"Your watch is broken." - Summer Part 1/Transcript

The following is the full transcript of "Your watch is broken." - Summer Part 1, the first episode of The Official The Last of Us Podcast.
== Transcript ==
=== Opening ===
[Music plays then cuts to a phone ringing. A scene from the game plays as Sarah Miller picks up the phone and answers.]
Sarah: Hello?
Tommy: [Over the phone] Sarah, honey, I need you to get your daddy on the phone.
Sarah: Uncle Tommy, what time is it?
Tommy: I need to talk to your dad now. There's some—
Sarah: [The phone call suddenly disconnects.] Hello? [She hangs up.] Dad?
[The sound of a glass sliding door shuts as Joel Miller grunts in panic.]
Sarah: There you are.
Joel: Sarah. Are you okay? [Opens a drawer and a box.]
Sarah: What's going on?
Joel: [Starts loading a revolver] It's the Coopers. Somethin' ain't right with 'em. I think they're sick.
Sarah: What kinda sick?
[Suddenly, Jimmy Cooper, the Millers' neighbor, slams into the sliding door from outside, startling the two. Jimmy, snarling and groaning, is infected with the .]
Joel: Jimmy. [Jimmy slams into the door again.] Jimmy, just stay back. [Jimmy breaks through the glass door.] Jimmy, I am warning you.
Sarah: Oh, my God…
Joel: Don't! [Joel shoots Jimmy once, killing him.] Go. Go.
Sarah: [Disbelief] You shot him…
Joel: Sarah.
Sarah: [Breathing shakily] I saw him this mornin'.
Joel: Listen to me, […] we have got to get outta here. Do you understand me?
Sarah: [Sniffles] Yeah.
[They notice car lights shining through the front window.]
Joel: Tommy. C'mon. C'mon.
Sarah: Okay.
[They exit through the front door.]
Tommy: Where the hell you been? You have any idea what's goin' on out there?
Joel: I got some notion.
[They get in Tommy's truck and start driving off. They come to a highway congested due to traffic. A helicopter is heard flying over.]
Tommy: Oh, this is bad. Everyone and their mother had the same damn idea.
Joel: Well… we could just backtrack and—
[Runners start attacking the car in front of them, as the passengers scream in fear.]
Joel: Holy shit. Turn us around.
Sarah: Oh, my God.
Joel: Tommy. Tommy!
Tommy: Holy shit.
Sarah: […] Look out!
[A car suddenly crashes into the side of their truck.]
Sarah: Dad?
Joel: I'm here, baby. I'm here. Come on, gimme your hand. [Sarah grunts] What is it?
Sarah: My leg hurts.
Joel: How bad?
Sarah: Pretty bad.
[The sounds of runners and commotion on the streets can be heard as intense music plays.]
Tommy: We're gonna need to run.
Joel: Now hold on tight.
Sarah: Okay.
Tommy: Joel, watch out!
Joel: [To Sarah] Just keep your eyes closed, honey!
Tommy: This way! Through the alley! […] Get to the highway!
Joel: What?
Tommy: Go—you got Sarah! I can outrun 'em!
Sarah: Uncle Tommy!
Joel: I will meet you there.
Sarah: [Sobbing] Daddy, we can't leave him.
Joel: He's gonna be fine.
[The sounds of infected are heard chasing them from behind.]
Sarah: They're gettin' closer. Dad?
[They are startled by gunshots. Sarah screams, and the infected behind them fall, struck down by bullets from a U.S. military soldier.]
Joel: [Softly] It's okay baby. We're safe. We're safe. [To the soldier] Hey! We need help—
Male soldier: Stop!
Joel: Please, it's my daughter; I think her leg is broken.
Male soldier: [Demanding] Stop right there!
Joel: We're not sick.
Male soldier: [Using radio] We've got two civilians in the outer perimeter, please advise.
Sarah: Daddy, what about Uncle Tommy?
Joel: [Quietly] We're gonna get you to safety and go back for him. Okay?
Male soldier: [Over radio] Sir, there's a little girl. [Hesitates] But— [Pauses] Yes, sir.
[The soldier trains his aim on Joel and Sarah.]
Joel: Oh, shit…
[The soldier pulls the trigger as sounds of gunshots can be heard. Sarah screams as they fall to the ground. Tommy enters the scene and shoots the soldier dead. He sees Sarah whimpering.]
Tommy: Oh, no.
Joel: Sarah?! [She whimpers in pain.] Okay. Move your hands, baby. I know, baby, I know… […] Come on, baby, please! I know, baby! I know! [Sarah's whimpering stops.]
Joel: Sarah… Baby… [Sniffs] Don't do this to me, baby. Don't do this to me, baby girl. Come on…
[Music begins playing in the background as the opening of the game ends. Host of the podcast, Christian Spicer, addresses the audience.]
Christian: I'm Christian Spicer. I'm a writer, podcaster, and huge fan of The Last of Us. And… this game means a lot to me, like I'm sure it does to you. And while playing it for the first time back in 2013, I became a dad to a little girl named Estelle, my first child. We nicknamed her "Ellie" before the game came out—before I knew anything about it—and there I am, playing the game late at night, playing through the devastating prologue we just heard, my daughter Ellie literally sleeping on my lap, and I witnessed the moment when Sarah dies in Joel's arms. A father holding his daughter as she passes, and from there the story doesn't let up. This game connected with me on such a human and emotional level, and even though I replayed it many times, that first playthrough: it sticks with me to this day. [The music gets louder.] Welcome to The Official The Last of Us Podcast. What you just heard was the gut punch of a prologue for The Last of Us Part I, a masterpiece of a game that came out in 2013, developed by Naughty Dog and published by . And while Naughty Dog is getting ready to launch The Last of Us Part II, I wanted to take the time now to revisit this video game that means so much to so many of us, and I wanted to crawl into the mind of the visionaries and talent who created this groundbreaking work. We'll be recapping the story while also diving deep into the making-of. In this episode, we'll be covering the prologue and Summer Part 1, and I'll be talking with and —also known as Joel and Ellie—and melee and combat designer Anthony Newman, and the writer and creative director of The Last of Us, . And since I'm still recovering from that prologue, it seems only fair to start our conversations with the mastermind behind it all, Mr. Neil Druckmann.
[The music intensifies and then fades out.]
=== Prologue ===
Christian: So jumping into the prologue for The Last of Us Part I, the player starts the game as Sarah. And so immediately we're playing as a character who isn't the typical video game protagonist, right?
Neil: Yes, a lot of those decisions came out of wanting to do something fresh and then we ended up with all these extra wins that we didn't necessarily plan for. So, um, initially the opening was you played as Joel and you would go over to your neighbor's house and see you neighbor get infected and have to do your first kill there as Joel, then come back to your house and get Sarah and be on your way. But the more we thought about it, it's like one, it felt like, okay, this—I've kinda seen that before, you know? Um, so it's like, how do we make this interesting? And then one of our brainstorms got the idea like, well, "What if you saw everything through Sarah's eyes?" And that became exciting because you're playing a much more innocent, um, not-as-capable person, so you feel the fear of the world kind of like falling apart around you.
Sarah: What is goin' on?
Neil: And you feel more helpless.
Sarah: Dad?!
Neil: We have very limited time with Sarah, and we need to establish this character and create all this empathy because that is—she is the reason why Joel ends up the way he is when we're jumping into the future. And it was a nice foreshadowing of where the story's ultimately going when you play as Ellie. Kind of like you're playing these two daughters that this guy ends up having.
Christian: And we get to see this nice little scene of what Joel and Sarah's normal is, with Sarah asleep on the couch waiting for her father...
Joel: We'll talk about it in the morning. [Sarah yawns] Alright, goodnight.
Sarah: Hey.
Joel: Scoot. [Puts down his keys and sits down on the couch.]
Sarah: Fun day at work, huh? […] Here. [She hands Joel a small box.]
Joel: What's this?
Sarah: Your birthday.
[Joel opens the box. Inside is a wristwatch.]
Sarah: You kept complaining about your broken watch… So I figured, you know… [Joel puts the watch on his wrist] You like it?
Joel: Honey, this is…
Sarah: What?
Joel: It's nice but I—I think it's stuck. It's not—
Sarah: What? [Worried, she grabs Joel's arm to get a closer view of the watch.] No, no, no, no. [As she looks, she finds the watch is ticking fine. It was all a joke by Joel.] Oh, ha, ha.
Joel: Where did you get the money for this?
Sarah: [Sarcastically] Drugs. I sell hardcore drugs.
Joel: Oh, good. You can start helping out with the mortgage then.
Sarah: Stsh—yeah, you wish.
[Joel uses the remote to turn on the television, and the scene ends.]
Neil: Yeah, since when you put it that way, it makes me think about the structure of The Last of Us, which is each chapter is kind of its own story. So you have to establish, okay, "What is the day-to-day like?" And then "What's the event that happened that throws these characters off their path and how are they struggling to get, kind of, back to normal?" And we came up with this idea of this sweet moment that his daughter has saved up money, and you know, we get the sense that maybe they don't have that much money, so it's a big deal for her, and she remembered his birthday, and she's staying up excited to give him this gift just so she can see his reaction. As far as I remember, the watch actually came from the concept art. Hyoung Nam was our concept artist who did all the character designs, and there was just a drawing of a watch on Joel's wrist, and it seemed kind of interesting, and then brainstorming his backstory was like, okay, "What if he's carrying the watch that his dead daughter gave him?" And that's kind of this constant reminder. And you know, cinematic storytelling, you're always looking for ways to visualize feelings so people don't have to—Joel doesn't have to constantly say, "Hey, remember Sarah, my daughter that died twenty years ago?" Like, instead all he's gotta do is touch his watch. [The sound of a watch ticking starts playing.] And as a player you right away, that becomes a symbol for this relationship. [The ticking stops.] And then to go from that to now you're seeing this other aspect of—and then again, so much of this game is about parenthood, relationships between a child and their parent, and vice versa—that you go from this playfulness, this intimacy, to this protectiveness of, okay, now we gotta make harder and harder decisions to protect the ones we love. And it was important to kind of encapsulate almost an entire story and who Joel is really doesn't change that much, like, the story is not about Joel changing, this is about Joel returning to who he truly is over the course of the game, um, so you get to see the full spectrum of who this person is in the opening, and then we kind of hit a reset for him before we come back to it.
Christian: And then, very soon after this sweet moment of Sarah giving Joel his birthday gift—his watch—we see Joel in another role, and it's as the role of protector when the neighbor comes over and Joel, um, I mean, without hesitation he kills the neighbor!
Neil: Yeah, so, um, I know the backstory—it was he heard some screaming from the neighbor's house and he went over to see what's going on. And this is what I find to be great storytelling is that you're given just enough information that you could put the pieces together yourself, so when Joel rushes back in, [Sound of a glass sliding door shutting] he already has blood on him, something has already gone down that has freaked him out.
Sarah: [To Joel] There you are.
Neil: And he's just concerned about the safety of his daughter.
Joel: Sarah, are you okay? Has anyone come in here? Don't go near the doors. Just stand back there.
Neil: Then he goes into the drawer and, [Sound of a drawer opening] takes up a gun. [Sound of a box unlatching] So now you just say, okay, "Joel is someone that owns a gun and is not afraid to just load it up, [Sound of a revolver being loaded] and hold it in his hands right away." Again, telling you something about him. [Sound of a glass sliding door shattering] And then when the neighbor crashes through the window, he's trying to—
Joel: Jimmy, just stay back! [Jimmy roars as Sarah screams.]
Neil: —he's pleading with his neighbor to stop.
Joel: I am warning you.
Neil: And only once the neighbor charges at him—and really, his daughter—[Sound of Jimmy charging at the pair and then a gunshot] does Joel pull the trigger. And you're right, without hesitation. As soon as he feels like his daughter is threatened, he's not afraid to pull the trigger; that's who he is and that's who he is, like, throughout the story.
Christian: Yeah, and then when they leave the house, they're in the car and we see another, I think, a great example of who Joel is in this moment and who he is as a father, where he makes the difficult decision to leave others behind and press on.
Joel: What the hell do you think you're doin'? Keep drivin'.
Tommy: They got a kid, Joel.
Joel: So do we.
Sarah: But we have room.
Male civilian: Hey!
Joel: Keep drivin', Tommy.
Male civilian: Hey, stop! Stop!
[Tommy speeds the truck up and continues driving down the road.]
Joel: You ain't seen what I seen. Someone else'll come along.
Sarah: [Whispers] We shoulda helped them.
Neil: It's funny you say the hard decision and I think about Joel, and for him it's not a hard decision at—it's a no decision. Like, "I'm not gonna stop to do anything that'll put my daughter at risk." And if I can go on a tangent real quick, I'm originally from so I follow a lot of Israeli politics, and there was this guy——a soldier who was kidnapped and held prisoner for years by . And then there was, um, an exchange of hundreds of prisoners for this one soldier, and some of the prisoners who were exchanged had blood on their hands, like committed terrosist—horrible terrorist attacks. And there was a big debate in Israel: was it right to, like, exchange so many people that were in prison for this one soldier, to bring him back? And I remember I talked with my dad about it, and I'm like, "What do you think? Do you think that was the right decision?" And he says, "Are you asking me as, like, this soldier's dad? Or as the prime minister of Israel? 'Cause that would make two very different decisions. As the prime minister of Israel, I think they made the wrong decision. I think they're now less safe because they made this thing. As the guy's dad, I would've traded every prisoner in every, like, prison for this guy." And that's really what this story's about, did the ends justify the means? And it's really so much about perspective. If it was maybe to save an estranged kid versus a family, maybe Joel would've made a very different decision, but when it was, like, his tribe, his daughter, there was no question about what he's gonna do.
Christian: Right, so you mentioned Joel's "tribe". Um, I'm curious, when does Joel let people in? When is he willing to sacrifice for them versus, you know, just keep driving and don't look back.
Neil: Well, I mean, you always like, um, I think this is like a thing, I'm sure it has older—Robert McKee is, like, a famous, kind of storytelling guru that someone I kind of really studied when I was learning how to write—um, but there's this concept of, for characters, the worst thing, like, what's the worst thing that could happen to them? A fate worse than death? [Sound of Jimmy charging and then a gunshot] And Joel experiences that in the very opening.
Tommy: [Sound of Sarah whimpering] Oh, no.
Joel: Sarah?! [She continues whimpering.]
Neil: Nothing could be worse for him, this is like—
Joel: Move your hands, baby. [The scene continues playing in the background.]
Neil: —the worst fate, is his daughter dies in his arms. So, Joel's—who he is, his decisions have lead him to hell, essentially. So he tries to fight his nature, and to say, "Okay, well if that's what has lead me here, whether it's conscious or subconscious, I'm gonna do everything I can to not get attached like this, because this is the consequences of loving someone in this world. [The music slowly fades out.]
Christian: Were you already a father when that decision was made?
Neil: I became a parent while working on The Last of Us, and this was one of the last things we did, was this sequence—the opening of the game—I don't know if I acted that differently, or reacted to the material that differently after having a kid because I just have so much—my parents were very protective when I was a kid, and I could just tap into those feelings and those fears and what they did to try to protect me and my brother, um, that then once, like, I had my own kid, it just felt a continuation, or maybe more intense versions of the same feelings? That's what I try when people ask me like, "What it's like being a parent? Like, do you feel new stuff?" I'm like, I don't know if you feel new stuff, it's just you feel a love like you've never felt before, you feel a fear like you've never felt before. It's just everything is much more intense, I could've never known such intense feelings before. And so I'm sure, like, once we were shooting that scene, it hit in a more personal level, but we were always going down that path anyways. It's interesting, 'cause on one hand I—when you're trying to direct actors, or at least that's the way I do it, I'm trying to be an observer, as if I'm a player playing the game and I'm trying to feel it as if I'm seeing it for the first time. And then there's the part of the director being very critical, and it's like, okay, what are we after, are we achieving the thing we're after? And we're trying to get this scene, and you know, Troy talks about this a lot—
Troy: So, I knew this scene was coming from the very, very onset of the game because it was a foundational moment in the game. So I spend the next… however long prepping and doing what I thought was a process for preparing for this role and this scene specifically, in this moment. And I knew, cognitively and academically, that what you needed to do as an actor was attach yourself to a very real moment that could best be a one-to-one analogue for the moment you're trying to create—and so I did. What they don't teach you, or what I had not learned rather, is that… that is like sticking your mouth on the open end of a fire hydrant. And I hit the moment where I thought I was a-ready, walked in and it is right there at the service. So we go through this scene, and it's bang, and instantly, it just—the levee breaks. [Music starts softly playing.] And I. Lose. My. Shit. And all of a sudden, Joel is gone, there's no Joel in that scene, um, there's just Troy. And there's Troy having this huge, cathartic moment, and I hear "Cut, [The music suddenly stops followed by a short pause] I'd like to go again." [Christian laughs.] And I'm—that I wasn't prepared for, and I went, "Wait, wait, wait, what?" So we go again. And now I'm forcing that moment and it's not anywhere—it doesn't feel genuine at all. And I start crying again, "Cut… I'd like to go again." And we do this five, six, seven takes, um, and finally, Neil says, "Okay, I think we've got it." And we all leave, I was exhausted. Then a month later, we're shooting again, and I'm outside and Neil goes, "So hey, um… next shoot we're gonna do some—this scene." I was like, "Oh, cool, cool." And he goes "And we all just need to—we all just needed to re-shoot a scene." It was like, "Oh, which one?" And he goes, "[Clicks tongue] …" Then I went, "Dude, don't do this to me." [Christian chuckles] Um, and now I'm mad. And so a month later, we come back, and we start shooting this scene, action, and I go straight into it, and it feels weird and it feels false. And we do it three or four times and Neil walks up to me in between takes and I'll never forget this, and he says, "I'm picking up on some resistance." And I said, "Yeah, you're damn right you're picking up on some resistance because we've got it, it's in the can, it was take one." And he said, "Let me tell you what I have. [Music starts playing] I have a man broken." I was like, "Yeah! His fucking daughter just died." He goes, "No. I have a man broken, what I don't have is, 'What's happening, this is happening, I can fix it, it's not working, she's going, she's gone, I'm broken.'" And that is when I realized that Neil Druckmann was the greatest director I've ever worked with.
[The music continues to somberly play until it fades out.]
=== 20 Years Later ===
Christian: All right, the game now takes us forward in time. It's twenty years later. We're in Boston, a city that's in quarantine. It's summer, and we've met Tess, and now we're meeting for kind of the first time aside from the neighbor, we're seeing the infected. We're seeing what life is like for survivors of the outbreak, we're seeing what Joel's experience is like walking by a group of people being checked if they're infected…
[A device that detects Cordyceps starts beeping, indicating a positive infection.]
Male soldier 1: Got a live one.
Female civilian: No. [The guards pin her onto the ground.] I'm not infected!
Male soldier 2: Ah, shit. Hold her down.
Female civilian: It's wrong. The scan's wrong!
Male soldier 1: [To the second guard] Do it.
Female civilian: [Pleading] Please!
Christian: Trying to escape and being gunned down…
Male civilian 1: Fuck this!
Male soldier 1: Stop!
[The man attempts to run away before being shot dead by the guards.]
Male civilian 2: [Panicking] Holy shit. Holy shit.
Christian: And that does not seem to faze him, and I think that sets up a big event for the player and it's Joel and Tess coming across a human being who has been infected by the spores…
Joel: [Startled] Jesus. [He looks down and sees a man wearing a gas mask.] Watch it. Watch it.
Male smuggler: [Pleading] Help me… [Coughs] My mask broke. Don't… Don't leave me to turn. [Coughs] Please.
Tess: [To Joel] What do you wanna do?
Christian: And Joel's action [Sound of a gun charging] is to [Sound of gunshot] kill that person.
Neil: It's kind of what we do at Naughty Dog, is we try as much as we can to, like, find this marriage between interactivity and storytelling. So we came up with this concept of like, okay, as part of their smuggling route, um, Joel and Tess actually have these underground tunnels that they use and they go outside of the city through—
Tess: Hold up. Spores.
Neil: —spore-ridden areas where people that breathe in spores could get infected, we get to see them wear gas masks. [Sound of a gas mask being put on] Except here, they go into this path—this tunnel—and some of this debris has collapsed on another smuggler, [Sound of debris collapsing and a gas mask breaking] has broken his mask, he's breathing in the spores, and he knows he's going to turn. And when you get there, he pleads with you to shoot him; he doesn't wanna turn into an infected.
Male smuggler: Don't leave me to turn. [Coughs]
Neil: It is a result of telling you like what people's mindset is in this world.
Male smuggler: Please.
Neil: And then we have the training comes up and it tells you what buttons to push to aim your gun and pull the trigger.
Tess: What do you wanna do?
Neil: And 9 out of 10 players do that. [Sound of gunshot] But we also had to account for players that don't do that, that just are fighting who Joel is at this moment.
Tess: [Sound of voice being reversed] What do you wanna do?
Neil: So then we had Tess do it. [Sound of gunshot] So actually, if you don't kill the guy, Tess will do it for you.Despite Druckmann's comments, Tess never actually shoots the smuggler if the player decides to not do it themselves. This is believed to be a misconception on Druckmann's behalf. So either we establish that Joel does it or Tess does it, but they're both okay with just shooting someone and then moving on, this is just the new reality. 
== Notes ==
Category:The Official The Last of Us Podcast transcripts