William Missouri Downs

This comedy compares the idyllic world of Mr. Rogers to the apocalyptic anxieties of modern reality. George and Martha, two short attention span multitasking I-phone junkies, post an abusive drama review on YouTube. Their antics get over a million hits, and the play closes. The playwright seeks them out, holds them hostage, and forces them to mono-task by having a face-to-face conversation as if they were in a play. Although this is not a musical, this comedy has songs like “Stanislavsky Gave Me Herpes.” Instead of an intermission, this play has a Twitter break. The result is a fast-paced farce about how smartphones, Facebook, and A.I. have rewired our brains and are killing the theatre. A.I. writes the ending.

FINALIST AT THE EUGENE O'NEILL - PUBLISHED BY TRW (Theatrical Rights Worldwide)

"Amid all the crazy plot turns, Downs finds opportunities to make valid statements about our perceptions of art, delusional self-styled "artists" and how art has lost any meaning beyond its value as a commodity." - Kansas City Star.

"How to Steal a Picasso has the audience chuckling by the end of the
first several speeches. It maintains its humor in what the author calls
"farcical reality" all the way through the fast two-act show that is still
able to make its serious points." Broadway World

"A farce with an edge!" – The Kansas City Star

"Amid all the crazy plot turns, Downs finds opportunities to make valid
statements about our perceptions of art, delusional self-styled "artists."
and how art has lost any meaning beyond its value as a commodity." –
The Kansas City Star

Otto Smith's dreams have come true. After a lifetime of struggles as an unknown painter and decades as a tour guide at the Detroit Institute for the Arts, he's won a major art award. But things quickly go wrong when a fifty-million-dollar Picasso is stolen from the museum on the same day that his long-lost son, an alleged art forger, shows up in the Motor City. Soon Otto's family is the chief suspect. This dark comedy looks at what is real and what is counterfeit in this pixilated world where we too often think of artists as employees and art as a mere commodity. How To Steal A Picasso received standing ovations, and its run was extended at the Unicorn Theatre/

This darkly comic drama was inspired by the cancellation of Ayaan Hirsi Ali's commencement speech at Brandeis in 2014, the Charlie Hebdo attacks, and my travels through the Middle East. When an April Fool's prank goes wrong, the Muslim students at a small liberal arts college file a complaint. Two professors deal with the problem by booking a poet from Somalia to give the college's commencement speech. Fresh off the plane, the poet doesn't understand the college's political correctness, nor does the poet fit the professors' preconceived stereotype of a Muslim woman. With the possible cancellation of the speech looming, all three are forced to confront the issues of diversity and the suppression of free speech on college campuses.

SOON TO BE PUBLISHED BY TRW (Theatrical Rights Worldwide - https://trwplays.com/)

A Play Designed For stage or Zoom! When a writer meets the ghost of Franz Kafka it sets off an existential chain of events forcing the cast to confront the meaning of life. This pandemic comedy asks the question, can we justify our existence, or is life one absurd zoom meeting?

Winner of a Rolling Premiere from the National New Play Network

PUBLISHED BY PLAYSCRIPTS!

In Shakespeare's day, men played the women's roles. In this new comedy, women play all the men's roles. It's the story of Jessica, an actress who has been cast to play Hamlet in New York. After accidentally interrupting a performance of Hamlet starring Patrick Stewart, Jessica thinks Mr. Stewart is stalking her; she also faces an uphill battle through a maze of self-important humanities professors, Freudian psychiatrists, and a Danish mother only to discover she doesn’t understand Hamlet, or herself. The search for identity is the theme as Jessica takes on her emotional baggage and an existential overload, as well as her self-doubt and disdain for Danish fondue. In the end she takes the stage and finds herself.

"This wickedly clever new play from William Missouri Downs, dubbed 'a comedy about a tragedy,' uses an all-woman cast to explore questions of courage and conscience in a modern setting, managing to both spoof Shakespeare and pay homage to him in a two-hour show that moves like lightning." - The Patriot News Harrisburg

"With the colorful script and vivid characters Women Playing Hamlet is a slam dunk..." - Kansas City Examiner

"What's amazing lies in the script where Downs dissects Hamlet's intricate character and puts all aspects of Hamlet's persona in Jessica's challenge to scale the ladder to play the part." - Kansas City Examiner

"A rollicking satire jabbing shallow pop culture, overly reverential attitudes toward literature and the intensive navel-gazing shared by actors." - Florida Theatre On Stage

"Silly, profound and ultimately moving" - Florida Theatre On Stage

"Downs's script has... theater history and some of the eternal questions about playing Hamlet woven into its fabric, along with funny and sobering truths about the actor's life." - Miami Herald

FINALIST AT THE EUGENE O'NEILL - WINNER OF THE REVA SHINER COMEDY AWARD from Bloomington Playwrights Project - Runner Up for the McNERNEY PLAYWRITING AWARD - PUBLISHED BY PLAYSCRIPTS

Also available in Spanish "Fuera de órbita"

"For a wildly different evening of fun theater." - Bloomington Herald times

You've heard of reality television; think of it as reality theatre. Mad Gravity is a comedy about Archie and Eudora, two Dada performance artists who have built a theatre in their living room. Every night before a live audience, they act out their lives. They want to build a second experimental space in their kitchen, but they just cannot take any more kitchen-sink realism. Artaud would be proud of them.

Tonight's Theatre of Cruelty performance concerns their teenage daughter, who wants to marry the son of Joe and Mary. All the parties involved have been invited to the house/theatre. But when the kids forget to tell Joe and Mary about the live audience, all hell breaks loose.

Things go from bad to worse when they discover that a comet has been spotted in the night sky. There is a 50/50 chance it will hit the earth. Everyone, including the audience, may have only an hour to live. This forces the parents to stop arguing about insignificant things like marriage and start arguing about great philosophical questions of life: Is the comet a sign from God, or is it just gravity? And what the hell is performance art?

The one-page second act (that's right, the second act is one page long) does something no play has ever attempted in the history of theatre - it lets the audience in on the meaning of life.

Winner of a Rolling Premiere from the National New Play Network.

PUBLISHED BY SAMUEL FRENCH

Untenured professor Dr. Dick Fig has found that a Ph.D. on Bertolt Brecht isn't worth much – He's being pink-slipped. The last thing he needs to do before he hits the slow-moving unemployment line is attending the University's required exit interview. Eunice, the interviewer, is not a good match for Dick; she finds comfort in self-help books like The Secret by Rhonda Byrne, while Dick hates small talk and is a vocal freethinker.

When a despondent student begins shooting up Ronald Reagan Hall (next door to the action), Dick and Eunice are forced to take cover as they confront the great existential questions of life: What is its meaning? What is the relationship between religion and science? And why does God hate amputees? (Dick had his foot amputated in a tragic moose accident – it was reattached).

The Exit interview is not realism - A chorus of actors play nearly two dozen roles that interrupt the main action to tell the story of Dick's failed relationships, his fallout with small-minded people, and his relationship with the moose. When things get too intense, the chorus stops the play's action to stage commercial interruptions and ten-minute plays with other storylines to remind the audience that they are in a theatre and need to keep thinking.

"The Exit Interview" may be one of the most up-front, honest plays you ever sit down to watch. – The Salt Lake Tribune

"Bertolt Brecht would be proud." - Orlando Sentinel.

"A gleefully boundary-flouting riff on religion, piety and the limits of belief" - San Diego Union-Tribune

PUBLISHED BY SAMUEL FRENCH

Kosher Lutherans is a curveball comedy about an infertile Jewish couple and their desperate attempts to have a baby. One day their dreams come true - they meet a young, naïve, pregnant girl from Iowa who is willing to let them adopt her out-of-wedlock baby. The only problem is the girl doesn’t know they’re Jewish. All she knows about Jews is what her farmer father told her, “They control Hollywood and killed Jesus.” In an attempt not to blow the deal, the couple decides to pose as Lutherans, leading to hysterical twists and turns and a perfect play for the holiday season.

PUBLISHED BY SAMUEL FRENCH

Phil was a philosophy major in college. As if that’s not enough of a turn-off to women, he is also rather average. All of this wouldn’t be a problem if Phil weren’t madly in love with Sophia, the boss’s beautiful secretary. He tries to introduce himself, but she looks right through him. Phil’s best friend, Norman, tells the humiliated Phil that the rumor around the office is that Sophia has a glass eye. This news thrills Phil because this tiny imperfection makes Sophia attainable. But more, Phil was standing to her left - perhaps she never saw him! Phil begs Norman to make a formal introduction. However, this second attempt ends in utter failure when Sophia looks right through Phil - again.

His self-esteem is in shambles; it soon occurs to Phil that Sophia, in fact, cannot see him. Perhaps he is caught in some kind of hyperspace or dualistic reality, or perhaps Descartes was wrong. Phil decides there is only one logical thing to do – he moves in with the woman of his dreams – despite the fact that she’s unaware of his existence

PUBLISHED BY HEUER PUBLISHING

Seagulls In A Cherry Tree is a Chekhovian comedy about Boris and Stan, two Hollywood screenwriters who have been hired by Disney to adapt Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard into a new movie for Mel Gibson. The trek to an isolated Arts Colony just outside Moscow, Idaho, to finish the stalled adaptation and get away from L.A.'s smog. The colony is full of navel-gazing, self-indulgent, philosophizing, chronically indecisive Chekhovian artists, actress, and doctors.

All plot points in Seagulls In A Cherry come from Chekhov's plays (The Cherry Orchard, Three Sisters, Uncle Vanya, and The Seagull), plus a touch of invention, all of which have been rearranged and shaped to form the first new Chekhov play in a hundred years. In the end, Stan and Boris (just like many Americans today) never realize that they are, in fact living in a Chekhovian world.

A NEW HOLIDAY COMEDY

It’s Christmas, that wonderful time of year when families deck the halls, don their gay apparel, and pretend they don’t hate each other. College student Loretta hasn’t been home in two years because she has nothing in common with her blue-collar parents. When she left to attend Harvard, she thought she’d never return, but then she fell in love with a cultivated Cambridge law student, and he wants to meet her parents.

The difference between Loretta’s law student and her parents couldn’t be more profound. He loves yachting, while her parents never let her near water - growing up, Loretta’s mother told her chlorine caused skepticism. He reads Tennyson, while her parents read Jonathan Livingston Seagull - not the book, the Cliffs Notes.

How to Survive Your Family At Christmas is a crowd-pleasing comedy about family, love, and the one thing we all need to survive the holidays, forgiveness.

PUBLISHED BY PLAYSCRIPTS

Semi-Finalist @ The Eugene O'Neill

Dead White Males is a contemporary, issue-oriented, dark-comedy about the religious right, our schools, and the politics of teaching.

The play uses epic theatre staging techniques to tell the story of Janet Greenberg, a young, idealistic, first-year teacher. She struggles against a school board dominated by the religious right. They want to ban sex education, Holden Caulfield, and evolution from the classroom.

Janet learns how to write a "proper" self-evaluation, how to censor musicals so that they are fit for "young minds," how to deal with countless new mandates, constant curriculum changes, petty political games, all the while learning how to cover her ass in a world dominated by constant accountability.

When Doris, Janet's best friend, has a nervous breakdown (while being forced to teach creationism in her science class), Janet is called to testify against her. She must name names or lose her job.

In the end, Janet learns why there aren't a lot of risk-takers in teaching.

FINALIST FOR THE NICK DARKE AWARD (London) Top 8 out of 1000 scripts!

Looking for that 1st production!

Maggie and Raymond have just flunked their hostile workplace training seminar. The only way they can keep their jobs is to put their microaggressions aside and attend the birthday party for the employee they bully the most, Karl, the office nerd. They don’t know that Karl is the only person on earth who can save humanity from destruction. That’s right, the world is ending, and Karl is the savior. Or is Karl just an evil genius who has staged the evening to seek revenge? Karl, The Magnificent is an absurd farce that asks the question, “If we had to start the human race over with only four highly flawed individuals would we be up to the task?” Or are Homo sapiens a lost cause, an evolutionary mistake, a dud?

PUBLISHED BY PLAYSCRIPTS

MR. PERFECT is not what you expect in a love story. It is a romantic comedy about a quirky flight attendant who is a romance novel junkie. When she meets Mr. Perfect, she attempts to make love with him in the bathroom of an Airbus 32,000 feet over Dayton, Ohio. When it doesn't work out, she sets out on a personal search to find the purpose of life by connecting the random chance events that make up existence.

Her search leads her to find solace in the arms of a Ph.D. student whose thesis is about human beings' feeble attempt to find meaning where no meaning exists. Mr. Perfect finds comfort in the arms of a nationally known self-help guru and author of such famous books as Ten Days to Self-Esteem and On a Wing and a Prayer: A Twelve-Step Crash Course on Conquering Your Fear of Flying.

But when the self-help guru goes down on an airliner and the Ph.D. is charged with plagiarism, the lovers by chance find each other again and set out to create their own through-line, narrative, and meaning.

Now a full-length play, the original one-act version was produced at the New York City Fringe Festival a few years ago. The play was canceled after one performance when Hurricane Irene hit, but the short version did get one review from New York Theatre.com, "Hysterical! If you're going to see a play as a sort of escape, you will get more than you bargained for here."

"...Downs flexes his considerable wit in asking if our ability to live in the present has been quashed by our need for familiar outcomes. If that sounds like a lot to get your mind around, fear not, for Downs brings this down to earth in the person of Zooey, an audio-book junkie who wants her life to be the incarnation of her favorite taped stories." - Denver Post.

"Probably the wittiest new play in the last few seasons; Mr. Perfect is also very wise. In this case, Mr. Downs' laser-sharp pen skewers our need to have lives reflective of the romantic visions of authors of the past who floridly illustrate the way relationships should begin love at the first page and end happily ever after." - Colorado Critic Corner

"Hysterical! If you're going to see a play as a sort of escape, you will get more than you bargained for here." - nytheatre.com

Optioned for production 2021 - A new comedy inspired by Ivanka Trump's line, "Perception is more important than reality." Sylvia, a divorced Hollywood screenwriter, loses her grip as her career slides into middle-aged female oblivion. Desperate for work, she takes a job writing a movie "based on a true story" only to learn that Ivanka was right, "If someone perceives something to be true, it is more important than if it is in fact true."

You Can't Say That is a comedy about the labels we attach to each other as if those labels capture the sum total of who they or we are.

The story centers around Chris, a white newly hired adjunct professor in a diverse English department, who is assigned Dorothy, a transwoman, as his TA. Chris attempts to act 'woke," but his ultra-conservative childhood haunts him. The University's poorly produced diversity and inclusion training webinar "You Can't Say That" only complicates things. The department decides that all faculty and students are to wear name tags that label their personal nouns and pronouns. But Chris doesn't know who he is or which labels define him. He's trapped in a society that forces us to clip the edges of our identity to fit ready-made social expectations. Then he discovers that his politically incorrect gaffes and personal struggles with his sexuality are going public and that he must stop hitting the "accept" button on his or others' identities without first reading the terms and conditions - in other words, without understanding who he or they really are.

Our purpose in writing this comedy is to draw people out of their bubbles. When you laugh at something, you never look at it again the same way. Laughter can open our minds to new perceptions, which is the beginning of change.

This quick-moving comedy features a diverse cast and is filled with ridiculous webinars and student-written absurdist plays-within-the-plays that demand an after-performance talkback.

Angry Psycho Princesses is a new musical comedy about William and Kate Fankhousers of St. Paul, Minnesota. To save their collapsing marriage, they take their daughter Cindy on vacation to Pretty Princess Park, a rip-off theme park across from Disneyland.

Their daughter marvels at the animatronic “Hall of Princesses.” Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, all the princesses are there in robot form (at least the ones in public domain). But William and Kate aren’t enjoying themselves. She’s a businesswoman with a bladder infection; he’s an unemployed car salesman. While arguing, they miss the recorded announcement; the park is closing; they find themselves locked in overnight.

After hours, the android princesses magically come to life. William and Kate are terrified, Cindy thrilled. The bitter, jaded human princesses try to drink booze and do Peyote off the clock. When they see little Cindy, they warn her that she must get the hell out, for they were also once upon a time trapped in Pretty Princess Park after hours and were made captive robots by the Evil Queen.

That’s right; Pretty Princess Park is, in fact, a front for a villainous cult of war rats ruled over by the malicious Queen Badassery.

Badassery was also a sweet little girl once, but then her mother took her to see Disney’s Bambi. The sight of Bambi’s mother dying was just too much for her little brain; she came down with Bambi Syndrome, which causes severe adult-onset wickedness. Badassery puts a spell on little Cindy; when the sun comes up, she too will become a robot princess.

William and Kate Fankhousers must save their daughter, but they are immediately sidetracked when Kate falls in lust for the enchanting Charming Prince; he’s everything she’s ever wanted in a man, and he doesn’t sell cars. Then William tries to spawn with the Little Mermaid, a sexy Fukushima victim, half-woman, half-Mackerel.

When they come to their senses, Kate, William, and the angry princesses lead a rebellion against the evil Queen in an attempt to stop her before she makes more little girls believe in princesses.

Beverly Hills Theatre Guild’s Julie Harris Playwriting Award

A Ph.D. in English lit isn’t worth shit - just ask Dr. Helen Hand. Desperate for a job, she drunkenly agrees to teach at a conservative Bible college in the middle of nowhere Kansas. The problem - she’s a skeptic, a liberal, and gluten intolerant. She enters a world of rigid moral rules: no smoking, no alcohol, no doubting. Working undercover, she sets out to enlighten the fundamentalist students, but it quickly goes to hell. This small cast comedy looks at our need for faith and reason.

A radical comic romp around the plutocracy that now controls the USA. Ayn Rand sings about the virtues of selfishness. Then Capitalism, Jesus sings about how God wants everyone to be wealthy and how he can’t cure people if they have preexisting conditions. Top this off with songs about trickle-down economics, the Russian golden shower dancers, a socialism polka, and you have an entertaining, politically incorrect evening.

FOR MORE GO TO. https://www.fascismthemusical.com

PUBLISHED BY HEUER PUBLISHING

Headset, a view from the light booth, is a comedy about the technical side of theatre. The entire play takes place in the Light Booth of the Chicago-Ensemble-Repertory-Group-Theatre-Project, on the final night of the Company's questionable production of Hamlet. Everything that can go wrong does.

The Los Angeles Times called it "A delightfully funny play." While Kevin Fox of the Company of Lost Souls wrote, "Headset is that rare sort of play that gives audiences a look at the chaos that often happens behind the scenes of theatrical productions… very, very funny."

A comedy about a woman who comes home to Texas to confront the dogma of her sexist, egotistical, cowboy, philosopher father.

The shadow of Ayn Rand (The Fountainhead, Atlas Shrugged) looms large in the world today. Her thoughts on unregulated capitalism and selfishness have influenced everything from the Tea Party to her close friend and disciple Alan Greenspan, who served as Chairman of the Federal Reserve for nearly twenty years. Her philosophies are to Fortune 500 CEOs what Scientology is to movies stars.

In this small two-character play, I place Ayn on trial and ask the audience to be the jury and vote on which ending the play will have – guilty or not guilty. Were her thoughts on laissez-faire capitalism the fountainhead that led to our current economic situation? Have her philosophies on selfishness led to Social Darwinism? In her personal life, did she live up to her heroes such as John Galt?

The trial covers the strengths of her philosophies but also her drug use, affair with a man half her age, and temperament. From her appearance before the House Committee on Un-American activities to her influence over the Federal Reserve, this play presents both sides of the argument. It lets the audience vote on how the play will end (like Ayn’s play The Night of January 16th).

The Trial of Ayn Rand is an interactive play that will lead to post-performance discussions.

A new adaptation for smaller theatres

PUBLISHED BY NEXT STAGE PRESS

A new (two act) adaptation of Ibsen's classic drama designed for smaller theatre companies.

This is not Inherit the Wind, the 1955 play written by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee. Inherit the Wind used only a handful of lines from the original trial. Unlike Inherit the Wind, this play was drawn from the 1925 trial and edited into a 90-minute play. Almost 99% of this play comes directly from the 1925 trial transcripts.

By being more accurate, I hope to show how little things have changed in the year since the trial. The issues brought up by the trial (separation of church and state, academic freedom, and the tensions between religion and science) are still prevalent.

This play also uses gender-neutral casting and stages the trial as if it were happening today.

This play also works as reader's theatre.

A comedy about how nothing lasts forever, even love.

A short comedy about how the theatre will be changed by the Coronavirus.

Short comedy about etiquette and manners, forgetting to flush.

A ten minute play about how straight, white, privileged, male academics talk To each other in private!

Fuera De Orbita es una comedia sobre dos artistas de performance Dada que han construido un teatro en su sala de estar. Cada noche antes de una audiencia en vivo actúan sus vidas. Usted ha oído hablar de la televisión de la realidad; pensar en ello como teatro de la realidad. Artaud estaría orgulloso de ellos.

Las cosas van de mal en peor cuando descubren que un cometa ha sido detectado en el cielo nocturno. Hay una posibilidad de 50/50 que golpeará la tierra. Todo el mundo, incluido el público, puede tener sólo una hora para vivir. Esto obliga a los padres a dejar de discutir sobre cosas insignificantes como el matrimonio y empezar a discutir sobre grandes cuestiones filosóficas de la vida: ¿Es el cometa un signo de Dios o es sólo la gravedad? ¿Y qué diablos es arte de performance?

Cockeyed - это комедия о философском понимании Декарта «Я думаю, поэтому я есть». Это история среднего философа философии, который влюблен в недостижимую женщину своей мечты. Единственная проблема в том, что у нее стеклянный глаз и смотрит сквозь него. Вскоре ему приходит в голову, что она не нарциссична, но на самом деле его не видит. Он объясняет, что единственная логическая задача - перебраться с ней и сожителем - несмотря на то, что она не знает о его существовании. Его можно назвать комедией Вуди Аллена. (3 мужчины, 1 женщина, комплект)
Cockeyed - eto komediya o filosofskom ponimanii Dekarta «YA dumayu, poetomu ya yest'». Eto istoriya srednego filosofa filosofii, kotoryy vlyublen v nedostizhimuyu zhenshchinu svoyey mechty. Yedinstvennaya problema v tom, chto u neye steklyannyy glaz i smotrit skvoz' nego. Vskore yemu prikhodit v golovu, chto ona ne nartsissichna, no na samom dele yego ne vidit. On ob"yasnyayet, chto yedinstvennaya logicheskaya zadacha - perebrat'sya s ney i sozhitelem - nesmotrya na to, chto ona ne znayet o yego sushchestvovanii. Yego mozhno nazvat' komediyey Vudi Allena. (3 muzhchiny, 1 zhenshchina, komplekt

PUBLISHED BY NEXT STAGE PRESS

Arlen Wienberg, a Jewish anthropologist, is called to be an expert witness in a murder trial. The accused: a white police officer. His alleged crime: murdering a black man twenty years ago and burying the bones in the dirt floor beneath his brownstone. When Arlen arrives, he is shocked to discover that the defense lawyer is black.

Ira Altridge the black lawyer isn't having a good day. His first expert witness has suddenly resigned giving him only one thin lunch hour to get his new anthropologist up to speed.

Soon the two men discover that they know each other. They both grew up in the same suburb of Chicago. Ira called it Lawndale. Arlen, Judenstrasse. Some thirty years ago the suburb was a Jewish neighborhood, but now it's all black. Ira and Arlen grew up together during the neighborhood's rocky transition. In fact Arlen’s father was Ira’s landlord.

Arlen begins to suspect that he is being set up. He wonders if Ira really wants to defend officer McDill or if he has another agenda. Race and political correctness are at the center of this compact two hander.

Ein Blick Aus Der Beleuchterkabine ist eine Komödie über die technische Seite des Theaters. Das ganze Spiel findet im Lichtkabinen des Chicago-Ensemble-Repertory-Group-Theater-Projektes statt, in der letzten Nacht der fragwürdigen Produktion von Hamlet. Alles, was schief gehen kann, ist Die Los Angeles Times nannte es "Ein herrlich lustiges Spiel." Während Kevin Fox von der Firma der verlorenen Seelen schrieb: "Headset ist das seltene Spiel, das dem Publikum einen Blick auf das Chaos gibt, das oft hinter den Kulissen der Theaterproduktionen geschieht ... sehr sehr lustig."

A play about how important plays and playwrights are.

Nights At The Round Table is perfect for community theatres looking for a fun love story. Placed in a quirky Iowa bar n 1976. The owners are the bashful Harry and the unflappable Hazel. Tonight, they’re celebrating a recent turn of events in Harry’s usually fumbling love life. He’s met Diane, a new resident who, like Harry, is looking for love and a quiet life. The “Governor,” a perennial candidate, is the bar’s favorite patron. In the 50s, he was a serious contender for the office, but he has given up after losing two close elections. The only reason he continues to campaign is because his father left a will that states he must run for office to get the money. He doesn’t even bother to give original speeches anymore, instead cribbing from other famous politicians. Farmers have come from as far away as Moline to hear tonight’s pontification. Complications arise when Harry discovers that Diane has a husband: a recent parolee and no one to mess with.