Polaroid Camera

Guest Links

• The Other Half
• Instagram
• Facebook
• Bluesky
• Discord
• Ethan’s Twitch

Below are some photos of Ethan’s Land Camera Model 95 that he showed us during the recording. These photos don’t give a good sense of scale—this thing is nearly a foot tall!

References

• The Deer Hunter
• Bratz
• Venom
• Moonraker
• Hellraiser
• Hellraiser: Deader
• Leprechaun
• Leprechaun 5: In the Hood
• Resident Evil
• Pinocchio
• Pinocchio: A True Story
• Geppetto
• Sean Connery
• Don’t Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood
• The Room
• Instant Camera
• Land Camera
• Edwin H. Land
• Minority Report
• Hey Ya!
• Monsters, Inc.
• It
• Almost Plausible: Newspaper
• Creepypasta
• Nicolas Cage
• Dream Scenario
• This Man
• Almost Plausible: Videocassette
• Oedipus
• La Jetée
• 12 Monkeys
• The Map of Tiny Perfect Things
• Up
• Sydney Sweeney
• Stanley Tucci
• The Irishman
• The Time Traveler’s Wife
• Groundhog Day
• Two-Timer Date
• Memento
• Myspace

Transcript

[Intro music begins]

[Shep]
I had the idea of like, oh, she was angling for a threesome. But you can’t do that if she is pretending to be his niece.

[Emily]
No.

[Shep]
That doesn’t work.

[Ethan]
Yeah.

[Mike]
Yeah, that’s not gonna.

[Ethan]
Oh, no.

[Emily]
That, that makes it creepy. I mean, that works in some movies, but we don’t make those.

[Ethan]
That would change the tone completely. Yeah.

[Mike]
Yeah.

[Ethan]
I don’t know if we can have the sad urn scene anymore if we do that.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Is she going to get stuck in the dryer? Is that what’s going to happen?

[Ethan]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Mike]
Stuck in the dryer…

[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 starting with a pitch session where we share some basic story ideas that we’ve each come up with. We pick one of those ideas, then work together to develop it into a movie plot that we hope is at least Almost Plausible. I’m Thomas J. Brown, and on this episode, we have Emily-

[Emily]
Hey, guys.

[Thomas]
F. Paul Shepard.

[Shep]
Happy to be here.

[Thomas]
And also joining us are Mike-

[Mike]
Happy to be here.

[Shep]
Hey!

[Thomas]
Shep, we’re replacing you. Did we not tell you about that?

[Shep]
Oh, no. My worst fears.

[Mike]
Hahaha.

[Thomas]
And Ethan.

[Ethan]
Hey there, story fans.

[Thomas]
Oh, no. Emily, what have you done?

[Emily]
Sweet! New boys.

[Thomas]
New story boys for Emily.

[Ethan]
These story boys.

[Mike]
Thanks for having us on the podcast, guys.

[Thomas]
Yeah. Mike and Ethan are the hosts of a podcast called The Other Half. And, guys, will you please explain how your show works?

[Mike]
Absolutely. So this was a pitch I’d made to Ethan quite a while ago, where Ethan was saying he hasn’t watched enough movies.

[Mike]
And I said, what you should do is you should watch the first half of the movie and decide whether or not you enjoy the first half, and then maybe watch the rest of it. And then that’s where we got our idea for the podcast. So one of us watches one half of the movie, the other one watches the other half. We alternate each week, and then over the podcast, we describe the movie that we saw. Either the first person talking about how the movie started, or the second person confusingly trying to explain what they think the movie is about.

[Ethan]
And you know what? Have not seen more movies, but I’ve seen more half movies.

[Thomas]
Well, that kind of answers one of my questions. I mean, how often do you guys go back and watch the whole movie after you record the episode?

[Ethan]
I would say, like, one out of every hundred.

[Mike]

100. Yeah.

[Ethan]
Yeah, I think it’s like one out of every hundred.

[Thomas]
You guys have over 500 episodes. So you’ve seen five full movies?

[Mike]
Five full movies. Honestly?

[Ethan]
That feels right. That feels right.

[Shep]
Ha.

[Ethan]
Yeah.

[Mike]
And it usually ends up being bad movies because, like, we’ll, you know, like, I remember one time we talked about The Deer Hunter, which is an incredible film, obviously, still haven’t seen the entirety of it.

[Ethan]
Nope.

[Mike]
But we watched the Bratz movie, the live-action Bratz movie. We’ve seen that movie, I want to say, maybe once every year, like, or so-

[Ethan]
You have. I’ve seen it probably once every other year.

[Mike]
Yeah, it’s a crazy film, but we watched it for the podcast and we’re just like, what an incredible film. It’s so terrible. It’s so awful. And now it’s like-

[Ethan]
I think Venom is another one, too.

[Mike]
Venom‘s another one.

[Ethan]
Venom‘s another one.

[Mike]
Yeah, we’ve seen Venom.

[Ethan]
Yeah, we’ve seen Venom.

[Thomas]
Hmm.

[Mike]
Now we. Now we are full-on Venom heads after watching the first Venom movie for the podcast. Yeah, so this happens every so often. Shep’s, his face is in his hands.

[Emily]
No, ignore him. His standards are unbelievably high.

[Thomas]
Yeah. Shep doesn’t even like what he likes, so-

[Mike]
Honestly, like, that’s one of the things that happens on our podcast as well, is like, one of us will watch the first half and we’ll either be enjoying it so much that we’ll slightly watch more than that.

[Thomas]
Hmm.

[Mike]
So we have sort of an interesting, like, meeting in the middle, or we will hate it so much that we’re just constantly checking the runtime, going like, “Is it over yet? Is it over yet? Is it over yet?”

[Thomas]
Which is saying something considering you only have to watch half of the movie.

[Ethan]
Oh, yeah.

[Mike]
Oh, sometimes it- It is so long. Sometimes you really can feel the length.

[Ethan]
I feel like I watch a whole movie sometimes.

[Mike]
Yeah.

[Ethan]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
I know there have been episodes where you guys have said, “I know it was only half the movie, but it feels like I watched an entire movie just in, the pacing was so slow.”

[Mike]
Yes. Yeah. Some of the pacing can be- Well, that’s actually been one of the interesting things about it is we’ve been, obviously, what we do this for the podcast.

[Mike]
We have over 500 episodes. We’ve been doing it for a very long time. Now whenever we watch movies outside of the podcast, we are, I think, a bit more aware of, you know, like, plot structure. Sometimes we will, like, watch movies halfway through, you know, because, like, they’re on TV or whatever, you know, we walk into a room, we can sort of pick up on, like, archetypes and cliches and stuff. I don’t know. I think it’s made me a much more like active movie-going watcher for me. I don’t know about you.

[Ethan]
Yeah, I think I’d agree with that.

[Thomas]
So maybe this question is silly because you have over 500 episodes. Seems like the format is working, but when you first started out, was there skepticism about whether the format would work at all?

[Ethan]
The first episode was Scarface, I believe.

[Mike]
Yeah, I was.

[Ethan]
And in that episode we were like, “I don’t know. It’s our first podcast. I don’t know if this is going to be fun to record or what. We’ll just do it.” And then we just, I don’t know if we ever discussed it was fun or not. We just kept doing it, though.

[Mike]
We just kept doing it. Well, at first we did it because we weren’t living together. You had graduated. I had not yet. And we were just trying to find an excuse for us to, like, hang out more.

[Ethan]
Yeah.

[Mike]
And then we live together and now, like, we see each other, I would say, very regularly. So it worked, I think. It helped, you know, our friendship, I think, maintain when it was sort of difficult. And, you know, it also helped us get through the pandemic, which was also really great as well.

[Shep]
So what I’m hearing you say is that more people should start podcasts with their friends. Is that…

[Ethan]
Yeah.

[Mike]
Especially men. I think men need to be making more podcasts.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Ethan]
Yeah, I think so.

[Thomas]
We got it.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Yeah, not enough straight white men podcasts.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Ethan]
Not enough.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Mike]
Not enough straight white men are talking about stuff.

[Emily]
Not even a little bit. Yeah.

[Ethan]
Well, they should give their opinions too.

[Shep]
Ha.

[Ethan]
Like, make sure it’s an opinion podcast.

[Mike]
Oh, yeah.

[Thomas]
Right, right, right.

[Emily]
Well, how else am I going to learn how to be a high-value woman?

[Ethan]
Yeah.

[Mike]
Yeah, exactly.

[Thomas]
Right. Yeah.

[Mike]
Yeah.

[Emily]
I need more input on that.

[Mike]
That is something that I actually really enjoy is like, we try to have, because, you know, we’re both men, we do try to have, like, different kinds of guests on our podcast to make sure that we aren’t just like spewing masculine energy in every single episode whenever we can.

[Emily]
Ha.

[Mike]
So, like, right now we’re doing a series on the 007 movies. We’ve tried to have as many different kinds of people on as possible to talk about the, the movies from different perspectives. Which I think is important because, you know, movies are a cultural signifier. And I feel like a lot of times people bring different things to movies. We see them in a… In a, you know, in a vacuum.

[Mike]
We see them in half a vacuum. So I think a lot of times people have, like, other things that they bring to films, which is something that I found to be very interesting about the podcast. Yeah.

[Thomas]
Well, I want to touch on something you brought up. One fun aspect of your show is that you periodically have recurring segments. So, for example, right now you’re in the midst of a segment called Watch Till You Can’t–

[Mike]
Yep.

[Thomas]
Where each week you watch the next film from a franchise until you just can’t bear to watch another one.

[Mike]
Yes.

[Thomas]
Past Watch Till You Can’t segments have found you reviewing films from franchises like Hellraiser, Leprechaun, and Resident Evil. Right now, you’re watching the biggest franchise you’ve ever tackled, the James Bond films. How’s that going?

[Mike]
Oh.

[Ethan]
It’s not that bad.

[Ethan]
Like, the thing is, as you mentioned, those previous ones, way worse. All of them, way worse.

[Mike]
They were bad.

[Ethan]
Way, way worse. Because no normal person has seen Leprechaun 5. You know? No one normal has seen that.

[Emily]
No.

[Ethan]
But I bring up James Bond, and people are like, “Yeah, Moonraker. I’ve seen that.” I’m like, “You saw Moonraker? That’s crazy.” Like, why would you watch that?

[Mike]
Yeah.

[Ethan]
And like- But everyone’s watched it because it was a cultural touchstone. So it’s like, there’s more relevance. It feels like you’re part of something. While, like, I’m not learning anything from watching Hellraiser 7. I literally, I just learned that I don’t, like, maybe Hellraiser should have ended. That’s all I learned.

[Mike]
Yeah, that’s fair. Yeah. No, this is definitely the one series of movies that I feel like we’re enjoying a lot more just because they’re better-made films than, like, the other previous ones, which were so obviously cash grabs. But I will say after, because we, we do go through, like, series. We also watched, I think, every single movie that’s ever been made about Pinocchio.

[Emily]
Oh.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Mike]
Yeah. Which was rough. And it was a similar thing where you’re just like, “You know, I think I’ve had enough of this fucking talking puppet.”

[Shep]
Wait, even the Pauly Shore one?

[Mike]
Yes. Even the Pauly Shore one.

[Ethan]
That one’s bad.

[Shep]
Oh, my god.

[Mike]
Even Geppetto, which was the TV movie starring Drew Carey as Geppetto. We’ve seen them all.

[Thomas]
Wow.

[Mike]
So I think nowadays I’m just sort of like, “You know what? I feel like this James Bond guy really needs to, like, maybe crack open a book about feminism and learn a thing or two about multiculturalism.”

[Shep]
It was of its time.

[Mike]
It was of its time. It truly was of its time. It surely was. But, you know, that’s what happens when you go through these movies. You start to see patterns, and we’re seeing a lot of patterns right now.

[Ethan]
Indeed.

[Shep]
Yeah, especially the Sean Connery ones.

[Emily]
Oh, yeah.

[Thomas]
Well, speaking of patterns, which genres of film do you find work best for the format, and which ones are maybe not as good?

[Mike]
I think we both know the answer to the second one.

[Ethan]
Yeah.

[Mike]
Comedies.

[Ethan]
Comedies are terrible.

[Mike]
They are the worst. We’ve only talked about a couple of comedies we’ve walked away enjoying. I think we can, like, list them on one hand. One of them was, what is it? Don’t Be a Menace While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood.

[Ethan]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Oh, great film.

[Ethan]
Yeah. Good movie.

[Mike]
Great film. Great.

[Shep]
So that’s one that has the setup and payoff immediately for the jokes.

[Mike]
Yes. That’s what it is.

[Shep]
Unlike classic comedies, where it’s set up in the first half and payoff in the second half. But if you didn’t watch the first half, you’re not going to understand.

[Mike]
You don’t understand. Exactly.

[Ethan]
Also, explaining jokes is just, in movies, is just not a fun thing to do. No one gets them.

[Mike]
Yeah.

[Ethan]
They’re never gonna land. The timing is off. It’s just not fun to explain.

[Mike]
Yeah, I agree. For the first one, though, I think that’s a… That’s a good question.

[Ethan]
I almost feel like it’s not even genres. What I think it is is mid movies. I think mid movies make the best podcast because mid movies have, like, kind of a middle ground between being interesting while also not being particularly good. You’re like, “Why isn’t this good?”

[Mike]
Yeah.

[Ethan]
There’s something more to chew on instead of, like, “It’s so amazing that this shot was done to give this person a sense of higher authority because they’re looking down at the camera” and stuff like that. But it’s like, “I don’t know about what they’re thinking with this movie. There’s something here. There’s some good moments.” Or bad movies where it’s just like, “This movie sucks.”

[Mike]
Yeah.

[Ethan]
Like, it’s kind of hard to talk about, like, oh, what’s interesting or what? What’s so bad about it?

[Mike]
I’ve maintained that you learn a lot more from watching, like, not good movie than you can from watching a good one. Because, like, if you watch too many good movies, you just assume, like, it must be easy to make a good film.

[Mike]
So, like, when you watch a bad movie or a mid movie, you’re like- You can see, like, you know, the strings. You can see, like, the edges of the frame, and you’re just like, you know something’s wrong. So now it’s, like, up to you to try to figure it out.

[Shep]
What can you learn from The Room? You can learn more from bad movies? Prove it.

[Mike]
I’ve learned a lot from The Room. I’ve learned-

[Ethan]
I’ve learned how pretty Lisa is.

[Shep]
Ha.

[Thomas]
Well, I guess we should get around to creating a movie of our own.

[Mike]
I’m excited.

[Thomas]
Since you are our guests. You get to choose this episode’s ordinary object. So what are we creating a movie plot about today?

[Mike]
Today we will be crafting a film about a Polaroid Camera.

[Thomas]
Oh, well, there are definitely a lot of potential directions that this could go, so let’s jump right into our pitches, and we’re going to start with Emily.

[Emily]
All right, so I have: a young woman sees the same person in every Polaroid photo she takes.

[Emily]
When she uses the camera on her phone or any other camera, the person isn’t there.

[Emily]
She doesn’t understand why this keeps happening. She changes the film cartridge, checks the lens. She cleans it as thoroughly as she can several times. She can’t figure it out, so she and a fellow photography friend set out to solve this mystery together. Is it a ghost? Is it a demon? Who knows?

[Mike]
Is it a poltergeist?

[Thomas]
It’s some guy at the film factory who’s figured out how to just, like, put himself in every-

[Emily]
That’s a little bit creepier, I think. Honestly.

[Mike]
Do you have a concept of, like, an idea, like, in your mind for this one of, of an ending or-

[Emily]
Yeah, kind of. I have a… A concept of what. What it actually is. What the person is.

[Mike]
Oh, but we won’t know unless we go with the movie. Is that right?

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Mike]
Oh, okay.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Mike]
Okay, good.

[Emily]
If we don’t go with it, I’ll tell you what my thought is, and then it’ll ruin it and you’ll be like, “Yeah, that was the right choice not to pick this one.” So that’s what I have. Ethan, how about you tell us one of yours?

[Ethan]
Ah. So I actually have a visual element for mine as well.

[Shep]
Oh, good. That’s-

[Ethan]
It’s great for a podcast.

[Ethan]
This is what inspired it.

[Thomas]
Oh, my goodness.

[Ethan]
But actually what I have here is a Land Camera, and I was going to- It’s a Polaroid Land Camera, and it’s called a Land Camera because the person who invented the first Polaroid was actually, his last name was Land. Anyway.

[Thomas]
Oh.

[Mike]
Oh.

[Thomas]
Didn’t know that.

[Ethan]
A Polaroid Land Camera has the magical power to bring things to life, which this old man was using to keep the memory of his wife alive by taking a photo of a photo.

[Ethan]
But after film is no longer manufactured, he falls into a deep depression.

[Ethan]
Desperate, he finds a Craigslist ad for someone who has a huge lot for sale of the film, enough to keep his wife alive for the foreseeable future. He meets up with the seller, and it turns out it’s in another state they have to find the whole lot of. That’s right. It’s a road trip to bring back his dead wife.

[Mike]
Now, I don’t know if you guys have listened to our podcast audience. Ethan hates road trip films.

[Ethan]
I hate them.

[Emily]
Oh.

[Mike]
I’m surprised to hear that you pitched a road trip idea.

[Ethan]
But it’s a supernatural one, kinda.

[Mike]
I like it.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Mike]
I like it. It’s a romance. It’s supernatural.

[Ethan]
Thomas, do you have a pitch for this particular object?

[Thomas]
I do. I came prepared today, as I usually do. James receives an envelope in the mail containing a Polaroid photo and a note.

[Thomas]
The photo shows James in bed with a woman who is not his wife. The note demands money, warning that more photos exist, which could destroy James’ life.

[Mike]
(gasp)

[Thomas]
The only problem, James has never cheated on his wife. Over the following days, more photos arrive, each depicting James in other compromising situations, doing drugs, stealing cash, even killing a man.

[Thomas]
But James has never done any of these things, yet it is unmistakably him in the photos. Determined to clear his name, James sets out to track down the blackmailer and uncover how these impossible photos are being created.

[Mike]
Ooh.

[Shep]
Fuckin’ AI.

[Mike]
I was thinking, this feels so like Minority Report, but the fact that it’s like, not the future.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Mike]
It’s like an old piece of technology that can’t be, like, falsified.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Mike]
Oh, spooky. Oh, man, that’s such a nightmare idea.

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

[Mike]
So I, I didn’t write anything down, but I pitched this to my wife earlier, and she got very excited about it.

[Thomas]
Okay.

[Mike]
So I, I’m gonna pitch it to you guys. So here’s the concept. These two high school students, one is sort of like a smart nerd who’s really into science and numbers and the other is an artistic sort of like burnout, comes from like a rich family. And she’s like, you know, really into like art and like old-timey photography.

[Mike]
And the two of them hate each other. They do not like each other. They go to the same school, they wind up in similar classes. They do not like hanging out with each other whatsoever. One day she goes into a antique store that is run by his family. He’s working behind the counter. She sees a Polaroid camera in there and she’s like, “I’m looking for something old and, you know, retro for this new project I’m doing.” And she’s like, “That camera looks great.” And the kid behind the counter is just like, “Oh, you know, this is, this is old technology. It’s not going to go very good and it’s probably really expensive,” just being a real asshole. So then she grabs the camera, takes a photo of him with it and like, you know, starts like waggling the Polaroid photo around goes-

[Shep]
Shaking it like a Polaroid picture.

[Thomas]
Yeah, exactly.

[Mike]
Indeed, indeed, shaking it around like a Polaroid picture. And she’s just like, “Well, it’s mine now.” And he, and like sort of like fanning herself with it. She walks out with the Polaroid as it’s developing, looks at the photo, and it’s a photo of the two of them kissing each other. And she’s just like, “What is going on?” She’s like, immediately assumes he must have something to do with it, goes in, accuses him of like, “You must have like done something to this, you little creep.” And the kid behind the counter is just like, “You’re the artist, like maybe it has something to do with you.” And they realize maybe this might tell the future.

[Mike]
Maybe this is something, something else. So they take a photo of the door. When it develops, it’s someone walking through the door. Five minutes later, that person walks through the door. They realize they can use this camera for something. She wants to use it to try to get answers to like future tests. But the boy who is, comes a poorer family, wants to use it to maybe get money out of a lotto ticket.

[Mike]
The rest of the movie is the two of them together, coming together eventually romantically at the end, and then at the very end of the movie, that photo that they took at the very beginning of the movie will hopefully come true at the very end. And that’s my pitch.

[Shep]
So the amount of time is variable between photos.

[Mike]
Very variable.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Mike]
Yes.

[Shep]
How do they control how much time?

[Emily]
They don’t. They just have to hope for the best.

[Mike]
They just have to offer the best when taking a photo.

[Thomas]
They started using their detective skills to see there’s a clock in the background.

[Mike]
Yes, exactly. Yeah, that’s my concept.

[Thomas]
And they have all this time because both of them are Outkasts?

[Mike]
They are both high school students, and, yeah, it’s probably-

[Thomas]
Thank you, Emily.

[Mike]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Hey ya-

[Mike]
They’re outcasts.

[Ethan]
Oh.

[Mike]
Oh, that’s a good one. I get it now.

[Thomas]
No, it wasn’t.

[Mike]
God damn it.

[Thomas]
No, it’s fine. It’s fine.

[Shep]
Oh, I get it now.

[Mike]
Hey. All right, Shep, what about you?

[Shep]
Okay, what is the big advantage of Polaroid cameras?

[Mike]
Instant photos.

[Shep]
Instant photos. You don’t need to take the film and go to a place and have it developed. If you’re a little kid, how do you take photos?

[Shep]
You can’t drive to Costco to get your film developed. Use a Polaroid camera.

[Shep]
So a young kid uses a Polaroid camera to document the monsters living under his bed, in his closet, to prove their existence to his disbelieving parents. But none of them are ready for what the pictures reveal.

[Mike]
That sounds so freaky.

[Shep]
I really tried to come up with, like, a normal, grounded one. Because Polaroid camera, you instantly go to magical realism.

[Ethan]
Yeah, absolutely.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Mike]
Absolutely.

[Shep]
It’s so hard not to. So I’m like, okay, here’s a logical reason why a kid would have it. Blah, blah, blah. And he takes photos of monsters. Damn it.

[Mike]
When you set up the story, it almost sounded like a Monsters, Inc. Situation. But then, as you finished, it turned into, like, It or something. Like, it sounds far more, like, terrifying or, like, you know, insidious.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Mike]
Oh, man, these are all really good pitches.

[Emily]
They are.

[Thomas]
Well, is there one that we are liking or we think can be made into a story that we want to pursue?

[Emily]
I like rom-coms.

[Ethan]
Thank you.

[Emily]
So I’m down for the high school one.

[Shep]
Right. Ethan, what was your pitch again?

[Emily]
The wife he wants to keep.

[Mike]
The wife.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Ethan]
Road trip one.

[Emily]
The road trip to keep his wife alive.

[Shep]
Oh, the road trip one. That’s right.

[Thomas]
Yeah, I did like that one. Although I would want to make some tweaks to it. But I do like that premise.

[Ethan]
I do think it needs some tweaks as well. Yes.

[Shep]
Wasn’t that our Newspaper episode?

[Emily]
Similar.

[Thomas]
Sort of.

[Shep]
Wasn’t he going into a photo?

[Mike]
Well, he’s not going into a photo, right? Because he’s just-

[Emily]
No, he’s just taking- How does. Yeah. How does he keep her alive?

[Ethan]
So yeah, that’s the thing is I was trying to figure out the best concept to like make this work about, like having the photo be taken of another photo to kind of like bring the person back to life. But it only lasts for a little bit because film is just doesn’t last forever. But then I was like, I don’t know if that quite works, but I’ll fucking roll with it.

[Emily]
Yeah, no.

[Thomas]
When you say it brings her back to life, what are you imagining?

[Ethan]
Like- It’s kind of like the memory of… So for example, if it takes a photo of like them at the beach, it’d be like her at that moment at the beach. And it’ll be like a day with her that he can spend at the beach.

[Thomas]
That is a lot like the newspaper episode, unfortunately.

[Emily]
Yeah. Very similar to Newspaper.

[Ethan]
Ah.

[Emily]
But this movie is about, like, similar concept. But it’s a road trip to get the stuff to continue that process.

[Ethan]
Yeah. And it’s more about. Or my thought is that the film doesn’t exist anymore, and it’s impossible to get, and so actually he has to reckon with the fact that he no longer can experience those memories that weren’t even really her.

[Ethan]
Along with this random person who I’ve not yet invented. This random person that’s with them, that maybe they can bounce off of.

[Mike]
What if it’s a situation where, like, he takes a photo of her and then she literally, like, comes back, and then she, like, slowly, like, dissipates as the photo goes away or something like that.

[Ethan]
So he’s got to find, like, more film. That could also work, too.

[Mike]
And then the person that’s, like, with him on the road trip is literally her?

[Thomas]
Ooh.

[Ethan]
Oh, I like that.

[Shep]
Well, that answers my question. Because if he’s taking the same photo of a photo, is she forming new memories, or does she revert? She resets to whenever that photo was taken.

[Ethan]
I was thinking revert initially.

[Shep]
Okay.

[Mike]
Okay.

[Thomas]
Oh, interesting. Yeah. I was thinking that she would keep those memories. That’s how he’s sort of keeping her alive. And one of the changes that I would like to see is that he’s- It’s not that he has run out of film, but he knows the film is getting lower, so he knows there’s a finite number of photos left that he can take.

[Mike]
What if it’s a situation where, like, he does have an amount? Because, like, it would be silly if, like, he’s just now realizing that it’s, like, running out. So what if one day he, like, goes to his storage unit and it, like, is gone? Like, it burnt down or something like that.

[Thomas]
Oh, yeah, that’s interesting.

[Mike]
And now it causes an immediacy of his, like, “Okay, well, now I need to get the-“

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Ethan]
The only thing I make you desperate enough to go to Craigslist in these days.

[Mike]
Exactly.

[Emily]
Right.

[Mike]
I also really like Emily’s story about the guy who shows up in only, like, Polaroid photos. This is- It’s very creepy and haunting to me. I can, like, imagine the poster, you know, at the movies called, like, Picture This or something like that. It’s-

[Mike]
It’s very unnerving. Feels like a creepypasta.

[Thomas]
What’s the… There’s a Nick Cage film where he’s in everybody’s dreams.

[Mike]
Ah, Dream Scenario. Yeah.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Oh.

[Mike]
Which is based off of that Internet thing where it’s like, “Have you dreamed this, man?” But the fact that it’s, like, in a Polaroid, it’s, like-

[Emily]
Yeah. It’s only the Polaroid.

[Mike]
So she can, like, show it to people and go, like, “This is the person.”

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
But I like that idea that it’s just some guy who doesn’t know that he’s showing up in Polaroids.

[Mike]
Yeah, it’s just a guy.

[Ethan]
Oh, I would love it, though, if that person, like, maybe is in the Polaroid and is, like, trying to get out. And the only way they get out is through the photos. Right? Like, they actually have a whole storyline inside of it.

[Emily]
That was kind of where I was going with it.

[Shep]
So he went in to stay with his wife, but then-

[Ethan]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Now he’s trapped.

[Ethan]
What if we make all the pitches into one big soup?

[Emily]
We have done this.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
We have done that.

[Emily]
So, yeah, that’s actually where I was leaning with it, Ethan, was that it was, somebody had it imprinted or is trapped in the camera, and that is the only way. But it’s only that camera. So-

[Shep]
Right. It’s not the film.

[Thomas]
Is this like a sequel to Video Cassette?

[Shep]
Oh, yeah.

[Emily]
The Muppet Slayer?

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Emily]
I don’t think we need to revisit the Muppet Slayer.

[Shep]
That’s how he got out of the VHS. I was going to ask Thomas: So what is going on in your pitch?

[Ethan]
That one is hard for me to really wrap my head around. Like, where to go with that. It seems like a great idea, but I’m like, yeah, I’m. I’m with Shep. I’m like, “Where does this go? How do we get out?”

[Mike]
Well, this feels like a situation where it’s either a future, like, these are actually photos from the future. Right?

[Mike]
Where it’s like, by looking into the case, it- It’s like an Oedipus thing. He ends up like a… Like a Greek tragedy.

[Emily]
Mm.

[Mike]
He ends up, like, falling into the situations that’ll eventually be caught on these Polaroids. That’s what I’m imagining, at least.

[Thomas]
Yeah. I mean, self-fulfilling prophecy is kind of the direction that I was thinking, but I don’t know how much I love that idea.

[Mike]
That’s true. That’s true.

[Thomas]
It’s a little La Jetée, 12 Monkeys, you know?

[Mike]
It is a bit 12 Monkeys. That’s true. Yeah. But 12 Monkeys is a good movie.

[Shep]
Anyway, which one of these are we doing?

[Mike]
Which one of these pitches? Well, I feel like a question that Shep usually asks is, like, “What are we trying to say with these stories?” So I feel like, is there a story here that’s, like, emotionally something that we feel is, like, a metaphor? Something that’s, like, beautiful or interesting or something that, like, we can actually, like, get behind? Because I don’t want us to, like, be halfway through a pitch, and then we’re like, “Uh oh, we’ve made the guy a creep and the woman, you know, a victim or something like that.”

[Shep]
Okay, well, then I like the road trip one. Because if the message is “It’s okay to let go, it’s okay to just have memories of someone that you lost.” Or does he get the film at the end and continues living stuck at this point?

[Ethan]
Ooh.

[Shep]
Like she’s stuck in the photo, he’s stuck in the real world, reliving these moments because he can’t move on. Oh, that’s… That’s A Map of Tiny Perfect Things. Fuck! It’s so hard to come up with a new idea.

[Ethan]
Yeah.

[Mike]
I was gonna say if. If he ends up letting her go, that feels a little, like, Up.

[Ethan]
Exactly.

[Mike]
But I think we can still get around it, because what if he ends up like, taking a photo of himself.

[Shep]
Oh!

[Ethan]
Yeah. It could get real weird with it. Like, you think you’re gonna go Up, and you think it’s like, “Oh, we don’t have any more.” And it’s like, here’s one photo left. And then he takes a photo of, I don’t know, something crazy. What- Instead of his wife.

[Thomas]
Well, if she exists in the real world, when he takes those photos of her, then the last photo is a picture of the two of them-

[Mike]
Together?

[Thomas]
Together. And that way they exist in the film world, together forever. Like, he finally figures out, oh, “I know how we can be together,” but it means-

[Mike]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Ending his life.

[Shep]
Right. Not me, but a copy of me-

[Mike]
We’ll be with you forever.

[Shep]
With a copy of her.

[Ethan]
And then the, the last shot of the movie is someone picking up that Polaroid again.

[Thomas]
Setting up the sequel.

[Ethan]
Yeah.

[Mike]
Yeah. Do we like the idea that he takes a photo and then she is there with him? So, like, the road trip is literally her and him together, basically?

[Thomas]
Well, so here’s an idea that I just had is that I like what you said, Mike, about his storage unit burns down. And so now, instead of having basically enough photos to last the rest of his life, he has like a dozen photos left or something along those lines, right?

[Mike]
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Thomas]
So he knows that this is going to end. And he’s looked online, there’s no one selling this. You know, they’ve stopped manufacturing it 30 years ago or whatever it is. And he’s like, “Shit. Like, I just. There’s nothing I can do. This is going to end.”

[Thomas]
So he has to do that calculus of, like, “Do I keep taking these pictures? Like, how long do I wait between taking pictures?” So what he decides is, “Okay, this is it. It’s the last dozen photos or the last eight photos, whatever it is.” So he’s going to do a road trip to go to places that were important to them so they can relive-

[Mike]
Oh, I love that.

[Thomas]
And so that is what motivates that road trip-

[Ethan]
That’s good.

[Thomas]
To significant areas. And then maybe where they had their honeymoon, they went to some special beach. And so that’s where that last photo gets taken.

[Ethan]
I like that.

[Mike]
I love that.

[Shep]
Okay, so I just looked up how long does Polaroid film last? And it doesn’t last very long. It lasts a…

[Thomas]
Why would you do that? Don’t look that up.

[Ethan]
Haha.

[Emily]
Because he likes to ruin things.

[Shep]
I- No, no, no. I don’t think his warehouse, whatever storage unit, should have burned down. I think he was keeping this film in a perfect climate-controlled room that could last, you know, keep it, you know, long-lasting.

[Shep]
And you know, the power went out or something.

[Mike]
Yes, yes.

[Shep]
So it was just a minor tragedy that could have happened.

[Mike]
Yes.

[Shep]
We’ve all had our power go out, and so the film gets ruined. Not because of a storage unit burning down. Because when has that happened?

[Mike]
Honestly, as I was pitching it, it sounded dramatic, so I like this idea better.

[Shep]
This is a minor thing. I mean, maybe the power didn’t go up. Maybe like the climate control stopped working. So there was no notification, there was no alarm.

[Mike]
Yeah.

[Ethan]
A lot of times people keep old film in fridges, so it could be someone who, like, just tripped over the fridge-like thing.

[Mike]
Or he trips over it.

[Ethan]
Or he trips it over. I feel like he would know it.

[Mike]
Know it. So, yeah, that’s true. Yeah.

[Ethan]
It would have to be, like, someone else would have to be in there, and they would have to trip over the cord and unplug it and then just not say anything.

[Shep]
Well, see, then someone’s at fault, which he could blame.

[Ethan]
That’s true.

[Mike]
Yeah.

[Emily]
There could be a short in the wiring and…

[Shep]
Right.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Ethan]
Yeah, that’s true.

[Shep]
The compressor burned out or whatever and it just stopped working.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Mike]
It’s just a… Yeah. Happenstance.

[Ethan]
That’s a better idea.

[Thomas]
Well, he was thinking about how old the film was, but not how old the fridge was.

[Mike]
Yes.

[Shep]
Ha.

[Mike]
I love this idea. Can I pitch one other concept?

[Thomas]
Okay.

[Mike]
So what if he gets at, like, the last location, he’s getting, like, photos taken. He’s, like, at a diner or restaurant or something, and he runs into, like, a woman there, and it reminds him of his wife, and he ends up falling in love with her. And then at the very end, he has to-

[Emily]
Oh, yeah.

[Mike]
And he has to decide. He’s just like, “Do I move on? Like, I’ve never moved on. Like, do I go off with this other person?”

[Ethan]
And she’s gonna be freaking awesome. She’s gonna be the best person ever. The audience is gonna fall in love with this new person.

[Mike]
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because we. We as audiences are also just like, “This is not healthy. This is not sustainable.”

[Ethan]
Yeah. I may- I, I was pitching old person to give the time aspect, but now if we don’t have to have that anymore, we could kind of age them up a little bit more so there’s more life that this person could have with this new person.

[Mike]
Yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s what I’m thinking. Where it’s, it’s less a situation where he, in the end, is, like, a bad, like, tragic figure and more a thing about, like, mourning and letting go and continuing to move on, which is, that’s something. Yeah.

[Shep]
Or what if he’s, you know, revisiting these photos when she is younger, and now he’s older, and so she’s like “Oh, oh, no.”

[Mike]
That’s actually really good. And then what if she is, like, played by Sydney Sweeney and he’s played by- And he’s played by, like, Stanley Tucci or something.

[Shep]
I was gonna say don’t make it creepy, but you did Stanley Tucci, and I think he could really-

[Emily]
It’s not creepy, then.

[Mike]
It’s not creepy.

[Shep]
It’s not creepy anymore.

[Emily]
Yeah, he can pull it off.

[Mike]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Yeah, he could pull it off.

[Mike]
But, yeah, it’s like, you’re like, “This does feel wrong. This is obviously wrong,” but, like, you can see that there’s still, like, this love and connection between these two people, even if it is, like, an age gap because of when they were- when they knew each other.

[Ethan]
Would she be growing, aging as well? Like, would she have all her memories, have the mental capacity to be kind of, like, an older person?

[Ethan]
Or would she still kind of be at the same age?

[Shep]
She is whenever that photo was taken, that’s-

[Ethan]
Okay.

[Shep]
She’s frozen in time.

[Ethan]
That is a little creepy. But not too, but not too creepy.

[Mike]
Well. I mean, that’s actually a really fun- What if we did, like, like, an Irishman thing where, like, you see her through years, you know, so it’s like she’s, she’s, like, younger, then she’s older again, then she’s, like, middle aged, you know?

[Ethan]
Like, each memory.

[Emily]
Oh, yeah. But then you get into that weird Time Traveler’s Wife thing where it’s like-

[Mike]
Yeah. That’s fair.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Yeah, this is okay, she’s college age, and he’s an adult man. And then-

[Mike]
We definitely want to avoid Time Traveler’s Wife as much as possible.

[Emily]
Yeah. Oh.

[Mike]
I really do love the idea, though, Thomas, about them on a trip and, like, they’re visiting places that were meaningful. And I love- Because, like, one of the things I was thinking about with Polaroid photos as well is that that trend you see where, like, people take photos and then they, like, hold them up to newer settings, but the photos are from old times. So it’s like we can have this thing where, like, he, like, holds up the photos to, like, the Grand Canyon. She’s in the photo, and then he, like, lowers the photo, and she’s now there.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Mike]
And that sort of thing of, like, that’s how he brings her back to life is, like, lining it up just perfectly.

[Thomas]
Oh, right. He’s got a photo album with Polaroids that he took 30 years ago.

[Mike]
Yes, exactly.

[Thomas]
And of course, because time marches on, there are places that they try to visit that aren’t there anymore.

[Mike]
Yes! Buildings have been demolished. Yeah.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Mike]
Like, oh, my god, I love that idea. Oh, this is so sad.

[Shep]
Good.

[Mike]
But so beautiful.

[Shep]
Good. We’re powered by the audience’s tears.

[Mike]
Yes.

[Thomas]
Yes.

[Mike]
I love this.

[Emily]
For me to add a little more sadness, in my opinion, would be to have her be actively growing with him so that when they go to the spot, she can be like, “Well, what happened to the restaurant? What hap-” You know, she could share in that-

[Mike]
Yes.

[Thomas]
Yeah, yeah.

[Emily]
Point out what’s wrong.

[Mike]
They go to a restaurant they used to go to, and, like, she’s like, “Didn’t we used to, like, smoke here?” And he’s like, “They don’t do that anymore.”

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Ethan]
Can other people see her apparition as well, because she’s in a restaurant?

[Mike]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Yeah. I imagine that the only way to really make that work is she has to corporeally exist.

[Mike]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
For some period of time. Right?

[Shep]
Or he’s crazy, and she’s not really coming back, and it’s all in his mind.

[Thomas]
We get that big reveal at the end. Usual Suspect-style, right?

[Shep]
Right.

[Mike]
Yeah, yeah, yeah. We definitely want to try to not make him mentally ill. We want to make him adorable.

[Emily]
Yeah. I think we make her corporeal.

[Ethan]
Maybe whoever presses the button on the magical Polaroid camera can see whatever appears from it.

[Mike]
I don’t want him talking to himself.

[Mike]
I want other people, like, seeing him talking to somebody. You know, I feel like it’s weird if he’s talking to himself at, like, a restaurant or whatever.

[Shep]
Oh, it’s gonna be weird no matter what. Where this person from the past shows up.

[Mike]
Ah. You know.

[Emily]
I like-

[Mike]
Sorry. Yeah, go ahead, Emily.

[Emily]
Yeah, I was gonna say, I like the idea of, like, the ability to do like, that she was older when they went to the Grand Canyon, but she was younger when they went to Niagara Falls.

[Mike]
Yeah.

[Emily]
So at one point, they’re at the restaurant in Niagara Falls and they’re like, “Oh, is this your dad?”

[Mike]
Yes.

[Ethan]
Oh, okay.

[Emily]
“What are you guys here for?” And, you know, even though she has kind of that idea, knowing that this isn’t the same and she’s not where she’s supposed to be, she could be like, “Why would they think you’re my dad?” Like, maybe she sees him young.

[Mike]
Yes.

[Emily]
But everybody else sees him as the older guy.

[Thomas]
Hmm.

[Ethan]
Okay.

[Mike]
I also, like, I like the idea of her being in, like, the different clothing from different time periods, and then people maybe bring that up, and it’s just like, she’s just, like, a hipster.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Mike]
Like, she’s just into that, like, wearing this kind of clothing, you know? Okay, so should we start plotting, where’s their end point and where’s their beginning point? Like-

[Shep]
I have two questions.

[Emily]
No, no questions from you.

[Shep]
How long does she last per photo?

[Ethan]
I was thinking that too.

[Thomas]
That’s a good question.

[Shep]
Is it a day? Is it several days? Is it a week? I don’t know what span of time-

[Emily]
We could make it variable by saying the sunset of that day. So if he doesn’t take the photo until like 3 o’clock, then he has until 5 o’clock before the sun sets. But if he takes it in the morning, then he has all day with her.

[Ethan]
That could be an option.

[Ethan]
The other thing I was thinking of is, depending on how faded the photos are that he’s using to take the photos of, it could last longer or shorter. Like, if it’s a newer photo and she’s older, maybe it would last longer because it’s a newer photo. That could be an option too.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
I mean, whatever the rule is, I think we want it to be really straightforward and simple.

[Mike]
Yeah.

[Ethan]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
I don’t think we should have variable rules because we want the audience to be able to get it quickly. So, if it was something like she disappears at midnight for whatever reason.

[Shep]
Because Groundhog Day rules.

[Thomas]
Exactly.

[Ethan]
Sure.

[Shep]
So I like the idea of the fade, the more faded the photograph is, the less time he has with her.

[Shep]
Because maybe he’s recreating, he’s reversing a trip and he’s going back to her family’s, you know, house or whatever.

[Mike]
Hmm.

[Shep]
And so the photos are getting older and older. And so the final photo, he only has a few minutes or whatever.

[Mike]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Because it’s so faded.

[Mike]
What if he’s going to, like, visit, like, a gravesite or something? Like, that’s the final point is, like, he’s going to, like, where her family is, like, buried, and he’s, like, going to, like, scatter her ashes or something like that.

[Mike]
And so it’s like, the final, like, thing of him is, like, him, like, with her, and then, like, cuts, and then he’s just, like, in a graveyard alone. Like, she’s dissipated now.

[Shep]
Oh, see if he’s there to scatter her ashes, but she’s corporeal briefly, she could scatter her own ashes.

[Mike]
Yes!

[Thomas]
Oh.

[Mike]
I love that.

[Shep]
I would like- Because it’s the- She’s trying to comfort him.

[Mike]
Yeah. She’s trying to be there for him.

[Shep]
Right. Because he’s this old man now. They were in love for so long.

[Ethan]
Yeah.

[Shep]
She knows, she can anticipate that he is grieving so deeply.

[Thomas]
Is this the scene where the thing they’re looking for isn’t there?

[Emily]
Oh, that could be.

[Thomas]
And he’s like, “I was going to scatter your ashes here.”

[Ethan]
Yes!

[Thomas]
Like, he had this plan, and he gets there and it’s like, “Dang it, this place doesn’t exist anymore.” And he’s upset, and she’s like, “I have an idea.”

[Mike]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
And she grabs the urn and drags him somewhere else, and they end up scattering or whatever.

[Mike]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
She’s like, “I don’t care. It doesn’t matter to me.”

[Shep]
Right. It was a park that they used to go to, and now it’s a mall.

[Mike]
Yes.

[Thomas]
Yeah. Yeah.

[Mike]
And then, like, you see, like, he’s all by himself. She’s scattering her urn or whatever. And then it’s just like a wide shot. You just see the urn drop to the ground because she’s, like, dissipated.

[Ethan]
Because there’s no time left.

[Thomas]
Hmm.

[Mike]
Yeah. This is sad. I like how sad this is.

[Thomas]
Well, let’s take a break to cry, and- When we come back, we’ll figure out what happens to the rest of our Polaroid camera characters.

[Break]

[Thomas]
All right, we are back. Now, as I recall, before the break, Shep had a second question that we didn’t get to.

[Mike]
Oh.

[Thomas]
Does Shep remember his second question?

[Mike]
Oh.

[Thomas]
Oh, we shouldn’t have taken a break.

[Emily]
Oh.

[Mike]
Oh, no, it’s gone now.

[Shep]
Just give me a second.

[Shep]
Let me go into my mind palace. Oh! Oh. My question was, at the end, does he- Someone floated the idea of him ending up with another woman.

[Mike]
Yes.

[Shep]
Which seems real soon after finishing grieving for his previous wife.

[Ethan]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Wait, how many years has he been grieving her? Like, what is soon?

[Mike]
I think he’s been grieving her for a while. That’s my-

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Mike]
That was my impression. But, yeah, I don’t know. I, I feel like giving him the option to finally, like, move on and then making it in a situation where, like, he never expected it. Like- Yeah.

[Mike]
It’s like, he meets a stranger, he actually, like, hits it off with her, and then he, and then he’s like, “Maybe I won’t take a photo tomorrow. Like, maybe I’ll actually just spend tomorrow with this completely different person and see what happens, you know?” And then he realizes, like, maybe there’s more to life than just, like, mourning his wife. You know, like, he’s actually, he’s actually realizing, like, letting go is, is, can be something that is attainable, you know.

[Ethan]
That’s a good B plot, too.

[Shep]
So he meets her earlier. He doesn’t meet her at the end.

[Thomas]
I was going to say the opposite is that he meets her after the credits. That’s the post-credit scene is pulling back into the driveway from getting home from the road trip. And then it’s his, like, new neighbor across the street who’s just moved in. And she comes over and introduces herself, and he’s like “Hmmm….”

[Mike]
I also feel like introducing someone who is age-appropriate to him would also imply, like, he’s not just doing this because he’s, like, obsessed with his young wife.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Mike]
He is a cool guy who, who isn’t just, like, lusting after, you know.

[Shep]
It’s Stanley Tucci.

[Mike]
It’s Stanley Tucci, and he’s making spaghetti.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Mike]
Should we set up an actual, like, location, start to finish, different locations that they would start and stop at? I like the idea, too, of, like, them going, oh, man. Yeah. What if they’re gonna go to, like, the place they first met and then that’s the place that’s destroyed. And then he takes, she takes him to, like, where her parents are buried or whatever.

[Thomas]
Oh, yeah.

[Mike]
Like, that can be instead where they end up going is, like, not a place that was the beginning of the relationship.

[Thomas]
Right. So she’s like, from, they’re, they’re both from this, like, small town-

[Mike]
Yes, exactly.

[Thomas]
And there was this boardwalk along the beach in the small town, and that’s where they met because he was working at, you know, the Fish and Chip Shack.

[Mike]
Yes.

[Thomas]
And she also worked nearby, and she always came there for lunch or something along those lines. Maybe it’s reversed because, I don’t know, a woman eating fish and chips at lunch every day, that seems a little weird. But I could see a guy eating fish and chips for lunch every day.

[Ethan]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Especially if there’s a cute girl that works there.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
And that’s his excuse for coming there every day.

[Ethan]
That’s, yeah.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Ethan]
Especially back in the day.

[Mike]
And what if on their first date, they got photos together in the little, like, photo booth?

[Shep]
Oh, yeah.

[Mike]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Yes.

[Shep]
So that’s the photo that he takes a photo of at the end.

[Mike]
Yes.

[Shep]
It’s the, it’s the photo booth photo. And those are shitty photos, and they don’t last very long. So it’s more faded than the other photos. It all makes sense now.

[Mike]
He, like, keeps it in his wallet, so it’s all, like, worn.

[Ethan]
Oh, yeah, yeah.

[Thomas]
Oh, yeah, yeah.

[Mike]
Yeah. Yeah. This is good.

[Thomas]
So is that the lowest low? Is that the trip has been leading up to this moment? They’re going to re- I don’t know, relive, but they’re going to enjoy this time together at the place where they met. It’s going to be this really great climactic moment for them. And it doesn’t exist anymore.

[Mike]
Yeah, it’s gone. Yeah. Like a big wave came and destroyed the thing or whatever, like, burnt down or something, so it’s-

[Thomas]
Right. It’s a climate change movie. We got it.

[Mike]
Climate change movie, exactly.

[Ethan]
Yeah. There you go.

[Ethan]
That’s the actual moral.

[Mike]
Yeah.

[Ethan]
Yeah, yeah.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
Yep.

[Thomas]
Oh, so then that park they used to go to, there’s a big oil derrick there now and…

[Emily]
Mm. Yep.

[Mike]
Yes.

[Thomas]
Yeah, yeah, I got it.

[Shep]
So it’s California.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Mike]
It’s California. Exactly.

[Shep]
So is she retaining her memories from photo to photo? Because previously we were saying no, and now it’s like, maybe she should.

[Mike]
I think she should.

[Thomas]
I think she should. Yeah.

[Emily]
I am advocating that she should.

[Ethan]
I’m thinking that.

[Mike]
I think she should.

[Ethan]
As we’ve developed this, I think it should.

[Shep]
Okay.

[Thomas]
As we’ve developed it?

[Shep]
Ha!

[Emily]
No.

[Ethan]
It was very quick, though. Just like a Polaroid.

[Shep]
So it’s one of the things she can talk about. She’s like, “Oh, I’m so young now.”

[Mike]
Yes.

[Ethan]
I like that.

[Shep]
Like, she’s in a younger body, but she has the memory of being older.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Ethan]
That feels more appropriate too, and less weird.

[Mike]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Mike]
I agree. We can’t just have her be like an ingénue the entire time, which is also a thing. What if he finds this woman and then he decides not to take a photo that day? And then the next day, she’s just like, “Did you not take a photo yesterday?”

[Ethan]
“It’s wednesday.”

[Thomas]
Oh, interesting.

[Shep]
Because she remembers.

[Mike]
She’s just like, “Has it been an entire day? You haven’t, you haven’t gone a whole day not taking a photo of me?” And then at first he, like, hides it, and then she eventually, like, says something, and at first he thinks that she’s gonna get upset, and she’s actually just like, “No. Like, who is she? Like, I’m so happy for you. You might have, like, found someone else.” Like, she actually is, like, advocating for him to move on, basically.

[Shep]
I’m picturing the other girl coming to, like, you know, wherever he’s at, knocking on the door, and that’s just like, “Oh, she’s here.” And she’s excited. She’s gonna let her in.

[Emily]
“Oh, let’s meet her.”

[Mike]
Yeah. And then she, like, wingmans him.

[Shep]
Yes.

[Mike]
Yes!

[Ethan]
Ooh.

[Mike]
Yes! Oh…

[Emily]
Oh, because she’s her younger self, then. So she can be, he can be her uncle.

[Mike]
Yes.

[Ethan]
Yeah, yeah.

[Mike]
Yes.

[Shep]
She’s telling the other, the new woman, like, the things that he likes. And…

[Ethan]
Oh, we’re cooking here.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Mike]
This is good. This. And the other woman is just, like, so impressed. And then he’s, like, awkward because he’s just like- He hasn’t been on a date in so long, obviously, and, like, he doesn’t really know how to, like, do this. And so she’s, like, helping him. Ah, I love this. This is so good.

[Shep]
Oh, man, I’m picturing her dressing him for his date.

[Mike]
Yes.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Picking out his, his clothes.

[Mike]
Yes. I love this.

[Ethan]
I was also going to say I would love the idea of her, as she gets her photo taken, mentioning, like, “Oh, I want to be in this outfit tomorrow. Can you take a photo of this particular one of me? So that way you can see. I love this outfit. I want to be there again.”

[Mike]
That’s really cute.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Mike]
What if, like, he has all of his, like, clothes in, like- Because I’m thinking back to, like, what their living situation must be like, right? So he has all of his clothes in his closet, and then he has, like, a rack of photos of her in different outfits, and she could, like, choose which one she wants.

[Ethan]
Yeah. Well, I also like the idea that, like- Because her younger photos, when she probably has like a… A body that’s not as aged and like, you know, it doesn’t have all the problems of being an old person.

[Mike]
Yeah.

[Ethan]
She prefers those, but she has to save them. Right. Because she’s only on the planet for so long with the faded photos. I think that’s a cool little-

[Shep]
Hmm.

[Mike]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Right, right.

[Mike]
This is really good. I want to watch this movie.

[Thomas]
This happens to us all the time.

[Mike]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Shep]
I like it now that she’s more of a participant in what’s going on and has more agency.

[Ethan]
Yeah, yeah.

[Mike]
Yeah.

[Ethan]
I agree.

[Mike]
I want her to be participatory.

[Shep]
Right. That thing about choosing.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
She wants to be younger because she wants to go dancing, even though she knows that it’s a faded photo so she only has, you know, four hours instead of a whole day.

[Mike]
Oh.

[Shep]
That kind of thing.

[Mike]
Yeah. What if, like, one of the places he takes her is, like, a dance hall, like, where they had, like, one of their first dances or something like that, and she goes up to dance, and then he, like, tries to dance, but he’s too old, so he can’t, like, get up and, like, move around as much. And so she’s just, like, out there, like, dancing and loving it, and he has to just sit and watch her dance.

[Ethan]
Ooh.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
So is the mid-second-act turning point when the other woman comes in, or does she show up earlier?

[Mike]
I think that would probably be it, right?

[Emily]
That feels like a good spot.

[Mike]
Like, she’s introduced at that moment. Yeah.

[Ethan]
So they’re on this road trip, and then she shows up like that because that’s-

[Thomas]
Right. We’ve established, like, the routine that they have. And then there’s one day he’s, like, about to take the photo and he meets the other woman for whatever reason, and he doesn’t take the photo right then, or he doesn’t take it at all that day maybe?

[Mike]
If she’s going to be a big part of it, she either is on exactly the same road trip as they are on, which could be the case. Or halfway through the movie, he gets to, like, their hometown.

[Ethan]
You know, or! Or, classic issue of car trouble. And you got to stay in a town for a while.

[Mike]
He has car trouble, and he stays in her town.

[Ethan]
Yeah.

[Mike]
I thought you meant, like, she has car trouble, so she has to, like, drive with him. And I’m like, “No.”

[Ethan]
No, no.

[Mike]
She’s gonna be like, “Why is there a different woman in your car every day?” I like this better.

[Thomas]
Well, and like, I think one of the points that he can bring up, because, of course he’s resistant to this idea of having a relationship with her. And one of the points that he brings up is like, you know, “But I live in city A, and she lives in town B.”

[Mike]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
And the wife is like, “And you’re retired. Move, you idiot.”

[Mike]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Like-

[Mike]
Well, yeah, that’s one of the things she can say is, like, “You don’t have friends. I would know. Like, you don’t do anything.”

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
Because he’s stuck in the past.

[Mike]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Mike]
“You’ve got no connection to that place that you’re living. The only thing that connected you there was the film canisters. You don’t even have those anymore, you know?”

[Shep]
Yeah. He’s like, “This is where we have all those memories.” And she’s like, “I’m dead.”

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Mike]
Yeah, yeah.

[Shep]
Like, “What are you doing?”

[Mike]
Oh, yeah. This is good. Yeah. So you’re right.

[Shep]
“Don’t use me as an excuse not to live.”

[Mike]
Exactly. Exactly.

[Thomas]
Yes, yes.

[Mike]
And then you’re right. We need to start breaking down the act. So halfway through the movie, his car breaks down where this woman is. So he ends up having to stay there for, like, I don’t know, like, a couple days, basically, until, like, his car can get repaired at the local mechanic or something.

[Ethan]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Ethan]
And she wants to go dancing that night. So his wife’s not around because she can’t be there the whole day. So he has to spend a lot of time alone because she wants to go dancing because of a faded photo.

[Emily]
Oh.

[Ethan]
So she spends a lot of time at like the local diner or whatever. And that’s a similar way they met before.

[Shep]
I want to bring something up that was brought up before: how the photos work. Like he is recreating the photo of where it was taken, right?

[Shep]
So he’s taking the photo of the photo and then moves the Polaroid down and she’s there. Well, if he breaks down at this town that they previously just passed through.

[Thomas]
Oh, yeah.

[Emily]
He can’t take the photo.

[Shep]
There’s no photo. So, like, he didn’t choose not to take a photo of her that day. He just is stuck in this town. And of course, how do we get him to have her there?

[Thomas]
Well, maybe there’s like, a photo of her in the car. And so he can always take a picture of her in the car.

[Shep]
Ah.

[Mike]
Yes.

[Ethan]
Yes, I was gonna say. Yeah. How does that work? That makes sense. In the car.

[Thomas]
But there’s no- There’s nothing in this town that they’re tied to. And that’s why he doesn’t want to leave the house. That was the house that they were living in. So there’s a bunch of pictures of her around the house.

[Shep]
Ah.

[Ethan]
Yeah.

[Mike]
And the city that, like, they live in has been, has changed so much. There’s no way that he can get the photos, like, of them outdoors, basically. So, yeah, you’re right. The house is the one thing that stayed the same. I think that sounds good. So it’s, he takes the photo of her in the car, but not her, like, in any actual space in the town.

[Thomas]
And that’s why the car breaks down. Because he’s had the same car for 40 years.

[Ethan]
Yeah.

[Mike]
Yes.

[Ethan]
Ah, yes.

[Thomas]
It’s a piece of junk at this point.

[Ethan]
Also, she can’t also be in the town as well because the car is in the shop, so he can’t take photos there anymore.

[Thomas]
Yes.

[Mike]
But he still needs, if we want the scene where they have, like, the double date… Oh, maybe the double date is after the car gets repaired.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Ethan]
Yeah, they stay in town a little bit longer.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Yes.

[Thomas]
He stays.

[Mike]
Yes.

[Thomas]
Yeah, yeah, exactly.

[Mike]
Yeah, I like that. I like that.

[Shep]
So he’s passing time with the new woman while his car is being repaired.

[Ethan]
S.a…

[Shep]
He doesn’t really have a choice, right?

[Mike]
Right.

[Shep]
He can’t spend time with his dead wife. She’s unavailable because he needs the car. But then the car is repaired and he takes a photo and she realizes how much time has passed and then brings up like, “How did you spend your time?” And that’s when the other, the woman shows up again.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
Coming to his hotel room so they could, you know, she’s going to surprise him with lunch or something.

[Mike]
Is it too cheesy if she’s also the mechanic?

[Emily]
How small of a town is this?

[Ethan]
Yeah.

[Mike]
I don’t know. Maybe it’s a small town.

[Thomas]
Oh, no.

[Thomas]
She works in the diner where their specialty is fish and chips. So-

[Mike]
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s what it is. Yeah, that’s what it is.

[Thomas]
There’s something about the smell of the grease that-

[Mike]
Yeah.

[Ethan]
Yeah.

[Mike]
It just takes him back.

[Thomas]
Takes him back. Yeah.

[Mike]
Yeah, I like that.

[Thomas]
Yeah. And so when, as Shep was saying, she shows up at his hotel, at first he’s panicked. Like, “Oh, gosh, it’s the-” You know, the two dates for the prom are meeting each other.

[Mike]
Yes.

[Thomas]
And she’s like, “Oh, is she- Is that why, it’s her? That’s why we haven’t been together for a couple days?”

[Shep]
“No, no, no. The car broke down.”

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
“I can explain.”

[Mike]
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Ethan]
But she knows.

[Emily]
“Oh, she’s so cute. You could-“

[Ethan]
She knows.

[Mike]
Yes.

[Thomas]
And she’s all excited. She, she doesn’t even ask. She just opens the door to let her in.

[Mike]
Yes. She’s all in.

[Ethan]
Yeah.

[Mike]
And, like, he’s, like, worried about how this looks. And she immediately has like, yeah, she’s like, “This is my uncle.”

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Mike]
Like, blah, blah, blah.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Mike]
And, like, it is obviously a weird situation that he, that needs to be like, like, “This is your uncle? He just broke down here. Why are you here? Like, where’s your car?”

[Thomas]
But also, like, “Why, he didn’t tell me about you. He didn’t mention that he was here with his niece.”

[Mike]
Yeah. And then trying to explain the situation to her.

[Mike]
I don’t know. I, I think this can work.

[Thomas]
Totally.

[Mike]
Like, it being strange enough, I think can actually make it work better.

[Thomas]
Yeah. So I think my big question now is, so if this is a town that’s outside of their planned trip, we know we want them, the lowest low happens at their end point goal. So they have to leave this town at some point. So, how do we keep this woman, this new woman, part of the story? Because he does have to leave her town.

[Shep]
He leaves her town, and his dead wife is trying to convince him to like, go back.

[Mike]
To go back.

[Thomas]
Oh, sure. And so the wharf or the boardwalk not being there is a sign.

[Mike]
Yes.

[Thomas]
She’s saying, “Look, look, it’s all gone.”

[Ethan]
Mm.

[Mike]
Yes.

[Thomas]
“Everything’s gone. The whole reason we stay in that house is because the rest of the city changed. Everything changed. Everything has moved on. Except for you.”

[Mike]
In the middle of the night. So, like, that night on the date, his wife is like, “Oh, yeah. Like, he’s really interested in you.”

[Mike]
Like, she’s talking him up, and then he overhears this and he’s super upset. And then that night, because she’s like, “Oh, we’ll meet up with you again tomorrow. Like, we’ll see you for breakfast tomorrow,” the wife says.

[Mike]
And then the lady leaves, and then he packs everything up and, like, gets her in the car and just drives there that night.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Mike]
And the wife is like, “What are you doing? Like, we have all this set up. Like, we can. This can all work out.”

[Thomas]
Oh, no. She disappears, and then he drives.

[Mike]
Yes. And she- Yes!

[Thomas]
So then they’re already out of her town. They’re already in the next place when he takes the next photo. And she’s like, “What are you doing?”

[Mike]
Yes.

[Thomas]
“You’re blowing this.”

[Mike]
Yes, exactly. Exactly. He drives all through the night.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Sorry, I had the idea of like, oh, she was angling for a threesome. But you can’t do that if she is pretending to be his niece.

[Emily]
No.

[Shep]
That doesn’t work.

[Ethan]
Yeah.

[Mike]
Yeah, that’s not gonna.

[Ethan]
Oh, no.

[Emily]
That, that makes it creepy. I mean, that works in some movies, but we don’t make those.

[Ethan]
That would change the tone completely. Yeah.

[Mike]
Yeah.

[Ethan]
I don’t know if we can have the sad urn scene anymore if we do that.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Is she going to get stuck in the dryer? Is that what’s going to happen?

[Ethan]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Mike]
Stuck in the dryer…

[Thomas]
Does the wife retaliate for him leaving in the middle of the night?

[Mike]
Yes. She’s pissed.

[Emily]
Absolutely.

[Mike]
She’s very upset.

[Thomas]
What does she do? How does she make things difficult for him? Does she get rid of a bunch of the photos?

[Ethan]
Yeah. She starts tearing up her own photos.

[Shep]
No! The- No!

[Emily]
That’s too mean.

[Shep]
So destructive.

[Emily]
It’s too mean.

[Ethan]
Yeah.

[Mike]
Yeah, yeah. I kind of dig that. That’s real, like, forcing him to, like, actually come to terms with it.

[Ethan]
Maybe not all of them, but just a couple. Like, just to be like-

[Shep]
No. I’m so against this idea. Because you can’t come back from this.

[Thomas]
But she doesn’t want him to. She wants him to move on.

[Mike]
Yeah.

[Ethan]
He has to move, has to move on anyway because you’re running out of film anyway, so might as well speed up the process.

[Emily]
Oh, okay. I can see it in a very dramatic way. She’s not participating in the way that she has been the rest of the trip. The way he’s expecting at this spot for them to go into the memory again.

[Mike]
Yeah.

[Emily]
And then she just books it for the car and rips open whatever the book.

[Thomas]
Maybe she doesn’t destroy the photos. Maybe she destroys the film.

[Emily]
Oh.

[Ethan]
Oh.

[Thomas]
So he has even fewer photos now that he can take.

[Shep]
I don’t like any of these ideas.

[Emily]
I was gonna say she, she’s threatening to do it and she’s saying-

[Shep]
That’s-

[Ethan]
Yeah. She shouldn’t have to-

[Shep]
This is such an unhealthy relationship you guys are portraying.

[Mike]
I mean, it is unhealthy. He’s forced her to, like, you know, live out.

[Emily]
It’s already unhealthy.

[Shep]
Yeah, he is stuck in the past, but she is the rational, logical, emotionally intelligent one.

[Shep]
She’s not going to like, throw a hissy fit and tear up his photos of her. What does that look like? That looks like she’s being hysterical. That is not a positive portrayal of a strong, independent woman. No, instead they go to a diner to have, you know, lunch or whatever on the trip. And she’s like, she’s mad at him. So he is trying to engage in conversation like you’ve seen in the movie up to that point. And she just crosses her arms and she’s not saying anything. And the waitress comes to take their order and she goes, “Why don’t you order for me since you like making all the decisions for me. Because you packed us up and started moving without consulting me.”

[Thomas]
A thought that I just had, too, is that like, he kind of does control her life.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
She’s there because he wants her there.

[Mike]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
She doesn’t have a choice in it.

[Shep]
No, she was picking out her photos previously. We gave her agency.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
So she was part of it, and now she’s not part of it. They’re no longer a team.

[Thomas]
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Mike]
Yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s true.

[Shep]
That’s the thing. And that conversation should be enough. She doesn’t need to destroy his property.

[Mike]
She can be, like, passive, like, very passive-aggressive about, like, how upset she is about the situation, I suppose.

[Shep]
Yes.

[Mike]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
All right. You’ve convinced me, Shep.

[Mike]
I don’t want to be accused of making a woman hysterical.

[Thomas]
Not like this anyway. Right?

[Mike]
I mean, it could be a situation where she gets very upset, and then they get to the place and he’s, like, realizing what happened. And, like, in this moment, even though she’s upset, she sees how broken he is, that the place that they first fell in love with, like, is, like, gone.

[Mike]
And then it’s in this moment that she’s, like, obviously is there for him emotionally, but also goes, like, “We can’t keep doing this. You know, this can’t continue.”

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Mike]
“Like, we need to put an end to this.”

[Emily]
“This is the time to let it go.”

[Mike]
Yeah. And it’s at this moment where he’s like, “I think you’re right,” because it’s like, there’s a physical example of that everything is gone now, basically.

[Shep]
Yeah. You can’t go home again.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Mike]
Yeah, exactly. Okay.

[Thomas]
Are there leftover photos, or does he take all of the photos by the end? Is he completely out of film, or is there some left that he chooses not to use?

[Emily]
I would like him to be completely out, but purposefully out, like instead of-

[Mike]
I agree.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
I disagree. And let me convince you.

[Mike]
Okay.

[Shep]
There should be some film left. We know it doesn’t last, so it doesn’t matter if there’s film left or not. It’s going to wear out after a couple months. But he is choosing not to take the photo. Not because he can’t, but because it’s a choice. It’s a conscious choice that he’s like, “Okay.”

[Emily]
Well, that’s why I was thinking it should be a choice to run out is, he says, “Okay, well, we have these left. Let’s finish this out.”

[Shep]
Here’s an idea. There’s one shot left in the camera.

[Mike]
Yeah.

[Shep]
He’s choosing not to use it.

[Mike]
Yes.

[Shep]
He goes back to the other town to go on a date with the new girl. The new woman. I don’t know why I keep saying girl. She’s age-appropriate. The new old woman.

[Mike]
Yes.

[Shep]
And they go out on a date. Like, this is the end of the third act.

[Mike]
Sure.

[Shep]
And they have a lovely time. And she’s like, “Oh, I wish we had a photo of this.” And it’s like, “Oh, I have a camera in my car.” And they use the last photo. He has someone take their photo of the two of them on a date. And it’s similar to the first photo that we see of him and the wife. It’s like, oh, it’s their first date (basically) photo.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
So that’s how he’s using the last of the film.

[Mike]
Is this new relationship.

[Shep]
Is the new relationship.

[Mike]
And then he gives it to her to, like, hold on to. He doesn’t want to hold on to it.

[Shep]
Unless we’re setting up the sequel.

[Mike]
Exactly.

[Thomas]
So the post-credit scene is a news report about, “Oh, somebody bought the patent for the film and they’re going to start manufacturing it again.”

[Mike]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Oh god.

[Mike]
I actually like the idea of, like, the credits rolling and you see all the different, like, Polaroids that have been taken.

[Thomas]
Oh, yeah.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Ethan]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
That’s good.

[Ethan]
Because they’ll all be like the ones of the trend you’re talking about. Right?

[Mike]
Yeah, exactly.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Ethan]
That’d be cool.

[Mike]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
This is pretty good. Do we have any unresolved stuff that we need to resolve before we wrap up our story here?

[Mike]
Yeah. I feel like we’ve got a pretty good, pretty good go here. Yeah. I don’t know. I mean, I think it’s-

[Ethan]
I guess it’d be establishing the rules of the camera might be a little tough, but it’s, I feel like we got it mostly down pat.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
I think so.

[Ethan]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
I think that’s something we need to leave to the writers because I feel like the specific details are a little more complex than we have time for, but also are going to be very dependent on what the final story is and how it works. So-

[Ethan]
100%.

[Mike]
I think, like, every good movie starts with a person waking up. So the first, you know, the movie, the movie opens with him waking up in the morning, and it immediately establishes what the rules are at that moment.

[Thomas]
We could open it exactly the same as Memento, where there’s a photo gets taken and somebody shaking it.

[Mike]
Yeah, that’s not bad. I like that. But, yeah. No, I think I like it. Do we have a… Do we have a pitch for a title?

[Emily]
Oh, I do.

[Mike]
Oh.

[Thomas]
Oh, okay.

[Mike]
Oh, let’s hear it.

[Emily]
But they’re terrible. No, I only have 10, and they’re stupid.

[Shep]
You have 10?!

[Emily]
But this is what I came up with. I have three. They all have the word “Ten” in them because I was picturing ten locations.

[Thomas]
Oh, okay.

[Emily]
So just “Top Ten”.

[Shep]
Okay, so, but, Polaroid cartridges have eight photos.

[Emily]
Okay. Then we change it to eight.

[Shep]
Okay.

[Mike]
There you go.

[Emily]
“Top Eight”.

[Mike]
“Top Eight”.

[Emily]
Because that works.

[Mike]
Just like MySpace.

[Emily]
Yeah. Oh.

[Thomas]
So he’s got a friend named Tom. Got it. Got it.

[Mike]
That’s right.

[Shep]
You don’t call attention to it.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
“The Eight Places to Visit Before You Die”.

[Shep]
Ooh.

[Emily]
I like that one a lot.

[Mike]
That’s a good one.

[Emily]
That’s my favorite one. And then “Best Eight Travel Destinations”.

[Mike]
That’s a good one. I like-

[Shep]
“Super 8”. “8-Track”.

[Mike]
“8-Track”.

[Shep]
I like The Top Eight Places- or “The Eight Places to Visit Before You Die”.

[Emily]
Before You Die.

[Mike]
I like that a lot.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Mike]
That’s a fun one.

[Shep]
I like that a lot.

[Mike]
Yeah, that’s a really good one.

[Shep]
Because if they use the number 8 or they spell 8 out, it’s going to be high up on an alphabetical list of movie titles.

[Thomas]
Ah, there you go.

[Mike]
Boom.

[Emily]
Yeah, that’s true.

[Thomas]
So just “8 Places to See Before You Die” with the number eight.

[Emily]
Yep.

[Mike]
Yes.

[Shep]
Yes.

[Mike]
There you go.

[Thomas]
Good call.

[Mike]
Nice and high on IMDb.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Well, we’d love to hear your thoughts on today’s episode about a Polaroid camera. Was it picture perfect, or underdeveloped?

[Thomas]
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. Mike, Ethan, I’m glad you guys were able to join us, and I hope you had a good time.

[Mike]
I had a wonderful time.

[Thomas]
Good, good, good. How can our listeners find out more about what you guys are up to?

[Ethan]
You can go to TheOtherHalfPodcast.com to find all of our episodes, our many, many episodes of our podcast.

[Ethan]
I also have a Twitch stream at ethan_rawkes at Twitch.TV.

[Mike]
And if you want to find more information about us, we’re on Instagram, we are on Facebook still, we’re on Bluesky.

[Mike]
And we also have a Discord that you guys can join if you want to keep track of our upcoming episodes or if you want to see when Ethan is streaming.

[Thomas]
And we’ll be sure to include links to all of those in the references section of our show notes, which you can find at AlmostPlausible.com. Many thanks to Mike and Ethan for joining us on this episode. Emily, Shep, and I hope that you’ll join us on the next episode of Almost Plausible.

[Outro music]

[Shep]
I had an earlier pitch that I didn’t use. That’s, it’s a Polaroid camera that steals your memories.

[Emily]
Oh.

[Shep]
So that’s what happened to the guy in Memento.

[Emily]
Reverse Memento.

[Shep]
He didn’t have Memento disease.

[Mike]
It was just the Polaroid.

[Shep]
He kept taking Polaroids, and that kept erasing his memory.

[Thomas]
Shit, now, I want to watch that movie with that framework in mind and be like-

[Shep]
Ha.

[Mike]
Yeah.

[Shep]
He doesn’t take enough photos for it to work in the movie.

[Thomas]
Oh, okay, okay.

[Outro music]