Write a commentThere's one in every friend group, one at every job. The word most apt to describe this kind of person is something that I probably shouldn't memorialize in print.
After having typed the word I want to use into a thesaurus, the results are as follows: troublemaker, agitator, instigator, provocateur and mischief-maker. Am I the only one that got an image of the Hamburglar when reading "mischief-maker"? I get the feeling anyone denying this is probably lying to themselves.
They come in all shapes and sizes. The cliche, of course, is a group of "mean girls" in a high school hallway, giggling to one another while someone they don't like passes by. Images of Sissy Spacek getting pelted with tampons in Carrie come to mind. Would it surprise you, dear reader, that one of the biggest gossips I know is a man in his 60s?
For the sake of anonymity, we'll call this guy Scott. Scott's a guy that has worked at my job longer than I have. He's developed quite a reputation as a general liar, but his genre of lie is typically gossip. He loves to be the first one with information so he can spread it around to everyone else. Because many of the people I work with don't have much of a social life, work is their social circle.
I get the feeling that Scott has never had many true friends. With this type of behavior, I'm not all that surprised. When he started working with me directly, I caught wind of exactly the extent of the lies he'd tell. While we were getting to know one another, I mentioned my maternal grandfather. As Scott was familiar with where my grandfather used to work, I figured they might know one another.
"Oh, Jim? Yeah, I knew him. Great guy. He was like a father to me," Scott said.
This struck me as a tad strange. Surely if my grandfather was "like a father" to Scott, I'd have heard about him.
I nodded politely, laughing slightly. "'Like a father'? We're talking about the same Jim, right?"
Scott began yelling in a rat-a-tat rhythm. "Of course, we are. I knew him, he loved me. He was like a father. I probably knew him better than you did!"
I reared back. "Scott, no. I wasn't saying...I just mean he never mentioned you."
Scott shook his head. "Well, he used to take me and my granddaughter out for ice cream. As a matter of fact, that was the last time I saw him. He drove me and my granddaughter to get ice cream a couple of weeks before he died."
I nodded. "Sounds like my grandfather."
"See?! I told you I knew 'im!"
We went back to our work but I was still pretty confused. When I got home that night, I spoke to my sister and mother.
"Hey, so there's this guy I work with, Scott. He knew Papa," I said.
"Like, from the track," my sister asked.
"That's what he said. Said Papa used to take him and his granddaughter out for ice cream all the time. I guess that was the last time they saw each other."
My sister looked at my mother, confused. "Adam, when did he say he saw Papa?"
"Scott said it was a couple of weeks before he died."
My mother cleared her throat. "Adam, your grandfather was basically bedridden up to his death. He wouldn't have been driving."
"Yeah, and Papa died in February. What ice cream place is open in February in Oswego," my sister asked. "Did he say?"
"I didn't ask."
"You might want to."
The next day I went to work. Scott was struggling with his cell phone, as he always was. It was silent in the office besides the occasional grunt.
I laughed slightly, clearing my throat. "Hey, you said my grandfather took you and your granddaughter to get ice cream? Where'd you guys go?"
Scott looked up from his phone. "Bev's. That was his favorite place to go."
For those of you not familiar with the area, Bev's is a strictly seasonal location. No way on God's green Earth did they get ice cream.
I said, "Oh, odd. My grandfather died in late February."
"So?!"
"So Bev's isn't open in the winter."
"It was a warm day! We went to Bev's!"
"Could it have been the summer prior?"
"No!"
Scott shot up to his feet and stormed out of the office. I let it be.
Months later, I wasn't working with Scott any longer, but he still worked on my shift so I would see him occasionally. In late June of that year, I pulled something in my shoulder. I thought I would be able to work light duty, but my first day attempting this work load, I received a phone call, telling me to go home.
As I was leaving, Scott was helping out. As he is a supervisor, I told him to tell anyone looking for me that I was sent home because I messed up my shoulder. He nodded. Once I got to a computer, I sent an email to all the relevant parties and was taken out of work for two weeks.
Within my first couple of days back, I was getting a lot of cross looks. People sneering at me and the like. When I approached one of the people I trust and asked what was going on, he told me that "someone" was going around, saying I broke my back. The reason people were giving me funny looks is because they didn't think I could recover in two weeks from a broken back so they thought I was making the whole thing up.
This coworker said to me, "Oh, yeah. Did you try killing yourself?"
I said, "What?"
"Yeah. That's going around, too. I guess someone heard on the police scanner there was a welfare check at your apartment complex and everyone thought it was you," the coworker said.
"These idiots (I didn't say idiots) understand there are over one hundred units in my complex, right?"
My coworker said, "I didn't believe it and I kept telling people to wait for you to get back before anyone made any assumptions."
A little while later, Scott approaches me. He looks me up and down. "Gee, you look pretty good after breaking your back."
"Who said that to you?"
"You said that to me."
"I said what to you?"
"You told me you messed up your back."
I shook my head. "Scott, I said I screwed up my shoulder."
"That's not what you said. You said you broke your back."
"I didn't say that."
"How do you know you didn't say that?"
"Because I didn't break my back. So I wouldn't say that I did," I said, voice shaking.
Scott shakes his head. "I saw the cops outside your building a few weeks ago."
(Oh, right. I forgot to mention that Scott used to live in the same apartment complex I did. He would tell me he'd watch me from his window when I would sit in my car in the parking lot for too long. It's like living in Creeptown and Scott is the mayor.)
"Oh. I don't know. What day was this?"
"A couple of Sundays ago," he said. "The police scanner said welfare check. I told people out here I thought you tried killing yourself."
And there it was. He openly admitted it. I didn't know what to say so I walked away from him. I was told later on that he was telling everyone around him that I was being mean to him and he didn't know why. Again, this is a guy who is in his 60s.
So, what was his motivation? What is anyone's motivation to be a pot stirrer? Boredom, jealousy? Does it matter? Or do they just love the drama?
The Drama attempts to explore that for about 2/3rds of its runtime before devolving into a standard "romantic" "comedy". Emma (Zendaya) and Charlie (Pattinson) are nearing their wedding day. While sampling the catering menu, Emma, Charlie, Charlie's best man Mike (Athie) and his wife Rachel (Haim) get drunk and begin to play a game. "What's the worst thing you've ever done?" Once they get to Emma, Rachel becomes furious and Charlie begins to second guess everything he thought he knew about Emma.
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Now, it's difficult to speak about this film without divulging what Emma says. Much of the advertising for the film has been coy about mentioning what Emma says. Apparently, when Emma was in high school, she planned a school shooting. At the last second, she changed her mind, opting instead to become an activist against guns.
Part of the reason Rachel is so furious about this is because her cousin was the victim of a school shooting, leaving her paralyzed. Rachel begins a campaign, seemingly trying to convince Charlie to call the wedding off. Charlie is in love with Emma and finds it hard to cut ties so easily.
This sets up a pretty interesting idea. If the person you love did something reprehensible in the past and changed, can you move forward? The film plays a little fast and loose with this concept. They introduce it and don't really delve into it. Before we know it, we're at the wedding and things go sideways, but it never really answers the question it posed in the first two acts of the film.
The character of Rachel is the exact kind of provocateur you'd expect. You understand where she's coming from, but, at what point is enough enough? It's Charlie's decision to make, good, bad or indifferent. Rachel's continual haranguing of Charlie does no one any good. Once Emma explains her thought process and how she dug herself out of the hole of depression she was in, it makes sense. It's admirable even, but Rachel doesn't care. Her mind is set and that's why she's the actual villain.
The problem is the film doesn't really seem to take a side. It's more or less that all the characters besides Emma are kind of dolts and deserve all the ill will they've brought on themselves. In a way, it's cowardly of the filmmaker to sorta shrug their way out of a problem they created.
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Technically speaking, it's pretty well edited, but the A24 aesthetic has grown tiresome. Somehow or the other, with few exceptions, their films all look pretty much the same. As far as the acting goes, Zendaya is okay. Her character is kind of one-note throughout. Pattinson is doing his best as well, but his character is too much of a schlub for the audience to really care what happens to him.
The real revelation in this is Alana Haim. She so naturally falls into the role of Rachel that it's unsettling. She creates a character so loathsome that everyone else fades into the background. Haim, known best for her music, has been bouncing around different acting projects over the last few years. In my opinion, she's the focus of every scene she's in which is saying something considering she's sharing scenes with Zendaya and Robert Pattinson.
I truly wish this movie had the strength to follow through with the controversial set up it created. Had the filmmakers dug their heels in to finish that plot thread, this could have easily been one of the best films of the year. As it is, we have some decent editing, a great villain and a tepid conclusion. They can't all be winners. The film never gives you its thesis. Instead, it cops out and just shrugs.
Even like a "Hey, you know something? Gossiping is bad news, brother" message would have been nice. Maybe throw a character like my coworker in there, but we don't get that. The film ends, Scott free.
I'll end this here before there's a revolt. Besides, I'm sure by now Scott has me pegged as one of the conspirators in the Kennedy assassination.
The Drama (2026)
Directed by Kristoffer Borgil
Cast: Zendaya, Robert Pattinson, Alana Haim, Mamoudou Athie, Hailey Benton Gates
Runtime: 105 minutes
MPAA Rating: R (for sexual content, some violent/bloody images, language throughout and brief drug use)
Rating (out of ****): **
The Drama is currently playing in theaters.
