Directed by Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris from a screenplay written by Michael Arndt. Steve Carell as Frank Ginsberg, Abigail Breslin as Olive Hoover.
- Why were you unhappy?
- Um, well, there are a lot of reasons. Mainly, though, I fell in love with someone who didn't love me back.
- Who?
- One of my grad students. I was very much in love with him.
- Him? It was a boy? You fell in love with a boy?
- Yes, I did. Very much so.
- That's silly.
- You're right. It was silly. It was very, very silly.
- There's another word for it.
- Dad.
- So, that's when you tried to kill yourself?
- Well, no. The boy that I was in love with fell in love with another man - Larry Sugarman.
- Who's Larry Sugarman?
- Larry Sugarman is, perhaps... the second most highly regarded Proust scholar in the U.S.
- Who's number one?
- That would be me, Rich.
- Really?
- Mm-hmm.
- So that's when.
- No. What happened was I was a bit upset... so I said some things that I shouldn't have said... and I did some things that I shouldn't have done... and subsequently I was fired from my job... and forced to move out of my apartment and move into a motel.
- And that's when you tried to...
- Well, no. Actually, all of that was okay. What happened was two days ago the MacArthur Foundation, in its infinite wisdom... awarded a genius grant to Larry Sugarman. And that's when I...
- I decided to check out early.
- Yes. Yes. And I failed at that as well.