Exploiting Hollywood 1980

Exploiting Hollywood 1980 https://

Seeing that the two Israeli filmmakers had no hope of winning awards, and staying in Montreal would only be caught by reporters asking embarrassing questions, they changed their tickets to America in advance without waiting for the film festival to end.

Before leaving, Minahan and Ronald had breakfast together and exchanged contact information. In the conversation, he knew that Ronald's script was valued by Jane Fonda and sold for a sky-high price, and immediately invited Ronald to the Los Angeles Cannon Films to talk about his "Intersection" script.

"Ronald, let's work together, we're going to win an Oscar, and we're going to make him a remake of the greatest Hollywood family movie of the past two decades, which is going to be popular in Hollywood right now."

"The greatest family movie?" Ronald thought for a moment. "Is it the 'Godfather'?"

"NoNoNo, it's 'guess who's coming to dinner'". Minahan shook his head.

Ronald knew that the film was about a white daughter who brought a black boyfriend to her parents' house for dinner, and then understood and reconciled with each other.

However, he was very afraid that his "Intersection" script would be made into a musical by Meinahan, in which Chinese and Italians dance together, and declined his kindness because he still needed to polish the script.

Minahan has just entered the game field of Hollywood, and he will not let go of an insider who sells high-priced scripts, "Anyway, you have to come to Cannon Pictures to talk to us, you are a talented playwright, and I am a talented director. , our cooperation will be a great success.”

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

The festival's entries screened at a rate of about one a day, and Ronald started a real career as a film buyer. Roger Coleman didn't give him a movie purchase index, but suggested that if there was a good movie and the price was right, he could contact New World's Gale.

So Ronald just picked some movies he was interested in to watch, no matter whether it was a new movie or an old movie.

For example, Hitchcock's daughter brought two films as a tribute to Hitchcock. Ronald watched both "RearWindow" and "Vertigo".

Although both films are Hitchcock's masterpiece, but Ronald missed seeing. I've never seen that movie theater rerun in America, not even Scorsese's movie appreciation class.

It turned out that Hitchcock knew that his daughter was of average qualifications and had no future in the film industry, so he bought the five color films that he was most satisfied with, including these two, and The Killing of the Murderer, The Dead Corpse, and the Reaper of Souls. Copyright, leave it to my daughter.

With the copyright of these five films in hand, the daughter's family is enough to live and breathe.

These two films are well conceived, and the cinematography is very good. Ronald, as a movie fan, has watched it once, and he wants to watch it several times to ponder the technique. In particular, the close-up of Grace Kelly that filled the big screen became her appearance in the whole movie, which was very amazing.

When the movie was screened to Jimmy Stewart going up the stairs, DollyZoom appeared, creating a kind of effect that the male protagonist did not move in the camera while the background moved, which was used to express the male protagonist's fear of heights and dizziness. .

At this time, the audience collectively applauded and cheered, it seems that they all know what to do. This is the technique of sliding zoom, which appeared on the big screen for the first time in film history, and was later used by Spielberg in "Jaws".

In addition to satisfying his own curiosity, Ronald's main focus is on exhibiting films that are not in English. The competition for English films is too fierce.

For example, "The Stunt Man," starring Peter O'Toole, has been bought by Twentieth Century Fox and is showing in America. Even the bids for the second round of screenings sold well above Ronald's budget.

The first thing that caught his interest was the film "Stalker" from the Union of Solvers.

Looking at the report, the artistic value of the film directed by Andrei Tarkovsky is highly praised.

Even if Ronald had a buyer's badge, it took a lot of trouble to enter the arena and find a seat in the back row.

Most of the people who came to watch were movie insiders and movie fans attracted by publicity.

The film is about a mysterious location that seems to contain alien relics, and the stalker is a guide-type character who takes others through the mysterious location. Some people want to travel through the mysterious location to get riches, some people want to get artistic inspiration, some people think it is evil and want to blow it up.

Others, like Ronald, found themselves hypnotized.

The pace of the film is unusually slow, and Ronald falls asleep from time to time. After two hours and forty minutes of fighting the Sandman, the screening finally ended. A head of the Souvelle Union National Film and Television Committee (Goskino) was being interviewed and asked questions from the audience.

"Yes, the film is very slow-paced, and Goskino gave the same advice to director Tarkowski to speed up the pace and shorten the duration.

"No, we don't interfere with the director's creation, just make suggestions, and director Tarkowski's intentions have been well preserved."

The whole film does show a completely different technique from commercial films, and you can feel the strong personal style of the author and director. In the middle section, the protagonist Stalker also quoted the words of Lao Tzu, a philosopher in China, "When a person is born, he is soft and fragile, and when he dies, he is hard and strong." This gives the film a philosophical temperament.

However, Ronald looked around, most of the audience were under the sleep spell, and the quality of sleep was quite good. No one dares to buy this kind of movie America and release it on a large scale.

Ronald saw that most of the buyers had left, 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 propaganda, the Union gave a lot of subsidies to the export of the film, and the film was shown at several major film festivals. Hope to be seen by the people of America, not just profit.

For this purpose, Goskino is willing to sell the film screening rights at a relatively low price, and if interested, he can contact the cultural counselor of the Soviet embassy.

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

Of course he didn't dare say that to the Goskino people. Ronald asked, "Do you have any works with strong storytelling? There are stories with twists and turns, the kind that reflect the lives of ordinary people? Movies that people watch can let American audiences know you."

The head of Goskino listened to the interpreter and replied through the interpreter, "Yes, there is a movie being shown in my country recently, which has already broken the audience record of the league. This time, I also transferred a copy to participate in the screening. You are welcome to come and see."

Ronald hastily jot down the showtime, hoping the movie won't make you sleepy.

Another film that aroused Ronald's strong interest was from Dongying, which was the participating film "The Call of the Distant Mountains". The director was not the familiar Kurosawa Akira, but a guy named Yoji Yamada.

This movie is about a middle-aged love story. Ronald is going to learn some experience and see how his "My Brother's Protector" is not old enough in the middle-aged love part of the plot.

The story is about a man named Tajima Farming, who broke into the home of a Hokkaido nomad widow on a rainy night and asked for shelter from the rain. The widow Minzi and his son Wu Zhi raised cattle and depended on each other. After accepting Tajima for shelter from the rain, Tajima asked to take a part-time job at Minzi's house.

Considering the need for a strong worker at home, Minzi agreed. Tajima won the favor of Minzi and his daughter with his down-to-earth and hard-working style, and also helped Minzi beat the peasant association cadres who came to the widow's door to play hooligans. Wu Zhi also relied on Tajima as his father's image.

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 borrowed loan sharks and speculated in stocks that could not be repaid. In a rage, Tajima accidentally killed the creditor who came to collect the debt at the funeral, and then fled to Hokkaido.

For Takeshi's wish, Tajima participated in a horse race in the countryside of Hokkaido. Tajima won the championship at the racetrack, but was recognized by the police who followed his brother and taken away.

Because of the provocative behavior of the creditor, the court ruled that Hetajima was not intentional, but a manslaughter. Finally, Tajima farming was sentenced to three years in prison.

On the train that escorted him to the place where he was serving his sentence, Minzi brought food and boarded the same carriage. With the consent of the police, she sat next to Tajima and chatted with her fellow villagers, telling the neighbor Tajima that she had sold her cattle and was going to move to the city, and was going to wait for Tajima to come back.

The filming of the whole film is simple and smooth, Ronald has not seen this kind of oriental implicit film style for a long time. The filming method of the film is a little old, but it is better than the emotion. Coupled with the scenery and folk customs of Hokkaido, it is a movie that audiences will like.

Ronald had the idea of ​​buying the screening rights of the film, and approached the manager of Shochiku Films, a distributor of Eastern Ying, to talk about America's distribution.

"..."

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

"I said, I speak English?"

Eh, the English of Dongying people is really difficult to understand. Ronald hired an interpreter from the organizing committee to help, so that he could communicate normally with the manager of Shochiku Films.

"What? Half a million dollars? That's absolutely not. It's too expensive."

"Rolla Nardson, but this movie is worth the price. You see a lot of people in tears."

"Yes, I also proposed to buy the distribution rights in America because of the simplicity of this film. But this film has no stars, it is still a foreign language film..."

"There is no star in this movie? Ronald Shochi, the manager of Shochiku pulled Ronald to the poster. The actor Tajima is played by Kensang Takakura. He is the first-class star of Toyo. The heroine Minko is Chieko Besou Playing, she is a national female star, the audience will not have a good festival if they don’t see her during the New Year and Obon Festival.”

"I understand that they may be the stars of Dongying, but no one knows them in America, and I like their performances so much that I want to introduce America. If you can reduce the price to less than $80,000, I can consider it in Screening in theaters in big cities, so that our people can also get acquainted with the stars of your country.”

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

Ronald is also a little disappointed. The film is well done, but the values ​​and culture are not compatible with American audiences, and can only find a market among some audiences who like foreign films and art films.

For example, at the end of Tajima and Minzi meeting on the train, put it in America, and Minzi must go up to communicate with the police, let the two meet and chat, and in the end they must hug and kiss, and the passengers on the train applaud and so on. In Dongying, it was impossible for Tajima to speak directly to Minzi. On the one hand, the police were not allowed to violate the regulations, and on the other hand, Tajima could not face Minzi.

This kind of implicit beauty, American audiences really can't appreciate it, and they will feel that Minzi's feelings for Tajima are not deep enough. This big cultural difference made Ronald dare not make up his mind to bid a high price.

I found the organizing committee at the film festival, and sent a fax to New World Productions about his optimism and opinions on "The Call of Distant Mountains", and Ronald plans to continue watching the film.

"Protest apartheid, protest racism!"

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

Ronald was suddenly interested. Showing the buyer's badge to the staff, he walked into the empty theater with few audiences.

Can be boycotted, isn't it free marketing?