As Good As It Gets

Mark Andrus and James L. Brooks 1997

IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119822/

A single mother and waitress, a misanthropic author, and a gay artist form an unlikely friendship after the artist is assaulted in a robbery.

	AS GOOD AS IT GETSAS GOOD AS IT GETS


	by 

	Mard Andrus 

	And 

	James L. Brooks 

	Story by 

	Mark Andrus





	FADE IN:

	INT. APARTMENT BUILDING (NEW YORK), HALLWAY - NIGHT

	ANGLE ON apartment doorway. As it opens and an 
	enormously SWEET-FACED, ELDER WOMAN steps out, bungled up 
	against the cold -- turning back to call inside to the 
	unseen love of her long life.

			SWEET-FACED WOMAN
		I'm just going to get some 
		flowers, dear. I'll be back in 
		twenty minutes. It's tulip season 
		today. I'm so happy.

	And now she turns and faces the hallway... her sweetness 
	dissolves in a flash... replaced by repulsion and that 
	quickly she has reversed herself and re-entered her 
	apartment... closing the door as we consider her vacated.

	POV - MELVIN UDALL

	in the hallway... Well past 50... unliked, unloved, 
	unsettling. A huge pain in the ass to everyone he's ever 
	met. Right now all his considerable talent and strength 
	is totally focused on seducing a tiny dog into the 
	elevator door he holds open.

			MELVIN
		Come here, sweetheart... come on.

	ON DOG

	Sniffing at a particular spot on the hall carpeting. 
	Melvin lets the elevator door close and advances on the 
	mutt who has ignores him.

			MELVIN
		Wanna go for a ride? Okay, 
		sweetie?

	The dog lifts his leg at the precise moment Melvin lunges 
	and picks him up with a decisive heft -- so that dog 
	urine squirts the hall wall for a secon