〈應觀眾要求重播去年(2002)所做專題〉
(序)
在電影《長島的愛與死》中
一個垂暮之年
長期封閉自己的英國老作家
偶然的
在電影院看到了一部YA片
然後他不可自拔的迷戀上電影裡的青春偶像
他像少女影迷一樣到書報攤買偶像雜誌
像少女影迷一樣將青春偶像小心翼翼地從雜誌上剪下來貼在剪貼本裡(還偷老女管家的廚房用剪刀)
他甚至於到從來不往來的鄰居家裡
只為了看青春偶像演的電視劇
接著
他買了電視機、錄放影機、加入了影視店會員
只為了一再重溫青春偶像的風采
更甚者
他甚至於在一場自己主講的純文學研討會裡
出神地講起電影演員的神采與魅力
最後
他終於來到了青春偶像所居住的長島
而且處心積慮的接近他
最後
他跟男孩示愛遭拒
他給男孩寫了一封很長很長很長的信
把自己對他的迷戀與熱情向他告白
而最後那封信
成了男孩主演的電影的劇本.....
不像《魂斷威尼斯》美神與死神的重疊
在《長島的愛與死》裡的英國老作家
實現了一場人生中原本無法體驗的旅程
然後經由這段脫軌的奇異旅程
他重新檢視了自己
獲得了新生
經由迷戀一個人而開啟了另一扇從未開啟的窗
老作家最後在離開長島時
戴上了青春偶像送的時髦太陽眼鏡
嘴上掛著微笑
老作家在演講會上說：
當一個演員用他的熱情與專注表演時
所帶來的感動無可比擬
那是美的極致
他為觀眾開啟了感官與知性的經驗之旅....
這也是我想要對一個
早逝的‧
偉大的‧
演員─River Phoenix(1970-1993)
致敬的話語
感謝他在活著的時候
以自己的敏銳、專注與熱情
為我開啟的一扇世界之窗
這是本月系列的由來
接下來的文章並不是嚴謹的 結構性的 或有客觀評論性的
或許只是一些介紹性的雜文 又或許只是一張照片
(但我想有時照片自己也會說話呢)
總之 憑藉著是我身為一個影迷的任性而已
(一)一個記者的回憶
在這篇文章中
一個記者述及他如何在萬聖節隔天的清晨五點
看到報紙上River的死訊
失聲痛哭
既而回想起初識這位年輕演員的1986年
在炎熱的巴西
而當時正進行拍攝的影片是《蚊子海岸》
在悼念River的眾多文章中
我一直很喜歡這篇文章
精簡而感性
哀傷的懷舊.....
以下為一小段的原文
(並不想翻譯.....)
………………………
The Mosquito Coast’s stars were Harrison Ford and Helen Mirren, but it quickly became apparent that River’s acting skills were also formidable. One night, the cast and crew were watching dailies of a scene (which didn’t make it into the movie) in which Ford’s character, a deluded expatriate inventor, brings ice to a remote village. He’s sure the natives have never seen it before and will react in amazement. But the village chief, popping the chilly cube from one hand to the next, utters ”Ice!” Ford, realizing missionaries beat him to the punch, is furious.
It was a wonderful scene, with Ford shifting quickly from deluded pride to disgust. But it was River, playing his son, who took everyone’s breath away. In a series of close-ups, he silently watched his father’s triumph and humiliation-and the powerful emotions that played across his face were shattering. Everyone in the room knew, without question, what kind of talent he possessed. And an unspoken question hung in the air: Where will he go with all of this promise?
……………………
Remembering River ：by Reid Rosefelt /《Elle》feb. 1994
綜觀這些知名雜誌的文字記者
不但有其寫作風格
在筆觸上也是比較人性的
(也就是俗稱的筆尖帶感情)
在看過的很多悼念文章中
有不少記者描述自己如何驚愕地失聲痛哭
對於一個悲劇
他們顯然是給予更多的悲憫
嗯...
這篇文章中
還有一小段提到River與其他演員的互動
是不得不提的：
....
As I watched River do his work, I was impressed by his generosity with the other actors. He was never competitive. In dailies, I would often notice that Jadrian Steele, the actor who played River’s younger brother, would try to place himself in a prominent position onscreen. River always seemed to hang back to the furthest recesses. But the more he stepped out of frame, the more your eyes were drawn to him.
...........
正是這樣的可貴.....。
(二)我的導演與我
我曾經寫過：導演跟他最鐘愛的演員之間，存在著如soulmate般的親密關係
就像
【法蘭西斯.柯波拉和艾爾.帕西諾】
就像
【馬丁.史柯西斯和勞伯.狄尼諾】
他們一起攜手合作所創造出的影像魅力
是兩個相知靈魂互相碰撞所產生的璀璨花火
我原本也期待Gus Van Sant 和 River Phoenix
也能成為長期合作的伙伴關係
Gus和River
【Gus ＆ River】理應變成一個獨特的專有名詞
他們應該一起在括號裡
然後一起留在談論電影製作的影片或書籍裡
Gus和年紀比他小一半的River
攜手合作創發出九○年代最佳的獨立製片
他們甚至於興致勃勃地計劃起下一部影片
有關於普普藝術家安迪.沃荷的故事
在〈MY OWN PRIVATE IDAHO 〉拍攝完成後
他們已經迫不及待地熱切討論new film的初步構想
Gus最喜歡的藝術家是安迪.沃荷
而Gus打算讓River扮演自己最喜歡的藝術家
Gus對River說他長得真像年輕時的安迪沃荷
非常神似
1991年剛拍攝完MY OWN時
River一度把金髮染成像沃荷一般的白金色
不是為了某一部戲的需要
我猜 他是想讓Gus看看是不是真的很像吧
Gus曾對記者回憶道：年紀幾乎比他小一半的River，非常非常地wise
這也是大多數比River年長的朋友的一致評語
聰慧而有洞察力
近乎直覺的敏銳
但有時有些瘋狂
近乎冒險的insane
天才的燥狂或許是一種必要吧
但是吃下比致死量多好幾倍好幾倍的drugs
讓從不諱言偶爾使用毒品的Gus也不可置信地說：沒有人會不知道吃下那些量會致命
好萊塢純真年代的結束
驚愕與哀傷漫延
然後輿論在驟然失去他們最喜愛的年輕演員後
箭頭一部份指向Gus和他的影片
“弄髒”了他們的golden boy
然後
Gus沉潛了一段時間後
影片風格有了明顯的改變
曾有雜誌報導Gus“come clean”
然後當我知悉《心靈捕手》(Good Will Hunting)的導演是Gus時
有點吃驚
有點失落
因為對於我而言
Gus以往影片中那種粗糙的華麗色調
那種迷幻狂亂的頹廢
那種幽默至極反生的悲傷
不見了
我喜愛的.最有原創性的
天外飛來一筆的幽默與粗野的生猛不見了
Gus變得中規中矩
十足像是個中產階級出身的溫和導演
2000年Gus出版了第一本小說《PINK》
描述一個獨立製片的導演的生活紀事
主角的名字Filx跟Phoenix讓人有些直接的聯想 (PS：它的確是的 )
在書店的座談會裡一位女性讀者問Gus
說她一直很想知道在MY OWN的結局裡
到底是誰把昏迷的Mike載走
Gus在讀者的追問下
給了一個答案：“我希望是我 ....如果可以的話......”
附上一篇《INTERVIEW》雜誌的全文
這是Gus與River在宣傳my own時
River利用行程空檔分成三段作成的訪問
由River訪問Gus
有趣的是最後一段訪問
River十分孩子氣地問問題
有點像是故意在鬧Gus
Interview Magazine, March 1991
My Director and I
interview by River Phoenix
(Introduction by Graham Fuller)
Gus Van Sant’s My Own Private Idaho - the title taken from a B-52 song and the story, in part, from Henry IV, Parts I and II - stars River Phoenix and Keanu Reeves as street prostitutes in Portland, Oregon: one a narcoleptic, the other a modern-day Prince Hal to a gay, Falstaffian gang leader (William Richert). The movie maintains the affinity for strung-out rebels that the thirty-eight-year-old Van Sant, a Rhode Island School of Design film graduate and former adman and Roger Corman PA, had demonstrated in his two previous films. Mala Noche, shot with considerable verve on 16mm for $20,000 in 1985, was the story of a convenience-store manager’s forlorn passion for a Mexican migrant labourer. Drugstore Cowboy, probably the best picture of 1989, was an agreeably grungy and bitterly funny slice of nostalgia for the low-life junkie culture of the early 1970s that sacrificed neither the jaunty skid-row lyricism nor the raw romanticism of its predecessor.
Drugstore Cowboy’s star was the newly wise, swashbuckling Matt Dillon, its patron saint William Burroughs, whose story ’The Discipline of D. E.’ Van Sant had filmed in 1977, one of several shorts he made prior to his first, now forgotten featurette, Alice in Hollywood. Van Sant’s future films include an adaptation of Tom Robbins’s novel Even Cowgirls Get the Blues and an elliptical biopic of Andy Warhol.
Just before the cast and crew of My Own Private Idaho left Scattle for the final days of shooting in Rome, River Phoenix interviewed his director over the course of a day as they ate, drove and ate again. It was appropriate that the conversation should take place in transit, for Van Sant’s films are nothing if not investigations of uprootedness and the spiritual quest for home - ’home’, of course, always connoting far more than four walls and a roof.
【In a Seattle sushi bar】
RIVER PHOENIX: In general, do you have fun ?
GUS VAN SANT: In general? Do you mean when I’m not shooting?
RP: Specifically, do you have fun if you like something that you’re working on, or do you just enjoy yourself anyway?
GVS: No, I don’t actually. I have fun sometimes when I’m not working, but when I’m working I just concentrate on the work. I guess if you get good results, then you start to have fun. But if you’re not getting good results, you say, ’Well, how can we make this better? It’s not sounding or looking right.’ Then somebody says, ’What do you mean by ”right”?’ And you say, ’just better’. And they go, ’Well, sorry’. So in those instances you don’t have too much fun, because it seems like you can’t get what you want. I get frustrated.
RP: I see you smirking very often.
Gus: Really?
RP: You get a sort of perpetual-bliss glaze to your eyes.
GVS: During the work?
RP: Yeah. But it’s also 1ike a creative spark at the end of takes, say. If you’re getting new ideas, your eyes kind of vibrate.
GVS: Well, part of it’s like I’m the audience sitting in a theatre. I’m not really pretending I’m in a theatre, but I’m looking at the scenes as I think it’s being shot, because I’m not looking through the camera.
RP: Didn’t you say that you kind of slip in, like a hand in a glove - actor being the glove - and share that sensation of being in the moment?
GVS: Yeah. Like I’m one of the characters.
RP: So you lose objectivity sometimes?
GVS: Yeah, so then -
RP: So you turn to your technical crew.
GVS: But I’m attached to them too. See, they’re also like the actors. I put myself into each of those technical positions - sound, camera - so it’s confusing in a way.
RP: Do you have a fragmented personality at the end of the day?
GVS: No, because I’m doing it intuitively. I’m not really doing it intellectually.
RP: As far as sitting down and applying motivation and drive to your ever-changing creative world, how do you discipline yourself? Is there any sort of philosophy that keeps you in line with that discipline?
GVS: When I see something - a film, say - that I think is a good idea, something that I might want to do, I don’t really see it as a whole. I see an image that I think represents the whole film. And so then I start to work towards that image, and then I fill it all out, and it becomes very complicated, because you have to have a lot of elements to make the image come to life. And on the way, you usually lose that one image It becomes a new thing, a thing unto itself. You keep it going along the lines that it’s got a mind of its own, and then by the end you say ’Oh yeah, I remember the first image of this particular idea. I thought it was going to be like this black-and-white, dark thing that was set in the l950s.’ And you actually end up with a very colourful, bright story set in the 1990s.
RP: Referring to My Own Private Idaho?
GVS: Yeah, Idaho is a very good example, because it is very bright and colourful, and it is set in the 1990s. And I think the original ideas were dark and shadowy, but there’s not a lot of shadow in it.
RP: Like there is in Mala Noche. So you start with a ’theme seedling’, and then that sprout s into its own tree and don’t really try to trim it. You let it grow and the end result is - whatever. Do you refine it? Do you try to reroute it back to what it was?
GVS: You refine it every step of the way. Usually I’m presented with new ideas. Like, our production designer, David Brisbin, showed up and said, ’I think that red and yellow are the colours of the film.’ And I might have no conception like that myself.
RP: Right, right.
GVS: Except, actually, I gave him a book cover that was yellow, and that book cover did inspire the look of the film. So he was actually reacting to something. But it was a new idea to me when he said ’Yellow’ and based the colour scheme on pornographic bookshop storefronts, which are usually yellow, and neons… the city colours. So, directions keep changing, because everyone’s interpreting things in their own way. I know that you persuaded me against using black and white. You said, ’No, no, no. It has to be colour.’ [chuckles] I don’t know why you said that.
RP: I wanted black and white, and, for me, colour was wrong, and that’s why I thought we should try for it because otherwise we might have ended up with something that really couldn’t be redone, like Stranger Than Paradise or Raging Bull. But black and white is dated in a sense, and this is a timeless picture. One of the things that I really appreciate in working with you is that in that collaborative stage you have no fear of your ego being stripped or anything. You’re not possessive, like some can be, but you let others ideas filter through without stopping them for fear of losing control, which would be rightful fear for someone who wants it to stay as pure as possible.
GVS: Yeah, that whole method of allowing new contributing factors to just enter in at will is the thing that I’ve personally worked on. Like here, for example, if you just walk around downtown, there are things thrust in your face, like, every ten seconds. And, like a documentary the film just absorbs that, or things that happen during rehearsal. Happy accidents, as we call them. Sometimes they’re not so happy, and usually people can tell when they’re not working.
RP: All these seedlings for different projects you have - Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, the Andy Warhol film - are starting to grow. Is that really exciting for you?
GVS: Yeah, they’re inspirational; they’re, like, my favourite stories. My Own Private Idaho might be the only one of my own stories that I ever get to tell, though of course I do have a bunch of Shakespeare in the middle of it. It’s the ability to actually do something about these things now that is pretty unbelievable. I was just telling Tom [Robbins] last night that the first time I met him was at a book signing in 1984, and I was standing in a long line of people with Walt Curtis, who wrote Mala Noche, and we were just fans. And Tom was signing books and you hoped that he’d write, like ’To Gus. Best wishes Tom’. I was a film-maker and I really wanted to Even Cowgirls Get the Blues into a movie. I had made one short film from a William Burroughs story, but I had no clout or power, or any money. I probably made, on average, like $100 a week doing something or other, and so I was penniless and without a portfolio. But I said to Tom, ’If I ever get the money, I want to come back to you and do the film.’ He said, ’That sounds good’, and signed the book. I figured it’d never happen, but I might as well say it. So now it’s a pleasure to be able to have the kind of support to do dream things like that.
RP: Were you interested in film at art school?
GVS: Yeah, I majored in film. I changed from painting after my first year because I thought that maybe a career in the film business was a more moneyed career than a painter’s.
RP: [laughs] A safe assumption.
GVS: It was a safety bail-out. But, also, films were more complicated, and I’d pretty much mastered - at least in my estimation - painting. But film-making was a big mystery, and I thought to get anywhere in the business I’d have to work really hard and forget about painting for a while. And that’s what I chose to do.
RP: Did some of your paintings - particularly your more recent ones - conceptually influence Idaho?
GVS: Yeah, because you know those paintings are of Idaho. Idaho desert is what I’m painting. The Sawtooth Mountains and a road that leads to a house that’s sometimes flying in the air and crashing to the earth. So, in a way, the story of My Own Private Idaho is the film version of the paintings. Because the paintings are about home, and they’re about love, I guess. And they’re about relationships and turmoil. Something to do with my upbringing in a middle-class family. And this is, like, the generic, box-like, red-roofed, white $17,000 home, smashing into a road. And a road symbolizes the journey of life, and the horizon is the future.
RP: Is it later that you articulate and identify the images as symbolic? Or is it something that you think out?
GVS: No, I think that it’s something I think out after the fact. I have been obsessed with my family’s house and where we lived when I was around six, which was in Colorado. Because I guess that’s where I first lived, you know? That’s my concept of home. Then we moved away, and I probably didn’t like moving away. So then the house smashing in the road is like my destruction of the house that I miss. But when I painted the paintings, I never thought, ’Oh, I missed my childhood, and now I’m showing how that childhood has been smashed in 10 million bits’ - though I can interpret them that way and then be sort of surprised.
RP: This is getting too close to home.
GVS: But the road also - there’s been a lot of travelling. My family moved around alot, about five or six times while I was a child. So the road symbolizes the journey back and forth across the country: from Colorado to Illinois, to San Francisco, to Connecticut, to Oregon.
RP: Why did you move around so much?
GVS: My father was making it up the corporate -
RP: Ladder of success?
GVS: Yeah. And he made it to president.
RP: President of what?
GVS: Of McGregor Doniger sportswear.
RP: Great!
GVS: And actually that yellow thing that you wear is a McGregor. That’s very symbolic, actually, but it wasn’t planned that way. McGregor windbreakers were very popular in the 1950s - I should show it in the film. Yesterday you were lying in a White Stag sleeping bag, and my father was the president of White Stag. That’s why we moved to Oregon. He changed his presidency from McGregor to White Stag.
RP: Wow. So what is your father doing now?
GVS: He’s in the fashion business - he has a women’s clothing company called Intuition.
RP: But he also does your accounting, right?
GVS: Yeah.
RP: Should we erase that?
GVS: No, no. You can ask me anything.
【In a van travelling to location 】
RP: I had a Thai dinner the other day with some women on this shoot. On this film I’ve been around a lot of boys, but for variety I like sitting and listening to women talk about what they do. And I mentioned it to you afterwards: ’Well, I have some gossip about some gossip for you. And not to mention names, but these two people are trying to figure you out.’ And your response was, ’What? Sexually?’ And that was the first thing. But more, I guess, intellectually. Or what was your -
GVS: What makes me go?
RP: Yeah. Trying to figure out the Van Sant mystery.
GVS: Is that a mystery though? See, I have no concept of what -
RP: I know, I know. Me - I’m the same way. I mean… um, you just live. We’re all just, like, living, hanging out, doing our thing.
GVS: But I’m fascinated by what they said.
RP: Me too. It was completely like a cliché.
GVS: You can say that about this film here.
RP: Oh yeah. It all came back to the film. You yourself said, ’What is Gus doing this for?’ Does it bother you when people try to figure you out?
GVS: No, not at all, because I’d like to figure me out actually.
RP: Yeah, so would I like to figure myself out. So if they can give me a clue, I’m always interested to hear.
GVS: Right. Yeah, I’m pretty much in the dark about myself - I haven’t done any psychotherapy. I don’t know if that would help. I don’t think that there’s much to be figured out. I think that one thing about me is that I’ve worked pretty hard since I was twelve, and I don’t know why exactly. Only on my own things, you know, which first was painting.
RP: You started when you were twelve?
GVS: Yeah. Some time during adolescence I just buried myself in my work. Before then, I was pretty much like a normal neighbourhood kid. So the work itself became pretty important, but it’s impossible to figure out what the kind of art that I do is, because its progressed. You’d have to follow the progression and say, ’Well, he made this piece because this happened to him.’
RP: Right. But I’m surprised by the arrogance displayed by people who try to figure you out by looking at a piece of your work.
GVS: Well, maybe there’s people in the business who have never written or directed before, so maybe it’s easier to interpret their work. There’s this thing where somebody was talking about this one director they had worked for - it’s gossip, really, - and they were saying, ’He became obsessed with this one actress.’ He would work for ten hours just lighting this shot where she walked through the door. It was like this sort of cuckoo obsession.
RP: That was true. I heard about that too.
GVS: I think it’s really cool. I mean, I can become obsessed with something, you know. So far that hasn’t happened in my work, but I guess it could happen. I tend to be pretty professional that way and catch myself if there’s any inkling of that kind of stuff. It’s like the door shuts.
RP: Right. How do you feel about the way women are portrayed in modern-day cinema?
GVS: It’s hard for them to find themselves, really. They’re not really portrayed at all, except in a man’s world.
RP: How do you feel about that? Because in this film you have this character, Carmella, who’s kind of a female cliché.
GVS: Yeah, she’s one of those.
RP: But then you want to do Even Cowgirls Get the Blues, which has to be one of the first books -
GVS: Tracing the notion of a female hero.
RP: Right, so you’re doing that, so that balances this. Some people won’t know that you’re doing that when they see this film and I guess it’s no big deal, except I’ve been kind of curious about that myself. I can’t imagine being an actress today. If I was a woman, I wouldn’t be who I am now. I wouldn’t have had the chance to grow to this point. It’s like a real hard road for someone to get to be like Sissy Spacek or Meryl Streep.
GVS: Most of time, [a film] is from a man’s point of view. You know, the female characters are one-dimensional sex objects and pieces of property, and that’s what Carmella is because she’s seen from the point of view of the male characters in the film. It’s like she’s an attractive piece of flesh, you know? Like, it’s pretty innocent and first-love-ish, but it doesn’t really show Carmella’s side of the story. In Cowgirls, though, you don’t really get this sex-object angle, although at the same time you can get the feeling that the writer is living in a fantasy in sex-object land. It’s sort of this other world, a city of women. So, it does have that quality which doesn’t cleanse it completely from the point of view of the type of feminist who might think that dead men don’t rape. But the whole project is a great women’s film. It’s a chance to make the ultimate remake of The Women, which is a beautiful Cukor film from the 1930s.
RP: How do you feel about sex in film today?
GVS: I don’t see why it’s such a problem, because there’s a lot of death, so -
RP: Why should sex even be rated as something as extreme as death, or something as negative?
GVS: No, it should be more positive. But it’s the mystery. You know, men are embarrassed by sex because they don’t understand it. They can come to grips with death and use it as an icon. And they can use love as an icon, or sex even, but the actual involvement of that intimate moment - the sexual moment - is somehow embarrassing, because maybe we don’t understand what it is.
RP: So what do you do about it?
GVS: Well, in my films I just try to be aware that people don’t understand it. And I just try and walk in that direction and say ’Well, this is this.` But even when we did our scene - you know, when you’re in the middle of it - it was tough to do.
RP: Well, when it came down to it, we were just doing it. We were just, like -
GVS: You’re just trying to, like -
RP: To fuck.
GVS: Just to do it from the point of view of the partners involved in having sex. That’s the way to get around it. And it you can get there and make the camera not a voyeur but a participant you can sometimes get away with a little more. But it’s still a problem because of our own perceptions of sex. I mean, I’m embarrassed by certain things. Being ’bad’ is part of it, although it doesn’t have to be that way, and I think other cultures know that. But our culture’s pretty uptight.
【In an airport restaurant】
RP: What else? Let’s talk about favourites.
GVS: Yeah. What does that mean?
RP: What’s your favourite car?
GVS: My favourite car? Well, I have a 1982 BMW-528E. And usually the car I have is my favourite car.[laughs]
RP: It’s your favourite holiday of the year?
GVS: Probably Halloween.
RP: What’s your favourite brand of coffee?
GVS: I usually buy Medaglia d’Oro espresso.
RP: The reason why I’m asking you your favourites is because I have none. I’m always split decision. But it’s so neat to be able to hear people commit, and you’re the kind of guy who can pretty much just say, ’It’s my favourite.’ What’s your favourite pop artist?
GVS: I guess it would have to be Warhol. He was sort of the Capra of the pop art movement. With the Warhol project that I’m working on, I’m trying to make a correlation between early 1950s to 1960s Warhol and then intercutting that with the later Warhol of the ~g80s and his relationships with the younger artists, like Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring. It dawned on me that you look a lot like Warhol did when he was, say, eighteen to twenty-five. It would be a stretch, but you could pull off playing the young Warhol.
RP: What is your favourite colour?
GVS: Green. It’s my middle name.
RP: What’s your favourite city in America?
GVS: Portland.
RP: Do you have a favourite relationship that you’ve had. Sexual? You don’t have to mention any names.
GVS: Do I have a favourite one? Yeah. The first one was the favourite one. But not always, actually.
RP: How old were you?
GVS: Thirty-two.
RP: That was your first?
GVS: It wasn’t my first sexual relationship. It was the first one that was really, like -
RP: That you loved?
GVS: See, I worked all those other years, so I had to catch up.
RP: Wow, wow. What is your favourite year?
GVS: I don’t know. Probably last year.
RP: Nineteen-ninety is my favourite year, too, which just means that it was consistent and decent and OK. What is your favourite word?
GVS: My favourite what?
RP: Word. Phonetically speaking. Oh, I know you have one.
GVS: [pauses] God, I can’t think of one.
RP: Like ’carousel’ or ’jagged’?
GVS: I like Italian words, because they’re funny. We were just in Italy, and this big truck passed us, and it was called - it was a brand name - Bindi. B-i-n-d-i. Bindi. And that was like saying Hershey’s chocolate. Instead of saying ’Hershey’s’, they say ’Bindi’.
RP: [laughs] What’s your favourite desert?
GVS: Um, I don’t have one. Chocolate cake.
RP: What’s your favourite -
GVS: That’s all. Let’s just stop.
RP: Just one more. Who’s your
favourite interviewer?
GVS: River Phoenix.
RP: Oh, that’s a good answer.
(三)世代偶像
有很多巧合 存在
James Dean 和 River Phoenix
當River以《MY OWN PRIVATE IDAHO》中的Mike一角奪得無數讚譽的1991年
很多報紙都以1990年代的James Dean稱譽(諷刺地日後竟像一種詛咒)
River曾被問及有無看過James的影片
他回答：還沒有.
就如同當年James Dean當年被問及有無看過馬龍白蘭度的演出時的回答一樣
他們倆個的視力都不佳
私底下都帶著眼鏡
表演時那boyish的走路方式
及充滿感情.偶爾模糊斷續到近乎低語的唸白
抿著嘴噗敕一笑的神態及淺淺的酒渦
有種奇妙的.黑色的.聯繫
Comparisons between Phoenix and James Dean are lazy, not to mention ubiquitous at this point, though they did share several of the qualities that separate great actors from mere signifiers of glamour. Both were extremely attentive to detail yet seemingly incapable of submerging their actual emotions under an artificial personality. No matter how peripheral Phoenix’s role-the scatterbrained Junior hippie In I Love You To Death, the poet/Casanova in The Life and Times of Jimmy Reardon, the loyal, spooked son of Harrison Ford’s megalomaniac in The Mosquito Coast-he was always a little more perceptive and soulful-more real-than anyone else onscreen.
Even in as offbeat and dislocated a milieu as the Portland street-hustler scene of My Own Private Idaho, Phoenix’s Mike stood out as unusually lonesome-someone who was afraid of, and simultaneously astonished by, his squalid conditions, who desperately sought affection from others while at the same time avoiding sympathizers like the plague. It was a
performance that, like most of Dean’s, seemed to distill the confused melancholy of an emerging generation.
............
Phoenix was that once-in-a-decade actor honest enough to connect powerfully with people his own age, and skillful enough to remind members of an older generation of the intensity they’d lost.
《SPIN 》Jan. 1994 Fallen Angel--by DENNIS COOPER
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相關閱讀：
http://epaper.ctfa2.org.tw/epaper80912we/2.htm
很重要的影評！
葛斯范桑的由「小」而「大」/聞天祥1998
(所以 他寫時 《Milk》根本還沒拍喔)
關於其中那段↓
“畢竟多一個《心靈捕手》的導演，似乎比少一個《男人的一半還是男人》的導演，要來得損失嚴重。因為在體制外，葛斯范桑是朵奇葩；進入體制，他頂多是個稱職的說書人。” /聞天祥1998
我是深有同感……
http://enews.url.com.tw/enews/193
你的名字叫「孤獨」--葛斯凡桑與青少年電影/文‧黃怡
http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_4a4c1434010008gl.html
電影頻道《世界电影之旅》：心靈的遠行─葛斯范桑猜想(雖然是簡體文)
但其中 談到很多關於River Phoenix(很多喔！ )
『但范"桑說過：瑞佛費尼克斯是無法替代的。』
最後一段：
我們的談話在對費尼克斯的懷念中有些傷感地戛然而止。也許費尼克斯是最能體現范"桑神韻的演員，失去這樣一位好友是范"桑特永遠的遺憾。
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