(THEME)
TR: 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. (MUSIC DOWN)
GK: It was November in Minnesota and people were getting down to business. The birds were heading south. The actors were waiting on table again. Most of the poets had gone back to paying jobs teaching creative so that other people could write poetry and not earn any money from it. But there were a few dreamers who were slow to learn.
FN: I love photography. I'm thinking of quitting my job in I.T. and becoming a full-time photographer and shooting pictures of interesting rock formations.
SS: You do and I will shoot you.
FN: What did you say?
SS: You heard me. (STING)
(KNOCKS ON DOOR)
GK: Yeah, come in, the door's unlocked. (DOOR OPEN, FOOTSTEPS) Come in, sir, have a seat. (FOOTSTEPS, DOOR CLOSE, CHAIR CREAK) --- It was a man in a blue seersucker suit and a shirt the color of apricots and a big broad tie with pink polkadots and two-toned shoes, green and orange. You knew, looking at him, that the man was in advertising.
FN: Mr. Noir, I'm Quinn Meshuganah of Meshuganah Associates here in the Cities. We're urban designers and I wonder if I could have an hour or two of your time. Have you had lunch? (BRIDGE)
GK: He took me to a restaurant I'd never heard of. (FOOTSTEPS, HUSHED RESTAURANT AMBIENCE) Called Cafe Madeleine. (TR FRENCH WAITER) Where we were joined by his associate, Jessica. Hi. (SS: Hi.) The idea of the cafe was that each dish is something you'll remember for a long time. The waiter brought me anchovy oatmeal and very rare very thinly sliced breast of frog with camellia petals.
FN: How do you like it?
GK: Interesting. So you're urban designers, huh? What's going on, Mr. Meshuganah?
FN: Jessica, give Mr. Noir a birdseye of the Duluth project.
SS: Right, Q.M. Here's the take-away, Mr. Noir. You know Duluth?
GK: Up Highway 61, on Lake Superior.
SS: We're in the business of reputation management and we're reaching out to Duluth, to close the loop and empower the city to re-brand it----
GK: Re-brand it.
SS: Yes, the name "Duluth" is associated with extreme cold, windiness, rain, and a gritty industrial landscape that is mostly uphill. So we've developed a seven-point plan to leverage the assets for a win-win solution and totally re-do Duluth.
GK: A seven-point plan.
SS: Yes. It's a game-changer. One, sustainable authenticity. 2. Integrated synergy. 3. Interactive diversity. 4. Environmental visibility.5. Citizen centricity. 6. Regional seamlessness. And 7. Transparency.
GK: Transparency.
SS: Yes.
GK: What do you mean by that?
SS: I don't know but I will know more when we get farther into it.
FN: At the end of the day, the bottom line here is that Duluth needs to be reconceptualized ---- what does that mean? It means it needs a new name. Why does it need a new name? Because the name Duluth has become synonymous with cold. Why is that a bad thing? Because the cultural trend in this country for the past hundred years has been to the southwest.
SS: The name "Duluth" ---- when you say it in Phoenix or Los Angeles or Dallas ---- people laugh. They laugh.
GK: So?
FN: So we've come up with a new name. Hillcrest.
GK: Hillcrest.
SS: Instead of the association with cold, it gives the city a new identity ---- that of visibility, of perspective --- a heightened identity.
GK: Hillcrest. You think they should give up Duluth and adopt Hillcrest.
SS: We did focus groups in Miami and Tucson and San Diego and they were 89% positive.
GK: And how do they feel in Duluth?
FN: They hate it. They burned our office and they ran us out of town, a mob of a thousand people with flaming torches.
SS: But disruption is what we do---- we think outside the box---- creativity is our core competency----
FN: It's in our DNA.
GK: What would you like me to do for me, Mr. Meshuganah?
FN: I had to leave town in a hurry and I left my dog at the hotel. Could you go back and get them for me?
GK: What kind of dog?
FN: It's an artisanal English sheepdog.
GK: Okay. I'll go get him. (BRIDGE) So I went north to Duluth to get an English sheepdog out of the Hotel Duluth. I headed for the Jefferson bus depot (TR P.A.: Now boarding at Gate A-four....Forest Lake, Pine City, Sandstone, Cloquet, and Duluth) and I got on and the door closed (AIR DOOR) and we pulled away (SFX). I sat behind a smoker (BAD COUGHING) and in front of a small child (BABY CRIES) and two hours later we pulled into Duluth (BUS SHIFTING DOWN) I got to the Hotel Duluth and the dog was in room 807 (WOOFS) and some clothes. A lavender jacket and rhubarb pants and cowboy boots made from coyote hide. They were my size and I put them on and I got the dog on the elevator (WOOF, DING DONG) and rode down and I heard Tony Bennet singing Bob Dylan (TR TONY: If you're going to the North Country fair, where the wind blows heavy on the border line.....) and the elevator stopped at the fifth floor---- a woman got on----
SS: Hi.
GK: Going down?
SS: I beg your pardon?
GK: She was tall, blonde, in jeans that looked a size too small and a down jacket that was full of mystery. Clearly she wasn't from Duluth. There were no chinstrap marks on her neck, her hair hadn't been deformed by stocking caps, she didn't have that extra fat around the belly ----- her midriff was as tight as the cap on a pickle jar.
SS: Nice dog. I love English sheepdogs.
FN (ENGLISH DOG, SINGS): O to ladi - o bleda, life goes on bra, la la la la life goes on (HE HUMS)
SS: Hey, a singing sheep dog. I always wanted a singing dog. How much you want for him?
GK: I hadn't even thought about it.
FN (SINGS) Obladi obleda, la la la la, how the life goes on.
SS: How about twenty thousand? That's all I have on me.
GK: She handed me a pack of hundreds big as a brick and I didn't bother to count it. ---- Thanks, kitten.
SS: See you in the next reel, hero. --- (BRIDGE)
GK: It was quite a payday for me. I'm in Duluth fifteen minutes, and I've got twenty grand and a lavender jacket and rhubarb pants. Big D, little u, l-u-t-h. Nowhere like it in the world. You take a deep breath of Duluth and for a moment you feel the way you felt when you were twenty-one. I went back to the front desk of the hotel.
TR: Yeah?
GK: Gimme the penthouse suite, bub. I want a nice view of the lake and 24-hour room service.
TR: That's gonna cost ya. Five hundred a night.
GK: Not a problem. Gimme seven nights. And we'll see what happens after that. (THEME)
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)