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In Breaking Bad Extras an actor talks about a scene in which he would wish to be part of:
..for some reason that episode is just lodged in my mind and I to have been a fly on the wall or a roach in the corner ... I feel I would have been pretty fascinating.
Could someone explain this usage? Is it equal to "I would have been a fly"? What kind of a stylistic flair does it add?
The dialogue goes
"For some reason that episode is just lodged in my mind, and I... I... to have been a fly on the wall or a roach in the corner... I feel like would have been pretty fascinating."
The two words "I" in succession are hesitations before the speaker reformulated his thought. The sense is "I feel ...[that] to have been a fly on the wall would have been pretty fascinating". That means that he thinks he would like to have been a hidden observer, to see and hear everything, not that he would have participated.
Try googling "fly on the wall".
