Love Prisoner

Series
The Other Side
Original Broadcast Date
3/18/2001
Cast
Joe Frank
Format
Karma Style, 59 minutes
Preceded by:	The Angina Dialogues
Followed by:	Anthology Of Love (Remix)
Purchase or  Stream

I'm sitting on my front porch; a woman pulling a cello in a case on casters.

Love Prisoner is a program Joe Frank produced as part of the series The Other Side. It was originally broadcast on March 18, 2001.

Synopsis

This episode is all re-used, from 'Prison songs', 'Love is', 'Windows', and 'The loved one, remix'/'Lover man'

Joe recounts falling in love with a woman walking by, pulling a cello. He imagines growing old together. After she passes he's relieved she got out while there was still time.

2:40: 'Love is like being ground to death in a huge coffee mill...' - Joe analogizes love with a series of gruesome images.

5:40: 'They say that love is more precious than the air we breathe...' - Joe lists things we say love is more precious than.

9:00: Joe describes a meeting of 'Love anonymous'.

15:40: Joe appeals to a woman he saw at the Laemmle Theatre in Santa Monica at a viewing of Breaking the waves to contact him. He left his umbrella behind; when he went back to retrieve it she had it for him. Joe was barely able to speak, he's so taken with her. He imagines their life together. Joe wants her to call KCRW, leave her name and number.

Joe remembers looking at a Botero painting next to a woman - but he can't find anything to say to her. Joe wants her to call him at KCRW - or one of the Japanese schoolgirls who were also there.

Joe's in Petco, falls in love with an outdoorsy woman, imagines their life together, wants her to call.

24:20: 'Love is an old man fishing off a bridge...' - Joe describes this fellow, his memories of surviving a bombing in Baghdad. A rude couple stops, asks for directions; he doesn't answer; a giant catfish pulls the guy into the water. The woman has a geological survey map. The guy takes his sandwich. The woman does her business in the bushes, wipes herself with poison ivy.

34:50: Joe recounts his breakup with Darlene, the awful things they did to each other. Joe imagines dismembering Darlene, making ornaments from her body parts.

37:40: Joe lists all the people who need love.

39:30: Joe lists more analogies for love, how necessary and irreplaceable it is. He addresses Darlene, how much he misses her.

46:20: Joe recounts walking along the ocean, coming upon an orchestra, dressed-up people dancing, waiters, champagne. A helicopter lands, lets out a man in top hat and tails who come to the microphone, then explodes, killing everyone but Joe. Joe returns to his hotel, pours a shot, pours it out into the pool.

48:20: Joe recalls Socrates's death.

49:00: Joe thinks about finding eternity.

49:40: Joe recalls his father being killed in a factory accident when he was 5, reduced to paste.

50:30: Joe recalls his piano lesson when he was 10. He was a poor student; the teacher struck him when he made a mistake. He developed migraines as a result. Years later he started therapy with a psychiatrist. She and Joe fell in love, made a suicide pact, which she honored but Joe did not.

52:20: Joe recounts when he was a cabbie in Manhattan, the couple he drove to Atlantic City and back.

54:40: Joe recounts meeting Sol at Lutece.

56:00: Joe recounts bursting into Bludstein's office, who was having an affair with Darlene. Bludstein pisses out the window.

Expand

Legacy Synopsis

• Joe fantasizes about a life with a woman he passes. She carries a cello case on casters.
• Monologue on love: love is likened to various exotic tortuous experiences. Love compared to precious things. Love as a fine wine, as becoming Edward Teller. A clown commits harakiri with a letter opener after being dumped by a harlequin.
• A relationship breakup as fission. Love as heroin. Description of a Love Anonymous support group. The members tell how long it has been since he or she was in love. The congratulate each other on their ability to stay out of love. Why love? Joe chooses to be a bachelor for the rest of his life, join a mens' club, build a latrine.
• Joe fantasizes about and then regrets not asking out women he encounters. Joe uses the show to asks the women or anyone who knows the women who may be listening to the show to call the KCRW office and leave her details so he may contact her. The first is a woman who returns his umbrella at a Lars Von Trier film at the Laemmle Theater in Santa Monica, Ca. She is with an obnoxious man who kept talking during the film. He imagines that the man is her retarded relative. He imagines a life with her and what he might say to her. It has been many months since the incident and he does not remember the exact date, so he is afraid it will not happen. Next, he sees a woman seen in a museum and later thinks about what he could have said to start a conversation. She leaves and Japanese school girls enter the exhibit and make sketches of the paintings on the wall. Joe encounters a third woman at a pet store who is naturally beautiful with no make-up. Joe imagines them spending time on the beach with her and the golden retriever he imagines she might have (all while contemplating the invention of cat litter).
• Monologue: Love is an old man fishing off a bridge. He remembers an explosion that kills his father and leaves him mute.
• Joe wanders through a retirement home, second person address to Darlene, remembrance of a spectacular public breakup, his ex seduces the elevator man as she's leaving. Joe thanks Darlene for vengeful gifts.
• Everyone needs love. Joe describes different types of people from all walks of life that need love. Disconnected nonsense verse. He imagines dismembering Darlene and displaying parts of her around his house or on his person, asks for his things back.
• The conductor of an orchestra explodes on stage at the beach. Socrates' last words. Finding eternity within ourselves. Joe's father ground to a fine past in a machine accident. A failed suicide pact.
• Joe is a cab driver: he overhears an argument in a foreign language. The woman stops to pray on a mat and in a specific direction, the man sprinkles rose water from a flask, they drive to Atlantic city only to return.
• Joe enters the large office of an executive of a company. The man urinates from the balcony and invites Joe to do the same. The man revels in the ability to do this.

Music

• "School Boy Crush" - Average White Band‎ (from Cut The Cake, 1975) | YouTube [Intro]
• "No More My Lord" - Jimpson (from Prison Songs • Historical Recordings From Parchman Farm 1947-48 • Volume One: Murderous Home, 1997) | YouTube [13:16]
• "Friends and Enemies" - DJ Cam (from Substances , 1996) | YouTube [15:35]
• "Dusk You and Me" - Groove Armada (from Vertigo, 1999) | YouTube [23:56]

• "Early In The Mornin'" - 22, Little Red, Tangle Eye, Hard Hair (from Prison Songs • Historical Recordings From Parchman Farm 1947-48 • Volume One: Murderous Home, 1997) | YouTube [31:30]
• "Angel Dust" - DJ Cam (from Substances, 1996) | YouTube [34:34]

Shared material

• Windows
• Prison Songs
• Love Is
• The Loved One (Remix)/Lover Man

Miscellanea

• This is a remix of monologues from earlier shows.
• The monologue about love is shared with Windows, The Loved One (Remix)/Lover Man.
• Includes loops of the Lomax Parchman Farm recordings.
• Joe reworked and used some material from this show at his live show at the Chicago Art Institute in 2003.

Additional credits

• Production by JC Swiatek
• Music coordinator Thomas Golubić
• Production assistance Esmé Gregson