Nancy: “Would it be rude of me to mention that something about your staging of this scene is a bit off?”

Director: “What? Do you not have enough spotlights on you?”

Nancy: “Why do you want me to sit like this and gaze longingly at my own face? What woman would do that at her dressing table? Joan Crawford?”

Director: “We paid five thousand dollars for that outfit. It’s going to get a cameo in this movie come hell or high water.”

Nancy: “Five thousand dollars for this tacky tribute to the North Pole? Somebody somewhere is an idiot.”

Director: “That someone is the producer. He saw it on the Home Shopping Network.”

Nancy: “Figures. Fine, I’ll do the scene this way. But there’s one other thing.”

Director: “Dear Lord, give me the strength.”

Nancy: “Can you have someone fix that jacked-up curtain in the lower right? It’s throwing off my concentration.”

Director: “Why can’t you just step over there and do some fluffing?”

Nancy: “Because I can’t move. I’m trussed up like a turkey waiting for the oven to pre-heat.”

Director: “Isn’t that your standard state of mind? Nothing ever pleases you.”

Nancy: “What? Why would you say that? Wait, what do you have against me?”

Director: “Nothing. I’m just tired and I don’t understand why you would focus on a stupid wrinkled curtain when there are so many more pressing problems in the world.”

Nancy, suddenly having an epiphany because most women are very skilled in that endeavor: “Wait a minute, I think I get it now. YOU want to be against me. You want to press me!”

Director: “What? You’ve lost your mind.”

Nancy: “No, I haven’t. I can tell when pheromones are swirling in the air. What I can’t quite grasp is why this is happening now. We’ve worked together a million times and I never once got the impression that you wanted to trim my hedges. What’s different this time?”

Director: “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Nancy: “Yes, you do. Why is it so hard for men to just say what they really want? Hold up. Is it this outfit? Do you have some kind of fetish about North Pole attire?”

Director, not wanting to admit anything, but, well, pheromones were swirling: “Maybe.”

Nancy: “So, the producer didn’t order this yuletide ensemble on the Home Shopping Network. You did.”

Director, still struggling: “Maybe.”

Nancy: “How interesting. Would you mind explaining why you’re enamored with the image of a sultry Mrs. Santa Clause? Feel free to speak your mind. It’s just you and me talking. Ignore the hundreds of technical people around us as we film this scene. We make way more money than they do, so their opinion on anything is not important.”

Director, finally deciding to admit his longings after years of denial: “Okay, fine. I’ve always had a thing about making love in the frozen tundra of Siberia.”

Nancy: “I did not see that coming. Nor did the tundra. I support you, I really do. But you have to understand that it can’t happen, right?”

Director: “Because you’re married?”

Nancy: “No, because we’re boycotting Russia at the moment until that asshole Putin is deposed.”

Director: “Okay, got it. Maybe next winter?”

Nancy: “Have your people get with my people and we’ll work something out. Now, about that iron curtain over there…”

Director: “I’m on it.”

#StandWithUkraine

Note: This is Exhibit #14 in Bonnywood’s March Madness. Details found here. This is another entry that I tinkered with, despite saying I wouldn’t, thereby violating the “March Madness” parameters. (The previous final line was that “trussed up like a turkey” bit.) I just saw an opening for a new direction with the plot, and I couldn’t help it. Such is life at Bonnywood…