THE BEST OF US
BY MELODY COOPER
Nick Offerman and Murray Bartlett in The Last of Us
After seeing “Long, Long Time,” the third episode of the HBO Max series The Last of Us, I agonized over what I wanted to write about it. So much had been said already as people raved about the unexpected exploration of the love between two men. I’d played the game before the show was announced (albeit briefly) and knew its potential for some pretty compelling drama. As soon as I learned that Craig Mazin would be writing and executive producing the series along with the videogame’s creator Neil Druckmann, I knew we’d be in for quite a ride.
I was lucky enough to have Craig Mazin as one of my mentors when I was in the HBO Access Writing program in 2019. He was engaging, down to earth and fun. And all I kept thinking when I first met him, was how wild it was that the man who wrote Hangover 2 wrote Chernobyl. I volunteered a scene from my thriller feature script for the class discussion. The script had won a major award, so I thought it was a safe bet. But Craig was there to critique so we could learn, and in that case, awards don’t mean squat. As Craig prepared to give his feedback, I was gripped by fear. ‘Dear God,’ I thought, ‘what had I done!?’ He smiled at the page and said the words I’ll never forget, “This was one of the best uses of magical realism in a script I’ve ever seen.” I’m still floating from that comment. Beyond that, he gave a lot of great advice, including that a great idea or plot was not as important as creating characters that we care about and that draw us in. He told us to create surprise with the truth of a character. He also taught me to not pigeonhole myself and to let my passion as a writer take me towards whatever genre and new horizons I wanted to explore.
When I saw “Long, Long Time,” it was clear that Craig had created an extraordinary episode that encompassed all the things he had taught as a mentor. The episode stayed with me for days afterwards, revealing small treasures…like the fact that to go down the hall to their final bed, Frank and Bill had to pass the staircase -- prominently placed in the shot -- that they would’ve climbed together the very first time they went to bed. I loved how Craig used the power of what is not said but is still conveyed in filled silences. I admired how he took his time to draw us in with the specter of danger that soon morphed into tentative attraction and blossomed into a loving, shared life. The way Craig played with expectations, from our assumptions about a survivalist to thinking the worst of Frank, to not realizing Bill was gay was smart and bold. And the fact that their being gay became beside the point but was also very much the point, was perfection. Most of all, I was intrigued, surprised, delighted and ultimately deeply moved by the script and the two exceptional performances of Nick Offerman and Murray Bartlett.
Nick Offerman and Murray Bartlett in The Last of Us
In the videogame that the series is based on, the men’s relationship is only alluded to when Bill finds Frank has hung himself. To take that small moment and create something so beautifully fleshed out and executed is the sign of a great writer.
There’s been a lot of speculation lately that chat bots might one day be able to write a good script. There are many things that ChatGPT can and will do in this world, but I doubt a generative A.I. could ever reach the heights of the best of us, and the best is what Craig Mazin gifted us with his master class of an episode.
MEET THE AUTHOR
Melody Cooper A 2017 Stowe Story Labs Fellow, and now mentor and Board Member, Melody is also a 2021 Sundance Episodic Lab Fellow and winner of an Adobe Women at Sundance fellowship and is writing the feature adaptation of the best-seller fantasy novel BEASTS OF PREY for Netflix. She also has a deal to develop an original genre TV series. Currently a co-producer on the Starz show Power Book IV: Force (aka “The Tommy show”), Melody started out as a staff writer on CW's Two Sentence Horror Stories while still in the 2019 HBO Access Writing Program. (One of her two episodes, “Ibeji” won a Silver Telly) She then joined the 22nd season of Law & Order: SVU. Winner of the 2018 Grand Jury Prize for Best Screenplay at the Urbanworld Film Festival, Melody has developed her work in several labs, including Shudder Labs, NY Stage and Film, The Writers Lab, and Stowe Story Labs (as a Tangerine Entertainment Fellow). An award-winning playwright, her plays have been produced in NYC. Melody also writes comic books, including OMNI (Vol. 2), the scifi story "Igbo Landing" in the anthology NOIR IS THE NEW BLACK, and a story in DC’s Milestones of History about Bessie Coleman and Mae Jemison. She recently joined Stowe Story Labs as a board member and is co-founder of Nyx Horror Collective (which has a short film program “13 Minutes of Horror” on Shudder) and is partnering with Stowe to offer a writing fellowship to a woman horror writer age 40 and over.
