GONE GUY
Taylor’s gone.
If you knew anything about him, then you’d know where this is going. His profound and incessant admiration for the ‘Gone Girl’ (2014) script. “This is how Gone Girl did it,” he posted a million times in the server chat. The guy even watched the movie about a psychopathic narcissist on a first date.
I don’t know if he ever got that tattoo, and I don’t know what thoughts would have been inside his skull if I’d cracked it open. In earnest, he might be disappointed that I’m the one carrying out this literary eulogy. We weren’t close, not really. Our connection was proximal, mostly confined to conversations about scriptwriting. But that was our seemingly strange, genuine connection: a shared insistence that a great script “breaks rules”. And what writer doesn’t love to see that pulled off?
Taylor’s love of the script in retrospect could make painfully perfect sense. It wasn’t just a good story; it was a mirror. It doesn’t offer redemption, just recognition. What can this dark thriller about a toxic marriage say about the hidden struggles of a scriptwriter named Taylor?
If you haven’t seen or read it: HEAVY SPOILERS.
Amy is the “cool girl”—hot, successful, Ms Happy-go-lucky. Nick is the sympathetic everyman husband. Their picture-perfect marriage is a hollow performance. Beneath it all, he’s a passive-aggressive cheater, and she’s a psychopath burdened with a persona of perfection. Their despair hides as they act out versions of people they want to be rather than who they are, or a literal envoy, for the smartasses in the back. And yes, Mr. Largy, the mechanism is a metaphor, or figurative comparison. (That guy still lives rent-free in my head.)
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before…
‘When you meet someone, you don’t really meet them. You meet their representative.’
This aphorism was something I heard and repeated frequently during my dating years. It is also the central mechanism of Amy and Nick’s relationship. It’s how I saw Taylor.
He was the cool guy. Easy-going, low-maintenance, endlessly supportive. His mask of normalcy hid his struggles. Sometimes the scariest thing a story can do is make you realise you were wrong the whole time. Like many left to figure it out, I was audience to his performance. I’m flipping through script pages and old posts, searching for meaning in a world that felt arbitrary to him.
Gone Girl suggests you can never truly know another person. But how else do you perceive someone? All we get is the curated, polished, public-facing version until we’re let in, if we’re lucky enough to get a glimpse beneath the surface. That hinges on you not being too self-involved to notice when the moment arrives.
So we tell ourselves stories. We craft narratives about who we are, what we want. While we’re busy being the main character, they’re crafting their own, where you’re the disingenuous asshole too afraid to be yourself and say what you think. The tragedy is that at some point a false narrative can become so convincing that no one, including you, can see the truth.
I’m as guilty of it as anyone. It’s where my love of film derives. I watched indie movies as a kid, soaked in the dialogue, then repeated the lines as if they would have ever occurred to me. It was effective. People smiled or laughed, enforcing the performance. And if someone scoffed? So what. It wasn’t me they were rejecting. They didn’t even know me. I wasn’t being myself.
We are the ultimate chameleons of ourselves.
There is a quiet desire to perform happiness, to be effortlessly funny. When we inevitably have an off day, it feels like a disconnect from ourselves and everyone else…the facade cracks. The pressure to perform, fear of regret, and making the wrong choice is a part of the human condition, even when we’re afraid to admit it. Amy rages against being trapped in her role. Nick gets trapped by the performance, too. To pull off his counter-con, he has to match Amy’s darkness. He has to lose his soul and become the monster she needs to complete her story.
“What have we done to each other?”
Certain art touches us in a profound way. It is the vessel for our own unspoken thoughts and feelings. As a writer, there’s a feeling of being stuck in a story that transcends the page. The anxiety is isolating. It extends into late nights, wasting time and trying really fucking hard not to re-examine relationships and life choices. I end up on that writing server, talking to strangers with a similar passion, just so I don’t feel alone. Sometimes, we still fail to connect, even in a community of fellow writers.
That’s why Taylor’s love of the script makes perfect sense. The story doesn’t promise a happy ending, just an honest one. In a world demanding we lifemaxx to the max, Taylor’s greatest act of rebellion was his messy, infuriating exit. A middle finger to the glossy veneer of bullshit narratives we’re supposed to swallow without reflection. Or maybe that’s just me trying to make sense out of something that should resist narration.
“And you’re going to smile and thank me for it. Because that’s what you do. You smile and you pretend. And you know what? I’m tired of pretending. So I’m not going to anymore. This is me. This is who I am. And you’re going to love me for it.”
I imagine that line resonating with him.
His taste in film, ironically, points to the last-minute reveal. A narrative trap, our false assumptions, and his devastating reversal. He pulled off the ultimate plot twist in his final act and shook his audience out of their complacency.
I recognise that I’m making confident claims about Taylor and his motives after admitting that people are fundamentally unknowable. Using a bunch of provisional language feels like waffling when trying to interpret Taylor, so I won’t. I can’t know, but this is what I want to believe.
What to say about him? He certainly was angry.
Let’s move on.
For Taylor, Verdens Verste Menneske
EDITOR’S NOTE: Taylor was a moderator and longtime member of the Script Hive Discord server. He made a lasting impact on countless up-and-coming writers and was an important part of our community. He is deeply missed.
FADE OUT.
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A beautiful (and fitting) write-up.
Another great one, believe it or not, is Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. Plus it’s the only Kevin Smith film I’ve ever enjoyed.