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Arthur Miller and David Rapkin with Joe
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Joe Frank signing a crazed fan's stomach
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Joe Frank honored in Chicago
We're back from Chicago and the 2003 Third Coast International Audio Festival was full of surprises. On Saturday morning, October 17th, Joe sat on a panel with film sound designers Randy Thom and Walter Murch (by telephone) and moderators Davia Nelson and Nikki Silva (the Kitchen Sisters). While introducing Joe, Davia used a list of adjectives to describe Joe's shows. When she came to "...erotic..." Joe, looking down at the table, nodded with resignation and the audience warmly laughed. Joe seemed surprised and when Davia, interrupted by the laughter, stopped to look at him, he said, "Sorry..." which prompted another laugh. It was as though he suddenly realized that people could see him. He was no longer comfortably hidden behind a microphone in a secure, private studio - to our great delight.
Joe introduced the first show excerpt he'd selected for the session by saying, "... this piece illustrates the difficulty of being me." There was a very long silence as the sound engineer failed to bring up the audio -- until, finally, Joe said, "Well, there you have it." Which brought another laugh. (By the way, the piece excerpted and finally played was the opening monologue from "The Loved One.")
Joe spoke of how he discovered his signature radio voice through the mistake of recording in Dolby and playing back without it -- which created Joe's now familiar intimate and gritty sound. A telephone call from "Rent a Family, Part 3" was played. Then, Joe spoke of the improvisational way in which he worked with actors in order to create a sense of authenticity. Time constraints caused the discussion to end before Joe had an opportunity to speak about his use of music, voices and drones.
Saturday night at the Awards Ceremony, Joe received a standing ovation before and after he delivered his acceptance speech. You can listen to the speech and read the transcript, but be sure to first listen to the wonderful introduction by Larry Josephson. A close friend of Joe's for many years, Larry tells an entertaining story about a heartwrenching personal experience he once had with Joe.
We have more material coming - photos, comments, audio - so be sure to check back.
The Joe Frank Team
The Introduction
Listen to Larry Josephson
introducing Joe at The Third Coast Awards Ceremony. (14 min)
Read Larry Josephson's
introduction
The Acceptance Speech
Listen
to Joe's acceptance speech (16 min)
Here is the complete transcript of Joe's acceptance speech at the Awards Ceremony on October 18th:
When I think of an evening dedicated to honoring those who have produced distinguished work in the past year, and then that special moment when the recipient of a Lifetime Achievement Award is introduced, I imagine someone being wheeled onto the stage with a blanket over his legs, his claw-like hands covered with liver spots, his eyes watery and appearing to be dissolving in their sockets.
With trembling fingers, he adjusts his glasses, removes a piece of paper from his pocket, unfolds it, and when he finally begins to read his speech, his voice is so inaudibly soft that someone has to lower the microphone closer to his mouth.
We observe him with discomfort and dismay, and worry that something dreadful might happen; that he may have a stroke or a seizure, or be somehow unable to complete his speech, or worse yet, the speech will go on and on and on in a long, pointless florid manner...until the orchestra begins to play. (At this point, the band began playing and Joe turned to them) Thank you...
So, by the time you receive this award, you should have your affairs in order. And I want all of you to know that I have consulted an attorney and made all the appropriate arrangements.
Because what does a Lifetime Achievement Award suggest about your future? That everything you've done that was meaningful and worthwhile has been done. That people no longer expect anything from you. That you're no longer the go-to guy, but you're washed up, a has-been, that the curtain has come down, and the man with the moustache and the overalls and the stump of an unlit cigar is pushing a broom across the stage; it's over.
If I wanted to get a job in radio now, would I enter the office of a station manager clutching my Lifetime Achievement Award, saying, "I've got some fresh, cutting-edge ideas. I want to make new, ground breaking radio." Would anyone in his right mind, trying to get a job anywhere, even mention having been honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award? Of course not.
And so I want to thank the Third Coast International Audio Festival panel for effectively ending my career.
The story Larry just told about the night I refused to let him come to my house in spite of his repeated, heartfelt entreaties, is absolutely true. I only wish I could have invited my dear friend over to visit. However, as Larry explained, it was necessary for me to keep him on the phone because I was surreptitiously recording him at a moment of heightened passion in his life, gathering material without his knowledge for a future radio program of mine.
And it's just another illustration of the sacrifices that I as an artist have to endure in order to pursue my work.
As I stood at my window looking down at the street, the snow gathering around the phone booth where Larry was hunched over, squeezing further into that small shelter against the gusting cold wind, the smashed shell of his cell phone that had lost power at his feet where he had thrown it in a fit of rage... as I watched Larry through a pair of binoculars that Larry himself had given me two Hanukkahs ago, I felt awful.
But I had no choice but to make the decision I made, the decision that all of you, if you call yourselves true artists, have to make every day you labor in this medium: to place your work before friendship, family, compassion and care. To set aside all personal priorities in order to service the creative process.
Yes, when Larry was pouring out his soul to the last person on earth he thought gave a damn about whether he lived or died, I was making sure the limiter wasn't turned up too high so that his voice wouldn't appear squashed, holding the mouthpiece away from my lips so that the sound of my breathing would not become an unwanted element in the mix, and relentlessly steering the conversation back to what I considered the most fruitful material.
"Larry, I know this might be painful, but tell me what was so wonderful about her that you feel so terrible now? Can you think of the most tender and intimate moment you shared with her that you'll never experience again with another woman, that is emblematic of the love that is lost to you forever?
"When you were in the cab together, returning from the concert, and you moved toward her and she stiffened slightly, turned away, rolled down the window and vomited into the street -- Why do you think she did that?"
And yet, it was Larry who, in fact, nominated me for this award. With his big, beautiful, forgiving heart. And to realize that one of my radio heroes, Larry Josephson, whose morning show on WBAI in New York City had provided the sound track for my breakfasts for years, would make this effort on my behalf is remarkable. And I am truly thankful, Larry.
When I think of great moments in the history of radio. What comes to mind are: Orson Welles' production of The War of the Worlds in which tens of thousands of Americans were seduced into believing the earth was under attack by Martians...the broadcast of the Hindenburg disaster, when the great air ship caught fire at its mooring and exploded in a gigantic solar flare of burning gas, and the announcer, observing passengers in flames screamed into the microphone, "Oh, the humanity, the humanity." ...Edward R. Murrow reporting from a rooftop in London during the Blitz...FDR's fireside chats, reassuring an uncertain nation during the darkest days of the Depression and World War II...
But we're not talking about great moments in radio; we're talking about my show.
I will always remember a moment at WBAI in New York City, when my friend, the brilliant actor and comedian, Arthur Miller, appeared live on my program pretending to be a world famous mime promoting his upcoming performance at Carnegie Hall in New York City. And we engaged in a lengthy, rather academic discussion concerning the evolution and the art of mime, when, to illustrate a point, Arthur stood up and gave a performance ...on the radio... which meant roughly 90 seconds of dead air. Nothing. Silence. And the audience response? Puzzlement, confusion, anger and outrage in some listeners, and great amusement and hilarity in others...all reflected in the station's switchboard, overwhelmed by phone calls of protest against and in praise of this bizarre absurdity.
That 90 seconds of silence set the tone for the remainder of an iconoclastic radio career. It wasn't that I wanted to be a rebel, it was just that I couldn't help myself. For example, though I lived in a public radio world of strictly formatted programs, each with clearly defined boundaries within which it operated, I felt compelled to create radio that eluded all categories, where form flowed freely from one shape to another, where the mold took the form of the molten material poured into it, rather than the molten material being formed by the mold. Programs that never attempted to explain themselves, but allowed the listener to draw his or her own conclusions.
As Roger Ebert once wrote: "Television shows happened in the TV set but radio shows happened in my head."
A hundred people will listen to the same show and see a hundred different pictures of the events depicted. In fact, no two listeners ever see the same images when listening, because radio draws on the creative imagination of each of us.
And what is a truly profound experience in the life of a radio listener, if not that moment when you hear someone say something that you know is true in your own life, that resonates with your own experience, that provides you with a sense that you are not as alone as you imagined. The stories that bind us to each other...
Or those moments where something you see every day is suddenly illuminated and revealed...in a form of modern alchemy, where the banal becomes profound...
Or those radio moments where you listen to something you never before imagined or contemplated, that catalyzes your thinking...these are among the experiences I think we're all after.
Last night, as I lay in my bed here at the Westin Hotel thinking about this speech, I felt I needed something to guide me, some form of inspiration, and I opened the night table drawer and found there what I was looking for: a Gideon Bible.
And I began to read the Old Testament. Because, what is religious scripture but a way to come to grips with the imponderables of life? Stories written about ancient nomadic sheep herding desert people. People who lived in tents, made war on each other with swords, shields, and clubs, who wrote their laws on stone tablets and then smashed them. Stories about a burning bush. A virgin birth. A woman created from a rib. A talking serpent. A blind man pulling down the pillars of a great temple killing thousands. A man swallowed by a whale who escapes to tell the story. Another man who lives 900 years and still can't pay off his daughter's wedding.
I returned the Bible to the drawer and lay back in bed. The need to tell and listen to stories is a fundamental part of human existence. Stories told around a campfire, stories told along a journey, stories told privately, stories that comfort, nourish, amuse, provoke, teach, frighten, inspire Stories performed on the radio.
In my career, I was fortunate and privileged to work with truly great improvisational actors. Tim Jerome, Larry Block, Ryan Cutrona, Barbara Sohmers, Mark Hammer, Laura Esterman, David Cross, Grace Zabriskie, Lester Nafzger, Annalee Jeffries, Harvey Perr, Debi Mae West.
And Arthur Miller, who gave inspired and hilarious performances as Dr. Oscar Ballwell, a slightly off-center resident-academic, Arthur, with whom I collaborated on creating many stories for radio and who also brilliantly directed the mixes of all our highly produced -- and sometimes award-winning -- programs created for NPR Playhouse. Arthur, please stand up.
Now, will security please remove Arthur from the room.
And then there's the wonderfully talented David Rapkin, with whom I've collaborated on much of the writing of my monologues over the years and who also served as the sound designer of our early NPR productions. In all of public radio, I doubt if there is another engineer as gifted as the Grammy-award winning David... So David, please stand up.
When I think of where I came from, born in a family that barely escaped the Holocaust, my childhood spent in a house where my father was dying, and passed away when I was five...then growing up with a learning disorder and living so many years in what a psychiatrist once called "a fugue state," and graduating at the bottom of my class of 500 in high school -- it's just astonishing that later, in my mid-thirties, I found refuge and sanctuary and fulfillment in radio.
I remember being struck by the phrase "blasphemy is a prayer in reverse." Because the truth is that, as profane as my programs may have seemed to some, I have always been searching for the sacred.
Thank you Third Coast, for the recognition and honor of this award.
Joe Frank