《大梦想家》讲述迪士尼经典的幕后故事

Not Quite All Spoonfuls of Sugar

《大梦想家》讲述迪士尼经典的幕后故事

For nearly 50 years, moviegoers have embraced “Mary Poppins” as a whimsical Disney classic about a magical English nanny, a twinkly chimney sweep and a London banker’s fractured family. But the new Disney film “Saving Mr. Banks,” written by Kelly Marcel and Sue Smith, shares two less cheerful tales. In flashback, it reveals the “Mary Poppins” author P. L. Travers’s sad past as an Australian girl with a hard-drinking father and a suicidal mother. The other story is of two weeks in 1961 when Walt Disney (Tom Hanks), who had been trying to secure the film rights from Ms. Travers (Emma Thompson) for nearly 20 years, finally lured her to California, where Disney staff composers, the Sherman Brothers (Jason Schwartzman and B. J. Novak), struggled to collaborate with her.

近半个世纪以来，电影观众把《欢乐满人间》(Mary Poppins)看做一个奇思妙想的迪士尼经典影片，讲述一个有魔力的英国保姆、一个欢乐的扫烟囱人如何帮助一个伦敦银行家破碎的家庭。但是由凯利·马塞尔(Kelly Marcel)和苏·史密斯(Sue Smith)编写的迪士尼新片《大梦想家》(Saving Mr. Banks)讲述了两个不那么欢乐的故事。它回顾了原著作者P·L·特拉弗斯(P. L. Travers)悲惨的童年，她是个澳大利亚女孩，父亲酗酒，母亲有自杀倾向。另一个故事是沃尔特·迪士尼(Walt Disney，汤姆·汉克斯[Tom Hanks]饰)花了近20年时间向特拉弗斯(艾玛·汤普森[Emma Thompson]饰)争取电影改编权，在1961年最终诱惑她来到加利福尼亚州。迪士尼公司的作曲家谢尔曼兄弟(Sherman Brothers，詹森·舒瓦兹曼[Jason Schwartzman]和B·J·诺瓦克[B. J. Novak]饰)吃力地和她合作了两个星期。

Since “Saving Mr. Banks” opened last month, critics have praised Mr. Hanks’s performance as a grinning international impresario unaccustomed to being stonewalled, while Ms. Thompson, imbuing Travers with equal amounts exasperation, fierceness and vulnerability, has already been nominated for a Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild award, and seems to be on track for an Oscar nod, as well.

汉克斯在《大梦想家》中把迪斯尼塑造成一个国际化的艺术经理人，他笑口常开，不习惯受到任何阻挠。自影片上个月上映以来，批评家们对汉克斯的表演交口称赞。而汤普森在特拉弗斯这个角色身上注入了同等分量的恼怒、强悍和脆弱。汤普森已经获得了金球奖和美国演员工会奖提名，似乎也即将获得奥斯卡的垂青。(编者注：艾玛·汤普森最终没有获得本届奥斯卡奖最佳女主角提名。)

On a recent evening at the Walt Disney Studios in Burbank, Calif., Mr. Hanks and Ms. Thompson met with Margy Rochlin to talk about “Saving Mr. Banks” and their real-life counterparts. At one point this Oscar-winning pair even burst into a few bars of a Disney tune. These are excerpts from the conversation.

前不久的一个晚上，在加利福尼亚州伯班克的沃尔特·迪士尼制片厂，汉克斯和汤普森与玛吉·罗克林(Margy Rochlin)谈起了《大梦想家》和现实生活中的这些人物。这两位奥斯卡奖得主甚至还唱了几句迪士尼影片里的歌。下面是谈话节选。

Q. Among other things, “Saving Mr. Banks” shows the adaptation process. Emma, how much of your own experiences adapting “Sense and Sensibility” and “Nanny McPhee” for the screen offered insight into Travers and what she was going through?

问：《大梦想家》的其中一个方面是展示改编过程。艾玛，你把《理智与情感》(Sense and Sensibility)和《魔法保姆麦克菲》(Nanny McPhee)改编成电影的经验对你理解特拉弗斯和她的经历有多大帮助?

Emma Thompson The big difference is that I adapted a book as a screenplay. Screenplays are designed to be handed over to somebody else. She was writing something that came from some subatomic part of her that she wasn’t willing to let go [of] at all, because she relied on it emotionally.

艾玛·汤普森：最大的不同是我把一本书改编成电影剧本。电影剧本是要转交给别人看的。她当时写的东西来自她内心深处的某个角落，而那个角落是她根本不愿意放手的，因为她从情感上依赖它。

Emma, you did quite a bit of research on Travers. Was she really that cold?

艾玛，你深入地研究过特拉弗斯。她真的那么冷酷吗?

Thompson Last night, when we were doing a Q. and A., Kelly [Marcel] said [Travers’s] grandchildren had said she’d died not loving anyone and nobody loving her. At which point, Tom burst into song.

汤普森：昨天晚上，我们做问答时，凯利(马塞尔)说(特拉弗斯的)孙子辈们说她去世的时候不爱任何人，也没人爱她。这时，汤姆忽然唱起了歌。

You sang? Tom, what did you sing?

你唱歌了?汤姆，你唱了什么?

Tom Hanks “Let’s Go Fly a Kite.” I needed to Disney-fy up the sad ending. [Laughs.]

汤姆·汉克斯：《让我们去放风筝》(Let’s Go Fly a Kite)。我需要把这个悲哀的结局弄得有点迪士尼风格[大笑]。

Travers insisted on taping her sessions with the Shermans, so there were hours of recordings available.

特拉弗斯坚决要求把她和谢尔曼兄弟的讨论录下来，所以我们能听到很长时间的录音。

Hanks Thirty nine hours of recordings. That must have been magnificent.

汉克斯：39个小时。肯定很精彩。

Emma, what did you learn about her by listening to her voice?

艾玛，听到她的声音，你对她又有了什么了解?

Thompson They were the biggest tell, the tapes. You can hear the distress, the tension and the resistance, just the purposeful sabotage in her voice. It’s fascinating.

汤普森：那些录音透露的东西最多。你能从她的声音中听到沮丧、紧张和抗拒，她是在蓄意怠工。特别有意思。

How much of that distress came from being alone in a foreign country and outnumbered by Disney staffers?

她的沮丧有几分是因为她独自在异国他乡，迪士尼的工作人员人数太多?

Thompson I think she sounded like that most of the time. We can’t forget that she made absolutely no effort whatsoever to go out with them, to socialize with them. She wouldn’t even eat with them in the commissary here when they were working together. She was horrible. You can’t sugarcoat it in any way.

汤普森：我觉得她大部分时候听起来都那样。我们无法忘记她完全无意和他们一起出去，和他们交往。他们一起工作的时候，她甚至不和他们一起在食堂吃饭。她很讨厌。你怎么都没法儿粉饰。

Hanks She hated the script that she’d already read.

汉克斯：连她读过的剧本，她也很厌恶。

Meanwhile, Tom, you’re playing the fellow who created the company whose movie it is. Can you walk us through what sounds like a strange job offer?

汤姆，你扮演的是拍摄这部电影的公司的创始人。你能跟我们谈谈这个听起来有点奇怪的工作吗?

Hanks It was incredibly straightforward. [Disney’s chief executive, Robert A. Iger, called and] said: “Look, we have a bit of a circumstance here. We have to make this movie about Walt Disney. We didn’t develop it. It came to us from somewhere else. It’s a great script, and if we don’t do it, that means somebody else might be able to do it, and we’re going to look heartless. But if we quash it, we’ll look like we’re trying to hide something. So will you play Walt Disney?”

汉克斯：他们不可思议地坦率。(迪士尼的首席执行官罗伯特·A·伊格[Robert A. Iger]打来电话)说：“是这样，我们这儿出了点状况。我们必须得拍这部关于沃尔特·迪士尼的电影。这不是我们开发的项目，是别人送来的。这个剧本很棒，如果我们不拍，那别人可能会拍，我们就会看起来很无情。但是如果我们阻止的话，就会显得我们在竭力掩藏什么。所以你愿意扮演沃尔特·迪士尼吗?”

What happened after you said yes?

你答应以后发生了什么事?

Hanks I was immediately dry-mouthed by the prospect. It’s just the hardest work that is to be done. There’s a billion hours of video, of Walt performing as Walt Disney, being a great guy. But I found enough actual footage of him in interviews when he’d really like to be done with the subject. When he doesn’t want to talk about “Fantasia” again, because what he’s really here to do is show you the new animatronic birds that are going to be going into the Enchanted Tiki Room. When I could find him showing any legitimate kind of consternation, that was worth its weight in gold.

汉克斯：我很快为将要发生的事情而兴奋。这差不多是我遇到的最棘手的角色。沃尔特拍过无数视频，在其中他力图扮演“沃尔特·迪斯尼”的角色，使自己看上去像个伟人。但是我找到了足够多他在采访中流露真实自我的视频——他真的不想再谈论某个主题时的视频。比如当他不想再谈论《梦想曲》(Fantasia)时的视频——因为他当时想展示的是新的电子鸟，它们将被放入迪士尼魔幻音乐屋(Enchanted Tiki Room);还有他表现出某种正常的惊慌失措时的视频——那对我来说简直是如获至宝。

Was the Disney family of assistance?

迪士尼的家人有没有给予帮助?

Hanks The Disney family connection with Disney studios did not end well. When Roy Disney [Walt’s nephew] was still here, he was sort of creatively shunted aside but kept aboard for almost ceremonial reasons. Then eventually they left. Not unlike the filmmakers who sent the script to the Walt Disney Company wondering if they were going to get a cease-and-desist order, we went to see Diane Disney [Walt’s daughter] wondering if she was going to say, “I don’t like this idea at all.” But she wasn’t like that. Everybody got what it was about.

汉克斯：迪士尼家族与迪士尼电影公司的关系有个不太好的结局。罗伊·迪士尼(Roy Disney，沃尔特的侄子)还在的时候，差不多被巧妙地边缘化了，几乎只是由于礼仪方面的原因才留在公司。最终他们都离开了。就像电影制作人们把剧本送到沃尔特·迪士尼公司，担心他们是否会得到勒令停止函一样，我们去见黛安·迪士尼(Diane Disney，沃尔特的女儿)的时候，也担心她会说，“我一点都不喜欢这个提议。”但是她没有那样说。每个人都知道形势是什么样的。

Emma, how did you come up with her hair? Even in silhouette, your perm has an aura of emotional repression.

艾玛，你是怎么想出让她留那种发型的?你的烫发甚至从侧面看都有一种压抑的感觉。

Thompson The hair is what she had. She had curly hair, which she cut into a bubble bob, which she wore for most of her life. It kind of suited her. But there was a severity, too. It did so much work for me. There’s something tightly coiled about her and tightly coiled about her hair. It was fantastically useful to me, because I’m a straight-haired person, so it makes me look very different.

汤普森：那是她本人的发型。她的头发本身就是卷的，她把它剪成了泡泡波波头，她一生大部分时间都是这种发型。这挺适合她的。但是这种发型也给人一种严肃的感觉。它帮了我很大忙。她和她的发型都给人紧密缠绕的感觉。这对我非常有用，因为我本人是直发，所以，它让我看起来很不一样。

Were you always mindful that P. L. Travers was on the ropes financially when she finally relinquished the rights to “Mary Poppins”?

你是否一直记着P·L·特拉弗斯最终同意转让《玛丽·波平斯》的改编权时，她在经济上很困难?

Thompson I think that’s a vital part of the story. She was alone.

汤普森：我觉得那是这个故事的一个关键因素。她孤立无援。

Hanks Know what? No one knows what they said to each other when push came to shove, but I’m almost willing to bet that it was all about money. “Hey, look, doll. You’re going to be an old bat and die here all by yourself. Don’t you want to have a bunch of money in your pocket? Well then, let me make the movie.” I’ll bet you anything that’s what went down.

汉克斯：咱们猜猜看。没人知道在紧要关头他们对彼此说了什么，但是我几乎可以打赌，他们谈的全是钱。“嘿，你瞧，美女。你会变成老太太，孤独老死。难道你不想口袋里有很多钱吗?那就让我拍这部电影吧。”我敢跟你打赌他当时是这么说的。

Thompson And it’s not just a financial question. It comes from the age-old difficulty of women being written about by Austen onward. What do you do? How do you make a living, if you’re not going to be married to someone who’s going to pay your bills?

汤普森：它不只是经济问题。它源于从奥斯汀起人们一直在谈论的关于女人的那个古老的难题。你何以谋生?如果你不嫁个男人来给你付账单，你怎么谋生?

“Saving Mr. Banks” is also a movie about the limits of charm in business dealings. Walt Disney had it. P. L. Travers was put off by it.

《大梦想家》也是一部展现商业交易的魅力的极限的电影。沃尔特·迪士尼拥有这种魅力。P·L·特拉弗斯则被它征服了。

Hanks I can’t smile like he could. My smile looks kind of demonic. But his was kind of “Isn’t it wonderful to be alive?” And he’d done that everywhere — from the U.N. to every room he walked into.

汉克斯：我做不到像他那样微笑。我的微笑看起来有点邪恶。但是他的微笑像是在说：“生活真是太美好了，不是吗?”他在哪里都那样笑，从联合国到他走进的每个房间。

Thompson You’re talking about two different ends of a spectrum that is actually quite wide and varied. You’re talking about someone who had the power to charm the birds from the trees and someone who refused on every level to use it. She could charm. I know she could. I read about it, and her friends told me. She just never ever did.

汤普森：他们两人处在一个很宽、很多样化的光谱的两端。其中一个人简直有能力把鸟儿从树上引诱下来，另一个则拒绝从任何层面施展这种魅力。她能施展魅力。我知道她能。我读的一些文章提到了这一点，她的朋友们也这样跟我说。她只是从不施展。

Emma, Travers was extremely private. You, on the other hand, seem open to sharing your life’s every detail.

艾玛，特拉弗斯非常注意保护隐私。而你似乎愿意公开你生活的所有细节。

Thompson We’re very different people. I feel a kinship with all human beings. She was so protected and defended.

汤普森：我们很不一样。我与所有的人都有一种亲近感。她却非常自我保护，有一种防卫心理。

So how did you find a way into her?

那你是怎么找到办法进入这个角色的呢?

Thompson She was a tough nut to crack. When I’m creating a character, I sort of do a brass rubbing, sort of put some tracing paper over the character and rub it and then think, “Which bits?” Of course, the father-daughter thing, the loss of the father’s storytelling abilities and the loss of his control, the loss of his power is very much a connective bit for me. My father had a stroke when he was 48. I say this as I am literally rubbing my neck because it was so distressing. He couldn’t speak, and I was the only person he allowed to teach him to talk again. So I was with my father when I was 18, 19 with little cards which said, “I am” and “you are.” I thought, “I’m being given this sacred task,” but it tore me apart.

汤普森：她是个棘手的人物。我塑造一个人物时，差不多是在拓印，像是把描图纸放到这个人物身上，摩擦它，然后想，“这是哪个部位?”当然，父女之间的事，父亲失去讲故事的能力，失去控制力，失去力量对我来说是个很重要的连接点。我爸爸在48岁时中风了。我提到这一点时很痛苦，因为它真的令人沮丧。他不能说话，只允许我一个人教他说话。当时我十八九岁，我和爸爸在一起，拿着小卡片，上面写着“我是”和“你是”。当时我想，“我得到了一个神圣的任务，”但是它把我搞得心力交瘁。

When my father came to Cambridge, when I was graduating, he’d had his stroke, and he couldn’t speak properly. He slurred his words, and he didn’t want anyone to know that it was because he had a stroke, so the teachers thought he was drunk. So there were those connections. But I think most artists are fundamentally inconsolable. That’s why they keep doing it.

我毕业的时候，父亲到剑桥看我，他当时已经中风了，所以不能好好说话。他说得含糊不清，他不想让别人知道那是因为他中风了，所以老师们以为他是酒鬼。所以我和她之间存在这些联系。但是我认为大多数艺术家从根本上讲都是悲痛万分的。这是他们不断搞艺术的原因。

Travers was certainly so. According to [the songwriter] Richard Sherman, she went up to Disney after seeing “Mary Poppins” at the premiere and told him she had ideas to improve the film.

特拉弗斯显然是这样的。据(作曲家)理查德·谢尔曼(Richard Sherman)说，她在首映式上看完《欢乐满人间》之后，找到迪士尼，跟他说她有些提议，可以改进这部电影。

Thompson Yes, and he said, “Pam, the ship has sailed.”

汤普森：是的，他说，“帕姆，木已成舟。”

And then?

然后呢?

Hanks And then he walked away from her. He was done.

汉克斯：然后他转身离开了。他已经完事了。