Nightride

Nightride[1]

Series
Work In Progress
Original Broadcast Date
1986
Cast
Tim Jerome, Mark Hammer, Joseph Palmieri, Alan Hunter, Lester Nafzger, Annalee Jefferies, F. Murray Abraham, Arthur Miller, Joe Frank
Format
Scripted Actors, Category:Sound Effects, 1 hour
Preceded by:	Highways West
Followed by:	Rent A Family (Part 1)

"That is the electric plant over there."

Nightride is a program Joe Frank produced as part of the series Work In Progress. It was originally broadcast in 1986.

Synopsis

Taxi driver (Tim Jerome), driving his cab too fast, points out the power plant; because it sells all its electricity they use candles inside.

2:00: Vorst (sp?) and Funk (sp?) menacingly interrogate Alex. They want him to confess to setting off a bomb in the industrial district.

12:00: Alex talks about missing something from his life.

12:50: Someone talks about the futility of questions.

14:30: Someone talks about how an alternating current of physicality and spirituality creates a tension.

16:40: Guy makes waking-up noises.

18:10: Guy with accent (Tim Jerome?) talks about interrogators trying to get him to confess.

19:30: Vorst and Funk interrogate Alex, ask about his sick mother, summer camp.

25:30: Alex wonders what's important in life. Another fellow tells him there are 5 important things: a clean mind, a strong heart, soap, almonds, and manganese. Then that fellow lists things we have to do before other things.

28:50: A psychologist (a Black man?) talks to someone whom police officers allege threatened to kill his wife and children. He prays that he not do anything crazy.

33:00: A guy (Tim Jerome) loves to drive a cab (from the sound effects, at very high speed)

34:20: Vorst tells about going horseback riding with a woman.

35:50: Vorst tells about how talking in person, appearances distract; on the phone, there are no distractions.

36:30: Vorst tries to get Alex to confess, talks about how great confession is, cites Galileo and Augustine. Vorst tries to stop Funk from getting violent.

41:50: A woman talks about what she likes. Another woman says she's better off without a lover.

45:10: Vorst tells Alex life is not a progression of events, then talks nonsense for a few minutes.

50:20: A guy had a dream that he realized he had a final exam for a course he never attended.

52: Music (Six Marimbas) and scat singing - 'dee-dee-dee' and nonsense syllables.

Legacy Synopsis

Rhythmic humming. Tour of the city: electric plant lit by candles. A power plant worker is interrogated about a bombing, his job, his life, his childhood. Something is missing dialog. Religious counselor type asks his subject to guess at the solution to resolving the tension between the physical and the spiritual. The five things which are important in life. Confession. The prison psychologist recording: don't trust angels and the save my ass daily declaration. A woman talks about what she likes. Life as a series of forgetting. A disappearing girlfriend. A man in the street talks about a final exam nightmare, the life and death box. Rhythmic humming and nonsense verse.

Miscellanea

Nightride takes place in the same world that A Tour Of The City does; Alex is the same person; except for the part about Alex missing something, the words are different. Black Hole re-uses much of it; Reprise re-uses a little.

Music

• "Six Marimbas" - Steve Reich (from Sextet · Six Marimbas, 1986) | YouTube

• "The Sinking Of The Titanic" - Gavin Bryars (from The Sinking of the Titanic, 1975) | YouTube
• "Flowered Knife Shadows" - Harold Budd (from Lovely Thunder, 1986) | YouTube

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