The National Portrait Gallery is the place dedicated to presenting great American lives, amazing people. And that's what it's about. We use portraiture as a way to deliver those lives, but that's it. And so I'm not going to talk about the painted portrait today. I'm going to talk about a program I started there, which, from my point of view, is the proudest thing I did.
国家人物志致力于 展现非凡的美国生活, 非凡的美国人。 这就是它的意义所在。 我们用肖像画的手法来还原这些人的生活,如此而已。 所以我今天要说的不是真正的肖像画。 我想谈谈一个我发起的项目, 我一生最得意的作品。
I started to worry about the fact that a lot of people don't get their portraits painted anymore, and they're amazing people, and we want to deliver them to future generations. So, how do we do that? And so I came up with the idea of the living self-portrait series. And the living self-portrait series was the idea of basically my being a brush in the hand of amazing people who would come and I would interview.
我为一个事实而忧虑 那就是很多人终生不为人所知, 然而他们是非常杰出的人物, 我们想把他们的故事讲给我们的后代听。 那么我们该怎么做呢? 于是我想到了发起这个自画像式的系列访谈。 基本上就是说 我作为被访谈者手中的画笔 请他们通过访谈为自己画像。
And so what I'm going to do is, not so much give you the great hits of that program, as to give you this whole notion of how you encounter people in that kind of situation, what you try to find out about them, and when people deliver and when they don't and why.
我不会谈 这个节目的成功之处, 我想谈的是总体上 在这种情况下你怎样去面对这些人, 你想在他们身上发掘些什么, 以及他们滔滔不绝或缄口不语的原因是什么。
Now, I had two preconditions. One was that they be American. That's just because, in the nature of the National Portrait Gallery, it's created to look at American lives. That was easy, but then I made the decision, maybe arbitrary, that they needed to be people of a certain age, which at that point, when I created this program, seemed really old. Sixties, seventies, eighties and nineties. For obvious reasons, it doesn't seem that old anymore to me.
我对采访设置两个前提。 一,受访者应该是美国人。 这是由国家人物志的定位决定的--- 这是一个探讨美国人的节目。 这个很容易,而之后的一个决定, 也许有些武断, 就是受访者应该都到了一定的年纪, 在我立项之初, 就决定被访群体主要是老人。 60岁,70岁,80岁,甚至90岁。 很明显,对我来说现在他们也不算很老了。
And why did I do that? Well, for one thing, we're a youth-obsessed culture. And I thought really what we need is an elders program to just sit at the feet of amazing people and hear them talk. But the second part of it -- and the older I get, the more convinced I am that that's true. It's amazing what people will say when they know how the story turned out. That's the one advantage that older people have. Well, they have other, little bit of advantage, but they also have some disadvantages, but the one thing they or we have is that we've reached the point in life where we know how the story turned out. So, we can then go back in our lives, if we've got an interviewer who gets that, and begin to reflect on how we got there. All of those accidents that wound up creating the life narrative that we inherited.
那么我为什么这么做呢? 第一,我们生活在一个推崇年轻人的文化里。 但我觉得我们更需要给长者一个舞台, 让我们可以坐在台下聆听这些长者娓娓道来。 第二个点是——随着我的年纪加深, 我越来越相信这一点—— 他们大都洞悉世事发展的方向, 听他们讲述这些故事是一件很神奇的事情。 这是长者独有的智慧之一。 好吧,做老人家还有那么点儿好处, 当然也会有不好的地方, 但我们的共性就是 我们已经到了 能够看透世事的人生阶段了。 所以,我们回归生活, 如果恰好有一位理解这些的访问者, 那么我们就可以为他讲述一路走来的人生历程。 所有这些悲悲喜喜 成就了我们今天听到的这段精彩人生。
So, I thought okay, now, what is it going to take to make this work? There are many kinds of interviews. We know them. There are the journalist interviews, which are the interrogation that is expected. This is somewhat against resistance and caginess on the part of the interviewee. Then there's the celebrity interview, where it's more important who's asking the question than who answers. That's Barbara Walters and others like that, and we like that. That's Frost-Nixon, where Frost seems to be as important as Nixon in that process. Fair enough.
然后我就开始想: 那么怎么才能达到这种效果呢? 采访有很多种,我们都知道。 有一种是记者采访, 这更像是盘查和质问。 某种程度上你必须应对来自被访者 的抵触情绪和外交辞令。 另一种是名人访谈, 提问者的身份往往比被访者是谁更重要。 Barbara Walters以及其他一些人就属于这种,大家都很喜欢。 像Frost对Nixon的访问,Frost就显得跟Nixon 一样重要。 就是如此。
But I wanted interviews that were different. I wanted to be, as I later thought of it, empathic, which is to say, to feel what they wanted to say and to be an agent of their self-revelation. By the way, this was always done in public. This was not an oral history program. This was all about 300 people sitting at the feet of this individual, and having me be the brush in their self-portrait.
但我想要的采访跟这些不一样。 我希望能达到“通感“的境界,这个词是我后来想到的。 也就是说,要能体会到他们想要说的,© 然后代替他们揭示自我。 别忘了,这都是要在大庭广众面前完成的。 这不仅仅是一个谈论历史的节目。 300名观众坐在被访者身边, 而我则化身为一支描绘被访者肖像的画笔。
Now, it turns out that I was pretty good at that. I didn't know it coming into it. And the only reason I really know that is because of one interview I did with Senator William Fulbright, and that was six months after he'd had a stroke. And he had never appeared in public since that point. This was not a devastating stroke, but it did affect his speaking and so forth. And I thought it was worth a chance, he thought it was worth a chance, and so we got up on the stage, and we had an hour conversation about his life, and after that a woman rushed up to me, essentially did, and she said, "Where did you train as a doctor?"
结果呢,我发现我其实很擅长这件事情。 我开始并不知道。 后来意识到的唯一原因是 我对William Fullbright参议员所做的访谈。 那是在他中风以后6个月的时候。 他自打中风后还没公开露过面。 那次中风并不是特别严重, 但也影响到了讲话和其他一些行为。 我觉得他可以试着重新出来见见大家了, 他也觉得可行, 所以我们就来到舞台上, 谈了一个小时,关于他的人生, 结束后,一位女士跑到我面前, 确实是这样, 她对我说“你在哪里接受的医疗培训?”
And I said, "I have no training as a doctor. I never claimed that."
我说:“我从来没有学过,我也从没有说过我学过啊。”
And she said, "Well, something very weird was happening. When he started a sentence, particularly in the early parts of the interview, and paused, you gave him the word, the bridge to get to the end of the sentence, and by the end of it, he was speaking complete sentences on his own." I didn't know what was going on, but I was so part of the process of getting that out.
然后她说:“好吧,那么刚才发生的就很令人费解了。 当他开始说一句话, 尤其是在访问的最初阶段, 然后稍稍停顿,这时你给递给他一个词, 这个词就像桥梁一样帮助他到达句子的结尾。 然后到了后来, 他就开始自己说完整的句子了。“ 我不知道发生了什么, 但毋庸质疑是我在帮他完成那个过程。
So I thought, okay, fine, I've got empathy, or empathy, at any rate, is what's critical to this kind of interview. But then I began to think of other things. Who makes a great interview in this context? It had nothing to do with their intellect, the quality of their intellect. Some of them were very brilliant, some of them were, you know, ordinary people who would never claim to be intellectuals, but it was never about that. It was about their energy. It's energy that creates extraordinary interviews and extraordinary lives. I'm convinced of it. And it had nothing to do with the energy of being young. These were people through their 90s.
所以我就想,好吧,看来我已经知道怎么“通感”了。 或者说“通感”,本来就是 这类访谈成功的关键。 但过后我又开始思考其他一些事情。 怎样的受访者可以成就一个好的访谈? 这与受访者的才智没有关系, 他们的智商。 他们中有些人非常聪明, 有些人 也就是普通人,他们也从不认为自己智慧过人, 但这些都不重要。 他们自身的能量才是关键。 是这些能量造就了非凡的访谈 以及非凡的人生。 我对这点确信无疑。 而且这种能量也不是那种年轻人的能量, 受访者有些都已经90多岁了。
In fact, the first person I interviewed was George Abbott, who was 97, and Abbott was filled with the life force -- I guess that's the way I think about it -- filled with it. And so he filled the room, and we had an extraordinary conversation. He was supposed to be the toughest interview that anybody would ever do because he was famous for being silent, for never ever saying anything except maybe a word or two. And, in fact, he did wind up opening up -- by the way, his energy is evidenced in other ways. He subsequently got married again at 102, so he, you know, he had a lot of the life force in him.
实际上,我所采访的第一个人 是George Abbott, 他当时97岁。 然而Abbott充满了生命力--- 我就是这样想的——充满能量。 然后他来到这里, 就有了我们之间不同寻常的对话。 他曾被认为是最难搞定的受访者, 因为他以沉默著称, 什么都不说, 即便说也就一两个词而已。 不过,实际上,他那次还的确是说了不少。 对了,他的能量还体现在其他一些方面。 他后来在102岁的时候又结婚了。 所以你就知道了,他其实是有不少生命力的。
But after the interview, I got a call, very gruff voice, from a woman. I didn't know who she was, and she said, "Did you get George Abbott to talk?"
但那次访谈之后,我接到了一个电话, 很生硬的声音,是位女士。 我不知道她是谁。 她说:“你让George Abbott开口说话了?“
And I said, "Yeah. Apparently I did."
我说:“是啊,看起来是这样。”
And she said, "I'm his old girlfriend, Maureen Stapleton, and I could never do it." And then she made me go up with the tape of it and prove that George Abbott actually could talk.
然后她说:“我是他以前的女友,Maureen Stapleton, 我都无法让他开口。“ 然后她又让我把那次的录像带翻出来 证明给她看George Abbott的确是说话了。
So, you know, you want energy, you want the life force, but you really want them also to think that they have a story worth sharing. The worst interviews that you can ever have are with people who are modest. Never ever get up on a stage with somebody who's modest, because all of these people have been assembled to listen to them, and they sit there and they say, "Aw, shucks, it was an accident." There's nothing that ever happens that justifies people taking good hours of the day to be with them.
所以,你看,你需要那种能量, 需要生命的能量, 但你同时也的确需要让他们觉得 他们的故事是值得分享的。 最糟糕的采访 就是被访者是个谦虚的人。 千万别去采访一个谦虚的人, 因为他们本来 是要说点东西给别人听的,但他们却坐在那里说, “唉算了吧,那只是个偶然事件而已。“ 似乎从来没有什么能 让他们为自己做过的事情引以为豪。
The worst interview I ever did: William L. Shirer. The journalist who did "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich." This guy had met Hitler and Gandhi within six months, and every time I'd ask him about it, he'd say, "Oh, I just happened to be there. Didn't matter." Whatever. Awful. I never would ever agree to interview a modest person. They have to think that they did something and that they want to share it with you.
我做过的最糟糕的采访是William L. Shirer. 他就是“第三德国的起落”的作者。 这个人在6个月里先后会见了希特勒和甘地。 关于这个每次我问到他的时候,他都会说,“噢,我只是碰巧在那里而已。 没什么大不了的。“此类的话。 糟糕透了。 我再也不会答应去采访一个谦虚的人了。 这些人必须先明白他们确实做过些什么, 然后他们也愿意跟你分享这些。
But it comes down, in the end, to how do you get through all the barriers we have. All of us are public and private beings, and if all you're going to get from the interviewee is their public self, there's no point in it. It's pre-programmed. It's infomercial, and we all have infomercials about our lives. We know the great lines, we know the great moments, we know what we're not going to share, and the point of this was not to embarrass anybody. This wasn't -- and some of you will remember Mike Wallace's old interviews -- tough, aggressive and so forth. They have their place.
但归根到底 是需要你去克服所有那些障碍。 我们每个人都有公众形象和个人形象, 如果你通过采访所能获得的只是被访者的公众形象, 那是无济于事的。 公众形象是我们事先安排好的,是用来作秀的, 每个人都有可以拿来秀的一面。 我们都知道那些冠冕堂皇的话,知道那些让我们感到荣耀的时刻, 也知道什么事情是不能分享的, 关键是我们说的话不能让别人感到难堪。 这并不难——也许你们有人记得 Mike Wallace以前的采访—— 采访不难,也没什么侵略性。这样的采访没什么问题。
I was trying to get them to say what they probably wanted to say, to break out of their own cocoon of the public self, and the more public they had been, the more entrenched that person, that outer person was. And let me tell you at once the worse moment and the best moment that happened in this interview series. It all has to do with that shell that most of us have, and particularly certain people.
但我想做的是让他们说出他们想说的话, 让他们从公众形象的束缚中挣脱出来。 他们作为公众人物的时间越长, 这种束缚就越发的根深蒂固。 让我来告诉你们这个采访系列中 最坏的和最好的时刻吧。 这都跟罩在我们身上的这个壳儿有关系, 对一些人来说尤为如此。
There's an extraordinary woman named Clare Boothe Luce. It'll be your generational determinant as to whether her name means much to you. She did so much. She was a playwright. She did an extraordinary play called "The Women." She was a congresswoman when there weren't very many congresswomen. She was editor of Vanity Fair, one of the great phenomenal women of her day. And, incidentally, I call her the Eleanor Roosevelt of the Right. She was sort of adored on the Right the way Eleanor Roosevelt was on the Left. And, in fact, when we did the interview -- I did the living self-portrait with her -- there were three former directors of the CIA basically sitting at her feet, just enjoying her presence.
Clare Boothe Luce是位杰出的女士。 是否知道她将是你是否属于特定年代 的一个标志。 她做了很多的事情。她是一个剧作家。 写了一部出色的剧本叫做“女人们”。 她也是一位国会议员, 那个年代女议员屈指可数。 她还是《名利场》的编辑, 总之,一个在那个年代非常杰出的女性。 不经意间我开始叫她 右翼Eleanor Roosevlt。 她被右翼人士所爱戴, 正像是Eleanor Roosevelt被左翼爱戴一样。 事实上,在我们做访谈的时候, 我对她做现场自画像, 观众中有三名前CIA的主管, 坐在下面, 很享受能跟她相距咫尺的感觉。
And I thought, this is going to be a piece of cake, because I always have preliminary talks with these people for just maybe 10 or 15 minutes. We never talk before that because if you talk before, you don't get it on the stage. So she and I had a delightful conversation.
我当时认为这次应该不费吹灰之力, 因为我总会在开始采访之前跟被访者聊一会儿, 大概10到15分钟的样子。 在那之前我们不进行交流,因为如果聊了, 真正采访的时候就出不来了。 后来我们的谈话非常令人愉悦,
We were on the stage and then -- by the way, spectacular. It was all part of Clare Boothe Luce's look. She was in a great evening gown. She was 80, almost that day of the interview, and there she was and there I was, and I just proceeded into the questions. And she stonewalled me. It was unbelievable. Anything that I would ask, she would turn around, dismiss, and I was basically up there -- any of you in the moderate-to-full entertainment world know what it is to die onstage. And I was dying. She was absolutely not giving me a thing.
我们坐在台上,然后—— 那真的棒极了。 Clare Boothe Luce打扮的美极了。 她穿着漂亮的晚礼服, 采访当天她马上就要80岁了。 她和我坐在那里, 我开始提问,® 然后她就开始很不配合。真是难以置信。 我问的任何问题都被她回避掉, 我基本上就被晾在那里——你们中任何一个 了解娱乐节目的人都知道 什么是冷场。 我就被冷在那里了。她什么都不肯说。
And I began to wonder what was going on, and you think while you talk, and basically, I thought, I got it. When we were alone, I was her audience. Now I'm her competitor for the audience. That's the problem here, and she's fighting me for that, and so then I asked her a question -- I didn't know how I was going to get out of it -- I asked her a question about her days as a playwright, and again, characteristically, instead of saying, "Oh yes, I was a playwright, and this is what blah blah blah," she said, "Oh, playwright. Everybody knows I was a playwright. Most people think that I was an actress. I was never an actress." But I hadn't asked that, and then she went off on a tear, and she said, "Oh, well, there was that one time that I was an actress. It was for a charity in Connecticut when I was a congresswoman, and I got up there," and she went on and on, "And then I got on the stage."
然后我开始思考到底发生了什么。 一边说一边思考。 然后我真的想明白了。 当我们单独交谈的时候,我是她的听众。 但在台上我变成了她争取台下听众的竞争对手。 这就是问题所在,她在跟我竞争。 所以当我问她一个问题, 我不知道将得到什么样的回答。 我问她关于剧作家的生活, 这就是她的典型回答: 她不是说:“嗯,我曾经是一名剧作家,如此这般,” 而是说:“噢,剧作家啊。人人都知道我曾是个剧作家啊。 很多人以为我还当过演员,其实我从来没有当过演员。“ 但我并没有问关于演员的事情,然后她就开始掉眼泪, 继续说道:“嗯,其实,我有段时间的确是一名演员。 那是在当议员的时候为了康涅狄格的一次慈善活动, 我就上去了,“然后她继续说,”我就上了舞台。“
And then she turned to me and said, "And you know what those young actors did? They upstaged me." And she said, "Do you know what that is?" Just withering in her contempt.
接着她转向我说, “你知道那些演员都做了什么吗? 他们对我很势力。“然后她又说,”你知道那是什么吗?“ 我被她这种不屑的态度搞得有些气馁,
And I said, "I'm learning."
于是就说,“我正在学习”
(Laughter)
(笑声)
And she looked at me, and it was like the successful arm-wrestle, and then, after that, she delivered an extraordinary account of what her life really was like.
然后她看着我,就好像赢了一场掰手腕比赛。 接下来,她终于开口讲述 她真正的生活是什么样子的,讲得非常精彩。
I have to end that one. This is my tribute to Clare Boothe Luce. Again, a remarkable person. I'm not politically attracted to her, but through her life force, I'm attracted to her. And the way she died -- she had, toward the end, a brain tumor. That's probably as terrible a way to die as you can imagine, and very few of us were invited to a dinner party.
这个故事我必须到此为止了。算是我向Clare Boothe Luce贡献的小小礼物吧。 再说一遍,她是个杰出的人。 我对她的政见并不感冒,但她身上散发的生命力, 吸引着我。 她辞世的方式——她是因为晚期脑瘤去世的 她可能是你能想到的最坏的离开方式了。 极少的几个人被邀请到她的晚餐聚会,
And she was in horrible pain. We all knew that. She stayed in her room. Everybody came. The butler passed around canapes. The usual sort of thing. Then at a certain moment, the door opened and she walked out perfectly dressed, completely composed. The public self, the beauty, the intellect, and she walked around and talked to every person there and then went back into the room and was never seen again. She wanted the control of her final moment, and she did it amazingly.
当时她处在强烈的疼痛之中, 这我们都知道。 她待在自己的房里, 客人都来了。管家给大家分发鱼子面包, 很稀松平常的东西。 然后到了某个时刻,门打开了, 她走了出来,打扮得一丝不苟,而且非常镇定。 她的公众形象,她的美丽,她的智慧。 然后她走向大家,跟每个人进行交谈, 然后走回房间,从此再也没有人见过她。 她希望掌控自己的最后时刻,她做到了,而且让人赞叹。
Now, there are other ways that you get somebody to open up, and this is just a brief reference. It wasn't this arm-wrestle, but it was a little surprising for the person involved. I interviewed Steve Martin. It wasn't all that long ago. And we were sitting there, and almost toward the beginning of the interview, I turned to him and I said, "Steve," or "Mr. Martin, it is said that all comedians have unhappy childhoods. Was yours unhappy?"
其实还有一些别的方法能让受访者敞开心扉, 这里我只能简单的提一下。 这个并不像刚才说过的“掰手腕”, 但也能让受访者感到出乎意料。 我采访过Steve Martin。那是在很久以前了。 我们坐在那里, 采访刚刚开始, 我问他:“Steve” 或者“Martin先生, 人们都说所有的喜剧演员都有着不愉快的童年, 你的童年是否也是这样?“
And he looked at me, you know, as if to say, "This is how you're going to start this thing, right off?" And then he turned to me, not stupidly, and he said, "What was your childhood like?"
他看着我,就像是在说, ”怎么一上来就问这个问题呢?“ 然后他看着我,一点也不傻, 反问道,”那么你的童年是什么样子的?“
And I said -- these are all arm wrestles, but they're affectionate -- and I said, "My father was loving and supportive, which is why I'm not funny."
这些都是”掰手腕“,但是很真诚。我回答说, ”我的父亲很慈爱,也很支持我, 所以我现在这么无趣。“
(Laughter)
(笑声)
And he looked at me, and then we heard the big sad story. His father was an SOB, and, in fact, he was another comedian with an unhappy childhood, but then we were off and running. So the question is: What is the key that's going to allow this to proceed?
然后他看着我,开始讲述他的伤心故事。 他的父亲是一个大混蛋, 事实上,他也是个有着不幸童年的喜剧演员, 然后我们就开始跑题了。 问题在于: 是什么启动了这个过程?
Now, these are arm wrestle questions, but I want to tell you about questions that are more related to empathy and that really, very often, are the questions that people have been waiting their whole lives to be asked. And I'll just give you two examples of this because of the time constraints.
这些确实是”掰手腕“的问题, 但我想告诉你们的是 那些由”通感“而引发的问题, 那些问题往往是 人们等待了一辈子想要被问到的问题。 时间关系我就只举两个例子吧。
One was an interview I did with one of the great American biographers. Again, some of you will know him, most of you won't, Dumas Malone. He did a five-volume biography of Thomas Jefferson, spent virtually his whole life with Thomas Jefferson, and by the way, at one point I asked him, "Would you like to have met him?"
第一个是我对那位伟大的美国传记文学家所做的采访。 他叫Dumas Malone。你们有些人可能知道他,大多数可能并不知道。 他为Thomas Jefferson写了一部五卷的传记, 几乎一生都跟Thomas Jefferson在一起。 对了,采访的时候我曾问他, ”你觉得遇到他幸运吗?“
And he said, "Well, of course, but actually, I know him better than anyone who ever met him, because I got to read all of his letters." So, he was very satisfied with the kind of relationship they had over 50 years.
他说,“当然了。 但实际上,我比谁都要了解他, 因为我看过他所有的信件。“ 也就是说,他对他们之间50年的关系非常满意。
And I asked him one question. I said, "Did Jefferson ever disappoint you?"
然后我问了他一个问题。 我说,”Jefferson有没有让你失望过?“
And here is this man who had given his whole life to uncovering Jefferson and connecting with him, and he said, "Well ..." -- I'm going to do a bad southern accent. Dumas Malone was from Mississippi originally. But he said, "Well," he said, "I'm afraid so." He said, "You know, I've read everything, and sometimes Mr. Jefferson would smooth the truth a bit."
这个花了毕生精力来研究Jefferson 并与他进行沟通的传记学者 回答道,“嗯——” 这里我准备拙劣的模仿一下南部口音, Dumas Malone的家乡在密西西比, 他回答道,“嗯——恐怕是的。” 他说,“你知道吗,我看过他所有的东西, 有时候Jefferson先生会稍微隐瞒一下事情的真相。”
And he basically was saying that this was a man who lied more than he wished he had, because he saw the letters. He said, "But I understand that." He said, "I understand that." He said, "We southerners do like a smooth surface, so that there were times when he just didn't want the confrontation."
其实他就是在说Jefferson 不比他原以为的那么诚实, 因为他看过那些信件。 他说,“但我理解,”他说,“我理解。” 他说,“我们南方人喜欢表面看上去光鲜一些, 于是会有一些时候他不想要太多的正面冲突。”
And he said, "Now, John Adams was too honest." And he started to talk about that, and later on he invited me to his house, and I met his wife who was from Massachusetts, and he and she had exactly the relationship of Thomas Jefferson and John Adams. She was the New Englander and abrasive, and he was this courtly fellow.
然后他又说,“你看,John Adams就过于诚实了。” 然后他开始说关于John Adams的事情。后来他邀请我去他家里, 我见到了他的妻子,她来自马萨诸塞州, 他们俩人之间的关系 跟Jefferson和Adams的关系一模一样。 她来自新英格兰地区,说话很生硬率直, 而他则是一个彬彬有礼的人。
But really the most important question I ever asked, and most of the times when I talk about it, people kind of suck in their breath at my audacity, or cruelty, but I promise you it was the right question. This was to Agnes de Mille. Agnes de Mille is one of the great choreographers in our history. She basically created the dances in "Oklahoma," transforming the American theater. An amazing woman.
但那个问题的确是我所问过的最重要的一个问题。 大多数时候,当我提到这个的时候, 人们会因为我的大胆,或者说残酷而倒吸一口冷气, 但相信我,那绝对是该问的问题。 下面要说的是Agnes de Mille. Agnes de Mille是历史上最杰出的舞蹈编导之一。 她创作了“俄克拉荷马”, 从而改变了整个美国的舞台剧。 令人惊叹的女人。
At the time that I proposed to her that -- by the way, I would have proposed to her; she was extraordinary -- but proposed to her that she come on. She said, "Come to my apartment." She lived in New York. "Come to my apartment and we'll talk for those 15 minutes, and then we'll decide whether we proceed."
当初我向她提出—— 顺便说一句,我没准真会向她求婚,她是那么的与众不同—— 我邀请她过来接受采访, 她说,“到我的公寓来吧。” 她住在纽约, “到这里来,我们先聊15分钟, 然后再决定是否继续。”
And so I showed up in this dark, rambling New York apartment, and she called out to me, and she was in bed. I had known that she had had a stroke, and that was some 10 years before. And so she spent almost all of her life in bed, but -- I speak of the life force -- her hair was askew. She wasn't about to make up for this occasion.
所以我就去了那个黑暗杂乱的纽约公寓, 听到她叫我,她躺在床上。 我之前已经知道她中过风, 大概10年以前, 所以她的生命大部分时间都是在床上度过的。 然而——我要说的是生命力—— 她的头发是杂乱的, 她并没有为采访而化妆。
And she was sitting there surrounded by books, and her most interesting possession she felt at that moment was her will, which she had by her side. She wasn't unhappy about this. She was resigned. She said, "I keep this will by my bed, memento mori, and I change it all the time just because I want to." And she was loving the prospect of death as much as she had loved life. I thought, this is somebody I've got to get in this series.
她坐在那里,被书籍所包围, 她认为她当时拥有的最有趣的东西 是她的遗嘱,就放在她手边。 她对此并不满意,但她屈服了。 她说,“我把遗嘱放在床边,它是死亡的象征, 我不停的修改它, 我就是想这么做。” 她对生死一样热爱。 当时我就想,一定要把她放在我的采访系列中。
She agreed. She came on. Of course she was wheelchaired on. Half of her body was stricken, the other half not. She was, of course, done up for the occasion, but this was a woman in great physical distress. And we had a conversation, and then I asked her this unthinkable question. I said, "Was it a problem for you in your life that you were not beautiful?"
她同意了。 她出来了,当然是坐着轮椅出来的。 她受中风影响,半身不遂, 当然她做好了访谈的准备, 但她承受着巨大的肉体折磨。 然后我们开始交谈, 我问了她一个意想不到的问题。 我说,“你曾因为自己不漂亮而感到困扰吗?”
And the audience just -- you know, they're always on the side of the interviewee, and they felt that this was a kind of assault, but this was the question she had wanted somebody to ask her whole life. And she began to talk about her childhood, when she was beautiful, and she literally turned -- here she was, in this broken body -- and she turned to the audience and described herself as the fair demoiselle with her red hair and her light steps and so forth, and then she said, "And then puberty hit."
在场的观众——你也知道, 他们总是站在受访者一边, 他们觉得这个问题有攻击性, 但这个问题是她一生 一直想要被问到的问题。 然后她就开始讲述她的童年,那时她还很漂亮, 然后她转身——尽管她的身体很虚弱—— 她转向观众, 把她自己描述成一名待嫁的少女, 一头红发,脚步轻盈,如此这般, 然后她接着说,“在那之后青春期就到了。”
And she began to talk about things that had happened to her body and her face, and how she could no longer count on her beauty, and her family then treated her like the ugly sister of the beautiful one for whom all the ballet lessons were given. And she had to go along just to be with her sister for company, and in that process, she made a number of decisions. First of all, was that dance, even though it hadn't been offered to her, was her life. And secondly, she had better be, although she did dance for a while, a choreographer because then her looks didn't matter. But she was thrilled to get that out as a real, real fact in her life.
然后她开始讲述 发生在她身上和脸上的事情, 她从此不能再指望她的长相了, 她的家人从此只把她当成一个丑小鸭, 她漂亮的姐妹们都去上芭蕾课, 而她只能陪她们一同前往。 就在那段时间,她做了一些决定。 第一个就是,尽管她不能上跳舞课, 跳舞仍会是她的生命。 第二,尽管她以前是跳舞的, 但如果能成为一名编舞就更好了, 因为那样的话她长什么样都无所谓了。 童年的梦想终于成真的时候,她激动不已。
It was an amazing privilege to do this series. There were other moments like that, very few moments of silence. The key point was empathy because everybody in their lives is really waiting for people to ask them questions, so that they can be truthful about who they are and how they became what they are, and I commend that to you, even if you're not doing interviews. Just be that way with your friends and particularly the older members of your family.
能完成这一系列访谈是我的幸运。 类似的时刻还有一些,很少的一些让人默然的时刻。 关键所在就是要产生“通感”, 因为每个人在他们的生命里 都在等待一些问题, 这样他们就能坚持真实的自我, 以及他们是如何成为今天的自己的。 我建议你们,即便你们不做采访, 对自己的朋友也试着这么去做, 尤其是对家里的长辈。
Thank you very much.
非常感谢!