访谈录 2011-02-27&03-01 相约雷恩·威尔森

When did you commit your life to acting¹?

Well, I was about 16. I started acting. And I realized this recently that basically every career choice I’ve ever made has been about meeting girls. It’s true. I did an impro…I took an acting class for some reason, I didn’t improvise².

All of a sudden people were laughing and laughing. And I finished. And all these girls came over and they are like “Oh, you are so funny.”  And I realized that, you know, such stocked with acumen³, I have made some of the worst career decisions in my life just to meet girls. The worst jobs I have worked over my 47 years.

What are you driving at?

Well, I started out picking raspberries when I was 13 years old.

To meet girls?

Yeah. You wouldn’t think it but they have this, the company has this racket, this crazy racket. It would send these bluebird school buses all over suburban⁴ Seattle and get these, all these unwitting teenagers, girls included, and bused them over to the raspberry fields. And it is really, really hard to pick up girls when you are covered in thorny⁵ nettles⁶ and raspberry juice and drinking industrial grey water out of a hose. I mean, I’m telling you it was Child Slave Labor⁷ Day, we were paid, they didn’t pay us hourly. That’s how they were able to hire children to work. And they paid us a dollar and 15 for a flat of raspberries. It takes about 45 minutes to pick a flat of raspberries. And there’s little boys right now in caves in Pakistan getting paid more to make soccer balls. You know what I mean?

I know, we had one on the show last night.

Oh, really?

Yeah. So that didn’t work meeting girls. Any other missteps along the way?

I, many, many, many, missteps.

I’m sorry to hear that.

My next job was at University of Washington. I got a job for the Department of Urban Studies, counting the cars that were in the car pull lane. And the high-tech⁸ way they had to do that is that I had a clipboard and a clicker and an umbrella and I sat on the freeway overpass⁹. So this is me. This is me. And, but the reason I didn’t quit after one day, David, is that there was a cute girl next to me doing the same thing. She was doing the other lane.

Doing the other lane, yeah.

So I stayed week after week after week and finally I got up the courage to ask her out.

And?

And she said “NO”.

But at least you were in the arena¹⁰. You were in the ball park.

I was in this game.

You were in the line-up.

Yeah, to use the headgear analogy.

1 acting   

n.演戏，行为，假装；adj.代理的，临时的，演出用的

参考例句：

• Ignore her,she's just acting.别理她，她只是假装的。
• During the seventies,her acting career was in eclipse.在七十年代，她的表演生涯黯然失色。

2 improvise   

v.即兴创作；临时准备，临时凑成

参考例句：

• If an actor forgets his words，he has to improvise.演员要是忘记台词，那就只好即兴现编。
• As we've not got the proper materials,we'll just have to improvise.我们没有弄到合适的材料，只好临时凑合了。

3 acumen   

n.敏锐，聪明

参考例句：

• She has considerable business acumen.她的经营能力绝非一般。
• His business acumen has made his very successful.他的商业头脑使他很成功。

4 suburban   

adj.城郊的，在郊区的

参考例句：

• Suburban shopping centers were springing up all over America. 效区的商业中心在美国如雨后春笋般地兴起。
• There's a lot of good things about suburban living.郊区生活是有许多优点。

5 thorny   

adj.多刺的，棘手的

参考例句：

• The young captain is pondering over a thorny problem.年轻的上尉正在思考一个棘手的问题。
• The boys argued over the thorny points in the lesson.孩子们辩论功课中的难点。

6 nettles   

n.荨麻( nettle的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• I tingle where I sat in the nettles. 我坐过在荨麻上的那个部位觉得刺痛。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• This bleak place overgrown with nettles was the churchyard. 那蔓草丛生的凄凉地方是教堂公墓。 来自辞典例句

7 labor   

n.劳动，努力，工作，劳工；分娩；vi.劳动，努力，苦干；vt.详细分析；麻烦

参考例句：

• We are never late in satisfying him for his labor.我们从不延误付给他劳动报酬。
• He was completely spent after two weeks of hard labor.艰苦劳动两周后，他已经疲惫不堪了。

8 high-tech   

adj.高科技的

参考例句：

• The economy is in the upswing which makes high-tech services in more demand too.经济在蓬勃发展，这就使对高科技服务的需求量也在加大。
• The quest of a cure for disease with high-tech has never ceased. 人们希望运用高科技治疗疾病的追求从未停止过。

9 overpass   

n.天桥，立交桥

参考例句：

• I walked through an overpass over the road.我步行穿过那条公路上面的立交桥。
• We should take the overpass when crossing the road.我们过马路应走天桥。

10 arena   

n.竞技场，运动场所；竞争场所，舞台

参考例句：

• She entered the political arena at the age of 25. 她25岁进入政界。
• He had not an adequate arena for the exercise of his talents.他没有充分发挥其才能的场所。