Balloons

References

• There Will Be Blood
• It
• My Best Friend’s Girl
• The Monkey’s Paw
• Bobby Loves Mangos
• The Sweet Hereafter
• Isekai
• Toy Story
• Finding Nemo
• Rango
• A Horse with No Name
• The Magic School Bus
• The Sixth Sense
• The Third Policeman
• Terry Pratchett
• Discworld Series
• Mort
• A.I. Artificial Intelligence
• Long Take
• The Langoliers
• Good Will Hunting

Transcript

[Intro music begins]

[Shep]
Sure, we can, like, see all that. But, like, what do the balloons actually do in the desert?

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Well, there’s clearly a joke where the balloon horse, somebody is trying to talk to him. They’re like, “I can’t remember his name.” And the other one looks at him and goes, “Oh yeah, he has no name.”

[Shep]
(Pained groans)

[Intro music]

[Thomas]
Hey there, story fans. Welcome to Almost Plausible, the podcast where we take ordinary objects and turn them into movies. I’m Thomas J. Brown, and with me, as always, are Emily-

[Emily]
Hey, guys.

[Thomas]
And F. Paul Shepard.

[Shep]
Happy to be here.

[Thomas]
The object for today’s episode is Balloons. Maybe just one, maybe a whole bunch. We’ll see what happens. And before we get into it, I’m wondering, have either of you gotten a helium-filled balloon and breathed in the helium to change your voice?

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Of course.

[Thomas]
Oh, man, I haven’t.

[Shep]
What?

[Thomas]
I know.

[Emily]
For real?

[Thomas]
Yeah. I don’t know how I’ve never done this, but I’ve never done it.

[Shep]
That seems insane to me.

[Emily]
Wow. As soon as I knew that was something you could do, I did it.

[Thomas]
I should have gotten a balloon for the recording tonight.

[Shep]
Oh, my gosh.

[Thomas]
Missed opportunity. Well, we often think of balloons as a festive way to mark an occasion, but, oh, boy, are they used for so much more than that. I’m excited to see how balloons get used in our pitches. So, Emily, let’s start with you.

[Emily]
All right, so there will be no serial killer murderer-

[Thomas]
I thought you were going to say There Will Be Blood.

[Emily]
No.

[Thomas]
But that’s the opposite of what you’re saying.

[Emily]
There’s too many with balloons and killers and things. It’s just too easy. It’s too on the nose.

[Shep]
It‘s too easy?

[Emily]
Yep, it’s too easy.

[Thomas]
It’s too easy.

[Emily]
So if 6-year-old Lena turns her star-shaped mylar balloon into an imaginary friend she names Stella, they have great adventures together. But as Lena grows, she needs Stella less and less. Until one day she decides not to reinflate the balloon anymore. Alright, the next one is a balloon artist, Maya, is hired to make the balloon arches for her ex-boyfriend Steve’s upcoming nuptials. Maya is hesitant at first, but views this as a good opportunity to get closure and move on. While decorating the hall, she runs into the best man, Devin, who has never liked her. Devin has lost sight of the groom and reluctantly asks Maya for help. Of course, this then ends up turning into an enemies-to-lover rom-com.

[Shep]
Why are they enemies?

[Emily]
Because he hated her.

[Shep]
Why?

[Emily]
Because he secretly loved her all along and thought Devin wasn’t good enough-

[Shep]
He’s Devin.

[Emily]
Or, thought Steve wasn’t good enough for her.

[Shep]
Maybe he thought he wasn’t good enough.

[Emily]
He may have thought he wasn’t good enough, but he definitely thought Steve wasn’t good enough for her. And so-

[Shep]
Well, we already know Steve is the villain.

[Thomas]
Yeah. Yeah.

[Emily]
Yes.

[Shep]
Spoilers with these names.

[Thomas]
I like Emily shooting her shot with Steve right at the beginning.

[Emily]
Right. I’m getting it out there.

[Thomas]
Like we know who the bad guy is.

[Emily]
I mean, we’ve all read a romance book, right? So we know, we know this. He loved her all along, but he couldn’t acknowledge or express it because it was his best friend’s girlfriend and so he had overcompensated with hatred.

[Shep]
I think there’s a song about this.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Speaking of enemies-to-lover rom-coms, another pitch I have is a half-cocked idea about two rival balloon artists enter the city’s centennial art competition and of course fall madly in love.

[Thomas]
I want them to also be mimes.

[Emily]
Yes.

[Shep]
They fall in love, but they can’t say it.

[Thomas]
They have to express it through balloon art. It’s not an easy act to follow, Emily, but especially since you started off by panning dark balloon-themed things, and both of mine kind of are that. So we’ll see. We’ll see. Well, I have two pitches. My first: some kids somehow have the power to turn balloon animals into the real thing. Anything they can sculpt with balloons, they can make real. At first, they use the power to goof around and have fun, but then one of them makes a dragon. He assumes the dragon will be small and friendly, but as soon as it becomes real, it grows to an enormous size and begins to terrorize their town. The kids try to stop the dragon with more balloon creatures, but they keep unintentionally making the situation worse. Eventually, they find a way to defeat the dragon, and they decide to get rid of whatever it is that gives them the power to make their balloon creations real.

[Emily]
It’s a real monkey’s paw situation there.

[Thomas]
My second idea: In the community of Echo Valley, a chilling mystery looms over the small town. Twenty years ago, an entire school bus full of children disappeared, including the sister of Amy, our main character. Amy was supposed to be on that bus, but because she had a fever that morning, she is now the town’s only survivor of her cohort. One day, a couple dozen mysterious and brightly colored balloons gently float down from the sky, landing all over town. Tied to the end of each balloon’s string are mementos belonging to the missing children. Emotions are stirred up, and Amy leads a new search for her sister and the other missing kids.

[Shep]
So Amy was supposed to be on that bus, but she wasn’t. It’s- It reminds me of Bobby Loves Mangoes.

[Thomas]
We know there are no new stories.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
It is phenomenally like Bobby Loves Mangoes, though, now that you say that. Yeah, yeah.

[Emily]
Oh, I was thinking it was a lot like The Sweet Hereafter.

[Thomas]
Oh, yes. Except they all know what happened to those children, so.

[Emily]
Yes, that’s true. Those bodies were found.

[Shep]
I was thinking that the school bus of children were isekai’d to another world, and they have gained the power to send a message back.

[Emily]
Mm.

[Shep]
Let their parents know that they’re okay, let their family know that they’re fine.

[Thomas]
And it’s just misinterpreted. Amy freaks out.

[Shep]
Right.

[Emily]
Yeah, of course.

[Thomas]
Those are my pitches. Shep, what do you have for us?

[Shep]
Okay, I have two pitches. At a party, a kid inhales from a helium balloon, but instead of making their voice high-pitched, they themselves float up to the ceiling.

[Thomas]
Even this fictional kid has done the helium thing, and I haven’t.

[Shep]
Yes.

[Thomas]
Jeez.

[Shep]
Everybody’s done it. Here’s another pitch: A clown driving to a birthday gig accidentally has their party balloons and balloon animals blow out the car window. Now the balloons are lost in the desert. Will they try to make their way to the kid’s birthday party? I guess this is just Toy Story plus Finding Nemo plus Rango. But I like the idea of, like, alive balloon animals making their way through the desert because cacti are pointy.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
It’s like the natural enemy of balloons.

[Emily]
And there’s scorpions that have little pointy ends to stab them.

[Shep]
Yes.

[Thomas]
Yeah, yeah.

[Shep]
Yeah. There we go.

[Emily]
A lot of things to kill a balloon.

[Shep]
All right, so which one of these is jumping out at us?

[Thomas]
Well, I do like the idea of the balloon animals in the desert. I don’t know why the clown would have preformed balloon animals. We’ll have to come up with an excuse.

[Emily]
Why is he driving with the windows down? That is rookie mistake number one.

[Thomas]
His AC is broken. This is a birthday clown. You think he can afford to get his AC fixed? His car’s got, like, you know, it’s spewing oil out the exhaust and…

[Shep]
Yep.

[Emily]
All right, I can see that.

[Shep]
He has some sample balloons, each one different, so that the kids can pick which one they want and he’ll make one for them.

[Thomas]
There you go.

[Emily]
Okay.

[Thomas]
That’s good.

[Shep]
I don’t know why it’s actual balloons and not pictures, which he could just reuse. Don’t think about it.

[Emily]
Well, his car window got busted out and somebody stole his binders of balloon pictures.

[Shep]
Ah, so this was like the day of.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Right. Yeah, yeah.

[Shep]
Yep.

[Thomas]
So he comes out in the morning, and his window’s busted, and then he realizes his binder. Oh, yeah. So he goes to. Because he has two parties that day. So he goes to the first party in the morning. He realizes, “I don’t have my binder. I’ll just make samples.” He makes a bunch of samples, but he knows he needs to take them to the second party later. That’s when he loses them.

[Shep]
Sure.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
All right.

[Shep]
Sure, we can, like, see all that. But, like, what do the balloons actually do in the desert?

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Well, there’s clearly a joke where the balloon horse, somebody is trying to talk to him. They’re like, “I can’t remember his name.” And the other one looks at him and goes, “Oh yeah, he has no name.”

[Shep]
(Pained groans) Yeah, you need jokes that only the parents would get.

[Emily]
Yes.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
All right, is there any others that jump out at us?

[Emily]
I do. Like the one with the bus and the disappearing children and the creepy balloons.

[Thomas]
I like the mystery of that one. And then the imagery of the balloons floating down.

[Emily]
Is it the children’s souls returning to say that they’ve finally been freed or that they’re trapped?

[Thomas]
I mean, that would be a good question. Like, are the children alive and rescued by the end of the film or not?

[Emily]
Yeah. How dark do we want to go with this?

[Thomas]
I mean, it would be really crazy if eventually they came back and Amy has grown up, but all of her friends are the same age as when they disappeared.

[Shep]
And are they the same children?

[Thomas]
They just spent the last 20 years traveling at light speed around the universe.

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
Ah.

[Emily]
In their Magical School Bus?

[Thomas]
Their teacher was Mrs. Frizzle. Yeah.

[Shep]
How realistic is this one? Like, how steeped in actuality is it? Or is it just an art house-?

[Thomas]
Yeah. I mean, I imagine it’s mostly real except for this incident and the details surrounding it. I don’t think it’s very, like… I don’t imagine, like, a lot of really weird stuff, but maybe we should. I don’t know. Did you have other artsy things in mind or-?

[Shep]
I don’t know. I’m just asking. I’m just asking.

[Thomas]
Typical podcaster, just asking questions.

[Shep]
Right. Is this an allegory?

[Thomas]
Is it an allegory? What would it be an allegory for? I didn’t think that deeply about it. I just had this picture of a bunch of balloons floating down. Okay. So the reason I thought of this is because I was thinking about different balloon ideas. And, you know, they have the big balloon releases, and then those fly off, and then eventually those balloons come down somewhere. I thought, “Oh, how interesting.” The idea of, like, a bunch of balloons just floating down. If you had no idea that there was a big balloon release, it would be like, “Where the hell are these hundreds of balloons coming from? How weird.” And then that sort of evolved into this idea.

[Shep]
Now, are the balloons coming down in important places? Like, is her sister’s balloon coming down at her house? Or is it just the balloons coming down all over town? And people have to get the mementos together and go, “Oh, this was so and so’s. This was susan’s, this was rebecca’s.”

[Thomas]
Yeah, yeah. The latter is what I imagined, because it’d be awfully convenient if they floated down to the right spot. But again, I’m not opposed to that depending on-

[Shep]
Right. Is it magical reality or is it reality?

[Thomas]
Right, yeah. But reality is what I imagined.

[Shep]
Okay.

[Thomas]
But obviously it’s not really reality, so we can make up whatever rules we want.

[Emily]
See, because I wanted to go dark with it. So I was thinking with those balloons coming down, they seem innocent at first and kind of hopeful because they’re bright, beautiful colored balloons and they have these mementos of the children that have been missing for so long. But maybe they are foreshadowing of something sinister coming.

[Shep]
Emily earlier is like, “I don’t have any dark ones this week.” Emily now is like, “Okay…”

[Thomas]
She’s making up for it now. Yeah.

[Emily]
Exactly.

[Shep]
Okay. I’m leaning more towards this one, but we need to come up with a plan.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
So what is the ending? Do the kids come back? If they do come back, I don’t think that they stay. Especially if they come back and they’re the wrong age.

[Thomas]
So again, I like the visual of that. Why would they be coming back?

[Shep]
How arty do you want to get with it?

[Emily]
Yeah. How, like Shep said, how arty? Because if it’s super art house, then we don’t need to know. It’s just that ethereal mystery that we can never know the answer to. Why did they disappear? Why did they come back? Why didn’t they age? Would be questions that everyone would have throughout the movie, but there’s no answer to it.

[Shep]
Oh, I got it. So I liked Thomas’s reference earlier to, like, those big balloon releases. This is the opposite of that. This is balloons coming down. The movie ends with the balloons as if they’re being released as the children are leaving again. So you have both of those scenes.

[Thomas]
Now, is that something that the townspeople have to do? They have to make that decision to release the souls and to finally put to rest this big mystery that’s been plaguing the town for 20 years or whatever?

[Shep]
I don’t know.

[Thomas]
I mean, that could be the arc of the town or in particular of Amy.

[Shep]
Right.

[Emily]
To that catharsis of letting go finally.

[Thomas]
Yeah. So then maybe the theme is about loss and grief and letting go.

[Shep]
Well, then why bring it up after 20 years? 20 years seems like enough time to basically get over it.

[Emily]
Not if you’re 27 and it happened when you’re seven.

[Thomas]
We could make it 10 years, too.

[Emily]
Right. Yeah.

[Thomas]
It doesn’t have to be 20. 20 is arbitrary. It could even be shorter. It could be something like five years. So the adults are kind of finally getting over it. It’s still sort of a sore subject on the anniversary, but it’s not something they think about day to day. Except for Amy, who’s fucking traumatized by this.

[Shep]
Oh, okay. I’m going to go real arty.

[Thomas]
Okay.

[Shep]
Amy died.

[Thomas]
All right.

[Shep]
She’s been dead this whole time. But she didn’t let go. The children came back for her. She was supposed to go with them.

[Thomas]
So they’re in the afterlife, she is in, like, an in-between space.

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
Or still haunting the real world. Oh, we could do like a…

[Shep]
Oh, this is Sixth Sense.

[Thomas]
Sixth Sense. Yeah.

[Shep]
Yeah. God damn it. No new stories.

[Emily]
I was also going to say, luckily I wrote my thesis on this novel, so.

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
But I do like that idea. I think that’s a cool story. And I like, again, the visuals of it.

[Emily]
Well. Oh, yeah. It would be the big reveal at the end. You know, this generation hasn’t seen The Sixth Sense. They don’t know.

[Thomas]
It sounds like we want to do the balloons coming down into Echo Valley one.

[Shep]
Yes.

[Thomas]
That’s kind of the direction we’re all leaning.

[Shep]
Since they leave again at the end, I like that it’s called Echo Valley.

[Thomas]
Oh, yeah.

[Emily]
Yeah, Yeah.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
I was gonna say, “Wow, we really tied that in on purpose.”

[Thomas]
So we should probably nail down the details of Amy’s situation. Is she a real person in the real world? Is she a ghost in the real world? Is she in an in-between world?

[Shep]
Have either of you read all the Terry Pratchett Discworld books?

[Thomas]
All of them?

[Emily]
No.

[Thomas]
No, many of them, yes.

[Shep]
Okay.

[Emily]
I’m on chapter two of my first one.

[Shep]
Oh, I was thinking of the book Mort.

[Thomas]
Ah, yes.

[Shep]
Where he changes the timeline by not harvesting a soul when he should have. And so there is a time bubble that he’s in where she’s alive and in the outside world, the main timeline is continuing where she has died and the bubble of reality is shrinking. So since this is a small, isolated town in a valley, I imagine the same thing is going on to Amy.

[Thomas]
Sure.

[Shep]
So in the town, she is alive. But now that it’s been 10 years or five years or whatever, whatever ages you can find for actresses that look enough alike.

[Emily]
Yes.

[Shep]
The bubble is shrinking. And this is when the balloons, which are, the bubble is also kind of like a balloon. So she can’t leave the town because she’s not alive outside the town. And she doesn’t understand that she can’t leave the town yet because to her, she’s alive. And she’s always been alive and she’s never died. But that bubble of reality is shrinking. That balloon of reality.

[Thomas]
So this would be great if she’s a teenager who’s about to finish high school, and in theory, she would leave the town and go off to college.

[Shep]
Ah. Right. So people that are outside the town, she can’t talk to, she, like, tries to call them and they can’t hear her or something.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
You do something weird creepy when she tries to use the phone.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
And she’s not getting responses back from the colleges that she’s applied to.

[Thomas]
Oh, right. She sent applications.

[Shep]
Right. So anything that has to leave the town, like she doesn’t get her SAT results, they just disappeared because they sent them off to be graded.

[Emily]
I like this because it’s really subtle at first.

[Shep]
Right. And she feels a compulsion not to leave, but doesn’t know why.

[Emily]
Right. She’s kind of happy there. She loves her town.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
So when these little things like the SATs scores getting lost happen, she’s kind of, “Eh.”

[Shep]
She’s like, “It’s a sign.”

[Thomas]
Yeah. Yes.

[Shep]
“I wanted to stay and work at the grocery store with my mom anyway.” She didn’t want to leave because her mom’s devastated since her sister disappeared.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Oh, yeah, Right.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
She needs to stay and help her mom, who’s never quite gotten over it.

[Shep]
Right. And it’s her staying that’s making things worse. So her mom can never get over it. She doesn’t realize that.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
I like the story more and more. So we have those hints at the beginning.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
You know, the SAT scores not coming back. She never went and visited any colleges, like they had planned to do it, but she came up with excuses and didn’t go. Because she has that subconscious compulsion to not leave the balloon of reality where she’s alive. And she can’t talk to people, family members that aren’t in the town. You know, if she tries to call them, which I imagine how weird it is for people outside that balloon of reality. You know, if the mom’s sister and her are on the phone, and Mom’s like, “Oh, amy wants to say hi,” and then holds up the phone to Amy and she says “Hi” or whatever, and then she goes back to the conversation. What is her aunt thinking?

[Thomas]
Oh, she’s got to be like, “Oh, my god, my sister. My poor sister.”

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
“She won’t let this go.” You got to come up with those clever ways of. Because I like that. She doesn’t hand Amy the phone. Amy doesn’t try to have a conversation. She’s just like, “Oh, hey, Terry,” or whatever.

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
And so there’s just, Terry just hears this pause, this silence, and just thinks, “Oh, my poor sister’s really got it bad,” and doesn’t quite know what to say.

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
And…

[Shep]
Right. Because it’s really awkward.

[Thomas]
Yeah, right.

[Shep]
What do you say? Nothing. You just ignore it.

[Thomas]
Yeah. Right.

[Shep]
Or you ask your sister how therapy is going, but she thinks it’s therapy over losing her one daughter.

[Thomas]
Right. So do we have anyone who leaves the town?

[Shep]
Yeah. She’s got to have a high school friend that went off to college or is visiting colleges or whatever.

[Thomas]
Oh, yeah. Well, I guess everybody else in her cohort has died, so actually, she may be the only person… Maybe there’s only one other person her age in town. It’s a family who has moved to town.

[Shep]
Ah. After the incident.

[Thomas]
After the incident. But they didn’t know Amy before. They didn’t know about this incident. They only find out about the incident once they’re inside the bubble. And so inside the bubble, Amy’s alive.

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
And so they could leave, go to colleges and come back. Do they have memories of Amy when they leave? They must. Right? We need to have them remember Amy for the sake of the story.

[Shep]
Or they forget Amy when they leave, but remember her when they come back, which you can also put a little thing on, like, “Oh, I thought you were going to call me when you were at the college.” She’s like, “Oh, I forgot.”

[Thomas]
Oh.

[Shep]
“I can’t believe I forgot.”

[Thomas]
Okay. I like that.

[Shep]
So you sprinkle all these little hints.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
So now that we have established the baseline reality…

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
One day all of these balloons come to town. So this is, I guess that setup is Act One, and this is the beginning of Act Two?

[Emily]
Yeah. Makes sense.

[Thomas]
Yeah. This would be a great mid-second act turning point. But that feels so late. Like, what are they doing for the second act?

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
Amy’s… She can have a trajectory that changes her arc or her desire. Her stated desire can change when the balloons show up.

[Emily]
Oh, so, yeah, she’s. She’s tethered to the town, so she doesn’t want to leave.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
She doesn’t have any, like, inclination to go beyond the borders of the town. Right? So when the balloons come back, she’s now convinced that this is a sign that they’re out there somewhere and that they need to be found. So now she has the desire to leave, to exit.

[Thomas]
And in fact, there’s an internal conflict there. She has the conscious desire to exit, but as you said, Shep, the subconscious desire to stay, and so she’s working against herself.

[Shep]
Right. What happens if she does leave?

[Thomas]
I think that maybe that’s what the kids are trying to get her to do is leave the bubble. Because once she exits the bubble, she cannot go back in. It maybe finally collapses on itself.

[Shep]
Okay, so that’s the ending. That’s the finale.

[Thomas]
Yes.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
That is the climax.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
All right.

[Emily]
And that was kind of, yeah, what I wanted to get to is that she is going to eventually go out and then maybe just to make it pretty and bookend, we can do: When she’s gone and the bubble finally collapses on the whatever anniversary that was coming up, they released 12 balloons this time rather than the 11 or what have you.

[Thomas]
Right. Oh, yeah, right. 11 balloons come down at the beginning of the second act. And in the finale, 12 balloons are released. I like that.

[Shep]
You said she’s tethered to the town like a helium balloon on a string that’s tied to a weight. You can even have a scene maybe when her sister comes back and sees balloons on a string or whatever. “Don’t they look sad? They want to leave, but they’re tied to a thing.”

[Thomas]
Hmm.

[Shep]
Or is that too obvious?

[Thomas]
No, that’s. That’s our Sixth Sense “I see dead people” scene.

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
The friend comes back and is like, “I always found balloons so sad.” And then you cut to Amy while the friend is saying “They want to leave, but they’re stuck or they’re in place” or whatever.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
And Amy’s just like, “Yeah, I see what you mean.”

[Emily]
“Yeah. I never thought of it that way before.”

[Thomas]
Right. So the balloons coming down, is this the initial attempt made by the kids to draw Amy out? And if so, what are the other bigger attempts that they must be making? Or is this the mid-second act turning point where it becomes way more obvious something hinky is going on? Because up to that point, there’s some stuff, but it’s disguised. We’ve intentionally explained it away or made it, you know, hand-wavy, but like, this you can’t ignore.

[Shep]
The mid-second act turning point is the kids come back themselves and they’re still young. They didn’t age. So you know that that’s not right.

[Thomas]
Yeah. Does everyone in the town see this?

[Shep]
It’s got to be. It’s got to be.

[Emily]
Yeah. If we’re going to pop that bubble and it’s going to reset everything, then yes, absolutely.

[Thomas]
Okay.

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
Because anything can happen inside the bubble because that reality is going to stop existing so the kids can go back, visit their families.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
But only for one day. The clones of the children. The alien clones of the children. What is this reminding me of?

[Shep]
It’s A.I..

[Thomas]
Yeah, yeah.

[Shep]
There was a pause, like you were waiting for an answer.

[Thomas]
I like that, though, Emily, about the idea that it’s okay for the children to actually visit the town and the townspeople to see it, because you’re right. Once that reality collapses, their memories return to the correct timeline where they all died and that never happened. So, yeah, I like that. So then the beginning of the second act, the balloons come down, and we are starting to upset the normal balance of things. Do we want to keep it to where the balloons just sort of come down all over town and it’s random, or do we want that to be tethered to, you know, they have a target and they go for that target? The reason that I would argue against them going to a target is because it creates a little more mystery that needs to be solved. It’s like, “What are all these balloons? Oh, there’s stuff tied to them. What could it mean? Where did it come from?” And then Amy or somebody is like, “Oh, that’s so and so’s hair clip.” Or-

[Emily]
Yeah. I like the idea of seeing them land separately.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
In yard to yard and have it like, just be someone who didn’t have a child on the bus. And they get this balloon down and they’re like, “What’s this shoe?” Or whatever. I don’t know why I was envisioning shoes. I’m envisioning shoes.

[Thomas]
Or is this a big set piece where the camera is sort of moving through the town? It’s like a oner. The camera’s moving through the town. We’re looking up, and we see the balloons are coming down and townspeople are coming out. It’s a really small town. There are only a few dozen families that live there. And so everyone sees the balloons and they’re like, “Oh, what’s this? What’s going on?” Oh, maybe even starts festive. And then as the balloons come down, that’s why everyone comes up like, “Oh, something cool is happening. An interesting thing is happening in our small town where nothing ever happens,” you know?

[Emily]
Right.

[Shep]
Ah.

[Thomas]
Ah.

[Shep]
It’s young kids that are seeing the balloons come down and they’re excited about it because all the parents are still traumatized.

[Thomas]
They don’t care. Like, “It’s probably just, you know, someone did a balloon release over in Colton” or whatever.

[Shep]
Do all the balloons come down safely or is one stuck in a tree?

[Thomas]
I think they should all come down safely. I think that that is the extent of targeting that I would want because that’s another element of weird and unnatural. If it was just balloons coming down from a balloon release, yeah, they probably, some would get stuck in trees. But we want to kind of add to the mystique.

[Shep]
I don’t know. I like the idea of one getting stuck in Amy’s tree and her having to go up and get it because she’s the protagonist and she’s making a choice. She’s taking an action.

[Thomas]
I like that idea, too, because all the balloons are coming down, the little kids are excited. They’re grabbing the balloons. They’re running around with them. One gets stuck in Amy’s tree, so she climbs up to get it. Maybe there’s a kid who doesn’t have a balloon and wants it. Amy’s like, “Oh, I got you.” She climbs up into the tree, and as she gets up there and grabs the string, she sees what’s tied to the end of it and has this moment where she freezes because she knows this barrette. She has seen this before. We need to establish things like a barrette, a bracelet, a shoe, whatever it is in that opening scene so that when those things come back later, it’s not just Amy being like, “Hey, I know about this.” The audience can look at it and understand, “Oh, I recognize this. I saw this earlier in the film. This is impactful to me too.” So we can feel it with her.

[Shep]
Right. So we see the bus. We see the bus of kids.

[Thomas]
Yeah, yeah.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
So we see probably two days with the kids. There’s the first day where we established those items, and then there’s the next day that they’re all excited. “Oh, we got a big field trip tomorrow.” Everyone’s excited. Unfortunately, Amy has woken up with a fever. She can’t go. She’s so disappointed. She’s looking out the window as her sister waves and gets on the bus. The kids all drive out of town. And that’s it. They’re gone after that. Yeah. Okay, I like all of this. So mid-second act turning point, the kids show up.

[Shep]
Yes. How do they show up?

[Thomas]
Ooh. So I have two ideas. One idea is they just sort of, like, from all around the town, just sort of wander in. The other idea is they come walking back into town in two columns, like they’re riding on the bus, but there is no bus. It’s just them walking into town.

[Shep]
See, I kind of like that visual. If, as the two columns are walking down the street, occasionally a kid walks off to a house.

[Thomas]
Oh, yep.

[Emily]
Like, that’s his bus stop.

[Shep]
Yep.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Well, that’s creepy as fuck!

[Thomas]
That’s the idea. All right, well, let’s take a break here, and when we come back, we’ll figure out the second half of our movie about balloons.

[Break]

[Thomas]
All right, we are back. So the missing children have just filed back into town in school bus formation, and they’re breaking off and going to their homes. So presumably the parents are freaking out.

[Shep]
Yes. So I have a question: Is the balloon of reality shrinking or not? Because if it is, if it’s focused on Amy, other children and their families are going to exit the balloon before she will. So we can see what happens on that side of reality.

[Thomas]
Hmm. I just imagined it as being centered on the town.

[Shep]
Maybe she lives close to the center of town.

[Thomas]
Or it’s centered around an arbitrary point. Maybe it’s centered around where she was in bed the moment that the incident happened. Because she is the cause of the fracture.

[Shep]
She’s the cause of the bubble.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Yeah. So is it shrinking?

[Thomas]
I think it is shrinking. I guess what I imagined was that she would exit the bubble. It’s not like the bubble got down to, like, 10ft across or something like that. It still encompasses the town. She just makes the conscious decision to leave the town and therefore leave the bubble. Because we do want her to be active in that decision.

[Shep]
Right. So we do or don’t see other kids leaving the bubble before her.

[Thomas]
Kids from the school bus?

[Shep]
Yes.

[Thomas]
I think we do. Right? They tell her it’s time to go, and she decides to go with them.

[Shep]
Oh, they all go at once? See, the reason I want it to be shrinking slowly over time is to put that pressure on her to make that decision, which she doesn’t want to make.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
Plus, it shows us some of the stakes.

[Thomas]
So are you thinking that kids leave the bubble or that the bubble shrinks to a point where their homes are no longer in the bubble?

[Shep]
It shrinks to the point where their homes are no longer in the bubble.

[Thomas]
And so what do you imagine happens outside the bubble?

[Shep]
Outside the bubble, the kids have been dead and never came back. So it’s very similar to what’s in the bubble for all the families other than Amy’s.

[Thomas]
I like that. Because Amy is not the only soul in her house. Her sister’s there too. Her sister could be the one to tell her “It’s time to go” and leave the house and leave the bubble. And so Amy has to make her peace with her mother.

[Shep]
Right. Or here’s another idea.

[Thomas]
Okay.

[Shep]
What if the mother ends up outside the bubble? She goes to work or whatever, or for whatever reason is on the other side of the bubble.

[Thomas]
But then she wouldn’t, like, she would have already had that time. It kind of makes the decision for Amy if that happens. I feel like.

[Shep]
Ah, well, what if she’s close enough to Amy that she can see her through the bubble?

[Thomas]
Mm.

[Shep]
She is outside the bubble and knows that Amy has died, but can see her on the inside of the bubble.

[Thomas]
Oh, I like that. So she leaves, like you said, to go to work. Leaves the house, leaves the bubble. “Ugh. Forgot my keys, forgot my whatever.” Turns around and Amy’s standing there, and the mom freezes because she’s seeing a ghost. And she’s like, “Amy?” And they can have a conversation, and the mom says, “I missed you girls so much.” And they can have a conversation, and Amy can get that reassurance of, like, “You know, it’s tough. I’m really sad. I’m sad every year on the anniversary. But there’s a memorial in town, and we all put flowers and whatever. Like, we’re all moving on. I’m moving on.” Maybe she volunteers at the school.

[Shep]
I like it if she volunteers at the school because she could talk about activities or whatever that she’s helping with.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
And you think she’s doing it because Amy goes to that school.

[Thomas]
Oh, yeah.

[Shep]
But we know that she’s doing it because she volunteers at that school.

[Thomas]
Well, would she, though? Inside the bubble, Amy’s not dead, so she wouldn’t be.

[Shep]
Right. Maybe the school is outside the bubble, but she still goes and volunteers and comes back. Inside the bubble, Amy’s alive. And that’s one reality.

[Emily]
So she crosses the bubble frequently and goes from Amy not existing to Amy existing without knowing.

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
But the way we’ve set up this story, Amy needs to be able to go to school.

[Shep]
Right. Maybe this is later when the bubble has start shrinking.

[Emily]
Why isn’t Amy in school at that point? Is it summer? Then why is the mom volunteering?

[Thomas]
Because I could see, like, Amy’s big into theater. And so the mom volunteers to help, after Amy’s death, the mom volunteers to help out with the things her daughters enjoyed because it’s a way for her to stay connected to her daughters and the things they loved. And so in the reality, with the daughters gone, the mom is volunteering at the school. But inside the bubble, in the course of the film, she’s a theater mom. Oh, Amy needs a costume, so she is helping out there. Oh, they need help. You know, it’s an all-volunteer thing.

[Emily]
Oh yeah, because then you could do the subtle thing where Amy tries on the costume for the lead part or whatever and she’s like, “The sleeves are too short. Why did you make the sleeves so short?”

[Thomas]
But is that a thing? Like, inside the bubble, the mom is making the costume for Amy, who is alive and in the play.

[Emily]
But she wrote down the measurements in this school and brought them back home.

[Thomas]
See, I don’t think we can have the school outside the bubble.

[Shep]
Not initially, for sure.

[Thomas]
But I like that idea of, like I was saying, the mom inside the bubble, while they’re in the bubble, the mom is doing those kinds of things. And maybe she helps Amy with her theater stuff and volunteers with whatever the sister was into. And maybe she makes Amy help out as well.

[Shep]
Okay, I have a thing, or a separate thing or a part of this thing? I don’t know.

[Thomas]
You got something. That’s all we know.

[Shep]
One of the hints that we have that the bubble of reality is shrinking is that Amy requested something of her mom and her mom, you know, at the store or whatever, which is outside the bubble, forgot.

[Thomas]
Yeah. Okay.

[Shep]
So she gets home and she says, “Oh, I forgot, I’m sorry.”

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
And we don’t realize initially that it’s because outside the bubble, she can’t remember that Amy is quote, unquote, “alive”. But this is Amy’s fear that she will be forgotten. If she leaves the bubble, her mom will forget her.

[Thomas]
Yeah, yeah.

[Shep]
So that’s part of the conversation at the end when the mom is outside the bubble and Amy’s inside the bubble. They can have that conversation.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
And the mom would be like, “Of course I’m never going to forget you.”

[Thomas]
Yeah. I like that. That’s good.

[Shep]
So that’s her fear. That’s how her fear is resolved. That helps her, helps her go with her sister.

[Thomas]
So with the bubble shrinking, what are the stakes for Amy? What happens if she doesn’t make the choice to go? I think we need to introduce a dark force. You have to make the choice to cross over. Otherwise you’re swallowed up by the Langoliers or whatever.

[Shep]
See, I don’t think that we do. I think it’s enough to stay in the bubble, in the house, and that is torturous for the mom, who outside the bubble has come to peace with her daughters passing. And then inside the bubble, she’s alive again. So every time the mom makes that transition, it’s hard. And as the bubble gets smaller, what is her quality of life? Eventually, it’s going to shrink down to just her house and maybe just her room. And that’s no way to live, quote, unquote, “live”. So I think just making the mom miserable is enough.

[Thomas]
How do we know the shrinking is going to stop and stay at a fixed point?

[Shep]
Maybe it’s slowing down.

[Emily]
How do we know that though?

[Thomas]
I mean, are we above someone telling her that.

[Shep]
How does she discover the bubble of reality? Oh, the other kids disappear. That’s right. So she sees when the other kids disappear, and then she could, like, make calculations.

[Thomas]
That’s what everyone likes in a movie: math.

[Shep]
Yes.

[Emily]
Hey, Good Will Hunting won an Oscar for writing.

[Shep]
So Amy’s trying to justify staying, and her sister, who we have not named, is trying to convince her to leave. But Amy’s like, “You know, look, it’s slowing down, it’s shrinking, but the rate of shrinking is slowing. So if it continues to slow at the same speed, then it’ll basically stop shrinking at the property line.”

[Thomas]
Ah. I think it should just shrink to its smallest size and stop. And so we see that it stops. We don’t need an explanation. Amy doesn’t know what happens if it shrinks into nothing, but in the end, she doesn’t need to worry about it. So maybe she’s panicked about “Oh, my gosh, my bubble of my reality is shrinking.” It’s increasing her anxiety because this is a thing that’s happening to her. But then it stops. And so we don’t have to have her do math and we don’t have to ever explain any of that stuff. It just stops.

[Shep]
All right, well, now we have an unexplained “Why did it stop?”

[Thomas]
Oh, we have an unexplained: “How did it start?”

[Emily]
It’s a magic bubble. It stops and starts on its own will.

[Shep]
Well, then there’s no guarantee that it’ll stay stopped. It could start moving again at any time.

[Emily]
If the bubble closes with her in it, she no longer exists on any plane of reality.

[Shep]
I mean, when, as it closes, it will pass over her.

[Emily]
No, it just boops her. She gets booped.

[Shep]
How do you know that?

[Emily]
It makes the noise and she disappears. She goes boop. I don’t know. The little sister tells her that and she’s like, “How do I know that’s real? You don’t. You’re 10. What do you know?”

[Thomas]
Well, her only evidence is that the bubble shrinks and these kids just disappear. That’s all she knows for sure.

[Shep]
Right.

[Emily]
Yeah, how does she know she can’t go beyond that? How does she know she can’t leave?

[Thomas]
Maybe you do this sort of thing where, like… Because she’s got to be able to see that there’s a border.

[Shep]
Right. The audience has to see it as well.

[Thomas]
Right. Nobody else sees it. The people in reality don’t see it. Only the ghost people see it and the audience.

[Emily]
Okay.

[Thomas]
And so maybe she puts her hand out and it kind of turns smoky and starts to sort of fade away. And she pulls her hand back real quick and it’s recorporealized. And she’s seen the other kids sort of… Maybe there’s a kid playing in the front yard and the bubble shrinks and the kid smokies away and she’s like, “What the?”

[Emily]
I want them to rainbow away.

[Shep]
Rainbow smoke?

[Emily]
Like a prism, you know? Just like a…

[Thomas]
There’s that, like, water vapory sort of, you know, when the light hits it just right.

[Emily]
Yeah, no, I know.

[Thomas]
Yeah. And you get that, like, rainbow smoke effect. I like that. That’s cool.

[Shep]
You guys are pumping up the effects budget already.

[Thomas]
I mean, you already got smoke. Just change the shader on your particle effect. I don’t know. What is the lowest low?

[Shep]
The lowest low is Amy finding out that she’s stuck in this bubble, which is shrinking. Because I’m sure she doesn’t know at first that she’s stuck in the bubble.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
She just sees as it’s shrinking and is passing over the ghost children, they are rainbow smoking away.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
So she is initially concerned about her sister, not herself, but her sister is not concerned.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
And maybe that’s when her sister tells her, “Oh, by the way, you died”?

[Thomas]
Yeah. I was going to say at some point that needs to be revealed, and it seems natural her sister would be the one to tell her that.

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
It is unfortunately a thing that I think needs to be told. And then, you know, typical movie, she can have a little flashback.

[Emily]
Wouldn’t that be the lowest low? Because she just found out she’s dead.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Yes, that’s what I’m saying.

[Emily]
Okay.

[Shep]
This is the lowest low.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
What is her flashback to?

[Emily]
Getting on the bus and sitting down like, is that.

[Shep]
But she didn’t. That’s why reality broke. She was supposed to get on the bus, but she didn’t.

[Emily]
Then how did she die on the bus?

[Thomas]
Right. No, she died on the bus. Because when she goes outside the bubble, reality corrects itself. Ah. She doesn’t have a fever. Oh, but she wants to go on the field trip. Why does she not want to go on the field trip? Why does she want to skip the field trip? They’re going to some museum that is like the sister’s jam, But Amy just doesn’t care. And because it’s the sister’s jam, they’ve been there before. So the other kids are excited, and Amy’s like, “Oh, this place again, that I have negative feelings about anyway, because my sister, she’s gonna do what she always does at this museum and be a smarty pants, and she already knows everything. Be all pedantic.” So she doesn’t feel like she’s missing anything.

[Shep]
So her sister, who has died, is the one that knows everything and is always explaining everything? This makes sense why she’s explaining everything to her at the end, it’s just Amy’s sister being Amy’s sister. What are we missing? The other kids are disappearing. The bubble shrinks down. The mom is on the other side. They have the conversation. Amy and her sister come to peace. They step through the bubble. Later, you see the 12 balloons being released.

[Thomas]
Right. So the mom is on the other side of the bubble, and she turns around and sees Amy, and they have the conversation.

[Shep]
Yes.

[Thomas]
Does the mom step back through?

[Shep]
No.

[Thomas]
Does the mom just go to work?

[Shep]
No. They have the conversation. Amy and her sister accept, Amy accepts, her fate, and they step through.

[Thomas]
I feel like her sister needs to be gone before that moment.

[Shep]
Oh, okay.

[Thomas]
So Amy’s alone.

[Shep]
The sister can step through intentionally earlier.

[Thomas]
Yes, yes. In fact, she maybe even does that to show Amy, like, “It’s okay.”

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
“It’s not scary.” You know, Amy’s scared by the fact that her hand is rainbow smoking. And…

[Shep]
Right. And then she does that just suddenly. And she’s like, “Wait, no!”

[Thomas]
Yeah. So Amy disappears. And then when the bubble collapses, does the mom’s memory of that conversation with Amy also disappear as a result?

[Shep]
No. Because she’s on the outside of the bubble when it happens.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
So the mom is the only one that remembers the things that happened.

[Thomas]
Well, does she remember the-

[Shep]
Or she, she remembers the conversation.

[Thomas]
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So two questions: Does the mom spearhead the balloon release at the end of the film?

[Shep]
I thought they did that every year or something. Was that not. Didn’t you say that earlier?

[Thomas]
I don’t think they should do that every year because…

[Shep]
It’s weird?

[Thomas]
It’s a little weird. Yeah.

[Emily]
And then the balloons coming down aren’t as special.

[Thomas]
Exactly.

[Shep]
Okay.

[Emily]
So, yeah, she spearheads it this time.

[Shep]
All right.

[Thomas]
And then are all of the kids’ artifacts that came down with the balloons still in existence, or have those disappeared?

[Emily]
No, they got rainbow smoked away too.

[Thomas]
Okay.

[Emily]
With the shrinking bubble.

[Thomas]
I figured that was the case. I just want to make sure. Because they did come down inside the bubble. So.

[Shep]
Oh, they could stay. You could have them be the only thing that does stay. And so at the end, like on a bookshelf or a mantle or something, you see Amy’s sister’s beret and then some memento of Amy’s that we’ve seen her wear.

[Thomas]
A brooch she’s been wearing the entire film or something like that?

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
And that’s her memento that’s in that same spot, which is a picture of the two of them as kids.

[Thomas]
Yeah, yeah. Oh, and then the last sort of scene, the balloon release scene, it starts with Amy’s mom getting ready, leaving the house, and the shelf is maybe near the door, and she says, “Goodbye, girls,” or something like that to show, like, oh, she does remember them. She remembers them every day.

[Shep]
Yep.

[Thomas]
And then they go and they do the balloon release, and then the camera follows the balloons up into the air and…

[Emily]
Happy feathery music plays.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Yeah, I like that.

[Shep]
I’ll watch this.

[Thomas]
Well, we’d love to hear your thoughts on today’s episode about Balloons. Were we flying high or did we have our head in the clouds?

[Shep]
Hmm.

[Thomas]
Only “Hmm”. Interesting.

[Emily]
It wasn’t that awful.

[Thomas]
Let us know by leaving a comment on our website, reaching out on social media, or sending us an email. Links to all of those can be found at AlmostPlausible.com. This show is all about creating movie plots from ordinary objects. And where do we come up with the ideas for those objects? Well, mostly we just come up with random stuff, but we’d love to hear from you and find out what ordinary objects you think would make for a good episode. Send us your suggestions using the contact form at AlmostPlausible.com. After you send us your idea, the only way to hear how it turns out is to join Emily, Shep, and I on the next episode of Almost Plausible.

[Outro music]

[Thomas]
In the small town of Echo Valley, the shadow of the town’s most chilling mystery looms over the town. Boy, “town” is in that sentence three times.

[Shep]
Yeah. Getting-

[Emily]
That’s a lot of town-

[Thomas]
Hang on.

[Shep]
Getting some semantic satiation going on.

[Thomas]
Small town, Echo Valley. Hmm. I should have read through this before I put it in here.

[Shep]
Yeah. Sometimes things sound fine in your head-

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
And then you read them out. It’s like, “Oh, ooh.”

[Thomas]
But I want to convey that Echo Valley is a small town.

[Shep]
Village!

[Thomas]
How about in-

[Emily]
In the small community, Echo Valley?

[Shep]
In the community of Echo Valley.

[Thomas]
Yeah, in the community of Echo Valley, a chilling mystery looms over the small town. There we go.

[Emily]
There you go.

[Thomas]
Okay, here we go again.