The Essential Bogosian

Talk Radio, Drinking in America, FunHouse and Men Inside

Eric Bogosian

• Publisher: Theatre Communications Group
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781559367394
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: American Drama
• Index: Literature

"What Lenny Bruce was to the 1950s, Bob Dylan to the 1960s, Woody Allen to the 1970s--that's what Eric Bogosian is to this frightening moment of drift in our history."--Frank Rich, The New York Times

TALK RADIO

Written by Eric Bogosian

Created by Eric Bogosian and Ted Savinar

AUTHOR’S NOTE

Reading Talk Radio today is confusing. First of all, there are two Talk Radios: the play and the film. In this book is the play I wrote in 1987 with the help of Tad Savinar; my director, Fred Zollo; and the original Oregon and New York casts. If you pick up the video of the film I made with Oliver Stone, you will find a different script with basically the same story and characters. That screenplay is the work of Stone and myself, and the result is an edgier, darker exercise.

Talk Radio was not based originally on any radio personality. What I wanted to do was write something that dealt with John Belushi’s death. I felt his terminal overdose was a result of his experience with the mass media. I share some traits with Belushi: ethnic and middle class with a penchant for dark humor and high-octane performance.

I didn’t think I could do a piece about a comic, because I could never write material funny enough. But a talk-jock is a performer too, and although at the time I had no inkling of the wilder DJs on the air (like Berg, Stern, Dee, et al), when Tad suggested to me that I do a piece about “talk radio,” it seemed like the perfect launching pad for an over-the-top, acerbic egomaniac.

Despite its title, Talk Radio is not an in-depth, researched, generic documentary. (There is no radio station set up like the one in the play.) Instead, I wanted to use the format, one few people had any sense of in 1987, as a launching pad to talk about my own ego and the mass media in general. I loved the notion of this vast landscape of people, the callers. And I wrote in archetype: Barry and every caller were meant to be instantly recognizable and familiar.

Coincidentally, when the play opened, a book showed up in the bookstores called Talked to Death, by Stephen Singular, about the life and assassination of Denver talk-jock Alan Berg. When I read the book I was impressed by the similarity between the real-life Berg and my fictional Champlain. When it came time to make the movie, we secured the rights to the book and Berg’s life, and created a pastiche from the real-life tragedy and my play.

In the play, no one dies. In fact, because it is a play, the moment to moment texture of the thing is more in the foreground than the “plot.” Basically, watching the play was something like being there in the studio with Barry, so to the degree Barry was entertaining, so was the play. (Larry Pine took over the role when I left, so I got to experience a wonderful “Barry” from outside looking in.)

The play is meant to stand as an abstract of a culture, not some kind of docudrama. Real talk radio in 1987 was a late-night phenomenon. What better place to examine a nation’s soul? Every caller could present a different point of view, and so the play would become a kind of kaleidoscope. As it twisted and turned, the audience could meditate on how we think of ourselves as people, as a nation.

I had listened to numerous talk-jocks (particularly Bob Grant and Gary Dee) and drew from my pre-teen experience of the legendary Alan Burke and Joe Pyne (two TV talk guys from the sixties with razor blades for tongues). But when the movie came out, the strangest thing happened—a new guy had shown up and was making big waves soon after the movie came out; his name, of course: Howard Stern.

Howard Stern today is a big star because he’s so brilliant at what he does. But at the time of writing this play, the notion that someone as acid-tongued as Stern would “go national,” or have a public war with the F.C.C., or become more famous than most movie stars, was on the very rim of anyone’s imagination, including, I’m sure, his own. To add the coincidences that he and Barry share this ethnic/hipster thing, are cynics and have a penchant for rock ‘n’ roll (Barry Champlain was using “Bad to the Bone” as theme music before anyone else) lay beyond all odds.

Is Howard Stern Barry Champlain? I hope not, for Stern’s sake. As far as I know, this play is not based on one man’s life; rather, I meant it to be a quilt of madness from the late eighties, a play about voices in the dark. Remember: sticks and stones can break your bones, but words cause permanent damage.

The original version of Talk Radio was produced in 1985 at the Portland Center for the Visual Arts through a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Metropolitan Arts Commission.

The original New York City production of Talk Radio was first performed at the New York Shakespeare Festival, Joseph Papp, Producer, May 12, 1987. It was directed by Frederick Zollo. It was performed by (in alphabetical order): Linda Atkinson, Eric Bogosian, William DeAcutis, Susan Gabriel, Zach Grenier, Michele M. Mariana, John C. McGinley, Mark Metcalf, Peter Onorati, Robyn Peterson and Michael Wincott.

CHARACTERS

(In order of appearance)

SID GREENBERG	Financial Talk Show host
BERNIE	Sid’s operator
SPIKE	Engineer
DAN WOODRUFF	Executive producer, WTLK
STU NOONAN	Barry’s operator
LINDA MACARTHUR	Assistant producer of “Nighttalk”
BARRY CHAMPLAIN	“Nighttalk” host
KENT	Guest
DR. SUSAN FLEMING	Talk Show host
OPERATOR FOR DR.FLEMING
CALLERS

The set is a stripped-down version of a radio studio—WTLK, a “talk radio” station operating out of Cleveland, Ohio. Two console tables occupy the main space. One, stage left, faces the audience and is equipped with a small computer screen, a phone unit with buttons for several lines, and a studio mike on a “Luxo” armature. Two office chairs are on either side of the table facing the audience. This is the talk radio host’s console. The second table, stage right, faces away from the audience and is equipped with a computer screen and keyboard, a larger phone unit, and a headset. This is the operator’s console. Behind and above the operator’s desk is a little balcony with three steps leading up to it. The balcony leads to a door, which in turn leads to the sound engineer’s booth. The booth is separated from the main space by a large plate gl...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• FOREWORD
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• TALK RADIO
• DRINKING IN AMERICA
• FUN HOUSE
• MEN INSIDE
• VOICES OF AMERICA
• UNCOLLECTED
• A NOTE ON PERFORMANCE