Me and Earl and the Dying Girl (22 page)

And then the other 8 percent tried to be funny or creative, and that was even worse.

• “In eighth period, I wrote a song that I want to sing you. Are we ready? Can I just sing it? OK. Rachel Kushner / Don’t you push her / She’s got leukemia / and she probably wants to scream-ia / But she’s everybody’s friend! / You know her life’s not gonna end!!!”

• “Even if you do die, I was thinking today, it’s really only on the arbitrary human scale that a human life seems short, or long, or whatever, and, like, from the perspective of eternal time, the human life is vanishingly small, like it’s really equivalent whether you live to be 17 or 94 or even 20,000 years old, which is obviously impossible, and then, on the other hand, from the perspective of an ultra-nanoinstant, which is the smallest measurable unit of time, a human life is almost infinite even if you die when you’re, like, a toddler. So either way it doesn’t even matter how long you live. So I don’t know if that makes you feel better, but it’s just something to think about.”

• “Greg’s a fag. I guess he’s in love with you, so that makes him bisexual or whatever. I hope you feel better.”

Third Problem: Madison had already made get-well cards for Rachel.
So we weren’t really doing anything new, for one. We were just doing a get-well card in video form.

Also—this took a little longer to realize—there was nothing specifically Gaines/Jackson about the get-well video. It was something anyone could do. So was it really that great of a gesture? No.

We’d been making films for seven years. We needed to do something better.

Ken Burns has done a bunch of documentaries about things, like the Civil War. He wasn’t around for the Civil War, just like we weren’t really around for most of Rachel’s life. I mean, we were, but we weren’t paying attention. That sounds horrible, but you know what I mean. Or, maybe it’s just horrible. I don’t know.

Look: We haven’t been following Rachel around with a camera for her entire life in order to get footage for an eventual documentary. You can’t really get mad at me for that.

Anyway, the Ken Burns style is to show a bunch of photos and old footage taken by other people, along with voiceovers and interviews and stuff. It’s a very easy style to copy, so this was our designated Plan B after the get-well video idea failed. Unfortunately, we really only had one person to interview: Denise. And Denise was going through a rough time. Her only child had cancer, and Rachel’s father—I probably forgot to mention this earlier—was estranged from the family.

Interviewing this woman was a total nightmare.

INT. KUSHNER LIVING ROOM — DAY

GREG

offscreen

So, Denise. Can you tell me a bit about Rachel’s birth?

DENISE

distractedly

Oh, Rachel’s birth.

GREG

offscreen

Yes.

DENISE

Rachel’s birth. What an ordeal.

inexplicably loudly

She was never much of a fighter. She’s always been a quiet girl, just so sweet, never wanting to fight, and now I don’t know what to do. I can’t make her fight, Greg.

GREG

offscreen

Uh, right.

DENISE

I raised a girl who’s sweet, and . . . and lovely, but not tough.

GREG

offscreen

So what was she like as a baby? Did she have a favorite toy?

DENISE

distractedly

She used to read . . . books.

uncomfortable pause

Greg, I’m a good mother. But I don’t know how to get her through this. It’s like, God forbid, she doesn’t want to live anymore.

GREG

offscreen

So, as a baby, she liked to . . . read books.

DENISE

firmly, sort of robotically

I’m a good mother. I’ve been a good mother to her.

We made an attempt to interview Rachel’s grandparents over the phone, but that was possibly an even more depressing failure.

“Hello?”

“Hi, Mr. Lubov—this is Greg, a friend of Rachel’s.”

“Who?”

“A friend of your granddaughter, Rachel.”

“
Whose
friend?”

“Your granddaughter. Rachel.”

“Hang on. (Janice. It’s for you.
I said it’s for you.
The
phone.
No, I don’t know where it is. The
phone
, Janice.)”

“. . .”

“Who is this?”

“Hi, my name is Greg. I’m a friend of your granddaughter, Rachel.”

“Rachel lives . . . Rachel lives with her mother.”

“I know—I’m doing a documentary? About Rachel?”

“You’re doing a—oh.”

“I was wondering if I could ask you some questions?”

“What?”

“Can I ask you some questions about Rachel?”

“Ask her mother. Denise.”

“It’s for a film, to make her happy.”

“OK, I don’t know who you are, and I don’t know how to help you. But if you’re looking for Rachel, she lives with her mother, Denise.”

“Um . . . OK, thanks.”

I hung up because it sounded like Rachel’s grandma was
about to cry. But sometimes grandmas just sound like that. Either way: excruciating.

There wasn’t much footage lying around for us to use, either. There was one vacation video that Denise let us look at, but we were really hesitant to use it.

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.