Handkerchief

References

• Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
• Johnny Mnemonic
• Weekend at Bernie’s
• Magic Castle
• Harry Potter
  • Lord Voldemort
• The Wizarding World of Harry Potter
• Rolex
• Dungeons & Dragons
• David Copperfield
• Val Valentino
• Winchester Mystery House
• Alcatraz Island
• Penn & Teller
• Criss Angel
• The Rock
• Face/Off
• Nicolas Cage
• The Sorcerer’s Apprentice
• National Treasure
• Mission: Impossible
• Ryan Reynolds
• Bay Area Rapid Transit
• Danny Trejo

Corrections

Thomas said that the ferry to Alcatraz leaves from Pier 39. While there is plenty to do at Pier 39, the ferry to Alcatraz leaves from Pier 33.

The envelope trick with the fake $100 bills that Thomas referred to is one performed by comedy magician John Archer. Thomas said the magician would give away one fake bill each time the trick was performed, but actually he gives away four fake bills.

Transcript

[Intro music begins]

[Emily]
Okay, sidetrack. We do realize this is taking place in San Francisco. Alcatraz is playing a prominent feature and it’s about face swapping.

[Shep]
Oh, no!

[Emily]
So Nicolas Cage is going to be one of those faces, right?

[Shep]
He also plays a magician! Did we Nicolas Cage this already? Oh, he’s not going to steal a Rolex. He’s going to steal the Declaration of Independence.

[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, as always, are Emily-

[Emily]
Hey, guys.

[Thomas]
And F. Paul Shepard.

[Shep]
Happy to be here.

[Thomas]
The standard way to blow one’s nose is with a tissue, but the classy way is to use a handkerchief. Of course, then you have a snot filled piece of cloth that you put back in your pocket? I’ve never really understood handkerchiefs, to be honest. Shep, I know you know more about this sort of thing, so elucidate us, please.

[Shep]
So my father carries around a handkerchief and blows his nose with it and puts it in his pocket to save for later. It’s disgusting. And I don’t get it.

[Thomas]
Is it because he doesn’t want anyone to get his precious bodily fluids?

[Shep]
But I also carry around a handkerchief all the time, and that’s because I used to live in Japan where it’s so normal… Because in Japan, or at least back then, 20 years ago, when I was there, bathrooms didn’t have hand towels to dry your hands after washing your hands.

[Thomas]
Mmm.

[Shep]
So you had to carry a handkerchief around to dry your hands after you use the restroom and wash your hands. And I still carry one because it’s so convenient to have one all the time, not just when drying your hands after using the restroom, but dabbing your brow when you’re sweating. It’s very convenient. I do not blow my nose with my handkerchief.

[Thomas]
I was just going to ask because, yours is not a snot catcher, but okay.

[Shep]
No, it’s not a snot catcher. It is a hand dryer and forehead dabber.

[Thomas]
All right. Well, Shep, why don’t you give us your pitches first?

[Shep]
All right. Pitch number one. I have two this week. A magician’s magical handkerchief that can take whatever is underneath it, falls into the wrong hands. And by whatever, I mean whatever. Like, you can cover up a lighter and make it vanish temporarily and then make it reappear somewhere else. But that’s a parlor trick. No, I mean, you can make someone’s face disappear and then wear it as your own.

[Thomas]
Oh, whoa.

[Shep]
The perfect disguise. Or someone’s been shot and is dying from a bullet wound. Make it disappear, make it reappear on your enemy. Problem solved.

[Thomas]
If the enemy shot the bullet in the first place and you moved the wound to them, is that suicide?

[Shep]
I mean, that’s what the cops are going to think. My other pitch is a fire scene investigator stumbles upon an inexplicably, unscathed handkerchief amidst the aftermath of a devastating fire. Like, they are investigating a house fire and everything is torched except for this pristine, undamaged handkerchief, and they want to find out why.

[Thomas]
Shep, apparently we share the same brain. The first pitch I came up with was basically the same magician’s handkerchief. You took it a bit further with the “anything can vanish”. I like yours better than mine. I also had an idea for a fireproof handkerchief. I didn’t end up going with it in my pitches, but I think it’s funny that we had that same idea. So I have the magician one-

[Shep]
Okay.

[Thomas]
And I have some ideas for a fireproof one if we want to go down that avenue. My other pitch that I have that’s unique to yours so far, I don’t know, maybe Emily will have one like this. In a cyberpunk future, a detective is called to the scene of a murder. A courier lies dead in a pool of blood. Their courier bag is missing, indicating they were killed for whatever they were carrying. Among the items in their pockets is a handkerchief, which is a bit odd for someone to be carrying in this day and age. After a bunch of detective work, the detective eventually realizes the handkerchief has special threads woven into it, turning it into a discrete storage device.

[Shep]
And also the courier was Japanese, so that explains that.

[Thomas]
There you go. Yeah. Was it a Mnemonic courier? No.

[Shep]
Yeah, it’s Johnny Mnemonic.

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

[Emily]
Surprise, surprise. I have a magic handkerchief.

[Thomas]
Hey.

[Shep]
How did we all do magic handkerchief?

[Thomas]
It must be the most obvious idea.

[Shep]
So when I was making mine, I’m like, “Oh, this is unique, this is clever. No one’s going to have this one.”

[Emily]
That’s funny, because when I wrote mine, I was like, “Blah, blah, blah. We’ll all have magic handkerchief,” but mine transports you anywhere in the world. And one day, the magician’s doofy assistant accidentally tears a little corner and then now it doesn’t work right. And it takes you where- Just random places if you try to use it for travel.

[Shep]
So in mine, I had- the longer pitch is the assistant steals the handkerchief and is using it for mischief, and the magician, who now is missing a face, has to partner up with a couple other people. Why is the magician still alive when they just have no face magic?

[Emily]
Magic.

[Shep]
Yeah, I imagine he’s got, like, just smooth skin, maybe draws a face on.

[Thomas]
Somebody else draws a face on.

[Emily]
Someone puts googly eyes in the middle of his head.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Yeah, they get those wax lips candy.

[Emily]
They Mr. Potato Head him.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
All right. This is the story of a handkerchief designer in 1600s London whose handkerchiefs are very popular among the wealthy young women of London. He has a very public courtship with one of the young ladies, but is scorned when she declines his marriage proposal. Not long after the breakup, his would-be fiancée becomes very ill and dies of consumption. Then another young lady in the court dies and two other ladies are stricken ill with consumption. Soon there’s an epidemic raging in the city. People are scared and looking for someone to blame. They discover that all the young women owned handkerchiefs by this designer. So they accuse him of purposefully spreading a curse of sickness on the women of London after being dismissed so rudely. And they accuse him of witchcraft and they eventually burn him at the stake.

[Thomas]
And when the ashes are settled, only a single handkerchief remains unscathed.

[Shep]
But, like, there are videos that talk about, you know, the what, the infected well, that everybody’s getting sick from. And they didn’t discover that for a very long time.

[Emily]
Right.

[Shep]
So if they managed to figure out that there is this one connection, which is the handkerchiefs, that would be amazing.

[Emily]
Well, yeah, but they think it’s witchcraft. They don’t think it has anything to do with the fact that he has tuberculosis and is accidentally spreading…

[Shep]
Right. They don’t have germ theory back then. They thought consumption was a disease of what, personality?

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Like, “Oh, you’re too brilliant for this world.”

[Thomas]
So is there a particular pitch that we like? We all have magician pitches, so clearly we have some ideas down that road.

[Shep]
I liked your ideas about what to do with the faceless magician, putting googly eyes on him.

[Emily]
I did like that.

[Thomas]
You know, they just, like, put sunglasses on him and Weekend at Bernie’s it.

[Shep]
Right. He won’t have a nose, though. So how do you keep the sunglasses up?

[Thomas]
Well, I mean, if he’s a magician, he’s working in theaters and there’s going to be, like, a fake nose they could put on him.

[Shep]
See, as a movie in a visual medium. I think that it could be very funny. It could be amusing the ways they come up with to get around the fact that one of the three of them doesn’t have a face.

[Emily]
How does he communicate?

[Shep]
He’s magic. He’s a magician.

[Emily]
Well, I know, but I mean, is it like telepathy? Do you just hear a voice?

[Shep]
He throws his voice, and he can still do that when he doesn’t have a face.

[Emily]
That makes sense.

[Shep]
So, like, objects around him are talking.

[Emily]
Is that the one we’re going to do?

[Shep]
We just started doing it. So he finally tells his assistant how the handkerchief works, and the assistant immediately steals his face and runs away with the handkerchief. That was my plan. And so the Magician teams up with a lady that’s, like, ostracized/outcast from Magic Society for her unique magic, whatever it is. I don’t know the answer to that. And a skeptical street rat style kid who perhaps witnessed the assistant doing something and so joins the team, who, of course, at the end becomes the Magician’s new assistant, despite them not believing in magic.

[Emily]
So when the handkerchief takes the thing and you said it can place it somewhere else, right?

[Shep]
Right. So in the Magician’s act, he’s, like, making a lighter vanish or whatever, and then “Oh, it’s behind your ear.”

[Emily]
Mmhmm.

[Shep]
Whatever.

[Thomas]
Right. Whatever somebody in the audience has in their pocket, he can- yeah.

[Shep]
Right.

[Emily]
Right.

[Shep]
You’re storing it temporarily in the handkerchief and then making it reappear later.

[Emily]
Is it first in, first out?

[Shep]
I don’t know. It’s magic. What do you want the rules to be?

[Emily]
Well, I was just wondering, because I think it would be funny if it is, you know, you can only have one object at a time in the handkerchief. So he steals the magician’s face. What does he do with it?

[Shep]
Oh, he puts it on his own face.

[Thomas]
Why would he want the Magician’s face?

[Shep]
The Magician’s famous.

[Thomas]
But what is it that the Magician has or has access to that he doesn’t and wants?

[Shep]
I don’t know. The Magic Castle.

[Emily]
In California.

[Thomas]
In Transylvania. No. Yeah, in California.

[Shep]
The real Magic Castle in London.

[Emily]
Hogwarts?

[Shep]
Yeah, right. He gets access to Hogwarts.

[Thomas]
He has a Universal Studios. Still, California.

[Shep]
Look, we’re filming in California, okay?

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
So it’s going to be California oriented.

[Thomas]
I mean, it could be something like he knows that the Magician has an audience with some other important person, and he wants to get in front of that person.

[Shep]
Oh, yeah. He wants to steal their treasure. And he’s got this convenient stealing handkerchief.

[Thomas]
Right. Some sheik or somebody is coming, and they have this really fancy Rolex that’s really famous.

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
So he goes and has, like, a knockoff. No, he wouldn’t have time to have a knockoff made, I guess.

[Shep]
He just steals a cheaper one from a store.

[Thomas]
Sure. It’s this really well-known Rolex, so there are knockoff ones available.

[Shep]
So that’s a ticking clock for the Magician because he is going to get blamed for this guy’s crimes even if he gets his face back.

[Thomas]
Yeah. Why does he choose to show the assistant then?

[Shep]
I don’t know.

[Emily]
He has a new trick planned, and it’s going to involve him disappearing with the handkerchief.

[Thomas]
You know how the Magician will go off stage and then come back on stage? They’re wearing a big robe, and it turns out they’ve swapped with an assistant. And so then the Magician appears in the audience. He’s going to do an on-stage version of that where he never leaves the stage. He puts the hood up, and he turns around, and then he turns back, and it’s the assistant, and it’s because they’ve face-swapped.

[Shep]
Yep.

[Thomas]
And so he’s teaching him, “Here’s how you do this.”

[Shep]
Maybe this new act was the assistant’s idea.

[Thomas]
Oh, yeah.

[Shep]
And the magician has finally- because the audience is no longer thrilled by the little parlor trick.

[Thomas]
It’s a meager audience.

[Shep]
Yes.

[Thomas]
So they’re paying- Because they’re just renting at the theater or whatever. So the guy who runs the theater, the owner of the theater, meets up with them. Or they meet up with him after the show, and they’re like, “Okay, where’s our portion?” He’s like, “Actually, you owe me $45.” It’s like there weren’t even enough people to cover the use of the theater for that night. And so the magician is like, “Okay, you’re right. We need something new. Tell me your idea for this trick.” And he’s like, “We just swap faces. It’s easy as that.” But he has it worked out to where he takes the magician’s face. That’s the first step of the swap. “I take your face, swap it with mine.” He’s like, “All right, let’s try it.” And as soon as he takes his face, he just fucking books it. And he’s like, “Hello?” Stumbling around, like, feeling.

[Shep]
Oh, yeah. He doesn’t know what happened yet.

[Thomas]
Right. So you said he has a couple of accomplices or compatriots who are helping him out. How do they end up in the picture? You said that there was a woman with some controversial magic.

[Shep]
Yes.

[Thomas]
Is she touring with him? Is she an old friend?

[Shep]
I think an old friend that he has perhaps lost contact with.

[Emily]
Maybe he’s always been kind to her and stood up for her. So he just goes to her apartment.

[Thomas]
Well, I think it’d be easier if she was supposed to come and see him after the show or something like that. So he just has to wait for her to show up.

[Shep]
Maybe he calls her. He can’t talk, but he can, like, mash buttons.

[Emily]
But he can’t see.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
It’s a Bakelite phone.

[Thomas]
It’s a rotary phone. He’s just counting holes around, “1, 2, 3, 4, 5…”

[Shep]
You don’t have to be able to see it. He’s not calling on a cell phone. It’s an old theater. It’s got one of those old phones on the wall. But she has caller ID, so she knows who’s calling her.

[Thomas]
It’s the theater calling, so it’s not a butt dial.

[Shep]
Right. And they haven’t talked in a while. So this is how the audience gets exposition on their relationship because she’s talking to him like, “You finally called after such and such time, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,” exposition dump here.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Can he “Mmm mm mmm,” can he do that sort of a thing?

[Shep]
I mean, sure, because what else can you do?

[Thomas]
He could tap on the microphone end of the receiver.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
He’s tapping Morse code.

[Shep]
SOS everybody knows.

[Thomas]
Oh, yeah, that’s good.

[Shep]
So she goes to theater to help him and tease him for losing his face.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
“You’ve changed.”

[Emily]
“What’s the matter? Cat got your tongue?”

[Thomas]
He’s just there, like, rolling his hand, like, “Go on, go on,” nodding. “Go on. Keep going on.”

[Emily]
“Yeah. Get it all out.”

[Shep]
Pretending to look at his watch.

[Thomas]
Right. Yeah. I love the idea of that scene where she’s there talking to him and he’s feeling around and knocking things over. And he’s like you can tell from his body language that he’s exasperated and he’s looking for something.

[Shep]
Yes.

[Thomas]
And she says something and he just turns and points his faceless face at her with this like “Come on,” look. Expression that he’s like “Ugh.”

[Shep]
His expressionless expression. Yeah.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
You can do a lot with body language.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Oh, I think he needs something. Some what’s the material when you need a material to cast a spell, you know what I’m talking about. You guys play D&D.

[Thomas]
Pixie dust or something?

[Shep]
No, he is like a material component, and he can’t find it because he doesn’t have eyes. And she comes in and sees that he doesn’t have a face and starts talking to him, and he’s, like, shrugging. Like she’s teasing him for getting played by his assistant and losing his face. And he’s like he really wants her to help him. So she eventually finds the material component he needs to start casting his throwing your voice spell so he can start responding to her.

[Thomas]
Is this a comedic movie?

[Shep]
I think it has definitely potential to be comedic.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Just the idea of him bumbling around with no face is funny to me.

[Emily]
Right.

[Shep]
Because it’s horrific, but you could play it for laughs.

[Thomas]
That would be great if, like, he does the spell or whatever he needs to do to be able to throw his voice. So he’s doing it, but it’s just the smooth face, and she’s like, “Ugh, that’s freaking me out. Here, hold on.” She digs around in her purse and pulls out a COVID mask and puts it on and is like, “There we go.”

[Shep]
Yes.

[Thomas]
So what about this street urchin character? How soon does he join?

[Emily]
He’s running a shell game on the streets and he tries to scam him?

[Shep]
He does. Yeah. Sleight of hand stuff.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Not real magic, but fake magic.

[Thomas]
He could be the guy selling the knockoff Rolexes.

[Emily]
Oh.

[Thomas]
And so he sees that the assistant steals one of the fake Rolexes that looks like the sheik’s Rolex, but he looks like the magician, so he goes to confront the magician.

[Shep]
Oh, he gets it stolen from him.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
He’s a victim.

[Thomas]
Yeah. So he goes to confront the magician like, “Why did you… You’re like…” He’s basically like a David Copperfield type of super famous. It’s like, “Why did you think you could get away with this?”

[Shep]
Right. “You’re busted. I got you.”

[Thomas]
Then he comes in and sees he has no face. He’s like “Ooooh.”

[Shep]
He’s got to freak out.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
He’s got to not be okay.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
He’s got to run down the- trying to run out of the apartment screaming and the magician’s trying to calm him down.

[Thomas]
She has to stop him.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
The woman has to stop him. She’s not freaked out because she’s into crazy, weird ass magic. So this is like, normal-ish?

[Shep]
Oh, yeah, I can see that. Both of them trying to catch him, but he is currently blind.

[Thomas]
He just runs into a wall.

[Shep]
Yes. Constantly.

[Thomas]
At least he doesn’t have a nose to break.

[Shep]
Right.

[Emily]
It’s true.

[Thomas]
The street urchin and has to call him a “Voldemort looking motherfucker.”

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Yep. This takes place in a world where the Harry Potter movies are real?

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Yep.

[Thomas]
I think this takes place in a world where, really the only main difference is this handkerchief is a thing.

[Emily]
Well, there’s some other kind of magic

[Thomas]
That’s true. There’s some other kinds of magic. Right.

[Emily]
Because the lady is, like, into that weird voodoo stuff or whatever.

[Thomas]
Right. Dark magic. Dangerous magic.

[Shep]
Yeah. What is her magic that got her ostracized?

[Thomas]
Dark, dangerous voodoo magic. We just said!

[Emily]
No, I want that to be what we think the whole time. Like, the kid keeps asking her and no one will say why she got kicked out. Just “We don’t speak of it.”

[Thomas]
“She knows what she did.”

[Emily]
Yeah, he says things like, “She knows what she did.” And she’s like, “We know. We don’t speak of it.” Then it’s something super asinine that no one would care about. Like she revealed some other magician’s secret or something.

[Shep]
Ah.

[Thomas]
She was The Masked Magician.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
That’s pretty good. She just broke the magician’s code, is all it was.

[Emily]
It had nothing to do with her actual magical powers.

[Thomas]
Although we do need her to have actual magical powers, don’t we?

[Emily]
Yeah, she does. She legit does.

[Thomas]
What would the climax of that movie be? Clearing his name? Bringing the assistant to justice? Stealing the assistant’s face?

[Shep]
There’s so many ways it could go. Perhaps the magician just has a briefcase full of faces, and he’s like, “Oh, that one’s burned up. We can’t use that one anymore.” And he puts that one back on the assistant, who gets captured by the police. So that’s how the assistant gets brought to justice, as the magician. They think they got their man, and they did, and it’s the assistant. And so the magician just has a different face at the end. But then why didn’t he just swap one of those faces out at the beginning? Why did they spend so much time with him faceless?

[Thomas]
But maybe he does. Maybe the whole faceless thing is a temporary thing. He’s trying to find that case, that briefcase full of faces.

[Shep]
Oh, he keeps all of his faces in a safe deposit box. He has to go to the bank. But how do you get the bank to let you in when you don’t have a face?

[Thomas]
He would have a very hard time getting in. He would have had to have planned ahead to have somebody else have access, because he’s going to have to show ID.

[Emily]
Oh.

[Shep]
Oh.

[Emily]
Maybe that’s why he gets the lady.

[Shep]
Yeah, that’s his ex. They opened the account together.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
That makes sense.

[Thomas]
The way you can explain this continuing relationship is that within the magic community, you have to defend your secrets. And because they had this relationship, they already know a lot of each other’s secrets about how their tricks work. So, yeah, their personal relationship is on the outs, but from a professional standpoint, there’s nobody they trust more than the other person. And so they’ve made this agreement, like, “Look, clearly we don’t work as a couple, but let’s maintain this professional relationship of guarding each other’s secrets.” And so that’s why he is able to reach out to her and rely on her. Does that feel logical?

[Emily]
Well, yeah, I was thinking they just didn’t work as a couple, but they were still friends.

[Thomas]
Yeah. I mean, they don’t have to be antagonistic toward each other.

[Emily]
Yeah. Lots of people get along with their exes.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
We don’t have to play into the Hollywood trope of as soon as you break up with someone, you blacklist them from your life.

[Shep]
She could take pleasure in him struggling.

[Emily]
Oh, yeah. She does enjoy that.

[Thomas]
For sure.

[Emily]
Yeah, because he was always a little bit vain and this is great.

[Thomas]
Does the assistant know that these other faces exist?

[Emily]
No.

[Shep]
I don’t think so, because they were from before he had this assistant.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Maybe she was his old assistant.

[Thomas]
Makes sense.

[Shep]
But then they went their separate ways professionally and personally. She stopped being an assistant and started being a magician. And so he got a new assistant, and the new assistant betrays him. So the new assistant doesn’t know this part of the act, where he is different people. Whatever. It’s an old trick. He doesn’t do it anymore. That’s why all of his old magic stuff is in the safe deposit box, not just his faces. I’d like it if all the faces have names. And so she’s like, “Oh, you went with Douglas?” And she’s like, opens up the briefcase and starts flipping through them. “Let’s see.”

[Emily]
“Always liked Ricardo.” Pulls one up. “Oh. Remember Niagara Falls?” Then puts it away.

[Shep]
Yep. I like that. They have a lot of history that the audience doesn’t know.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Right.

[Thomas]
There’s a poster. When he’s feeling around in his dressing room, we see a poster that says, like, Man of a Thousand Faces. Though we don’t call attention to it.

[Shep]
Yes. Excellent.

[Thomas]
It’s just there in the background, an old poster. So the magician can use those extra faces to spy on, fool, swap with, whatever, the assistant. He can get very close to the assistant without the assistant realizing it’s him. He can get other people-

[Shep]
Oh, how does he put the faces on without the handkerchief?

[Thomas]
Good question.

[Shep]
I didn’t think about this. Like, they can go and retrieve the faces, but then they just have a briefcase full of faces and no way to attach them to his face.

[Thomas]
What is the genesis of the handkerchief? Did she give it to him? Does she have- Is it a matched set?

[Shep]
That makes it really easy, though.

[Thomas]
It does, but he still needs his face back. He’s a famous person.

[Shep]
Right. If he gives up the face at the end and that assistant goes to jail with that face, he’s burning that whole career with it.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
But maybe this isn’t the first time this has happened. Maybe he’s thousands of years old.

[Thomas]
So the end of the movie is that he leaves his face on the assistant. The assistant goes to jail for stealing, like, millions of dollars’ worth of stuff. Right? This Rolex alone is like a couple million, right? Because it’s all diamond encrusted and solid gold and whatever.

[Shep]
Whatever is more expensive.

[Thomas]
Right, right. And the thing is, he doesn’t steal his face back. He steals all the stuff the guy has stolen, the millions of dollars’ worth of stuff. Burn the face. Who cares? Burn the career. I just got millions of dollars richer. I mean, how do you fence that watch, I guess. But.

[Shep]
You don’t. He’s actually a dragon in human form. He just takes all of that treasure to his hoard that he has stored away somewhere. That’s the twist at the end.

[Thomas]
I mean, whatever the MacGuffin is, right? There’s some expensive thing that he’s going there to steal.

[Shep]
But why does he want it?

[Thomas]
The assistant?

[Shep]
No, the magician. At the end, why does he want the expensive thing that he’s blamed for stealing? Also, how does he prove that the assistant did it if the stuff is missing? Or maybe he was witnessed stealing it?

[Thomas]
Right. And nobody believes that the handkerchief is actually magic. That’s preposterous. Especially because, I don’t know, he stole big things with it. Is that the case? Like, if you have something like my water bottle is taller than a handkerchief. Like, if you draped it over my water bottle, could you just keep pulling down? And it would suck my whole water bottle up into the handkerchief, even though it itself is larger than the handkerchief.

[Shep]
I mean, earlier I was saying that it could also move bullet wounds.

[Emily]
True.

[Shep]
So, what are the rules? It’s magic.

[Emily]
It’s magic.

[Shep]
You just hold it up in front of your face so you can’t see the Eiffel Tower. And then it has stolen the Eiffel Tower.

[Thomas]
So I mean, maybe there are bars of gold or there’s a special gold statue, whatever it is. Like there’s some something that he’s going to steal. And so why does the magician want it? For the value. He didn’t want this situation to happen at all. But it has somebody with your face who’s claiming to be you is caught stealing all this stuff. How do you prove that it wasn’t you?

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
Well, don’t. Let the person who’s stolen your face reap their punishment.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
And also, you just got several million dollars’ worth of stolen goods that you can fence somehow because you’re a magician. You know shady people. Your girlfriend’s even shadier than you. Ex girlfriend. Sorry.

[Shep]
She does shadow magic.

[Thomas]
“What kind of magic does she specialize in?” “Dark magic.” She’s black. And everyone is like, “It’s black magic.” And the street urchin is like, “Uhh…. No follow up questions.”

[Emily]
What part of California are we talking for this? Because I was thinking it could be in San Francisco and they could commune with the dead or something. And they could go to the Winchester house and… Just for shits and giggles.

[Shep]
Just for shits and giggles. Because we’re in the area. Because we’re in California. Let’s throw that in there.

[Thomas]
Maybe we can get money from the San Francisco tourism board. As if they need help getting tourists there, but. They go to Alcatraz at some point. That’s probably where the sheik’s- The sheik has rented Alcatraz.

[Emily]
For a magic show. Because how cool would that be?

[Thomas]
Right. He’s having some party, and at the party he’s hired the greatest magician, or one of these, like, super famous magicians. You could even get a cameo of other- Penn & Teller are there. And David Copperfield is there.

[Shep]
Or magicians from this decade. I can’t name any.

[Thomas]
Penn & Teller still work. I mean, if the sheik is paying. Right? Like, he grew up watching these magicians. So he’s coming to America. He wants to have a big party. He likes magic. He wants to invite the magicians he grew up watching on TV.

[Shep]
I like this. Let’s get a bunch of magicians that were famous 40 years ago, get them to cameo, because what else are they doing right now?

[Thomas]
Yeah, right.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Emily]
We’re giving Criss Angel another vehicle. Don’t let that man come back.

[Thomas]
No, I was actually going to specifically say that they make a point of saying, “No, he wasn’t invited.”

[Shep]
Like, the street urchin that doesn’t believe in magic is like, “Oh, Criss Angel.” And all the magicians are like, “No.”

[Thomas]
“He knows what he did.”

[Shep]
Yeah. They chase the Apprentice to Alcatraz.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
And they get caught and locked in cells. Naturally.

[Thomas]
Naturally. Yeah.

[Emily]
Obviously.

[Shep]
And the street urchin is like, “Oh, what are we going to do?” And the two magicians are like, “What the fuck are you talking about? It’s just a jail cell.”

[Thomas]
Right. He’s like, “What are we going to do?” They’re already sliding their cell doors open. “How’d you guys do that?”

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
I feel like Alcatraz is the third act.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
What’s the lowest low, then?

[Thomas]
Yeah, if they get out of the jail cells immediately.

[Shep]
Right, that can’t be the lowest low. So the Apprentice has to successfully rob the guy with the magician’s face. So the magician’s on the hook for this crime.

[Thomas]
How does the magician get his face back? Unless getting his face back is not the ultimate thing. Maybe getting his face back is something that happens at the end of the second act, and then because he now has his face back, it’s him with his face, not someone else with his face. He can’t prove anymore that he wasn’t the person who did those things. So now all those negative things, the cops are knocking on the door, the sheik is knocking on the door. All these people are coming to get him. And how does he prove that it wasn’t him? So that could be the lowest low.

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
But I don’t know how he gets back up out of there. He throws a smoke bomb at the ground and disappears.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Actually, that would be kind of funny if they come to arrest him and he does that, and they run up to the stage where he was, and there’s the trap door is still open, and you see him booking it out the back.

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
But I don’t know how to get him out of that sticky. It’s a good lowest low.

[Shep]
It’s a good lowest low, but it’s really painted into a corner and we can’t just go, “Well, that’s a problem for the writers.”

[Thomas]
Yeah, right.

[Shep]
No, this is the plot.

[Emily]
This is, yeah.

[Thomas]
Yeah. Does this happen all in one day, or does this happen over the course of a number of days?

[Shep]
Well, it’s got to happen fairly quickly, or I guess it doesn’t. I was going to say, “How can he eat without a face, but also how can he breathe?”

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
Magic.

[Shep]
So magic, yes, is the correct answer. I think that the assistant made the schedule with the sheik, because otherwise why was the magician in such a hurry to start this new trick? He already had a gig coming up that was going to pay money.

[Thomas]
Right. So the magician doesn’t even know about the gig with the sheik.

[Shep]
Right. He gets a confirmation from his agent that just texts his phone or whatever. That’s their clue. Big clue, kind of gives the whole game away. The Urchins got to figure it out. The Urchins got to show value. Lots. Like the whole movie.

[Thomas]
Yeah. Oh, yeah. Maybe the Urchin makes some comments like, “So how are you going to do your thing at the sheik’s?” “What?”

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
Somehow he’s heard about it.

[Shep]
It’s the talk of the town.

[Thomas]
“I do most of my work down in all the tourist areas, of course.”

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
And that’s how you get out to Alcatraz is Pier 39, so. “I’ve heard security talking about it for the past week. You’re supposed to be down there.”

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
“How are you going to do that show?”

[Shep]
Without a face. Yeah, because they’re not advertising it. Because why would they advertise it?

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
It’s a private show.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
Security is talking about it. That makes more sense. Good job, Thomas.

[Thomas]
There’s got to be a great scene where they’re like, on the pier and they’re seeing all the people in their tuxedos and everything getting onto the ship to be ferried out. And everyone has tickets they’re showing and having scanned, and they’re there like, “Okay, we can do, like, a Denver shuffle.” And they’ve got whatever little names for tricks they’re going to do. And then the street urchin comes back out of breath. He’s like, “Okay, I got us three tickets.” They’re like, “Whoa, what?”

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
That’s where you establish that he can pickpocket earlier in the movie so that at the end, when he pickpockets the handkerchief, it’s like, “Oh, we already knew he could do that.”

[Thomas]
Right. So security is there, and the guy’s like, patting, “I swear I had…” and they’re like, “Excuse me, can we get scanned in? Thank you.” They walk right by the guy whose tickets they just stole. Classic Hollywood joke.

[Shep]
Because they’re all rich assholes, so it’s okay if they suffer.

[Thomas]
Right. “Oh, no. The rich asshole didn’t get to go to the rich asshole party with the other rich assholes. Boohoo.”

[Shep]
The GIF of dabbing his face with millions of dollars.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Okay, sidetrack. We do realize this is taking place in San Francisco. Alcatraz is playing a prominent feature and it’s about face swapping.

[Shep]
Oh, no!

[Emily]
So Nicolas Cage is going to be one of those faces, right?

[Shep]
He also plays a magician! Did we Nicolas Cage this already? Oh, he’s not going to steal a Rolex. He’s going to steal the Declaration of Independence.

[Thomas]
Sounds like we have the beginning and the end pretty much figured out. So we’ll take a break, and when we come back, the middle of our story about a handkerchief.

[Break]

[Thomas]
All right, we’re back from break. Let’s get this second act nailed down.

[Emily]
What do we need in the second act? What makes a good second act?

[Thomas]
Boy, that’s actually a really good question.

[Emily]
Oh is that too-

[Shep]
That’s too deep for one episode of this podcast.

[Emily]
Too existential for this?

[Thomas]
If I knew that, I wouldn’t have done so badly on my final screenplay for film school. I mean, I feel like the second act in this one is a lot of them going around doing detectivey kind of stuff, like trying to track him down, running away from people who are trying to get him because they think he has. Oh, but he doesn’t look like himself. Never mind.

[Shep]
Right. He doesn’t have his face yet.

[Thomas]
Right. I mean, the first step is, he’s got to get a face. Did we ever solve that? How does he get another face?

[Shep]
I don’t think he has a face. I think he spends most of the movie faceless. So when he finally does get a face, you’re like, “Oh, this should be a triumphant moment.” But this is when they get caught by the police.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
So it’s the lowest low.

[Thomas]
So it’s like, toward the end of the second act, he gets the handkerchief back. He must steal the face back?

[Emily]
The guy shoves it back on him because he’s gotten everything he needs, but he doesn’t want to go to jail.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
Right. That’s all the assistant’s plan.

[Emily]
Yeah. So the assistant gives it back.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Yeah. So what are they doing for the second act? If the assistant’s whole plan was come back anyway.

[Shep]
Their plan is to stop the assistant before he steals everything, and they fail. That’s what leads into the lowest low, is everything that they did, trying to figure out what the assistant’s plan even is, tracking him down, trying to steal the handkerchief back. Fail, fail, fail. And the assistant puts his face back on him and leaves him behind for the cops.

[Thomas]
Maybe that even happens at Alcatraz.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Yeah. He handcuffs him to something.

[Thomas]
He handcuffs him to something, and he’s like, “I could just get out of these.” And he just shouts back, “I know.” And runs off.

[Shep]
He knows exactly how long it takes the magician to get out of handcuffs.

[Emily]
Right.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
Because they had to time it for their tricks.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
So the assistant makes the escape with the handkerchief still. He has no reason to leave it behind. So they have even failed to retrieve the title of this episode.

[Emily]
So then does the magician actually end up in jail?

[Shep]
No, they’ve got to escape.

[Emily]
Okay.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
Oh. They use the street kid to steal the handkerchief back using sleight of hand instead of magic. That’s why you have him along for the ride the whole time, because he’s also a pickpocket.

[Thomas]
Do they get a ringer handkerchief to swap?

[Shep]
But he must know the magician has the handkerchief because he put his face back on him.

[Thomas]
No, he puts the face on, but keeps the handkerchief and runs away.

[Shep]
No, the assistant does that. But afterward, the magician puts that face back on the assistant.

[Thomas]
Right. Yeah, good point.

[Shep]
Or maybe he does that in a way that the assistant doesn’t realize that the face is back on him.

[Thomas]
Well, but he would realize. They would keep calling him by the magician’s name, and it wouldn’t take long for him to-

[Shep]
Who would?

[Thomas]
The police.

[Emily]
The cops.

[Shep]
No, he’s in his apartment or he’s at home or whatever, and there’s a knock at the door, and he goes and answers it, not realizing that he doesn’t have his old face anymore. He has the magician’s face. They sneak in while he’s sleeping and swap faces, Mission Impossible style. Yeah. How do we get from the magician being captured, the lowest low, where he gets his face back, but still doesn’t have the handkerchief?

[Thomas]
Mmhmm. Well, they have to escape from Alcatraz.

[Shep]
Right. That’s the easy part.

[Thomas]
That’s the easy part. Right. And so they go somewhere. The urchin has a cardboard box in an alley that they go retreat to. I don’t know. Anyway, they go somewhere to work out what their next move is going to be, and they know that they need to get the handkerchief. They’ve got the face back. Now they need to get the handkerchief. Is it during the third act that they come up with the plan to swap the faces again?

[Shep]
Right. At this point, the magician’s blamed for all the crimes, and it’s like, “Okay, I’ve got to get rid of this face.”

[Thomas]
So they have to get the handkerchief and the briefcase of faces.

[Shep]
So how do they get the faces after he’s a wanted man? He’s a wanted man.

[Thomas]
Her?

[Shep]
Just her?

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
I mean, she could just go in on her own and get it. If she has access to the safety deposit box, he doesn’t have to go in.

[Emily]
The only reason he was bringing her before was because he didn’t have a face.

[Shep]
Right. Now he has a face, but it’s the criminal one.

[Emily]
The wrong one. Yeah.

[Thomas]
It’s a very short second act.

[Shep]
Yeah, I hear size doesn’t matter. Is that a lie? What else would you put in there? See, I had them going to the bank earlier, but we moved that till later.

[Thomas]
I don’t know. Second acts are hard.

[Shep]
Second acts are hard. Maybe they try to go to the assistant’s apartment and lockpick the door and get in and try to figure out, like they’re trying to figure out the clues of why he did this and where he went.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
But he didn’t go back to his apartment.

[Emily]
No, because now he has a famous face. He’s going to go stay at a fancy hotel.

[Shep]
Yes. Oh, he steals the magician’s wallet as well. All his credit cards. See, that would leave another clue.

[Thomas]
Wouldn’t he not care? I mean, I guess that part of it depends on how fast this is all happening. Right? If it’s all within, like, a 24 to 36 hours period, then, yeah, great. I’ll pay for everything on his credit card. No problemo, because by the time he figures out what all’s gone on, I’ll be long gone with the money, and he’ll be on the hook for everything. That’s the plan.

[Shep]
So they just use a computer to log on to the bank website.

[Thomas]
Right. They have access to the theater until the end of the second act, basically until they leave for Alcatraz.

[Shep]
Yes.

[Thomas]
So he could have a work computer that he has in the dressing room, and he can log in that way.

[Shep]
Right. But it’s also 20 years old.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
Old CRT monitor. So they track the assistant down. He’s staying at some hotel.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
So they try his apartment. That doesn’t work. They tried the hotel. He’s already gone. We have several dead ends. Until the urchin figures out that it’s Alcatraz. Then they go to Alcatraz.

[Thomas]
He has to put something together. Like, they don’t actually say his name. The guards, the security guards, didn’t actually say the magician’s name. They used some code name, or they called him by some slang name.

[Shep]
Oh, she uses his old nickname.

[Emily]
Yeah, I was just gonna say that.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
Because the sheik grew up watching his old routine where he went by the old stage name, and so that’s who he wants to come and do the show. And so later, the street urchin puts two and two together and is like, “Oh, it’s you. You’re who they were talking about.”

[Shep]
Are the assistant and the magician the same height?

[Thomas]
They have to be roughly the same. If you were the magician, you would want an assistant who looks roughly like you.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Okay.

[Thomas]
Your build, so that you can do those kind of fake out things for the audience.

[Shep]
So we can’t have a lot of jokes about people saying, “I thought you’d be taller.”

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
Okay. Because you’re right. That would make sense to be roughly the same body shape for tricks.

[Thomas]
Yeah. All right. I think that makes a much stronger second act. It’s maybe not as full as it could or should be, but it definitely shows them doing things, being intelligent, and attempting to accomplish their basic goals in a way that is logical.

[Shep]
Yeah. I’m trying to think of a scene that you could put in there where the street kid is doing something, and so you have a moment of time between the magician and the female magician so that they could talk about old times, whatever. Put some backstory there.

[Thomas]
Yeah. There’s maybe a point in time where the street urchin has to go talk to one of his contacts or something and “You guys can’t come. He’s very suspicious,” whatever it is.

[Shep]
Yeah. “No Narcs, no old people.”

[Thomas]
Yeah. So they just have to kind of, like, wait on a bench somewhere and talk.

[Shep]
Yeah. Do they get back together at the end? Is this a rom-com?

[Emily]
No.

[Shep]
Are we doing another rom-com?

[Emily]
No! She just likes him as a fellow human being.

[Shep]
I’m just saying, it’s a Hollywood movie, and it’s a male and female lead.

[Emily]
Subvert expectations.

[Thomas]
Look, we know that that’s going to be a studio note, so we’ll write it without it, and then when the studio gets their hands on it, they’ll make it into a romance because you have to do that.

[Emily]
Oh, yeah.

[Shep]
Okay. I guess if you’re paying us.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
We’ll make a rom-com. Begrudgingly.

[Thomas]
Does the end does he swoop her- after he gets his face back, or he gets his new face on? He swoops her up and gives her a big kiss. She goes, “What is that for?” He’s like, “Just making sure they still work.”

[Emily]
Oh, my god. That’s the worst one I’ve ever heard.

[Shep]
So they go to the party on Alcatraz. The assistant steals the stuff and swaps faces back with the magician. In fairly short order.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
The magician gets captured for being a thief. They call the cops. While they’re waiting for the cops to arrive, the magician and his former assistant escape. I don’t think the urchin gets captured with them.

[Emily]
No, because he’s sly.

[Shep]
They’re not together at the party.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Right. So they escape from Alcatraz, and then what? That’s when they go to the bank to get the faces?

[Thomas]
I think first they go to some other location to work out what is their plan.

[Emily]
Has the street urchin stolen the handkerchief back by this point and they just don’t know yet?

[Thomas]
No, I think that’s part of the third act plan.

[Emily]
Okay.

[Thomas]
How are they going to track him down? If I’m the assistant and I have finished my mission, what am I going to do? I’m going to get the hell out of the country. Right? He’s got to go to his fence. He has to get paid for all the stuff because he can’t use the magician’s credit cards anymore. He doesn’t look like the magician.

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
And he can’t travel as the magician.

[Shep]
Right. He’s done with the magician. He puts the face back on, throws him his phone in his wallet. He’s like, “See ya. See ya never.”

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
And takes off.

[Thomas]
So, yeah, what’s his plan? Because if they need to track him down, that’s going to be tricky.

[Shep]
Yes.

[Emily]
Is this the point where the kid goes to talk to his buddy because he knows all the fences and that’s when they can have their exposition?

[Shep]
Ah. So they’re having their talk after the lowest low.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
So not before.

[Thomas]
Oh, yeah. That’s good, because then they can actually look at each other. You can get a lot better emotive expressions and whatnot.

[Emily]
Well, yeah.

[Shep]
Right.

[Emily]
And she’s going to be more-

[Thomas]
“There’s the face I haven’t seen in a decade.”

[Emily]
Yeah, maybe. Seeing him actually seeing his face makes her, like, nostalgic until she starts kind of talking about things.

[Shep]
So that’s when the street kid is off finding out who’s fencing large ticket items. That’s their next clue.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
They go to the fence. What can the fence tell them?

[Emily]
When and where he’s meeting him?

[Thomas]
So the other fence, it doesn’t really matter who it is. He’s just some guy who scurries off at the first sign of trouble or they never make it to- The assistant doesn’t know who the fence lit is, what he looks like.

[Emily]
Right.

[Thomas]
He’s never seen him in person. He could look like anyone. So the magician can go get his booklet of faces, pretend to be the fence.

[Shep]
He can’t put the faces on yet. He doesn’t have the handkerchief.

[Thomas]
Ah right. Damn.

[Shep]
Not having the handkerchief is really limiting.

[Thomas]
The street urchin could pretend to be the fence.

[Shep]
Yes.

[Thomas]
Depending how old he is. If he’s too young, then no, but.

[Emily]
He could be like, 15-16.

[Shep]
Mmm.

[Emily]
So he could pass for older.

[Thomas]
He could be in his twenties and be a street urchin. Maybe he’s just some down on his luck guy. Maybe he’s just a street performer. He doesn’t live on the street. He has an apartment. Everyone just assumes he’s homeless. He’s like, “I have an apartment.” That’s where they go after they-

[Shep]
Right. They can’t go to the theater.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
They can’t go to her apartment because she used to be his assistant. So, like, she’s being investigated as well. They have to go to the street urchin’s place.

[Thomas]
Right. It’s in Oakland, though.

[Shep]
So yeah. He could be young. It doesn’t matter.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Because if the assistant complains like, “Oh, you’re younger than I thought,” and it’s like, “Then-“

[Thomas]
“Look, do you want the money or not?”

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
The other thing is that we’ve already established (maybe) that the woman is good with theater makeup. She could make him up to be older looking.

[Emily]
Yeah. Now I just imagine him being twelve and then she does makeup and he looks like he’s 35, and they just have a whole other actor playing him.

[Thomas]
Ryan Reynolds shows up to play him.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
Yes.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
You got to have that Ryan Reynolds cameo because it’s 2023 and that’s what all movies have.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Emily]
He’s a very good agent.

[Shep]
Yes.

[Thomas]
Could totally see Ryan Reynolds being like, “Do you want the money or not?”

[Shep]
A sassy Ryan Reynolds?

[Thomas]
What?

[Shep]
Let me try and picture it.

[Thomas]
All right. That’s good. I like that. So does it all happen right there? Have they captured the real fence and they have him tied up somewhere?

[Shep]
Mesmerized in the back room.

[Thomas]
Yeah, right.

[Shep]
And they’re having him answer questions like, the street kids got an earpiece in.

[Thomas]
Yeah, that’s good.

[Shep]
The assistant has, like, some code word or something, because he’s paranoid.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
But there’s a delay. There’s a delay between when he says it and then the-

[Thomas]
That’s why you need that Ryan Reynolds wit, to-

[Shep]
Yes. To fill in the gap.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
So is this where they steal the handkerchief back or not?

[Emily]
Yes.

[Thomas]
Yes, this absolutely must be. They’ve got the urchin and the assistant together. This must be where he steals the handkerchief.

[Shep]
Okay. But not the face.

[Thomas]
No, because we want the magician to steal the face.

[Shep]
Right.

[Thomas]
Oh, yeah, they can’t. He has to get the handkerchief before they can take the face off of the magician. So those are two separate meetings. So he meets with the quote, unquote “fence”, who gives him a quote. “I have to see what you have to give you a quote. Okay, I’ll get the money, meet back here,” or meet whatever in an hour. Whatever it is, there’s an excuse for him to leave and come back with the face.

[Shep]
Okay. If I’m the assistant, I want to minimize risk.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
I’m not going to come back to this location.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
I’ve already been here once.

[Thomas]
This location is burned.

[Shep]
Yes. So we can meet at the airport because he’s leaving the country immediately. We’ll do the handoff there.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Shep]
“You have the material. You hand it to me, you get the money.”

[Thomas]
Right. We’ll do. In the parking garage or something.

[Shep]
Right. Oh, not the parking garage. They’ll do it inside the airport. Past security.

[Thomas]
Where all the cameras are?

[Shep]
Past security in the bathroom.

[Thomas]
Wait, there’s a huge problem here, which is that anything they bring through security is going to get scanned by TSA. You can’t bring millions of dollars through TSA. You can’t bring a whole bunch of artifacts or whatever that the police are looking for. So is there another semi-secure location but where they don’t x-ray all of your bags? Could just be a relatively public location.

[Emily]
BART station?

[Thomas]
So when I was in San Francisco recently, I was visiting a friend of mine, and I took the BART back from San Francisco into Oakland, and it was, like, 10:30 at night or something. And I was in this one BART station that was underground, and it had these, like, super tall ceilings, and I was literally the only person there. It was this bizarre liminal space.

[Shep]
That sounds like a great filming location.

[Thomas]
It was amazing, is what I’m saying. Like, the mood was totally weird.

[Emily]
Sounds like a good spot for a handoff.

[Shep]
Oh, hand off. Okay. Yeah, yeah.

[Emily]
I thought that immediately after I said it out loud.

[Thomas]
So it could be something like that. I mean, yeah, it could be as simple as, like, “Meet me at this BART station at (whatever time),” and the plan is to bring identical bags. Maybe he even gives him a bag. He’s like, “Put the money in this bag.” And so they’re going to just swap bags in the classic movie style. So how does the face swap actually happen? So the magician disguised as Ryan Reynolds goes down?

[Shep]
Not Ryan Reynolds. One of the other faces he has in the briefcase. He’s got the handkerchief. He can be any of these faces. It’ll be someone he’s never seen.

[Thomas]
But if I’m the assistant, I only want to deal with the person I’ve spoken with previously. I don’t trust anybody else.

[Shep]
Look, I’m saying we can’t get Ryan Reynolds for two days. We can get him for one day. So he can be at the first scene or the second scene. They’re not going to make eye contact. They’re not going to acknowledge each other. You know who it is? It’s the person with the identical bag. The fence isn’t going to take the risk either.

[Thomas]
Yeah, it’s a security guy that he works with. Say, “I’m not carrying $10 million around. That’s what I hire this guy for.”

[Shep]
Yeah. Who else does really good cameos?

[Emily]
Danny Trejo.

[Shep]
Yes.

[Thomas]
And then that’s when he comes back up after he’s swapped the face. And she’s like, “I’ve always liked Ricardo.” And he’s like, “I don’t understand why you like this face.”

[Shep]
You have Danny Trejo saying that?

[Thomas]
Yes. I don’t know. It just feels like if you switch out, who it’s going to be if I’m the assistant, I don’t like that. But I guess that’s the “Do you want the money line.” Right? So also, if I’m the assistant, I want to see the money. I’m not going to hand over five or ten or whatever million dollars’ worth of stuff until I see that the case is full of money. So how do we get away with that? Is that the moment where they know he’s going to be distracted? So that’s when the handkerchief comes out. And-

[Emily]
Seems logical to me.

[Shep]
So I don’t want the assistant to know that his face has been swapped.

[Thomas]
How are you going to do it without him knowing, though?

[Shep]
The lights go out briefly.

[Emily]
He doesn’t feel the handkerchief on his face.

[Thomas]
Right?

[Shep]
Nah, magician’s got a light touch. I mean, how else did he steal this briefcase full of faces one at a time?

[Emily]
Where did the faces come from?

[Shep]
Oh, he’s a serial killer. Did I not mention that? This is the serial killer one. So it’s like, the assistant gets his bag of money, he opens it up a little bit, he sees there’s money in it, like, “Great, our business is concluded. Let’s never see each other again.” And the magician is like, “Agreed,” and leaves. At what point does the assistant realize that he’s got the wrong face on? The police show up. The police show up and tackle him to the ground and arrest him. And they are the ones that open up the bag fully because they’re looking for the stolen goods. So what’s actually in the bag? I was going to say newspaper, but newspapers aren’t a thing anymore.

[Emily]
I think it would be funny if he was like, “Who has newspapers?”

[Thomas]
Yeah. This street urchin is making fun of the magicians. Like, “We got to fill it with newspapers.” And he’s like, “Where are you going to get newspapers? It’s 2023.”

[Shep]
See, this is a problem for the writers. You need time to think of something funny that you would put in the bag that you could establish earlier in the movie.

[Thomas]
I saw a magic trick once where the guy has a bunch of envelopes and he gets $100 or something like that, and he puts it in one of the envelopes, and in all the other envelopes are fake hundred-dollar bills with his face on them. And so the trick is that you can never pick the one with the $100 bill in it. He’s holding it in such a way, like, he shifts them around in such a way. I don’t know. Anyway, so what you get at the end is this fake hundred-dollar bill with his face on it. That’s like, “Hey, congratulations. You’ve participated in the trick, right, and you got fooled.” Well, he’s got to order a case of these things. He’s handing one of these out every night. So he’s got just a big case of these fake hundreds or whatever. And so that’s what it is. He goes to the warehouse and gets those out. I don’t know. And, yeah, maybe they put a few real hundreds on top to make it look real. I don’t know.

[Shep]
So when the police capture him, he looks like the magician, and he has a duffel bag full of $100 bills with his own face on them.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
Yeah.

[Shep]
What do they think his plan is?

[Thomas]
Doesn’t matter what they think his plan is.

[Shep]
Yeah. So then the trio walk off into the sunset, end of movie.

[Thomas]
How does the face swap happen?

[Shep]
We don’t see it because it’s magic. We don’t see him swap the duffel bags. We don’t see him, whatever. It’s the end of the movie. He’s got to have some secrets.

[Thomas]
It’s super crucial!

[Shep]
I’m saying you have the lights go out very briefly.

[Thomas]
That’s such a coincidence, Shep.

[Shep]
It’s not a coincidence because they’re the ones that are turning the lights off.

[Thomas]
They’re just breaking into the BART Station mechanical room.

[Shep]
She’s got shadow magic. She’s just covering the bulbs with shadows temporarily. We established that earlier.

[Thomas]
Why do you want him to not know? Why are you gunning so hard for the assistant not to know his face has been swapped?

[Shep]
So that he doesn’t run when the police show up. I want it to be a surprise to him and also potentially the audience if we’re seeing him from behind. Oh, if they’re similarly dressed, and we see the police come in and tackle a guy with a duffel bag, and we see that it’s the magician. We might panic from him and go, “Oh, no, something has gone horribly wrong. They were about to get away with it, or they’re about to do whatever.”

[Thomas]
So I think you could, this doesn’t explain how the switch happens without the guy noticing, but you could do the whole thing of, like, it plays out, and then once we see the outcome, it plays out again with more detail. Like, “How did you do it?”

[Shep]
Oh, the trio is asking him.

[Emily]
The kid. The kid’s asking.

[Shep]
Okay.

[Thomas]
Yeah.

[Emily]
She knows because she knows his secrets.

[Thomas]
Right.

[Shep]
Yeah.

[Thomas]
Because she had to help. Yeah.

[Shep]
Right.

[Emily]
It’s like, “It’s obvious.” And he’s like, “How is it obvious?”

[Shep]
“Would you like to learn magic?” That’s when he brings him on as his assistant. I don’t think you explain it. Don’t explain it. Leave it as a mystery and maybe open the sequel.

[Thomas]
I like that. Because then we use the street urchin as the audience surrogate in that case of “How did you do it?”

[Shep]
Yes.

[Thomas]
And he’s like, “Oh, magic.” Works for me.

[Shep]
Great. I think that’s everything.

[Thomas]
I think so, too.

[Emily]
I think we’re good.

[Thomas]
Well, we all seem to like it, but we’d love to hear your thoughts on today’s episode about a handkerchief. Was it as slick as snot, or was it not anything to sneeze at?

[Shep]
Blech.

[Thomas]
Let us know- Yeah, that one’s a little gross, I’ll grant you that. Let us know by leaving a comment on our website, reaching out on social media, or sending us an email. Links to all of those can be found at AlmostPlausible.com We’d love to hear your idea for an ordinary object we could turn into a movie. Get in touch and let us know what you have in mind by visiting AlmostPlausible.com and clicking on Contact. Emily, Shep, and I look forward to seeing you again on the next episode of Almost Plausible.

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