Nurse Betty | Renée Zellweger | Morgan Freeman | Chris Rock
Winner of the Best Screenplay Award at the Cannes Film Festival 2000 -- a romantic, dangerously funny road picture starring Morgan Freeman, Renee Zellweger, Chris Rock, and Greg Kinnear, from the award-winning director--coming from USA Films in October 2000. Working with the screenplay by John C. Richards and James Flamberg which is based on Richards' short story, Neil LaBute (In the Company of Men, Your Friends and Neighbors) directs the first film that he hadn't written himself and found that that it all added up to "a year of bold experimentation for me." A darkly comic story about one woman's incredible determination to make her dreams come true against numerous odds, fantasy collides with reality as the main character, Betty Sizemore (Renee Zellweger) inspires herself and everyone she meets to find at least a piece of their real selves. Her road journey goes from mid-America to points West, from Kansas to the Grand Canyon to Los Angeles. The Newmarket Shooting Script book includes the complete shooting script (including scenes that were cut during editing), an introduction and notes by the director written exclusively for this edition, stills, and full credits.
Nurse Betty Pictures:
Nurse Betty Story:
What happens when a person decides that life is merely a state of mind? If you're Betty (Renée Zellweger), a small-town waitress and soap opera fan from Fair Oaks, Kansas, you refuse to believe that you can't be with the love of your life just because he doesn't really exist. After all, life is no excuse for not living.
The popular daytime TV drama A Reason to Love has an especially devoted viewer in Betty, a young woman with a good heart and a bad marriage. Her no-good car salesman husband, Del (Aaron Eckhart), treats her like dirt and forgets her birthday. At home one night watching a videotape of that day's episode, Betty watches raptly as her favorite character, Dr. David Ravell, stares up at the moon and says, "I know there's someone special out there for me." Betty feels as if he's speaking directly to her. That is, until her husband comes home with two men to negotiate a shady business deal. As she tries to watch her show, Betty becomes an accidental witness to this deal going fatally awry: Del offends courtly hit man Charlie (Morgan Freeman) and his excitable protégé Wesley (Chris Rock), and is violently dispatched.
Betty, traumatized by this savage event, enters into a fugue state that allows--even encourages--her to keep functioning... in a kind of alternate reality. Betty Sizemore becomes "Nurse Betty," who is set on returning to the love of her life, Dr. Ravell, whom she jilted at the altar six years ago. Betty promptly leaves Kansas in a "borrowed" 1997 Buick LeSabre--which is precisely what her late husband's killers are looking for. They, in turn, set off after Betty, followed also by Fair Oaks sheriff Ballard (Pruitt Taylor Vince) and local reporter Roy Ostrey (Crispin Glover), who are investigating Del's murder and Betty's sudden, unexplained disappearance.
Betty arrives in Los Angeles to search for her beloved Dr. Ravell, who is played on A Reason to Love by actor George McCord (Greg Kinnear); she's reluctantly aided in this quest by her new friend, Rosa Herrera (Tia Texada). As Betty makes contact with Dr. Ravell/George McCord and the hit men slowly but surely track her down, life begins to imitate art... and vice versa.
Nurse Betty People:
- Morgan Freeman - Charlie
- Renée Zellweger - Betty
- Chris Rock - Wesley
- Greg Kinnear - Dr. David Ravel
- Aaron Eckhart - Del
- Neil LaBute - Director
- Crispin Glover - Roy
- Allison Janney - Lyla
- Pruitt Taylor Vance - Ballard
- Tia Texada - Rosa
- James Flamberg - Screenwriter
- John C. Richards - Screenwriter
Nurse Betty Review:
Unlike Neil LaBute's previous films, Your Friends & Neighbors and In the Company of Men, which were low-budget, intimate tales set in unnamed major cities, Nurse Betty is a larger-scaled story set in specific locales. For the first time in a LaBute film, characters break out of their natural (confining) environments--both physically and psychologically.
The director found it all added up to "a year of bold experimentation for me." Reflecting on the progression of his films as director, LaBute comments: "For my first film, I picked from among my scripts the one that I knew I was most capable of pulling off with the amount of money that I had. The jump between the first and second movie was that I felt that, with more money, I had more time to devote to directing, rather than wearing so many hats because I couldn't afford to pay anyone. I felt that again with Nurse Betty." "Two things struck me immediately upon reading Nurse Betty," noted LaBute. "One, this script is incredibly fun and clever, and two, no one will ever expect me to direct it. So, I instantly jumped at the chance."