纽约时报报导说,在戛纳电影节于5月24日结束后,莎朗.斯通飞到斯德哥尔摩,在那里举行的由科学家和卫生专家参加的全球健康论坛会议上发表讲话。与此同时,中国网络已经开始谴责她冷血无情。
“现在它已变成一场热闹的演出了,”50岁的莎朗.斯通说。她即将在路易斯安纳与Val Kilmer合演一部名叫”Streets of Blood”的新片。
纽约时报指出,像许多欧洲奢侈品品牌一样,据报今年头三个月已在中国以两位数字增长的迪奥,也期待着把这个新兴的消费市场作为一个主要收入来源,因此它急于避免“引火烧身”。今年4月,在奥运火炬于巴黎传递期间出现了亲西藏的示威,在中国引发了一场抵制法国零售商家乐福运动。
 莎朗.斯通在戛纳电影节上 |
莎朗.斯通说,她告诉迪奥首席执行长托勒达诺,由于她不相信自己做错了什么,为什么迪奥让她用一份声明来澄清她的言论?莎朗.斯通的发言人伯格(Cindi Berger)用电子邮件给纽约时报发来的那份声明显示: “我对10秒钟被糟糕地编辑过的镜头深感难过,它沾污了我过去20多年代表国际慈善机构从事慈善服务的声誉。我的用意是为中国人民服务。”莎朗.斯通对四川大地震遇难者表示同情,还说如果她在戛纳的评论被误解了,她感到很遗憾。
纽约时报称,然而,由迪奥上海办公室以莎朗.斯通名义发表的声明,却与原件有很大出入,这种“差异”似乎刺激了这位好莱坞影星。对于许多博客而言,莎朗.斯通的道歉似乎是马上的卑躬屈膝和言不由衷。
“它看起来好象是,我对我做的一件坏事达成了一致,”莎朗.斯通补充说。她认为,这份声明不是因为糟糕的翻译,而是被改写了。目前还不清楚是迪奥的什么人员向中国媒体提供了这份声明。
纽约时报还说,象莎朗.斯通这样的女星为产品代言,对犯错没有多大余地。她说,她和迪奥首席执行长托勒达诺还没有讨论她的合同。
迪奥发言人称,托勒达诺正与他的老板阿尔诺(Bernard Arnoult)从中国返回法国,目前还无法就此发表评论。后者也是路易威登主席。
虽然莎朗.斯通表示,与她所称的中国媒体记者的鼓动战术相比,她更少关注这些跨国公司对中国的绥靖态度。
不过,听起来她正从这个插曲中得到磨炼。她在接受采访时,不止一次提到她在戛纳筹款会上筹集到1000万美元,她还说,以后她将会出言谨慎。
原文:
THERE is no denying that the high-heeled foot in Sharon Stone’s mouth at the Cannes Film Festival belongs to the actress herself. She admitted that her comments suggesting that karmic retribution may have caused the devastating earthquakes in China were blithering.
Dior Drops Actress From Ads After China Remarks (May 30, 2008)
Times Topics: Sharon Stone
“Clearly, I sound like an idiot,” said Ms. Stone on Thursday evening from her home in Los Angeles, after she had watched a widely viewed Internet video of her remarks from Cannes.
In the red-carpet interview on May 22, Ms. Stone, who was about to enter a fund-raising gala for the American Foundation for AIDS Research, of which she was a host, told a journalist: “I’m not happy about the way the Chinese are treating the Tibetans because I don’t think anyone should be unkind to anyone else. And the earthquake and all this stuff happened, and then I thought, is that karma? When you’re not nice that bad things happen to you?”
The comments created a stir in the Chinese news media and on blogs, and Dior, which has a modeling contract with Ms. Stone for a face cream, removed her from advertising in China, fearing a backlash. Dior’s Shanghai office issued a statement in which Ms. Stone was quoted apologizing: “I am deeply sorry and sad about hurting Chinese people.”
In the 45-minute telephone interview Thursday night, Ms. Stone was at first strident and then contrite about her remarks. She insisted her comments in Cannes had been taken out of context. She also said that she resisted Dior’s efforts at damage control, and that the apology issued in her name distorted her words.
Early last week, Ms. Stone said, she received a call from Sidney Toledano, the chief executive of Dior, which hired the actress for beauty advertisements in 2005. “I talked to Sidney and I said: ‘Let’s get serious here. You guys know me very well. I’m not going to apologize. I’m certainly not going to apologize for something that isn’t real and true — not for face creams.’ ”
Ms. Stone said the interview in Cannes with her remarks about Tibet and karma came at the end of a media line of 80 to 100 television crews. She believes, but is not certain, the interviewer was from a Hong Kong television station. The call letters on the microphone are blurred out on Internet sites showing the video.
If Ms. Stone’s expression in the video seemed unduly happy as she referred to the earthquakes in Sichuan Province, which have taken the lives of more than 68,000 people, it may be because, as she said on Thursday, she had recently been in communication with the Bridge Fund, which does work on behalf of Tibetans, and was touched by the group’s relief efforts in the devastated area.
On May 20, Ms. Stone said, she received an e-mail message from her friend Monica Garry, executive director of the Bridge Fund, requesting a quote from the actress for the organization’s Web site that might encourage people to give money to the relief.
“This was the story I was telling the reporter” at Cannes, Ms. Stone said, adding that some of her explanatory comments were edited out.
At the end of the film festival, on May 24, Ms. Stone flew to Stockholm, where she was scheduled to address a global health forum attended by scientists and public health experts. Meanwhile, Chinese blogs were starting to condemn Ms. Stone for being insensitive.
“Now it’s turned into a three-ring circus,” said Ms. Stone, who is 50 and is set to begin production in Louisiana on a film with Val Kilmer called “Streets of Blood.”
Like many European luxury brands, Dior, which reported double-digit growth in China for the first three months of the year, looks to emerging consumer markets as a major source of revenue, and it is eager to avoid causing offense. In April, a pro-Tibetan demonstration during the Olympic torch relay in Paris brought calls in China to boycott the French retailer Carrefour.
Ms. Stone said that she told Mr. Toledano of Dior that since she didn’t believe she had done anything wrong, why didn’t Dior let her clarify her remarks with a statement? That statement, which Cindi Berger, a publicist for Ms. Stone, sent to The New York Times in an e-mail message, said, in part: “I am deeply saddened that a 10-second poorly edited film clip has besmirched my reputation of over 20 years of charitable services on behalf of international charities. My intention is to be of service to the Chinese people.” She expressed sympathy for the earthquake victims and said she regretted if her comments in Cannes were misunderstood.
Yet the apology released in Ms. Stone’s name by Dior’s office in Shanghai bears little resemblance to the original, and the difference seemed to irritate the star. To many bloggers, the apology made Ms. Stone seem at once groveling and insincere — another actress doing what she has to save a movie career.
“It makes it appear that I’m in agreement that I did a bad thing,” Ms. Stone said, adding that she believes the statement was not a poor translation but rather rewritten. It is unclear who at Dior provided the statement to the Chinese news media.
For actresses like Ms. Stone, whose image sells products, there is little room for fumbling. She said that she and Mr. Toledano have not discussed her contract with the company.
A Dior spokesman said Friday that Mr. Toledano was returning from a trip to China, along with his boss, Bernard Arnault, the chairman of LVMH Moët Hennessy-Louis Vuitton, and could not be reached for comment.
Although Ms. Stone said she is less concerned by the appeasing attitude of corporations toward China than what she calls the sensational tactics of journalists, she nonetheless sounded chastened by the episode. Noting more than once that she helped raised $10 million at the amfAR gala, Ms. Stone said that in the future she will chose her words more carefully. “I am really sorry that it created such a thing,” she said. “I misspoke for four seconds and it’s become an international incident.”
It was only after reviewing the video in her home toward the end of the interview that it seemed to dawn on Ms. Stone why her comments had caused such an uproar. “I had absolutely no intention of saying that, which I did say,” she said, “and now, looking at it on the tape, I look like a complete ding-dong.”
