Rupert's New King of Comedy Speech, Explained：the go-ahead

What's really going on

Rupert is not lying so much as performing. He has a few encouraging words from Jerry and builds an entire future on them, because the telling is the part he can control. To Rita he offers a package deal: his career, his house, his life, as if loving her and casting her in his fantasy were the same thing. Her reply, "I'm a working girl. I gotta go home," is the whole verdict: she lives in the world he keeps editing out. He keeps talking about what a shot on Langford means, yet the scene never shows Jerry actually promising a thing, and that gap is the drama. Rupert hears rejection as encouragement and encouragement as a contract. When Rita tells him not to "sell yourself short," she is trying to be kind, and he takes the kindness as more proof of his own greatness.

Theme

このチャプターで学べること

• The go-ahead is approval, and Rupert claims he has it.
• Pay the price turns money talk into talk of consequence.
• Selling yourself short means refusing to see your own worth.
• Rita's short replies quietly decline the whole fantasy.

発音のポイント

• a couple of — Link a couple of and weaken of so it sounds like one chunk.
• What do you — In fast speech what do you can blur into whaddaya.
• wouldn't wanna — The t sounds in wouldn't and wanna often drop in fast speech.