Sand

References

• Eat, Pray, Love
• King of the Hill
• Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones
• Almost Plausible: Flag
• Gilligan’s Island
• Brigadoon
• The Time Machine
• Soylent Green
• V
• Fae
• Star Trek
• Falling Down
• Pi
• Saw II
• Pringles
• Lay’s
• Turtles all the way down
• Move Your Feet, Lose Your Seat
• Urban Dictionary
• Aladdin
• Stargate
• Independence Day: Resurgence

Transcript

[Intro music begins]

[Shep]
And so, reflexively, defensively, he accidentally kills his stepfather.

[Thomas]
Mmm. That’s good.

[Shep]
But now that he has done this. It’s like, “Oh, well, it’s okay. I was protecting myself. I was protecting the chair. He was a bad guy, and he would have used this to do bad things. So I’m a good guy. I’m protecting the chair. I’m protecting the city. I’m protecting everyone else.”

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
But once you’ve opened, once you’ve broken the seal, it’s easier to kill the next one.

[Emily]
You murder one, before you know it, you’ve murdered five.

[Shep]
Right. ‘Once you pop, you can’t stop,’ as the saying goes.

[Emily]
Exactly. Yeah. ‘Bet you can’t kill just 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 with me, as always, are Emily-

[Emily]
Hey, guys.

[Thomas]
And F. Paul Shepard.

[Shep]
Happy to be here.

[Thomas]
Our theme for today is Sand, which can actually be any material with grains in a particular size range. With that in mind, lots of things technically qualify as sand, including salt and sugar. The most common type of sand, however, is silica, made of quartz crystals that have broken down pretty much as far as they naturally can to roughly a millimeter in diameter. But you’re not listening to Almost Geology. You’re listening to Almost Plausible, where sand goes in one end and a movie plot comes out the other. The whole process starts with pitches. So, Shep, why don’t you get us going?

[Shep]
Sand goes in one end. Sorry, I’m so distracted. There is a visual. That phrase painted a picture in my mind that I can’t share.

[Thomas]
I was hoping you’d like that.

[Shep]
Okay. A group of friends on vacation in a small boat stop by a beach where one of them discovers what appears to be a hidden treasure map that has washed ashore. Thinking it’s probably a joke, but what the heck? They’re on vacation. They head to the indicated nearby desert island. They leave the beach and head inland, but the shifting sands prove difficult to navigate. One of them starts hearing whispers. One of them sees visions of an oasis. One of them gets separated and finds like, an ancient artifact. How much is real and how much is delusion?

[Thomas]
Interesting.

[Emily]
I like this one.

[Thomas]
Yeah, that sounds cool.

[Emily]
I would watch this movie.

[Shep]
So a magical realism one. I thought since, you know, we hardly ever do one of those.

[Emily]
Never.

[Shep]
That’s it for me.

[Thomas]
Emily, what do you have for us?

[Emily]
A father passes away, leaving his only daughter his collection of sands from around the world. As part of her grieving process, she sets out on a globetrotting adventure to continue collecting sands.

[Shep]
I thought she was going to go return all the sands.

[Thomas]
Yeah. Oh, yeah. She could put a little bit of her father’s ashes in each of the things and then-

[Emily]
Ooh, yeah, that’s better.

[Thomas]
Put all the sand back. And then, like, while she’s at each of those places she like, ends up meeting people who knew-

[Emily]
Yeah. Meets interesting people. Change her life.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
There you go. Sweet little, like, Eat, Pray, Love type movie.

[Thomas]
Yeah. There you go.

[Emily]
This one’s a 60s-style beach movie about a sandcastle contest in a hip beach town. There are lots of bikinis, drag races, dancing, and beach barbecues. Oh, and tons of sand.

[Thomas]
Okay.

[Emily]
All right. And then this one is: a solo extreme adventurer. He gets caught in a sandstorm and finds refuge in a cluster of rock caves. After the storm subsides, he finds an oasis with a city built around it. This city has been frozen in time due to its remote isolation. Our traveler is enthralled by the purity and opulence of the civilization there. However, he soon gets a sneaking suspicion that things are not as they seem. Is this kingdom part of his world? Are they as hospitable and generous as they seem? Only the sands of time will tell. All right, and the last one is Sandman Serial Killer throws sand in his victim’s eyes to blind them before he abducts them, to torture and kill them.

[Shep]
Pocket sand!

[Emily]
All right, Thomas, what do you have?

[Thomas]
A group of nomads live in the desert and survive by constantly moving between the limited sources of water known to the tribe. Because resources are so scarce, they are wary of outsiders, often choosing to attack without warning rather than become victims themselves. During a particularly difficult dry spell, the tribe decides to attack a local settler’s farm for supplies. A couple of younger tribesmen kidnap the farmer’s wife, which creates trouble for the tribe internally, as well as making them a target for the colonizers. They quickly leave the area, but the farmer’s son eventually tracks them down and kills them, every single one of them. And not just the men, but the women and children, too.

[Shep]
I hate it.

[Thomas]
My first pitch takes place in the 1980s. It’s a film about a small seaside town that hosts an annual sand sculpting competition. The town is being used by smugglers to bring cocaine into the country. For some reason, the sand sculptors are the ones to thwart the criminals and defend the town. Perhaps they steal the cocaine shipment and hide it in a sand sculpture until the DEA can arrive to bust the smugglers.

[Emily]
That totally checks out.

[Shep]
It’s very 1980s.

[Thomas]
Right?

[Emily]
100%. Seen this movie.

[Thomas]
Yeah. My next pitch takes place in a small lakeside town known for its picturesque views, tranquil waters, and cool mountain air. That all changes one evening when a mysterious sandstorm engulfs the town, forcing all of the residents indoors for the night. The next morning, the residents emerge to find that their once familiar surroundings have been replaced by endless sand dunes and scorching heat. It soon becomes clear that the whole town has been inexplicably transported from the mountains to the desert. Supplies are limited, the heat is overbearing, and none of them are quite sure where they are or how to get out of the desert. They must work together to survive and escape.

[Shep]
I love it.

[Emily]
So are we all afraid of sandstorms transporting us to a different time and place?

[Shep]
I’m not afraid of it. Was that something to be afraid of?

[Emily]
It’s not?

[Shep]
No. Just remember your training from when you were a kid. Your survival training.

[Emily]
The quicksand.

[Thomas]
How did none of us write a quicksand story?

[Emily]
I don’t know.

[Thomas]
Wait a minute.

[Shep]
Oh, my god. Tough choices this week.

[Emily]
There are, actually.

[Thomas]
Well, we did all have that theme of sandstorm transporting us somewhere, so.

[Emily]
So we got to pick the best one. Who is best at coming up with magical sandstorm?

[Thomas]
Shep’s does remind me a little bit of Flag.

[Emily]
Yeah. But I liked Flag a lot.

[Thomas]
Yeah, Flag was really good. I’m not saying we shouldn’t do this one.

[Emily]
Shep’s also makes me think of, like, it’s the dark, grown up version of Gilligan’s Island. Happened to them in real life.

[Shep]
Just say the dark, grown up version of Gilligan’s Island. That’s the whole pitch.

[Thomas]
Yeah, I’m in.

[Shep]
That’s-

[Thomas]
That’s great.

[Shep]
See, I kind of want to combine parts of-

[Thomas]
We can do that. That’s allowed.

[Emily]
We’ve always done that.

[Shep]
Okay, so small lakeside town, picturesque views, sandstorm comes, everyone’s indoors. The next morning they come out and the lake is gone and they’re in a desert. Nearby, there is the city from Emily’s. You know, that city and their city got blown to the same location or whatever, or their city got blown to nearby where that city is.

[Emily]
Or that is how the city travels and conquers, is it’s a sandstorm, and it comes and sucks up other towns.

[Thomas]
When they need resources.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
And you can have someone hearing whispers and someone seeing visions and someone finding, you know, whatever. We have something from all three of us.

[Thomas]
Yeah, I like that. Well, I feel like we should kind of jump to the end and figure out why this happened and how do they rectify it? Is it a Brigadoon situation? Is it, like you said, Emily, where this other town is attacking them? Did somebody do something to cause this to happen?

[Shep]
I like the other town attacking them for resources. This is why everything’s idyllic in this town. They don’t have to work for any resources. They just consume other towns.

[Thomas]
Does that include absorbing the populace of the other town?

[Shep]
Sure.

[Emily]
No.

[Shep]
Oh, I was going to say yes, you know, for their- Well, do we want to have slave labor in this one?

[Thomas]
So, okay, I like the idea that it is an attack, but part of their strategy is the people who they are attacking think like, “Oh, it’s this incredible, beautiful, amazing place. How lucky we are to be here.” They don’t realize at first that this is actually a bad thing for you.

[Emily]
They’re food for the Morlocks.

[Shep]
Oh. Gosh, I can’t tell if that’s worse or better.

[Emily]
Is it too hard to convince the people to stay once they know what’s going on?

[Thomas]
It’s no good eating up all the supplies of the town and absorbing the population. That’s unsustainable growth. I guess I see it as one of three things. Either they are enslaving the population that they’re attacking, or they’re killing them for making Soylent Green or whatever. There’s some reason why they’re killing them. They themselves are also a resource. Or they just straight up leave those people behind in their now ruined town.

[Emily]
I think if they left them behind and their now ruined town, they’re leaving them to die. I’m imagining that when they leave, the desert doesn’t. Whatever sand has dumped there stays there.

[Shep]
So what happens to the town when they’re done? It stays in the desert? It doesn’t go back to the world it came from?

[Emily]
I think that’s a good question. And I was picturing that it stayed in the desert. But what does happen?

[Shep]
See, I pictured that the city in the desert is traveling around and taking its desert with it.

[Emily]
Okay.

[Shep]
So it comes and lands next to this town and it’s like, surrounded it with its bubble so they can consume the resources that they can. And then when it leaves, it takes its desert with it and. And leaves the husk of the town behind.

[Emily]
I guess the idea of it leaving the town as it was but just desolate and empty is also frightening.

[Thomas]
So I have two questions. One of them is, when this magic city is not actively sort of attacking a town, where is it? And the other question is, does it only do this to Earth? Or can it visit other planets?

[Shep]
It’s got to be able to visit other planets. I’m sorry. Go ahead.

[Emily]
I was going to say, I think you can only do it to Earth because then you’re making it too complicated, and I don’t want to go there.

[Thomas]
Fight. Fight. Fight.

[Shep]
I think you should visit other planets because otherwise Earth would notice every once in a while one of our cities disappears. It’s got to be so infrequent that it doesn’t really-

[Emily]
No, it’s just an unexplained geological event. That’s a thing that happens. All right, so what is the advantage of it visiting other planets? Do we see it visit other planets?

[Shep]
No, we can’t see it because that would be too complicated.

[Thomas]
Right. I agree.

[Shep]
But they could have technology or people from other worlds that just enhances the magicness of this city.

[Emily]
So I like the idea of stealing people as resources because I’m imagining this small city, centuries or whatnot old, needs to refresh the bloodlines now and again. Right? So they’re going to have to try and convince at least a portion of the people that they’re conquering to come along with them.

[Thomas]
Optionally, I think they would do that. Yeah.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
So, like, if they show up somewhere and they’re like, “Oh, we’re interested in having these people join us. We will ask some of these people to join us.” But they wouldn’t necessarily do that at every stop.

[Shep]
How many survivors do they leave behind, if any? We know they don’t want to keep all of the population because, as Thomas said, that’s unsustainable.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
Right.

[Shep]
They could keep a few, but not everyone. So what do they do with the people they’re not going to keep? Do they leave them in the town, or do they kill them? Or do they keep them, but not to be part of their main population, they go live underground with the Morlocks and run on the treadmills to power their technology.

[Emily]
I like the idea of leaving them behind to die. Like, they don’t straight up kill them, but they just-

[Shep]
Just the way you phrase things. “I like the idea of leaving them behind to die.” Okay.

[Emily]
Don’t ever get stranded anywhere with me. We know what’s going to happen. What do you think makes more sense? I feel like if they’re going to kidnap people, let’s call it kidnapping, that one way to sort of trick them into being okay with what they’re doing is to be like, “No, we’re just taking a select few. We’re leaving the rest. See all the survivors, they’re there. They’ll go and get help. They’ll be fine.”

[Thomas]
Either they’re leaving them behind. With the assumption that “We’ve taken so many of their resources, they’re going to die,” or they’re leaving them behind with the assumption that, like, “Hey, we didn’t take all of their resources. They’ll be fine.” Or they are intelligent and observant enough of the planet to realize, like, it’s not like this is the only settlement. They can move to a different town. They can get somewhere else.

[Shep]
So y’all remember V, the miniseries from the eighties?

[Emily]
Yeah, vaguely.

[Thomas]
I have a vague recollection.

[Shep]
So aliens come to Earth. They bring new, fancy technology. They appear to be friends. But they are sucking up Earth’s resources, including water, and taking people and eating them. So it’s just another resource. So is the magical city full of humans or aliens? If it’s aliens, they don’t need any more humans to replenish their population because those bloodlines don’t cross, and they would be happy to eat the humans as food. However, that’s just V, which already exists. Maybe they don’t take outsiders. Maybe that’s a conflict. One of the outsiders- Oh, that’s- What’s the town that only shows up once every hundred years?

[Thomas and Emily]
Brigadoon.

[Shep]
Brigadoon. It’s Brigadoon. He falls in love with one of the girls in the city. He wants to stay, but it’s not allowed.

[Emily]
See, I kind of had the idea of there being, like, a corrupt mayor-type figure who, he’s trying to get an in with them so he can go with them. He knows what’s going on. He sees what they’re doing, how they’re manipulating everything to steal all the resources. So he wants in on it, but they don’t want him. They want this really smart, pretty girl over here, because that’s the way movies work. And she has too many values and morals and ethics to go with them because she can’t see the rest of them die. That’s why they have to die, in my opinion, because that creates conflict for her. Otherwise, why wouldn’t she just go run off with the aliens with endless supplies of resources and fancy technology?

[Thomas]
Right. Which is what I like about either the murder or the slavery aspect of it. It’s like there’s this really clear, dark aspect to it where it’s like, “Oh.” So at first it’s like, “This is amazing. This is beautiful. This is incredible. How lucky that we get to experience this.” And then they find out the truth about it, and it’s like, “Oh, these guys are huge assholes,” and they want nothing to do with them. In fact, if they can take them down entirely, all the better.

[Emily]
Okay, so instead of them leaving them to die, because that has a lot of holes in it, they do plan on just murdering them.

[Shep]
I might have an objection to… the whole premise. If they’re technologically advanced, what do they need slaves for? It doesn’t make any sense.

[Emily]
Like you said, running on the treadmills underneath the-

[Shep]
They- They just put up some solar panels. There’s plenty of sunshine in the desert.

[Thomas]
Maybe they’ve discovered nuclear fusion.

[Shep]
Yeah, they don’t need slaves.

[Thomas]
That makes sense.

[Shep]
I think it’s- It’s Brigadoon. They don’t take outsiders. Maybe they are here to trade. They’re like, “Look, you have resources that you don’t care about, things that are not valuable to you at all. Your little vegetable garden has carrots and strawberries, and those are plants we don’t have. So it would be easy to trade some of our magical technology to you in return for things that you don’t care about? Because the magical technology we don’t care about, it’s nothing to us. These translators that fit in your ear like earbuds and suddenly you can understand every human language that’s trash to us. We don’t even bother to recharge them. We just throw them away.”

[Thomas]
“There’s a vending machine full of those.”

[Shep]
Yeah. So then what’s the conflict? If the conflict isn’t they’re here to steal resources and be evil, this is just a super advanced, technology oriented city and they’re just here visiting. They’re not gonna stay. It seems like it’s all upside. It seems like it’s all good.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
Right, which is why they have to be hungry for people. That’s it. They have to eat them.

[Shep]
What would be the most interesting version of this story? All I can think of is versions of this story that already exist.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Yeah, it’s tough. Writing is hard.

[Emily]
That’s why you don’t have to think about why they’re mean and angry, and you just let them be mean and angry.

[Shep]
What if it is like the Fae? They’re here, and it’s a magical night, but they’re not going to stay. And so you’re going to be full of regret for the rest of your life that you had this amazing encounter, but it couldn’t last.

[Emily]
Oh, I thought you were going to say they’re like the Fae, and they trick you and steal your children.

[Shep]
Ah, maybe they do that too.

[Emily]
How did we paint ourselves in a corner with this one? It had so much promise. Okay, so maybe they’re not evil.

[Thomas]
What’s the conflict?

[Emily]
Is it the fairy night? They get a wild orgy, and then-

[Thomas]
How is that not Brigadoon, then?

[Emily]
There’s no singing and dancing.

[Thomas]
It’s not a musical. Doesn’t have Sean Connery.

[Shep]
Doesn’t have Sean Connery? I’m out.

[Thomas]
All right, well, it sounds like we have some pretty tough choices ahead of us. So let’s take a break, think about it for a bit, and maybe when we come back, we’ll have some great ideas for our story about Sand.

[Break]

[Thomas]
All right, we’re back. I had a thought during the break. What if the city isn’t inhabited?

[Emily]
It’s just empty? Like the city itself- The city itself steals people as a resource?

[Thomas]
Yeah. Yeah.

[Emily]
And uses them like food?

[Thomas]
I don’t know.

[Emily]
As, like, energy source, like batteries?

[Shep]
No, it’s so- It’s all automated. It’s built by an advanced civilization. But it needs someone to run it. It doesn’t have a purpose if it doesn’t have any occupants. It’s trying to find someone to sit in the chair and make the choices.

[Emily]
What happened to its original decider?

[Shep]
They grew old and died. That’s the problem with biological life forms is they don’t last forever. They’re like batteries. They get used up. So their last one got used up and it stopped at the nearest civilization, which happens to be this town. This lakeside town.

[Emily]
Does it want to take everyone or just one person?

[Thomas]
I don’t think it cares.

[Shep]
Right. It needs at least one. That’s its goal, is to get at least one person to sit in the chair. But what happens to you when you sit in the chair? Are you stuck? Are you stuck there until you die? You get in this chair and you can control this city and have God-like powers, but you can’t leave.

[Thomas]
No, you can, but why would you? And so the conflict is who gets to sit in the chair? They’re fighting each other over control of the chair.

[Shep]
Do they know what the chair represents?

[Thomas]
Eventually.

[Emily]
Well, then we can bring back that idea I had of the corrupt town leader who wants to be in charge, and he can be in charge in the best way.

[Thomas]
He thinks he should be in charge. “I’m the mayor. I’m naturally the leader.” And then, oh, then we can bring back the voices and the visions and all the, like, suspicious stuff.

[Shep]
Yes.

[Thomas]
People are getting paranoid of each other.

[Shep]
I like the voices and the visions. That’s the city trying to communicate.

[Emily]
Yeah, I’ll buy that. So you have the people who want it. So they figure it out. They figure out that it wants people to inhabit it. And so it’s kind of whispering and sending visions to find who it wants to sit in the chair, who it wants to be in charge. So everybody kind of figures out what the deal is. And so you have that one character. “I’m a natural leader. I should be in charge.” And then you have, like, the reluctant hero/reluctant leader who the city kind of is like, “I like this one.”

[Thomas]
I mean, how involved is the city, though? Because I think the city, like, the chair, is genuinely a prize. And so everyone’s gonna want it, and no one’s gonna want to leave it. Or leave this amazing city where everything just sort of automatically happens for you. You don’t have to work. You don’t have to cook. You don’t have to clean. It just happens magically, or so it seems.

[Emily]
I want to go to there.

[Shep]
See? It’s already got its hooks in you.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
So the conflict just becomes each other, then.

[Emily]
Normal, man versus man.

[Thomas]
Power struggle. Yeah.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
All right, so what’s the ending? Let’s figure out the ending first, and then we can lead up to it. Who ends up staying in the city? Not everyone.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
There’s some people that, you know, their family is in the real world.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
Their friends are in the real world. They have responsibilities.

[Emily]
Their kids are at summer camp, and they got to be there when they come home.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
Does anybody leave with the- We’re calling it a ship?

[Shep]
Sure.

[Emily]
Whatever.

[Thomas]
So does anybody from Earth leave on the ship or not?

[Emily]
Yes.

[Shep]
Yes.

[Thomas]
Okay, good people or bad people?

[Shep]
Good people.

[Thomas]
Okay.

[Shep]
That’s the kind of movies that we make.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
Happy endings. It’s good people.

[Thomas]
Normally, yeah.

[Emily]
You don’t want to make reverse Star Trek where they’re going out to conquer and destroy.

[Shep]
No, that’s modern Star Trek. It’s awful.

[Emily]
Oh.

[Thomas]
How do the good people defeat the bad people?

[Emily]
I don’t have a serious answer for that.

[Shep]
What’s your unserious answer?

[Emily]
God’s on their side.

[Thomas]
All right. If I’m a bad guy and I sit in the chair, and I-

[Shep]
Oh, Thomas, you’re a bad guy. We know.

[Emily]
We still love you.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
If I’m a bad guy and I sit in the chair, and I immediately recognize all the power available to me, why would I ever get up out of the chair? Why would I ever, like, you know, especially if I’m hearing voices or whispers or whatever, and I’m all paranoid of everybody around me. How do they get the bad guy? Is it just one, like, really bad guy?

[Shep]
Oh, he’s killing everyone.

[Thomas]
Oh, yeah.

[Shep]
He’s absolutely murdering everyone. This is where we get our murders. And so they have to-

[Emily]
Yay!

[Shep]
So they have to kill him to survive. He won’t let them get away because he’s afraid they’re going to take his chair. So he’s using the power of the city, which we can hint that isn’t him. Like, it’s the city. Because they’re exploring the city and then people are getting killed and it’s like, “Oh, my gosh, the city is so dangerous. It’s attacking us.” No, it’s the guy-

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
That found the chair and he is killing people. So it’s a, it’s a suspense. It’s-

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
So if I’m understanding right, the city comes, they hear whispers. They have visions. This guy has figured it out, found the chair, and he wants to prevent anybody else from taking over. So he is killing them.

[Shep]
Right. Cause he’s paranoid and crazy.

[Emily]
And they don’t know that he’s doing it, and is in charge. They think that this city, as beautiful and opulent and awesome as it seems, is, in fact, evil and just eating people.

[Shep]
Yes.

[Emily]
Okay.

[Thomas]
Why doesn’t he just immediately launch the ship?

[Shep]
It needs time to rest and recharge.

[Emily]
It needs the resources still.

[Thomas]
Right. It’s sucking up the water into its tanks or whatever the-

[Emily]
Yeah. Takes time.

[Thomas]
Yeah, yeah. Makes sense.

[Shep]
So is the lake still there in the desert? Remember, it’s Sand is the theme of the episode.

[Thomas]
Right. I think the sand has, like, filled the lake, so it’s covered.

[Emily]
It’s got a really cool siphon that goes into the quicksand that it’s created in the lake because it’s all water and sand, and it’s just kind of siphoning off the water.

[Shep]
Okay, so the person in the chair can understand this process and see what’s going on.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
All right.

[Thomas]
But it’s not the chair or the city or whatever that corrupts the person in the chair. That guy is already corrupted.

[Emily]
Right.

[Shep]
Right. Maybe it’s mental stability.

[Emily]
Yeah. He’s a bad dude.

[Shep]
Well, I don’t know if he’s a bad dude or was previously a bad dude. He’s clearly a bad dude now that he’s murdering people. Murder is bad. But maybe he was just mentally unstable. So the city is looking for someone in that sweet spot. They’re unstable enough to be able to hear the whisperers, but not so unstable they go power mad and start killing people.

[Thomas]
Is he basically the guy from Falling Down? He feels like “All these bad things are happening to me. I feel oppressed,” but he’s doing bad shit to other people. And in the end, he’s like, “Wait, I’m the bad guy?” Like, he doesn’t think of himself as a bad person necessarily.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
This is just his time, and he’s not going to let anybody take it away from him.

[Shep]
“They wouldn’t use it properly. They would misuse it. I’m preventing it from being misused,” by killing people.

[Emily]
You don’t want him to just be corrupt because he’s a corrupt person?

[Shep]
No, that’s not how movies are anymore.

[Emily]
But there are people like that. That is real life.

[Shep]
Yeah, but you want to have people have a conversation about the movie afterward and go, “Well, actually, I think he was in the right. His motivations were understandable. He wasn’t cartoonishly evil.”

[Emily]
Okay, so if he’s mentally unstable, what…? I’m worried that that’s going to, I don’t know, cartoonized mental-

[Thomas]
Like, trivialize mental health problems.

[Emily]
Yeah.

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

[Emily]
Oh, what if it’s, like in Pi and he just can’t handle it. His brain is incapable of- Because does it commune with him in some way? Because he can use it to kill the people, in the chair. Right?

[Shep]
Right.

[Emily]
So if it somehow integrates into him in the way that he integrates into it, then maybe his brain just can’t handle it, and it crosses some wires, and then he goes down that thought process of… And then that way it’s not like he was mentally unstable or he had some sort of mental illness or something like that. It fried his brain, essentially.

[Shep]
Right. It destabilized him.

[Emily]
Yes.

[Shep]
Yes.

[Emily]
And then some hippie chick pothead can be, like, the real leader because her brain’s already fried in a way that doesn’t affect her anymore.

[Thomas]
She’s, like, done a lot of mushrooms and is really open to the universe.

[Emily]
Yeah, the ayahuasca really helps.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
So our movie is sending a definite message of some kind.

[Emily]
Hallucinogenics are okay.

[Shep]
And being too uptight is bad. So who leaves with the city?

[Thomas]
Is there, like, a core group of people that we kind of follow? Or, like, I think there may be, like, a few small groups. And then the one dude.

[Shep]
Well, how many people do we see get killed off? Is this a Saw movie where you start with twelve people and then you end up with just three?

[Thomas]
Yeah. Why does he think that they are a threat? Or is it not that he thinks they’re a threat? Is it retribution? These are people who wronged him, or he perceives wronged him, held him back. It’s his ex-wife, and it’s his boss that fired him. And it’s the librarian who was really a stickler for the late fines, and-

[Shep]
Oh, the first one he kills is his stepfather, who physically abused him.

[Thomas]
Mm hmm.

[Shep]
Who also discovers the chair.

[Thomas]
Hmm.

[Shep]
And is like, “All right, get out. That’s mine now.”

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
And so, reflexively, defensively, he accidentally kills his stepfather.

[Thomas]
Mmm. That’s good.

[Shep]
But now that he has done this. It’s like, “Oh, well, it’s okay. I was protecting myself. I was protecting the chair. He was a bad guy, and he would have used this to do bad things. So I’m a good guy. I’m protecting the chair. I’m protecting the city. I’m protecting everyone else.”

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
But once you’ve opened, once you’ve broken the seal, it’s easier to kill the next one.

[Emily]
You murder one, before you know it, you’ve murdered five.

[Shep]
Right. ‘Once you pop, you can’t stop,’ as the saying goes.

[Emily]
Exactly. Yeah. ‘Bet you can’t kill just one.’

[Shep]
So the second one he kills is the girl he has a crush on’s ex-boyfriend or something like that.

[Thomas]
Hmm. So he’s doing it for her.

[Shep]
Right. He’s just gonna prune- You know, an unpruned bush is just- That’s no good for anyone.

[Thomas]
Right, right.

[Shep]
It’s better to cultivate properly.

[Thomas]
And again, he knows that there was domestic violence happening there.

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
So it’s a win-win.

[Emily]
So it starts out sort of vigilante-esque in a way.

[Thomas]
Sure.

[Shep]
Yes.

[Thomas]
I imagine he would have access to some sort of audio and video surveillance throughout the city.

[Shep]
Right. He can see everything.

[Thomas]
So there’s maybe some other person who’s plotting something, who’s talking about being greedy or something along those lines. He sees, “Ah, this is a problem i’m going to nip in the bud.”

[Shep]
Right. They’re going to use this technology back in the real world.

[Emily]
Ooh, that could be something he overhears. If somebody is like, “Oh, we could take this, and it have major applications.” They’re thinking of, like, a humanitarian way to use it. And all he’s hearing is, “We’re going to take this and exploit it.” And that’s where he first crosses that line from. “Well, they were bad guys,” to “I’m still helping.” Even though he’s now not.

[Shep]
Well, he wouldn’t feel like he’s crossing the line then. Because he is still stopping bad guys, from his perspective.

[Emily]
Right.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
He doesn’t feel like he’s crossed the line. We’re seeing that he’s crossing the line.

[Shep]
No, I- So, I did it. “No, no, no, no.” Someone else found the chair. Not someone bad. Just someone else. And to protect the secret of the chair, he has to eliminate this person. This is where he crosses the line unambiguously.

[Emily]
Right.

[Shep]
This is not a bad person. But two people can’t keep a secret unless one of them is dead. And it must remain a secret for everyone’s safety, for the good of the world. This person, this innocent person has to die. And he’s very sorry that he has to silence them permanently. But he does do it.

[Thomas]
At what point do people realize that there are people dying? Because I feel like his stepfather, that’s just for him. He kind of just wants his stepfather to disappear. He doesn’t want anyone asking questions. So the murder and the cleanup, I feel like that all happens, and he’s the only one who knows. And then maybe the same thing with the ex boyfriend. And then at some point, you know, we want people to discover not just that, “Where are these people? I haven’t seen these people in a while,” but like, “Oh, people are actually dying.”

[Shep]
Right. Someone has to witness people dying.

[Thomas]
Oh, maybe when he kills the other person who knows about the chair, another person happens to see it, and so he has to do two that, “God, I don’t want to kill either of these people, but I have to. I don’t have a choice. I had to protect the secret of the chair, so I killed the first person. I have to protect myself because this other person saw it. So I have to kill that person as well.”

[Emily]
Murders all the way down.

[Thomas]
Right?

[Emily]
So what if he murders the person first that finds the chair in order to keep it for himself so that it’s a secret.

[Thomas]
Mm hmm.

[Emily]
And then he overhears the people kind of talking about what they could do with this technology and how it could advance humanity, and then that’s, again, the secret is going to get out. But they’re very outspoken about it. So with them being murdered, it would be noticed that they’re gone, like, right away because they wouldn’t just up and leave. They’ve been talking about doing this thing. He could maybe want to make an example out of them and do it very publicly, maybe so others will catch on that you don’t want to do something like that.

[Thomas]
Sure. If somebody’s talking about using this technology. And then suddenly the ship or the city attacks that person and kills them, that could be construed as, “Oh, okay, maybe don’t do that.”

[Emily]
Right.

[Thomas]
“That’s not an option.” That’s what his hope is. His hope is that they will see this person was saying, “We can take this and do something with it.” And the ship says, “No, you can’t. Don’t even think about it.” That’s his hope.

[Shep]
Right. From his perspective, it’s one murder to stop other murders.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
Other murders will be unnecessary as long as this person dies in a public way.

[Thomas]
Yeah. How do people figure out that he’s the one behind it?

[Shep]
That’s gotta be the twist at the end.

[Thomas]
Well, I feel like that’s the third act, is them trying to overcome him.

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
So it needs to be, like, somewhere late second act.

[Shep]
Right. If he thinks he’s the good guy, he might tell someone. Or he might talk to someone. He talks to that girl that he has a crush on.

[Thomas]
Right. That makes sense. So is she the main character then?

[Shep]
It’s gotta be, because that’s how these movies are.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Right. So the lowest low is her realizing I’m trapped in this room with this nut job.

[Shep]
I’m trapped in this city with this nut job.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Oh, wait. Is she Mushroom- Mushroom Girl? Is she the one that sits in the chair at the end? It’s gotta be. Let’s be efficient with our characters.

[Emily]
I mean, that would make the most sense writing-wise, because then we have to develop a whole other human.

[Shep]
Right.

[Emily]
I don’t know if you’ve made other people. It’s hard.

[Thomas]
I don’t know. I found it pretty easy. And enjoyable.

[Shep]
What did that take? Three minutes? Oh, jeez.

[Thomas]
So she has some way that she can signal people or communicate with people outside of the bridge, the throne room, whatever we want to call it. The bridge, I guess, if it’s a ship.

[Shep]
Right. Is she- She’s not trapped in the bridge.

[Emily]
Is she the only one trapped in city at the moment with him?

[Thomas]
Oh, no. I think that it’s a big city. There are lots of, like, the whole town would be exploring it.

[Emily]
Okay.

[Thomas]
Not a huge town.

[Emily]
Right. Well, does she get out first and go and tell people what’s going on and they’re like, “Okay, crazy lady.” Or do we have that obstacle?

[Shep]
Well, she can’t tell people. Because he’ll know.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
Okay.

[Shep]
Also, is he stuck in the chair or can he, now that he’s established the connection, he can get up and move around and stay connected to the ship?

[Thomas]
I think that he can get out of the chair, but he can’t control the ship unless he’s in the chair.

[Shep]
Okay.

[Thomas]
So he’ll have to be able to, like, get up and go to the bathroom, or he can leave, but-

[Shep]
So when the person gets publicly murdered, he’s not there.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
He had to be in the chair.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
This is a clue to the audience if they’re rewatching like, “Hey, he wasn’t there.”

[Emily]
It’s an epic game of Move Your Feet, Lose Your Seat.

[Shep]
Uh. What?

[Thomas]
Yeah. I-

[Emily]
Move Your Feet, Lose Your Seat?

[Thomas]
Never heard of this.

[Emily]
Oh, you don’t have older siblings.

[Shep]
I have older siblings, and I haven’t heard of it either.

[Emily]
What? You guys didn’t used to say that to each other? Like, when you were sitting down somewhere watching TV and you got to go to the bathroom or go get snacks, and you come back and they’re in your seat, and you’re like, “Hey, that’s my spot.” And they’re like, “Move your feet, lose your seat.”

[Shep]
Nope, that’s not a thing.

[Thomas]
Yeah, nah.

[Emily]
100% a thing. That is not just me and my siblings.

[Shep]
Yeah, it’s just you. You grew up in a rough family.

[Emily]
But-

[Shep]
Civilized families don’t do that kind of thing.

[Thomas]
I mean, yes, my spot got taken, but I don’t- That was never a thing that we said. I don’t know if there was some other thing that we said.

[Shep]
Yeah, it’s like, “That was my spot.” “Oh, I didn’t see your name on it.”

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
Wow. Yeah, we always said, “Move your feet, lose your seat.” It’s like saying, “Sucks to suck” now?

[Shep]
Now? I got some bad news for you.

[Emily]
Shut up. I’m not old. Okay, there’s a National Institutes of Health article about this.

[Thomas]
I like the implication that that’s some sort of, like, government policy.

[Emily]
Maybe it is. Maybe that’s where we learned it from, because, you know, Navy housing.

[Shep]
Where were we on this episode?

[Thomas]
Oh, we were talking about the girl and how, like, how do they defeat the bad guy?

[Shep]
Yeah. He’s basically God in this city. It’s going to be tough.

[Emily]
He goes to the bathroom. She sits in the chair and says, “Move your feet, lose your seat.”

[Shep]
And he’s like, “That’s not a phrase.” And she’s like, “Check Urban Dictionary.”

[Thomas]
He’s, like, trying to make an argument to all the other people. And everyone’s like, “No, that’s. Yeah, we all say that. Yeah, no, it’s true.”

[Emily]
“Yeah, no, that’s law. It’s our town motto.”

[Shep]
Right.

[Emily]
Over the welcome sign.

[Shep]
It’s just in Latin, so he never knew. Ooh. I used the- an English to Latin translator to translate, “move your feet, lose your seat”, Move pedes, sedem perdas. It almost rhymes.

[Thomas]
Pretty good.

[Emily]
That’s pretty awesome.

[Shep]
That’s the town motto.

[Emily]
I am getting that put on a board for my living room.

[Thomas]
That would be great if, like, that’s like part of the town seal. We never call attention to it. You just see it at some point.

[Shep]
Yes. Yep. That’s a great little Easter egg.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
One of two things, or maybe two things together need to happen. She has to trick him into trusting her potentially, or she needs to distract him somehow so that he doesn’t realize he’s being set upon. I don’t know how she gets word out to everybody else. I mean, maybe she just texts them. Does this take place in a modern time? And she can just text people and be like, “Yo, I’m in the bridge. And this guy is-“

[Shep]
She’s got to communicate in a way that he can’t understand. Or see. So either she knows sign language and her sister is deaf, or she’s using her high school Spanish with her friend. Assuming there’s not universal translators, like in our earlier version of this story.

[Thomas]
Right. Yeah, we don’t need that anymore. So.

[Shep]
Right. Or that could be her first attempt, that she uses Spanish and it automatically translates it for him, and so that doesn’t work.

[Thomas]
Hmm.

[Shep]
But then she uses sign language, and because it’s not spoken, it doesn’t get translated.

[Thomas]
Yeah, that’s. That’s good. So do all the town people work together and just overwhelm him? He can’t fight all of them off. How do they get into the bridge? Is there not a way to close the bridge?

[Emily]
Where is the bridge? Like, is it in the center of everything? Is it-

[Thomas]
Wherever is convenient for the story.

[Emily]
In a high tower above all?

[Thomas]
I mean, I guess it depends how difficult we want it to be for people to get to the bridge. It should be, I suppose difficult, but not insurmountable.

[Emily]
I mean, if we’re making him godlike and he’s the overseer, putting it in a high tower with limited access seems reasonable.

[Thomas]
Sure.

[Shep]
Or he can move it. I mean, he’s got phenomenal cosmic power.

[Thomas]
You said that they kill him, right?

[Shep]
They have to.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Or maybe they don’t. They just leave him behind. But he is a murderer.

[Thomas]
Yeah. I don’t think that they would leave him behind, because then they’re leaving him with people they care about who are staying behind.

[Shep]
Right. So it’s okay to kill him. It’s to protect others. Oh, no!

[Thomas]
He launches the ship.

[Shep]
Ah.

[Thomas]
And so the ship is leaving, and either he falls to Earth or is ejected into space or something, but it’s like partly by his own hand in a way.

[Shep]
Right. As is tradition.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
I’m just realizing that the ship in Stargate literally arrives during a sandstorm. Right? Am I remembering that correctly?

[Thomas]
It’s been so long, I don’t remember.

[Emily]
I feel like that’s right. Yeah, it’s been-

[Shep]
So we’re just doing Stargate.

[Emily]
But with murder.

[Shep]
But with murder.

[Thomas]
There’s a lot of shooting in Stargate. I don’t know who, they kill a whole bunch of people.

[Emily]
Oh, there’s a whole lot of murder in Stargate.

[Shep]
Right. They solved theirs with a nuclear weapon.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
Do we have a nuclear bomb that we can use?

[Thomas]
Is there a reason, I mean, I know what the reason is to not have people kill him, but I mean, he’s not going to kill himself.

[Shep]
Not intentionally. Not with that attitude.

[Thomas]
It’s like we don’t really want to have him make a mistake. And if we want intelligent characters, how are you going to trick him?

[Shep]
Okay, I would like to revisit an earlier thing.

[Thomas]
Okay.

[Shep]
Him being connected to the city even after leaving the chair. I’d say that doesn’t happen right away. But the more time he spends in the chair, the more he’s connected.

[Thomas]
Mmm.

[Shep]
So eventually, towards the end, he can leave the chair and still be in command of the city and have all of his abilities.

[Thomas]
Okay.

[Shep]
So he is launching the ship. He’s pursuing the people that he wants to eliminate. Perhaps he’s chasing them outside of the protection of the city. He’s still protected because the city is protecting him, but they’re not. She somehow makes her way to the chair and turns off the protections on him. That kills him.

[Thomas]
Okay.

[Shep]
Then the question is, how do we get her into the chair? Which I think is an easier question than how do we kill him?

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Because he’s not going to kill himself, like you said.

[Thomas]
So he doesn’t trust anybody, including her.

[Shep]
Correct.

[Thomas]
So he initially takes her with him, but for some reason ends up discarding her or leaving her behind.

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
And she takes advantage of that to run back and get in the chair. So that specific detail we could maybe say is a problem for the writers if we know that we like that idea.

[Shep]
I mean, he maybe put some sort of protection around the chair that she has to overcome to get to it, but that’s something we can establish earlier that she has- You know, she’s a gymnast or whatever. So the people being pursued, the last people. Since the ship is launched, it’s got to be another guy, right? Because then we have Adam and Eve in space. It’s the mushroom girl and the guy that she had a crush on that wasn’t her ex-boyfriend and not the “nice” guy that is murdering people.

[Thomas]
Right. There could still be a bunch of people.

[Emily]
A few people could have stayed.

[Thomas]
Okay, maybe it’s not. Maybe she’s the only one left on the ship. Like, he ejects those last few people and she ejects him, and then she takes the ship back down to Earth so that everybody in the community can, A) know what happened and, B) have the option to join because maybe people were moving back and forth and then the ship sealed up and took off. Or maybe there are people who weren’t killed who were on the ship, who wants to be back on Earth because their kid’s away at Vassar, and when they come home, they’re going to be really confused about where they are.

[Emily]
Also, they really need to write that check.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
Vassar’s expensive.

[Shep]
So if the ship stays on Earth, that radically changes everything from this point in time going forward, because you have all of that new technology.

[Thomas]
Oh, it’s not staying. It’s not staying. She’s just coming back to, like, drop the people off who want to stay. People-

[Shep]
Then why leave?

[Thomas]
He’s trying to leave. He’s trying to get out of there.

[Shep]
Hes trying to leave, right.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
So she comes back. Why leave again?

[Emily]
There’s adventure out there to be had.

[Shep]
Right. But there’s all this new technology in the ship that you can use to be a trillionaire on Earth.

[Thomas]
It’s a good point.

[Shep]
I’m just saying it would be easier to have the ship leave and then not be able to control it and go back. That’s why I wanted Adam and Eve in space, because it sets up the idea that, oh, they could continue living.

[Thomas]
Then she shouldn’t be able to use the chair. If you’re in the chair, you have total control.

[Shep]
Oh, she destroys the chair! That’s how she stops it.

[Thomas]
Hmm.

[Shep]
She destroys the chair so he’s not connected to it anymore.

[Thomas]
So that’s where the nuke comes in. Got it.

[Shep]
So he loses his protection. But then they can’t stop the ship.

[Thomas]
All right. I like that. That works.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
And then you get Adam and Eve in space.

[Shep]
And then you get Adam and Eve in space and possibly a sequel, whatever.

[Thomas]
Right, right, right.

[Shep]
And if you come back to Earth, you haven’t radically changed everything.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
It’s not like Independence Day 2, where it’s like, “Hey, it’s in the future, so everything’s magic now.”

[Thomas]
Well we’d love to hear your thoughts on today’s episode about Sand. Did it develop into a pearl, or should we bury our heads in the stuff? Let us know by leaving a comment on our website, reaching out on social media, or sending us an email. Links to all of those can be found at AlmostPlausible.com. We’d love it. If you could give us a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or anywhere else that has podcast ratings. And if you leave a written review along with your five-star rating on Apple Podcasts, we’ll read it on the show at some point in the future. As the sands of time inexorably shift, so too does the topic of our show. What will our next movie plot be about? To find out, you’ll have to join Emily, Shep, and I, on the next episode of Almost Plausible.

[Outro music]