Killjoy (PODCAST EXCLUSIVE EPISODE)

**MrBallen** (0:00)
Today, we have three stories about people who each have, like, this one big thing in their life that brings them a lot of happiness and fulfillment and purpose.
But, unfortunately, this same thing winds up being the very reason that their life gets ruined. But before we get into today's stories, if you're a fan of the Strange, Dark and Mysterious delivered in story format, then you've come to the right place because that's all we do, and we upload two, three, even four times every week. So, if that's of interest to you, on the next really cold day, offer to make the follow button a cup of hot cocoa. But, don't use whip cream on top, use shaving cream instead. Okay, let's get into our first story called The Old Man and His Doc.

**SPEAKER_2** (1:00)
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**MrBallen** (1:30)
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One afternoon in June of 1993, a movie director named Xie Jin sat on a couch in a production studio in the city of Yinchuan, China.
He was with a few members of his production team, and they were in the middle of auditioning what felt like the 100th terrible actor for the lead role in the film that he was directing.
However, this was not an ordinary lead role. The lead role for this film was going to be a dog. So the movie was called An Old Man and His Dog, and it was based on this popular novel about a man living during a period of war in China with his loyal yellow dog. People had really responded to the story in the book because it captured just how devastating war could really be on rural communities, and a lot of people in China had seen themselves in the characters in the story. At this point, Jin had already cast the film's human actors, but the dog's role was by far the hardest to fill, and obviously the most central to the movie.
He and his team had hosted a bunch of casting calls already, and advertised to the public to ask if anybody had a dog that looked like the one that was in this book, and tons of people had answered this ad, but none of the dogs that they brought in were good enough for the film. The reason for that is Jin knew the dog needed to look the part, but it was more than that. The dog also had to be compelling and charismatic despite being a dog. This dog was the hero of the story and the soul of the movie, so it really had to project loyalty and bravery and goodness on screen and come across also as gentle and sweet enough that audiences fell in love with it. But now, as Jin watched yet another anxious, poorly trained dog actor scurry around the room, he felt this wave of anxiety. Jin was starting to feel worried that maybe the reason all these dog actors were not working out is because maybe the perfect dog just didn't exist. And if that was true, then his movie would not be good, like he would have a bad actor in the lead role and it would flop. And for Jin, I mean, that really represented sort of like a worst-case scenario for him.
So, decades earlier, in the 1950s, Jin had been this prolific director in China, and he had won many prestigious awards. But during China's Cultural Revolution, which was a period of unrest in the country in the 1960s and 70s, Jin had been ostracized by the public because of his largely unpopular political views. And ever since then, he had been struggling to regain his status as a celebrated filmmaker. And so the chance to adapt this brilliant novel, which was touching and tragic and already beloved by the public, was like his opportunity to prove himself and get back on top. And he knew that, you know, if the movie failed, he was old enough that he would very likely not get another chance like this, and he might be completely forgotten about. And so now, as this dog's audition came to an end, and obviously this dog was not going to be a fit, Jin's just sitting there feeling kind of hopeless, and Jin's producer walked up and led the anxious dog and its owner out of the room and Jin at this point was so busy worrying to himself about how this movie was destined to fail now that he barely noticed his producer bringing in the next dog and owner.