Exploitation Hollywood 1980

"Let's relax and do some physical relaxation. Today I'm going to teach you an ancient Eastern relaxation technique, Tai Chi."

Every morning after breakfast, this group of young actors have a morning class to relax. When actors are rehearsing or performing, if they cannot relax their bodies, it will be difficult for their emotions to burst out.

However, generally everyone uses stretching exercises or yoga to relax the body. Some veteran actors will also drink a few sips of wine to relax. It is rare to see people like Coppola who practice Eastern mysterious relaxation techniques.

Coppola is a famous director in America. The poor young actors have no idea what the mysterious Eastern relaxation technique has to do with the roles they are about to rehearse. But since Coppola said it, everyone can only follow it.

Do.

The TV in the rehearsal room was playing a Tai Chi teaching video, and a thin Chinese actor began to teach Tai Chi in English.

"Forget your movements, that's not important, remember the state of your body. Raise your hands, inhale, exhale..."

Chinese actors dressed in ancient costumes began to introduce how to practice Tai Chi on TV.

"A few people are missing on both sides." Tom Cruise leaned over and whispered to Ronald.

"Let's continue practicing and wait for them to take the bait." Ronald nodded and exchanged colors with Tom and Rob.

"Ronald, you are doing very well. Do you know Tai Chi? Come to the front and teach everyone." Coppola saw that Ronald's Tai Chi movements were better than others, so he simply asked him to come to the front to lead the exercises.

.

The TV screen was too small, so the actors couldn't see clearly. It felt much better to have a real person to guide them.

"Tai Chi is very easy. Look at my hand patterns." Ronald didn't know why his movements were quite standard.

"Relax your body and let's imagine together with me." Ronald raised his hands flat in front of his chest. "I have a big watermelon, big and round." He made a Tai Chi gesture and held the ball in front of his chest.

"Hey, hey..." Two groups of young actors ran in. Coppola glared at them and had to follow them to practice.

Ronald saw the two leaders at a glance.

One is Emilio Estevez, who plays the role of the "two-bites" in the Oil Head Gang, and is the eldest son of the famous movie star Martin Sheen.

The other one is Leif Garrett, who plays the son-in-law Bob. He is a youth singer and movie star. He is called a "double threat" in the industry (meaning he can both sing and act).

Ronald knew what he was doing and ignored them. He separated the ball holding position and parted his mane. "Cut the big watermelon into two halves, give one to you and one to him."

"Hahaha..." Diane Lane laughed so hard she held her stomach and was out of breath.

She saw the palms of Emilio Estevez's hands stretched out to cut a watermelon, turning black.

Emilio glanced at her, his face turned red, and he clenched his hands into fists. She was going to prank Diane again, but instead she was painted with black paint on Diane's doorknob.

"Hahaha..." Some people saw Emilio's evil hand, and some people in front thought that Diane was amused by Ronald's statement about cutting watermelon, and they also burst into laughter.

"Okay, Ronald, come down and you continue." Coppola also smiled and called Ronald aside.

"You know it was me who asked them to play pranks, right?"

"I guessed it, but Cherry is a shrewd girl, and Diane also needs to fight back."

Sure enough, it was Coppola's idea to have two groups of actors compete to play pranks on Diane.

Ronald went on to say, "The person who put honey on the toilet seat had a sense of humor, but the one who wrote bitch on the mirror had poor imagination and poor taste. You should declare the first wave of people the winner."

"Damn it, Emilio is a little axxhole." Coppola also cursed. This Martin's son lacks a sense of humor and is not as relaxed as his brother Charlie.

This can be seen from the attitude of the two towards their stage names on the set of "Apocalypse Now". Emilio was rigid and insisted on keeping the Latin name Estevez. Charlie, on the other hand, was more flexible and inherited his father's stage name.

It's cheap and no burden.

The minor commotion passed quickly, and Diane did not tell her father, Bert, about the prank. The attention of the teenage actors was easily diverted to new things, and they soon were distracted by Coppola's video rehearsals.

During the two-week rehearsal period, the actors rehearsed almost all the scenes from beginning to end. Ronald also filmed all the rehearsal parts with a Sony betacam camera.

Unlike formal filming, the rehearsal process follows the order of the script, and each scene is performed from scratch. Except there is no makeup and no props.

Every night, Ronald watched the rehearsal videos with Coppola and the trainee directors. They analyzed what the actors did well and what they didn't, and continued to improve the next day.

As time went by, Ronald felt that the actors' cooperation was getting better and better. Because they were rehearsing progressively according to the script, the story and characters were fully developed, and the actors' understanding of the characters was getting better and better.

Ronald now fully understands why Coppola had to assemble all the actors in advance to rehearse. This method can make them more natural during the official performance and make the audience convinced and moved.

"He is truly a great director," the trainee female director also praised.

"you are right."

Ronald didn't fully understand the term trainee director from a technical point of view. This kind of practice of rehearsing for a long time in advance would be difficult for a director of Coppola's level to hold the scene. Many actors have schedules and will not come.

I wasted two weeks rehearsing.

Of course, most of the actors are newcomers under their twenties and do not have the capital to be big names, which is also an important reason. Except for Patrick Swayze, who plays Ma Chai's brother, the others don't even have managers or stand-ins.

Rehearsals were very monotonous. Coppola tried his best to let the actors relax and have something to do, so as not to get bored due to too much concentration. He always tried to keep them in a state of being happy and engaged in creation.

Ronald has been watching, and he admires Coppola's ability to control the actor's mentality and emotions.

Every time the actors were too tense, he would show everyone a movie, or play some games, and take a short vacation to let the actors relax.

After two weeks of rehearsals, the actors were all a little tired. Coppola promptly booked the theater at the Tulsa Cinema and screened a new film, "Rocky III."

The opponent Stallone knocked out with a heavy punch on the screen this time was the black star "Mr. T" with a very special image. This former bodyguard of boxing champion Ali has the iconic Mandingo hair style and played in the TV series "The Last Man".

He played a role in "a-team", an absolute beast.

Rocky's opponent in the first two movies, Apollo, took over the coaching post after Rocky's coach died and started training Rocky.

The final scene of Rocky beating Mr. T made all the boys stand up and shout. The fatigue of two weeks of rehearsals was temporarily left behind, and they began to look forward to performing like Stallone during the official filming.

Ronald has learned a lot about this little trick of mobilizing actors' emotions and helping with filming. He feels that Coppola really cares about mobilizing the actors' state. No wonder the actors in his movies always perform very well.

"Let's have a table tennis match, let's relax, and we'll start the official shooting tomorrow."

After watching the movie, Coppola saw that it was still early, so he carried the ping pong table in the hotel to the outdoor courtyard and let the boys start playing.

"Ralph, you come and play too." C. Thomas Hall, who plays the protagonist "Ponyboy", is only sixteen years old. He listens to Coppola's instructions and plays with Lars, who plays his best friend "Johnny".

Wolf Mazio often hangs out with them to feel like close friends. Now he also comes to play with La Mazio.

Ralph Mazio and C. Thomas Hall are good friends in the movie, but they don't get along very well. Mazzio spends all day thinking about memorizing lines and trying to figure out his acting skills, while Hall thinks about playing with each other all day long.

be lazy.

"No, I still want to read the script."

"On, don't be so boring. Today is the last day of rest."

"Okay." Mazio thought it right, put down the script, and started playing ping pong with Hall.

None of the boys had played table tennis before, but no one was willing to admit defeat. They soon started playing in the ring, and if they lost, they would automatically step down.

Diane and Michelle Meylink, who played her best friend, were also watching the boys' competition, which made the competition among the actors even more intense.

Over time, the Oil Head Gang gradually gained the upper hand. Emilio Estevez always resented Ronald for making him look embarrassed, and finally challenged Ronald when he got the racket.

"Hey, Ronald. Do you dare to come and play with us? Those young men are no match for us."

"You guys go play." Ronald didn't want to disturb Coppola's arrangement. This was a tactic he deliberately designed to stir up the competitive psychology of the two groups of actors.

"Are you afraid? Or do you think that your technology is not at the same level as ours?"

"Your skills are indeed not at the same level as mine." Ronald thought to himself, but he just smiled and turned to leave.

"Loser!" Emilio saw that Ronald didn't dare, so he called Ronald a loser from behind.

"Hey, Ronald, let them see how good you are." Diane couldn't stand it anymore, came over and took Tom Cruise's racket and handed it to Ronald, "You can't really do it.

Let’s fight? Do you want me to help you fight?”

Ronald looked at Diane, as well as Tom and Rob who were cheering next to him, and took the racket.

"Hey, don't you even know how to hold a racket?" Emilio saw Ronald holding the racket upright with his thumb and forefinger, "I'll let you serve first." He threw the ping pong ball over and then swung it.

He said to Ronald with a gesture that he considered very handsome.

"Look carefully, I will serve you a forehand." Ronald raised his hand and served, and Emilio caught it.

Emilio Estevez didn't understand what was happening, so he picked up the table tennis ball, hit it hard on the racket, and sent the ball back.

Ronald kept his body still, stretched out his backhand to block, and the table tennis ball bounced back quickly and urgently. Emilio missed it again.

Just like that, Ronald pushed the ball to the left and smashed to the right. He didn't move his feet very much. He stood in front of the table and used a strange grip posture to beat Emilio until he could only pick up the ball.

"shxt", Emilio was so beaten that he threw the racket on the table and stopped playing.

"You guys can play, I have something else to do." Ronald also put the racket on the table, clapped his hands and left.

Tom Cruise, Rob Lowe and others were left looking at each other, what the hell is this special style of play?

Soon it was time for the official filming, and Ronald came to the scene early to see what Coppola's secrets were.

When he watched "Fast Richmond High", he always felt that the actors' emotions before and after the performance were out of tune.

Due to lighting reasons, the scenes where the two actors' dialogues are edited together may actually have been shot at different times, or even weeks apart.

For example, today's scene of Ma Zai and his second brother Soda Pop, first spent more than three hours carefully lighting the scene with C. Thomas Hall, focusing on shooting the scene where Ma Zai and his second brother were talking to each other at home.

Then tomorrow we will focus on Robert Laub's dialogue with the soda pop.

How to keep the dialogue scenes and emotions of the two actors perfectly in sync after editing together?

What Ronald wants to know most is the details of directing performances. A great director like Coppola must have his own unique skills, right?

"Cut!" Coppola stopped the shooting, and then exchanged opinions with the director of photography.

"It's coming soon. Let's see how the great director guides the actors' performance and emotional scale." Ronald was full of expectations. This kind of opportunity doesn't come often. He didn't dare to blink.

"Very good, this one is good, let's print it." Coppola nodded with satisfaction, "Let's take another one."

"cut!"

After shooting a few more strips, Coppola still felt that the first two were better, and asked the set recorder to write down the number of strips that would be printed by the final laboratory.

"next."

Ronald stood up in shock. Why did he pass? There was no re-direction of the directing part?

Is Coppola so sure that the intensity and emotion of Rob Lowe's Soda Pop tomorrow will be in perfect harmony with C. Thomas Hall's Pony today?