Newspaper

References

• Woodward and Bernstein
• Newsies
• Early Edition
• 12 Hours After
• The Truth
• The Paper
• Citizen Kane
• Safety Not Guaranteed
• Three Days of the Condor
• War Games
• Mercury Rising
• Doc Hollywood
• William Randolph Hearst
• The Chronicles of Narnia
• The Langoliers
• SightLineVR (“The Chair”)
• The Third Policeman
• Back to the Future
• Groundhog Day
• About Time
• The Time Traveler’s Wife
• Dr. Strange

Transcript

[Intro music begins]

[Shep]
Do all our movies take place in the ’80s?

[Emily]
A lot of them do.

[Shep]
I’m just trying to plan ahead.

[Emily]
We’re clearly ’80s children.

[Thomas]
Yeah. I was going to say, I wonder why-

[Intro music]

[Thomas]
Hey there, story fans. Welcome to Almost Plausible, the podcast where we take ordinary ideas and turn them into stories. I’m your host, Thomas J. Brown, and stop the presses, because this week on the show, we’re creating a story that centers around a newspaper. Getting to the bottom of this story with me are my own Woodward and Bernstein. It’s Emily-

[Emily]
Hey, guys!

[Thomas]
And F. Paul Shepard.

[Shep]
I’m not qualified.

[Thomas]
I’m glad to have you both here, but I have good news and bad news. The bad news is that the best newspaper movie already exists, and that is the 1992 musical Newsies. So what are we even doing here?

[Emily]
This is 100% true.

[Thomas]
It really is, I think.

[Shep]
Is it about the newspaper, though?

[Thomas]
It’s about the newspaper industry…?

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Okay.

[Thomas]
I would say the newspaper does play a central role in that film.

[Shep]
See, there are two broad categories when it comes to newspaper stuff. There’s magical realism, which is Early Edition or 12 Hours After or something like that, where you get the news ahead of time. And then there are movies about the newspaper industry or the book, The Truth, the Discworld novel, which is about making a newspaper. There’s The Paper (1994), criminally underrated newspaper movie.

[Emily]
Greatest movie ever made.

[Shep]
All The President’s Men. Citizen Kane is kind of a newspaper movie-

[Thomas]
Kind of.

[Shep]
Because he’s a publisher. So there are a whole bunch of movies about the newspaper industry. So I thought this was about a newspaper.

[Thomas]
Yeah, that’s what I had in mind as well. And when I was trying to think of pitches for this week, I kept coming up with ideas that already exist. So my honorable mentions include Early Edition, Safety Not Guaranteed, and Three Days of the Condor, which all have plots similar to things that I thought of.

[Shep]
I totally forgotten about Safety Not Guaranteed. That takes me back.

[Thomas]
Well, that was the bad news. The good news is that I have confidence we’ll be able to come up with our own unique story. So let’s jump into our pitch session. Emily will start with you. Tell me all the news that’s fit to print.

[Emily]
All right. I think my first one fits in with the newspaper as a central role and not the newspaper industry. Actually, now that I think about it, we’ll get there. A girl discovers coded messages in her small town’s newspaper and is convinced it’s KGB messages from Soviet spies. So clearly this takes place in the ’80s

[Shep]
Do all our movies take place in the ’80s?

[Emily]
A lot of them do.

[Shep]
I’m just trying to plan ahead.

[Emily]
We’re clearly ’80s children.

[Thomas]
Yeah. I was going to say, I wonder why-

[Emily]
There’s a level of, like, “We can only go so far and we’ve stopped.”

[Thomas]
They say write what you know.

[Emily]
Yeah. So she’s convinced these newspaper messages are from Soviet spies. From the KGB to Soviet spies. Turns out it’s just a couple of boys down the street playing war games and using the newspaper as a means of doing that. And then the three get enlisted into a secret government decoder program.

[Shep]
So how did the government find out about them? I could understand the government finding out about the boys. How did they find out about the girl?

[Emily]
In my head, I imagined that they kind of converge all at the same time. She figures it out the same time the government figures out who it is, and they kind of go there to get, like, meet at the same time, coincidentally. And the government’s like, “Why are you here?” And she’s like, “Oh…” I didn’t think that far ahead yet. That’s what we’re supposed to do.

[Thomas]
Right. That’s a detail we can figure out.

[Shep]
I don’t like coincidence. I do like the premise. I like that whole code solving type.

[Thomas]
It’s sort of Three Days of the Condor meets War Games.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Yes. What was the movie with the autistic boy where it’s puzzles? It was a puzzle in the back of a magazine or something.

[Thomas]
Yeah. What was that? I remember. I know what you’re talking about.

[Shep]
Mercury Rising. That was the name of the movie-

[Emily]
Okay. Yeah.

[Thomas]
That’s right. Yes.

[Shep]
With Bruce Willis. It’s all coming back to me.

[Emily]
All right. So that’s pitch number one.

[Shep]
So is that about the newspaper, though? Because it seems like the newspaper is the medium.

[Emily]
I realized that as I was about to read it, I was like, “Oh, wait…”

[Thomas]
But if the government job that they get, if what they’re decoding is messages in newspapers.

[Emily]
That could be. We could easily incorporate it further.

[Shep]
Or they use the newspaper to solve a problem-

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Because they’re already using it to send coded messages to each other.

[Thomas]
Sure.

[Shep]
It might be worth exploring.

[Emily]
I mean, it’s an interesting concept, and you could definitely take it somewhere.

[Shep]
Well, I like the ’80s, even though 1980 was 20 years ago.

[Thomas]
Right?

[Emily]
Yeah. 20 years ago. I only have two today. My second one is the last paper issue of a midsize city’s newspaper is set to publish in the next 24 hours, and the managing editor wants it to be the greatest issue they’ve produced and uncovers a crazy city council secret.

[Shep]
Because a lot of actual reporting is done by reporters. Shocking. I know.

[Emily]
Right.

[Thomas]
Yeah. That’s funny because I have a pitch that’s sort of similar to that. And it was actually my shortest of my three pitches. It’s a near future story about the last print newspaper in the world releasing its final edition. That was all I came up with. I just liked the idea of literally the last newspaper that’s going to be printed. So similar idea of a small paper that’s closing down-

[Emily]
I was also visioning that the secret would be just something really bizarre, like, just completely insanely bizarre. Not even, like, criminal. Just like, fucking. What the fuck? Weird.

[Thomas]
One of the city council members is actually a lizard person,

[Emily]
Exactly.

[Thomas]
The mayor. It’s going to be the mayor’s lizard person. You’ve heard one of my ideas. So I’ll do my other two here. The first is the main character moves from the big city to a rural town for whatever reason. And he decides that the once a week newspaper that mainly focuses on things like farm reports and town gossip and sharing recipes is just all wrong. So he goes on a mission to improve the newspaper and unintentionally runs it into the ground, upsetting the townsfolk in the process. His redemption comes when he learns more about the town and the people living in it. He helps restore the newspaper to its former state and manages to make a couple of small changes that actually do benefit the town.

[Shep]
There are a lot of that type of big city person goes to the small town and has trouble adjusting, adapting, and then changes everything for the better. Doc Hollywood comes to mind.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
Doc Hollywood is so good. I was thinking the same thing.

[Thomas]
My another idea is that an unscrupulous newspaper man at the turn of the century, the turn of the 20th century, helps corrupt politicians and businessmen run the small city where they all live. When the protagonist confronts them about printing lies, the newspaper man responds, “What I print is true because I print it.”

[Shep]
That sounds familiar. That line sounds familiar.

[Emily]
That sounds like-

[Thomas]
Does it? Oh, no.

[Emily]
I was going to say it sounds like a line from Newsies.

[Shep]
I haven’t seen Newsies. So it doesn’t sound like a line from Newsies to me, but it does sound like something that might have happened in real life.

[Emily]
I was going to say it sounds like something Hurst might have actually said out loud.

[Thomas]
Yeah. All right, Shep, those are mine. What do you have?

[Shep]
Well, I wanted to talk a little bit about your new future story about the last print newspaper in the world releasing its final edition

[Thomas]
Oh, sure. Yeah.

[Shep]
Because I can kind of picture it like they had announced and then they got new subscribers. But that is an event that happened in the past, so it’s not going to happen again. And so now it’s just sort of petering out, going out with a whimper instead of fanfare. And it’s the end of an era, literally the era of print media coming to a close.

[Thomas]
I was going to say that it seems implausible that they would because they got a whole bunch of subscribers keep going that they would have planned for this big finale or this big final issue and then just stuck with that. But how many times have we seen that in real life where a company is like, well, “I guess we’re closing,” and then everyone’s like, “No, we’ll save you.” And so they stay open longer.

[Shep]
Yeah, briefly.

[Thomas]
Briefly. So I think that is actually a pretty realistic story for them to have.

[Shep]
Right. I’m picturing characters that are thinking it’s going to happen again, they’re going to be revived again because they were saved last time. “Once people find out that we’re actually closing, they’ll come back,” but they don’t.

[Thomas]
All right, Shep, what do you have for us?

[Shep]
So like I said, there were a couple of newspaper themed stories, like Early Edition and 12 Hours After, where the trick is that they’re getting the news ahead of time. So I had an idea. What about a newspaper that tells you news that happened in the past? How come nobody’s made a movie about that? My other idea is I like magical realism. So how about a newspaper that you can enter any picture that’s in the newspaper for a day because it’s a daily paper.

[Thomas]
Makes sense.

[Shep]
So you can go into that time whenever that photo was taken for one day. You can’t affect anything. Well, you can change things there, but it doesn’t change anything outside the newspaper because it’s its own reality.

[Emily]
I like that idea that it’s only encapsulated universe, basically because you’ve already captured that time and it can’t go forward or back.

[Thomas]
Could you go back to it because you have the newspaper, you can always go back into it anytime.

[Shep]
Well, it could go either way. It could be going back for that day, uses up that newspaper or maybe just that page. So you can’t go back again. But if you want to know more about an event, you could go to the event. What if you got the newspaper to print a photo for you of something in the past, a dead relative or whatever?

[Thomas]
I was just going to say that. Yeah.

[Shep]
You could go and visit them the day that they had that photo taken.

[Thomas]
Interesting. I like this a lot.

[Shep]
So if you had a photo of, like, your grandmother as a young lady, you could go back and meet her as a young lady, but she wouldn’t know you because you being her descendant. That’s the thing that happens in her future.

[Thomas]
So is this the story, then? The main character has, like, a wife died of cancer type of thing and has all these photos from her life and gets them printed somehow and visits her in each one?

[Shep]
Or it could be someone keeps buying ad space and is just printing a photograph over and over again. We don’t know why. And they go to investigate. Why is this person doing that? Well, that’s why.

[Emily]
Interesting.

[Thomas]
I do like the idea that it’s a one time use because that creates tension and conflict.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Oh, the photo they keep printing over and over again could be like a crime scene photo. And they could be trying to solve the crime by going back in and going over all the details every time and, like, marking everything.

[Shep]
Or that’s what they want to use it for. Like “This person is wasting it just meeting his dead wife over and over and over again. We could use it for good. We could solve crimes.” Of course, you need a photo of the event before the crime. If you had a photo of the event within 24 hours of the crime, you could go back in and just wait, hide out somewhere and wait. But the guy with the power doesn’t want to do any of that. He just wants to relive the same day with his wife over and over again.

[Thomas]
So he can take people with him.

[Shep]
I don’t know. We’re making it up right now as we go along.

[Thomas]
I mean, I like this one.

[Emily]
I like this one a lot, too.

[Thomas]
Should we pursue this then, as our story? Because this is the one I’m most intrigued by.

[Emily]
Yeah. I think this might be the winner.

[Thomas]
So is it the newspaper that is magical, or is it the guy, or does he have some process that he’s come up with to make the newspapers magical?

[Shep]
I think it’s the guy, because if you want to use his power yourself to solve crimes or whatever, you need to convince him to go along with it. But he doesn’t want to do any of that because he doesn’t care about anything in the current world because like you said, his wife died-

[Thomas]
And it’s just newspapers this works with?

[Emily]
Yes.

[Thomas]
For some reason.

[Shep]
Sure.

[Emily]
It has to only be newspapers. For the theme to be newspaper.

[Thomas]
Right. To fit the premise of our show. And I think it would be one of those things, too, where it’s like, “Well, what about other things?” He’s like, “No, it’s just newspapers. I’ve tried.”

[Emily]
Yeah. We don’t have to explain why.

[Thomas]
Maybe it’s only like this town’s edition of newspapers or something. Like you get the Washington Post or the New York Times. Not going to happen. Doesn’t work. Not the online edition that doesn’t work either. It has to be the print edition.

[Emily and Shep]
Yup.

[Shep]
Because you don’t have to explain none of them. It’s magical reality.

[Thomas]
Right. It’s magic.

[Emily]
It’s magic. We don’t care. It’s just how it is. It’s got its own rules.

[Shep]
I don’t want you to be able to bring anything out of it either, or you can try to bring stuff out of it. But when you get out to the real world, it’s all made out of, like, papier-mâché or whatever.

[Emily]
It’s two dimensional.

[Shep]
It’s a photo of whatever.

[Thomas]
Has time passed?

[Shep]
Does time pass outside the newspaper when you’re inside the newspaper?

[Thomas]
Are we doing Narnia rules again?

[Shep]
I like Narnia rules.

[Emily]
Narnia rules are good, but I think it would be more of a fun challenge to have that yes. The time elapses.

[Thomas]
When you’re in the newspaper, are you in danger?

[Shep]
Great question.

[Thomas]
If the newspaper is destroyed-

[Shep]
Well, paper cuts.

[Thomas]
And then you come out and your hands are all black? Damn it.

[Emily]
But you can’t be harmed in the paper. But if the paper’s destroyed, then you can’t come back out. So you die.

[Thomas]
What is the process of going into and coming out? Is it like a ’90s movie where the person sort of, like, shrinks down and gets sucked into the picture, or is it just “Snap your fingers?, now we’re there”?

[Shep]
I think it’s a process, like you said. So the guy has a method. So you put the photo down, you put the page down of the newspaper, you look at the photo and he’s explaining to someone else so he can bring them in, kind of like hypnosis, where he’s like, “You see the photo, the air is blowing, the tree is swaying. You’re in the photo.” And so as they’re talking, the photo is getting bigger and bigger and bigger until they’re there.

[Thomas]
What I was thinking is if the paper gets destroyed or the photo of the paper or whatever gets destroyed, that they would snap back to wherever they were. So if somebody crumples it up or tears it up or it catches on fire or whatever, suddenly they just appear back where they were. Or do they come out of the paper, or do they die?

[Shep]
So if time is passing while they’re in the paper, they must only be in the paper mentally. Like their bodies are still there.

[Emily]
So they’re just sitting in a room-

[Shep]
Staring at a newspaper?

[Emily]
Staring at it and they’re just mentally in there?

[Shep]
I’m asking. I’m saying, where are their bodies while they’re in the newspaper? Which way would you like it to go? Would you like them to be physically inside the newspaper or-

[Emily]
Well, if they’re physically inside the newspaper, then you introduce opportunities for mischief with the newspaper to create a problem later down the line. Like somebody cleaning up and moving it somewhere else or crumpling it or a cat sleeping on it. And they can’t get out because the fur is in the way.

[Shep]
Like, it’s a window they can’t pass through this doorway because to them it’s a giant cat.

[Thomas]
So this might be a total left turn that we don’t want to pursue. But if you’re physically in the newspaper and somebody moves the newspaper to a new location, could you get into, for example, a secure area secretly?

[Shep]
Oh, man, what a great twist.

[Emily]
See, I like the idea that mischief that can happen if you’re physically in the paper.

[Thomas]
Right. Would it be a shock somebody moves the paper and suddenly you’re in the recycling truck or you’ve been moved to a new location, and so you come out and you’re like, “Whoa, wait, this isn’t what I was expecting.” So I don’t know. That might be a totally different idea than what we want to pursue.

[Emily]
It’s like a really neat idea, though, because you could do a fun heist movie with that.

[Shep]
If he had a partner, he could be doing heists that went unsolved because someone slides the paper halfway under a door or something, and he comes out and does whatever and then gets back in and comes back out.

[Thomas]
Can he take the jewels or the money or whatever with him into the paper? Surely he goes in with his clothes and stuff. Right?

[Shep]
Right.

[Emily]
Yeah. If he can take other people, then, yes, he can take objects with him. He can take foreign objects in and out, but the foreign objects can’t stay in without him. And he can’t take anything from the picture out.

[Thomas]
Yeah, whatever goes in, the same rules apply. So if he drops something in there after 24 hours, it’ll just come back out wherever the paper is.

[Emily]
Just pops back up-

[Shep]
What happens to the world when you’re in it, when 24 hours are up? Does it start to break apart Langoliers-style, or are you just knocked out immediately?

[Thomas]
I imagined it as whatever the process of getting in is, that happens again, but going out, and then you’re left holding a newspaper with the original photo.

[Emily]
So everything just starts shrinking around you?

[Thomas]
Or whatever that ends up looking like. If you’ve ever played a VR game, one of the cool things about them is that the game knows what you can see in the headset. So there’s a great demo called The Chair. And one of the cool things to do in The Chair is look around because you’ll look to the left and see a tree and you’ll look to the right and you’ll see a bush, and then you look back to the left and all of a sudden you’re looking down the street of a city. So it’s completely changed as your head was turned away. So I think that’d be kind of a neat way, if you could find a way to shoot that. Like you were saying, “Oh, you hear the breeze, you see the tree,” and so little things start appearing in the room that are actually the things in the picture. And then eventually you kind of like turn and look to the side. And now this side of the room, it’s not your shitty apartment, it’s the bank vault or whatever.

[Emily]
I like that, because then it can reverse very easily.

[Shep]
If there’s a photo of a restaurant and you go in and have a meal, can you have a meal?

[Emily]
We are getting into my thesis territory here. Yes. You can have the meal, but when you come out, you will be hungry. This is very Third Policeman rules. When you go down the elevator, you can have anything you want in the cavern, but you have to weigh the exact same amount going up the elevator as you did coming down.

[Shep]
So I imagine the person with the ability explaining this to the newcomer, the audience stand-in.

[Emily]
Yes.

[Shep]
That could be all stuff that they cover or things that the audience stand-in asks, “What if we have a meal? It’s so expensive, but we go and have a meal and then just come out of the newspaper.” “Yeah, you’ll still be hungry.”

[Emily]
“You’ll be full while we’re there. And you’ll enjoy it and you’ll taste it and it’ll be fine. But when you come out, you’re still hungry.”

[Shep]
“You’ll have the memory of it.” I imagine that the person, if he really is just meeting with his wife whenever has done that multiple times.

[Thomas]
Sure. Yeah, probably.

[Emily]
Yeah. Well, it’s all old hat to him. He’s like, “Yeah, you can do that. That’s fine. It’s a thing. I’ve done it. I enjoy it sometimes.”

[Thomas]
So is the guy who can do it… Has he been committing crimes or does the new person talk him into it?

[Shep]
The new person has to talk him into it. That’s the inciting incident, is the new person discovering this ability and being greedy. Not trying to be greedy, but just thinking of the possibilities like we are right now.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
What could you do with this?

[Emily]
They have this conversation, like, “Oh, we can do this. We could go to this park and I can finally go to Disney World.”

[Shep]
Whereas the person has only ever been using it for their own enjoyment, not causing harm or anything, but really reliving their memories.

[Thomas]
Does his desire to relive those memories with his wife cause conflict?

[Shep]
Well, sure. Why would they want to do anything other than their routine? This is an old, maybe retired guy.

[Emily]
Yeah. Maybe he agrees to it one time and he’s like, “Okay, well, I’ll show you what it’s like.”

[Shep]
Oh, yeah, it’s a reporter. The reporter has found him and is doing a story, and so he explains it and shows him whatever. And then the reporter is coming up with new ways to use this ability.

[Thomas]
It’s a small enough town that everyone’s noticed these weird ads that keep being purchased, different photos of this woman. Nobody maybe knows who she is because the guy moved to the town after she died. So nobody there met her. It’s been like a gossip thing. So the reporter looks and sees who is buying these ads, and it’s just this guy. So he goes to interview the guy and maybe somehow finds out. Or he has to have something maybe to dangle over the guy to give the guy a reason to show him “I have this special ability.”

[Emily]
Does he just walk in on him doing it?

[Shep]
Yeah, I don’t like coincidence. But if the guy happened to come out of the newspaper while the reporter was there.

[Thomas]
Maybe the horse is looking in the window, like he’s knocking on the door and the guy’s not answering. He’s like-

[Emily]
Because he’s in the paper, so he’s not answering, but it looks like he’s home. Everything else is saying he’s home.

[Thomas]
Yeah, the lights are on or something and car is in the driveway. So he kind of peeks in the window and then sees the guy sort of come back up out of the paper and is just like, “What the fuck just happened?” And then says, “Well, either you tell me what’s going on, or I’m going to print what I saw.” I mean, nobody would believe him, though. If somebody said, “I saw a person materialized out of a newspaper,” they would not believe you. So what is his proof or what is it that he has over him?

[Shep]
Well, once he’s seen it once, he would know to come next time with a camera.

[Thomas]
That assumes he knows there’s going to be a next time. And was he just going to sit outside the guy’s house 24 hours a day waiting?

[Shep]
Well, once he’s seen it, he talks to the guy.

[Thomas]
But why would the guy ever answer his questions?

[Emily]
Why would the guy not if he’s just using it for innocent purposes? What does he care if other people know?

[Thomas]
Because he doesn’t want the attention. If you had a superpower, would you want other people to know about it?

[Emily]
No. Yeah, I get it. Because I don’t want people in my life.

[Thomas]
Yeah. People would be bothering you all the time to do stuff. He knows if people know that he can do this, they’re going to bring pictures to him. People are just going to bother him forever.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Like, the reporter pulls up a photo on his phone. “Can you take me into this photo?” It’s like, “No.”

[Emily]
“No it’s only in the paper.”

[Thomas]
Maybe he told people in the past, there was like, somebody who really trusted and he’s like, “Oh, I can do this cool thing.” And then it completely ruined the relationship. The guy was constantly bugging him. “Print this picture. Let’s go in here.”

[Shep]
What if he did it with his wife all the time?

[Thomas]
Interesting.

[Shep]
They had great vacations, and he’s got nobody to go with him now. That’s why he keeps going to photos with his wife. But he’s getting older. And so it’s going to be the point where she’s noticing that he’s older than he should be, older than he was when she had that photo taken.

[Thomas]
So does the reporter just keep bugging him and the guy is, “I’m just going to keep coming every day. I’m going to bother you every day until you show me or explain it or something.” So the guy’s like, “Fine, come in.”

[Emily]
Yeah. Why not let him be a pest? I like that.

[Shep]
I want to like the reporter at first.

[Thomas]
But I don’t think he does it in a nagging way.

[Emily]
Yeah. Not in a mean way.

[Thomas]
I mean, if he’s going to dangle something over the guy, we’re not going to like that no matter what.

[Shep]
Right? So maybe he shouldn’t dangle something over the guy. Maybe he’d say, “This is a miracle. What you can do is a literal miracle, and we should know about it. The world should know about it. It’s amazing. What you can do is amazing.” Not blackmail the guy. Stroke his ego.

[Emily]
Right.

[Thomas]
But he doesn’t want the world to know about it. That’s not an in. Okay. What I was going to say before is that I like what you said about the guy is alone. He doesn’t have anybody anymore now that his wife has passed away. So he’s a little bit lonely and nobody ever comes around. Maybe he lives in kind of a remote place. This guy keeps coming around. Maybe the reporter doesn’t say, “I’m just going to keep coming back.” The reporter just keeps coming back. And so finally the old guy is like, “I guess he should just come in. Then you may as well come in.” Because he actually kind of does want someone to talk to. And then maybe the reporter says, “You don’t have to explain it. I won’t write about it. I just want to see it.” And so he agrees to let the reporter sit in the room. Maybe he takes his cell phone away from him and locks it up in his safe so that he can’t take pictures or video or anything.

[Emily]
What if he does take pictures and video and it just doesn’t show anything? Because-

[Thomas]
Because he’s a vampire. Oh, no, wait.

[Emily]
When they’re in there and they’re in the newspaper, it just doesn’t show anything.

[Thomas]
He doesn’t get service in the newspaper. “Damn it.” That’d be funny.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
It would be interesting if things were a little bit differently. Like, you don’t get cell phone reception in the newspaper, even if it was like a photo from yesterday.

[Shep]
Right. Could you call someone?

[Thomas]
You could call somebody in the world, in the encapsulated world, but not outside of the paper.

[Shep]
So let’s say you wanted to have an argument with someone, or you wanted to practice an argument with someone. You could keep doing that because you know how they’ll respond because you literally called them.

[Thomas]
Okay. The old man, the guy who could do it is an old man. Is he able to pass this power on? Is the old man actually only around for a short period of time, passes this power onto the reporter or whoever that person is, and then that person starts using it for dodgy purposes?

[Shep]
I like that, because then that person, the reporter, or whoever it is, once they mess everything up, can buy an ad space and have a picture of the old man and go and talk to him and say, “Okay, I really mess things up.”

[Thomas]
Yeah. That’s what I was thinking.

[Emily]
That’s a good way to go.

[Thomas]
So somehow they meet. Maybe they’re friends. Maybe it’s like a nephew. I don’t know, whatever. No, it’s always a nephew and an uncle relationship. We gotta have a different relationship.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
It’s Doc Brown and Marty McFly. Why is he friends with an 80 year old? Doesn’t matter. Oh, so it’s not a reporter. It’s someone that he knows and he wants to share it because he’s alone and he’s lonely and he knows that he’s going to die and he wants to pass the spark on to someone else.

[Thomas]
Yeah. So he shows them how to do it, shows them how to bring other people in, show them all everything he needs to know he’s right.

[Shep]
And everything the audience needs to know. It’s great.

[Thomas]
So then that guy starts doing his thing. I think this would be a good time for us to take a break. And when we come back, we’ll figure out what those things are.

[Break]

[Thomas]
Welcome back. Now, before we press on, we need to let you know that Emily’s microphone had a temper tantrum while we were recording the second half of the show. So at some point, her audio will start to sound noticeably different. Technology, right? Anyway, back to it. So we’ve changed our story around kind of significantly. Where do we go from here?

[Shep]
This kind of reminds me of Groundhog’s Day. If you could keep using the same photo over and over again, you’re basically choosing to relive that day over and over again as many times as you want.

[Thomas]
Maybe there’s a girl he likes and there’s a photo of her in a bar or something. And he keeps going back into that photo to hit on her until he figures out what she is like and how that works.

[Emily]
Maybe it’s just a random photo of a bar in the town and he goes in. It’s like his first solo. He goes in and he meets this girl and is like, “Oh, I can figure out things and do the Groundhog Day thing where I can figure out things about you. So that when I meet you in real life.”

[Shep]
That was real problematic. I don’t know if we want that type of storyline. It might be okay if he goes in not with that intention, but as his first solo, he goes into the bar and he meets someone and they hit it off really well. And so he wants to meet her in real life, but she doesn’t have the same memory of experiences that he has.

[Thomas]
Also, she lives in New York and he lives in Vermont.

[Shep]
So, yeah, it’s not a local bar, it’s a bar from L.A.

[Emily]
That works too.

[Thomas]
So the only way he can see her is to go into the paper.

[Shep]
But she won’t remember him.

[Thomas]
Right. Our story is going in several different directions or possible directions.

[Emily]
We have to pick a lane.

[Shep]
This kind of also reminds me of a movie I have not seen called About Time. Do you remember About Time?

[Emily]
It does remind me of About Time.

[Thomas]
Oh, yeah, that’s true.

[Shep]
I’m basing this on the trailer alone. In the trailer, it’s a guy teaching his son how to travel through time, something that the men in the family can do.

[Emily]
Yeah, but they do have their limits and they know when it’s their last trip.

[Shep]
So what kind of story is this story?

[Thomas]
I really like the transporting people one, but I feel like we should save that idea for a future story. It feels a little bigger than what we have space for here, if that makes sense. I like the idea of the guy passing on the power to the next generation because I really like the idea of him going into the paper to see the old man and be like, “Man, I screwed this all up. I need your help.”

[Emily]
Okay, let’s go that track. I’m going to be decisive. Yes.

[Thomas]
What is his goal?

[Emily]
What’s the goal? What is the plan here?

[Thomas]
Once he figures out how to use it, and he’s done it a few times. What does he use it for? Does he bring people in the real world with him? Is there some girl he’s dating? And he’s like, “We can go to Tahiti right now.”

[Shep]
So you would do that to someone that you’re dating, not someone you married to?

[Thomas]
That’s a good point.

[Shep]
What if the relationship doesn’t work out, like most relationships?

[Thomas]
He’s young and dumb.

[Shep]
Yeah. Is this how he screws up?

[Emily]
Maybe.

[Thomas]
Everybody knows. Do other people find out? Yeah, I can see that. He takes a girl on a date to wherever. Maybe there’s an ad for a travel agency. And it’s Tahiti or Bora Bora or whatever, some tropical place. So they go there for the day, and she’s, like, blown away by this. She thinks it’s the coolest thing and tells a ton of people. And so the next day, a few people show up with her who she’s trying to convince. She’s like, “No, show them, show them.” And he’s like “Uh…”

[Shep]
How many people can you take at once?

[Emily]
One. Just make it easy.

[Shep]
If two people go in and one of them comes back out, does the other one come back out at the same time?

[Emily]
Yes.

[Thomas]
I think if the other one is him, but I think he’s the only one who can control it.

[Emily]
So yes.

[Thomas]
Maybe the more people you bring in, the less stable the universe is?

[Shep]
I do like the inside of the newspaper universe breaking apart and everything being papier-mâché or something like that. Made out of newspaper type of thing. I like the visual imagery of it.

[Thomas]
What is the big conflict? He screws it all up. How does he screw it all up?

[Shep]
And how can he unscrew it? So if everybody knows he has the power, that’s not a thing that can be undone. Unless Dr. Strange is in this universe, which I don’t think so. He sees an advertisement for Doctor Strange and goes into could you go into a movie universe if there’s a photo? Or would you just show up where they took the photo for the ad?

[Thomas]
Yeah, I think so. I think it’s the photo. You can’t go into a comic strip because it’s not a real thing.

[Emily]
That’s part of the rules explanation. At the beginning when he was like, “Maybe I could go into this, my favorite movie. I could go in here and I could be the hero.” And they’re like, he’s like, “No, you’ll just end up in Hollywood.”

[Shep]
What if it’s a Photoshopped image?

[Emily]
You see the real image.

[Thomas]
Using your Doctor Strange example, it’s an actual photo, but they’ve doctored it up to look like he’s floating in the air, in space or, I don’t know, whatever. But if you go in there, you’ll just see the photo shoot.

[Shep]
Yeah. So the photo of him is an actual photo. And maybe the photo of the background is a different actual photo. So which photo do you go into?

[Thomas]
Maybe there’s an aspect of intentionality. Maybe that’s one of the things the old guy teaches him. “You got to be careful. You don’t want to go into a photo of space or underwater.” Does he get the bends? I guess not. Because when he comes back out, everything is sort of back to normal.

[Shep]
Would your clothing be wet?

[Emily]
No. Everything resets.

[Thomas]
Because you would be bringing water with you. You can’t do that.

[Shep]
Oh, right.

[Emily]
Can bring anything out of the photo that you didn’t take in. But we’re not going that route. So then you can’t take anything in other than another person.

[Shep]
You have to be able to take things in.

[Emily]
But they have to come back out with you. That’s right.

[Shep]
So what does he do? This is the central question. What is the big mess up that he can fix with advice from the magical old man.

[Emily]
Yeah. How does he break something if he can’t change anything? Because he can’t change anything outside of the photo, he can’t necessarily break anything.

[Thomas]
Okay, so I have two thoughts. One is that he learns something that is true, that he doesn’t want to know, and that messes up a relationship. The other idea is that it’s not a magical power. There’s a bottle of teleportation juice and he kind of goes crazy and uses most of the bottle up.

[Emily]
I like that he sees something he can’t unsee or knows something he can’t unknow.

[Shep]
I like that one as well, because I can imagine getting advice on getting over it. But you can’t unknow it.

[Emily]
Maybe he sees a local hero is a shitbag who beats his wife or something.

[Thomas]
I was thinking maybe his girlfriend or wife or whatever, he has suspicions that she’s having an affair. So he goes to a day when he knows that she was away for the weekend or she was out or something like that so that he can follow her.

[Shep]
Oh, I have a question. Can you meet yourself if you go into the photo?

[Thomas]
Oh, hadn’t thought about that. You must be able to.

[Shep]
You must be able to because they exist in the world at that time when the photo is taken. And if it’s a photo of him sometime after he gained the ability, then he would know that if he meets someone, then he’s the one in the photo.

[Thomas]
Interesting.

[Shep]
How would your day go differently if you met someone who was you who said, “Yeah, you’re in a photo. Nothing you do today matters because nothing is permanent.” What would you do differently? How would you live your life that day?

[Thomas]
But I think of it in the movie, it’s inconsequential.

[Shep]
Yeah, I’m saying it is inconsequential. It literally has no consequences. Would you bother exercising that day? Would you bother going to work that day?

[Thomas]
Of course not.

[Shep]
Of course not.

[Thomas]
But how does that create conflict?

[Shep]
I don’t know. I’m just saying as long as you’re breaking all the rules you want.

[Emily]
Right. Say he meets himself and realizes there’s no consequences of the day. Maybe he gives himself a treat day. They go fishing,

[Thomas]
But again, what’s the conflict?

[Shep]
Maybe it’s not a conflict. This is just a thing that he does earlier in the movie when he’s still experimenting with the power.

[Emily]
But we still need a conflict. We still need something to go wrong. He needs to break something.

[Shep]
Something that he learns that he didn’t want to know. Some unfortunate fact, like you said, a cheating wife or a girlfriend. I don’t want to stereotype, though. But if he is taking a break from the day, then he could end up in a place that he wouldn’t have normally when he went to work.

[Thomas]
Maybe it’s not a love interest, but a friend of his who he thinks totally has his back, but behind his back is talking shit about him or stealing from him. Maybe. Okay, maybe the guy owns the company and the friend is stealing from the company or something like that.

[Emily]
I like the idea of maybe a non-romantic partner or friend doing something that’s-

[Thomas]
Yeah, because adultery is such a crutch for Hollywood.

[Shep]
Yes, agreed. But if he owns the company, just fire the person.

[Thomas]
But he doesn’t know. That’s my point. I see what you’re saying.

[Shep]
Once he knows, he could just fire them.

[Thomas]
Once he knows. Yeah.

[Shep]
What is the thing that he can’t do anything about once he knows?

[Thomas]
Maybe the friend or the person, whoever is corrupt in their job, he has no power over them. Maybe they’re the Sheriff of the town.

[Emily]
I was thinking local hero is a shitbag. No one’s going to believe him when he comes out and says “He eats puppies and kicks babies.”

[Thomas]
But it can’t just be like, “Oh, the mayor’s an asshole.” It has to be “My best friend, the mayor, is an asshole” because otherwise he has no stakes. It’s not a big deal for him. It’s not a conflict for him other than he knows this thing that he doesn’t like, but-

[Emily]
What if his best friend is, going back to the work thing, is stealing his work. Like maybe they work for an ad agency or something, and when he’s away-

[Shep]
It cannot be an ad agency. There’s way too many.

[Emily]
Okay, I just randomly threw something out.

[Thomas]
What if a friend is a murderer or committed a murder or committed a hit and run or something like that? He has no way to prove it. But he knows this thing.

[Emily]
Okay. Yeah. Maybe somebody died in a hit and run and it’s always been a mystery for the town and they’re just never going to find out. Because there’s no way, it’s past the point of finding out, right? And then he learns that it was his best friend or brother or something.

[Thomas]
Oh, yeah. Brother is better.

[Shep]
It’s a big coincidence that it’s someone that he knows that committed this crime.

[Thomas]
Yeah, I don’t think it would be a known-

[Emily]
Okay.

[Thomas]
There’s a missing person. Nobody knows what happened to this person.

[Emily]
I was just thinking it was there was a hit and run two years ago and nobody knew what happened. Maybe it’s not a well-known thing.

[Thomas]
Yeah, I don’t think it should be a well-known thing.

[Shep]
Why is he investigating this hit and run?

[Thomas]
I don’t think he is. I think it’s, I think he finds out.

[Emily]
He stumbles upon it. Maybe when he’s hitting on the girl in the bar picture, he notices-

[Thomas]
Actually, that’s not bad. He notices his friend is like, “Oh, I didn’t realize he was there that night” and goes to follow him.

[Shep]
I don’t like coincidences.

[Thomas]
Well, you don’t like anything, Shep, so…

[Shep]
I don’t. This is true.

[Emily]
Coincidences happen. If there’s no fate or determination, the world is coincidences.

[Thomas]
Yeah, it’s always going to be a coincidence.

[Shep]
Coincidences happen in real life, but in movies they feel like a cheat. So how about this? His friend or brother, his brother is accused of being in a hit and run and he is swearing up and down that he didn’t do it. So he thinks, “Oh, I’ll investigate it and I’ll find out what actually happened,” and he discovers it was his brother. His brother did it. His brother is guilty. People think that he’s guilty and he is guilty. And now he knows that.

[Thomas]
That’s a really good conflict.

[Emily]
I like that.

[Shep]
And no coincidences involved.

[Emily]
All very intentional.

[Shep]
What was the rule about coincidences? Coincidences that get you into trouble are fine. Coincidences that get you out of trouble are a cheat. That’s the Pixar-

[Thomas]
Well, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but our time is up, so there it is. Hot off the press. Our story that centers around a newspaper.

[Shep]
There’s so many of them.

[Thomas]
What do you think? Is this one going to hit the headlines or is it yesterday’s news? You can send your letter to the editor via email or social media. Links to those can be found on our website AlmostPlausible.com And finally, Emily, Shep, and I want to thank you for listening. Join us again next week where we hopefully come up with a complete story on another episode of Almost Plausible.

[Shep]
Another edition. Another edition of Almost Plausible.

[Thomas]
Oh, another edition. Yeah. Very good.

[Outro music]

[Thomas]
Well butts. We knew that there were going to be some failures, though.

[Emily]
There’s got to be one or two. They can’t all be gold.

[Thomas]
Nope.

[Shep]
I think this one was fine. What are you talking about?

[Emily]
I think we did end up coming up with most of a story. If you piece it all together.

[Thomas]
Yeah. Well. And the point of the podcast is to show the writing process. Writing is hard.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Emily]
And the things you have to think about when you’re trying to come up with a story.

[Thomas]
Agreed.