Screenplays

It’s fair to say Moe Green never caught a break in her life.  So it’s not completely out of place that she was diagnosed with terminal cancer at the age of twenty-two and given three months left to live.  That’s probably why Moe jumped right over denial and went right to the second stage of grief, Anger. You can’t blame her, though, with a father that she never met and a mother who’s in jail, she managed to navigate the foster care system and get her GED and an Associate’s degree because she was going to make something of her life.  So much for that now.  

 

But Moe attributed her success to being a list person, so she made one last list.  On it was everything she was going to do to make her life mean something in the time she had left.

 

In Moe’s mind, the only person who ever really loved her was her grandmother.  Grandma had gone to Europe when she was Moe’s age and loved it, had the time of her life; she talked about it all the time.  So, Moe was gonna do that, see Europe.  Most of the ass-wipes in her life had never even left Pittsburgh.

 

Getting back to that anger thing, Moe had never really been lucky in love which led to item number seven on her list: find some cute fuck-boy, have my fun with him and throw him away like used toilet paper. As it turned out, that fuck-boy had the given name of Cool, which he didn’t always quite live up to, so he ended up being the toilet paper that stuck to her shoe.  Try as she might to wipe him off, even when she thought he was gone, he’s still managed to be there.  Cool had his own reasons for going to Europe, but I guess none of them were as important as the fact that he was still stuck on her.   

 

When they enter the upside-down world of Act Two, where everything is beautiful, tulips are in bloom and horse chestnut flowers fall, like snowflakes, to the streets of Amsterdam all around them,  their love also blossoms.  The grey oppression of Pittsburgh is no longer even visible in the rearview mirror.  Being two kids playing a game of “Beat the Clock” with their love, they decide to get married.  They tie the knot in a beautiful seaside village complete with cobblestones and flowerpots that hang from streetlights.  The wonder of their upside-down world continues as they follow Grandma’s footsteps across Europe.

 

Unfortunately for our couple, there is a third act.  But like all great third acts, there is a plot twist you didn’t see coming.  After collapsing and being rushed to the hospital, the doctor tells us that Moe’s cancer is in remission, and she is pregnant.  That sure changes things.  Maybe her life will mean something after all.  If only the plot twists were done.

 

You’ve come this far, so you should probably just read the script to see if it’s as good as you think it might be.  Spoiler alert:  It is.