The Fault in Our Stars


 * [first lines; Hazel is lying in the grass staring up at the stars]
 * Hazel: [voice over] I believe we have a choice in this world, about how to tell sad stories. On the one hand, you can sugar coat it, the way they do in movies and romance novels where beautiful people learn beautiful lessons and nothing is too messed up that can’t be fixed with an apology and a Peter Gabriel song. I like that way as much as the next girl, believe me. It’s just not the truth.
 * [Hazel closes her eyes]
 * Hazel: [voice over] This is the truth. Sorry.
 * [Hazel is sat in a doctor’s office with an oxygen tube in her nostrils]
 * Hazel: [voice over] Late in the Winter of my seventeenth year, my mother decided that I was depressed.
 * [Hazel’s mother, Frannie, is talking to the doctor]
 * Frannie: She eats like a bird. She barely leaves the house…
 * Hazel: I am not depressed, Mom.
 * Frannie: She’s reading the same book over and over.
 * Dr. Maria: She’s depressed.
 * Hazel: I’m not depressed!
 * [Hazel is sat in the mall with Frannie, she watches group of teenage girls talking and laughing]
 * Hazel: [voice over] The booklets and the web sites always list depression as a side effect of cancer. Depression’s not a side effect of cancer, it’s a side effect of dying. Which is what was happening to me.
 * [Hazel is lying on her couch at home watching TV when Frannie brings her a tray of food and medicine, next Hazel is sat in a coffee shop reading the book “An Imperial Affliction” by Peter Van Houten when she notices a young couple holding each other and laughing she glances back at the page in her book an looks at the words that have been circled “Pain demands to be felt”]
 * [back at the doctor’s office]
 * Dr. Maria: I may switch you to Zoloft. Or Lexapro. And twice a day instead of once.
 * Hazel: Why stop there?
 * Dr. Maria: Hmm?
 * Hazel: Really, just keep ’em coming. I’m like the Keith Richards of cancer kids.
 * Dr. Maria: Have you been going to that support group I suggested?
 * Hazel: Yeah, it’s not my thing.
 * Dr. Maria: Support group’s gonna be a great way for you to connect with people who are…
 * Hazel: Who are…what?
 * Dr. Maria: On the same journey.
 * Hazel: “Journey?” Really?
 * Dr. Maria: Give it a chance. Who knows? You might even find it enlightening.
 * [Hazel attends a cancer support group where the person running it just finishes playing the guitar]
 * Patrick: Alright. You guys ready? We are gathered here today, literally, in the heart of Jesus.
 * [he kneels down on a massive rug of Jesus]
 * Patrick: We’re here with JC.
 * [Hazel tries to hide her smile]
 * Patrick: Who wants to share their story with the group.
 * [a girl stands]
 * Angel: I’m Angel. I have acute myeloid leukemia.
 * [a boys stands]
 * Sid: Sid. Acute lymphoblastic leukemia.
 * [another boy stands]
 * PJ: Hi. I’m PJ. Um…I have neuroblastoma.
 * Patrick: I’m Patrick. Testicular.
 * Hazel: [voice over] I’ll spare you the gory details of Patrick’s ball cancer. Basically, they found it in his nuts, they cut most of it out and he almost died, but he didn’t die. So now here he is, divorced, friendless, living on his parent’s couch, exploiting his cancertastic past in the heart of Jesus, “literally”, to show us that one day, if we’re lucky, we could be just like him.
 * Patrick: Who’s next?
 * [no response so he looks across at Hazel]
 * Patrick: Hazel?
 * [Hazel reluctantly stands]
 * Hazel: Um…I’m Hazel. Uh…thyroid originally but now with quite the impressive satellite colony in my lungs.
 * Patrick: And…and…and how are you doing?
 * [to herself as she looks at Patrick thinking of how reply]
 * Hazel: [voice over] Uh…you mean besides the terminal cancer?
 * [replying out loud]
 * Hazel: Alright, I guess.
 * Patrick: We’re here for you, Hazel.
 * [Hazel sits back down]
 * Patrick: Why don’t I play another song?
 * [Patrick starts playing his guitar and singing]
 * Patrick: [singing] Christ is our friend and he’ll be there until the end. Christ is our friend and he’ll be there until the end. Rise, rise, rise…
 * [Hazel looks over to one of the group members, Isaac and he smiles at her as they listen to Patrick sing]