Headlong: Missing Richard Simmons · Topic / Pineapple Street Media / Dan Taberski

Where's Richard?

February 15, 2017·28 min·2 clips

A 450-pound Nebraska hairdresser handed Richard Simmons her phone number in the freezing cold, and he called her every Sunday for years until she lost 200 pounds.

The host starts with a confession. He is a filmmaker and a New Yorker, but not someone who has been faithfully keeping a gym membership alive. Then Richard Simmons walks in. Not the fuzzy TV memory, but the short-shorts, bedazzled-tank-top figure the host remembers from talk shows. Slimmons costs 12 dollars, and that tiny price changes the feel of the room. It makes the place seem reachable, almost homemade, even with a celebrity at the center. Things get odd quickly. Richard has been teaching there for 40 years, and the class feels less like a workout than a public ritual. He performs for people. He also seems to notice them and let them come close. Then comes the bloody foot. David describes Richard bleeding through a sock and still stopping everyone for pictures because it would make them happy. At first, that sounds sweet. The host lets it sit there, then asks what that kind of sweetness costs. The house starts to feel like evidence. Around 80 tour companies, by the host's count, regularly drive past because Richard has been such a dependable celebrity interaction. That is fame turned into routine availability, where a person becomes a landmark people expect to wave back. The Letterman clips make the contrast sharper. Richard could be funny and game, but he was also often the joke that famous, funny people knew how to make. The host asks us to hold that image next to the earlier one. Before Slimmons, there was Anatomy Asylum, a national network of 72 clubs in 13 cities before Richard turned 35. Then Deal a Meal arrives. The 1987 infomercial frames him as a business force too, with a quarter of a million people starting the program in its first eight weeks. The mystery is still waiting. What, or who, could make someone that available to strangers suddenly stop cold turkey?

As heard by us

A funny, affectionate portrait that keeps showing how much Richard Simmons meant to people.

This episode treats Richard Simmons as more than a comic figure. It sees a performer, fitness evangelist, and generous public presence, and it keeps that balance steady as it moves from the talk-show persona to Slimmons, then to the fan photo where he is still smiling while…

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Why you'd press play

Press play if you want a portrait of Richard Simmons beyond the punchline.

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