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Don't Encourage Us
Don't Encourage Us episodes
- Story Break: The Billionaire Slayer - One Premise, Four Genres
A private jet pilot who flies the ultra-wealthy has a side gig: killing billionaires. That's the pitch. The question is — what kind of story does it become?
In this Story Break, the hosts take one provocative concept and run it through four completely different genre frameworks, exposing how the same premise produces radically different stories depending on which creative decisions you make.
The four versions they build:
- The psychological unraveling — a controlled, professional pilot who starts breaking down, killing without understanding why, and losing the battle between who he was and who he's becoming. Themes of control, addiction, and psychosis.
- The corporate espionage thriller — a trained ex-military operative hired to take out specific targets, bugging the cabin, blackmailing passengers, and working toward a hidden endgame. Phone Booth meets Flight.
- The buddy dynamic — a pilot losing his mind paired with a co-pilot who has a secret agenda and special forces skills. Neither one is honest about who they are. Training Day at 30,000 feet.
- The Usual Suspects comedy — he thinks he's covering up a murder, but everyone already knows and they're all secretly helping him get away with it because the victim was universally hated. The reveal: it takes a village.
Also covered:
- Why "he doesn't know why he does it" is a harder story to tell — and how to make the audience tolerate a withheld motivation
- The Coen Brothers' technique of writing characters into corners to force unexpected plot turns
- When to shift the protagonist mid-story — and whether the stewardess, the investigator, or the co-pilot should take over
- How the same concept works as a film, a limited series, or a short — and what changes structurally in each format
Reach the show at [email protected]
Stop by and discourage us on Instagram, X, TikTok, Discord, YouTube, and Threadshttps://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.
58 min - Story Break: A Sitcom About a Sitcom — When the Character Outperforms the Person
We take a one-line concept and build it into a full series pitch over 45 minutes — characters, backstory, running gags, episode ideas, romance, soundtrack, and the format debate that could take it from web series to HBO.
In this episode:
- The pitch: a sitcom about a sitcom — where the "dad" chases his castmates around set trying to be their actual father
- How a documentary-style format (think The Office meets Modern Family) could make this work
- The backstory: a cancelled child star with three ex-wives, no money, and a tiny apartment
- Why one cast member absolutely has to be a Scientologist — non-negotiable
- The pregnant actress whose contract says she must appear in every episode (and the increasingly absurd ways they hide it)
- Episode ideas: a social media fail, a rival actor trying to Ashton Kutcher him, a stolen dog from a fake "Taken" sequel
- Adding romance: an ex-wife visits the same week a new love interest is cast
- Music picks for the show — montage songs, mood pieces, and scene-setting tracks
- The great debate: light sitcom, dark comedy, movie, mini-series, or web series?
Timestamps:
- 0:00 — Introduction
- 2:52 — The pitch: a sitcom about a sitcom
- 7:12 — Building out plot, characters, and backstory
- 23:22 — Running gags, episode ideas, and naming the show
- 31:12 — Music picks and the romance subplot
Check out the Spotify Playlist for this episode here: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0QTp8GEfcWhjAijcj1U2rL?si=e2a80c0e328a4836
Reach the show at [email protected]
Stop by and discourage us on Instagram, X, TikTok, Discord, YouTube, and Threadshttps://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.
47 min - The Adam Project (2022) + The 'Is It Cake' Algorithm Trap
Is The Adam Project a kid's movie wearing a Ryan Reynolds costume? We dig in.
In this episode:
- How Ryan Reynolds' casting rewrote the original script and broke the story
- Why the kid (Walker Scobell) starts as the hero and gets sidelined by his own movie
- The DNA-locked spaceship that can't tell the difference between a 10-year-old and an adult
- Time travel logic: why this movie waves its hand and hopes you're distracted by lasers
- Mark Ruffalo as "the dad who should be a villain but isn't" and why that casting backfired
- What a better sequel could look like (and why it would have to kill Ryan Reynolds first)
- Detour: Is It Cake, Too Hot To Handle, and the death of the prestige Netflix algorithm
Timestamps:
- 0:00 — The Adam Project's vanilla plot
- 5:53 — Why the film is an emotional flatline
- 19:37 — Time travel logic flaws
- 25:49 — The spaceship DNA problem
- 31:18 — Rewriting the ending: why erasing the plot never works
- 34:42 — Detour: Is It Cake and the Netflix algorithm trap
- 39:15 — Too Hot To Handle and the death of prestige Netflix
Reach the show at [email protected]
Stop by and discourage us on Instagram, X, TikTok, Discord, YouTube, and Threadshttps://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.
43 min - The Adam Project (2022) Deep Dive + The 'Is It Cake' Algorithm Trap
Is The Adam Project a kid's movie wearing a Ryan Reynolds costume? We dig in.
In this episode:
- How Ryan Reynolds' casting rewrote the original script and broke the story
- Why the kid (Walker Scobell) starts as the hero and gets sidelined by his own movie
- The DNA-locked spaceship that can't tell the difference between a 10-year-old and an adult
- Time travel logic: why this movie waves its hand and hopes you're distracted by lasers
- Mark Ruffalo as "the dad who should be a villain but isn't" and why that casting backfired
- What a better sequel could look like (and why it would have to kill Ryan Reynolds first)
- Detour: Is It Cake, Too Hot To Handle, and the death of the prestige Netflix algorithm
Timestamps:
- 0:00 — The Adam Project's vanilla plot
- 5:53 — Why the film is an emotional flatline
- 19:37 — Time travel logic flaws
- 25:49 — The spaceship DNA problem
- 31:18 — Rewriting the ending: why erasing the plot never works
- 34:42 — Detour: Is It Cake and the Netflix algorithm trap
- 39:15 — Too Hot To Handle and the death of prestige Netflix
Reach the pod at [email protected]
Stop by and discourage us on Instagram, X, TikTok, Discord, YouTube, and Threadshttps://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.
43 min - Brightburn (2019) Deep Dive: Evil Superman & Why a Great Concept Failed
In This Deep-Dive Analysis, We Deconstruct the Absurdity:
- The World's Worst Mother: Why Mom’s Level 10 Delusion was the single most unbelievable and narratively convenient element, and how her character was sacrificed because the script writers couldn't find a logical way to end her arc.
- Robot vs. Villain: The essential difference between Brandon Breyer (a one-note Terminator who chews forks) and the true, sneaky genius of Damien in The Omen.
- The James Gunn Connection: Was Brightburn a "Hollywood Jail" project?
- Breaking the Universe: We dissect the plot holes that expose the film's shaky foundation, including the apparent complete and total lack of forensics in the Brightburn universe (Seriously, how did the police rule a car dropped 30 feet from the sky as a "deer accident"?).
- Logic Failure: Plus, the uncle's baffling and unmotivated decision to flee the scene rather than check on his wife.
Want More Than a Movie Review? We also took an essential detour into business innovation and why terrible product launches (like New Coke and Tab) teach us valuable lessons about creativity and audience testing.
Check out Brightburn (2019) on Netflix and streaming platforms everywhere.
Learn more about the business analysis that kicks off the episode: Make Elephants Fly: How Radical Innovation is Remaking the World is available here: www.foundersspace.com/make-elephants-fly
Reach the show at [email protected]
Stop by and discourage us on Instagram, X, TikTok, Discord, YouTube, and Threadshttps://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 1 min - Lights Out (2016) Explained: Is the Creature a Manifestation of Depression?
Is the creature in Lights Out a ghost that hides in the dark or is it something much more unsettling? Creative professional Steve Franco joins to dig into what makes this 2016 horror film more than a simple monster movie.
In this episode:
- Why a paper-thin concept became a surprisingly layered film
- The mental illness angle: is the creature a physical manifestation of depression?
- The vampire ghost theory and why it holds up
- What a Lights Out prequel or sequel universe could look like
- The muzzle flash scene and why it's one of the smarter horror moments of the decade
Timestamps:
- 2:28 — Lights Out film analysis begins
- 5:01 — The ghost in darkness: breaking down the core concept
- 12:00 — Unraveling what the creature actually is
- 22:58 — Where a sequel or prequel could go
- 35:33 — Concluding reflections
Check out the 3 min Swedish short film that started it all. Lights Out - Who's There (2013) on Vimeo
Reach the show at [email protected]
Stop by and discourage us on Instagram, X, TikTok, Discord, YouTube, and Threadshttps://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.
41 min
About Don't Encourage Us
From the publisher's feed
Most people watch a movie. We use it to generate new ideas.
Don’t Encourage Us takes films and TV apart to uncover the creative decisions, strategic trade-offs, and unexpected connections that spark original thinking. From Alfred Hitchcock to Artificial Intelligence, we use stories as springboards for exploring business, human behavior, strategy, technology, and creativity in ways that reveal possibilities others might miss.
The point isn’t to review what’s been done. It’s to connect ideas that haven’t been connected, challenge familiar assumptions, and discover new ways of seeing problems and opportunities.
Watch a story. Discover new ideas.