"I've been in this business for years and I'm still befuddled by the ways of this town"
About this Quote
Show business sells the fantasy of mastery: learn your lines, hit your marks, take the meeting, win the room. Meg Ryan punctures that myth with one word that lands like a shrug and a warning: “befuddled.” It’s not bitterness, not a takedown, not even complaint. It’s a seasoned performer admitting that Hollywood’s operating system never becomes fully legible, no matter how long you’ve had a keycard.
The intent is disarmingly practical. Ryan frames “this business” as a place where time served doesn’t automatically translate into control. The subtext is about power that stays mobile and hard to pin down: taste shifts, gatekeepers rotate, narratives get rewritten, yesterday’s “it” becomes tomorrow’s “why her?” In a town obsessed with certainty - box office projections, branding, awards math - her line insists on the opposite: the rules are vibes, and the vibes change.
Her choice of “this town” matters. It’s the old showbiz euphemism that turns an industry into a geography, a climate. You don’t argue with weather; you learn to carry an umbrella. Coming from Ryan, whose 1990s rom-com dominance made her a shorthand for a particular kind of American charisma, the confession reads as both humble and quietly defiant. She’s not pretending the machine is meritocratic, and she’s not pretending her longevity grants her special insight. That honesty plays well culturally now, when celebrity is less mystique than surveillance and the public has grown fluent in how reputations get managed, traded, and occasionally burned for sport.
The intent is disarmingly practical. Ryan frames “this business” as a place where time served doesn’t automatically translate into control. The subtext is about power that stays mobile and hard to pin down: taste shifts, gatekeepers rotate, narratives get rewritten, yesterday’s “it” becomes tomorrow’s “why her?” In a town obsessed with certainty - box office projections, branding, awards math - her line insists on the opposite: the rules are vibes, and the vibes change.
Her choice of “this town” matters. It’s the old showbiz euphemism that turns an industry into a geography, a climate. You don’t argue with weather; you learn to carry an umbrella. Coming from Ryan, whose 1990s rom-com dominance made her a shorthand for a particular kind of American charisma, the confession reads as both humble and quietly defiant. She’s not pretending the machine is meritocratic, and she’s not pretending her longevity grants her special insight. That honesty plays well culturally now, when celebrity is less mystique than surveillance and the public has grown fluent in how reputations get managed, traded, and occasionally burned for sport.
Quote Details
| Topic | Work |
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