Watch

Guest Links

• Website
• Jayson on IMDb
• Facebook
• YouTube

References

• Almost Plausible: Pockets
• Almost Plausible: Calendar
• White Like Me
• Almost Plausible: Newspaper
• Paycheck
• Aladdin
• Nerve
• The Purge
• Black Mirror
• Ojing-eo geim
• Clockstoppers
• Logan’s Run
• Elysium
• The Hunger Games
• St. Matthew Island
  • What wiped out St. Matthew Island’s reindeer?
• Behavioral Sink
• Jeff Bezos
• Elon Musk
• Snowpiercer
  • Why SNOWPIERCER is a sequel to WILLY WONKA AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY
• Skynet (Terminator)
• I, Robot
• Dragonslayer
• Network
• Inspector Gadget
• G.I. Joe

Transcript

[Intro music begins]

[Shep]
Displays go up all over the place, showing people trying to do the tasks. Like, it’s entertainment for the wealthy.

[Jayson]
Oh, that’s a great idea.

[Shep]
It’s Hunger Games.

[Jayson]
Yeah, that’s a great idea. It’s a sinister idea, but it’s a great idea.

[Shep]
It’s very sinister. The whole pitch is sinister.

[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 today I’m joined by Emily-

[Emily]
Hey guys.

[Thomas]
F. Paul Shepherd-

[Shep]
Happy to be here.

[Thomas]
And guest Jayson Johnson.

[Jayson]
‘Sup, ‘sup!

[Thomas]
Jayson is an independent screenwriter and film director. He has made eight films that have been selected to over 80 film festivals and has won six times.

[Shep]
OOH.

[Thomas]
At one point, Jayson worked with legendary filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola in his Crazy Ideas department. He’s currently working to get a distributor and funding for his first feature project, but he’s taken some time to join us today. Jayson, welcome to the show. Tell us a bit more about your history with movies and writing.

[Jayson]
Thanks for having me. I’ve been an independent filmmaker for about twelve years now and I started not knowing anything, but have had an opportunity to make eight films now and just doing the DIY thing and happy to be on the show.

[Thomas]
That’s great. I mean, having gone to school for film, it’s one of those things that anytime I see somebody who’s out there successfully doing it, I think that’s fantastic. I know it’s not an easy industry to be working in, especially, well, I mean, I guess studio or independent, either way, it’s tough. So-

[Jayson]
Yeah would say it’s very tough, but we’re trying to do it and it’s just, film is plan A. I don’t really have a plan B, so we’ll see how it goes.

[Emily]
Maybe this could be your plan B. You can just join us.

[Jayson]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
There you go.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Well, Jayson, since you’re the guest on our show today, you get to pick the topic we are covering. What ordinary object have you chosen?

[Jayson]
I have chosen Watch.

[Thomas]
A watch. That is a very ordinary, everyday sort of object. Well, we begin every episode of Almost Plausible with a pitch session. Each of us has come up with some pitches for a movie about a watch. So we’ll take turns sharing those ideas, and then together we’ll choose one and develop it into a story. Emily, how about you pitch first?

[Emily]
All right, so my story is: Natalie is a happy and healthy young woman. Her life is good and everything runs on a great schedule. Her sister would say she’s a little too scheduled now. Natalie wasn’t always so disciplined. Her life used to be a mess. She couldn’t hold down a job or a relationship. When she did remember engagements, she was always very late. But all that changed when she found a funky little smartwatch at a trade show her sister dragged her to a year ago. Now she is always on time, is able to organize her day in perfect two-hour chunks. The watch gives her reminders and she doesn’t even have to program them in or link it to her calendar. It just knows what she should be doing and when. She becomes obsessed with it. And one day the watch begins asking her to do kind of terrible things like steal some gum or knock over the bike messenger. The day it asks her to kill her sister, Natalie struggles with what to do. She loves her sister, but the watch has never been wrong.

[Thomas]
So she’s been doing these terrible things all along.

[Emily]
Yes. So I imagine like when it tells her to steal the gum, she ends up meeting like a really cute guy or something in the elevator.

[Thomas]
Hmm.

[Emily]
And so now she has fresh breath. So getting that gum at that point was a good thing. And then knocking over the bike messenger somehow saved her or somebody else an accident. So it wasn’t a bad thing to do. So even as it’s having her do these seemingly terrible things, the result is usually good. And then one day it’s like, “Hey, kill your sister.” Not exactly like that, but-

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
I feel like we’ve had this pitch or similar in the past.

[Thomas]
Pockets.

[Shep]
Pockets. Um,

[Emily]
Oh, damn it’s. Pockets, isn’t it?

[Shep]
It’s not just Pockets. There was another one that we didn’t use.

[Thomas]
Yeah, I recall that, actually.

[Shep]
Yeah, where it’s like you get messages or maybe it was Calendar. One of the pitches for Calendar, perhaps.

[Thomas]
Could be. Could be.

[Emily]
So apparently all of my pitches involve the thing that tells you to do things, telling you to do bad things.

[Shep]
Right. I’m guessing Emily might have an intrusive voice, tells her to do things.

[Emily]
It’s only intrusive when you don’t want it to be there.

[Shep]
Otherwise, if it’s not intrusive, it’s a comforting friend.

[Emily]
That’s right.

[Shep]
That tells you to push over bike messengers and steal gum when it could just tell you to purchase gum so you have gum and fresh breath. You don’t need the steel to acquire chewing gum. You can exchange money for goods and services.

[Emily]
But she was in a hurry.

[Shep]
Oh, she was in a hurry. Oh, well, then never mind.

[Emily]
She was a white woman in a hurry. It’s fine.

[Shep]
OOH, I want to talk to her manager.

[Thomas]
Reminds me of that, the Eddie Murphy SNL sketch where he puts on whiteface and he goes into the shop and the guy’s like, “Just take it.”

[Shep]
“Just-” yeah.

[Thomas]
“No one’s here. It’s fine.” So funny. Well, I have two pitches. First one is: the main character finds a watch that allows them to relive moments from their past. At first, they use it to relive their most cherished memories. Eventually, they stumble across a moment they had forgotten. They uncover more forgotten moments and quickly find themselves entangled in a web of lies and deceit, with them at the center. They must use the watch to play detective and discover the truth.

[Emily]
Okay, so this one is Newspapers.

[Shep]
Newspaper.

[Thomas]
Yeah, it kind of is Newspaper. It’s similar to that. Yeah.

[Shep]
I was thinking it was like the movie Paycheck, where he does the job and then has his memory erased.

[Emily]
MMM.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
But that’s also like Emily’s, I have Paycheck on the mind because he’s got that bag of items where it’s like you pull one out and you use it right away.

[Thomas]
All right. My other pitch: a street urchin pickpockets a wealthy vizier nabbing an intricately engraved golden pocket watch. On his way to pawn the watch, he’s fiddling with it and accidentally discovers the watch’s secret: it can control the flow of time. The urchin pauses time and starts stealing from nearly every stall he passes. He imagines the luxurious life he’ll be able to live thanks to this pocket watch. What he doesn’t anticipate are the lengths the vizier is willing to go to to get the pocket watch back.

[Shep]
Is his name Aladdin?

[Emily]
Yeah just gonna make that joke.

[Thomas]
It’s Aladdin. And-

[Emily]
I mean, that is the proper way to pronounce it.

[Thomas]
So those are my pitches.

[Shep]
Yeah. The street urchin one is very Aladdin.

[Emily]
Well, especially since that’s the only way I know the word vizier.

[Shep]
So in the original, he has multiple genies. He’s got the genie of the lamp and the genie of the ring, and there’s a couple, but that’s kind of what it reminds me of. It makes me think, are there other magical items in this universe?

[Thomas]
All right, Jayson, do you have any ideas for a Watch-based movie?

[Jayson]
I do. I have an idea of an idea, so I will try and go for it.

[Thomas]
Okay.

[Jayson]
So the year is 2072 and all of the world’s governments have formed together to form a super government that is a totalitarian government that looks to trim the world’s population by 10%. Each day, everyone is tasked with something to do that is sent to their smartwatch, and if they are not able to successfully do it, then 10% of the world’s population will be injected with the poison and they will die.

[Thomas]
My God.

[Jayson]
I don’t know why, that sounds terrible.

[Emily]
I like it.

[Shep]
So if everyone doesn’t do it, or if the people that don’t do it, they get injected?

[Jayson]
Each day, 10% of the people that are unsuccessful will be knocked off.

[Shep]
Each day, 10%? That’s a very rapid drop off in population.

[Thomas]
What was that movie where it was like social media challenges? It was like The Purge meets, like, Instagram.

[Emily]
What?

[Shep]
Was it a movie, or was that an episode of Black Mirror?

[Thomas]
No, it was a movie. Oh, God. What was it called? But the idea was, like, you would sign up for this challenge, and then people would livestream you doing the challenge. But they were always crazy things, and I think it was sort of a horror/thriller kind of movie. I don’t know. It looked like something I wouldn’t enjoy, so I didn’t bother watching it.

[Shep]
So it’s not a movie that you watched.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
Right. It’s just a trailer you saw one time.

[Thomas]
Yeah, it’s a movie I know exists.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Okay.

[Emily]
Wait, trailers don’t count as watching the movie?

[Shep]
Well-

[Thomas]
Sometimes.

[Shep]
These days-

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Okay, so it’s not 10% of the total population, but it’s 10% of the people who failed to do the task.

[Jayson]
Correct.

[Shep]
Okay. That’s realistic.

[Jayson]
I never said it was going to be realistic.

[Thomas]
Think about, like, being somebody who has some task, and you’re like, “You know what? 10%? I like those odds. I’m not going to bother with this task.”

[Shep]
Yes. If the task is so dangerous, like, half the people that try it die-

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
Your odds are better not to try.

[Thomas]
So is it 10% of the people given the task? Or is it 10% of the people who survived the task, or who-

[Jayson]
It would be 90% of the people that do better than the 10%, those will be the survivors. And I guess the ones that fall on the bottom 10 percentile would be the ones that would be exed off.

[Thomas]
So it’s a little bit like Squid Game, then.

[Jayson]
I guess so.

[Thomas]
You want to be high performing.

[Jayson]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
All right. I like that.

[Shep]
Every day? Do we take Sundays off?

[Jayson]
Let’s say every day for a certain amount of time.

[Thomas]
How about every day that there’s a challenge?

[Jayson]
There we go.

[Thomas]
Oh, and maybe the challenges come randomly. Like, it might be two days in a row. It might be a month between challenges. You never know. So your life is like crazy topsy turvy.

[Emily]
Ooh. It could start out where it’s been, like, three months since there was a challenge, like, that’s where the story could start.

[Thomas]
Oh, man.

[Emily]
And so they’re all like, either half have gotten lazy or like, it’s not co-, we’re done, it’s not happening again.

[Thomas]
MMM.

[Emily]
And the other half are just, like, on edge.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
It’s based on the population. When the population goes over a certain line, it’s like, oh, we need to trim it down, get under that line.

[Jayson]
Oh, my God. Yeah, I like that.

[Emily]
Perfect.

[Jayson]
Yeah, that’s great.

[Shep]
So, like, we could stop the challenges if we just stop fucking. But that’s a deal breaker.

[Thomas]
Well, I guess we’re doing challenges.

[Emily]
No, you can have sex without procreating. It’s possible.

[Thomas]
No, not in this world. 100%-

[Jayson]
100% conception rate. Yeah.

[Thomas]
Yeah. Oh, man. Pregnant women would become ridiculously valuable as sex partners because you can’t get, like, double pregnant.

[Jayson]
I didn’t think about that. Yeah.

[Thomas]
There’s a whole economy there that we can create for them. All right. Did you have any other thoughts? Any other ideas?

[Jayson]
No, that was what I thought of.

[Emily]
It’s a really good idea.

[Thomas]
All right, Shep, let’s hear from you.

[Shep]
All right, so you already had the watch that can stop time, which was the first thing that I thought of, but that’s been done.

[Thomas]
Right. It’s pretty obvious.

[Shep]
Yeah. Clockstoppers. And so the other thought I had was a watch that travels through time. But then I settled on, okay: a detective uses a mystical watch to let him go back to see crime scenes or nearby crime scenes to solve mysteries. But the limitations are he can only go back 24 hours because that’s the time on a watch (actually, 12 hours is on a watch, but ignore that), and he can only see from the perspective of another timepiece. So he’s not physically back in the past. He’s observing. He’s watching. Watch.

[Emily]
Ha.

[Jayson]
I love the, nice pun there. Yeah.

[Thomas]
Follow up questions. Can he switch timepiece perspectives? So if there are watches and clocks and things like that in the area, can he jump between those, or is he just in one of them and that’s the one he sees it from?

[Shep]
No, he’s got to be able to switch because then he’s taken an active role to try to get the best perspective on the-

[Thomas]
Right.

[Jayson]
Is he limited to time zones?

[Shep]
If he flies to- I think he has to physically be there to start it, to touch a timepiece and go back.

[Emily]
Okay.

[Thomas]
That makes sense. That makes sense.

[Jayson]
Okay. All right. Yeah.

[Shep]
So it’s 24 hours from his current location.

[Jayson]
Okay.

[Thomas]
Can the clocks be digital and analog both? He can switch between?

[Shep]
Well, see, that’s what I was wondering about. Like, when is this set? Because if it’s set in the future, there’s going to be a lot fewer analog clocks.

[Thomas]
So he jumps back and he sees that. Can he do that multiple times or is he limited to one jump back?

[Shep]
I think he must be able to do it multiple times. Like, it’s a detective solving a mystery. And, like, every clock is a camera that has observed the scene.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
So he can go back and replay the footage from the past 24 hours from any of those virtual clock cameras.

[Thomas]
So to fix the 24 hours thing, you could have a watch that has 24 digits on its face and just a single hand that moves around and people could comment, “What a strange watch.” “Oh, it’s a 24 hours watch.”

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
All right. Is there one of these that is jumping out at us more than the others?

[Jayson]
I like the detective one.

[Shep]
I like the totalitarian government one. I guess I’m in that sort of dystopian mindset.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Jayson]
I was watching a climate change documentary right before.

[Emily]
That explains it.

[Jayson]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Jayson]
And they were like, oh, we’re all going to die. So, yeah, that was kind of the genesis of the idea.

[Shep]
Right. We’re all going to die unless we take drastic measures, like murdering 10% of the population every day. Just got to keep them under that line. That’s one way to cut down on climate change, cut down on the number of people, although really, it’s the top one-percenters that are using up all the resources. How political do you want it to be?

[Emily]
So we only need to kill 1% of the population, and then to not put them to waste, we should eat them. So you’re saying eat the rich.

[Shep]
So eat the rich. Yeah.

[Jayson]
But if you eat the top 1%, wouldn’t there be like, a new 1%?

[Shep]
So just do that every day.

[Jayson]
Okay.

[Emily]
Yeah. That’s the problem with eat the rich, is that there’s just more people to take that space in line.

[Thomas]
It’s like a Logan’s Run thing. You get to be rich for a little while. And then…

[Emily]
I wouldn’t say no if I was given the opportunity.

[Shep]
That’s why rich people are always trying to go to space. They’re trying to get away. They know it’s coming. “Try to come and eat me on Mars, bitches.”

[Jayson]
Like Elysium. Yeah.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Yes.

[Thomas]
Yeah. So is that the one we want to go with?

[Emily]
I like both the detective and the totalitarian government one.

[Thomas]
So in the totalitarian government one, we said that this event happens whenever the population gets too large. Is that a thing the citizens know, or is that sort of a thing that gets revealed later in the film? Is this just like a mysterious thing that happens that everybody just puts up with because it’s been happening this way for a hundred years or, you know, whatever?

[Emily]
It depends on how you want to create the tension. If it’s random and they don’t know why it’s happening, there’s obviously a good amount of tension with that. But then you have that extra layer, I think, if they know that when the population goes over, so they are extra careful about contraceptives and hushing up pregnancies, hiding them and hiding kids and stuff like that.

[Thomas]
Hmm.

[Shep]
Yeah, I think they should know.

[Jayson]
I agree.

[Shep]
Because then that steers society.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
The whole point of not Hunger Games what are we calling this? The Purge? The limiter? The whole point of the limiter is to keep the population down.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
So it’s better if the population knows.

[Thomas]
Yeah. This sort of thing always reminds me of St. Matthew’s island, where there was a reindeer population.

[Shep]
Yes.

[Thomas]
So there were basically some reindeer that were put on the island for, I think, like, the Coast Guard had a base there, and so they were there to be like meat, I think. And then eventually the Coast Guard was like, “Okay, we’re done. We don’t need to be on this island anymore.” And they just let the reindeer go wild on the island, and there were no predators and there was lots of food. And so the reindeer population exploded, and it just kept growing and growing and growing, but then there wasn’t enough food because there were too many reindeer, and eventually they all completely died out. And so it was one of those things where because the population got too big and wasn’t controlled, that was the collapse of those reindeer. So it’s the same sort of thing here. So maybe it’s like the St. Matthew Project or whatever, right, where they’re trying to ensure that the human population never goes above a certain amount that scientists have determined, “Oh, we can’t feed more than 10 billion people,” or whatever the number is. So once we get up to that number or close to that number, we have to cull the population and that’ll buy us some time.

[Shep]
Well, this has also been done before. There was like an experiment with mice or rats or something like that and a scientist just like made up a heaven for rats and let them go crazy and then the population collapses after a certain point because it always does. And so really, it’s not what is the maximum population that the Earth can support, but really, what’s the ideal population? It’s going to be a lot lower than 10 billion.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
Like, maybe we can support 10 billion, but that’s also a lot of resources and a lot of damage to the environment that we’re causing.

[Thomas]
Sure.

[Shep]
So! The limit, the population limit goes down over time, so whether or not everyone’s having kids, there’s still going to be another limitation event as the limit comes down to where the population is. Not all at once, but a little bit at a time over time.

[Jayson]
Oh, they just keep ratcheting it down.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Jayson]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Okay.

[Jayson]
That’s interesting.

[Thomas]
So where does this story start and who are we focusing on? Is it like The Hunger Games where there’s like one character who we’re kind of following?

[Jayson]
I haven’t gotten that far yet, but.

[Thomas]
Well, now’s the time to figure it out.

[Emily]
No, that’s what we’re here for.

[Jayson]
Yeah. I think it makes sense to focus on a certain tribe of people, and within that tribe, then you have one central person that finds out that this just doesn’t pass the smell test and then they start the whole investigation and wanting to know more.

[Thomas]
Sure.

[Jayson]
And that becomes kind of an infectious thing that other people kind of sign on to as well.

[Shep]
So I was thinking that we were following one couple, so there was just a limiting event, and they both survive and they think, okay, it’s safe to have a kid now because it’s not a good idea to have kids when you’re approaching the line again, because then you get harassed by people because everyone knows once you go over the line, but they just had a limiting event, so it’s safe. So she gets pregnant, but then they announce, oh, we’re lowering the limit, so there’s going to be another limiting event. And they’re like, It’s too soon, like, we’re not ready for this. So they have to hide her pregnancy because of the upcoming limiting event and then survive the next limiting event. And of course, depending on how political you want to get, the rich people never get assigned tasks, so obviously-

[Thomas]
Right. Or their task is like, “Have a nice day.”

[Jayson]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
“Yell at the staff.”

[Shep]
“Oppress the poor.”

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
Mission accomplished. And it’s not even four in the morning.

[Jayson]
I like that. I think it should only apply to people that earn a certain wage or less.

[Shep]
Obviously that’s the least effective way to do it if the point is to lessen the impact on the planet. But politics!

[Emily]
But politics would say that the poor and downtrodden are the ones making the population, so that’s where it needs to be eradicated.

[Shep]
Yes. It’s such bullshit.

[Thomas]
So now are they announcing, is the government announcing that they’re lowering the limit? Or do they just say it’s time for another event and they’re not saying what the limit is, the actual number?

[Shep]
No, they have to say what the limit is because the goal is to get people to keep under the limit voluntarily.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Jayson]
Yeah.

[Emily]
And you get this faction of people who totally believe and are full on into this and think it’s the absolute right way to go and willing to sacrifice themselves or their families because it’s for the good of everyone.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Jayson]
Yes.

[Emily]
For the good of the world. So I think having them announce it makes it easier to build that population into the story. And then it’s always some reason, like, “Oh, we recalculated our CO2 gases and we’re still emitting this much,” or “We’ve noticed that the wheat resources have gone this low,” that kind of thing, and that’s how they justify lowering the limit.

[Shep]
Right. But it’s all Big Brother stuff where it’s just like it’s made up.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Can you even trust it? They say they say they announce these things, but we the people have no way to verify, or is that too depressing? Where’s the line?

[Emily]
Well, I mean, it’s dystopic, so it’s not too depressing ever.

[Thomas]
I think it depends on the end. Like, do they overthrow the government? Do they-

[Jayson]
I would say, my vote says yes. They overthrow the government and then they find out that it was all a sham, in the, the whole time. And then they take back the resources, they take back their civility and just everything that is good. So you take a bad situation and you make a really good one.

[Thomas]
Is it one of those things where there was like an AI running on a computer and there’s not actually anybody in charge of the program?

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
It’s just a computer that keeps being like “My goal was to reduce the population” and so now there’s like 2 billion people left on the planet instead of we’re at over 8 now, I believe. So it’s just kept going down and down. But nobody knows how many people are actually on the planet and they just have to accept this.

[Emily]
So you want to take it out of the hands of evil people and put it into the hands of evil computers. You don’t want it to be a bet between Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk on who can get more people-

[Shep]
For $1.

[Emily]
Yeah, right.

[Thomas]
Well, maybe it’s more Snowpiercer then, where you’ve got the ultra-wealthy who kind of don’t have to play by the rules and there’s some dictator type of person at the top who’s just completely unhinged. And it’s been a while since I’ve seen Snowpiercer. I may be misremembering.

[Shep]
All I know about Snowpiercer is the Willy Wonka theory video I saw on YouTube.

[Emily]
I have heard the name. That is where my knowledge of Snowpiercer is.

[Shep]
I mean, I’ve seen clips of it and stuff.

[Thomas]
Sure. So if they overthrow the government, what happens? Are they abolishing this program? Is that the sort of final triumph?

[Shep]
Is it a triumph or is it the deer again?

[Thomas]
That’s actually a good question.

[Jayson]
Maybe they try to blow it up like Skynet, but it’s already online and it just kind of regenerates after a certain amount of time.

[Thomas]
Is it too dark and depressing for them to get up there and realize, “Shit, this program is actually effective and it’s doing its job properly and yeah, it’s oppressive, but it needs to be. Like it feels bad. And I wouldn’t call it good, but it’s necessary.”

[Shep]
That’s the argument the computer is making when they’re breaking into the AI building.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Jayson]
Yeah. It’s like, I, Robot. “My logic is impeccable.”

[Shep]
Yeah. “My logic is flawless.” “Yes, but it’s also heartless.”

[Emily]
I don’t know. I think audience wise, like general audience wise, you don’t want to end it with the people getting up there and then realizing, “Oh, the computer program is correct. Okay. Back to life as normal.”

[Thomas]
Sure.

[Emily]
That’s not humanity. The general population does not want to- they want to feel heroic. They want to feel like humanity can survive anything and is meant to survive anything and that any sort of oppressor needs to be dealt with.

[Shep]
Even if it’s for our own good.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
Because how many times throughout history have we been told, “This is for our own good. We know what we’re doing, just do as you’re told.”

[Thomas]
Sure. So do we want then to have it not be a computer that’s running everything, but a person or a group of people that we can point to and say like, “No, you are just as flawed, you are wrong.”

[Shep]
I think the goal or the resolution is not to destroy the limiter, because realistically, we do need a limiter because we’re going to fuck ourselves to death. The goal is to make the top one percenters take part. So everybody’s got the watches on, everybody gets the task, everybody gets a random task, everybody gets a realistic task. No more of this getting a free pass because you’re wealthy.

[Jayson]
Okay.

[Shep]
It’s the princess in Dragonslayer to go off on a real far tangent. She was never put in the lottery of the people drawn to go be sacrificed to the dragon.

[Thomas]
Right. So what’s the inciting incident?

[Shep]
The inciting incident is they’re lowering the limitation just after the one girl got pregnant. Like, this is messing up everything. Why didn’t they tell us ahead of time that the limitation was going to be lowered again so soon after an event?

[Thomas]
Why is this couple the heroes of the story? What skills or qualities or access or what is it about them?

[Shep]
I think they just represent everyman.

[Jayson]
Yeah, I was going to say they’re just relatable.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Yeah. They don’t have any special skills or quality. They’re just a happy couple who felt like they survived their task, and now they can take a breath and do a normal human thing, which is bear and raise a child,

[Thomas]
Right. So they’re mad as hell and they’re not going to take it anymore.

[Shep]
Right.

[Emily]
Because it’s unfair. It’s unfair to live in that fear and that natural biological drive is fierce and hard, and it’s unfair to have to fight it.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Okay. Once the announcement comes out, you’re going to have groups of people that want to lower the population before the limiting event. Right?

[Emily]
Yes.

[Shep]
So they can go two ways. You can have the Church of Extinction, where they drink poison and kill themselves.

[Jayson]
Oh, my God. Wow.

[Shep]
Right. They really believe in lowering the population and they’re going to do what they can, which is kill themselves.

[Thomas]
Well, and it’s a selfless act because they’re doing it so that everyone else can live.

[Shep]
Yes.

[Thomas]
And so as a result, they feel that they’ll be rewarded in the afterlife for helping so much of humanity. Yeah, that makes sense.

[Shep]
And you’re going to have the other group that kills people.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
They’re just going to kill people randomly because that’s another way to lower the population. So they’ll try to start wars, they’ll do terrorist attacks, that kind of thing. I think this second group is the group our couple ends up with. Not because they want to be terrorists, but they’re desperate. They’re desperate. They want to stop the limiting event from happening because she’s pregnant.

[Thomas]
MMM.

[Shep]
And right now, no one knows. And so they’re going to do what they can. I think this is what leads them to attacking the wealthy. It’s like, “This is our opportunity. This is the way to-“

[Emily]
So before the couple joins the terrorist group, are they just hitting high populous events areas, buildings, high, densely populated areas, like, at random? Or do those people have a plan and they are going after the top 1%? Or does the couple kind of, like, sway them or try to evolve the process into going for more of that?

[Shep]
You can even have them talk about it’s worth more to kill a rich person because they use more resources, and that frees up more resources, than it is- It’s almost worthless to kill the poor unless you kill many, many of them, which is a thing they also do.

[Thomas]
I wonder if there are different levels of these factions. So on the sort of neighborhood level where they start out, it’s what we’re talking about, of killing the poor, killing people, just kind of whatever, a little bit more of that loosey goosey terrorist type of thing. And then as you kind of get into some of these, maybe more toward the rich parts of the city or toward the governmental parts of the city, or there’s some sort of faction that’s like, there’s a plan. It’s not just random murder. It’s targeted. It’s very targeted. And the problem is not the poor. It’s not even really the rich. It’s the government that’s controlling this. It’s the iniquity of what’s going on. And that’s what they’re after. And so they sort of end up in that other group and realize, like, “Oh, we can have a bigger impact on this whole thing.” So there’s like, some point, maybe it’s the end of the first act. Maybe it’s the mid second act turning point where their mission goes from have our child without grief or fear, to, this bigger picture thing of really help everybody in the world.

[Shep]
Okay, I have some thoughts.

[Thomas]
Okay,

[Shep]
Once the announcement is made. Murders in poor areas just happen all the time. Don’t walk alone at night. You’ll just be murdered out of hand.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
It’s like a constant Purge all the time. Now, in the wealthy districts, there is a lot of security. They are keeping the peace. No one’s getting away with anything. This is why the terrorist group leads a raid on the wealthy district. But it fails, and some of them get captured. Among them, our couple that we’re following, and the couple is promised, “Look, you can move here and live in the wealthy district. You just have to tell us where your headquarters are so we can stamp out this terrorist group. You don’t really want to be a part of them. You’re pregnant. You have a family to think about.”

[Emily]
How do they even know she’s pregnant?

[Shep]
They scan her or whatever. Who knows?

[Thomas]
It’s probably a standard procedure.

[Shep]
It’s 2072.

[Jayson]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Jayson]
They have the technology.

[Emily]
And how is she hiding it before that?

[Shep]
They don’t have those scanners in the poor neighborhoods. It’s Elysium all over again.

[Thomas]
It right-

[Shep]
There’s a huge disparity in technology.

[Jayson]
This movie got really violent, like, really fast.

[Shep]
You started it. You’re like-

[Jayson]
I didn’t.

[Shep]
“10% of the population is killed every day.” That’s what you said.

[Jayson]
Oh, my God. I didn’t think about it. Oh, man.

[Emily]
That’s why we have to have a happy ending to get through all of this trauma and violence.

[Jayson]
I would feel better about that. Yeah.

[Emily]
Right?

[Thomas]
Well let’s take a break here, and when we come back, hopefully we’ll reach that happy ending for our movie about a Watch.

[Break]

[Thomas]
All right, we’re back. So at this point, our couple that we’re focusing on, they’ve sort of joined this terrorist group, and now they’ve been captured. They’re in the rich neighborhood, and they’ve just been bribed. The government is trying to bribe them by saying, “Oh, you could be part of the rich neighborhood.” How do they go from this situation that they’re in to actually attacking the government and this program, or at least the way this program is run?

[Emily]
Well, do they just go “Yeah, sure.” And then go along with it? Because this was the plan all along.

[Jayson]
They would have to at least go with it temporarily. Right?

[Thomas]
Is the government actually genuinely giving them this, or are they just trying to get the information out and “You’re poors, we’re going to kill you no matter what”?

[Emily]
I think they have to take the risk. I think that’s a conversation that they have, and they have to decide, is it worth it? Or even if we are taken to prison or what have you, we’re still that much closer.

[Jayson]
What if they gave the government, like, partial information so that they were within the vicinity, but it wasn’t precisely where they needed to be, and that bought them time and influence with the government?

[Shep]
I mean, if I’m the government and I’m offering these deals, if the information doesn’t pan out, you don’t get the deal.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Jayson]
Yeah, that makes sense.

[Emily]
What happened with the McCarthy era? Didn’t those people who gave up the names get to go back and live their life scot-free and it was a legitimate offer?

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
It’s a good point, actually.

[Shep]
So I think it is a legitimate offer because even in the wealthy neighborhood, the wealthy district, they still need people to clean their apartments. They still need people to serve them at restaurants, whatever.

[Emily]
To watch their broods of children.

[Shep]
Right. So they offer them jobs. Even though he’s like a technician or something, he gets a job as a waiter because that’s what allows him to live in the wealthy district.

[Thomas]
Right, they live in the district, but they are not wealthy.

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
They are lower-class citizens who live here.

[Shep]
Yes. But it is still safer here.

[Thomas]
Right. They do enjoy some protections.

[Shep]
Right. But this is how they find out that the wealthy don’t get the tasks on their watch. Because this is leading up to the next limiting event. Right? We’ve already established that that’s coming.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
So they give up, they surrender the location, they get to live in the wealthy district.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
They’re adjusting to their new lives as hired help.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
When previously, like I said, he’s an engineer, she’s a doctor, whatever. And now she’s a maid. Like, it’s absurd, but they’re in this district when the limiting event happens, and maybe their watches don’t even go off. Like, none of the watches in the whole district go off.

[Thomas]
Well, you don’t want to get rid of the help.

[Shep]
Right.

[Emily]
No.

[Shep]
You need the help.

[Jayson]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
We’ve established that already, and so-

[Thomas]
So they’re re radicalized because of that.

[Shep]
Yes.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Not only do their watches not go off, but, like, displays go up all over the place, showing people trying to do the tasks. Like, it’s entertainment for the wealthy.

[Jayson]
Oh, that’s a great idea.

[Shep]
It’s Hunger Games.

[Jayson]
Yeah, that’s a great idea. It’s a sinister idea, but it’s a great idea.

[Shep]
It’s very sinister. The whole pitch is sinister.

[Thomas]
A really good position then, because they’re on the inside, are they able to bring in outsiders?

[Shep]
Oh, no no no.

[Thomas]
No. They can’t open a door and let people in. It’s too much security, I guess.

[Shep]
Right. But… So all of the other help are poorly educated because the wealthy don’t want them to be educated. They want to keep them in their place.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
But these two are highly educated and are invisible, basically. So the doors to the district are locked, but he’s an engineer. He can figure it out. So you’re talking about, like, he doesn’t have permission to go and get people, but perhaps he can pick the door and let people in.

[Jayson]
I like that. Do they act dumb when they’re around other affluent people? Do they dumb themselves down to the point-

[Shep]
I think they must. And I think other help people, teach them how to do that. It’s the first thing they do.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
Like, “You need to pass as one of us. You need to cover yourself so that you don’t get suspected.”

[Thomas]
Well, I think it’s one of those things where, like, day one, there’s some interaction they have with the wealthy people who kind of give them this look like, “Who the fuck do you think you are?” And the other helper, like, “Sorry, sorry, sorry,” and pull them away, and it’s like, “What are you doing? You can’t behave like that. You can’t talk to them, you can’t look at them.”

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
So they’re taught by the other people, “Hey, you need to blend in. You need to disappear into the background. You need to behave a certain way.”

[Emily]
What happens if they don’t? Do they get fired? And does that mean exile into the poorer parts of town?

[Shep]
Which means death.

[Thomas]
It’s a good question.

[Jayson]
I would say yes.

[Thomas]
Right. If you don’t know your place, you don’t belong here.

[Jayson]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Well, yeah. So if you get fired, it’s just like, well, then we can’t keep you here. Bye.

[Jayson]
You don’t know your role and you didn’t stay in your lane, so you have to-

[Thomas]
Or you get put on garbage duty in the underground tunnels.

[Shep]
Oh. So one of the first days in the restaurant, someone’s watch or something doesn’t work, and the technician guy tries to fix it because he knows how to fix it. But you’re not supposed to talk to them. You’re not supposed to help them. They will hire a technician amongst themselves.

[Thomas]
They’ll just send their watch in and get a replacement or whatever.

[Shep]
Yeah, you’re right.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
So he outs himself, and they have a talk with the manager, and he’s fired. Now he has to find another job, like, by the end of the day, or he doesn’t have permission to be like, you can have a countdown on his watch going, “You must exit this district by (whatever time).”

[Jayson]
Oh, wow. Yeah.

[Shep]
And so he’s desperately seeking another job. He’ll literally do anything. Now that he knows the rules, he’ll follow it better. It’s so oppressive.

[Thomas]
And I could see an underground garbage tunnel thing and that that could be- Actually, so, I would like them to give him a warning the first time because he’s new. He hasn’t learned yet how it works, but this is how it fucking works. And don’t do it again. Otherwise, you’re going to have to go work in the garbage tunnels. And then later, when they’re trying to get all of the poor people to come in and storm the Elysium area, he intentionally gets demoted to the tunnels so that he can let people in through the tunnels or something like that, perhaps.

[Jayson]
I think that works.

[Emily]
Yeah. Because he’s an engineer and he can hack the locks.

[Jayson]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
Yeah, that’s good. Very intentional. That’s him being an active participant in the story.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Using their own system against them.

[Thomas]
So I feel like them getting into the Elysium is kind of the mid-second-act turning point.

[Shep]
Yes.

[Thomas]
So what is that second half of the movie? Obviously, they learn about how to behave. They see the event happen and become re-radicalized. So from that point to the end, like, what are they doing? How are they communicating with the outside world or with the poor people outside of the Elysium area?

[Emily]
Well, I think they got to radicalize a few of the people inside, too.

[Thomas]
Sure. They have all the hired help to-

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
“Hired,” the indentured servants to pull from.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Emily]
They have them they’re going to try and radicalize them as well, because the more support they have inside, the easier it is to get the things from the outside. So maybe there’s some benevolent, there’s always a benevolent person in the wealthy side.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
Right. Who’s going to help them.

[Shep]
Is there? Do we want that?

[Emily]
It’s a common trope.

[Jayson]
Maybe it’s someone that is, like, dying and they don’t really care anyway, so maybe they’re dying of cancer.

[Thomas]
Yeah. I mean, it’s kind of douchey, right? Like, “Hey, I’ve lived my whole life benefiting from this system, but now that I can’t benefit from it anymore, fuck this system.”

[Shep]
I think that’s good, and I think that’s a thing that they can say.

[Thomas]
Oh right. He’s like trying to die with his clean conscience. It’s like, you don’t get that. You lived your whole life, I guess. Thanks for helping, finally. But you’re still an asshole.

[Shep]
Yeah. Acknowledge it.

[Thomas]
Yeah. So what does that person give them? It could just be a safe space to meet. It could be maybe that guy has a way of getting messages out and he doesn’t care. He’s like, “Yeah, sure, I’ll let you send messages to wherever.” Maybe he has some sort of special code that can open a door. Or he has special knowledge. Maybe he helped design, oh, maybe he helped design the watch system, and so he has the knowledge they need to update the watch system.

[Jayson]
To the rest of the masses.

[Thomas]
Right. So that everybody is getting-

[Shep]
Oh, the task they’re given. Everyone is given, is storm the district.

[Thomas]
Oh, yes.

[Emily]
Oh, that’s good.

[Thomas]
Fantastic. So, yeah. Did he design the broad-, the watch broadcast system?

[Shep]
Yes. And that’s why he feels so guilty.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Like he has enabled this whole system, which they were, in doing it when he was young, he was a young person, and they were doing it to save the planet. Humankind was going to go extinct.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
It was this or nothing, but they took his idea and they perverted it.

[Thomas]
So he can get one message of anything you want, one task, any task, but you can only do it once because they’ll be onto him immediately, and they’re going to close whatever little backdoor he has.

[Shep]
Yes.

[Thomas]
So you got to pick just the right thing at just the right time. I like that.

[Emily]
Yeah. Then everybody storms, it becomes an overwhelming event.

[Shep]
Because there’s more of them than there are guards in the wealthy district.

[Thomas]
One thing we’ve never talked about is we said that 10% of the people who fail are killed. How? Does the watch just have a little poison thing in it and it just pierces your skin and injects you with poison? Is there like a stormtrooper force that comes to your house and kills you?

[Shep]
I like the poison in the watch because it’s easy to show visually in a movie.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
And then you can have people that don’t wear watches, which is a criminal offense. You can have that, at the end, they storm the wealthy district. The couple that we’re following escape from that civilization entirely, and they’re off in a village somewhere in the woods, and nobody’s wearing watches.

[Jayson]
I like that.

[Thomas]
Are there some wealthy preppers who anticipated eventually a storming of the of the main district? And so they have rockets set up to take them to another planet or something like that?

[Emily]
I’m just imagining, like, the bad guy at the end of, like, Inspector Gadget or any 80s cartoon that’s like, “You won’t get me this time, GI Joe!”

[Thomas]
Right, yeah.

[Emily]
Or something, you know?

[Thomas]
Right.

[Jayson]
I think it would be funny if you had at least one person escape like that. It just seems that that’s always the case anyway.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Jayson]
So why not do it?

[Shep]
Does he escape successfully? Is it a working rocket? Or did they just dummy something up because he paid them an absurd amount of money?

[Jayson]
I would say it’s a working rocket.

[Emily]
I’m with Jayson. Let the one guy get away.

[Jayson]
Yeah. Because then you can stretch. If there was a sequel, then you could-

[Thomas]
It’s a sequel.

[Shep]
Oh, yeah.

[Thomas]
Exactly, yeah.

[Emily]
Yep.

[Shep]
He goes up to the Elysium Space Station and he’s like, “Okay…”

[Thomas]
Right, yeah. I was going to say, is there a space station or a moon base or something like that where-

[Shep]
Yes. There’s got to be the fallback position for the wealthy because they’re not giving up without a fight.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
Yeah. Set it- Open it up for the sequel. You’re right.

[Thomas]
We talked about earlier, they want to keep the program intact, but now everybody’s participating. But then we also kind of talked about some people living in the woods without watches, so obviously they’re not participating in the program. So what is the kind of ending that we’re going for? And how do they achieve that? I mean, if they’ve got everyone storming the main district, it sounds like the program’s not staying intact. Probably.

[Emily]
Yeah. I think we’re gonna have to end the program, honestly. I think it’s a more satisfactory ending.

[Thomas]
Even if we know that ultimately it’s St. Matthew’s Island and they’re going to be in trouble.

[Emily]
Right.

[Thomas]
They don’t know that necessarily, or they don’t-

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

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Jayson]
We want to end on a good note so, you know.

[Thomas]
It’s going to take generations to get back to that level of-

[Emily]
And they’ll know better by that time how to handle the situation.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
Right. That’s how people are. Humans learn from their mistakes.

[Emily]
We’ve learned our lesson, and we know better now. And we’ll use contraceptives and not just go willy nilly with the children.

[Jayson]
I also like the idea that now the wealthy are now the indentured servants. So it’s a big role reversal.

[Shep]
No, they make terrible indentured servants. They don’t know how to do anything.

[Jayson]
That’s the good part. They get to learn, and they get to, by the sweat of their brow. They have to be put to work in and trained how to do manual labor when they’ve never done it before.

[Thomas]
And then there’s the poor people going, “Oh, looks like you failed that task.”

[Jayson]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
And they’re like, “Oh, no.”

[Shep]
Do they ever radicalize the other servants in the wealthy district, or are we just relying on sending out the message that makes the task “Storm the district”?

[Emily]
I feel like they do radicalize them.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
That that’s part of how they get in contact with the guy is because they radicalize the rest of the servants, and those servants work for him or something, and they’re like, “Oh, I bet know somebody who could help us.”

[Shep]
See, that’s better than one of them working for the guy, because then that’s an amazing coincidence.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
And I don’t like coincidences. So I think it’s unrealistic for them to radicalize all of them or even most of them.

[Thomas]
I mean, I imagine there would be a small faction of the indentured servants who are already want to do something.

[Shep]
I imagine that most of the indentured servants were raised in this district and are happy with the status quo and don’t really know better.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
But you have a small percentage of them that came from outside the district like our main couple did, and they do know better and they’re not happy with the status quo. But how do they recognize each other?

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
How do they get in contact with each other? Because well, then you don’t really need to radicalize them. They’re already on board. They already don’t like the system. Perhaps one of them gets in contact with the couple and sees that they are new. So they came from outside the district, so they’re probably not going to be happy with the status quo and tries to get them on board. But in the beginning, they’re trying to toe the line and keep their head down. And it’s only later when they get re-radicalized by seeing them seeing the wealthy watch the limiting event as if it were entertainment.

[Thomas]
Right. So they come back and they’re like, “Okay, we’re in.”

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
And that’s how they get in contact with the original engineer. Okay, it all makes logical sense, and then there’s no coincidence.

[Thomas]
Excellent. Well, on that note of the tidy bow that we’ve wrapped this in, we’d love to hear your thoughts on our story about a Watch. Did you have a good time or are you ticked off?

[Shep]
It’s so much worse than the first one.

[Thomas]
Let us know by leaving a comment on our website, reaching out on social media, or sending us an email. Links to all of those can be found at AlmostPlausible.com Jayson, thank you so much for joining us today. Where can our listeners find out more about you and what you’re up to?

[Jayson]
You can just do a Google search on me. My name is Jayson Johnson. That’s J-A-Y-S-O-N Johnson. And my website should show up there. I’m writing my third screenplay called Grip Tape. It’s about a skateboard bandit that robs banks in the San Francisco Bay Area. He has a daughter that has type one diabetes, and he has to figure out how to pay for her medication when his benefits run out. So that’s kind of the genesis of the story. So that’s what I’m working on. And yeah, you know where to find me.

[Thomas]
Well also keep an eye on the feed for this show as we’ll be releasing a bonus episode with Jayson where he talks more about his journey to becoming a filmmaker. Thanks again to Jayson, and thanks also to Emily, and Shep, who I have no doubt will join me on the next episode of Almost Plausible.

[Outro music]