Birthday Candle

References

• Frosty the Snowman
• Big
• 17 Again
• Hocus Pocus
• The Picture of Dorian Gray
• Almost Plausible: Flashlight
• Almost Plausible: Ceiling Fan
• The Monkey’s Paw
• Liar Liar
• 13 Going on 30
• Trolley Problem
• Marley and Me
• Wolverine
• The Man From Earth
• Doctor Who
• Highlander
• New Amsterdam
• The Loom of Fate
• Great Expectations
• Sears, Roebuck Catalog
• Henry James
• Into the Wild
  • Chris McCandless
• One Hundred Years of Solitude
• Encanto
• The Twilight Zone
  • Time Enough at Last
• Windows 95
• Immortal Snail

Transcript

[Intro music begins]

[Emily]
He’s, essentially been too isolated for too long to really, like, reintegrate, obviously. Right? 100 years or so of solitude’s not going to work out for you going back into being with people.

[Thomas]
Is that the title of the film? “100 Years (or so) of Solitude”.

[Shep]
So 100 Years of Solitude was the inspiration for Encanto, which is also a magical candle based- Like, there is a lot of overlap.

[Thomas]
Wow.

[Shep]
Thomas, was that an intentional reference?

[Thomas]
No!

[Shep]
Because-

[Thomas]
I had no idea. I mean, yes, very intentional. My scholarly brain thought of that. I’m so glad my smart friends caught that reference I was intentionally making.

[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 here with me are Emily-

[Emily]
Hey, guys.

[Thomas]
And F. Paul Shepard.

[Shep]
Happy to be here.

[Thomas]
And in the immortal words of Frosty the Snowman, “Happy birthday.” Is it anybody’s birthday this week? No. Oh, well, we must just be in a celebratory mood because of this episode’s object, which is a birthday candle. I’ll pitch first. Clearly the first pitch is Big, but with a birthday candle. Right.

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
We kind of, probably all came up with that.

[Emily]
Right. Of course.

[Shep]
17 Again.

[Thomas]
Yeah. So the other idea that I had is a postapocalyptic story. So there are some people who are living in a bunker, and the only source of light they have is a box of birthday candles. And birthday candles burn very fast because they’re super cheap, so they have to be very careful with how much they use, how often they are lighting their candles, living in mostly the dark.

[Shep]
Should have got those birthday candles that don’t go out.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
How dark is the bunker? Like, it’s an underground bunker, so there’s literally no source of light at all other than these birthday candles.

[Thomas]
Maybe they have something with-, that’s powered but stationary, so it has like a glowing, you know, like how your smoke detector is on the ceiling, but it has a little light on it.

[Emily]
Like a small glow. Yeah. Okay.

[Thomas]
Maybe there’s something like that. So there’s like a very faint light, but you couldn’t read by it.

[Emily]
Right. Okay.

[Shep]
But if there’s that light, even if it’s just a small LED on a smoke detector, in pitch black you’ll eventually be able to see something. Here’s my question, though: How are they lighting the candle? Because surely that’s another form of light.

[Thomas]
Yeah, I guess maybe if they have a lighter or matches. That’s not an infinite source either.

[Emily]
Right. Because you don’t want to waste those.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
Maybe you have more, like, matches than you do birthday candles. But once you light all the birthday candles-

[Thomas]
Yeah. Birthday candles burn fast, but you know what burns faster? Matches. So that’s my story. Emily, what do you have?

[Emily]
I have a virgin lights a candle and awakens three witches who try to eat the town’s children. And then I have another one where a person can kill another person by blowing out their birthday candle.

[Shep]
Is this a euphemism?

[Thomas]
So, wait, let’s say it’s Shep’s birthday and he has a cake, and it has candles on it. If I blow them out, do I kill him? Or this is like a special candle, or I can make a wish on my cake to have Shep die or… Nothing against you, Shep.

[Emily]
Well, I hadn’t thought about that. In my mind, it was this person has, like, a bunch of special candles that he assigns as birthday candles for the person, and then he lights it and blows it out and they die. But I like yours where if that person has sort of the power to… if they can blow out the birthday candle first, then they’ll kill the other person.

[Thomas]
What if I blow out my own birthday candle? Is that like suicide? Just never light that candle!

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
No, you have to wish to live.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Otherwise you’ll die.

[Thomas]
“Make a wish.”

[Emily]
I like the darker one where it’s like you just can’t blow out your birthday candle.

[Thomas]
I kind of like that idea of every year getting the opportunity, like, “Do I want to keep doing this?”

[Shep]
“Am I going to reup for another year, or am I done?”

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
I know. “Netflix has now discontinued sharing, so…”

[Shep]
“I’m out.”

[Emily]
Yeah. There’s no point in living anymore. And then my final one is a serial killer leaves the birthday handle in the right eye of his victims.

[Thomas]
Oof.

[Shep]
Why the right eye?

[Emily]
Because he’s left-handed. That’s the only reason I have.

[Shep]
All right. I checked the math.

[Thomas]
Yeah. That’s an oddly specific detail, but yeah. All right, it works.

[Emily]
Those are my pitches.

[Thomas]
All right, Shep, let’s hear yours.

[Shep]
A magic birthday candle.

[Thomas]
Another one. Good.

[Shep]
Well, I mean, it’s specifically birthday candle. We’re really-

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Honed in on a particular object.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
Okay. Magic birthday candle where you only age while it’s burning.

[Thomas]
I like that idea. Interesting.

[Emily]
Do you keep it in a drawer?

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Like, when you reach the age you want?

[Thomas]
Right?

[Emily]
Like, you hit 21 in America, but then you just stop burning it.

[Thomas]
Yeah. The candle of Dorian Gray. You keep it in a box in your attic and board it up behind a wall maybe.

[Shep]
Right. Don’t just keep it in a drawer.

[Thomas]
What if your house burns down? Keep it in a safety deposit box at your bank. What if the bank burns down? Oh shit.

[Shep]
What if you’re in your house and it burns down, but the candle doesn’t burn up? You’re just horrifically burned forever?

[Thomas]
Oh God.

[Emily]
Would you have to burn it to do some healing or-

[Shep]
Oh, I didn’t think about that.

[Thomas]
Interesting.

[Shep]
Every time you get injured you have to burn the candle a little bit to get better.

[Emily]
That creates really heavy stakes-

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Yeah. Well that’s better than the alternative where if you get injured you could never heal. So for the birthday candle that you only age while it’s burning, I figured- because how would you know that? So I figured like a pair of twins, each gets a special candle from whatever magical source, magical grandfather, magical shop, whatever, and one of them likes it so much they stay up all night reading by the light of that candle and they burn it all up in one night and age out and die.

[Emily]
Prior to getting the candle they age normally?

[Shep]
Yes.

[Emily]
Because I’m like, how big is this candle that they just let it burn until they’re like 14 and can make that decision for themselves, where they’re like “Ah…”

[Shep]
Well now you got me thinking about what is their backstory? Maybe it is like a special candle created when they were born and the parents burn it a little bit each year.

[Thomas]
Or you could have it be something along the lines of the first time it’s lit is when the magic begins, when the spell begins.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
If you never lit it, you would just age normally. But once you light it now you’re cursed or blessed or whatever.

[Emily]
I like that. Because then you don’t have to- Well, I like the twin dying, because death is my favorite thing.

[Shep]
It wasn’t from a serial killer though, so…

[Emily]
It’s still death. It counts. It’s fine.

[Thomas]
Well, hold on now there could be some person handing these candles out all over the place. We don’t know.

[Emily]
This is true.

[Shep]
That’s right.

[Emily]
I was thinking it would be, without the twin aspect of it, it would be like the grandfather or whatever is going to pass on this secret of this candle, and then they explain it to him. Like, once you light this…

[Thomas]
So literally explain it to the audience. Basically. Yeah, I mean that works too. That’s a tried-and-true method.

[Shep]
Yup, yup. Alright. My other one is a tiny world of tiny people living in a birthday candle. Have we done tiny worlds? Yes, we did. We did for a flashlight and I think it was one of the pitches for ceiling fan.

[Thomas]
Yes, you’re right.

[Shep]
Anyway, I like tiny world, tiny people things. They’re living in a birthday candle and then it gets lit and their world is being destroyed. So for us, a birthday candle is a celebration, but for them it’s the end of the world. And I guess it’s an allegory, on the nose allegory for climate change.

[Thomas]
All right, which of these do we like?

[Emily]
It’s Big. We like Big.

[Thomas]
I love Big because it’s a good movie, so it’s already been done.

[Emily]
I love wish granting movies. I think they’re fun. Especially monkey’s paw, consequences are the best.

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
We’ve done a few of those.

[Emily]
What’s one more?

[Shep]
It’s specifically a birthday candle, which makes it a little more tricky.

[Thomas]
So I like then the idea of a candle where you age while it’s burning because if it’s a birthday candle that’s very correlated to, you age, or associated with aging.

[Shep]
Yeah, there are movies where birthday candle specifically grant wishes, you know, kid wishes that his dad can’t tell a lie anymore.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
And his dad’s a lawyer.

[Emily]
13 Going on 30, right? That was when she wishes-

[Shep]
That’s another of the age-

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Big again. I never saw that one. I like the age transformation movies because I like fish out of water stuff.

[Emily]
I watched it for the first time recently, and I enjoyed it. I thought it was all it promised me it would be. It has Jennifer Gardner going from 13 to 30, and Mark Ruffalo is there. And he’s cute.

[Thomas]
I love when she’s in the elevator with that girl. They’re, like, complimenting each other’s outfits.

[Emily]
Yeah, it’s super cute. So are we going to go with granting a wish or watching your light go out slowly?

[Shep]
So dark.

[Thomas]
Well, what would the story be for that? Watching your life go or not? Like, do you just live forever?

[Emily]
Well, I like the consequence of having to use it to heal.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
That creates a lot of tension.

[Thomas]
And prevents you, presumably, from living forever.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Or you end up living this super boring, sheltered life.

[Shep]
Yeah. If you have to burn it to heal, then you can’t just throw it in a big block of cement and drop it in the middle of the ocean.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
Right. You have to have it readily available. There’s like a case, break in case of emergency, little axe next to it.

[Thomas]
Don’t cut the candle in half.

[Emily]
Oh, yeah. What happens if the candle breaks?

[Thomas]
Then all the magic escapes.

[Shep]
What’s the message of the movie?

[Emily]
Okay. Yeah. I would go super sappy myself just because I’m either about death or just sap. There’s no in between with me right now. So I would have the message be that sometimes you have to sacrifice yourself for the greater good. Like, he’s on a trolley and they can go, they can kill five people or three people. So he burns his candle and kills himself.

[Shep]
Uses the dripping wax from the candle on the track to derail the trolley.

[Emily]
It could be something very altruistic like that. What do you want the message of the movie to be?

[Shep]
I don’t know. I didn’t have any deeper plan yet. What is the purpose of living forever?

[Emily]
That is an excellent question that I don’t have the answer to. Thomas?

[Thomas]
I guess just experiencing new things. Being in my early 40s, I’ve come to the conclusion there are lots of things that when I was younger, I was like, “I will definitely do those things.” And now I’m like, “I’ll never do those things. I can’t afford to do those things. I don’t have time to do those things.”

[Shep]
“Now I’m too old to do those things.”

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
Right.

[Thomas]
“My knees hurt too much,” all that stuff.

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
So I think maybe that’s the point of immortality, is I have all that time. I can do- I can read all the books I want; I can see every movie I want; I can visit every country I want.

[Shep]
You won’t be able to see all the movies you want and read every book you want because they’re constantly making new movies and books.

[Thomas]
But I don’t want to see and read all of those.

[Shep]
You and I are different.

[Emily]
Just the ones he wants, not all the things that exist.

[Shep]
I don’t know. Right now there’s a bunch of really good TV shows that I have not even begun to watch.

[Emily]
So you’re saying immortality is essentially a desire to conquer FOMO?

[Thomas]
Kind of. Yeah. So it’s greedy, maybe, in a way. Or it’s like a desire to have a fulfilled life, a fulfilling life, a full life.

[Emily]
Oh, yeah. Full life.

[Thomas]
To do the things, all the things that you want to do.

[Shep]
Okay, so-

[Emily]
I like that being a motivation. Does that end up being the correct way to live or do we learn-

[Shep]
Yeah. What’s more important than that?

[Thomas]
Well, one of the things that I always think about when that idea of immortality comes up is the idea that every time you make friends, they’re going to die. Everyone that you ever love is going to die.

[Emily]
They’re the dog and you’re the human.

[Thomas]
Right. They’re Marley and you’re me.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Okay, so companionship is important. “What if you cut the candle in half?” was brought up earlier. So the candle takes effect when you light it. So if you cut it in half, there’s an unlit half of the candle that you can give to someone else. And as soon as they light it now they have this candle that they only age when it burns, but your candle is half as long.

[Emily]
And you have to use for healing,

[Shep]
Right. So you’re not immortal immortal. You don’t live forever and you could still die if you get injured or if you get sick or whatever. You’re just not aging. You’re not Wolverine.

[Emily]
Right.

[Thomas]
If you lose that arm, you lose that arm forever.

[Emily]
Yeah. You can’t regenerate.

[Thomas]
What an interesting toss-up to have. Like, oh, I have a small cut on my arm. It’s a little annoying, but no big deal. I’ll just keep it clean, put a bandaid on it so it stays covered up, and next time there’s something worth healing, then that will heal too.

[Emily]
Right.

[Shep]
So the majority of the time you’re going to have all these minor wounds.

[Emily]
Paper cut.

[Thomas]
Bruises and stuff.

[Shep]
This deal gets worse and worse all the time.

[Thomas]
But that’s the toss-up. Do you burn some of the candle to fix all those things, or are they all not such a big enough deal?

[Shep]
Well, that’s why you burn it once a year on your birthday.

[Thomas]
Yeah, there you go.

[Shep]
Just a little bit, just to keep you healthy.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
And on special occasions when you break an arm or something because you were snowboarding.

[Emily]
Get punched in the stomach and your spleen exploded. You need to light the candle.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
Is that going to put your spleen back together?

[Thomas]
Well, after the surgery, you’ll need to heal.

[Emily]
So with the companionship idea, are we going to make it romantic companionship?

[Thomas]
What if they break their candle in half and make the offer and the other person is like, “I don’t want that. Why would I want that?” And so now they’ve broken the candle in half and they’re going to lose this person.

[Emily]
That could be your lowest low.

[Shep]
Or they take the half and leave you.

[Thomas]
Because their perspective on desire to be around people and to have that companionship and that connection, it’s totally different to yours, because you’ve been around for 1000 years or however long, and so you had all this loss that you’ve experienced and this loneliness, this sort of pervasive loneliness that’s lasted for hundreds of years.

[Emily]
Do they come back again 100 years later, hundreds of years later, and they’re like “So I was wrong.”

[Shep]
You guys have seen The Man from Earth, right? Doesn’t he talk about running into another immortal or someone he suspects was another immortal?

[Emily]
Yeah. That sounds familiar.

[Thomas]
That sounds familiar.

[Shep]
But it’s very brief, like at a train station or something, but they got away.

[Emily]
Right.

[Shep]
Are we just making The Man from Earth again?

[Emily]
Well, I was thinking it’s sounding a lot like Doctor Who because he’s always getting a new companion because he keeps losing them.

[Shep]
Right.

[Emily]
I was also thinking of, because I did watch a lot of the Highlander in the 90s, like a lot. And-

[Shep]
Oh, yeah.

[Emily]
He had a few other immortal female companions.

[Shep]
I don’t know. If you’re living forever, if you’re living for hundreds of years, even, that’s plenty of time to learn to be comfortable in your own skin, to be a complete person.

[Emily]
I mean, they did it with a Fox show in the early 2000s, New Amsterdam with the guy who ended up being Jaime Lannister. He was an immortal-

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
And constantly cycled through companions. He had several wives, lots of kids. He eventually got to a point where he could deal with it, but it was still always difficult.

[Shep]
Well, in The Man from Earth, I mean, he is having that going away party that he does every ten years to say goodbye to all the people that he knows so that he can go and change his identity. So he’s not even just outliving everyone.

[Emily]
He’s just moving on.

[Shep]
He’s moving on every ten years.

[Emily]
I like the idea of splitting in half to have a companion. I’m okay with the companion taking off and having it be like a lowest low. I like the idea of having it have him have to burn it for altruistic reasons. Like, I don’t know what those would be. I don’t know how his death or his aging would help someone else. But I think that creates another good tension where it’s like, “I’ve been alive for so long and I’ve done so much and I still have so much more to do.” But does he not do it before, say, okay, so he’s had all these companions, right? And he’s never chosen them over the immortality? Is he finally to a point now where he’s experienced all that he can experience?

[Shep]
He’s read all the books, he’s seen all the movies.

[Emily]
He’s read all the books, he’s seen all the movies,

[Shep]
He reached the end of the internet.

[Emily]
And now he’s met another handsome young man who he fancies, and he’s going to burn the candle and live out his life happily with this man and several French bulldogs.

[Thomas]
It feels like an easy decision, though, if you’ve done everything you want to do.

[Shep]
Right. It’s a hard decision if there’s always more stuff to do.

[Emily]
Right.

[Thomas]
Or if that’s not even his reason. If his reason is a fear of death, for whatever reason.

[Emily]
But wouldn’t you think the fear of death would be even stronger the older you are, the longer you’ve lived?

[Shep]
I’m having an idea. So he previously split the candle. So you establish that’s a mechanism that can be taken advantage of. He split the candle, gave it to a romantic companion or whatever, and she leaves and he’s alone and he’s devastated. Like, he gave up this big chunk of himself-

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
And it’s just gone. Just gone! Maybe she even used up her half of the candle really quickly. She doesn’t like being in discomfort. So every time she got, you know, a small nick or whatever, she’d burn the candle a little bit, a little bit, little bit, little bit. And then it quickly runs out. Anyway. She left him, somehow, either by burning up the candle or just by leaving. I like it if she just leaves because then you have that open for a sequel.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
So he kind of cuts himself off from the world. He stops talking to people, he stops having companions and just tries to be an island unto himself. And then he meets someone else, someone new, maybe not a romantic companion, some young guy that comes to his house or whatever and gets him back out into the world. And now he’s out in the world for the first time in potentially decades or centuries and begins to enjoy life again. But then he has to do something. Maybe the kid is being mugged and he tries to stop it and gets stabbed or whatever, and they have to burn- (because the kid knows his secret), has to burn his candle so that he can heal. And the guy cuts off the top of the candle because he’s done. He’s done. He’s been done for centuries, but he was just still alive. Now his eyes are open that he was basically a walking ghost this whole time and wasn’t living, and that’s no way to exist. And so he’s like, “I’m giving you the rest of the candle,” basically.

[Emily]
So when the candle’s burned up, you just continue to age or you’re dead?

[Shep]
I thought you were dead.

[Emily]
Okay.

[Shep]
It’s like when your string gets cut in the loom of fate.

[Emily]
Right, I like that. I like that idea.

[Thomas]
I want to see that realization that he has of, “Oh, I’ve just been a ghost this whole time.” Like, I suppose that comes from when he goes out and experiences the world again and kind of gets a second life almost, in a way.

[Shep]
Or because he’s been out of the world for so long, he can’t adapt to all the changes that have happened.

[Emily]
Yeah, I was going to say, does he live, like, in the attic of some old monastery?

[Shep]
I mean, I imagine he’s got a nice house because he’s been alive for so long.

[Emily]
Right.

[Shep]
You just got to invest a penny and then live for a thousand years.

[Emily]
Right. So is he not coming across any- like he’s not getting the newspaper? So he doesn’t know about major events, TVs, phones, that kind of stuff?

[Shep]
He just lives in his dusty mansion wearing his wedding dress.

[Emily]
Yeah. Is he Miss Havisham?

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
I mean, I think you would know about changes and things like that, but knowing that an iPhone exists and using an iPhone if you’ve never used them before are very different experiences.

[Emily]
That’s what I’m saying. Because you can get from living in a house in 50s to an iPhone without leaving the house. You can do that.

[Thomas]
Right. Especially if you basically live forever.

[Emily]
Right. You’ve invested money and then, okay, so you get the Sears Roebuck catalog. You have a phone. Like you can make these things happen without leaving your house is what I’m saying.

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
He’s just not leaving his house, though. He’s left the world, basically.

[Emily]
Right.

[Shep]
He was so heartbroken that he’s like, “Nothing is worth it.”

[Emily]
So he is Miss Havisham.

[Shep]
Yes, you’re right!

[Emily]
I don’t think that’s- she was a great character. I mean-

[Shep]
I had higher expectations.

[Emily]
Well, that was a good one. So he just chooses not to participate.

[Shep]
Right. He’s wallowing in his misery for 100 years.

[Thomas]
That seems like it’d be really boring, though, eventually,

[Emily]
Well, he’s got a lot of books.

[Thomas]
Right. He’s made a bunch of money because he invested. Okay, so this is a planned seclusion, right? He’s like, “Fuck it. I’m going to buy all the books that I wanted. I’m going to buy all the movies I wanted, and I’m just going to hole up, going to have Instacart delivered to me every day or whatever.” Because he lives in the modern world. He can have his groceries delivered.

[Emily]
Right.

[Shep]
When did he go into seclusion, though.

[Emily]
In 2019.

[Shep]
Right, this just happened. He didn’t even know about the pandemic.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
Yeah. It was nothing to him.

[Thomas]
That would be so funny if somebody made some comment like, “Man, it’s crazy being stuck in doors all day.” He’s like, “What do you know?”

[Emily]
And then we go 100 years in the future, and then we get to create not only a magical realism, but a future world, too.

[Shep]
You’re really increasing the budget real quickly.

[Thomas]
All right, well, let’s take a quick break, and when we come back, we’ll burn this candle down a little more.

[Break]

[Thomas]
All right, we’re back. I don’t think we ever settled on exactly when this guy decided to isolate himself.

[Shep]
Now, I was thinking it’s a guy from the 1890s or whatever. He still wears the old-timey whatever.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
People romanticize the past so that’s this guy. Still talks in old fashioned American.

[Thomas]
So then he doesn’t have movies. He just has books.

[Shep]
Right. But he could have lots and lots of books.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
And then he has his own notebooks where he’s been journaling his thoughts, which was the style at the time. Oh, when did they do the acid paper? Do you know what I’m talking about? The paper that doesn’t last. So we have records older than that because it was cotton paper back then, and then for a while it’s acid paper, and those just fell apart over time. So we have this, like, gap in our records. I think that was maybe 1700s. I don’t know. But I was thinking maybe he has that kind of paper as his journal. So his oldest journals are just crumbling. Although what is he talking about in his journals? His thoughts?

[Emily]
Yeah. What is he journaling about? Is he just writing dissertation after dissertation on these books he’s reading? Does he have, like, deep insights into Henry James novels?

[Shep]
Right. Everything’s a book report.

[Thomas]
“Day 12,483. The bitch is still gone.”

[Shep]
Yes. “PS: Fuck that bitch.”

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
“Never forget.”

[Thomas]
#NeverForget. “Why do I keep putting the octothorpe there? How strange.”

[Shep]
I think that he’s journaling his thoughts on life and having such a long life and the advantages and disadvantages of whatever, and he thinks that he’s come to this conclusion that it’s great to lock yourself away from the world and just live in isolation and have your groceries delivered forever. I wonder what this is a commentary on. But then his persistent neighbor intrudes on his perfect life of isolation, which at first he hates, and then comes around because that’s how movies are. And then he realizes that all of his dissertations on this long life were wrong. He was wrong. He was- the very foundation the premise was wrong, that life isn’t for isolating yourself with your thoughts. It’s for living.

[Thomas]
Right. Life isn’t for existing. It’s for living.

[Shep]
Oh, yeah. Write that down.

[Emily]
I just had a really random thought, but it was the guy in Into the Wild, and his name is Candless, and he goes into the wild to be isolated and away from society because he feels that’s the only way, and then dies a terrible, horrible death because he made terrible life decisions. I think it’s interesting his last name is Candless.

[Shep]
McCandless.

[Emily]
McCandless. Oh, yes.

[Shep]
“I have had a happy life and thank the Lord. Goodbye and may God bless all.” Those were the final words he wrote down.

[Emily]
Yeah. It’s a similar idea that he was looking for this solitude to find peace and be happy in his life.

[Shep]
Well, he did find solitude and apparently did find peace and happiness at the end of his life.

[Emily]
We want this guy to live his life to the fullest?

[Shep]
No, I want him to give the candle, the remaining length of the candle to the guy that brought him out into the world.

[Emily]
Yeah, I like that. Because he’s essentially been too isolated for too long to really, like, reintegrate, obviously. Right? 100 years or so of solitude’s not going to work out for you going back into being with people.

[Thomas]
Is that the title of the film? “100 Years (or so) of Solitude”.

[Shep]
So 100 Years of Solitude was the inspiration for Encanto, which is also a magical candle based. Like, there is a lot of overlap.

[Thomas]
Wow.

[Shep]
Thomas, was that an intentional reference?

[Thomas]
No!

[Shep]
Because-

[Thomas]
I had no idea. I mean, yes, very intentional. My scholarly brain thought of that. I’m so glad my smart friends caught that reference I was intentionally making.

[Emily]
Does he tell the person he gives the candle to, to make use of his time? Not to-

[Thomas]
Oh, absolutely. I think that if that’s the lesson he learns, is live life, don’t just exist, then yeah, go have adventures and use this to help you.

[Shep]
Yes.

[Thomas]
But never stop having adventures. There’s nothing more important than experiencing everything you can.

[Emily]
And it’s also, you come out with this breadth of knowledge and insight that you can use to better the world if you choose to.

[Shep]
Unless you spend 100 years going down the wrong path of ethics and morality and everything was worthless and a waste of time.

[Emily]
And you have to convince the people alive that you know what you’re talking about because you were there.

[Shep]
Right.

[Emily]
They don’t understand.

[Shep]
“Listen to me. I’m old.” I don’t think that works.

[Emily]
Good point.

[Thomas]
Especially if you look younger than the people you’re trying to convince.

[Shep]
Does he look younger? What age does he look like he is?

[Emily]
When did he stop burning the candle and live with his paper cuts? Is he covered in bruises and paper cuts?

[Thomas]
Until his birthday. I mean, think about a calendar year for yourself. How often do you have bruises and paper cuts and minor scrapes and things like that? Like, you probably have some, but I don’t think you’d be covered to the point where people are like, “Jesus, what happened to you?”

[Shep]
Right.

[Emily]
You underestimate my ability.

[Thomas]
Your clumsiness.

[Shep]
My pinky toes would be destroyed.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
But the rest of me. Oh, he must not shave because then he would cut himself. So he’s got to have a big beard.

[Thomas]
Does his beard grow? Getting into the weeds again.

[Shep]
Right. Does he have to eat? Does he have to sleep?

[Emily]
I had a really good in-the-weeds comment earlier when we talked about the other companion being a woman and going away. Can she bear children without burning the candle? But that’s a different story. That’s the next movie.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
We’ll worry about that one later.

[Shep]
Yeah. That’s a great question, though. She’d have to burn it all the time to have a child.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
So how does that affect her view on the world?

[Thomas]
That would be some amazing birth control, though.

[Emily and Shep]
Right?

[Emily]
But that’s an in-the-weeds, and for the second movie.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
That’s for whoever picks up the rights for that one has to write it.

[Thomas and Emily]
Right.

[Thomas]
Yeah. Good luck.

[Emily]
Good luck with that story. So he tells the kid to go on adventures, never stop living life, and that’s just you see him go and do all the things.

[Shep]
Who goes and does all the things?

[Emily]
The boy, the child.

[Shep]
We don’t see it cause that’s the end of the movie. We can just only hope that he learned the lesson, because, you know, people often take the advice of older people and listen.

[Emily]
But this guy doesn’t look old. He’s just furry. Like, is he 30? Is he 25? Is he 40?

[Shep]
It totally depends on the casting director.

[Emily]
So that’s a male role. That makes him 45. But he’s playing 30.

[Shep]
330.

[Thomas]
I imagine the character would probably be in his mid 30s, right?

[Emily]
See, I imagine he would be in his late 20s,

[Thomas]
Late 20s. Early 30s somewhere around there. I mean, he is aging a little bit every year, and there would be a few times in between where he’d have to burn it a little bit more for whatever reason.

[Emily]
Right, because for a really good chunk of time there even minor scrapes could keep kill you.

[Shep]
Oh, he can’t be that young. Here’s why. When he cut the candle, the next time he burned it, he aged up to however much wick was left.

[Emily]
Okay.

[Shep]
So he cuts the candle to give to her, but now he’s twice her age, so she leaves.

[Emily]
So that works. But he’s, like, 18 when he cuts the candle, and now he’s-

[Shep]
Or early twenties, whatever.

[Emily]
Right. And she being the ripe, young 16-year-old. What era are we talking? When does he cut the candle? In the 1890s? She’s 16.

[Thomas]
Good point.

[Shep]
No, no, he’s got to know her for a while first. He’s not going to cut it as soon as he meets her. He’s going to cut it when he realizes she’s aging. So nobody looks at a 16-year-old and goes, “Wow, this person is really aging.”

[Emily]
In the 1800s, you do.

[Shep]
No, I disagree!

[Thomas]
“You’re not married yet.”

[Emily]
Right? She’s 16. She’s only got three years before she can’t have kids anymore because she’s going to die of typhoid.

[Shep]
So I’m saying they’re married for a while, enough for him to share his secret with her.

[Emily]
Okay,

[Shep]
Maybe enough for her even to be worried about aging. Maybe she even asks, “Is there anything that you can do?” When she gets, the first time she gets crow’s feet or whatever, because she’s aging and he’s not. So even if they get married when he looks like he’s in his twenties and she looks and she is 16, it’s not going to stay that way because he’s not going to get older when she gets older.

[Emily]
Right. Do we let her get older? Do they have children? Can he produce children?

[Shep]
Who knows?

[Thomas]
I don’t think that he would have kids in the first film. That could be a thing we find in the sequel. And she was pregnant. Now there’s this kid, and if that’s the thing that the writers of the second film want to do.

[Shep]
If he has kids, how do they not know the secret? How does the secret not come up in 100 years unless they’ve died. Like, they knew the secret, because-

[Thomas]
That could add to it. His kids are gone. His wife has left him. He’s seen nothing but death and loss. “The world sucks, so I’m going to cloister myself with my books.” And then he breaks his glasses and “Oh, no!” Oh, wait, that’s a different-

[Shep]
“There was time now.” Okay. Yeah, I’ve come around. He had kids, but they died. Maybe they died and that’s why she left, because maybe she can’t have kids because no, we can’t answer that.

[Emily]
No.

[Shep]
That’s for the sequel.

[Thomas]
Yeah, I think that she’s not taking it well.

[Emily]
Oh, they die young.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
They’re babies or little children. So they just die. Because that’s what happened all the time back then.

[Shep]
No, we got to have them be about the same age as the neighbor kid that pesters him into coming out of the world because he sees his former son in that neighbor child, which is the only reason that he lets him in.

[Emily]
But at what point does he cut the candle for his wife? What’s the driving factor for that? How old is she? Because you said that he ages so far past her because he’s cut it and lit it.

[Shep]
Right. Maybe she doesn’t leave him because he’s now twice her age. She leaves him because she lost her children to disease or an accident or whatever.

[Emily]
Okay.

[Thomas]
And she can’t be around him. Looking at him is a reminder of her dead kids, and so she just has to get away.

[Emily]
Maybe they have the one and she almost dies. So she almost dies in childbirth. He cuts the candle in half, saves her. Has her heel properly from the horrific childbirth, and then they raise the kid, but they’re not aging. The kid is aging, and then he at the age of 21 or something, gets in a sawmill accident or something and dies, and she’s devastated.

[Thomas]
I like that because you get that time where things are all going well and working out. They have this family, they’re both not aging.

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
They have this good dynamic and maybe that like, “How are we going to- Are we going to split her candle now as well later?” And then he gets the kid gets one as well.

[Emily]
Right.

[Thomas]
And then it’s like, “Well, we’ll figure it out when the time comes.” And then he is dead for whatever reason.

[Shep]
It’s got to be disease because it’s prior to vaccines, so.

[Thomas]
And so she just like goes off the deep end is like, “I can’t, I can’t stay here. I can’t be with you.”

[Emily]
And she’s like, “Why didn’t you tell me about this?” Because now she knows how old he- he’s already centuries old at this point, right?

[Shep]
I think that he would have told her before that.

[Thomas]
Yeah, I think she knows,

[Emily]
Well, yeah, but she’s like, “I didn’t know. You told me, but I didn’t know,” or something.

[Thomas]
But I think she’s been using her candle for a while as well. There’s several years period where they’re both using their candles. I mean, does he need to visually age? Does he need to go from 23 to 46? Or is it a fast forward button or is it a life force?

[Shep]
No, it’s a fast forward button. When you light it, you’re that age. However much is left because at the end he cuts off the tip and just has that little bit left. And so when he burns that up, he’s this very old man at the end of his life.

[Thomas]
Is there something else we need to figure out? Because I feel like overall we have it.

[Shep]
Yeah, I think we have it.

[Emily]
Yeah, I think we got it.

[Shep]
We have the message, we have the beats. Like, what are we missing?

[Emily]
We got a lowest low.

[Shep]
We have the lowest low, we have the highest high.

[Emily]
The rest is all just pretty cinematography.

[Thomas]
So I guess the one thing that’s a little vague is just that ending. What exactly is the reason that he gives the other dude candle?

[Shep]
Because he tries to go out into the world on his own and he can’t communicate with people and he can’t get along in the modern world. And he’s not interested in the modern world. He is set in his ways. He’s been living in isolation for 100 years. He is detached from the world and it’s too big of a mountain to climb to get back to it. So he looks young, but his soul is old and worn out. And he’s tired. He’s too tired to go on. He’s got lots of candle left to burn and no flame to burn it with. Metaphorically. “So I’m giving you the rest of my candle. Don’t light it until you reach the age that you want to stay. And then hopefully you don’t make the same mistakes I did.”

[Emily]
“Wait until you’re 25, your brain will be fully developed, and you can make good choices.”

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
So we don’t want to have it to where the young guy is injured. And the best way, only way, fastest way, whatever to save him is to have him have a life candle of his own? And it becomes that altruistic- It’s sort of both.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
He’s realized like, “This world doesn’t work for me anyway.”

[Shep]
I think that that particular way to do it is just the way to do it in Hollywood movies.

[Emily]
Right.

[Shep]
Which is why I want to avoid that, because that’s how it’s always done. I know that things are done for a reason, because they work. That might be the way with the broadest appeal, is that altruistic sacrifice rather than the depressing, “I’m too old to change and I don’t want to change anyway.”

[Emily]
So we’ll leave that up to whoever options this one.

[Thomas]
Right. You’ve got choices.

[Emily]
You got two choices.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
You can go Academy Award winning or box office smashing.

[Thomas]
I was going to say the idea of “I’m too old for this shit” may not have broad enough appeal, but that smacks with me. I can relate.

[Emily]
Well, I finally reached the age of technology, where I’m like, I’m done learning new programs.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
Let’s just stick with what has worked.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Now, I understand those people who are like, “But Office 95 was great.”

[Thomas]
It’s funny, because I definitely, more and more, find myself being like, “I don’t know how this works, and I don’t give a shit.”

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
I just don’t care.

[Emily]
I don’t care to learn this one anymore.

[Thomas]
And I think that’s the thing I never understood when I was younger. “How do they not get it?” It’s not that I can’t get it. I just don’t want to.

[Emily]
Right.

[Thomas]
I don’t care.

[Emily]
It’s going to change again in three months.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
I just can’t anymore.

[Shep]
There’s a limited amount of time, and there’s all these movies and books that I want to get through.

[Thomas]
Exactly. Well, we’d love to hear your thoughts on today’s show. Was it so good no other episode can hold the candle to it? Or have we been caught in our birthday suits? 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 While you’re there, you can subscribe to our show, if you haven’t already. You can also follow us on Apple podcasts, Google podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher. Basically anywhere you normally find podcasts, we should be there. Thanks for listening. You’re invited to the next party when Emily, Shep, and I get together again for another episode of Almost Plausible.

[Outro music]

[Shep]
If you have to burn it to heal, then you can’t just throw it in a big block of cement with the immortal snail and drop it in the middle of the ocean.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
You have to have it readily available for emergencies.

[Shep]
Right.

[Emily]
So imagine it’s in a glass case.

[Thomas]
How do you get the snail in there? You can’t touch the snail.

[Shep]
You have someone else pick up the snail. You got a million dollars.

[Thomas]
Well, that’s true.

[Emily]
What are we talking about? A snail and touching it. What?

[Shep]
Oh, you don’t know this? It’s you and a snail, a super intelligent snail, each get a million dollars and you’re made immortal. But if the snail ever touches you, you die, and the snail wants to kill you.

[Emily]
So you have to just spend your life escaping a snail.

[Thomas]
Doesn’t the snail know where you are at all times?

[Shep]
I think so, yeah.

[Thomas]
Like, it has this way of knowing where you are. Yeah.

[Shep]
And it’s super intelligent and it has a million dollars. But it is a snail.

[Emily]
But it could hire an Uber.

[Shep]
How could it hire an Uber?

[Thomas]
Yeah. How does the snail get a credit card?

[Emily]
It’s super intelligent!

[Shep]
Oh, it just steals a credit card somehow.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Steals a credit card off the Dark Web, uses its eyeball to order the Uber.

[Thomas]
It just hops in someone else’s Uber when it pulls up.

[Shep]
How does it hop in someone else’s-? It has to like, grab onto their shoe as they’re walking into the-

[Thomas]
Right. Yeah.

[Emily]
It doesn’t kill everyone it touches. Just you. Right?

[Shep]
No, it doesn’t. Just you.

[Thomas]
Million dollars? I think I could afford a salt suit.

[Shep]
That you have to wear all the time forever.

[Emily]
So you can’t kill the snail, the snail’s Immortal.

[Shep]
The snail is equally immortal.

[Emily]
But if it touches you, you die.

[Shep]
Yes.

[Emily]
But you can’t kill it in any way.

[Shep]
Right.

[Emily]
We’re getting way off track here.

[Shep]
We are.

[Emily]
But we’re going to put a pin in this and have this discussion later.

[Shep]
I thought this was common Internet lore, which is why I referenced it.

[Thomas]
I just saw somebody make a completely out of the blue reference to it earlier today in a comment thread where it was like, if you don’t know, that comment makes no fucking sense at all.

[Emily]
You have to remember, between the years 2013 and 2019, I had mom brain, so I don’t know anything.

[Outro music]