Exploiting Hollywood 1980

When the two Israeli filmmakers saw that they had no hope of winning awards and would only be asked embarrassing questions by reporters if they stayed in Montreal, they decided to change their tickets and go to America in advance before the festival ended.

Before leaving, Minahan and Ronald had breakfast together and exchanged contact information. During the conversation, I learned that Ronald's script was valued by Jane Fonda and sold for a sky-high price, so I immediately invited Ronald to discuss his "Intersection" script at Cannon Pictures in Los Angeles.

"Ronald, let's work together. We're going to win an Oscar. We're going to make him a replica of the greatest family movie in Hollywood of the past twenty years. Family movies are going to be popular in Hollywood right now."

"The greatest family movie?" Ronald thought for a moment. "The Godfather?"

"No no no, it's 'guess who's coming to dinner.'" Minahan shook his head.

Ronald knew that this movie was about a white daughter bringing a black boyfriend to her parents' house for dinner, and then they understood and reconciled with each other.

However, he was very afraid that his "Intersection" script would be turned into a musical about Chinese and Italians dancing together by Minahan, so he declined his offer because he still needed to polish the script.

Minahan has just entered the Hollywood game. He knows an insider who sells scripts for sky-high prices. He will not let it go. "Anyway, you have to come to Cannon Pictures to talk to us. You are a genius screenwriter and I am a genius director." , our cooperation will definitely be a great success.”

Well, Ronald only agreed to check out Cannon Pictures. He also doesn't want his script to be made into a movie that will be criticized by the audience.

Film festival entries were screened at a rate of about one a day, and Ronald began a real career as a film buyer. Roger Corman did not give him a quota for purchasing films, but simply suggested that if there was a promising film and the price was right, he could contact Gale of the New World.

So Ronald just picked some movies that he was interested in watching, regardless of whether they were new or old movies. If he was still not interested after watching them for twenty minutes, he would get up and leave.

For example, Hitchcock’s daughter brought two films to the screening in tribute to Hitchcock. Ronald watched two movies, "Rear Window" and "Vertigo."

Although both films are Hitchcock's masterpieces, Ronald never got to see them. I’ve never seen that movie theater re-released in America, and I didn’t even miss Scorsese’s film appreciation class.

It turns out that Hitchcock knew that his daughter’s qualifications were average.

There was no future in the film industry, so he bought the rights to the five color films that he was most satisfied with, including these two, To Catch a Murderer, The Case of the Unexpected Corpse, and Rope, and left them to his daughter.

With the copyrights of these five movies in hand, my daughter and her family can live comfortably.

These two movies were well conceived, and the photography and acting were excellent. As a movie fan, Ronald watched them once and wanted to watch them several times to study their techniques. In particular, Grace Kelly's close-up that fills the big screen and becomes her appearance in the entire movie is very stunning.

When Vertigo was shown to Jimmy Stewart going up the stairs, a sliding zoom (dolly zoom) appeared, creating an effect where the male protagonist remained motionless in the camera while the background moved, to show the male protagonist's fear of heights and dizziness. Feel.

At this time, the audience applauded and cheered collectively, and it seemed that they all knew what they were doing. This is the first time the sliding zoom technique has appeared on the big screen in film history, and was later used by Spielberg in "Jaws."

In addition to satisfying his curiosity, Ronald's main focus is still on exhibiting films in languages ​​other than English. The competition for English-language films is too fierce.

For example, "The Stunt Man" starring Peter O'Toole has been purchased by 20th Century Fox and is showing in America. Even the bids for second-run screenings sold for far more than Ronald's budget.

The first thing that attracted his interest was a Soviet Union film "Stalker". According to reports, the artistic value of this film directed by Andrei Tarkovsky was highly praised.

Even though Ronald had the buyer's badge, he still went through a lot of trouble before entering and finding a seat in the back row.

Most of the people who come to see it are movie insiders and movie fans who are attracted by the publicity.

The movie tells the story of a mysterious location that seems to contain alien relics, and the Stalker is a tour guide character who leads others through this mysterious location. Some people want to travel through the mysterious place to get riches, some want to get artistic inspiration, and some people think it is evil and want to blow it up.

Others, like Ronald, found themselves hypnotized.

The movie moves at an unusually slow pace, with Ronald drifting off to sleep from time to time. After a two-hour and forty-minute struggle with the Sandman, the screening finally ended. A head of the Soviet Union State Film and Television Committee (goskino) was being interviewed and asked questions by the audience.

"Yes, the pace of the film is very slow, and Goskino also made the same suggestion to the director Tarkovsky, asking him to speed up the pace and shorten the duration.

"No, we don't interfere in the director's creation, we just make suggestions. Director Tarkovsky's intentions have been well preserved."

The whole movie indeed presents a completely different technique from commercial movies, and you can feel the strong personal style of the author and director. In the middle section, the protagonist Stalker also quoted a Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu, "When a person is born, he is soft and fragile, and when he dies, he is hard and strong." This gives the movie a philosophical temperament.

However, Ronald looked around and saw that most of the audience had been under a sleeping spell and the quality of their sleep was quite good. No one in America would dare to buy this kind of movie and release it on a large scale.

Ronald saw that most of the buyers had left the table, and the head of the National Film and Television Commission seemed quite lonely, so he went over to talk to him through an interpreter.

He told Ronald that in order to promote cultural promotion, the alliance gave many subsidies to film exports, and the film was screened at several major film festivals. I hope that I can be seen by the people of America and should not just focus on profits.

For this purpose, Goskino is willing to sell the film screening rights at a very low price. If you are interested, you can contact the Cultural Counselor of the Soviet Embassy.

Ronald was interested in the low price, but there was no market for the film. Maybe artists in the industry will learn some useful exploratory photography techniques from this, but the general audience? Maybe try selling to insomniacs?

Of course, he didn't dare to say this to Goskino's people. Ronald asked, "Do you have any works with strong storytelling? Stories with plots and twists, the kind that reflect the lives of ordinary people? Only movies that someone has watched will allow American audiences to understand you."

After hearing what the translator said, Goskino's boss replied through the translator, "Yes, there is a movie that was recently shown in our country, which has broken the league's audience record. This time, a copy was also transferred to participate in the screening. You are welcome to come and see us.”

Ronald quickly wrote down the show time, hoping that this movie would not make people want to sleep.

Another film that aroused Ronald's strong interest was from Japan, the entry "The Call of the Mountains". The director was not the Akira Kurosawa he was familiar with, but a guy named Yoji Yamada.

This movie is about a middle-aged love story. Ronald is going to learn some experience and see if his "my brother's protector" is not mature enough in the middle-aged love story.

The story tells the story of a man named Tajima Kōsō who broke into the home of a Hokkaido herdsman widow on a rainy night and asked for shelter. The widow Minzi and her son Takeshi breed cattle and depend on each other. After taking Tajima to take shelter from the rain, Tajima asked to work part-time at Minzi's house.

Considering that the family needed a strong laborer, Minzi agreed. Tajima won the favor of Minzi's mother and daughter with his down-to-earth and hard-working style, and also helped Minzi fight off the peasant association cadres who came to the widow's house to play rogue. Takeshi also relied on Tajima as a father figure.

Two years later Tajima's brother came to see him and gave him some money. It turned out that Tajima was a murderer. He committed suicide because his wife couldn't repay the loan he borrowed for stock trading. In anger, Tajima accidentally killed the creditor who came to the funeral to collect the debt, and then fled to Hokkaido.

In order to fulfill Takeshi's wish, Tajima participated in horse racing in the countryside of Hokkaido. Tajima won the championship at the racecourse, but was recognized by the police who followed his brother and was taken away.

The court ruled that because of the creditor's provocative behavior, Wadajima was not intentional and was manslaughter. Tajima was eventually sentenced to three years in prison.

On the train that was escorting him to where he was serving his sentence, Minzi brought food and got on the same carriage. After asking for permission from the police, she sat next to Tajima and chatted with fellow villagers. She told Tajima who was sitting next to her that she had sold her cattle and was going to move to the city and was waiting for Tajima to come back.

The whole movie was shot in a simple and smooth way. Ronald had not seen this kind of Eastern implicit movie style for a long time. The filming techniques of the movie are a bit old-fashioned, but the emotions are more realistic. The relationship between a pair of orphans and a widowed mother, and the long-term worker who is a fake father figure is very touching. Coupled with the scenery and folk customs of Hokkaido, it is a movie that audiences will like.

Ronald had the idea of ​​buying the film's screening rights and approached the manager of Japanese distributor Shochiku Pictures to discuss distribution in America.

"..."

"What? I don't speak Japanese, can you speak English?" Ronald requested embarrassedly.

"I said, this is English I speak?"

Well, Japanese people's English is really difficult to understand. Ronald hired a translator from the organizing committee to help, and he was able to communicate normally with the manager of Shochiku Pictures.

"What? Half a million dollars? No way. It's too expensive."

"Laura Nardesan, this movie is worth the price. You can see that many viewers were in tears."

"Yes, I proposed to purchase the distribution rights in America because of the simple and touching nature of this movie. But this movie has no stars and it is a foreign language film..."

"This movie has no stars? Laura Nardson, Shochiku's manager pulled Ronald in front of the poster. The male protagonist Tajima is played by Takakura Kenso, who is Japan's top star. The heroine Minzi is Baisho Chieko Acting, she is a national female star. If the audience does not see her during the New Year and Bon Festival, it will be difficult for them to celebrate the festival."

"I understand that they may be stars in Japan, but no one in America knows them. I also like their performance very much, so I want to introduce them to America. If you can lower the price to less than $80,000, I can consider it. Show it in theaters in big cities so that our people can become familiar with your country’s stars.”

"I'm really sorry. This is beyond my authority. I'm very sorry to disappoint you." The manager of Songzhu Pictures kept bowing and apologizing, but refused to lower the price.

Ronald was also a little disappointed. The film was well made, but its values ​​and culture were incompatible with American audiences. It could only find a market among those who like foreign films and art films.

For example, at the end when Tajima and Minzi meet on the train, in America, Minzi must have gone up to communicate with the police and let the two meet and chat. In the end, they must have hugged and kissed, and the passengers on the train applauded. In Japan, it was impossible for Tajima to speak directly to Minzi. On the one hand, the police were not allowed to violate regulations, and on the other hand, Tajima could not face Minzi.

American audiences really can't appreciate this kind of implicit beauty, and they may also feel that Minzi's feelings for Tajima are not deep enough. This huge cultural difference prevented Ronald from making up his mind to pay a high price.

After visiting the organizing committee of the film festival, he sent a fax to New World Productions about his expectations and opinions on "The Call of the Mountains". Ronald was ready to continue watching the film.

“Protest against apartheid, protest against racial discrimination!”

A group of people shouted slogans from a distance at the entrance of the screening room to boycott the movies shown here.

Ronald was immediately interested. I showed my buyer's badge to the staff and walked into the empty theater with few spectators.

Being boycotted is not free marketing, right?

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