(THEME)
Tim Russell: A dark night in a city that knows how to keep its secrets but on the 12th floor of the Acme Building one man is still trying to find the answers to life's persistent questions...Guy Noir, Private Eye. (THEME)
Garrison Keillor: It was February, and bitterly cold in Minnesota, so cold that if you spit, other people turned around at what sounded like a handful of dimes hitting the sidewalk. Through some freak accident, St. Valentine's Day gets tossed into this cold spell and at a time when most men are thinking about how nice it would be to be in bed, they're expected to think about romance. I got a call from Texas--
TR (ON PHONE): Mr. Noir -- it's NASA calling from Houston, Texas. Listen -- we've got an astronaut-a trained scientist-who was in love with another astronaut and she drove 900 miles wearing a diaper to spray another woman in the face with pepper spray and she took a knife and a mallet and some rubber tubing and some garbage bags with her.
GK: Well, there's a lot of that going around now.
TR (ON PHONE): We just wonder if maybe we need to screen these people better.
GK: Sir, love is love. It makes fools of us all. We're in the control of something we can't understand, but that's the nature of it.
TR (ON PHONE): You don't think we could test them for emotional stability?
GK: Love is scary, sir. But it's what makes life interesting. You have to just go with it. (BRIDGE) That's my business. Love and romance gone wrong. And that very afternoon a young woman named Elizabeth Tryst came to my office... (TIME PASSAGE CHORDS)
Sue Scott: I have a sort of embarrassing problem, Mr. Noir. I was hoping you could help.
GK: I'll do my best.
SS: I'm suffering from a terrible case of writer's block. It's my doctoral thesis. I've been working on it for three years and I've written four sentences. Instead of writing my thesis, I sit in the library watching videos on my cellphone.
GK: What is your thesis?
SS: It's about Edith Wharton and Her Quest for Authentic Experience. Have you ever read Edith Wharton, Mr. Noir?
GK: No, I haven't. I've started several times, but--
SS: I haven't read her either.
GK: That might be the source of your problem. But listen, I'm a private eye. I'm not an editor.
SS: Please. You see, my father, who is the president of Kleenex, has said I won't get a dime of my inheritance until I finish my thesis. And my fiancee Jimmy Legato won't marry me until I get the money. And until I get the money, I can't donate forty million dollars to public radio
GK: So it all comes down to Edith Wharton and her quest for authentic experience.
SS: Edith Wharton wrote about wealthy educated women like me who suffer under horrible social constraints and are tired of working to keep up appearances and who want simply to be alive, truly alive, every hour of every day.
GK: Okay.
SS: And I am doing research on a trip she made in 1906 to see a rodeo in Livingston, Montana, where she wound up winning first-place in Brahma bull riding.
GK: Sounds fascinating.
SS: I know. So why can't I do it? Why do I sit and stare at a computer screen and surf around looking up stupid stuff in Wikipedia? Why am I blocked?
GK: Miss Tryst, there is one treatment for writer's block that I know of -- and it's called scaring.
SS: Scaring?
GK: Someone jumping out and yelling at you. -- it worked for Toni Morrison. Who was having a hard time writing a novel about a small-town in Minnesota in the winter, it just was going no place, and then her dog barked, and she sat down and wrote Beloved. Worked for E.L. Doctorow who was stuck on the third page of a novel about John Philip Sousa called "Stars and Stripes" and then he changed the name to "4/4" and then someone dropped an armload of china and he wrote 'Ragtime'.
SS: Sounds good. I wonder if it works for non-fiction.
GK: Only one way to find out. (BRIDGE)
GK: The next day I took her for a walk in the woods. (FOOTSTEPS IN SNOW)
SS: What are we looking for, Mr. Noir?
GK: We're looking for quail, Miss Tryst.
SS: We're quail hunting? Now you're making me apprehensive. But where's your-- (SHOTGUN BLAST)
GK: Anything?
SS: Nothing. (STING)
GK: I arranged for a Rottweiler to take a run at us (DOG BARKING, SNARLING). I hired an old man to jump out at us naked from behind a bush (WACKO WHOOPING). I hired a plane to dive very low at us (DIVING PLANE ZOOMS PAST). I arranged for a surprise phone call.
TR (ON PHONE): Miss Tryst, it's Mr. Wills from the IRS. (DOOM CHORD)
GK: And another surprise phone call--
Tom Keith (ON PHONE): The pregnancy test came back from the lab, Miss Tryst. Do quintuplets run in your family? (CHORD)
GK: I arranged an attack by a deranged turkey (TURKEY). I put some alarms beside her bed (KLAXON). I arranged for a startling news story to be broadcast-- (MORSE CODE SFX)
TR (ANNC): This bulletin just in from Washington. The Supreme Court has voted 5-4 to cancel the 2008 election, meaning that President Bush will get a free third term.
TR (BUSH): I believe that at this critical time it is important not to change course lest we show weakness to our enemies and so, for the good of our country-- (CLICK)
SS: Sorry, Mr. Noir. I'm afraid it's no use, Mr. Noir. You've tried everything. I'll just give up writing the thesis and never inherit the money and never make an enormous donation to public radio. That's okay.
GK: Don't give up, Miss Tryst. There's more than one way to skin a cat, you know.
(PAUSE)
SS: What did you say?
GK: I said, "There's more than one way to skin a cat."
SS: This isn't something you're thinking about actually doing, is it?
GK: It's just an expression. Don't worry about it. (BRIDGE) But as long as it got a rise out of her, I went to the trouble of finding a hairless cat and had it jump out of a box (MEOWWWWW) -- and that didn't faze her either. I called up her father--
TR: Yeah?
GK: How's everything at Kleenex, sir?
TR: We're on strike, that's how things are.
GK: The workers are on strike?
TR: All of us. You see, without Kleenex, everyone has to picket.
GK: Mister Tryst, I think you should consider revising your estate plan -- this is torture, forcing your daughter to write her thesis in order to collect her inheritance and marry Jimmy and be able to donate to public radio -- the woman is in the throes of writer's block--
TR: I'm not going to change a thing unless her psychiatrist tells me that it's endangering her mental stability.
GK: So I spoke to the psychiatrist--
TR: (GERMAN, ADAMANT, PRECISE)
GK: And he laid a lot of Freudian nonsense on me and that gave me an idea. I sent Miss Tryst to see her father--
SS: Hi, Daddy. How's the strike?
TR: Nothing's changed. How are you? You look different? Are you pregnant?
SS: No, I'm wearing a diaper, Dad. I've got to rush. Another woman is after Jimmy and I'm going to spray her with gas and hit her with a mallet and tie her with rubber tubes (BRIDGE).
GK: And so she got the inheritance, and she married Jimmy, and she was just about to write the check to public radio when suddenly the writer's block broke -- (RAPID TYPING) and she sat down and started writing about Edith Wharton and the search for authentic experience. And meanwhile your public radio station's appeals for funds went unheeded and the wolf was at the door -- an alpha wolf (HOWL) and the beta wolf (HOWL) all the way down to the omega wolf (WOLF) and the Sigma Chi wolves (THREE WOLVES IN HARMONY). Ms. Tryst, time is running out for the fund drive.
SS: Don't interrupt me. I'm writing (TYPING). "Easing her great bulk atop the horned beast writhing in the chute, Mrs. Wharton grasped the harness rope with her left hand and shouted, "Whoopee! Ride it Cow Girl."
TR: A dark night in a city that knows how to keep its secrets but one man is still trying to find the answers to life's persistent questions...Guy Noir, Private Eye.
(THEME OUT)