All Time Hits

PDF of Script: 

A multi-voiced two-hander, All Time Hits, mines the hidden deposits of loss and isolation in all of us.  Bert, a radio DJ pushing thirty, realizes one night that maybe he should have zigged when he zagged in life.  Grinding through the graveyard shift, he has visions of a guardian angel, or devil, named Ace who appears in his control booth and radically changes the tune . . .

image by Gregory Thomas Christopher


Bert checks under console, half-expecting to find a person.

    ACE
Prime of your life, twenty-eight years old, a degree from an elite university, and you’re poking around a radio studio looking for a fucking phantom.  Meanwhile Mom is getting ready for the pennies-on-the-eyes treatment.

    BERT
Hey.  I can’t just let the station go dead air.

    ACE
You just can’t bear to see that look in her eyes, can you?

    BERT
It’s important to keep the signal going.  The antenna could fry.  The electricity could go out.

    ACE
Disappointment and disapproval.  Every time you think of her you see her eyes.

    BERT
Somebody has to stay here and play the songs.

    ACE
The world would be a better place if nobody played these songs ever again.

    BERT
Top 40 is not my personal taste, either.

    ACE
So play what you like.  Spin some rock.  Waste your life in style.

    BERT
I’m a radio man.  I can play any style.  It doesn’t matter.

    ACE
Pop is not a style.  It’s the absence thereof.

    BERT
It’s popular.  That’s why it’s called pop.

    ACE
It’s cliché and hypnotism and horseshit.

    BERT
There’s a place for pop.

    ACE
Yeah, in Hell.  How many nights have you rolled around sleepless in bed trying to get one of these tunes out of your head?  Remember “Chickenrisa”?

    BERT
Don’t.

    ACE
Ah, “Chickenrisa.”

    BERT
That’s not fair.

    ACE
(singing reggae-style)  You got de Chickenrisa/De Chickenrisa/You got de peas and de carrots and de Chickenrisa/ (Repeat)

    BERT
(covering his ears)  I didn’t choose the format.

    ACE
Bert, think of yourself as an addict.  It’s time for an intervention.

    BERT
You can’t take life so seriously.

    ACE
How about death?

    BERT
She doesn’t want to see me.

    ACE
Dad says she does.

    BERT
I wouldn’t know what to say to her.

    ACE
Imagine yourself in that chair in forty years.

    BERT
Nothing’s changed.

    ACE
It’s been six years since you’ve seen her.  She’s almost gone, Bert.  She wants to bury the hatchet.

Pause.

    BERT
Big Bear . . .

    ACE
Oh, for Jimity-Jim-Jim-Boree.  Fuck Big Bear!

    BERT
He’s the boss.

    ACE
He’s a loser!  And you’re a up-and-coming loser.

    BERT
You don’t just abandon the console.

    ACE
Ah.  But abandoning your life . . .

    BERT
People call in, people call for help.

    ACE
Oh.  And you think you’re Jesus with an antenna?

    BERT
I’m a radio man.

    ACE
You’re gonna heal the sick?

    BERT
I talk to them.

    ACE
You gonna turn the Top 40 into wine?

    BERT
I’m good at talking to them.

    ACE
How about Linda?

    BERT
Shut up.