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...look closer
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Film by Sam Mendes
Screenplay by Alan Ball
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Mother
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Father
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Beauty
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Daughter
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Ricky
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On VIDEO: JANE IN profile, looking toward the sky, her eye shut, enjoying the sun on her face.
RICKY
Jesus, you're beautiful.
ON VIDEO: Jane in Ricky's bed, naked. She quickly pulls a sheet up over her breasts.
JANE (shy)
Don't.
RICKY
Why?
JANE (re: image on TV)
It's okay when you're just filming me, because that's just you, looking at me. But it's weird, watching myself. I don't like how I look.
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RICKY
I can't believe you don't know how beautiful you are.
JANE
Look, I'm not going to sit here for that shit.
She gets out OF bed, takes his camera and focuses it on him.
We see his image on the TV as she videotapes.
JANE (cont'd)
Ha. How does it feel now?
RICKY
Fine.
JANE
You don't feel naked?
RICKY
I am naked.
JANE
You know what I mean.
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...And then LESTER smiles: the deep, satisfied smile of a man who just now understands the punch line of a joke he heard long ago...
After a beat, the barrel OF a Gun rises UP behind his head.
LESTER
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They say your entire life flashes in front of your eyes when you die.
It's not really your entire life...
It's just the moments that stood out...
And they're not the ones you'd expect, either...
The moments you remember are tiny ones, some you haven't thought of in years...
If you've thought of them at all...
But in the last second of your life, you remember them with astonishing clarity...
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Because they're just so...
beautiful...
...that they must have been imprinted, on like a cellular level...
For me it was, lying on my back at Boy Scout camp, watching falling stars...
And yellow leaves from the ginkgo trees that lined our street...
Or my grandmother's hands, and the way her skin seemed like paper...
And the first time I saw my cousin Tony's brand new GTO...
And the way I felt when Angela first smiled at me...
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Carolyn...
And Janie...
And Carolyn's roses....
I guess I could be pretty pissed of about what happened to me... but it's hard to stay mad, when there's so much beauty in the world.
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Sometimes I feel like I'm seeing it all at once, and it's too much, my heart fills up like a balloon that's about to burst...
And then I remember to relax, and stop trying to hold on to it, and then it flows through me like rain
and I can't feel anything but gratitude for every single moment of my stupid little life...
You have no idea what I'm talking about, I'm sure... but don't worry...
You will someday.
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