that all about and then you made the program and then i went
and made a follow-up
and when you go back they kind of have your number and i don't mean number as
in like
they know you're a prankster or making fun of them it's more like they just
know who you are right so
they don't put up with any nonsense and you know who they are so the point the
word you used was jaded
you get a little jaded and that creates a different energy so you are sort of
saying
come on just stop it it's racist or it's homophobic it's anti-semitic and you
just cut to the chase
quicker which uh uh you know you have no camouflage so it doesn't make it
impossible to do work and as
so as long as i'm on a new story even if it's a related story to something like
if you put me in a
prison in the us tomorrow i'd be a very happy person wow but no i mean you're
like you're the p actually
that gets put in like you're the thing that has an effect on these i see yeah
yeah i've got the
distorting effect of being of mixing things up and and yeah i very much i do i
do like that i yeah i
don't know what else to say about yeah like what is that is it how did that
ever start start in you
that you desired like okay i like invisibility and i'm an anxious person and
because i grew up uh
always worrying about things um i felt if i was talking to someone who seemed
off beam or just in any
way like their mind works differently like i was maybe all kids are like this
but i was the kid
who if there was a homeless person with his mouth open and i was like five or
six years ago i'd be
like what what what's going on with that mom why is that man got his mouth open
what mom and they're
like you know things you're not supposed to talk about don't talk about it or
if you read about just
weird stuff happening like guys falling asleep and and and kind of getting you
know and then burning to
death because they were in the sun and they were wearing too much sun oil and
it's like what does
that feel like i was just kind of i think there were aspects of life that felt
so strange it took
me out of myself it and and whatever inner voices of anxiety and disquiet i had
they were silenced does
that make sense yeah yeah it's interesting so if you're on location you're
going and talking to
someone who like the first story i ever did was for michael moore and it was
called millennium and it was about
people who think the end of the world is about to happen and i my main anxiety
was um
i'm going to be terrible at being on tv right i just didn't think i had
whatever that gift is
like i was very nervous i thought i know i always think i know at least five
people who are way who
would be way better at this than me like my best friends were all really funny
people i grew up with
who went on to be comedians and talented performers right and i'm thinking i'm
the least funny one in my
friendship group and yet i was 23 years old and i've been given this break and
the only thing i had
that i was clinging on to that i thought but i i'm going to take this
opportunity of of being a network
you know being a correspondent on this new show because i want to meet these
people who are part of
these crazy cults who think the world is about to end yeah i just thought that
does sound like but that
sounds fascinating and i will enjoy that part of it and maybe in enjoying
speaking to them they'll get
some usable footage and that was really the launch pad like was the fact that i
just want to know like
why why do you think that like what what part of you you know like when is it
going to all happen when
is jesus coming back and what will he be wearing and is that a tuesday or a wednesday
and the concrete
detail or the ufo there were four different groups and there was a ufo group uh
they were landing in
southern california that the the spaceships were going to land in 2001 and and
uh and then there
was a group in western montana who who were a part of a neo-nazi outfit who
wear little nazi uniforms
and i remember it was day three first two days it went terrible it went
terrible it like i thought um
with the neo-nazis you mean no the day one was a harold camping he was he was a
fundamentalist
christian okay like this and then jesus is going to come back see yeah and then
day two was it was a
ufo group and they were all kind of touchy feeling like we're not preaching
doom and gloom we're not
fearful at all but it was kind of like they kept talking like i just didn't
feel like i was clicking
with them like they talked too much basically and i was too polite and scared
to interrupt but then day
three the nazis bizarrely were the most polite and the most sort of emotionally
available does that make
sense so they were just i think they were just so lonely and so bored living
like two guys living in
a trailer in western montana oh yeah the me arriving and they're like come on
in uh so great
to have you you know there's a lot of truth in the prophecies that are written
up in star wars the
movie star wars and what about star trek star trek's another one a lot of truth
in that different
planets for different races yeah and i thought like i was um i was i didn't
want to talk too much about myself because i thought
they'd probably assume i was jewish because a lot of people assume i'm jewish
and i thought that would
lead to an interesting dynamic right so i and and it was just really striking
how they were just thrilled
to be telling the good news about different races going to different planets
and how there was this
neo-nazi cosmic vision and i would just sort of go like wow that's fascinating
tell me more and
in in in the ambiance of of of kind of weird i don't want to say friendship but
this sort of weird
feeling of um warmth that infused the room and the ludicrousness of what they
were saying i thought
okay i'm i can do this like i can do my job right this is funny and interesting
and um that's cool man
i thought that was it i can now now not only did i think i've got this i
thought like i'm one of the
greatest tv performers of all time you know what i mean oh yeah like that i was
like this isn't a
segment this is a feature film and and and in fact michael moore better watch
out because i'm hot on his
tail i'm i'm way bigger than that yeah oh it's wild how you're three days in
three days in of course
i'm too big for this do you feel um accomplished
yeah but you're not supposed to say yes but i do i do because it's a really
cool thing to say i think
it's important i i don't think i you know there's people have done way more
obviously stuff than me
but because i've been so lucky with uh the career that i've had and i think
maybe because of that
when i came along it was like there was various thing