Lies

Lies[1]

Series
WBAI And NPR Playhouse
Original Broadcast Date
3/06/1982
Cast
Mark Hammer, F. Murray Abraham, Barbara Sohmers, Christina Moore, Tim Jerome, Arthur Miller, Jane Hunt, Joe Frank
Format
1 hour
Preceded by:	Questions
Followed by:	A Tour Of The City (Part 1)

"At some point when I was in high school I lost my draft card, and my folks changed houses, and I think there was a period of two years there, or three years, or four years, when the Army lost me. They couldn't find me."

Lies is a program Joe Frank produced as part of the series WBAI And NPR Playhouse. It was originally broadcast in 1982.

Synopsis

• A guy avoids the draft by pretending to take drugs.
• A military intelligence officer at a translation center in Vietnam during the war.
• A pair of radical women screw up a revolutionary bank robbery and go on the run.
• A man talks about having been politically active.
• A man meets a woman in a deli; "it had the cadence of witty repartee without the wit;" her roommate makes bagel and cream cheese paperweights, he goes to her place later. She tells him about a rape long ago, about a marriage to a man who shits in bed.
• Joe is a social climbing night watchman, lists things he must do every night, discusses office people.
• Scenes from the office - a board room filled with terror, one with giggling idiots, a woman shouts colors against a background of machinery.
• Joe buries his boss and takes his place.

Music

• "Ceres Motion" - Mother Mallard's Portable Masterpiece Co. (from Mother Mallard's Portable Masterpiece Co., 1973) | YouTube

• "T on a White Horse" - Eberhard Weber (from The Following Morning, 1977) | YouTube

• "Part One" - Philip Glass (from Music in Twelve Parts, 1976) | YouTube

• "Music For 18 Musicians" - Steve Reich (from Music For 18 Musicians, 1978) | YouTube

• "I Will Wait For You" - Mantovani (from To Lovers Everywhere, 1971) | YouTube

Shared Material

• Black Light
• Rare Early Joe Frank Stories from NPR Playhouse

Miscellanea

• The "Night Watchman" segment was broadcast as the conclusion of All Things Considered on Halloween, October 31, 1979.

• The first 30 minutes of the 1985 Martin Scorcese comedy After Hours plagiarizes the plot setup and portions of woman-in-the-deli segment from "Lies". Joe recounts learning about this plagiarism in the extended version of No Show, and his decision to accept a settlement and remain uncredited on the film. Coincidentally, Larry Block appears as a taxi driver in the film, a role that originates with this episode.

• The "fugitive radical women" segment appears to have been inspired by Susan Edith Saxe and Katherine Ann Power, who committed robberies in 1970.

Commentary

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External links

• The Scandalous Origins of Martin Scorsese’s After Hours