Oats

References

• Don Bluth
• Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH
• The Secret of NIMH
• Richard Scarry
• The Jungle
• The Aristocats
• Lady and the Tramp
• Almost Plausible: Flashlight
• Game of Thrones
• Almost Plausible: Shamrock
• The Ant and the Grasshopper
• Quest for Fire
• Ron Perlman
• Antz
• The Lord of the Rings
  • Samwise Gamgee
• Delicatessen
• The Goonies
• Stand by Me
• Alan Tudyk
• Snowshoe Hare
• Honey, I Shrunk the Kids
• Chekhov’s Gun
• The Shawshank Redemption
• Seabiscuit
• Top Secret!
• Little Women
• Wattle and Daub
• Into the Wild
• Almost Plausible: Jelly Beans
• Jurassic Park

Corrections

Throughout the episode, we use “Secret of NIMH” and “Rats of NIMH” interchangeably. Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH is the book, and The Secret of NIMH is an animated film based on the book.

Thomas accidentally referred to the showshoe hare as a snow hare.

Transcript

[Intro music begins]

[Emily]
So, could we have an adventurer going out to seek any kind of food available because of the loss of the oat stores?

[Shep]
It’s Quest for Fire, but it’s Quest for Oats.

[Thomas]
And there’s dialogue.

[Shep]
And there’s dialogue.

[Thomas]
I still say we get Ron Perlman, though, so-

[Intro music]

[Thomas]
Hey there, story fans. Welcome to Almost Plausible, the podcast where we take ordinary objects and turn them into movies. We are Emily-

[Emily]
Hey, guys.

[Thomas]
F. Paul Shepard.

[Shep]
Is that me?

[Thomas]
And I’m Thomas J. Brown. Oats, oats, a wonderful grain. Good for your heart, good for your brain. If you are vegan, the milk is humane. Combine that with cookies, perfect the twain. But a movie from oats our minds this will strain. We must give it our best lest the show be in vain.

[Shep]
Oh, my god.

[Thomas]
I am confident together a plot we shall gain. And it’s Emily’s turn to begin this campaign.

[Shep]
Wow.

[Emily]
I am voting you off the island.

[Shep]
All this week, “Hey, Thomas, you want to hang out?” “I’m busy. I’m writing something.”

[Emily]
Okay. I have one complete page pitch, and I have one brewing in my brain.

[Thomas]
Okay.

[Emily]
Oats is an old farm horse who has grown weary of his day-to-day life. He craves more excitement. One day, he decides he’s going to follow his dream and move to the city to become a carriage horse for tourists visiting the big city.

[Thomas]
This totally feels like one of those late ’80s cartoons that we all watched.

[Emily]
Right, Don Bluth. Right? Absolutely.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
So Oats is the name of the horse.

[Emily]
Of the horse. Yeah.

[Shep]
Ah. Now, did Oats grow up on the farm or was he a tamed, like- He was a wild. He was wild Oats.

[Emily]
No, no, he’s just a plain old quarter horse. Farm horse.

[Shep]
He’s plain old-

[Emily]
Just-

[Shep]
He’s plain Oats.

[Emily]
Plain old Oats. Yep.

[Shep]
All right.

[Emily]
Okay, so the one I have brewing in my brain is, of course, the serial killer one, where oats are the method for murder. And I wanted to create the pun of sowing bad oats rather than wild oats.

[Thomas]
Mm, mm, mm.

[Emily]
So-

[Thomas]
Maybe the serial killer is Goldilocks. She poisons the bear’s oatmeal, or porridge, I guess.

[Emily]
Now I was thinking it would be set further back in time.

[Emily]
I want to do an old west serial killer. So it would be someone poisoning oats with like arsenic or whatever.

[Thomas]
I love this idea, Emily, because we need more westerns. I want that to be more popular as a genre. I like that as a genre. And I can’t, off the top of my head, think of any serial killer westerns.

[Emily]
I cannot either.

[Thomas]
They’re probably one or two.

[Emily]
There’s got to be one out there somewhere.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Yeah. Anyway, that’s what I’ve got. Who’s next? I’m gonna pick Shep.

[Shep]
Oh, no. Okay. A scandal in an eggnog recipe contest when it’s revealed that the winning recipe is oatnog.

[Thomas]
So it’s a fantasy story then. Got it.

[Shep]
You don’t like oatnog?

[Thomas]
It’s fine. It’s not full-on dairy eggnog, though.

[Shep]
Oh, man. I prefer oatnog over dairy eggnog any day. Anyway, here’s another pitch. A science experiment in easing world hunger goes awry when their new creation, a plant that spreads like dandelions but produces oats, gets into the wild. Suddenly it’s everywhere. It takes over parks, and golf courses, and people’s lawns. It’s an oatpocalypse! Is the entire world gonna be converted to oats?

[Thomas]
I feel like we’d probably all be eating a lot more oats. That’s for sure.

[Shep]
Good for your heart. Probably. Possibly. Could be marketing. Who knows? That’s it for me, Thomas. What do you have?

[Thomas]
A tiny world story where a family of inch-tall people attempt to harvest several stalks of oats so that they can eat during the winter.

[Thomas]
I imagine they go out into a farmer’s field, and they have to cut down the stock, and they have to get the- Whatever the head is called. They have to get that off and haul it back to their hole where they live. I don’t know.

[Shep]
Now, is it like- Yeah, they gotta live in a burrow underground.

[Thomas]
Yes, burrow. That’s a much better word than hole.

[Shep]
Take it to the hole.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Is it like when you’re cutting down trees, you’re harvesting trees, where you gotta go up and top it, so you have one of them climb up the stalk and saw through the top because they only need the top part.

[Thomas]
Mmm. Yeah, that’s right. And then I imagine there’s like birds and mice and other things that are normal-sized.

[Shep]
Owls. Oh, no, that’s Rats of NIMH. I’m just thinking of Rats of NIMH.

[Thomas]
Oh, no.

[Shep]
That takes place in a farmer’s field.

[Thomas]
Right. And their, their burrow is in the lee of the stone. Yeah.

[Shep]
Yeah. Yeah.

[Thomas]
I have another idea. A family-friendly movie that takes place in a Richard Scarry-style world where everyone is an animal with a job. Mr. Oats is a goat, a farmer, and an old grump. He wants to live a simple life in the country, but lately the city has been encroaching on his fields. He has watched farms around his sold to developers to build bustling suburbs.

[Shep]
Does he only have a little lot? He doesn’t have a full farm?

[Thomas]
Maybe he’s had to sell parts of the farm.

[Shep]
The property taxes keep going up as the city gets closer and closer.

[Thomas]
Right. Well, yeah. The value of the property keeps going up, and that raises the taxe,s and he keeps having less crop to be able to sell.

[Shep]
Yeah, it’s a downward spiral.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
This is a family-friendly movie? This sounds very depressing.

[Emily]
Well, family-friendly doesn’t mean family-happy.

[Shep]
Plus, there’s a family of mice that keeps stealing his grain and taking it to their burrow.

[Thomas]
Those are my pitches. Which one of the pitches do we want to do today? Emily, did you have thoughts about your horse, what he does when he gets to the city?

[Emily]
Oh, yeah.

[Thomas]
Is it like, about the journey to the city?

[Emily]
He gets to the city, maybe he has some kind of animal friends that join him and…

[Thomas]
Things aren’t what he expected. And-

[Emily]
Yeah, yeah, so he goes to the park initially, right? Because that’s where the carriage rides are.

[Thomas]
Sure, he sees the carriages around the park, and he’s like, “Oh, boy.”

[Emily]
Yeah. Kind of follows him into the stable, and then the horses are, those horses, are rude to him because they’re sophisticated, beautiful horses, and he’s just country bumpkin horse.

[Thomas]
Now, is this a world with humans in it as well?

[Emily]
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Thomas]
So there’s like a cop on a police horse that comes up, and the police horse is talking to him.

[Emily]
Yeah. Harassing him. And so he ends up kind of, you know, milling around the city trying to find either a way to prove he’s good enough to be one of those horses, or find his place because he doesn’t want to go home.

[Thomas]
It’s a bit like The Jungle, where he’s just taking whatever work he can to make ends meet while he’s trying to get a better job.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
What happens in the end? Does he get to pull a carriage?

[Shep]
Glue factory.

[Thomas]
Oh, no.

[Shep]
Surprise. So the animals are sentient in this? Do they have jobs? He’s getting a job. Do they have money? How does he pay for things?

[Emily]
No, I-

[Shep]
Where is his wallet?

[Emily]
I was thinking they would be like the animals in, like, The Aristocats or Lady and the Tramp.

[Shep]
I see.

[Emily]
You know, like they’re sentient to each other, but separate from human sentience.

[Shep]
I see.

[Thomas]
Well, I don’t want to, like, you know, vote for myself too heavily. My favorite one of these pitches is the Inch Tall People story. That’s the one that I’m most interested in. Although I’m not sure, like, why we’re rooting for them necessarily.

[Shep]
Is this a sequel to Flashlight?

[Emily]
Another one?

[Thomas]
Interesting. I hadn’t thought of that.

[Shep]
Well, it’s small people.

[Thomas]
Right. They’ve gotten out of the cave. This is like decades later, or generations later.

[Shep]
Right.

[Emily]
We did this already.

[Thomas]
Did we?

[Emily]
Yes. Yes, we did. No, we did this. And they, they were out in the wilderness. We did this already. I am a billion times convinced.

[Shep]
Did we actually do it, or was it just a pitch?

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
No, I swear we did it. I’m gonna be so pissed if I have made this up in my head, because it was-

[Shep]
We make all of these up in our heads, so it’s fine.

[Thomas]
Yeah. Like, it’s tickling something in my brain. Like, I think we have had a conversation about this, but I don’t think we’ve done it as a full episode.

[Emily]
Okay, well, in that case, let’s continue exploring this thought.

[Shep]
So is it small people in a world with big people, or is it small people in a world?

[Thomas]
I imagine, with big people.

[Shep]
Okay.

[Thomas]
So, like, this is a farm. There’s maybe there’s a farmer who’s going to be harvesting the wheat. And so they know they need to hurry up because the machine is coming to thresh the wheat or whatever. Or the oats.

[Emily]
So-

[Thomas]
I mean, not the wheat.

[Shep]
Right. This is the oats episode.

[Thomas]
Right, right.

[Shep]
Not the wheat episode.

[Emily]
So Secret of NIMH, where the thresher is going to be started, and harvest is coming. Like that’s specifically the plot of Rats of NIMH.

[Shep]
The rain is coming. You gotta harvest this crop or it’s gonna be ruined.

[Thomas]
One thing I didn’t look up or think much about when I wrote this pitch is what the actual oat plant looks like.

[Emily]
It looks like a stalk of wheat with oats on the top, doesn’t it?

[Thomas]
Well, sort of. Except, a stalk of wheat, it’s like all the grain is bunched together in one beautiful little clump. And oats, it’s kind of more spread out.

[Emily]
Oh.

[Thomas]
So they would have to perhaps harvest individual groats off of the plant.

[Shep]
They’re doing it like coconuts, they’re climbing up and cutting each one off.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
All right, are we doing the tiny people? And I assume we are.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Yeah. I think that’s the one we’re most interested in.

[Shep]
So, is there a community or is this one family? What’s- What’s the story?

[Emily]
Not one family, because that’s just the Rats of NIMH.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Okay.

[Thomas]
I had imagined one family, but, yeah, I think it’s. You’re right, it’s too close to Rats of NIMH, so-

[Shep]
So if there is a community of these people, I assume they all live underground and only some come up sometime.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
For the harvest.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
For the harvest. So those are the farmer ones. There’s teams of them coming up to get the oats. So they all do different jobs. These are the farmer ones. These are the oat farmer ones.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
They go and harvest some of the grains.

[Thomas]
The Oat Lumberjacks.

[Shep]
The oat lumberjacks, the oatjacks. What is the target audience for this movie? I assume kids.

[Emily]
No. Full-on adults.

[Shep]
Full-on adults. It’s all drama and…

[Emily]
There’s nudity, there’s drug use.

[Thomas]
It’s an R-rated. Yeah.

[Shep]
It’s Game of Thrones, but with oats.

[Emily]
Yep. Game of Oats.

[Shep]
Game of Oats. Game of Oatjacks.

[Emily]
Oatjack of all trades.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
They have the oatmeal wedding.

[Shep]
Too soon!

[Thomas]
Instead of dragons, it’s just crows.

[Emily]
Yes.

[Shep]
I’m on board for crows.

[Emily]
I want to be one of these tiny people.

[Shep]
Now, they tame rabbits and ride rabbits around. Okay, so we have a community of inch tall people. What are they called?

[Thomas]
Yes.

[Shep]
Or is that a problem for the writers?

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
I don’t want to Taco Tuesday us right away, but I would like to refer to this group of people without saying-

[Thomas]
I mean, if we’re seeing it from their perspective, they’re just people.

[Shep]
Okay, so they’re The People, and then the giant people are called something else. That’s a problem for the writers.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Okay, so we have a community of people living underground. We’re following one family that are part of the oat farming group. And it’s harvest time. What are some of the characters? What are their arcs? What is the theme of the movie? Or is it just the difficulty in getting enough oats before harvest ends? And the farmer, whatever the giant people are called, the gods come and eat the world.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
This is why we all live underground. Because every once in a while, the above ground is completely annihilated.

[Thomas]
Would their lifespans be much shorter?

[Shep]
If they’re small, then probably.

[Emily]
I was going to ask a similar question, because it… Yeah. If their lifespans are shorter, like a day would be much longer to them.

[Thomas]
I mean, winter could last most of your life.

[Shep]
Well, if they’re an inch tall, a mouse lives longer than a year. So one winter is not going to be-

[Emily]
Okay. Yeah. So that’s kind of my question. Is it- How does time work for them?

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Is it, work like our time? Does that- Is the perception similar?

[Thomas]
Well, the reason I bring it up is because it’s not just about like, “Oh, winter is going to be tough because we can’t go out and get food.” It’s that like you were saying, apocalypse is coming. It happens every year. The world outside gets completely destroyed, and it takes this super long time for it to all come back to normal.

[Shep]
Oh, is this the story of a winter? So they’ve harvested some oats, and then they’re trying to stretch that out. But it’s a community of people, not everyone prepared. So do you share your oats with your neighbors that didn’t prepare or not? You know, it’s ant and the grasshopper.

[Thomas]
Yeah. I mean, that story has been told.

[Shep]
Well, then let’s not do that. Let’s come up with another one. What if some of the community didn’t prepare enough and so they don’t share their oats, but, moisture got into where they’re storing the oats and they rotted, and now they’re in need, but they already established to the community that don’t help people that didn’t prepare. And also, if they had shared the oats, they would have found the problem much sooner, and they would have saved more oats. The lesson is: we’re a community.

[Emily]
We only live as well as we treat one another.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
So, could we have an adventurer going out to seek any kind of food available because of the loss of the oat stores?

[Shep]
It’s Quest for Fire, but it’s Quest for Oats.

[Thomas]
And there’s dialogue.

[Shep]
And there’s dialogue.

[Thomas]
I still say we get Ron Perlman, though, so- So I like the idea of the harvest is ruined and it’s not any one person’s fault.

[Emily]
Right.

[Thomas]
There’s not like a character that they can point to and say like, “Hey, you’re out of here.” Or like begrudgingly help, even though they screwed over the whole community.

[Thomas]
And it’s not like in Antz where the grasshopper is holding them hostage or whatever. You know, he’s, he’s not the big bad. It’s just like this is a thing that happened. This is a tough aspect of reality. And now we have to figure out what to do.

[Emily]
Right.

[Shep]
So the theme of the movie is: we are all in this together.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
That’s the theme.

[Emily]
And we’re only as well off as we treat-

[Shep]
The least of us.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Yeah. So maybe we’re seeing some turmoil around, like there’s not enough food. People are blaming each other, who didn’t do maintenance on the storeroom or whatever. Things kind of start to break down as people are starting to panic. Maybe there is, there’s rationing, but there’s people trying to have more than their fair share. And you’ve got your main character who’s saying, “No, no, no, we need to work together.”

[Shep]
Who is the main character? Who are we following? We are 30 minutes into the recording.

[Emily]
Jeff.

[Shep]
They just have regular names. Jeff, Kevin, Bob.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Sam.

[Shep]
No Sam!

[Emily]
No Sam?

[Shep]
No Sam. Because then they’re, they’re going on a quest. They’re going on a journey.

[Emily]
They’re not going to a mountain to destroy something.

[Thomas]
Oh, what if they know what the farmer does? Or there’s a rumor that the farmer has gathered all of the grain in a big silo or in the barn, or there’s bags of it in the basement. That’s Delicatessen again, I guess. But-

[Shep]
We’ve got to bring that up every episode.

[Thomas]
Maybe they don’t know for sure. But there’s a rumor that this exists. This is this fabled mountain of oats. And they could go get some, but it’s super dangerous because there’s no cover, because the world outside has been destroyed. Everything’s cut down, and it’s winter. So there’s that.

[Shep]
Oh, so they’re not friends with birds. Birds are hunting them. It’s the opposite.

[Emily]
Well yeah.

[Thomas]
Right. There’s like hawks or something that are out there hunting for mice. And they see little 1-inch creatures running around in the snow.

[Shep]
Looks delicious.

[Thomas]
I don’t know. What do we think of that idea?

[Shep]
I like it. I like it. Especially if, like, if this is a family movie that’s a family of oat farming people.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
The son or the daughter, the kid is like, into the stories and knows the story of-

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
There is a place that the farmer takes the grain, and it’s all the grain that you can see. And they take it to a place that’s higher than you can see into the sky. It’s an infinite amount of oats. “Why are we harvesting these oats one cluster at a time? We should just wait till the farmer harvests them and go and pick them up.” And the dad is like, “You’re being ridiculous. That’s an absurd- Like, that’s not real.”

[Thomas]
If it sounds too good to be true.

[Shep]
Sounds too good to be true. Well, then what lesson are we teaching? Like, it turns out to be true.

[Thomas]
That’s a good point.

[Shep]
But, like, we’re harvesting it here because we live-

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
You know, our burrow is right over there.

[Thomas]
Right over there. Yeah.

[Shep]
So are you gonna-

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
You gonna journey to this oat castle and back every day, over and over again, bringing back enough oats to live off? We gotta feed the whole community.

[Thomas]
You couldn’t carry enough for the community that way.

[Shep]
Right. Yeah.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
That’s where the corgis come in. Strap a wagon to them.

[Shep]
Could you imagine a farmer discovering that there’s a nest of corgis living in a burrow in his oat field? Every once in a while, a bunch of, you know, dozen corgis come out of the holes in the ground.

[Emily]
Just pop out, steal oats, and then run back.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
I just imagine the farmer looking out the window and sees like a dozen corgis running around in his field. He’s just like, “What the hell’s going on?”

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
Is there an animal that they’re friendly with that they can get to help them? Do they have some sort of a pack mule-style animal that they have tamed? Because they are going to need to carry enough for the community, and one family can’t. Or they’re going to have to make multiple trips, which is, as this movie proves, very deadly or dangerous at least.

[Shep]
Rabbits or mice.

[Emily]
Well, I’m gonna vote mice if you’re giving me the choice between rabbits and mice, Shep. Because rabbits bounce too much to really-

[Thomas]
Right. The grain’s like flying out, going everywhere.

[Emily]
Yeah. Like, whatever contraption they have to carry it in is going to get jostled.

[Thomas]
Although they are very fast.

[Emily]
Well, then they have to come up with something on some kind of like, a differential for the baskets so that when the bunnies are hopping, they- they’re stable.

[Shep]
You put them in bags, you close the-

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Tie the top of the bag closed.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
So the bird that’s stalking them. I vote cardinal, because the red would contrast with the white.

[Shep]
Visually appealing. But it’s only after the oats. It’s not after the mice.

[Thomas]
Right, right. That’s why I like a hawk, because the hawk is directly going for them. You get that classic red-tailed hawk call. Oh, and there’s like, we all know what it’s like when like a plane goes overhead and you get that little like down your spine, like, “Ooh.” You know, you get that sudden shadow that goes over you.

[Shep]
I have no idea what you’re talking about.

[Thomas]
Do you not? Have you never experienced that?

[Shep]
No, I don’t go outside.

[Thomas]
Well, you don’t go outside. Yeah.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Emily]
I never get that “Ooh” feeling.

[Thomas]
Well, a lot of people do. I guess it’s like a, like an ape brain thing.

[Emily]
Yeah. It would make sense, but I think I’m just desensitized to it.

[Shep]
I’m assuming that I’m in shadows of things sometimes because I do have memories of walking around, and then suddenly I can’t see for a… And then the world comes back, and I was like, did my eyes shut off for a second, or did a bird fly overhead? And the shadow was directly over my eyes, and I couldn’t adjust.

[Thomas]
Shep, I think that’s just called blinking.

[Shep]
Oh, is that? Oh, blinking. You sound like my doctor. I know I’ve heard that word before.

[Thomas]
All right, well, let’s take a break here, and when we come back, we’ll figure out more details about this journey to the farmhouse to get some oats.

[Break]

[Thomas]
All right, we are back from our break. We’re talking about a community of inch-tall people who have harvested oats to last them through the winter.

[Thomas]
Those oats were ruined sort of accidentally, and now they need to figure out how they’re going to feed themselves. One of them has a plan to go to the full-size, our size, human farmer’s barn, where there is a fabled mountain of oats that they could collect. And perhaps this one character’s family agrees, or they draw a short straw or something like that. But it’s up to these five, maybe, whatever, people to go and collect the grain. So how are they planning to bring a community’s worth of grain across this literal, dangerous, deadly tundra?

[Shep]
Okay. It’s five kids. It’s The Goonies. It’s Stand by Me.

[Thomas]
Ah, so everyone’s told them, “This is a dumb plan, it’ll never work.”

[Shep]
Yes.

[Thomas]
And they’re like, “We will be the saviors of our community.” I like this.

[Shep]
Right. They believe the stories are true.

[Thomas]
And this helps make it more of a kid’s movie, right?

[Shep]
And their parents don’t believe them, but they set off on their own and face these dangers because they’re not bringing back enough to feed the whole community.

[Thomas]
Yeah. Hmm.

[Shep]
They’re bringing back enough-

[Emily]
To prove-

[Shep]
To prove that it’s real.

[Thomas]
Sure.

[Shep]
And then, like, the community can go out.

[Thomas]
So it’s a problem they don’t have to solve.

[Shep]
Right. They just have to prove that it’s real and it’s out there.

[Thomas]
Okay, now question one. Are they successful? Do they bring grain back?

[Shep]
No, they all starve to death. Of course they-

[Thomas]
Well, they meet various ends, right?

[Shep]
Yeah, each one is killed off. Right, right, right.

[Thomas]
One is eaten by a hawk, one dies of frostbite. Yeah, yeah.

[Emily]
One just kills the other out of insanity and greed.

[Thomas]
Right, right.

[Shep]
One of them finally makes it to the grain silo and opens it up, and the grain falls on them and buries them, and they suffocate.

[Thomas]
Right. It’s one of those. They’re up at the top. You know, grain silos are ridiculously dangerous, and you can fall right in like quicksand.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Oh, yeah.

[Thomas]
So-

[Emily]
Yeah. What if it was all bagged up? Like, they go to get it and they- They arrive and they don’t see it. It’s gone.

[Thomas]
They think it’s gone-

[Emily]
Yeah, but it’s just in the-

[Thomas]
But it’s just in big- a mountain of burlap sacks, and they’re like, “Well, we can’t eat-“

[Emily]
Yeah. Yeah. They don’t know it’s in them.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
And then I don’t know, something happens.

[Shep]
You gotta be able to smell that it’s in there. Burlap sacks are not airtight.

[Emily]
Well, yeah, that’s maybe one of them. They get there and they’re disappointed and there’s like five or six oats on the ground or whatever, and they’re like, “This is it? This is all we have?” And then one of them’s like, “But don’t you smell them?”

[Shep]
“They were just here.”

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
“I can still smell them.”

[Thomas]
Yeah. “We must have just missed them.” And then there’s a mouse that’s, like, chewed open one of the sacks, and the grain is spilling out, and they’re like, “Oh.”

[Shep]
Yeah, it’s the unruly mouse that they’ve brought with them, but is always getting them into trouble and running off and doing things. And this time it saves the day.

[Emily]
And it’s voiced by Alan Tudyk.

[Thomas]
Oh. I was going to say Ron Perlman.

[Shep]
Either way. Either way.

[Thomas]
Because I like the Quest for Fire nod. So we got to work him in there somewhere. So they get the grain, they come back, they show the community, and then do we see the community going and getting grain? I mean, do the writers need to figure out a conveyance system, or is it enough for everybody to go and collect some?

[Thomas]
Or- I mean, then you’re risking the entire community if everyone goes and gets some.

[Shep]
Right. No, you send a dedicated team with rabbits, and you don’t explain how they transport the grain with rabbits. Just the rabbits are much faster.

[Thomas]
Right. Probably snow hairs, but yeah.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
So I think the big thing we need to figure out for our story now is, like, what do these kids go through?

[Shep]
The ringer.

[Emily]
Trials and tribulation.

[Shep]
It’s Honey, I Shrunk the Kids. It’s-

[Thomas]
Yeah, it’s Honey, I Shrunk the Kids meets Quest for Fire.

[Shep]
Yes.

[Emily]
Meets Secret of NIMH.

[Thomas]
Yes.

[Shep]
So the five kids and a mouse have snuck out of the burrow.

[Thomas]
So I think it’s pretty obvious where they’re going. They can see the barn. They know that that’s the goal. So they’re never lost in that respect. Although maybe there’s like, a blizzard at some point. But what I was thinking is the immediate danger that they’re facing is it’s cold and snowing, or starting to snow. Maybe this is the first snow.

[Shep]
Oh.

[Emily]
So the ground’s just frozen right now?

[Shep]
I think that it has already snowed. So there’s like- There’s no plants on the surface. Everything’s under the snow. That’s why they can’t just go and eat whatever’s around. And I think it should blizzard partway through.

[Thomas]
Oh, I wonder if they’re-

[Thomas]
If they’re sort of tunneling through the snow and they’re like, “Oh, it’s fine, we’ll stay under the snow.” You know, “Other animals won’t be able to see us because we’re going to be under the surface of the snow.” But then one of the nights, because it takes a few days for them to get there, right? One of the nights, the snow melts, or, you know, over the course of the day, the snow melts away, and now they’re exposed. And then later there’s a big blizzard.

[Shep]
So the reason I want to have the blizzard is they can see the barn, but they can’t see the burrow.

[Thomas]
Mm. Right.

[Shep]
So if they hunker down for the blizzard, it’s like, “Do we continue on to the barn? Because we don’t know our way back even from here.”

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
“If we start from here, we have a semi-good chance of finding a way home. But if we continue on to the barn and it snows again, we’ll have no path to follow.”

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
So that’s just one of the things they have to face.

[Emily]
I like that.

[Thomas]
And then there’s a hawk that’s around. Maybe they have, like, a minor threat from the hawk.

[Shep]
They originally had two mice.

[Thomas]
Yeah, perhaps.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
So there’s this, like, minor threat on the way to the barn, and then on the way back from the barn, there’s a major altercation with the hawk. So you get that, like, literally looming threat as the shadow goes by and they have to scurry for cover and…

[Shep]
Right. On the way back, they realize, “Oh, we’re all carrying all of these bags of grain. We can’t move as fast. If we try to do the same thing we did on the way here, which is scurry faster than the hawk comes down, we will get caught. So we have to handle the hawk before we go home.”

[Thomas]
And they’re probably, they’re larger now. They’re carrying bags of grain.

[Emily]
Yeah, they’re more noticeable.

[Thomas]
They are more visible targets. Yeah.

[Shep]
Yep. So they have to, like- They obviously have to trap the hawk or deal with it in some way.

[Thomas]
Is their altercation with the hawk, is that the climax of the film? I mean, it can fly, it can see them from the air. They kind of maybe don’t know it’s coming until it’s there, swooping down, grabbing somebody. It’s been this sort of looming threat the whole film. Right? It is Chekhov’s hawk.

[Emily]
So with them returning, could that be the point where the wind has come in and melted the snow, and so they now have a clear path back?

[Thomas]
Yeah. But no cover.

[Shep]
Right.

[Emily]
But no cover anymore.

[Shep]
So good and bad, it’s mixed.

[Emily]
Yeah. So they now know where they’re going. So then I feel like, then in that case, the hawk definitely becomes the climax.

[Thomas]
Yeah. The parents must have come out looking for them.

[Shep]
That’s what I was thinking, was they don’t make it all the way back to the borough. They make it back to the search parties.

[Thomas]
Yeah. What else do they run into? If it’s winter, we probably don’t have snakes, but there would be mice or rats or something. There could be some sort of a weasel-type creature.

[Emily]
Yeah. Dumb cows. Pigs.

[Thomas]
Oh yeah, pigs.

[Shep]
Pigs out in the snowy field?

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
What do barnyard animals do during the winter?

[Shep]
If it’s snow, they can’t go out and graze. There’s snow.

[Emily]
I’ve seen horses out on snowy pastures.

[Thomas]
Yeah, I guess they’re looking around.

[Emily]
They’re digging in. They dig down in and pick up.

[Shep]
Horses don’t count. They have hands. But cows, they don’t have fingers. So it’s-

[Thomas]
It’s harder for them to hold a shovel.

[Shep]
I grew up on a farm, and our, our animals basically stayed in the barn in winter, and were not very active.

[Emily]
Yeah. I’m not saying they go out and actually eat a lot, but they leave occasionally for exercise purposes.

[Shep]
Oh, they get their yard time.

[Emily]
Yeah, yeah.

[Shep]
They get an hour in the yard every day.

[Emily]
That’s right.

[Thomas]
Go out and do push-ups and play basketball.

[Emily]
Yep.

[Shep]
Right.

[Emily]
Shake the rocks out of their pants.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
We just said they couldn’t hold a shovel very well.

[Emily]
Yeah. They weren’t holding a shovel. They were holding a little rock-

[Shep]
It was a rock hammer.

[Thomas]
A little-

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Yeah. Yeah.

[Emily]
Rock hammer.

[Thomas]
Okay, so now I gotta know what is the poster on the wall? What do the animals choose?

[Emily]
Seabiscuit.

[Shep]
It’s the cow on Top Secret!. Because that’s on the poster.

[Thomas]
He’s got the galoshes.

[Shep]
Yes.

[Thomas]
Yeah, that’s funny. One thought I had is I could see a scene where they’re trying to cross ice. Some puddle has frozen, or maybe it’s a watering basin and the top is frozen. But at one point, the ice breaks, and they’re struggling that way. That could be something that they’re dealing with.

[Shep]
Yeah. You really want to tighten that sphincter of the audience.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Could there be a way they’re getting into, like, one of the troughs for some reason?

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
And then that’s where the ice is, because that’s really deep for them.

[Thomas]
Because we could put them in a situation where they have to get up off the ground to get away from some other thing.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
And they get up there, and maybe it starts off like they find the ice, and they kind of are just… It’s like they’re ice skating, but they’re not wearing skates.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
They just have their shoes, so they’re just like sliding, you know, and they’re-

[Emily]
They’re playing.

[Thomas]
Yeah, they’re goofing around, they’re playing, and all of a sudden it’s like this fun bright scene, and all of a sudden crack, crack, crack. And one of them disappears, and… And none of them have any experience with this before. This is not a thing they’ve seen and interacted with.

[Emily]
Yeah. It’s Amy falling through the ice in Little Women. It’s amazing.

[Thomas]
Right. And then that guy, whoever fell through the ice, is going to be freezing cold.

[Emily]
Yep. I gotta figure out how to keep him warm.

[Shep]
Oh, they gotta find fire. It’s a Quest for Fire.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
So, is this the movie where we teach people, we sneakily teach people, winter survival skills?

[Emily]
Yeah, yeah.

[Shep]
Because I’m okay with that.

[Emily]
Yeah. Because we can teach him the whole, lay down on your stomach on the ice and get a chain of people to pull the person out.

[Thomas]
Right. I do like that idea of them actually doing the real things you would do.

[Emily]
Oh, yeah.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Emily]
I think it’s a grand idea.

[Shep]
Are they building little shelters on their way?

[Thomas]
They must be, right?

[Shep]
Right?

[Emily]
They would have to.

[Shep]
They have to be. But they normally live in a burrow. It’s not like they’re putting up tents, but, like, what are they doing? What am I- What am I seeing? What am I looking at?

[Emily]
They’re doing the Boy Scout snow caves to sleep in.

[Thomas]
Oh yeah, they could do that.

[Thomas]
They could do like a lean-to with some of the bottoms of the oat and some of the like chaff and stuff that’s out in the field. They could grab just whatever’s there, and if the ground isn’t frozen, they could make like waddle and daub-style. Not that they’re building a house or anything, but-

[Shep]
Right. They’re just stuck in one spot for a while. So they build up a shelter.

[Thomas]
There’s like a mini mansion halfway to the barn.

[Shep]
That’s where Amy fell through the ice, and she got sick, and so-

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
She needed time to recover.

[Emily]
Yep.

[Thomas]
There we go.

[Shep]
We couldn’t just abandon her and keep going. But she wasn’t able to move. They get stuck on the wrong side of the river, and they eat the berries that aren’t nutritious.

[Thomas]
Yeah. Do they get split up at some point? Does something happen that-

[Shep]
I mean, if you have the hawk come down and grab one of them, that could be a way to split them up. How do you get them back together?

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Oh, wait, are we just doing Jelly Bean? Have we been doing Jelly Bean this whole time?

[Emily]
No, because there are no peeps clucking around the farmyard. They’re not riding peeps. So we’re good.

[Shep]
Are there chickens? You can have actual chickens in this one.

[Emily]
We could.

[Thomas]
Well, I feel like we should specifically avoid that now.

[Emily]
Well, I think we should have actual chickens because then that’s something that would eat them. That’s their threat. Because chickens do go outside in the snow.

[Thomas]
Yeah. After they’ve got the bags of grain, the chickens are like, “Ooh.” And chasing after them.

[Shep]
They go through the chicken coop to get to the barn.

[Thomas]
It’s that scene from Jurassic Park. And they’re being chased by the dinosaurs, as they’re being chased by the chickens, and they- They jump over the log.

[Shep]
So they have the packs on and they’re just chatting, and then there’s like a little puddle because it’s melted a little bit.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
“Clever girl.”

[Thomas]
What are some challenges they would specifically face on the way back because of the grain? We’ve got, they’re slower and more visible to the hawk, we’ve got the chickens are chasing them because they’re carrying grain.

[Shep]
Right. They’ve got to take breaks more frequently.

[Thomas]
Oh, yeah.

[Shep]
Like they planned for this to take this amount of time, but that’s a lot of weight that they’re carrying now. It’s just impossible to make the same distance that they did on the way there.

[Thomas]
Is somebody injured? And they have to leave a bunch of grain behind? Or do they make a choice to leave a bunch of grain behind, or do they throw some out as bait and run away? Like, half of what they got, they’ve lost on the way back.

[Shep]
Okay. I know that it’s kind of an Into the Wild thing, but if there were a stream that they crossed on the way there before everything melted, then it was no problem to cross. And on the way back, it’s a much more rapid stream as the ice is-

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Because of the melt.

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
You know, on the way there, maybe they knocked a stick over or something, and that’s-

[Thomas]
Or just ford the river.

[Shep]
Right. But on the way back, they can’t do that.

[Emily]
Do they get swept downstream and now have to go further? Or is that too, like- That’s too many things?

[Shep]
I mean, it’s however many things it takes to fill up the movie. That’s the movie. This movie has too much movie in it.

[Emily]
Because that would add more tension again, and it would add another layer of “Okay, we had this plan, and it just… We can’t continue with what we’re, we were doing.”

[Shep]
So they knock a stick over the stream on the way back, and they’re like crawling on that as a bridge.

[Thomas]
Hmm.

[Shep]
But it’s not stable.

[Emily]
Right.

[Shep]
And at one point, it rolls, and one of them falls into the stream. Now, at this point, they have to abandon their pack because it’s ruined. The oats are in the water.

[Thomas]
Or perhaps it rolls over and their pack just falls off, and they’re clinging on, and then they fall in. So it’s like, their pack’s already.

[Shep]
Or it starts to fall, but it’s like caught on the side of the branch, and they’re trying to get it, and it’s like, “Don’t, no, leave the pack.”

[Thomas]
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Forget that.

[Emily]
Yeah. Yeah.

[Shep]
“You can’t retrieve it.”

[Thomas]
Yeah, I like that.

[Emily]
Then they make it over the hill, but the mouse isn’t right behind them. And the little girl, who’s the mouse’s owner is standing there waiting. The mouse comes limping muddy over the hill.

[Shep]
And then the hawk comes down, and it’s gone.

[Thomas]
Oh.

[Emily]
No, because I know what to do with the hawk. I already have a solution for the hawk. Because you’re like, “Get rid of it.”

[Thomas]
This is good. Because we definitely need that.

[Shep]
Yeah. What is the solution for the hawk?

[Emily]
Okay. So they trick it into going into, like, a skunk or raccoon trap so it’s caught. That’s how they are able to get away from it.

[Thomas]
Right. We’ve established this trap earlier.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
The existence of the trap earlier.

[Emily]
Yeah. And then they, you know, somehow bait the hawk into getting in there.

[Shep]
Right. The one that led them out there, the one that believed in the stories and whatever. But all these accidents are happening. They, they’re like, “Okay, I have to be the one.” And they stand up and they like get the hawk’s attention, like, “Come eat me.”

[Emily]
Yeah. And then they run into the trap, and the hawk gets slammed in there.

[Thomas]
So does the hawk trigger the trap, or are they planning to trigger the trap on the hawk?

[Emily]
I think the hawk triggers the trap once it gets in, like, they’re you know, standing, and they’re being bait.

[Thomas]
Or- That’s their plan. They want- They’re like, “Oh. And then the hawk will step on the thing and the trap will snap shut.”

[Emily]
Yeah, yeah.

[Thomas]
And it doesn’t. And the kid who has gotten the hawk’s attention is like, “Uh oh.”

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Yeah. So then he triggers it. He’s gonna sacrifice himself to trigger it, but he doesn’t end up. No? “No, no, no, no, no, no. Here’s what happens,”?

[Shep]
Here’s what happens. They’re like, “I’m gonna bait them into this trap.” The hawk swoops down, he runs into the, or she runs into, the trap. The hawk comes in, and now the hawk’s got this person cornered.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
They’re in the trap with the hawk. And the hawk’s coming. They’re like, “Ah, a couple more steps, it’s going to hit the thing and it’s going to slam the door. And when it’s distracted, I’m going to squeeze out of the trap.” That’s the plan.

[Emily]
Right.

[Shep]
The hawk hops right over the trigger and so like, “Oh, crap.”

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
Yep.

[Shep]
Like “If I try to wiggle out now, it’s just going to bite down on my legs like there were worms. And I’m going to, I’m going to die.” And so while they’re panicking and they don’t know what to do, and everything has fallen apart, and this plan was dumb. “I shouldn’t have left home. Mom!” Their friends that are with them jump on the trigger, and it slams the door, and then they all scamper out.

[Emily]
Yeah. Very dramatic. Yes. This is what I was thinking. It’s almost exactly the visual I had.

[Thomas]
So do we want the kids by themselves to defeat the hawk, or is this a thing that happens after they’ve reconnected with the search party?

[Emily]
No, I want the kids to defeat them themselves.

[Shep]
It’s got to be the kids.

[Emily]
Yeah, I agree with Shep here. It’s got to be the kids.

[Thomas]
Okay.

[Shep]
I agree with Emily here. It’s got to be the kids.

[Thomas]
I mean, it sounds good to me. So I guess I agree with both of you here. It’s got to be the kids.

[Shep]
No. Getting found by the search party, that’s the happy ending. That’s, at that point, the movie’s basically over. They are lost at the end.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
They’ve lost several of their bags.

[Thomas]
They’ve defeated the hawk, but they’re lost. Like you said, the blizzard came.

[Shep]
Yes.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
They don’t know… They know it’s, like, toward the big tree, and that’s it. But that encompasses a huge area. And so it’s that sort of last, final, like, “What do we do?” Like, “We’re screwed. We shouldn’t have done this.” Like, they’re feeling really low.

[Shep]
Yes.

[Thomas]
And then they hear calling?

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Yep.

[Thomas]
And then, yeah, the music swells and it’s a big reunion and… “Oh, yeah, no, we’re right over here. We know how to get back.”

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
And they take everyone back and “Look, we got the grain and…”

[Shep]
“It does exist. It does exist.”

[Thomas]
And then we see the denouement of them, like, unloading the bags from the rabbits.

[Shep]
That’s so much more than you need. You just need to establish that it’s real and then leave the rest of the audience’s imagination.

[Thomas]
Sure. Yeah.

[Shep]
You don’t need to show everything. You don’t need to show them like, “We were this close.” No. They’re found and then it wipes and they’re back at the burrow. How far away were they? Doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter. Listen to the music swelling. Watch them hugging.

[Emily]
They’re home and eating nice, warm oatmeal.

[Shep]
Yeah. Yes. Each one has one oat. Yeah.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
In a bowl yeah.

[Thomas]
Well, we’d love to hear your thoughts on today’s episode about Oats. Are you feeling your oats or are you off your oats? 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. We’re always trying to improve the show, so let us know how we can do better. Or, you know, if we’re already perfect, we’d like to hear that, too. You can send us your feedback through the contact form on our website, AlmostPlausible.com. Now go sow your oats and then join Emily, Shep, and I on the next episode of Almost Plausible.

[Outro music]

[Emily]
I wish I knew what this Quest for Fire was.

[Shep]
Oh, gosh. Oh, golly.

[Thomas]
It’s a movie from a million years ago.

[Shep]
It- Yes.

[Thomas]
Literally.

[Shep]
Very truly.

[Thomas]
It’s what it sounds like.

[Shep]
Yeah. They run out of fire and you have to run to the store to get some more.

[Shep]
And there is not a lot of dialogue.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
There is one character that speaks, but not in a language that anyone can understand.

[Thomas]
And isn’t subtitled.

[Shep]
Yeah, of course. Why would it be?

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
Why would it be? She’s pretty clear on what she’s saying.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Yeah. That scene had a formative effect on me when I saw it as a kid.

[Outro music]