Maurice ist außer sich vor Wut, als er mitbekommt, wie sein Radio-DJ Chris Stevens Walt Whitmans Homosexualität nebenbei erwähnt. Der reaktionäre Maurice sieht darin eine Verunglimpfung eines amerikanischen Helden und entfernt den belesenen Freidenker, Herzensbrecher und Ex-Sträfling gewaltsam aus seinem Sender. Er übernimmt selbst das Radioprogramm. Doch die seichten Musicals und faden Anekdoten langweilen die Cicelianer. Auf einer turbulenten Stadtversammlung übergibt Bürgermeister Holling Vincoeur Maurice eine Petition, wonach die Bevölkerung ihren "Chris am Morgen" wieder zurück haben will. Erst als sich Chris bei Maurice entschuldigt, gibt er ihm eine zweite Chance. Eds väterlicher Onkel Anku hat Prostatakrebs, doch der Schamane (Medizinmann) ist zu stolz, sich von Joel behandeln zu lassen. Ed (Vollwaise) drängelt jedoch unermüdlich, bis Joel seinen Onkel aufsucht. Joel lernt von dem alten Mann eine Menge über indianische Heilkunst, aber auch über indianische Verstocktheit. Letztendlich springt Anku doch über seinen Schatten und läßt sich operieren. Joels sanitäre Anlagen sind in einem katastrophalen Zustand. Verzweifelt ruft er Maggie (seine Vermieterin), die sich über seine Notlage lustig macht. Sie findet den überheblichen "Hilflosigkeitsjunkie" lächerlich und fordert ihn zu mehr Selbständigkeit auf. Das ist der Beginn einer großen, leidenschaftlichen Haßliebe! Die Retourkutsche läßt nicht lange auf sich warten: beim Tanzen verdreht sich Maggie das Knie und ist auf ärztliche Hilfe angewiesen...
1.2 Brains, Know-How And Native Intelligence Originaltitel
Deutsche TV-Premiere: 17.06.1992 (RTLplus)
TV-Premiere: 19.07.1990 (CBS)
Stuart Stevens Drehbuch
Peter O'Fallon Regie
Frank Prinzi Kamera
Musiktitel
Another Op'nin', Another Show "Kiss Me Kate"
March of the Siamese Children "King and I"
This was a Real Nice Clambake "Carousel"
Wunderbar "Kiss Me Kate"
Zitate
Maurice: "What do you want?"
Chris: "I forgot some stuff. I can come back."
Maurice: "Make it quick. I‘m busy."
Chris: "You got a furtive mind, Maurice. What I mean is, it‘s like the waters of the Big Muddy. It‘s hard to see the bottom of it. It‘s deep where you think it‘s gonna be shallow and it‘s shallow where it should be deep."
Maurice: "You lookin‘ for another beatin‘?"
Chris: "No, sir, not at all. Look, Maurice, what I‘m trying to say is, it was never my intention to cut down Mr Whitman. But I can see now how what I said, in some people‘s eyes, could be taken that way.I don‘t I don‘t want people reading Walt Whitman for the wrong reasons, Maurice.
And I most assuredly don‘t want to kill the child inside the man.
Maurice: You did a bad thing, Chris."
Chris: "I know. I‘m sorry."
Maurice: "And? And? And?"
Chris: "And I apologise and I am I don‘t know."
Maurice: "What? And you want you job back, right?"
Chris: "Right."
Maurice: "OK. Everybody deserves a second chance. This is yours.
Oh, on a personal note, I‘d like to compliment you on that left cross you snuck in on me. I felt it. Matter of fact, I saw stars. Well, not stars exactly, more like fireflies."
Chris: "Hey, Maurice Thanks."
Maurice: "OK, all right."
Maurice on air:
"When I was growing up in Oklahoma City, I‘d go to the show on Saturday.
My favourite was John Wayne.
Didn‘t matter what kind of a movie it was, cowboy picture, war movie, I was with him all the way.
Except for The Quiet Man.
That one bored the hell out of me.
By the time I was nine years old, I was walkin‘ and talkin‘ like the Duke.
And then one day, the walls came crashin‘ down.
I was playing army with the Marshall boys, Jed and Jeff, in Bailey‘s Wood and Jeff said kind of offhandedly that John Wayne didn‘t do his own fightin‘.
Didn‘t throw his own punches, didn‘t take his own hits or his own falls.
I kicked the hell out of the Marshalls and ran home and asked my daddy if it was true that John Wayne didn‘t do his own fightin‘.
And he said yes.
John Wayne was my hero and the Marshall boys gave him feet of clay.
I don‘t give a damn if Walt Whitman kicked with his right or his left foot.
Or that J Edgar Hoover took it better than he gave it.
Or that Ike was true-blue to Mamie.
Or that God-knows-who had trouble with the ponies or with the bottle.
We need our heroes.
We need men we can look up to, believe in.
Men who walk tall.
We cannot chop ‘em off at the knees, just to prove they‘re like the rest of us.
Now, Walt Whitman was a pervert, but he was the best poet that America ever produced.
And if he was standing here today and somebody called him a fruit or a queer behind this back, or to his face, or over these airwaves, that person would have to answer to me.
Sure, we‘re all human.
But there‘s damn few of us that have the right stuff to be called heroes.
And that closes the book on it."
Maurice on air:
"Let me tell you people something.
Grissom, Glenn, Carpenter and Minnifield got into it a little bit down in Cape Canaveral.
Scotty liked West Side Story.
Gus like Guys and Dolls.
And Johnno, well, Johnno was a Brigadoon man.
As far as I was concerned, none of ‘em could hold a candle to The King And I.
Point of information: Yul Brynner would have made an outstanding flyboy.
"I Whistle A Happy Tune", "Hello, Young Lovers", "Shall We Dance?" This one goes out to you, Scotty."
Maurice on air:
"I‘ll take the hit. Maurice Minnifield is not one to dodge responsibility.
And what went out of here yesterday on my airwaves was a disgrace.
Whether or not Whitman deserves to be in the big tent with the big boys will be up to the vultures and the bookworms to decide.
But the Minnifield Communications Network will not be a party to an expos or a seal hunt.
This is Cicely, Alaska, not San Francisco.
That being said.
Here‘s a tune from the Broadway show "Kiss Me Kate".
Music and lyrics by Cole Porter who lived to be past a hundred.
That oughta brighten up your day."
Maurice und Chris in KBHR-Studio
Chris: "...the musical shuttle, Out of the Ninth-month midnight, Over the sterile sand..."
Maurice: "Haul your ass out of that chair, Stevens!"
Chris: "Maurice!"
Maurice: "I said, get your butt up outta there, now!"
(crash of glass; Chris and Maurice grunt)
Chris on air
"It was a day not unlike any other day in the summer of 1976. I, a boy of fifteen, and my oldest and dearest friend, Dickie Heath, having just stolen a car from the parking lot of a Shop-Easy and finding ourselves with nothing much to do, entered a house on Foxhill Lane. While Dickie rifled the upstairs for valuables, I entered the sitting room where, while pocketing a gold-leafed pen and a silver humidor, came across the book that completely changed my life.
So this morning Chris-in-the-Morning is going to dispense with the weather and traffic report, and the local news, and get down with The Complete Works of Walt Whitman.
When lilacs last in the door-yard bloom‘d,
And the great star early droop‘d in the western sky in the night,
I mourn‘d--and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring.
O ever-returning spring! trinity sure to me you bring;
Lilac blooming perennial, and drooping star in the west,
And thought of him I love. […]
Months later, as I sat in a juvenile detention home, re-reading those poems that had opened up the artist in me, I was blindsided by the raging fist of my incarcerator, who informed me that Walt Whitman‘s homoerotic, unnatural, pornographic sentiments were unacceptable and would not be allowed in an institution dedicated to reforming the ill-formed. That Whitman, that great bear of a man, enjoyed the pleasures of other men, came as a surprise to me and it made me reconsider the queers that I had previously kicked around."
Onkel Anku:
"If you want to catch a fish, think like a fish."
Mr. (Onkel) Anku:
"Stolz ist ein wirkungsvolles Narkotikum. Aber er tut nicht allzuviel für das Immunsystem."
Maurice:
"By the time I was nine years old, I was walkin‘ and talkin‘ like the Duke. And then one day, the walls came crashin‘ down. I was playing army with the Marshall boys, Jed and Jeff, in Bailey‘s Wood and Jeff said kind of offhandedly that John Wayne didn‘t do his own fightin‘. Didn‘t throw his own punches, didn‘t take his own hits or his own falls. Well! I kicked the hell out of the Marshalls and than I ran all the way home and asked my daddy if it was true that John Wayne didn‘t do his own fightin‘. And he said yes.
John Wayne was my hero and the Marshall boys gave him feet of clay."