The River

Series
Somewhere Out There
Original Broadcast Date
March 31, 1996
Cast
Joe Frank
Format
Absurd Monologue, 60 minutes
Preceded by:	Just Get Me Out Of Here
Followed by:	Justine
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We were on the Nile, going down the river.

The River is a program Joe Frank produced as part of the series Somewhere Out There. It was originally broadcast on March 31, 1996.

Synopsis

Joe recounts a voyage down the Nile with Helga, a mannish woman with a small dog; Ernst, her effeminate hen-pecked husband, wealthy heir, part-owner of the line of the ship on which they were riding; 2 priests, Paulo and Claudio, who looked exactly alike, never appeared together, professed to despise each other; the Egyptian vice-prefect of Cairo; a Hawaiian sumo wrestler Takamatsu, with his entourage; and an Indian physician.

Helga's dog repeatedly bit Ernst, which he accepted glumly. Helga 'had a thing' with the sumo wrestler. The dog disappeared one night. The captain ordered a search even though he had seen Ernst throw it overboard. The physician had diagnosed Ernst with fatal brain cancer, speculated that this had given him the courage to kill the dog.

Helga died a few days later from an overdose of opioids. The dog's body washed up on the coast of Normandy. The physician lost his license for malpractice. Claudio or Paulo left the priesthood and became a brothel owner. Ernst never developed brain cancer but lived a long life and died peacefully. The ship sank on its next voyage.

27:30: Joe says, 'The river has been more of a home to me than anywhere else.', that it reminds him of the time he found his brother, who had hanged himself from the shower nozzle when he was 12; a fight at the dinner table between his parents; a school chum who accidentally speared the track coach with a javelin, severing his spine, paralyzing him from the waist down; his grandfather whose health deteriorated from multiple diseases and injuries; cousin Julia who had a nervous breakdown while studying at the Sorbonne, started talking in an unknown language; the professor who lost his career trying to make sense of Julia's language even after it was proven to be not a real language.

34:20: 'The river is a series of tragic stories. I see the countryside go by, a child standing by himself in the backyard of a house that has been gutted, an abandoned truck upside down in a field, a dying industrial town, a shell of its former self, mines closed, streets empty. The sound of the river is like the wail of a woman, a call of regret and mourning and loss and despair and journey. The river takes you to the ocean, to your final resting place.'

36:20: Joe recounts being a guide at the south end of the Nile, 'headed toward Lake Albert just below Victoria Falls'. A rhino and a lion attack him at the same time; he sidesteps, they annihilate each other. A cobra gets him in his grip, but he gets his gun out in time to shoot him. He is about to be trampled by a herd of wildebeests when he digs a hole to hide in.

38:50: Joe recounts his experiences on the safari with Maria. She's a practical joker, mimes convulsions, puts dummy bullets in Joe's elephant rifle. When an elephant he's hunting tramples him he and Maria become best friends.

40:50: Joe describes waterholes where all the animals drink. When a crocodile eats an antelope the others watch, but go back to drinking. Joe speculates on what they think.

42:10: In the evening Kenyan guides cook some of the animals they killed while singing show tunes.

42:50: Late at night Joe and Maria go to the waterhole, strip, get in, pat the animals.

43:30: Joe describes his trophy room, in which the rear ends of the animals are displayed.

44:10: Joe became fascinated with time on that safari, wore and carried a number of clocks, had bearers carry a grandfather's clock. He wrote a book of short poems on his ideas about time.

50:00: They come to a village in which the distinguished German anthropologist and linguist Hans Muller lives. He seems to die, the natives conduct a passionate funeral rite, take him to his grave, but he comes back to life; apparently it's a shamanistic ceremony. Joe recognizes that it isn't Muller but Eric Schmiel, the commandant of the concentration camp where his parents had been put to death. Joe shoots him, mounts his rear end in his trophy hall.

56:30: 'And looking back, I can't help but feel that we will never be able to unravel the infinitely complex, multifaceted knot, a very tightly-typed cluster of meaning, curtained by mystery, which is in turn enveloped in an air of unpredictability, which is imbued in a profound sense of malaise underpinned by doubt. In other words, do we look at the elementally-unclear manner in which meaning encased in a sphere of ignorance manifested by a metaphor, which inevitably results in a sense of dislocation and anomie and loss? Well, perhaps one has really gained immeasurably from an insight that a sense of loss can induce.'

57:30: Joe becomes a stockbroker, married to Maria; they have 3 children, live in the suburbs. Joe's written an opera about his life.

Legacy Synopsis

Joe is on a passenger boat on the Nile along with a gender reversed German couple, two identical monks, an Egyptian prefect. The German couple's dog disappears. The river makes you feeling a part of god, suicide in the shower, a man with a javelin in his back, missing an eye, a woman who speaks a nonsense language and the linguist who believes it's genuine. Joe is a guide in Africa attacked by animals. Mounting animal hind parts on walls. Being covered with watches. The burial of an anthropologist by the banks of a river.

Music

• "The Veldt" - Combustible Edison (from I, Swinger, 1994) | YouTube [Intro]
• Judith Owen vocalizes over "The 29-8 Steps"

• "The 29/8 Steps" - Outside (from The Rough And The Smooth, 1995) | YouTube [26:18]
• "11.08am" - Outside (from Almost In, 1993) | YouTube [36:26]

Additional credits

The original broadcast credits state: "Created in collaboration with Arthur Miller. Recorded music was from Combustible Edison. Original music was created by vocalist Judith Owen and keyboardist Todd Cochran to a loop by the group Outside. This program was recorded, edited, and mixed by Theo Mondle. Special thanks to Jennifer Ferro, Carly Eiseman, Esmé Gregson, Kelly Kidneigh, and Steve Herbert."