JB = Jonathan Brandmeir, FD = The Fake Detective, plus there are call-in guests who are named.
BEGIN as theme fades:
JB: Let’s meet someone you should know. Ladies and Gentlemen, if you love to peruse the Internet and you come across naked photos of celebrities, and you wonder to yourself "how do these celebrities get on the Internet naked" and then you wonder to yourself "Are these photos really those of naked celebrities - the ones you known and love - for example Gillian Anderson".
(Music: Theme from "The X-Files".) Gillian Anderson’s voice over the music: "Agent Mulder died late last night from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot to the head." End music.
JB: Gillian Anderson has the dubious distinction of being queen of the fake nude photos - says the man who searches the Internet for bogus celebrity shots. That’s what his man does. They call him The Fake Detective. Eddie from Wisconsin. Ed Lake is your last name?
FD: That’s right.
JB: How are you, sir?
FD: Just fine. How are you, Johnny?
JB: You know I’m also from Wisconsin, sir.
FD: Whereabouts?
JB: Fond Du Lac.
FD: Oh. Up north.
JB: Yeah. Would … Would you call it up north?
FD: I’d be calling it up north from where I am, yes.
JB: Okay. You do not want … I understand you do not want your location disclosed … because fear of what?
FD: Well … fear of having a band of little old ladies picketing outside my front door.
JB: Why would they be picketing since … well, why don’t you describe what you do? You search the Internet, you look for naked photos of celebrities. And then you decide whether they’re real or not real. Thus the title "The Fake Detective".
FD: That’s right. Technically, what I do is I search the Internet for pictures of celebrities, and when I find a fake then I investigate. I don’t look for nudes specifically.
JB: Uh huh.
FD: But … uh … anything having to do with nudes automatically gets the little old ladies upset.
JB: All right, now. You say that Gillian Anderson is the fake ... the queen of the fake nudes?
FD: That’s right.
JB: Okay. Why is that?
FD: Well, I guess …
JB: More than anyone else. More naked photos of Gillian Anderson than anyone else. And if there is a top five, what are the top five naked celebrities on the Internet?
FD: Well, Gillian Anderson is definitely the … the number one. I’d say there are at least 500 of her out there. The Number Two would be … Christina Applegate and Sandra Bullock and … um … Melissa Joan Hart?
JB: Who’s that?
FD: She plays "Sabrina, The Teenage Witch".
JB: (laughing) Wow. … Now, you search the Internet, you find these naked celebrities, then when do you determine that they are fake? What do you do then? Ah, Ed? Can I call you Ed?
FD: Sure.
JB: All right, Ed.
FD: Basically what I do is if I find a picture that I think is worth exposing, I create … I find the head shot that belongs with the naked picture and I post them side by side - the fake and the head shot - and I create a case file for it and a little text blurb which I put on the … on the … with it .. and I post it to UseNet … and it ends up on some web site.
JB: Okay, what do you get out of this?
FD: Basically, I just did it for the heck of it when I started.
JB: Yeah.
FD: And it’s kind of snowballed.
JB: Uh huh. Well, let me ask you … Do celebrities get a hold of you and say "Thanks for letting people know that this is a fake photograph"? Or don’t they care about you one way or the other, Ed?
FD: Well, I don’t … I would say that until …
JB: Has anyone, a celebrity or office or has someone contacted you and said "Hey, thanks for proving that that Gillian Anderson nude was fake on the Internet. It’s been going around for years and thanks a lot, we appreciate it"?
FD: No, they haven’t. But I don’t think that any of them even knew about it perhaps until this Hollywood Reporter article came out a couple days ago.
JB: Right. Right.
FD: The Internet is kind of a murky place that …
JB: Murky and scary. I’m going to call it murky and I’m going to call it scary.
FD: Most people don’t even know what’s going on out there.
JB: Yeah. Well, wait a minute. … So, if there are fakes of Gillian Anderson and there are fakes of the other ladies you mentioned … what are … um … give me the most often requested fake … well, you know what … do people e-mail you, get a hold of you on the Internet and say, "Hey, can you show me where to find these nudes? Because … I … Honest to God I wouldn’t even know where to look to find a nude celebrity. Do I just type in "search nude celebrities"? Because I’m going to start looking.
FD: That would do it. But you‘d probably get thousands of sites that way. And you’d just have to pick through them to find what you want. I don’t really do that. What I do is I go into UseNet and go into the newsgroups …
JB: Are they all fake? Hey, Eddie. Fake Detective. Are they all fake for the most part?
FD: Well, 90 percent of the celebrities out there do not pose in the nude, so therefore the answer to that would be no. Most … uh … most pictures are real, but most nudes are … I would say are fake, yes.
JB: Yeah, the nudes of the celebrities, is what I’m saying. Most of them you see the naked … someone had put their body on another head … boom boom boom.
FD: Yes, but at the same time there are some real ones out there. I did an interview last year for …
JB: What are the real ones?
FD: Ah, well, for example, on this interview I did last year. They began the show by saying that … um … they showed eight different pictures, and they said that they were all fake. But actually five of the eight were real. There was a real picture of … um … Barbra Streisand from a video capture …
JB: Hold on a minute. Back up a minute. I can get Barbra Streisand naked on the Internet right now?
FD: Right.
JB: A real photo of Barbra Streisand naked?
FD: Yes.
JB: Fully naked?
FD: Uh … topless.
JB: Okay. Uh … What else? Who else is real that I can get?
FD: The thing is that this … this Barbra Streisand is from the movie she made called "The Owl And the Pussycat". It’s a video capture.
JB: So, they shot it off the video and put it on the Internet.
FD: Right.
JB: Okay. … Robert has a question for The Fake Detective. The man spends his life in Wisconsin looking for fake naked photos. Ah, hello, Robert. … Robert, you’re on the line with The Fake Detective.
Robert: I was wondering if like the photos you see in Celebrity Skin and Celebrity Sleuth … I was wondering if those are legit photos.
FD: Well …
Robert: Are you even familiar with those magazines?
FD: Yes. They are kind of my nemesis. I do a lot of battling with them. I had a big case … #126 with a picture of Gates McFadden that was posted ...
Robert: Ah!
FD: They were printing that as being real. But it wasn’t. It was some picture … It was a video capture of a woman named Camille Keaton.
Robert: Really!
FD: They do quite a few where they imply that it is a picture of Grace Kelly or Elizabeth Taylor or Sally Field or whatever, but it’s not.
JB: Why are you fighting with them?
FD: Well, because they create these .. um … they print these pictures and then people distribute them and believe that they are real because they were printed in Celebrity Sleuth.
JB: But what do you … I mean … what do you get out of it? What do you care whether or not someone thinks a Gillian Anderson photo is real or whether Gillian Anderson naked is fake? What would you care about it? What do you get out of this? … How old are you?
FD: Sixty.
JB: Sixty. So, do you have a job?
FD: Right now I’m writing screenplays.
JB: Okay. So, you’re writing screenplays, and this is your job?
FD: Well, no, there’s no money in this. It’s pro bono for the public benefit.
JB: So, you think the public wants to know that what is real and what is fake?
FD: Well, apparently … they do, because I get e-mail … dozens of e-mails from all over the world every day.
JB: Well, I’m not saying they don’t. I’m just saying that you think there’s got to be enough interest in it - obviously - to have people like you going looking for it. Okay?
FD: Right.
JB: Okay. And you spend a lot of time doing it. And you say you’re doing it all the time every day.
FD: It isn’t as much time as you might think. I think today I did … maybe an hour and a half.
JB: What did you find today on the Internet, Fake Detctive? What did you find today?
FD: Er … today … I found … uh … I found a picture of Cindy Crawford that’s been circulating.
JB: All right.
FD: I found out the name of the woman who this picture really is. Her name is … um … Nikki Dial.
JB: All right. Nikki Dial is Cindy Crawford. There is no naked photos of Cindy Crawford on the Internet.
FD: Well, there may be some. But not the one we’re talking about.
JB: Okay. Eric, you’re on with The Fake Detective.
Eric: Hey, I know of a site and … um … what this guy does is he takes stills from movies and he credits the movies from where they are from and he posts all these pictures - there’s got to be at least three thousand of them - of famous celebrities.
JB: Give me the site, please.
Eric: It’s called Scoopy - S.C.O.O.P.Y - dot … dot net.
FD: I’m familiar with them.
JB: Scoopy dot net. Hello, Mike, go ahead, please.
Mike: Hey, are there any pictures of Ed naked on the Internet?
JB: Ed, are there any photos of you naked on the Internet?
FD: There are a couple out there, but they’re not really me. One of … they put Peter Falk on the …
JB: Peter Falk naked. Thank you very much. I believe that’s where we’ll wrap this up. I don’t need to see Peter Falk naked. I do want to check out your site. What’s the Internet address?
MUSIC: The theme from "The X-Files" starts again and Gillian Anderson again says "Agent Mulder died late last night from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot to the head." Music continues over the rest:
FD: It’s WWW dot Lair Of Lux Lucre dot com slash detective slash
MUSIC changes to Jonathan Brandmeir’s them and continues over the rest:
JB: All right, I didn’t get any of that. Can you give it to me again.
FD: It’s WWW dot Lair Of Lox … Lux Lucre dot com slash detective slash … but you can probably do a search on fake detective and find it.
SILENCE
FD. Hello?
THE END