Post-it Notes

References

• Post-It Note Wars
• Charlotte’s Web
• Mannequin
• The Name of the Rose
• Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion
• Alan Cumming
• Almost Plausible: Mac and Cheese
• Duct tape dresses
• Butterfly Effect
• Tucker and Dale vs Evil
• Reddit
• Augmented Reality
• Geocaching
• Home Alone 2: Lost in New York
• Final Destination
• Urban Exploration
• Mr. Bean
• Ted Bundy
• Gentleminions
• Joel Murray
• God Bless America
• Drop Dead Gorgeous
• Tara Lynne Barr
• Four Lions
• Heathers
• Natural Born Killers
• Blue Harvest

Transcript

[Intro music begins]

[Emily]
Why wouldn’t they be there with the groceries?

[Thomas]
Yeah, why wouldn’t they be there with groceries?

[Shep]
Because they couldn’t pick them up from you because you didn’t put them out.

[Thomas]
Why would you put them out?

[Shep]
So they could pick them up.

[Thomas]
I see what you’re saying. Oh, wow.

[Shep]
See, you’re going forward in time, but everything is moving backwards.

[Thomas]
Right. This is already broken my brain.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Wow.

[Shep]
Maybe we shouldn’t do time travel then.

[Thomas]
Let’s not do this one.

[Shep]
Let’s not do this one. This one doesn’t- it’s too complicated.

[Emily]
I’m not high enough for this one.

[Intro music]

[Thomas]
Hey there, story fans. Welcome to Almost Plausible, the podcast where we take ordinary objects and turn them into movies. I’m Thomas J. Brown, and in the office with me today are Emily-

[Emily]
Hey, guys.

[Thomas]
F. Paul Shepard.

[Shep]
Happy to be here.

[Thomas]
And this week, we’re coming up with a movie about Post-it Notes. It’s Emily’s turn to pitch first this week, and I look forward to finding out how a serial killer uses Post-it Notes. Emily?

[Emily]
I have two pitches this week. Remember when offices were doing the Post-it Note window art that was very, like, pixelated eight-bit style?

[Thomas]
Oh, yeah.

[Shep]
Yeah. Remember offices?

[Emily]
Yeah, I remember offices.

[Thomas]
To be clear, everyone, we’re not actually all together. I said we’re in the office together. We are not.

[Emily]
Not even close. So I was thinking that we could tell the story of a young graphic designer who’s struggling to express herself and uses the Post-it Note art to tell the world who she really is, but obviously at night when no one is watching because she fears rejection and doesn’t want anyone to know she’s the one doing it. So kind of like Charlotte’s Web, but she’s also Charlotte and Wilbur at the same time.

[Shep]
And then a mannequin comes to life.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
And for my second pitch, I have the third body in as many months has been found in a dumpster. This one also has a Post-it Note stuck to her forehead with a smiley face drawn on it, confirming that Smalltown Detective Jackson is in fact dealing with a serial killer.

[Thomas]
Well, there we go. I got my answer.

[Shep]
I knew that it was going to be a serial killer when you said dead body, which was the first thing that you said.

[Thomas]
Yeah, well.

[Emily]
I’m so transparent.

[Thomas]
Now I’m excited to know, are the Post-it Notes, is that the murder weapon? Is it poison sticky that the-

[Emily]
Oh, that’s good. I was trying to figure out how to do that. I was like, is it death by 1000 Post-it paper cuts?

[Thomas]
It’ll be like The Name of The Rose, where it’s like poison ink and they keep licking their fingers. Spoiler alert. All right, Shep, lets hear your pitches.

[Shep]
All right. Post-it Notes. Two friends go to their ten-year high school reunion and concoct a lie about inventing the glue in Post-it Notes in order to impress their classmates.

[Thomas]
That seems like that would make a good movie.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Only there’s a random weird ballet dance in the middle of it.

[Thomas]
Yeah. And you know who we should totally get to be in it is Alan Cumming. I love that guy.

[Emily]
Oh, Alan Cumming makes all movies better.

[Shep]
It should have a good soundtrack, I think that’s the-

[Emily]
Oh, it should have one of the best soundtracks of that year.

[Shep]
All right. My actual pitch is someone invents a time machine, but when they go back in time, 1 hour in their lab, when they step out of the machine, there is a Post-it Note waiting for them that wasn’t there before.

[Thomas]
That’s good.

[Shep]
They were in the lab for an hour.

[Emily]
Right.

[Shep]
So what happened when they went back in time that there’s now a Post-it Note waiting for them?

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

[Shep]
It’s more of a writing prompt than a pitch, but, I mean, I could flesh it out. Like, I imagine that it would appear that the Post-it Note is from themselves. That could perhaps lead to other places and times where there are more Post-it Notes. It’s like a scavenger hunt through time.

[Thomas]
Through time. That could be actually really fun.

[Emily]
That would be neat.

[Shep]
I know time travel movies are so easy to write.

[Emily]
Nothing ever goes wrong.

[Thomas]
I mean, there aren’t a lot of great ones, so even if ours was bad, we would be in good company.

[Shep]
Oh, yeah. That’s it for me.

[Thomas]
All right. So I have one that’s actually very similar to that. Our main character finds a Post-it Note inside of a library book. The note has a mysterious message or maybe latitude, longitude coordinates, something like that, and it leads to an adventure. So similar idea, kind of going around finding more Post-it Notes, perhaps, and not sure what they find at the end or what the goal is. Maybe they get led down a dark alley, and the serial killer comes out and murders them. Maybe all the Post-it Notes have a smiley face on them. I don’t know.

[Shep]
All the Post-it Notes are led by two bored kids having a coming-of-age story.

[Thomas]
My next idea is a teenage girl enters a contest to make a prom dress out of unconventional items, and she uses Post-it Notes.

[Shep]
I think that exists on the Internet. I think that’s a thing.

[Emily]
With Post-it Notes? Because I can’t-

[Thomas]
I know. I’ve seen duct tape.

[Emily]
Yeah, Post-it Notes, I feel like it’s much more like, what are the rules of the prom dress? Can you affix them to something else? Because otherwise you’re just layering Post-it Note on Post-it Note on Post-it Note. You’re asking for nudity by the end of the night because that sweat is going to melt that-

[Thomas]
New pitch. There’s a stripper who comes out covered in Post-it Notes.

[Emily]
Instead of balloons.

[Thomas]
Part of her, exactly, part of her routine is you pay and you get to take off a Post-it Note.

[Shep]
You pay and you get to aim the fan that blows off Post-it Notes.

[Thomas]
Yeah. There you go. There you go. My final idea is an important Post-it Note gets stuck to someone and leads to a wacky 80 style farce. They’re trying to track that person down and get the Post-it Note back. Those are my ideas.

[Shep]
The Post-it Note has coordinates.

[Thomas]
Right. It has, like, a password written on it. People always write passwords on Post-it Notes.

[Shep]
Right.

[Emily]
Stop looking at my desk.

[Thomas]
I used to work in IT. I don’t need to look at your desk to know that.

[Emily]
Oh, my God, we have so many passwords. It’s ridiculous.

[Thomas]
Get a password manager.

[Emily]
I have one and I can’t remember the password.

[Thomas]
You made it too secure. All right, which pitch?

[Shep]
Which one was about passwords? Because it seems like we had a lot of password stories.

[Emily]
We have a lot of passwords, though.

[Thomas]
Yeah. So there’s a stripper who’s written her password on one Post-it Note, and she left it in a book in the library in the past.

[Shep]
I mean, the thing about things being left in the past is that they will travel to the present on their own.

[Thomas]
What about a time traveling serial killer who leaves Post-it Notes?

[Shep]
I mean, a time traveling serial killer can leave whatever they want. They’re not going to get caught.

[Emily]
They’ll always get caught. They always get sloppy.

[Shep]
No, you commit all your murders in the future. Is this your first time being a time traveling serial killer?

[Emily]
Yes.

[Shep]
Because even if they catch you in the past, guess what? You haven’t committed any murders yet. It’s the past.

[Emily]
Interesting. Now I’m trying to figure out how they could catch you in the present.

[Thomas]
Oh, yeah. I think that’s the finale, right? They catch him, it goes to trial. There’s no evidence, he walks free.

[Emily]
To kill again.

[Thomas]
Shep, your guy who uses the time machine-

[Shep]
Could be a girl. I specifically say someone.

[Thomas]
Your scientist. Do they actually go back in time within their own timeline, or are they taken to a parallel universe and that’s why the Post-it Note is there, but they don’t realize that?

[Shep]
Well, do you want hard time travel where you have a specific mechanism that it works? You know what I think would be interesting… So imagine time travel where you get in the machine, and it can take you some point back where that machine is, but you’re rolling back. You’re reversing entropy. You’re reversing time. So things happen in reverse, except for things that required you, because you’re no longer there. You’re in the machine. So it wouldn’t be an exact copy of the past. And you couldn’t go forward to where you were either because you’re again in the machine, so nothing that you would have done would happen. You can go forward to some future point in time, but not where you affected anything from the point where you got on the time machine.

[Thomas]
Wow, interesting. What is a major event that would or would not happen, if you went back far enough, but not before you were born? Let’s say I rolled back one week.

[Shep]
One week would probably be fine because you’ve probably been living in the same house for that week. There might be butterfly effect stuff where if you ordered groceries delivered, you wouldn’t have been there to bring them inside. They’d still be outside. Wait, you’d be in the past. They wouldn’t have been delivered yet, so you wouldn’t have been able to put them away.

[Thomas]
You ordered them on Sunday but then traveled back like a week later. You traveled back to Monday so they would have shown up, but instead of you being there Sunday evening to get them, they’d still be sitting on your front step or something.

[Shep]
Now, I don’t know if this works because you wouldn’t have been there to put them out on the porch for them to be delivered. Like the delivery person comes by and picks them up but they’re not there. So what happens to that delivery person that’s now at your place with no groceries to deliver because you didn’t put them out on your porch? It’s got to be very confusing for them.

[Thomas]
Right? I mean, from their perspective, it’s just like, “Hello? Do I have the right address?” You’d probably just go back to the store.

[Shep]
But they’re not there with any groceries.

[Emily]
Why wouldn’t they be there with the groceries?

[Thomas]
Yeah, why wouldn’t they be there with groceries?

[Shep]
Because they couldn’t pick them up from you because you didn’t put them out.

[Thomas]
Why would you put them out?

[Shep]
So they could pick them up.

[Thomas]
I see what you’re saying. Oh, wow.

[Shep]
See, you’re going forward in time, but everything is moving backwards.

[Thomas]
Right. This is already broken my brain.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Wow.

[Shep]
Maybe we shouldn’t do time travel then.

[Thomas]
Let’s not do this one.

[Shep]
Let’s not do this one. This one doesn’t- it’s too complicated.

[Emily]
I’m not high enough for this one.

[Thomas]
Alright, which one of these do we want?

[Emily]
Which one do we want? I like the library book, the mysterious message.

[Thomas]
Yes. I like that it feels like it could happen to me. So already the audience is like, “Oo, okay, I can envision myself as the main character here.”

[Shep]
But what is the ending? What is the conclusion? Who was actually leaving the Post-it Notes?

[Thomas]
I think that’s the first thing to figure out if we’re going to go down this path. What if the main character doesn’t find the Post-it Note? They’re the one placing the Post-it Notes.

[Emily]
Why are they placing Post-it Notes? Are they trapping people?

[Thomas]
I think they’re doing it just as like a fun thing. They have them hidden around town.

[Shep]
So the treasure is the friendship they’re making along the way.

[Thomas]
Basically, yeah.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
It’s for the novelty. To add levity to the world.

[Shep]
From the audience’s perspective, we’re not solving a mystery or going on an adventure.

[Thomas]
Well, that’s what the main character’s goal is. And then somehow it gets twisted around and-

[Emily]
Maybe they get accused of murder.

[Shep]
Yeah, someone gets murdered in the library and the police find this Post-it Note. That could be funny. Is this a comedy?

[Emily]
It could be. It could be a black comedy. We could go that route.

[Thomas]
They set up an adventure and somebody gets killed while on the adventure.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
I’m just imagining, like, the news coming up with serial killer nicknames for this poor person that set up what they thought would be a fun adventure. But then you have crazy people, like, diving into the water next to a dam because they misinterpreted a clue and they get sucked into the turbine.

[Emily]
Is it just murder after- not murder, death after death for each different clue? So it does seem like it’s a serial killer.

[Shep]
Yes. It’s Tucker & Dale vs Evil.

[Thomas]
Yeah, I think that’s funny.

[Emily]
I think it’s hilarious. I think it would be interesting. And then I get my blood and gore.

[Thomas]
That’s right.

[Shep]
So the main character is setting up all the things in reverse order, right? So that they get to the last one, they leave it in a book in the library.

[Emily]
Right.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
The book itself is part of the clue, and then things get misinterpreted, but as the news is reporting on it, they’re including the clue. And then a bunch of murder mystery podcasters are like, “We can solve this!”

[Thomas]
Yes. I think that is exactly what would happen. And you know that people who are picking up where the other person left off, they would post photos of the Post-it Notes online asking for like, “Hey, Reddit, what do you think this means?”

[Emily]
Right.

[Shep]
Right, there’s a whole separate subreddit dedicated to-

[Thomas]
So there are a ton of people who now know the clue. So more and more people are going to different places trying to find the Post-its.

[Shep]
It’s named after the nickname for the murderer, the serial killer that they think is behind it.

[Thomas]
So Post-it Paul?

[Emily]
Do the deaths start happening before the main character- Like, they were going to launch a website that was going to explain everything and they were laying out the clues first, but they didn’t get to that launch bit yet, so now they have more evidence showing they’re responsible.

[Shep]
So it’s an ARG. It’s an augmented reality game.

[Thomas]
Yeah. I mean, originally my thought was he’s just doing this anonymously as a fun thing and perhaps in the same way that people create like, a geocache and then maybe they’ll go back and check up on their cache and see like, “Oo, who’s signed the log? And has anybody left any little trinkets?” And it could be the same sort of thing where he would check up every once in a while and be like, “Has the Post-it Note been found yet?” Maybe the final instruction is to do something that would be publicly visible but nondestructive, because the whole thing is meant to be… It’s a fun way to get around town and visit some places and just a neat little diversion that hopefully people would be talking about.

[Emily]
Right, right.

[Thomas]
Because he wants to be anonymous. He likes the idea of this is- it’ll be something in this town’s lore forever.

[Shep]
Yes, they’re definitely going to remember it.

[Thomas]
“Who created this?” And yeah.

[Emily]
So he definitely has that serial color mentality of like, he’s going to get excited about the news reports or the public mentions of it. So he’s, like, scouring and searching for it for the first one to be found.

[Shep]
Oh, he goes to one of the Post-it Notes to get it to stop it, but it’s too late and the police are already there. So he is revisiting the scene of the crime.

[Emily]
The crime scene.

[Thomas]
Right. Because he would try to go back and collect the Post-it Notes.

[Emily]
Right. Especially after everyone keeps dying.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
So then how can he not collect all the Post-it Notes at some point? What is preventing him from stopping it from continuing?

[Thomas]
Realistically, he’d be able to get some, if not most of them. Maybe people are solving them a lot faster than he anticipated.

[Emily]
Right. Maybe he thought it was going to be really difficult and it would take a couple of years.

[Shep]
Then it’s taking like a three day weekend.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
Well, because now everybody is concerned.

[Thomas]
There’s so much attention.

[Shep]
Oh, he’s got it. So he takes the Post-it Notes down, but then someone realizes that there was an impression left on the material that you could trace it. “Now it’s getting more difficult, but we can still solve it.”

[Emily]
So he’s not in the system because they would have obviously dusted for prints?

[Thomas]
Yeah, I think that’s a good point to bring up. What if the Post-it Note is just the initial thing and there is a website where you’re supposed to find different clues and punch it into the website to get more information? So he takes the website down right away because he’s like, “Oh shit, I need to stop this.” But it’s the Internet.

[Shep]
Nothing gets deleted from the Internet.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
Right.

[Thomas]
So people on Reddit are like, “Oh, here, you can still find all the information here. It all got indexed.” Because he doesn’t know how to build a website to keep that stuff from getting indexed.

[Shep]
And the police track the IP address and it turns out like some horrible website is also served out of the same servers. So they think it’s all related.

[Thomas]
Right, because they don’t know how the Internet works either. And then maybe something is, there’s something he wrote with a permanent marker somewhere or spray painted on something, so he can’t make that go away easily.

[Shep]
He’d paint over it.

[Thomas]
If it’s public enough, he would not be able to before it was discovered or something. So people are still able to find certain clues.

[Shep]
He did it in some graffiti but then Google Street View happened to catch it.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Say he might have been going to paint over it and then somebody’s there to solve it and stops him from doing it.

[Thomas]
They get mad, “You’re just trying to stop everyone else from doing it, you want to solve it yourself.” He’s like, “No!”

[Shep]
So they get in a fight and then the police are called and they pick him up and they realize he had the same permanent marker (because he was going to draw over it) that was used to leave the message. He’s our number one suspect now.

[Thomas]
But they can’t tie him to anything. For some reason.

[Shep]
They can’t tie him to anything yet, so they have to let him go.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
And so now he’s got a dilemma, like he really wants to stop it now, but the police are watching him.

[Emily]
Yeah. They’re kind of keeping tabs on him.

[Thomas]
So if he goes to any of these places, it will confirm he’s the person who set it up.

[Shep]
He can’t call people to ask them to go because surely his phone is tapped. This is how he doesn’t get to take the rest of them down.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Right.

[Thomas]
So maybe the first one, like you said, the person drowns or something. So they have the Post-it Note but they can’t get a print off of it because it got wet and that messed it up or something.

[Shep]
Yeah. Would he be in the system? He would be after he gets arrested for fighting.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
After that time he would, but before, he wouldn’t necessarily be in the system because how often are you fingerprinted for something?

[Shep]
I mean, getting your driver’s license in California.

[Thomas]
We just won’t set it in California then.

[Shep]
Okay.

[Emily]
There we go.

[Shep]
So the last note or the last clue has to be on a Post-it Note, which definitely has his fingerprints on it.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
So he has to stop it somehow before that point or they’re going to catch him because he was already arrested and fingerprinted.

[Thomas]
It has to be a very public spot because the postal note is small. You could open a book in the library, snag it out of there, and no one would have any idea.

[Emily]
Right.

[Thomas]
So it has to be some place that’s difficult to get to without being spotted, but reasonably safe for a person to get to because he doesn’t want to put- his intention was never to put people in danger.

[Shep]
Right. He just didn’t think it through. So it’s purely accidental. What is his serial killer nickname? Because he’s leaving clues around.

[Thomas]
Is he a Sticky Bandit? No, wait.

[Shep]
If they’re not all Post-it Notes, then it won’t be Post-it Note related.

[Thomas]
That’s true. That’s true. So it would be Scavenger Slasher.

[Shep]
Mystery Killer. The Hunter, because it’s a scavenger hunt.

[Thomas]
Yeah, the Scavenger Hunter?

[Emily]
Okay.

[Thomas]
That’s pretty good.

[Emily]
It’s just cheesy enough, too.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Yeah, I like that.

[Shep]
It would be fun. The police keep going on TV saying, “Don’t follow the clues. You’re putting yourself in danger.” Every person thinks that they’re going to outsmart the killer.

[Emily]
Right. “If you find a clue, don’t attempt to solve it. Call the police. We’ll come.”

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
“They’re just trying to solve it for themselves.”

[Shep]
“Don’t take photos of it and post it on reddit. People are just going to go to the next clue.”

[Thomas]
How are these deaths happening? Are they Final Destination? Like, this just happens?

[Emily]
Oh, I kind of like that.

[Shep]
Oh, they’re all kind of be accidental or misinterpretations. Like, maybe he has one that has some urban exploration, like going under a passageway, under a road or something, where there’s steam pipes. And that happens to be the time of year that they’re cleaning out the pipes and it’s super-hot. It’s not normally like that, but he led them down there the one time of the year that it’s deadly.

[Thomas]
I mean, there are people who will drive their car into a lake because the GPS told them to, so yeah, I can totally see somebody walking right past little signs that are like, “Don’t go in here.”

[Shep]
Yeah. “Super deadly, super dangerous. Not only will this kill you, you’ll hurt the whole time you’re dying.”

[Emily]
Yeah. Yeah.

[Shep]
I think we have basically, other than coming up with individual clues, what’s the resolution?

[Emily]
How does he get out of it? Does he get out of it? Do we want him to get arrested?

[Thomas]
I think that’s a big question. Yeah.

[Shep]
I think that he gets out of it by somehow getting to the final clue while someone else has made it to the final clue. Some crazy person has made it to the final clue.

[Emily]
Right. I was thinking that that would be a good one. Like some psychopath.

[Shep]
They end up dying, and then the police come and think that he stopped the killer.

[Emily]
Right. I like that.

[Thomas]
That’s really funny.

[Emily]
And then he’s touted as a hero.

[Thomas]
Yeah, the cops, “We had you all wrong. Now we understand why you were there. You were trying to help.”

[Shep]
“You’re trying to clear your name.”

[Thomas]
“You shouldn’t been a vigilante.” Yeah.

[Shep]
Yeah. “You shouldn’t have taken the law into your own hands. You shouldn’t have been a vigilante. Trust the system. Give us that final clue.” Which he does from his hands, so…

[Thomas]
Right. That’s funny. All right, well, we’re going to take a quick break, so be sure to stick around and hear the rest of our story about Post-it Notes.

[Break]

[Thomas]
All right, we’re back. I feel like we have a pretty good story. So what are the details that we still need to figure out?

[Shep]
We have the elevator pitch for sure.

[Emily]
Right.

[Thomas]
For sure. Yeah.

[Shep]
So if we were going to script it out, we would need specifics.

[Emily]
I need some character development.

[Shep]
Well, if it’s just a farce, it doesn’t necessarily need character development. It’s just a wacky series of events. He’s Mr. Bean, basically. He didn’t mean for any of this to happen, and it just keeps escalating beyond his control. Now, I’m picturing Mr. Bean as-

[Emily]
Do we want to have the parallel story of a real serial killer and that’s who ends up being killed in the end, or just-?

[Shep]
What are the odds that there would be a real serial killer?

[Emily]
I don’t know.

[Thomas]
That could be what sets the whole thing off. There is a real serial killer that is killing people around the town.

[Shep]
Oh! Oh… If there were an existing serial killer, someone that had already killed a couple of people, so that’s why the police are thinking this is a continuation of that serial killer. They’ve changed their method a little, but they’re still leading people to their death somehow.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
So that’s who he runs into at the end, because that serial killer is like, “Hey, you’re stealing my thunder.”

[Thomas]
Oh, man.

[Shep]
“This was my thing.”

[Thomas]
Yeah. He goes up there to get the post a note from wherever it is, and there’s just this voice that’s like, “You know, my big admirer of your work.” He turns, he’s like, “What?”

[Shep]
“But you should have given me credit.”

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
“This was mine.”

[Emily]
“This town isn’t big enough for the both of us.”

[Thomas]
Even the serial killer thinks he’s a serial killer.

[Emily]
Maybe he even asks “What’s your motivation? Mine is that I wanted to have sex with my mother from a very early age.”

[Thomas]
“Isn’t that a little cliched?” “I oughta to kill you for saying that.”

[Shep]
“But professional courtesy.”

[Thomas]
Yeah, right. So the serial killer dies on accident?

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Yeah, the serial killer dies on accident, but maybe it’s in a clock tower and the bell rings and then he gets knocked over the edge.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
Whatever, it doesn’t matter. It’s got to appear like the main character did it. But then once they know who the serial killer is, the police can trace it back to the earlier murders before the scavenger hunt started.

[Emily]
Right.

[Shep]
It’s like, “Oh, then this is definitely our guy, because he ties in to everything.”

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
And I imagine that he also killed people at some point during the scavenger hunt. Like, maybe one of the clues didn’t kill anyone.

[Emily]
It was just him.

[Shep]
And the serial killer gets there at the same time as someone else who has solved it and just murders them to take the clue.

[Thomas]
How much coincidence is acceptable.

[Shep]
None, zero. What are you thinking?

[Thomas]
Because it would be funny if the serial killer had a job at the lumber mill and one of the people died there or something like that. So they’re like, “Oh, yeah, see, and he worked there. And that was when…” And so the police are making all these connections that didn’t actually exist, but… “He had a boat down at the dock where that one guy drowned.”

[Shep]
Right. If the town is small enough, everybody’s been everywhere.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
Right. I want the main character also to have, like, a girlfriend or wife who starts to suspect him because he’s starting to act weird, right? And he’s been arrested.

[Thomas]
The Post-it Note has his handwriting.

[Emily]
And it has his handwriting, and she’s just like, “I can’t believe I… We’ve known each other for so long. We share a bed. How did I not see this?” And she’s convinced because the police have convinced her, so she’s moved out.

[Shep]
No, she’s into it.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
She listens to so much true crime podcasts.

[Shep]
Yes. So she’s like, wants to plan the next murder with him. And he’s like, “I’m not a killer.” She’s like “It’s okay.”

[Thomas]
She’s like doing interviews with her favorite true crime podcasts.

[Emily]
Right. She’s like “You’re my own personal Ted Bundy.”

[Shep]
That’s great.

[Thomas]
“Babe we’re going to be famous.”

[Shep]
“What’s this ‘we’?” Because at some point, he gets out of his house to try and stop things, and so the police know that he’s gone missing. That’s when she’s doing interviews with true crime podcasters, because this is surely confirmation of his guilt that he has fled.

[Emily]
Right.

[Shep]
I want to watch this now.

[Emily]
I do, too.

[Shep]
I’m convinced.

[Thomas]
Does he hide out somewhere then?

[Shep]
Well, no, he wants to stop it as soon as possible. Why would he hide? He wants to bring it to a stop and save lives and also get to that final clue before anyone else because it has evidence that it’s him.

[Thomas]
Right. He can’t just go to the end and work backward because people will die in the meantime. So he has to go to the next one, the next one, the next one.

[Emily]
Right.

[Shep]
So at some point, the police ask Reddit to lock the subreddit so that people will stop sharing the clues, and he thinks, “Oh, phew, I have time now.” But then there’s people at the next clue location because now they’re sharing them on TikTok.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
The Internet will find a way.

[Emily]
Yes.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Emily]
And it’s great content for TikTok so they’re not shutting it down.

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
China doesn’t care.

[Emily]
Right.

[Shep]
So do I want to come up with any of the actual clues or locations or interesting deaths or just put that as an exercise to the writers?

[Thomas]
I mean, we have time.

[Shep]
I mean, we have basically the whole beginning, middle and end. We just need the details.

[Thomas]
Yeah. There’s got to be a time where he, besides, after he’s arrested, where he narrowly gets caught or narrowly misses being killed.

[Shep]
One of the places he goes to is the location that the serial killer has murdered those people. He gets there after they’re murdered, and shortly after he’s there, the police arrive.

[Thomas]
Is the serial killer trying to keep pace?

[Shep]
The circle is following the clues.

[Emily]
And he’s killing some of the victims himself rather than letting some random-

[Shep]
Because they happen to be there.

[Emily]
Because he found the clue at the same time as another person and was like, “Well, this was easy.” Crime of opportunity.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
So what are some of the deaths? We got a drowning. We mentioned a sawmill, so one of them, I think, you got to have a gnarly sawmill death.

[Thomas]
No, it’s at the sawmill, but they get crushed by logs that fell over.

[Emily]
Oh, yeah.

[Thomas]
So you think it’s going to be the blade.

[Emily]
Right.

[Thomas]
You set it all up like, “Oh, they’re going to go in the big thing,” and then just like a log falls off and hits them in the head.

[Shep]
That’s good.

[Emily]
I like that.

[Shep]
I like the misdirection.

[Emily]
Yeah. And we’ve got the steam pipe. I like that one.

[Shep]
Someone’s got to get electrocuted.

[Emily]
Yes.

[Thomas]
And then does a serial killer just stab somebody to death at one of them?

[Emily]
Yeah. Because he’s not very creative, like, he thinks he is, but I mean…

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
Oh, this is their big out. The serial killer is thinking “This is the one where- suicide by cop. I’m going to be in all the papers.” They have rifles or something. They’re going up to the top of the clock tower. That’s their big finale. That’s their planned big finale. So for them, it’s like-

[Thomas]
Yeah, because more and more people keep showing up in the town. You’ve got national media coming to cover it.

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
You have all these true crime podcasters. You have all these people from the Internet. It’s become a TikTok trend so all these teenagers in suits are showing up.

[Shep]
Would this be bad if this was an actual movie? Like, maybe…

[Emily]
I think it’s a commentary on society. We’re poking fun at our obsession with things and how we turn everything into entertainment.

[Thomas]
Yeah. Like, what was that movie with a friend from Dharma & Greg and that girl and they drive around in that car and shoot everybody? Buddy?

[Emily]
The friend from Dharma & Greg?

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
The neighbor girl?

[Thomas]
Greg’s friend.

[Emily]
Oh, Greg’s friend?

[Thomas]
Yeah. The chubby dude. Joel Murray? Yeah, Joel Murray.

[Emily]
Yeah, one of the Murray boys.

[Thomas]
God Bless America is the film.

[Emily]
Oh, yeah, I did see that.

[Shep]
I don’t watch movies, so I have no idea what you’re talking about. I don’t watch movies or listen to podcasts. How did I get here?

[Emily]
Drop Dead Gorgeous also kind of does a similar thing where it’s a lot of violent-

[Thomas]
That’s like the whole point of God Bless America is Joel Murray and Tara Lynne Barr go around murdering people because everyone is shit. And we have access to lots of guns in this country. So-

[Emily]
Yeah. It’s a satire. It’s a satirical take on America’s obsession with video trends and true crime.

[Thomas]
It’s like Four Lions is a terrorist black comedy.

[Emily]
Right.

[Thomas]
Doesn’t promote terrorism. And it’s a very funny movie. Yeah.

[Emily]
Heathers is satire and it’s hilarious and it is not promoting teen violence and suicide.

[Thomas]
We could even have a graphic that comes at the beginning of the film that says, “It shouldn’t need to be said, but don’t do any of this. Looking at you, youths.”

[Emily]
We need the credit sequence ending for Natural Born Killers, where it’s like “Do you understand the point of the movie? Let me reiterate it, please.”

[Thomas]
So how does the electrocution happen?

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Interested to hear how that one goes.

[Shep]
Oh, I have no idea.

[Emily]
Okay.

[Shep]
Maybe the clue leads up a pylon.

[Thomas]
It wouldn’t.

[Emily]
He wouldn’t be that stupid.

[Thomas]
How many of these are people fucking up royally? And how many of these are-

[Shep]
Unfortunate coincidence?

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
Any electrocution should be somebody fucking up royally and they think that you have to go up the pylon and that’s how they do it.

[Thomas]
Or maybe they’re going up- Well, yeah. I was going to say going up the pylon to get a better view of something.

[Emily]
Oh, that’s a good idea.

[Thomas]
And get electrocuted as a result. But the point is to make it seem like these are premeditated things.

[Emily]
Right.

[Thomas]
So the clue instructed them to go up the pylon.

[Shep]
Oh, the clue was it’s by the shoes that are on Main Street or whatever, and it’s underneath the shoes that are over the power cable. And someone thinks, “Oh, it’s the shoes,” or it’s on the shoes or whatever. They get a metal pole or something. “It’s fine. It’s aluminum. It doesn’t conduct*” or whatever and shock themselves. Or they get up there because their friends are like, “No, birds land on the wires all the time. They’re insulated or something. I don’t know.”

*Aluminum is highly conductive.

[Emily]
It’s just a tweaker looking for copper wire.

[Thomas]
Or it could be something where it’s like, it instructs people to go to a certain place. And to do that, you have to climb over some sort of power box. And for whatever reason, because people climb over this power box all the time. There’s this bolt that’s starting to shear, and so this person steps on it and it snaps down and it electrocutes them. And they’re like, “Oh, he planned it so that when somebody climbed over the power box, it would break off.”

[Shep]
Or so many people are following the clues that it wears it out.

[Emily]
Right.

[Thomas]
But it has to look like the serial killer intended for that to happen. That that was the planned method of killing that person. That’s why they said to go there, because they had prepared the box to electrocute the next person who stepped on it or something like that.

[Shep]
Right. So police investigating it won’t know how many people climbed over it. They’ll just know something wore away this bolt that was securing this thing so that the first person that climbed over it, broke it, and then fell in and got electrocuted.

[Thomas]
Not realizing that that’s a place teenagers go all the fucking time.

[Shep]
And also, like, 13 other people have just climbed over it.

[Thomas]
Right. The person who got electrocuted was not the first one there to look for the clue.

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
They’re just the one who died.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
And of course, nobody wants to admit that they were also there because you’re not supposed to be looking for these clues. The police have said, “Don’t do this.” So no one’s gonna say, like, “Well, actually…” So maybe the police are like, “How are these clues still getting out there? The killer must be leaking the answers.”

[Emily]
I like that you would have a couple of people being interviewed who are like, “We had just done it the day before. And just to think we could have been one of the victims had we been a day later.”

[Thomas]
Yeah. You know, there would definitely be people who be taking advantage of that.

[Emily]
Right.

[Shep]
Was it his wife or his girlfriend?

[Emily]
I was making his girlfriend.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Because that way they can break up easily at the end, because that’s a kink he’s just not into.

[Thomas]
It’s not as big of a loss.

[Emily]
He’s not going to roleplay serial killer with her. She starts writing letters to prisoners.

[Shep]
What if the actual serial killer survives at the end, but he’s just very badly injured?

[Emily]
Okay.

[Thomas]
You see a thing at the end where she’s bringing flowers to him in the hospital.

[Shep]
Or writing to him in prison, but that’s like glorifying serial killing. He gets a reward. Well, if it’s satire, if it’s parody, I guess that’s the point.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
The point is to show like she’s nuts.

[Emily]
She’s insane and he’s dodged a bullet.

[Shep]
Does she kill anyone?

[Emily]
No.

[Shep]
Okay.

[Thomas]
Yeah. It’s not about the death. It’s about the power.

[Emily]
Right. She’s attracted to their power.

[Thomas]
Right. Oh, my God. These people. I think this is a very funny movie.

[Shep]
Potentially. Yes. Horrific and funny. Horribly funny.

[Thomas]
Yes. That’ll be what’s on the posters, on the Post-it posters? Oh, all the reviews for the film would be written on Post-its on the poster. That’s how it would look. Right. What is this movie called? Scavenger Hunter.

[Shep]
That’s got to be a reveal.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
I mean, they’ll just change the title and production anyway.

[Emily]
Right.

[Thomas]
That’s true. Whatever the studio decides, that’s the title of the film.

[Shep]
Right.

[Emily]
We’ll just call it Post-it The Movie.

[Shep]
Blue Harvest.

[Thomas]
Yeah. Well, if you were a studio head, what would you call this movie? We’d love to hear your thoughts on today’s show. Should we keep you posted, or was it simply a sticky wicket? 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 Hey, did you know that we post unique images with quotes from our episodes on our social media accounts? Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram for extra entertainment from us. Emily, Shep, and I will see you again next week on another episode of Almost Plausible.

[Outro music]

[Thomas]
I’m Thomas J. Brown, and in the office with me today are Emily-

[Emily]
Hey, guys.

[Thomas]
F. Paul Shepard.

[Shep]
Happy to be here.

[Thomas]
And… Should that be and F. Paul Shepard?

[Shep]
Why?

[Thomas]
No, it’s fine.

[Shep]
I’m the second. Go ahead.

[Thomas]
Well, because there are three of us and I’ve named all three of us already. And this week we’re coming up with a movie about Post-it Notes. It’s Emily’s-

[Shep]
Did you name yourself?

[Thomas]
Yeah, I said myself first. I said “I’m Thomas J. Brown, and in the office with me today…”

[Emily]
Please keep this as the actual opening.

[Shep]
No no! I wasn’t paying attention. Because it does sound weird-

[Thomas]
Shall we do it again?

[Shep]
That you don’t say “and” for me.

[Thomas]
Yeah, but then I say “and this week” and talk about it so maybe it works.

[Shep]
Okay, you’re right. That’s fine.

[Thomas]
Okay.

[Shep]
There’s an “and” in there. Never mind.

[Thomas]
Now I kind of want to do it again because I don’t know if I’m going to be able to edit around that.

[Emily]
I want it in. I want it to be what we hear.

[Shep]
It’ll be fine.

[Thomas]
All right, I’ll make a deal with both of you. I’m going to do it again, but all this shit goes at the end.

[Emily]
Okay.

[Thomas]
All right.

[Shep]
Oh, no. They’re going to know that I’m dumb.

[Outro music]