We’ve been meaning to read “The Descendants” script for weeks but weren’t properly motivated until this week’s announcement that George Clooney was in talks for the lead role. It’s not that we’re freaky for Clooney (though we do appreciate the guy), but more so because we are indeed freaky for writer-director, Alexander Payne.
Screenwriters Nat Faxon and Jim Rash adapted Kaui Hart Hemmings’ novel and turned in this draft in April of ’08, so the script has likely changed some since (Payne is supposedly polishing it now), but here’s hoping not much will be different because we truly dug this script and think Faxon and Rash are the bees knees.
The Gist: Set in Honolulu, Hawaii, a father, Matt King (Clooney, if he accepts the role), struggles to take care of his daughters while his wife lies in a coma. (Spoiler-ish alert, but you probably already know this bit if you’ve read the synopsis elsewhere) He finds out that his wife had an affair and sets out to meet the man with his daughters in tow. In the background of all this, Matt is a direct descendant of one of the prominent families of Hawaii (yep, a honkie descendant) and together with a larger group of descendants having must decide whether or not to sell land.
For Show and Tell Today, I Brought Pictures I Took of My Mom in a Coma: Matt’s daughter, Scottie, is an overweight 10 year old, precociously funny and loud. In the Opening scene of “The Descendants,” she shows off pictures of her mom in a coma and sings the bananas line from Gwen Stefani’s “Hollaback Girl” while her dad, Matt, talks to her teacher. Scotty is easily the funniest moment in a given scene (one of her favorite things to do is to pretend to be a diva customer at a local bar). At different times throughout the script, she’s wearing giant sunglasses, oversized shoes, or joke tee-shirts with “She’s Fat. I’m Drunk. Its On.,” “I Only Have Sex On Days that End in Y,” and “Mrs. Clooney” printed in obnoxious lettering on the front (hopefully, they’ll drop the Mrs. Clooney bit now that Clooney may star). We assume the funky clothing are joke gifts given to her mother that Scotty’s gone and pulled out of her mother’s closets. “Little Miss Sunshine-ish?” Maybe a little, but we didn’t care.Ignore Him. He Gets Like This When He’s Stoned: Matt doesn’t quite know how to take care of Scottie or her older teenage sister Alex. After hearing that his wife’s condition is hopeless and that plug should be pulled, Matt decides to get Alex from boarding school and to put the call out to family to come say their goodbyes. Alex insists that her stoner friend (a boy, but not a boyfriend, ok, but they kiss), Sid, tag along wherever they go. Powerless to nearly any and all of his daughters’ whims, Matt allows it and Sid slowly becomes part of the fabric of their family and a person for Matt to talk to (or begrudgingly get high with) when he’s frustrated with his daughters. But don’t take that the wrong way, Matt isn’t another hip dad-who-gets-high (this is not “American Beauty” or every other film about a mid-life-crisis dad that’s been made since), he’s too uptight, stressed out, and distraught over his wife’s state, guilty that he wasn’t a better guy before his wife’s accident.
Then the Accident Happened: Not the boating accident that sent wife and mother, Joanie, into a coma, but the accident that was her eldest daughter seeing her with another man. It’s not until 50+ pages in the script that both Matt and the audience learn that Joanie was with someone else. This pacing could be trouble for others, but here we think screenwriters Faxon and Dash have catered this adaption to play to Alexander Payne’s strengths (his characters, his patient approach to their arcs). By the time Alex tells her father that she walked in on her mother with someone else, we’ve already spent 50+ pages feeling what its like for Matt to juggle his daughters emotions and suppress his own. We’re in rhythm with “the brood (how they’re referred to in the script).” Everyone is real (not movie reenactments of real people), the dialogue is incredibly naturalistic and easy, the descriptions are intuitive, and the characters are built through what they say and how they say it. So when a meatier plot shows up around page 56, we’re ready to go anywhere with this family and are just as psyched as they are to deviate from the sadness of their daily life.
His Name is Brian Speers: After Matt is rocked by the realization that his wife was cheating on him, he confronts friends who reluctantly reveal the name of the man she’d been seeing. Soon after, the brood is on the move to an adjacent island to hunt down this man so Matt can confront him. We won’t spoil what transpires.
What works: Just about everything. Add to that, Alexander Payne’s direction and this has now been officially added to our most anticipated films of 2010.
Who Should Join Clooney? Since 3 leads are under 20 (one being 10), throwing out casting ideas for those ages isn’t easy (especially since Payne seems to have a nack for putting little-knowns in decent-sized roles. Maybe a teen actress like Mia Wasikowska? Yes, we mention her all the time, but she’s great). Joanie, the wife (an ex-model, alive in flashback daydreams), is supposed to be much younger than the forty-something, Matt. Though her dance card is booked and she badly needs to not play another wife, we’d love to see January Jones here. Payne seems to love Reese Witherspoon, so maybe she could do him a favor? Most of the other adult roles are small and only have a scene or two (including the adulterer Brian Speers and his wife, Hugh King, Matt’s drunk, older cousin), but they’re written so well that we’d be surprised if they not filled with A-listers looking to work with Payne ala the way Zach Galifinakis and Danny McBride took small roles in Jason Reitman’s “Up In The Air.” ~ Andrew Hart