THE HAPPY ENDING PROJECT
By Andrew Hawcroft
Outline
A two-man documentary crew for a low-end American TV production company turn up at a motel room in Pasadena, California.
There they meet James Lantern, the Englishman with possibly only 5 days left to live before a potentially fatal heart transplant operation. The young man they have grudgingly agreed to document on his quest to try and meet a certain woman he has fallen in love with.
The woman in question, however, is a painted character on a science-fiction book cover. A fantasy-figure by a local artist who has been known to use real-live models to paint from.
The possibility that this beautifully painted character may be based on a real woman, is the flimsy foundation for this young man’s quest, a quest that seems as silly and impossible as the usual TV-lite tripe covered by the disillusioned two-man crew of Dan Prentice and Joe Chinelli.
Except, as the days and hours pass, and the two men discover that the woman in the poster does exist, it becomes a lot harder to remain coolly objective about James Lantern....
