Nurse Betty
by Lovell Mahan-Moutaw

My biggest question about this movie is, how did it get pitched to the Hollywood executives that would eventually give it a green light?

Pitcher: "Okay, okay, okay...you’ve got this woman. Right? And she’s a waitress. Right? With a kinda dickwad husband...he’s not abusive, just stupid, thoughtless and rude...and...and... philandering. Right?"

Pitchee: "Right. Thelma and Louise rolled into one. Boring."

Pitcher: "No, no, see, okay, okay, okay...she sees these two guys kill her husband."

Pitchee: "Interesting. How does he get killed?"

Pitcher: "Um...he’s shot."

Pitchee: "Boring."

Pitcher: "Stabbed?"

Pitchee: "Boring."

Pitcher: "Um, okay, okay, okay...scalped! Then, um, shot!"

Pitchee: "Interesting."

Pitcher: "Yeah, and okay...well, then she goes on this long distance trek."

Pitchee: "We’re back to Thelma and Louise."

Pitcher: "No, no, no, you see...she’s alone and she doesn’t screw anyone or get screwed in any way on her way there. No Brad Pitt. No Michael Madsen. No Harvey Keitel even. You see, okay, okay...she’s gone loony ‘cause she’s in shock ‘cause she saw her husband scalped, and well...okay, okay...she’s in love with this soap opera doctor, right?"

Pitchee: "How stereotypical can you get? Boring."

Pitcher: "No...no, see, she actually finds him and convinces him that she’s...a, a., um, method actress! That’s it. And he gives her a job and...the guys that scalped her husband are after her and they are two separate hitman philosophers...and...um, one falls for her, that’s it...yeah..."

Pitchee: "You’ve used up your two minutes. This sounds like a mess."

Pitcher: "It is...but, Pulp Fiction was a mess! And, um, well...it will seem very um, artistic. You could get Tarantino to do it...it is perfect for him! Or, um....let’s see...that Three Kings guy, he’s into surrealism. He could get in to this. We’ll make George Clooney the soap opera star..."

Pitchee: "Who do you see as the woman?"

Pitcher: "Um, Julia Roberts."

Pitchee: "Not gonna happen."

Pitcher: "Sandra Bullock?"

Pitchee: "Not gonna happen."

Pitcher: "Renee Zellweger...we could make her all sweet and vulnerable and not run down by life. That’s it...one of the biggest mysteries of this business is how Hollywood gets away with making all of these abused, neglected wives walk around with stars in their eyes! People love that. That Zellweger girl would be great! She’d epitomize the Hollywood innocent, starry-eyed, abused and neglected wife! She’s all cute and innocent. Perfect."

Pitchee: "What are you trying to say with this movie?"

Pitcher: "I don’t know...it’ll be funny, and interesting, and unusual...you know, okay, okay, weird and wacky...and deep. Yeah...deep. Okay, okay, okay...very deep. Movie snobs’ll love it."

Pitchee: "Weird and wacky and deep?"

Pitcher: "It’ll scream ‘no-way-is-this-gonna-get-an- Oscar-because-the-Academy-is-too-stupid-to-realize- how-brilliant-it-is’! Okay, okay? Doesn’t that sound great?!"

Pitchee: "Actually, it does. All of those movie freaks and geeks will love something like this...champion it until the day it receives maybe one nomination for an Oscar, for, like, editing or something, and then they’ll call for a strike of the Awards. There will be protests and websites devoted to it and it’ll be all over Entertainment Weekly and Entertainment Tonight and Premier. It will make tickets sales go out the roof! I love it."

Pitcher: "You do? Okay, okay...great."

Pitchee: "Great."

Pitcher: "Can we still get Clooney?"

Pitchee: "Naw...we’ll find someone else, someone who was nominated, and deserved it, but didn’t win. Hell, we’ll fill the movie with great, unappreciated talent. It will up the movie freak and geek pissed offedness quotient."

Pitcher: "Yeah. Great."

Pitchee: "Great. Next!"

Nurse Betty is a weird, wacky and deep movie. The deepness comes from the performances of the actors...rather than the story which seemed to be trying way too hard to be weird, wacky and deep. But rather than making this a miss, it surprisingly, makes it a hit.

The story follows Betty (Zellweger), a waitress with a thoughtless, stupid husband (Aaron Eckhart). Betty’s dreams of becoming a nurse and helping people went the way of the dinosaur when she met and married Del. Now, her existence is working, taking care of Del, and being cheated on and made a fool of. Oh yeah, and there is her obsession with a soap opera character, Dr. David Ravell (Greg Kinnear).

Betty’s husband is killed, right before her eyes. Shock sets in quickly, and Betty’s brain, as a coping mechanism, shuts out what she has seen and instead absorbs what is going on in the background – Dr. David Ravell announcing that there is something better for him out there, somewhere. Betty is convinced this is true for her...and that something is Dr. David Ravell.

She thinks she is leaving her husband to find her old flame, an ex-fiancé by the name of Dr. Ravell and she heads to LA in one of Del’s cars (he’s a used car salesman). In the meantime, the killers Charlie (Morgan Freeman) and Wesley (Chris Rock), find out she’s witnessed the crime and they need to find her and the goods they were trying to get from Del...which she, unknowingly, is carrying in the trunk of the car she took from his lot.

Betty makes it to LA, actually meets David Ravell, or rather George McCord, the actor...in the meantime, our hitmen Charlie and Wesley are on her trail...both of them coming to different conclusions about who and what Betty is and what they are meant to do with her once they get there.

Although you laugh, hard, quite a bit during this movie, it is not funny. I went with my fiancé, who described it as "like watching a train wreck." Betty, a mess, in shock and loopy, is on the verge of making a fool of herself and getting into some very serious trouble everywhere she goes. Once the scalping started, I turned away (I cannot handle gore and violence very well) but from what I saw, I can imagine this visual would set anyone’s loopy meter at high (past ten, straight to eleven).

Zellweger is all innocent and starry eyed and poofy-lipped and cute and cuddly and sad and sweet. She makes it hard to take your eyes of Nurse Betty...in this weird and wacky way...like you could jump in to the movie screen and stop her from getting ino another mess, and gently care for her as she so desperately needs after a shitty life and a horrible, tragic shock.

Betty needs a new and happy life and it is terrible that to get it, she has to witness the scalp being peeled away from her husband’s skull...but so be it. Whatever lights that fire under Betty’s ass and gets her moving in to a better direction. She’s never even been out of Kansas but there is a world to discover and she’s young enough to have the chance to do it. She just needed to shake off the old and discover the new. Luckily, Charlie and Wesley came along to help her do just that.

Freeman’s Charlie is fantastic. What a fucking weird creature Charlie is. Dignified, intuitive and intelligent, he’s a hitman who has spent his life dealing with human garbage.

 Having a person like Betty in his life is something he never counted on and it isn’t surprising that he fell for her almost immediately – even before he would know how she would figure in his life. Freeman and Zellweger’s scenes together were wonderful - throw some humor and wackiness in to the relationship between Starling and Lechter in Silence of the Lambs and you get Charlie and Betty.

Wesley, on the other hand, is Charlie, without the dignity and intuition but lacking none of the intelligence. Wesley is slightly more barbaric in his approach to the job and he holds no sentiment in life.

 He’s got a job to do, it gives him money, so he does it. Whatever way it needs to be done. Whatever Betty turns out to be...or however they need to deal with her...means nothing to him. He simply has a job to do.

I think that many people will be disappointed with this film because it isn’t as funny as it has been advertised to be. If you look back at it, there isn’t much funny about it at all, not in the conventionally humorous way, that is. It is certainly funny in a weird and wacky way...the kind of way that makes you emit quick, strange hoots of surprised and possibly horrified laughter.

If you aren’t into weird, wacky and possibly deep movies...go to see Nurse Betty anyway. Zellweger, Rock and Kinnear are fabulous. Freeman is Freeman, so infinitely watchable that you could spend the week with his Charlie. It also has Crispin Glover and Allison Janney (who, thank God, won the Emmy she so richly deserved) which is a treat. The performances and the interaction between the characters is fantastic. Worth the price of admission.

But as for the movie, what can I say? It entertained me, definitely. It moved me, several times, in several different ways (to sadness, horror and anger). It was so weird and wacky and possibly deep and with those things, and the strange sensation I get from having seen it, and the performances, it registers as worthwhile. Very.

CineScene, 2000