Everything Must Go (2010) - Rush and Ferrell's great Carver adaptation

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2 Film Excess nominations:

Best Screenplay: Dan Rush (lost to Christopher Nolan for Inception)
Best Lead Actor: Will Ferrell, also for Megamind (lost to Stephen Dorff for Somewhere)
 
+ Best Adaptation of the Year

Will Ferrell does look a little lost on this poster for Dan Rush's Everything Must Go

Will Ferrell (Stranger than Fiction (2006))  plays a man who loses his job, his wife and his car and deals with these defeats by deciding to move out onto his front lawn and start drinking.

Everything Must Go is a Raymond Carver (Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? (1976)) adaptation, based on his short story Why Don't You Dance? (1978), written and directed by Dan Rush as his first and only credit to date. It has just the needed shot of comedy in the shape of Ferrell and some extra warmth in Rush's script, which Carver's story is likely to have be missing.
Ferrell is eminent in the for him rare, more dramatic part, and Rebecca Hall (The Gift (2015)) and Laura Dern (When the Game Stands Tall (2014)) are both good in supporting parts. Everything Must Go is a nice dramedy and a fine film SPOILER with a hopeful ending that is decidedly un-Carveresque.

Related posts:

2010 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III]
2010 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]
2010 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED I]
2010 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess

Watch a trailer for the film here

Cost: 5 mil. $
Box office: 2.7 mil. $ (North America only)
= Unknown (looks like a huge flop)
[Everything Must Go premiered September 10 (Toronto International Film Festival) and runs 97 minutes. Rush's script was featured on the 2008 Blacklist, an online list of the most liked unproduced scripts around. Filming took place in Arizona. The film was only released in half a dozen countries. It opened #15 with 0.7 mil. $ in North America, where it peaked in just 245 theaters. It made under 100k $ in each three of its foreign  markets (South Africa, Brazil and the UK), which are reported. Regrettably, poor distribution and audiences bailing on Ferrell in an attempt at a more serious film seem to have killed the film theatrically. Everything Must Go is certified fresh at 75 % with a 6.7 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Everything Must Go?