View source for When She's Asleep, She Looks Like An Angel

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|header1 = Series
|header3 = Original Broadcast Date
|header5 = Cast
|header7 = Format
|label10  = Preceded by: 
|label11 = Followed by: 
|data2  = [[Work In Progress]]
|data8 = [[:Category:Serious_Monologue|Serious Monologue]]<br>52 minutes
|data4  = 1985
|data6  = Joe Frank
|data10 = [[A Pact With God]]
|data11 = [[A Kiss Is Just A Kiss]]
|below = [https://www.joefrank.com/?s={{#invoke:URLEncode|encode|{{PAGENAME}}}} Purchase]
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''Years ago, when I lived in Manhattan, I went to psychoanalyst four times a week.''

'''When She's Asleep, She Looks Like An Angel''' is a program Joe Frank produced as part of the series [[Work In Progress]] in [[Category:1985|1985]].

== Synopsis ==
Joe sees a psychiatrist who specializes in children, her only adult
patient.  Her husband teaches Jewish history.  He dies; Joe attends
his funeral.  23rd psalm in background.  Joe becomes obsessed with his
corpse, won't talk about it in therapy, takes a diplomatic post in
Africa.<ref>Joe tells a somewhat-different version of this story in
[[No Angel]].</ref>

9: A little girl (his daughter?) dotes on Joe - 'Sometimes when I'm
stretched out on the sofa she'll climb up on top of me and fall asleep
on my chest...  When she's asleep she looks like an angel...'

11: On California Highway 1<ref>Joe says US 1, but must mean California 1; he makes the same mistake in [[Dear Annie]]</ref>, on a cliff above the water, an unemployed
carpenter and his girlfriend, Carla, a forensic serologist in the
medical examiner's office, find an abandoned handbag.  They drive to
the nearest place with a phone, a restaurant, call the cops, wait for
them to arrive.

28:  23rd psalm in background.

29: The little girl again - 'She likes me to make up stories, sitting
before the piano...'

30: 'Yesterday a woman called...' who wants a lawyer.  Joe can't help.
She wants him to call back.  She wants him to tell her a number that
was special to her.  Joe thinks about that.  We hear him talking to
himself, saying numbers.

33: When he was a boy, falling asleep, Joe tortured himself with
fantasies of making awful decisions.<ref>Joe re-uses this segment in
[[Journal]] and [[Higher Learning]].</ref>

35: While Joe was living in a fancy building as a boy, Pat, one of the staff, was
caught having snuck into their apartment, was fired.

37: Interview on public television with Holocaust survivor.<ref>Joe uses a modified version of this story in [[Philosophy]]</ref>

38: Joe's friend George who has trouble crying.

42: Marshall gets drunk at Caroline's Christmas party, laments the
deaths of trees.

43: Joe picks up a hitchhiker in Montana who tells him of 40-foot tall
Jesus.

44: Joe wanders a corridor at a college, overhears a graduate
assistant lecturing about limits of human intelligence.

45: Joe drives one night on route 5, stops at a gas station, hears
people clapping and singing, then a preacher.  The station attendant
is the same person lecturing in the segment above.  Joe attacks him.

47: 23rd psalm in background.

48: The little girl again - 'Every Thursday evening I take her on my
rounds.  We drive to the homes of families I've photographed...'  Joe
brings lovers home, takes their pictures.

51: Joe says more numbers.

<div class="toccolours mw-collapsible mw-collapsed" style="width:95%; overflow:auto;">
<div style="font-weight:bold;line-height:1.6;">Legacy Synopsis</div>
<div class="mw-collapsible-content">

Joe sees an analyst, contemplates the elevator man, becomes obsessed with the analyst's dead husband.  The lord's prayer read against a funk background.  Description of a girl who lives with Joe, looks like an angel. Joe and a girlfriend find an abandoned purse above seaside cliffs, call the police, wait in the restaurant.  Carla tells Joe about crime in a forensics lab, a prison guard is burned with a cigarette while at a restaurant.  Description of an overweight, former rape victim delivering a dance-a-gram for the lab chief.  While waiting in the restaurant, Joe washes his hands, imagines blood coming from the spout. He discovers the found bag belongs to Carla, runs from the police and down toward the sea.  A stranger calls Joe at work, asks him to recommend a lawyer and choose a number.  Lying in bed and fantasizing about horrible choices involving torture of others. Blue collar workers in the apartment building of Joe's childhood and an elevator-man turned burglar. An interview with a holocaust survivor turned reformed hoodlum. A man, who wants to cry but cannot, fails to confront a drunk who harasses his date.  A man at a party talks about crucified Christmas trees.  A hitchhiker talks about a 40 foot tall Jesus.  A man delivers a lecture on the limits of human knowledge, is assaulted by Joe at a gas station. The girl travels with Joe the photographer, hears him making love to his subjects.  A list of random numbers.
</div></div>

== Music ==
{{Harima (Mandingo)}} [7:38] <!--ambient track @ ~38-45m perhaps commissioned - during "Piano Bar Theater" JF references Polarities (https://www.discogs.com/release/7517405-John-Ramo-Zenon-Slawinski-Polarities) which was released by the owners of the Sonic Images studio-->

== Shared material ==
* [[Higher Learning]]
* [[Journal]]
* [[Philosophy]]
* [[No Angel]]

== Additional credits ==
The original broadcast credits state: "Technical production by Tom Strother. Music by [https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/lifestyle/1987/11/06/getting-it-down/f55d3fdc-ed92-4afa-a0a1-ecac391b7aba/ Sonic Images]."

== Miscellanea ==

After attending his psychiatrist's husband's funeral, Joe says
he went to see a movie, 'The film was about an unhappily
married man, trapped in a boring and unsatisfying career, who
contracted to stage his own death so that he could begin a new life as
someone else.  But his Faustian bargain, played out in another part of
the country, turned into a nightmare.'

A scholar at jfwiki.org suggests it's [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seconds_(1966_film) 'Seconds']

== Footnotes ==

[[Category:Serious_Monologue]]
[[Category:1985]]
[[Category:Work In Progress]]
[[Category:Unknown_air_date]][[Category:Show]]
[[Category:Show_by_date|19850002]]	{{Airdate|airdate=1985}}
{{Series|series=Work In Progress}}{{Cast|cast=Joe Frank}}