I wanted to get more serialized. I had this idea for an event that would click onto everybody's mortality. I said, "I want somebody to die. " Fortunately for me, when I was toying with that idea, John Landgraf, who's the head of FX but also a very smart executive, came up with the idea of the ashes in the maracas. He called me up and said, "Listen, what about this, they get the ashes in a box and when they get them, they shake them and they sound like maracas. " And I was like, "Okay, now I've got my throughline. "
The telephone is the most important single technological resource of later life.