Time's Arrow

"Times Arrow" is the name of a program Joe Frank produced as part of the series Online.

Synopsis

• Larry talks about being in a production with young actors. Joe: old people have nothing to teach us.
• Joe - The story of a man in a poor village recruited by Hamas to attack the guard post at an Israeli settlement. The man awakes to realize he is actually an Israeli soldier guarding the settlement, a secular Jew new to Israel who hates god for torturing humanity. A man approaches the gate, who may be a spiritually gifted deaf hassid from the neighboring village or a bomber in disguise. A Christian pastor drives past and is caught in an explosion, only to wake up and realize it is a dream. The world seen from an ever-retreating vantage point.
• Larry - Waiting for a life changing epiphany. Beckett's, "You think you're simply resting. . ." Wanting to die and eat and drink. The time before we die.
• Joe - His mother lives in a nursing home near a schoolyard. Old people were once young. Mechanisms for trying to stop time. Measuring time in various events - mountain building, a root canal, traffic. Your life set against billions of years.
• Larry - Dorris Day as an old woman, accompanied by an ugly old man; waiting for Doris. Our time alive, compared to time without us. Knowing you'll never live to see a construction project finished.
• Joe - growing old; the hour glass of life. Time as a river, a wall, a burning plane. A world without time.
• Larry - a brief flash of optimism dissolves into wanting, the need for a sandwich and scotch.
• Joe and larry - jumping while talking on a cell phone with the suicide hotline. An impressionable person on a hotline gets talked into suicide. Suicide hotline operators on the verge of suicide. Hemlock Society infiltrators sabotaging suicide hotlines.
• Joe - He's overcome with lethargy at a diner. A doctor orders brain cancer screening. Becoming distracted at a dinner party. Wetting the bed.
• Larry - visiting a graveyard and encountering wet paint.
• Joe - wanting to go back to bed. Methods of suicide. Age and wisdom. Relating to the scripture of the ancients. The childish stories of scripture.
• Larry - he wants to be a parking meter repairman.
• Joe - a sailboat disaster. TV news, religion pitted against religion. Nonsense verse: A poem. Things happening at this moment. A pig's foot and an ancient table top.
• Larry - unjustified optimism.

Commentary

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