I wonder, all too often, what it would be like to have lungs this healthy. This alive. I take a deep breath, feeling the air fight its way in and out of my body.
I love that Rachael spoke to this moment. It was so much fun imagining, then describing in the screenplay, then watching them film, the artwork of Abby and Will. Each drawing, each painting, each cartoon reflected the personality of its creator (Abby or Will, respectively) and also reflected a moment or a memory, ie, Will’s Fire-Breathing Stella and I’m Sorry, or Abby’s A Tornado of Stars and Living Lungs.
The Living Lungs were my favorite by far. In my mind, this was the very last thing Abby gave to Stella before she left - just as the panda was the first thing Abby gave her - so I was thrilled that Rachael recognized the importance of this drawing to the story and gave Stella that beautiful line of prose.
Fun Fact: I almost - almost - left Abby’s Living Lungs drawing incomplete. Like, one bottom corner would be unfinished, and then my idea was to have Will, just before he left forever, finish the drawing for Stella, completing the circle between him and Stella and Abby. But that was a terrible idea. Really bad. I quickly realized how shitty Will would be to do something like that. While it seemed poetic (for a wild, stupid second), it would have made Will disgustingly presumptuous. What a dick, right? So nah, that didn’t happen.
Instead, I gave Will and Stella their lights. That would be his parting gift to her, his “I will always love you,” moment. Now, every time a light comes on... a Christmas light, a streetlight, or even a simple desk lamp... Stella thinks of Will. He is her light and she is his.
Limau Nipis and 25 other people liked this
