State of the Art

Richard Belzer

by Carly Carioli

"I see conspiracy everywhere I look," admits Richard Belzer in his new foray into the comedo-forensic literature, UFOs, JFK, and Elvis: Conspiracies You Don't Have To Be Crazy To Believe (Ballantine, 222 pages, $24). The one-time stand-up comedian, talk-show host, and (until very recently) star of NBC's Homicide: Life on the Street isn't kidding. Although Conspiracies is saturated with his trademark fatalist, why-did-I-get-born-on-the-dumbest-planet -in-the-universe deadpan sarcasm, this tome is, first and foremost, the work of a believer to make Fox Mulder blush. Split into two parts, it's an overview of what Belzer calls "the two greatest detective stories of the century": namely, the conspiracy behind the Kennedy assassination and the suppression of evidence of alien life on Earth.

"I guess I have some kind of detective DNA," says Belzer from his home in France, in advance of a signing at Barnes and Noble in Kenmore Square this Tuesday. "As a child and as an evolving adult I always questioned authority. And I always felt reflexively that there was more to the surface than meets the eye. I used to be a newspaper reporter, then I played a detective for seven years on TV, and having been a stand-up comic and a talk-show host, I've had a journalistic bent. Epiphanies about history that aren't generally known have always intrigued me. So it's just a combination of madness and seriousness."

And though Homicide has been cancelled (a prescient passage in Conspiracies described the series as "critically acclaimed and therefore doomed"), Belzer may soon be returning to the small screen in the role of a detective -- this time as the voice of an animated, time-traveling sleuth in a series based on Doug Moench's comic-book-style volumes The Big Book of the Unexplained and The Big Book of Conspiracies. Belzer's obsession with such topics won't come as any surprise to those familiar with his Homicide character, Detective John Munch (who once made a cameo on The X-Files), or with Belzer's own comedic rants, including his recent CD, Another Lone Nut (Uproar). And neither will the following advice come as news: don't get him started.

"Well, what's amazing to me about the Kennedy case is that new information comes out all the time but the mainstream press doesn't trumpet it," he says. "Like just very recently it came out that different doctors examined two different brains [both purported to be JFK's]. I mean, if there was no conspiracy, why were there two brains? But that's not gonna be a headline in the New York Times. And there's thousands of pages of stuff that's been released just in the past year that's really tantalizing and fascinating. We now know for a fact that Oswald worked in some capacity for the CIA. We now know for a fact that the Zapruder film is totally doctored. Now we know scientifically that that film has animation in it, it has frames missing. But when you tell people that, they look at you like you're fucking crazy."

If the proliferation of conspiracy theory is indicative of anything in our culture, it might be the illumination of the great paradox of the so-called information age -- that the more information we become privy to, the less we're able to sort through it coherently. In essence, data overload leads to less certainty, not to mention cynicism and apathy.

"It can be exhausting," says Belzer. "And people will say, `Well forget about it, I don't care if Kennedy was killed by our own government, I've gotta go buy an RUV.' I think that's why a lot of people are in denial about these subjects. It's like, `Who needs that information?' There was a coup d'état, there really are aliens, we're a manufactured species, we're helpless in the face of it, our religion and science and military are helpless in the face of this, all order will break down. And I'm almost directly quoting government documents here.

"I mean, it's a contradiction. On the one hand I'm a nihilist; on the other hand I think that individuals can make a difference and can illuminate ideas." He chuckles, "And at the very least be entertaining. If all else fails."

Richard Belzer discusses and signs his UFOs, JFK, and Elvis this Tuesday, June 8, at Barnes & Noble at the Boston University Bookstore, 660 Beacon Street. Call 236-7425.