Directed and co-written by four-time Academy Award nominee Ethan Hawke, WILDCAT invites the audience to weave in and out of celebrated Southern Gothic writer Flannery O’Connor's mind as she ponders the great questions of her writing: Can scandalous art still serve God? Does suffering precede all greatness? Can illness be a blessing? In 1950, Flannery (Maya Hawke) visits her mother Regina (Laura Linney) in Georgia when she is diagnosed with lupus at twenty-four years old. Struggling with the same disease that took her father’s life when she was a child and desperate to make her mark as a great writer, this crisis pitches her imagination into a feverish exploration of belief. As she dives deeper into her craft, the lines between reality, imagination, and faith begin to blur, allowing Flannery to ultimately come to peace with her situation and heal a strained relationship with her mother.
Category
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Short filmTranscript
00:00 [MUSIC PLAYING]
00:02 The sky was underpinned with long silver streaks
00:05 that look like scaffolding.
00:08 But no one was paying any attention to the sky.
00:10 [EXPLOSION]
00:13 Will.
00:14 I don't understand why you don't
00:17 want to write something that people would like to read.
00:22 Dear God, I want to write a novel, a good novel.
00:27 So, Conner, sometimes I feel like you're
00:29 trying to stick pins in your readers.
00:31 I don't think you need to make them suffer in order
00:33 to introduce them to the unusual way your mind works.
00:35 [GUNSHOT]
00:36 [MEOW]
00:37 Mary Flannery, you've been writing
00:39 many cute stories lately.
00:42 I read that last one you sent your mama.
00:44 You know, it left kind of a bad taste in my mouth.
00:48 You weren't supposed to eat it.
00:50 You might want to consider being a little more friendly.
00:53 I tried to turn the other cheek, but my tongue was always in it.
00:57 I need to be working.
00:58 I need to rest.
01:00 Nowadays, doctors don't let young people die.
01:03 Dear God, please, I can never seem to escape
01:11 myself unless I'm writing.
01:13 And strangely, I'm never more myself than when I'm writing.
01:16 [LAUGHTER]
01:17 [MUSIC PLAYING]
01:20 Is there no way for me to disappear into something bigger?
01:22 [MUSIC PLAYING]
01:27 Lord, please grant me grace.
01:29 Let me be a typewriter.
01:36 Please give me one good story.
01:38 [MUSIC PLAYING]
01:42 I thought it would be the end of any creation.
01:44 [MUSIC PLAYING]
01:48 Now I see it is only the beginning.
01:49 [MUSIC PLAYING]
01:54 [MUSIC PLAYING]
01:58 It must come easy for you.
02:00 It's like giving birth to a piano sideways.
02:02 [LAUGHTER]
02:05 [MUSIC PLAYING]
02:09 [MUSIC PLAYING]
02:12 [MUSIC PLAYING]
02:15 [MUSIC PLAYING]
02:19 [BLANK_AUDIO]