Fuck Yeah, Paul Gross!

Geoffrey breaks down Hamlet for the nervous Jack:

Jack: Look… my hands are shaking.

Geoffrey: (nods in silent understanding)

Jack: I feel sick. (He paces the dressing room.) Fucking Richard, man! I can’t get through this. The play’s too big… I can’t wrap my head around it. I’m just a face, you know? Normally I don’t think I’ve ever had to keep it up for more than three eighths of a page — sometimes it’s just a glance, you know? And then you do it twenty times until you get it perfect—

Geoffrey: Well, forget about perfection! There’s nothing more boring than perfection! Imprecision. Fear. This is what gets them to their feet.

Jack: Oh, well I should be brilliant, then.

Geoffrey: And it is not that big of a play.

Jack: (stands there and gives him a look) Yeah, right.

Geoffrey: Come here. Sit down. (he pulls out a chair) Sit.

Jack: (sits down)

Geoffrey: All right, look at me. I want you to think of it in terms of six soliloquies, okay? Count ‘em off with me: ‘Oh that this too, too sullied flesh,’ ‘Oh what a rogue and peasant slave am I,’ ‘To be or not to be,’ ‘Tis now the very witching hour’ - that’s a very short one, that’s only twelve lines - ‘Now might I do it pat,’ ‘How all occasions do inform against me,’ that’s it. Six. And the rest, as they say, is silence.

Jack: (wryly) I think there’s some dialogue inbetween.

Geoffrey: Filler. Nail those six soliloquies, everyone goes home happy.

— Slings & Arrows 1x06, Playing the Swan