"And when I have lived elsewhere, every two weeks I have to fly back to LA. Even New York directors go there to audition. So I have to be there to a degree"
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There is a particular exhaustion baked into this kind of logistics talk: the life of an actor reduced to a commute, a calendar, an airport lounge. Speedman isn’t name-dropping Los Angeles as a dream factory; he’s treating it like a compulsory jurisdiction. “Have to” appears twice in three sentences, turning what outsiders imagine as glamour into something closer to parole conditions. The intent is plain: explain why geography still dictates opportunity. The subtext is sharper: in an industry that sells the fantasy of mobility, power remains stubbornly centralized.
The detail that “even New York directors go there to audition” is doing heavy lifting. It’s a quiet admission that prestige outposts can exist, but the decision-making gravity sits in LA. New York has theater, culture, even a mythos of seriousness; Speedman punctures that romance by pointing out that serious people still submit to the same pilgrimage. That “even” carries a hint of disbelief and a small resentment: if the coastal rival has to bend the knee, what choice does an actor have?
Context matters here. Speedman came up in a moment when “living elsewhere” sounded plausible: Vancouver shoots, indie booms, later the streaming era’s dispersed production hubs. Yet casting, networking, and last-minute availability still reward proximity. “To a degree” is the closing hedge, the actorly understatement that masks a harder truth: in Hollywood, your zip code is part of your resume.
The detail that “even New York directors go there to audition” is doing heavy lifting. It’s a quiet admission that prestige outposts can exist, but the decision-making gravity sits in LA. New York has theater, culture, even a mythos of seriousness; Speedman punctures that romance by pointing out that serious people still submit to the same pilgrimage. That “even” carries a hint of disbelief and a small resentment: if the coastal rival has to bend the knee, what choice does an actor have?
Context matters here. Speedman came up in a moment when “living elsewhere” sounded plausible: Vancouver shoots, indie booms, later the streaming era’s dispersed production hubs. Yet casting, networking, and last-minute availability still reward proximity. “To a degree” is the closing hedge, the actorly understatement that masks a harder truth: in Hollywood, your zip code is part of your resume.
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| Topic | Career |
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