On The Edge

When I first came to L.A. I lived in a hotel on the beach.

On The Edge is a program Joe Frank produced as part of the series Work In Progress. It was originally broadcast in 1991

Synopsis

In between each segment, a piece of dialog is inserted of a man shouting positive, self-help affirmations in a desperate voice.

Joe moves from the east coast to the west coast, and in his first house in Santa Monica, he lives next door to a women with a dog named Prince. For the first month after Joe moves in, the woman is home all day so the dog does not bark. Then she gets a job at a hospital, and the dog barks all day when she is away. When she is away, the dog's bark is fierce, followed by whimpering. When someone is at the door, the dog does not have this style of barking. Joe is home all day trying to work on his show, and he cannot stand the barking. He waits 3 days to tell the woman because he wants to give the dog the benefit of the doubt. When he confronts the woman she said she is glad, and that is what he is supposed to do. The dog scares potential buglers, and since every house in the neighborhood has been robbed recently except for her house, and she credits the dog and its barking for this. She basically tells Joe that she is not going to do anything about it. Joe fantasizes about ways to kill the dog: buying a gun in another state and shooting it from the alley, or putting rat poising in a slab of meat and throwing it over the fence.
What is death; what if the expression "bought the farm" were literally true? *Annoyances: waiting in line at supermarkets and post offices, athletes today, teenage dance shows.
What if "gone fishing" were true?
Annoyances: messes in public bathrooms, litter in movies, pan-handlers.
Barking dog followed by gunshots.
Death as hotel paradise.
"Death is... "