In my original editor’s cut, I decided not to show the pooping. Both versions were very effective, it just became Mike’s preference. It’s no longer this shocking thing that happens. Now, had that scene remained, our pooping in the suitcase scene becomes something quite different. “The biggest choice we made that affected the pooping in the suitcase scene was cutting out a scene two episodes prior where Armond tells Belinda a story about an onerous hotel guest from his past, who had pushed him to his breaking point while he was still using, and how he snuck into this guest’s room and took a shit in her Louis Vuitton suitcase. They had to find ways to shoot around that so that no one is seeing camera while we’re filming.” John Valerio
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A benefit of shooting in the same hotel for three months is that we had access to that room, and they could plan it out - it’s not like we arrived there on the day and they’re like, ‘Oh, we didn’t realize there was a wall here.’ But at the same time, that bathroom is full of mirrors. So to come upstairs and find a shit in his suitcase is the final straw, like ‘What is this cosmic joke on me?’ There’s so much self-pity, anger and expectations that haven’t been met. She’s gotten her own room, and he’s been boozing for the last hour. And by this point, his wife doesn’t want any part of it. “When we started filming, I had a short-sighted view of Shane, and Mike was very helpful in being like, ‘This is just a guy who’s trying to have a nice honeymoon, and things keep getting in his way.’ In essence, Shane thinks he’s a good guy, but the script and his actions tell a different story. We wanted Armond’s last moment to be sort of ambiguous - there’s terror, obviously, in being stabbed in the chest, but also there’s some relief and perverse humor in it.” We had a stunt guy who actually fell back into the bath. Shane comes in and I’m creeping out of the closet, and then he comes back into the hallway, so I have to go back in the closet. We also did wide shots, but Mike was like, ‘Don’t worry, we’re never going to use the wide shots.’ He called me the day that the last episode went to air and was like, ‘You’ve seen it right? I feel so bad.’ A lot of it is one long wide shot of me squatting over a suitcase doing my thing, which is the perfect shot to use obviously, but Mike was sort of stressed about it. “We did a lot of coverage of that scene - there were shots on my face and shots of me squatting over the suitcase. I thought, ‘If we stage this right, there might be a way where we can show this accident, murder, whatever it was, from both perspectives.’ So we decided to shoot it from both characters’ points of view, which gave us options in the edit.” Murray Bartlett We found this room that had a strange layout because you could see into the bathroom from the bedroom. Our options for the scene were limited to the layout of the various rooms in the Four Seasons Maui. It’s such a turn from all these beautiful people in this beautiful setting. And seeing him take a shit in this antiseptic hotel with perfect production design perfectly encapsulates his feelings toward the service industry and these guests.
But this just feels so right because it best expresses how off the beat Armond has gotten. “I’m not a scatological person, nor am I trying to push envelopes in that particular graphic way. Shane hears a noise, picks up the pineapple knife, skulks toward the bathroom, turns a corner and plunges a knife in Armond, who then bleeds out in the bathtub. As Shane notices the “turd” in his luggage, Armond tries to escape. But before the viewer has time to digest what went down, Shane enters the room and Armond retreats inside a closet. Pairing Bartlett’s bare behind with Cristobal Tapia de Veer’s cinematic score, the scene is shockingly graphic.