Bob-LeMent-Cover

Ep. 40

Videocassette

03 January 2023

Runtime: 00:45:19

A long-forgotten videocassette for a Sesame Street style TV show turns out to be a portal into the puppet world. But when a pair of children go through the portal and meet a strange new friend, their parents have to race to save them from a very grown-up danger.

Guest Links

References

Transcript

[Intro music begins]

[Bob]
Are the old puppets all pilly? They’re all pilled up because they’re so old.

[Shep]
Right. instead of getting wrinkles-

[Bob]
Yeah.

[Shep]
They get pills on their fabric.

[Bob]
They get pilled up and the killer’s got a pill shaver he brought into the world with him and he’s befriending all these old puppets.

[Emily]
Yeah, he opens a pill shop.

[Shep]
Puppet reconstructive surgeon.

[Thomas]
I like that idea. That’s how he blends in, right? Everyone thinks he’s there to benefit the community.

[Bob]
Oh, yeah.

[Emily]
The Demon Barber of Sesame Street.

[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 joining me today are Emily-

[Emily]
Hey, guys.

[Thomas]
F. Paul Shepard-

[Shep]
Happy to be here.

[Thomas]
And special guest Bob LeMent.

[Bob]
Hello everybody.

[Thomas]
Now, Bob is the cohost of Static Radio. How long has the show been on?

[Bob]
We the concept came about in November of 1998, believe it or not.

[Thomas]
Oh, my gosh.

[Bob]
And we recorded the first episode on Thanksgiving evening after everybody had done eat- got finished eating.

[Thomas]
The best time have to record when everyone’s bright and awake and-

[Bob]
Yeah, everybody. Yeah, everybody’s groggy.

[Emily]
Filled with wine and gravy.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Bob]
An interesting fact, though. So we do stories every week. We don’t, like, you guys do film ideas and so forth. But the funny thing was, the very first story was a film idea.

[Thomas]
Oh, cool.

[Bob]
Yeah. Which I don’t want to repeat it here because it was rude, but it was a rude story about a film idea. But yeah, I just found that fascinating when I ran across you guys, and I’m like, “Go figure.”

[Thomas]
Now, you said you’re almost a filmmaker. Is that kind of what you meant, or is there some other aspect to that?

[Bob]
I went to film school. I have a degree in cinema and photography. We talk about that on the show because my co-host as well has a degree in cinema and photography, and we’re both failures in that field.

[Thomas]
Well, you’re in good company because I’m right there with you.

[Emily]
And I never finished film school.

[Thomas]
And Shep didn’t even try to get into film school, so-

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Bob]
Well, good for him. Good for him.

[Thomas]
One of us is sensible, at least.

[Bob]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Well, perhaps the movie we come up with today will get made at some point. Bob, since you’re the guest, you get to choose this episode’s object. What will our movie be about?

[Bob]
You know, I’ve pondered this a lot over the last 27 years, and I come up with something that was near and dear to my heart at the time and is now near and dear to no one’s heart. The humble video cassette.

[Thomas]
It sounds to me like you had an idea 27 years ago, and you’re just like, “Oh, shit, I need something for this show.” No, that’s fine. I love it. I actually have a whole bunch of video cassettes on the shelf behind me here because I just can’t let go because I’m old.

[Bob]
Really? Oh, my Lord.

[Thomas]
Well, as I said at the beginning of the episode, on this show, we take an ordinary object and come up with a movie plot about that object. Now, before we start the process of creating the plot, we need to have a pitch session to figure out the basic idea for our movie. Bob, why don’t you pitch first?

[Bob]
Well, this is about a guy who works in a video store who becomes a famous director and filmmaker. Now, I’m joking. That’s Quentin Tarantino, folks. No, no, this is about, so, if you can imagine. So I think the last gasp of the video cassette was somewhere around 2004. And oddly enough, a lot of times what I try to do is come up with a title before I come up with an idea, and sometimes that helps me. And so the title of this one’s Dirty Foreign Movie. And so that kind of drives us a little bit. So if you can imagine that there’s these three kids, Seth, Billy, and Verne, who are digging through an old trunk trying to find the dirty foreign movie, and they’re in an attic, and they’re just throwing things out of this trunk, is what I kind of see. And then they, you know, get to the bottom of it, and they find an old video cassette. The label’s worn off. It looks like it’s, you know, been used too much, and it looks like it’s from a different time, even, not 2004, like, even earlier, like, probably in the 80s or something. And so then they run downstairs to a small TV/VCR combo that’s still left, you know, working in their household.

[Thomas]
And it turns out the tape is Betamax. Ah crap. Oh, no.

[Bob]
Oh, my gosh.

[Shep]
Kids, do not play video cassettes you find that your parents have hidden away in trunks in the attic.

[Thomas]
Yeah. Yes.

[Shep]
Just don’t risk it.

[Bob]
So they think it’s the dirty foreign movie. And that’s where I thought a sister would become involved in this because there’s always an older sister around in these kind of things and lives to make them-

[Thomas]
I’m pretty sure I’ve seen this on Pornhub already.

[Bob]
What?

[Shep]
They were stepsiblings in the one on Pornhub.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Bob]
Well, but there’s a twist. There’s a twist. They put it in. It’s all grainy and staticky, and they’re watching it and then they see like a puppet and they’re like, “Boy, your dad’s weird. This is like puppet pornography or something. What is going on here?” Turns out it’s a copy of an Icelandic kids show that they used to watch when they were children. And it’s not the dirty foreign movie, so but anyway, I kind- that’s the main concept of things is they kind of get foiled and then the sister does some stuff, I’m assuming, that makes them feel even littler than they already do because they were on this terrible search for the dirty foreign movie.

[Shep]
I don’t know when I was a kid, a puppet show, but it’s grainy, so you kind of have to use your imagination. It’s a difficult wank, but it’s not impossible.

[Thomas]
To be fair. Shep, though, you were out in the woods, so it’s like if you were going to try to find a real porn, it would have taken days, and-

[Shep]
Oh, yeah, the episode of Rick and Morty where Morty is like, “I saw a curved stick” when they’re trapped in the micro dimension. I’m like, “Yeah, I feel that. “

[Thomas]
“What a buxom stump.”

[Shep]
Those evergreen trees.

[Thomas]
They’re always ready.

[Shep]
They’re always ready.

[Bob]
So I put too much into it. but that’s kind of the pitch that I come up with.

[Thomas]
So do they ever find this movie that they’re looking for?

[Bob]
No, and to me that’s the irony of it is always whenever you’re kind of a preteen kid, you always have this kind of unattainable thing. And then I think the fun part is not attaining it because it always becomes this thing that’s just out of reach and then as you get older, things change and you don’t have the same curiosity or anything.

[Thomas]
Sure.

[Bob]
And so to me it was funny because it was like, “Oh, we’re going to have this dirty foreign movie.” And it turns out, “Wait a minute, this is just some old crappy tape that we’ve watched a million times when we were like four years old.”

[Shep]
Well, if they didn’t find the tape, why did they not continue looking for the tape?

[Bob]
If you want to make it a trilogy, we can find two with trying to find the tape. And the next year we’ve cleaned out the attic fully.

[Shep]
I’m just picturing a series of movies, and they get older and older, and it’s like, just go and buy a magazine. You’re an adult now.

[Bob]
Just wait for the Internet to catch up to you.

[Thomas]
All right. Shep, do you want to pitch a few stories?

[Shep]
Sure. So, video cassette. The first thing that I think of is the short film Bobby Loves Mangoes. Have you all seen Bobby Loves Mangoes?

[Thomas]
Love it.

[Emily]
I have. It’s been a while.

[Thomas]
So good.

[Shep]
I love it. So the beginning of the short film, this school principal gets a video cassette. And when he plays it, it’s a message from the future from one of his students about an accident that’s going to happen in a few days that’s going to kill a bunch of students. That’s the premise, and I think that’s great. So, video cassette from the future with a message from the future. But that’s been done.

[Bob]
Now. I’ve heard a lot of pitches from you about stuff from the future.

[Shep]
This one wasn’t mine. Okay, so what about The Ring? The Ring? You play the video cassette, you see the ring and then you die.

[Thomas]
That’s the first thing I thought of, which is weird because I’ve never seen that movie.

[Shep]
Right? Neither have I. So here’s my pitch. A video cassette that allows you to travel through a TV into another world, Ring style. So you put the cassette in here, and that turns the display into a portal. You go through the portal, you’re in another world.

[Thomas]
The same world, or-

[Shep]
Could be the same world. Could be everything’s backwards. Could be the world where all the Ring people are, and now you’re the monster. Could be anything.

[Thomas]
A world where the vertical sync is not quite right. So everyone is skipping all the time.

[Bob]
Yeah, skipping around.

[Thomas]
That’s an old people joke. If you don’t understand it, just keep going.

[Bob]
Do you have to turn the tracking knob or anything?

[Thomas]
Exactly. yeah.

[Shep]
You take the remote in with you, and then you can pause the world.

[Thomas]
You hide in the video blanking interval. Just keep going. Don’t worry about it.

[Shep]
Okay, how about a security tape where if you record over previous events, it changes the past.

[Thomas]
Yeah. Interesting.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Okay, pitch number three. Someone is contacted by an estate lawyer because there’s a video cassette waiting for them and it’s from their parent who has recently passed. But this is a parent that they had cut out of their life 20 years ago.

[Bob]
So we don’t know what’s on the tape?

[Shep]
No. Could be an apology. It could be just their parent being an asshole again.

[Emily]
So is the movie them sitting in existential crisis of whether to watch it or not?

[Shep]
Could be. I mean, they did cut this person out of their life for some presumed reason.

[Emily]
Right.

[Shep]
That’s it for me.

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

[Emily]
All right. I have a young woman moves into a new apartment and finds a box of video cassettes in the closet.

[Shep]
And they’re all dirty foreign porn.

[Thomas]
Yeah, I was going to say don’t play those.

[Emily]
All dirty foreign porn. She’s a vintage loving gal, so she has a VCR laying around and so she decides to play the cassettes because she’s bored and drinking wine alone one night. And the cassettes are the lives of a couple that had lived in the apartment before or- yeah, that’s why the box is there. They lived in the apartment before and she kind of watches their story unfold as they, like, start out dating and then end up getting married, maybe have a couple of kids, holidays, things like that. And then the last tape is one of the partners dying and she kind of becomes obsessed with the idea of finding the surviving partner to return the videotapes.

[Shep]
But it turns out that surviving partner was a serial killer and they murdered their partner.

[Bob]
That’s the next pitch.

[Emily]
Oh, are you guys in for a surprise. Because I don’t have a serial killer pitch today.

[Shep]
Oh, no. Emily’s been replaced!

[Emily]
Instead, I have a middle-aged man helping his parents clean out their house and comes across a video cassette he loved as a child. It was his favorite show.

[Shep]
It was this foreign puppet show.

[Emily]
Foreign puppet. He remembers it clearly, as if he was actually part of the world on the videotape. So he takes it home along with one of their VCRs, and he watches it and he’s suddenly transported into the world of the video cassette and has to figure his way back home.

[Thomas]
Well, that idea, Emily, is very similar to one of mine, which is a child’s favorite cartoon that they watch over and over again on a VHS tape, and the characters in the show interact with the child. So it’s kind of like Dora of the Explorer, except that the interactions are real.

[Emily]
Creepy.

[Shep]
So they’re alive, but they’re trapped in a video cassette. And every time the child plays it, they come alive again, but every time it wears out a little bit more.

[Emily]
They’re slowly disappearing…

[Shep]
Yes.

[Emily]
As the nothing encroaches…

[Shep]
“These look like big, strong hands, don’t they?”

[Emily]
Too soon.

[Shep]
Too soon? I didn’t mention the horse at all!

[Emily]
You know, the rock giant is what gets me more.

[Shep]
Oh, yeah, I’m the same. The horse does nothing for me but the rock giant who’s just waiting for the nothing to come and take him because he failed to protect his loved ones.

[Thomas]
I just think about the making of the film, and I’m like, I’m like “That poor fucking horse.”

[Emily]
Ah, right?

[Thomas]
My other idea is a political thriller. It doesn’t have to be a political thriller, but that seemed to fit. where a crime is recorded onto videotape via a security system. Powerful, high-profile people are trying to get the tape back, and they chase the main character all over town.

[Shep]
Starring Will Smith and Gene Hackman.

[Thomas]
Oh, yeah.

[Emily]
Yeah, that’s what I was thinking about, that.

[Thomas]
You might even say he’s an Enemy of the (Person on the Video).

[Shep]
Yes.

[Emily]
That was a good movie.

[Thomas]
Yeah, I forgot about that. So those are my ideas. Is there one in particular that we like? I mean, it sounds like interacting with whatever is on the TV, whether that’s just interacting, like I said, or going through the TV is something that we kind of all had in common.

[Shep]
I mean, I like going through the TV because I like magical reality stuff.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
That’s my serial killer.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
So they go through the TV into a foreign puppet world.

[Shep]
Yes.

[Emily]
Were they all being murdered one by one by an unseen serial killer?

[Bob]
A puppet serial killer.

[Emily]
A puppet serial killer.

[Shep]
See, I like this more and more. I know you’re joking, but it’s like-

[Emily]
All of our serial killer episodes that we actually do are a result of “None of the pitches spoke to me, so let’s just make up this absurdly weird serial killer.”

[Bob]
It’s a Pinocchio.

[Shep]
Pinocchio?

[Bob]
Pinocchio impales people with his nose by telling lies to them.

[Emily]
I’d watch that.

[Shep]
“I won’t kill you.” So my point was going into a videotape world that’s full of puppets and solving a murder-

[Emily]
By a serial killer puppet.

[Shep]
That scratches several inches for me.

[Thomas]
Yeah, I like that. Do we want to pursue this one?

[Bob]
Sure.

[Emily]
I am up for anything.

[Bob]
Yeah.

[Shep]
So this was no one’s pitch.

[Emily]
No.

[Thomas]
That’s a mix of a bunch of them.

[Bob]
It’s an amalgam. It’s a witch’s brew.

[Emily]
What we do best.

[Shep]
Okay, I want to put the twist in right away.

[Thomas]
Okay.

[Shep]
It’s not a puppet committing the murders. It’s another person that has gone through a video cassette and is in the puppet world.

[Thomas]
I like that.

[Emily]
What’s his or her motivation?

[Shep]
They don’t think the puppets are real.

[Emily]
Okay.

[Shep]
They don’t believe the puppets are people.

[Bob]
Oh, okay. They’re not sentient or anything. They’re just puppets. They’re blank.

[Shep]
They’re just puppets.

[Emily]
They don’t matter. They don’t have souls.

[Bob]
Is it like Toy Story when they don’t move when they’re looked at or-

[Shep]
No, because it’s the puppet world.

[Bob]
Okay.

[Thomas]
So are these adults, then, who have gone through into this other world?

[Bob]
The puppets.

[Thomas]
No, the- our human characters that are in this story.

[Shep]
Yeah, we kind of glossed over a kind of major part of it was-

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
There’s a magical video cassette that lets you travel into the puppet world.

[Bob]
This already sounds like a Sid and Marty Krofft thing. You guys know who Sid and Marty Krofft is. So Johnny Whitaker goes through the television and he’s in the puppet world and someone is trying to off him. Are they in a puppet suit but it’s still really a person, but they’re pretending to be a puppet?

[Emily]
No, I think they’re actual people. People that they just look like themselves when they got sucked into the magical video cassette and they’re just interacting with puppets, and the puppets are freaked out by their fleshy skin and not having any fur or felt.

[Thomas]
Well, is this a fully puppet world, or is this like Sesame Street where it’s puppets and humans living together?

[Bob]
Yeah. does Mr. Hooper buy it right away?

[Shep]
This is the Sesame Street prequel that leads into them living- coexisting with humans.

[Thomas]
Right. Sesame Street is like, after Times Square got cleaned up.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
This is like, pre-that. It’s like, ’70s.

[Bob]
So Oscar the Grouch is given out flyers for the porno theater? Is that what you’re saying?

[Thomas]
Right.

[Bob]
“Hey, come on in.”

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Bob]
“We got the dirtiest girls right here.”

[Thomas]
Exactly.

[Bob]
No, you mentioned earlier that the killer was a person, not a puppet, and so I was wondering, is it the killer? A person who’s trying to be identified as a puppet, dressing up like that?

[Thomas]
They skinned their victims and make a puppet suit.

[Shep]
It’s Buffalo Bill, it’s

[Thomas]
Right. yeah.

[Emily]
I endorse this idea.

[Bob]
“It puts the felt in the basket.”

[Shep]
Silence of the Lambchop. Hey!

[Emily]
Shari Lewis is rolling in her grave.

[Thomas]
So how long has the killer been in this world? Have they been there for years, killing these puppets this whole time.

[Bob]
They don’t age. They’re puppets. Right. They don’t age. Puppet world-

[Thomas]
Oh.

[Bob]
Or are the old puppets all pilly? They’re all pilled up because they’re so old.

[Shep]
Right. instead of getting wrinkles-

[Bob]
Yeah.

[Shep]
They get pills on their fabric.

[Bob]
They get pilled up and the killer’s got a pill shaver he brought into the world with him and he’s befriending all these old puppets.

[Emily]
Yeah, he opens a pill shop.

[Shep]
Puppet reconstructive surgeon.

[Thomas]
I like that idea. That’s how he blends in, right? Everyone thinks he’s there to benefit the community.

[Bob]
Oh, yeah.

[Emily]
The Demon Barber of Sesame Street.

[Shep]
We’re killing it with the titles.

[Emily]
No. yeah.

[Thomas]
Does Big Bird have a rent-controlled nest?

[Emily]
Obviously, he lives in the alley.

[Thomas]
In our version, Snuffleupagus is truly fake, though, right?

[Emily]
Yeah, he’s a delusion, obviously,

[Thomas]
He’s actually imaginary, right?

[Emily]
Because Big Bird is clearly schizophrenic.

[Thomas]
Right. yeah. He’s living in an alley, so essentially, instead of- he has a nest made of cardboard boxes and he’s always on, like, heroin or something.

[Bob]
“Snuffy, Snuffy help me.”

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Bob]
“Oh, bird. Get out there and make me some money, bird.”

[Emily]
Elmo hits the streets with a new kind of fentanyl.

[Bob]
Oh, my goodness.

[Thomas]
Does that mean that Abby is also not real? Oh, no. she’s a raver girl.

[Emily]
Yeah, she’s a raver girl.

[Thomas]
She’s an e pusher.

[Emily]
Yeah, she’s a party monster girl.

[Bob]
This is all taking a very bad turn, I think.

[Emily]
Yeah. I was going to say, this is taking a very dark turn.

[Thomas]
All right, so how long has the killer been in the puppet world?

[Shep]
Do they stay in the puppet world or they go in just to kill?

[Emily]
I think the killer stuck in the puppet world.

[Bob]
Yeah, they’re stuck in there.

[Emily]
That’s why he’s gone mad and started killing the puppets.

[Bob]
He’s gotten bored. He’s been there for ages.

[Emily]
Yeah, he’s been there for what he feels like is decades.

[Bob]
Yeah, he’s been there longer than Sesame Street has been on.

[Shep]
Oh, he went in with the same tape. There aren’t two tapes.

[Thomas]
Right? Yeah, yeah.

[Shep]
He went in with this one tape but stayed in so long that it reached the end of the player and stopped and rewound automatically.

[Thomas]
Oh.

[Shep]
And then the portal closed and he’s trapped.

[Bob]
There you go.

[Emily]
There you go.

[Shep]
It’s Jumanji rules. He’s stuck there till someone else plays the tape.

[Thomas]
Yeah. and then the tape got donated to Goodwill or something. And who the fuck buys VHS tapes anymore? And then somebody was like, “Oh, I used to love this show when I was a kid.” And so they take the tape. So maybe this person does age.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
So they went in as a young kid or as almost teenager or something, and they just sort of grown up feral in this world.

[Emily]
So this is starring Crispin Glover.

[Shep]
He would be so good at it.

[Emily]
Right?

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
I like Crispin Glover.

[Emily]
I do, too. I actually think he’s really interesting.

[Thomas]
That’s a word.

[Shep]
Yes. agreed.

[Bob]
I wouldn’t want to be his neighbor, but he seems like-

[Shep]
Imagine the stories you could tell, though.

[Bob]
There’d be a lot of them. I know.

[Emily]
Oh, I’m sure he’s such the most boring person when he’s at home. I mean, he dresses all in black and looks vampire like, but, you know, just sits and reads on his black chaise lounge next to his black pool.

[Thomas]
He probably just, like, sits in a chair and, like, stares at the wall.

[Emily]
Yeah, something super boring.

[Thomas]
That’s all he does. Every time you, like, see him in the window, you’re like, “What? He’s still there. What the fuck?”

[Bob]
So Crispin Glover gets trapped in the puppet world.

[Thomas]
So has it been 20 years, 30 years? 40 years? How long has it been?

[Shep]
How old is Crispin Glover now?

[Bob]
He’s probably at least-

[Emily]
60?

[Bob]
Yeah, close to 60, probably.

[Emily]
50? Late 50s, I would assume.

[Bob]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Yeah. 58.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
So has it been 50 years? Nearly?

[Shep]
Oh, yeah. He went in as a young child. He went in as an eight-year-old.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
He’s not going to get any of our references.

[Thomas]
Do we see him go in at the beginning and then get caught? We must. Right? Like-

[Bob]
I think you got to have him go in.

[Emily]
I don’t think we need to see him go in. I think we need to see the protagonist go in.

[Bob]
For the whole feel of it, you have to see him go in and make the theme song about him going in.

[Thomas]
No, I think you’re right, Emily, because if the twist is-

[Emily]
That it’s a human killer.

[Bob]
Okay.

[Thomas]
Right, then we need to keep hidden the fact that he’s there for basically as long as possible.

[Bob]
I see. but we see the person to replace him go in?

[Emily]
Yeah, we see the person who finds the tape and plays it.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Bob]
“Hey, kids. I watched this when I was a kid. do you want to sit down and look at it?” “Sure, we’ll look at it.” And then (whoosh) “Where did my kids go?”

[Thomas]
Oh, god.

[Shep]
Oh, is that why they’re going in? They’re going in after their kids.

[Thomas]
I mean, that raises the stakes.

[Bob]
Whoever finds the tape just starts playing it because they recognize the old show art, and they’re like, “I used to watch this. you want to watch it?” And then they start it, and they walk away, and the kids get sucked into the TV.

[Shep]
So if their kids go in, so they’re going in to retrieve their kids and it turns out there are murders happening, their first thought is going to be, “Oh, those little monsters. They’re killing these puppets.”

[Bob]
“I knew Bobby was no good. he was doing this to his sister’s dolls before this.”

[Shep]
Oh, yeah.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Bob]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
When does the killer realize that the portal is open again?

[Bob]
When he sees other people walking around.

[Emily]
Yeah, when he sees the other humans.

[Thomas]
So wouldn’t he try to get out immediately?

[Emily]
But maybe we have to get to a certain spot to get in and out? Do you need to be like-

[Thomas]
There’s probably a specific TV in the puppet world, right?

[Shep]
Or if the puppet world is an analog of this world, then it’s wherever they started to watch it in this world, that location in the puppet world.

[Emily]
Okay.

[Shep]
So the killer needs them to lead him back to that location.

[Emily]
To where they found it?

[Bob]
Right.

[Thomas]
Right. That’s really good.

[Shep]
Is the killer appearing as a human at that time, or have they covered themselves in felt and so they think this is another puppet?

[Bob]
I think they cover themselves in felt.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Bob]
Yeah, it’s a very patchy job, too, you know?

[Shep]
Especially if you’re just collecting the felt from puppets you’ve murdered.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Bob]
Right. Random puppets.

[Shep]
They’re going to be real small.

[Bob]
That’s right.

[Thomas]
“What’s your name?” “…Patches.”

[Shep]
Yes.

[Thomas]
“It’s a bit on the nose.” “Well…”

[Bob]
Does he befriend these kids to try to get him to take him back? Kind of like-

[Shep]
Oh, he befriends the kids. I was thinking he was meeting the parents.

[Thomas]
No, that’s good.

[Emily]
No, I like that.

[Shep]
That’s better.

[Bob]
Because he’s got to get him to take him back.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Bob]
So he’s gotta, you know-

[Thomas]
Which they have no interest in going back to.

[Bob]
Right. This is great.

[Thomas]
They don’t care what-

[Bob]
There’s all these puppets. I mean, come on.

[Thomas]
Cause they’re little shits. They want to fuck with Patches a bunch.

[Emily]
Right.

[Bob]
That’s right.

[Thomas]
So the kids are in real danger at some point then. As this guy’s, his fuse is getting shorter and shorter. He’s running out of patience.

[Shep]
That puts a nice clock on the parents getting to them in time.

[Thomas]
And now once he realizes the parents are in the world, he has the kids there, he can just threaten to kill the kids. All right, well, I think this is a really solid start to our story, so let’s take a quick break, and when we come back, we’ll figure out what happens in our puppet world for Video Cassette.

[Break]

[Thomas]
All right, we are back. I was thinking during the break, if this person has been living in this world and has been killing puppets when the intro to this movie plays, is it the same as our main character remembers it? Or are there differences? Because maybe one of the main characters is dead…

[Bob]
Oh, yeah, that would be interesting.

[Emily]
I would like there to be slight differences. Like they’re missing his favorite side character.

[Bob]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Like he was a big Gonzo, like, you know, “I love Gonzo.”

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
So if Gonzo was missing from the Muppets, I would be like, “This isn’t okay.”

[Bob]
It’s just the chickens. No Gonzos.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Emily]
“This isn’t the same.”

[Thomas]
They changed it. but then you check the back of the cassette and it’s like 1973, and you’re like, “How could they have changed it?”

[Emily]
Then you have to question, you get that Mandela effect.

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
Yeah, yeah.

[Emily]
“Wait, this thing existed, right?”

[Thomas]
All right.

[Shep]
“You all remember this character Gonzo, right?” Yeah, I like that. So that at the very end when the villain is trying to have their redemption arc and like, “I’m not so bad,” it’s like, “Yeah, you killed Gonzo. So, no.”

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Is that how the parent figures out that Patches is not all he seems to be, is like, Gonzo’s nose is, like, on there.

[Bob]
Yeah, there you go.

[Thomas]
There’s some recognizable part.

[Bob]
The Big Bird feathers on his shoulders or something.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Bob]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
This is the only character that had this particular shade of orange felt, and there’s a big patch of it somewhere, and he’s like, “Wait a minute.”

[Bob]
There you go.

[Thomas]
How does this movie end? Do they just lock the killer back into the tape and destroy the tape? Did they kill the killer?

[Shep]
The killer is crawling out of the TV and the tape ends and stops.

[Thomas]
And just gets cut in half.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Emily]
I mean, to really have a satisfying ending, you’d have to kill the killer.

[Thomas]
But see, now you’re closing the door on a sequel. I mean, he hasn’t done anything illegal. Wrong, perhaps, but not-

[Emily]
Okay, but morality is still morality.

[Thomas]
Right, that’s what I’m saying. It’s wrong, but it’s not illegal. They can’t bring them back into our world and have any recourse.

[Emily]
Yeah there is no recourse in our world for it.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
They can’t leave him there because he’ll just continue his mayhem.

[Thomas]
Yeah, that’s a good point.

[Emily]
So he has to die.

[Shep]
Or he has to go to muppet jail.

[Thomas]
But the bars are just felt. He can just pull them open.

[Emily]
What kind of punishment could the muppets wreak on him?

[Thomas]
Always got to listen to the theme song over and over again forever. Hugs.

[Bob]
He gets destitched.

[Thomas]
Community service.

[Shep]
Oh. So during some segments of the original show, the characters are just like in this void where they can talk about letters or numbers or whatever. So at the end, they trap him in that void. So not only is he trapped in the muppet world, he’s trapped in this void and doesn’t even have the puppets to interact with. It’s just now, nothingness.

[Emily]
So just complete real solitary confinement.

[Shep]
Yes, you thought he was crazy before. He’s going to be super crazy in the sequel.

[Bob]
So is that good enough that he gets to do that for the rest of time rather than being-

[Thomas]
Yeah, I think so, because he’s trapped. So it’s punishment.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Like you said, it’s solitary confinement. He can’t kill anymore. And we can even have that conversation of like, “Well, yeah, it’s wrong, but it’s not against the law. We can’t kill him. that would be wrong and illegal. We can’t bring him back to our world to face justice, because what justice is there? He hasn’t broken any laws.”

[Emily]
One, he’s clearly insane now and unrepairable, so we can’t bring him back into our world.

[Thomas]
Right? And he’s a danger. You don’t want to be around him anyway.

[Emily]
Right.

[Bob]
So then during this whole situation where he gets put in the void, the kids pull his suit off of him, made of the other puppets. And then the last, for the sequel, we see the kids putting the puppets back together as we crane away from them, sewing back together the lost puppets from the show.

[Shep]
Would the puppets come back alive?

[Bob]
Well, that’s the question. That’s a sequel.

[Shep]
I mean, the puppets don’t have like, internal organs or things. So as he’s disassembling them for his suit, at what point do they “die”?

[Thomas]
I mean, how dark do we want to go? They could have eyes and stuff that are looking around, that are on his suit, that look all, like, freaked out.

[Bob]
If you’ve ever been to Build-A-Bear Workshop, they put a little heart in all the bears when the kids get the bear, so you can have the heart that comes out and then that’s the point when they die.

[Emily]
Yeah, we could do something like that.

[Thomas]
But Build-A-Bear already does that. So we should do something different like the spleen or something.

[Bob]
Whatever, yeah. The liver.

[Emily]
Well, the spleen, because that’s where all the humors are.

[Thomas]
Very good. Well done. Love it.

[Shep]
So if you reassemble the puppets without that spleen, they wouldn’t come back alive.

[Bob]
Maybe he made a necklace of all the spleens.

[Emily]
I mean-

[Shep]
You have to get the right spleen in the right body.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
It takes a little time. It’s fine.

[Thomas]
It’s trial and error.

[Emily]
I like the idea of them trying to reassemble them and, you know, restuffing them and then realizing they’re missing, that whatever spark of life was in them is now gone forever and they have to come to terms with that.

[Thomas]
And then that gets retconned in the sequel.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Bob]
Yeah, exactly.

[Shep]
Yep. that’s a good way to do it.

[Thomas]
I think that’s the traditional way of approaching it.

[Shep]
Right. You got to have that sadness for the first one, so it has that emotional impact.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
And then you undercut everything for the sequel, because money.

[Bob]
Yeah. money grab.

[Emily]
Sequel is just a money grab.

[Thomas]
So what are some of those interactions like between the humans and our killer? How do they escape? How do they get the killer into the void?

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
They must have to work with the puppets because the humans don’t have the power to travel in and out of the void. That has to be established so that we know he can’t get out.

[Emily]
So the kids befriend the killer.

[Thomas]
Or I think the killer befriends the kids.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
And so there’s a rapport there-

[Emily]
There’s a rapport there, and the kids are following the killer around and then the dad or mother or whatever comes in and befriends another puppet.

[Thomas]
Because they’re trying to find the kids.

[Emily]
Yeah, cause they’re trying to find the kids. So with the help of the dad’s puppet, that’s how they get access to the void.

[Shep]
So can you take a puppet into the world and have it be alive?

[Thomas]
From the real world, into the movie world?

[Shep]
From the real world.

[Bob]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Ooh.

[Bob]
Maybe they bring somebody with them.

[Thomas]
What if, for example, let’s say Kermit was the person’s favorite character, and so they have a Kermit doll and they bring the Kermit doll with them, and now there are two Kermits? But I like the idea that it’s like what we said before. Gonzo is missing, and Gonzo was their favorite, and so they bring their Gonzo, and that ends up being the replacement Gonzo for the world.

[Emily]
Yeah, that’s exactly what I was thinking, is that they bring in the replacement for their favorite because they have the doll.

[Thomas]
So do they actually leave the world to get him? Because maybe it seems to be, like, a weird thing to grab to go into the world.

[Emily]
No, I think they leave the world to get him. He and the main puppet character, the good puppet.

[Thomas]
That’s like a third act sort of thing, right?

[Emily]
Yeah, they figure out to go back in there. And how would they figure out if they brought him in, it would be real?

[Thomas]
Maybe one of the kids has a character, not from that show, but a plush character that they have brought with them into the world. And so later, the parents find it, and it’s alive, and they’re like, “Wait a minute. this is from the Disney universe, not the Jim Henson universe,” sort of thing.

[Emily]
Oh, yeah.

[Thomas]
Then they realize, like, “Oh, this is my-” it’s got, like, the name written on the tag or something. “Oh, shit. This is my kid’s toy.” and they realize, “Oh, this came from our world. We can go back and grab-” And at first, they’re sort of like, “Oh, that’s crazy. Wow, what a weird, magical world.” And then later, it occurs to them like, “Wait, I have a Gonzo in a box in my closet from when I was a kid,” and they go back and get them. I also like the idea of there being two of the same character who share a consciousness.

[Shep]
Ooh. If they share a consciousness, then each one knows what the other one can see.

[Thomas]
Exactly. I like that idea. What could we do with it?

[Shep]
I mean, the killer could capture one of them.

[Bob]
“What do you see?” “I see all my stuff because he’s in my apartment.”

[Thomas]
Yeah. “Shit, he’s moved everything around.”

[Bob]
“He rearranged-“

[Thomas]
“What a dick.”

[Bob]
Yeah.

[Shep]
“That monster.”

[Thomas]
There’s a Monster at the End of the Movie. Is that what we have? How do they trick him into getting into the void? Or how do they get him into the void? How do the muppet characters get into the void? Just they will it? They snap their fingers?

[Emily]
That’s a good question.

[Shep]
Oh, there’s got to be some trick to it. Otherwise, it would be too simple.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
And you want our characters to be clever. So if someone asks them, one of the muppets, a question that they can answer in the void, they can go into the void. So they need to trick the killer into asking them a question in a way that it can be interpreted as-

[Thomas]
Void answerable.

[Shep]
Void answerable.

[Thomas]
Yeah. if he’s trying to chase the kids… Well, I guess this kind of goes against what you were just saying. If he’s trying to chase the kids and one of the puppets takes him into the void, maybe he has another puppet that he’s holding prisoner, and he knows that they’ve gone into the void, but he knows he can’t get into the void, so he grabs the puppet like, “I want to follow them. Take me after them,” or whatever, and they’ve already skipped out.

[Shep]
But then it’s just his own fault that he ends up in the void.

[Thomas]
Yeah, that’s true.

[Emily]
I like the idea of having them tricking him into asking a question to be answered in the void.

[Shep]
Especially if you establish that at the very beginning when the parents go in and they’re talking to the muppet and they ask a question and suddenly they’re in the void.

[Thomas]
And they’re like, “Where? What the hell is going on?”

[Shep]
Then that establishes that as a mechanic. And then at the end, if we’re clever with the dialogue, it could be clear to the audience what’s about to happen, but not clear to the killer. Although they’ve lived in this world for 50 years, so how would they not know the mechanics?

[Emily]
You think they would have picked something up.

[Shep]
Oh, then they have to know. They have to know and not go into it. So it’s a reversal where you think, “Oh, this is where we’re going to trick them into the void.” But they’ve been living there for 50 years. They know all the tricks. So then what happens? We’ve still got to get them in the void somehow, but it can’t be the obvious way.

[Emily]
How do you trick someone into going into a void?

[Shep]
The question for the ages.

[Thomas]
If we knew the answer to that, we’d be millionaires.

[Shep]
Yeah, you got to trick them with some reference to something that they don’t get because they’ve been out of the world for 50 years.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
“It smells like up dog in here.”

[Thomas]
Does he have to specifically ask the muppet the question, or is it just the muppet answerable? So if the humans are talking, it wouldn’t occur to him that like, “Oh, this is a void question,” because he’s talking to people, not puppets.

[Shep]
Although he hasn’t spoken with people for 50 years.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
What are some of the void questions?

[Shep]
Oh, what if the muppets or the puppets I got to stop saying muppets. The puppets are always taking people into the void to answer questions, so this person has learned not to ask questions because they’re always being taken into the void for whatever explanation and that it’s uncomfortable. It’s got to be uncomfortable in there.

[Emily]
Yeah, for a human.

[Shep]
For a human, it’s not a pleasant place to be.

[Thomas]
It’s like an anechoic chamber. It’s just, like, really creepy and weird and everything feels strange and-

[Shep]
Gravity is weird, the air doesn’t feel right.

[Thomas]
Yeah. it’s very stagnant.

[Shep]
So.

[Thomas]
Smells like burnt steak.

[Shep]
When they discover the kids, suddenly they don’t have this restriction anymore, this restriction they’ve had for 50 years, and they can finally relax and speak without guarding everything that they say. They really want to get out of this world.

[Thomas]
Yeah. and I think a good introduction to that is the kids asking a question. He’s like, “No, no, no. Oh, nothing happened.” Like, he realizes, like, “Oh, if we’re talking to each other and there aren’t puppets around.”

[Shep]
And he can just ask a bunch of questions because it’s fun to ask questions.

[Thomas]
Well, and he’s got 50 years he wants to catch up on.

[Shep]
Yes.

[Thomas]
“How did you get here? Where did you come from? Where is the TV you came through? Take me to it.”

[Bob]
“Who won the world series in 2022?”

[Thomas]
Yeah. So how do they use that to their advantage? Sneak a puppet into the room who can void him?

[Shep]
It’s got to be a puppet that we’ve known has been there. Like a plush backpack or something.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Bob]
I was thinking, like, if you go with Gonzo, it has to be a chicken, right? Because Gonzo has always got his chickens, and they’re always kind of everywhere in the background.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Right. but for copyright reasons, we can’t be using Gonzo specifically.

[Emily]
This is true.

[Bob]
A Gonzo-like person.

[Emily]
But instead of chickens, it’s ducks.

[Thomas]
So there’s, like, a duck.

[Bob]
Yeah, there you go.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Bob]
Duck.

[Thomas]
And then instead of a rat, it’s a mouse.

[Emily]
I don’t know. They’ve abandoned Rizzo, so-

[Thomas]
What?

[Emily]
I don’t know what’s going yeah, now he’s always with the freaking shrimp-

[Thomas]
King prawn?

[Emily]
King prawn. I’m sorry.

[Bob]
Yeah.

[Shep]
I like Pepe.

[Emily]
I do enjoy Pepe, but I miss Rizzo.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
“I like Pepe. Okay.”

[Emily]
Rizzo and Gonzo had a good rapport.

[Thomas]
So is he basically just letting down his- he has begun to let his guard down because there are other humans around, and so he slips up later?

[Bob]
Well, what if he’s trying to get the kids in the void? Stuck in the void? So he has to show them the void. “Oh, this is cool. Check this out.” and then-

[Shep]
If he can open the void, then he can’t be stuck in the void.

[Bob]
He’s demonstrating how you get into the void with the puppets for the kids, because once he finds his exit, he doesn’t want to have any problems, and he doesn’t want them to get out.

[Emily]
Well, you bring up an interesting point, Shep, with him getting out of the void. If the void opens whenever anybody asks the muppet a question, wouldn’t when they restart the tape, the next time the question comes up on the tape to open the void, wouldn’t he get out?

[Shep]
Save that for the sequel.

[Emily]
Okay, well, do they just destroy the tape at the end?

[Shep]
No, because that would kill him. they’re not trying to kill him.

[Emily]
Well, yeah.

[Thomas]
Would that kill him, or would that just close the portal?

[Emily]
Closes the portal.

[Shep]
That’s a question for philosophers.

[Thomas]
But it also doesn’t like- I mean, it’s I guess it’s a good point. Are there different voids?

[Shep]
I think that all the muppets, whenever they’re answering a question, they’re in their own unique void for that.

[Emily]
Okay, so if the double muppet opens the void, can he sacrifice himself?

[Thomas]
Oh.

[Emily]
Does he open the connected muppet’s void, or does he open his own individual void?

[Thomas]
Interesting.

[Emily]
And then they take him back to the world with him, and he’s just a stuffy again, and so that void cannot be opened, or reopened.

[Thomas]
Or he just stays in his void.

[Emily]
Or he stays in the void.

[Thomas]
He’s opened the void. They’re in there together. “That’s it. I’m never closing my void. I’m just going to-“

[Shep]
And he’s not really stuck there because half his consciousness is still out in the other-

[Emily]
Right, he can still see the rest of the puppet world.

[Thomas]
That’s a good idea. I like that. Is there a way that we can incorporate the killer’s lack of knowledge about the double into that. He thinks no muppet would ever sacrifice himself. No muppet would stay stuck in the void. Or can puppets control who comes and goes with them? “To answer your question, I will bring you into the void, and then once we’re done, I will take you back out again.” And so they can just decide “Bye! Leaving you here!”?

[Emily]
Well, I assume that’s how we were going to work it before.

[Thomas]
Each void doesn’t belong to the puppet. It belongs to the specific question being asked. So if they get him to ask a question that no one but him would ask, then he’ll be stuck in his own void fragment forever.

[Shep]
That’s why whenever you’re in the void, you never see other people answering questions and stuff.

[Thomas]
Right. Yeah.

[Emily]
That makes sense.

[Thomas]
So do we need to figure out what the question is that they get him to ask, or is this a problem for the writers because-

[Shep]
That’s a problem for the writers.

[Thomas]
It’s late in our episode and we know how it happens.

[Shep]
Right. I think we have the bones of the story.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Yeah, I agree. I think that we’ve got it. Is there anything that’s glaringly, obviously missing or wrong or that we haven’t resolved?

[Shep]
We probably need to talk about the video cassette more, since that’s the name of this episode.

[Thomas]
Well, but I mean, it’s the entire reason that all of this happens. It’s how they get in there.

[Shep]
Yeah. it’s kind of Jumanji, though, where it’s just a thing that led to another world.

[Emily]
I see nothing wrong with this.

[Thomas]
Yeah, I think it’s fine. I don’t know.

[Emily]
We’ve done other episodes where this is-

[Shep]
All right. We’ve established precedent.

[Emily]
Yes.

[Shep]
And I guess it does matter because the reason that the killer got trapped in the world in the first place was because it was a video cassette and therefore came to an end.

[Thomas]
Right. That specific one, in fact.

[Shep]
Yes. all right, I withdraw my objection.

[Thomas]
Okay.

[Emily]
And then at the end, they have to lock the cassette up or figure out what to do with it. So nobody else falls into this, or accidentally lets the muppet killer loose.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
I mean, think of the business opportunities, though. You have a world full of living puppets.

[Thomas]
Well, it’s our Space Jam sequel again, right? You have tourism to the puppet world.

[Shep]
Yes.

[Emily]
Okay, Captain Capitalism.

[Shep]
I’m just saying.

[Thomas]
So we had talked a little bit about not revealing the killer’s entrance into the world early. How do we explain that to the audience later and sort of when? Do we ever show that to the audience as, like, the killer explaining it and there’s a flashback? Does the killer explain a false version of it early to the kids, and then we find out the truth later? Do we never actually find out there’s just this person who we know they’ve been stuck there for 50 years? Or does any of that matter?

[Shep]
I mean, a quick flashback as the killer is explaining how they got to this world, perhaps to the kids, not in the sense that they were stuck or not that it’s a bad thing. They went into this world and then they realized that they couldn’t get back out. “And then I didn’t want to get back out. It’s better here.” Whatever.

[Bob]
But we had the killer wearing the other puppet. So does he reveal himself as human to the kids right away, or they still think he’s a puppet?

[Thomas]
That’s a good point.

[Shep]
That’s a good point. So you’re right. No, he wouldn’t explain in a flashback at that point. So there’s got to be a tell earlier on when he’s a puppet that he’s not a puppet. They ask a question, and he doesn’t take them to the void because he can’t.

[Thomas]
He has to go to the bathroom.

[Emily]
He cusses.

[Thomas]
No, I like the idea that he doesn’t take them to the void.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Bob]
Oh, when they ask him a question, he doesn’t.

[Thomas]
Because it’s sort of subtle. So then how do they, our main characters in their family, how do they find out, or how does the audience find out the killer’s history? Does the killer explain it once it’s revealed that they’re human?

[Emily]
Well, yeah, he does the James Bond thing.

[Thomas]
The James Bond thing?

[Emily]
Yeah, the James Bond villain thing.

[Bob]
Over verbose villain. “Now that I’ve got you, I’ll tell you all about what happened to me.”

[Thomas]
“No. Mr. Bond, I expect you to count. Ah! Ah! Ah!” All right, well, I think we’ve got it, right?

[Emily]
Yeah, I think we do.

[Shep]
And if we don’t, then write us, leave us a message.

[Thomas]
Yeah. we’d certainly love to hear your thoughts on today’s show. If this movie were released on video, would you buy it to add to your home library, or would it just be a rental? 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 Before we go, Bob, what are you up to that you want people to know about?

[Bob]
Well, I’m certainly not going to watch any puppet videos, I can tell you that. I’m worried about getting sucked into these things and- Just doing shows and talking to people. That’s pretty much it. You can find out everything you want to know at StaticRadio.com

[Thomas]
All right, well, thank you for listening to the show. And a big thank you to Bob LeMent for joining us today. You can find Emily, Shep, and I again right here on the next episode of Almost Plausible.

[Outro music]

[Shep]
Those evergreen trees.

[Thomas]
They’re always ready.

[Shep]
They’re always ready.

[Emily]
Make sure they conifer their consent.

[Bob]
Oh, my god.

[Emily]
You’re just mad I came up with it first, Thomas.

[Thomas]
Just leaf, right now. Just leaf.

[Bob]
Oh, my gosh. The puns.

[Shep]
Yeah, they’re so accorny.

[Thomas]
If this show has a problem, truly the puns are the root of it.

[Bob]
I wish I could think of a pun now. Gosh.

[Thomas]
You just have to branch out.

[Shep]
You got to stop him. You gotta stop Thomas.

[Emily]
I was only good for one, and it took a long time to come up with that one.

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