Veterans of Hollywood Grow Immune to Movies’ Magic
好萊塢老江湖 喪失觀影樂趣
By Peter Mehlman

LOS ANGELES – The first mistake, ordering tickets a day in advance, left 24 hours for the second: telling anyone in this town you’re seeing “The Judge.”
第一個錯誤是提前一天訂票，留下了二十四小時的空檔讓第二個錯誤發生：告訴洛杉磯城裡隨便那個人，你準備看電影《大法官》。

“Oh ...” a friend says.
「喔……」一位友人說。

“Oh?”
「喔？」

“No. Just that someone who dated the script supervisor – or dialogue coach, I forget – told me the script was rewritten like 41,000 times.”
「並非如此。只是某位和編劇總監或對話指導約過會的人，我忘了是跟誰，告訴我劇本大概重寫了四萬一千次。」

The tickets aren’t refundable. You love Robert Duvall, and once met Robert Downey Jr. at Starbucks during his drug-using days and he could not have been cooler, so –
電影票不能退。你喜歡勞勃杜瓦，也曾在星巴克連鎖咖啡店遇見過當時還在嗑藥的小勞勃道尼，他簡直酷斃了，所以－

Maybe 20 minutes into “The Judge,” the dialogue veers wildly, and the writing voice jumps into a variety of genres. An hour in, you think, Wow, they brought in a S.W.A.T. team to rewrite this.
也許在觀看《大法官》二十分鐘後，對白開始暴走，編劇的用字遣詞聽起來各類片型都有。看了一小時後，你心想，哇，片商找了霹靂小組來改寫劇本。

Back home, an email awaits from a friend on Eastern Standard Time. “Saw ‘The Judge.’ Loved it!”
回到家，一位住在（美國）東部標準時區的友人寄來的電郵寫道：「看過《大法官》了，超喜歡的！」

Envy. That’s what you feel toward your friend. He can still easily enjoy a movie. But working in Los Angeles has ruined any chance at pleasure when going to a movie.
真教人羨慕。這是你對這位朋友的感覺。他依然能夠輕輕輕鬆享受一部電影。但是在洛杉磯工作，已經使得你在觀賞一部電影時，無法去享受任何樂趣。

Before moving here, I loved the movies. The sheer joy of rapt focus on a story in the dark.
搬來洛杉磯前，我喜歡看電影。單單在一片漆黑中全神貫注於故事的發展，就讓人感到欣喜若狂的快樂。

Well, so much for that. Five, 10, 20 years in L.A., and you suffer the -itis or -osis of knowing too much. You know all about script structure, studio notes, budget overruns, star troubles, fired directors. It’s like you’ve seen the movie before its release.
嗯，往事只能回味。在洛杉磯待了五年、十年、二十年後，你罹患知道太多的疑難雜症。劇本架構、電影介紹、預算超支、明星出包、導演被換。好像電影還沒上映，你就已經看過了。

I vividly remember the moment my cinema innocence ended. Year 3 of show business employment on an aisle seat in Westwood, amid killer Jack Nicholson acting and whip-smart Aaron Sorkin dialogue in a movie I actually liked, a rogue thought arose: Boy, this movie should have been called “A Few Good Close-ups.”
我清楚記得觀賞電影的純真歲月結束的那一刻。入行的第三年，坐在西木區（譯註：西木區是洛杉磯地區最精華的地段，很多好萊塢電影的首映會在這兒舉行）靠走道的戲院座位上，播放的電影我很喜歡，裡面有超迷人傑克尼柯遜的演技，和聰明絕頂的亞倫索金編寫的對白，我生出了個歪念頭：哇，這部電影應該叫做《幾個好特寫》（譯註：作者提到的電影是1992年的好萊塢電影A Few Good Men，中文譯名為《軍官與魔鬼》）。

It was the kind of involuntary thought that infuses Hollywood movie viewing, the kind of low-impact cynicism that signaled the end of leaving myself behind in a movie. Permanent antennas grew out of my head, signal catchers that beep at the first blip of ham-handed exposition, in-your-face character development or feel-emotion-now screen tricks.
這種不由自主的念頭進入觀看好萊塢電影的經驗，一種沒啥大不了、反正就是這麼回事的態度，預告了我再也不能融入電影情節之中。我的頭頂長出常態的天線，爆炸凸槌時的第一個停頓聲、衝著你來的角色發展、或是激發共鳴的銀幕伎倆一出現，信號捕捉裝置就會嗶聲示警。

But this is L.A. You have to keep going to the movies. You can’t just stop and exclude yourself from every conversation in every part of the city.
然而這裡畢竟是洛杉磯。你必須不斷去看電影。你無法乾脆停下腳步，自外於城市每個角落的每一段會話。

Before “Gravity” came out, I met the nice guy whose company did the special effects. Huh, maybe I’ll enjoy the visual majesty.
在《地心引力》上映前，我遇見一位仁兄，他任職的公司幫電影作特效。哈，或許我可以享受視覺的壯麗。

The theater lights barely dimmed when a tethered George Clooney floated through outer space to chat up Sandra Bullock as if she was a new face on an old bar stool.
拴了繩索的喬治柯隆尼在外太空飄浮，和珊卓布拉克閒聊，彷彿在和老吧檯的新面孔搭訕，電影院的燈光這時還沒暗下來。

Uh-oh. Clunky back story alert!
啊喔。警告：長篇大論的話說從頭要來了。

He asks if she has anyone waiting back home for her.
他問她，家裡是否有人為她守候。

Oh God, no. Try to focus on the beautiful cosmos...
我的天啊，別這樣。努力聚焦在美麗的宇宙風景上…

Sandra says no one is waiting. Her 4-year-old daughter died. And cue the involuntary avalanche of eye-rolling thoughts: Apparently Warner Bros. assumed audiences couldn’t be trusted to root for a woman stranded alone in space; let’s throw in a dead daughter.
珊卓說，沒有人在等候她；四歲的女兒已經往生。促狹的念頭源源而來，插入劇情：顯然華納兄弟娛樂公司認定觀眾對獨自困在太空的一位女子不可能捧場；我們就給她安排個死掉的女兒吧。

But it’s not just movies themselves removing all pleasure potential for the Veterans of Hollywood Wars.
不過，剝奪好萊塢資深記者一切觀影樂趣可能性的，不光是電影本身。

There’s the cynicism of proximity. (“I don’t need to see ‘Wild.’ I can see Reese Witherspoon walking in Brentwood.”) In the opening credits of any studio-produced movie, odds are you’ll see a name you know – and make no mistake about it, people here rarely root for someone they know. Welcome to L.A.: the only place where moviegoers want movies to stink.
還有因為距離太近而產生的藐視感。（我不必去看《那時候，我只剩下勇敢》，反正我在布倫塢就能看見主角瑞絲薇絲朋散步。）任何一部好萊塢片商出品的電影開場介紹劇組的字幕出現時，你可能會看見認識的名字，別搞錯，這裡的觀眾很少替認識的人打氣。歡迎來到洛杉磯：唯一一個電影觀眾希望電影很爛的地方。（編按：布倫塢是洛杉磯一個富裕的區域）

Foreign films are appealing, because you probably won’t know anyone who worked on them. If the credits are in Korean, well, the more foreign, the better.
外語片很吸引人，因為劇組人員你可能一個都不認識。如果介紹劇組人員的字幕是韓文，很好；文字越外國越好。

Of course, every year, fine movies slip through the cracks. But even when you admire a movie, the purity of your experience is compromised by all you know and wish you didn’t.
當然，每年都會有好電影乘隙而出。但即使你讚賞某部電影，觀影的純粹喜悅會被你的知識破壞，但願自己別知道這麼多。

Upon leaving “Foxcatcher” (directed by Bennett Miller), my first thought was: How did something this well made ever get made?
一看完班奈特米勒執導的《暗黑冠軍路》，我的第一個念頭是：拍得這麼好的一部片，究竟是怎麼辦到的？

原文參照：
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/22/movies/the-man-who-knows-too-much.html

2015-03-03聯合報/G9版/UNITED DAILY NEWS 張佑生譯 原文參見紐時週報十二版下