EXT. BEACH, PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND — DAY
The sky is gray. The sand is dark, as though it has just rained. It looks as though it may rain again. RACHEL is sitting heavily on a towel, doing nothing, facing the sea.
DENISE
offscreen
Hi honey!
Rachel turns to face the camera and says nothing. Her face is expressionless.
DENISE
offscreen
Here we are on beautiful Prince Edward Island. There’s little Rachel, and there’s Bill.
PAN to BILL, next to an umbrella. He is in an elaborate beach chair with TWO BEER HOLDERS, both containing beers.
BILL
too loudly
We’re having a GREAT TIME.
DENISE
offscreen, fake cheerful
Bill’s a little grumpy because of the weather!
BILL
Denise, can you just turn that thing off.
DENISE
offscreen
Can you at least try to enjoy yourself.
BILL
What does it LOOK LIKE I’M DOING.
Let’s put it this way: If I were Rachel, lying in bed feeling awful, this would not make the list of Scenes I Would Want to Be Watching in a Movie.
And actually, everything we put together via the Ken Burns method failed that test. In essence, we were trying to put together a biography of a girl who hadn’t lived very long and hadn’t really had that interesting of a life. I know that sounds horrible, but it’s true. None of it was interesting to watch. And a lot of it was sort of painful.
And then taken as a whole, the documentary-of-Rachel’s-life idea was really painful, because we never came out and said it, but basically the message was: Now that your life is over, we can summarize it. So here’s a summary of all of your life. There maybe isn’t a worse thing that we could have said.
So we needed a new method. And it needed to be much better. Otherwise, we were going to kill ourselves.
Meanwhile, things were going shitty with Rachel. I mean, it was usually just more of the same.
INT. HOSPITAL ROOM — EVENING
GREG
So I was thinking today: Strawberry is my favorite flavor of candy. But I don’t actually like strawberries that much. And then I realized, strawberry-flavored candy doesn’t actually taste like strawberries at all. So what does it taste like? That’s got to be the taste of something, right? Is there this delicious mystery fruit out there that I don’t know about? I want to eat that fruit, you know? I want to eat the hell out of it.
Or then I was thinking, does an animal maybe taste like that? Like maybe if you ate, I don’t know, a walrus, it would have that awesome taste, but the guys who make Airheads are afraid to say, walrus-flavored Airheads.
RACHEL
weakly
Yeah.
GREG
Yo, is that a new pillow? I think that’s a lady pillow over there. Hey . . .
whispering
Would you mind introducing me to her? Because she’s totally fine. You don’t have to if it’s awkward.
RACHEL
possibly trying to laugh
hhhhnnh
GREG
panicking
Holy shit, I forgot. What time is it? It’s after five? I have to do Pigeon Man. Sorry, it’s part of my new exercise regimen.
crossing eyes, bobbing head, strutting
PIGEON MAN. PIGEON MAN. WALKS LIKE A PIGEON. PIGEON MAN. POOPS ON YOU, FROM THE SKY. HE’S THE PIGEON-EST MAN.
RACHEL
Greg, you don’t have to—try to make me laugh.
GREG
What?
RACHEL
You don’t have to put on—a show.
GREG
feeling like shit
OK.
Plan C was sock puppets.
First of all, let me just say that sock puppets can be way more emotional and expressive than they get credit for. There are a lot of different ways to put your hand in a sock and make it look like a face. Also, if you draw eyebrows over the eyes, that’s really humanizing. You have to know what you’re doing with the mouth, but if you do, you can make magic happen.
All that said, Plan C was a cancer-themed movie starring sock puppets. So it was pretty much doomed from the get-go.
Once we decided to try sock puppets, our main problem was plot. If Rachel was the star, what did she do? Whose ass did she kick? Was she going to kick leukemia’s ass?
INT. BRIGHTLY COLORED CARDBOARD LANDSCAPE — DAY
RACHEL
La di da di da
LUKE
wearing cape and mustache, speaking with a Southern accent
Howdy!
RACHEL
suspiciously
Hmmm. Who are you.
LUKE
Uh . . . my name is Luke.
RACHEL
What’s your full name.
LUKE
Luke mmmphlmmph.
RACHEL
I can’t hear you.
LUKE
Luke Emia.
RACHEL
TIME FOR A BEATDOWN.
How did this make us better than Justin Howell? The theater kid who wrote the song about how leukemia made Rachel want to scream-ia? We weren’t sure.
INT. BRIGHTLY COLORED CARDBOARD LANDSCAPE — DAY
LUKE EMIA
addressing camera
What’s up, this is a public service announcement. I’m leukemia. I like to pick on kids and teenagers, because I’m extremely pathetic. Here’s a list of things I hate:
—delicious foods such as pizza
—adorable panda cubs
—if you were to fill an Olympic-size swimming pool with pleasant-smelling rubber balls such as would be fun to frolic around in, I would hate that as well.
Not a lot of people know this, but my favorite thing in the world is a poorly made car commercial with generic guitar music in the backGROUN GAARRGGHH
RACHEL, holding a baseball bat in her mouth, clubs LUKE while yodeling.
It was just all really childish and simplistic. It had nothing to do with anything. It looked like television for toddlers, and even worse, it was a big stupid lie. Rachel wasn’t fighting leukemia. She wasn’t interested in fighting. She seemed like she was giving up.
Plan D was stop-motion animation. In stop-motion animation, you shoot a single frame of something, move the characters slightly and maybe also the camera, shoot another frame, move things again, etc. It’s painstaking and time-consuming. On the plus side, it allows you to use LEGO Darth Vader.
We wanted Rachel to watch a bunch of evil people talking about how much they love leukemia, and get pissed off at them, and be inspired to fight back. This led to some terrible filmmaking.
INT. LEGO DEATH STAR — NIGHT, WHICH IT ALWAYS IS IN SPACE
Elevator music. LEGO stormtroopers are wandering around in the background.
DARTH VADER
singing to himself
La la la. I am a jackass. Doot di doo. Big, big jerk.
looking at camera
Oh! Hello! I didn’t see you there. My name is Darth Vader, and I’m the president of Evil Villains In favor of Leukemia, a.k.a. EVIL.
Appearing in the lower left-hand corner:
Evil
Villains
In favor of
Leukemia
DARTH VADER