你知道《老友记》中莫妮卡房间的墙壁为什么是紫色吗？美术总监John Shaffner近日透露了答案：为了让观众记住这部剧。
这个简单粗暴的答案让人讨厌不起来，因为——这部剧真的值得被记住啊。
“Color is very important in terms of establishing the show identity,” said John Shaffner, the set designer of Friends. “When you see ‘Friends,’ you saw it was purple and you stay tuned.”
“当我们最开始展示《老友记》布景的时候，我拿了白色的纸模，” John说。“制片人看了一眼，然后问道‘那颜色怎么办？’”
John建议把墙壁涂成紫色，但这个建议“让每个人担心，直到他们看到成品。”
“When we were presenting ‘Friends,’ I presented a white model,” John said, “And the producer looked at it and said, ‘Well, now what are we going to do about color?’”
John suggested they painted the set purple, but “everybody was anxious about it until I painted the little model purple.”
不知道John是谁？这么说吧，他曾为44部电视剧设计场景，其中包括《达尔玛和格里格》、《德鲁•加尔利秀》、《好汉两个半》和《生活大爆炸》。
“能设计《老友记》，我非常幸运，”John说。
As a production designer, John has done 44 shows, including “Dharma and Greg,” “The Drew Carey Show,” “Two and a Half Men,” and “The Big Bang Theory.”
“I’m so lucky I got to design ‘Friends’,” he said.
那么，《老友记》中还有他的哪些设计呢？
What other sets in the sitcom did he design?
比如，莫妮卡永远打不开的橱柜门：
For an example, Monica’s messy closet:
还有我们最最最熟悉的——中央咖啡馆：
And Central Café:
对于这间咖啡馆，John可是很自豪的：“我觉得《老友记》里的咖啡馆影响了交友文化。”
“现在，几乎每个街角都有咖啡馆。令我惊讶的是，其中的很多家还有软得不行的椅子。”
“I definitely think that the coffee house on ‘Friends’ sort of influenced our culture of where people like to meet and hang around.”
There’s a coffee shop at every corner, and “I’m surprised how many of them have overstuffed chairs.”
《老友记》还影响了语言习惯。在一项2005年发表的研究中，加拿大多伦多大学语言学家发现，美国人在说话时越来越多地使用“so”这个词，而这正是因为《老友记》里的人物为了强调他们所说的话，经常使用“so”。
“Friends” has also influenced the words people tend to use. According to a study published in 2005, linguists at the University of Toronto found the word “so” was on the rise in the American vernacular, all thanks to the series since the characters emphasized their adjectives with “so” on a frequent basis.
这则由纽约媒体Great Big Theory制作的John采访视频被人人字幕组翻译成中文后，“老友记墙壁”成为微博热搜关键词，引得《环球时报》、《新京报》、《法制晚报》、《南方日报》等媒体账号纷纷转发，让中国网友再掀起一波怀旧热潮。
“Friends Walls” have been widely discussed on the Chinese microblogging platform Weibo after the Chinese website Allyingshi.com translated the video made by the New York-based media company Great Big Theory.
那么，为什么这么多人依然热衷看《老友记》呢？
So why do people still watch the sitcom?
“观众跟这部剧联系很紧密。他们一旦了解角色，就会投入到故事中，”John说。“打开电视看一集《老友记》，是一件很轻松愉快的事。每次与这些角色待半小时，都非常舒服。”
“Audiences relate to sitcoms because once you get to know the characters, you become invested in their story. So it’s easy to turn on and watch an episode of ‘Friends’,” according to John.
“It’s a comfort coming back to visit with these characters and be with them for half [an] hour.”
除了轻松、愉快的内容和氛围，《老友记》为何能在众多中国影迷心中成为永恒的经典？
1994年首播的《老友记》，是很多人看过的第一部美剧，也是众多英语学习者的教材。
Since its initial broadcast in 1994, “Friends” is among the earliest American TV series introduced to China.
Many Weibo users said they have been learning English from the show.
和在中国一样，《老友记》在其诞生地也依然受欢迎。《纽约时报》2015年的一篇报道称，不少年轻纽约客把这部描绘上世纪90 年代曼哈顿生活的剧集看了一遍又一遍。
是哪一点吸引了美国的青少年呢？报道称，“六位主人公没有任何有害的野心。”
One of the reasons New York teenagers love the series is that the six main characters don’t damage their relationships through malice, the New York Times reported in 2015.
一位住在布鲁克林的 17 岁高中女孩说，《老友记》的每一集她都看了，有一半看了两遍。“我的很多朋友也是这样，”她说，“我们非常喜欢讨论对方是瑞秋型的还是莫妮卡型的，很好玩。”
A then 17-year-old high school girl, who lives in Brooklyn, told the New York Times that she had watched every episode of “Friends” and half of them twice. “That’s true for a lot of my friends”, she said. “We are really into categorizing each other as a Rachel or a Monica; it’s fun to play into that.”
此外，2014年，《老友记》“铁粉”、美国电视节目《吉米秀》主持人Jimmy Kimmel曾找三位女主人公出演自己写的搞笑剧本。
In a 2014 episode of “Jimmy Kimmel Live!,” the famous anchor asked Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox and Lisa Kudrow to reprise their respective roles as Rachel Green, Monica Geller and Phoebe Buffay in a piece of fan fiction that he wrote.
近年来，老友记在不少场合都重聚过，比如NBC为他们安排的特别重聚典礼。
After the sitcom ended, the “Friends” reunions took place on many occasions, including a special one held by NBC, where it was originally aired.
还记得下面这个情节吗？
Do you remember this scene?
没错，这是瑞秋逃婚后在咖啡馆和大家见面，也是230多集电视剧的第一个场景。就像John说的，“谁能想到就是这个场景，开启了10年间最受欢迎的电视剧？”
This is the first scene in the iconic TV series.
“Who knew that [the scene] was going to be the beginning of 10 years of a number-one show on television?” said John.
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