FADE IN:

EXT. SAN FRANCISCO, 1937

BLAKE LIVELY lives twenty-nine years of a REGULAR MUNDANE LIFE as described by a CUTESY NARRATOR.

NARRATOR (V.O.)

One day Blake crashed her car into a freezing lake, only to be revived moments later by a bolt of lightning.

BLAKE LIVELY

Ooh, lightning! What asstardedly unrealistic effect is it having today? Am I psychic now? Invisible? Did I go back in time?

NARRATOR (V.O.)

You’ve stopped aging.

BLAKE LIVELY

Sweet! It’s good to see that even in an age when any schoolchild has at least a rough understanding of what electricity is, fiction is gritting its teeth and sticking with the “all-purpose magic” idea.

NARRATOR (V.O.)

No no no, not magic, we’ve got a whole bunch of science words to throw at you! See, the lightning restarted your heart, shocked you out of a death-like state, and also gurbleplaximxrovinated your DNA, which is a totally sound scientific principle that simply hasn’t been discovered yet!

BLAKE LIVELY

...So, magic.

NARRATOR (V.O.)

SCIENCE magic!

BLAKE LIVELY

Oh well then, guess we should start following my Benjamin Button-style tour of the twentieth

EXT. SAN FRANCISCO, 2015

BLAKE LIVELY

centuryyyuh, what? You’ve dumped me back in the current-day framing device already?

NARRATOR (V.O.)

Oh, this isn’t a framing device, it’s the bulk of the film. See, instead of the Fountain/Orlando/ Interview With the Vampire “journey through history” approach to immortality, we’ve decided on the Highlander “wow period sets and costumes are expensive, fuck it let’s just cram in a couple of flashbacks and set the rest in modern day” approach.

BLAKE LIVELY

Oh. So this isn’t a generations-spanning epic of love and loss?

NARRATOR (V.O.)

No, although you do give me a great idea for a promotional campaign. Wait here, I’ve got some misleading posters to make.

(leaves)

BLAKE LIVELY

Fine then, let’s check out my current life and find out what makes it worth so much more screentime than eight decades of being an immortal fugitive.

BLAKE works at the LIBRARY. She goes home to her DEPRESSING APARTMENT and her OLD DOG.

BLAKE LIVELY

Woooo. Let’s strap ourselves in for The Adventures of the Most Boring Person in the World.

(drums fingers)

So, uh... dog. How’s things?

OLD-AS-FUCK DOG

Hack, bluurrgh. I’m fine. I’m fine. Just give me a second. Hhhuuhhh, uhh hhooouuugghhh, oh God oh God.

DOG LOVERS IN AUDIENCE

All right, we can see where this is going.

(leaves)

BLAKE LIVELY

Can we have a flashback yet? Seriously.

EXT. SAN FRANCISCO, 1953

A forty-five-year-old BLAKE is hustled into a car by a pair of FBI AGENTS.

SHADY GOVERNMENT ASSHOLE

Miss, you’re under arrest on charges of looking really good for your age.

BLAKE LIVELY

Okay, how the hell did you guys hear about me and why do you give a fuck? If I was eighty and looked fifteen that’d be something, but if my current levels of youthfulness were enough to make somebody an X-File, Paul Rudd wouldn’t be walking free right now.

SHADY GOVERNMENT ASSHOLE

Hey, don’t ask us, we’re just some schmucks they don’t even trust with a car that ordinary middle-aged ladies can’t-

BLAKE LIVELY

(breaks out)

SHADY GOVERNMENT ASSHOLE

See now, that’s what I’m talking about.

BLAKE goes and meets up with her daughter, CATE RICHARDSON.

BLAKE LIVELY

I’ve got to skip town and assume a new identity, which is something that a regular person can apparently do without any particular skills, resources, connections or prep time.

CATE RICHARDSON

Will I ever see you again?

BLAKE LIVELY

Sure. I’ll get in touch with you, like, all the time. I’ll even come meet up with you on obvious occasions like birthdays. Also while I’ll be constantly changing identities, seemingly most of those identities will live and work in my home town of San Francisco.

CATE RICHARDSON

You’re lucky the authorities are even worse at looking for you than you are at hiding from them.

INT. SWANKY HOTEL, 2015

BLAKE is attending a NEW YEARS EVE PARTY with her BLIND FRIEND LYNDA BOYD.

BLAKE LIVELY

Having a blind friend is fantastic! I can pretend to be closer to my real age and she’ll never suspect anything’s amiss!

LYNDA BOYD

Unless I hear your voice. Or feel your skin. Or notice the way the other people behave around you. Oh look, I just did all three of those things in this one scene.

BLAKE LIVELY

Well, uh, I guess maybe being blind has made all your other senses weaker, like a sort of reverse Daredevil?

LYNDA abruptly disappears from the movie while BLAKE is approached by MICHAEL HOUSEMAN, who has apparently been afflicted with JASPER FFORDE’S MISPELING VYRUS and now goes by the baffling jumble of letters “MICHIEL HUISMAN”.

MICHIEL HUISMAN

Hi there. I’m a handsome intellectual self-made millionaire philanthropist. I once witnessed you doing something slightly quirky and pretty much immediately fell in love with you, and now I want to do nothing but lavish you with attention and gifts.

BLAKE LIVELY

...You know what, I’m just going to let this slide. Sure, you’re a paper-thin idealized fantasy that’d embarrass a Nicholas Sparks novel, but in a day and age when a fictional “perfect man” can easily be a sparkly vampire stalker or a sadomasochistic psychopath, I’d say we’re not doing too bad.

(warm)

Pleased to meet you, Michiel! I’m Nobody McFakename!

(cold)

Don’t even consider starting anything with me, it’d never work out.

(flirtatious)

My interests include books and obsessing over history!

(distant)

And that’s all you may know. I hate having my photo taken and never give out my address. FUCK OFF.

MICHIEL HUISMAN

It’s fine, I’ve already figured out you live at the corner of Rude Street and Crazy Boulevard. But don’t worry, as a cartoonishly perfect love interest I am of course impossible to alienate. How about I donate a bunch of valuable books to your library? IF AND ONLY IF you go on a date with me.

BLAKE LIVELY

Ooh, blackmail, how romantic!

MICHIEL takes BLAKE on a date to see the ROTTED-OUT HULL of an OLD BOAT.

BLAKE LIVELY

Thanks for the date, it was a lot more romantic than it sounds! Now I’m off to mysteriously disappear forever, GOODBYE.

MICHIEL HUISMAN

Uh, wait, what if we make a deal. I’ll tell you a joke and if you laugh you have to go on another date with me!

He tells her a joke.

BLAKE LIVELY

Wow, what a well-chosen joke. It’s not funny, but it’s not SO not funny that you’re forced to laugh at how lame it is. Nor is it weird enough to make you laugh at its bizarreness. You couldn’t have picked a better example of a joke that nobody would ever laugh at under any circumstances.

MICHIEL HUISMAN

(checks script)

But it says here that you DO laugh at it.

BLAKE LIVELY

Oh. OH. Uh... “ha ha ha”?

MICHIEL HUISMAN

Gotcha! Now you have to go on a date with me according to the terms of our stupid schoolyard bet!

BLAKE LIVELY

Slightly better than blackmail! We’re moving up in the world.

BLAKE has dinner at MICHIEL’S PLACE, then MICHIEL unwittingly FUCKS A CENTENNARIAN.

BLAKE LIVELY

Wow, you rocked my world! Now MAKE NO ATTEMPT TO CONTACT ME EVER AGAIN.

MICHIEL HUISMAN

(to audience)

I can’t be the only one getting tired of this shit, right?

BLAKE LIVELY

What else can I do, though? Tell you that I can’t start anything serious because the government is after me and I have to stay on the move? That’d be a perfectly true statement that would explain every part of my behavior!

(pause)

Oh. Let’s - let’s just pretend that’s not an option.

(leaves)

INT. BLAKE’S HOUSE

BLAKE returns alone to her DEPRESSING APARTMENT.

BLAKE LIVELY

Feh, who needs Michiel, I’ve got my arthritic old geezerhound to keep me company. Say boy, why are you lying on the floor like a boneless puddle of dog?

BARELY-ALIVE DOG

Urrrgghhh my organs. All of them. Bllfffffffnnnnn.

BLAKE LIVELY

Ah fuck.

She takes the DOG to the VET to have it PUT DOWN. It’s SAD AS HELL.

DOG LOVERS IN AUDIENCE

(at home watching Seinfeld reruns)

INT. BLAKE’S DAUGHTER’S HOUSE

BLAKE visits her DAUGHTER, who grew up to be ELLEN BURSTYN.

ELLEN BURSTYN

Mom! I’m so glad they managed to retrieve you safely from the depths of space!

BLAKE LIVELY

No, you’re thinking of your OTHER parent who wound up being much younger than you due to a bunch of ridiculous sci-fi nonsense.

ELLEN BURSTYN

Huh, that’s a bizarrely specific role for me to do two movies in a row. Anyway, I want to tell you you’re crazy if you let Michiel go. I can’t stand to think of you being alone! It’s such a waste of your life!

BLAKE LIVELY

You don’t say. Hey, how are your husband and kids doing? Oh that’s right, you appear to have reached the age of eighty-two without ever having any, you fucking hypocrite. But whatever, if you say so I guess I’ll go get Michiel back.

She apologizes to MICHIEL.

MICHIEL HUISMAN

Great! Since you’ve proven incredibly easy to scare off, I’d better be careful to take things slow from here on out OH YOU KNOW WHAT YOU SHOULD GO ON A TRIP WITH ME TO MEET MY PARENTS!

BLAKE LIVELY

I’m surprisingly fine with this idea.

INT. COZY COTTAGE

MICHIEL introduces BLAKE to his parents, HARRISON FORD and KATHY BAKER.

HARRISON FORD

Hello, nice to meet HOLY FUCK, BLAKE?!

BLAKE LIVELY

Harrison! Shit! I mean uhhh, no, I’m Nobody McFakename, Blake Lively was my mother. Small world, I guess!

(pause)

You know, we seem to be using the whole “What a coincidence you should have known my mother” thing to try and distract from the fact that yes, this is in fact a HUGE fucking coincidence.

HARRISON FORD

(shiny-eyed)

I knew your mom back in the sixties! She and I were close. Like really super close. She was so smart and wise and brilliant and amazing and she was so well-read and spoke all these languages and-

KATHY BAKER

AHEM.

HARRISON FORD

Oh. Uh, don’t worry, honey, she was nobody! I think she did my taxes one time, or I bought some floor wax from her, sure, that’s it.

KATHY BAKER

Uh huh. Am I really not supposed to notice the pet name you called her when she walked in? That peculiar name that also happens to be a name you gave to a comet you discovered? Our family talks about that comet all the time, did you really think I wouldn't pick up on that?

HARRISON FORD

(checks script)

Well apparently nobody in our entire family did. So, phew!

EXT. ENGLAND, THE SIXTIES SOMEWHEREABOUTS

BLAKE flashes back to when she met HARRISON FORD, back when he was a guy called ANTHONY INGRUBER.

BLAKE LIVELY

Thanks for fixing my car. In return I’ll immediately break all my rules by telling you my real name and starting a romantic relationship with you. I guess the fastest way to my heart is through my gearbox.

ANTHONY INGRUBER

GEE THAT SURE IS SWELL!

BLAKE LIVELY

Yeugh. What’s with the incredibly fake, booming voice?

ANTHONY INGRUBER

THAT’S JUST BECAUSE I’M SLATHERING MY HARRISON FORD IMPRESSION ON WITH A TROWEL. LOOK, I CAN DO HIS LOPSIDED GRIN AND HIS SURLY POUT!

(contorts face)

BLAKE LIVELY

Okay, I’m starting to see why this movie doesn't hang around in the past very much.

INT. COZY COTTAGE

That night BLAKE beats HARRISON at TRIVIAL PURSUIT using her OLD PERSON KNOWLEDGE, because apparently living through the PAST automatically gives you ENCYCLOPAEDIC KNOWLEDGE OF IT. But then HARRISON notices a SCAR ON HER HAND.

HARRISON FORD

Gasp, Blake had that exact scar! YOU’RE BLAKE! Because clearly the idea of two people coincidentally cutting their hand in the same place is far more outlandish than the idea that you’re actually an ageless being from beyond time.

BLAKE LIVELY

Curses, I’ve been found out! Time to default to fleeing, as usual.

HARRISON FORD

No, you can’t walk out on Michiel the same way you walked out on me. I was deeply in love with you and never got over it!

BLAKE LIVELY

Isn’t that actually a very good reason NOT to stick around and become a permanent member of your family? The truth would have to come out eventually, and think how your wife would feel then. “Look honey, it’s the woman I fell in love with before I met you, she’s as brilliant as ever and it seems she has eternal youth and beauty as well, let’s have her constantly around us!”

HARRISON FORD

Come on, don’t leave, I’m so close to a creepy vicarious do-over of my past-

BLAKE amscrays. But a couple miles down the road she reconsiders and calls ELLEN.

BLAKE LIVELY

I’ve decided to stop running and tell Michiel the truth.

ELLEN BURSTYN

What about the whole thing where you’re a medical curiosity the government wants to dissect?

BLAKE LIVELY

Let’s not mention that and hope it takes care of itself. On the whole, I’m pleased that the film is letting me deal with this immortality curse through character development. A lesser movie would have just given me an easy out by finding a horribly contrived way to-

NARRATOR (V.O.)

Suddenly Blake got into basically the exact same car accident all over again. Her core temperature dropped, her heart stopped, revived with electricity, yada yada, so her DNA got reflurbilizated and she resumed aging.

BLAKE LIVELY

Goddamnit.

INT. HOSPITAL

MICHIEL is by BLAKE’S hospital bed.

BLAKE LIVELY

It’s time for me to tell you my one weird secret. I’m a hundred and seven. I look twenty-nine. Doctors hate me.

MICHIEL HUISMAN

You’re immortal, you say? I’m just a tad tempted to be skeptical of that. Failing that, it might be reasonable for me to freak the fuck out. But once again, I’m Mr. Perfect, so I’ll apparently just be cool with it all.

(smiles at camera, winks)

INT. BLAKE’S HOUSE

A year later, BLAKE and MICHIEL are still happily together. One day BLAKE notices a GRAY HAIR.

BLAKE LIVELY

Ah, I’ve just now learned of my renewed mortality. Awesome! I can finally know the joys of having my body wither and decay into a feeble, senile, incontinent husk. Hooray!

NARRATOR (V.O.)

Twenty years later humanity discovered that bit of bullshit science we mentioned earlier. Having discovered the secret to eternal youth, the scientists quickly patented it and started performing immortality treatments for extravagant sums. Class tensions intensified as the working class grew to resent the unnatural longevity of the priveleged. Thousands died by electrocution in failed attempts to recreate the process; when the method was finally successfully reproduced and disseminated across the internet, the government attempted to prevent a population explosion by cracking down severely on back-alley longevity treatments. These draconian measures sparked widespread civil unrest, made worse by the ever-expanding population and increasing strain on resources. Eventually civilization completely disintegrated and the world turned into a post-apocalyptic wasteland ruled over by gangs of immortal warriors. But hey, as long as Blake got to hook up with Handsome McBeardface, it’s still a happy ending, right?

END.