This is the epilogue for POSERS, but it’s pretty much done. Except that if I have the energy later, I’d like to replace some of live action with stop motion. I do have the flags, Kim, Trump, Dennis — and Kim’s sister is coming soon from China, I hope.
Donald Trump’s infamous meeting with Kim Jong-un in Singapore on June 12, 2018 was a big inspiration for one of the subplots in POSERS, because it represented the normalization of two mafia-level, sadistic dictators.
I had long referred to Dennis Rodman as Trump’s Ambassador to North Korea, but CNN’s Chris Cuomo really sealed the deal by interviewing Rodman in Prime Time.
So to a part of that interview, I added layer upon layer of music and dialogue — including Kim’s character voice from POSERS and Trump’s actual voice as a public figure saying the most absurd things to Kim, caught on a hot mic.
In the background we hear the Summit’s venue playing a tinny, sappy song I recorded directly from the same Barbie Princess record player we saw earlier in the Bunker of Evil.
And in a headset surround sound effect, we hear a News Director (played by my sister-in-law) try to call shots amidst the chaos and technical difficulties — including a network Chyron operator who goes rogue for comedic effect.
In the end, Rodman essentially concludes the North Koreans are good people, and that his friend Kim Jong-un is perpetually misunderstood.
The scene fast-forwards to the infamous 2020 presidential debate in which Joe Biden tells an out-of-control Donald Trump, “Will you shut up, man?”
And then we end our show with our News Director aghast. “TV doesn’t get any better than this,” she sighs as she pops a beer. “And that’s a wrap.”