Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Extraordinary Book of Facts: And Bizarre Information (49 page)

THE COLLECTOR

Not all of this booty ended up at Hearst Castle—Hearst owned a castle in Wales, a beachfront mansion in Santa Monica, a 50,000-acre estate near Mt. Shasta in the northern part of California, and more. But he bought more antiques, artworks, and architectural
fragments than even these buildings could hold; to this day thousands of his purchases sit in their original packing crates in Hearst Corporation warehouses around the country.

COMPANY’S COMING

By the mid-1920s, enough of the construction had been completed at San Simeon to allow Hearst to begin entertaining guests as diverse as Winston Churchill, Charlie Chaplin, Calvin Coolidge, and George Bernard Shaw. He provided them with plenty to do: hiking, trout fishing, horseback riding, and tennis; there was also a billiard room, library, movie theater, and indoor and outdoor swimming pools. If guests wanted to play golf, there was even an airplane standing by to fly them to the nearest course. If they wanted to look at elephants, giraffes, or other exotic animals, that wasn’t a problem either: Hearst’s estate was also home to the largest privately owned zoo in the world.

A FEW SMALL PROBLEMS

When guests arrived at the estate, they quickly discovered that for all its grandeur, it wasn’t very comfortable. Some guest rooms gave up so much space to antiques and art that there wasn’t any room left for closets. The buildings could also be quite drafty, and the chimneys smoked terribly.

Hearst’s peculiar quirks as host added to the discomfort. He didn’t believe in serving his guests breakfast in bed, or even bringing them coffee. There were no kitchens in the guest houses, so anyone who wanted something to eat had to get dressed and come to Casa Grande.

The cocktail hour before dinner was another oddity. It could last as long as two hours or more, but Hearst served only one cocktail to each guest (two if you arrived early, drank quickly, and got lucky). Anyone caught smuggling their own liquor into San Simeon soon found their bags packed and set next to the car that was waiting to take them away.

Rationing his booze may have come back to haunt Hearst in ways he could never have imagined: one of his most ungrateful guests was a hard-drinking writer named Herman Mankiewicz, who went on to cowrite the screenplay for
Citizen Kane
, a film about a “fictional” newspaper baron who lives in an enormous castle called Xanadu, an obvious blast at Hearst.

Hearst was one of the wealthiest men in the country, but the Great Depression finally caught up with him in 1936; he found himself more than $100 million in debt at a time when newspaper circulation and advertising revenues were sharply off. At 74, he lost control of his business empire and was forced to sell off real estate, newspapers, and half of his art collection. He managed to hang on to San Simeon, but only by agreeing to halt construction and paying “rent” to his creditors until his financial situation improved.

HE’S BA-A-ACK

Hearst finally regained control in 1945 when he was 82, and immediately resumed construction at San Simeon. But Hearst’s health was deteriorating, and in 1947 he was forced to move to Los Angeles to be closer to his doctors. He never returned to his castle, and died in August 1951 at the age of 88.

The Hearst Corporation directors were not nearly as infatuated with San Simeon as Hearst had been—they wanted to get rid of it. But nobody would buy it, because nobody could afford it.

The company offered it to the University of California free of charge . . . but the university refused to accept the “gift” unless it was accompanied by a huge endowment to cover operating costs. Finally in 1958, the corporation donated the buildings and the surrounding land to the state of California, which now operates it as a tourist attraction.

THE BIG QUESTION: HOW MUCH DID IT COST?

William Randolph Hearst spent so much money so quickly over so many years that it’s difficult to calculate just how much he spent building and furnishing San Simeon.
Guinness World Records
estimates that he spent as much as $30 million (or about $277 million today). By contrast, Microsoft founder Bill Gates’s mansion cost only $60 million.

That makes Hearst Castle easily the most expensive private residence ever built . . . and it’s still unfinished.

“I do not seek, I find.” —Picasso

Mix reality TV and Japanese game shows with the plot of the movie
The Truman Show,
and you’ve got this unbelievable true story
.

M
ADE IN JAPAN

In January 1998 a struggling 23-year-old stand-up comedian known only by his stage name Nasubi (Eggplant) heard about an audition for a mysterious “show business–related job” and decided to try out for it.

The audition was the strangest one he’d ever been to. The producers of a popular Japanese TV show called
Susunu! Denpa Sho-Nen
(Don’t Go for It, Electric Boy!) were looking for someone who was willing to be locked away in a one-bedroom apartment for however long it took to win 1 million yen (then the equivalent of about $10,000) worth of prizes in magazine contests.

Cameras would be set up in the apartment, and if the contestant was able to win the prizes, the footage would be edited into a segment called “Sweepstakes Boy.” The contestant would be invited on the show to tell his story and, with any luck, the national TV exposure would give a boost to his career. That was it—that was the reward (along with the magazine prizes).

SUCH A DEAL

As if that wasn’t a weak enough offer, there was a catch—the contestant would have to live off the prizes he won. The apartment would be completely empty, and the contestant wouldn’t be allowed to bring anything with him—no clothes, no food, nothing. If he wanted to eat, he had to win food. If he wanted to wear clothes, he had to win those, too. Nasubi passed the audition and agreed to take the job.

On day one of the contest, the producers blindfolded him and took him to a tiny one-bedroom apartment in an undisclosed
location somewhere in Tokyo. The apartment was furnished with a magazine rack and thousands of neatly stacked postcards (for entering the contests), as well as a table, a cushion to sit on, a telephone, notepads, and some pens. Other than that, it was completely empty.

Nasubi stripped naked and handed his clothes and other personal effects to the producers. He stepped into the apartment, the door was locked behind him, and his strange adventure began.

HOME ALONE

Nasubi spent his days entering magazine sweepstakes, filling out between 3,000 and 8,000 postcards a month. It took him two weeks to win his first prize—a jar of jelly. Two weeks later, he won a five-pound bag of rice.

But how could he cook it? He hadn’t won any cooking utensils. He tried eating the rice raw, and when that failed he put some in a tin can, added some water, and put it next to a burner on the stove. Using this method, he cooked about half a cup of rice each day, and ate it using two of his pens for chopsticks. (The producers are believed to have given Nasubi some sort of food assistance, otherwise he would not have eaten anything for the first two weeks of the show. To this day it is unclear exactly how much assistance he received, but judging from the amount of weight he lost during the show, it wasn’t much.)

SECRET ADMIRERS

Nasubi didn’t know it at the time, but he was being watched. Sure, he knew about the cameras in the apartment, but the producers had told him that the footage would be used on
Susunu! Denpa Sho-Nen
after (and if) he completed his mission. And he had believed them.

But the producers had lied—he’d been on TV from the very beginning. Each Sunday night, edited highlights of the week’s activities were broadcast in a one-hour show on NTV, one of Japan’s national networks. The show was a big hit, and in the process Nasubi became a national celebrity, one of the hottest new stars in Japan. A naked star at that, albeit one whose private parts were kept continuously concealed by a cartoon eggplant that the producers superimposed on the screen.

NASUBI’S BOOTY

Viewers were there when Nasubi won each of his two vacuum cleaners, and they were there when he won each of his four bags of rice, his watermelon, his automobile tires, his belt, and his ladies underwear (the only articles of clothing he won during months in captivity), his four tickets to a Spice Girls movie (which he could not leave the apartment to see), his bike (which he could not ride outside), and countless other items, including chocolates, stuffed animals, headphones, videos, golf balls, a tent, a case of potato chips, a barbecue, and a shipment of duck meat.

Nasubi also won a TV, but the joy of winning it was shattered when he discovered that his apartment had neither antenna nor cable hookup. (The producers feared that if he watched TV, he’d find out he was on TV.)

And he won a few rolls of toilet paper—10 months after his ordeal began.

Nasubi sang a song and danced a victory dance every time a new prize came in the mail; when he did, many viewers at home sang and danced with him. When his food ran out, they gagged and sobbed with him as he ate from the bag of dog food he won; when he prayed for a new bag of rice, viewers prayed, too.

ROUND-THE-CLOCK EXPOSURE

Nasubi was such a media sensation that reporters tried to find out where he was living. It took six months, but someone finally located his apartment building in June 1998. Before they could make contact with him, however, the producers whisked Nasubi off to a new apartment in the dead of night, telling him the move was intended “to change his luck.”

In July the producers set up a live Web site with a video feed and a staff of more than 50 people (many of whom were there just to make sure the moving digital dot stayed over Nasubi’s private parts at all times). Now people could watch Nasubi 24 hours a day.

Finally, in December 1998, one year after he was first locked into the apartment, Nasubi won the prize—a bag of rice—that pushed his total winnings over a million yen. So was he free? Not exactly: The show’s producers gave him his clothes, fed him a bowl of ramen noodles, and then whisked him off to Korea, where he couldn’t speak the language and no one would recognize him. Then he was placed in another empty
apartment, where he had to win prizes to pay for his airfare back home.

When Nasubi finally accomplished that, he was flown back to Tokyo, taken to a building, and led into another empty room (it was really just a box, but he didn’t know it).

INSTANT CELEBRITY

Out of habit, he stripped naked and waited for something to happen. Suddenly the roof lifted, the walls fell away, and Nasubi found himself, still naked, his hair uncut and his face unshaved for more than 15 months (he never did win clippers or a shaver), standing in an NTV broadcast studio in front of a live audience. Seventeen million more people were watching at home.

More than 15 months had passed since Nasubi had been locked into his apartment, and it was only now, as he held a cushion over his privates, that he learned he’d been on TV since day one. His weekly show had made him Japan’s hottest new star, the producers explained to him. The diary he’d kept? It had already been published and was a best-selling book, one that had earned him millions of yen (tens of thousands of dollars) in royalties. That bowl of ramen soup the producers fed him the day he came out of isolation? The footage had been turned into a popular soup commercial. They told him about the Web site—it made money, too. All of this resulted in a lot of money for Nasubi.

It took quite a while for all of this information to sink in. “I’m so shocked,” Nasubi finally said. “I can’t express what I feel.”

ONE OF A KIND

Today Nasubi is a happy, successful celebrity. Nevertheless, as crazy as Japanese game shows can be, it’s unlikely that any other person will experience what he went through. Even if someone were crazy enough to agree to be locked in an apartment for such a long time, they would know from the beginning what was up.

But there’s another reason: That much isolation just isn’t healthy. Sure, he looked relatively happy on the show, and he certainly had moments of joy. But the footage had been edited to make Nasubi’s experience seem better than it really was. In press interviews, he admitted there were times when he thought he was going to go nuts. “I thought of escaping several times,” he told reporters later. “I was on edge, especially toward the end.”