Simone's next film, I Am Pig, is her "directorial debut" and a tasteless treatment about zoophilia intended to disgust audiences. Not only does it fail to achieve the desired effect of audience alienation, but it also serves to foster her credibility as a risk-taking, fearless and avant-garde artist. Taransky's subsequent attempts to discredit Simone—by having her drink, smoke, and curse at public appearances and use politically incorrect statements—similarly backfire when the press instead begins to see her as refreshingly honest. As a last resort, Taransky decides to dispose of Simone completely by using a computer virus to erase her, dumping the hard drive and floppy disks into a steamer trunk, burying the trunk at sea, and then announcing to the press that she has died of a rare virus contracted on her Goodwill Tour of the Third World. During the funeral, the police interrupt, open the coffin and find only a cardboard cutout of Simone. He is arrested and shown a security camera video where he loads a large trunk onto his yacht. After being charged with her murder, he admits that Simone is not a person, but a computer program. The chest containing the computer data is brought up empty. Taransky's daughter Lainey and ex-wife Elaine enter his studio to try to help. They find Taransky's forgotten virus source disk (Plague) and apply an anti-virus program to eradicate the computer virus. They restore Simone and have her appear on national television laughing while holding up a newspaper headline with her obituary. They pick up a confused Taransky, with whom Elaine asks to get back together. In the end, Simone and Taransky are remotely interviewed at home about their new (virtual) baby, used as a cover story for her absence. Simone is concerned about her child's future and decides to enter politics. A post-credits scene reveals Viktor creating footage of Simone buying a calorie-laden meat pie TV dinner at a supermarket, while tabloid investigator character Max Sayer, who has an obsessive crush on Simone throughout the film, is thrilled to discover that she appears to love meat pies as much as he does. Production Like Andrew Niccol's predecessor Gattaca, Simone deals with themes of the problematic aspects of technological advances being used to attempt to attain perfection. Unlike the former, however, Simone was Niccol's first attempt at a comedic satire with lighter moments and over-the-top drama. Niccol's first attempt at