O.J. Simpson was acquitted of that infamous double murder in October of 1995. His personal fortune before the murders was estimated between 8 and 11 million. By the time the trial was over and he was released, he was reportedly over one million dollars in debt…but very confident he could get it all back and more.
Dozens of cash-making plans were announced. He was going to write a book. He was going to produce a movie about his ordeal as a wrongly-accused man. He was going to host a TV show that would spotlight innocent people who had been arrested for crimes they did not commit and clear their names. He was going to sit for a Pay-Per-View interview with Larry King in which he would answer questions that would convince the world he was innocent. (That last one was the real scam. Hitler could sit for a twenty-hour Larry King interview and probably never be trapped into admitting he had anything to do with World War II.)
There were other plans as well but most fell through and the rest fizzled out financially. The problem seemed to be that no one wanted to be in business with O.J. Simpson. Finally, a home video company made a deal with him to do a VHS tape called O.J. Simpson: The Interview. Various prominent newspeople were approached to be the interrogator but, rumor had it, everyone turned it down. Finally, Ross Becker agreed to accept the assignment.
Ross Becker has been in TV news since 1975, moving from station to station around the country, occasionally moving into management for a time. I recall him doing excellent work on KCBS in Los Angeles in the early eighties and popping up later at KCOP and KNBC. He's currently an anchor and reporter for KUSI in San Diego.
I further recall reading that when Becker agreed to do the Simpson interview, he had very little time to research the case and prep. If Simpson ever thought his producers had engaged a pushover who'd be easy to snow, he was in for a disappointing surprise. Becker was informed, ready and quite unwilling to be a stooge. No, he didn't trap O.J. into a Perry Mason-style confession but he did make him sweat a lot and hastily ad-lib a lot of clumsy answers for questions he obviously didn't expect. Simpson blamed, of course, everyone: Lying witnesses, racist cops, dishonest lab technicians, scumbag reporters, etc. — and especially anyone who was ever around Faye Resnick. I thought Becker did as expert a job was anyone could have.
The gentleman who produced the tape appeared on Larry King Live to promote it before its release. I remember him saying, in effect, "I don't know if Simpson did it or not but I felt he deserved a chance to tell his story and I knew we would make a ton of money off it." There was an exchange that went something like this…
KING: You're putting this out even though 75% of the country thinks O.J. should be in prison.
PRODUCER: Hey, I'll settle for the kind of sales we can get from 25% of the country.
He fearlessly predicted it would sell in the zillions but it was later reported as a colossal failure. I don't recall the precise numbers that circulated at the time but it was something like they expected to sell two or three million copies and they sold around 39,000. It was a pretty monumental disparity and it had to have been one of the worst moments of the whole matter for Simpson: The realization that his wealth was never coming back and that there was absolutely no market out there for him or his story.
Several folks have posted the entire video to YouTube so you cam watch it without paying Simpson a dime. The interview runs about 90 minutes and it's then followed by an hour of Simpson taking viewers on a tour of his home on Rockingham and explaining more of his side of the case. I've never made it through the whole thing but one friend of mine who did said, "He comes off as so arrogant and contemptuous of Nicole and everyone else that even if he didn't commit the murders, I still hate him."
Since the whole thing's about two hours and 35 minutes, you will not watch all of it. I doubt you'll make it through twenty minutes. But you might want to pick out one section and watch for a bit just so you can see what true naked lying looks like. Almost any section at random will do fine…
