Exploiting Hollywood 1980

"Ah...hahahaha..."

Aunt Karen had no reaction until she saw Tom Cruise and McGillis chasing each other angrily on a motorcycle. After a heated exchange of words, the two suddenly kissed each other, and she suddenly covered her mouth and laughed. .

Aunt Karen was very excited to see the two of them as happy friends. Cruise once visited her home and she liked the young man very much. She was not very interested in the aerial combat scenes and the competition between the pilots, but this romantic scene made her get involved.

"call……"

Ronald was relieved that "Top Gun" was a high-concept movie. If you like it, you will like it. If you don't like it, it will be difficult to like it as the story progresses.

Young male spectators started shouting as early as the first air battle.

The middle-aged man greatly admired the various dazzling tactics of the fighter jets. While watching, he discussed with the people next to him the sneak attack tactics of MiG aircraft that could not be recognized by radar when flying in a stack, and how to deal with Tomcat automatic wings and advanced air-to-air missiles. MiG has the technological upper hand.

When the young female viewers saw the volleyball scenes of the muscular pilots in the bathroom and on the beach, their eyes began to light up.

Only middle-aged female viewers began to truly appreciate this movie until this point.

"Watch every move in my silly lover's game

On this endless ocean, in the end lovers know no shame

Turn around and go back to a secret place in your heart

Watch you turn around in slow motion and say...

Take my breath away..."

The love interlude of the Berlin band plays in the movie for the third time.

Because the passionate scenes between the two male and female protagonists were shot afterwards, there was no new music specially assigned to them. Ronald had to play "Take My Breath Away" several times in a row. Whenever Charlie and the Lone Ranger are alone together, this interlude will play.

The young people around him did not find it repetitive or boring at all, and some were humming along softly along with the songs.

"call……"

Ronald let out another breath.

This time luck was on his side again.

In order to hedge against the impact of the Challenger crash, Ronald contacted the Berlin band through his agency. During their tour break, I took the initiative to shoot the MV for this song for them.

More than a month before the film's release, "Take My Breath Away" began receiving strong airplay on television stations, with joint financing from record companies and Paramount, and a run on the charts.

Maybe it’s because of the high quality of the song itself, or maybe it’s because the music video shot by Ronald is very tempting, and soon “Take My Breath Away” climbed to the top of the American charts.

This was the first time a Berlin band had a single that topped the charts.

Ronald remembered that when he was shooting the music video, the music video had to coincide with the release of "Top Gun", so the plot was similar to that of a movie, with some unimportant movie clips interspersed.

Lead singer Terri Nunn, wearing a blue overalls like a blue-collar worker, filmed her solo performance on location at the Mojave Air and Space Port, inside the wreckage of several aircraft.

The Mojave Air and Space Port is a famous aircraft cemetery. Many retired fighter jets, bombers, reconnaissance aircraft, etc. from the Navy and Air Force are parked here, as well as many old aircraft retired from the Vietnam War.

The band's frontmen, John Crawford and Rob Brill, were not happy.

They only wanted to sing the songs they wrote, and were very repelled by this pop-rock song, which was neither written by Berlin nor composed by Berlin.

However, the Berlin band's popularity was limited, and they did not have the same control over their work as Bruce Springsteen. Under pressure from the record company, he had no choice but to agree to release "Take My Breath Away" as the title song in the new album.

As part of the contract, they also have to cooperate with the music video's performance. So when Ronald was filming the music video, he found that the two of them were not cooperating.

In order to shoot the MV as quickly as possible, we had to separate the small female lead singer Terri Nunn from their camera as much as possible. Anyway, most audiences who listen to pop music will not notice the difference between the band's style and original works.

There are only six lyrics sung over and over again, and they are superficial and have no meaning. Except for Terri Nunn singing happily, the dissatisfaction of the two creative members is growing day by day.

However, as the band's first chart-topping song, they had to perform it at every concert during their tour.

"I actually don't care about that. This song is so popular, I don't care who composed it."

Ronald's thoughts were pulled back from Terry Nunn's private complaints about him.

The movie was greatly loved by the audience. In the end, the MiG aircraft was defeated. The Lone Ranger and Iceman settled their differences. In the end, the Lone Ranger chose to return to Top Gun School as an instructor and reunited with Charlie.

All the stars stood up and applauded. The audience's constant cheers, applause and stamping of feet made them all understand that Ronald's new film would be a big hit at the box office.

Tom Cruise, Val Kilmer, Kelly McGillis and others took to the stage to receive cheers from the audience and then began to answer questions from fans.

Others asked if they really knew how to fly fighter jets. Except for Tom Cruise, who admitted that he had a pilot's license, several other actors who played pilots were vague.

Ronald was delighted to see these people pretending to be in a high-altitude air combat in the ground cockpit facility designed by Cameron, and they were much more similar than they are now.

After seeing off big names such as Spielberg and Lucas, the other young actors and guests went to a New York nightclub to hold a party to celebrate the success of the premiere.

Ronald dragged behind and got into a limousine with the two producers.

"Is Sid still insisting?" Ronald asked Simpson.

"Yes, I think we should agree with him. The reaction of the audience at today's premiere is a great sign of a big hit. People are very enthusiastic now. Having such a movie that allows them to vent their patriotic emotions will bring great benefits to the box office. A little positive addition.”

"A week early, huh?"

Ronald skillfully took out a bottle of whiskey from the freezer next to him and gave each of the two producers a glass.

"Ronald, do it. Memorial Day is a small release period. We will release it nationwide a week in advance. We can take advantage of this opportunity to turn this small release period into a large release period."

"I just felt a little adventurous."

In the marketing of a movie, the box office in the first week is particularly important, as it determines the size of the first audience. And then it depends on the quality of word-of-mouth.

Sid Ganis, Paramount's distribution manager, came up with a risky plan. The week before Memorial Day, what was originally planned to be a small-scale release weekend, expanded to a full-scale release.

By opening the film in more than a thousand theaters, we can use word-of-mouth to inspire audiences to watch "Top Gun" for the second Memorial Day weekend, which is almost 10% more than in previous weekends.

The risk here is that if the audience's reputation is not as good as expected, the number of viewers in the second week will be lower than that of conventional operations.

It takes time for the movie's reputation to develop. In the first week, audiences still chose to watch the movie based on marketing operations. Keeping the biggest suspense on the weekends when regular audiences are the largest is a common practice for all movies.

It was a small gamble, but now that the audience's response to the premiere exceeded expectations, the risk of the gamble has been reduced to a minimum.

"Okay, let's take a gamble." Ronald drank the wine in one gulp.

"Sid," Bruckheimer picked up the phone in the car and dialed Paramount's marketing department, "the feedback from the premiere was very good, and Ronald agreed, so we'll go with your plan."

"Okay, just watch it!"

Sid on the other end of the phone was very happy and immediately went down to arrange it.

"In this way, our film reviews will be released next weekend." Don Simpson threw a schedule over.

"What do those sons of bitches say?" Ronald picked up the schedule sitting on the sofa, with comments from several famous film critics attached to it.

"Ebert gave it 2.5 out of four stars, Cisco gave it three stars, and best of all, surveyed audiences gave the film an average rating of an A."

Bruckheimer had already seen it, and he briefly introduced Ronald.

"Hmph, they won't give me four stars anyway." Ronald also knew that the popcorn movies he made were not favored by film critics.

But what he values ​​most is not the film critics, but the scores of this emerging audience sampling survey company.

ema is an audience evaluation research company founded by founder Ed Mintz. Because they were dissatisfied with film critics giving random scores to movies, which disrupted their viewing choices, they came up with the concept of building a pure audience evaluation system.

They will not tell the producers in advance, but will randomly select locations and conduct random audience evaluation surveys on the first day of release.

This time, Ed Mintz personally brought people to New York to prepare the score for the premiere. He wanted to break into Paramount to consult with them.

When the painting starts next week, they will secretly appear in any state or small town in America, and then conduct a more rigorous random sampling. The ratings given at that time will be more convincing.

Ronald put a check mark in his notebook to indicate that the review was also positive. He then looked at the reviews given by two Chicago film critics. They were the benchmark for audiences across the country, especially the audiences in the Midwest and Deep South that the two producers were looking for.

Roger Ebert of The Sun said "A movie like Top Gun is hard to review because the good parts are so good and the bad parts so unforgiving. Melee is definitely the best thing to do since Clint Eastwood was in "Fox" The most exciting aerial scenes ever. But beware of scenes of people talking to each other.”

Gene Sisko of the Chicago Tribune praised the action scenes but criticized the romance, writing that "it falls into the category of a teenage sex fantasy rather than a worthy real romance, if you're looking for any depth." For the value, you will be disappointed…”

"What benefits does Paramount give them? The ratings are not high, and even the words they say are still a little scolding and a big help."

"Hehehe, a voucher for a trip to Hawaii, and a sponsorship for the Chicago Film Critics Association annual conference."

"Here we are, gentlemen!"

The driver parked the car at the entrance of the nightclub. Ronald came down and saw that it was a nightclub with a more luxurious decoration than Club 54.

"Tom, Cher", a group of lovers inside were holding hands affectionately. Ronald stepped forward and hugged them respectively.

Ronald looked around. McGillis was chatting with Jodie Foster and Jennifer Beals. They were holding hands and whispering like sisters.

Ronald didn't feel comfortable disturbing her, so he looked around for Helen. After asking, I found out that Helen was picked up by her father Gerald's special car.

Ronald smiled, simply sat down and looked for a new target.

"Ronald, your movie is very good, but what I don't like is that he has a bit of American chauvinism. He makes the audience feel that the war can be won."

Ronald looked back and saw that it was Oliver Stone who had just finished filming his first and second movies, "Salvador" and "Platoon". His unique gentle voice was in Ronald's ears. echo.

"Why, do you think we can't win the cold war with the Suwei Alliance?" Ronald was a little surprised by Stone's thoughts.

"No, I mean, if there's World War III, there's no winners. I was in Vietnam myself, and there's no winners, there's no winners, man..."

"To a certain extent, I agree with you."

Ronald had a drink with him. This poor drafted Yale student, like his dead uncle, was in the Army. In Vietnam, he took a beating from the North Vietnamese.

The "Top Gun" navy, flying planes and bombing people's heads indiscriminately, will not have this feeling of horror of war.

"You won't say anything bad about me in the newspaper, will you?" Ronald poured him another glass.

"No, but we can talk to each other and create some hype?"

"I like your idea, Oliver..."

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