The film will have two parts, the initial part of John’s friend Peter coming to his funeral and the main part describing John’s life since college years till death, focusing on his marriage, career, and values.
The main protagonists will be John, a paralegal living a comfortable and good life in a small town, but gets an unknown lethal disease and spend months slowly getting weaker, his wife Jeana, their two children, their worker Jerry and John’s friend Peter. The main characters of marriage are rather troublesome, so the husband focuses on his career. The story is focused on showing selfishness of every character under various circumstances.
The intended audience for this film is all people older than eighteen years. The film explores a heavy and dark issue of dying and its physical, emotional and psychological aspects, which makes this film rather specific and deep. It will be made for the audience interested in the psychological and spiritual sides of death and the effect it makes on society.
The adaptation will be designed to follow the main character’s emotional and psychological development through the course of his adulthood and the impacts of his lethal disease on him and the people around. The story will emphasize the pursuit of selfish interests by every character and their complete ignorance towards the issues of others and inability to be compassionate.
Challenges:
- Narration (the story is narrated by the author, who will not be present in the film).
- Thought process (different characters of the film, including John, have important inner monologues).
- John’s dialogue with his soul.
The challenge of author narration will be addressed through the dialogues between the characters. For example, in one of the initial scenes when John’s co-workers discuss his death they will mention their secret happiness that this unfortunate disease did not happen to them.
The thought process of the main character will be turned into actual dialogues with Jerry, the only generous and genuine character of the story. John’s dialogue with his soul will occur as dialogues with an inner voice, this voice will comment on John’s death to show that death was just a moment, that death was not an endless processor state.
The names of the characters will be changed to more common ones for the contemporary American audience. The story will feature a small town in the United States. The story will be viewed as the events happening during the 1980s, which will allow the movie makers to add clothing styles that are fashionable these days.
One of the film’s most important scenes is one of John’s funeral and the social reaction to his death, emphasizing that everyone cares only about their personal good coming from this tragic event.
One more crucial scene is when John realizes that his desire to live is nothing but a habit and his fear of death is just the fear of the unknown when everyone else thinks his life is over, he understands that what really is over is his death.