Exploiting Hollywood 1980

After corey yuen received Ronald's invitation, he flew from Hong Kong to Los Angeles as quickly as possible. He got off the plane and was taken to Ronald's office in Daydream.

"I'm sorry for not letting you rest first. I have a lot of things to do here, so I have to trouble you to come over and talk about 'Boxing World' first." Ronald apologized to Corey Yuen first.

"It doesn't matter. I slept very well on the plane. Those of us with martial arts backgrounds are not afraid of this hardship." Corey Yuen took out a folder from his luggage and handed it to Ronald.

"This is Qiao Hong. He competed with Bruce Lee back then. Now that he is older, his figure is still very good, and he looks very stylish in Tang suits and Japanese Ronin kimonos."

In the folder are audition photos of several actors named by Ronald. The actor named Qiao Hong, born in 1927, has a beard, but his face is a bit elegant like a high-level intellectual. There is also a picture of him wearing Japanese clothes. The audition photo is very suitable for playing the role of the protagonist’s mentor.

After the death of Bruce Lee, Qiao Hong returned to Hong Kong to work as a film and television actor, and his role was not an action actor, but more meaningful roles. He also speaks English well and played the role of a tycoon in Spielberg's Indiana Jones and Gossip.

Such a choice eliminates the trouble of late dubbing. Ronald is very satisfied with Corey Yuen's preparation.

"This is Jet Li, a domestic martial arts champion. He is a household name after filming the Shaolin Temple. He is a big star." Corey Yuen took out another photo, "He recently switched to a director. If you hire him, the salary will be relatively high, but in It has great box office appeal in China and Southeast Asia."

"Does he speak English?" Ronald was not interested in the so-called domestic box office appeal at all. After being deceived last time, he already knew that the box office in China and Southeast Asia was mainly based on buying out copies. A Hollywood Small companies, don’t expect a box office share that even the Big Seven can’t achieve.

"Not really. I heard that he is studying and preparing to immigrate with his wife and children."

"This pass", Ronald was not very interested in actors who needed post-dubbing, "Are there any other martial arts champions in the country? It's best if they speak better English."

"None of their English is very good. Except for Jet Li who has already arrived in Xiangjiang, all other organizational connections are in the martial arts team. The leader must approve the filming, and the remuneration must be given to the martial arts team."

"That's it..." Ronald was even less interested in inviting people from the martial arts team to film. Many people who practice martial arts in China are not good at studying.

The level of English can be imagined. Moreover, if this film is to be released in America, it must be registered with major labor unions. This kind of salary arrangement may conflict with labor union regulations, and Ronald is not sure whether it will cause trouble.

"If you must record live, you can consider this. He has also participated in domestic martial arts competitions and won the routine championship. He was born in America, so his English is not a problem."

"Oh, this guy looks pretty good and can play the son of the protagonist's master. The martial artist who participated in the martial arts conference and was killed by the villain can just lead to the protagonist's reason for participating in the martial arts conference to avenge his brother."

Ronald looked at the martial arts champion with long flowing hair in the photo and found it quite photogenic. He turned the photo over and looked at the resume, which read his name and date of birth: Qiu Yunbo – 1960.

…

Arrange corey yuen in the hotel and let him get over the jet lag first. Ronald began filling out ballots for the major unions' 1987 film awards.

Awards from the two major writers' unions, Eastern and Western, are jointly awarded. Divided into two categories: movies and TV series. There are three awards under the film category, Best Original Screenplay, Best Adapted Screenplay, and Best Documentary Screenplay. The Writers Guild of the West mainly consists of film screenwriters, and Ronald joined the union as a film screenwriter, so he has the right to vote on film awards.

Ronald filled in John Patrick Shanley in "Moonlight" and Bertolucci in "The Last Emperor" respectively, leaving the others temporarily vacant. Once the ballots have been mailed, nominations will be announced in early January.

Awards from the Directors Guild include categories such as Best Theatrical Film, Best Short Film, Best Directorial Debut, Best Documentary, and Best TV Series Director. Ronald has five voting spots in each category. By mid-January next year, the nomination list will be opened.

Of course, I definitely have a vote for my "sultry moonlight". Then came Bertolucci's "The Last Emperor", Spielberg's "Empire of the Sun", and then old friend Adrian Lyne's "Fatal Attraction". The last vote, Ronald thought for a while, Voted for that new acquaintance Bob Reiner's "The Princess Bride."

The film, which Ronald saw afterwards, was unexpected in its structure. The movie begins with a grandfather telling his sick grandson a story from a storybook. It starts with a very clichéd princess falling in love with a handsome young man herding horses.

But unlike the classic princess and knight story, every turning point will flash back to the scene where the grandfather and grandson are telling stories. The grandson doesn't want to listen to the same old story. At such times, he always asks his grandfather to lead the story to something unexpected. direction.

Then the camera flashes back to the story itself, just like a child using his imagination to make up and modify many phone call stories and string them together.

This kind of storytelling technique is very difficult to handle, and the actors, Robin White who plays the princess, Cary Elwes who plays the horse, and Billy Crystal who plays the pirate, all chose The role is superb and the acting is superb.

Ronald also deserves his vote from a purely technical standpoint.

After filling out the nomination votes for various awards, Richard also came to Ronald's office to collect the voting sheets.

“Ah ha, your DGU Awards votes are all full.”

"Haha, yes, this is my profession, so I took it upon myself to write down all five places." Ronald laughed.

"It doesn't matter. Generally speaking, we respect the client's choice for the Guild Award list." Richard picked up the Screenwriters Guild voting sheet again, "I will use these last three to exchange resources."

"Excuse me, I haven't written a script for a long time. I'm almost no longer a professional screenwriter." Ronald was a little embarrassed. Although he paid his membership fee every year, he really hadn't participated in an event organized by the Western Writers Guild for a long time. .

"With the Screen Actors Guild, Niceta and I will use some resources to exchange the votes of Olympia Dukakis and Cher..." Richard and the others got Ovitz's promise to be nominated for the Oscar for Best Director this year. , the two of them, plus Paula, wanted to mobilize all the resources they could and give Ronald a little more hope.

Nominations for the Oscars, and nominations for each special award, can only be voted by people in that special category. Members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Technology are all senior industry insiders, and their memberships indicate their majors.

For example, Ronald, although he is a member of two unions, when he becomes an Academy member and votes for Oscar nominations, he can only choose five films to be nominated as a director. He didn't have a vote for the Best Screenplay nomination.

This is why the nominations for the Oscars each year largely overlap with the awards of each union. These two groups of people who voted are basically the same group.

Of course, among the Oscar awards, there is one exception, and that is the Best Picture Award. In theory, this award is for producers to receive, but his nomination was not voted on by the Producers Alliance.

Members of the Academy of Motion Picture Technology and Arts, regardless of their status as producers, directors, screenwriters, or actors, have the right to nominate best films.

And for the Best Picture nomination voting, a member can choose ten films instead of five for other awards.

"Which films do you want to vote for?" Richard took out a big notebook and started to write down. In the Best Director nomination voting, Ronald will definitely choose the five films from the Directors Guild.

"I want to add 'Wall Street' and remove 'The Princess Bride'. You can decide on the rest."

Ronald From an overall movie perspective, "The Princess Bride" is not that great, and "Wall Street" starring Michael Douglas, although the acting and directing levels are not high, the overall presentation is better than other movies. There is power.

"Wall Street" was also an award-winning film released in December. After Ronald saw it, he felt that the audience's reaction was definitely unusual.

This movie was originally about Oliver Stone exposing the ugly side of Wall Street tycoons. In it, Gekko, played by Michael Douglas, took advantage of the rules and did everything he could. Instead, Bud, played by the conscientious Charlie Sheen, was taken away by the police as a scapegoat for insider trading.

But when the audience heard Gekko's famous line "greed is good", they clearly sided with Gekko, and some young viewers even clapped and shouted.

This kind of reaction that went against the director's original intention made Ronald very emotional.

The people of America are not very disgusted with the tycoons who make huge amounts of money legally but unreasonably. The puritanical moral code of the baby boom generation has now been replaced by the money worship that as long as it is legal to make money, it is good, and has become a common consensus among young people.

Since everyone has a positive attitude towards making money legally through loopholes, Ronald also discussed with Kevin Wade, the screenwriter of "Working Girl", to add some plot points to Tess's project, so that she could accidentally discover it. Legal loopholes can give the clients of the listed company owner a magic weapon to resist mergers and acquisitions by Japanese capital.

After all, Ronald is not the kind of screenwriter or director with a Broadway background who uses drama theory to plan the direction of characters and plots.

What he really values ​​​​is what plot the audience likes to watch. If what the audience likes to watch conflicts with the so-called Puritan moral principles, or the likes and dislikes of theater theorists and film critics, Ronald will always side with the current audience's taste without hesitation.

In the end, Oliver Stone arranged a reversal at the end, asking Bud to cooperate with the police and wear a recording device in the park to induce Gekko to reveal the content of his crime. In the end, Gekko was prosecuted and Bard De was sentenced lightly.

However, the direction and ending of the whole story are not consistent, as if the director did it deliberately. The story itself, where Bud was caught and sentenced and Gekko was at large, was actually quite complete. Oliver Stone deliberately added a Billy Wilder-style "ending after the ending" because of his attitude towards financial giants.

The Billy Wilder-style false ending is a reversal in the aftermath of the climax of the story that completely surprises the audience. However, this kind of reversal requires foreshadowing in the first and second acts. The audience regrets the false ending, and the final reversal is satisfying.

The movie "Wall Street" had an accident at this point. The director thought that the audience would be dissatisfied with the fake ending, but in fact, in their hearts, they agreed with the philosophy of "bad guy" Gekko, which made this reversal look... It looks awkward.

But this is what Ronald likes about this movie. After the director finished editing the movie, he actually only completed 90% of the creation of the movie, and the final 10% or so had to be completed with the participation of the audience. This kind of audience's disapproval of the director's original creative intention and understanding the plot according to their own ideas is often an indispensable part of high-box office classics.

"Okay, just vote according to this, I'm leaving first." Richard took the voting sheets from the Writers Guild and the Directors Guild, and then took the Ronald Oscar nomination ballot sheet, and rushed to the CAA to discuss with Niceta. How to combine vertically and horizontally, and with whom to trade, in order to get the most Ronald supporters.

After Richard left, Kevin Wade, the screenwriter of "Working Girl", came to discuss with Ronald the direction of revising the script.

"In the final outcome, the male protagonist Jack Traynor did not side with Tess, but instead supported Tess's boss, ex-girlfriend Catherine. In the end, Tess was recognized by the client, and she was proud at work but frustrated emotionally. In this way Will the ending make the audience dissatisfied?"

Kevin Wade asked. He and Ronald had been chatting about improvements to the script. On the one hand, Ronald asked Bannon to check the script and added a lot of professional content on Wall Street mergers and acquisitions, so that the script, at least in the eyes of professionals, would have no major flaws.

On the other hand, Ronald and Kevin Wade had a lot of discussions about the emotional line of the protagonist Tess.

"Nowadays, the age of marriage and childbearing for working women in America is being pushed back year by year. I'm not sure that today's female audiences still expect the heroine to live happily with the hero when watching movies.

Look at the hit movie 'The Princess Bride', which didn't follow the old fairy tale formula at all, but it did well at the box office. I wonder if the current urban female audience, seeing Tess transform from secretary to manager, will feel that she deserves a better man? "

Through Donna's introduction, Ronald also met many elite women on Wall Street, communicated with them on the phone a lot, and also negotiated for Demi Moore and Joan Cusack to follow them as interns for two weeks.

When talking about this emotional drama, these elite women working on Wall Street all looked down upon the character of Jack Traynor. In the end, he did not trust Tess to come up with the legal loophole to counter Japanese Capital's merger. On Wall Street, loyalty is the most precious quality.

"Okay, I'll listen to you and write another version of the ending where Jack Traynor was fired because he didn't trust Tess. In the end, he and Tess met at the ferry terminal in lower Manhattan, giving them an open ending. .”

"Yeah, that's a good idea." Ronald nodded in agreement. Elite women don't like Jack Traynor's infidelity, but at the end of the day, they want romance in the work environment. Such an open ending may satisfy both urban professional women and small-town housewives. Both types of female viewers can interpret it according to their own preferences.

This is how Ronald's time is filled up every day, and all kinds of things fill up his time slot.

After Corey Yuen got over the time difference, the two actors recommended by Chao Li also came from San Francisco and other places to accept the joint audition of Corey Yuen and Ronald.

"Oh, your muscles are really similar to Schwarzenegger's."

In the audition room, Yang Si took off his shirt and struck a bodybuilding pose for the two of them to see. His muscles are very well defined and his upper body muscles are very well defined. Apart from their racial differences, perhaps the biggest weakness between him and Schwarzenegger is that they don't look like good guys.

Yang Si's face is full of flesh, his eyebrows are a bit bald, and he has a ferocious look when he smiles. He is a born villain actor.

"How was it?" Ronald asked Corey Yuen.

"I didn't expect you to invite him here. He also made a few movies in Hong Kong, where villains can't get high salaries. He returned to America to open a bodybuilding agency. I thought he quit the film industry. Yang Si He is the best choice for the villain in this movie."

Then, it was Bruce Lee’s eldest son who came to audition.

"Hi there, my name is Brandon Lee."

Brandon is tall, a trait he inherited from his white mother. With his widely parted hair and distinctive American accent, Ronald had a good impression of the son of a legendary kung fu superstar.

"Your uncles in Xiangjiang missed you very much after you went to film last time. If there is a chance this time, they can see you again." Corey Yuen said the last word to Brandon in Cantonese.

Corey Yuen is also quite satisfied with Brandon's audition. His face is not very photogenic, but Kung Fu movies are mainly about action scenes, and the appearance of the male protagonist is not as particular as other types of movies.

Ronald looked over and Corey Yuen explained to him. Brandon Lee has always wanted to enter the film industry, but there were few opportunities in Hollywood. Last year, he returned to Hong Kong and filmed a Cantonese action movie, but it didn't arouse much box office response.

However, many martial arts in Xiangjiang were led by his father, Bruce. When the eldest son returned, they would come to help him. Youngs, whose martial arts skills were brought into the film industry by Bruce, took the initiative to play supporting roles for Brandon and promoted him as the male lead.

"Let me tell you, this way, eight will advance to four in the arena, and there will be two highlights in the semi-finals. We can give Brandon more shots." Ronald and Corey Yuen decided to give Brandon Lee an important supporting role. He represented his father's Jeet Kune Do school of martial arts in martial arts conferences.

…

"What? You don't want to participate? Why?" Surprisingly, Brandon Lee's agent called the next day and declined the invitation for a second audition. Ronald was a little surprised when he received a call from Corey Yuen, "Does he dislike the lack of appearances?"

"They said on the phone that they didn't want to go back to Hong Kong to film. The last time they went to film a film, they gave Brandon a very bad impression. They worked very long hours and couldn't get used to the food. But it may be the reason you mentioned. There are less dramas.”

"Okay," Ronald thought to himself. It seems that someone else has given him a chance. "Then it's up to you."