The following program
is a PBS Wisconsin Original Production.
? ?
- I think that very first time when I heard him,
like, that was the thing that seemed so different to me
from anything I had ever heard on the radio,
was that I felt like, I'm listening to this thing, I have no idea where it's going.
I have no idea why I keep listening to it,
but I cannot turn away from it.
Like, I had never had that experience
with something on the radio.
Like, I had never heard anything that was good.
And somehow, when Joe narrates,
it's like he pulls you into a dream with his voice.
Like a transmission from a ship at sea, far away.
? ?
- Welcome to "Director's Cut." I'm Pete Schwaba.
And that was a clip from the documentary "Joe Frank: Somewhere Out There,"
a film that takes us back to the heyday of radio,
and introduces us to one of its true originals.
I'm joined tonight by the film's director, Dave Carlson.
Dave, welcome to "Director's Cut."
- Thanks for having me on the show. - Oh, you bet.
So, obviously you're fan of Joe Frank. You wanted to tell this story.
What made you actually want to--
How were you so big of fan, you had to tell the story?
- I was thinking about it this morning, that it's sort of been like a 30-year journey
between the time I heard of him and finished the film,
'cause I first came to know about him in about 1988.
He was in Chicago. He was on WBEZ, on the radio,
late night, against Ken Nordine's "Word Jazz."
I used to listen to Ken Nordine,
and then Joe would follow thereafter.
It was, like, Sunday nights, 11:00, 12:00 at night,
so it was a great time to listen to radio.
Then, it wasn't until many, many years later,
he came through Chicago to do a live show, in 2002,
at the Art Institute, and I reached out to him and said,
"Hey, can I do a live performance shoot with him?"
He agreed, and I was able to-- I showed up early
and interviewed him a little bit in that context,
and made kind of a short film about that day.
Then it wasn't 'til even years later,
in 2012,
no, 2010 or something, where he came to Steppenwolf,
and I filmed him again there.
Then, the film that we're seeing, the documentary,
kinda came out of that performance.
- So the first time you approached him, then,
was not to make a documentary,
it was just to record him at the Art Institute?
What was his live show like,
compared to what he did on the radio? - It was very similar.
He would do his monologues, and then he'd have music in the background.
The only difference is, he'd bring in some live musicians occasionally, or a dancer.
He'd sort of offset with some theatrical stuff.
But what was very curious to me is,
I'd sit there on one of the camera angles, filming,
and I'd look at the audience to see how they were perceiving it,
and almost, a fair amount of 'em had their eyes closed,
because I think most people experientially
came to Joe Frank on the radio,
and so internally when you listen to him, and I think they were
trying to capture that, too, even in a space when he's performing in front of 'em.
- [Pete] It's strange to actually see him, yeah. - Yeah.
- Well, let's take another look at a clip
from "Joe Frank: Somewhere Out There."
- If I were a drinker, I would describe Joe's voice
as a good single malt scotch.
The way we achieved that was actually a happy accident.
Back in the old analog tape days,
we recorded him, and when you record on tape,
tape makes a noisy hiss, kind of,
and the way around that was, back then,
a device called Dolby.
Joe's voice was recorded on a Dolby-encoded tape,
and he removed that tape
to go into an edit room to sort of cut,
and he put the tape back on another machine
that had no Dolby on it.
And, when he played it back, he loved the way it sounded.
(upbeat music)
- [Joe] In the course of a lifetime,
we lose keys,
pens,
wallets,
pocketknives,
library cards,
wristwatches,
sweaters,
earrings,
sunglasses,
gloves, and umbrellas.
We also lose our hair,
our eyesight,
our hearing,
our teeth,
our sense of wonder.
Horizons shrink.
Possibilities collapse.
(futuristic hum or drone)
- The drone is an important aspect in Joe's sound.
I loved it when the music would stop and the drone would come up.
(hums) Like a big, like this sort of strange foghorn.
It's full of harmonics. They're really complex.
He used to put 'em together with lots of different sounds.
They add a, sort of a strange dither.
- Joe used to use two types of drones.
One is a synthesizer pad
consisting of three or four notes.
And then we had this human choir,
like, "Ahh," or "Ooh," on the 8-track machine.
That gave us the flexibility of choosing
either one note on the drone, or two notes on the drone,
or the fourth voice on the choir.
Bam, people are locked in.
- How great would it be if you could,
everything you said in life, you could have a drone
and human voices kind of resonating in the background to,
just to intimidate people?
That guest, or that subject you interviewed there,
Kenny Lyon, had a really interesting quote about Joe Frank.
He said his storytelling style
was very passionate, in a dispassionate way.
I had to wrap my head around that a couple times.
Can you elaborate on that? - Yeah, I guess,
it's sorta this monochromatic kinda delivery
where, I think, you know, with all the music going on,
and the heavy words that he's delivering, in terms of his philosophy,
I think that that monologue style that he did
just sort of, like, hypnotically gets you to,
gets you right into, inside of his head, and then he gets inside of your head.
So I think that's where that comes from.
But he was, I mean, he was,
he used to work at the Dalton School in New York.
He taught there for like 10 years, like, Russian philosophy and stuff like that.
So he was deep into some critical thinking
and storytelling and stuff like that.
A lot of that shows up in his monologues, when he's talking about stuff.
- So they talked about the Dolby in his voice,
and how they kinda discovered that, which I found really fascinating,
but, like, Ira Glass says he's from a ship at sea,
and it sounds like he's transmitting.
The first time I saw this, it sounded like a Kubrick thing.
Stanley Kubrick coming from outer space,
and he's commenting these little vignettes on humanity.
How much of what he says is due to his success,
as opposed to how he says it? I know the two go hand in hand,
but let's say he just didn't find the Dolby, and he was just saying these things.
Would he have been as successful, do you think?
- I think so. I mean, this guy, he used to write.
I mean, his shows, and when he got to LA,
he used to work six, seven days a week to deliver a show.
It was all analog back then.
So he would, he'd work with people and develop monologues.
He'd work on them all week.
Transcribe telephone calls he made with people,
and then pick music and record stuff,
and then sometimes, he'd fly it in at the last minute
at the radio station, almost minutes before it went on the air.
So he spent a lot of time-- And we talk about it in the film.
I mean, he almost, you know, didn't have any time to play.
That's all he did was work. That's what he cared about the most.
You know, he didn't live much outside of himself.
- You have someone you interviewed, Grace,
I'm probably gonna say her name wrong,
Zabriskie? - [Dave] Yeah.
- She was on "Seinfeld," too. Hilarious on "Seinfeld,"
but she was one of the actresses he used.
She said, "Joe forged his own genre."
What would you call that? Did Joe even know what his genre was?
- Well, I think he looked up to other monologists, I think,
back in the '50s and '60s,
when he was growing up in New York,
I think bringing together the music and that sort of sensibility
we were talking about before, in terms of his style,
and I think his interpersonal sort of reflection.
I mean, you can do diary films and maybe talk about yourself,
but I think he did it in a way,
whether it was within his own backstory
or within interviewing other people,
where I think he told stories about the human condition
that took people right up to the line
of what was uncomfortable, and then beyond it.
I think a lot of times, people don't go beyond it.
You know, they might keep it universal,
but he, I think, gets underneath people's skin.
There's some of that in the film, too, I think, where you see that.
There's a dark side to everybody's human behavior.
- I think it's, for me, personally,
some of the stuff he's said, you're like,
"Wow, I've kinda felt that, but don't go any farther."
(laughs) You know what I mean? Like, yeah, "It's good.
"That's, I'm glad that's your experience.
"I can kinda relate, but I'm just listening to the radio here.
"I'm just a dude listening to the radio."
Let's see another clip from "Joe Frank: Somewhere Out There."
- He was not jokey. He was not funny.
He was looking for something,
and he was not resting until he found it,
and he made sure that you knew it.
I really don't recall very much else
that was being done on any air
that was at all similar to what Joe was doing.
We didn't even know what Joe was doing,
until he started coming up with the stuff in the final edit.
- My first paid job
in radio
was as Joe's production assistant.
And, this was 1979,
and Joe was down in Washington, DC.
He was doing some of his stories as part of a series on NPR
that included documentary stuff and other stuff,
and I worked for the producer of that series, and I had just started.
And Joe was sitting behind the microphone in the studio
and I was in the control room,
and I remember he was performing some story,
and the music was playing off one of the reel-to-reel tape machines.
It was like somebody doing some sort of weird magic trick,
right in front of you, that I felt like I couldn't even tell
how he was doing the thing that he was doing.
- [Joe] I work hard at my job,
and I hope that by my efforts rendered faithfully
over a period of years,
I'll move up through the corporate hierarchy
to a position of security, power, and prestige.
In order to improve my chances for advancement,
I dress conservatively,
keep myself well-informed in the arts
and in current events, hold popular opinions,
and socialize in the best circles
with those who have influence.
But these efforts have been, so far, in vain.
I remain the night watchman.
- I think that was my favorite clip from the movie.
I just love that, at the end, there, when he says, "I remain the night watchman."
Dave, tell us a little bit about the challenges you faced as a filmmaker.
You've got this guy just talking. - [Dave] Right.
- It's not very cinematic. You used these graphics.
And I love what you did with the fast motion graphics
over this kinda slow, deep voice.
How much of a challenge is that,
for you as a filmmaker, to make a guy talking cinematic?
- It's a big challenge.
You don't want to get in the way of what he's saying.
Like I said, most people hear him inside his head,
and they want to fill in the blanks on their own.
So it was, you know,
it was a challenge to find the right balance
between using landscape photography,
using radio iconography,
using photos, using waveforms, all those types of things,
and spreading 'em out throughout the picture so you weren't going down,
one rabbit hole all the time, but you could keep things kinda fresh.
But, I think there was a lot of trial and error along the way.
I went as far as doing animations,
and goofy stuff like that.
And then, of course, I probably did 30 or 40 minutes of material
that was fully B-rolled, and realize that didn't make the picture.
So there was a lot of experimentation,
and just trying to make sure, in the end, that it was elegant.
I remember the first time I met Joe at the Art Institute,
I was eavesdropping on him talking to a sound engineer
who was doing his mixing live.
The bottom line was, he says,
"It's gotta be elegant, no matter what it is."
So, that was sort of a word that I came back to quite a bit in the editing room,
whether it was working with his audio or working with visuals,
is trying to just do something that was a little seamless,
and again, not getting in the way of what his words were.
- And what a cool moment for you, just to kind of eavesdrop
on this incidental piece of information about him.
That's one of my favorite things is that,
one of his friends says, "A guy went up to Joe and said,
"'So what do you do? Just smoke a bowl of opium and go on the air?'"
But that's a testament to his preparedness,
that he can just make it sound like he's spewing stream of consciousness stuff,
when it actually was really rehearsed, right?
I mean, the guy was... - Oh, yeah. - Really meticulous.
- Oh, yeah, absolutely.
He didn't suffer fools gladly or anything.
I mean, he's an intimidating guy, even as much as I interviewed him
and broke the ice back in Chicago,
by the time I was sitting down with him in Los Angeles,
a couple of times, he listens very carefully
to what you say and how you say it.
So, even me, as a director, had to be very prepared with him.
And at the same time, here's a guy who went through
a whole life worth of health problems, you know,
and they never really ended.
Even through the process of the film, he had a lot of ups and downs
that I had to work around in order to complete the film.
But it was a real privilege, I mean, again, he's one of these guys
that I first listened to back in 1988,
and I never would've thought I would've made a film about him.
I mean, I was, actually, I'd done films with Ken Nordine,
and lots of films about the creative process,
but it was a great opportunity for me to jump into him.
I think, during the production, being like a detective,
like, going and meeting all these people who were part of his career,
and part of his work, was my favorite part, you know?
'Cause most of these people hadn't talked about Joe ever.
He was a very private kind of a guy, personally and creatively.
So, it was fun to find those folks around the country and talk to 'em.
- You have a lot of footage that you use,
like you just mentioned, over Joe talking.
How much of that did you have to shoot, and how much was stock footage,
and how do you balance that as a filmmaker,
spending and shooting?
- I don't know the percentage of that at this point.
That, to me, wasn't quite the problem financially.
The bigger problem was the music selects.
I mean, when you get into Joe's work,
he took a lot of preexisting music,
and he'd cut it and create loops with it.
But when you put it into a film, you gotta pay for it.
So, I mean, there's scores of selects
that I had to clear in terms of the music licensing,
and that, to me, as a filmmaker, was a challenge.
Especially as an independent filmmaker,
'cause I financed most of this picture,
until the very end when I was Crowdfunding for music licensing.
So, those barriers, for many filmmakers,
can be the death knell of the film.
So, for this one, just getting over that hump,
and getting it out in the public, and sharing it with your audience, too,
has been very rewarding.
- You just gave me license to break a taboo
and talk about budgets, and I'm gonna do that after we see another clip.
Let's see another clip from "Joe Frank: Somewhere Out There."
- It was funny because men wanted to be him,
and women wanted to be with him.
So, whenever we would be out,
people were thrilled to meet Joe.
I've never seen so many women
throw themselves at a man before.
(answering machine beeps)
- [Woman] I just want you to know that...
I really understand you,
and I'm the only person who understands you,
and nobody else is gonna ever love you the way I love you,
and you know that, and it just scares you to death.
- He always seemed to be digging
for stuff about relationships and sex.
And I thought, well, of course, why not?
What's more interesting than that? I mean, we're all--
Especially at that time when there was a lot of, you know,
(inhales sharply) people were just crazy.
- [Joe] Last night, after a series of phone calls
in which I was forced to listen to hours and hours
of Kate raging against me,
I finally exploded.
I said, "I can't take this any longer.
"I've had it. You are driving me crazy.
"This relationship is over. It's finished!
"I don't want to talk to you, "hear from you,
"have anything to do with you ever again.
"Goodbye."
- He's a damaged soul,
and he has no compunctions about
spending valuable airtime
exploring the nature of that damage.
- You just spoke a little bit about that,
his physical ailments. Harry Shearer just told us he was a damaged soul.
How much did his physical ailments
play into his damaged soul,
and, how much did that
play a part in his success on the radio, and his point of view?
- Well, you write what you know, right?
That's the best type of art you can put out there, I think.
You know, Joe got cancer at a very early age.
I think, when he was a teenager,
and we talk about it in the movie.
I think when he got out of that experience,
he became very serious about being a creative individual.
He went to Iowa Writers' Workshop right after that
and started off on his career as a writer.
I think he also had a lot of conflict in his house
with his mom and his stepfather,
very violent kind of confrontations
and discussions and screaming matches,
and he used to eavesdrop on them, too,
and write the words that he heard coming down from the hallway.
So, I think,
it started around him at a very early age.
And then, I think, some of the stuff that maybe he got later in his life,
like that last clip we were hearing from, it was probably self-imposed.
The different relationships people get into,
and also realize that they're not healthy.
And, he wasn't afraid to talk about that stuff, too.
- So before the clip, you talked about financing,
and I rarely ask filmmakers about this.
They don't want to disclose how much they spent,
where they got their funding. You mentioned you Crowdsourced,
but you also mentioned that you spent a lot of your own money.
Can you tell us about what that does as a filmmaker,
the added stress of spending your own money,
versus the creative freedom?
- It's a bad thing. I mean, the good thing is,
is you retain creative control, for the most part.
I made a film back in '98 called
"Chicago Filmmakers on the Chicago River,"
where I interviewed 20-some odd film directors,
all from Chicago, on different boats,
and they float around talking about the creative process.
And I've learned as I've gotten older
that every lesson about filmmaking I've ever learned
is in that movie, including, you know,
don't spend your own money on a film. (chuckles)
- [Pete] And you did it.
- Yeah, I always tell people that this film,
'cause literally, if you were to put rates in
of everybody who did work on it, and myself,
and every stinking second you put into it,
it's like a $400,000 piece of artistic property.
But I could bring it in for a quarter of that.
I don't get paid for it.
I do my other work on the side that pays bills,
and then you take these projects, that are passion projects,
and you make 'em, and you try to see 'em through.
But I think one of the great quotes I always hear about filmmaking
from other film directors is you have to absolutely love your subject
if you get into this business, or get into the world of it,
because it will just destroy you.
And I think as the producer director that I am,
there wasn't one guy doing all the money and the business stuff,
and me over here doing all the creative stuff, which is fun.
It was the show business and show art kinda coming together,
and sometimes that's an internal challenge,
you know, a day-to-day grind.
'Cause I would much rather spend the time
being a fanciful artist making creative choices all day
and have somebody else deal with all the BS.
But, in this case, you gotta take it all.
- That leads me to my next question.
We just have about 45 seconds to our next clip,
but you also told me that Joe had final cut.
So how does that play into you spending your own money
and having this artistic freedom
when you still have to answer to your subject?
- You know it was less about a-- It was less of a challenge.
It was more like, we had to work at a different pace.
You know, sometimes, creatively, I might really love a sequence,
and we, a discussion, and maybe he'd win,
or I'd win, and, you know, hit the cutting room floor,
and it would make the final film. That's one thing.
But sometimes, just waiting for somebody to get back,
or waiting for him to get out of the hospital, in some cases,
kinda destroys some momentum, you know?
So you have to be patient with it.
You know, I was--
I've had a lot of films that have been stretched out over the years,
and usually it's just because of money, you know, or time.
And, this was one of those ones where
I just had to be patient with him.
But I think, in the end,
some of those healthy challenges we had together,
getting the, you know, getting the film together,
were good battles, so to speak,
and I wish I would've done more of 'em, in the end.
'Cause he died, after he approved the final cut,
he went into the hospital and died like three, four months later.
I mean, he was able to see the film, but, you know,
I wish he had more time to maybe celebrate it with us.
- Sure. Let's see our final clip from
"Joe Frank: Somewhere Out There."
- Joe had a really unusual
and very complicated relationship with Ruth Seymour,
because they're both very intense people,
and sometimes she would get in trouble
for things that he'd said on the air,
'cause he could get pretty edgy, and she always protected him.
- She was really ruthless,
like one of the old Hollywood moguls.
You know, like Harry Cohn or one of those, Mayer,
who cosseted their stars,
but then, if the stars didn't cooperate, you're out.
One of the incidents, Joe has had a lot of medical problems,
and surgery and so forth.
Joe didn't tell her that he was going into the hospital.
This was a big insult, and she fired him.
For that, you know.
- It was very hard on Joe.
He no longer had a home.
It was as though he got kicked out of the house.
- Well, when I was fired, I was furious.
I was really, really angry.
That just was incomprehensible.
I was really enraged.
Later, she had another reason,
which was that she said that I was played out creatively,
that my work was no longer fresh.
It was no longer new,
that I shouldn't be doing radio any longer.
? ?
- So, you have Ira Glass, Harry Shearer.
These two kind of big names in radio.
You also interview Alexander Payne,
who I'm a fan of, as films.
How tough of a get was he, and how did you find out he was a Joe Frank fan?
- Well, I found out, I think,
from Joe that he was a big fan,
and it was an easy get because he, Alexander, like me,
came to know Joe Frank in college,
and I guess he was a voracious listener of his.
I think I know the first film that Alexander Payne
kinda plays homage to him stylistically,
in terms of what he does with the voiceover,
and sound design and stuff.
And I can't remember the name of the short film,
but he was very much influenced by Joe Frank.
I think when we scored Alexander Payne,
he was in Chicago at the time doing preproduction on "Nebraska."
So, the timing was right, as it is with a lot of these folks.
It's just sort of being persistent,
and then all of a sudden something pops
and you end up in the same space at the same time.
But he loved talking about Joe Frank.
He was very much influenced by him.
- I'm gonna ask you a question, because that last clip,
where we saw Joe lose his job.
If this guy doesn't have an outlet
for his stories and his personality, what does he do?
What do you do, if you couldn't make films, Dave?
As a documentary filmmaker,
does that terrify you? How would you approach life?
- (laughs) Does it terrify me? You know what?
You know what's funny? When I was a kid,
I always wanted to be either a stuntman or a radio guy,
but I don't think I want to be either, now. I would probably just paint.
- Combine 'em and do both somehow. - Yeah.
- That would be pretty impressive. - I don't know.
Probably just paint, you know. That would be the way to go.
There's no other collaborators you have to deal with. - Right, yeah.
- In any kind of way, to get your work done. It just gets done by your hand.
- Is it harder to tell a story like this?
If you can tell me, in like a minute,
not using a narrator,
kind of using just your guests, your subjects,
is that easier or harder?
- Oh, it's way easier. I mean, for me, it is. For other people, maybe not so.
I mean, on the side,
I make documentary films for all sorts of different things.
I've been involved in broadcast work, and corporate work,
and, you know, everything in between.
So my style when I direct anybody is to be a good listener,
and I carve together a narrative in my head as I listen to it.
I don't transcribe. I hear beginnings, middles, and ends.
And I don't walk out of a room 'til I feel like I have all of it.
Then I just get in the editing room, and I just wordsmith it, and I create it that way.
It's just one of these things that I'm--
I have the facility to do. I'm not trying to brag.
But, that's one of my favorite things to do.
- Well, the more I think about it, too,
it would be weird if you had.
It would almost be a competing voice, in some ways,
to Joe, as well, if you have a narrator,
a guy just talking. - Oh, yeah.
- Then you're putting him next to this radio legend,
who you told his story.
Great job in the film, and really great having you.
Keep up the good work. - Thanks so much!
Appreciate it. - You got it.
And thank you for watching "Director's Cut."
For more information on "Joe Frank: Somewhere Out There,"
please go to PBSWisconsin.org and click on "Director's Cut."
While you're there, send us an email, or find out how to submit a film.
Also, don't forget to like PBS Wisconsin on Facebook,
or follow us on Twitter.
I'm Pete Schwaba, and I am old school.
I still listen to the radio on a boom box, turned all the way up.
That's the best way to hear "All Things Considered."
We'll see you next time on "Director's Cut."
? ?
- [Joe] You know,
when I think about myself and the life I've led,
I feel self-loathing,
shame,
disgust.
"I'm a waste, and a failure," he says.
But when I imagine myself as a character in a novel,
well, I think I'm pretty interesting.
Kind of offbeat,
intriguing,
entertaining.