Exploiting Hollywood 1980

"Hey, he still refuses to marry a girl from our ethnic group..."

On the rooftop of a high-rise building in New York, an old man got off the helicopter, and next to him was the assistant who greeted him. After hearing what Ronald asked his son Michael to say, Kirk Douglas stood on the tarmac in a daze. After a moment, he waved his hand to dismiss the messenger.

Kirk Douglas is over seventy, but still full of energy and traveling. He came to his room through the exclusive elevator and called Michael Ovitz of CAA.

"Michael, your golden boy rejected my offer..."

"I just said that he is not old enough to get married yet." Ovitz was not satisfied with this old-school blind date method from the beginning. Today's audience is much more tolerant of men and women living together before marriage than in Hollywood back then.

The cohabitation of male and female celebrities now is equivalent to marriage in the days of the Hays Code. Breaking up now is equivalent to divorce back then. After President Franklin of the Donkey Party took office, the tax laws were very unfriendly to entertainers, and the social atmosphere was very conservative.

There are even two tabloids in Los Angeles, which are famous for discovering the romantic affairs of celebrities, and then colluding with several major studios to blackmail their stars, making them obey and make movies they don't like.

This trend continued until the 1950s, when Ingrid Bergman's marital infidelity was brought to the attention of the Senate. However, after the Vietnam War, urbanization intensified. Men and women left their families to work in the city, and living together before marriage gradually became normal. This is also reflected in the plots of Hollywood movies.

Therefore, after people's acceptance increases, they will no longer be so harsh on celebrities. As long as you don't openly make other girlfriends or get caught during the period when your relationship is officially open, there will be no problem.

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Besides, since the current commander-in-chief took office, the tax burden on people in the entertainment industry has been greatly reduced. Everyone is a wealthy person. After getting married in California, the spouses have joint ownership of half of the property. Under this law, the old age will be used again. He used a trick to win over Ronald, but in fact Michael Ovitz was not optimistic about it at all.

"Are there any beautiful girls among our ethnic group?" Kirk Douglas became stubborn as he got older. He didn't think it was because there was something wrong with his strategy, or because he thought Jewish girls were not good-looking.

"No more... Annette Bening has become the best resource in the industry in recent years."

"Why don't you take a look and see if there are any beautiful girls from other ethnic groups who match his aesthetics? As long as we provide some convenience, it would be the same for her to join Judaism.

"

"Mr. Douglas, this is too far-fetched. I think Ronald prefers money and awards to beautiful women..." Ovitz was anxious. What's the point of just giving away beautiful women? He still had half of his words left unsaid. In fact, perhaps what Ronald valued more was the freedom from being manipulated by others.

"As long as he has pursuits, there will be weaknesses. Give him more conveniences, just like we give Steven (Spielberg) more 'good scripts' to open the door to convenience."

Kirk Douglas consciously found Ronald's weakness and wanted to give him more dramatic and literary scripts just like he did when he guided Spielberg to the "right path". As long as he has the idea of ​​pursuing an Oscar, he must be able to control him to a certain extent (which is exactly what Ovitz can do).

Also, it would be better if Ronald's desire to win the Best Director Oscar is overwhelming. In major studios controlled by Jews, many of these films appeared to be critically acclaimed, but were extremely commercially risky.

Feed him more scripts like this. As long as he shoots two money-losing movies in a row, he will definitely have various financing difficulties for his next movies, so much so that he will have to turn to these old Jewish men.

"That sounds good..." Ovitz hung up.

This old man's ideas are stubborn and old-fashioned. It's not like the days when big studios held big-name directors and stars under five-year or even ten-year contracts. He owns the largest agency in Hollywood, and he doesn't dare to say it's 100%. The land can secretly allocate resources and guide these directors to make the movies they want them to make.

Just like Spielberg, I did let him fulfill his wishes in many projects and used many actors signed by CAA. However, the agency always has a weakness for directors and stars, and that is the law in the contract. If you go too far to protect artists, they will most likely go to another agency for the next contract.

However, Kirk Douglas's idea does have merit. Being able to exert influence on the director is always the most convenient shortcut to gaining power in Hollywood. Compared with a studio boss who has his own B-movie hair channel and is well-funded, Ronald, who doesn't have enough money to make big productions and needs CAA, is much more useful.

However, there are operational problems with Old Kirk's method. This year, Ronald has been shown a little bit of CAA's influence on Oscar nominations, and he should be given a stronger shock next.

As for Jewish people controlling Hollywood, that is all unrealistic and delusional. If they really have that ability, they might as well control Hollywood themselves...

No matter what religion or ethnicity, they are just excuses to hide their shame. Kirk Douglas himself, not for his own purposes, is now able to accept non-Jewish beauties to influence the director?

…

Ronald knew nothing about this. He anxiously went to George Lucas' ranch, where he met the employees of Industrial Light and Magic, Pixar Studios, and those who lived in the house built by his ex-wife Martha. A computer with the Pixar logo written on it.

"Is this a computer that can render particles?" Ronald touched the computer with a dark green arc shell, curious in his heart.

Each of these computers is larger and heavier than the IBM I use. Pixar engineers call it the workstation. The computer screen has a color screen that looks very well calibrated, and is several times larger than an office monitor.

There is also a computer without a monitor, and the host computer is as big as a large double-door refrigerator. There are also the words "renderman" on it. According to the engineer, it is specially used to render the final picture result. Those special effects such as lightning and fireball are changed from zeros and ones in the program to what the audience can see. A realistic picture.

"Let me show you something good..." Alvi Ray Smith, executive vice president of Pixar, smiled and opened a file on a "Pixar Special Effects Workstation".

"Luxo jr", Ronald read the title text.

Sure enough, a white desk lamp appeared on the workstation monitor, and a colorful ball rolled over on the ground. The desk lamp shook its lampshade and stared at the ball, just like a person shaking his head and staring at it when he is curious.

"Is this all computer-generated? No real shots?" Ronald saw something was wrong. Whether it was a desk lamp or a ball, the tones were very consistent. They were not at all like objects in real life, which always had inconsistent colors. The place.

"Yes, our Pixar slogan is that everything is rendered." Alvi Ray Smith replied with a smile. Many directors would be surprised when they see the small desk lamp they demonstrated for the first time.

However, some people enthusiastically asked if it could be made into a feature film, and some people were defensive and found fault with Pixar. Like Ronald, who could see the key at a glance and was interested in many technical details, there were only two people besides Lucas. Just one or two people.

There is also a child in the small table lamp, and the small table lamp starts to play like a father and son playing with a ball. Finally, the little desk lamp was naughty and jumped on the ball, crushing it. Although they are two desk lamps, the coordination of movements and the emotions conveyed are no different from real-life performances.

Ronald was lying on the table, looking at the monitor intently. This thing felt a bit familiar, and the demonstration was very fascinating. In the future, would it be possible to shoot a movie without actors, just by relying on the computer? A movie?

"We can..." Vice President Alvey came over to introduce Ronald. Unexpectedly, Ronald was faster than him and pressed the shortcut key combination to restart the animation.

"Um, have you seen this computer before? Have you been to last year's Computer Graphics Exhibition?" Alvi felt that Ronald's movements were more skillful than his own, almost as good as those of his animation engineers who worked every day.

"Ah... that's not important..." Ronald didn't quite understand why he felt this way. He pointed at the small desk lamp on the screen. How did you model it? How do you calculate these light and shadow relationships?

The magic of this animation is not only that all the characters were created by computer engineers. And there is nothing wrong with the lighting.

The desk lamps will emit light, and the two desk lamps are still twisting the lampshades like people, the two spotlight light sources, the diffuse reflection caused by the table wall, and the difference in brightness and saturation of the colors on the colored rubber balls caused by the light, Ronald, who was a photographer, could see clearly, and there was no mistake in the logical relationship.

“This is all made possible by our engineers developing software from scratch bit by bit.”

"Can you take me to see it?" Ronald asked.

"Of course, we have a team next door working on George's new film. We can go and see how they work." Vice President Alvey Ray Smith was very happy to see Ronald being so interested.

Steve Jobs, the retired CEO of Apple, was a nice talker and didn't take kindly to employees who disagreed with him. He said five million to acquire some shares and five million to inject capital, but in this purely money-burning industry, it would not stir up a few splashes.

Jobs also refused to continue investing. He also had a new company to develop a so-called computer to compete with Apple, his old employer that kicked him out. So for Pixar, he just asked them not to update more hardware, but to sell the software they have already created, coupled with the latest graphics workstations, to make some money to sustain it.

Jobs is a computer businessman, and Ronald is a film artist. In comparison, the artist must be more willing to invest in a distant dream.

"This is the modeling engineer," said a bearded employee, sitting in front of the computer, using the mouse and keyboard to rotate and scale a colorless three-dimensional model that looked like a ceramic cup.

Every time you drag and zoom, the monitor will stand still for a moment before the zoomed image can be displayed. Refreshing frame by frame, it seems that the computing power of the workstation is not enough.

"shxt", the bearded man cursed. When he was demonstrating it to Ronald, the entire software crashed because he dragged and dropped it too fast, and a window popped up on the screen with error messages in it.

"I haven't saved it yet, damn it."

"Well, we can take a look at that. After the modeling is completed, we can add various special effects there." Vice President Alvi quickly covered up and took Ronald to see the subsequent processes, and finally arrived at the refrigerator-like refrigerator. In front of the same computer, "the final model is added with various special effects equations, and it is rendered here to look like what you see."

"Interesting..." Ronald looked at each one and felt familiar. It seemed that he could use those softwares.

"Are you selling these computers?" Ronald asked.

"Ah, yes, yes, we not only sell hardware, but also software. We include teaching and training, and we can also provide training on the entire process. You can hire some animators, computer engineers, and programmers, and you can do it yourself in half a year. Make a small lamp.”

"Then bring me one." Ronald pointed to the different computers used in the process, and then pointed to the "refrigerator". "Bring me one too. How much does it cost?"

"That one is not for sale, and we only have two available for use. If you have the finished files, you can burn them on a CD and bring them to our office here or in Los Angeles. For customers who buy computers, the rendering time is eight times Discounted fee.”

Ronald was deeply shocked when he heard that the computer used for rendering was quoted at tens of thousands of dollars per second. But what they say makes sense. Rendering is not a one-time success. You have to repeatedly debug the parameters, and finally charge according to the generated results. This price is already very cheap.

It seems that it is not that simple to make a movie that can be released in theaters in a short period of time. In addition to various R\u0026D and engineers, we also need to cultivate various process management talents ourselves. I bought some this time as an investment to familiarize myself with those flame and lightning special effects, and try to recruit people myself.

After writing a check, Ronald did not mention the investment, but ordered a few workstations first.

"Ronald, are you interested in learning more about our Pixar..." Vice President Alvey was still there to promote. Buying a computer would be good, but investing in shares or something was what he wanted most.

"Hmm... um..." Ronald agreed absentmindedly. He was not stupid. Obviously these softwares were not stable enough. He was not sure whether he could use computers to shoot movies. Buy some first and do a feasibility study.

"What are you talking about?" Ronald saw a corner of the office, pasted with several animation original paintings and a storyboard. Above is a laughing and monkey with an open mouth, and the anthropomorphic expression is very vivid.

"This is a collaborative project between us and Japan's Shogakukan Publishing House. They provide the story and original paintings, and we provide the technical capabilities to prepare a co-production of 'Journey to the West.'"

"Huh?", Ronald thought, don't lie to me, isn't this the story of Journey to the West? I was even treated to a cartoon produced by the Art Film Studio in Xujiahui.

"This monkey is a circus master and magician. Starting from China, he went all the way west to learn knowledge from the masters in northern India."

Vice President Alvi also introduced there, "This is the first animated film jointly produced by Japan and the United States. It was shot using the latest technology. We made some storyboards. Are you interested in taking a look?"

Because technology has not developed enough and computers are not fast enough to watch, this Japanese-American joint venture movie has been delayed for three years, and Japan is about to withdraw. If Ronald can inject money into this project, it will also be greatly improved. Ease Pixar’s current predicament.

"I have to study it first..." Ronald declined. He just took the two original paintings of "Journey to the West" given by the vice president and went back to think about it.

"You still want to lie to me. Journey to the West is obviously a story about China. There have been several movies and TV series made. A Sino-US joint venture is pretty much the same."