Doorknob

Guest Links

• Well… Adjusting
• Law & Order – Folk Hero
• Robin on IMDb
• Robin’s Website
• Robin’s Instagram

References

• Alamo Draft House
• Memento
• Friends
• Philip Pullman
• His Dark Materials
  • The Subtle Knife
• Melrose Place
• Timecode
• Clue
• Rashomon
• If These Walls Could Talk
• Tom Hanks
• Here
• Knives Out
• Alfred Hitchcock
• Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark
• Nostradamus
• “It’s like poetry. It’s sorta… They rhyme.”
• Encanto
• Panic Room
• Poltergeist
• Gray Gardens
• Psycho
• Edgar Allan Poe
• VRBO
• Silver Alert
• Ring
• Bewitched
  • Gladys Kravitz
• Scooby Doo, Where Are You!
• Swagger Stick
• Boyz II Men
• Salad Days

Corrections

In the episode, Shep refers to “The Golden Compass trilogy.” The Golden Compass was the North American title of Northern Lights, the first book in the His Dark Materials trilogy.

Transcript

[Intro music begins]

[Robin]
Well, I’m gonna go with Emily’s Ring camera when they’re outside because I really like the Ring camera idea. I like the idea of using the Ring camera.

[Shep]
I thought the whole point of the pitch was it was from the perspective of the doorknobs.

[Robin]
A Ring camera is a door camera.

[Shep]
Is it doorknob? Or is it a door? What’s the theme of the episode?

[Robin]
All right, fine. All right. I mean, it’s a little bit of a technicality here, Shep, but fine. You’re right. No, you’re right. You’re right. I kind of forgot the whole point of the movie. Fair enough.

[Intro music]

[Thomas]
Hey there story fans welcome to Almost Plausible, the podcast where we take ordinary items and turn them into movies. I’m Thomas J Brown and today we have Emily-

[Emily]
Hey, guys.

[Thomas]
F Paul Shepard-

[Shep]
Happy to be here.

[Thomas]
And Robin Hopkins.

[Robin]
Chello.

[Thomas]
Robin is an actor, writer, podcaster, stand-up comedian, playwright, producer, and just all-around cool person. Robin, welcome to Almost Plausible. Tell us a bit about your experience with movies and storycraft.

[Robin]
I was gonna say, “Am I a cool person?” Probably not.

[Thomas]
I think so. You have the Thomas seal of approval, so.

[Robin]
All right, well, thank you. I’ll take it. All right, so movies. I love them. Hugest fan. Biggest thing that I love to do outside of like travel and music is go to the movies by myself. It’s not just because I have two teenagers and I want to be alone.

[Thomas]
Honestly, it’s an underrated activity.

[Emily]
Mm.

[Robin]
It really is! I love an Alamo where you sit and you eat a little old fashioned and watch a movie by myself. Like, I don’t need anybody.

[Thomas]
We don’t have those here. You’re lucky.

[Robin]
Oh, so great. It’s the absolute best. But I just, I love story.

[Thomas]
Mm hmm.

[Robin]
I started off as a stand-up, but I always say that I’m like a writer at heart and like, I love, I’m a storyteller. And so I just, I love watching. I love, you know, obviously I want to be in them as whenever anyone lets me, which is, you know, rare. More often, I’m doing commercials for diabetes. But other than that, you know, I just, who doesn’t love a movie? It’s like escapism. It’s the best.

[Thomas]
For sure. Well, since you’re our guest, you get to choose a topic for today’s show. What ordinary object are we going to focus on?

[Robin]
A Doorknob. It’s a flashback to my college experience.

[Thomas]
That sounds like there’s a story there.

[Robin]
I know. I left it in a place that could have gone a lot of directions, but no, there was this, like, I mean, sort of famous, like famous in college circles class. It was like intro to filmmaking or something like that.

[Emily]
Hmm.

[Robin]
And one of the things that everyone had to do was make a film where the only rule was that a doorknob had to kill someone.

[Emily]
Oh…

[Robin]
And that was the whole thing. And so I thought it would be fun to- my doorknob was like, I had a friend who had a toothache and she tied something around the door to try to pull her tooth out. And then the door fell off and smacked her in the head. And she died. So I thought it would be a nice homage to Ithaca College.

[Thomas]
Sounds good.

[Emily]
Solid.

[Thomas]
Well, every episode of Almost Plausible kicks off with a pitch session. Each of us has come up with some pitches for a movie about a Doorknob, so we’ll share those ideas, pick the one we like the most, and then develop it into a movie plot. I will get us started with my pitches. I have two today. A woman lives in an apartment with a door that’s been painted over and is missing its doorknob. She’s shocked one night to come home and discover a knob has been attached to the door, and the door is slightly ajar.

[Shep]
Nope, hard pass. Too creepy.

[Emily]
I’m in. I want to know what’s behind the door and who put the knob there.

[Thomas]
Yeah, that’s about the reaction I expected from the two of you.

[Robin]
I’m like, I’d like to hear more. Continue.

[Shep]
That’s the episode. That’s how it works. If there’s more, we have to come up with it.

[Robin]
No, I meant more about the second one because I need to know before I’m committing.

[Shep]
Oh, I see, I see, I see.

[Robin]
I’m not, I’m not committing yet.

[Thomas]
Okay, well, the second one is, a disgraced former detective who has psychic visions of the past when he turns doorknobs is pulled back into the case that destroyed his career when the exact doorknob from that crime goes missing from evidence and shows up on his kitchen counter.

[Robin]
I’m gonna kind of like this one.

[Shep]
He’s the killer. It’s split personality all over again.

[Robin]
He did it.

[Emily]
No, he has a Memento disease and he just doesn’t remember.

[Robin]
Oh, where you can’t remember anything? You got tattoo yourself.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
All right, Shep, since you didn’t seem to like my ideas, let’s hear yours.

[Shep]
Oh no-

[Emily]
On the spot.

[Shep]
Okay. A work-from-home dad is distracted from watching his mischievous toddler by a shakeup at work. So, a company-wide all-hands Zoom call is taking place at the same time he accidentally breaks off door to the bathroom where his kid is definitely getting into things. There are escalating disasters as he tries to get the door open without causing damage while presenting a calm presence in the simultaneous work call. So, like a 90-minute, you know, real-time movie-

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Where he has to get his kid out of the bathroom now that there’s no doorknob.

[Thomas]
And present the Q3 report or whatever.

[Shep]
Right.

[Robin]
He’s like Chandler Bing, he’s got to get the projections in.

[Thomas]
Yep.

[Shep]
Yep.

[Emily]
Right.

[Shep]
That’s it for me. Emily, what do you have?

[Emily]
I have a very short one. A doorknob that can create and open a door in any wall you attach it to.

[Robin]
Oh, interesting.

[Shep]
Door to what? Or does it just open the wall?

[Emily]
Opens a door in the wall. Does it go to another dimension? Does it open the wall? That’s up to us to decide.

[Shep]
Right. You put it at the bank vault in the back in the alley.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
You open it up and just take all the money out.

[Robin]
Well, that’s like that’s like a cross between a superhero power and if you’ve read the Philip Pullman series, The Subtle Knife is one of the books. And there’s a knife that if you slice, you carve a window into another world.

[Thomas]
Hm.

[Emily]
Hmm.

[Shep]
Yeah, the Golden Compass trilogy.

[Robin]
Yeah, the Golden Compass series-

[Shep]
Right.

[Robin]
But The Subtle Knife is one of is the one of the books in that series. I feel like I did it wrong because mine are like, I don’t have like tight, I just gotta already apologize, I don’t have tight log lines but mine are all around the same thing. My whole thing was I wanted the doorknob to be the camera angle for the whole thing.

[Thomas]
Interesting.

[Robin]
So had like three kinds of different versions of it. And so one like set around, think Melrose Place. So it’s like, there’s a courtyard and it’s all the angles of the courtyard. And it’s like we’ve got, you know, you’re getting like, you know, like a couple fighting, a band rehearsing, a woman hiding bruises. You got a tech bro. And then somebody gets thrown off of balcony. And then the murder unfolds through all the doorknobs.

[Emily]
Oh.

[Robin]
That’s one.

[Thomas]
That’s really interesting. I like that.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Robin]
Okay, then my second one. And by the way, my thinking of this, I don’t know if you guys remember that movie Timecode.

[Thomas]
Oh, yeah.

[Robin]
It’s funny that you said Shep, like, real-time. That one had the four quadrants and it was all happening at the same time. Like, so I’m thinking that it’s real-time with the, um, a real-time ninety minutes with the doorknobs, and that one. And in the second one as well. The other one heavily influenced by Clue. So we’ve got like, kind of like, wealthy, somebody’s dying, but it’s between two rooms. So you’ve got the family room and then another room and it’s the door back and forth. I’m a lot on the setup and less on the plot just FYI, BTdubs.

[Thomas]
That’s fine.

[Shep]
That’s fine.

[Robin]
I was like really leaning into you guys helping on the plot. So I wanted like the mom to die and then we’re seeing all the alibis, everybody like in the rooms and then it’s going to play out like Clue.

[Thomas]
So it’s like Rasho-knob then.

[Robin]
Yeah.

[Shep]
(Pained) Ah!

[Robin]
I see what you did there. Okay, then my last one was heavily influenced by If These Walls Could Talk.

[Emily]
Okay.

[Robin]
And so it’s one apartment, one doorknob. And also that, whatever that bad Tom Hanks movie that was out last year. (Here)

[Emily]
I was thinking about a little bit, yeah.

[Thomas]
Oh, yeah.

[Robin]
Yeah. So we’ve got like one house through the time all from the doorknob. And that one feels like, I don’t, I don’t got a lot there.

[Shep]
Yeah, nobody gets killed, so-

[Robin]
Yeah, nobody, dies. It was more of like an emotional drama. But yeah, it was, I was definitely ripping off that. So those are my ideas.

[Thomas]
Well, I like those ideas.

[Robin]
Like, again, very unfleshed out.

[Thomas]
But that’s the show.

[Emily]
That’s the point.

[Shep]
That’s the show.

[Thomas]
So, yeah.

[Robin]
Okay, good. Because I was like, felt I was like, “Oh, I didn’t do my homework,” but it was, I was preparing my taxes.

[Thomas]
Obviously, this is more important than your taxes, Robin. Geez, you really let us down.

[Robin]
What do we, I mean, we do what we can.

[Thomas]
Well, is there one of these stories that we like more than the others, or maybe a couple of these that we want to mush together?

[Robin]
I don’t like being the judge of this. Feels like-

[Shep]
So the Clue one, except it’s not Clue.

[Robin]
It’s Clue meets Knives out, I think.

[Shep]
Well, that just it’s getting better. So-

[Robin]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Run me through it again.

[Robin]
Well, again, in it I had little notes like we never see a full room at once, and we’re only catching fragments. So it’s like we’re coming in and out of this at the same time. And I love the idea of like, again, like, I’m about the look of it, like, only seeing half a body and half a person and like someone walking through because it’s just like a stage. I don’t know if it’d be boring because you just got like a stationary shot there, but we have to have to figure that part out.

[Shep]
So, is it from the doorknobs point of view, or is it through the keyhole? Because the keyhole gives you a limited window, whereas the doorknob you think is open to the whole room.

[Robin]
It’s almost like you’re going to see an establisher of the doorknob and then you just realize it’s the doorknob perspective. Like, so you might see like someone coming up to the camera, like they’re turning it, or you’re gonna see, you know, a slammed door. So you’re gonna see the door. I mean, although that’s a facing the doorknob. We’re gonna have to, I mean, listen, it’s not perfect.

[Emily]
That’s up to the cinematographer.

[Robin]
Really. I mean, what am I? I can only do so much with this film. Like, am I supposed to do all the roles? I’m in a union, guys.

[Thomas]
I think if you establish early on through a camera angle that doorknobs can only look perfectly perpendicular from their door, right? Then that demonstrates, okay, this is the perspective that knob has, and yeah, the cinematographer can pick whatever lens they feel is appropriate and we just kind of go from there. And so, then, yeah door will swing open at times, and that’ll allow us to see different portions of the room.

[Robin]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
And I like that idea of the movie starts off maybe it’s the front door knob and so we see police pull up. Right? Or whoever.

[Robin]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Somebody comes up and grabs the camera and twists it, and the door swings open. And like very quickly, you can establish these are the visual rules of this story.

[Emily]
Hmm.

[Robin]
Yeah. Well, and it’s got to be steeped in family bullshit. You know what I mean? Like-

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Robin]
There’s a will, there’s got to be a will, like oh a will that somebody is trying to burn. Like, you know, it’s like, because one of the shots, the family room’s got a big fireplace at the end. You know, maybe there’s a billiard table. I don’t know how far we want to go with this.

[Shep]
And there’s a conservatory, and there’s a-

[Robin]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Yeah, yeah.

[Robin]
It’s weird. There’s a kitchen and a knife.

[Thomas]
But the knife’s not in the block, the knive’s out. So-

[Shep]
Ugh!

[Robin]
Ah!

[Emily]
I kind of like the idea you’re talking about only seeing like half a body or little snippets of like a lot of the rooms they’re gonna go in and shut the door to sneak around and be private, whatever. But like in one case, it would be left open and it would just stare at a blank wall and you would hear the conversation.

[Robin]
Yes.

[Robin]
And you just hear the audio. Yes.

[Emily]
Yeah, yeah.

[Robin]
That’s got to be a big fight, too. And maybe some (sound of collision)-

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Robin]
Like some thumping.

[Thomas]
Yeah. Now are we seeing one doorknob at a time, sort of Rashomon-style, or are we following one character at a time, or are we bouncing around the house doorknob to doorknob?

[Robin]
I mean, in the one, in the courtyard one, I was imagining bouncing from doorknob to doorkob to doorknob. In this one, I was imagining either side of a doorknob. And so you’re seeing, like, you might see like the door slams and then it goes to the other doorknob. Or you could also get really like Alfred Hitchcock, like the doorknob camera zooms in on a door on the other side.

[Emily]
Right, I just thought that!

[Robin]
Right? And then it shifts us to another room.

[Emily]
You can travel the house that way.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Robin]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Doorknob to doorknob.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
So, I’m thinking, why are we in the perspective of the doorknobs? Maybe this is the spirit of the person who dies-

[Robin]
Oh.

[Shep]
And they are viewing the aftermath that happens afterward, but all they can do is attach themselves to doorknobs for some reason.

[Emily]
Copper.

[Shep]
That might be a problem for the wri- The copper!

[Robin]
I was thinking, like, if you think of it, like, the house has secrets.

[Emily]
Mm.

[Robin]
You know, that the house has secrets and they’re all revealed. Like the house almost as a character. And it’s, oh, God, I was just thinking of this horrible horror movie I saw when I was little that my mom told me not to watch and then she didn’t stop me from watching it. And I had nightmares about forever. And it was like these little people behind a fireplace wall and they came out and like dragged a woman in and then closed the fireplace up. It was awful. I still haven’t recovered. Do you know what I’m talking about?

[Emily]
Oh, I know which one you’re talking about. Yeah, yes, they remade it too.

[Robin]
Oh, it was awful. They were these little people and they just stole her and she was like, “Oh no!” and then you saw the fireplace bolts go whoosh, whoosh, whoosh, and like lock.

[Emily]
Yeah, yeah.

[Robin]
And she was like gone. Yeah, I mean, but I could go I could go either direction on that.

[Thomas]
So you said somebody’s murdered, the mother is murdered, or someone.

[Robin]
Yeah, somebody’s got to be murdered and somebody with money.

[Thomas]
What if the body is in a room where the doorknob has been removed from the outside of the door?

[Robin]
Interesting.

[Thomas]
And so at some point, that doorknob is being carried around the house. And so we can actually move around the house but with that perspective. And perhaps even that’s a clue that the killer is, or perhaps a clue to who the killer is, there walking around the house with this doorknob at some point.

[Robin]
I’m thinking of that, like, what are those ones where you like, it might be like a safe type thing where you stick them in and then you, and it’s like, and you can move, like, is that what you’re thinking? Like, you can take them out move them? Or is it a traditional doorknob?

[Thomas]
I think a lot of doorknobs can be removed. I don’t know how easy or difficult it is, especially on an… I imagine this is probably like an older house. so-

[Robin]
You just need a lesbian with some tools.

[Emily]
That’s right.

[Robin]
And, you know, and I’ll probably be there since I’m going to try to get in this as well as, so I feel like I can handle it.

[Thomas]
There we go. Yeah.

[Shep]
I grew up in an older house, and the doorknobs would just come right off.

[Emily]
Yes.

[Shep]
It was harder to get them to stay on.

[Thomas]
Maybe that’s a recurring theme is the house is kind of in disrepair. So there’s somebody who… That’s maybe part of the mystery. Like the house isn’t worth anything. It’s falling apart. Why would somebody want this?

[Robin]
What if there’s some family lore that there’s money in the walls of the house? Like it’s been buried, like there’s some kind of treasure in the house.

[Emily]
Like some ancestor was a bootlegger-

[Robin]
Ooh.

[Emily]
And that’s where they hid their ill-gotten gains.

[Robin]
Like there’s a secret vault or something somewhere and they’re all trying to find it. I don’t know how you tie that to the doorknob.

[Shep]
If they stash the body in the secret vault room, but then they know where the vault is.

[Robin]
This part’s hard.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Robin]
It’s really great to get the big idea and then it’s like- I’m a Leo. I’m like, “Somebody now figure that out and let me know.”

[Thomas]
I like that idea, though, of the family lore, because again, that brings the house back as a character.

[Robin]
Would be interesting if maybe the house has been abandoned or it’s not even their house anymore.

[Thomas]
Hm.

[Robin]
And the family lore is tied to a date and time trigger. Like, what’s that? Nostradamus like, we’re always going to die, you know, in like thirteen days.

[Emily]
Right.

[Robin]
So it’s like it’s coming up. And then throughout the night, through the doorknobs, we see them each in the family coming in with their guess of what it is trying to figure out where the money is. Obviously, a fight breaks out, somebody gets killed. Or maybe they’re all getting killed. Maybe it’s like sardines. Remember that game when you were a kid? Like one by one, they’re all dying.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Robin]
And being hidden.

[Shep]
Okay. You’ve talked before about the house being its own character. Like the house is alive. What if there were two business partners back in the day, in the 1920s, and one of them killed the other? And their body was stashed in the safe room in the house. And that’s not the body that they’re, that the people there now are talking about, it’s, you know, someone else’s- their elderly grandparent has died, but they were the business partner of the other person who had killed them. So they’re all trying to get this treasure or whatever it was and it turns out it’s long gone because the business partner killed his partner, put the body in the room where the treasure was, and took the treasure. So they’re scrambling to find that room and get into it, and it turns out it’s just a separate murder mystery. And so, the perspective that you see that’s following the people as they move around is the spirit of the original business partner who is inhabiting the house. And so maybe it’s taking its revenge on the person who killed him a hundred years ago.

[Robin]
You know what I like about that is you could have flashbacks in there and use a different older doorknob so that you could tell your, you know, how sometimes they’ll cut somebody’s hair so you like, and you could tell the timelines. So we can get the flashback of that original murder.

[Thomas]
So the older doorknob only sees things in black and white, and the new one sees it in color.

[Robin]
Something like that, yeah. But I like that. That’s interesting.

[Thomas]
One of the things, too, I like about jumping back and forth in time is you can sort of use that to mislead the audience a little bit if you wanted to.

[Robin]
For sure.

[Thomas]
Help extend that mystery. And maybe we see weird parallels between the past and the present.

[Shep]
Right. “It’s like it rhymes.”

[Robin]
And it would be interesting if the grandfather or whomever the- who was the business partner that didn’t die, there’s always like they thought he was a great guy. And that one’s unraveling. And he’s actually the murderer of the business partner.

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
Oh, yeah. Oh, he’s the reason why they think there’s a treasure, because he keeps talking about this treasure and the secret in the house. The secret in the house is not the treasure, it’s the dead body he left in the house sixty years ago.

[Robin]
Does he kill them all in the end? Is it, we go real dark? And then he pulls them all behind the fireplace and locks the door.

[Thomas]
I like the idea of the house being haunted and it like shoots doorknobs off of the door at people.

[Robin]
Yes.

[Thomas]
Like, as a weapon.

[Robin]
Just like just drops and so it looks like the camera fell.

[Thomas]
Night of the Knobs.

[Robin]
Night of the Knobs.

[Thomas]
Nope, Shep is shaking his head. We’re not doing Night of the Knobs. Okay.

[Robin]
It kind of sounds dirty.

[Thomas]
The porno version of it is just also called Night of the Knobs.

[Robin]
No, this is called Knobs.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Robin]
Knobs Out. Thank you. Try the veal.

[Emily]
That one’s great.

[Thomas]
Brilliant.

[Robin]
I just, I like the idea of there being like the two storylines. I’m with you on that, Shep.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Robin]
Like of the old and the new, and a twist with the grandfather. Then how do you tie it between the treasure and the dead body, and what happens when the grandfather turns out to be a bad guy? Like, what happens to the to the family and-

[Thomas]
What the things I like about the idea of the treasure is gone and they just find another dead body and they’ve been fighting pretty violently over this this whole time is the sort of morality aspect of like, “Yeah, fuck you. Don’t fight over this stuff.” Like, money corrupts.

[Robin]
What if when they find the room where they think the treasure is, they find the old body, but then they find the grandfather and he’s stabbed with a knob through his heart. So there’s no not only no treasure, but you got the double bodies. But I don’t know who killed him. Maybe the house did.

[Emily]
That’s like Encanto, but the casita out for revenge.

[Robin]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Okay, so the grandfather killed the guy and put him in a room, took the doorknob off of that door so that it couldn’t be opened because it’s like a fortified room, right? It’s a Panic Room type of thing. He took the knob, but now he has a cane where the top of the cane is that knob.

[Robin]
Oh!

[Shep]
Ah!

[Robin]
Love it, love it.

[Thomas]
And so maybe that’s the murder weapon, his own murder weapon, right?

[Shep]
So he killed his business partner back in the day-

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
With the doorknob. And then he took it with him.

[Thomas]
Ooh.

[Shep]
And it’s on his cane. And then he’s killed later by his cane, which is the doorknob that he used to kill his partner. They’re both killed by the same doorknob. The corrupt family, that’s fighting over the imagined treasure gets into the room. And the house closes the door behind them, which doesn’t have a knob on the inside.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
And so they can’t get out. And of course, it’s deep in the house, so there’s no cell signal, so they can’t call for help. And so it’s implied that they all now die as well. Everybody dies in the same room.

[Robin]
I like everybody dying. I really do. And I also like the second that they get in there and they’re trapped, every doorknob in the house falls off. And you just hear like clank, clank, clank, clank, clank.

[Emily]
I love all of this.

[Thomas]
And so we have that closing shot that mirrors the opening shot where you see the front doorknob’s perspective looking out at the driveway, but you see the camera fall to the ground and it’s this sort of upside-down shot looking at the driveway and it just sort of fades to black.

[Robin]
I feel good about that.

[Shep]
Why are all the doorknobs falling off?

[Robin]
Because the house is like, “Fuck off.”

[Thomas]
Yeah, why does the house able to close a door?

[Robin]
I mean, we’re definitely veering into haunted territory, which I don’t mind.

[Thomas]
Yeah, that’s fine.

[Robin]
A little, a little like Poltergeist-ville. I mean, there has to be, like, the lore… If we’re going to go scary, if doorknobs are falling off and people are dying and we’re jump scaring, the lore has to be really, like, scary.

[Emily]
Mm.

[Thomas]
Hmm.

[Emily]
Like dark.

[Robin]
You know, like it’s a haunted treasure or something, like you shouldn’t go after it. And, you know, and maybe the grandfather the whole time said, you know, “This is what happens. You should never go after it. You should never go after it.” And it’s really just him trying to hide that he killed his own business partner who’s in there. And maybe the, I don’t know why he can’t get the body out, but I mean, at some point he’s got to be home alone. I don’t know.

[Shep]
I mean, he’s home alone with the body back when he kills it, he doesn’t have a family yet. I mean, I assume that he leaves the body there because it’s a nice, tidy hiding spot for a body, and there’s no reason-

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
To move it somewhere else where it might be found.

[Emily]
Well, yeah, yeah. You’re risking it being found, and this way he can keep a close eye on it. Meaning he knows-

[Robin]
Like burying it in the backyard.

[Emily]
Yeah, he knows it’s there. He knows where it’s at.

[Robin]
And then his extra security is to be like, the treasure was haunted and-

[Emily]
Mm hmm.

[Robin]
You’ll never find it, so just don’t even try.

[Emily]
Yeah, somebody comes up like it was somehow getting the treasure killed a bunch of children. So that’s what this is.

[Shep]
Whoa, whoa, whoa.

[Robin]
Just a hop, skip, and a jump to dead kids.

[Thomas]
It was the orphan fund, and now the orphans have no funds.

[Emily]
Hey, we needed reason for it to be dark and scary and to avoid it, he can’t just be like “Oh and it was haunted because, like, a witch put a curse on it.” No, it’s darker if it’s like “And all these children were slaughtered in the process of getting the-.” Too dark?

[Thomas]
Well, what if he took the deed to the property? So, he owns the property that it’s on. He hasn’t told anyone about the treasure. He hasn’t told anyone about the property. hasn’t told anybody about this. Basically, the house has fallen into disrepair, right? It’s like a Gray Gardens-style house, where it’s just falling apart. And, you know, the paint is peeling and everything. But nobody lives there. And there’s a new development that’s coming into that area, or maybe there’s a highway and the land is being eminent domained or something, right? And so, he’s like “Oh crap, they’re going to find that body, that skeleton, while I’m alive.” Like, his hope was “Carry this to my grave and then it doesn’t matter if they find it. Who cares?” And so now he’s like, “Uh oh! I have to go move this skeleton, or hide this evidence.” So that’s when he goes back and is killed and somehow everybody finds out he’s killed. Or maybe he’s just been disappeared for enough time that he is declared dead. And then that’s when his family finds out that this property exists. And so, somebody has said something about, like, “Oh, this is where the treasurer is.” Maybe over the years he’s just sort of mysteriously had money. I don’t know.

[Robin]
Yes.

[Thomas]
There’s maybe some sort of a time pressure that causes him to go back.

[Shep]
Okay, so this is not where he lives.

[Robin]
Last seen at this house.

[Shep]
Last scene in his house, what?

[Robin]
Meaning, like the reason everyone else goes back is because he was last seen walking into this house.

[Shep]
Ah, I see, I see.

[Thomas]
Oh, sure. Maybe he’s not… Well, yeah. Somehow people find out about this house, if he’s kept it a secret all this time.

[Robin]
The neighbor’s Ring camera. I mean, it’s all, it’s all Ring cameras now.

[Thomas]
Yep.

[Robin]
“There was an old man with a cane walking into the Gray Gardens house.” I like the idea that he’s got some unexplained money, like he took some out, but there’s he could only get so much out. And that makes people think of the treasure. And he can’t get the body out because he’s old and he’s got the cane now. But he’s going to go back and see if he can hide it. Or he’s going to try to figure things out. Maybe wants to try to get some more money.

[Shep]
Is there still money? I thought the money was long used up. Like, there isn’t a treasure. It was a nice starting fund.

[Robin]
Yeah.

[Shep]
It was a secret. And people assume that the secret is a hidden stash of funds or other valuables, but it was it was never that.

[Robin]
I just had some weird thought of him. Like he goes back there all the time he’s doing like a (Norman) Bates type thing, like the guy’s in a, the dead body’s in a chair and he’s going back to talk to his friend because he’s like if killing him made him crazy.

[Emily]
This is where my brain has been there the whole time where it’s like he’s thinking about this body. And yeah, he goes and visits it. He didn’t get rid of it because, you know, you can’t just dump your friend off somewhere. I mean.

[Robin]
Maybe it was like a, he didn’t, he didn’t mean to kill him. They were having a fight over the money. And so he feels so bad that he just keeps him in a chair there and he goes back and talks to him. And then, I mean, there has to be like a payback from the house, like your Poltergeist vibe-

[Emily]
Hm.

[Robin]
Or he trips and falls and he stabs himself with the cane with the doorknob on the end. But I like, I like the doorknob on the end and that’s how he gets in. Like he takes it off his cane, (click click) opens it.

[Emily]
Where’s the room? Is it gonna be like in the basement, attic?

[Thomas]
Probably in the basement, right?

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Robin]
Creepy long stairwell to go down.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Right. Well, you see he’s from that generation that couldn’t possibly do therapy. So this is how he handles his shit. He goes and talks to a corpse, so-

[Robin]
It’s very Edgar Allan Poe. We just, it’s just how do we connect it to the family? Or do you just-

[Emily]
Could it be some property like upstate that was gonna be this home they were gonna live in and they never did or whatever? So they just keep it as an investment property. And even though there’s a dead body in the basement, it’s been rented out. You know, but the basement sealed off because owner’s private storeroom kind of thing. They VRBO it and then he-

[Robin]
VRBO it!

[Thomas]
“Nice place. Basement smells weird.”

[Robin]
It’s a little musty. And they’re coming back for a vacation and they’re like, are they, do they know he’s dead? Are they looking for him? Has he been gone for a while and they just, they, like he’s been missing for so long they had a funeral and they just want to get away and be back where they remember him when they were little and they go into the house-

[Emily]
Maybe there was evidence to show that he had wandered off into the woods and died of exposure or something, you know, some silver alert type thing.

[Robin]
He got the dementia with the tattoos.

[Emily]
Yeah, yeah.

[Shep]
So, is this a house that the family knows about or not? It is or it isn’t. It was being used or it wasn’t.

[Thomas]
It seems to me like if I’m him, I would want to keep it a secret.

[Shep]
Keep the whole house a secret.

[Thomas]
Yeah, the house, the property, everything. Keep it all a secret from anyone. Let that body molder away until after I’m dead, and then I don’t care anymore.

[Shep]
So if he dies at the house, no one’s gonna know.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
That’s a problem.

[Thomas]
If he dies at the house before anybody finds out about it.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
So he, in that case, he would be a silver alert situation, where they think he’s a little demented and they kind of follow, you know, his car was last seen here, he was up on this security camera and then the Ring doorbells, you know, they kind of follow him through a modern American surveillance.

[Shep]
So, who’s got access to the Ring doorbell cam?

[Emily]
The neighbor who is, saw the silver alert, and said “Hey I think I saw that guy.” Goes back and re-watches it, calls the people. Because there has been a silver alert issued.

[Thomas]
Feels pretty convenient.

[Shep]
Doubt.

[Emily]
How do you think they find these old people who wander around, people find the license-

[Shep]
They don’t.

[Emily]
They do! People watch for the license plate, people look for the person, and they find them and they call in. This is, happens, this happens all the time. It’s not convenient, it’s not a coincidence. It’s a legitimate actual thing that happens in society.

[Shep]
If someone happens to be watching their door cam while he’s there.

[Emily]
No they’re not watching it while he’s there they go back and look at the alert or they happen to, like, maybe they’re just weirdos like me who check the thing every time the door dings. And mine is set to a very sensitive level where if a dog walks in front of it it’s gonna ding, so I’ll check just to see what’s up.

[Shep]
Yeah, does it go off when someone is at a different house?

[Emily]
If they walk by the front of the house my door bell will ding and I can look and see it.

[Robin]
I was just say, my sister sends me footage of her Ring camera 24/7. “Look, a coyote.” And I’m like, “Okay.”

[Shep]
Yeah, she’s not sending you videos of like, “Look, here’s an old man.” Because it’s not notable.

[Robin]
Well, but I don’t think old men wander by her house.

[Thomas]
Hopefully not.

[Emily]
No, but, they only think look because they’re on Facebook and they see the silver alert.

[Shep]
When is this movie set? Who’s-

[Emily]
Now!

[Shep]
Does Facebook still exist?

[Emily]
Yes!

[Robin]
Well…

[Emily]
People still this!

[Shep]
Well…

[Emily]
Just because you don’t use it, and you wouldn’t look at your Ring camera that way does not mean other people wouldn’t. There’s Mrs. Kravitzes all over America.

[Shep]
It is an amazing coincidence.

[Robin]
What I find hilarious about this discussion is the plot holes we’ve had, but prior to this moment, you could drive a fucking 18-wheeler through. But this one, with the Ring cameras, is where we’re, you’re dying on that hill, Shep.

[Shep]
Yep.

[Robin]
I’m for the Ring camera. I feel like our biggest issue, our biggest fish to fry is what is the connection with the family and the money?

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Robin]
Like we don’t have the money part. The money part is like, is it a treasure? And how do they-

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Robin]
If they don’t know about the house and we got dead people, we see dead people, but we don’t have a treasure yet.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Robin]
Or don’t know why we have one.

[Thomas]
Well, let’s take a break here and we’ll ponder this over the break. When we come back, we’ll see if any of us can come up with a way to fix these problems in our Doorknob episode.

[Break]

[Thomas]
All right, we are back. Now, over the break, I did have a thought about our issue here. So, I feel like we’re trying really hard to put him in the house and be already dead before his family gets there. And I think that’s maybe the big issue. What if his family discovers the house, knows that there’s some secret? Somebody puts two and two together. They think it’s treasure. They go to the house. He knows they’re going to the house. And so, he panics and goes to the house to sort of chase them or get them out of there. And then dies.

[Shep]
I had a similar thought. My thought was: he dies, not at the house, he dies at home. And they are going, you know, “Where’s the money?”

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
“He had this business, we thought. What has he been living on his whole life?”

[Emily]
“Where’s the paperwork?”

[Shep]
Yeah, and find deed and go house. And you know, one of them has then cane, because of course he’s already dead-

[Thomas]
Hmm.

[Shep]
So they’ve had their eye on the cane, his son whatever. So they take the cane house, because he’s carrying the cane around.

[Emily]
Why would they take the cane?

[Shep]
Because he’s got the cane!

[Emily]
But why? But why?

[Shep]
It was his dad’s favorite cane, or his grandfather’s cane. What do you mean why? He’s using the cane.

[Emily]
Why is he walking- Does he need the cane? Is he injured?

[Shep]
No, it’s not that that kind of cane.

[Emily]
Then why is he walking around with it?

[Shep]
Are you trying to do me? Because your objection doesn’t make any fucking sense!

[Emily]
That’s how I feel about yours sometimes.

[Shep]
He got the cane because it was the symbol of the patriarch.

[Emily]
Sure.

[Shep]
Of the family.

[Emily]
I was being facetious, but in the same point as you saying that the Ring camera seems too convenient. It seems too convenient that he wouldn’t just mount that on the wall or keep it in a special place at home, that he would actually be walking around with it. Because people don’t do that.

[Shep]
Right, but it’s his symbol of like, “Now I’m in charge of the family.”

[Thomas]
He could also just be an opportunistic, terrible person. And so he’s discovered the grandfather is dead and is rifling through his things. He’s taking what he wants, and he’s trying to do it quickly before the other family members find out or arrive or whatever.

[Emily]
No, it doesn’t bother me that he has the cane. What bothers me is he’s carrying the cane outside of his home with him.

[Thomas]
Well that’s- Emily, Emily. Let me finish. He’s put all the shit that he wants to take in his car. He’s driving to this other house that he’s just discovered about. So, he doesn’t have the cane with him in his hand in the house.

[Emily]
Okay.

[Thomas]
But it’s out in his car. And so, when he realizes, like, “Wait a minute, I’ve seen that doorknob somewhere.” And then he goes back out to his car and gets the cane.

[Shep]
Ah!

[Emily]
So, he’s trying to beat the rest of the family to it.

[Thomas]
Yes.

[Emily]
Okay.

[Thomas]
To the perceived treasure.

[Emily]
Right.

[Thomas]
And then maybe when he goes out to the car to get the doorknob, that’s when the rest of the family pulls up in their car. And it’s like, “Oh, shit, busted.” So, then they can all discover the skeleton in the panic room together.

[Shep]
Because he forgot to turn off location tracking on his phone-

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
So his family knows where he is.

[Thomas]
Because he’s not smart.

[Shep]
I think none of them are smart.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
I mean, the patriarch killed a guy and left him in the house and wasn’t smart enough to invest the money.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
He’s been spending his principal!

[Robin]
I like that he dies elsewhere. I do like that. And there’s all this talk about, he’s been very secretive. He, like, he takes off all his time. He goes up to that, he goes somewhere, and then like they find the deed. I like that.

[Thomas]
And maybe they know he’s like kind of wealthy. And so they find this secret property and they’re like, “Oh man, this place must be great.” And so then they get up there and they’re like, “Oh, this place sucks. It’s, it’s falling apart. What the heck?”

[Shep]
“Doorknobs are falling off.”

[Thomas]
Right.

[Robin]
Do they get stuck there or they just decide they’re like, maybe there’s like that moment of just like, “Ugh.” Like, “We don’t, we cannot catch a break.” Like, “There’s not even, this isn’t even a good house,” but they’re, they’ve got to stay up for the night. And there’s, you’ve got the obligatory like fire outside scene where they’re getting loaded and they’re talking about him and then the stupid cane. And they’re like, “Why did he have that stupid cane all the time?” And then somebody’s like, “Wait a minute. Isn’t it just like all the doorknobs inside the house?” And then now they’re sort of drunk and they’re on a Scooby-Doo mission inside the house. And they’re piecing together, like, I feel like almost like a campfire story. They’re piecing together this idea that there could be money in the house by the fire while they’re drinking.

[Shep]
Okay, but instead of a fire outside, can it be the fireplace inside so that the doorknobs can be seeing what’s going on? I thought that was the perspective.

[Robin]
Well, I’m gonna go with Emily’s Ring camera when they’re outside because I really like the Ring camera idea. I like the idea of using the Ring camera.

[Shep]
I thought the whole point of the pitch was it was from the perspective of the doorknobs.

[Robin]
A Ring camera is a door camera.

[Shep]
Is it doorknob? Or is it a door? What’s the theme of the episode?

[Robin]
All right, fine. All right. I mean, it’s a little bit of a technicality here, Shep, but fine. You’re right. No, you’re right. You’re right. I kind of forgot the whole point of the movie. Fair enough. All right. Inside, I’m fine.

[Thomas]
I mean, we could pivot too. It doesn’t have to be from the perspective of the doorknobs. The doorknob in question can be the one on the cane.

[Robin]
Oh-

[Thomas]
Or we could just shoot like a normal movie and not have this weird visual language.

[Shep]
No, what’s the point of a normal movie? I like the idea of sometimes it’s the perspective of the doorknob on the cane.

[Robin]
I like that too.

[Shep]
It’s normally every doorknob on doors, and then every once in a while, it’s the cane. That’s great. I didn’t even think about that.

[Robin]
That could be the reveal.

[Thomas]
Yeah, that’s true.

[Robin]
That’s the reveal of how we know it’s a doorknob is it cuts to it and you hear the clunk as they’re using it like a cane.

[Shep]
So what do you see when they’re using it like a cane?

[Emily]
The hand over it.

[Shep]
Oh, you just see the hand?

[Emily]
Yeah, why not?

[Thomas]
Or if somebody’s holding it slightly below the at the neck, then you’re just looking up their nose, I guess.

[Robin]
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, you would lose my sound effect, but he could be holding it and walking like, you know, if you were to hold an umbrella when you walk-

[Thomas]
Hmm.

[Robin]
How it moves forward and back parallel to the ground.

[Thomas]
Oh, you’re holding it like a swagger stick. He’s got it tucked under his arm.

[Robin]
Yeah, yeah. Like Boyz II Men. Sure.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
And we talked before about possibly having moments in the past. Is that an element we’d like to keep now that we’ve discussed so much of the rest of the story?

[Shep]
Yeah, you gotta see the original murder of the partner when it’s revealed that that’s the body in the hidden room.

[Thomas]
So are we seeing some of that stuff throughout the story, though? Or is that something at the very beginning? Or is that something that happens at the very end once we find the body? Then we get the jump into the past?

[Shep]
So if we’re moving from doorknob to doorknob, every once in a while, we could move to this other two guys, other two young guys-

[Thomas]
Hmm.

[Shep]
In the house. And that turns out to be the patriarch and his business partner way back in the day. But we don’t realize that.

[Thomas]
So the house looks nice then, though.

[Shep]
Yes, the house looks nice. And that’s the only difference.

[Thomas]
So we know it’s in the past, we just don’t know who these guys are.

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
Until the end.

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
Yeah, I like that.

[Robin]
I have a really weird idea that, at the end, before we, haven’t figured out how they’re all going to die yet-

[Thomas]
Okay.

[Robin]
But at the end, like when they’re revealing that their grandfather killed the business partner… This is so bad. The doorknob angle, it’s like the house has come alive and it’s like, a, you know, those old like tch tch tch tch like movie cameras, it’s shooting on the wall.

[Thomas]
Hm.

[Robin]
Like it’s the house has recorded it in some way and it’s coming out of the doorknob and shooting on the wall. And they see the film, like, and that’s, and it replays the murder. I don’t know how the hell that just happened, but I see your face, Shep. You think I can’t see it? We’re on video.

[Shep]
Oh!

[Robin]
I know it’s a podcast, but I can see your face.

[Shep]
So, where are we at? What are we missing?

[Thomas]
I feel like the biggest thing we’re missing at this point is what happens in the house. How much time, if we like the idea of the one opportunistic grandson or son or whoever showing up first and then the rest of the family shows up, how much time does that person spend by themself in the house? And then what happens once everybody else shows up?

[Shep]
I think that’s like the first act is that one person because we’re establishing a couple things: that the perspective is from the doorknobs, and that this is an old house, and they are looking for something. We don’t know what yet, but they are looking for something. They’re investigating each room. And so, the audience is like, “Well, what are they? What are they looking for? Who is this? What’s going on?”

[Emily]
How furnished is the house? Because in my brain movie, it’s fairly empty because it’s an unused house-

[Robin]
Sheets.

[Emily]
Is it, is it furniture with sheets over it? And there’s desks and paperwork still that he kind of just locked up and left it for time to preserve because he was… got his money, but still kind of afraid of the dead body in his room.

[Shep]
Oh, so you talked about this being an old rundown house, but these days even an old rundown house is worth a lot of money. So, they’re looking for ways to cash in, basically-

[Emily]
Mm.

[Shep]
On their inheritance, or what is of it. And so maybe they are taking all the sheets off the furniture and like, you know, “We could fix this up and sell it for a lot of money.”

[Robin]
VRBO!

[Thomas]
Or even just sell the antique furniture that’s in the house.

[Emily]
Yeah, like it’s all of that. “Can we sell the antique furniture?” They’re not crackheads, so they’re not looking to tear out the copper, but-

[Shep]
So they go, and they take the sheets off, and then they’re snapping photos of the furniture.

[Emily]
Because grandpa had good taste, so some of this has to be valuable.

[Thomas]
Well, here’s a question we haven’t answered: is whose house is this originally? Whose treasure was it originally in the safe or the panic room or whatever it ends up being?

[Emily]
So, did they steal together the grandfather and the business partner? Did they, like, heist it somewhere?

[Thomas]
Maybe that was the plan and the grandfather double-crossed him.

[Robin]
Yeah, like almost like a haunted treasure. You know, it’s like whoever has it, no good things come to the person who has it.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Robin]
I feel like the business partner, it’s his house and he covets it for everything in it.

[Thomas]
That was the sense I had, yeah.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Robin]
And then he forges the, you know, we see him in flashbacks. We see him forging it, the house deed over to himself.

[Thomas]
Yeah, that was what I was thinking as well. So.

[Robin]
Yeah. And his family comes and then he’s like, boop. You see it in the door. “Mine. I don’t know why he left it to me. Beat it.” Although I don’t know how they know he’s dead. He’s just missing.

[Shep]
“No, he moved to australia. Sorry. Sorry that he didn’t tell you.”

[Robin]
“Left me the house.”

[Shep]
Yeah, “He left me at the house and he moved to Australia. Maybe go and search for him there.”

[Thomas]
Right, that part of the story takes place far enough in the in the past where that was a thing that happened.

[Emily]
Yeah, people just took off.

[Thomas]
You could just show up and say you were someone.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Robin]
That is true. Let’s not give him a family then.

[Emily]
That’s what I always thinking. He doesn’t need a family, right?

[Robin]
Yeah, it’s too complicated if he’s got a family.

[Thomas]
Yeah, these were young guys, right?

[Robin]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Robin]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
So, they were unattached at that point in time.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Robin]
And they look enough alike, “You could be brothers.”

[Emily]
Mm.

[Robin]
All that vibe.

[Thomas]
Ooh, yeah, that’s good.

[Shep]
So, is the grandfather not even who the family thinks he is? He’s the business partner, but he’s taken over the life of the dead business partner.

[Robin]
Ooh, yes.

[Shep]
Then don’t have to forge the deed transfer.

[Emily]
Well, there you go.

[Shep]
He’s like, “Oh I’m Gary,” or whatever. “Steve.”

[Emily]
Identity theft was easier back then.

[Shep]
Yeah, yeah.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Robin]
Those were the salad days.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
The salad days of identity theft.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
All the guys look the same with their mustaches and the hats on.

[Emily]
Yeah, same haircut, same pomade, it’s, whatever.

[Robin]
Yeah, he took over his life. So maybe, maybe that’s why they come running up to the house. Not just they don’t just find the deed, but they realize he’s not even who he said he was. Find an old birth certificate.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
If you found an old birth certificate, you wouldn’t assume that it’s the actual identity. You’d go, “Why does grandpa have someone else’s birth certificate?”

[Robin]
Yeah, valid. Well, they could find enough evidence that it’s clear that, you know-

[Thomas]
That’s a problem for the writers.

[Robin]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Let the writers figure out how they figure that out.

[Emily]
He has some picture of his mom, and it’s not there-

[Robin]
Yeah.

[Emily]
It’s not the mom he told stories, about I don’t know.

[Shep]
Who says the family has to ever figure that out?

[Emily]
This is true.

[Shep]
We, the audience-

[Thomas]
Hmm.

[Shep]
Can know because we see the flashback. The family might never know.

[Robin]
They’re just going because they want money.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
So how do they figure out, how does the family figure out that there’s this room, there might be treasure? Is that where that fireplace scene? They’re kind of putting some two and two together type of thing. Like, “Man, he always talked about some mysterious place, some treasure. Maybe this is where it was.”

[Shep]
Sorry, when you say the fireplace scene, I wasn’t thinking of the scene where they’re getting drunk next to the fireplace. I was thinking of the Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark scene where she’s dragged by the little people.

[Robin]
I mean, like, post-funeral talking about him and the stories used to tell. And that’s when light bulbs are going off and they’re all like, “Maybe there’s money, maybe there’s a house.” And then you get up, the one guy coming up, they all follow him. “You always do this. You suck. Like, it’s for all of us to split.”

[Shep]
Showing that the whole family is like the grandfather.

[Robin]
Yeah, they’re all gross. Yeah. And then you’ve got looking all day. Nothing happens. They decide, they pull out, they find some old scotch by the fire. They have the scotch they’re getting loaded. And they’re going deep, deep, on what this could be. And it’s money. And they’re like living out fantasies. And then it’s like, then it has to turn into they all try to kill each other and somehow all end up in the basement with the dead business partner. And then there’s that shocking moment, doorknobs fall off. And then the door slams closed. Like, everything’s trapped inside the house.

[Thomas]
So, we said that the panic room or the vault or whatever it is down in the basement. I wonder if there’s something that’s covering the door. If the grandfather, when he was young, moved a cabinet or something in front of the door.

[Robin]
Something, yeah.

[Thomas]
And in the scuffle or whatever, at some point in the story, that gets moved or knocked over. Or, you know, everything-

[Shep]
Ah!

[Robin]
Yes.

[Thomas]
Rotty and moldy in the basement. And so it kind of gets bumped into and falls apart. And then the door is revealed. And they’re like, “Oh, we haven’t looked in here. Oh, there’s no doorknob on it. What do we do?” And-

[Robin]
That’s the moment where they all come back together.

[Thomas]
Yeah, exactly. Yes.

[Robin]
They were starting to fight over the, they all come back together and they’re going to get down and they get down there. I don’t know how they die.

[Shep]
They get trapped in the room together.

[Robin]
That’s it.

[Emily]
Just eventual starvation.

[Shep]
Yeah, it’s much worse than dying instantly.

[Robin]
Okay, I feel good about that. And the like you said, the final shot is the door slams shut. That doorknob falls off. The cane doorknob falls off. And it’s from the other door. And then the that door closes and the house looks all closed up. Lights go off. They’re dead in the basement. Greed kills you.

[Thomas]
Yeah, I like that.

[Robin]
This really went from Clue to something much darker, but-

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Robin]
But I dig it.

[Shep]
Yeah, Clue was just a red herring.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Are there any other story details that we are missing that we forgot about that we can remember that we should resolve here before we wrap things up?

[Emily]
I think mostly it’s stuff about like what the house does to show it’s possessed or haunted. But it’s, you know, that’s easy. A little creak here, a little creak there, jump scare.

[Thomas]
Yeah, we need little clues here and there that the house is haunted. Otherwise, that door slamming at the end and the doorknob falling off is-

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Comes out of nowhere.

[Thomas]
Yeah it comes out of nowhere and-

[Robin]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Audiences will be like, “What? What? What? Huh?”

[Robin]
Yeah, it has to be eerie. Like, and while they’re drinking the scotch, there’s like they’re laughing about it, that kind of vibe.

[Shep]
So if the house is inhabited by the dead business partner’s spirit and he wants to kill them because it wants to kill that whole family-

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
It has to be trying to give them clues-

[Thomas]
Oh, yeah.

[Shep]
As to where the hidden room is in the basement-

[Robin]
Hmm.

[Shep]
Because it wants them to find his body.

[Robin]
So, as they walk up, you see the door unlock and it creaks open a little bit. So it’s just, it’s very welcoming, and you can tell, like, we know it’s haunted before they do.

[Shep]
I mean, yeah, maybe we know it’s hunted from the first act when it’s just the one guy.

[Emily]
Yeah, that’s what I was thinking. We would pick up on that then.

[Thomas]
Right, we’ve been seeing little things that he maybe isn’t noticing.

[Emily]
He would maybe hear a shuffle or a voice or something in a distant room. And then he’s like, “What’s going on?” You know.

[Shep]
Oh, so as we’re following him, doorknob to doorknob through the house, when he goes back, now a door is open that wasn’t open before.

[Thomas]
Hmm yeah.

[Emily]
Right. But he doesn’t remember because, you know, he’s focused on other things.

[Shep]
He doesn’t remember.

[Robin]
He’s got the dementia.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Robin]
But also, in his dementia, like ramblings, he’s rambling about the house and it’s got his own life of its own.

[Shep]
Whose dementia? I was thinking of like the grandfather’s dead. It’s the kid that went to the house.

[Robin]
Oh, is he dead right away? Is he dead from the get-go? Or do we have some, do we have a little bit of him hanging with the body and starting there and then he’s coming home to die?

[Shep]
I figured that if we saw him with the body, that would only be in flashback.

[Robin]
Oh, okay.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Robin]
I’m good with that.

[Thomas]
Hmm.

[Emily]
Oh, I like the idea of we do see him with the body in flashback, like we see him both with the live guy, and then interspersed with him with the dead guy. At some point, we realize that that room doesn’t make sense with what we’ve been shown with the house. Like, we know where this room is, this room, and this room, but this room doesn’t fit within that blueprint because it’s down in the basement hidden away.

[Thomas]
It could even be the case that in the flashbacks, we see him talking through the door to the business partner. And so when we see him in the present talking through the door, we assume like, “Oh, he’s kept him prisoner there,” or something like that.

[Emily]
Hmm, okay.

[Shep]
Ah!

[Thomas]
And so later it’s a surprise, like, “No, he’s dead and has been dead.”

[Shep]
Okay. Well, that’s great. And I want, I to want to talk about why.

[Thomas]
Okay.

[Shep]
So, the business partner’s trapped in that room with no doorknob on the inside. He can’t get out.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Right.

[Shep]
But partner can talk to him through the door. And so the implication as you said is that he’s been kept prisoner there and so we’re in anticipation of when the family gets into that room and finds this poor old man, and, or whatever but they do they finally get into the room and it’s a long dead body and then the door slams behind them and we know what happens when that door closes.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
You can never get out and you’re going to die.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Robin]
I love it. And the kids have to be just insufferable.

[Thomas]
Absolutely.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Robin]
Like, just insufferable for the money. Just-

[Shep]
So you can have him talking through the door and hearing his business partner talking back.

[Emily]
Right.

[Robin]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Like that’s the conversations they’re having. So we are led to believe that he’s still alive.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
But also it’s just he’s crazy.

[Robin]
And some curtains blowing, you know, with the windows like all kinds of creepy shit.

[Emily]
Mm hmm.

[Thomas]
Definitely. Well, we’d love to hear your thoughts on today’s episode about a Doorknob. Did this one click or was it just twisted?

[Shep]
(Pained groan) It was definitely twisted.

[Thomas]
It feels like both, really, I think. You can 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. Robin, thank you so much for joining us and bringing us this very interesting Doorknob idea. What cool things are you up to and where can our listeners find out more about you?

[Robin]
Well, I think as I said at the top, I’m up to almost no cool things. But if anybody wants to listen to my podcast, Well… Adjusting, where myself and producer Steph, we talk to someone who’s in the middle of a problem, trying to help them break it apart, pick it apart. But we don’t do it in an NPR way. We do it like we’re drunk at the bar. And I’m about to ask you about your mother. So, it’s a lot of fun. I hope you want to take a listen. I was in an episode of Law & Order if you want to see me watch the guy shoot the healthcare executive, that is me discovering him.

[Emily]
Oh.

[Robin]
So, there you have it. That’s the only cool things I’m up to. The rest are pretty lame.

[Thomas]
Well, we’ll have links to that in our show notes, which again you can find at AlmostPlausible.com. I hope you enjoyed listening to this episode as much as we enjoyed recording it. I suppose I’ll come back again, and I hope you’ll join me along with Emily and Shep on the next episode of Almost Plausible.

[Outro music]