2012年5月25日 星期五

Saying goodbye to House

再見了!親愛的豪斯醫生。



終究到了曲終人散的時候,
House M.D一路到第八季,也該是說再見的時候了。

第一次看到這個影集,是在好幾年前的某個夜晚。
因為失眠,平常幾乎不看電視的我,無聊打開電視亂轉。剛好公視正在播House的第二季,一看成「主顧」。XD
當時美國的進度,House已經播到第四季了。所以我一邊慶幸好在才四季,要從頭開始補很快,另一方面也哀怨,怎麼只有四季,每個禮拜追劇很痛苦...
我喜歡劇中的House,儘管他表現出來的總是一副討打的模樣、嘴賤、任意挖人瘡疤不說,還時常欺負總在他身邊陪伴著他的Wlison,然而,我喜歡他用這種充滿戰鬥意味、卻以最毫不在意的方式表現出對於這個看似和諧、看似美好的社會的最深諷刺。這個世界已經太過美好,有時候,我們僅需要的是一點點說真話的勇氣。


主要角色來來去去,好在House身旁總是有一個Wlison...(我本來好希望House能與Cuddy一路走下去,沒想到編劇可以這麼個玩法,讓我整個無言...)

在劇終之際,Hugh Laurie寫了一篇文章:Saying goodbye to House.





有好心的網友把它文字化了,我把原文貼在下面,或者可以到這裡看:

Saying goodbye to House


ON OUR LAST DAY OF SHOOTING, Fox's top brass gave me some top brass. I'm not talking about my salary, which was undeniably mad — the sort of money that should only be paid to people who destroy Earth-bound asteroids, or invent a method for converting journalists into clean energy — no, I mean they gave me a trumpet. And not just any trumpet, but a vintage Selmer, as played by Louis Armstrong. (The certificate of provenance that came with it doesn't specify whether Pops played this actual instrument or a close relation, but I suppose the lack of clarity is clarity of a sort. Never mind. It is a wondrous gift.) I tried blowing it immediately, almost turning my digestive tract inside out in the process, but I did get a sound. I tooted my own horn and it felt good.

Now I know that I'm not supposed to do this. It is the accepted custom, especially among my countrymen, to play down one's accomplishments; to blush, and stammer charmingly about luck, and teamwork, and possibly the hand of God (which, when you think about it, is a ferociously arrogant explanation for one's success, but we'll leave t hat for now). But this Dance of Modesty can often be disingenuous. It serves to deflect and disarm, to spike the guns of one's enemies; I know because I have used it that way myself. 

So, for the length of this paragraph alone, I am striking out against the custom. I am going to toot my horn loud and clear and say that, for eight years, I worked as hard as I knew how, to make House as good as it could be. I frothed and fretted over every detail, every line, every moment. Driving home in the small hours, I pounded the steering wheel as I replayed mistakes in my mind. I tossed and turned every night, plotting the next day's maneuvers, until I reached moments of near-madness — some would say nearer than near — because I loved House with all my heart, and loved the other characters and the world in which they moved just as much. 

我好喜歡這兩段Hugh Laurie的說法!成功並不是因為幸運,而是因為,我很努力,我非常努力。每一個細節、每一句台詞、每一個瞬間,我都要努力做到最好。因此我可以大聲說,House的成功不是因為幸運,相反的,他是多少人努力付出的成果!這也是我看House的感覺,Hugh Laurie整個把自己嵌進House中,二者不可分割。

事實上,我們總容易只看到演員的功成名就,而忽略他們背後辛苦的付出。因此這是我喜歡Hugh Laurie這段說法的原因,我對得起我自己做為一個演員的角色,同時,我也對得起我所獲得的掌聲,因為,我就是這麼認真的付出。

這讓我想到了Benny。Benny的訪問總讓人覺得他很謙虛,他對於這一年多來的片約與掌聲,他還處在適應的階段,因此他總說要提醒自己不要被迷惑,要穩定好自己的心情,做好自己的工作。我覺得Benny跟Hugh剛好是兩個不同階段的代表。

Benny一直很努力,我們也看到他一路跌跌撞撞,還曾經好幾個月完全沒有工作、也曾在舞台劇上失聲,面對觀眾的噓聲,痛哭著離開。隨著Sherlock影集讓他的身價水漲船高,但我卻總是為他背後的努力所感動。就像是他要演霍金,即便別人覺得沒必要,他還是覺得應該要與霍金本人有所接觸,盡量了解他本人。或者像Smaug,他還專程跑去動物園觀察蛇移動的方式。更不用提演出Frankensteinn時所受的傷害。這些幕後的準備工作,若不是訪談之中提及,其實我們不一定會觀察的到。Benny給我的感覺是,他一直都很努力,只是不曉得為什麼在這個時間點,他的努力與他的收穫不成正比,一下子爆炸了。所以他會說,比起其他的演員,他幸運的多,因為還有許多一樣很優秀的演員,他們顯然還沒有成為目光的焦點。

但Hugh不同。House已經八季了,Hugh已經紅了許久。能夠受到觀眾的愛戴與支持,這已經不是我很幸運或感謝上帝可以打發的過去的狀況。Hugh能大聲的說,House這個角色受歡迎,我是真的很認真很努力。我有這樣的自信可以大聲說,這不是幸運女神的眷顧,而是我腳踏實地的結果(當然也包括劇組的努力,他在文章後面會提到)。

我真的希望,有一天Benny也能有Hugh這樣的自信,別再覺得自己沒有其他人長得好看(不然我天天看著你的照片發呆是在幹嘛?),別再覺得自己幸運,因為你值得。我希望Benny能有這樣的笑容與自信,告訴觀眾,請你們注意我的付出,請你們肯定我的努力。

At its best, the show felt to me like the sweetest kind of chamber music, with perfectly satisfying intervals, cadences, rhythms; but to achieve that consonance, every part of the ensemble had to be just so. The modern style of acting produces a rough, igneous stone from which skilled editors are expected to cut and polish fine diamonds, but that could never have worked for House. The door to Wilson's office had to close between the words "malignant" and "melanoma," to punctuate the moment, not a half second earlier or later. The cap of the pin bottle had to snap shut just before the patient turns his head from the window, or the moment would fail. A misplaced blink, or swallow, or crack of the voice, and a phrase could be reduced to a men string of words: serviceable, comprehensible, but not musical. Often we hit clam, a bum note that would ring on through the following scenes, distracting, and weakening the effect. But we hit some very sweet ones, too.

Of course, critics and Internet wags liked to say that the show, in its middle years, became formulaic. They had fun reducing an episode to its basic elements: Patient gets sick, team tries variety of madcap diagnoses eventually settling on the most improbable, hey presto, patient cured.

Well, yes, one can apply that technique to pretty much any human endeavor: All blues songs are the same, all operas are the same, all games of basketball are definitely the same (to an English eye anyway); in fact everything is the same, including critics, if you don't pay attention to their differences And if you preface your critique with the word "just," you can diminish and undermine the most complex structures. The Mona Lisa is "just" oil paint on wood, arranged to look like a woman. String Theory is "just" an effort to reconcile quantum mechanics with general relativity. King Lear is "just" the story of an old man going loopy.

Obviously, I'm not claiming that House rose to the level of Shakespeare—that really would be loopy—but it did have nuance. Or tried to.

我想,劇集的模式化問題,我覺得是美劇的通病。因為美劇一季一播就是十幾二十集,演員要消化好這些台詞不容易,編劇要想出些新鮮有趣的梗也沒這麼容易。(看看海峽對岸那個倫敦第二號恐怖的人就知道!寫個醜聞可以寫這麼久!)在這種播放的結構下,你要集集有創意、集集有新意,根本就是不可能的事。連生活大爆炸有些時候我都忍不著快轉...

And that, to me, is the most important thing: House tried to be about something. Most procedural dramas set out merely to comfort the audience with the idea that we live in an ordered, moral universe in which virtue is rewarded and sin is punished; wherever evil takes to the streets, a group of heavily-armed models will be there to chase it, catch it, and expunge it from our nightmares. This is not an entirely accurate representation of the facts.

這段很棒。不只是醫務劇,很多劇都是如此,不停安慰觀眾我們生活的世界多麽的道德、有秩序、美德會被褒揚、罪惡會被懲治,無論何時邪惡想戰勝正義時,總都會有一隊全副武裝的部隊將罪惡剿滅。但這個世界真的是如此嗎?(嗯!這是鋼鐵人、蜘蛛人等超級英雄的邏輯不是嗎?)

But House, I believe, grappled with some chewy questions. Is it worth using bad means for good ends? Can an action be good if its motive is bad? Or if its motive is not intentionally good? What is a soul? Is there a God? If there isn't, what defines a friend, and what will you do for him? We didn't always express these questions well, by any means, but we tried, and a large number of people around the world seemed to respond to the effort. I am so damn proud of that. 

這段真是太棒了!House的確常常把人們捲進兩難的思考當中,強迫我們去思考。於是我們會發現,很多時候我們的道德準則其實是會鬆動的。當我們滿腦子道德與正義時,House卻逼我們去面對,很多時候我們其實都一樣:偽善。但我倒不覺得House因此把人性推向一個惡的境界,或者無神論的景況,因為,你要知道,最終面對這些抉擇的時候,選擇的總是你自己。就像關鍵報告裡,先知Donna最後抓著Anderton的手,告訴他:You still have a choice!

But now, finally, the undertakers are in. In the last week of shooting we could hear the Pac-Men at our heels, chain-sawing through the sets we've trodden for eight years. Even the sets themselves seemed to know that the jig was up: Windows started sticking, door handles fell off, carpets curled up like dried leaves. Now the place is awash with cardboard boxes, and the writers have descended on House's office like a crowd of post-Saddam looters. I know this because I tried to do the same, but got there too late. I had thought of putting in a bid for the glass door, with House's name and title painted on it, thinking it would make a good shower door—and then I realized it wouldn't.

我能要那顆House總丟著玩的球嗎?XD

But enough with the looting, and more than enough with my tooting. There were so many great horns in the brass section, far more than I can mention here: Robert Sean Leonard can take anyone, anywhere, in any movie, TV show, play, musical, piece of modem dance, anything; David Shore is a truly great writer; Katie Jacobs may be the best producer in the business; Gale Tattersall may be the best cinematographer, Tony Gaudioz the best operator, Jeremy Cassells the best production designer, and on and on and on. So much hard work, and love, and pride, and companionship - it fair mists the eye to think how far we have come since those first faltering steps in Vancouver in 2004.

No one knows where network TV is headed. Cable is all around us, with its many advantages for viewer and producer alike. (You can't guess at how much we envied the stretchiness of cable when it comes to running time — if they need another 30 seconds, or a couple of minutes, to tell their story, then so be it — while we skinned our knuckles every week against the network schedule. We often had to choose between the set-up and the punchline, and wept for both.) But wherever it's going, it might not take a future House with it. It's possible that we may have experienced the beginning of the End of Days for network drama. Before long you will be faced only with reality shows, broadcast on your wristwatch, or your loved one's teeth, or simply inside your head. There will be no great commonality with whom you can discuss and share the pleasure of drama, or its cost. This may very well be it. Apres nous le deluge. Or I could be talking out of my hat.

Apres nous le deluge.我們之後,洪水將至!如果以後節目的發展真如Hugh所預期,那真的會是災難阿...

The Loopy Old Man writer also came up with The Seven Ages of Man (and if we had had our wits about us, perhaps we might have finished House a year ago, allowing our seven seasons to fit his lifespan more snugly), the last of which, according to the sorrowful Jaques, goes like this:
Last scene of all/That ends this strange eventful history/Is second childishness and mere oblivion/Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

Toot toot.

莎士比亞又出現了。請重新複習Benny的聲音~~~XD




兩位,再一起合作一次吧!我會超級無敵期待的!!!!!

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