【英语阅读】纽约时报 | 感觉世界不会好了？看看汤姆·汉克斯的故事吧

感觉世界不会好了？看看汤姆·汉克斯的故事吧
This Tom Hanks Story Will Help You Feel Less Bad

Here is a list of stories about Tom Hanks I’ve heard over the last few miserable months, as it appeared that politeness and civility and manners were facing an extinction event in this country.
以下是我在过去悲惨的几个月里听到的关于汤姆·汉克斯的故事，这段时间以来，这个国家的礼貌、修养和礼仪似乎正濒临灭绝。

• miserable adj.悲惨的,不幸的,可怜的 令人痛苦的 令人不快的
• politeness n.有礼貌;客气;文雅 有礼貌的行为;客气的词语
• civility n.礼貌;端庄;礼仪
• extinction n.熄灭,消灭,灭绝;废除

Once, in 2008, when he was shooting “Angels & Demons” in Rome by the Pantheon, a bride and her father couldn’t approach the chapel because of the hullabaloo, so Hanks stopped filming to escort them to the altar.
2008年，当他在罗马万神殿拍摄《天使与魔鬼》（Angels & Demons）时，一名新娘和她的父亲因为现场的混乱无法进入教堂，于是汉克斯停止拍摄，护送他们走向圣坛。

• Pantheon n.万神殿;名流群
• chapel n.小教堂;附属礼拜堂 礼拜仪式
• hullabaloo n.喧哗
• filming n.摄影;拍摄 v.以薄膜覆盖;拍摄
• escort n.陪同;护送者;护卫队 vt.护送;陪同;为…护航
• altar n.祭坛;圣坛;圣餐台

Once, in 2015, he stopped by a table of Girl Scout Cookies and bought some boxes, donated an additional $20, then offered selfies to passersby as an enticement to buy. That same year, he found a young woman’s student ID in a park and used his charming Twitter feed, which is filled with found items, to get it back to her.
有一次，2015年，他在一个女童子军饼干摊前驻足，买了几盒饼干，又捐了20美元，然后向路人提供合影机会，吸引他们买饼干。同一年，他在公园里捡到一个女孩的学生证，他利用他那招人喜爱的Twitter账号——里面有各种遗失物品的照片——把证件还给了她。

• Girl Scout n女童子军队员
• donated adj.捐赠的 v.捐款
• additional adj.增加的,额外的,另外的
• passersby n.过路人,经过者
• enticement n.引诱,怂恿
• charming adj.迷人的;可爱的 v.使陶醉

Once, in 1997, before shooting “Saving Private Ryan,” Steven Spielberg sent Hanks and other cast members out to do military training in the woods with a former Marine. After spending time in the rain, they all voted to quit the training, except for Hanks, who chose to obediently perform the job he was hired for and spurred the other men to stick with it as well.
1997年，在拍摄《拯救大兵瑞恩》（Saving Private Ryan）之前，史蒂文·斯皮尔伯格（Steven Spielberg）曾让汉克斯和其他演员在林中接受一名前海军陆战队员的军事训练。在雨中训练了一段时间后，其他人都投票决定退出训练，只有汉克斯选择顺从地完成他被雇来做的工作，并鼓励其他人也坚持下去。

• military adj.军事的;军人的;适于战争的 n.军队;军人
• former adj.从前的,前者的;前任的 n.模型,样板;形成作用的人
• Marine adj.海的,海产的 海军的 n.水兵;海军陆战队士兵
• obediently adv.服从地,顺从地,忠顺地
• perform vt.执行;完成;演奏 vi.表演;执行,机器运转

These are the regular-nice acts of a person who holds the mantle of Everyman in our movie star culture. But lately they have signified more than simple good deeds. They’re something like the embodiment of a gold standard of menschiness, which is not just gone from the culture at large, but now plays like a parody of it.
对于这个在我们的电影明星文化中经常饰演普通人的人来说，这些只是普通的慷慨行为。但最近，它们的意义已不仅仅是简单的善行。它们是某种体现了高尚品德黄金标准的东西，这种标准不仅从整个文化中消失了，而且现在的一切就像是对它的拙劣戏仿。

• signified n.符号义,所指
• deeds n.功绩;契约;行为 v.立契转让
• embodiment n.体现;化身
• menschiness 标准
• parody n.滑稽的模仿 拙劣的模仿 vt.滑稽地模仿;拙劣地模仿

There’s more. Spielberg once said about him, “If Norman Rockwell were alive today, he would paint a portrait of Tom.”
还有一些事例。斯皮尔伯格曾这样评价他：“如果诺曼·洛克威尔（Norman Rockwell）今天还活着，他一定会为汤姆画一幅肖像。”

• Norman Rockwell 美国20世纪早期重要画家及插画家,为美国总统艾森豪，甘乃迪，詹森，还有其他世界知名人士如埃及总统纳瑟Gamal Abdel Nasser和印度总理尼赫鲁Jawaharlal Nehru画过肖像画。
• portrait n.肖像,画像 生动地描述

Quick, who is your favorite president? Is it Abraham Lincoln? Well, you’ll never believe this but Tom Hanks is related to him. The maiden name of Lincoln’s mother, Nancy, was Hanks, and yes, it’s the same Hanks.
问一下，你最喜欢的总统是？是亚伯拉罕·林肯吗？你绝对不会相信，汤姆·汉克斯和他是亲戚。林肯母亲南希的娘家姓是汉克斯，没错，就是这个汉克斯。

Quick, who is your second favorite president? If it’s Barack Obama, here’s what he said about his true-life friend Hanks at the Kennedy Center Honors reception in 2014: “People have said that Tom is Hollywood’s Everyman; that he’s this generation’s Jimmy Stewart or Gary Cooper. But he’s just Tom Hanks. And that’s enough. That’s more than enough.” Two years later, Obama gave him the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
问一下，你第二喜欢的总统是谁？如果是贝拉克·奥巴马（Barack Obama），听一下他2014年在肯尼迪中心（Kennedy Center）颁奖典礼上是怎么评价他现实生活中的朋友汉克斯的：“人们说汤姆是好莱坞的普通人；他是这一代人的吉米·斯图尔特（Jimmy Stewart）或加里·库珀（Gary Cooper）。但他只是汤姆·汉克斯。这就足够了。已经太够了。”两年后，奥巴马授予汉克斯总统*勋章。

• Everyman n.普通人,一般人
• generation’s 一代人的

The day after Hanks’ new movie, “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood,” in which he stars as Mister Rogers, debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival in September, he was sitting on a bench in a hallway outside a conference room, making jokes to a group of publicists, waiting for me ahead of the appointed time. That does not really ever happen, an actor waiting for me ahead of the appointed time, versus clearly dreading me two hours past it. “I think a long time ago, I learned how important it was to show up a little bit early,” Hanks told me. “Be ready to go, you know? And to respect the whole process, and I think that you could respect the whole process even when the other people don’t.”
汉克斯在9月多伦多国际电影节首映的新片《邻里美好的一天》（A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood）中饰演罗杰斯先生。首映翌日，他坐在会议室外走廊的长椅上对一群公关人员开着玩笑，当时还没到我们约定的时间，他在等我。这种事真是前所未有，一个演员在约定时间之前等我，而不是用迟到两小时来威吓我。“我想很久以前，我就知道早到是多么重要，”汉克斯告诉我。“做好准备，对吧？尊重整个过程，我认为你可以尊重整个过程，即使其他人不是那么尊重。”

• debuted 首次亮相
• hallway n.门厅;玄关;走廊
• conference n.会议 讨论,商谈
• publicists n.宣传人员;宣传代理人 评论家;时事评论员

So Tom Hanks is as nice as you think he is and exactly what you hope him to be, which is great unless you are someone trying to tell a good story about him, with elements like an arc and narrative tension. “Saintly Actor Playing Saintly Public Television Children’s Host Mister Rogers Is Saintly” is not a great story. But what am I supposed to do? He sat facing me, cheerful and focused and willing. Maybe this could just be a story that makes you feel better.
所以，汤姆·汉克斯就像你想象的那么好，也正是你希望他成为的样子，这很好，但是如果你想讲个关于他的好故事，带点点叙事弧和张力，那就不怎么妙了。“饰演圣人般的儿童电视节目主持人罗杰斯先生的圣人般的演员是个圣人”，这可不是什么精彩的故事。但是我该怎么做呢？他面对着我坐着，心情愉快，精神集中，乐于配合。也许这可以成为一个让你感觉好一点的故事。

• arc n.弧度;弧形物 adj.圆弧的;反三角函数的 vt.走弧线;形成电弧
• narrative n.记叙文;故事 adj.叙述的;叙事体的
• tension n.张力,拉力;紧张 vt.使紧张
• Saintly adj.像圣人的;非常圣洁善良的;神圣的
• cheerful adj.高兴的;快乐的;愉快的

An hour later, he sat on a panel with the filmmakers and other actors, all of whom seemed giddy to put a Mister Rogers movie out into the world, relaying all the stories they’d heard about him. Tom Junod, who wrote the 1998 article in Esquire that the movie is based on, would talk about the way his interactions with Fred Rogers changed his life. You sit there and you listen and it’s hard to believe that those stories are real.
一个小时后，他与制片人和其他演员一起开了个座谈会，他们似乎都对推出关于罗杰斯先生的电影感到兴奋，讲述着他们听到的关于他的所有故事。影片是根据1998年汤姆·朱诺（Tom Junod）在《时尚先生》（Esquire）杂志上发表的一篇文章改编的。他说起他与弗雷德·罗杰斯的互动怎样改变了自己的人生。你坐在那里听，很难相信那些故事是真实的。

• giddy adj.头晕的;眼花的;令人眼花缭乱的;轻浮的
• relaying v.中继,转送,转发
• article n.物品,物件
• Esquire n.先生,绅士

In our first interview there in Toronto, Hanks sat back in a chair with his left ankle pressed against the top of his right patella. He was wearing clear-plastic framed glasses and a beard for shooting “News of the World,” which is set in the aftermath of the Civil War. In our interviews, he says “oh dear” and “geez” and “for cryin’ out loud.” He is a history enthusiast. He is an information enthusiast. He is an enthusiasm enthusiast. At one point, I can’t remember why, he recited the Preamble to the Constitution.
我们在多伦多的第一次采访中，汉克斯靠在椅子里，左脚踝放在右膝上。他戴着透明塑料镜框的眼镜，因为拍摄故事发生在南北战争后的影片《世界新闻》（News of the World）而留着胡子。在我们的采访中，他满口“哦，天哪”、“哎呀”和“我的老天爷”。他对历史充满热情。他对信息充满热情。他对热情充满热情。有一次，我不记得为什么，他朗诵了《宪法序言》。

• patella n.膝盖骨
• aftermath n.后果
• enthusiast n.热心人,热衷者
• recited vt.背诵;叙述;列举 vi.背诵;叙述
• Constitution n.宪法,法规,章程

In the panels after the premiere, some of the questions seemed to be based on the notion that Tom Hanks is so wonderful and Mister Rogersy that he just had to show up and read some lines since hey, they’re both essentially the same: easygoing nice men with graying hair.
在首映式后的座谈上，有些问题似乎是基于这样一种观念：汤姆·汉克斯太棒了，他只要一出场、说几句台词就是罗杰斯先生，因为，嘿，他们的本质是一样的：随和、友善、头发花白的男人。

• essentially adv.本质上;根本上 必需的
• easygoing adj.脾气随和的;温和的
• graying n.泛灰

This created as close to a crisis as the people who made this movie will probably have: It has been 24 years since Hanks won an Oscar （two in a row for “Philadelphia” and “Forrest Gump”）; it has been 18 years since he was even nominated, even though he has had an unrelenting leading-man career that includes the last three devastating minutes of “Captain Phillips.” So while other movies this year opened to PR disasters around the offscreen behavior of their stars or directors or producers, it was this that the “Beautiful Day” team felt they had to get in front of: the notion that Hanks wasn’t acting when he was playing Mister Rogers.
这几乎和这部电影的主创们所面临的危机一样：汉克斯上一次获得奥斯卡奖已经是24前的事了（他凭借《费城故事》[Philadelphia]和《阿甘正传》[Forrest Gump]连续两年获得奥斯卡奖）；上次获得提名也是18年前的事，尽管他一直都在饰演男主角，他的精彩时刻包括《菲利普斯船长》（Captain Phillips）最后那惊人的三分钟。因此，今年，当其他电影因为明星、导演或制片人在银幕外的行为而引发公关灾难时，《邻里美好的一天》团队觉得能让他们领先的是：汉克斯在扮演罗杰斯先生时并不是在做戏。

• probably adv.大概;或许;可能
• nominated vt.提名,任命;指定;推荐
• unrelenting adj.持续不断的,不松懈的,不屈不挠的 无情的
• leading-man 男主演
• career n.事业,职业;生涯
• devastating adj.毁灭性的 很好的,引人注目的
• offscreen adj.画面以外的,实际生活中的 adv.在电影摄影机拍摄距离外地

At a panel, a journalist suggested that he’s actually playing Tom Hanks, but just “slower.” But the slowness of Fred Rogers — the un-self-conscious, considered slowness — was hard, Hanks said. It felt ridiculous when he first tried it out. He studied hours of tapes, because sometimes he couldn’t imagine that he was supposed to go this slowly. “When you get over that there is some point where you just go, oh dear lord, this just has to be slower, and it’s not dumber. It’s a combination of procedure and behavior that was singularly Fred Rogers.”
在一次座谈会上，一名记者暗示他实际上是在演汤姆·汉克斯，只是“慢一些”。但是，汉克斯说，弗雷德·罗杰斯的那种迟缓——不自觉的、审慎的迟缓——其实是很难的。第一次尝试时他感觉很可笑。他研究了几个小时的录像，因为有时他无法想象他要走这么慢。“克服了这一点之后，你就会明白一些东西，哦，天哪，必须要再慢一些，而且不是更蠢。这是方法和行为的结合，这是弗雷德·罗杰斯的独特之处。”

• un-self-conscious adj.自然的;不装腔作势的
• tapes n.带子 录像带 vt.用带子捆起来
• combination n.合作,结合,组合
• singularly adv.非常地,格外地 奇怪地,异常地

It wasn’t just about pace, though. It was about a specificity of cadence, and an intention. When Hanks watched those tapes, he saw that Mister Rogers was “always talking to a single kid, a single person two feet on the other side of the camera screen. They said when you were talking to Fred, you felt as though you were the only person in the world that mattered to him.”
不过，这不仅仅是速度的问题，而是关于特殊的节奏和意图。看录音带时，汉克斯发现罗杰斯先生“总是在和一个孩子说话，和一个站在摄像机屏幕另一边的人说话。他们说，当你跟弗雷德说话的时候，你会觉得自己是世界上对他来说唯一重要的人。”

• specificity n.特异性,特征
• cadence n.节奏;韵律;抑扬顿挫

Performance aside, it’s not hard to see why director Marielle Heller wanted him so badly for the role. He bears a somewhat passing physical resemblance to Rogers, which was a good start. He is most often cast in roles that need what Robert Zemeckis （who directed “Forrest Gump,” among other Hanks movies） calls “that classic Everyman quality.” Over my reporting, many, many people told me what an Everyman he is.
撇开表演不谈，不难看出导演玛丽埃尔·海勒（Marielle Heller）为什么这样希望汉克斯来出演这个角色。他的外貌与罗杰斯有些相似，这是一个好的开始。他最常饰演的那些角色都需要《阿甘正传》的导演罗伯特·泽米基斯（Robert Zemeckis）所说的那种“经典的普通人品质”。在我做采访期间，很多很多人告诉我，汉克斯是一个普通人。

• resemblance n.相似,形似

But Mister Rogers wasn’t an Everyman. It didn’t hurt that whereas Mister Rogers was the closest thing my generation had to a living saint （even Mother Teresa got canceled, eventually）, Tom Hanks was the closest thing we had to Mister Rogers — an uncomplicated-seeming, scandal-free man with a long career who never had to issue a public statement that included the phrase “It was a different time.” In other words, having Hanks cast as Mister Rogers removes a layer of suspension of disbelief that is the burden of a movie depicting a real-life person.
但是罗杰斯先生并不是普通人。对于我这一代人来说，罗杰斯先生是最接近凡间圣人的人物（就连特蕾莎修女最终都被否定了），而汤姆·汉克斯是我们这一代人当中最接近罗杰斯先生的人——一个外表单纯、没有丑闻、漫长的职业生涯里从来没有发布过带有“这是一个不同寻常的时刻”这种措辞的公开声明，这一点当然是有好处的。换句话说，让汉克斯扮演罗杰斯先生消除了人们心中的一层疑虑，对于描绘真实人物的电影来说，这样的疑虑只会成为负担。

• saint n.圣徒,圣人;道德崇高的人
• uncomplicated adj.不复杂的
• issue n.流出;问题 vt.发行
• phrase n.短语,词组;成语
• suspension n.暂停,中止
• disbelief n.不相信,怀疑
• burden n.负担;责任 vt.烦扰;使担忧
• depicting vt.描述;绘画

Hanks grew up in Northern California, in the era of the Zodiac Killer and Patty Hearst and the Black Panthers and the People’s Park riots. He was 5 when his parents divorced and he and his older brother and sister went to live with his father, while another brother lived with their mother. Both parents were in rough shape, just trying to survive. His father worked in a variety of small restaurants, remarrying again and again and moving every few months.
汉克斯在北加州长大，当时正值十二宫杀手、帕蒂·赫斯特（Patty Hearst）、黑豹党和人民公园*的时代。他5岁时父母离异，他和哥哥姐姐搬去和父亲同住，另一个兄弟和母亲住在一起。父母的状况都很糟糕，只能勉强谋生。他的父亲在各种小餐馆工作，一次又一次地再婚，每隔几个月就搬一次家。

• Panther n.豹,黑豹;美洲豹
• riots n.暴动 v.闹事;*
• variety n.品种,种类
• remarrying vi.再婚 vt.与某人复婚

He was never angry at his parents; he’s still not. He saw how hard it was for them to function. They never explained things to him. Now he knows, “it’s because they didn’t have the verbiage. They didn’t have the vocabulary. And they were so racked with self-loathing and guilt and et cetera, all that stuff that went along, and there were four of us, for God’s sake, and they just, you know, couldn’t do it. Now, I’ve got four kids myself, and as soon as you start having your own kids, you go, like, oh, I get it.”
他从不生父母的气；现在依然没有。他明白他们很难尽到父母的职责。他们从不向他解释任何事情。现在他明白了，“那是因为他们没法长篇大论。他们无话可说。他们被自憎和内疚这些东西折磨得痛苦不堪，所有这些都随之而来，有四个孩子，看在上帝的份上，他们就是做不到。现在，我自己也有了四个孩子，当你自己有了孩子的时候，你会说，哦，我明白了。”

• verbiage n.冗词；废话；措辞方式
• vocabulary n.词汇量 词汇表
• racked n.行李架;拷问架
• self-loathing n.自我讨厌的;自我憎恨的
• guilt n.有罪,对罪行有责任 使人内疚的责备
• cetera adv.其实,其他

He remembers Oprah once asked him on her show about his dysfunctional family growing up, and he thought, “What’s that? Oh, that’s us.” He’d never thought of himself that way. But somewhere underneath he must have known that something was off because he had started accumulating a lot of typewriters. Hundreds of them. It was something about how he never got to keep the things he loved through all of his family’s moves. Now that he’s 63 and he’s thought a lot about it, he realizes that when he was young, he’d often have to move on a moment’s notice and was not in charge of packing, so he often lost things that were important to him. “I had nothing, actually, that stayed with me all through my life. I don’t have anything from when I was 5 years old. I don’t have anything from when I was 3.”
他记得奥普拉曾经在节目中问他，在不正常的家庭成长是什么样的感受，他想，“什么意思？噢，是说我们。”他从来没有用那种方式想过自己。但在内心的某个地方，他一定知道有些东西出了问题，因为他开始囤积大量的打字机。好几百台打字机。这是因为当年的他永远无法在搬家时保留自己心爱的东西。现在他已经63岁了，对此他想了很多，他意识到自己年轻的时候经常需要临时搬家，但却不负责收拾行李，所以经常丢失对自己来说很重要的东西。“事实上，我一生中没有什么东西是伴随我的。我现在没有任何我5岁时候的东西。我没有任何我3岁时候的东西。”

• dysfunctional 机能失调的,功能失调的
• underneath n.下面,底部 adj.下面的,底层的
• accumulating n.累加 v.积累
• typewriters v.打字;用打字机打字

Lately, he’s been giving away his typewriters. Now that he’s had a home all these years, and stability, and a wife who sings to him and children who bring his three granddaughters to visit him regularly, he wants to get a little leaner on stuff again. He’s down to about 120. One day he’ll just have one. The one he’ll keep is the Olivetti Lettera 22, the same model they keep at MoMA. I told him I make too many mistakes to work on a typewriter. But Hanks is more optimistic than I am.
最近，他经常把这些打字机送出去。这些年来，他已经有了一个稳定的家，有了一个给他唱歌的妻子，有了经常带着三个孙女来看他的孩子，他想把自己的收藏再减少一点。现在只有120个了。总有一天他会只留下一个的。他想留下的是一台Olivetti Lettera 22型打字机，就是MoMA收藏的那一款。我告诉他，我用打字机打字总是出错。但是汉克斯比我更乐观。

• stability n.稳定性,稳固
• regularly adv.有规律地 定期地
• optimistic adj.乐观的,乐观主义的

It was this optimism I’d been hoping to capture when I took on this story; it was this optimism I was hoping to marinate in so that I’d feel a little better about the world for a couple of hours a day for a few weeks. I’d been depressed lately and the amount of time you have to spend researching a profile — reading the old articles, rewatching the movies — would help me avoid any kind of subversiveness. In exchange, my story would be boring. It’s OK, I told him. Some stories are boring.
这就是我在撰写这个故事时希望捕捉到的乐观情绪；我希望自己能沉浸在这种乐观情绪之中，这样我就能一连几周，每天都有几个小时的时间能对这个世界感觉好一点。最近我一直很沮丧，而花在研究个人资料上的时间——阅读旧文章，重看电影——可以帮助我避开任何破坏性的东西。作为交换，我的故事可能有点沉闷。没事的，我告诉他。有些故事就是沉闷的。

• optimism n.乐观,乐观主义
• marinate vt.把…浸泡在卤汁里 vi.浸泡在卤汁里
• profile n.侧面,轮廓,外形,剖面
• subversiveness adj.破坏性的;从事垫颠覆的 n.危险份子;颠覆分子

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