Here’s an idea for a movie:
A young goober who happens to be a doctor gets married and finishes his residency, and he and his wife move to Montana, where smaller towns will pay out the wazoo to keep the local family medicine practice staffed. His first winter there, he turns 30, inviting 35 of his closest friends for the occasion. Citing work and the recent holidays and general intimidation by trying to get to Montana in the middle of January, 32 of the friends say no. One who says yes is his old med school roommate, named Justin or something like that (we’re never quite sure what Justin’s real name is). The other two are his buddies Stu and Ryan, from college. They weren’t his closest friends in the world—weren’t in his wedding, for example—but they were around. They were always around. And they liked to occasionally bully this doctor.
The film opens with Ryan picking Stu up from the Missoula airport (don’t worry Ryan, I’m not counting on a ride, I just thought this would make for better cinematics). They don’t say a word. Ryan doesn’t even look at Stu, staring straight ahead while Stu loads his bag in the trunk. In a Blues Brothers homage (and to protect from glare off the snow), each is wearing sunglasses.
Finally, as they pull out of the tiny airport’s arrivals lane, the silence breaks:
Stu: I’m gonna kick him in the balls.
Ryan: I’m gonna kick him in the dick.
Stu: I’m gonna upper decker his toilet.
Ryan: I’m gonna upper decker his face.
Stu and Ryan take it upon themselves to not only ruin this friend’s birthday, but to ruin this friend’s life. Patrick—let’s say this is the name of the friend—is feeling all warm and fuzzy that these two guys are coming. Patrick has no idea what he’s in for.
When Stu and Ryan arrive, they try to enter through the house’s chimney. It goes badly, but they do succeed in covering the house in soot, and after they set the bags down—being nothing but polite to Patrick’s wife, whose home they have just covered with soot (Ryan brought a nice housewarming gift, Stu grabbed the mail on his way inside)—they take out two cartons of orange juice, take out one bottle of cranberry juice cocktail, and pour all three on the ground. Laughing, they then march outside, where—while smoking cigarettes, because this is a movie and there are no consequences for actions—Ryan stuffs a potato up Patrick’s tail pipe and Stu takes a Tupperware® container of mashed potatoes out of his coat pocket and smears them on Patrick’s license plate. Patrick comes running over, trying to stop them, but Ryan—who has been working out a lot lately—puts Patrick in a headlock while Stu menacingly whispers, “YOU KNOW WHAT THEY DO TO GUYS LIKE YOU IN PRISON?”
Throughout the weekend, Ryan and Stu struggle—intentionally or otherwise—to remember Justin’s name. Ryan calls him various names starting with a J. Stu calls him Bart or pretends he doesn’t see him. Multiple times, Ryan turns to Justin and says, “(Jameson or Jedediah or Jehoshaphat), when are you leaving?” Multiple times, Stu says, “Dammit, Bart’s still here.” There’s no soundtrack to this movie, so every time these guys are mean to Justin or Patrick, the ensuing silence is deafening. I think this movie will win multiple Oscars, and I am giving the plot away for free.
The worst part about this for Patrick is that Ryan and Stu have Patrick’s wife hoodwinked. She was out running errands when the soot incident happened, and she was in the bathroom during the incident with the juice, and Stu and Ryan successfully cast the blame on her husband while Joshua stayed dead silent because Ryan had moments earlier recited Jeeves’s address into Jimbo’s ear, implying a vague threat while he did so. At night, Patrick tries a second time to convince his wife it wasn’t him, but she says, “We’ll talk about this later,” and the camera cuts to Stu and Ryan stuffing Patrick’s neckties down the kitchen sink in the dim light from the refrigerator’s water dispenser.
On the second night of the weekend, Patrick’s wife heads out to see some friends, saying, “You boys have fun!” as she leaves. Things start innocently enough. The four men are playing a board game. At one point, though, things turn: Stu and Ryan disagree with one another over a trade, and their response to this is to pull out Civil War-era revolvers it was not previously revealed they were carrying and fire them repeatedly into the ceiling. Once they being to fire them, they realize they’re having quite a lot of fun, and they continue to fire them for a few minutes, reloading repeatedly, while Patrick yells, “Pubey! No!!” and “Piglet! No!!” Again, I am giving this plot away for free. My only request is that Timothée Chalamet gain 75 pounds and starts over-washing his hair so he can play the role of Stu.
When Patrick’s wife gets home, she notices all the bullet holes in the ceiling and gets cross with her husband while Ryan and Stu are out on a smoke break. Patrick protests that it was Ryan and Stu firing their Civil War-era revolvers during a competitive dispute, but his wife isn’t having it. “Ryan and Stu are so polite, Patrick. They’d never fire Civil War-era revolvers into our ceiling. You, on the other hand…I support the fishing, but all that hunting is getting to your head.” Patrick walks away with his head down, like he’s Charlie Brown. That blockhead!
On the third night (MLK Day is Monday—in the movie, I mean), Rachel has gone to bed early, and Patrick wants to go to bed as well, needing to work the next day while Ryan and Stu get on the road. Jackson is already gone. Ryan and Stu won’t let Patrick go to bed, though, making him watch the same episode of “I Think You Should Leave” (the Turbo Team episode) over and over again while repeating a cycle in which they ask why Patrick’s brother didn’t come, then say they are Patrick’s brothers now, then respond to him saying they aren’t by saying, “Oh, so we’re your sisters?” and then fighting each other over which one is which. Thankfully for Patrick, Stu traded the pistols for a box of dynamite at the local Montana prison museum conveniently located a mile from Patrick’s house, but unthankfully for Patrick, Ryan bought boxing gloves at a rest stop on the way to Missoula to pick up Stu and every time he and Stu disagree he pummels Patrick with body blows.
By Monday morning, the house is in tatters. Bricks keep falling through the roof from the top of the chimney. There’s a smoldering hole in one corner of the living room through which a family of racoons is coming and going. Ryan dismantled the wooden steps leading to and from the front door, so when Patrick opens it, there’s a three-foot drop to the ground below. Graciously, Patrick’s wife bids Ryan and Stu farewell, giving them each a homemade muffin for the road before they hop down and walk to Ryan’s car. Heartened, Patrick yells, “Thanks for coming, guys! Good to see you!” Stu doesn’t turn around. Ryan turns around but flips Patrick off.
Once in the car, Stu and Ryan smile.
Ryan: That was fun.
Stu: I love that guy.
**
My friend Ryan contributed to the brainstorming session which turned into this post.
