[外電] The Life Obsessive With Wes Anderson 1. 韋思安德森的海海人生

The Life Obsessive With Wes Anderson



On a spur-of-the-moment train ride to Rome with the filmmaker whose reality bears a distinct resemblance to his movies.



By David Amsden 









Wes Anderson did not know where he was going. The problem was not that he was lost, but that his mind kept wandering, darting off in too many directions at once—a common and not entirely unwelcome problem for the 38-year-old director. Part of him wanted to stick around Venice for another day or two, now that the Venice Film Festival was over and the promotional business surrounding The Darjeeling Limited, his new film, was behind him. He liked Venice, liked the whole idea of wandering the catacomblike streets of a city that should have been swallowed up by the Adriatic centuries ago. But there was talk of moving the party elsewhere—to Paris, maybe, where he has kept an apartment since 2005; or perhaps to Rome, where some friends were heading. Eventually Anderson would have to figure out a way back to Manhattan, his other semi-permanent residence, in time for Darjeeling to open the New York Film Festival, but logistical details like that were, for the time being, best left out of the picture. 



韋思安德森不知道自己身在何處。問題不在於他迷路了，而是內心總有太多點子蜂湧而上，對於這位三十八歲的導演可謂見怪不怪，且不受喜愛。一部分的他想趁宣傳告個段落，多在威尼斯逗留幾天。他喜歡威尼斯，他喜歡遊盪這城市早該在好幾世紀前被亞得里亞海吞噬的墓街。移師巴黎也不錯，二零零五年留下的公寓等著光臨；或許羅馬會更好，友人們正驅車前往。最後，安德森終於下定決心回到曼哈頓，紐約影展期間的半生住所，但以上邏輯推理還是別應用在電影裡好。









"I’m thinking Rome," he eventually said, as if Rome were an appetizer he frequently orders, and twelve hours later he finds himself here: on a train bound for the Eternal City, joined by Roman Coppola and his girlfriend, Jennifer Furches. Coppola and Furches are the director’s old friends who, like most of his old friends, double as frequent collaborators. This is the dynamic at the heart of what those close to him affectionately refer to as "Wes’s world," which resembles a vaudevillian family by way of Evelyn Waugh. Coppola, for example, is the cousin of Jason Schwartzman, the star of Anderson’s Rushmore, and together the three of them wrote the script for Darjeeling. (Furches was script supervisor.)



「我正在想羅馬。」他終於開口，彷彿羅馬是必點開胃菜，而十二小時過後，才發現自己和羅曼柯波拉賢伉儷正坐在通向永恆之都的車廂裡。賢伉儷是導演陳年老友，就像其他陳年老友一樣，兼任工作夥伴。這就是「韋斯安德森世界」旋轉的動能，類比為伊文利渥夫 (夢斷白莊) 式雜耍家族。例如柯波拉乃傑森薛茲曼堂親，都是愛情惹的禍男主角，三人合寫了大吉嶺有限公司的劇本。(柯波拉女朋友是劇本醫生)



Evelyn Waugh 1903~1966









That we happen to be traveling by train to discuss a movie that takes place on a train was not part of the original plan, though I’m starting to think of it as yet another example of Anderson’s knack for retouching reality with an idiosyncratic gloss. (It may be connected to his fear of flying as well; until recently, Anderson traveled to Europe by boat, and he far prefers trains and automobiles to anything airborne.) Also somewhat peculiar is the fact that buried in one of Anderson’s monogrammed suitcases is 10,000 euros in cash—about $14,000—an amount that may or may not be legal to carry, and that was given to the director by Bill Murray, who asked that the money be "delivered to Luigi." 



在車廂裡討論電影並非計畫之中，即使我開始將之視為安德森又一個人化現實的案例。(這也和他怕坐飛機有關) 更奇特的是，安德森字母圖騰手提箱裡裝有一萬歐元，約莫一萬四千美金，違法攜帶邊緣的數目，乃從比爾莫瑞手中交付，指名「快遞給路奇先生」。



Luigi 1983~present









"It’s not as weird as it sounds. Luigi was Bill’s landlord when we shot The Life Aquatic," explains Anderson, talking about his last movie, parts of which were filmed in Rome. 



「事情沒有聽起來那麼古怪。路奇先生是比爾海海人生拍攝期間的房東。」安德森談到取景景羅馬的上部電影。









"But," I ask, "wasn’t that back in 2004?"



「巴特……那已經是二零零四年的事了，不是嗎？」筆者反問。









"Yeah, Bill can be a little weird with time. But there’s no hard feelings or anything. I think Luigi and Bill have a pretty good rapport, though Luigi will probably be happy to get his money."



「耶！比爾的時間觀異於常人。但這之間沒有嫌隙或什麼。我認為比爾和路奇先生關係良好，即使路奇先生還是希望可以拿到房租。」 









Anderson often finds himself in situations like this: real-life circumstances that have the same absurd, art-directed quality as his films. You may be tempted to shake your head and simply say that Anderson has been incredibly lucky, which is true, but that doesn’t give enough credit to his talents—not just as a director, but more generally as someone who has constructed a life almost preposterously conducive to the pursuit of fantastical whims. When he was editing Darjeeling, for instance, he convinced Fox Searchlight to rent him a suite at the Inn at Irving Place, an unmarked hotel on Gramercy Park designed to re-create an era of faded glamour that probably never actually existed. Given that Anderson owns a spacious loft in the East Village that doubles as a work space, and that the studio could have rented any number of generic editing rooms for significantly less money, the logic behind this could be considered questionable. "I remember walking in there and thinking, Man, only Wes would figure out a way to pull this off," recalls the photographer Gregory Crewdson, who befriended Anderson at a dinner party four years ago. "There was the little guy behind the desk, the narrow wooden staircase leading up to the room—it was just perfect. In his films he creates a very particular and unmistakable world, and I guess you could say the same is true in his life."



安德森發現：真實世界往往和韋思安德森世界有著相同的荒謬美感。你或許為安德森的好運搖頭，事實如此，但不足以解釋他的才華，身為導演，更貼近身為一個過著開發奇天異想的生活的人的才華。好比剪接大吉嶺時，他說服福斯探照燈租下歐文別墅套房，格拉梅西公園旁意圖重現未曾存在消逝風華的旅館。假使安德森住在東村某寬敞閣樓，電影公司可以更便宜價錢租下更多剪接室，然而這邏輯不適用於此。「記得漫步於此心想，老兄，只有你才能在這種地方工作。」攝影師葛雷哥萊克魯森說到，兩人四年前晚宴認識。這傢伙屈身桌後，狹窄樓梯間直指房門，簡直完美。他建構了一個非常獨特而精確的世界，你可以說就和他的房間沒麼兩樣。









You need only watch a few frames of one of his movies to spot it as an Anderson production. Though he is originally from Texas, there is something distinctively European in his obsession with aesthetics: a belief that the way something looks is what dictates how it will make you feel. His impeccably composed wide-angle shots have the feeling of a childhood fantasy: wistful, more than a bit ridiculous, with a darkness creeping in at the edges. Pepper in some resurrected classic-rock songs; deadpan dialogue; themes of failure, nostalgia, and fractured families; and the result, at its best, is a world unto itself. 



幾個鏡頭即可判斷這是韋思安德森電影。生於德州，卻顯露對美學迷戀的歐陸風格：一種外觀決定感受之信仰。他無可挑剔的廣角充滿童年夢幻：嚮往，可笑，黑暗潛伏牆角。老搖滾辛辣；活死人對話；失敗主題，鄉愁，和破碎家庭；結果是，頂多，重複轉動的世界。









2. 韋思安德森幽閉恐懼症