It's just a testament to sticking to your guns, your creative
guns. Don't be rigid to the point where you don't
accept notes that could help elevate your story, but definitely
don't give in to making some sort of mockery of your creation
just for a short-term gain or to quote unquote appease
the masses.
What's up, folks? What's going on? Welcome to the Spun Today Podcast,
the only podcast that is anchored in writing but unlimited in
scope. I'm your host, Tony Ortiz, and I appreciate you listening.
This is episode 296 of the pod, and in
this episode, I am going to break down from a writer's perspective
yet another Black Mirror episode, this
one titled Playthings. We'll also be adding,
or better said, inducting another member into your
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Black Mirror Playthings. There's a specific kind of
Black Mirror episode that doesn't shock you right away.
No jump scares, no immediate twists,
just a quiet unease that slowly tightens its
grips the longer that you sit with it. Playthings is one of
those episodes. At its core, Playthings isn't about
gadgets or neural implants or artificial life.
It's about belief. It's about obsession, about
the stories that we tell ourselves when we convince ourselves
that we're building something better, even if we can't fully
explain better for who. Now, before we get into
all the great writing takeaways that I got from this episode, as we like to
do here on the Spontanate Podcast, let's shout out the writer.
Very special shout out to the writer of this episode whose
DNA is all over The Black Mirror series,
Charlie Brooker. Really good,
great episode. Now let's dive a bit deeper. The story starts off in
this near-future reality that's very true to the
Black Mirror series in that it feels like a reality that is not far
off. And we see this wide-eyed, messy-haired older
man named Cameron Walker, played by Peter
Capaldi. That barges into a liquor store and attempts to steal a bottle
of whiskey. He rushes to the exit door, which auto-locks,
and he bumps into the glass doors. The whiskey bottle falls,
shatters, and goes all over the place. And the liquor store attendant
mentioned that the door is locked because there seems to be some sort of mechanism
where it detects when someone tries to leave the store without
paying for something and it auto-locks. And he states
it so matter-of-factly like it's such an obvious thing.
And he just does so like nonchalantly, like kind of frustrated, like, and now the
police are on their way. So our main protagonist, Cameron Walker, then
just goes to sit down by the fridge to wait for the police.
When they arrive is when we learn that we are beyond the year
2029, at least probably like mid-2030s, because
when— and I thought it was genius the way they like slipped this into the
dialog of the story— the police arrive and they casually reference a
law allowing them to instantly DNA
swab via a handheld device when probable
cause exists. And they mentioned, you know, due to the law of
2029, we have the authority to swab your
DNA. Please open your mouth. And it's— there's no like grand exposition,
just a matter-of-fact detail that was slipped into the world. Now,
on their little handheld device thingy, Karen flags up
as some sort of high-profile dangerous criminal wanted
for a cold case murder that we come to learn. And he
just calmly gets up and taken
into custody where he's later interrogated by a detective
and a psychologist. And here is where he starts telling a bit of the
backstory on how he wound up where he was today
at that liquor store. Now, a great writing takeaway for my fellow
writers out there is What makes
speculative fiction feel real is the
understatement. So instead of explaining the future,
let the characters just operate inside of it and go about their
days as it already being normal to them.
When you make the technology of like a handheld DNA instant
swab thing just seem boring and mundane
and, and routine, to the people using it, it
becomes terrifying to the audience while easily acceptable.
And it's a great way to immerse them in the rules of
the world that you're designing. Now, during his interrogation, we learned
that Cameron was a former video game
journalist back in the 1990s that became
obsessed with a life simulation game called
Thronglets. Which was created by this
eccentric programmer who was idolized in that
space named Colin Ritman,
played by Will Poulter, who did a great job, by the way, playing that
actor or playing that role, rather. And there was this scene in particular where he
describes his own creation with a line that
felt almost like a thesis statement. He says that
progress and flux are the defining properties of life
itself. And the reason why that resonated with me was
because it's an artist explaining his
obsession. The idea that life is just constant
iteration, constant mutation, that
feels benign, like just the way the world, the way things are supposed to be
until you see where it leads, which we'll see a little bit further
in, in this breakdown. And a great writing takeaway is
that we as creatives can let big ideas
enter our story through passion, not through
prophecy. So when philosophy comes from creators
and thinkers and people that are passionate about what it is that they're doing within
your story rather than some sort of authority figure, it
feels seductive and much more palatable
instead of just preachy. Now that game designer
Colin tells the game journalist Cameron, who is
there to do— write this piece on him and his new creation, that
he created something that wasn't a game. It was actually the first
sentient digital beings. So these creatures on
the screen that he's seeing on the computer are actually alive.
Now Cameron is skeptical at first, and then as the
interrogation goes on and he's again, telling the story
of how he got to where he was at that liquor store. We learned that
Karen stole a copy of that game
software to take it home and tinker with it. And then he becomes
obsessed with the thronglets, which he then
begins to think are actually sentient. He thinks they're alive.
And then after a friend of his visits and gets on his computer
one day and begins to just kill the
Thronglets by like dropping rocks on them and torturing them on
the screen. Cameron winds up killing his
friend in a complete blackout rage. Now
mind you, he's this really nerdy computer geek guy that's
socially awkward, barely even knows this friend because
just some dude that he met that sold drugs and stops by every once in
a while, but he winds up killing this guy then chopping up
his body and hiding it. Hence him 40 years later
in the future getting flagged up in this, you know,
DNA device thing because his DNA was all over that body. But
they were never able to identify whose body it was and
the person that killed him. And at this point in the interrogation, once he's
admitting to all this, he said
something that struck me, which was that humans are masters
of the universe. Creators of tools,
yet still running on buggy software in our heads.
Darwinian 1.0, he said. And that statement reframes
humanity as outdated hardware. So from his
perspective, it's not a problem of technology
evolving too fast. It's people evolving too slowly.
And a good writing takeaway for us there is reframing familiar
themes with new metaphors. So calling human nature,
quote unquote, like legacy code or coding
instantly modernizes an ancient argument about
violence and impulse and our basic human
instincts. Now, an interesting or important anecdote of
the story is that Cameron also admits that
when he started realizing from his perspective that he could actually
communicate with the Thronglets, he could start understanding
their— the noises that they made as some sort of digital
language that they were attempting to communicate with. He was
on acid. He was on LSD, which was
sold to him by that, that friend that he wound up chopping up. And
he admits that the LSD is what expanded his mind enough for
him to be able to communicate with the throne. And they became this artificial
digital life that he was able to interact with. And
the story never definitively tells us when
fantasy becomes reality, or if he was just
delusional or ahead of the curve. And a great writing
takeaway there is that that type of ambiguity
can be used as a tool. It's not necessarily a cop-out
in not fleshing out your story or not defining
everything in your story. Because when the audience can't
pinpoint the moment where reality breaks, they're
forced to stay engaged and wrestling with those elements of your story
long after the scene ends, long after the story ends, really,
because that type of thing is what keeps the conversation going. We then learn
that Cameron winds up upgrading his computer system
repeatedly. You know, he's popping acid, speaking to the
Throng. Getting information from them on how to build
up his computer to make it more powerful so they can communicate more, so he
can expand. And he gets to the point where he eventually builds a
homemade neural implant so that he can plug himself into
the computer and have the Throng and him in some sort
of symbiotic relationship, communicating directly with each other. And
it was framed, at least by him and his perspective, as not
some sort of craziness or madness, It's framed as devotion,
like just the progress that he was trying to make
with the Thrawn at any cost, to the extent where he
literally drilled a hole in the back of his head following their
direction to create this homemade neural implant to plug
his brainstem into the computer. And a great writing
takeaway there is how the most unsettling characters
in stories They believe that they're improving the world.
When obsession masquerades as innovation, it
becomes morally slippery and dramatically rich.
And that's exactly what we have here. Now, at different points throughout this
interrogation, Cameron continues to ask for a pen and
paper, and the detective denies it. The detective's perspective is,
fuck you, you're— you killed someone. You could probably stab
one of us with that pen if we gave you one. And I think you're
a piece of shit, so I don't want to give you anything that you want.
And he's coming from a very practical perspective
in the interview, which is, all right, cut the shit. I don't care
about your backstory. Tell us who the guy is that you
chopped up who had no identifying marks. There's a family out there
that doesn't know if their son is dead or alive. Give us his
fucking name right now. And then you have the psychologist
which is in essence playing the quote unquote good cop and
just trying to decode and parse out the
truth and delusion and genius and different things
that she seems to be picking up on from Cameron's story. Now they finally
give in and give him the pen and paper and he starts
drawing and then shows them this QR
code looking round symbol. And then he
reveals his plan. He says how getting arrested was
intentional. He wanted to be in that interrogation room because
there was a camera in that room that was linked up to the most
powerful computer in the state or in the country, in the county.
I don't remember exactly how they framed the
geographical territory, but it was the most powerful
computer around. And the detective and
psychologists are kind of like, what the hell even is that, you know,
glyph QR code looking thing? And this reveal
reframes the entire episode retroactively.
So every action up until that point that we
were confused about suddenly has a purpose.
And a great writing takeaway for us is that great
twists don't add information. They
recontextualize what we've already seen or read
so that the audience feels both
surprised and inevitable at the same
time. And what the QR code symbol did
was allow him to aim that QR code
at the camera, which automatically scans the QR code,
and it allows the throng to access the system,
expand exponentially, almost instantly, and then
broadcast a worldwide signal like an audio signal
that triggers a hive mind singularity event
where all humans become one and the Throng is
embedded within them. There's no explosions, no screaming
crowds, just a soft, irreversible shift
in human consciousness. And when the sound is triggered, you see
that some characters collapse to the floor and have their eyes rolling to the back
of their heads and apparently becoming one with the throng.
And we see the view from the perspective of the
detective now as he opens his eyes back up and sees
Cameron standing above him, reaching down to help him up. And a
great final writing takeaway for my fellow writers and creators out there is
that sometimes the most powerful ending doesn't shout,
it whispers. And we as creatives can let
scale come from implication and not spectacle.
Playthings isn't asking whether technology will
replace us. It's asking whether we'd recognize
transcendence if it didn't look like a threat. And something
very like meta and cool that I thought Netflix did
was that with releasing this
episode or this season, they also released
through Netflix Games a real-life
Thronglets game, which is a cool little,
little Easter egg. I haven't seen or played it myself,
but in just researching some details for this episode, I
picked up on that. So I thought that was, that was pretty cool of
them to do. And lastly, a little writing prompt for
my fellow writers and creatives out there who may be interested. Write a
scene where the end of the world happens quietly
through some sort of policy or routine or a
decision made in a small room. No panic,
no announcement, just a line crossed that
can't be uncrossed. And see what you come up with.
Feel free to share any of those in the comment section of
this episode at
SpunToday.com/podcast/296. And if you enjoyed that breakdown, make
sure to check out other episodes of the Spun Today podcast for
many more. And now it's time
for your favorite segment and mine, Goats Doing Goat
Shit, where I like to highlight GOATs within their respective
lanes that go above and beyond in some sort of way. And
this episode's inductee is none other than writer,
actress, creative Nia
Vardalos.
Very special shout out to Nia. Nia was
the main protagonist and more importantly, the writer of the
romantic comedy My Big Fat Greek Wedding. Now, when she wrote the
script, and she was trying to get the movie made, she faced
repeated rejections over and over again. Nobody wanted to make the
movie. They liked the script but thought it was too niche,
too ethnically Greek. The
studios that did show some interest in making it wanted her
to change the film's ethnic identity to make it more palatable
to the masses. They suggested things like
making the family Hispanic or making the family Italian. And they
wanted to replace her in the lead role with a bigger
name actress like a Julia Roberts or Marisa Tomei,
so on and so forth. She stuck to her creative guns, as I
like to big up here on the show, specifically within this segment,
and she didn't give in to those demands, which from my perspective
aren't just creative notes to elevate a story. They are
corporations corporationing. If you will, and
just looking for ways to increase the bottom line. She wound
up getting fired by her agents or let go. And what did she do?
She turned her script, her movie script,
into a one-woman stage play. And then that ultimately caught the
attention of Rita Wilson, who in turn convinced her
husband, Tom Hanks, to produce the film through their
production company, play tone. Hanks and Wilson
supported Vardalos's vision without
requiring any changes, allowing the film to be made as
she originally intended. They made the film for a modest
$5 million. That was the budget of the film. And I don't know if
that means it was made for $2.5 million and
then $2.5 million worth of marketing, or if it
was made for $5 million and then another $5 million worth of marketing. Because how
they say whatever a film is made for, it's that exact same amount that goes
into the marketing. But regardless, total overall
price between $5 and $10 million, I would say.
But the budget itself is publicly known as being a $5 million budget.
Now, Nia wound up taking a modest upfront fee
along with an 8% profit share of the AGI,
or adjusted gross profits— or gross income, rather. Of the
profits. Now that's those backend points that I've
mentioned in the past where if you believe in your vision, you know what it
is that you made, you really think it's going to connect, you know, you take
a gamble of just taking a large upfront
fee or as large as it could be, I guess, with a $5 million budget
and it's like a one and done deal. Then the production company and the studio,
they make all the profits the movie makes. Or
versus on the flip side, you know, if the movie flops and doesn't make anything,
you might, you know, that upfront fee might be more than whatever you would've negotiated
on the backend. But then if the movie does blow up, the studio and production
companies are the ones that make all that money. But again, believing in her
vision, she negotiated this 8% fee on the backend
and the movie went on to become the largest
grossing rom-com in history, raking in over
$368 $10 million
worldwide. So because of that 8% profit share agreement,
she earned $10 million for herself, which as an
aside, Playtone, which is that, uh, Tom Hanks and
Rita Wilson production company, later wound up suing the studio,
Gold Circle Films, for additional profits
that they were all owed due to their quote unquote Hollywood
accounting. Again, corporations gonna corporation. So I'm
not sure if that $10 million that she made wound up increasing.
Cause if I do some, some quick behind the envelope math, she was probably doing
8%. If that's gross
minus the budget, probably like 3 times that $10 million. But
regardless, $10 million bucks, very great payday.
And it's just a testament to sticking to your guns, your
creative guns. Don't be rigid to the point where you don't
accept notes that could help elevate your story, but
definitely don't give in to making some sort of mockery of your
creation just for a short-term gain or
to, quote unquote, appease the masses. And with that said,
Nia Vardalos, welcome to the
Spunt Today GOATs Doing GOAT Shit list.
And that, folks, was episode 296 of the Spun Today podcast. Thank each
and every one of you for taking the time to listen. I really, really do
appreciate it. Again, if you'd like to support the show, please go to spuntoday.com.
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And I'll check you guys out next time. Peace.
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I love you, Aiden. I love you, Daddy.
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