Exploiting Hollywood 1980

"Please help me contact these people at a time. I want to discuss with them the purchase of the video copyrights of these movies." Ronald called his secretary, Miss Chen, and asked her to give "Streets of Rage" respectively. The producer of the three films "Night of the Comet" and "Break Dance" called.

"Okay, leave it to me. Ronald, you still have the video rights for a few movies. Do you want to contact us as well?" Ms. Chen is of Chinese descent. After graduating from college, she officially joined Daydream and contributed to the company. Do some secretarial work.

"Several other films, including the Dragon King series, Top Gun, and the fast-paced Richmond High, my first directorial work, were all produced by the seven major film companies, and the box office was very high. Negotiations were very difficult. I I will let the agent talk to me first. You just need to call these three film producers who are produced by small productions..."

"boom!"

Before Ronald finished speaking, the office door opened, and a middle-aged man wearing a suit and holding a leather briefcase rushed in.

"No. 1, Ronald, is still No. 1. Dirty Dancing's soundtrack album sales are still No. 1 in the charts in the new week."

Jimmy Lehner, the manager in charge of Ronald's record business, just came back from New York on Monday. He happily ran to Ronald's office at Daydream Pictures, took his hand out of his briefcase, and took out A copy was dropped on Ronald's desk.

"Our single beat Michael Jackson? Impossible, right?" Ronald was very surprised. He stood up from behind the desk, picked up the piece of paper and read it.

"Dirty Dancing" has two original singles, one is the theme song "The Time of My Life", a duet between Bill Medley, lead singer of the Righteous Brothers, and female singer Jennifer Warnes, who just The list was dominated by MJ's new songs.

It is unlikely that a song like the one from MJ's new album that takes the number one spot and gets stuck at number two will become a hit.

Could it be the song "He's Like the Wind" that Patrick Schwytz composed and sang himself? But with Schwytz's mediocre voice, it's impossible to overpower MJ.

Ronald looked for a long time on the paper with a puzzled look on the singles chart, pop chart, and even the dance music list. He couldn't find the title of the two songs of "Dirty Dancing" on any single list. The top spot appears.

"It's not the singles chart, it's the album sales chart." Jimmy Lehner looked at Ronald's confused eyes and understood that the other party had misunderstood, and immediately pointed to the list in the middle to show Ronald.

"Oh, it's my fault." Ronald looked at the list Jimmy Lehner pointed to.

Here are America's weekly record sales rankings. The sales of "Dirty Dancing" ranked ahead of MJ's new album "Bad", ranking first.

"The statistics of this list are not necessarily accurate. They are based on reports from major record companies and sampling statistics from the retail market." Jimmy Lehner seemed to feel that he was too excited and told Ronald about the list. origin.

"It's not important. Our sales will soon break through the double platinum mark, 2 million?" Ronald shook the piece of paper. There were sales statistics at the bottom.

"I'm only first or second. In short, this sales figure has exceeded my best expectations many times." Ronald patted Jimmy Lehner and asked Miss Chen to make him a cup of the best coffee. .

"Originally, we were going to have champagne for this, but I'm still jet lagged, so let's celebrate with this cup of top-notch Indonesian coffee that my agent gave me."

"Cheers," Jimmy Lehner smiled too. Clinked coffee cups with Ronald. He transitioned from a song rights broker to Ronald's head of record business. It was a good sign that his first album was so successful.

"If the sales are great and I remain at the top of the year, can I attend the Grammy Awards?" Ronald took a sip of coffee and read the copy again, wondering if there was any I am so happy to have the opportunity to win a Grammy Award and have it at home alongside the Oscars.

"I have to be honest with you, Ronald. This sales volume is sales, and the awards mainly depend on the commercial performance and artistic achievements of the single."

"I remember the Grammy awards for Album of the Year, right?" Ronald touched his nose.

"There are only two original songs in our original album, and the rest are remastered old songs..."

"Okay, okay", Ronald raised his hands to show that he was starting to have unrealistic fantasies again.

"As long as the sales can bring us enough cash flow, I can start investing in next year's movie."

"That's not a big problem. RCA collects money from albums just like us. They also don't have to pay more royalties to artists."

Ronald nodded happily. The box office of movies and the sales of video tapes were relatively slow, but the income from records, which was not very optimistic at first, became Daydream's largest cash income in 1987.

…

"Mr. Coleman..."

The first person Ronald went to negotiate the rights to the video tape was Tom Coleman, the president of Atlantic Productions, the producer of his science fiction film "Night of the Comet."

"To be honest, I don't recommend that you re-release the video tape of this movie." Tom Coleman knew Ronald's intention, but it was a more sincere suggestion.

Atlantic Productions, since making big money releasing Ronaldo's "Night of the Comet," has been making small-budget productions. Of the movies produced and released every year, there is probably only one movie that can make money like winning the lottery, while the others are struggling to reach the break-even line.

In 1985, they produced and released Michael J. Fox's "18", a story about members of a teenage basketball team who suddenly find themselves transformed into werewolves and kill everyone.

Although in the light of "Back to the Future", this movie did not become the top five of the year, but with a production cost of more than one million, it achieved a commercial success of 80 million at the box office, allowing Atlantic to survive to this day, and can still shoot every year A dozen movies.

This year they also have the sequel to The Wolf to be released. In addition, Ronald also heard that their distribution department is preparing to release "The Good Wife" in America, which won the Best Actress Award at the Tokyo Film Festival.

Atlantic is a relatively healthy company among small Hollywood companies, and its shareholders have made a fortune from dividends.

"Why do you say that?" Ronald was a little strange, wondering if the other party was unwilling to sell the copyright of the video tape to him.

"That's right, Ronald. We released the video on Night of the Comet in 1985, the year after it came out. There were three versions, VHS, Betamax, and analog disc CED, and in the end we just barely broke even. Just two years have passed since you were about to re-release the videotape...

I know you are now a successful commercial film director, and it is perfectly understandable that you would want to get back the video rights to your past works. But this movie seems not suitable for video release, and our selling price will not be lowered.

Business is business. "Finally, Tom Coleman added a favorite saying of American businessmen.

"You are right, business is business, but I still want to take all the movies I have directed under my own name. These movies are like my children..."

"Okay, since you insist, I will ask our distribution manager to negotiate with your people and try to give you a preferential price."

Tom Coleman felt a little disdainful of upstart directors like Ronald. These people always think about business issues from an artist's perspective. After making a few good movies and having some money, I started spending it randomly.

Forget it, I have seen too many directors in this industry who are up and down like this. One or two years ago, they were making big productions from the seven major studios. After one or two years, they have been reduced to the point where they have no movies. There are so many directors. , some of them were so proud that they could go back and make low-cost exploitation films and start over, but some were just too embarrassed to save their dignity, and quite a few of them fell into ruin.

"I will remember your care for me." Ronald stood up and shook hands with Tom Coleman to say goodbye.

In his heart, he also despised such fools who guarded the Jinshan Mountain and didn't know how to mine it.

In the videotape market, only the VHS format is suitable for movies. Both Betamax and analog disc CED can only record for one hour. In this era where movies generally last from 90 minutes to two hours, having to get up to change the video tape halfway through is really unnerving.

The funniest thing is that Sony's Beta format is actually not incapable of recording for more than 2 hours, but their engineers want to protect the clarity of the video tape and are unwilling to record movies at a lower definition, which is what it is now. , to buy a movie video tape, you also need two video tapes.

On the other hand, the average game length of the NFL, the most popular professional sport in America, is about 4 hours. As for the Beta format video tape, there is a video tape that can use lower quality recording, but the total duration is only 3 hours.

VHS tapes, which also use low-quality recording, can record up to 9 hours of TV programs.

I really don’t know what these Sony engineers are thinking. When watching movies at home, the TV sets in most American families are no larger than 21 inches. No matter how high the quality is, it can’t be seen? Moreover, many people record football games automatically because they have something to do that day and wait to watch them tomorrow.

I don’t know who came up with this crazy operation of having to change a videotape when recording the most critical moment in the fourth quarter.

The VHS camp, which is also from Japan, has a much deeper understanding of the American market. Now more and more movies are beginning to use VHS format as the main distribution method. The larger the quantity, the lower the unit price can be.

Coupled with the difference in the number of boxes, the cost of VHS tapes of movies now is almost half that of Sony's Beta system. This paved the way for the price of movie video tapes to drop from 90 US dollars to 40 US dollars.

As long as Ronald abandons the expensive but low-selling Beta video tapes and CED disc format, and only releases VHS video tapes, he can earn a suitable profit through the surge in sales brought about by low prices.

No matter how you calculate it, you still have something to earn.

The two told each other that the other was a fool, initialed a cooperation agreement, and Ronald bought back the copyright to the video tape. Within the next ten years, they will be able to release videotapes of their own films.

Atlantic's Tom Coleman received a transfer fee, and the share of the video tapes in the next ten years has nothing to do with him. Regardless of whether Ronald earns or stays with him, he can get a stable copyright transfer fee.

…

"Break Dance is Cannon's most profitable movie so far. We couldn't possibly sell the video rights to Ronald at such a cheap price."

The current head of the cannon is Minahan's younger brother, Yoram Gobulos. He looked at Ronald's proposal that Minahan had brought and frowned as he rejected Ronald's image.

"How could you do this? Back then, the two of us were wandering on the streets of New York. We almost ran out of money and wanted to go back to Israel. If Ronald hadn't filmed the movie "Break Dance" that brought us back to life, and then raised funds to acquire Takao and The British cinema circuit, all the limelight at Cannes, was impossible.”

Minahan's neck was squeezed even more thickly. He scratched his neck and slapped the table at his cousin. The cheap plywood desk made a loud banging sound as he slapped it, as if it was about to fall apart.

"Minahan, our current cash flow is very problematic. You agreed that there are too many green-lit projects. We shot more than 40 movies last year. Even 'Superman 4', which needs the most investment, has no projects because of these redundant projects. We got enough late-stage funding and failed. What we need now is more money and fewer boutique projects.”

Yoram adjusted his glasses. The last major production Minahan was responsible for, Superman 4, failed shamefully because there was not enough money to invest in post-production special effects. The flying scenes of Superman are not as good as those in the first Superman film ten years ago. Due to lack of funds, the flying scenes of Superman and the villain Atom look like people made of paper, which is fake at first glance.

Because of this public failure, Minahan was canceled from the project by EMI, his joint venture partner. I used to be the follower behind Minahan, but now I have been appreciated by EMI for my excellent negotiation skills, and I have taken over all the decision-making power of Cannon's operations.

"High-quality products, high-quality products. No one knows whether they are high-quality products until the box office comes out." Minahan did not give in. "Think about it, Yoram, what we need now is to cooperate with high-level talents like Ronald. Whatever he wants to shoot, we will invest in it. As long as he is willing to direct or is optimistic about a certain project, we will use our overseas distribution capabilities to work with him. This is the right strategy to bring Cannon out of the quagmire. "

Minahan had nothing to do for a while, so he watched all the movies he made after Cannon was acquired by him over and over again. He finally understood that in Hollywood, if you want to make money, you have to find capable people to cooperate with. My own vision has long been out of date. Taking advantage of Cannon's current distribution capabilities in Europe and Britain compared to the Big Seven in Hollywood, more cooperation is the right approach.

"I am the one who makes the decision now, Minahan." Yoram pushed up his glasses. This cousin really lacked ability in business and he didn't understand many things. Video tapes will become Hollywood's next big income. It's better to get such a cash cow.

"If you do this, you will break my trust in front of Ronald." Minahan was furious, hammered the table, and left angrily.

"Pop..." He used too much force, and a crack appeared on the plywood, and the flat tabletop seemed to be split into two pieces.

"Rosa, order me a new desk." Yoram touched the cracks and called his secretary to find a new desk.

"Ronald, I'm sorry for you. I didn't do what I promised you. Now that Yoram has the backing of people from China, he is becoming less and less willing to listen to me in the company. I really don't know why he It will become like this. We were able to take off all because of your small production of less than 1 million US dollars, "Break Dance." Minahan did not fulfill Ronald's instructions, so he had to come back to Ronald to apologize.

"It's okay, Minahan. I understand his decision. Business is business. If it doesn't work this time, I'll just ask him next time."

Ronald in turn comforted Minahan. This Israeli hero is now gradually losing control of the company he founded. It is indeed the greatest tragedy for a movie lover who is more of an artist than a businessman to have the power to make movies.

Moreover, Yoram is now in a high position. Unlike Minahan, he does not have the mentality and time to reflect on the gains and losses of the past few years. Maybe in his eyes, breakdancing is still his credit.

"I'm sorry for you, Ronald. But I won't let it go. Sooner or later, sooner or later, I will return the copyright of the break dancing video to you in its entirety."

"Hey, we two brothers don't need to talk about this. Let me tell you a fun thing. In China, all their people are now break dancing. You know their original intention of introducing this movie is that they feel that the movie reflects the race of America. Discrimination and class disparity?”

"Hahaha, do they really think that?" Minahan talked about the movie and quickly forgot about the unhappiness with his cousin.

"No, let me tell you, the Chinese are very meticulous in doing things. They have also found the right people to dub each character. Lucinda Dickey's mouth shape can be matched with Chinese. Look at their version, it’s like Lucinda speaks Chinese again.”

"That's really interesting. I've never seen other countries that have such fine control over dubbing. Those idiots from the Soviet Union just let one person read the narration next to them. The narration was in Russian and the original English voice. It gives me a headache just looking at it.”

"Lucinda has been filming movies for Cannon, right?" Ronald also began to recall the past. At that time, Minahan seemed to have promised Lucinda Dickey to be Cannon's leading actress.

"Hey, she found a businessman boyfriend and got married. That's how actresses are. The prime time is very short. When you have love, you need marriage, then children. If you are unlucky, get divorced... and you will be like this for the rest of your life. .”

"Tsk..." Ronald recalled that on the beach in Los Angeles, he and Rodrigues, a disabled man nicknamed "Hand Man", snapped a hip-hop scene, and then they were received by the president and his wife together. The past events of awarding awards, things Right and wrong. Next year, the commander-in-chief's two terms are coming soon.

…

Finally, there’s Diane Lane’s “Streets of Rage,” which has been a hit in East Asia. Japanese people have always liked it, and the theme song has been requested on the radio.

Ronald finally found the film's producer, Joel Silver, through his agent.

"Ah ha, Ronald, long time no see. I didn't expect you to come to me. When your agent Niceta called me, my heart skipped a beat."

Among the producers of the three movies, the one who did the best was this guy with a big head and a thick neck.

In his mansion in Beverly Hills, he was holding a blonde beauty in his arms, picking up a bottle of Bordeaux red wine and drinking it directly.

"I'm here to buy the rights to the Streets of Rage video. I really like Diane's appearance in that movie and want to buy it as a gift for her." Ronald knew that these producers were all human beings. Let’s get straight to the point.

"That's a small problem, a small problem. I'll have no problem selling it to you." Joel Silver said proudly. After filming "Streets of Rage," he declined for several years.

It wasn't until last year that Mel Gibson was hired to play a neurotic agent who is a retired Vietnam War veteran. Together with his partner, a black detective, he solved a difficult case.

The combination of hot action stars and comedic pairings has been a success this year. His "Lethal Weapon" also allowed him to re-enter the ranks of Hollywood's top producers.

He had just finished filming "Lethal Weapon," a police story about a neurotic detective who is a Vietnam War veteran and his partner, a black man with comedy talents.

This police drama produced by Silver's own company did very well at the box office after its release. It grossed more than 60 million US dollars in America and sold a total of more than 100 million box office worldwide.

As the boss of the company, Joel Silver has washed away the bad luck brought to him by "Streets of Rage", and now he is starting to shake things up again, living the typical life of a successful producer, partying night after night. Night.

"Thank you, you are the most cheerful among the producers I have come into contact with." Ronald stepped forward and hugged Joel Silver.

"Say, Ronald. I'm currently preparing another police film. Are you interested in directing it?"

"A police and gangster movie? I feel that the old-fashioned formula of heroes defeating gangsters is almost outdated. Besides, I have never made a police and gangster movie." Ronald thought of the "last craziness" he watched in China. The tastes of audiences around the world seem to be shifting.

"Oh, heroes think alike. I also think some comedy elements should be added. As for whether you have made a police movie or not, it won't be a problem for you. You have never made an aerial combat movie before, nor have you ever made a musical."

"Hahaha..." The two laughed.

The idea of ​​​​causing the other party still stayed on the combination of action and comedy. This was not the case in Ronald's mind.

Please remember the first domain name of this book: . :