Perhaps the most shocking moment in both the book, and subsequent film adaptation, of the ultra-popular “kids with cancer” romance The Fault In Our Stars comes not from its depiction of adolescent love and loss in the shadow of a Very Bad Disease, but from – at a key point in the story’s plot – our enfeebled lovers sharing a tender make out sesh in the middle of the Anne Frank house. It’s supposed to be a touching ray of sunshine in the midst of a doomed love affair between terminal teens. Instead, it’s…well, making out in the middle of the Anne Frank house (also, everyone around the makers-outers starts applauding for some goddamned reason…Id’know.)
Suffice it to say, I’m not the only one who’s a little weirded out by Hazel and Gus’ holocaust hook-up.
The sketch, created by and starring Tracy Soren & Jessie Jolles (you may have seen their DIBS webseries) was born when the two comics went into a Fault screening expecting tears, only to find themselves themselves stuck firmly in “what the fuck?” land. As Soren explained in an email to Heeb:
Everyone told us how emotional the movie was and how we were going to be hysterically crying. It doesn’t take much to make us cry so we were looking forward to a nice emotional release. But when Hazel & Gus share their first kiss in the Anne Frank House, we both were just like “what is happening??!”. We were whispering to each other during the movie because we couldn’t believe that the *first kiss* was while they were staring at a picture at Anne Frank, with Anne Frank’s words playing over them as the aphrodisiac.
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The characters in the video aren’t really characters, they are just us. It’s just the two of us speaking our mind. We improvised all of our dialogue, shot it on a green screen, and put ourselves into the scene.
As weird as the Anne Frank fooling around might be, it could have been much worse – Hazel and Gus could have been making out during a screening of Schindler’s List.
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