Douglas Mcgowan's interview of Joe
Douglas Mcgowan Interviews Joe Frank, copyright 1994 by DBM This is a telephone interview with Joe Frank, conducted my friend Douglas McGowan when we were still in highschool in 1994. I transcribed and formatted it. Originally from http://www.wacmusic.com/dbm/etc/joefrank.htm, archived at Internet Archive
DOUGLAS MCGOWAN INTERVIEWS JOE FRANK
transcribed by Eric Battle
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JOE FRANK: I'm afraid I really don't, as you said, I don't like to talk about that... Let me see, in a broad sense? I was born in Strasbourg, France. I came over here when I was an infant. My father was a German Jewish industrialist who, because of the Nazis, was driven out of the country. He was a very successful and wealthy man, but he was also an ill man and he died in exile from Germany when I was five years old. That I think had a very powerful effect on me, the loss of this very dynamic man, and I grew up a very alienated and confused young man. Academically I was extremely inadequate, I was a very poor student; I didn't have any idea what was going on in class when I was in school, and I graduated at the very bottom of my class. There was no expectations in anybody that I would amount to anything. I was in trouble. The only things I cared about were sports. I didn't play team sports but I played with kids in my neighborhood. And then certain things happened through which I came around to become myself. When I was twenty years old I was seriously ill and during the period of recuperation I began to read seriously for what was almost the first time in my life, and I began to think about my life in a different way than I had ever done before. I only went into radio when I was in my thirties. Before then I was a teacher in a private school in Manhattan. It was highly ironic that I, who had been such a poor student and had been so lost when I was in high school, would end up actually teaching in a school. But that happened, and after I did that for a while... I was a very good classroom teacher, kids really loved it. I was very good in front of an audience, I was sort of a performer, and I was also asking questions in my classes that were very compelling to kids about what matters in life. We read books in a very philosophical way and we would discuss what the books meant to us and what a character's choices implied and we talked about values and life and I realized that I had a gift for communicating and addressing those particular questions in a way that was interesting to people. So in 1978 I went to a public radio station in New York called WDAI, which was a non-commercial radio station and eventually I got my own show on Saturdays from midnight to five a.m. After doing that for a couple of years I was hired by National Public Radio. I created radio dramas and radio pieces for NPR and in 1986 I was invited to come out to Los Angeles and do this weekly show called Work In Progress, now known as In The Dark. So that's a pretty broad thumbnail sketch. What was the content of this five hour show that you did in New York? Was it D.J.ing? It was what they call 'Free Form Radio,' which was a mixture of me talking and having actor friends come in. We were doing bits; they would act out different characters, and one of the classic ones that we did that got a lot of response at that time was done by a very clever guy who I still work with whose name is Arthur Miller. He has been involved in a lot of the shows for years for me and still is. But this is when I first knew him. He came in one day and pretended live on the air to be a famous mime. First we did an interview about the art of mime and then we talked about what it was like to play in different venues if you're a mime, what was it like in a small cabaret, and when you're performing in a larger concert hall or a stadium, and it was all done very straight, serious, and low-key. I pointed out that he was going to be performing at Carnegie Hall in New York City in two weeks, and then I asked for him to do a performance for us on the air and he very graciously consented to do it, and then we just had a minute of dead air where you didn't hear anything, and then at the end I applauded and congratulated him on what an exquisite performance it was. The phones lit up at the radio station and there was a split between people who understood the joke and just thought it was the funniest thing they had ever heard, a mime performing on the radio, and others calling up absolutely outraged that didn't we understand that that was stupid? These people had no sense of humor and couldn't understand why I would have a mime on the air doing such a thing because I always tried to keep the comedy real to the extent that the people who listened wouldn't quite understand whether this was supposed to be funny or whether it was inadvertently funny. I would do my strongest material, so to speak, at the beginning of a show--a monologue I had written or an actor improv. Then I would play some music and I'd take phone calls, and then I might read something interesting from the newspaper or a magazine. So it got kind or more and more free form as it wore on. Do you think that you had any major influences from the radio field? Probably there were two. One was a guy named Jean Shepherd, who had a late night talk show. When I say talk show, I mean he would be there every night and he'd talk. He was really a phenomenon because he had a show that was on for three or four hours and he would just be telling stories about his youth and talking about what was on his mind and he had such an engaging way that he was a boon to all insomniacs in New York City. If you couldn't sleep, which I sometimes have trouble doing, you could listen to him, and he was a real comfort. I guess another guy who nobody has ever herd of, Steve Post, who had a morning show on WDAI--which is the station I first went to--and he was just a hilarious, clever guy who would extemporize in such a way that was just mind blowing to me, and I thought My god, if I could do that! and I still can't do what he did. I can write it, but I can't get in front of a mic and be as fluent as either Jean Shepherd or Steve Post. They both showed me the power of radio, and how radio could effect the people who were listening to it. I saw that it could really be a very compelling medium. You mentioned in a Ken Nordine CD booklet that he was an influence. I did? Well, you're quoted as saying something like Nordine was a trailblazer in the field of what they once called 'word jazz.' Oh yeah. That's not true though, Ken Nordine had no effect on my career. I don't think I ever even heard him before I started. Who were your major influences outside of radio? It must be a long list. Well it's not that long; it's mostly literature. There was a time when I really began to read, and I got into some of the great writers. If I were to pick a few works that were seminal in my career, in my intellectual development, I would say that Dostoyevsky's Notes From The Underground, which is about an alienated man, was a book that was really quite stunning. From there I went on to read The Brothers Karamozov, which was a very philosophical work which addressed the very questions I was wrestling with which were Does God exist? and If God exists, is God good or evil? and, How can you justify the suffering of the innocent in this word and still believe in a loving God? Those questions I was very much thinking about because I had been through, as I said, this illness, that many other people had been through and are going through. Other influences were The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann, which was also a very philosophical, heady kind of book. Another was The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner. What was particularly striking about it was the free-associative stream of consciousness style or writing, the way he went into the minds of characters and he just ran with the thoughts of characters as things were happening. I was very impressed by that as an aspiring writer. Do you think that your appreciation of these works came from the fact that you read them on your own as opposed to in the educational system? That's an interesting question. It was difficult for me to appreciate the philosophical literature being taught in high school. I read Crime and Punishment there, and I couldn't get into it. I couldn't either. I didn't like Crime and Punishment. I really find that a big mistake in curriculums all over the United States, they pick the wrong books of Dostoyevsky to perpetrate on young people. Crime and Punishment, from my point of view, is not anywhere near as interesting as The Brothers Karamozov or Notes From the Underground, which a lot of young people can identify with because it's about feeling like an outsider. It's a good book for young people, although it's maybe is a little bit difficult. The first part of Notes From the Underground is very philosophical. Then the second part he gets into the narrative of the story, and that's when it really becomes gripping. But the first part is fascinating. I did do some of this stuff when I was in school; I didn't read all of it outside the academic environment. I think I read The Magic Mountain when I was in graduate school. Where did you go to school? I went to the only college that would accept me because as I told you I had this horrible awful academic career, I was lucky to get in. At that time it was called Hofstra College, it was a small community college on Long Island, and since then it's expanded. Then I went to the University of Iowa Writer's Workshop. Did you have any influential teachers there? No. Oh yes, I did. I took a course in Greek Drama and there was an extraordinary teacher, his name was Peter Arnott. I never would have read Greek tragedy but I took his course and it was really quite extraordinary, we read Agamemnon by Escalus, among other things. What major issues or demons have you noted in your person from doing the show? You seem to express a lot of neuroses in your programs. I think the radio show, in a way, protects me from having to deal with a lot of these problems. In a way it's insidious because it's such an all-consuming work that I haven't really had to face some of the life kinds of problems that I might otherwise have to face. On the other hand there's not a whole hell of a lot of enjoyment I take outside of the work because I am such a workaholic that I really don't have much opportunity to do anything else but create these radio programs. Demons... That's the kind of question you'd want to spend about twenty minutes thinking about before you answer it. Through my own experience and through my own history and in what is my on-going history I am very aware of death. It's like the shadow that hangs over me and it is something that I'm never out from under and that I am always aware of, and sometimes I just keep on churning out this material because I want to leave something behind when I'm gone. Do you have some sort of significant other? Yes I do. Ariana Morganstern is my significant other. I've been involved with her for about seven years now. We don't live together, but we are very good friends. You run such an extreme gamut of ridiculous comedy to renching dramatic pieces and monologues, all of which come off as apparently autobiographical. Only some of them are, not all of them. I think it would be boring to do autobiography all the time because I have a weekly show, if I did the same thing every week, if I did stories about angst and sadness and monologues of my personal life week after week it would get tired. On the other hand I could do comedy, I suppose I could try to do off the wall comic stuff, but then after a while that seems empty, after a while, you know, So what? So you're funny. Big deal. I want to reach people's emotions. I don't sit down and say I want to move somebody or I want to make them laugh. It comes from inside, it's whatever mood I'm in or whatever I happen to be thinking at the time, that will create the program. For example, I recently did some comic shows for a while. I did about two or three; they were basically surreal and funny, and then I thought, I'm getting tired of this, So this last weekend I did a very serious program about loving and about people in trouble, and it was one of these very honest, completely real shows. Next week I might do something off the wall again. Life is kaleidoscopic, it's full of many different emotions and many different layers and since my program is about my life, my interior life, it's not about necessarily what's happening to me but it's about what I am thinking about or imagining. There are a lot of different things that go on, and some of them are happy and some of them are goofy and some of them are very sad. But basically I would say I have a tragic view of life. For most people life's a very arduous, troubling, disheartening and painful journey. It has it's good moments but it's a difficult journey. I think my shows reflect that even when they are being funny. So doing the show though is a form of self therapy for you? I'd say so, yes. Do you keep a personal journal? No. Have you ever tried that? I did maybe twenty years ago, maybe twenty five years ago. You use a lot of interesting music on your show. I've noticed Miles Davis, Brian Eno, among others. Where do you get your music? In 'Iceland' you described it as the most boring, monotonous, featureless music you could find. Well, I said that self-mockingly. The music is integral and a very important part of the radio show. It enhances the emotion in these programs, it provides a driving rhythm that moves the story along and also creates emotion. The way I find music is I listen to my own radio station, KCRW, and lately I've been listening to a show of dance music, techno and all that, and there are a lot of rhythms, a lot of rhythmic things and hard driving, pulsing stuff. It is that sort of thing I am looking for right now. Harold Budd or Brian Eno are great if you want to have a stretch of ambient music. What you're looking for is music that isn't going to impose itself or distract from the material, from the acting or the story. I mean, if you have people talking and then there's a saxophone solo or a trumpet solo or whatever it completely distracts from what's happening so you've got to find music that's very steady but also that packs some kind of power. Sometimes you find twenty seconds or thirty seconds in a piece of music and you loop it and it goes around and around and around, and it's almost like a mantra; it almost has religious feel to it. And then I add other elements to it. If you listen carefully to my programs, particularly the more recent ones, you'll hear other notes and harmonies come in to the looped music. So I'm not only using pre-recorded music but I'm also creating music to go with that music off the recording. You're writing music? It's not really music, it's more like harmonic notes. There is no melody, it's just a steady three notes played together to make a harmony that goes well. You can raise the pitch up, or lower the pitch to fit whatever you're playing. Are you the only person doing what you are doing in radio today? I think I am, I can't say for sure. I haven't heard of anybody else. What do you think about other major monologists and performance artists such as Eric Bogosian and Spaulding Gray? I think they are very good at what they do. They do what they do and I do what I do. Do you have any sort of dialogue with any of them? No. Do you ever want to collaborate with anyone beyond your current circle? Oh no, I don't want to collaborate with anybody, I just want to do my own thing. I am really out there in the wind, in that sense. I don't have any connection with anybody else except the people I work with who are part of this program and the people I hire to perform in it. I don't have social or professional relationships with any of these other performance artists. How many Work in Progress shows have you done in the last eight years? I have done more than a hundred, but there are a hundred that are available for people to buy. What about the live performances? I did a thing at the Museum of Contemporary Art, in the Almond Theater, which seats around two hundred. It was very ironic because once we announced on KCRW that I was going to do it they sold out the entire run. It was going to be originally four weeks and it ended up being eight weeks. We could have really continued to run it except they had another show coming in. It was very gratifying and it was very well reviewed, but I hated it. I made some bad decisions, I decided to use material I didn't believe in and I didn't care about. Material from old shows? Yes. It was fine to take stuff from old shows had it been stuff that mattered, but rather I went for the jokes. I had this idea that I should be funny, so I went for the humor without the soul. It was like a dishonest show; it didn't have anything to do with me, really. It just didn't mean anything to me. And every night I would go out and do this show that meant nothing to me and everybody would be applauding and standing up at the end, and it would be all very exciting, and I would just feel so empty and stupid, and I couldn't believe that I was trapped in this nightmare of having to get up there every night and embarrass myself by doing this stuff that I didn't care about. That's over, thank god. No plans to ever do that again? Actually, sometimes I think about going into television. People are interested, but I haven't figured out quite what I would do. Work In Progress has been done out of Santa Monica for its entire run. Could you work anywhere, or is Los Angeles really tied to your show? Los Angeles isn't tied to the show at all. I mean, Los Angeles doesn't even come up that much. It's not like a 'Los Angeles Show.' The reason I do it here is because the management really appreciates what I do, they pay me more than any other public radio station would, and they give me complete creative freedom. Nobody ever questions anything I do. Los Angeles has certain advantages, story option money from Hollywood, for example. I've made good money simply by permitting people to have the opportunity to use my shows if they want to for films. If I were doing programs out of some other place I wouldn't have the same kind of access. People are listening out here, and so I am known in the film industry and I am approached fairly frequently by people who want me to write films or whatever. But I just can't imagine writing a movie for a lot of reasons, the major one being I am spoiled because I get immediate gratification. I get an idea on Monday and put it on the air on Saturday. I have a week turnover from a concept or a vision to an actual creative work. If you write a film the lag-time is something like two years, and you don't even know if you can get it produced, and if it does get produced you get a director who will change everything and they'll rewrite your script for you, and you'll end up with something that doesn't remotely approximate what you originally envisioned. Doing radio I can do what I want, exactly the way I want to, and I get to do it right away. Who would you trust your script to? Nobody. What if Stanley Kubrick came to you? No way, because everybody has their own visions. It's not that they're worse than I am, it's just that they have their own perspectives. No. Are you able to write the typical three-act Hollywood screenplay? No. No, I don't think I can. I've been asked by Michael Mann and Ivan Reitman to write screenplays for them and I turned them down. And Michael Mann is a fair director. Even though some of his scripts were really ludicrous and stupid, I was always very partial to Miami Vice. Yes, it strikes me as something you would like. When it was good, it was great, when it was bad then it was really awful. There were some really great shows. Besides the book, The Queen of Puerto Rico, and Work in Progress, and now In The Dark, what other work do you have out there? Nothing. I read that you were doing four short films for the Playboy Channel. I did them. In fact it was three short film for Playboy and one short film for CBS. I've never seen them. Well you can, it's hard to find them, but there's a... Oh hell, I wish I could remember the name of it. They're in the video stores now, and it's a Playboy series, I can't remember what the name of it is, but three of the films in there are these three things that I wrote and also performed in which were... I don't know how to explain it. I didn't write them for Playboy, I wrote them for CBS. When CBS decided not to go ahead and do this thing they were discussing with me there was a producer who was familiar with the material because they were going to be done through a company called Propaganda Films, and he was the producer associated with Propaganda, and he would have to be doing this Playboy series and he thought the scripts could be tailored to meet Playboy's needs. So I revised them slightly and did them for Playboy. What were the titles? 'The Perfect Woman,' 'Jilted Lover,' and I can't remember the name of the other one. Do you have an engineer on the show? I have two different engineers, they alternate. One week it will be Theo Mondell, and the other week it will be Jerry Summers. They engineer a lot of other shows, they work on a lot of other things as well. My collaborators, like Arthur Miller, or David Rapkin, or Larry Maffin, or Mike Malone, or Jack Cheeseborough, are all friends of mine who have other jobs. They're not radio people, they're just people I have known over the years who have really interesting senses of humor or ideas which mesh with my program. And then there are actors, like Grace Zabriskie, or Ryan Katronah, or Tim Jerome, a whole bunch very talented people. It's not like an ensemble company or an organization; it's just me talking with friends, coming up with ideas, and then writing a monologue. Or I may have some actors over and improvise towards a finished scene or show. What else do you do during your week? There isn't anything else I can do. To put together a half hour radio show a week is murderous. You don't have any other pursuits? No, this is it, and believe me, it's murderous. The shows air here at KCRW 6:00 p.m. on Saturday night and I finish them usually about ten minutes before air time. In fact, two weeks ago we mixed the first half of the program by six o'clock, put it on the air, and while the first half of the show was running we were mixing the second half of the show. It's a very stressful, all-consuming thing because you are, on a weekly-basis, writing original material, you're hiring people to perform it, you're writing your own monologues, you're hiring actors, you're directing the actors, you have to make arrangements to get them down to the studio and all that kind of thing, then they come down, then you direct them, then you have a lot of tape that you have to edit. You edit the tape, you write your own material, then you also have to find the right music, you have to create the music. Not only do you have to find fitting music but you have to loop it, then you have to figure out how you are going to add your own music to that music to make it stronger, and that all happens in the course of week. It would be hard enough just to write a decent monologue per week, let alone trying to do all these other things. Do you ever improvise? Do you ever do live shows? No, because I'll never be satisfied. I've gotten to a point now where I have a certain standard. If I were to do a live show I know there would be enough glitches, enough moments that were not quite right that I'd never be able to listen to the show again. If I can create a show before it runs I can make sure that everything happens pretty much the way I want it. They're never perfect because there isn't enough time to make them really as good as you would like them to be. I'm a perfectionist without ever achieving it. Do you really hate submissions as much as you stated on one of your programs? The problem is, and I can't emphasize this enough, that there isn't enough time to do these radio programs. I guess I get Saturday night and a little bit of Sunday to rest. By the time Monday comes around I am already thinking, What the hell am I going to do for next week? And then if I get a bunch of tapes from people or somebody sends me a story or whatever, I'm thinking, I don't have time for this! If I were to listen to these tapes and read this material, I'd never finish my work; I just can't do it! So, what happens is that stuff piles up and then I know that there is somebody out there in Massachusetts or Ohio or wherever who's really bitter because I haven't responded in a prompt and seemingly appropriate fashion, because I just don't have time. I also have to fit in phone calls to my mother, and just keep friendships alive. The problem with time is a major, major, major problem. If I answer these letters that people write and if I read the stuff and listen to the tapes then I'm not going to have any personal life at all. Besides writing The Queen of Puerto Rico, what else did you do in the year and a half between when Work in Progress ended and In the Dark began? The time during the year when I was between working on the shows I was ill again. That was the reason I was off the air. I've never said that to anybody who... Do you want me not to print that? I don't care... You know, everybody thinks it was because I was doing the book, and I was doing the book, and I was doing the television thing, but, I was actually taking... I mean I won't be, I don't have to be so evasive, but it was cancer when I was twenty and it was cancer two years ago. I was writing scripts, and this HBO thing that did not happen, I was also doing chemotherapy and throwing up and I was not well. That was why I was off the air. But I told people who are not close to me that it was because I was writing. And I was writing the book too; I was still this workaholic, even when I was sick. I was finishing the book and I was also writing these scripts for the TV thing that never happened, and the reason it never happened was because I was sick. I think, I'm not absolutely sure, that the producers were afraid that they couldn't invest in me when they didn't know if I was going to be around long enough to make their investment pay off. You're the first journalist I've said that to. That's really what happened, and that's why there's this obsession or concern about death, particularly with the In The Dark series. When you hear it you'll know what I am talking about. The new show is darker, still funny, but somewhat more serious than the previous on, because of my recent experience. I am going to have to go soon because I have to get out of here for an appointment. All right. Is the new show better in your opinion? I think some of the new shows are among the best work that I've ever done. What are your favorite shows? The thing about the past, you know, is that it seems so distant now. I guess there are moments in 'Rent-A-Family' that really knock me out. I think 'Rent-A-Family' was some strong, interesting work. Fuck, I know there were other programs that were good... See, when I think of my past work I can't say, This was, in its entirety, a really fine work. I can say, There were wonderful things in this... A program called 'In the Middle of Nowhere' had things in it that I thought were wonderful. I really love listening to 'Rent-A-Family.' 'Iceland' had its moments. I think it's more a matter of there being aspects or moments in programs that I think are great as opposed to thinking that there are actually any great programs.
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