This is the last Hoffman article post, I promise

From Hoffman:

“In my mid-20s, an actor told me, ‘Acting ain’t no puzzle,’ ” Hoffman said. “I thought: ‘Ain’t no puzzle?!?’ You must be bad!” He laughed. “You must be really bad, because it is a puzzle. Creating anything is hard. It’s a cliché thing to say, but every time you start a job, you just don’t know anything. I mean, I can break something down, but ultimately I don’t know anything when I start work on a new movie. You start stabbing out, and you make a mistake, and it’s not right, and then you try again and again. The key is you have to commit. And that’s hard because you have to find what it is you are committing to.”

So often, I feel like I'm trying to find the formula for writing a good play -- the set of fail-safe rules that will allow me to emerge from every trip to the laptop with a shining, successful play. And of course, I know this isn't how it works...but if you're one of those people who, as a student, figured out the formula for getting straight As and then got them, it can be very disconcerting to realize that there's no one way to guarantee the result you want. But commitment, I can do.