Genre: Comedy-Drama
Premise: A teenager is forced by his mother to befriend a female classmate who’s just been diagnosed with leukemia. An unexpected but life-changing friendship follows.
About: This former 2012 Black List script turned film just sold for a record 12 million dollars at Sundance.
Writer: Jesse Andrews (based on his own book)
Details: 114 pages (3/23/12 draft)
When I heard yesterday about the big Sundance sale for this movie, I pulled “Me & Earl & The Dying Girl” off of the digital pile to check it out. Now I’m no cinematic scientist, but I was hoping that the film had been purchased because it was actually good, and not because one of its principle characters was a female teenager dying with cancer, thus the perfect opportunity to capitalize on the success of The Fault In Our Stars.
Then again, for a place where most sales hover around the 2 million dollar range (The Eli Roth Keanu Reeves collaboration, “Knock Knock” just sold for 2.5), 14 mil is a hefty price to pay for something that isn’t any good. Sundance may have lost its luster since most indie films are going straight to digital these days. But their 2 or 3 breakout sales are usually pretty good. Let’s see if Cancer Flick joins those ranks.
Greg is starting his senior year at high school and informs us right away that by the end of this year, he’ll have killed a girl. Well, maybe not directly, but in some significant way he’ll be responsible. Greg is a weirdo who spends the majority of his time making bizarre movies (stop motion, sock puppets) with his best friend, Earl.
So one night, Greg’s informed by his mother that his classmate, Rachel, has been diagnosed with leukemia. Because his mom happens to be the most mom-like mom in the world, she insists that Greg call Rachel and offer her help, despite the fact that he barely knows her. After a lot of resistance, he does, and it goes about as well as you’d expect. As in it’s a disaster. Neither of the two are interested in talking to each other.
Unfortunately, mom doesn’t let Greg off the hook, and forces him to actually visit Rachel. What starts off as a series of weird awkward conversations, develops into Greg’s first genuine male-female friendship. And oh yeah, Greg informs us, don’t worry. Rachel is not the girl who dies in this movie. That will be someone else. Hang tight to find out who.
In a sort of 80s homage, Greg is in love with the hottest girl in school, Madison, who happens to actually be that rare combination of hot and cool. As Greg drools over Madison’s every micro-movement, Rachel’s at home literally drooling into a barf bucket, as her disease continues to worsen.
Eventually, Greg decides to make one of his weird movies for Rachel to cheer her up. But it proves to be the most difficult thing he’s ever done, and he gets lost in numerous versions of the film. As Rachel continues to get worse and Prom night approaches (hey, it IS a high school movie), Greg has to stop pretending that all of this is going to be okay, and come to terms with the fact that the most important girl in his life may not be around soon.
Me & Earl & The Dying Girl kind of sneaks up on you like a hillbilly in the Appalachian Mountains. You think you’re safe in your little tent as you zip up your sleeping bag and get ready to call it a night, only to realize that you’re in the middle of nowhere and, if something goes wrong, there’s no one around to hear you scream.
Okay, maybe that’s a little over-the-top but the point is, “Dying Girl” comes at you under the radar as this sweet safe little story, only to whack you over the head when you least expect it. And to that end, it’s a good read. I mean there really is a lot to celebrate here. Which is funny to say, because there was one element that almost COMPLETELY RUINED the screenplay for me.
I don’t know how much you guys have heard of the term AFFECTED DIALOGUE, but it’s about time we talk about it. Have you ever watched American Idol and listened to someone sing in a very RASPY voice? In these cases, the singer is AFFECTING their voice to create a certain sound. Now there are two kinds of affect – the kind where you can tell that that’s the singer’s NATURAL tone, and the kind where the singer TRIES HARD to add the rasp. The latter never works because no matter how good of a singer you are, you can hear the trying.
Affected dialogue is similar. It’s when you give a character a unique “affected” way of speaking. You can spot a great dialogue writer when they affect a character’s dialogue so naturally that you don’t notice it. Even though the character is clearly talking in a stylized way, it feels like an extension of who they are.
Then there’s the opposite, and that’s the character of Earl (Greg’s friend), a character whose dialogue was SO affected that it almost single-handedly destroyed the script for me. I liked almost everything else about this script except when Earl spoke. Here are some examples of his lines. “Won em off Ill Phil playing Tonk. Tired a whoopin his dumb ass.” “So now we both lit.” “Did he act all stoned and shit? While he teaching?” “Man, what the hell’s wrong with you. All apologetic and shit. Makin errything about your sorry ass.” Yes, that was “everything” spelled “errything.”
Maybe the actor they got to play Earl in this film is a comedic genius and makes this dialogue work. But reading it was like watching a 60 year old white male who’s never been to an actual ghetto in his life do tons of research online of how black people talk, and then write a character with a “black” voice. It actually made me cringe at times.
The crazy thing is that Greg’s dialogue is great. Greg is funny, thoughtful, strange, and therefore whatever comes out of his mouth is usually memorable (from one of Greg’s voice overs: “One last thing. Hot girls destroy your life. That’s just a fact. It doesn’t matter if the hot girl is also a good person. She’s a moose, you’re a chipmunk, she’s just wandering through the forest, oblivious, and she doesn’t even know that she stomped your head.”). There’s no affecting Greg’s voice. He just “is.”
Andrews also possesses a very rare superpower – the ability to take the script through familiar story beats without you knowing you’re going there. (spoiler) There’s this moment late in the script where Greg is taking Madison to prom, and we’re on our way to pick Madison up, only to show up, instead, at the hospital, where we realize Greg has ditched his dream date in favor of being with Rachel. I kicked myself for not seeing it coming, but oh how intense the moment was because I didn’t.
(Spoiler) Andrews also uses the “unreliable narrator” approach to assure us that Rachel is going to be okay in the end. We’re specifically told she’s not going to die. But then, quite suddenly, she does. And in retrospect, you knew it was going to happen, but dammit if, in the moment, you didn’t believe Greg when he assured you she’d be fine.
Finally, Andrews uses some bells & whistles to spice up a lot of the scenes. For instance, when Greg goes to school, we occasionally go into a little “faux-Terminator” POV where he assesses, like a robot, the variables (jocks, hot girls, appropriate handshakes) a typical high school senior deals with on a daily basis. Or whenever he goes over to Rachel’s, there’s a poster of Hugh Jackman in her room that will just start sharing his opinions with Greg.
I don’t mind Bells & Whistles IF they’re a natural extension of the characters or story. So let’s say you’re writing a script with a baseball player as the protagonist. If, say, the ghost of Babe Ruth occasionally appears to give the protagonist life advice, that makes sense due to the baseball connection. If your main character has deep intellectual conversations with squirrels for no reason, however, it can come off as “quirky try-hard.” Me & Earl & The Dying Girl falls somewhere in between these two extremes. Some of these bells & whistles were funny enough to make you forget they were written, while others (Hugh Jackman) screamed “Look at me! I’m a quirky writer!”
Despite the back and forth nature of this review, I’d definitely recommend Me & Earl & The Dying Girl. And that’s mainly because (spoiler) the ending really hits you on an emotional level. I didn’t expect it at all but darnit if Andrews didn’t suck me into this world and make me care. I don’t know how this new generation of writers is writing about cancer and keeping it accessible, but somehow they’re doing it. Check out “Dying Girl” if you can find it.
[ ] what the hell did I just read?
[ ] wasn’t for me
[xx] worth the read
[ ] impressive
[ ] genius
What I learned: You can’t use action lines to tell the reader that a character is speaking. You have to ACTUALLY HAVE THEM SPEAK. I’ll notice screenwriters make this mistake every once in awhile, and Andrews (who makes a few newbie mistakes throughout “Dying Girl”) makes it here. During a scene where Greg is making a bunch of jokes to Rachel and she’s laughing excessively, we get the action line: “Rachel is now begging Greg to stop.” Even though we understand what you mean, it doesn’t feel like it’s happening because you’re only describing it. You need Rachel to literally beg Greg to stop via her dialogue. So in this case, you would instead write something like – RACHEL (dying laughing): Stop! Oh my go… (gasping for air) please…Greg…
