Text | Ripe apples
"Space Exploration Editorial Department", which has made the audience curious for more than two years, has finally officially landed in theaters nationwide. This film, which won four awards at the Pingyao Film Festival in one fell swoop, including Fei Mu's Honorary Best Film, the highest honor for Chinese films, was almost sold out from screenings to road shows, earning enough gimmicks.
Yang Haoyu, as the first starring actor of the film, also attracted people's attention and heated discussions about the role of the role because of his successful role as "Old Tang" in the film.
As the editor-in-chief of the editorial board of "Space Exploration", Don Lao has been immersed in alien civilizations all day long. From the capital Beijing, to the depths of the southwest, just to be thousands of miles away with aliens. "That's not an ordinary snowflake point, but the afterglow of the birth of the universe" "Wait for the sparrow to fall on the lion statue, and you will see the legendary alien!" "In short, this is not an ordinary single event, but a cosmic coincidence.
And our dialogue with Yang Haoyu should also start with this kind of "cosmic coincidence".
01
Return to the depths of the southwest and turn back to the science fiction park
"There are some cosmic coincidences about you, I wonder if you have noticed it yourself?"
"Huh?"
This is the first question we asked Yang Haoyu and his reaction at the time before the interview began.
In fact, "Space Exploration Editorial Department" is not Yang Haoyu's first time in a science fiction movie. As early as 2019, He Lianke in "The Wandering Earth" and the interviewer in "Walking on the Moon Alone" last year, Yang Haoyu both had wonderful performances in it. But in "Space Exploration Editorial Department", as the protagonist Don, it is indeed the first time.
And this does not mean that Yang Haoyu has only been associated with "science fiction" in recent years. As early as more than twenty years ago, this destined "cosmic fate" was forged with him.
As a teenager, Yang Haoyu once entered a sci-fi-themed amusement park called "Froebel Science Fiction Park" as a Shanghai migrant worker. When looking back on that period of the past, Yang Haoyu's thinking is still clear, and he can even accurately remember the scene and name of each science fiction museum.
"What I remember is particularly interesting that it has a total of six venues, the first venue is about the invention of gunpowder, the second venue is to popularize the knowledge of human landing on the moon, and the third venue is to present the life of the space station. The most impressive thing is that these venues have a huge trainer that throws people into it to create various rotations of 360 degrees. For me, the greatest joy at that time was to be turned around desperately inside. Because in the process of being turned, a lot of change will be dropped on the trainer. ”
As for why he appeared in the Shanghai Amusement Park, originally from Chongqing? This has to mention another fate.
"My experience was quite peculiar. When I was a child, my father worked in the exploration team, so he led me on various runs in the mountains of the southwest. ”
In childhood, Yang Haoyu was like a bear child, and he was raised by his parents in the southwest mountains. Stepping on stones, smelling flowers, and fantasizing along the way, it was not until puberty that he was brought back to Shanghai from the southwest mountains by his mother, who was a young scholar in Shanghai. After that, he became a Shanghai subway maintenance worker.
A monthly salary of three or four thousand a month, placed in China in the 90s, earned a lot of money, equivalent to more than ten times the salary of ordinary employees at that time. But in the face of this iron rice bowl, Yang Haoyu muttered in his heart: "It seems that he has looked at the end in his life." He then submitted his resignation to the company, beginning a long trial and error career.
It was not until a chance that the "performance" entered Yang Haoyu's field of vision. It was this opportunity that the impulse to "want to act" made him unable to calm down in his heart for a long time and was greatly shaken. Just like presented in many movies, the hero finally has a dream, and as presented in many movies, the journey of chasing dreams must be a thousand gaps.
"To learn acting, you have to learn the best." Yang Haoyu has always been strict with himself in this regard. Whether it was then or now, the best acting school in Shanghai is none other than Shanghai Theater Academy. "Then go to the test!"
After three consecutive attempts, Yang Haoyu finally entered this dream art paradise next to the maximum age line of the theater admission brochure. And the previously mentioned [Froebel Science Fiction Park] is the fate he made while waiting for the admission notice of the play.
In this way, Yang Haoyu and the prosperous city of Shanghai are no longer the relationship between migrant workers and construction sites, but an additional layer of academic care. And during this period, he seemed to be farther and farther away from the remote mountainous area in the southwest.
But this time, because most of the exterior scenes in "Space Exploration Editorial Department" are located in the Sichuan-Chongqing area, with this reason alone, he was brought back by Old Tang back into the southwest depths of the cloudy and mountainous barriers.
When asked how he felt about returning to the depths of the southwest, Yang Haoyu smiled and described with us the smell that can only be smelled in the mountains of the southwest, gesturing with his hands to the size of wood picked up from the mountains.
"When I was filming the scene in the mountains, I smelled the smell of the forest again. It's special, and only those who have stayed there know how it smells like that. It has a very old atmosphere, because it is usually deserted, and it has some moisture, which makes people feel very comfortable and comfortable staying inside. Later, I also picked up a piece of wood and put it on as a souvenir, which is still in my living room. ”
In addition, he also likes to observe the growth of plants in the mountains.
"Although young life is immature on the outside, it is very tenacious inside, and only by pushing hard to the outside can the buds continue to emerge little by little... The whole forest system is very complex, always alternating between the old and the new, just like the Bagua map, the new life and the old life are always in the cycle of reincarnation. ”
From running away from the southwest to returning because of the role. From entering the sci-fi playground as a venue manager to pick up coins, to entering various sci-fi movies with different themes in different professional identities, some of the "cosmic coincidences" that Yang Haoyu carries are also in reincarnation. Even the name "Haoyu" is subtly related to the universe, and it is no wonder that it has so many connections with the word "science fiction".
02
The connection with Don is deeper
More than two years have passed since the launch of "Space Exploration Editorial Office" to its release. But when it comes to the role of Old Tang, Yang Haoyu still has mixed feelings. Ask him what he misses most about Don? He replied: "I miss his bits and pieces, his food, clothing, shelter, and his actions." And compare Don Quixote to Don the Elder.
As the editor-in-chief of a magazine that is about to be discontinued, he will pounce on every opportunity to confirm the existence of aliens, but in fact, every time it has failed, and this time is the same. He has a little bit of a quixotic feeling, very persistent, very tragic, like a lonely brave. Some say he is like a neurotic, first of all I disagree with this statement. I think his performance is an extreme love and pursuit of his profession, and a model of love and dedication. He was not without his glory and success, and his career flourished in the early years when print media flourished, until he was hit by the Internet wave. In fact, you can see in him a heroic twilight sadness, and the final death throes. ”
It is not difficult to say that this is a kind of vulnerability that belongs to the lonely brave.
"You see now he has failed so many times, he has been deceived so many times, and even what the end will be, he has predetermined in advance. But even so, Old Tang carefully took out his sincerity for everyone to see, and he had to be restrained and cautious, because he was injured too many times. ”
With an understanding and distress for Old Tang, Yang Haoyu and director Kong Dashan launched one of the most important debates in the whole film - about whether Old Tang really found aliens in the end, rather than hallucinations caused by mushroom poisoning.
"I said I don't want mushroom poisoning, I want to see it. Otherwise, Don is too miserable, he really has a miserable life. Later, the director said that you should act according to your own ideas and give it to him in the later stage. After the performance, I was relieved, but I felt that both situations were acceptable. ”
The industrialization reform mentioned in the movie, in addition to bringing a generation of paper media to a brilliant end, also made the human beings living on the earth no longer accustomed to looking up at the starry sky. Once upon a time, human beings were full of infinite curiosity about alien civilizations and space exploration, but with the commonplace scientific progress, they have evolved into "urban low-headed people".
Only a child like Old Tang would insist on the significance of "space exploration" for human existence. At the beginning of the story, when some media asked about the value of finding an alien civilization, the young old Tang looked bright, and couldn't help but wave his hand: "Found aliens!" Then all human barriers will disappear! ”
When he read this line, Yang Haoyu suddenly felt a burst of electricity passing through his back, and he was also deeply shocked.
That passage touched me wholeheartedly. Because when I was in college, I especially liked "The Great Dictator" played by Mr. Qiu Yuefeng, and Chaplin's monologue in it was regarded as a classic by me, and I used it later during my graduate school interview. So when I read the words 'all human barriers will disappear', I was suddenly dragged into the surging emotions at that time. ”
Then, Yang Haoyu began to recite to us the classic line from "The Great Dictator": "We don't want to hate and despise each other, the world can accommodate all people." The land is fertile and it feeds all people. The path of life is free and beautiful, but we are lost. Greed poisons humanity, divides the world with hatred, and drives us into pools of pain and blood. ”
Yang Haoyu feels that Tang's worldview is very similar to this monologue. "What he is ultimately looking for is kindness, beauty and sincerity that are associated with 'love'. A lot of hard work is just to stand in the center of the universe and call for love. And on this point, many people will also have difficulty understanding. ”
He also used a scene to illustrate this feeling of not being understood. "When I was filming the scene where Old Tang and everyone separated, Aunt Cairong, played by Mr. Ai, ran after me behind, shouting heartbreakingly, saying that she finally figured it out, I just can't figure it out. I never understood these words, and I said all the confusion and collision about Old Tang about the world. ”
Of course, it is not only Old Tang who is also confused about life, but also Yang Haoyu himself. "Sometimes I ask myself repeatedly, what are the things I need in life? After asking, it seems that there is nothing important except life and death, and material desires are no longer the most important pursuit. Just like Don, life is simple enough to maintain the whole of his life with a bowl of noodles with salt, but how rich is his spiritual life? ”
In addition, the character color of "do not abandon, do not give up" in the character of Old Tang also brought Yang Haoyu a deeper level of inspiration.
"Acting is fine, but for my own hobbies, if you want to push forward, you need to be urged by others all the time. To give a simple example, I once thought about making more than ten different plays and directing one of my own films, but in the end all of them failed. Later, I wanted to learn guitar, I also played it, and even my fingers were cocooned, but because I practiced less, I now have no more progress except for a few simple chords.
So for me, this persistent spirit in Don is a great inspiration to me. He did something that no one else dared to think about, and that he might not have done. In the end, it seems that a fairly satisfactory result was obtained. Probably that's why I love him so much. ”
03
Ten-year period, taking the "performance canon"
Many viewers knew Yang Haoyu from 2013 "Dragon Gate Dart Bureau", in which he played the role of Uncle Gong. "I'm a dartmaster! There is wind in the blood! The longing life is to wear the stars and the moon every day, and the dust servant! This is a classic line that belongs to Uncle Gong alone.
Speaking of this role, Yang Haoyu began to dance unconsciously, as if "Uncle Gong" appeared. When asked about the different understandings of performance methods in the past ten years, the word he used the most was "receive".
"During the Uncle Gong period, what was used was actually a set of drama performances. In terms of the type of work, "Dragon Gate Dart" is a comedy, so at that time, I really wanted to open my teeth and dance my claws like a man, and all three heads and six arms had to be cut out of it. Later, I want to take that flamboyant feeling away and put it away. ”
And "Space Exploration Editorial Department" gave Yang Haoyu great "convergence" space. "Don doesn't need you to leave too many traces of performance, which is for an actor who is used to acting, the 'performance' at the moment needs to be put in quotation marks. Because it can be a double-edged sword. If the audience thinks that this person is really good, he may be praising or ridiculing, saying 'this person is quite capable of acting', and the actual feeling is false and empty. ”
Recently, Yang Haoyu is chasing the Japanese drama "Restart Life", and he likes Sakura Ando's performance style very much, thinking that her performance is "touching the bone". "It's obviously the same person, and in different works, this person's temperament has all changed. You can't believe that Saito in "Love for a Hundred Dollars" and Shibata in "Thief Family" are played by the same actor, but they are so real, I think this kind of performance is what I aspire to and what I admire. ”
Performances that touch the bones can be undesirable, often accompanied by additional pain. Friends who are familiar with Yang Haoyu know that the life habits of Old Tang in "Space Exploration Editorial Department" are completely opposite to Yang Haoyu in normal times. Old Tang has developed in the direction of screwing from the rhythm of speaking, psychological state, words and deeds, and even eating habits, while Yang Haoyu in life is more willing to take out a comfortable and self-consistent state to face everyone. But these are not Don.
It was this experience that made Yang Haoyu think more deeply about performance. "Actors can't be too comfortable, because you're comfortable, which means that you are still yourself when you act, and the hardest thing for people is to change themselves." Despite the pain of stripping myself, I feel relieved to see that Don's presentation is completely different from my previous role. ”
From "put" to "receive", from "drama" to "life", from "comfortable" to "uncomfortable", in the past ten years, Yang Haoyu has three different understandings of performance.
At present, "Space Exploration Editorial Department" has officially met with the national audience. During this more than hour-long conversation, Yang Haoyu carefully asked us many times about some feedback from the audience about his performance.
So we then asked, what is the most moving feedback he has received these days?
He said: "What touched me the most was that during the roadshow two days ago, an audience member said that she was not in a particularly good mood recently, but she was relieved a lot after watching this film. This is really honored and happy for me as an actor, and it completely explains the meaning of our film. ”
Back at the beginning of the interview, we asked Yang Haoyu if he noticed some "cosmic coincidences" in him, and he laughed after listening to the explanation, saying that it was also fate.
"At that time, I was young, and I was looking down at coins in that science fiction park, and I was poor. But now after acting in so many science fiction works, I feel that if I can pass on the true science fiction spirit to the audience, let them have a heart that advocates science and loves the universe. I think that's a very valuable thing in life. ”