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So Long Simpson, Texas
| In June of 1956, Bruce Temple has a high school diploma in his hand and little thought in his head of how to conquer his newest challenges: college, military obligation, career field, virginity. On a whim, he lands a job in a TV station near his hometown. Mastering TV production techniques is a slow, stressful learning experience for Bruce, however, his personal life education accelerates when his long-time friend, Larry Stone, gets a job at the station. Larry and female co-workers introduce Bruce to the life a Southern Baptist boy has only heard about in sermons. Provoked at a party, Larry breaks the TV weatherman’s jaw and is fired. Bruce is also canned due to an event indirectly related to the party. Ol’ Mac, TV station handyman and Bruce’s philosophical mentor, quits his job in protest of the firings. The jobless trio hit the road in search of fame, fortune, women, the meaning of life, and their next meal. |
After The Ten O'clock News
In late 1961, Bruce Temple has fulfilled his military obligation and takes over the job he was hired to do two years earlier at a TV station in Two Rivers, Mississippi. Bruce also takes up where he left off with Sue Ann Crawford, his true love and senior pre-med student at Memphis State University. A few weeks into the new job, Bruce is fired after several unnerving civil rights-related incidents, beginning when a lynch mob comes to the studio seeking a Black politician and culminating when Bruce and a cohort are severely beaten after they filmed Freedom Riders attempting to integrate a Greyhound bus station. Confused and desperate, Bruce accepts a TV job offer in Texas, sight unseen. He realizes he has made a monumental mistake the moment he enters the station. He reluctantly accepts the challenge; however, maintaining a serious love relationship between Banta, Texas, and Memphis, Tennessee, is difficult at best. Besides a pipsqueak program director and a tyrannical general manager in Texas, Bruce’s situation is further complicated by a beautiful weather girl and a nympho traffic director, each of whom wants to test his loyalty to his betrothed.
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