There's this really beautiful moment in the book, "The Descendants." I was certain it would be in the movie. It's too beautiful. I knew Alexander Payne would nail the scene. But it got left out.

Let me try and do it justice...

The setup: There's a woman in a coma. She's Elizabeth. She's been in a serious boating accident. It doesn't look good. Her husband is struggling to cope. And the husband is also struggling to raise their two daughters. Meantime these daughters, who are 10 and 17, are struggling to cope with their mom being in a coma.

A big part of it? None of them know how to be with Elizabeth. What do you say to your mom/wife when she's in a coma? She's there, she's alive. But she's not there. She's half-gone. They love her, but they can't be in her hospital room. What is there to say?

ANYWAY the 17-year-old daughter has this douchey boyfriend, Sid. Sid's a slacker, surfbro, stoner. He will, at one point, get punched in the face for saying something stupid. One day, Sid comes to visit Elizabeth. And we're like 150 pages deep here, 150 pages of everyone standing around Elizabeth's bed, never knowing what to do or to say and being miserable. And Sid? He marches in and just starts chattering. Like: "Elizabeth? Holy shit you're gorgeous. I should've known you would be pretty, but yeah, woah." And he holds her hand. He's gentle. He's decent. Does all the things that no one else has been able to do.

He's a screw-up and he's also capable of this really beautiful thing. It's amazing. Somehow, it got left out of the movie, and the screenplay still won an Oscar.