Windows

Windows[1]

Series
The Other Side
Original Broadcast Date
10/10/1999
Cast
Debi Mae West, Joe Frank
Format
Serious Monologue, 59 minutes
Preceded by:	Love Is
Followed by:	Jam

There was a man who lived in an apartment complex in a city.

Windows is a program Joe Frank produced as part of the series The Other Side. It was originally broadcast on October 10, 1999, and explores a variety of themes surrounding love.

Synopsis

Michael sees a beautiful woman in the apartment across the courtyard but never talks to her. He follows her one day, watches her stand on a bridge over water. A fellow in a motorized wheelchair approaches and talks to her; she lights his cigarette. She then goes to a restaurant, sits at an outside table. An expensively dressed man in his 60s in a Lincoln Town Car meets her there; she leaves with him. Michael sits at the same table, finds a picture of a 9 or 10-year-old girl she left behind, takes it. He sends her flowers anonymously. A young man arrives at her apartment; they make love. Michael takes a cab to the airport, intending to run away, but the cabbie convinces him to return. She disappears. Her mother has her stuff packed up and moved out. A male body-builder moves into her apartment

15:50: Joe tells the story of the woman meeting the quadriplegic on a bridge from her POV, a scene the man watched. She was contemplating suicide but the meeting with the quadriplegic heartened her.

22:10: Debi Mae West air-dries after a shower. She tells Joe how much she likes it. They discuss her love life.

33:50: 'They say that love is more precious than the air we breathe...' - Joe lists things we say love is more precious than.

37:10: Joe describes a meeting of 'Love anonymous'.

43:40: Debi tells Joe about a cute guy she met who told her he wanted to eat her out but didn't come across.

47:40: '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.

57:50: Debi tells Joe about the time her mother dropped her off at school on Good Friday when she was 6; they didn't know school was closed because they're Jewish.

Legacy Synopsis

• Monologue: A man watches a quiet, sad woman across the courtyard from his apartment window. He falls in love with her and sends her flowers when she looks particularly unhappy. One night he sees her bring a man to her apartment; he decides to leave the city, but a cab driver talks him out of it. He returns to find that she is gone. The woman's point of view description of meeting a quadriplegic on a bridge after contemplating suicide.
• Telephone conversation: Debi Mae West discusses her love affairs: one that ends after a drunken five day weekend, a psychic who tells her she and the man have been together in past lives, a man who refuses to give her oral sex.
• Monologue on love: "they say that love is more powerful/precious/etc...." Love as a fine wine, as becoming Edward Teller. A clown commits hara-kiri after being dumped by a harlequin. A relationship breakup as fission. Love as heroin. Description of a Love Anonymous support group. Why love? Joe chooses to be a bachelor for the rest of his life, join a mens club, build a latrine.
• Telephone conversation: Debi meets an old friend at a theater who offers her oral sex.
• Monologue: Love is an old man fishing off a bridge. Joe remembers an explosion that kills his father and leaves him mute.
• Telephone conversation: Debi talks about being dropped off for school on a holiday.

Music

• "Brooks Was Here" - Thomas Newman (from Shawshank Redemption Soundtrack, 1994) | YouTube [Intro]
• "School Boy Crush" - Average White Band‎ (from Cut The Cake, 1975) | YouTube [22:06]
• "No More My Lord" - Jimpson (from Prison Songs • Historical Recordings From Parchman Farm 1947-48 • Volume One: Murderous Home, 1997) | YouTube [41:26]
• "Dusk You and Me" - Groove Armada (from Vertigo, 1999) | YouTube [47:18]

• "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 [54:52]

Miscellanea

• Includes loops of Alan Lomax's Parchman Farm recordings (YouTube)