Themes: Rags To Riches, Twentysomething Life, Existential Crisis
Main Cast: Paulo Costanzo, Steph Song, J.R. Bourne, Auden Devine, Susan Hogan
Release Year: 2006
Country: CA
Run Time: 95 minutes
MPAA Rating: R
Plot
A slacker edging into his thirties plots a not quite legal get-rich-quick scheme in this satiric comedy written by celebrated novelist Douglas Coupland. Ryan (Paulo Costanzo) lives and works in Vancouver, which has become overrun by runaway Hollywood film crews and folks looking for an easy buck however they can find it. Ryan's unemployed father grows marijuana in his basement, his brother is involved in a real-estate scam that bilks tycoons from Hong Kong who never see the property they only think they own, and Ryan himself is an office drone at a magazine devoted to chronicling the lives of lottery winners. After his girlfriend leaves him for a wealthy yuppie, Ryan falls for Ming (Steph Song), a beautiful Asian woman he meets in a Mandarin language class. Prompted by Ming's desire for a more luxurious lifestyle, Ryan dreams up a scheme to fix the lottery using what he's learned at his job. Adapted from the first original screenplay from Douglas Coupland, Everything's Gone Green received its world premiere at the 2006 Toronto Film Festival. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
Tom Butler; Peter Kelamis; Gordon Michael Woolvett; Katharine Isabelle; Tam Chiu-Lin; Tara Wilson; Alexis Dumont; Jennifer Kitchen; Chang Tseng; Melanie Blackwell
Credit
Carolyn Neuert - Art Director, Robin D. Cook - Casting, Jennifer Page - Casting, Corinne Clark - Casting, Sheila White - Costume Designer, Patricia Ann Dyer - First Assistant Director, Paul Fox - Director, Gareth C. Scales - Editor, Morris Ruskin - Executive Producer, Dana Lyon - Executive Producer, Michael Baker - Executive Producer, Scott Mackenzie - Executive Producer, Ken Lawson - Line Producer, David Hayman - Musical Direction/Supervision, Peter Andringa - Production Designer, David Frazee - Cinematographer, Elizabeth Yake - Producer, Henrik Meyer - Producer, Scott Mackenzie - Producer, Chris Nanos - Producer, Matthew Versteeg - Set Designer, Eric Batut - Sound/Sound Designer, Douglas Coupland - Screenwriter, Amy Sloan - Featured Music, Fembots - Featured Music
Ryan, a good-natured slacker in his twenties, is dumped by his girlfriend and kicked out of their apartment, and, on arriving late to work, is suspended (pending psychological tests) from his job at an anonymous IT corporation. On receiving a phone call from his family saying they have won the jackpot of 4.3 million dollars on the BC lottery, he trashes his office space, and resigns. Unfortunately, when he calls the lottery "Win Line" he discovers they haven't actually won anything. By happy accident, Ryan is offered a job with the lottery bureau interviewing and photographing lottery winners. En route to the job interview he stops to see a beached whale and meets Ming, a set designer in a relationship with golf-course designer and scam artist Bryce.
Ryan is enticed by Bryce into participating in a lucrative money-laundering scheme involving new lottery winners, and after the euphoria of new-found wealth wears off is forced to choose between working with Bryce and winning over an increasingly sceptical Ming. Additional complications arise when Ryan discovers that his parents are operating a marijuanagrow-op in the family basement, and when he re-visits lottery winners to discover that they are often worse off than they were before winning.
