热身词语

　　shill: someone who helps a cheater to cheat others

　　Quantrell-type: a very strong male character

　　Cuban cigar: a cigar from Cuba (one of the best places for cigars in the world)

　　charge down : rush down

　　(long) shot: the camera was far from the actors; shot: using the camera to record the actors is called "a shot"

　　Civil War: a war in the US between the Northern and Southern states

　　Pontiac: a car brand

　　resale: could be sold for a second or more time

　　commodity: some item for sale

　　nothin' but: actually be…(nothing but trouble = actually this is trouble)

　　Actors have become shills. I remember doin' a television show, oh, about ten years ago-I haven't worked on network television for about eight years. I was smokin' a cigar. I was playing a Quantrell-type character, so I had a long Cuban cigar. I got up on a horse and we had to charge down a hill. It was a long shot. The director and the producer both hollered, "Cut! Cut! What're you doin' with that cigar in your mouth?" I said, "I don't naturally smoke cigars, but I'm doing it for the role. They didn't have cigarettes during the Civil War." They said, "You don't understand." I said, "Oh, now I do understand. But this isn't a cigarette program." The sponsor was Pontiac. But this show had resale value. They didn't want a Civil War character smoking a cigar because they might resell it to a cigarette company and-my act might damage their commodity. They insisted I get rid of the cigar. We're nothin' but goddamned shills.

　　primarily: mainly, chiefly

　　An actor is used to sell products primarily. There's good money in that. More than that, actors have, become shills for politicians, even for some I like. I remember one of them talking of actors as political commodities. They want an actor to be the boss's boy.

　　contempt: looking down on as less than you

　　voice-over: the voice for a film or TV program but without the person

　　Brylcreem: a hair product for men, popular before 1970

　　control booth: the place where recording is controlled

　　freak: someone who is very, very strange

　　I don't have any contempt for people who do commercials. I've never been able to get even that kind of work. A friend of mine gave me a name, somebody to see. She said, "You'll have to shave your heard." This was long before beards and long hair were "in."I said, "It's only a voice-over, what difference does it make?" She said, "You won't get in." So I went up to read a Brylcreem commercial. There must have been forty people in the control booth. There usually are about five. It was as if everybody from all the offices of the agency were there. I didn't get the job. They came to look at the freak. I went around and read about three or four commercials. They liked what I did, but I never got any work.

　　is run on: the driving force behind this is…

　　antithesis: the exact opposite

　　kill: ruin

　　righteous (anger): being angry because something is done that is "not right"

　　speak straight: talk in a straight way, without pleasant courtesy or polite liesbig: important

　　diving board: a board over a swimming pool, it's bouncy so you can jump into the pool

　　dive: jump off a diving board

　　double flip: after you jump off the diving board, turn your body 360 degrees, twice

　　trunks: boys' clothes for swimming

　　might as well: well, since we are going to do this, we should…to make it more fun

　　grand: one thousand US dollars

　　bigwig: important person

　　bullshit: just talk for fun, not being serious

　　social gaffe: a social mistake

　　Years ago, when I worked in Hollywood someone said, "You don't understand. This town is run on fear. You don't appear to be afraid." Everyone has some kind of fears. I don't think the antithesis of love and happiness is hatred. I think it's fear. I think that's what kills everything. There's nothing wrong with righteous anger. But if you speak straight to them, even the sound is strange. I don't know how to deal with this ... I went to a party. A big producer gave it. It was alongside the pool. Must have been 150 people there. They had a diving board up in a tree. I remember when I was a kid, I could dive off a thing like that and do a double flip. Somebody said, "You never did that in your whole life." I said, "I guess I could do it now." He said, "That could be arranged." They got me some trunks. I said, "We might as well make a bet on this, I'll bet you a dollar." I should have bet him a grand. All the people at this party watched me. I got up there and I did it. The guy very angrily gave me a dollar and nobody would speak to me the rest of the night. It was as if I'd done some offensive thing. He was some bigwig and had meant to humiliate me. By showing him I wasn't bullshitting, I had committed some social gaffe. I should have taken the insult and said, "I guess you're right." I was never able to do that.

　　artistry: art and skill

　　cut (me) off: stopped me from speaking by saying something

　　a voice level: a test for recording to adjust to how loud a person's voice is

　　cave in: give up under pressure

　　A few years later, I was reading a Pan Am commercial. The man who wrote it came out of the control booth and said, "I remember you. I remember you around that pool in Hollywood. You thought you were pretty big in those days, didn't you? You don't remember me, do you?" I guess he was one of those who didn't talk to me that night. He said, "You may not think artistry has gone into the writing of this material. I want to tell you that twenty lines of this commercial has more thought, more artistry, more time spent, more money spent than is spent on your usual Broadway play." I said, "I believe you." Then he said, "Give us a voice level, please." I said, "Pan Am flies to-" He cut me off. "When you say that world 'Pan Am'-" I said, "I'm just giving you a voice level. I'm not giving you a performance yet." So I tried again. And he said, "Not much better." He just wanted to cave my head in. Do you think he was getting even for my social gaffe? Me being me?

　　reflect: be a picture of

　　jingle: simple poems with a very regular beat, usually of poor quality, esp. as a radio or TV advertisement

　　opera: classical music play with singing instead of talking

　　Who's running things now? The salesman. You must be a salesman to reflect that culture, to be a success. People that write commercial jingles make more money than people that write operas. They're more successful by somebody's standards. That somebody is the salesman and he's taken over. To the American public, an actor is unsuccessful unless he makes money.

　　At my grandfather's funeral, one of my uncles came forward and said to me, "No matter what you've become, we still love you. We would like you to know you have a place with us. So why don't you stop that foolishness and come home?" They look upon me as a failure.

　　myth: something everyone believes but that is not true

　　television series: television programs with the same characters and story but in short parts, shown over a long time

　　The myth is: if you do commercials and you become financially successful, then you will do artistic work. I don't know wh's ever done it. People say, "You've had your chance." I was offered over sixty television series. But I always look upon 'em as shills for products. I was always told, "If you go ahead and do this, you will be able to have the theater. You will be able to do the roles you want to do." I know of no one who was able to do the other work he felt was his calling.

　　come up: go over to someone famous and introduce yourself

　　sold out: do something you do not believe in for money or other gain

　　make accommodation: give up something you believe in to get something you need

　　pay the rent: have money to take care of the basic parts of life, like a place to live, food to eat, clothes to wear

　　A lot of young actors come up and say, "I have respect for you because you never sold out." I've sold out a lot of times. We all have to make accommodations with the kind of society we live in. We gotta pay the rent. We do whatever we can. I've done jobs I wasn't particularly proud of. You do the best you can with that. You try to make it a little better for your own self-respect. That's what's changed in the nature of work in this country-the lack of pride in the work itself. A man's life is his work.

　　countersink: hammer a nail all the way into a board, so the nail is below the edge of the board

　　curbing: the raised part along the side of the road

　　be laid out: be arranged

　　rested: feeling better after you rest

　　craftsmanship: the quality and pride of doing something yourself and doing a good job

　　Why, you don't even have the kind of carpenters ... He says, "Aw, fuck it." You know they're not even gonna countersink something when they should. They don't have the pleasure in the work any more. Even in Mexico, there was something unique about the road work. The curbing is not laid out by machine, it's handmade. So there's little irregularities. That's why the eye is rested even by the curbing in Mexico. And walls. Because it's craftsmanship. You see humanity in a chair. And you know seven thousand didn't come out in one day. It was made by some man's hands. There's artistry in that, and that's what makes mankind happier. You work out of necessity, but in your work, you gotta have a little artistry, too.