Jonathan Nolan has been, at least in part, responsible for some of the biggest movies of the last decade. Working with his brother Christopher, Nolan scripted both The Dark Knight, and The Dark Knight Rises, as well as cult classics Memento and The Prestige.
乔纳森·诺兰(Jonathan Nolan)负责制作过,起码参与制作了过去十年中几部最成功电影作品。他与哥哥克里斯托弗·诺兰(Christopher Nolan)不仅共同创作了《蝙蝠侠:黑暗骑士》(Dark Knight)以及《蝙蝠侠:黑暗骑士崛起》(The Dark Knight Rises)的剧本,还写出了《记忆碎片》(Memento)和《致命魔术》(The Prestige)这两部悬疑经典。

He’s recently been working on his own, as creator and showrunner of Channel 5’s crime thriller, Person of Interest, the first season of which is released on Blu-Ray and DVD this week, our review is here.
最近,他又有了一份新工作,那就是担任他自己开发的罪案美剧《疑犯追踪》(Person of Interest)的主创与监制。该剧第一季的蓝光碟和DVD已于本周正式发售。 

We recently spoke to Nolan to promote the release, and during our conversation he spoke about the creeping impact of surveillance on our society, the comparisons between superhero stories and classical epics, and the enjoyment he feels collaborating with other people.
值此之际,HeyUGuys网站专门去采访了诺兰。他在采访中聊到了监控给我们社会带来的可怕影响,探讨了超级英雄故事与传奇史诗的对比关系以及与他人合作的愉快经历。 

HeyUGuys: What was the origin of Person of Interest, when did it come about?

Jonathan Nolan: I lived in the UK until I was 11, and then moved to the states. At that point we had CCTV cameras everywhere in London, then I move to the states and they didn’t have them anywhere. It was a big difference, and it got me fascinated with the idea of surveillance, and the idea of who’s watching. There are the cameras, but who’s on the other side of them.

HeyUGuys(以下简称为H):《疑犯追踪》最初的创意来自哪里?你是什么时候产生灵感的?

乔纳森·诺兰(以下简称为N):我11岁移民来美国之前一直都住在英国,那时候伦敦街头随处可见监控摄像机,后来我搬到美国却发现这儿几乎看不到监控摄像头的踪影。这种情况和英国简直是天壤之别,我当时就对监控这个概念很着迷,很好奇是谁监视着我们。我们都知道监控设备的存在,但镜头背后是什么呢?

So for you it’s about the surveillance culture rather than exploring people going off and acting upon what they see?

I think it’s about both. I’m fascinated with the world becoming a quite considerably stranger place, while looking the same on the outside.

H:如此说来,比起探究人们对所看到之事做出的反应,其实你对监控文化更感兴趣?

N:两者兼而有之吧。归根结底,当今世界正在朝着一个相当奇怪的方向变化才是我最感兴趣的。不过从表面来看,这个世界似乎还是一样。

There’s a degree of distrust of government in the series as well.

Absolutely. I think there should be a healthy distrust. It’s not a political decision so much as a recognition that our capacity, and our government’s capacity to keep an eye on us; and honestly, lately more than the government, companies like Google and Facebook that make me wonder. Their capacity to surveil us far outstrips the laws, and outpaces the laws that we’ve enacted to keep track of them.

There’s a problem, and a growing problem, and it’s not going to get better any time soon. By the time the laws have been changed to reflect – privacy laws are a fascinating example. In the states right now, at the very least, and I haven’t kept pace with privacy laws in the UK – but in the states, there’s virtually zero protection. Nothing. Our information’s spewing into this pile, and we don’t really have a great idea who controls it and what they do with it. And frankly by the time the laws have been changed to give a little more transparency about what’s happening with that – Let me give you an example: do you have an iPhone?

H:《疑犯追踪》还体现了对政府的一定程度的不信任。

N:没错。我认为大家都应该对政府保留健康的不信任度。这不是什么政治立场,而是对我们自身能力的了解,对政府服务大众能力的认知。说实话,比起政府,像谷歌和脸书那样的网络公司现在更让我好奇。这些公司监视我们的本领比法律大多了,并且发展速度超过了制约它们的法律的立法速度。

这就是个问题,一个越发严重的问题,一个近期无法完全解决的问题。其实针对这些问题,法律也有所改善,隐私法就是一个极好的例子。但目前至少在美国,因为我并没有随时了解英国隐私法的近况,我们的个人隐私几乎没有得到任何保护。根本没有保护措施。个人信息被大量需要,而我们一点也不了解谁负责管理这些机密信息,他们又将怎样使用我们的隐私;可是增强信息管理透明度的法律还没出台。我来给你举个例子吧,你用iphone么?

I have an Android.

It’s roughly the same thing. Google in many ways is an admirable company, any company whose internal slogan is, ‘don’t be evil’, it’s sort of self-evident. There’s great capacity there to do evil. The people there are very idealistic and interesting people, but the capacity that Google already has, using your phone to abuse that information – it’s really just a question of who’s running the company, and what they’re doing with that information. It’s not about insidious threat, I think it’s more of a creeping threat, where you’re monitored and surveiled in ways that Orwell couldn’t possibly have dreamt of.

H:我用安卓手机。

N:基本上是一样的。谷歌从许多方面来说都是一家令人钦佩的公司,而任何一家这样的公司的内部口号都是“别做坏事”,这是不言而喻的。这样的公司有足够大的能力去做坏事。在那里工作的人们很有趣并怀揣理想主义,但谷歌已然具备了通过你的电话肆意使用信息的能力,而谁在运作着这家公司,他们会把这些信息用来做什么,这就是问题所在了。这并不是一种潜在危险,我觉得这更像是一种令人毛骨悚然的威胁,你被到处监视,其系统监视的方式是连奥威尔(Orwell)做梦都想不到的。(诺兰指作家乔治·奥威尔的作品《一九八四》中虚构的监视设备“电幕”。)

Do you do a lot of investigation into these things, and the technology behind it.

We do a fair amount of research, and the writers here – we have a big writing staff, and I think we’ve corrupted all of them to see the world in a slightly different, darker way, suddenly exchanging e-mails with each other about the latest developments. It’s overwhelming. There’s so much of it, it’s such a groundswell here. People for the most part getting on with their lives, they don’t really pay attention.

We’re at the advent of this, and I don’t see much future in this, but you have domestic law enforcement agencies: municipal law enforcement agencies, at least, agitating to get their own drones. Again, I think that’s kind of a blip on the radar, but it’s fascinating none the less. We’re in an arms race here with surveillance that we – we being civilian consumers, regular people – are definitely losing.

H:你对这些事与其背后的科技做了很多调查吗?

N:我们确实做了大量的研究,还有编剧们——我们拥有一个庞大的编剧团队,最近我们用电子邮件交流的时候,突然发现他们的世界观都发生了细微的变化,变得有些黑暗了。现在我们这儿的世界观发生了翻天覆地的变化。人们习惯了信息被滥用的生活,他们并没有真正注意到这方面的问题。

我们的隐私岌岌可危,虽然我无法从中预料到未来会如何,但至少国内的市政执法机构会拥有无人机进行监控。再有,我觉得隐私就像雷达上闪现的一个光点,即使如此也足够吸引大家的目光。我们身处军备竞争和监视系统的环境之中,作为平民消费者和普通人的身份正在消失。