Numb

A chronically-depressed screenwriter desperately tries to cure his condition when he meets the girl of his dreams. Hudson Milbank is a successful Hollywood screenwriter who suddenly, strangely, finds himself with no emotional feelings. He tries doctor after doctor, shrink after shrink, but nothing works. The Golf Channel, lesbian exercise classes, and a dizzying variety of pills get him through the day but don't quite solve his problem. His writing partner tries everything to get him back to normal, but it's not until Hudson meets Sara that he finds a real motivation to get better and actually start feeling again. From the writer of "Deuce Bigalow" comes "NUMB", a romantic comedy about an unusual man looking for strange love. —Anonymous Hudson Milbank is one half of a Los Angeles-based screenwriting team. His partner Tom is the writer; Hudson is the pitchman, which requires him to be on his toes mentally during meetings. After smoking his first joint ever, Hudson begins to feel detached from himself, almost like he is looking at what is happening to himself without feeling anything or being able to control what he is doing. He learns that the technical term for his disorder is depersonalization. Associated with his disorder is anxiety, insomnia, and depression. Specific to him, he believes that even mentioning the words "death" or "dying" will result in the death of his father, which would be traumatic as he has dysfunctional relationships with his mother and older brother. As Hudson goes to a series of doctors and therapists in the hope that one or more of them can cure him (some treatments end with disastrous results), Hudson tries to continue with his life, which generally consists of endless hours of watching the longest programming he can find on television, such as the golf channel or the longest movies ever made. At a pitch meeting he meets Sara Harrison, the executive assistant at a movie development company. The two begin a relationship that continues even after Sara learns of Hudson's disorder; she states she's in this relationship because you can't control with whom you fall in love. But will Sara be able to tolerate the many issues in Hudson's life, especially as Hudson comes to the conclusion that he might never be normal? —Huggo Screenwriter Hudson Milbank suffers from acute depersonalization disorder. So alienated from his own life that he makes the chronically-depressed look perky, Hudson lives alone, watches The Golf Channel all day, can't hang onto a relationship, shoplifts to get his adrenaline up off the floor, fears that thinking about his dad's death will bring it on, loathes his mother, and is as nutty as a crapshack in a peanut farm. Obsessed with the underlying sadness that infuses his wretched existence, Hudson is a man in hell, but he thinks that his long catalogue of dismally unsatisfying and mutually self-destructive relationships is over when Sara stumbles into his life. He knows she can save him. She knows he must save himself. Together they save each other. —Anonymous