再见，钱德勒：马修·佩里的光芒与挣扎 The One Without Matthew Perry ALEXIS SOLOSKI 2023年10月30日 2009年，马修·佩里。 2009年，马修·佩里。 MATT SAYLES/ASSOCIATED PRESS A confession: When I received a news alert that the actor Matthew Perry had died, my mind adopted the particular cadence that Perry perfected as Chandler Bing, the character he played for 10 seasons on the NBC sitcom “Friends.” Here is what I thought, “Could this be any sadder?” 坦白说，当看到演员马修·佩里去世的消息推送时，我脑海里浮现的是他完美诠释的钱德勒·宾独有的语气，那是佩里在NBC情景喜剧《老友记》(Friends)中扮演了10季的角色。我想的一句话是：“还有比这更悲伤的事吗？” Perry, 54, died nearly a year after the publication of “Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing,” an unusually candid memoir of addiction and recovery. As he detailed in that book, he spent many of the best years of his career oblivious, avoidant, numb — conditions that don’t typically encourage great acting. But he was great. And it had seemed reasonable, if rose-colored, to hope that sobriety might make him better, returning him to the nervy, instinctive brilliance of his peak years. That hope is now foreclosed. 54岁的佩里在《老友、爱人和最可怕的事》(Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing)出版近一年后去世，这部回忆录无比坦诚地讲述了他的瘾症和康复过程。他在书中详述了自己如何在演艺生涯的黄金岁月陷入恍惚、回避和麻木——人在这种状态下往往拿不出精湛表演。但他演得还是很出色的。或许戒酒能让他变得更好，回到巅峰时期那种什么都不是事、走到哪里都熠熠生辉的样子，这样的期待似乎合情合理，尽管有些乐观了。如今，这个希望破灭了。 A professional actor since his teens, Perry had appeared in more than a dozen sitcoms before landing “Friends” in 1994. I first remember seeing him years earlier, on an episode of “Growing Pains” screened by my school during a special assembly meant to advertise the dangers of drunken driving. Mostly it advertised Perry and his anxious, reckless charm. 佩里不到20岁入行，在1994年得到《老友记》的角色之前，他已经演过十几部情景喜剧。我记得对他的最初印象是在《老友记》之前的很多年，当时我的学校在一场特别集会中放了一集《成长的烦恼》(Growing Pains)，意在宣传酒驾的危险。但其最吸引人之处，还是佩里和他紧张中带着莽撞的魅力。 To say that he never did anything quite as good as “Friends,” before or after, is not to diminish his achievement. Even among the irrepressible talents of his co-stars, Perry stood out, for a rubbery, heedless way with physical comedy and a split-second timing that most stopwatches would envy. If you have seen more than a few episodes of the show — and many, many millions have, including fans born years after its initial airing — you will have absorbed Chandler’s rhythms, his catchphrases, the way Perry’s handsome, moony face would stretch like spandex, the better to sell a reaction. He had both an absolute commitment to what a line required and a way of gently ironizing that line. His character was the butt of jokes. Perry was in on those same jokes. There was a boyishness to him that seemed to excuse his characters’ worst behavior, on “Friends” and in subsequent roles. 说佩里在《老友记》之前或之后都从未演过那么好的角色并不是在贬低他的成就。即便在《老友记》其他主角的光芒四射中，活灵活现又漫不经心的动作喜剧型表演依然让佩里脱颖而出，他对精准的节奏把控让大多数秒表都望尘莫及。如果你对这部剧不是浅尝辄止——无数人确实都不是，包括在首播多年后出生的粉丝——你一定会被钱德勒的节奏所吸引，包括他的口头禅，还有佩里的俊脸上搞不清楚状况的表情，越是变幻莫测就越能收获满堂喝彩。他对台词编排和台词中的委婉讽刺都有绝对严格的要求。他的角色就是笑点，而佩里也把自身投射其中。佩里身上的那种天真似乎能让人原谅他所饰演角色的最恶劣行为，无论是在《老友记》还是他后来的戏里。 Those roles never served him as well and the shows he attached himself to rarely survived to a second season. His co-stars found other movies and series to showcase their talents. Perry’s latter projects, despite fine work on “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip” and “The Good Wife,” were largely grim, forgettable. It can be hard for boys to grow up. 那些角色再也没能带给他那样的好评，他投射自我的剧集也很少能拍到第二季。他的《老友记》搭档都在其他电影和剧集里大放异彩。虽然有《日落大道60号》(Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip)和《傲骨贤妻》(The Good Wife)这样的佳作，但佩里后来的角色基本是沉闷且无足轻重的。要男孩长大成人或许并不容易。 《老友记》主演。左起：大卫·休默、詹妮弗·安妮斯顿、柯特妮·考克斯、马修·佩里、丽莎·库卓和马特·勒布朗。 《老友记》主演。左起：大卫·休默、詹妮弗·安妮斯顿、柯特妮·考克斯、马修·佩里、丽莎·库卓和马特·勒布朗。 VIA GETTY IMAGES WARNER BROS. TELEVISION/HULTON ARCHIVE, VIA GETTY IMAGES It seems to have been hard for Perry. “I wanted to be famous so badly,” he told The New York Times in 2002. “You want the attention, you want the bucks, and you want the best seat in the restaurant. I didn’t think what the repercussions would be.” Those repercussions included the enabling of his addictions and the loss of any anonymity. (It had the occasional upside, too. In his memoir, he wrote that after a reaction to an anesthetic stopped his heart, a worker in the hospital in Switzerland performed CPR for five full minutes to restore rhythm. “If I hadn’t been on ‘Friends,’ would he have stopped at three minutes?” he wondered, darkly.) 这似乎给佩里带来了不小的打击。“我太渴望成名了，”他在2002年对《纽约时报》表示。“我想得到关注，赚到大钱，在餐厅里得到最好的位置。我没想过这会带来怎样的后果。”这些后果包括深陷瘾症，并失去所有隐私。（偶然的好处也不是没有。他在回忆录中写道，他曾使用麻醉剂导致心脏骤停，瑞士一家医院的一名工作人员对他进行了整整五分钟的心肺复苏才让他的心率恢复。“如果我没演过《老友记》，他会不会在三分钟以后就停手了？”他颇为阴暗地想道。） His struggles were an open secret, then they weren’t even a secret. (He was speaking openly, if optimistically, as early as 2002.) And it’s a miracle, really, that he could perform as he did, in and out of rehab, even as various cast members confronted him about his alcohol use. He seems to have fictionalized some aspects of this in “The End of Longing,” a play he wrote and starred in. While the Times critic was cool on the drama, he wrote that Perry was “genuinely scary as a ja