Monday, February 13, 2017

Historical Fiction Piece

Click here for: My Other Half Script

My Other Half shows us the familiarity and camaraderie between Michael and Ashton Kutcher.  Michael is born with cerebral palsy and has had other health complications that have made life difficult to navigate—it’s hard to know which way to go when you don’t know where the cliff’s edge is.  Michael’s health problems are the true antagonist of our story.  Much like Hurricane Katrina in Josh Neufeld’s After the Deluge, Michael’s health problems control the underlying tension of the story. 

In this circumstance, Ashton reacts somewhat similarly to his brother’s health crisis as Marjane Satrapi does in her excerpt The Veil.  Satrapi is forced to wear a veil to cover her head as is common in some Muslim sects.  At first, her and her classmates do all sorts of nonsense with the veil before they settle into the routine wearing of such. 

Ashton bounds to an extreme solution when he contemplates the news that his brother needs a heart transplant and soon: Ashton offers his own heart.  Ashton also reacts rather excessively when Topher Grace makes a comment about handicapped.  Another antagonist in My Other Half, Topher Grace, is based loosely in rumor.  An inciting incident was necessary for the story, so the rumor that Grace was a bit cold to his fellow cast members was useful.  This provided us with an opportunity to use our creative liberty and spruce up the contention a bit. 

This leads us to a semi-antagonist—The Producer.  This character is not based on any sources.  My Other Half needed a devil’s advocate as far as the conflict between Ashton and his acting career goes.  An unrealistically sympathetic human may have let Ashton have the day off to tone things down.  But our current Producer exemplifies the idiom ‘Time is Money’ and Ashton was not on his own time.  Earlier versions focused more on events and their minute description, but the story is better told through the dialogue and nudges in for mis en scene.

Works Cited
Associated Press. "Michael Kutcher talks about twin brother Ashton, life with cerebral palsy
February 2, 2012 at 11:01 pm | UPDATED: February 7, 2016 at 12:42 pm." 7 February 2016 Web. <http://www.twincities.com/2012/02/02/michael-kutcher-talks-about-twin-brother-ashton-life-with-cerebral-palsy/>.

Faherty, Allanah. "Ashton Kutcher Contemplated Suicide to Save His Twin Brother." Sept. 2016. Web. <https://moviepilot.com/p/ashton-kutcher-suicide-twin-brother/4107780>.

Swift, Nicki. "What Really Happened Behind the Scenes of That '70s Show." Web. <http://www.nickiswift.com/9993/really-happened-behind-scenes-70s-show/>.

Wikipedia. "Ashton Kutcher." Jan. 2017. Web. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashton_Kutcher>.


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