“Oh. It was a couple years ago, right after I first got hired. I came up with a Cinderella idea for this shoe ad, but in the end we pitched one of my other ideas to the guys, the shoe guys. They liked it and told me how great I was and, uh, the one guy said... oh, right. He said I understood women really well. Which is hilarious, and I said that. And then I told him this other idea I had, the Cinderella one, at the last minute. Just as conversation, because... because it was about a woman, and how strange and frightening the world always seemed like it would be to me, for women. How can anyone understand that? All the contradictions and the violence and the desire.”
At this point, Michael's staring off into a slightly-elsewhere, the way he does when he tells a story or gets otherwise carried away by his own thoughts.
“But they liked it,” he says, refocusing a little. “They bought it. Whatever that means.”