"Unlike a lot of stories that you hear about actors who demand lots of things in their contract and lots of people and chefs and all that jazz, I'm not one of those. All I want on location of a movie is a ping-pong table in my living room in the hotel. That's all I want." - Kevin Spacey
Kevin has made a faulty comparison. His quote also contains some awkward diction that could be avoided with the removal of a single conjunction.
In the first sentence of this quote, Kevin begins with "Unlike a lot of stories." The word "unlike" sets up a comparison, and the first part of this comparison is "stories." Towards the end of the sentence, he completes the comparison with "I." While it is easy to understand that Kevin probably intended the pronoun "those" to refer to "actors" and not "stories," the structure of the sentence creates a comparison between "stories" and "I." It is not logical to compare stories with a person. The sentence can be restructured to avoid this faulty comparison.
The noun phrase "actors who demand lots of things in their contract and lots of people and chefs and all that jazz" is awkward because "lots of people and chefs and all that jazz" are things that are listed in contracts, but this phrase follows "in their contract" and it is connected to the prepositional phrase with the conjunction "and." The removal of the conjunction creates an appositive that serves to include these specific things in the broader "lots of things in their contract." Since each actor has his or her own contract, it might make more sense to change "contract" to "contracts."
The faulty comparison can be avoided in several ways. These are a few possibilities:
"A lot of actors demand lots of things in their contracts, lots of people and chefs and all that jazz. I'm not one of those."
This approach removes the comparison altogether and the pronoun "those" clearly refers to "actors."
"Unlike a lot of actors who demand lots of things in their contracts, lots of people and chefs and all that jazz, I do not do that."
This approach maintains the comparison, but "actors" are compared to "I." The independent clause "I'm not one of those" has been replaced with "I do not do that" to establish a parallel structure.
"Unlike a lot of stories that you hear about actors who demand lots of things in their contracts, lots of people and chefs and all that jazz, my story is simple."
This approach maintains the comparison, but "stories" is compared to "mine" and "mine" clearly refers to Kevin's story. This comparison is logical.
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