MAN: Neither do I, but why do it when the cameras are rolling?
DIRECTOR: For the scandal.
MAN: Why?
DIRECTOR: What d’you mean “why”? There can be no success without a scandal. Who’s interested in watching a funeral? It’s all pretty dreary, so been-there, done-that. I did instruct the designer to zhuzh it up as much as possible, and make it more festive and cheerful – but a funeral’s a funeral. Always the same thing – glum faces, phony eulogies… The viewers will click over, to a football game or their favorite soap. But if there’s a scandal, they’ll talk about it, interest will skyrocket, people will insist on reruns. My stagings always involve a scandal. The rest doesn’t interest me, or the viewers.
CONSULTANT: But what does physical violation have to do with a funeral?
DIRECTOR: Nothing. That’s the trick of it. One time I set up a welcome ceremony for a foreign leader, and do you know what I came up with? Naked girls with an obscene tattoo on their breasts came running out to meet him at the airport. That bit of film got airtime on every station worldwide.
MAN: And what did the foreign dignitary say?
DIRECTOR: He was very pleased. The girls were just what the doctor ordered, and he became a household name all over the world. And before that, no one had even heard of him. That’s how a success is made. And when I was directing an orchid festival in Singapore…
CONSULTANT: Sorry to interfere again, but this isn’t a stroll down memory lane. It’s a rehearsal.
DIRECTOR: The word “rehearsal” in Latin means “repetition,” my dear girl. With a real director, though, no rehearsal is ever a repetition of the same old thing. It’s a quest for, a promotion of, new ideas.
CONSULTANT: Setting someone up to be violated doesn’t strike me as a good idea.
DIRECTOR: First of all, pussycat, nobody asked you. Second, that’s exactly how the funeral should go, in my mind’s eye. As a great director once asked, “Where’s our next surprise coming from?”
CONSULTANT: You think that a televised sex act will surprise anybody?
DIRECTOR: To be honest, I’m not sure. I’m putting this idea out only as a working hypothesis. And what do you think would surprise today’s viewers?
CONSULTANT: Well, for example, a show that comes across as logical.
DIRECTOR: That’s old hat. I always have to be ahead of my time, not trailing behind it. That’s why my shows have more hooks, obscenities, violence, and all the rest of it than anyone else’s. Food without pepper and spice is bland and tasteless.