Short Film Script: Gustav’s Brush
I would like to have reprinted the script in its correct script format, but the parameters of this publishing site made that option unavailable. But I have spaced things out in such a way that it should still be easy to read.
GUSTAV’S BRUSH
FADE IN:
INT. GUSTAV’S KITCHEN – DAY
A spartanly-decored kitchen of a 1930s bungalow. Old appliances and dirty dishes suggest it still functions as such, but the room has been, for the most part, overrun by an ARTIST’S STUDIO.
GUSTAV HJERSTROM (59) sits at an EASEL in the center of the kitchen. He works on an ABSTRACT PAINTING — a black background with red and orange swirls in the middle.
Gustav is a bedraggled, old codger with bits of dried paint clinging to his clothes and hair.
A RAPPING SOUND from offscreen.
Gustav stops painting and looks in the direction of the sound.
INT. LIVING ROOM – DAY
Gustav opens the front door and finds DARRYL FOSTER (11), a mop-headed kid with a skateboard. They stare each other down a moment. Then:
GUSTAV
Need something?
DARRYL
My Mom said I was giving her a headache, so I should come over here.
Gustav subtly grinds his teeth.
GUSTAV
Well, doesn’t she suppose you’d give me a headache, too?
DARRYL
(shrugs)
I don’t know.
CUT TO:
INT. KITCHEN – DAY
Gustav and Darryl eat hashbrowns and eggs. Darryl notices Gustav’s abstract painting.
DARRYL
What’s that?
GUSTAV
A volcano.
Darryl studies it a moment.
DARRYL
It is?
GUSTAV
Yeah.
Darryl chews on his eggs as he continues to look at the painting.
DARRYL
(talking with his mouth full)
Oh, it’s like you’re looking down inside. And that’s lava.
GUSTAV
Yeah.
DARRYL
It’s cool. I wish I could see a volcano explode once.
Gustav nods.
DARRYL
Have you ever seen a volcano explode?
GUSTAV
Not in person.
They resume eating a moment, then:
DARRYL
I’m gonna come here after school all the time.
Gustav blinks at him.
GUSTAV
You mean every day?
Darryl nods.
GUSTAV
What for?
DARRYL
Because I like it here.
Gustav gives him a tough stare.
GUSTAV
I’m not really the funnest playmate.
DARRYL
I don’t care.
Gustav stands up from the table.
GUSTAV
Don’t you have friends?
Darryl shakes his head.
Gustav takes his plate off the table and takes it to the kitchen sink. He rinses his food into the garbage disposal. He looks back at Darryl.
GUSTAV
Rules of the house, then. No snooping. And no belly-aching about being bored.
Darryl nods and smiles.
QUICK MONTAGE:
1. Darryl drinks a soda and intently watches Gustav work on a painting.
2. Different day, different clothes, Darryl looks bored as he watches Gustav make slow progress on the same painting.
3. Again different day, different clothes. Darryl invades Gustav’s work space, picking up his brushes and paint tubes. Gustav brusquely shoos him away.
4. Yet another different day, different clothes. Darryl observes the painting upside down while draped across a chair.
DARRYL
Don’t you ever see that guy on TV?
Gustav looks at him.
GUSTAV
What guy?
DARRYL
The one who paints trees and mountains. He’s a lot faster than you are.
Gustav’s annoyance is palpable.
GUSTAV
Maybe you’d like to do your own painting?
Darryl’s eyes light up.
CUT TO:
EXT. GUSTAV’S FRONT PORCH – DAY
Gustav continues to paint as Darryl stands in front of a smaller easel that has a large piece of PAPER taped to a DRAWING BOARD. Darryl stares at the paper. He looks at Gustav’s canvas and his art supplies and then his set of Crayola WATERCOLORS.
DARRYL
How come I don’t get the kind of paint you got?
GUSTAV
My stuff’s not cheap to come by.
DARRYL
But don’t you have a lot of money?
GUSTAV
No.
Darryl stares at his blank paper for a long time, then:
DARRYL
My mom thought you had a lot of money.
GUSTAV
(shrugs)
Helen used to spend it like we had it. But we never did.
Darryl continues to stare at his blank paper, then:
DARRYL
My mom wanted me to come here and always talk about how we’re doing bad on money — like how I couldn’t get new shoes for school and stuff.
Gustav looks at him a moment.
GUSTAV
What about your father?
DARRYL
He’s dead.
After a long, uncomfortable silence:
GUSTAV
Well, tell your Mom if she wants I’ll buy you shoes. Nothing fancy. Just something to keep you from walking around barefoot.
Darryl smiles.
Gustav turns back to his painting, but as he lifts his brush, his hand begins to shake. He sets the brush down and picks up a FLASK sitting nearby. He unscrews the lid and takes a long drink.
CUT TO:
EXT. GUSTAV’S FRONT PORCH – DAY
Darryl knocks on the front door. He holds a CONTAINER OF CUPCAKES.
Gustav opens the front door.
DARRYL
Mom baked you some cupcakes.
INT. GUSTAV’S KITCHEN – DAY
Gustav and Darryl have eaten almost the entire batch of cupcakes. The empty cups litter the table top. Darryl notices another of Gustav’s paintings — a landscape with Mt. Fuji. Darryl looks at Gustav.
DARRYL
How come you like to paint volcanos?
GUSTAV
(shrugs)
How come you like to paint race cars?
DARRYL
Because they’re awesome.
GUSTAV
Well, that’s how I feel about volcanos.
They continue to eat the cupcakes. Gustav gulps down half a glass of milk and wipes his mouth with his sleeve. He eyes the boy, smiling impishly.
GUSTAV
In Japan, there’s a volcano famous for people killing themselves there. It was in the 30s. Happened so often, tourists lined up on the rim just to watch. The ferry that ran out to the island had to stop selling one-way tickets so it didn’t look like they were promoting the whole thing.
DARRYL
Why did the people kill themselves?
GUSTAV
(shrugs)
All sorts of reasons. Depressed. Lonely. Nuts. Couldn’t stand to live with themselves anymore. All pretty good reasons.
Another long, silent moment. Then Darryl pushes the last cupcake toward Gustav. Gustav looks at it with a faint smile.
MONTAGE:
Gustav becomes Darryl’s art teacher as Darryl gets progressively older. At the end of the sequence, Darryl graduates from PAPER and WATER COLORS to CANVASS and OILS.
INT. GUSTAV’S HOUSE – DAY
A FOURTEEN-YEAR-OLD DARRYL enters the house.
Darryl looks around the house a moment. The decor is noticeably more cheerful. Some of Gustav’s PAINTINGS are hanging on the walls.
DARRYL
Uncle Gustav?
Darryl walks into:
INT. KITCHEN – CONTINUOUS
Darryl looks around a moment, then he sees something offscreen that stops him in his tracks.
DARRYL’S POV: Through the window to the back yard, we see Gustav tossing some PAINTINGS onto a BONFIRE.
CUT TO:
EXT. BACK YARD – DAY
Gustav watches the fire and then drunkenly staggers to a pile of paintings as Darryl rushes out the back door.
DARRYL
What are you doing?
Gustav sways back and forth a bit, then stoops to pick up another painting. Darryl quickly bats the painting out of his hands.
DARRYL
Stop!
Gustav puts his hand on Darryl’s chest to shove him out of the way, but he merely trips past him and stumbles to the ground. Darryl quickly leans down to see if he’s all right. The old man swats him away.
GUSTAV
(slurring)
Cut it! I’m getting revenge.
A faint POLICE SIREN grows progressively louder.
DARRYL
On who?
GUSTAV
What?
DARRYL
Revenge on who?
Gustav is at a loss.
The POLICE SIREN gets very loud and then stops.
CUT TO:
EXT. GUSTAV’S HOUSE – DAY
Gustav sits in the back of a PATROL CAR. A FIRETRUCK is also parked out front.
A couple of FIREFIGHTERS move back and forth from the back yard as Darryl talks to a POLICE OFFICER.
POLICE OFFICER
(hands Darryl a citation)
Have him bring it to the courthouse.
DARRYL
Okay.
The officer looks at Gustav, then back at Darryl.
POLICE OFFICER
Does your aunt live here?
DARRYL
No.
POLICE OFFICER
Nobody looks after him when he gets like this?
DARRYL
No. But I’ll stay with him tonight.
INT. KITCHEN – DAY
Gustav and Darryl sit at the table. Gustav has a cup of coffee in front of him. He gazes out the back window.
GUSTAV
Can’t believe I burnt ’em. That’s the thing about booze — tends to make your worst ideas sound pretty smart.
DARRYL
How many did you burn?
GUSTAV
(shrugs)
Thirty?
DARRYL
Did you burn any of mine?
GUSTAV
God I hope not!
DARRYL
(a thoughtful beat)
Well, if you did, that’s okay. I’m just glad you didn’t set fire to anything else.
GUSTAV
You mean like myself?
DARRYL
No. I mean like your house.
(a beat)
You wouldn’t set fire to yourself, would you?
Gustav shrugs. He looks away. There’s a long silence.
GUSTAV
You probably want to know why I got shit-faced.
Darryl nods.
GUSTAV
Helen’s getting married.
DARRYL
Ah, Jesus…
GUSTAV
(shakes his head)
Marriage was never a good idea for that woman. Not with me. Not with anybody. I don’t know why she kids herself.
A long, silent beat, then:
GUSTAV
I’m in the mood for a movie.
CUT TO:
EXT. DRIVE-IN MOVIE SCREEN – NIGHT
A MOVIE plays on the screen, but we do not hear its audio. Instead, we hear the OFFSCREEN VOICES of Darryl and Gustav as they ad-lib their own dialogue to the images on the screen.
The shot pulls back to reveal:
EXT. ROOFTOP – CONTINUOUS
Darryl and Gustav sit on the roof of Gustav’s house, watching the Drive-In Screen on the lot next door. Darryl and Gustav continue to ad-lib dialogue. They crack each other up immensely.
INT. GUSTAV’S HOUSE – DAY
Darryl enters.
DARRYL
Uncle Gustav?
Gustav enters from the kitchen.
GUSTAV
Hey, boy.
DARRYL
What do you want to do today?
GUSTAV
You can help me write my suicide letter.
Darryl looks at him a moment. The gravity of such a request seems to make no particular impact on him.
DARRYL
All right.
INT. KITCHEN – DAY
Darryl sits at the table as Gustav stands at the center of the kitchen, reading from a sheet of paper.
GUSTAV
Dear Helen, if you wonder if you should blame yourself for what I’ve done, the answer is, “yes”. I can’t take the pain and loneliness anymore. I hope you find true happiness with your new husband, but you should also know that I have died a slow and agonizing death as every last ounce of blood dripped from my broken heart. Yours, Gustav.
Gustav folds the paper and looks at Darryl. Darryl nods.
DARRYL
This stuff is getting kinda serious now.
GUSTAV
It’s been serious for a while.
DARRYL
(a little angry)
So what does it mean? You’re one step away?
GUSTAV
(shrugs)
I don’t know. It’s good to have a note handy. If I’m ever pressed for time…
DARRYL
Let me see it.
Gustav hands the letter to Darryl who quickly reads it over again. He looks back at Gustav.
DARRYL
Well, you get to the point. That’s good… and it’s kind of poetic at the end. But where it says Aunt Helen should blame herself — maybe you could be a little more specific.
GUSTAV
How?
DARRYL
Well, you say she broke your heart, but it seems to me like you hate her now. You said she always knocked your paintings and she always talked to you like you’re a kid. And she refused to get pregnant for you because she already had a kid. Maybe you can make a list of all the bad things she did to you and put them in the note.
GUSTAV
Like an indictment!
DARRYL
A what?
GUSTAV
And then maybe it’ll riddle her with guilt! That’s a good idea.
Gustav sits down at the kitchen table. He tears a fresh sheet of paper from a notebook and begins writing.
GUSTAV
This’ll be good for that poor bastard who married her, too. Let him know what he got himself into.
EXT. ICE CREAM PARLOR – DAY
Gustav and Darryl walk down the sidewalk outside an ice cream parlor. Gustav has an ice cream cone. Darryl eats a sundae.
DARRYL
How do you want to do it?
GUSTAV
I thought I could run my car off Saddle Creek bridge.
DARRYL
Then where would you put the note?
GUSTAV
Maybe I’ll leave it up on my bed.
Darryl thinks for a moment.
DARRYL
Well, what if you don’t die? Some people drive into creeks and they don’t get killed.
GUSTAV
That’s because they get out of the car and swim back to the bank. But I wouldn’t. I’d just let myself go under.
DARRYL
And drown?
GUSTAV
Yeah.
DARRYL
(shakes his head)
My P.E. coach said drowning is one of the worst ways to die.
GUSTAV
Why’s that?
DARRYL
Because it can take up to twenty minutes and you go through cardiac arrest.
EXT. GUSTAV’S FRONT PORCH – DAY
Darryl works on a painting while Gustav sits in a nearby chair. He gazes out into his front yard and nurses his flask.
GUSTAV
It’s hard to botch shooting yourself.
Darryl continues to paint without a word.
GUSTAV
People who jump off bridges and things often botch it.
(a long beat)
The jumpers who live always say they regretted it right after the leap.
EXT. GROCERY STORE – DAY
Darryl and Gustav load groceries into the trunk of Gustav’s beat-up old car.
GUSTAV
There was a woman in D.C. who fed herself to the lions. Apparently hid in the zoo until after hours then scaled the fence, climbed over a retaining wall, swam across a moat and then laid down and just let the big cats feast.
DARRYL
(with a cynical smirk)
That method would be last on my list.
GUSTAV
I’m not even considering it. But the police figured out this lady wasn’t just murdered and dumped there because she left clues about how she intended to feed herself to the lions just like the Christians in ancient Rome. She made her suicide symbolic. Maybe that’s something I ought to think about. Symbolism.
INT. GUSTAV’S KITCHEN – DAY
Gustav and Darryl sit at the kitchen table eating sandwiches and potato chips.
After a moment of silent eating, Gustav picks up a TUBE OF PAINT that is sitting amongst a collection of paint brushes and junk mail. He unscrews the lid and squeezes the tube a little so that a dab of paint sits just above the rim. He looks at Darryl who’s already staring at him.
GUSTAV
What if I ate a whole tube of paint?
DARRYL
Well, I’d say it’d definitely kill you.
GUSTAV
And it would be symbolic. I could write in my note that Helen’s feelings toward my art sort of consumed me with self-hate and so to get back, I consumed the tool of my art.
DARRYL
But won’t it make people think you’re crazy?
GUSTAV
Will it?
DARRYL
(nods)
I bet so. You don’t want Helen to think you’re crazy. You want her to think that you died on purpose as a way to blame her for your loneliness. Right?
GUSTAV
Yeah.
After a brief pause, Gustav wipes the dab of paint off the tube and tastes it.
DARRYL
What does it taste like?
GUSTAV
Metal.
(he spits the paint out)
No way could I eat this whole tube.
EXT. ROOFTOP – NIGHT
Gustav and Darryl sit on the roof and ad-lib to another drive-in movie. They again crack each other up until, abruptly, they realize that the CHARACTER currently on screen is putting a GUN in his mouth.
Gustav and Darryl become stone silent as they watch the movie character kill himself.
DISSOLVE TO:
EXT. ROOFTOP – NIGHT
The drive-in screen is now dark. Gustav and Darryl lie on their backs on the incline of the roof. They stare up at a big, clear STARRY SKY.
GUSTAV
What do you think that guy’s last thought was?
Darryl thinks about it for a moment, then:
DARRYL
I don’t know.
GUSTAV
I mean if he was real. You think he was afraid that last split second? You think it ever crossed his mind that it was a mistake?
DARRYL
I don’t know.
A thoughtful pause.
GUSTAV
What do you suppose happens when you die? You think there’s an afterlife? Some place you go beyond Earth? Or do you just die and that’s it. Nothing.
DARRYL
I don’t know.
They continue to stare up at the big, starry sky. Darryl looks sad and maybe even a bit frightened. Gustav’s expression is a little more stoic.
GUSTAV
You know Helen did get pregnant with me once. She was 42 and said it was no age to be having a baby again. I said it didn’t matter ’cause I was excited to be a father and I said I would be in charge of raising the kid. She still didn’t want to, but she said okay. Two weeks later, she went out and got an abortion. Didn’t ask me. Just went out and did it like it was some kind of errand. She said having me raise the kid was all fine and good, but since I couldn’t do the pregnancy — what did it matter? Our marriage became so bitter after that. Wasn’t too long before she left me.
They look at each other a long moment.
GUSTAV
How old were you when your Dad died?
DARRYL
Five. I used to miss him a lot.
GUSTAV
Still do, don’t you?
Darryl shakes his head.
DARRYL
I don’t remember him much anymore. I used to think about him every day, but then I slowly forgot a lot of things about him. And then I had to look at pictures just to remember what he looked like.
Gustav frowns.
GUSTAV
Maybe it’s better you don’t remember him much. Losing a parent can be hard to get over. At least this way it’s like you never even had a father. Life’s a lot less complicated without those kinds of relationships. To be fatherless or sonless… is really not so bad.
Darryl looks at him a long moment, then:
DARRYL
Do you feel like you never had a son?
Gustav is about to answer him off-handedly but then catches a telling look in the boy’s eye. The foster relationship between the two is now apparent in both of their expressions.
Gustav suddenly chokes back tears.
WIDE SHOT:
Gustav’s house. Moonlight shimmering down, casting the two as silhouettes as the Drive-in across the fence sits empty.
FADE OUT:
THE END
A three minute vidoe clip
of the film is available at AOl Video and also at ifilm.com.
You may also check out a slide show
of a comic book version of the opening sequence to the film.
