The Bitter and the Sweet of Temporary Things

Back in March, Time Magazine's Asia edition had an article about a Bhutanese film-maker, Khyentse Norbu -- The God of Small Films. I suddenly remembered it, and hunted it up. The part that came back to me was this:

...Another character Dondup comes across along the highway is an 81-year-old apple-seller, played appropriately by an 81-year-old apple-seller whom Khyentse Norbu found in a market in Thimpu. The apple man in the film-and on the set-is a perfect representative of the innocence of old Bhutan that Dondup initially finds so unattractive. Despite the crew's genuine efforts to make him understand that he's an actor, the apple-seller thinks everything about the shoot is real. For three weeks, each time he is asked to board a vehicle bound in the story for Thimpu, he believes he's actually going home. When a scene calls for him to fall asleep by a campfire, he does just that. When he's offered a cup of butter tea with the cameras rolling, he complains that it's not salty enough. By his last day of shooting he's thoroughly confused. He's just played a scene in which he cheerfully bids farewell to the other travellers and steps onto a bus. When it stops seconds later and backs up to let him off for the next take, he stomps his foot in bewildered frustration. "It only took me four hours to get here from Thimpu," he says to Khyentse Norbu with a slight hint of reproach. "I can't figure out why it's taking me so many days to get back."....