you could articulate the particular sense,i.e smell see hear feel the approach of death in a given context.

...that everybody acts out their final moments on earth in their head, but my...

"etwas in Szene setzen" means "inszenieren, aufführen", but the Leo translation "stage manage" is not really appropriate for literature. "to stage" alone or "produce" or "perform" would all be acceptible literal options, as would less literal ones like imagines, pictures, orchestrates, etc. The idea is not that he arranges the events in a certain way, but that he conceives of them in his mind, he creates a picture of them, i.e. in Szene setzen (create the scene).

Todesnähe is the "approach to death" or the last minutes before death. I would highly recommend looking a Prince Andrey's death in War and Peace and the death of a protagonist in Sevastopol Stories for literary, albeit translated descriptions of the last minutes before death.

Obviously the options are endless and you will probably be able to come up with a better sentence in the context.

...another variation on the theme

Or as Woody Allen put it: "I am not afraid of dying; I just don't want to be there when it happens".

...might be a v. loose (maybe over-the-top) rendering of the sense I get here. I think it's a form of complaint, in the line of 'everyone to their own taste, but... '. As so often, background mood/context will be a factor.
In practice, 'Panavision' may be anachronistic - 'Technicolour'? That kind of thing for 'in Szene setzen in this context. Less specific metaphors might be (death-throesI 'splayed all over his wall/s','plaster his walls with...', etc. Background sense for me is 'make a whole environment/big feature of'.