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- Mystery Train
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- Hillary Frank
Hillary Frank remembers a train ride with a fifteen-year-old couple on a date and a girl who tries to convince the couple to get wasted with her at a party. The boy wants to go, but his girlfriend doesn't...because she's pregnant. As the ride progresses, Hillary learns more about the teens' conflicting desires -- and how they each want the evening to end.
Originally aired on This American Life's "Promised Land" show.
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Piece Description
Hillary Frank remembers a train ride with a fifteen-year-old couple on a date and a girl who tries to convince the couple to get wasted with her at a party. The boy wants to go, but his girlfriend doesn't...because she's pregnant. As the ride progresses, Hillary learns more about the teens' conflicting desires -- and how they each want the evening to end. Originally aired on This American Life's "Promised Land" show.
5 Comments
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Review of Mystery TrainThis piece has a refreshing voice that will help develope the near future generation radio. The story within the piece is a great message to teens "juviniles" dating. |
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Review of Mystery TrainA good story with good pacing and imagery and the relaxed TAL flow. Has the power to hold attention for the length of the piece. What else to say? |
Transcript
HOST: THIS IS THE STORY OF TWO PEOPLE, EACH YEARNING FOR A DIFFERENT FUTURE -- THOUGH NOT NECESSARILY THE SAME FUTURE. HILLARY FRANK REMEMBERS THE STORY...
The lights were out. We were stopped on the tracks. And Danielle wasn't happy. "All I wanted," she said, "was to have McDonald's with my boyfriend." It was supposed to be their big Friday night in Boston.
They were sitting diagonally behind me. Danielle and her boyfriend Donny had gotten on the train in Providence, a few stops after mine. Eavesdropping in the dark, I had learned their names, that they were fifteen ? four years younger than me ? and that they were surprised to see the black girl sitting by the window behind me. Donny's surprise was pleasant: "Man, Cynthia, I didn't expect to run into you!" And Danielle's was more like: "Yeah. Didn't think I'd run into you." Other than an elderly couple in the back, we were t...
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Timing and Cues
story-- 6:09 + :53 music bed
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Seth Lind
Posted on December 20, 2004 at 12:31 PM | Permalink
Review of Mystery Train
Addiction to eavesdropping is an early sign of a destiny as documentarian. Here, the producer remembers an overheard encounter - one of those confrontations that distills casual maniuplation to its essence, the type that make you think, if I could just communicate this moment, I could carve one more notch on the key to human nature. And she DOES communicate it. It's all the more perfect for radio that she was apparently not facing the characters - causing her, for example, to describe the SOUND of their kisses, not the look. Thanks for this story.