50/50

My personal interaction with cancer began years ago, and it’s been part of my life ever since. I was in middle school when my grandma first became sick with the disease, and she’s battled it several times since then. There have been good times when cancer remains in its small corner. Other times, it occupies almost every thought, every day. And thinking about it makes my throat hurt, makes my mouth taste like it’s full of pennies. Hearing, talking, or thinking about cancer hurts.

Despite this, the film 50/50 interested me from the first time I saw a preview. A dramatic comedy about cancer—is that even possible? Joseph Gordon-Levitt is a fantastic actor who stole my heart in 1999 in 10 Things I Hate About You. He was pitch-perfect in (500) Days of Summer. And of course, he was the true acting genius of Inception. Seth Rogen (who plays Gordon-Levitt’s best friend Kyle), on the other hand, makes me want to scratch my eyes out. I would love-hate the stars in this movie. It really would be 50/50.

And of course the cancer theme. Could it be portrayed in a real, authentic way? Would the directors, actors, producers really understand what cancer is all about—not just the disease itself, but they were attempting to capture the life around cancer—from the point of view of the person with cancer, to the best friend, the girlfriend, the therapist, the mother. Each has his own stake in this life; each suffers differently. What if they didn’t get my view of cancer right?

For the entire movie, I felt the pennies in my mouth. I wanted to cry the whole time—I wanted to break down as I watched Joseph Gordon-Levitt get skinnier, paler, with darker circles under his eyes. He lost his hair—he lost so much—and it was so real. Because he remained so calm. And maybe that’s not how everyone fights cancer. But that’s how I fought my grandma’s cancer. I never let it boil over—just kept pushing it down, just kept swallowing the feeling that there is nothing you can do.

And then, he breaks. Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s character Adam finally breaks. He gets into drive Kyle’s (Rogen) car (although he doesn’t have a license and doesn’t ever drive) because Kyle is drunk. He’s a bad friend who’s been using Adam’s cancer to get girls. And Adam drives furiously the wrong way down a one-way, driving too fast, and finally, Kyle yanks the emergency break and halts the car. Adam orders him out, and then loses it. He screams, yells, smacks the steering wheel console. It’s a raging moment, bordering on ridiculous and crazy. And it’s one of the most real moments in cinema. He’s having life-threatening surgery the next day, and he finally admits he just wants everything to be over. He’s tired of being sick.

There’s a subtle moment in the next scene where Adam gets Kyle to bed. He’s in Kyle’s bathroom where he finds a dog-eared book, with underlined and highlighted sections, Facing Cancer Together. It’s a good moment, a renewed hope in their friendship, and a look at the silent pain of a best friend.

Angelica Houston as Adam’s mother is brilliant. It’s almost painful to watch her incredibly real portrayal of a woman dealing with both a husband with Alzheimer’s Disease and her young son with only a 50/50 chance of survival.

There’s so much pain in this film, so much real-life pain, as it was developed by screenwriter Will Reiser, who was diagnosed with a rare spinal cancer at age 24. His real-life best friend, Seth Rogen, helped him cope with the disease by coming up with ideas for comedies about cancer. 

The entire movie is a play on the title 50/50, Adam’s initial survival rate. It’s half charming and funny and half heart-wrenching. Reiser had explained the film doesn't make fun of cancer itself, but instead finds humor in how people close to cancer patients react to their diagnosis.

“For myself and everyone involved, the most important thing was to be true to the characters and make it feel honest,” Reiser told Indiewire. “Anything that felt like it wasn't real, we would cut. We didn't really sit around and think about what other movies had done. We thought about what was honest in this world we created.”

And then the real-world application. Brett and I watched together, laughing out loud through several scenes, quietly inflecting during others. And of course, both pondering How would we react? Adam, as real-life Reiser, received this diagnosis at 24. I’m 24. And that’s the beauty of life—the imperfection, the fragility, the unexpected. Every day, every single one of us is living with the 50/50.