Nathan For You (2013) s01e02 Episode Script

Santa; Petting Zoo

1 My name is Nathan Fielder, and I graduated from one of Canada's top business schools with really good grades.
Now, I'm using my knowledge to help struggling small business owners make it in this competitive world.
This is Nathan For You.
Underneath this man's clothes is a huge gift from God.
Can you guess what it is? That's right.
His Santa Claus body.
James Bailey has been a professional Santa for over 20 years.
And if you looked like him, you'd be one too.
I am 6'4", and I do weigh 350 pounds.
- Holy [Bleep.]
.
- Yeah, holy [Bleep.]
.
Yeah.
I mean, my doctors would like me to lose some weight.
So it's the trade-off between living longer or dying and getting to be Santa.
It's like, what's better? It's hard to say.
Well, it's very hard to say.
But for someone so committed to bringing us joy, it's a shame that, for most of the year, James is completely out of work.
In the summertime, Santa Claus becomes a homeless person.
But I wouldn't be here if I didn't have a solution.
So you know how the best time to buy a winter coat is in the summer? 'Cause that's when all the sales are.
Yes.
So what I'm thinking is that same approach with Santa.
I'm not seeing how that applies to Santa Claus.
Every Christmas, people line up in malls to get their pictures taken with Santa.
But what if you could do it when it's less crowded and at half the cost? The plan: Discount photos with Santa in the summer.
Yeah, that's a great idea.
I can see the dollar signs in your eyes.
Yeah.
Right.
For this to work, we needed to get a shopping mall on board, and mall manager Sweeney Montinola at the SouthBay Pavilion in Carson, California, was happy to let us try out our concept.
I think Santa in the summer is a fun and unique idea, and it will be great for SouthBay Pavilion.
With a mall on board, it was now time to buy the supplies for our Christmas village.
Which stuff do you rent for the most, which holiday? - Christmas.
- Christmas? - Yes.
- Okay.
You really shoved this away in a corner, huh? Yep.
- No one likes this? - Yes.
But after renting our props, something bad happened.
The mall's policy requires a background check on all employees.
But when we had one run on James, something actually turned up.
So I paid him a visit to see what the story was.
You have a criminal record? Well, yeah.
The only it was a misdemeanor, really, from a DUI many years ago.
Okay.
I couldn't believe what I was hearing, but then again, from the first day I met James, I could tell he was different from other Santas.
This is a Smith & Wesson .
500 Magnum.
This is a .
45 caliber semi-automatic.
.
22 rifle.
The AK-47.
This is a .
300.
Little shotgun in case you're into shotguns.
This is a .
357 Magnum, and that one is loaded.
Okay, we can't take out a loaded gun.
And there hasn't been any other crimes that I should know about.
No, there's nothing there.
Even though James had a criminal record and a closet full of guns, I could still tell he was a good guy.
But when I went back to SouthBay Pavilion, they didn't see it that way.
I wouldn't allow anyone that has any kind of background to be that close to kids.
I mean, he's a really good guy.
I think you'd really like him.
No and no.
- Okay.
- Definitely no.
I didn't know how to tell James that the mall didn't want him, but I paid him a visit to break the news.
It's also important if we could have it set up so that we could print the photos right there.
Right.
You know, so we do the digital.
- We get the pictures taken.
- Sure, sure.
So that might help draw more people in.
Right, so I spoke to the director of marketing at the mall.
Okay.
And uh They're okay with us doing it? Yeah? Great.
So we're gonna make this happen then.
That's outstanding.
- Yeah.
- Good.
- Yeah.
- I just gotta say thank you.
Really.
I think this is awesome.
James seemed so excited, and I just didn't have the heart to tell him that he wasn't wanted by the mall.
So my only goal was to make it happen.
My hope was that, if we got in there early, we could do about 1/2 hour's worth of photos with James before anyone realized we weren't supposed to be there.
So on the morning of August 2nd, we quietly pulled our truck up behind the JCPenney .
And before unloading the village, I had a quick word with James.
Just so you know, if I ever say "abort," we should just walk to the exit - if you can.
- Abort.
Yeah.
Um Okay.
Okay.
That's it.
All right, quicker, guys.
We're gonna be doing a Santa display soon.
Maybe over here.
Maybe, like, the background is here.
Do you want your picture taken with Santa? Come.
- Hi, there.
- Hey, yeah! - What's your name? - Here, come here, little one.
Yes.
You know how to do it.
Yeah.
Big smile.
Look at the camera.
The mall manager.
What's her name again? I'm, uh, Nat I'm just an elf.
- - Wait.
Um Would you like your photo taken with Santa? $5 only.
It's discounted prices 'cause it's earlier in the year.
- Excuse me.
- Okay, come.
Okay.
- - - - Let's go.
Come on.
- - This way.
Excuse me.
Hey, can you stay away from the cameras, please? - - You can't go in front of please.
Can you stay away from our camera person? - - Okay, we're going.
That's nice.
- We are leaving.
- Nathan, you want me to stop him? - - I said, does he want me to stop you? - - Yeah.
You've never messed with Santa Claus, have you? - All right, okay.
- Just cool it, dude.
No, it's okay.
James.
I'm out of the door.
Stop it.
- Oh, my goodness.
- James, come with me.
Okay, I know - - We're both trying to do our jobs.
- - Okay, don't swear.
There's kids around.
- Do not swear.
- Now! - There's kids around.
- You can't swear when there's children around.
Yes, I'm walking.
We're both trying to do our jobs, okay? So you can't think your job's more important than mine.
Well Watch out.
Stay back, please.
You can't say the "F" word around kids.
What just happened? Okay, um When I talked to the mall manager and I told her about the criminal record thing, she didn't wanna have us.
So we weren't allowed - To be in there.
- That came up? But I didn't wanna tell you because I thought you'd be sad.
So I wanted to go through with it.
I mean, I I honestly felt like it's a human rights issue.
You have to be able to be able to do this when you did something so small in the past.
That guy almost wanted to fight.
But just what you did, stepping up to him, just again proves, like, my point of how great of a guy you are.
Oh.
And just how much you deserve to be doing this.
Well, yeah, this is great.
The little kids are enjoying it.
That was fun.
The main point is we made a stance.
- Okay.
- And we did what was right.
All right.
You understand? Yeah, I'm with you there.
- Merry Christmas, bro.
- Okay, guy.
All right.
Okay.
Noel, Noel It felt good to help someone with a criminal record redeem themselves.
But what if I could prevent someone from entering a life of crime while they were still young? When I see stuff like this, I see what's probably a teenager headed down the wrong path.
So I decided to catch a teen doing graffiti and then warn his parents before he turns to a life of crime.
To do this, I created a series of fake promotional posters for my TV show that may seem innocuous, but to an immature vandal, would be extremely tempting to deface.
To see which one would work best, we left the posters up for a week in several locations around the city of Los Angeles.
To my surprise, the "every penny counts" poster, "risk equals reward," "tie shoes for safety," and "be flexible" didn't attract any graffiti at all.
However, "dream big" and "stand up to the big guys" did.
I decided to go with "stand up to the big guys" since there was opportunity for two [Bleep.]
s and put it up on a wall near a local high school.
I left a pen and added a sticker that would make the act even more irresistible to an immature smart aleck.
With all the elements in place, I watched from a van across the street, ready to pounce at any moment.
We'll check back with this in a bit.
But first Terry Fox has been running this petting zoo in Oak Glen, California for years.
- Can I touch the fat pig? - Yes, you may.
Absolutely.
But with several other petting zoos located closer to the major city of Los Angeles, Terry needs to give people a good reason to visit hers.
And that's where I come in.
People don't go to Seaworld to see a whale.
They go to see Shamu.
- Right.
- Who's your Shamu? Our Shamu is our petting farm.
Our pigs, our goats.
- Shamu is one animal.
- Right.
So if I had one animal to pick, um, it would be the pigs.
The pigs is multiple - Multiple, yes.
- Animals.
- So you don't - You just You don't have a Shamu.
We just don't have one Shamu.
No, we don't.
My mission was to make oak Glen petting zoo a destination.
And what they needed was a star animal.
The plan: To create a hero pig by staging a viral video in which he rescues a baby goat from drowning.
Oh, okay.
So I think if you had a video like that, people would come from places as foreign as Japan, and even more foreign like China, just to see your hero pig.
That would be great.
The first step was picking our animals.
Vince would be our hero pig, and Gangster the goat would be our victim.
The zoo had a large trout pond, so this would be the setting for our rescue.
But when I brought Vince near the water, I realized he was an incredible coward.
Okay, okay! - Okay, okay, okay! - No, no, no, no! So we hired some animal handlers to bring in a professional movie pig that looked identical to Vince.
The question now was how do we get a pig to rescue a goat on camera? Answer? You can't.
So I decided to have two scuba divers secretly submerged beneath the animals guiding the pig towards the goat to make it look like a real rescue.
During the first couple attempts, the pig kept slipping out of the divers' hands.
So we decided to build an underwater track out of pvc to guide the pig like a bowling ball going down a bumper lane.
This worked a lot better, and I was hopeful it would fool the Internet audience into believing this video was real.
But as the amount of people involved began to grow, including animal trainers, stuntmen, and humane society reps, I started to get worried.
After all, word couldn't get out that this was fake or it would be a disastrous scandal for Oak Glen.
So I asked everyone on set to sign non-disclosure agreements stating that they swore not to tell anyone the rescue was fake or else they would face the death penalty.
Even though my lawyer said the death penalty clause was not enforceable, I still wanted to leave it in there so people knew how serious I was.
After several failed attempts, we finally got the rescue on tape.
We had our video.
And it was great.
But now we needed a convincing backstory.
If this goes viral, the press will wanna know Who filmed this video? It couldn't be me with my background in television.
People would smell a hoax from a mile away.
But there was one person no one would ever suspect.
Santa Claus.
In order to distance myself from the pig rescuing goat video, I got James to agree to say that he was the one who shot it.
So for believability, I needed to record audio of James to make it sound like he was there on the day it was filmed.
Goat in the water! Goat in the water! Goat in the water! - Yeah.
- Goat in the water.
Now, I needed to be sure that Terry was with the program.
So when the media comes a-knocking - Here's what you say.
- Okay.
- Verbatim.
- Okay.
I sometimes take the animals out to the pond.
That day, I left to go get my lipstick from the office.
That's when the goat must've slipped in.
I never saw the rescue.
However, a good samaritan showed me the video.
I never got his name or his gender.
Now repeat.
Gimme a minute.
I sometimes I sometimes take the animals out to the pond.
Here, I did write it down for you.
Thank you.
With Terry's script to memorize, the hero pig story was becoming more concrete.
"When the goat slipped in.
" Okay.
But then I realized I had one more mouth to shut.
While we were filming the rescue, one of the scuba divers, Alex, was telling me some pretty personal stuff about actors he's worked with in the past.
Jennifer Aniston, Ben Stiller.
Ben's pretty bold.
He had to do some kinda nude water stuff over in Hawaii for Along Came Polly.
I did that movie with him.
Alex was clearly a liability, and I couldn't have him spilling details about our video on his next job.
So I asked him to meet me at the Pico subway station to have a little reminder chat.
- Thanks for meeting me here.
- What's up? - How's it going? - No worries.
Good.
Good.
Oh, you're a bit tense.
- So, uh well, you know - Stand right here.
- So how you been? - Good.
I just wanted to ask.
Do you remember that "pig rescues goat" video we made? Yeah.
You haven't been talking to anyone about that or anything, have you? You look like you're trying to like threaten me.
- What? - You look like you're No, no! Not at all! You're shoulders were sore.
That's why I was doing that.
Come on.
Just 'cause I'd be very - Very upset - Yeah.
If you told someone about - Could you - All right, all right.
Okay, yes, I'm sorry.
No, I'm sorry.
Yes.
I shouldn't have done that.
Yeah, but please don't tell anyone, okay? - Okay.
Thank you.
Okay.
- No worries.
My paranoia was getting the best of me.
The video hadn't even been uploaded, and I was already getting worried about people revealing the secret.
Plus, watching the video again, I started to doubt that this would fool anyone.
Goat in the water! All I could do at this point was upload the video and let the public decide.
Goat in the water! When I woke up the next morning, I was astounded to see that the video had been posted on Gawker, eBaum's World, and a bodybuilding message board.
It had over 3,000 views, and that was way more than I ever expected.
Then I saw it was climbing the charts on reddit.
Then I checked the view count an hour later.
Holy [Bleep.]
.
By the way, this may sound like a sea rescue, but a goat a baby goat gets stuck in water.
This is some pig.
You have to see it.
A goat at a petting zoo got stuck in a lake.
- This really happened.
- That was cool! Have no fear, there's a pig there.
I mean, you couldn't do this at Warner brothers as a cartoon and make it seem more realistic.
We're wayward duty-bound to pass this on.
It's the leading web video today.
While we have no way of knowing if it's real, this was apparently shot at a petting zoo.
Goat in the water! That's a baby goat who got out into too deep water.
Begins crying for help.
Enter this pig.
It seemed like the whole world was talking about my video.
For a moment, I felt bad because it wasn't real.
But then I realized that that didn't matter.
Interspecies, he went and helped learn from it, humans.
In these cynical times, people are desperate for something to believe in.
And I gave people a reminder that it's okay just to believe.
How did the pig free the goat? Just kinda guided it, just pushed him.
Every day with Elizabeth is like "how did this happen?" I always knew this video was something special.
And that's why, in the end, I decided not to put the name of the petting zoo on it.
I didn't want it to come across like an ad, - you know, for the petting zoo.
- Mm-hmm, right.
I thought it would be a bit transparent.
But if people would've known that it was Oak Tree Village But I mean, you can't be so selfish.
Selfish? Well, I mean, if people love the video, it's like Can't just be all about the business.
But that's what it was supposed to be about when you first came up.
It was supposed to be about the business.
Terry just didn't seem to understand.
But I don't leave those that I help empty-handed.
That's why I made her this sign.
As my stakeout for a young vandal continued, I was starting to get frustrated.
I'd been monitoring the poster for over four hours, and no one had defaced it.
For a moment, I thought this wasn't going to work.
But I was quickly proven wrong.
Oh, he's taking the pen.
Oh, my God.
He's actually doing it.
On camera.
Let's go! Let's go! Hey, man.
Hey.
- Hey, how's it going? - It's going.
Cool, what are you doing there? Oh, that's so funny.
You drew a [Bleep.]
.
- Yeah.
- Yeah, that's really funny.
We're doing a show about teens cool teens Called "Teen Street.
" Is it cool if we ask you a few questions for the show? - Sure, no problem.
- All right, cool.
That's really funny.
That's mega funny.
This teen was no good, and his parents needed to know what he did.
So to earn his trust, I told him we wanted to make an entire "Teen Street" episode about him.
So we spent the rest of his afternoon shooting segments for a fake show.
What up! I'm Kyle.
19 years old.
And this is "Teen Street.
" If you don't like it, [Bleep.]
you.
I do whatever the [Bleep.]
I want, and I can do whatever I want.
The thing I'm most proud of is I make [Bleep.]
load of money.
No regrets.
Listen to that! Bam.
Yeah, I skated for six years, played the drums for six years, and did muay tai and Brazilian jiu jitsu.
You have to love your mom.
If you don't, go [Bleep.]
yourself.
This show is about the coolest teens in town.
"Teen Street," bitches! First tattoo when I was 13.
This is the only girl that never complains to me.
All right, so now I'm gonna show you where I live.
Let's do this.
For the final part of the segment, I said we had to do a tour of his house.
He didn't know it, but he was leading me right to his parents, and I was going to tell them what he did to my poster.
What up? This is my pad.
This is where I spend my time making trouble.
I'm gonna show you a tour real quick.
So who's this lovely lady? - This is my mom Sheri.
- Awesome, man.
- Nice to meet you.
- Guess teens have moms.
- Right? - Yeah.
All right, but we need to stop laughing for a moment, because we have to sit down.
I have something to talk about.
Okay.
He's drawn two penises right there.
And you can see I'm holding them as if I'm masturbating these two men.
Your s you're laughing.
- I don't - What do you find - Is that funny to you? - I no.
- This is not funny.
- The penises? - Do you like that? - No.
Being held like that? Is that so this is okay.
So this is funny to you.
To my surprise, even his mom wasn't taking this seriously.
Luckily, I had an LAPD officer with me to set him straight.
What we have here is a crime.
If someone sees you commit the crime, you can get arrested and go to jail.
And believe me, you don't wanna go to jail.
Would drawing penises going into someone's hand be a segue to, you know, murder? Of course not.
I don't think so.
- Never? - I'm not gonna say never.
So may yes.
So then yes.
- If he choked on it, maybe.
- Kyle.
Show respect and apologize.
- It's a good way to go.
- All right, well, I did enjoy drawing penises next to your face, - but I really do apologize.
- No, I don't accept that.
I don't accept an apology that starts like that.
I apologize for drawing a penis next to your face.
- Okay.
- All right.
You're a good kid.
You have a lot of potential.
And to be honest, I see some of myself in you.
But you just have to try to become more like me and less like you.
No, I disagree.
I think he should be more like himself Well, he shouldn't be like himself obviously.
Someone who draws penises.

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