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__________The mystery of O.J.Simpson
The most notorious man in America sits with his right hand resting over his heart, staring almost mournfully from the cover of this month's Esquire. "I believe in my heart I'm going to get it all back in spades," reads the pull quote. O.J. Simpson is gracing the cover of magazines again, this time in an effort to rehabilitate his public image. Journalist Celia Farber camped out in front of Simpson's famous Brentwood home for months to get the story. She followed him to the golf course, watched as he mingled with ecstatic fans and angry detractors. She was privy to perhaps the strangest life in America. Never granted an official interview, Farber nevertheless was able to get 18 hours of face time with Simpson. The result is an enigmatic and deeply disturbing profile, one that ultimately leaves more questions unanswered than resolved. Since the magazine hit the stands, Farber has granted about 40 interviews and is in the unusual position of being a journalist in the hot seat -- answering the questions rather than asking them. The clamor to mine Farber for O.J. insights proves that the public's appetite for all things O.J. has barely diminished since the days of the Bronco ride and the courtroom drama. Salon recently caught up with Farber and discussed the peculiarly American cult of O.J. Did you follow the O.J. trial closely? No, no, no. I followed it peripherally, at best. I think that helped me get the story because I wasn't consumed with passion about it. People would say, "How can you stand it?" It just didn't bother me. I just thought of it like any other story. You do the story and you don't come home until you have it. While the quote on the cover of Esquire is certainly provocative, the meatiest quote, the one everyone's talking about, is in the inside. O.J. said: "Let's say I committed this crime ... Even if I did do this, it would have been because I loved her very much, right?" Why wasn't this quote on the cover? There was a time when they flirted with the idea of putting the Big Quote on the cover, which made my heart stop. Then the deputy editor called me and said they decided not to use it because it really didn't reflect the rest of the story accurately.
Why do you think Esquire asked you to do the story?
People have commented on the physical similarities between you and Nicole Brown Simpson. You're both blond and attractive. Oh c'mon! I am not O.J.'s type. O.J. goes for real pin-up girls. Seriously, there was a time when I was out there [in L.A.] and I was getting nowhere -- zero, zip, nothing. I had no information and I was starting to really panic. I started to think about girlfriends I have who really are his type and I was going to ask them to stand outside the house with me and be O.J. bait (laughs). Does it bother you that people are commenting on your looks along with your story? It really did bother me. But I can't complain about how the article was received because it was so overwhelmingly positive. But the level at which it bothered me was on behalf of all women in the field. I thought, damn it, how far do we have to progress before we have the right to have hair? And if my hair hadn't been blond they would have said, "Oh, so they sent a redhead to do the story!" The whole train of thought is wrong. Why do you think O.J. talked to you? He still hasn't officially agreed to talk to me (laughs). I think I was persistent and I think he took a chance. And I think it's part of what he does even though it's a little bit dangerous and a little bit reckless. Larry Schiller [author of "American Tragedy: The Uncensored Story of the Simpson Defense"] told me this in the beginning: "The thing about O.J. is there is no rhyme or reason. Go ring his doorbell, just show up and if he's in the right mood, he'll talk to you. And he won't stop talking." There is this sense that O.J. really wants to convince people that he is innocent -- that if he could get us all one-on-one then he could convince the whole country. Could he? Is he that convincing? Could he convince the whole country? No, not the whole country. Not Fred Goldman. Not Geraldo. I wasn't even there to talk about his case. But it is going on around and around inside his mind all the time and if you just sit down, he'll just start talking and there's this non-stop dialogue. There's something tragic about it. The way he doesn't stop talking about the case and blood drops and Faye Resnick. People showered O.J. with adoration when you were with him. The very first thing I saw, when I got to his house, was a woman, a grandmother, putting roses under his gate. I walked up to her and I said, "Why did you do that?" And she said, "I just believe in my heart that he is innocent." And I said, "So you don't believe DNA?" And she said, "No, I don't believe DNA." Some people say that celebrity eclipses everything. And some people say that what goes on outside O.J.'s house is like a freak show. He is a freak. But I also saw genuine concern. And didn't someone hand him their baby? Yes, a white woman. I spent a considerable amount of time talking to her on the curb. She was very sweet, a mother of three, there with her family. They were hard-working middle-Americans who had driven there from God knows where. They didn't necessarily believe he was innocent, but there was a sense that they thought he should be forgiven anyway. When he came out of the gate a few hours later she ran and handed the baby to O.J. They took pictures and were just ecstatic. There are two universes where O.J. walks around: one where he is guilty and one where he is innocent. The one where he is innocent is a much smaller world, but it is not as though when he walks down the street everybody yells "murderer." But someone did yell "murderer" when you were with him. O.J. goes to a movie, and these two little old ladies whisper to each other, "There he is, there's the killer." And as he is walking past them he turns around and goes "Boo!" It is so symbolic. It is amazing the way this one person has engineered a global obsession by saying, effectively, "Boo." At one point you walk up to O.J. and a group of men as they are relaxing after a game of golf and ask them what it is about the game that they love. O.J. says: "It's about taking this hard, shaftlike thing and trying to get the thing in the hole." What did you make of that? It made me feel unwelcome, like there I was, a representative of the media, which he hates. I took it as a swipe at the media. He was saying, "I might talk to you, but I am not going to like it. And I am not going to like you." It established a sense of, well, it was very weird. Very disturbing. There are these cracks in his personality that I really cannot explain. I was a spy, I was like an uninvited presence in his sphere, and I was trying to be polite about it. But from his point of view, there is no reason he should have been favorably inclined toward me. N E X T+P A G E+| The juicy quote that Esquire didn't print |
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A JOURNALIST WHO INTERVIEWED THE 20TH CENTURY'S MOST INFAMOUS ACQUITTED MAN SAYS THAT SHE STILL DOESN'T KNOW IF HE DID IT -- AND HE MAY NOT, EITHER.
I think they wanted an investigative reporter. But there was a comment in the New York Observer, something like "Esquire dispatched a blond to get O.J." And I wanted to call up my editors and say, "That wasn't why [you sent me] was it?" I want to call them and ask, "Was there ever a moment when you said to yourselves, 'We should send a female reporter, not a male'?" I really don't know.
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