Ep. 691 - Amsterdam

Another personal AND DRAMATIC story about Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap. I was just out of high school in the early 80s and I am always trying to catch up on “classics” so I decided to check out a filmed version of a Christie play, The Mousetrap. I am not making this up. It was not an official movie, just a filmed version of a theatrical production. It was a locked door thriller, as a snowstorm kept everyone in, including the detective solving the murder that takes place off stage. This show is excellent, I am enthused and while I have my theories, I can’t wait to see the end of this mystery. About 20 minutes before the play is done, The CABLE NETWORK SHUTS DOWN AND ALL I GET IS A SCREEN FULL OF WHITE NOISE! I am furious. I check all the connections, I call the cable company, I don’t know what to do. After about a half hour I realize that all my fuming is for nothing. But I did not forget. I looked up The Mousetrap in my local library, I searched for it in my college library… nothing. Only after listening to your informative and entertaining podcast did I suddenly realize— I now have access to the internet! I found out that the original short story was Three Blind Mice. That it has been in production in 27 nations. It seems like a no brainer that some of these productions were filmed for local consumption. I am left with questions: Did Jeff Canatta happen to capture a local filming? Did the company that oversaw the Mousetrap copyright shut down my cable company befor they reveled the secret end? Did they also take out all the volumes relating to The Mousetrap from my local libraries? Even so, my forty year odyssey is about to end. I ordered the script from Amazon and I will have it in my hands on Saturday. And, according to the agreement I had to sign in my own blood, after reading it, I will burn the script and mention the end to no one, living or dead. -Steve Kimes, Eugene Oregon (formerly of Orange County CA)

Cameron Stewart

A tangent re: Valkyrie and generating tension in stories about established history - I will never forget the absolute jaw-open shock and delight I experienced during the climax of Inglourious Basterds when Hitler gets machine gunned in the face. At that point no one had any idea it was an alternative history story and I never would have seen it coming, I of course expected that QT would play by the “rules” of history. It’s one of the all-time great twists in cinema.