FADE IN:

AUGUST: OSAGE COUNTY OBVIOUSLY

SAM SHEPARD is a poet who is talking to MISTY UPHAM about life and how it's terrible during a really uplifting job interview.

SAM SHEPARD (V.O)

T.S. Elliot was a poet who said wise things about life and why it's mostly terrible. Don't think it's so bad? Just wait the next hour and fifty eight minutes and you'll be searching for the nearest lake to drown yourself in. I live in a house where we black out the windows from the outside world and never turn on the air conditioner in 100 degree heat in order to remind us that we on earth are actually dancing near the rings of hell. If you aren't convinced that life is total shit, then meet my wife MERYL STREEP.

MERYL STREEP

HELLOOOOOOO Sweetums! I see you're hiring this here INDIAN PERSON to cook for us.

MISTY UPHAM

This is weird.

MERYL STREEP

Well just you wait there pretty lady! Pretty pretty lady lady lady. You there are a lady with pretty hair. LADDDYYYYY...

SAM SHEPARD

Meryl does a lot of drugs. You want to hear something hilarious? She has cancer.

MISTY UPHAM

Well now that is fucking hilarious. Cancer is balls aching funny. Is that why she's on so many drugs?

SAM SHEPARD

Well no. Cancer patients are no more permitted than the rest of us to go around acting like Courtney Love on a particularly bad day.

MERYL STREEP

HEY'D you notice I got NO HAIR?? Yep. NOOOO HAIIIIR. I'm going for Oscar here so I'm going to milk the tits off this cancer hair thing.

MISTY UPHAM

Is this also supposed to be funny? But in a horrifying way?

SAM SHEPARD

It's more of a Tracy Letts "funny". So I take it you accept the job?

MISTY UPHAM

Why yes. Why in the world would I not want to work here?

SAM SHEPARD disappears so MERYL calls her daughter JULIANNE NICHOLSON as well as her sister MARGO MARTINDALE and brother in law CHRIS COOPER.

JULIANNE NICHOLSON

Hey mom, I'm the only daughter you don't resent for getting far away from here. How are you holding up?

MERYL STREEP

WHAT DID you do to your hair!? You look like a lesbian! Do you hear me? I said "LESBIAN"! Put it on every preview for the movie! You'll never find a man dressed up in all that plaid and denim. Don't you need a man? I mean, look how happy I am in my marriage.

JULIANNE NICHOLSON

I'm not looking for a man, and by that I mean I have a twisted Forest Gump IQed cousinbro love interest up my sleeve.

Meanwhile, MARGO MARTINDALE drinks straight whiskey and calls it a cocktail.

CHRIS COOPER

Well as one of the only decent characters in this movie, I'm going to try to rationalize that Sam just ran off like he's done before. Poets do that kind of thing apparently.

MARGO MARTINDALE

Oh whatever you stupid shitty-faced assmouth.

JULIANNA NICHOLSON

Mmmkay. As pleasant as this all is, I'm going to call my sister Julia Roberts to see of she'll bring some life to this party.

JULIA ROBERTS lays in bed in a dark room while the phone rings and then tells her daughter, ABIGAIL BRESLIN, to tell her husband, EWAN MCGREGOR, to fuck off. Because life, ya'll. It's pain.

ABIGAIL BRESLIN

That was Aunt Julianne. Grandpa Sam went missing and we all have to take a road trip to be with Meryl.

JULIA ROBERTS

Fuck. Well fine then. Ugh. Fuckers.

EXT. MERYL'S HOUSE

EWAN, ABIGAIL and JULIA show up at MERYL'S house and they all look like they'd rather be in a human centipede.

EWAN MCGREGOR

Well righty then you guys. I sure am glad to be in this here movie.

JULIA ROBERTS

Ewan, you've been playing characters with American accents for years. Why do you sound like Richard Pryor's white guy impersonation? I mean, it was funny when he did it but I don't think that's what we're going for here.

MERYL STREEP

Julia! So good to see you! You fucking ingrate!

JULIA ROBERTS

Hey Meryl! Look! Gray roots! Crow's feet! I get to say fuckity fuck fucks you fucking fuckers! And later I get to slap a kid! OSCAR HERE I COME!

Meanwhile, while everybody is talking and nobody is looking for him, SAM SHEPARD drowns himself in a lake. The rollicking good time continues at the funeral dinner party where MARGO and CHRIS'S SON, BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH, shows up very late and JULIETTE LEWIS and DERMOT MULRONEY show up very arrogantly.

INT. FUNERAL DINNER PARTY

Absurdity abounds.

BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH

So sorry I'm late. Setting an alarm clock is just too advanced for me.

JULIANNE NICHOLSON

It's cool first cousin lover.

BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH

Well this is unusual. A first cousin love twist…?

JULIANNE NICHOLSON

Also unusual is someone casting an American incestuous rural simpleton and thinking Benedict Cumberbatch would be perfect for the part. Why in the hell are there so many people in this movie?

BENEDICT CUMBERBACTCH

To accurately convey the suffocating sensation of family gathering to grieve. I mean isn't this every single family?

JULIANNA NICHOLSON

Sure cuz, let's make out.

JULLIETTE LEWIS

Gosh I love Dermot! He is so fucking amazing. He loves me as much as I love me and that is A LOT.

DERMOT MULRONEY

Hey 14 year old Abigail. Nice boobs. Want to smoke pot?

ABIGAIL BRESLIN

Ew. You are gross. Yes on the weed though.

EWAN MCGREGOR

I could pretty much not be here at all.

MARGO MARTINDALE

Benedict! You fucking stupid fuck. I couldn't hate you more if I you were a cancer itself.

JULIA ROBERTS

Fuck all of ya'll. I hate you all. In fact I hate everything. Including you, Abigail.

JULIA slaps ABIGAIL.

CHRIS COOPER

Funeral dinners are a hoot.

MERYL STREEP

Women get ugly as they get older! It's the truth. It's so true that I will rant about it for about thirty minutes. Don't let the fact that this rant is coming from Meryl Fucking Streep sway you against this. Life takes a nosedive along with your looks ladies, so bottoms up and pass the vicodin.

JULIA ROBERTS

Fuck you mom. You take too many fucking drugs and it's time for you to fucking stop it.

JULIA wrestles her mother to the ground. Everybody raids the house of all of her drugs.

Later that night, the sisters get drunk and talk.

JULIANNE NICHOLSON

Benedict and I are in love. We're going to move to New York City.

JULIA ROBERTS

Why? So he can juggle for change on street corners?

JULIETTE LEWIS

I think it's sweet. I mean mom and dad were married for a long time and that's nice, right?

JULIANNE NICHOLSON

(this is an actual line, and it is the only funny line in the movie even though it's...)

Dad killed himself.

JULIA ROBERTS

How the hell did you fall in love with our cousin who seems to have a baby's brain? You should probably not procreate with him.

JULIANNE NICHOLSON

I had a hysterectomy so we can't have kids.

JULIA ROBERTS

Oh. Well, cool then.

The women come across MERYL, who delivers a monologue about how her own mother was sewn with the yarns of evil.

JULIA ROBERTS

I'll never turn out like her or you. Mother fucking cunt stinking bitch.

JULIANNE NICHOILSON

Wow. Why don't we just grab an apple off of a Meryl Streep shaped tree and hurl it right into your face.

JULIETTE LEWIS

Or show a pot bitch slapping a kettle for calling it black.

Later that night, DERMOT tries to make out with 14 year old ABIGAIL so MISTY shows up and hits him with a shovel. JULIETTE and DERMOT leave.

INT. HOUSE OF DARKNESS

MARGO MARTINDALE and CHRIS COOPER fight about why MARGO is major bitch to BENEDICT while JULIA ROBERTS eavesdrops.

JULIA ROBERTS

Sorry I was hiding behind the stage curtains, I mean the hallway. You see this movie was originally a play and the translation isn't working out that great.

MARGO MARTINDALE

It's fine. I have a secret. Let's go on the porch while I tell you about five feet away from Chris Cooper even though for some reason he can't hear what I'm saying. I'm so mean to Benedict because I resent him because he's really Sam's child. We had an affair and everybody knew about it but nobody talked about. So he's your half brother. And Julianne's half brother.

JULIA ROBERTS

Uh huh. So while nobody in this family ever shuts the fuck up, nobody brought up the fact that you were fucking your brother in law and had his child? Right.

The next day, MERYL and JULIA have lunch while JULIANNE walks in.

JULIANNE NICHLSON

Mom I need to tell you something about me and Benedict.

MERYL STREEP

You mean how he is your brother? Isn't it obvious?

JULIANNE NICHOLSON

Now come on how did you know? There is nothing that seems incestuous about Benedict Cumberbatch aside from his face.

MERYL STREEP

We said it already. Everybody knew and nobody mentioned it. It only matters now that it will cause great pain to one of my children.

JULIA ROBERTS

Huh. Well, you are a bitch.

MERYL STREEP

Well I have a doozy. Sam left a note saying he was planning on offing himself and I should call him at a hotel if I didn't want him to do it. I went to the bank instead. So he died, and bam, I have become even more heartless than I was 2 hours ago.

JULIA ROBERTS

Listen Julianne, just go to New York without having any biological babies and sell peanuts to tourists at the Statue of Liberty or whatever your plan was. I mean living incestuously has to be better than living anywhere near here.

Everybody leaves and MERYL is left to die alone like everybody's expectations for this movie.

END