The idea behind this script actually has roots going way back to like near 2000, when Jim Shelton and I discussed what could be shot on the flying boat (used in
Raiders of the Lost Ark) at the Oakland Aviation Museum (on which we ultimately shot
"Stagecoach In the Sky" [link]) and he mentioned an old radio drama concerning people on a plane which is frozen in place and the passengers aren't sure if time stopped or if they're dead or what, and we talked about trying to find/license the radio show and adapt that to a film, or do our own riff on the general concept. So when I hit on the idea of shooting in a "Limbo" I first went to that "people wonder if they're dead or not and why they're there" thing, but that started to sound a little too "Five Characters In Search of An Exit" from
The Twilight Zone. After my first notes for the prospective script for "The Limbo Set" Jim suggested the notion that maybe it's like a play where only one character realizes they're on a stage and all you have to do is walk off. And that made me think about how people can't or won't see the possibilities right under their noses, and that "dead" is maybe a metaphor for not actually living the life you have. Thus the limbo game became our 2001 monolith: this thing that appears and makes the apes see things differently because its mere presence is beyond their comprehension. It's there ergo it MUST mean something. So it makes them aware that there IS a way out, or they impose that function on it and thus it becomes their "exit" because they imagine it to be. Or something.
Here's some
behind the scenes video [link].
