Exploiting Hollywood 1980

Latest website: "Stephen, then it's settled that you will be one of the guests who will present the award to Mr. Kurosawa?"

"Of course, if Kurosawa receives an honorary Oscar, I will definitely attend."

As the producer of the Oscars, Ronald's biggest job is to find as many stars and celebrities as possible to enhance the level of the party, attract more viewers, and at the same time, satisfy the people at the Academy.

In addition to nominations and awards duties, stars are actually not very willing to attend the Oscars live. They just do it as a last resort for some camera time.

Especially female celebrities, wearing very tight dresses and sitting at the party for several hours, it is difficult to even go to the bathroom. If there is no camera time, it can be said to be a chore.

For a director of Spielberg's level, this is no longer necessary. In addition, his girlfriend Kate Capshaw, like Diane, is pregnant and about to give birth. Originally Spielberg didn't want to come.

But when Ronald mentioned Kurosawa's name, Spielberg immediately agreed. He greatly admired Kurosawa's last previous film, Ran, and considered it his best film. He also worked hard to finance Kurosawa's subsequent films.

"George, I have a request, can you come and be the guest of honor for the Oscars?" Ronald continued to call George Lucas.

"Let me go to the Oscars ceremony, Ronald. Even though I heard that you are organizing the awards ceremony, I won't go, hahaha..." Lucas had some issues with Oscar, and he quit the Directors Guild. If the special effects department hadn't won the award last time, he wouldn't have attended.

"What, special honorary award, I won't go to anyone... Kurosawa Akira? Okay, okay, I'm definitely willing to go... You leave a good seat for me, this guest must be me, no one can compete with me... …”

"Hey hey hey", Ronald knew clearly, and Lucas was even more of a fan of Akira Kurosawa. In his "Star Wars - A New Hope", there will be a lot of tributes to the content of "Spider Nest City", whether it is shots, plots, or characters.

Moreover, he also has a fan-like belief in Akira Kurosawa. When Akira Kurosawa made his comeback with "Kagemusha", it was his financing guarantee for 20th Century Fox.

The news that two heavyweight directors were going to award Akira Kurosawa has spread in some top director circles. Ronald has almost been annoyed to death by phone calls from friends from all over the past two days.

Francis Coppola is doing better. He is filming "The Godfather Part III" and has a busy schedule. However, he still strongly requested Ronald to arrange a meeting with Kurosawa when he came.

Ronald had no choice but to arrange a director's pilgrimage dinner after the Oscars party, and specially purchased red wine from Coppola Winery as the wine for the post-Oscar party, which satisfied him.

And Martin Scorsese was very dissatisfied. He was very angry that he did not have the opportunity to go on stage to present the award to Akira Kurosawa. The phone calls were all about Ronald accusing Ronald of "forgetting this old friend of his...".

"Marty, it's not like I don't give you the opportunity to award the award. You know, the academy's old-fashioned rules state that an award can only have two presenters at most, and there's nothing I can do about it."

"I am Akira Kurosawa's number one fan. You should let me be one of the two award presenters..." Scorsese sternly pointed out that even if there are two places, he should naturally occupy one, "I am with him. The Hollywood director with whom I have the closest relationship, you say you like Mr. Kurosawa, but I took the initiative to go to the countryside around Tokyo to become an actor for his movie dream..."

"Marty..." Ronald was indeed speechless. When other people pursue stars, they only seek to invest in their idols, provide guarantees, or talk about how Kurosawa influenced them in the Hollywood media. Scorsese directly became an actor for others.

He is not the kind of director who is good at acting and directing. He has only appeared once in a Roberto Benigni movie because of his ex-wife Isabella Rossellini.

"This time it's a little different. Mr. Kurosawa's films did not do well at the box office in Japan, so they needed international funding. The money for his first few films came from George (Lucas) and Steven (Spiel). Berg) found it.

And although he is about to be 80 years old, he still has a strong desire to create, so we have to commend the investors so that his wish can be fulfilled. "

"Well, okay, but I have to have a chance to chat with him, and you have to make arrangements for me..." Scorsese thought about it for himself, and had no chance to compete with these two colleagues who were at the top of the box office charts. I gave the award to Akira Kurosawa.

"I will make arrangements. A few days before the awards show, it happens to be Mr. Kurosawa's 80th birthday. We will all go there then..."

The two talked about the arrangements for a birthday party for Akira Kurosawa. Ronald remembered another thing and asked Scorsese.

"The academy gave me a batch of copies of old movies and asked me to edit a few-minute clip as a way to review and reminisce about Hollywood in the past. Now I have a problem. The copies of many movies are in very bad condition. Is there any How can we make some repairs?”

"Ha, you asked the right person." Scorsese happens to be a fan of old movies, and he keeps many copies of old movies at his home in New York.

After the film copy is projected, some problems will inevitably occur, such as scratches, stains, and sometimes the film catches fire. The projectionist will cut off a part and splice the rest together. Or maybe it was improperly stored and some of the film became moldy.

Celluloid film will also cause the images stored on the film to slowly fade and the contrast to decrease due to the accumulation of chemical reactions over time.

After the rise of the videotape business, some people began to repair old films, but this was often time-consuming and costly. Except for some classics in film history, it was difficult for other films to enjoy the restoration of modern technology.

Scorsese told Ronald that the best way was to find the original studio and develop a new copy from the negative. But the negatives of many old films can no longer be found, and only some of the screening copies remain.

"By the way, how's your new movie going? When will it be released?" Finally, Ronald chatted with Scorsese about his new movie "Goodfellas." After the failure of "The Last Temptation of Christ" at the box office the year before last, Scorsese returned to his favorite gangster film with the most promising box office prospects, and once again accumulated credit for being able to make the movies he wanted to make (if you make movies with box office If you fail, you need to make a few box-office successes before anyone dares to invest in your kind of artistic films).

"It's really good. I'll show you my rough cut version then. I'm currently working on the final soundtrack... By the way, I now have a long scene where the male protagonist enjoys the convenience of picking up girls as a gangster for the first time. The lens needs a suitable soundtrack. Can you lend me your Jimmy Lehner? I want to buy a music copyright that is difficult to buy..."

"What song do you want?" Ronald took out a pen and paper, "Well, Then He Kissed Me? Ah..."

Ronald remembered this piece of music. When Chris Columbus was filming "Adventures in Babysitting," it was used at the beginning when Elizabeth Shue was dancing in the room, waiting for her boyfriend to come to her door. It was completely a girl's fantasy about her boyfriend. A portrait of the mood that comes with inviting yourself to dinner.

Scorsese is making a gangster movie, so why would he use such a cute song? A talented director whose creativity is so unexpected.

This is the famous song of the Crystal Band. Since "Adventures of Babysitter" became a hit at the box office, the copyright holder has raised the price of the film soundtrack a lot. Ronald called Jimmy Lehner and asked him to give it to Scorsese. After Si called, he had a strong curiosity to watch this movie.

…

The major studios were notified by the Academy and cooperated very well, giving Ronald copies of many classics for use at the Oscars. These films start from the silent era and run through various film and sound formats including black and white, sound, color, stereo, and widescreen.

Ronald looked at a lot of films and scratched his head, so he had no choice but to find Walter Murch, gave him a contract, and asked him to serve as a consultant to re-edit these classics and calibrate and align all the sounds and films. format so that the final result doesn’t feel weird.

If there's anyone in Hollywood who's best suited for this job, it's probably Murch, a double Oscar nominee for film editing and sound design.

"If you look at these silent films, the expression methods are actually much richer than today. Without sound equipment, the production cost of the film is low, and there is no need to worry about the huge size of the live sound recording equipment, so the expression methods are very free, and many actors have very good acting skills. A lot of it is invisible in modern movies..."

Even Walter Murch saw some movies for the first time. He asked his assistant to play a few videos and sighed to Ronald.

For talkies until very late, the on-site sound recording equipment was very large, and there were many requirements for stable shooting positions to avoid noise that could not be eliminated with the technology at the time.

This created the fixed routine of the main shot, two over-the-shoulder shots during dialogue, and some reaction shots. The various random long shots, super frontal close-ups to express dialogue, and other techniques used in the silent film era... have all disappeared.

"Any ideas?" Walter Murch asked Ronald. This kind of editing is actually very simple, but it is not easy to make an impression.

"How about this..." Ronald thought of Eisenstein, the director of the Soviet Union. The earliest masterpiece to extensively use montage is "Battleship Potemkin". Editing montage can modify the original image meaning to generate a film fragment with a completely different meaning.

Ronald's idea was to re-edit the most famous shots from famous movies in history to achieve different effects. For example, the screams in horror movies turned into laughter in comedies, and in the silent film era, physical performance became a dance that matched the rhythm of the music. The musicals have become dramas, and the plots of commercial films have become the expressions of art films...

Various movies from different eras have been edited together to create a special feeling. Both movie fans and ordinary viewers can be happy. Fans can recognize which segments and shots belong to which movie. Ordinary audiences also like this kind of clips that make people laugh after obviously different movies are cut together.

In the end, this tribute to the classics fell on the common emotions of mankind and turned into a large collection of smiles and kisses.

"I think we need a powerful ending..." Ronald and Walter Murch discussed that it was not impossible to end with a kiss, but it lacked the power of the beginning.

"Just use this..." Murch turned back and recalled the classic shot from David Lean's "Lawrence of Arabia". Lawrence struck a match, and then after the match's light faded, What appeared was the sunrise in the desert...

Here, Murch helped him edit. On the other hand, Akira Kurosawa, the winner of this year's Oscar Honorary Award, also needed a short film to introduce his film achievements.

With the same logic, Ronald also cut together similar scenes from different movies, allowing Kurosawa fans and ordinary viewers to fully understand the outstanding directorial talents of this great director in a few minutes.

Ronald handed over this job to Ang Lee, who was also an East Asian and had just returned from home.

Ang Lee has returned to America. This time he went back to a bad situation. Although he submitted two scripts, "Pushing Hand" and "The Wedding Banquet", to the first script competition held by the Information Bureau, he did not even see Chief Song.

Ang Lee's father was just the principal of a school in the south and had no roots in Taipei. Therefore, he did not receive any special help during the competition. The staff just asked him to fill out the entry certificate, including the name of the script and his contact information, and then the inspector began to check his script.

After confirming that there was no signature or secret mark on it, I sealed it in a large envelope and put it in a box dedicated to the competition.

Chief Song requested that the entire process be held in the name of anonymous elections, publicly stating that he wanted to pursue fairness, eliminate nepotism, and establish new rules for doing things. After the death of the previous leader, Chief Song's favorite thing was to use various unconventional methods to increase his exposure in the news media.

Anyway, he is the head of the Information Bureau, and the major media are happy to give him a face.

Chief Song also requested to increase the scale of the script competition and officially open it to overseas and mainland China. In order to give the playwrights time to get the news, the selection of the entire competition was postponed to the second half of the year.

Ang Lee, who had nothing to do in his hometown, had no choice but to come back. I originally wanted to stay at home and write scripts again, but my wife became pregnant again, so I had to ask my old friend Ronald again, hoping to continue working.

Ronald didn't care about this. It was very understandable for a talented director to want to make movies. He gave Ang Lee better treatment than a script doctor. He asked him to first familiarize himself with the editing work, and then he would have the opportunity to intern on the crew. If he had the opportunity, he would invest in him to return to his hometown to make his favorite Chinese-language movies.

"Kurosawa's films are a treasure trove, but I wanted to give viewers who were unfamiliar with him a theme..."

Ang Lee has watched Akira Kurosawa's films for many hours and extracted many representative shots. The expressiveness of these shots is very different from Hollywood's approach, and they reflect certain cultural characteristics of the Japanese nation.

However, Kurosawa's films are mainly in Japanese, and the audience is not familiar with the plot, so it cannot have the same resonance effect as a short film that pays homage to Hollywood classics, so Ang Lee has to find a way to make his genius familiar to American audiences.

"what idea?"

"This is something Akira Kurosawa himself particularly likes to have his protagonists say. In a crazy world, only crazy people are sane..."

Ronald looked at it and laughed. There were real shots of the protagonist being shot at close range with a bow and arrow in "Spider's Nest", a duel with real swords in "Seven Samurai", and a direct shot of the sun in "Yora Dog". The shocking act of filming...

This sentence really sums up the artistic characteristics of Akira Kurosawa very well.