Moving your estranged and deranged 82-year-old dad into eye-wateringly expensive care facilities isn’t the laugh riot it sounds. But that’s the inciting incident that rips Richard Keane 43, from his L.A life with its partly cloudy problems – a failing real estate business and failing relationship—and hurls him home to Ireland and a quagmire of sibling torment with his older sister, Clare. But their conflicting agendas on how to pay for Dad’s care and what to do with the crumbling family home becomes a moot point when it’s discovered the neglected swimming pool in the back garden is now a habitat for a colony of environmentally protected Gold Crested Newts (And wtf? Who builds a swimming pool in Ireland??). With the house unsellable, it’s not so much you can never go home again, but rather, you might never leave.
In a nutshell...
When we were living in New York, I became obsessed with the play THE HUMANS by Stephen Karam. I saw it enough times that I finally had to take a look in the mirror and ask… why? THE HUMANS was about a family nothing like mine, but also everything like it. Ditto my husband’s. And the family we’d created with our kids. And my sister’s family for that matter. Karam’s play was nothing like any of that, and exactly like all of it. And while I was looking in the mirror I suddenly realized… I really wanted to take a crack at writing a family drama myself. Only, maybe a funny one.
But it wasn’t till we were back in England having dinner with friends who were in the midst of sibling hell over what to do with their parent’s dilapidated money-pit of a house, that this story crystallized. Without giving too much away… just know, the part about the newts is all true.
Why now newts?
writer’s intro
The Siblings
EXT. FARRANFORE TRAIN STATION – DAY
Remote. Small time. Richard Keane, 43, steps from the train, a few belongings and the weight of the world on his shoulders.
A white cis male with a fallen “Master-of-the-Universe” vibe and Anglo-Irish brogue that’s taken some knocks too. Not Irish. Not English. Not American. Where the feck does Richard belong?
To his family, Richard’s life in Los Angeles is non-stop sun-filled glamor; he’s “Ricky-Rich,” successful Real-Estate-Lawyer to the stars with endless money and a fabulous girlfriend on his arm. His life is perfect, that’s how they see it. They don’t see the sleepless nights, how he’s haunted by past mistakes, facing bankruptcy, his fabulous girlfriend a click from leaving him. And the tiny Irish village he’s headed for with its unpronounceable name – Baile an Fheirtéaraigh -- is Richard’s kryptonite. Who knows what “Fheirtéaraigh” means in Irish. In Richard’s case it means confronting an estranged father, an angry ex-wife, and biggest and loudest of all, his in-your-face-and-up-your-arse older sister Clare.
But it’s the things Richard can’t confront that cut the deepest. There’s his dementia addled dad who still manages to hurl verbal hurt, only in Irish now. There’s the family home Richard bought but never lived in, empty, a crumbling mess that somehow symbolizes how much he fucked-up as a father himself. And there’s Richard sons… that hurts most of all, the two boys who won’t speak to him. Coming home, being this close and yet a world away from his sons… it’s a special kind of hell.
So what’s his plan? Well, being a true Anglo-Saxon it’s: Get in. Get out. Sweep what’s left over under the carpet and confront it sometime never. Oh, and sell the house. Sell that feckin’ money-pit asap -- at least it’ll put a Band-Aid on Dad’s care home expenses.
But you know what they say, if you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans…
Richard Keane
Clare Keane-Spuyt
EXT. FARRANFORE TRAIN STATION – DAY
CLARE KEANE-SPRUYT, 46, charges down the platform. Colourful, and that’s not just the HELIUM BALLOONS she clutches flying in her wake. Larger-than-life, talks a mile-a-minute, a human cyclone with a beating heart. Pick an adjective, it’s true about her.
Clare is just… a lot. Front-y yet passive-aggressive, magnificently loving but a mean streak that kills, bossy but… well, she’s just very bossy.
Clare loves her brother with every fiber of her being, with devotion of a woman who would’ve been a great mother but never had kids, with the intensity of a thousand white-hot suns… while still resenting the fuck out of him. Most of her gripes are ancient history stuff, but now Clare’s in therapy, so let’s talk about how she got moved to a tiny bedroom down the hall when she was three and the “he-baby” Richard got the biggest bedroom in the house.
But also, let’s talk about how Richard was Mummy’s favorite, despite the fact Clare did everything for that woman her entire life. While Richard was off in “Los Angeleez” living the life of Riley, Clare was in the trenches every fecking day. And Mummy’s endgame wasn’t easy. Clare washed her, dressed her, changed her nappies… buried her. And still, Mummy never loved her, not like she loved Richard. Mummy could be deadly mean… And even so… Clare misses Mummy every day now she’s gone.
But before we feel too sorry for Clare, she is married to a very lovely man…
Extended family,
Ex-family & Maybe family
Clare’s husband. Wise and quietly eccentric. Would love to put in him the ring with Yoda.
INT. CLARE AND NOELLY’S HOUSE - KITCHEN – NIGHT
The kitchen’s a war zone. Working away is –
NOELLY SPRUYT 52, a wisp of a tiny man even in stilettos. We meet him drowning in food prep, a flowery dress and big apron.
Gentle, enlightened and a terrific cook, Noelly might just be the perfect husband if only he’d stop borrowing Clare’s knickers without asking.
Noelly Spruyt
Neve Keane
Richard’s Ex-wife. There’s something about his ‘first-love’ Richard might never fully get over. We’re not rooting for them to get back together, but still… there’s unfinished business.
INT. “AN CAORACH DUBH” PUB - NIGHT
Richard turns, and there she is, NEVE KEANE, 40, his Ex. Their eyes lock.
If only she’d lost her looks, her sense of style or even aged up some, maybe he could breathe. But he can’t. Her eyes crinkle in a smile and he sees the teenager he fell in love with.
But then he sees the strapping guy, 30ish, next to her. The one she whispers something to. And by the time she turns back to Richard it’s like everyone’s remembered they kinda hate each other.
Richard’s girlfriend in Los Angeles. A landscape artist specializing in drought tolerant plants, she’s like a cactus. In the right environment, she just might bloom.
INTERCUT BETWEEN PUB AND COMPUTER ZOOM MEETING where two pissed off looking women are waiting.
THERAPIST CHLOE
There he is!
RICHARD
Got my message? I did apologize—
EMMIE
Got it. And what I heard was “Gee,
I think I’ll sabotage my therapy
session specially arranged around
my schedule and piss my girlfriend
off so much she’ll break up with
me ‘cause I don’t have the guts to
do it myself.”
RICHARD
That-- No! Unfair! Untrue.
EMMIE GRANT, 35. Like a next-gen computer, she’s younger-smarter-faster than Richard.
Also, THERAPIST CHLOE, mid-30s as well. Emmie’s pick.
Emmie Grant
“Daddy.” A dementia riddled shadow of his former hell-on-wheels self.
INT. RESIDENTIAL CARE HOME – DADDY’S ROOM – DAY
DESMOND KEANE, 82, is in a wheelchair facing away. The room’s okay, but cramped -- pills, books, framed PHOTOS.
DESMOND
Clare?
CLARE
It’s me! I’ve brought a special
visitor. Look! Ricky’s here!
Slowly Desmond swings around, bovine. Watery eyes, an ancient face and a 1000-yard stare…
Desmond Keane
The story takes place in the deepest darkest, wildest wooliest, farthest reaches of
Dingle Bay, Ireland –
meaning it’s really lush and green…
which also means it rains a lot…
and people speak a language with a lot of consonants and vowels and accent marks that come and go in random order…
which might mean it’s a magical land…
or everyone’s completely whack…
and drilling down on a personal observation, “deepest darkest, wildest wooliest, farthest reaches of Ireland” to me means when it comes to nutty, scary, fragile, funny, wondrously fucked up family members… it’s a place exactly like your home and mine.
The World
The Tone
If you haven’t dealt with an aging parent… lucky you. You’ve either dodged a bullet or the pin’s already been pulled from the grenade, it just hasn’t gone off yet.
But for most, there comes a time -- an aging parent, a care home crisis, a house to be emptied – and suddenly you find yourself in the trenches of “family,” people you very well may adore! But trenches can be an awful lot like murky metaphorical backyard pools with protected newts that have to be delicately, surgically, lovingly salvaged before you clean them out and, well… you get the point.
However for added context, MAKING GOD LAUGH might be compared to THE FAREWELL, if it
was set in Ireland. Or LITTLE MISS SUNSHINE… in Ireland. Or you could go with BANSHEES OF INISHERIN… but faster paced. Less tragi-comedy, more…
In fact, this movie is probably nothing like any of those movies.
Premise
… and the fecking newts.
If you’ve read this far, you can probably picture Richard, an L.A. transplant reluctantly coming back to Ireland to face the family he left behind, on the brink of bankruptcy, desperate to sell the old family home to pay for their father’s expensive care. Clare, being the opposition (with a secret agenda to keep her brother in Ireland and finally have a close relationship with him) envisions turning the family home into a bed and breakfast. They’ll run together! What fun.
But the real antagonist, the one you haven’t met… are the newts. Specifically, Gold Crested Newts, which, despite being tiny, slimy and let’s say it, useless little dinosaurs, are an endangered species. Highly protected. And they’ve taken up residency in Mummy and Daddy’s back garden in the dilapidated mud-filled swimming pool; which is pretty much just a bog now. Or as conservationists might deem it, “a habitat.” Sorry, “a protected habitat.” For fucking newts.
To step out what that means, in the words of their Gen-Z real estate agent Fiona Boyle:
FIONA
(reciting fast)
“It’s illegal to catch, possess
or handle Great Crested Newts
without a license or cause harm
or disturb their habitat in any
way. Those found guilty of doing
so face unlimited fines and up to
ten months in prison.” That’s the
decision handed down by the High
Commission. I memorized it.
CLARE
Why would you do that?
FIONA
In case we’d had to write an essay.
On the Real Estate diploma exam.
CLARE
Did you?
FIONA
No.
Anyway, what that boils down to is Richard and Clare must empty out Daddy’s swimming pool and secretly transport a colony of newts to the village pond (at night under cover of darkness when no nosy neighbors can see or hear them) before the house can go on the market. Otherwise, it will come under conservatorship. And will, for all intents and purposes, belong to the newts. Forevermore.
So. Richard and Clare’s course seems clear.
Until disaster strikes. In the process of moving the newts, Richard slips on the slimy slope of the swimming pool, breaks his leg, and is stuck at the bottom clinging to Clare’s cankle for dear life while she in turn holds onto a frayed garden hose – half in, half out of the pool -- as they wait for help to arrive. Which isn’t coming. Because their cellphones are at the bottom of the pool too. Buried in mud.
And so, Clare feeds Richard some of Daddy’s hallucinogenic medication for the pain, and then takes the opportunity to air out all her old repressed childhood grievances.
Like a subverted Christmas Carol, he’ll be forced to reexamine the past, to rehash the present, then take a cold hard look at what the future holds before he’s finally deposited in a murky world between life and death…
… a place where epiphanies occur. Miracles. Clarity. Forgiveness…
Which is really amazing an’ all. But…
But what good are epiphanies without also getting a chance for a do-over?
And, well, sometimes you get one of those...
Then again, sometimes you don’t.
And sometimes, you just don’t get to know what you’re getting…
until you see the end of the film.
Director's Statement
I am, by the nature of where I have lived, a ‘half and half,’ having spent equal amounts of years in London and Los Angeles. Which adds up to meaning I don’t really belong anywhere. For those of us ‘unlicked cubs’ who came to L.A. and made somewhat of a go of it, to the folks back home you are ‘Mr. Hollywood’. When the rubber hits the road, and your parents get old, or are put in homes… or die… well, you are suddenly back in the trenches with those same siblings you squabbled with over what channel to watch on TV or who got more ice cream at dinner (and just to be clear, she did). This is an everyman family story that happens to be set in the beautiful, visually stunning landscape of Ireland with a tone akin to my favourite move ‘WITHNAIL AND I.’ Its whip smart and fast paced script will deliver a family dramedy for the ages…