Owen and Vince discover that it's not actually possible for them to reduce their dignity further.

THE INTERNSHIP

The Abridged Script

FADE IN:

INT. WATCH DEALERSHIP

VINCE VAUGHN and OWEN WILSON have just been fired by JOHN GOODMAN.

OWEN WILSON

Man, I can't believe you've been planning to shut up shop for months, but even after the business was closed, not only had you not told us we were out of a job but you still sent us out on sales meetings!

(pause)

Seriously, I can't believe it. It's just absurdly implausible human behavior, nobody would ever act like that. You must be mentally deranged.

JOHN GOODMAN

Sorry guys, but it's kind of your own fault that you're screwed now. Sure you were hotshot salesmen, but you just kept coasting by in these high-end sales positions instead of bothering to get real jobs with any kind of future.

VINCE VAUGHN

Wow. So this movie's just a big middle finger to anyone who chooses a career in sales, huh?

VINCE goes home and starts googling employment options.

VINCE VAUGHN

Wait a minute, googling... Google! We should go get an internship at Google! That's a real logical train of thought right there.

OWEN WILSON

Google, great idea! But to keep ourselves covered, we should also try out for the New York Knicks and the London Philharmonic. And, ooh, is NASA hiring?

They have a JOB INTERVIEW where they demonstrate the tech savvy of UNFROZEN CAVEMEN.

OWEN WILSON

Look, if we sort of ramble on, talking over each-

VINCE VAUGHN

Like, interrupting each other and being repetitive-

OWEN WILSON

Repetitive and redundant.

VINCE VAUGHN

So if we repeat ourselves a bunch, or sometimes never even finish what-

OWEN WILSON

That's funny and charming, right? Please say yes, we're sort of banking everything on the appeal of verbal diarrhea.

AASIF MANDVI

All right, why the hell should we give two coveted spots in this program to these completely unqualified assclowns?

JOSH BRENER

First of all, they have a whole lot of entirely irrelevant experience. Secondly, they demonstrated outside-the-box thinking, by which I mean they started desperately rambling when they couldn't think of an answer to the question.

AASIF MANDVI

That's a ridiculously unconvincing argument, but it's not like we were ever going to come up with a way to make this movie's premise plausible. They're in.

INT. GOOGLE

Arriving at GOOGLE, OWEN meets ROSE BYRNE, who is wearing THICK BUDDY HOLLY GLASSES, because nerds, amirite?

OWEN WILSON

Hi there! You're really pretty!

ROSE BYRNE

Hello! Jump up your own ass and die.

OWEN WILSON

Ah, so we're doing that storyline, are we? The one where you inexplicably dislike me, but then I keep harrassing you until you inexplicably like me?

ROSE BYRNE

Not exactly. We've also thrown in the "interns can't date employees" roadblock.

OWEN WILSON

Actually, no. We make a point of explicitly establishing that, but then it just sort of fails to ever come up again.

ROSE BYRNE

Oh. Then yes, it's your standard Harrassment Equals Love subplot.

OWEN WILSON

That'll be a nice morale boost for all the stalkers out there. Don't give up, fellas, you'll wear her down eventually!

OWEN and VINCE go and gather with the other INTERNS.

AASIF MANDVI

Hello, I will be in charge of all you interns, including Vince, who sucks. Could everyone please take note of what a loser Vince is.

VINCE VAUGHN

Uh, okay, even if you've got to be weirdly hostile, why me and not Owen? He's every bit as useless as me, and he's right there.

AASIF MANDVI

Now if Vince will stop being a turd for one second we can get things started around here. Divide into teams so we can begin the elaborate reality TV-style tournament that passes for an internship program in this movie.

OWEN WILSON

All right, everyone in the winning team gets a job, so all we have to do is attach ourselves to much more competent people and ride their coattails to victory! This isn't even Abridged Script snark, this is our actual plan that we explicitly state in dialogue.

Everybody TEAMS UP, but because VINCE and OWEN are CLEARLY TERRIBLE, they get stuck on the REJECT SQUAD.

TOBIT RAPHAEL

Hello, fellow teammates, I'm Tobit. I'm undergoing a quiet mental breakdown because my mother is putting enormous pressure on me to achieve academically. But I'm only half Asian, so I figure it's only half an offensive stereotype.

TIYA SIRCAR

I'm Tiya, an attractive young woman who talks about sex all the time and repeatedly mentions how hot I find Vince and Owen. Did we mention that Vince co-wrote this movie?

DYLAN O'BRIEN

And I'm Dylan, a condescending font of dismissive verbal abuse who's meant to be a decent guy even though I'm pretty much a grumpier version of the movie's villain.

MAX MINGHELLA

That's me! And oh my, would you look at the pathetic scraps of human detritus on Team Loser. This looks like an easy win for us over on Team Insufferable Douchebag!

VINCE VAUGHN

What about the other teams, which presumably are all made up of smart, hard-working and dedicated young people whose whole lives have built up to this?

MAX MINGHELLA

What, you mean Team Anonymous, Team No Lines, and Team Only Shows Up in Crowd Scenes? I think we can safely rule them out.

AASIF MANDVI

Okay, now for your first task, which is to debug some code.

VINCE VAUGHN

Hmm, maybe if we found the programmer and talked to them, we could have a quicker job finding out where they might have messed up.

DYLAN O'BRIEN

That's actually a halfway intelligent suggestion. But, it's not time for us to have any respect for you two yet, so we'll act like you just tried to eat a keyboard.

TIYA SIRCAR

Yes, let's humiliate and ostracize the non-nerds, even though it's been made clear that a lack of teamwork is pretty much the quickest way to failure around here!

The TEAM humiliates VINCE and OWEN with CROTCH-PUNCHING RESULTS. Along the way, they LOSE THE CHALLENGE.

AASIF MANDVI

For your next challenge, something that all experts in computer science ought to excel at: team sports! Specifically, we're playing quidditch, because nerds, amirite?

TEAM LOSER start losing miserably to TEAM INSUFFERABLE DOUCHEBAG.

VINCE VAUGHN

Don't worry, guys, we've got an ace up our sleeves: a comically colorful Inspirational Speech, which is pretty much most of what Owen and I are going to be doing for the rest of the movie!

TIYA SIRCAR

For some reason, we've suddenly stopped being irritated by your inane chatter and instead find it uplifting! Your words fill me with athletic competence!

TEAM LOSER turn their game around dramatically and start winning! But then MAX grabs the Golden Snitch and insta-wins the game, because quidditch is dumb like that.

TOBIT RAPHAEL

Okay, our next challenge is to create an app. Let us use math to determine what manner of app a human might be liable to purchase, because nerds, amirite?

VINCE VAUGHN

Guys, guys. We're way behind right now and we need to win this to have a fighting chance in the tournament. So clearly the right choice is to leave work altogether and go get hammered at a strip club.

OWEN WILSON

Yeah, us old guys may not belong in this institution for the young, ambitious and gifted, but we can sure show this ragtag group of plucky rejects how to PAR-TAY!

(pause)

Hold on. Vince, did your "Story By" credit consist of you taking the story for Old School and scribbling in "Google" instead of "college"?

VINCE VAUGHN

...I put some other stuff in there as well.

TEAM LOSER go and get trashed all night, then win the app challenge by inventing DRUNK DIALER again.

AASIF MANDVI

Next challenge: manning the tech support lines.

MAX MINGHELLA

Oh, this should be no sweat, considering how much Vince sucks and all. Have fun sucking, Vince!

VINCE VAUGHN

Come on, you too?! Owen is RIGHT. FUCKING. THERE. Argh, maybe I do suck, I'm gonna fail all over the place, heeellllp!!!

JOSH GAD

Don't worry, Vince, I'll help you study! I'm a super-smart computer guy. Also I have extreme social anxiety, and I'm obese and have terrible grooming and no fashion sense, because nerds, amirite?

(sighs)

Hey, remember back before The Big Bang Theory, when people understood there was a difference between geek humor and just mocking geeks with tired stereotypes? Those were good times.

The INTERNS all man the PHONES.

TIYA SIRCAR

(on phone)

Thank you for calmly and clearly explaining the nature of your problem, sir. Fortunately it sounds like a routine issue that can be fixed within less than a minute.

TOBIT RAPHAEL

(on phone)

All right, ma'am, now that you've understood my instructions and followed them to the letter your issue has been resolved to everybody's satisfaction. No, YOU have a nice day!

DYLAN O'BRIEN

Boy, it's neat that we live in this alternate universe where tech support is a stress-free occupation which socially stunted individuals such as ourselves can handle without any problem!

But then it turns out that VINCE accidentally didn't LOG HIS CALLS.

AASIF MANDVI

Ha ha, automatic zero! For you and your ENTIRE TEAM.

VINCE VAUGHN

What? That makes no sense! By that logic, when one of Max's team got sent off hurt during quidditch, the whole team should have forfeited. Come on, what happened to "Don't Be Evil"?

AASIF MANDVI

I'm sorry, did you say something? All I can hear is a loud obnoxious sucking noise.

VINCE VAUGHN

That's it, I quit! Although it's unclear whether I actually officially quit, in which case it's weird that later they just let me come back when the mood takes me, or if I've just stopped showing up, in which case my absence will presumably continue to be held against my team and I'm therefore being a dick.

AASIF MANDVI

Ah, good riddance, your team can do without some loser whose only skill is in sales. Incidentally, the last challenge of the internship is selling Google ad space!

TIYA SIRCAR

Wait, sales? It's been made abundantly clear we're trying out for tech jobs, why the hell is the climactic task of this tournament to go work for the sales department?

AASIF MANDVI

Because how else are Owen and Vince going to save the day? Use your head.

OWEN goes and tracks down VINCE who is off selling MOTORIZED SCOOTERS.

OWEN WILSON

Come on, man, we need you. Don't give up on the dream now.

VINCE VAUGHN

What "dream"? I saw the word Google and decided on a whim to get a job there because I couldn't find a decent job in sales. Which I now have. By all reasonable thinking, my situation has now improved dramatically.

OWEN WILSON

I can't let you do this to yourself! Not sales! Don't take the soul-crushing, self-annihilating path to perdition that is a successful career in SALES! It may be what your actual skill set is useful for, but for the love of God, Vince, IT'S SALES!!!

VINCE VAUGHN

Jesus, did a salesman sleep with the director's wife or something?

VINCE comes back to the team and they succeed at the SALES challenge!

MAX MINGHELLA

Big whoop, so you sold ads to a pizza place. We sold ads to a coffee shop, basically the same thing.

AASIF MANDVI

Ah, but the pizza place is going to open a second branch at some point and be TWO pizza places, which is completely different. Team Loser wins everything forever!

MAX MINGHELLA

What?! No, no. They won two out of five challenges and came dead last in one. Tiya EXPLICITLY SAID that they were so far behind that they couldn't win the tournament even if they performed PERFECTLY in the last challenge.

AASIF MANDVI

Yeah, but fuck you, I'm giving it to them because they have Heart. You see, Vince, I was on your side the whole time, TWIST!

VINCE VAUGHN

...Um, okay. That completely contradicts everything you've said and done this entire movie, but what the hell, we'll take it.

MAX MINGHELLA

BULLSHIT! I demand a second opinion!

JOSH GAD

Fine, I'll have a say. See, it turns out I'm really important around here, OBVIOUS TWIST! Don't you wish you hadn't ignored me earlier? Even though I already mentioned how I specifically go out of my way to BE ignored?

MAX MINGHELLA

Oh man, how the hell did a brown-noser like me not know who you were, when this place has a comprehensive internal facebook that even Owen was able to navigate?

JOSH GAD

So yeah, Team Loser win because of the Heart thing that Aasif already said. I'm seriously just using different words to make the exact same point, this is a total waste of time.

(leaves)

OWEN WILSON

All right, we did it! We, a team of scruffy underdog misfits, were able to beat the odds and win this tournament against the much more qualified but also much more unpleasant... oh for God's sake. Vince, when you said you put some other stuff in here too, did you mean Dodgeball?

VINCE VAUGHN

Leave me alone.

END.

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