Don't Encourage Us

Don't Encourage Us

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Don't Encourage Us episodes

  • Why Are Orcas Sinking Boats? And Other Headlines to Inspire Your Next Script

    Killer whales are sinking boats off the coast of Spain and the scientific theory behind it raises real questions about animal intelligence, trauma, and socially transmitted behavior. We break down the research, then turn to the MCU box office data that reveals why sequencing matters more than individual film quality. Also in this episode: Pablo Escobar's hippos are now an invasive population of 200+ in Colombia. CRISPR gene editing heads to FDA review for sickle cell treatment. Modified mosquitoes dropped dengue by 97% in three Colombian cities. And a FedEx truck piracy trend becomes a real-time screenplay pitch.

    Orcas are attacking boats, but why?

    Genetically modified mosquitos attack...Dengue

    Humans begin re-writing billions of years of evolution

    Hungry, Hungry Hippos invade Colombia

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    Listen to all the music we've discussed in every episode so far on our Encouraged Grooves playlist on YouTube and Spotify and find your next favorite song.

    1 hr
  • Paradise (2023): Zero Science, and Everyone Wins Except the Innocent

    Topics discussed:

    • Paradise (2023): the case that this is fantasy, not science fiction and why that matters so much
    • The missing villain backstory: what one or two scenes could have fixed
    • Why the ending is actually a win for everyone except the one innocent character
    • The underdeveloped rebel group problem (again — see also: The Last of Us)
    • Science fiction vs. fantasy: where's the line and does Paradise cross it?
    • What we'd do with the IP: sequel series, age-swapping identity twists, and why this works better as a short film
    • The technology question: could any real science ground this premise?
    • Ballerina (2023): Korean revenge thriller recommendation
    • The Call (2020): another strong film from the same director

      • Working with Jigsaw

      Ballerina (2023)

      The Call (2020)

      Paradise (2023)

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      Listen to all the music we've discussed in every episode so far on our Encouraged Grooves playlist on YouTube and Spotify and find your next favorite song.

      47 min
    • 130 Years of Film Technology: What Filmmakers Get Wrong About Their Audience

      Topics discussed:

      • How each major film technology changed audience psychology, not just production quality
      • Why drone shots consistently break immersion — and what alternatives do better
      • The 30-year cycle of 3D: why it keeps dying and returning (1920s, 1950s, 1980s, 2010s)
      • Steadicam vs. shaky cam: flying vs. running and what each does to the viewer's brain
      • TikTok editing and how short-form platforms are retraining how audiences process narrative gaps
      • Letting a scene breathe: why 1970s pacing worked differently than modern cutting
      • The Mona Lisa question: should old art be restored to its original state?
      • Why Smell-O-Vision failed and 4DX is worse
      • Technicolor, synchronized sound, widescreen, CGI, motion capture — what each actually changed
      • Hitchcock's storyboarding vs. Robert Rodriguez's one-man production model
      • The Covenant (2023) review: atmosphere, cinematography, and restraint in war films

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        Listen to all the music we've discussed in every episode so far on our Encouraged Grooves playlist on YouTube and Spotify and find your next favorite song.

        1 hr 25 min
      • Story Break: Ruff Love or Part-time Dog Stalker - Strategic Format Selection

        A romantic comedy about a woman who's more in love with her ex-boyfriend's dog than the guy himself. Stalking ensues. Then somehow, things get deeper — and darker — when the whole concept pivots into a Pixar-style animated film about a dog navigating its owners' divorce.

        Actor Matt Baughman is back, and he's responsible for blowing up the original pitch and rebuilding it into something better. The guys work through both versions in real time: fleshing out characters, debating endings, pitching casting (including where Pete Davidson does and does not belong), and figuring out how to make a kids' movie about divorce that doesn't destroy everyone emotionally.

        This episode covers:

        • A tribute to Matthew Perry and his influence on comedic timing
        • The original rom-com pitch: Ruff Love — a dog-stalking story with a lot of heart
        • Why the Pixar version might be the better movie (sorry)
        • Casting both films, ft. Sam Rockwell, Timothée Chalamet, and a very contentious Pete Davidson debate
        • How to show a dog's POV without making the audience sit through an hour of "woof"
        • Listener questions: Which version do you prefer? Who would you cast?

          • Connect with Matt Baughman: Instagram: @MattyBaughs

          Matt Baughman

          Landless Theater

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          Listen to all the music we've discussed in every episode so far on our Encouraged Grooves playlist on YouTube and Spotify and find your next favorite song.

          1 hr 12 min
        • Pontypool (2008): What Happens When Language Becomes a Virus?

          Topics:

          • Pontypool (2008): the Canadian horror film where understanding English words activates a virus
          • The host split: surreal art film about the fragility of sanity vs. a thriller that breaks its own spell
          • Not a zombie film: the virus attacks comprehension itself — perception is the vulnerability
          • The cure scene: forcing someone to challenge their understanding of a word resets the virus in the film — but not in the audio drama
          • 10 Cloverfield Lane comparison: confinement + unreliable information as the real engine, external threat secondary
          • Would this work better as audio? The entire film takes place in one room — everything important is spoken or heard
          • The reveal problem: grounded War of the Worlds setup followed by a fantasy explanation — does that shift work?
          • The Sunshine Chopper: fake helicopter sound effects as a metaphor for the film's relationship with reality
          • Grant Mazzy as protagonist: disillusioned, alcoholic, depressed — the perfect character to lose his grip on language
          • The BBC interview scene: misinformation as theme, not plot device
          • The post-credit scene: Sin City aesthetic, completely disconnected from the film, later spun into a separate movie
          • Film vs. audio drama vs. novel: three versions of the same concept with different endings
          • Color grading and lighting: how a sub-$1M film creates atmosphere through visual tone
          • The doctor as weak link: a difficult character that the actor and direction didn't land
          • Bodies (Netflix): time travel show that abandons its own causality rules
          • Jack Reacher novel #1: first-person tactical mind as narrative hook
          • Expeditionary Force Book 10: RC Bray performance and series culmination

            • Links:

            • Watch Pontypool free here
            • Listen to the official Pontypool audio drama here
            • And then read the Tony Burgess novel: Pontypool Changes Everything

              •  

              Reach the show at [email protected]
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              https://linktr.ee/dontencourageus

              Listen to all the music we've discussed in every episode so far on our Encouraged Grooves playlist on YouTube and Spotify and find your next favorite song.

              50 min
            • Threshold (2005): 'Transitional Fossil' Between Episodic and Serialized Sci-Fi

              Topics discussed:

              • Threshold (2005): CBS sci-fi series, 13 episodes, canceled mid-run — autopsy of what went wrong
              • The transitional fossil problem: episodic format vs. serialized storytelling fighting in every episode
              • Why the first few episodes' race-against-time momentum dies when CBS's episodic instincts take over
              • The bioforming concept: aliens that don't invade but transform Earth's life into their own via signal
              • Signal vectors: sound, video, biological substrates — nearly impossible to contain
              • The planned arc: Threshold → Foothold → Stranglehold (first contact → occupation → resistance)
              • Post-9/11 vulnerability: the show systematically hits every American fear (GMOs, power grid, pandemics, water supply)
              • The Peter Dinklage controlled experiment: same archetype in Threshold vs. Game of Thrones, wildly different results
              • Writing as the variable: alluding to vices vs. showing them is the difference between flat and legendary
              • The infected investigators: why the government wouldn't replace compromised team members (and should have)
              • Carla Gugino as Molly: contingency analyst as protagonist — an underused character type
              • Why Netflix has no network-defining show: algorithmic personalization kills shared cultural experience
              • NBC Thursdays vs. Netflix homepage: the death of "water cooler TV"
              • Mindhunter's cancellation as a case study in data-driven decisions missing long-term brand value
              • Chase the fun vs. behavioral psychology: when engagement metrics don't measure actual enjoyment
              • Wheel of Time Season 2: too many books crammed into too few episodes
              • What a modern reboot would need: update the vulnerabilities, keep the bioforming, serialize fully

                • Watch all 13 episodes of Threshold free on YouTube.

                 

                 

                Reach the show at [email protected]
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                Listen to all the music we've discussed in every episode so far on our Encouraged Grooves playlist on YouTube and Spotify and find your next favorite song.

                1 hr 6 min
              • The Billions Sitting in Abandoned IP: Devil's Advocate & Conspiracy Theory

                Topics discussed:

                • Conspiracy Theory (1997): developing it as a romance-conspiracy streaming series
                • The Gibson/Roberts dynamic: why their complementary strengths made the romance work
                • Season structure: each season wraps 2-3 real conspiracies into one narrative arc
                • Jerry Fletcher's memory reconstruction: Memento-style discovery of his own erased past
                • Devil's Advocate (1997): the double-game series concept
                • Kevin Lomax remembers the reset and plays against the devil — or does the devil know?
                • Corrupted characters as double agents: who serves the devil, who's undermining him, who's just a bad person?
                • The wife character: why she needs more development for a series than the film gave her
                • Paradise Lost and literary references as mythology backbone
                • Casting challenge: both properties require exceptional lead actors to work
                • The tone question: Devil's Advocate needs to stay adult, dirty, HBO/Showtime register
                • The Museum of Failure: Monoski, Arch Deluxe, Crystal Pepsi, and what they teach about IP
                • Quick IP evaluations: Alf, Thundarr the Barbarian, Greatest American Hero, Xanth, V, Pitch Black
                • What makes a dormant IP worth reviving: universal core concept + modern relevance

                  • Reach the show at [email protected]
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                  https://linktr.ee/dontencourageus

                  Listen to all the music we've discussed in every episode so far on our Encouraged Grooves playlist on YouTube and Spotify and find your next favorite song.

                  51 min
                • Rocket League: What "Chase the Fun" Teaches About Building Products That Last

                  Topics discussed:

                  • "Chase the fun" as a development philosophy: how following what felt good to play shaped every major design decision
                  • The failed first attempt: Supersonic Acrobatic Rocket-Powered Battle Cars and what Psyonix learned from it
                  • From Unreal Tournament 2004 to Rocket League: the vehicle coding lineage
                  • Why accessible entry plus deep skill ceiling creates lasting games
                  • Cross-platform play: why only Rocket League and Fortnite pulled it off and what they have in common
                  • The free release strategy on PS Plus and how it built critical mass
                  • Blizzard, Valve, and the creative decay of major game studios
                  • What a Rocket League 2 could look like — and whether "chase the fun" can work twice

                    • Guest: Mark Murray

                    Reach the show at [email protected]
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                    https://linktr.ee/dontencourageus

                    Listen to all the music we've discussed in every episode so far on our Encouraged Grooves playlist on YouTube and Spotify and find your next favorite song.

                    39 min
                  • Occult (2009): How a J-Horror Film Uses Genre Confusion as a Weapon

                    Topics discussed:

                    • Genre ambiguity as narrative design: the film holds alien, psychic, mystical, and mythological explanations open simultaneously for an hour
                    • The Eno performance: oscillating between pity and menace without resolution until the final act
                    • Found footage as resource management: how micro-budget constraints become creative advantages
                    • Kiyoshi Kurosawa cameo: the Pulse director plays himself as a symbologist — J-horror community connections
                    • The director casting himself: adding realism by making the documentary crew real filmmakers
                    • Automatic writing / psychography: the concept and its use in Project Stargate
                    • The leech god mythology: Hiruko, the limbless offspring of two gods in Japanese mythology
                    • The ending: definitive resolution vs. ambiguity — why showing everything (badly) was the wrong call
                    • The sound design problem: off-key violin that destroys tension instead of building it
                    • The Indiana Jones detour: why Eno sees Kingdom of the Crystal Skull as confirmation of his mission
                    • Net cafe refugees: Japan's cyber homeless who live in 24-hour manga cafes
                    • COVID's impact on the cyber homeless: pushed from cafes into relief lines
                    • Micro-budget filmmaking inspiration: why this film makes you think you could make a movie
                    • Wheel of Time Season 2: too much exposition, not enough momentum
                    • The Terminal List: Chris Pratt's slow-build thriller that keeps escalating
                    • Stephen Merchant's Outlaws: the best show nobody's heard of
                    • Scott Bakula's post-Quantum Leap career that nobody noticed

                      • Watch Occult (2009) here

                      Reach the show at [email protected]
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                      https://linktr.ee/dontencourageus

                      Listen to all the music we've discussed in every episode so far on our Encouraged Grooves playlist on YouTube and Spotify and find your next favorite song.

                      1 hr 7 min
                    • Doctor Sleep: How Do You Write A Sequel To Incompatible Versions of The Shining?

                      Three versions of The Shining compared: Kubrick's 1980 film, King's novel, and the 1997 ABC miniseries — plus Doctor Sleep (2019) as a sequel to all of them.

                      Topics discussed:

                      • The sequel architecture problem: how Doctor Sleep reconciles two incompatible source versions
                      • Dan gets Jack's novel ending: self-sacrifice by destroying the hotel, transferred across generations
                      • Steam vs. Shine vs. Soul: working through the taxonomy of Doctor Sleep's mythology
                      • "The hotel shines too" — the miniseries line that reframes everything about the Overlook
                      • Why the True Knot is starving: modern technology dulling humanity's collective spirit
                      • Pain purifies steam because it's the opposite of passive consumption
                      • The True Knot's arrogance: millennia of preying on children, never encountering a developed adult
                      • Abra's tactical brilliance: the double ability scene (possession + telekinesis simultaneously)
                      • Rebecca De Mornay in the 1997 miniseries: why her version of Wendy is the hero, not the victim
                      • Kubrick's disproportionate hotel sets and atmospheric horror vs. the miniseries' normal hotel
                      • The topiary hedge animals: works in your imagination, fails on screen
                      • The missing years: Danny from traumatized child to alcoholic adult — what's in that gap
                      • Mike Flanagan as director: Oculus, Gerald's Game, and interpreting "unfilmable" King material
                      • Billy as the moral center: why a character would drive to another state to dig up bodies and shoot people
                      • The fan service debate: does returning to the Overlook interrupt the film's flow?
                      • What to do with this IP next: the spirit ecosystem concept

                        • Links:

                        • Check out trailers for The Shining (1980), The Shining TV mini-series (1997), and Doctor Sleep (2019)
                        • You can watch The Shining mini-series on the Internet Archive now.

                          •  

                          Reach the show at [email protected]
                          Stop by and discourage us on Instagram, X, TikTok, Discord, YouTube, and Threads

                          https://linktr.ee/dontencourageus

                          Listen to all the music we've discussed in every episode so far on our Encouraged Grooves playlist on YouTube and Spotify and find your next favorite song.

                          1 hr 26 min

                        About Don't Encourage Us

                        From the publisher's feed

                        Most people watch a movie. We use it to generate new ideas.