FACT: "The Fault in our Stars" is better than "Star Wars"
It’s twice as sad when beautiful people get cancer.
I saw the romantic masterpiece “The Fault in Our Stars” and I just got to say…WOW! Not only has this film restored my faith in the heart of humanity, but it has restored my faith in film. All over the country teenage girls, their mothers, and one 33 year old, balding, white man have been touched by the story of Hazel and Augustus. I got a sneak peek at this film at an exclusive showing. So exclusive that I was the only one there. I got this hot tip to head to the industrial park, where they were having a one man showing of the film. It was a day before the release and I had to sign an agreement that I wouldn’t speak of the film until after it came out. A garage door opened upon my arrival and a man, whom I think spoke with a Russian accent, escorted me to the back of the warehouse. There hung a giant sheet from the ceiling and many feet away from it a film projector. Admittedly I wasn’t too in love with the location at first. It smelled like lighter fluid and animal sex. But when that film started rolling I became transported to another world. A world where romance wasn’t dead.
Hazel Lancaster has thyroid cancer in her lungs and meets Augustus Waters at a cancer support group. Hazel breathes through an oxygen tank and Augustus is a cancer survivor with an amputated leg that he cut off himself. What results is the truest, most beautiful, love story ever put to film. I feverishly wrote down on my pocket notepad every book Hazel and Augustus ever discussed or exchanged. From the Marquis De Sade’s Justine to Georges Bataille’s Story of the Eye, my summer reading list is quite full! Of course the romance between the two grows more and more intense, and just when you forget the reality of the situation…tragedy occurs.
I know it’s in bad form to spoil things on the internet, but I felt like the ending of this movie was so well-done and honorable that people who might dismiss this kind of movie as some typical “chick flick” deserve a little bit more detail. I think this could encourage those people to go see the film and turn this thing from a teenage phenomenon to a worldwide explosion until it becomes a cultural earmark for the rest of our history. That being said, I will now reveal the ending to The Fault in our Stars.
Hazel has left town to see relatives and is expecting Augustus to call her that night. The call never comes. For the rest of her trip she calls Augustus multiple times. Some messages she leaves are angry. Other messages would just be her reading onto his voicemail, sobbing out their favorite parts of Justine. Two days later she returns to Indianapolis and drives straight to Augustus’s apartment and knocks feverishly on the door. Tired and worked up, she begins to feel weak and collapses on his doorstep. She wakes up in the hospital where she has to stay for four days. After finally getting the go-ahead to leave, Hazel begs her mother to drive straight to Augustus’s apartment. Hazel’s mother insists on going through the Arby’s® drive-thru to hit up two Beef ‘N Cheddars™ for only $5, an Arby-Q® sandwich, and a Jamocha Shake™. She also grabbed an apple turnover for later. She would have gotten some curly fries, but they give her indigestion. Which is just some stomach thing she has always had with potatoes, and isn’t the fault of Arby’s® at all.
Arby’s® is a proud sponsor of of Bob Sham Comics and The Fault in our Stars. In theaters now.
After Hazel and her mother leave Arby’s®, they drive to Augustus’s apartment. Hazel knocks on the door, doing her best to remain calm for fear of collapsing again. Her mother stayed in the car eating Beef ‘N Cheddars™. Hazel walks to the side door where a hobo was asleep, propped against the brick. Too weak from being full of cancer, Hazel wakes up the hobo and pays him $50 and half of an Arby-Q® sandwich to kick the door open. It takes him a few tries but he manages to break in. The hobo leaves immediately, muttering “I ain’t going back to jail.” Hazel walks in. The place is very quiet. She calls out Augustus’s name, but there is no reply. She looks nearly everywhere until she stops by the bathroom door, which is cracked open, and peeks in. There was Augustus dead on the toilet. Nothing on but his boxer shorts around his ankle. Augustus had apparently suffered from a brain hemorrhage while making waste and died slumped onto the toilet. His body, a little over six days dead, had swelled and bloated making Augustus look puffy and lumpy. His skin was turning black, his lips bulged out, and his eyes were popping from his face. Devastated, Hazel erupted into tears and slumped to her knees onto the bathroom floor. After several minutes Hazel rears up, looks directly into Augustus’s face, and says “Gus, my love, I cannot tell you how thankful I am for our little infinity. I wouldn’t trade it for the world. I wouldn’t trade it for the world. You gave me a forever within the numbered days, and I’m grateful.” Then she kisses him one last time. As her lips touch his corpse-lips she touches his pudgy hand which forces a lot of decomposition gas to expel from his body very loudly. Augustus’s body jostles from the latrine and falls forward right on top of Hazel. Hazel’s oxygen tube gets knocked from her nose and her face gets smothered by Augustus’s bloated, heavy, torso. The corpse version of Augustus is played brilliantly by acting super star Mickey Rourke who insisted on very little make-up for the role. She struggles to get free, but she is too weak from her treatments. Hazel dies, technically, in the embrace of her greatest love. Hazel’s mother, after going ahead and eating that apple turnover and finishing one more round of phone Tetris™, decides to see what is taking Hazel so long. When she walks through the open side door, she sees the bodies of her daughter and Augustus. After a long silence, Hazel’s mother looks directly into the camera and says, “This is the fault in our stars.” Roll credits. I walked out of that warehouse that night feeling emotional and awed. It was well worth $300.
In a perfect world, Mickey Rourke would win twenty oscars for his compelling portrayal of Augustus’s corpse. Unfortunately this isn’t a perfect world. It’s a trash world. That’s why The Fault in our Stars is so important.
You see what I’m talking about?! You have GOT to see this movie! I loved it for so many reasons. Not the least of which being that the character of Augustus shares the same name as my cat. That pretty much cements me getting that name tattooed on my lower back. Maybe when I get more money I can get Augustus Waters’s face on one side of the name, and my cat’s face on the other. This movie deserves to be bigger than Star Wars. If you disagree then you are entitled to your wrong opinion.
My Augustus isn’t an amputee cancer survivor, but it would be a lot more romantic if he was.
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