Listen to understand how setups, payoffs, and reversals create narrative cohesion even when your story is fkn bonkers.

In this one-shot, Chas and Stu jump into the utter chaos of EVERYTHING EVERYWHERE ALL AT ONCE. Y'know, nultiverses, butt-plug action sequences, hot-dog fingers, a raccoon chef, a nihilist bagel. All the good stuff. And yet it lands emotionally in a way that feels inevitable.

So of-course we break it down in a masterclass in setups and payoffs — specifically, how payoffs do two jobs at once: they reward the audience for paying attention, and they stitch what would otherwise be an episodic swirl into something that feels like a single, coherent whole.

The framework we land on has three parts (with debt to William Dunn):

From there, we deep dive down how EEAAO earns all three. Raccacoonie starts as a throwaway joke, then appears as a half-visible visual seed, then tracks Evelyn's relationship arc across three separate beats. The opening 13 minutes crams in more setups than you register on first watch — and then we talk about why that invisibility is the craft. And the ending turns out to be a payoff for something planted in the very first scene of the film.

In particular, we focus on its use of setups, payoffs and reversals; breakdown the difference between Pointers and Plants and Stitches; deep dive into its Michael Arndt inspired ending. And, of course, we talk hotdog fingers and butt-plugs.

We also tackle the film's macro structure: the midpoint reversal where the mission shifts from defeating to saving Joy, the competing philosophical stakes (nihilism versus kindness, but more precisely, control versus empathy), and what Michael Arndt's climax structure reveals about how the ending's repeated beat finally lands hardest

"No one's meant to notice this scaffolding. But it needs to be there — because otherwise people would be like, where did that come from?"

Thanks to Chris Walker for editing this episode.

As always: SPOILERS ABOUND and all copyright material used under fair use for educational purposes.

LIKE THIS EPISODE?

Thanks to our Patrons, especially Malay, Casimir, Eduardo, Jennifer, Leigh, Garrett, Bjorn, Randy, Jesse, Sandra, Theis, Alex and Khrob.

→ Read the transcript for this episode.

———

"And it does all of that with fucking butt plug action sequences and hot dog fingers." — Chas Fisher @ 00:00:00

———

CHAPTERS

FILMS

SCRIPTS

RELATED EPISODES

———

More Draft Zero is brought to you by our awesome Patreons.

If you enjoy the show, please leave a review on Apple Podcasts, a rating on Spotify, or a review on Podchaser.

We are @stuwillis, @mehlsbells and @chasffisher on Twitter. You can find @draft_zero and @_shotzero on Instagram and Twitter.

Full show notes at: https://draft-zero.com/2022/dz-90/