Almost Plausible

Ep. 33

Chalk

27 September 2022

Runtime: 00:53:09

This week our film is a period piece set in the 1970s... Er, wait, that's not right. It's set in the 1890s. James spends a decade in prison for a crime he didn't commit. To pass the time in his cell, he draws on the wall with chalk. To his surprise, he's able to enter his drawings and live out his dreams. Upon his release, James struggles to reintegrate with society and tries desperately to get back into his fantasy world.

References

Transcript

[Intro music begins]

[Emily]
Who’s gonna be at home? Charles.

[Thomas]
Charles an authority figure now?

[Shep]
Charles in charge?

[Thomas]
Yep.

[Shep]
We did it, team.

[Thomas]
Well, that’s been Almost Plausible for the-

[Shep]
Thank you for listening to our final episode.

[Thomas]
Goodbye forever.

[Intro music]

[Thomas]
Hey there story fans, welcome to Almost Plausible, the podcast where we take ordinary objects and turn them into movies. We do that by first pitching our story ideas for that everyday object, which in this case is Chalk. Then we’ll pick one of the pitches and work together to come up with a movie plot where Chalk plays a critical role. I keep saying we, so I suppose I should tell you who we are. I’m Thomas J. Brown and joining me are Emily-

[Emily]
Hey guys.

[Thomas]
-and F. Paul Shepard.

[Shep]
Happy to be here.

[Thomas]
Emily it’s your turn to pitch first, tell us what you have for Chalk.

[Emily]
I’ve got three this week. I have: a gymnast finds chalk with magical properties that make her routines perfect. A rival becomes suspicious after a meet and follows her around to find out the source of this power. She follows her into the woods where there’s a small quarry of this magical chalk being mined by fairies. She steals some and is hunted down by the fae and then things get terrifying.

[Thomas]
Wow there were turns there I was not expecting.

[Emily]
Right? One, the chalk is not chalkboard chalk. I was clever with that one. Sidewalk chalks that can create real worlds you can visit. You know, like in Mary Poppins. But one guy uses it to live out the life he wishes he had because he’s too afraid to try it in real life.

[Thomas]
So serial killer this is your serial killer story.

[Shep]
I was thinking it’s more of because there’s a lot of movies where it’s a meek guy that has some sort of rich inner life that he imagines-

[Emily]
Right, like Walter Mitty.

[Shep]
Walter Mitty, Secret Life of Walter Mitty. So this is a grown man drawing with sidewalk chalk and going into these imaginary sidewalk chalk worlds.

[Emily]
And living out whatever fantasy he wants to-

[Shep]
Well, see, I’m really intrigued at what the fantasy is, because normally in these types of movies, it’s a girl that he’s too afraid to ask out. So is it a chalk lady in the chalk world? Or is he imagining a live action human woman?

[Emily]
In my thought process, I thought he would live out different things. One of them being a woman, you know, he’s too afraid to talk to a woman. And I always thought it would be more real life rather than cartoon or chalk.

[Thomas]
So he draws it in Chalk but then it’s he steps through and it’s a real world.

[Emily]
It’s a real life. But I’m not, you know, married to that idea. I could totally explore the idea of her being a chalk woman.

[Shep]
I mean, because I imagine him imagining this perfect woman, this chalk woman that he’s drawn that no real woman could ever live up to, which is why he spends his life alone.

[Emily]
Yeah, it’s hard to find triangle dresses.

[Shep]
The waists are too narrow.

[Emily]
They are. It’s just too hard.

[Shep]
And no pockets! I guess if it’s a fantasy world, he can draw on pockets.

[Emily]
He could draw on pockets. And that would be kind of him because designers don’t draw on pockets. And my final pitch is: someone chalks the outline of a serial killer’s latest victim, but the chalk is special. And the outline animates the events that led up to the victim’s death. And the detective on the case uses the information to hunt down the killer before they can claim their next victim. That’s my serial killer one.

[Shep]
So is it the power of the detective or the chalk?

[Emily]
The chalk can show you if you trace the body, the chalk will show you how the body ended up there. So it’ll like animate itself into little chalk drawings, chalk cartoon, but only the outlines. There’s no detail.

[Shep]
Does it do that immediately while the police are still there or only when the detective is there?

[Emily]
While the detective is there.

[Shep]
So they’re leaving the detective alone with the body for some reason.

[Emily]
Well, I imagine there are other people around, but he’s the one in charge of it. He and whoever did the drawing, the forensic chalk drawer, which they don’t actually do. I know this because nobody cares about where the body lands anymore.

[Thomas]
Did they ever do that? Or is that a purely Hollywood thing?

[Emily]
I’m trying to remember because I had actually heard the answer to that recently. And I couldn’t remember if it was, it is in fact a purely Hollywood thing or they did actually do it. But I think they did actually do it on occasion, but it’s very rare. And it’s not to the degree that Hollywood shows it.

[Thomas]
Because like one of my pitches is very, very similar to that and as I was writing that I thought “Is this just a fake thing that movies have taught us?”

[Shep]
Ah, they would use it not for investigating the crime, but for press photographers.

[Emily]
Ah, that’s what it was. Yeah.

[Shep]
So they chalk the outline, remove the body, and then press can take photos of the crime scene for newspapers.

[Thomas]
So my pitch that was really similar to that is: after a murder scene has been cleared up and everybody has left, the chalk outline comes to life.

[Shep]
Ironic because it’s an outline of a dead body.

[Emily]
Yes, I like it.

[Thomas]
Yeah, I’m not sure what it does once it comes to life, but-

[Emily]
I was going to say, does it…?

[Shep]
It murders.

[Thomas]
Gets revenge. Can slip under doors no problem, it’s flat.

[Shep]
Right, it murders a lady so that it could have a lady chalk outline to go out with.

[Thomas]
Yeah, that’d be great that you right away it kills the guy that killed him and now he’s got nothing left to do. He’s still around. He’s still a chalk person.

[Emily]
It didn’t solve any of his problems.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
Go figure, murder doesn’t solve problems.

[Thomas]
My other idea is: a period piece about a man in an asylum-like prison, think something along the lines of The Count of Monte Cristo, and he finds that one of the bricks of his cell is made from a block of chalk. He carves out pieces and uses them to draw on the walls of his cell and the drawings begin to move and speak to the man and eventually he’s able to enter their world. Is any of this real or has he finally lost his mind?

[Shep]
So, like the sidewalk chalk guy from Emily’s pitch.

[Thomas]
Similar, yes.  And those are my two. Shep, what do you have?

[Shep]
A film about pool. Wait, that’s 1996’s Chalk. What about a short film regarding a sister who’s reintroduced to the family after spending two years in a psychiatric institution? That’s 2014’s Chalk, which is available to view in its entirety on …. what’s the normal site for viewing short films?

[Emily]
YouTube?

[Shep]
No…

[Emily]
V… the V one?

[Shep]
Vimeo! Yes, thank you. The V one.

[Emily]
I was going to say Venmo, but I knew that’s not right.

[Shep]
It’s similar. It’s very similar. What about a TV series about staff and students at a high school? That’s 1997’s Chalk series that lasted for two seasons. And then there’s another one that’s not a movie, it’s 2006’s Chalk, also about high school. So there’s lots of, yeah, go on IMDb and search for Chalk. Someone’s gotten there before us. So eliminating pool and psychiatric shorts and high schools. Drawing a portal with chalk, we already talked about that.

[Thomas]
That’s Whiteboard basically.

[Shep]
Yeah. Child Sidewalk chalk drawings come alive. Or we could do a sportsball movie because chalk is used as the line markings. Or maybe a body modification one where people are like tailors and they mark the bodies with chalk before they alter them. Or chalk as an allegory about lookalike replacement. Because chalk, classroom chalk, dustless chalk, isn’t really chalk. It’s gypsum. It’s a lie. It’s not chalk.

[Thomas]
Maybe it’s a story about a block that sits behind a tire? Oh, that’s the wrong kind of chock. Sorry.

[Shep]
That would have been good. Since I was having trouble coming up with chalk pitches, I should have had a bunch of pitches about tire chocks. I misunderstood the assignment.

[Emily]
Any of them popping out to you guys?

[Shep]
I mean, I wanted to do a teacher one, but it’s been done twice already.

[Emily]
I like the idea of a teacher one.

[Thomas]
I mean, we can do it better.

[Emily]
I couldn’t come up with a good teacher movie that wasn’t like basically Summer School because that’s my favorite teacher movie.

[Shep]
Oh yeah, Summer School is really good. Never mind. The teaching movies have already been perfected.

[Thomas]
We don’t want like Substitute or what’s that other one?

[Emily]
Stand and Deliver.

[Thomas]
Stand and Deliver. That’s what I’m thinking of.

[Shep and Thomas]
Dead Poets Society.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Blackboard Jungle.

[Shep]
So you’re saying there’s one or two.

[Emily]
Yeah, there’s a handful.

[Shep]
Well, I like the guy that makes the sidewalk chalk art and can go into that, but the prison one is also that.

[Emily]
I like the prison one. I like the idea of going into the world and exploring that. And I think the prison one is a little better.

[Shep]
So picture the prison guy one where he’s in solitary confinement for 10 years or some absurd amount and he keeps making these chalk worlds and going into them and having this rich chalk world life and then gets pardoned or whatever. And they want to release him back into the world. But he’ll have to leave his chalk world to go out into the real world.

[Emily]
I like that.

[Thomas]
Yeah, that’s good.

[Emily]
That’s great.

[Thomas]
That’s a great conflict.

[Shep]
All right, let’s do that.

[Emily]
Okay, what’s he in prison for?

[Shep]
Murder!

[Emily]
What’s his name? His name can’t be Andy Dupree.

[Shep]
I do like that if he is in prison for murder, because then you start the movie with them drawing the chalk outline.

[Emily]
Oh, yeah, you’re bringing it all around. Then he ends up as a teacher.

[Shep]
He didn’t actually commit the murder because, you know, you want to like the protagonist or whatever, but someone was murdered and he went to jail for it.

[Emily]
I think no matter what he goes to jail for, he has to be innocent.

[Thomas]
And if it is a period piece, like I was saying, they don’t give a shit, they just need someone to go down for it.

[Emily]
That’s true. Yep.

[Shep]
Yep.

[Shep]
Unlike today, where they work tirelessly to make sure that they have the right person.

[Emily]
And that all known killers are brought to justice.

[Thomas]
Yup.

[Emily]
All right, how far back are we thinking? This will help with my fantasy world because I need to know.

[Shep]
Well prior to DNA tests.

[Emily]
Obviously.

[Thomas]
So before 1980, cool.

[Shep]
Yeah, it’s a period piece set in 1977. The 70s were a period.

[Emily]
This is true.

[Thomas]
Well, I mean, you’d have to have an asylum-like prison where it’s a sort of lock them up and throw away the key situation.

[Emily]
And we could have it set in England, they still have those.

[Thomas]
Okay. So England in the 70s, is that what we’re saying?

[Emily]
Yep, England in the 70s. Are we just writing Bronson?

[Shep]
Write what you know.

[Emily]
I like early 1900s, late 1800s, I think would be a good time period.

[Thomas]
Yeah, that’s probably.

[Shep]
So yeah, what’s his name?

[Emily]
Thomas, you get to name him, he’s your character. That’s my new rule now.

[Thomas]
Oh, great.

[Shep]
Oh, I don’t like that rule. Note to self, make all my pitches shitty in the future so I don’t have to come up with any names.

[Emily]
Names are fun.

[Thomas]
I don’t know, what would a late 19th century British name be? Patrick?

[Emily]
Basil.

[Thomas]
Does he run an inn, is he very grouchy?

[Emily]
He wouldn’t be if his Spanish waiter could just learn English. I like Patrick. Patrick’s a good normal name, easy to remember.

[Thomas]
Alright.

[Shep]
John, William, James, George, Charles. Popular names for boys at the time.

[Thomas]
Alright.

[Emily]
I’m partial to James.

[Thomas]
I was thinking James as well, so James, it is.

[Emily]
I wanted James to murder his landlady.

[Thomas]
Well, Will, the neighbor.

[Emily]
Or Will, yeah, Will murders the landlady. James goes down for it.

[Shep]
Why does anyone murder the landlady?

[Emily]
They can’t pay rent?

[Shep]
That’s their solution?

[Emily]
It’s the late 1800s in England, yes.

[Shep]
There’s so many, if you’re going to commit a murder, murder someone with money and give them money to your landlady.

[Thomas]
You could do the Crime and Punishment thing where he goes to rob somebody and then… we can rip off Dostoevsky, right? It’s been long enough.

[Emily]
Right, it’s public domain now.

[Thomas]
Yeah, yeah.

[Emily]
That might have been where I was going with it. William murdered the landlady and James took the fall, so now he’s in prison.

[Shep]
Who’s William?

[Emily]
The real killer. I just gave him a random name.

[Thomas]
William is a neighbor who lives in the building, who was trying to rob the landlady and ended up having to murder her because she caught him stealing. But James for some reason goes down for it. Maybe he-

[Emily]
He went to go pay his rent and finds her and he’s clearly the person in the room when the body is discovered.

[Thomas]
Are we doing the cliche where he’s holding the knife because he’s an idiot.

[Emily]
 Yeah, absolutely, why not?

[Thomas]
Don’t ever touch anything.

[Shep]
Yeah!

[Emily]
Well this is the late 1800s in England, they don’t know this yet.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
Right, they didn’t have police procedural TV shows.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
The TV shows in the 1890s were just very basic.

[Emily]
And the podcast did not give good legal advice.

[Thomas]
So she’s not dead yet. He’s trying to help her. So he’s covered in blood and she dies as the police get there. Doesn’t look good for him.

[Emily]
Right. Ooh and as the police get there, he starts to panic so he starts to run because people do that. William catches him and is like “I got the killer for you.”

[Shep]
So he goes to prison for Mrs. Hudson’s murder and he is released 10 years later because William confesses as part of some, I don’t know, plea bargain or something that he would confess to the repeated murders that he’s committed.

[Thomas]
Yeah, I think at that point, William doesn’t even remember that he had James go down for it. He’s just-

[Emily]
He’s just spouting off.

[Thomas]
He’s just a nutcase. And he’s just like, “And I murdered this person and I murdered this person.” And somebody’s like, “Wait a minute, that guy’s in jail for this murder that you did?”

[Shep]
Oh, William isn’t the one that caught James. Some other person, Charles, Charles caught James thinking James was the murderer and is seen fleeing from the scene covered in blood before the police arrive. And he thought that he was doing a good thing.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
So you can have that conflict come back years later when James is released and Charles has that guilt of having sent an innocent person basically to prison for 10 years, but thinking they were doing the right thing, assuming that they cross paths again at some point. But I mean, in the 1890s, there were only 12 people living in London, so odds are good.

[Emily]
Well I was thinking there wasn’t a lot of economic movement so you’re kind of stuck in your neighborhood.

[Thomas]
It’s true, yeah.

[Emily]
And when he’s released where’s he gonna go? Home, right?

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Who’s gonna be at home? Charles.

[Thomas]
Charles an authority figure now?

[Shep]
Charles in charge?

[Thomas]
Yep.

[Shep]
We did it, team.

[Thomas]
Well, that’s been Almost Plausible for the-

[Shep]
Thank you for listening to our final episode.

[Thomas]
Goodbye forever. So how much of him in prison drawing these chalk worlds do we establish? Is that basically the first act is the murder, going into prison, discovering the chalk brick and drawing the worlds? I want to make sure that we have enough time with him doing that, that we kind of understand what’s going on. I guess a question to ask is how does the movie end if he’s out of prison and trying to recapture this magic? Does he?

[Emily]
Does he learn to live in the real world like he did in the chalk world? Like does he recreate the chalk world with real people? Does he manage to do that?

[Shep]
Or he becomes a famous chalk artist.

[Emily]
Desperately trying to reopen the world…

[Shep]
Well, he’s just really good at drawing at that point, he had many years of practice.

[Emily]
Well yeah.

[Thomas]
Right, so he’s like doing these incredible drawings and people are lauding him for his talent and he’s just super depressed because none of them are coming to life?

[Emily]
My instinct is to have maybe an interview with somebody talking about his art, you know, what drives it, and then he’s very morose and forlorn and they’re like “Why? Why do you…? You create these beautiful masterpieces, and-” and he’s like “Yeah and they’re temporary and they’re fleeting and I can never capture what I want to add,” and they’re like “What does that mean?” And then we go into a flashback of him going back creating the worlds in prison.

[Shep]
You killed me.

[Emily]
I did. I know it’s so wrong but it’s just like it’s so easy to go that route.

[Thomas]
Is the end of the movie that he commits a murder so that he’ll be reincarcerated in the hopes he’ll be back in his cell?

[Shep]
I mean, that’s also been done.

[Emily]
I want him to be a good person. Good people don’t murder.

[Shep]
Is that the title?

[Emily]
Yeah, Good People Don’t Murder. That’s is my true crime podcast coming next fall.

[Shep]
I imagine the end of the movie is him in the real world as an artist making his way, making art. That’s the ending. He becomes famous as an artist, thanks to Charles, who has been looking for a way to make up for what he did, even though what he thought he was doing was right at the time. Given the knowledge that he had, he made what he would say is the correct decision. But he still feels guilt over it because this person’s life was ruined. Like they’re out of prison now. But whatever industry they were working in, things have changed in 10 years. You know, they can’t get their old job back. They don’t have any experience for any of the new stuff going on. This is basically going to be a destitute person and it’s Charles’s fault. So Charles recognizes James’s talent for art and tries to get other people to see it or tries to get him to make chalk art on something that can be moved like a canvas and not his wall because he keeps chalking up his walls. But it’s hard to invite people over to see your wall. But it’s easy to take a canvas somewhere and show it off.

[Emily]
Oh does Charles get him like pastels which work similarly to chalk for drawing and stuff so then he can also incorporate color and I don’t know?

[Shep]
Sure!

[Emily]
So in prison we see him creating the worlds. What do they look like? What is, is it different each night? Is it the same?

[Thomas]
I imagine that he’s building on what he’s drawn previously and adding more detail.

[Shep]
Right, otherwise, he’d have to be erasing the chalk off of his own walls.

[Emily]
What if he started out doing different vignettes for a while and then he finds one that he likes and then that’s where he adds all the detail to it.

[Thomas]
Sure.

[Emily]
Because it would make sense that he would draw one and then all of a sudden he realizes he can go into it. Like he draws a carousel, and so he goes in and he rides the carousel and he’s like “Hmm I wonder what else I could do.” Maybe draws his old neighborhood.

[Shep]
Especially if that’s where he goes back to when he comes out of prison. And everything’s changed. It’s not how he remembers it, and it’s not how it was in the chalk world.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
That extra underscores that things are different and he can’t recapture what he’s lost.

[Emily]
Right yeah and part of what he could have lost is there was a girl he was courting that they were on their way to marriage or whatever. He went to prison for murdering the landlady so obviously he gets out and she’s either gone or-

[Thomas]
Married Charles. Oh, no.

[Emily]
Or married or married to someone else happily living her life without regret because as far as she knew she thought he was a murderer.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
I mean, he was literally a convicted murderer.

[Thomas]
How does Charles find out that he made a mistake?

[Shep]
I guess it wouldn’t be in all the papers unless the other guy whose name I’ve already forgotten-

[Emily]
William.

[Shep]
-is a famous serial killer at that point.

[Emily]
He could be known in the neighborhood to be a killer.

[Thomas]
There’s a folk song, I can’t remember the name of it off the top of my head, but basically it follows this guy in prison and he’s condemned to death and it’s sort of his final days. And the end of the song is basically that everybody knows it’s the wrong guy and everybody knows that he’s being put to death for murdering people he didn’t murder, but the people in charge are sticking to their guns and so they kill him. So it could be one of those things.

[Emily]
Yeah well maybe Charles overheard because Will and Charles still live in the same building or whatever.

[Thomas]
Or in the same neighborhood, at least.

[Emily]
Same neighborhood, he overhears Will talking about it at the bar drunkenly.

[Thomas]
Right, right. Bragging that he got away with murder.

[Shep]
Why is he bragging 10 years later?

[Thomas]
Not 10 years later. Like, not long afterward, but.

[Shep]
Then if everybody knows, why is he still in prison for 10 years?

[Emily]
Because this is the 1890s in England and nobody cares.

[Shep]
In that case, why is he ever let out of prison?

[Emily]
It’s an excellent question. Because he’s a good model prisoner, never causes trouble, he’s very quiet in his cell.

[Shep]
I mean, if everybody is in solitary, not a lot of trouble to be had. They’re not releasing everybody.

[Emily]
Okay so that’s not- so- why would he be let out why would they admit that they were wrong in convicting him? In this time period that would be a very big stretch.

[Shep]
Well then maybe we should change the time period.

[Emily]
Okay.

[Shep]
Because we have to have him- Well, we don’t have to. We can change the whole story. We’re making it all up as we go. But if we have him let out of prison at some point, it has to be in a time period where he would be let out of prison at some point.

[Thomas]
What if it’s like a Nellie Bly situation where there’s some intrepid reporter who’s doing an article about how police aren’t doing their job effectively. You have murderers who aren’t being put away, people who are innocent being locked up, and somehow this case is the one that they lock on to.

[Shep]
The original true crime podcasters.

[Emily]
Yes.

[Thomas]
Right. And so the officials are feeling a lot of public pressure.

[Emily]
That has happened that’s believable. That’s almost plausible.

[Shep]
Hey, roll credits. So yeah, I imagine the whole thing is like not even about them, but like whoever owns the newspaper, putting pressure on whoever, you know, it’s upper-level games they’re playing with each other. And the way that they’re going about it is investigating-

[Thomas]
It’s all rich person politics.

[Shep]
Rich person politics! And the way that they’re leveraging it is this 10-year-old crime, which everybody knows he didn’t do and someone else did. And this poor, innocent person is still locked away. What a terrible injustice.

[Thomas]
Maybe Will’s already locked up for something else. And so it’s not like… He’s… maybe already has a life sentence. So what are they going to give him another one? Like, he has no incentive to lie. Maybe somebody goes to see him and says, you know… Oh, maybe they cut a deal with him. They’re like, “Look, everybody knows this is true. If you confess this will make some accommodation for you.”

[Shep]
Why would they cut a deal with him if he’s already in prison?

[Thomas]
Not the officials. There’s somebody who’s trying to get James released and they’re saying “If you write a confession or whatever, then I can help get you something.”

[Shep]
Why would the authorities care about that?

[Thomas]
Because the newspaper is putting pressure on them.

[Shep]
But they could just go to him and interview him if, you know, he has visitors or whatever. I don’t know if they allow visitors in 1890.

[Thomas]
They do in movies they’ve seen from that time period.

[Shep]
Then we’re all good.

[Emily]
Yeah I was gonna say they did in The Prestige.

[Thomas]
So look, were you alive? You don’t know- That’s the movie I was thinking of, actually!

[Thomas]
You don’t know what it was like. Nobody knows. Our audience has no idea. If we tell them that’s how it was, it sounds good.

[Shep]
All right.

[Emily]
Audiences will believe anything. (whispering) Trust me I believe everything.

[Thomas]
Yeah, you saw the physics in Hobbs & Shaw, so…

[Shep]
You watched Hobbs & Shaw?

[Thomas]
No, I have not seen that movie.

[Emily]
I was gonna say, I was like, “I did not but I will nod my head.”

[Thomas]
What’s the…

[Thomas]
Is it the ninth one where like, they like, hook a cable to the car and go swinging like around a car? It’s the stupidest fucking thing.

[Shep]
Yes. Well, yeah, each one endeavors to be more ridiculous than the previous. It’s a never ending spiral. What were we talking about before we..?

[Thomas]
Basically trying to get James out of prison.

[Shep]
Oh, yes.

[Thomas]
I mean, how do we get him out?

[Emily]
Through the front door.

[Shep]
We might not even need the confession or anything by the true killer.

[Emily]
He can just be in prison.

[Shep]
Who can be in prison?

[Emily]
Will, we can just have him punished like so we see that he’s been punished. You know, do the Shakespeare thing.

[Shep]
We don’t care about Will. You know, we don’t even need to know who killed Mrs. Hudson.

[Emily]
Okay.

[Thomas]
I mean, here’s the thing: If I’m the person in charge of the prison and the newspaper is putting pressure on me, that makes me look bad. So I’m going to want to deny, deny, deny. I didn’t do anything wrong. We did our jobs properly. The correct people are in jail.

[Thomas]
So the newspaper is going to have to have compelling concrete evidence to show, no, this guy’s innocent. Otherwise, I would never admit it. You have to put evidence in front of me that is undeniable. And then I’ll go, “Okay, I guess this is correct. We must have screwed up in this one case, but only this one.” Is this a problem for the writers? We just know that there’s going to be some evidence.

[Emily]
I think we’re thinking too hard about the logistics of him getting released from prison. He’s just released from prison.

[Thomas]
Maybe the sentence was only ever 10 years.

[Shep]
For murder?

[Emily]
Yeah she was an old lady she was gonna die in like three weeks anyway it’s fine.

[Thomas]
Nobody liked her.

[Emily]
She was 35, she was knocking on death’s door.

[Shep]
Yeah, we can just have him sentenced for 10 years and have him get out.

[Thomas]
It doesn’t have to be murder either. It could just be some crime that he goes down for and it’s a 10-year sentence.

[Emily]
It’d be robbery.

[Shep]
Then why is Charles trying to help him when he gets out?

[Emily]
I don’t know you invented Charles I was happy with Will being the one being like “Look I caught him even though I’m really-“

[Shep]
It’s too coincidental! If you just killed someone, don’t hang around the crime scene hoping to catch some other random person.

[Thomas]
Yeah, I feel like Will would leave and try to establish an alibi somewhere else.

[Shep]
Yeah, “I was at the pub for all day.”

[Emily]
Alright I will give you that. So why is Charles helping him? So he has to know that he’s innocent. Does Charles have to help him? Can we introduce Thomas, his brother who’s going to help him. Wait that’s confusing there’s already a Thomas on the show. John.

[Thomas]
I mean, Charles can be his brother. We can just change Charles’s role.

[Emily]
You just wanted that redemption factor right?

[Shep]
I wanted that additional conflict of someone putting someone innocent, who they find out is innocent, in prison. But if it’s not some random person that caught him, but his brother that he moves in with after he gets out of prison, who just wants him out of the house, so wants to find him a career or something, some path to put him on, I mean, that could also work. I don’t have any objection to losing the conflict of the person putting someone innocent in prison and then finding out that they’re innocent later.

[Thomas]
Maybe that storyline would detract too much from what James is going through.

[Shep]
It could be.

[Thomas]
It puts a lot of focus on somebody else.

[Emily]
I like the idea of it being his brother trying to get him out of the house because there are chalk drawings over every wall and his wife is being driven crazy.

[Shep]
See, I like that Charles blamed himself for what he perceives as this terrible injustice. But James sees at this point as this, you know, he lived in a magical world for years. So prison wasn’t a trial for him. It wasn’t a burden. It wasn’t this punishment. It was freeing. Prior to that, all he ever did was go to work and come home and sleep and go to work and come home and sleep. He didn’t have a life. He wasn’t free until he went to prison.

[Emily and Thomas]
Oooh…

[Shep]
So you have that different perspective that James and Charles both see for the same event.

[Emily]
Okay I do like that.

[Shep]
But doesn’t have to be that. Could be his brother. So we don’t have that conflict, but maybe he’s jealous of his brother because he gets out of prison and now he’s much older than men would be when they get married and he sees his brother with a wife and children. And he had these relationships in the chalk world that was ripped from him. But that’s a whole different type of conflict.

[Emily]
I like the more peaceful conflict. I don’t know I just feel like that “This was ripped from me, this was I had everything and now it’s gone and you don’t understand,” I just I feel like we don’t need that in the world right now.

[Shep]
Okay.

[Thomas]
All right, we’ll take a quick break and when we come back, we’ll figure out the direction our story is going to go for chalk.

[Break]

[Thomas]
All right, we’re back from the break. I had an idea while we were on the break.

[Shep]
Oh, good.

[Emily]
Excellent.

[Thomas]
So the conflict that we’re up against right now is that if we want to stick with that original idea we were talking about where Charles gets sort of a redemption arc, maybe, Charles needs to somehow find out that James is innocent. So how do we do that? So perhaps William is trying to seek absolution.

[Emily]
He’s found Jesus?

[Thomas]
Well maybe he’s been sentenced to death. He’s committed other crimes; he’s sentenced to death. And so now he’s trying to, last minute, clear his good name in the eyes of the Lord. And so he confesses to the priest who comes to hear his final confession about this. And the priest looks into it and realizes, “Oh yeah, this guy is totally innocent.” Or maybe just goes and tells the officials that, “Hey, this person has confessed to this crime, which matches what the original guy that we put in jail was saying 10 years ago.”

[Shep]
So you’re having the priest tell officials what was told to him in confession. Am I understanding that correctly?

[Thomas]
After the guy is killed, does the priest have any requirement to maintain that?

[Shep]
After he’s killed, why would the officials believe the word of a priest? He could be making it up. He could have been paid off.

[Emily]
He could be acting on behalf of William and saying “He has requested that I inform him to inform you this is how he wants to clear his conscience this is how he wants to pay his penance.” That’s the only way that he would have the ability to tell the authorities.

[Shep]
OK, what crime did William commit that got him sentenced to execution where our main character who is in jail for murder isn’t being executed?

[Thomas]
Double murder.

[Emily]
Can William be dying from like syphilis or something and not sentenced to death?

[Thomas]
Oh, okay.

[Shep]
But why are people believing the confessions of a dying person? They could be saying anything, they have nothing to lose.

[Emily]
Because people weren’t as cynical back then?

[Thomas]
So there was never a murder weapon that was found because William ran out with the knife in his hand and he gets outside and realizes he has it. So he ditches it. He hides it somewhere. And it’s still there. He’s never moved it from that hiding spot. So he’s able to say this is where that murder weapon is.

[Shep]
OK, that’s good. Now there’s actual evidence. I don’t know how good the forensics were in the 1890s.

[Thomas]
But I mean, if they’re willing to throw a man in jail on no evidence…

[Emily]
I mean they didn’t even have a murder weapon.

[Shep]
See you were very convincing earlier, Thomas, when you’re talking about if it were me in charge, I would never admit to wrongdoing.

[Thomas]
Right. I mean, we spent half the podcast just working on how to get James out of prison, believably.

[Shep]
Which is just going to be a 30 second segment of the actual movie. That’s the care that we put into each one of these pitches.

[Emily]
I can think of three episodes that were very broad-strokes.

[Shep]
OK, how about this? He’s sentenced for 10 years and they later find out that William did it. He’s got the murder weapon, whatever. But James has already been sentenced and they’re not going to admit wrongdoing now. So everyone in the neighborhood knows that he went to jail-

[Emily]
Didn’t we talk about this a half an hour ago?

[Shep]
Except the reason he’s getting out of prison is he just served his entire sentence.

[Shep]
He wasn’t released early. Nothing anyone did, you know, the newspaper couldn’t get him out. The political pressure couldn’t get him out. The actual killer confessing doesn’t get him out. The actual killer confessing just lets everyone know that he wasn’t really the killer, but the officials still keep him locked up.

[Emily]
So now Charles still wanting to make amends for having him sent to prison.

[Shep]
Yes. Yes. And also, everyone’s very sympathetic. They’re not going to treat him like a murderer.

[Emily]
This is true. He’s welcomed back into the open arms of the neighborhood.

[Shep]
Yeah, this solves several problems.

[Thomas]
So when is he released from prison? Is this the mid second act turning point? Is this the lowest low at the end of the second act? I feel like the lowest low should be him not being able to recreate and not being able to function in society. So he gets out halfway through the film?

[Shep]
Yes, and he goes back to his old neighborhood. Maybe he moves in with his brother, but he can’t get his old job back.

[Thomas]
Well, if Charles is trying to do the redemption thing, maybe Charles is like, “I’ve got a room you can stay in. There’s a job at the factory. I’ll get you all set up.” And he never leaves the room. He sucks at the factory. He just can’t hack it.

[Shep]
He starts drawing on his walls.

[Thomas]
Right, he’s drawing on his walls and Charles sees it and is like, “Dude, this is amazing.”

[Emily]
I buy it.

[Shep]
Yeah, the lowest low is when he can’t get his own place and he can’t keep a job.

[Thomas]
He can’t function in society and he can’t return to the fantasy world.

[Shep]
He can’t function in society. Yes. So just imagine him with his chalk in his hand in the middle of the night, crying in the dark while it rains and he can’t go into the chalk world.

[Shep]
Maybe there’s a scene earlier where it’s raining in the prison and he goes into the chalk world where it’s nice and sunny. So you have that callback.

[Thomas]
Yeah, that’s good. So how does the art thing happen? Does Charles get him like a board to draw on? He’s like, “Hey, maybe instead of drawing on the walls, can you draw on this?”

[Emily]
I think he brings like butcher paper in or something.

[Shep]
Do they have rolls of butcher paper in the 1890s?

[Emily]
Yes why do you think it’s called butcher paper?

[Thomas]
What do you typically draw on with chalk if you’re an actual artist?

[Emily]
I was just thinking the butcher paper is readily available, it’s around, there’s paper around back then right you’ve seen movies there’s paper and hay everywhere.

[Thomas]
It could just be he has some butcher paper because he bought meat.

[Emily]
Yeah that’s what I was thinking.

[Thomas]
And “Here’s a piece of paper and draw on this.”

[Emily]
Yeah I wasn’t thinking there were rolls of butcher paper I was thinking he was like-

[Thomas]
Right it’s not it’s not like a middle school classroom.

[Emily]
“Here draw on this, we’re gonna turn it around away from the bloodstain.”

[Thomas]
Well, it will be the outer wrappings. It’s not all bloody.

[Shep]
I mean, if he sees the bloodstain, he has the flashback to finding Mrs. Hudson.

[Thomas]
So the end of the film should be that he’s successful, right?

[Emily]
I would like him to be successful.

[Shep]
I mean, if you want a happy Hollywood ending, the end of the film is him successfully getting back into the chalk world.

[Emily]
As he dies.

[Shep]
No, not as he dies, just he’s, he-

[Emily]
Yeah because it was all in his head in the first place.

[Shep]
He was never released from prison at all!

[Thomas]
Is this Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge?

[Emily]
Yeah I forgot about that story.

[Shep]
Yeah, I had to read that story in middle school and then I had to read it again in high school and had forgotten in the intervening years. And I started reading in high school. I’m like, “I better know how this is going to end.” And I was right, and like, “Oh, that’s right. I read this in middle school.”

[Emily]
Read it in middle school, read it in high school, read it in college. Watch the movie all three times.

[Shep]
How could they make a movie out of it? It’s three pages long.

[Thomas]
Okay, so what is the ending? I kind of feel like he should not get back into the chalk world. That’s a little too ehavy handed, I think.

[Emily]
I don’t think he should get back into the chalk world. I do think he should find success but still kind of always be a little like “Meh.”

[Shep]
Just sad forever. This is the happy ending that you want for the protagonist.

[Emily]
Kinda I mean.

[Thomas]
Well that’s accurate for an artist of that time period, right?

[Emily]
That’s what I was thinking you know it’s he gets some fulfillment. He’s now found a way to function in society whereas before he couldn’t, but he’s never going to be completely fulfilled.

[Thomas]
Yeah. Right he makes his drawings and he’s hooked on laudanum so-

[Shep]
So things are looking up.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
I imagine that all of his art is just like what he would be doing if he could go into the chalk world, him and the chalk woman that he had the relationship with, the imaginary relationship with.

[Thomas]
So what is that transition from unknown, depressed, not technically artist yet? Does Charles take one of the drawings down to the pub and show people like, “Hey, look at this?”

[Emily]
See I want-

[Thomas]
Does Charles have a wealthy cousin who comes to visit reluctantly but then sees the drawing on the wall? He’s pinned it up on his fridge, right?

[Shep]
His icebox.

[Thomas]
Right, his pantry.

[Emily]
See, I kind of want Charles to have the kind of job where he is in neighborhoods where somebody would know something. You know like he has a loose connection with somebody. He’s the milkman or something for-

[Thomas]
Yeah I mean I think if this was all going to happen earlier it would be- did you guys ever see Perfume?

[Emily and Shep]
No.

[Thomas]
The main character in Perfume has just like incredible like superhuman sense of smell and he ends up working for a guy who makes perfume, but that guy is sort of like the local perfumist and he gets to a point where that guy can’t teach him anything, and that guy recognizes it and he says “Oh you need to go find somebody basically smarter than me, better at doing this than me, who knows more complicated techniques” and that’s kind of what I would imagine would be the case here. Charles knows enough to recognize that this is good but he doesn’t have the right connections to get him all the way to the top. He can maybe introduce him to some other people who can move him further up the ladder, who could provide him with an artist space, who could provide him with the materials or help him get those things and maybe even help refine his craft, handle the business side of things but that’s not Charles. But I feel like that transition takes too long for the amount of time we have remaining in the film.

[Emily]
Do they try to sell it at like a market, because that was a thing, like, right? They had markets, like we have Saturday markets where you put up booths around the park like Piccadilly Square or whatever?

[Thomas]
If you think about this time period though who’s buying art? It’s got to be rich people, right?

[Emily]
Right.

[Thomas]
Are poor people buying art? I don’t know.

[Emily]
I mean just because they’re poor doesn’t mean they don’t like pretty things on their wall.

[Thomas]
If they’re poor they’re probably not buying art, if they’re middle class and above they probably are.

[Emily]
But wouldn’t a poor person have a booth at a market to sell the things that they make? Just as, you know, I’m thinking Eliza Doolittle selling her little flowers, right?

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
So there’s some sort of like flea market-esque thing where the middle class will go and visit now and then. And they have a booth where they’re selling baskets that they weave or whatever and Charles is like “Hey, I have an idea for you to make some money. I think people might be interested in this.” And so he has him put a couple of the chalk drawings up in a booth there.

[Thomas]
How does he convince James to try to sell it?

[Shep]
That’s going to be hard because what James is drawing is the life of his dreams.

[Thomas]
It’s super personal to him.

[Shep]
Super personal. These are his treasures.

[Thomas]
You said earlier that Charles perhaps is like a milkman so what if James can’t hack it and Charles doesn’t know what to do with him but he knows he’s got to get him out of the house. Maybe the wife is like “Dude he just fucking sits up there all day it’s creeping me out you’ve got to take him with you.”

[Emily]
And have you seen his walls?

[Thomas]
Yeah and so he takes him to this like part of town and he’s like “Okay you sit in the park and draw, I’m gonna go around and do my deliveries and I’ll pick you up later.” And so while he’s there drawing some wealthy person is walking by and sees the drawings and is like “Holy hell this is great!” What do we think of that?

[Shep]
I thought you were going to have him just leave him there.

[Emily]
Abandon him in the park alone?

[Shep]
Look, he did what he could, but this guy is too broken and he’s worried about his family.

[Thomas]
I thought he was going for a redemption arc.

[Shep]
He tried.

[Thomas]
He missed the target.

[Emily]
I mean, we can only go so far. You can only be so happy.

[Shep]
Okay, but someone recognizing the greatness of his art, the one day that he happens to be… It can’t be just one day. It has to be the new routine.

[Thomas]
Okay sure.

[Shep]
The wife doesn’t want him in the house while the husband’s at work. So she’s like, “If he can’t work the route with you, you’ve got to get him a job somewhere else. You’ve got to take him somewhere. He can’t be here when it’s just me or just me and the kids.” I don’t know if he has kids or not, whatever, “He can’t be here during the day.” So that becomes the routine is when he starts his route, he takes him to the park and puts him on a bench somewhere with an easel and just says, “Okay, here are your pastels. I’ll be back in 19 hours” or however long, you know.

[Thomas]
Long time to deliver milk.

[Shep]
Long time. So he’s there every single day. So eventually someone sees him. This is much more plausible.

[Emily]
And then you see his art getting progressively better, him getting a little sadder because he can’t go into it.

[Thomas]
Does he get to a point where he kind of doesn’t care anymore about it? Like he keeps drawing different stuff and none of it’s fulfilling him the way he wants it to. So when this person comes along and says “Oh I’ll buy that off you for, you know, £20,” or whatever, he’s like “Fine.”

[Emily]
That makes sense. Yeah.

[Shep]
Oh, yeah, that makes sense because I think you’re right at that point that drawing didn’t work. It’s garbage.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
That’s a failed drawing. It has zero value.

[Thomas]
And then he would want to offer Charles the money. He’s like “Hey man you’ve been helping me out a lot, I got this today, you should have it, like, I owe you way more than this.”

[Shep]
Is this a lot of money or is this a little money? Is this more money than Charles would normally make in a week?

[Thomas]
I have no idea.

[Emily]
Not that much, but enough to make, you know, give a little treat, pay a bill, get him some meat at the market.

[Thomas]
And then maybe Charles is like “Wait, one of your pictures made this much money?” So is James in the park again the next day working on another drawing and the same dude has brought a friend because he’s shown this picture to somebody, he’s “Oh look at this great picture I got.” And so “Well maybe he’ll be there tomorrow.” And they go back and that’s kind of how he starts getting some attention in the middle to upper class world?

[Shep]
Yeah, that makes sense.

[Thomas]
Oh perhaps this rich guy who bought the painting or the drawing, he has a friend who is an art dealer, who works in the art world, and he wants to show “Oh look at this great drawing I got from this unknown artist.” And so then the guy gets really excited and he says “Oh I have to meet this guy, I want to represent him, he should be in my gallery.” Because that seems feasible that he would know somebody.

[Emily]
Right.

[Shep]
Right in those circles.

[Thomas]
So they find him and… and then what happens? My only concern with this is that James isn’t really doing anything apart from drawing. It’s like things are happening to him he’s not the reason why he’s being successful.

[Shep]
Other than being the one that’s producing the art that’s famous.

[Thomas]
Yeah but I mean he’s not trying to be successful, he’s not taking an active role in bettering his life. Or is that okay though?

[Emily]
What if at first he’s not at first, it’s just it’s happening to him because everything’s been happening to him since he went to prison.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
He has no ability to take initiative, right? Because he’s been in prison for 10 years. That happens a lot for prisoners because everything’s passive in prison.

[Thomas]
Sure.

[Emily]
So he’s just used to living that passive life. And then as this guy’s talking to him and he’s like, “I guess, sure.” And then maybe he makes something one day and it doesn’t come to life. But he gets a little bit of that feeling back that when he did have them come to life and then he tries harder and it gets better.

[Thomas]
He, maybe he’s a little bit excited about getting that money, because he’s been feeling lousy about being essentially a failure at life and having to sort of mooch off of Charles, and so he’s like feels really good that he’s able to contribute. And so it’s not fixing any problems but it does feel nice, it’s a nice little pleasant feeling. So the next day when he’s out there and the art dealer comes and he’s like “This is great, do you have any more of these?” He’s like “I got a shitload of these back home. They all suck.” And he’s like “Well, let me be the judge of that.” And he’s like “No, these are all incredible. I will buy- like, I want to display these in my gallery and sell them.” And he’s like “Yeah, whatever, that’s fine, take them like I don’t care.” Because, again, they’re all failed in his mind. But now he starts getting income and fame, so that would start to change his point of view I guess or his-

[Shep]
You’ve put in my head that he should be more active, and I agree. So I think he should ask the patron basically that has purchased a drawing from him if he wanted to buy any more or knew anyone else that wanted to buy any more.

[Thomas]
Oh so like after the guy has bought it and is walking away and he’s like “Oh wait.”

[Shep]
Maybe not even that same day, maybe some point in the future, he wants to recreate that situation where he sold a drawing.

[Thomas]
He sees the value maybe that the money brings like to Charles’s family. “Oh now we can afford to buy bread that isn’t cut with sawdust.”

[Shep]
And this is a thing that he can do. So he takes the active role of either catching the guy the next time he sees him in the park or tracking him down.

[Emily]
I like tracking him down.

[Thomas]
Right. The guy says oh I’m Mr. Shipley, so he goes “Oh, okay, go to the park ask around.”

[Shep]
Right, that could make a good sequence of him tracking down this guy and asking him if he needs any more art. And he doesn’t, but he knows a guy that might need more art. And that guy knows maybe the art dealer.

[Thomas]
Sure.

[Emily]
I like the idea of him being able to recreate that chalk world with the real world when he starts taking initiative. So like, he sells the first one and he feels bad about mooching off Charles. So he gives him the money and it helps their family out a tiny bit. Right? And then maybe he sells another one just to somebody else, like a smaller piece or something for even less or whatever. But it’s not enough to really give to Charles because it’s not going to make a big impact. But it’s enough to buy sweets for the kids. And maybe that was one of the past pictures in prison was him buying sweets for his own children.

[Thomas]
It’s enough for him to go ride the carousel.

[Emily]
Or something like that, or like to have the kids go ride it, you know, and he’s bestowing that gift onto them. But he’s also kind of making that connection with “I can rebuild that here.”

[Shep]
With someone else’s kids?

[Emily]
No, just that feeling. It doesn’t have to be the exact same thing.

[Thomas]
Is it too depressing for the movie to end where he’s very financially successful and there’s a room in his house that has nothing in it but he’s drawn all over the walls?

[Shep]
It’s got a tiny little cot. That’s where he sleeps at night.

[Thomas]
Yeah right.

[Emily]
I kind of like that.

[Thomas]
He’s tried, he’s like recreated a whole bunch of the drawings on the walls in this one room.

[Shep]
He sleeps in the walk-in closet of his bedroom. He doesn’t sleep in the bedroom.

[Thomas]
Yeah there you go.

[Shep]
So what’s the big finale? What’s the climax of the film? The gallery showing where everyone appreciates his art?

[Thomas]
Yeah is it the moment of his success and everyone’s buying up his art and he’s the toast of the town and he goes back to his closet and just draws on the wall a little bit more? I don’t know.

[Shep]
I also don’t know.

[Thomas]
How much time does he spend being successful, I guess, it would be good to figure out.

[Shep]
I think he should start taking commissions. Like people start to describe scenes and so he can imagine that scene, him and his imaginary chalk woman. And that’s the basis of the drawing. Because you know, if you’re paying for art, you don’t just want random whatever, you want something made for you.

[Thomas]
Right yeah meaningful to you but what makes it good is that it’s also meaningful to him.

[Emily]
Right.

[Thomas]
Well we need a good ending because we’re just about out of time here.

[Emily]
He meets a nanny, he draws a picture and they end up in a penguin world.

[Shep]
He could meet a female artist. I mean, you could have the finale be he finally has feelings for a real woman, not his imaginary one, which you could hint at depending on, how much time do we have him outside prison? We have half the movie outside of prison.

[Emily and Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
But how much time do we have after he goes into the art world?

[Emily]
We can make that pretty quick. Like after he gets out of prison, we could show him failing at everything else. And that could be a quicker bit. Like a third of the movie could be-

[Thomas]
Like the majority of the third act is him being success- or becoming successful.

[Shep]
So if he has this mentor, he has this female artist that’s sort of guiding him, who can see that spark of gift in him and wants to fan the flames and make him even greater. And maybe she’s the one that gets him to, like, essentially do commissions where describing a scene and having him imagine him in that world and making that drawing. Maybe the chalk woman begins to resemble her more and more in that final third of the movie until he realizes he’s drawing her and she exists. He hasn’t been able to go into the chalk world. He basically brought some of the chalk world into the real world. She’s real. She’s here.

[Emily]
That’s what I was getting out with the kids.

[Shep]
Those are someone else’s kids!

[Emily]
Well, I know, but they’re like the little taste-

[Shep]
Don’t give candy to strangers’ kids.

[Emily]
They’re not strangers’ kids, they’re Charles’ kids, he’s being nice.

[Thomas]
So does he ask her out on a date, and they go to the fair and ride the carousel together? Is that how the movie ends?

[Emily]
Yeah!

[Shep]
So do we like this? What are we missing? What’s left?

[Emily]
I like the happy love ending.

[Thomas]
Yeah I like that we’re hinting toward that.

[Shep]
Did I turn this movie into another romance movie? Is that all I can do now? Every movie has to be romance.

[Thomas]
No, no. Hollywood did that. Why does every movie have to have a romantic angle? I don’t fucking know but apparently they do.

[Shep]
Because it’s easy to solve problems with like the big happy ending with romance. That’s what- we just did it! We experienced it.

[Thomas]
Look, we’re up against a time crunch so we switched to lazy writing and that solved all our problems.

[Shep]
If it works.

[Emily]
Yeah. It’s more about human connection, and it’s showing a human connection that he’s making.

[Thomas]
That’s what I think the point was all along was about trying to get him back into being a participant in this reality and one of the major things that we know he’s missing because we’ve seen it in his drawings is that companionship. It’s a thing he’s been craving for the past decade plus so I think it’s a natural ending to the story.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
He asks her out and she’s like, “I have a boyfriend.” Then you have the scene, him in this closet drawing on the walls again.

[Thomas]
What if we just end it with him asking her out? You don’t know the answer because it doesn’t matter what her answer is we’ve shown that he has moved on from the chalk lady.

[Shep]
Oh, we don’t even show him ask her out. We show him whisper something into her ear, which we can’t hear. Are we missing something or are we done?

[Emily]
I feel like we could be done.

[Thomas]
I feel like it’s done.

[Shep]
I feel like it’s done.

[Emily]
Yeah, I think we hit all the points.

[Shep]
Yeah, and anything left is left is an exercise for the writers.

[Emily]
Correct.

[Thomas]
Yeah well we’d love to hear your thoughts on today’s show. Can we chalk it up as a win? Or did it go like chalk and cheese? 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 Hey can you do us a favor? Tell someone about the show. We’re trying to get the word out about Almost Plausible and the best way for that to happen is by word of mouth. You probably know someone who likes movies or podcasts or writing. Well, make sure that person knows about Almost Plausible. Thanks for helping us spread the word, and thanks for listening to the show. Emily, Shep, and I will get together again on the next episode of Almost Plausible.

[Outro music]
[Emily]
All right. (accented) So James is in prison. That was terrible accent I did.

[Thomas]
You’re want to take it again?

[Emily]
(accented) James. Why is it coming out Southern? Oh my god, I can do British accents.

[Thomas]
This is amazing. No, I want to hear it, keep going.

[Emily]
I don’t think I can do it. I think it’s only going to come out Southern.

[Thomas]
(accented) James in prison y’all.

[Emily]
(accented) James is in prison, y’all. He done did something bad.

[Thomas]
(accented) But he didn’t do it.

[Emily]
(accented) It was not him.

[Thomas]
(accented) He’s not guilty. He’s inn-o-cent.

[Shep]
Just FYI, I can’t understand either of you at all.

[Emily and Thomas]
Hahaha.

[Shep]
Are you doing your Ted Lasso? Is that-?

[Emily and Thomas]
Hahaha.

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