How about some quotes from
Noises Off...? Pure Massacre Theatre.
Gary: Lloyd, let me just say one thing, since we've stopped. I've worked with a lotta directors, Lloyd. Some of them were geniuses, some of them were bastards. But I've never met one who was so totally and absolutely... I don't know.
Lloyd: Thank you Gary, I'm very touched. Now will you get off the f***ing stage?
Lloyd: On we blindly stumble!
Lloyd: I'm starting to know what God felt like when he sat out there in the darkness, creating the world.
Belinda: And what did he feel like, Lloyd my dear?
Lloyd: Very pleased he'd taken his Valium.
Usher: Mr. Fellowes, uh, is there anything wrong with your seat?
Lloyd: [thinking] Yeah, it's facing the stage!
Lloyd: Think of the first night as the dress rehearsal. If we can just get through the play once tonight - for doors and sardines. That's what it's all about, doors and sardines. Getting on, getting off. Getting the sardines on, getting the sardines off. That's farce. That's - that's the theatre. That's life.
[pause]
Belinda: God, Lloyd, you're so deep.
Lloyd: I'm just God, Belinda, love. I'm just the one with the English degree. I don't *know* anything.
Lloyd: The wellsprings of human action are deep and cloudy. Maybe something happened to you when you were a very, very, very small child that made you frightened to let go of groceries.
Belinda: Or it could be genetic.
Gary: Yes, or it could be... you know.
Lloyd: Could-could well be.
Frederick: Of course, thank you. I understand all that, but...
Lloyd: Freddy love, I'm telling you I don't know. I-I don't think the *author* knows. I don't know why the author came into this industry in the first place. I don't know why any of us came into it.
Frederick: All the same, if you could just give me a reason I could keep in my mind.
Lloyd: Alright, I'll give you a reason then. You carry those groceries into the study, Freddy honey, because it's just slightly after midnight, and we're not going to be finished before we open tomorrow night - Correction. Before we open TONIGHT!
Lloyd: Like the band playing on as the Titanic sank.
Lloyd: I'm not running away. I'm just not the kind of person who gets a kick out of watching an automobile crash, particularly when it's my automobile! It's gonna be the worst catastrophe Broadway has ever seen. They're gonna forget their lines, the set will fall down. None of us will get out of New York alive; they've got big pictures of us in the lobby.
Lloyd: I'm not. I'm in New York. But I can't sit out there and listen to two minutes, three minutes, one minute, two minutes!
Belinda: Lloyd! We're having big dramas back here!
Lloyd: We're having big dramas out *there!* This is a matinee, Love! There are senior citizens out there! "The curtain will rise in three minutes," we all start for the gents! "The curtain will rise in one minute," we all start running out again! We don't know which way we're going!
And even better: Alan Rickman in
Galaxy QuestSir Alexander Dane: I played Richard III.
Fred Kwan: Five curtain calls...
Sir Alexander Dane: There were five curtain calls. I was an actor once, damn it. Now look at me. Look at me! I won't go out there and say that stupid line one more time.
[…]
Jason Nesmith: You WILL go out there.
Sir Alexander Dane: I won't and nothing you say will make me.
Jason Nesmith: The show must go on.
Sir Alexander Dane: ...Damn you.