You mention the large writing staff. How is it for you working with a large team of people, and given how closely you two collaborate, do you miss having Christopher casting an eye over things?

I do occasionally get his eye on things, I directed my first episode in the second season, which aired here in January, and Chris was nice enough to take a look at it, take a look at my cut. He pops in occasionally and looks at stuff. I’ve always looked at his stuff, he’s always looked at mine, it’s often tricky.

But yeah, when I started the show he was off shooting The Dark Knight Rises, so I was on my own, but the great fun of television is collaboration, which I’ve always enjoyed with Chris, and in television collaboration is the order of the day, every day. You just couldn’t make a show – not an American network show, where you’ve got to do 22 or 23 episodes a year, which is roughly making an episode every two weeks – you have to get over your own bullshit and your own preciousness, and just get in with the writing staff and figure out how to make it work. And it’s great fun, really great fun.

H：你剛提到了龐大的編劇團隊。請問這么多人的團隊是怎樣為你工作的？鑒于你和兄長克里斯托弗的無間合作，你會在工作中想念他在身旁的日子嗎？

N：他確實會偶爾來看看我，我執(zhí)導(dǎo)第二季第一集時，就是這里（英國）一月播出的那集，克里斯托弗很貼心地來看望我，并看了我的剪輯。他偶爾來我這兒探班。我們經(jīng)常會探對方的班，感覺很有意思。

不過剛開始制作這部電視劇時，克里斯正在進行《蝙蝠俠前傳3：黑暗騎士崛起》的拍攝，于是我只好單干，然而制作電視劇的樂趣就在于享受與他之間的合作，合作也是制作電視劇中最重要的。你做的并不是在美國網(wǎng)絡(luò)上播出的一場表演，你一年得做22或23集，基本上每兩周就要完成一集。你的好想法壞想法都必須付諸行動，與編劇團隊交流并最后找到實現(xiàn)的方法。這真的好玩。

It strikes me that you have a billionaire and a crime fighter. You seem to be touching on ground you’ve already touched on before. Is that because the themes are universal, or because you’re taking inspiration from Batman?

Absolutely. I’ve been working in comic book movies for ten years, and what happens when you do three movies – I started working on Batman Begins in September 2000, so when you’re working on comic book movies for ten years, you get into that key. But beyond that, you also do a lot of thinking in that word, that sort of heightened vein. I came out of that experience – I’m very proud of that story that we told in the Batman universe, and I felt strongly, along with Chris, that this last film should be our last film in that universe, but for me I had a great deal more to say about urban crime and vigilantism.
For Americans at least, and it’s funny, it translates into some parts of the world, but not to others – the whole superhero thing absolutely dominated the box office for years now, and it’s sort of American mythos. It fulfilled a similar function to the way Greek tragedy or Homeric Epics have done for cultures since time immemorial: it’s an exploration of morality and crime and virtue – exploring the question of at what cost doing the right thing, but also playing in that fun, slightly heightened territory of super villains, and the American city as a kind of an urban playground, or jungle, or arena.

And absolutely, I’m fascinated by the fact that frankly, while you’ve had the explosion of creative energy, and money in the superhero realm in film, but at least in this country it has yet to translate into something, map onto anything in television. Americans for the most part, if not drawn to naturalism exactly, at the very least for their crime shows, for the most part have preferred a slightly more naturalistic, slightly more grounded edge to conventional criminal procedurals, whereas our show is unabashedly, unashamedly sci-fi, cyberpunk crime procedural.

H：在劇里，你同時擁有一個億萬富翁和一個正義戰(zhàn)士。這一點讓我很震撼。你似乎是在重復(fù)你曾經(jīng)做過的事情。是因為這是個亙古不變的主題，還是因為你從蝙蝠俠（Batman）身上獲得了靈感？

N：當然。我從事漫畫改編電影已經(jīng)十年了，當你在做三部電影的時候，你會怎么樣？——我從2000年9月開始《蝙蝠俠：俠影之謎》（Batman Begins）的工作，所以說若你將十年時間致力于漫畫電影，你就會沉迷于這個主題了。但除此之外，你仍然需要對細節(jié)多加思考，要有清晰的脈絡(luò)——這是我的經(jīng)驗之談。對于我們在蝙蝠俠的世界里講述的故事，我感到很自豪，我和克里斯都深深覺得，上一部電影（指《蝙蝠俠：黑暗騎士崛起》）應(yīng)該是我們在這個世界里的最終章。但就我個人而言，關(guān)于城市犯罪和治安我還有很多想要表達的。

很有趣的一點是，至少對美國人而言，這已經(jīng)被代入到了這個世界的某些部分中，但對其他國家的人來說不是這樣——超級英雄類的電影已經(jīng)統(tǒng)治票房多年了，這也算是一種美國式神話了。這類電影對文化的影響類似于希臘悲劇或是荷馬史詩在古老的時代所發(fā)揮的作用，是對道德、罪惡和貞操的探索——探索要做正確的事情會付出什么代價。但同時也用有趣的方式來表現(xiàn)，稍稍將超級惡棍的領(lǐng)地和美國某個城市夸大為城市游樂場、或是叢林、又或者是競技場。

坦白說，在以超級英雄為主題的電影里，當你有了創(chuàng)造性思維的爆發(fā)和資金，你還需要代入一些東西，然后在屏幕上反映出來，至少在美國是這樣的。這一事實毫無疑問讓我很著迷。美國人大多要求真實的描繪出本能，至少在他們的罪案片中，多半會比較傾向于多一點本能，多一點行走在傳統(tǒng)犯罪行為邊緣。由此看來我們的劇集是當之無愧的，當之無愧的科幻、網(wǎng)絡(luò)朋克犯罪。

Do you find that, now that you’re doing this on-going series, that when you’re working on other projects ideas bleed into it, or belled across from it, into other projects?

A little bit. My focus has largely been on the show for the last couple of years, but there is a fun kismet where ideas collide with one another. The thing about television, the thing I enjoy about it so much, Is that you have to generate so many ideas, so many stories about the world you get to explore. And one of the fun things about working in TV is that you can bring to – whenever something bad happened to you as a writer, you reach a moment where you say to yourself, ‘I can write about it’. It’s the silver lining in any experience.

I think that collision between ideas coming out of this universe, and the interplay with the other worlds I’m working in, yeah, there’s a fair amount. It’s more, honestly the problem with American broadcast television being 22 or 23 episodes, it’s more a question of ‘what have you got’, ‘OK, here you go’, ‘ that was last week, what have you got now?’. You’re sort of taking everything at a conversation with all the things in your life: the story you read in the newspaper this morning, the book that you just read, the anecdote you just heard, it’s all getting thrown into the blender.

H：你現(xiàn)在制作的這部劇集會啟發(fā)你對其他作品的靈感嗎？反之，在其他作品上會獲得對這部劇的想法嗎？

N：有時會。這幾年我的工作重心都放在《疑犯追蹤》上。有趣的是，靈感相互碰撞會產(chǎn)生意想不到的效果。我之所以這么熱愛電視，一方面是因為它迫使我萌生許多想法，促使我去探索這個世界，并以此為基礎(chǔ)創(chuàng)造許多故事；另一方面是因為作為編劇遇到困難時，你可以告訴自己“我可以寫好的”，繼續(xù)堅持寫下去就能克服困難。這個“雨后總能見彩虹”的道理適用于任何事。

我認為同一領(lǐng)域中的想法會互相碰撞，并且不同領(lǐng)域的想法也會相互作用，在很大程度上都是這樣。老實說，美劇每季一般都有22或23集，問題就在于一味地編情節(jié)而忽視了劇情的連貫性。制片和編劇間的對話往往是這樣的——“你有什么想法？”“這個想法可行”“這是上周用過的，你還有什么好點子嗎”對話間可能會提到早上在報紙上看到的故事、最近正在看的書、剛聽到的趣聞……恨不得用上所有的畢生所見所聞把劇情搞成一鍋大雜燴。