Original subtitles

Cam, cam.

Okay, man. Here we go, roll for speed.

Yeah, okay, and ten, nine, eight…

- Standby six. - …seven, six, five…

Our show was created on the studio floor, in the moment.

Go, go, go!

Would you welcome Mr. Jerry Springer, right over there!

You gotta grab your audience, and you gotta hold 'em.

And that's what we tried to do.

Thank you!

Thank you very much.

Hey, welcome to the show.

Today's guests say their relationships are so bizarre,

they have to keep them a secret.

Please meet Mark.

He's been together with his wife for ten years.

But before we talk to Mark,

let's meet his wife.

Please welcome her to the show, Mark's wife.

Oh my God.

I'm gonna vomit.

Jerry! Jerry! Jerry! Jerry!

Greatest love story ever told.

This guy married a horse.

Hey, hey!

Nothing like Jerry Springer had ever been seen before.

We wanted to create a new genre of talk show.

Like this!

Let's turn it upside down.

It was the inception of American shock culture.

Our show was chaos.

I hate you! I hate you!

It was genius.

The modern version of the Roman Colosseum.

Producing that show gives you a superpower…

No, no, no!

…to convince people to do shit that they wouldn't normally do.

Get out there and fight for her!

People in the middle of a big crisis in their life.

You're a meth-head piece of ♪♪♪♪!

It was vulgar, it was vile, it was exploitative.

Jerry liked the ladies, but the guests are the guests.

You don't cross that line.

The producers were playing with fire.

Yeah!

It was very dangerous.

Where would you draw the line?

I would not. There's no line to draw.

If I could kill someone on television, I would execute 'em on television.

It's our worst nightmare. Love triangle comes on the show,

and then they kill each other.

This is it.

After this, I'm never talking about this fucking show ever again.

Jerry! Jerry! Jerry! Jerry! Jerry! Jerry!

At the beginning of 1992,

we got a tip as journalists

that this new guy was coming to Chicago to launch a talk show.

Well, you've seen them advertised

in newspaper inserts and on television sets.

Nah, not television sets.

So there was a press event

where this guy was introduced to the media,

and that was where he outlined his vision for the show at that time.

I want them to say, after watching the show,

that they learned something about life that they didn't know before,

and Jerry didn't get in the way of the telling of that story.

But there was a problem. We had no idea who this guy was.

We just knew his name was Jerry Springer.

Councilman Springer, what are you doing?

I'm trying to make a living.

Apparently, he was the former mayor of Cincinnati,

and had also been very successful in television news

as a news anchor and as a news commentator.

Good evening. America's spirit is soaring tonight,

right along with the space shuttle Discovery.

The company that I did the news for said,

"Jerry, we're starting a talk show, and you're gonna host it."

And that, I think, was the idea, that I would do news at night…

Gonna see you again tomorrow. Until then, take care of yourself.

- And each other. Good night. - Good night.

…and then do the talk show during the day.

So it started out serious.

If you just joined us, this is our first show.

And, uh, we're putting together people who haven't seen each other for 35 years.

My first impressions were, "This is very unremarkable."

We have a nice surprise for you today.

- Okay? - What?

You are gonna meet your daughter, Sandy, who you have not seen in 35 years.

Sandy?

There was nothing about Jerry or the show that stuck out

among the literally dozens of talk shows

that were flooding the market at that time.

It was just one more show.

Till next time, take care of yourself and each other.

The ratings for talk shows always mattered,

and if anybody said that anything else mattered more, they're lying to you.

Every morning, you would get what was called an overnight sheet,

and it would have all the talk shows listed

and what they would do.

You always wanted to get at least a two, a two million people watching.

That was like the magic number at that time.

Obviously, Oprah would get like, you know, 12, 14.

That show was a beast, you know?

- Isn't this… - Fabulous!

Fabulous! It's a fabulous hat.

It's a gift. The truth is, I could do this for 50 years,

and I would never be as good as Oprah. That's the truth.

Brian's in a smoking section. Doesn't he have the right to smoke?

We all knew we were never, ever going to beat Oprah.

Like... Like, never, you know what I mean? Just like, "Ah."

Mmm.

- A senior in high school? - Yes.

- What's next? - College.

It was respectable, but it wasn't compelling.

It didn't drive the audience.

We sometimes had to send people out to the street to get audience to come in

because, you know, it wasn't exciting to them to watch that.

Wait, you know what? When you're all talking, we can't hear.

- Yes? - What I was…

When the ratings were starting to tank,

individual stations started to move the show out of its daytime slots

and bury it at one o'clock in the morning.

We were very aware that if we didn't get those numbers up,

that we would probably be canceled.

Clearly, something else was needed if Jerry was gonna find a path to success.

Basically, something had to happen.

I thought the show was terrible.

It... It was just boring.

You had a terrible host, a terrible show.

The audience is 90.

So when I took over the show and became executive producer,

the vision that I had, that I wanted everybody to fall into,

was "Let's take a talk show and let's turn it upside down."

Let's make it wild.

Let's make it sexy.

Please welcome Richard Dominick. Richard.

Because that's what I was known for.

Richard Dominick was always, first and foremost, a showman.

That's what he was trained to do.

- You write the headlines. - Yes.

And you can swear to me, unequivocally, that everything in here is true.

Absolutely true.

When I was working for the tabloids, my job was crazy headlines.

And what I noticed is that once that became the front page,

the sales were going up.

How do you know it's possessed by the devil?

Can you see that, Richard?

"Satan lives."

I mean, nobody was Bigfoot's love slave,

but people bought it.

A hundred percent true?

Beyond a shadow of a doubt.

That's because life is hard.

You know, "Oh my God, I got to get up." "Oh, my back hurts."

"Oh, I can't pay this bill."

"Oh! Elvis is in a UFO. I want to read that."

It takes you away from your world…

into another world.

And that's what I wanted to do with Springer.

Why have you kept this toaster?

Well, Richard, when all is said and done,

it makes good toast.

All I had to do was convince Jerry

to go with the flow and do what I wanted.

Theresa's been… Theresa is selfish…

But his dream was not the show. His dream was politics.

It's just election time, so the rhetoric flows,

but not the commitment, and certainly not the money.

I mean, he was an Emmy Award-winning news guy

with dreams of Congress or Senate.

And I remember thinking…

"Ah, it's gonna be tough."

But then me and Jerry took a walk down Michigan Avenue

and… kind of bullshitting about, and I gave him my theory.

We're on at two o'clock in the morning.

Let's do a two o'clock in the morning show.

Let's have some fun.

Jerry felt, "That's kind of risky."

So I said to him, "You're a funny guy. You're a laid-back guy."

That's what I thought.

"So let's bring it out instead of trying to hide it."

He eventually saw that this had potential.

And yeah, he... he... he went along with me.

"Okay, let's give it a shot and see what happens."

All right, please welcome the host of our show, Mr. Jerry Springer!

That was the beginning of Richard saying,

"Do not bring anything to me

unless it is gonna be interesting with the sound off."

I wanted somebody going through the channels,

hitting our show,

saying, "Holy shit, what the hell is that?"

Oh my God.

Hi, Jerry.

Well, it just doesn't matter what I ask, you know.

That's what it was about. It was about getting people to stop.

Hey, Jerry.

Bob…

where did you get those shoes?

Do you like 'em?

It started out to be a very funny, sexy kind of show.

Basically, anything I could get away with at two o'clock in the morning.

I would, but I'm on a diet.

You might see some tits, you might see, you know, somebody doing a rap.

It's like a party.

Everyone, applaud!

Come on, make some noise!

I told the stage manager, "When he comes out,

I want everybody on their feet,

and I want them to chant, 'Jerry! Jerry! Jerry!'"

They'd be like, "Really?"

"Yeah, that's what I want

because people at home, they're gonna think he's famous."

Jerry! Jerry! Jerry! Jerry! Jerry!

That was kind of, I think, the beginning, maybe, of the metamorphosis of the show,

was the fact that we kinda made him a little more fly, you know what I mean?

The one thing about Jerry is he had a tremendous sense of humor,

and he had a tremendous sense of timing.

Come on out.

And you could see the passion he brought to the audience.

Any thoughts about which woman is here to confront you from your past?

It could be anybody. I dunno.

Anybody?

Hey.

Hey, Mike, huh?

Suddenly, he loosened up.

And... And... And that's what made it work. He made it work.

Dominique, tell me about that one-night stand.

I have to tell you because I'm not gonna lie anymore.

I used to be a man at one time.

The bosses weren't crazy about Richard's ideas.

They were kind of embarrassed and very angry.

They'd be like, "Stop doing that. Don't do that kind of show."

"Otherwise, we're gonna cancel you."

Oh, they'd call every day, and they'd scream and yell at me.

"You've turned the show into cocktail table talk!"

Whatever the fuck that means.

So I had to be the tough guy.

I had to lay down the law.

I had to call them and say, "This is what the audience at home wants."

I mean, they weren't happy about it,

but then the numbers would come in, it'd be like, "Okay."

"Do you want us to, like, help the little kid over here and get a 1.9,

or have the pimp and the prostitute on and get a 3.7?"

You... You got to choose.

Now they're like, "Oh my God, people are watching this."

So now they would put it back on in the daytime,

and then it would repeat at night.

That's called a double run. You got double ratings.

And that's when we knew, this is what we could do every day.

It's not just that the show was great and entertaining,

it was that people loved Jerry.

And that formula saved the show.

Jerry!

It was exciting.

We're having a good time, we're doing great shows,

we're growing an audience.

This is terrific.

Oh! Swish!

But now it's saved. Let's see how far we can go.

Today, in an exclusive interview, we're going to talk to Earl Zea,

a man who cut off his own penis.

It looks like chaos on TV,

but the producers had to really organize that whole thing.

My desk was very similar to this.

My... My desk has a story all its own.

I had come from the tabloid world.

So obviously, Richard was looking for people who thought that way.

From the minute I was hired on it, it was crazy intense.

I mean, where are you? I need you to move really quick.

This is Studio B in Chicago.

Now, for the first time, we take you behind the scenes

to find out how we make The Jerry Springer Show.

Three. Go three. Two. Let's go!

Richard was scary. He's probably still scary.

You know, he... he sat behind his desk smoking a big cigar.

Take the camera off of me and go shoot in the hallway.

If anybody's got a problem, tell them to come see me.

Whereas Jerry, everybody likes him.

You meet him and it's like… He's like the dad you want to have.

You know, he's calm and he's nice and he's self-deprecating.

And to be able to combine this kind of highbrow personality

with these everyday lowbrow problems,

it was genius.

It really was.

It worked.

Melinda speaking.

Don't have a story, you don't have a show. Don't have guests, you don't have a show.

The stories were everything, so you had to have stories.

But to do it all by yourself is almost impossible.

I mean, it's a lot.

So I needed help right away.

Okay, bye.

And that's when I interviewed Toby.

I didn't know what I wanted when I interviewed on the Jerry job.

I'd just graduated college late,

and I'd been bartending for like four years.

He was a very, very bubbly guy and, um, really eager.

Super eager.

"Can you start right away, please?"

"All this sounds great."

You know, "I have no talk show experience. Is that a problem for you guys?"

- And she was like… - "No."

"You were a bartender, so you're kind of perfect,

because you can talk to anyone."

Springer. Yup.

No, put 'em through.

The guests were advertised for during the shows at that time especially,

and, um, people would call in to the number.

Right.

And they would all be written down on these big sheets.

"Are you in a strange and unusual relationship

and want to tell people?"

"Are you cheating on your spouse and you want to surprise them?"

Yeah.

Whatever it was, this was their chance…

- No. - …to tell their story.

Okay, talk soon.

It was very high pressure.

I love producing The Jerry Springer Show.

Um, I think you gotta kind of be a nutbag to do it.

The mailbox is full and cannot accept any messages at this time.

Richard was a very hard taskmaster on his employees.

Wonderful to deal with as a reporter on the outside,

but as I would come to learn,

the employees were under tremendous strain

to deliver and to produce the goods,

specifically for only Richard's approval.

Jerry! Jerry! Jerry!

I mean, I don't believe Jerry understood

or really much cared about the long-term direction of the show.

I think he was just along for the ride.

You know, I got bills to pay, all right?

Everything flowed through Richard.

He was the Svengali who controlled the show,

and controlled the producers,

and who whispered in Jerry's ear,

and who made everything happen.

He wouldn't ever talk.

He'd sit behind his fucking desk with a cigar like a mob boss,

and just sort of nod his head, and he'd go, "Good story, go get it."

You know, "You'd better be ready," or something, you know, frightening.

I mean, his philosophy when I got there was,

"What are we doing to scare the competition?"

You guys ready to go? Ready to roll?

Todd, you ready to roll out there? Richard, ready?

Okay, let's do it.

- You are? Okay, man. - It's showtime.

Roll for speed.

I knew that we had to keep changing the show to make it work.

If you stayed sexy for too long,

it would then be boring.

Always give the audience something new.

Something shocking.

- Standby, six. - Eight, seven, six…

- Standby, live in five, four, three… - Standby Steve's entrance.

Now, America's hero, Mr. Jerry Springer!

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Thank you. Welcome to the show.

Today, we're meeting brand-new members of the racist hate group the Ku Klux Klan,

to see if we can convince them to give up the KKK before it's too late.

I don't think anybody knew how crazy that show was gonna be.

Like, it was a whup-ass.

Here is Mike McQueeney.

White power!

White power!

Conflict on talk shows was usually internal.

A mother and a son, a husband and a wife. You know, that kind of thing.

But what Richard did, and ultimately what the show did,

was that he expanded that.

So it would be, like, Klan members conflicting,

and, you know, Black activists versus white activists.

He moved... He moved the line.

- What country you come from, Black boy? - Okay.

- Hey, hey, hey. Hey! - What country you come from?

You don't even know!

You were a slave, and so were Jews.

Jews were slaves 4,000 years ago.

- All right! - And they're still slaves.

Okay, we're all laughing at you because we know you're stupid, but…

I'm not sure Jerry knew what he was getting himself involved with

when Richard suggested that show.

I mean, Jerry was the son of Holocaust survivors.

He understood the real danger of bigotry and hatred.

And to put it out for public consumption, he should have known better.

Well, my next guest says he's fighting mad over the things our guests today

have been saying, and he's going to set them straight.

That's what he wants to do.

He's a controversial civil rights leader as well.

He's the founder of the JDL, the Jewish Defense League,

a very controversial organization.

Here is Irv Rubin and his bodyguards, Al and Joseph.

Richard didn't want that viewer at home

to even turn the channel at all.

Like, every single segment, something had to happen.

He just let the emotion play out.

Like, he could see their anger was getting bigger and bigger and bigger.

So the second they went on stage, like, that was it.

Fucking game over.

All of a sudden, it was chaos.

Just crazy.

It was like an atom bomb going off.

- That's it! Get out of here! - Enough!

I mean, it was horrible.

It was vile.

It was brilliant.

And it rated through the roof.

- There's no discussion with them! - Hey, hey, hey, hey.

And that gave me an idea.

If you're producing a show that you want to be insane

and unlike anything that's ever been on TV before,

there's your goal, that's what you want.

Jerry! Jerry!

And at that point, Richard was like, "Game on."

"Let's go have some fun."

"Action."

It became a talk show where there was very little talking.

It was about the yelling, the fighting.

Fuck you, bitch!

Fights would break out all the time and, like, people lived for that part.

They loved it. The audience loved it. They loved the fight.

It was as primal as the Christians and the lions,

and the crowd roaring for blood.

And that was what Richard wanted to tap into.

That's television. That's television.

Richard Dominick was a diabolical genius.

He was right.

There was a direct relationship between violence and ratings

because that's what people will tune in for.

My best friend's grandfather

was in his eighties, and he watched all the time.

He says, "It just makes me laugh and laugh and laugh."

"I just love that show."

Fuck!

Once that happened, I never tried to do anything

that didn't fall into some kind of a confrontation

or unusual to look at.

I know that if we have two people

in an absolutely confrontational situation,

that the probability is they're gonna go at each other.

And you want 'em to, don't you?

- I want the... - Truth?

I want the show to demonstrate outrageousness, yes.

We want our TVs clean!

We're beginning, today, a "Fox" hunt.

Tonight, it's not the guest, but the Jerry Springer program

that's taking the lumps.

A variety show and a weekly magazine

compare the fights on the rough-and-tumble talk show

to pro wrestling.

Across America, the show became a lightning rod for criticism.

Where was our culture going? Where was our society going?

Hearing of the fight against The Jerry Springer Show,

St. Sabina's Father Michael Pfleger and dozens of protesters

demanded Springer's removal,

saying the violent talk show is pure trash, bad for everyone.

Violence is what the show is most known for right now.

This kind of trash television has to go and will not be tolerated.

I got tired of hearing the priest tell me that I'm working all for the devil

and that we were showing the wrong side of human nature.

Like, and it went against God.

Seriously? Like, come on.

In a free society, the media should reflect all elements of that society,

not just the mainstream.

On our show, for example, we have Klansmen on.

We have neo-Nazis on.

They killed my family. I hate these people.

I hate what they stand for.

But in America, what is it?

"I may hate what you say, but I'll fight to the death your right to say it?"

We really believe that.

The beauty of Jerry Springer, the person,

and one of the reasons why that show was so successful

was because he didn't judge.

He didn't say, "I don't want to do this show."

"I don't want to do that show. I don't want to have this person on."

He didn't want to censor anybody.

I would hope that you would feel some sense of responsibility

for the kids that are influenced by violence

that is acted out, uh, on your show.

If I thought for one second

that my show would be hurtful to society,

I wouldn't do it.

It's a television show.

It's a television show.

We will all survive it.

Thank you for having me.

We felt like we were the pariah of television.

Everybody around us, you know, were like, "You're just producing trash."

Even my family hated it.

I mean, my father did not like The Springer Show

or what it represented.

Mr. Sulu, what happened to the Russian dressing?

The dispenser's jammed, Captain. It will take days to repair.

We don't have days!

My dad is the production designer for Saturday Night Live since 1975.

And I've been in awe of him.

It's Saturday Night Live, for fuck's sakes.

- You heard my order, Mr. Sulu. - Aye, aye, sir.

He was, you know, sitting on top of the mountain,

and I'm, like, getting scraps on the bottom of the... of the food chain.

One Christmas, my dad said,

"What you do isn't television. What I do is television."

I can still picture his face,

and it was like a... it was of disgust.

I didn't talk to my father for… four years.

So Richard became my dad.

And it was... You know, it was hard.

I'm very angry at this moment.

You owe her an apology, and I want you to give her one.

- Right this second. - Oh, okay.

- If you're gonna roll your eyes... - I'm not rolling my eyes.

I'm not rolling my eyes.

I said to Toby, you know,

"I'm depending on you to get this job done,

to give me those shows that I need."

I never told him what they were,

but I knew that he understood what I meant,

that I wanted the crazy stuff.

After that, my life became revolving around the show.

You know, just trying to keep the balls in the air

and make this the best show ever.

I mean, you had to deliver.

Hi, this is Mary with The Jerry Springer Show.

I was wondering if you had a crazy story for us.

I mean, if you think about it, we had to do 200 shows a year.

Anything, cheating, prostitutes, transsexuals, some kind of Springer drama.

That would mean each producer was doing, you know, 30, 40 shows a year.

Really? Well, that's a love triangle.

And, you know, everybody can't do that.

You'd be living in the office, you know, six days a week, days and nights,

like 10, 12, 14 hours a day, easily.

And that sort of pressure cooker was really difficult,

you know, because there were some…

There were some stories which probably went too far.

Okay, help me out here.

You honestly think it's okay

that a brother and a sister sleep together?

Yeah.

Let's meet your brother who made you pregnant.

David.

Many of the people on the show had real problems.

But the way to get help for serious problems

is not to go on a national television show

in front of an audience where you're being jeered and ridiculed.

You made her pregnant. You didn't mail it in.

Yeah.

- You slept with her, right? - Yes, I did.

A lot of the guests were earnest.

They literally did think they were coming on to solve a problem.

You wouldn't believe how many people said to me on the telephone,

"I can't wait to meet Jerry. I really hope he can help me with this."

Jerry didn't help anybody with any of it. He just stood there and did his thing.

- You say you still love her? - Yes.

You tell her how sorry you are that you ever, ever slept with her.

She is your sister, for God's sake.

These guests got it all out in this really extreme environment

where there's a lot of people looking at you

and judging you.

I mean, very, very tough.

Especially considering these were real people,

you know, just coming into town

from whatever small-town America they live in.

There's this triangle you can draw

from, like, Tennessee to Ohio to Georgia, like the Bermuda Triangle.

It was called the Springer Triangle, where it's like 75% of all the guests

in the history of the show came from that region of the country.

You know, these are small-town folk, right?

And you're trying to sell it to them of like, "You've got this great story."

"We want to give people an opportunity to see that."

"If you do it on the show,

you get to sort of settle it once and for all."

But in order for them to deliver, they have to like you.

Okay, cool.

So you treat them like they're,

you know, kings.

You send them a limo to pick them up to drive them to the airport.

They land at Chicago O'Hare and get into a limousine.

Like, their mind is blown.

A lot of the guests, they've never been to a big city.

You know, they've never seen stuffed pizza.

You know, we arrived in Chicago, and I swear to God,

from the second they picked us up from the airport,

they did everything in their power to get us as crazy as possible.

They gave us so many drink tickets.

They were like, "Go hog wild, have fun."

And so we got wasted.

And then we got to the hotel. We kind of kept the party going.

We probably stayed up till four in the morning, maybe slept for an hour.

They woke our asses out of bed at like 5:00 a.m. and were like,

"Okay, it's time to go down." And we were like, "What?"

I remember being in the elevator on the way down,

and somebody else from one of the other shows was just, like,

"Yeah, I was up all night doing speed!"

I probably got to the green room

at like six o'clock in the morning or something.

All right, um, so, again…

The producers were there from the get-go,

just kind of, like, coaching us on what to say and how to act.

What have you done for me? Nothing!

I've done everything! I take your kids to the...

Oh, that's bull! You lying little bitch!

The guests get their energy level

from you as the producer.

It's called being Springered, right? You're being produced.

I hate you!

You can hate me all you want, but I'm screwing your man!

I don't care! You can have him.

No, don't give up on him. You're doing great.

Don't give up on him, because, you know why?

You are the victim here. Tell me what you've done for him.

Does she know how you love him?

- Yes! - Okay.

You know how much I love him!

They had to be the kind of guest that when they got on stage,

they knew how to tell their story,

maybe even ready to fight if necessary.

But, you know, sometimes guests get on the stage and they don't do

what they're supposed to do, and that's when your job as a producer

is to make sure that they did.

You're not giving me anything here, honey. You're living this life.

I don't know what it's like to live your life.

You've got to make me understand what it's like to live your life.

I would throw the door open to the dressing room

and, like, pick up a chair and throw it across the green room,

you know, and start screaming, like…

- Do you care about your sister's feelings? - No, I don't.

You're goddamn right you don't.

You gotta wake 'em up.

"Want me to brush your nasty teeth? You want me to wipe your ass? You stink."

- Okay, go. - You're a terrible, awful human being.

- You're a genetic disaster… - You had to reach into their brain.

And tap on the thing that would make them laugh, cry, scream, or fight.

Get out there and fight for her!

You're a meth-head piece of ♪♪♪♪!

You're starting a shit fight.

You rev them up to, you know, tornado level,

and then you send them out onstage.

The whole time I was in the dressing room,

I was just getting angrier and angrier by the second.

And I am not an angry person.

Welcome back. My guests today say they're ready to come clean

about their sex affairs.

Please meet Darren.

He says he and his girlfriend have discussed marriage,

but before he can follow through on that, he has a confession he has to make.

Please meet Melanie.

My heart was pounding.

Like, I felt like it was about to burst out of my chest.

I was tired, crazy,

ready to fuck it up.

Either way, I've been sleeping with somebody else.

They weren't treating you sensitively.

They weren't interested in what kind of impact it was gonna have on you.

It was all for the show.

Let's meet this other person. Come on out.

If you didn't hit those ratings, your show was gone.

That's what counted the most.

So we're not trying to help nobody.

We're not trying to save anybody.

You are here to tell your story

in such a way that's gonna be entertaining and just hit those numbers.

That was it.

By the late '90s,

the formula that Richard Dominick had created was so effective,

that Springer had closed the gap to Oprah.

And at that point, she did speak out against them.

Jerry Springer is in a class all by himself,

if you want to call that a class.

I think he just is...

He's out, he's gone, that whole show.

It's appalling?

I think it's appalling. I can't believe what I'm seeing.

Oprah would say, you know, "How could Jerry put those guests on?"

Jerry didn't put those guests on.

I put those guests on.

You know, you're yelling at the wrong guy.

I ca... I watched the other day, and this guy pulled his pants down,

and there he is, he opens himself...

I can't believe what I'm seeing when I watch that show.

But you led the way with the sort of confessional TV

and people baring their soul.

Confessing and baring your soul is one thing.

Baring your penis is another.

The way that Oprah behaved compared to the way Jerry behaved?

Like, Jerry was class act.

She does a real talk show. I don't do a talk show.

I do a circus. You know, there's just no lions.

It's a…

You know, he gave her the right of way, and she... she punched back.

It was so inappropriate.

She says that your show is bad for television.

Yeah, well, I... you know, I'm sorry. I'm doing the best I can.

Oprah pissed me off, especially because…

Jerry was so nice.

Jerry was the nicest... the nicest man in the world.

He... He was a great man

and a gentle man,

and I... I felt like she needed to be taught a lesson.

And that's when we went after her, and that's when I could taste the blood.

That battle with Oprah

was kind of this pressure cooker

of, like, "Now the knob has to go to 11," right?

But we weren't a huge production machine.

We were this little band of... of crazy people

that were just trying to survive the week.

I mean, sometimes you'd be trying to book a story

all the way up to the day before your show and have nothing.

That's when it's better to just sleep in the office and keep calling.

And if you were lucky, something would happen.

Springer show.

It had to be like three, four o'clock in the morning

when I get a call from this guy.

He says, "Hi, my name's Mark."

And I go, "Hey, Mark."

And he's like, "I've been meaning to call the show for a long time."

Okay, cool.

"Because you guys are the only people that really would understand me."

"I left my wife and my two daughters

for a Shetland pony."

Really?

Huh.

And I'm like, "This is a fucking dream."

So the difference between bestiality and you is what?

The animal loves you back.

He said that he and Pixel looked at each other

and they had an immediate connection.

Okay, that's weird.

I was petrified to pitch it.

How am I gonna pivot from a straight-up love triangle

to a dude's... is sleeping with a Shetland pony?

Toby came in and said…

"I have a man who married his horse and wants to come on the show."

My first reaction is, "Well, will the horse be there?"

I don't know. Like, I guess you put it in a truck.

I'm in. I mean, to me, it was exciting.

And I'm like, "Okay." "That was easy."

- Jerry! Jerry! Jerry! - Thank you!

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

There was this weird buzz in the studio

where, like, nobody could talk about it.

Like, we were all sworn to silence,

um, because we had to make it a surprise.

Well, you know, there's been all this controversy about all the fights.

Well, today, we have a love story.

Please meet Mark.

He's been together with his wife for ten years

and married for the last five.

Please welcome her to the show. Mark's wife.

Oh my God!

You watch the cutaways to the audience, and they were just like this, like…

Oh my God!

It was so shocking. Like, nobody could speak.

So you actually had a ceremony where you married this horse?

- Yes. - You... You live with this horse?

Yes.

And you are having intimate relations with this horse?

Mmm. Yeah.

It's true.

This is... This is pretty sick, isn't it?

Okay, all right.

To have a guy on who had married a horse,

who was kissing a horse on stage,

this was the most vile and grotesque

freak show that's ever been on television.

It was the perfect show.

I mean, it was everything I ever wanted it to be.

Yes!

Ah!

It was like, "Whoa."

You know, this is pretty incredible.

Jerry! Jerry!

It was like the best show ever.

Jerry! Jerry! Jerry!

And then, like, two weeks later, the show goes out.

And, like, the shit hits the fan.

First place it aired that day was New York City,

and it was stopped from airing… anywhere else that day.

The fact that it got banned,

that it hit basically every huge newspaper in the country

that, um, The Jerry Springer Show had done this show,

even if it didn't air, people were so curious about it.

You know, disgusted, but drawn.

It's the train wreck that you can't rip your eyes off of.

Jerry Springer is one of the greatest entertainers in the world.

He's one of our idols.

Whether it's news, soap operas, prime-time television,

whatever picture we get of life,

we don't get anything that is raw and real.

Jerry Springer.

He's been doing this talk show for seven years.

But it's only now that his ratings and popularity

are soaring through the roof.

This gladiatorial formula has appealed to enough base instincts

to catapult the show to the top of the daytime ratings.

Springer's the first talk show host ever to knock

Oprah Winfrey off her throne as the queen of daytime talk.

Oh, my God.

- Are you fucking kidding me? - We did it!

That was an incredible watershed moment.

I was just like, "Yes!"

I... I mean, it's... Think about it.

Nobody ever beat Oprah.

It was almost like a vindication, you know?

Like, yeah, you used to always look down at us and talk about us

and make fun of us, and we're trashy, but now look what happened!

The trash wins the day! You know?

The net result was Jerry emerged from it

more powerful and more popular than ever.

It really did just kind of mushroom cloud, right?

Like a huge explosion. There was always a Jerry interview.

- Please welcome everybody, Jerry Springer! - Jerry Springer!

Jerry Springer!

He became a cultural icon.

He became a phenomenon.

Now, America's hero, Mr. Jerry Springer!

There was no question,

Jerry and Richard were on top of the world.

I mean, the riches that it gave them and the fame were very compelling.

Jerry! Jerry! Jerry!

But what did they have to do in order to achieve it?

I mean, the degree to which Jerry sold himself out

and the degree to which he was complicit with Richard

in exploiting the people who came on the show

is something that had serious consequences.

Just like any other manipulative situation,

you need to instinctually pull out of them

those points of tension that create a soap opera.

Okay, here she is. Nan.

If you come on this show, you're gonna do what we expect you to do.

You're gonna kick so-and-so's ass. You'd better do it out there.

This was basically Stanford Prison Experiment

in that you were playing with people's psyche

until you get a result.

Here he is. Ralf.

That's where it all gets really dark.

A lover's triangle turns deadly,

and the man in the middle is now a murder suspect.

All three people involved

had been on The Jerry Springer Show that day.

Till next time, take care of yourself and each other.