宋飞 黑暗与荒诞作家

宋飞 作家、制片人、艾美奖得主拉里·查尔斯在光子学中心礼堂外向只有站场的人群发表讲话。 马修·希利摄

Most people in the audience Friday night at the Photonics Center weren’t born when 宋飞 first aired, but that didn’t dampen their enthusiasm for an appearance by 宋飞 writer, producer, and Emmy-winner Larry Charles, who screened a selection of his work and answered questions.

Charles was at the University as part of the College of Communication 实验电影院系列, which brings accomplished filmmakers to campus to screen and discuss their work.

After leaving 宋飞 in 1994, Charles was a staff writer and executive producer for 为你疯狂, produced and directed HBO’s 抑制你的热情, wrote and was executive producer for 随行人员, and directed Sacha Baron Cohen as the title characters in the hugely successful (and often wildly irreverent) mockumentary films 布鲁诺 and 波拉特. The evening started with his screening episodes of 宋飞 (“婴儿派对”) and 抑制你的热情 (“Softee先生”) and the unaired pilot of a Kanye West HBO系列 that never materialized. Afterward, he took questions from the audience, and reflected on some of the more revealing moments experienced while filming 布鲁诺, about a gay Austrian who travels to the United States in the hope of starring in his own television show.

“因为布鲁诺是如此公然的同性恋，如此张扬，每个人都立刻讨厌他，”查尔斯说。 “我们得到了惨痛的教训。 这是制作这部电影最大的惊喜之一，在他做任何事情之前，有多少人讨厌这个角色。 布鲁诺走在街上，人们就会推他，或者对他说一些难听的话。 我们最终用那部电影捕捉到了一个非常黑暗的美国形象。 现在我看到了这个国家在这个选举周期中发生的事情，这有点道理。”

在介绍查尔斯时，电影资料馆馆长兼COM讲师杰拉尔德·皮尔里说，在该节目20年的历史中，“我们今晚的嘉宾可能是塑造喜剧最重要的人。” Charles wrote some of 宋飞’s most ludicrous and dark episodes, including 两个 that were never aired.

“我认为这是我的一个公式——把通常不被认为是有趣的事情拿出来，并试图从中找到幽默，”他对聚集在礼堂外的只有站立空间的人群说。 “我觉得这很舒服，觉得这是一种值得追求的艺术，因为它迫使你不断努力，弄清楚界限是什么。 如果我当初听了别人的话，我现在肯定不会在这里了。”

Peary asked Charles to respond to the widespread assumption that he wrote the darker episodes of 宋飞, and Charles mostly agreed. “正如你在《迎婴派对》这一集看到的那样，它涉及了一些在今天可能是禁忌的话题，”他说（乔治试图在前女友的迎婴派对上报复她，杰瑞梦见自己会因为偷有线电视而被杀）。 “我想，我更喜欢黑暗的一面。 好在杰瑞（宋飞）和拉里（大卫）很酷，也很支持我。 他们鼓励我更多地利用克莱默这个角色，他们允许我这样做。”

Although best known for his work on 宋飞, Charles prefers his work on subsequent projects, because he had more ownership of them. “I felt like I was the George Harrison of 宋飞,” he said. “我有约翰和保罗要处理，但把歌录进唱片真的很难。” 大卫和宋飞“非常支持，但这是他们的过滤器。 With 抑制, it’s the same thing.”

When screening the 宋飞 episode, Charles noted that “it feels very restricted, very tight. It reflects Jerry’s personality in a way, whereas 抑制 really reflects Larry’s personality.”

When David invited Charles to work on 宋飞, he told him, “We’ll make 13 episodes, make a little money, and then it will get canceled and we’ll move on.” 查尔斯说：“这对我们来说是一个解放的理论，因为我们真的不在乎。 我们写的都是我们认为有趣的东西，但我们的收视率很差。 So we kept pushing and pushing until it became 宋飞.”

当被问及他有多少电影是违反常规的，他说他钦佩那些“打破常规”的电影制作人，特别提到了导演约翰·沃特斯（John Waters）。 “我不想给人们他们想要的东西——我想挑战他们，”他说。 “我是安迪·考夫曼（Andy Kaufman）的超级粉丝，他是一个概念喜剧演员，会做一些惹恼观众的事情。”

Breaking rules was a big part of the filming of 波拉特 and 布鲁诺. During 波拉特, which is about a fictional Kazakhstani journalist traveling through America, Charles estimates that the production was stopped by police 150 times. 他说：“有一个留着黑胡子的人开着一辆冰淇淋车在白宫附近转悠，后面有四个人拿着黑色的大东西，从远处看不出是摄像头。” “我发现这是一次令人振奋的经历，因为我知道我们没有做任何违法的事情。 最后，我和全国各地的警察都建立了良好的关系，因为我最后和我们访问过的每个州的警察都交谈过。

“As a director, in 波拉特, I knew the scene was doing well if the police were called,” he said. “我不怕把它带到那个地方，因为在喜剧上，如果你能以一种诚实的方式到达那里，它真的会得到回报。”

一个学生让查尔斯回忆一下他职业生涯中最难忘的经历。 His answer: during the filming of 布鲁诺, the cast and crew had to flee from an angry mob in Jerusalem hell-bent on 石刑 them after 布鲁诺 walked through a traditional Hasidic neighborhood wearing skimpy, inappropriate clothes. 愤怒的人群聚集起来，一些人开始投掷石块。 查尔斯说：“这是萨夏·拜伦·科恩唯一一次打破角色。” “他开始大喊，‘但我是犹太人！ 我是犹太人！’”

Then there was the scene shot at the home of a white supremacist in Missouri, one that insinuated that the white supremacist had had an affair with 布鲁诺. 他们发出了威胁。 这名白人至上主义者现在因谋杀两人而入狱，这两人与拍摄无关。