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The Dark Progress of Joe Frank by Ralph Rugoff

LA Style 1989 November


KCRW's twisted genius pushes the envelope of radio drama Joe
Frank's "Night," a one-and-a-half-hour radio monologue first broadcast
in 1988, builds to a moment so unrelievedly dark that it imprints
itself on the listener's mind like a black hole, causing ordinary
compassion and sympathy to flounder and fail.  Frank's voice is
clipped and hypnotically driven, barely wavering from a monotone as he
weaves his program around a web of hard-luck narratives: A hapless
fry cook accidentally burns down a restaurant; a small-chested
stripper receives a toxic silicone implant as a birthday present; a
New Age preacher is exposed for having sex with a male staff member
who later commits suicide.  Finally, Frank relates the story of one of
the preacher's followers, a Vietnam veteran who has desperately
battled his own suicidal impulses and is slowly dying inside.  He loses
his sense of smell; his hearing deteriorates; he experiences numbness
in his hands and feet.  And it occurs to him that he's withdrawing from
life, but there's nothing he can do about it because he stopped caring
a long time ago.

What makes this portrait of despair additionally chilling is
that, like all of Frank's monologues, it's based on a true story.

"I never wanted to produce radio programs in order to comfort
anybody," says Frank.  "People are comforted enough.  Radio and
television dramas typically end with a resolution of problems.  But
in real life 'happy endings' are just the beginnings of new
problems.  I want my program to be about the way life really is, even
if it is often painful.  "I find the darkness powerful," Frank
adds.  "I find it almost religious in some sense.  It's almost as if the
darker these stories are, the more profound they become.  It's through
suffering that we're forced to examine the meaning of our lives."

A weekly program aired in Los Angeles over KCRW-FM, "Joe
Frank: Work in Progress," delivers its darkness in two remarkably
divergent formats.  Frank's monologues, based on biographical material
collected in lengthy interviews, explore scenes that arc so
squeamishly personal, so harrowingly intimate, that listening to them
is akin to reading the journal of a close friend and discovering
things you'd rather not have known.

Frank also produces droll ensemble pieces that deftly
scramble the factual and the fantastic.  In ersatz docudramas like
"Rent a Family" (a 1988 show in which a single mother and her children
are hired out to lonely bachelors), the humor is Kafkaesque - absurd,
dreamlike and decidedly black.  Yet for all their comic incongruities,
Frank's verit&eacute; simulations are often spiked with heart-wrenching
pathos, as even the most absurd premise is acted out with compelling
psychological realism.

Evident in both his monologues and his dramatic pieces is a
fascination with alienated characters.

Frank's stories frequently feature individuals who've been
derailed from mainstream trajectories and find themselves confronting
fears of never getting back on track.  Riddled with ambivalence and
indecision, they engage in wayward quests for emotional contact and
intimacy.  Inevitably, they come up against despair and
frustration.

"They're alienated people, but then again, who isn't?"  Frank
asks rhetorically.  "In my experience, no matter how normal and
integrated someone might seem on the surface, whenever I get to know
them really well, I find trouble.  I think when you remove the masks
and the disguises, we're all fellow sufferers, struggling through life
one way or another.

"People who do fit in well, who are integrated, don't really
reflect a lack of ambivalence to me.  Instead, I think they're just not
in touch with their unconscious.  In a society like this where you have
so much stimulation and so much freedom to choose, how can anyone
end up being anything but ambivalent?  In a sense we're too
intelligent for our own good.  We're weighed down by conflicting
thoughts, feelings, temptations, options.  When you're with one
woman, you're thinking about being with another one.  And when you're
with her, you're thinking of the first one.

"The bottom line is that the human condition is inherently
full of ambivalence.  In every meaningful relationship, I think
you're going to find love, hate, resentment, compassion,
cruelty.  Nothing," concludes Frank, "is simple."

Frank's Venice neighborhood, a deracinated, fun-and-sun suburb
near the beach, seems to belie the dark visions he forges on the
radio.  And in person, despite his professed belief in the power of
darkness, the 49-year-old radio dramatist hardly seems diabolical.  His
sharply focused eyes and the lines around them suggest the powers of
concentration one finds in a concerned psychologist.  Durable good
looks exude a weathered kindness and there's something about his
demeanor - a probing, deeply attentive curiosity - that reminds me that
the most dangerous person to interview is a good listener.

Frank's face eases into a cautious smile as he leans back in
his Barcalounger and contemplates life in Los Angeles.  "I've gotten
used to it," he admits.  "But when I first moved out here, it seemed
far too clean and sunny.  I was sure that I was going to die
spiritually and would be returned on a railway car in a coffin back to
the East Coast."

Death, both spiritual and physical, is a recurring theme in
Frank's work.  Suicides, fatal accidents and terminal diseases, as well
as a host of macabre fears, crop up routinely on his programs.  In
his stage performance at the Museum of Contemporary Art last spring
(sold out for its six-week run), his obsession with mortality took a
peculiar twist.  In addition to a blood-filled water cooler, the sparse
set included a coat rack shaped like a crucifix and a clock stopped at
three, which, as Frank points out, is the hour Christ died on the
cross.

"I was born with clubfeet and as a child was subjected to
repeated surgery, so the idea of crucifixion has a special resonance
for me," Frank relates.  "Also, my father died when I was five and a
half, after an illness that had lasted for two years, and in a way, it
was like the death of God.  That experience of living in a situation
where my father was ill and I was ill, and my mother was young and 
vital and in a sense burdened by us, certainly had a telling effect on
my psyche and sensibility."

Born in Strasbourg, France, in 1939, to a Viennese mother and
Polish father in flight from Nazi Germany, Frank grew up in
Manhattan.  After attending a notoriously permissive school on the
Upper West Side, he moved with his widowed mother and stepfather to
Great Neck, Long Island.  "I was sent to public school at the age of
thirteen and for the first time in my life I was confronted with the
reality of homework.  It was crushing," he recalls.  Frank found some
consolation in listening to Jean Shepherd, a late-night radio
monologist who would fill hours of airtime reminiscing about his
Indiana boyhood.  "I had difficulty sleeping," Frank remembers, "and
it was a comfort having him to listen to late at night.  He was
entertaining and moving, and he made you feel less lonely.  Looking
back, that was probably the first time I realized how radio could
affect and nourish people's lives."

Eventually graduating "493rd in a class of 508," Frank spent
his time in high school daydreaming of athletic glory or dashing off
amusing prose pieces he'd hand to his classmates.  That flirtation
with writing developed into a serious affair during four years at a
local community college, and following a postgraduate stint as a night
duty volunteer on Bellevue's psychiatric ward, Frank headed west to
the celebrated Iowa Writers' Workshop.  Two years later, sans degree,
he returned to New York, where he spent the next decade teaching
English in a private school.  His writing plans slowly faded from
sight.

In search of an alternative creative outlet, Frank ended up
knocking on the door of WBAI, an independent-minded New York radio
station run largely by volunteers.  After lending a hand on various
programs (at one point, editing down a 100-hour reading of a Gertrude
Stein opus), a slot opened up for his own show.  And then, after ten
years of wondering what he was going to do with his life, Joe Frank
found himself on the air.

"In the Dark," first broadcast in 1977, was a prototype for
Frank's later programs, combining rambling personal monologues with
improvised comic skits.  From the beginning, he avoided using scripted
material.  "The performances in radio they're not subtle enough and
they overproject.  So I decided that when I worked with actors, I
would give them only the premise of a situation and then see how far
they could take it.  And I found that when you do improvisational work
with really creative people, they'll think up things you would never
have imagined.

"It can be an exciting and wondrous experience when you
encounter something done in a way you'd never envisioned before," he
continues.  "Whenever I've had that kind of experience, whether it was
the first time I read 'The Sound and the Fury' or saw an Ingmar
Bergman film, it's been very, very powerful.  So when I went into
radio, I wanted to create a program that would give people a similar
experience, something that would make them sit up and wonder 'What the
hell is this?' "

One way Frank achieved that effect was by featuring elaborate,
improvised put-ons.  An actor would be introduced on the show as a
distinguished guest, perhaps a best-selling author or a controversial
sociologist.  Frank would then discuss with him, in quasi-serious
fashion, increasingly bizarre topics.  On one program, a guest was
presented as a world-renowned mime and Frank, after inquiring about
the mime's current world tour, asked him to give a live performance.
The resulting minute of dead air time - "something you just don't do
on radio," Frank points out - divided his audience between befuddled
outrage and wry appreciation.  On another program, an actor posed as a
New Age doctor and took live calls on the air.  "His suggestions were
so bizarre that it was funny, but it was also cruel," Frank notes,
"which is something my programs are still accused of being.  But art
is about extremes.  If you're going to write a love story, you don't
write about a mildly satisfying affair."

By 1978, "In the Dark" had drawn the attention of National
Public Radio and Frank was hired to host the weekend edition of "All
Things Considered."  He lasted for three months before resigning.  "It
was a horrendous experience," he remembers.  "They brought me on
because they thought I had a good voice, but I had no journalistic
experience.  I remember talking to Senator Moynihan in his office and
finding the situation utterly dreamlike.  Frequently during
interviews, my mind would start wandering and I'd come back with an
hour and a half of tape that was virtually unusable."

Frank ultimately convinced the NPR executives to let him
produce radio dramas instead, and for the next seven years he worked
in Washington as a free-lance writer/producer.  In 1986, he moved to
Venice at the invitation of KCRW manager Ruth Hirschman, who offered
Frank a weekly show.

Since moving to the movie and TV capital of the world, Frank's
radio program has enjoyed an uninterrupted success.  In its short
lifetime, "Work in Progress" has garnered numerous prizes and awards,
as well as significant funding from national radio and arts
agencies.  In early 1990, William Morrow will release a book compiled
from programs being rewritten by Frank for publication.  Film
producers and directors have already begun courting Frank in a
time-honored Hollywood ritual.

The success of Frank's program is indubitably linked to its
unnerving, diary-like rawness - and to an audience raised with
voyeuristic appetites.  "I think we're all interested in how other
people live their lives," he comments.  "You only have one life, so
it's fascinating to see other paths you might have taken.  Assuming
we're all troubled to some extent, it's particularly interesting to
listen to a program that explores people's struggles which, though
extreme, are similar to our own."

According to Frank, the fact that his monologues are closely
derived from true stories further augments their appeal.  "I don't
believe it's possible to credibly tell a story that isn't true," he
maintains.  "Or put it this way - I think true stories are much more
interesting than anything you can make up.  When people hear something
honest and authentic on the air, they know it."

Yet like the proverbial good wine, Frank's offbeat imagination
may not travel well.  In more commercial media, the unalloyed
intensity of his radio shows will most likely be compromised.  Even in
his performance at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Frank seemed
hesitant to take the same risks with a live audience that he does on
the air.  Assembled from fragments of past programs, the show was
liberally peppered with one-liners.  

(Sidebar)
"I was always a troublemaker," he quips at one point.  "I
remember creating; open rebellion in the fourth grade when I told my
classmates that the vaccine shots we were about to receive would be
administered directly into our eyeballs."
(/Sidebar)

Rather than challenging his audience, Frank seemed bent on
entertaining them.

One person who was not amused was MOCA curator Julie Lazar,
the woman responsible for getting up the show in the first place.
"She called me the morning of opening night and told me the show
trivialized my work and that, based on my radio programs, she knew I
was capable of much deeper material," recalls Frank.  "I went into a
tailspin.  I remember rushing into my den and desperately looking
through my files to see if I could somehow put together another show
for the performance that night."

While the MOCA piece proved to be an unqualified success with
audiences, Frank admits that it wasn't as close to his heart as the
rougher-edged "Work in Progress."  Having just received several major
grants for radio work, he's now concerned with producing new programs
which will surpass the risks he's already taken.  "I've created these
dark shows and now the question is, 'Will Joe Frank just repeat
himself, or is he going to take things a step further?'  What can I do
now so that I won't let down my audience, so that when they turn on
the radio, they know something different might happen?

"It may be strange and inappropriate," he continues, "but
there are fanatics out there who regularly listen to this program, and
I feel compelled to take them places they've never been.  In a sense,
it's like being a knight and wanting to do wonderful things - even if
they are dark and perverse and strange.  I want to meet new
challenges, to confront new dangers and to honor my listeners by acts
of spiritual, if not physical, courage."

In a culture where the term "radio drama" usually evokes bland
BBC productions or the nostalgic quaintness of "Prairie Home
Companion," Frank's edgy shows seem hopelessly out of sync.  Yet by
nose-diving into the dark side of the human condition and delving into
its pathetic absurdity, desperation and inexplicably enduring
hopefulness, Frank's "Work in Progress" has found a growing
audience.  It may be that in the midst of all that darkness, listeners
perceive a glimmering light.  Frank certainly does.

"I feel deeply moved by many of the stories I tell on the air.
I feel they have to do with the search for meaning and spiritual
connection.

"I'm not formally religious, but I constantly wonder and
contemplate the purpose of our lives and I marvel at the cruelty of
the world we live in.  Just outside this house, in my backyard and a
few blocks away in the ocean, there's a violent, unseen struggle going
on, where in order to survive, members of different species have to
kill one another.

"Yet I don't feel the world is a nihilistic vacuum.  I just
think we don't have a clue as to what's actually going on.  There's a
reality around us that we cannot grasp, any more than a dog can read
Plato.  If you can't imagine empty space going on and never ending, or
the alternative possibility of it ending somewhere without any
space beyond it, then right away you're caught in a conundrum you
can't solve.


"Now if we can't imagine either of those possibilities - the
only two options our intelligence can fathom - then where are we?  How
can anybody presume to know the truth about our condition when we
can't even understand basic concepts like time and space?"

Frank pauses for a moment to catch up with his thoughts.  His
corrugated brow suggests a man fascinated by life's biggest
questions, questions that make the mind stutter.  But while Frank
takes them seriously, he isn't naive enough to be looking for
long-term answers.

"I feel there's mystery," he explains.  "More than we can
imagine.  And this might sound pretentious, but in a sense, the radio
programs are a way for me to try to touch that mystery.

"Maybe it's because my father died when I was young, but I
have never wondered if there's any meaning in life.  I know there is,"
he insists with quietly unassailable conviction.  "Pursuing that
meaning is why I'm on the radio."