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Nurse Betty
What happens when a person decides that life is merely a state of mind? If you're Betty, 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. Traumatized by a savage event, Betty enters into a fugue state that allows -- even encourages -- her to keep functioning... in a kind of alternate reality.
2000 · Directed by Neil LaBute · 108 min · Comedy · Crime · Thriller · Drama · Screenplay in the scene database · 8 frames
Tagline
She's chasing a dream... they're chasing her.
Plot
In the small Kansas town of Fair Oaks, diner waitress Betty Sizemore is a fan of the soap opera A Reason to Love. She has no idea that her husband Del, a car salesman, is having a sexual affair with another woman, his secretary. She also doesn't know that her husband supplements his income by selling drugs. When Betty calls to ask about borrowing a Buick LeSabre for her birthday, Del tells her to take a different car. She manages to get the Buick's key and drives off, unaware that a large stash of drugs is hidden in the trunk. Two hitmen, Charlie and Wesley, come to Betty and Del's house. Charlie threatens to scalp Del if he doesn't reveal where the drugs are, and Del reveals that he has hidden the drugs in the trunk of a Buick; Wesley then scalps Del after misunderstanding Charlie's silent communication. The appalled Charlie shoots Del dead. Betty witnesses the murder and enters a fugue state, assuming the identity of a character in A Reason to Love who is a nurse.
That evening, Sheriff Eldon Ballard, local reporter Roy Ostery, and several policemen examine the crime scene while Betty calmly packs a suitcase. She seems nonchalant about the murder, even with the investigation going on right in her house. At the police station, a psychiatrist examines her. Betty spends the night at her friend's house, sleeping in a child's bedroom. In the middle of the night, she gets into the LeSabre and drives off. She stops at a bar in Williams, Arizona, where the bartender talks about her vacation in Rome; Betty tells her that she was once engaged to a famous surgeon (describing the lead character from A Reason to Love). Meanwhile, the two hitmen are in pursuit, having learned that Betty saw Del's killing, and having realized that she probably has the car with the drugs. As they search, Charlie's heart begins to soften towards Betty, to Wesley's consternation.
In Los Angeles, Betty tries to get a job as a nurse while looking for her long-lost "ex-fiancé". She is turned down because she has no resume or references, but when she saves a young shooting victim's life with a technique she learned from the show, the hospital offers her a job in the pharmacy but forbids her to touch any more patients. Despite her position, Betty becomes popular with patients and their families. She ends up living with Rosa, the older sister of the young man she helped earlier, in gratitude for saving his life. Rosa is also a legal secretary and offers to help Betty find her surgeon boyfriend. She learns from a colleague that "David" is a soap opera character, and goes to the pharmacy window to confront Betty. Thinking her friend is jealous, Betty is impervious to the revelation.
Plot summary from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA.
Crew
- Screenplay: John C. Richards, James Flamberg
- Cinematography: Jean-Yves Escoffier
- Edited by: Joel Plotch, Steven Weisberg, Nick South
- Music: Rolfe Kent
- Production design: Charles William Breen
- Produced by: Steve Golin, Gail Mutrux
Cast
- Morgan Freeman as Charlie
- Renée Zellweger as Betty
- Chris Rock as Wesley
- Greg Kinnear as Dr. David Ravell
- Aaron Eckhart as Del
- Tia Texada as Rosa
- Crispin Glover as Roy
- Pruitt Taylor Vince as Ballard
- Allison Janney as Lyla
- Kathleen Wilhoite as Sue Ann
Production
- Country: Germany, United States of America
- Language: Spanish, English
- Studios: IMF, Gramercy Pictures, Propaganda Films, ab'-strakt Pictures
- Budget: $24,000,000
- Box office: $29,364,989
- Themes: bartender, native american, writer, used car dealer, nurse uniform, tv production, heart specialist, anxious, fugue state, hilarious
More by Neil LaBute
On this film
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