• “I know we never hung out very much.”
• “You’re in my class, but we’ve never really talked.”
• “I actually don’t know anything about you.”
• “But I do know that you have the inner strength to get better.”
• “You have a beautiful smile.”
• “You have a beautiful laugh.”
• “You have really beautiful eyes.”
• “I think your hair is beautiful.”
• “I know you’re Jewish, but I’d like to just say something from the Bible.”
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 ha
ve 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.
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
We just think leukemia is the greatest. But don’t take my word for it! Here’s some testimony from some annoying pirates!
EXT. LEGO PIRATE SHIP — DAY
PIRATE KING
Arrrr! ’Twas a day the likes o’ no other, athwart the starboard bow upon the rottin’ maggoty beard o’ Davy Jones hisself!!! Upon the horizon did Two-Eyepatch Bill not espy the hideous sucker’d limbs o’ the mighty Kraken—fast amidships all cannons astern and swab the decks, ye filthy motherless bilge rat SWINE!!!!!
INT. DEATH STAR — NIGHT
DARTH VADER
Uh . . . sure.
INT. GREG’S DESK — DAY
PLASTIC FIGURINE OF SERPENTOR
with a snake accent
I am Serpentor, Cobra Emperor, of the evil Cobra Command! Leukemia is my favorite thing in the world! Now, because I love leukemia so much, I am going to go make out with my sister, the Baroness Anastasia DeCobray! You can tell she’s evil because her last name has the word “Cobra” in it!
BARONESS
I love making out with my nasty-ass brother! Because I’m disgusting as hell!!
SERPENTOR
How do we kiss again?
BARONESS
My goddamn mouth won’t open.
SERPENTOR
Neither will mine.
BARONESS
The hell we supposed a do now.
INT. DEATH STAR — NIGHT
DARTH VADER
We sure do love leukemia! Don’t believe me yet? Why don’t you ask this spinning tarantula paperweight?
INT. GREG’S DESK — DAY
The tarantula paperweight is a dead tarantula encased in glass. The magic of stop-motion animation is causing it to spin around in a circle.
SPINNING TARANTULA PAPERWEIGHT
with a German accent for some reason
Nothing makes me happier than leukemia.
Christ.
So this was Plan D. Maybe it would have been good. I don’t know. I doubt it. What I do know is, it took forever to do, and a few days before Thanksgiving break, Rachel and Denise decided that they were done with chemotherapy, and being in the hospital, and getting treatment. They were just going to let things run their course, they decided.
At that point I didn’t really know what to do.
So Rachel moved back to her room. Things were different, obviously. Actually, she was in a pretty good mood those first few days. The first day she came back was a Friday. It w
as late November but not cold yet.
“They’ve stopped shooting me up with chemicals,” she explained.
“So that’s over?”
“They just didn’t seem to be doing me any good.”
We silently contemplated this morbid utterance. For some reason, I said, “Certainly not in the hair department.” I was trying to make things less depressing, which of course had the effect of making things more depressing. But Rachel actually laughed. It was sort of a different kind of laugh, like she had to reengineer the shape of her mouth during laughter, because the old way was too painful. I did a surprisingly good job of not thinking about this.
Pretty soon I was just talking a lot and I wasn’t trying too hard to make her laugh and it felt a lot like before she went to the hospital and got all depressed. We were just sprawled out in her kind of dark poster-and-pillow-intensive room and I was going on at insane length about my life and she was just listening and absorbing it all and it felt like we were back on normal terms with each other. It was possible to forget that she had decided to die.
By the way, when someone stops cancer treatment and you point out that this is a decision to die, everyone freaks out at you. Mom, for example. I don’t even want to get into it.
But yeah.
“So Gretchen is just acting nuts.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Oh man. Girls at that age are just impossible. There’s just a lot of shrieking and stomping around. Some of it doesn’t even make any sense. Were you like that? At like age fourteen?”
“I fought with my mom sometimes.”
“Gretchen even gets pissed off at Cat Stevens. She’ll be petting him and then he’ll freak out and bite her, which he’s been doing for his entire life, and then suddenly she’s like, Oh my God, I fucking hate stupid Cat Stevens. She says he looks like a big garden slug. Which he does, obviously, but that’s sort of what’s so great about him.”
“That he looks like a slug?”
“Yeah, he’s just this ugly stripey slug color. He’s like the biting champion of the slug world.”
I guess it actually wasn’t possible to completely forget that she had decided to die. Because the whole time as we were talking, it was in the back of my mind and it was stressing me out a little bit, the idea that Rachel was close to the end of her life. Or not stressing me out, but just kind of weighing on me and making me feel a little short of breath.