I'm Not Crazy (Remix)

Series
Somewhere Out There
Original Broadcast Date
November 3, 1996
Cast
Joe Frank
Format
Absurd Monologue, 57 minutes
Preceded by:	The O.J. Chronicles
Followed by:	The Policemen's Ball (Remix)
Purchase

I'll always remember the great drought, when it didn't rain for two years..

I'm Not Crazy (Remix) is a program Joe Frank produced as part of the series Somewhere Out There. It was originally broadcast on November 3, 1996.

Synopsis

This episode is 100% re-used content, first from The Dictator (Part 1) then Iceland (Part 3), then On The Edge, Joe Frank's America, and I'm Not Crazy

'They drive by night'

0:50: Joe remembers the great drought.

7:00: It rains for 3 months, drowning everybody and thing, except Joe, who grabs an uprooted tree trunk, floats to a new village, where a family adopts him.

8:00: The new village is farmers. A cruel neighboring tribe kills all, except Joe, who buries himself, breathes through a reed during the raid.

9:40: 'One more night' (Can) - a canter sings in the background.

10:10: 'I came to the rabbi in a state of crisis...' Joe describes the home of a well-appointed rabbi.

12:10: Joe tells of taking the train to Grasporia (sp?): a peasant woman with chickens, a beautiful young woman in tears, the beauty of the countryside. He gets sick to his stomach, remembers his father, a carver of wooden dolls.

15:20: Joe recounts digging in an ancient cemetery on the upper Nile. They find a sarcophagus, open its lid, find a grand party underneath, that the lid is a skylight to a ballroom.

19:30: Party noises, 'In the mood' (Glenn Miller)

20:20: 'One more night' (Can)

20:40: Joe's walking along ashore at Cape Cod at dusk, describes the sights, smells, and sounds. A pickup drives at him. Then he sees his favorite hat, which he lost 3 months ago, blowing along the beach.

22:30: 'One more night' (Can)

23:00: 'The girl from Ipanema' (Joe). He's singing in a jazz club. He describes the audience. He's both doing what he's always wanted to do and hates the club. He wants to tell the people in the audience what he thinks of them.

25:30: Joe speculates about the nature of death, imagines 'bought the farm', which goes awry when foreclosed upon.

32:50: Joe tells of singing in the Pelican lounge, goes through his pockets, finds: 'a hotel key, a harmonica, a pine cone, a field guide for identifying shrubbery, an expanding cuff for a blood pressure meter, a tranquilizing suppository, brown rice, an egg containing a religious diorama of Calvary, a canister of mace, a wind sock.' to 'Me and my shadow'.

34:30: Someone (Joe? I'm not sure) declaims, loudly, the pride he takes in the name Joe Frank - then gives up.

36:20: 'I'm sorry, I'm too tense, I drank too much, I've been thinking about the office, I'm tired, I'm distracted, I'm upset.': Joe explains why he's unhappy.

37:30: Joe tells all the wrong things he's doing: 'I'm lighting the wrong ends of my cigarettes; I'm using erasers to fill in the forms at work; I mailed the telephone to Sharper Image and expected to receive my credit card in return.'

Joe lists all the things he needs, for example, 'I need whalebone stays in the corset of my life's forgotten days.'

37:50: Joe lists all the things he needs, for example, 'I need whalebone stays in the corset of my life's forgotten days.'

38:20: A series of odd things: dropped briefcase, running a stop sign, his orthodontist's odd treatment, trying to give his liver to someone who doesn't need one.

38:50: Joe hates circus clowns, 'brown paper bags wrapped in string', house painters, jazz musicians, people who see through him - for absurd reasons.

39:30: Joe finds his diary proofread, objects.

40: 'Last night, as the teacups rattled on the saucers, as the walls undulated, as the fish tank overflowed, and the fissures in the carpet opened, I thought of Richardson's casual sarcasm concerning my recent face lift, of Spitz's disparaging remarks about my finger rolls, of Lipstein's lewd reference to my daughter, and swore an oath of vengeance.'

40:20: 'You know, lately I've been reading abridgments of Guy de Maupassant stories along with the Torah-like endless scroll of my hospital chart the seismic record of my digestive and pulmonary actions, my bile excretions, stool fecundity, sperm count, cell regeneration, skin loss, dilation of the duodenum, volatility of my blood.'

'Last night I dreamt an endless toilet paper-like roll of dollar bills flowed from my pocket, the core itself fragrant, edible, and highly nourishing.'

40:50: 'You left me in a parachute harness, moth-eaten and threadbare, in a restaurant...', then in a waiting room, then in a lawyer's office, and other terrible things people did to him.

41:40: 'Don't ever go through my sock drawer again...' a poem.

42:00: Last night Joe dreamt he carried a paper bag with the heads of 4 people in it, then thinks a number of odd things.

42:50: Joe protests that he's not crazy, disparages the people who have opinions of him because of his shows. He talks about what's crazy and what isn't, cites examples.

46:40: Joe speculates about the nature of death, imagines 'going to the Hotel Paradise', which goes awry when guerrillas destroy the regime that protects the hotel.

53:20: Joe talks about death, 'Death is a dancing mirage...', describes it with many images, all the things it will do.

56:40: Gunshot.

Legacy Synopsis

A great drought decimates a village and is followed by flood. A band of raiders attacks a village and cuts off the thumbs of the villagers. Scenes from a train: a compartment with a peasant woman, a beautiful lady, and chickens, being sick and discovering subtle profundity in mistaking the restroom for the dining car. Archaeologists digging in Egypt discover a dinner party beneath a sarcophagus. Walking along a windy beach and being served papers. Joe sings in a club, is disappointed with the experience and begins criticizing the audience in his songs. What is death; what if the expression "bought the farm" were literally true? Joe talks about his name against a background of children singing "Me and My Shadow." Mad ramblings: dentures, panicked exclamations, a distressing orthodontist, money and toilet paper, "and if you'd only accept my transplant, then you'd have two livers", "I hate circus clowns because they're indifferent to national emergencies," legal language, paranoid delusions, people are talking about me, a man India takes a vow of silence, preferring the company of mutes and children. Death as hotel paradise. Death is. . . Sound gunshot.

Music

• "They Drive by Night" - David Van Tieghem (from Strange Cargo, 1989) | YouTube [Intro]
• "One More Night" - Can (from Ege Bamyasi, 1972) | YouTube [9:40]
• "Never Get Out Of The Boat (Gosh Mix)" - The Aloof (from Never Get Out Of The Boat, 1990) | YouTube [11:54]
• "In The Mood" - Glenn Miller (from The Best of Glenn Miller, 1965) | YouTube [17:40]
• "The Girl from Ipanema" - sung by Joe Frank [22:51]
• "Paradise" - Sade (from Paradise, 1988) | YouTube [29:20]
• "Me and My Shadow" - The Jazz Masters (from Smooth Jazz) | YouTube [32:50]
• "Evening Tango" - Roger Eno (from Voices, 1985) | YouTube [36:02]

Shared Material

• The Dictator
• Iceland (Part 3)
• I'm Not Crazy
• On The Edge
• Joe Frank's America

Commentary

2 segments from 'Iceland' are abridged: in the original, Joe meets the rabbi and talks to him; and the driver of the pickup delivers a subpoena (sic) for alimony for his ex-wife.