The Decline Of Spengler

"The Decline of Spengler" is the name of a program Joe Frank produced as part of the series WBAI And NPR Playhouse. It was originally broadcast in 1982.

Synopsis

Hoffman dies in surgery, Joe ponders technology and society on a plane. Robot stewardess. Joe dreams he is a doctor on horseback. Hoffman's funeral and the fountain of youth is in Florida. Dream: film of Austria with weapons demos. Human centrifuge and fast-moving-foods dialog. Dream: Joe is a lawyer before a jury of prophets and seers. Joe gets cold call from Mrs. Waterman, they go to hotel, she is in a wheelchair (monologue, followed by actress). A doctor is called to a hotel where an operation is performed on him. A German engineer is mistakenly trapped on a train bound for a concentration camp, he escapes and finds the messiah. A three act play about a film about a man who loses his memory, emerges from the screen and is shot. The shooter than begs the projectionist to run the film backwards. Later a muffled telephone conversation accompanies a theological debate. A doctor dismisses a patient in a call-in medical program. Old people at a beach chat. Joe visits the zaddik of Rome. The messiah talks about time and decay, denies responsibility. Joe imagines a life married to a woman in Tampa who finds Jesus. Cleaning out Hoffman's room, finding a ticket to a rocket ship launch in Dreamland, ending up crashed in the swamp hundreds of years in the future. Nonsense monologue.

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