A message from the author, Baum: Thank you all for reading and the wonderful reviews!
Note: Baum has changed and added several places in the script's part 1 and part 2, so if you read part 1 and 2 BEFORE March 1st, you might as well want to read the two parts again, since they were replaced on March 1st. Thank you for paying attention to this matter!
INT. MONROE HOMESTEAD
ALMA
I'm planning to start a friendly conversation with you and end up letting myself explode and scream at you.
ENNIS
Awkward.
ALMA
You don't go with Jack Nasty to fish.
ENNIS
Of course I don't. I go with him to buy fish. I have discovered this HUGE fish market in Norway.
ALMA
That's an even lamer lie. GET OUT OF MY HOUSE!
ENNIS
What's wrong with you?
ALMA
In order to make this scene dramatic, I, the annoying ex-wife, must scream at you and kick your ass. GET OUT!
ENNIS
Whatever.
(pause)
Why does the rest of the world also hate me?
DIRECTOR ANG LEE
Because this is a bleak, tragic movie. As the main character, you must look really pathetic.
ENNIS
Isn't that pointless?
DIRECTOR ANG LEE
It's for the sake of Audience Sympathy.
FILM CRITICS
I'm overwhelmed by sympathy purely because their conditions are something that I can totally relate to! You see, I was once also either the world-deserted, marginal man in the society or the victim side of a failed marriage! OSCAR FOR HEATH LEDGER AND MICHELLE WILLIAMS!
EXT. RANDOM VACATION MOUNTAINS
JACK
It seems our conflict during my meeting with your Pieces of Family Value Symbolism has been solved automatically without any explanation to the audience.
ENNIS
You are not mad at me, are you?
JACK
Of course not; I'm desperately in love with you. And also because after that conflict I regularly go to…uh, a place.
ENNIS
You are a bastard, but I won't show my suspicions until the end of this movie. My sucker-looking mannerism and appearance has made me shitty and dull, but the upside is at least I don't have a stupid mustache to convey my Movie Age.
JACK
Shit, that's not only for my age but also for my social status.
ENNIS
Forget it, Jack, it doesn't work. Without it you looked extremely girly, now with it you look like a gratuitously cunning Wall Street Villain.
JACK
DUH! That's what I am supposed to be! I'm a salesman, am I not?
ENNIS
Well, do you think the audience like cunning Wall Street Villain?
JACK
Maybe…not. They really hate this type of persons, actually.
ENNIS
Then how can they continue to sympathize you if you look so hateful?
JACK
Damn you Ennis; don't you know my hateful appearance has made me even more pathetic and has transformed Audience Irritation into Further Audience Sympathy? And at least I'm not an asshole, like you are.
ENNIS
That's PRECISELY why I'm winning that Oscar.
JACK
Assholes win Oscars?
DIRECTOR ANG LEE
(smug)
That's a fine tradition.
SEAN PENN AND RUSSELL CROWE
We can vouch for that. We are the living proof.
FILM CRITICS
Muahaha! That's because WE are assholes and assholes love other assholes! OSCAR FOR HEATH LEDGER! He's our man! LEDGER, LEDGER, LEDGER…
They DEPART and go on their separate, pathetic, good-for-nothing LIVES for some years. ENNIS meets CASSIE, the third annoying, UNFORTUNATE, WOMAN.
INT. BAR—WYOMING
CASSIE
Apparently after Alma fired you, there is nothing standing between you and your Truelove. Therefore, I want to be your girlfriend in order to make you again trapped in the social conventions that can dissuade you from pursuing your happiness.
(pause)
No, this scheme doesn't seem to work. I don't think I like you.
ENNIS
(confused)
Because I'm not fun?
CASSIE
(crying)
Girls don't fall in love with fun, Ennis! They fall in love randomly!
ENNIS
That makes a lot of sense in this movie.
FILM CRITICS
LEDGER, LEDGER, LEDGER…
CASSIE runs away.
INT. ALMOST THE SAME BAR—EXCEPT IT IS IN TEXAS
JACK meets LASHAWN, the movie's forth annoying WOMAN. She possesses considerable power of ANNOYANCE and successfully becomes the most annoying WOMAN in this movie, beating out ALMA. But to THE AUDIENCE'S profound disappointment, she is not UNFORTUNATE.
JACK
Is this couple's appearance necessary? I mean, of course, Ennis and I are in agony and all, and we are reasonably really pissed, but now this pointless 20 minutes of dancing and chatting and nothing that really holds any significance in this movie?
DIRECTOR ANG LEE
AND AUTHOR ANNIE PROULX
To show that you are really pathetic and somehow rationalize your intense, twisted hatred for the society, we have to reveal that your marriage is virtually dead.
JACK
(bitter)
I thought that was painfully obvious.
THE AUDIENCE
I agree. You've already spent at least 45 minutes showing that, and I could have been saved from the presence of that annoying Woman and the wasted 20 minutes of my life. And what the hell is about that Randall guy whom no one really cares?
DIRECTOR ANG LEE
He's quite important, actually, because he is presumably that Texas neighbor of Jack's mentioned in John Twist's lines.
JACK
You mean the guy that I'm supposed to drag to help run the crappy ranch of Lightning Flat? Yeah, according to that Appalling Old Country Man's account, it seems that I have finally given up on Ennis and possibly turned to Randall for a life together.
(pause)
In fact it's a good thing that my seemingly undying but in truth nearly dying-out love for Ennis is so worthy of Audience Sympathy, isn't it? Or else I will look really awful, uh, sort of, because I have not only "betrayed" Ennis, but also, in the course of doing it, disrupted another family and put the apparently economically dependent LaShawn into a desperate situation when her husband runs away with me; and all this is happening only because of my (and perhaps Randall's) whimsical selfishness.
DIRECTOR ANG LEE AND AUTHOR ANNIE PROULX
Can't see what your point is.
FILM CRITICS
LEDGER, LEDGER, LEDGER…
To be continued...
