Almost Plausible

Ep. 41

Marshmallow

17 January 2023

Runtime: 00:46:10

In a world of marshmallow islands and hot cocoa oceans, a community scrambles to save their homes after years of corruption and ecological mismanagement. One family must find a way to rally the working class together to literally take back their land from the billionaires.

References

Transcript

[Intro music begins]

[Thomas]
I just need to bring up that somebody in this has to be a sugar daddy.

[Shep]
But not the dad.

[Thomas]
Right, no.

[Emily]
No.

[Shep]
He’s not the sugar daddy.

[Thomas]
He’s the big hunk.

[Shep]
That’s why she married him.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
All those kisses.

[Emily]
You got him started. This is your fault.

[Shep]
I will admit that I was wrong.

[Thomas]
Oh and the, uh, uhm, whatchamacallit.

[Shep]
(Pained groans) Nope. Too far.

[Thomas]
Okay, I’ll take five.

[Shep]
How do I… how do I delete someone else’s podcast?

[Thomas]
How do you unsubscribe from this podcast you’re a part of?

[Shep]
Yes.

[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 some story ideas and then working as a team to come up with a movie plot. The team I’m referring to are Emily-

[Emily]
Hey, guys.

[Thomas]
F. Paul Shepard-

[Shep]
Happy to be here.

[Thomas]
And I’m Thomas J. Brown. Today we’re teaming up to tackle Marshmallows. Emily, Shep, how do you feel about marshmallows?

[Shep]
They’re nice in hot cocoa.

[Thomas]
Yes, I agree. And s’mores. You kind of need those for s’mores.

[Shep]
I am not a fan of s’mores.

[Emily]
I like the really gross marshmallows, like marzipan and which is not actually marshmallow, but to me tastes like a marshmallow. And Lucky Charms marshmallows like the gross crunchy ones.

[Thomas]
Yeah, the freeze-dried ones. Love those.

[Emily]
Yeah, those are the best. Other than that, they’re fine.

[Thomas]
Every once in a while, I get a craving for a marshmallow, and if we happen to have any in the house, I’ll just pop one in my mouth there. Num, num, num.

[Emily]
I think they sound like a good idea. And then I eat one and I’m like, “This was-“

[Shep]
“Why did I do this?”

[Thomas]
One is always enough.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
I’m never like, “I’ll go get another.”

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Oh, they’re good in desserts. Like orange fluff or what’s the other one?

[Emily]
Ambrosia.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Ambrosia.

[Thomas]
Ambrosia. Yeah.

[Shep]
Or maybe I just like ambrosia.

[Emily]
I mean, ambrosia is not terrible. Depends on who makes it.

[Thomas]
I mean, it has marshmallows in it.

[Emily]
Yeah, I eat around it. It’s like anything with raisins. I just eat around it-

[Shep]
You can’t eat around raisins in an oatmeal raisin cookie.

[Emily]
Now-

[Shep]
There’s subterranean raisins hiding there.

[Emily]
That’s why those are the cursed cookies, because they’re the one thing you can’t unraisin.

[Thomas]
Subterranean raisins.

[Shep]
Yes.

[Thomas]
That’s going to be the name of my next band.

[Emily]
Yes.

[Thomas]
We’ll do California Raisins cover songs, but, like punk.

[Shep]
Ska.

[Thomas]
This. Yeah. Third wave ska.

[Emily]
Bring back ska. Let’s do that.

[Shep]
It’s time.

[Emily]
It is time.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
I actually have been waiting for a ska band to come out because I’m like, it’s been 30 years, right?

[Thomas]
Been long enough. Yeah.

[Emily]
It’s time.

[Thomas]
All right, well, we should probably pitch a few story ideas while we’re here, right. So, Emily, why don’t you get us started?

[Emily]
All right. I have a Claymation style movie about a lonely marshmallow who wants to find love. She ends up meeting a nice piece of chocolate who tries to convince her to run away with him, only to find out he leads a cult and needs her to ascend into a s’more.

[Shep]
The first thing I thought of was the comic, where it’s a chocolate and a marshmallow and a graham cracker sitting on couches, and they’re like, “You’re probably wonder why we brought you here.”

[Thomas]
Yeah, I like how we were talking about the California Raisins and then immediately went into a Claymation pitch.

[Emily]
Yes. That was very kismet of us.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
So my second pitch is a lonely woman becomes famous for a viral video of her playing chubby bunny and stuffing an obscene amount of marshmallows in her mouth. She becomes known as the marshmallow girl and tries to ride the fame out in some funny way.

[Shep]
Don’t children choke on marshmallows and die?

[Emily]
I only just heard that kids choked on it. And then I was like, “Oh, no, I let them play that at one of my children’s birthday parties.” Like, I encouraged it.

[Thomas]
I was paying attention to make sure that everyone was breathing. Did you think we could get the Overly Attached Girlfriend to play the main character in that one?

[Emily]
Oh, that would be great.

[Thomas]
She is due for another turnaround.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Right?

[Shep]
Right. It’s time for the breakout hit where she becomes a movie star.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
All right. And my final pitch is murder victims start showing up in town around the time of the annual hot cocoa festival. They all have marshmallow shoved down their throats. There’s a race against time to solve the murders before a high-profile person in the town becomes the next victim.

[Shep]
Well, here’s another opportunity for Overly Attached Girlfriend, but this time as the murderer.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
There you go.

[Thomas]
Well, Emily, you’ve got a couple that are really similar to the first thing that I thought of, which is a serial killer one, and he’s known as the Chubby Bunny Killer, or she. I don’t know. As we’ve previously established, women can be serial killers as well.

[Shep]
We’re all about equality here.

[Emily]
Yes.

[Thomas]
And they kill their victims by stuffing their mouths with marshmallows until they choke and die.

[Emily]
I’m down.

[Thomas]
My next idea, a group of kids who are on a quest to find the fabled marshmallow mountain.

[Shep]
Are they kids or are they unicorns?

[Emily]
Does one of them lose a kidney?

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Yeah. My last idea, one day, marshmallows of all kinds rain down from the sky. The phenomenon is novel at first, but quickly becomes problematic as the world is slowly being buried in marshmallows.

[Shep]
It’s Cloudy with a Chance of Marshmallows.

[Emily]
Oh, that would be a nightmare. You’d get stuck in it, and you couldn’t move, and if the temperature got too warm, it would just be sticky everywhere.

[Thomas]
And although, like vermin, that would be just feasting on it. Yeah, it would be awful. Those are mine.

[Shep]
Okay. A mallow king hires a marshmallow to rescue a princess for him. And a donkey comes along. No? Okay. How about a boy builds a giant marshmallow looking robot and becomes a superhero? No? Okay. Captain of a marshmallow ship on the Hot Cocoa Sea.

[Thomas]
I like this premise.

[Shep]
That’s it. That’s all I got.

[Thomas]
Is this ship made of marshmallow?

[Shep]
Yes, the ship is a marshmallow.

[Emily]
That means it’s got a finite amount of time to cross the hot cocoa sea because it will, in fact, melt.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
I mean, they just do maintenance when they come in to dock. Just normal, just slapping another coat of marshmallow on it.

[Thomas]
Maybe it’s like, you know how on our planet we have warmer and colder areas of the ocean, so maybe they have to stick to the colder areas.

[Shep]
Ah, that’s good.

[Thomas]
But at some point in the story, they have to sail through the hot chocolate equator area-

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
And that’s going to cause damage to the ship.

[Shep]
They get stirred off course.

[Emily]
Yep.

[Thomas]
Yes, it’s good.

[Emily]
That’s adorable.

[Thomas]
Love it.

[Emily]
I like that.

[Thomas]
With Captain Overly Attached Girlfriend, right? That’s moving.

[Emily]
Yeah, of course.

[Shep]
Yeah. Now she plays a mermaid.

[Thomas]
She’d be a siren, obviously.

[Shep]
Oh, yes, obviously.

[Thomas]
No idea what the story would be, but I like the premise.

[Emily]
I don’t know. I imagine they were pirates, but I guess it doesn’t specifically say that in the pitch. It does just say captain of a marshmallow ship.

[Thomas]
That’s true. It could be a merchant ship. A merchant marshmallow ship. And they deal with pirates at some point. What would the pirates be? And would they have like, a graham cracker ship or what would they have? It’d be cobbled together out of old stir sticks.

[Shep]
Yeah. The peg leg is graham cracker.

[Thomas]
Yeah, that’s his name. Captain Graham Cracker.

[Emily]
It be a peppermint boat, they be peppermint pirates, arr!

[Thomas]
There you go. And their captain’s name is Patty.

[Emily]
I actually really like that. Peppermint Patty, arr!

[Shep]
So that’s how they get off course. The pirates are chasing them.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Let’s get Starbucks to sponsor this.

[Emily]
No, I’m boycotting them and their lack of eggnog this year.

[Thomas]
I’m boycotting them because of their shitty union busting policy.

[Emily]
I mean, there’s plenty of reasons to boycott Starbucks, but really, I draw the line at not bringing eggnog back.

[Thomas]
I was already boycotting them before the eggnog, and that just reaffirmed my-

[Shep]
Right. That’s the final straw. Yeah.

[Thomas]
So are we going to get Pendleton Ward to do the art for-

[Shep]
Oh, yeah. Now that I’m thinking, it’s so much like Candy Kingdom.

[Thomas]
It really is.

[Shep]
Oh, no. Adventure Time went on for like, nine seasons. Are we sure there wasn’t an episode like this?

[Thomas]
There might have been, actually.

[Shep]
There might have been. There’s no way to tell. Nobody’s seen all nine seasons.

[Emily]
An obscure German children’s book features, I believe, a hot cocoa hot springs on an island made of food.

[Shep]
I like the hot cocoa hot springs. Does anybody have a pitch around that? They’re marshmallow people and they go to Hot Cocoa Hot Springs.

[Emily]
But then they would melt.

[Thomas]
But you just melt a little bit and it feels so good.

[Shep]
It’s the good kind of melt.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Yeah. All right, so which one of these jumps out at us?

[Thomas]
What about the idea of a marshmallow island and it’s a Hot Cocoa Sea, and they’re not in a marshmallow ship, they’re just in a ship. So they’re sailing the Hot Cocoa Sea to get to the marshmallow island.

[Shep]
But the island is getting smaller and smaller every year.

[Thomas]
Oh, yeah.

[Shep]
And that’s really an allegory for climate change.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
There’s some resource that’s only available at that island.

[Shep]
Yeah, the marshmallow mines.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
It’s what their economy is based off of.

[Shep]
Yeah. What are we going to do? Change our economy just because our primary resource is going to disappear? That we’ve built all our infrastructure around? Ridiculous.

[Thomas]
What about a story that takes place in a bowl of cereal? So it’s a mini world, bowl of cereal, there are marshmallows that float around.

[Emily]
The only problem I have with this is it’s a cute idea for like a short, but it’s not-

[Shep]
Shorts are so much easier.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Let’s just do shorts from now on. That’s our true calling. I’m reminded of the comic where it’s a ship and there’s these white, milky guys crawling up the side, and the captain’s like, “Hold. Keep fighting. Hold!” And then at the end, it’s just a boy eating a bowl of cereal. So we want a tiny world of some kind that incorporates marshmallows.

[Thomas]
I mean, it doesn’t have to be a tiny world necessarily. I agree that, if it’s in a bowl of cereal what’s happening outside of cereal?

[Emily]
Right.

[Thomas]
It feels like the world would be changing constantly if we just set this in a food-based world like Adventure Time, where it’s just like, “Oh, there’s just food here. that’s just how this place is.”

[Emily]
I mean, Adventure Time didn’t invent that concept. It’s not theirs and theirs alone. We could totally make a food movie.

[Thomas]
Maybe there are different oceans with different liquids. There’s like an orange soda ocean.

[Shep]
The Fanta Seas?

[Thomas]
The Seven Up Seas?

[Emily]
What if there is a marshmallow mountain and they are going to it?

[Shep]
How old are the kids?

[Emily]
What if it’s not kids? What if it’s adults?

[Shep]
Guy hires the Sherpa to take him up Marshmallow Mountain.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Are these explorers, like Vasco da Gama type of thing?

[Emily]
Let’s do this. They’re going to explore what’s on the other side of Marshmallow Mountain. Or the Marshmallow Mountain ranges.

[Thomas]
They’re looking for the Northwest Passage.

[Emily]
Yeah, exactly.

[Thomas]
What do they think is beyond the mountains?

[Emily]
That is the realm of monsters, obviously.

[Thomas]
Are they looking for El Dorado sort of thing? “There’s a world of pure sugar.”

[Shep]
Marshmallows are pure sugar. “There’s a world with no sugar.”

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
We’ll finally-

[Thomas]
It could just be that they’re explorers, and so no one has gone beyond the mountains yet, and so they’re going to venture forth and see what lies beyond the mountains because there is some resource scarcity that’s going on. And so they go across the mountains and you start introducing more savory things. So, like, there’s pretzels, like chocolate covered pretzels. So it’s like there’s still candy, but it’s like, starting to switch over. And there’s maybe, like, caramel popcorn and stuff like that. And then you start moving into just regular pretzels and salted buttered popcorn and more savory types of foods. And then they get into a world of, like, spicy, which is like a tropical environment and-

[Shep]
But what’s the plot?

[Thomas]
Yeah, that’s what I was just trying to think of.

[Shep]
I like the visuals.

[Emily]
That’s it. It’s a visual piece. It’s Fantasia. We’re not-

[Thomas]
Look, it’s Aguirre, Wrath of God but in Candy Land.

[Shep]
Is this just Candy Land? Are we’re just doing Candy Land?

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
They’re going on an adventure that goes around these food-based locations.

[Thomas]
Candy Land is all candy, though. If we did different types of food, like savory and salty and spicy…

[Emily]
Okay, so if we made it like a one-to-one thing too, like the natural world and you have your deserts and your tropical areas and whatnot, sometimes we get things from those other areas in our atmosphere, but we’re running low on those, so we go to the source of them. Right. Maybe it rains salt, I don’t know. I’m really just spit balling here. So they have to go find where the salt originates from because they do need it.

[Shep]
Or they don’t need it and something is blowing in salt, which they haven’t seen before-

[Emily]
There you go.

[Shep]
And all the marshmallow people are like, “What is this? This is awful.” And the caramel people are like, “This is great.”

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
What’s the resolution? What do they find?

[Emily]
The marshmallows at the poles are melting into the hot chocolate sea. They’re all doomed.

[Shep]
It’s funny, because it’s true.

[Emily]
Welcome to reality, children.

[Shep]
Yes. “Look, there’s no easy way to tell you that the world is screwed.”

[Emily]
“We’re sugar coating it the best we can.”

[Shep]
Literally.

[Thomas]
So is there like a salt volcano that’s erupting salt into the sky and it’s blowing across the world?

[Emily]
Well, the salt is obviously in the desert.

[Thomas]
Okay.

[Emily]
That’s what the sands are and nothing can grow there. And it’s a wasteland because it’s salt.

[Thomas]
Sure.

[Emily]
That all checks out. So there’s wind picking up where the wind is coming from, the gas of the people in the tropical area because they’re eating too many spicy things.

[Thomas]
Well, if the salt is a natural phenomenon, how do they solve the problem that the city is having?

[Shep]
They don’t.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
They all die.

[Thomas]
So what would be the resolution? What would be the action that they would take to solve their problem?

[Shep]
Mass suicide.

[Thomas]
They all drink the Kool-Aid.

[Shep]
Problem solved.

[Thomas]
Whereas if it was something like, “Oh, the desert people are dumping their waste salt and it’s polluting our world,” then potentially that’s a thing they could stop or change somehow.

[Emily]
Are the people of this world food-based or do they just live in a food-based world?

[Shep]
We haven’t decided yet.

[Emily]
Okay, so they’re not food-based themselves, but they live in a food-based world, so they have warring factions. You have your salty people of the desert. Your sweet people.

[Shep]
I’m trying to pay attention, but I have the song Blue by Eiffel 65-

[Thomas]
Why?

[Shep]
Because she said “A food world.” And everything’s food to him. He lives in a food house. He’s got a food girlfriend. Wait, she would be food.

[Thomas]
Is there a resource that all of the different regions lack that they’re fighting over?

[Shep]
I’d say that it should be land. They’re fighting over the remaining marshmallow islands as they’re all melting into the Cocoa Sea.

[Thomas]
As the sea heats up.

[Shep]
As the sea heats up, the islands are melting.

[Thomas]
And so are there basically like, marshmallow polar bears or something that are-

[Shep]
Trying to balance on one single marshmallow?

[Emily]
I’m imagining it trying to catch Swedish fish as they jump out of the water.

[Shep]
That’s the critical whatever. They have to figure out what to do because their grandfather built this house near the beach, but now the beach is encroaching. The cliff is just falling apart as it melts. And they’re like, this happening everywhere. It’s happening everywhere. What do you do? What do you do? They’re about to be homeless, so they have to go somewhere.

[Thomas]
So do they build a ship? Going to live on the ocean now?

[Shep]
What do they build the ship out of? If everything is made out of marshmallow?

[Thomas]
Is literally everything made out of marshmallow?

[Emily]
Just the land.

[Thomas]
There are two elements on this planet, marshmallow and hot chocolate.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Emily]
No!

[Shep]
I kind of like that because they can’t just go swimming or whatever. Whoever falls in the hot chocolate just melts.

[Thomas]
How would they solve their problem?

[Shep]
They can’t solve their problem.

[Thomas]
So what’s the plot?

[Shep]
They all die!

[Emily]
We’re sugar-coating.

[Shep]
Yes. We’re sugar-coating climate change. So there’s a big war over resources, the resource being land that hasn’t melted into the hot Cocoa Sea yet.

[Thomas]
Things are getting more and more crowded.

[Shep]
Yes.

[Emily]
You see little shanty, floating towns of graham cracker and cookies. But they’re melting too, at a faster rate. They’re only temporary relief.

[Thomas]
People floating by in little lifesavers. I think we have a compelling point A, but we need a solid point B to get to-

[Emily]
All of them inevitably dying isn’t a solid point B?

[Thomas]
What happens at the end of major disaster movies. It all calms down and humanity figures out how to rebuild?

[Emily]
Some scientist discovers either some magical solution or they learn to use other resources to make their way.

[Thomas]
Right? So somebody figures out how to capture the cotton candy clouds and spin them into new islands of manufactured marshmallow bricks or something?

[Shep]
They just build airships. They start living in the sky.

[Thomas]
There you go.

[Shep]
That’s the solution for climate change. We’ll just move to space.

[Thomas]
There’s like three billionaires and they all have rockets that they’re testing.

[Shep]
This is a kids movie. You can’t put penis rockets in it.

[Thomas]
Is there a corrupt mayor who’s only-

[Shep]
Well, there’s just rich people that own giant islands all to themselves.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
It’s like who decided that this is all yours? Like, the marshmallow land is a natural resource that belonged to all of us and you just decided it was yours? You just decided. You put up a flag.

[Thomas]
Are these islands where it was part of a larger landmass, but because it’s marshmallow, they were able to, like, carve out a big chunk and sail out, so they’ve like, taken something that was previously part of-

[Emily]
I like that.

[Shep]
I like that.

[Thomas]
So you have the people who are like who are making that argument of like “No, this was a thing that everybody owned and previously had access to and-“

[Shep]
“You just took it and declared that it was yours.”

[Emily]
That part of the problem, why it’s melting. Because now there’s more surface area to get into the cracks of the marshmallow and create more melting.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
Right. It’s all the billionaire’s fault.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
It really is. It works on so many levels.

[Thomas]
So is it too late to recohere the marshmallow islands? Yeah.

[Shep]
I was going to say that’s the resolution is you get all these outer islands and then put them all back together. It doesn’t solve the long-term problem.

[Emily]
No.

[Shep]
So you end on them acknowledging, “We’ll need to do something because it’s still going to eat away at the outer edge of the lands, but it’ll just be slower now. We’ve bought ourselves some time.” You set up the sequel.

[Emily]
Yeah, they’ve bought some time to figure out the real solution. Lithium batteries.

[Shep]
Right. We need to cool this hot cocoa ocean somehow.

[Thomas]
And then those people who are like, “Entropy will take care of it. There are natural cycles to the warmth of the ocean.”

[Shep]
“Yes, it will cool, but will all be melted by then.”

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
“Do the math!”

[Thomas]
So are we going to focus on a small group of people like we typically do in these kinds of disaster movies?

[Emily]
Of course. You’ve got your-

[Thomas]
There’s the scientist obviously.

[Emily]
Scientist, your true leader, politician-esque…

[Thomas]
Do you have like, the corrupt mayor is with them at first? You don’t realize that the mayor is corrupt.

[Shep]
I don’t think the mayor is part of the group. I think that they go to the mayor and find out that he is the one that sold off big chunks of the land to the billionaires.

[Thomas]
So of course he’s a denier.

[Emily]
Yeah. “It’s not causing problems, it’s just heating up a little bit.”

[Thomas]
Right. He’s just full of excuses. He’s got a way to explain every argument away, whether it makes sense or not. But one thing he knows for sure is “It’s not my fault. Nothing I did caused this.”

[Shep]
Everything he did was legal.

[Thomas]
Right! Yes.

[Shep]
Okay, so we have the family whose home is about to fall into the Hot Cocoa Sea. We have the corrupt governor. We have the billionaires. We have the scientist, the 80-year-old scientist that is inexplicably friends with the boy from the family.

[Emily]
Yeah, of course.

[Shep]
The scientist’s solution is to build a DeLorean that goes back in time to when there was more land.

[Emily]
How about instead of it being a random friend that doesn’t make any sense, the scientist is like his fucking uncle.

[Thomas]
Or grandparent or something.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
So his son has the house that’s too close to the sea?

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
He’s trying to convince him to move further inland. But he’s a denier.

[Thomas]
So obviously the dad’s arc is believing in climate change. What are we going to call it? Not climate change. Cocoa change?

[Shep]
Yeah. Hot cocoa change.

[Thomas]
Cocoa warming?

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
So early on, do we have a scene near the beginning where the grandfather is trying to convince his son to move? Or is that just something that comes up later where when their house falls into the sea, the grandfather is like, “Hey, I told you, I’ve told you for years.”

[Shep]
That’s where they introduced the grandfather because their house is falling into the sea. Where are they going to go?

[Thomas]
Right. They need a place to stay.

[Emily]
Right.

[Shep]
And he has to go to his dad, who told him this was going to happen, but he rebelled against him.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Yeah. That’s a great way to introduce the character. How does the movie start? I mean, surely it’s not just their house falls into the sea. So what is-

[Shep]
The opening scene is just a house falling into the cocoa.

[Thomas]
That actually could be really funny. I see like a fly in shot where you’re pushing across the Cocoa Sea. You’re coming up to the white marshmallow cliffs and there are this beautiful house that’s perched on the edge of the cliff. You know, it has an amazing view of the ocean and sort of like you come up and sort of stop on it and there’s like a beat and then the house just crumbles into the ocean.

[Shep]
Or you’re panning along the beach at all the houses-

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
And then you get to one and it collapses and it stops Wes Anderson style. So that’s the opening shot. But that’s not their house. That’s one of their neighbors.

[Thomas]
Yes. Very good.

[Shep]
So that’s the kids are going to their dad and going like, “It’s going to be us soon. It’s going to be us next.”

[Thomas]
Right. It’s, “Three doors down, just fell into the ocean.”

[Shep]
“They built on that sandy area.”

[Thomas]
Right?

[Shep]
“Their home was less stable than ours.”

[Emily]
“They had all those cookie crumbs under their house.”

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
They had ants.

[Shep]
Just ants living there.

[Thomas]
Insectist father.

[Shep]
Is this a pro insects movie? Because I need to rethink some things. So the father’s in denial, but has some inkling that it might happen to them.

[Thomas]
I think his denial is largely based on “I don’t know what else to do.”

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
No one’s going to buy the house.

[Shep]
Because it’s not worth anything because it’s about to fall into the cocoa.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
So they argue with the dad and then the house collapses? Like right then? What’s the chain of events? For- somehow the house collapses.

[Emily]
Right?

[Shep]
There’s got to be something, though.

[Thomas]
What is that initial set up?

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Do they come back from a weekend at Grandpa’s and grandpa sees that the house down the road has collapsed?

[Shep]
No, they don’t talk to grandpa.

[Emily]
Okay.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
They’re estranged until they have no other option. I think the dad knows deep down that their house is not safe.

[Thomas]
Yeah, for sure.

[Shep]
So, like, one of the kids asks if their friends can come over and he’s like, “Why don’t you go to their house?” He’s not admitting that he’s wrong, but he’s not an idiot. He knows, but he doesn’t have a solution.

[Emily]
Yeah. He’s realized a little too late and can’t sell now.

[Shep]
Right. You have a phone call with him on the phone to the realtor and there’s no bids, there’s no offers.

[Thomas]
Or on the phone to the bank, who’s, “Sorry, you still have a mortgage you need to pay.” Like, “We’re not just dissolving your mortgage.”

[Shep]
Yeah. “We’re not a charity.”

[Thomas]
Right. “That’s money you borrowed. You speculated. I’m sorry that this is happening to you, but…”

[Shep]
I mean, he didn’t speculate. He’s living there, he’s not buying the property-

[Thomas]
But the speculation is that something like this isn’t going to happen, basically that you will be able to- any loan is a speculation in some respect.

[Shep]
So when he bought the house, was it by the beach or did someone take that land and it suddenly became beachfront property?

[Thomas]
So at first he thinks, “Great!”

[Shep]
Right now it’s worth a lot.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
He paid a little bit for it because it was inland, just a tiny little property. Now it’s beachfront property.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
So he’s pro the billionaires taking the land and moving off to their own island. And in fact, when it came to a vote, he voted for it.

[Thomas]
He’s been bragging to all of his friends.

[Shep]
Right. He’s smart.

[Emily]
Oh, yeah. Cause he got a little kickback for it too, to take part of his marshmallow.

[Shep]
Did they take part of his marshmallow or did they take it right at the property line? He didn’t get a kickback. But his property value did increase for a while.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
Because it was suddenly beachfront property, but now it’s dissolving and it’s losing all its value. So he could have been smart and sold out right then, but didn’t. He held onto it and now it has become worthless. And he voted for it. So he’s in deep denial that he was so wrong.

[Emily]
Did he take out a big, giant home equity loan?

[Shep]
Yes. Yeah. Because it was worth so much more now.

[Emily]
Right.

[Thomas]
And their house was already almost paid off, so they were almost free and clear. And now they have this huge debt again that maybe the wife wasn’t totally sure about.

[Emily]
Or aware of?

[Shep]
No, they got to know.

[Thomas]
But he wants to fix up the house because “It’s only going to appreciate in value as this neighborhood-“

[Shep]
Oh, yeah. He took out a loan and then-

[Thomas]
Yeah. And then renovated the house.

[Shep]
Renovated the house. Which is now going to fall into the ocean. It hurts so bad thinking about because it’s not his fault, but it is his fault.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Right. So I feel like there needs to be at least one major event that happens prior to their house falling. Like, is their house falling in the end of the first act?

[Shep]
Yes. Because then they have to go to the grandpa and introduce him as a character.

[Thomas]
Right. And that’s kind of like where the story starts in earnest?

[Shep]
Right. So what’s the other thing that happens before the collapse?

[Thomas]
I feel like it needs to be something that’s totally external to them, that we’re, like, establishing some major story element here for later.

[Shep]
Right. World building that’s going to come back.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
So maybe it’s something with the billionaires or the politicians or something. Why are we focusing on this family specifically? What special skills do they bring to the table that are going to allow them to survive the upcoming apocalypse, basically?

[Shep]
Well, their grandpa is a scientist.

[Thomas]
Is that it?

[Shep]
You got to follow someone in a movie.

[Thomas]
Right. But I guess I think of something like San Andreas, where one of them is a pilot and one of them is a scientist, and one of them is like, everybody has their own skill that they’re bringing. And so that’s why this group is uniquely qualified to survive, as opposed to some other family who maybe has a scientist in it, but they don’t have access to a helicopter.

[Shep]
A sea captain.

[Thomas]
Right. Does the dad have some redeeming skill, or has he purchased a boat so they can go beyond the boat? Or did he used to work in the marshmallow mines and so he knows something about the structural integrity of marshmallows. Is it something like that?

[Shep]
I like the boat one because he could have bought that with the money.

[Emily]
With the money.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
Yeah, that had crossed my mind.

[Shep]
So that’s the one good thing that he spent money on is a sturdy boat that’s not going to melt in the sea.

[Thomas]
So later, when the grandfather’s house is threatened and they lose that house-

[Shep]
The grandfather lives way inland. He knew what was going to happen.

[Thomas]
Why would they ever leave his house? Then.

[Shep]
He moved inland after his kids had already moved out.

[Thomas]
I’m saying, why did our group of people that were following, they go to the grandfather’s house, why would they ever leave it over the rest of the course of the film?

[Shep]
Because all of the islands being separate is causing all the islands to melt faster than they would be connected. And he knows that because he’s a scientist. So he’s like, “We need to go out and get the islands and bring them back together.” He still has his house in the center.

[Thomas]
Okay.

[Shep]
He’s still safe, but he recognizes that long term, things need to change, and they need to get all these things back together for everyone’s benefit, but also his, because it’s better to live in a functioning society than one that has collapsed. So.

[Emily]
We could make the mom have some kind of good skill too.

[Thomas]
I think we should yeah.

[Shep]
What’s the mom’s skill?

[Emily]
I don’t know.

[Thomas]
She’s really funny. She tells great jokes, keeps everyone’s mood up.

[Emily]
Yeah, she’s got giant boobs.

[Shep]
That’s her skill? Emily, with the female’s perspective.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Thank you, Emily, for your-

[Emily]
You’re welcome.

[Thomas]
Her two big marshmallows up there, and the dad likes a motorboat, so it all works out well. On that note, let’s take a quick break, and when we come back, maybe we’ll figure out the rest of our story for Marshmallow.

[Break]

[Thomas]
All right, we’re back. Before the break, we were trying to figure out what is the mom’s special skill that makes her valuable to this group of people.

[Emily]
She could be a medical professional. She could be a-

[Thomas]
What would be the danger? Scalding from the hot chocolate? Because if everything is made of marshmallow, it’s all pretty soft, I have to imagine.

[Shep]
She is a scientist just like the grandfather. So they get along really well and the husband is left out and he feels really upset because both his wife and his father connect on a level that he doesn’t connect to them on.

[Emily]
Grandfather is like an academics scientist who’s looking at problems and solutions and stuff. And the mother is in industry. She’s an industry scientist.

[Shep]
Right.

[Emily]
She’s looking at making money, making- Maybe she knows more about the process of separation and how it works and why it’s going wrong so quickly.

[Shep]
Because too many islands separated. That was the problem. Like the first island separated, they did like an impact study and it’s like, “Well, it’s not going to be that bad.” But when you have 20 islands separate, now it’s a much bigger impact because each one magnifies the damage that it’s being done.

[Thomas]
Right. Well, and there was an arms race to who had the biggest island, so each successive island was bigger and bigger and bigger.

[Shep]
Yes. Right. That’s why the dad was so happy to have beachfront property, because beachfront property was suddenly very expensive because billionaires were buying it up. But all the billionaires have bought it up and left and there’s no one’s buying his property now.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
He held on too long.

[Emily]
So she and the grandfather can work together. Because it wouldn’t be as easy as just smushing it back together, right?

[Thomas]
Yeah. She’s going to know how to mix them together, like get the two pieces to stick together again or something.

[Emily]
Yes. She’s got to know the secret mortar.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Which is more hot cocoa.

[Thomas]
So the grandfather knows the cause of the cocoa warming and he knows why it’s happening and knows a theoretical solution. And she is uniquely positioned to explain to everybody how to get the pieces to actually stick together.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Now, who’s going to convince all the billionaires to give up their islands though?

[Emily]
That’s why they go to see the governor, thinking, he’ll help.

[Thomas]
Right?

[Shep]
Right. They’re going to prevent this-

[Thomas]
We have a solution that they’re bringing.

[Shep]
Right. They’re going to present this logical scientific argument to the government in charge. “That’s going to go super well,” he said, sarcastically rolling his eyes.

[Emily]
“I’m up for reelection next year.”

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
They’re kind of hoping for a government decree-

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
That he is just not going to do.

[Shep]
So. What’s the next step? They have a revolt against the governor, because otherwise I don’t see anything changing. Because like the governor said, “Everything he did was legal.”

[Thomas]
Right. So they’re going to have to take things into their own hands.

[Emily]
I mean, this is an apocalyptic level emergency. Citizens get to take back the power.

[Thomas]
So maybe the original island has been abandoned because that billionaire bought another bigger island. Once all the dick swinging started to happen, he was like, “Well, now my original island isn’t big enough, I have to have a bigger one.” So he just bailed on that one and it’s just out there so they can go get that island. And surely the islands must have a way to move.

[Shep]
Tiny little motorboat.

[Thomas]
They have built in motors so they can keep at a distance from the mainland. You don’t want it to be too close to the proletariat.

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
So they can use that. They can use the dad’s boat to get out to that island and then they can use that island to perhaps crash into another island and then adhere them together and start doing like a Katamari Damacy thing where they’re just collecting all these islands.

[Emily]
So they start by collecting abandoned islands. Are the billionaires starting to catch on to it and thinking-?

[Thomas]
Oh, right away. Right.

[Emily]
“That’s still my island. I didn’t give that up.”

[Thomas]
Oh, yeah.

[Emily]
How do we stop the evil billionaires?

[Thomas]
I mean, really, you need a peasant revolt, right?

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Well, first of all, the railroad workers go on strike. I don’t want to derail the conversation again. So how do they get the peasants to revolt?

[Emily]
How do they convince them that-

[Shep]
“Either we go out and collect all these islands or we all die. Those are our options.” How do they do their Extinction Rebellion?

[Thomas]
There has to be some- people don’t believe them at first, or at least a lot of people don’t believe them, or it seems like an insurmountable issue.

[Emily]
Right.

[Thomas]
And they need to prove that their solution is actually a solution.

[Shep]
Right. That’s what the first island is for.

[Thomas]
Exactly. So they go and they get the first abandoned and maybe they crash it back into the mainland and re-adhere it and demonstrate, “Look, we can get these things, we can bring them back, we can reconnect them.” But how does that actually stop the melting of the marshmallow island?

[Shep]
It doesn’t stop it, but it slows it down.

[Thomas]
Is it demonstrably slower?

[Shep]
Yes!

[Thomas]
Okay.

[Shep]
I mean, it would be demonstrably slower. You have less surface area, so less is being melted away at any given time.

[Thomas]
Is this basically a problem for the writers? How are they going to convey that to the audience visually, though?

[Shep]
How is it not clear?

[Thomas]
I mean, there has to be a focal point where it’s like this thing, this beloved memorial is about to crumble into the ocean. But we’ve crashed this island into it, and now the memorial is safe and people who go, “Oh, yeah, look at that.”

[Emily]
Sure, I buy it.

[Thomas]
“These billionaire islands are plenty big enough to protect the ocean. The ocean is encroaching on the town and obviously parts of the city are falling in. These are basically just like one home on a giant empty island. So if we just put them all back along the shoreline, the current shoreline, that’ll buffer and like you said, slow down that progress and give us time.”

[Shep]
Yeah, I’m convinced.

[Thomas]
Okay, so now they get a critical mass of people to take to the seas and attack the billionaires?

[Emily]
Yeah. They have to out the governor mayor character

[Thomas]
Oh, yeah, totally.

[Emily]
And that helps boost their numbers, obviously.

[Shep]
Are they outing him or ousting him?

[Emily]
Both?

[Thomas]
Yes.

[Shep]
Outing is rude.

[Emily]
Not that kind of outing. I agree. That kind of outing is rude.

[Shep]
That’s all I’m picturing now, is the governor being-

[Thomas]
It’s like, “You guys stop it.”

[Emily]
What’s the right word for that? Then-

[Shep]
For what?

[Emily]
Showing his truth. They’re pulling back the curtain.

[Shep]
Oh, outing.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Outing is the right word.

[Thomas]
They’re revealing his corruptness.

[Shep]
So maybe that’s what the dad is good for, is admitting his mistake and giving a rousing speech to the peasants, his fellow peasants, that he was wrong. And he’s admitting that he was wrong. He was blinded by greed and his own hubris.

[Thomas]
Sure. Maybe he’s a blue-collar worker. And so the prospect of beachfront property was like, “Well, this could never happen. I could never have afforded something like this. This is a miracle.”

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
And so he was very vocally, like you said, in favor of what was happening. So for him to switch sides all of a sudden is meaningful.

[Emily]
He had given the impassioned speech as to why they should sell in the first place or allow this to happen.

[Thomas]
Yeah. Maybe he convinced a bunch of people originally.

[Shep]
Yeah. That’s why he really can’t go back on it at the beginning-

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
Because he convinced others to go along with it. And even if he knows on some level that he was wrong, it would be embarrassing to admit that he was wrong.

[Thomas]
Is he skeptical that this is going to work? And so the first island convinces him as well?

[Shep]
He has to be on board a little bit, because they take his boat to the island.

[Emily]
Well, he trusts his wife.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
She’s the one with the knowledge, and he trusts her implicitly.

[Shep]
Right. They have their roles in their family.

[Thomas]
He knows she’s smarter than him.

[Shep]
Yes.

[Emily]
Right.

[Shep]
That’s why he married her.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
And she helped convince him that it was okay because she was part of the impact studies on-

[Shep]
The first island.

[Emily]
The first island.

[Thomas]
And frankly, what do they have to lose? If this doesn’t work-

[Emily]
Right.

[Thomas]
In fact, even better if this doesn’t work. You were right. Although, is he pretty sure it’s going to work? He just doesn’t want to admit it, or is he genuinely skeptical of this plan?

[Shep]
I think that he would be genuinely skeptical.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
He knows that it’s bad that the beaches are being eroded away, but he doesn’t think there’s really anything that can be done about it.

[Thomas]
Is it his boat or is it the granddad’s boat? The granddad is retired and has a boat.

[Shep]
No, granddad doesn’t have a boat. He lives so far inland. Why would he have a boat? Where would he keep it?

[Thomas]
At the harbor. Where do you keep boats?

[Shep]
But the harbor is dissolving, so there’s no place to leave a boat long term.

[Thomas]
Well, where’s the dad’s boat?

[Shep]
Right on his beach.

[Thomas]
Then the house fell on top of it?

[Shep]
That eliminates his role in the movie.

[Thomas]
“We can take my boat. Oh… Right.” I mean, the other thought, I don’t know how much this would convince other people, necessarily, is that they don’t lose their house. Their house is falling into the ocean. It’s not gone yet, but it obviously will. But when they get that first island, they smash it back into the cliff where their house is, and it saves their house. And so they’re able to demonstrate, “Hey, we saved our home. We can save your homes, too.”

[Shep]
No, the dad’s like, “Oh, we’re done, we solved it.” What is the billionaire’s response to their islands being stolen from them, essentially?

[Thomas]
They would try to sail away, wouldn’t they? They have everything they need.

[Shep]
They would try to sail away, or they’d try to fight off the peasants.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
They’d hire other people to-

[Thomas]
Marshmallow mercenaries.

[Shep]
Marshmallow mercenaries. Love it.

[Thomas]
I just need to bring up that somebody in this has to be a sugar daddy.

[Shep]
But not the dad.

[Thomas]
Right, no.

[Emily]
No.

[Shep]
He’s not the sugar daddy.

[Thomas]
He’s the big hunk.

[Shep]
That’s why she married him.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
All those kisses.

[Emily]
You got him started. This is your fault.

[Shep]
I will admit that I was wrong.

[Thomas]
Oh and the, uh, uhm, whatchamacallit.

[Shep]
(Pained groans) Nope. Too far.

[Thomas]
Okay, I’ll take five.

[Shep]
How do I… how do I delete someone else’s podcast?

[Thomas]
How do you unsubscribe from this podcast you’re a part of?

[Shep]
Yes.

[Thomas]
So what do we need to figure out in our story still? I think it’s basically the climax, I think is what we need.

[Shep]
Right. Suddenly all the peasants are on board, and they all-

[Thomas]
Are we convinced that all the peasants are on board?

[Shep]
Somehow we have to get them on board. That’s the only resolution that you can have.

[Emily]
Oh, are we Newsie-ing this? Is it, the end of Newsies?

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
Where it’s just them at the paper and they’re like, “Oh, man, nobody joined us, we’re screwed.” And then the wave of child labor workers come, and- You have to see this movie, Shep!

[Shep]
I’m never watching Newsies. You can’t make me, even though you bring it up every podcast. Okay. So they have a small group of people that are going out and capturing these islands. The rich people catch on and they start defending their islands with mercenaries. So they go to try to capture an island, but it’s got a bunch of mercenaries on it, and they try to fight them, but they can’t. They’re outnumbered. And that’s when the other peasants show up. Newsies-style, apparently.

[Thomas]
Yeah, that’s accurate. I’ve seen Newsies, several times.

[Shep]
No golly.

[Thomas]
I love Newsies.

[Shep]
I’m outnumbered.

[Thomas]
You are. Newsies is fantastic.

[Shep]
So I’ve been repeatedly told.

[Thomas]
By us.

[Shep]
Yes.

[Thomas]
Is it the case that the mercenaries don’t actually want to hurt anybody or kill anybody, and so they’re overwhelmed by- the crowd of people is so big that they have that “They can’t get us all” mentality, and that’s how they have a show of strength to which the mercenary’s response is like, “Yeah, fine, I don’t care that much”?

[Shep]
I think some of the mercenaries have to realize that if they don’t let the islands go back in, they will also be screwed.

[Thomas]
There’s some guy whose home is actively being threatened.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Emily]
You have to have that element. And then I think, yeah, just being overwhelmed by the amount. They’re not getting paid that much.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
Even if they are, what good is money if society collapses and currency has no value?

[Emily]
If I know one thing about mercenaries, it’s that they go with the side that has the power. If the billionaires no longer have the power, eh, they’re willing to switch sides.

[Thomas]
Are the mercenaries just literally overwhelmed? The people just go running past them and they can’t stop everyone. Are they mercenaries or are they just basically security guards? They don’t have guns or anything, just a show of force who are quickly outnumbered. They’re strong enough to hold back that initial group because it’s a fairly small group, but when everyone else shows up, that’s a tidal wave of people they just can’t prevent from getting into the control house and taking over.

[Emily]
Right.

[Shep]
I like that because it’s visually representative of the real-world situation where we outnumber billionaires a billion to one.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
Why are we letting them ruin our planet?

[Thomas]
Well, it’ll trickle down. Don’t worry. Just be patient. Because one day you might be a billionaire. And don’t you want that kind of freedom?

[Shep]
No, I want a planet with breathable air.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
I’ve made my choice.

[Thomas]
Does this happen, like, one island at a time? Or is it the case where we’re focused on our one group on their one island, but that wave happens across all the other islands pretty much simultaneously?

[Shep]
I like that because you could have a line about how it seems that the melting of the islands is slow now, but it’s going to happen all at once.

[Thomas]
Oh, yeah.

[Shep]
It’s going to be slow at the beginning, but eventually it’s going to be all at once. And so when they’re capturing the islands at the end, they’re doing it one at a time and then people realize this is the solution and they all go out in different groups and start getting all the islands all at once. And it’s the same line but the opposite effect.

[Thomas]
So what is the very end of the movie? They’ve crashed all the islands back together. They have a single land mass again.

[Shep]
The very end is the grandpa and the mom talking about, “We’ve slowed it down, but it hasn’t stopped.”

[Thomas]
Right? Everyone’s cheering. Everyone’s like, “We’re saved, we did it.” And they’re like, “Hang on-“

[Emily]
“This is not a permanent solution.”

[Thomas]
“That was step one.”

[Shep]
Right. “This is the first step. We have to come up with a longer solution because the islands are still melting.”

[Thomas]
Is the final scene essentially like a new governing body being put together?

[Shep]
A New Hope! Blue Harvest. Is it the final scene a new governing body put together? Or is it just them being triumphant on the beaches that they’ve crashed the islands into? Like, “This isn’t a solution, but it’s given us time to come up with a solution.” That’s the end. You end on a triumph. Don’t end on bureaucracy. Who are you? George Lucas? No, the ending is not them in a meeting room talking about “Who votes, aye, nay.” No, this is for kids.

[Emily]
Yeah. End it with them being triumphant on the beaches.

[Shep]
Right. Triumphant, but them saying “It’s not the end, this is just the first step.”

[Thomas]
That sounds good.

[Shep]
And then we’ll never know what the second step is because the movie is going to flop, because advertisers won’t get on board.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
Because capitalism.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
They don’t want to make a statement.

[Thomas]
If you want to make a statement, we’d love to hear your thoughts on today’s show. Was it toasted to golden perfection or burnt to a crisp? 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

[Emily]
TDineen left us a five-star review. They said “A royal romp! These cheeky folks are a breath of fresh air in a world of stale crime sleuth podcasts. Keep up the great work, team!!!”

[Thomas]
If you leave us a five-star review on Apple podcasts, we’ll read it on the show at some point in the future. Until then, Emily, Shep, and I will return soon with another episode of Almost Plausible.

[Outro music]

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