Exploiting Hollywood 1980

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Universal's president, Tom Mount, meets Ronald and his accompanying Nisita in his office.

At the age of 33, he became the eighth, no, the president of the seven studios in charge of production, and Mount is now proud of his spring breeze. He took this position at the age of 27. In the past few years, he has either initiated, supervised, or provided financing, and has produced more than 100 films in total.

For various types of movies that are popular nowadays, he has great confidence and predicts the level of profit in advance.

Ronald, who was greeted by the secretary, noticed that on the wall of the office, there was a copy of an exclusive interview page of Time magazine, which was mounted in a wooden picture frame. Inside the interview, Mount called the young tycoon (Baby Mogul), he is the hottest power man in Hollywood.

Young Mount has a good demeanor, a handmade suit with metal buttons, which looks more fitted than Ronald's, and should be much more expensive, perhaps a tailor from Savile Row in London.

Mount and Nisita had a lot of dealings and stood up and hugged him.

But Ronald reached out to shake his hand, having met David Lynch once before, but perhaps the busy president had forgotten himself. Just use the etiquette of the first meeting.

"You must be Ronald, please take a seat. Please bring us two cups of coffee, with sugar?" Mount shook Ronald's hand enthusiastically, and beckoned the secretary to serve them coffee.

The three sat down, and Mount asked, "Ronald, tell me what this movie in your heart looks like."

Ronald knew that the first crucial question came today. For directors who have just debuted and have no experience in directing feature films, the most important thing for producers to interview them is to examine, discover, and evaluate the other's directing level through questions.

In a nutshell, tell me what kind of images you can direct on-set technical teams, and actors.

"I wanted to make 'Fast Paced' a film about teenage growing up that reflected the life of high school students in California. When the audience sees it, they feel like these high school students are so real, it's like they're in the high school next door go to school.

Therefore, the background of the film is a realistic, light comedy with a slightly exaggerated tone, and the five main student characters represent the typical six types of students today. "

Ronald spoke the words he had practiced for a long time, and he took out a cardboard board from his briefcase with six categories written on colored paper cards.

"They are

Big brother Brad, who is always looking for life experience from books,

Little sister Stacey, who is full of imagination about the opposite sex,

Pretending to be mature, Linda, the social queen who made up a perfect boyfriend,

The nerdy 'mouse' Mark who is shyly afraid to date girls,

Mike, who came from a poor family and made money with his lip service at all costs,

As well as being sloppy, but good at surfing, maintaining a childlike Spicy. "

Ronald pointed to the portraits of the six characters on the cardboard, and the character traits written in words next to them, and explained to Mount.

"Oh, you've drawn very well. Is there any consideration for such a character classification?" Mount picked up the cardboard and looked at it seriously.

"Yes, I have considered it," Ronald replied.

"America's high school students have different growth rates of physical, intellectual, and character development. Students in the same year can vary greatly in these three items, giving people the feeling that they are not students of the same grade.

You must know that the author of the novel, Cameron Crowe, once went undercover a few years after graduation, and no one found out his true identity for a year. "

"Their developmental levels are also distributed differently in these three categories, so there are several typical characters. For example, a nerd with a poor body and a good brain; another example, an athlete whose body is relatively mentally developed ...

All of them are different, and they can show different popularity in the social circle of high school. For example, a beautiful social queen, or a little transparent who basically has no social circle...

All these character archetypes,

are deeply imprinted in the minds of young audiences. As long as you can see this type of character on the screen, you can think of your classmates and friends around you.

This can greatly enhance the audience's level of engagement, allowing them to integrate into the atmosphere of the story as soon as possible.

...

Of course, a large part of these ideas should be attributed to Cameron Crowe, the author of the original novel. These are some of my views on the film. "

Ronald gushed for more than 20 minutes, seeing Tom Mount listening carefully.

Especially interested in the six different types of high school students, he kept the cardboard in his hand and kept watching.

"Very good, Ronald. I have a general idea of ​​what you think about movies. Nisita showed me a couple of commercials you directed, which were impressive, but you don't have experience directing 90-minute films, I Why do you believe in your abilities?"

Ronald was well aware of his weaknesses and prepared for it, "Although I haven't directed a 90-minute feature film, I've been on Roger Coleman's crew, shooting low-budget productions. The method has its own understanding.

After that, in the famous crew, I handled a lot of actor relationships as a crew assistant and knew how to stimulate actors' acting skills.

As for the scheduling of shots, and your understanding of the overall atmosphere of the film, I think Mr. Mount, you have seen several of my series of commercials, and the atmosphere is all well unified. You can judge for yourself my ability to translate the script into audition language. "

"Very well, what are your thoughts on casting?"

"I used to work in a studio in New York, and my view on the character is: as close as possible to the real age of the character, as long as you can work 8 hours a day as an adult and have acting skills.

The closeness here, I think, is mainly to select actors with temperament similar to high school students, as for the real age of the actors is not very important. "Valley

Ronald knew that this question seemed to examine casting ability, but it was actually an examination of the cost control of low-cost teen exploitation films.

"Very good, Ronald."

Tom Mount asked some more questions to examine Ronald's director's scheduling and stimulate the actors' acting skills. Finally, he nodded with satisfaction and said to Ronald:

"I appreciate your director's intentions and your language to express your thoughts on the language of the film. Especially the classification of this character, can you leave it for me to look at it again?"

Ronald glanced at Nisita and saw that the other party nodded slightly, so he happily agreed.

"When can we get the signing done?" Nisita ended up asking Mount the most important question.

"We still need to meet some potential candidates, and if they don't perform as well as Ronald, we could sign anytime within two weeks or so," Mount said, rubbing his nose with a hand.

"Two weeks?" Ronald repeated.

"Any questions?"

"No, no problem at all." Ronald thought to himself that he had to stay in Los Angeles for the past two weeks, so let's call back to school and ask for a leave of absence. Generally, New York University will support students to participate in the work of the crew, and will also give corresponding credits. If you are a director, you will not stop yourself.

Nisita and Ronald say goodbye and leave the office.

Tom Mount, after confirming they were gone, picked up the phone and dialed a number.

"Hello," came a woman's voice on the phone.

"Ronald's strength is very strong... I have a character classification table here, which is his invention. You can come and have a look."

Meanwhile, Ronald got into Nisita's BMW in the parking lot.

"How am I doing?" Ronald asked as soon as he sat down.

"Oh, it's perfect. I can't help but fall for your preparation, Ronald. I can't think of any reason not to choose you, there couldn't have been a better choice for this $3 million budget production. ."

"What? Do you think Mount has other options?" Ronald was nervous and asked hastily.

"Of course, there's always a choice in this business. We often say it's not what you know, but who you know. It's always the truth in the film business.

However, your performance is very good, according to the reasoning, you should not consider other things, not to mention that you are a newcomer and can only ask for a salary of 100,000 US dollars. At this level, I can't think of a rookie better than you. "

Nisita still felt a little strange, so she pulled the car to the side, got out of the car and went to the phone booth to make two or three phone calls to confirm.

"Is there any news?" Ronald, who was sitting in the car, was actually waiting anxiously.

"No, we haven't heard of any strong candidates. But two weeks is an odd time."

"why?"

"If it is a veteran director and needs to wait for his time, Mount can tell us who it is. The competitiveness of newcomers in front of veterans is very weak. We can only pray that the competitor has other better options, or ask for over-budget wages.”

Ronald nodded, "What if that opponent is a novice like me?"

"That's even more impossible. Since he is a novice, how can he be qualified to let someone like Tom Mount wait for him for two weeks?" Nisita felt that this was a questionable place, but lacked further information. .

However, he has already found a few insiders. If there is clear news, he should know it as soon as possible.

"If that's the case, why don't we just forget him, let's find a place to eat something?" Ronald asked. After spending an afternoon selling himself hard, Ronald felt a little hungry.

"No problem, I know a good steakhouse, I'll treat today." Nisita hit the gas and drove to a restaurant on the edge of Hollywood.

"I have a question. If it's not convenient for you to answer, you can leave it unanswered, Rick." Ronald sat in the co-pilot, opened the window a little, and let the wind blow in through the gap and onto his face.

Today's interview is over. It's a bit like a dream. He needs a little sense of reality to remind himself that to realize his dream of being a director, he has done everything he can, and the rest is up to God's arrangement.

"Come on, what's the problem?" Nisita replied.

"Tom Mount is only 33 years old. The last time Richard told me that Shirley Lansing, the president of 20th Century Fox, was not even 35 years old. How can such a young person be the president of seven major studios? Because they are geniuses?"

"genius?"

Nisita smiled, "I don't know what a producer's genius is. In this industry, there are directing geniuses, actors' geniuses, and other technical geniuses such as photography, but what is the producer's genius?"

"Then why did they become presidents? Is it convenient to say?"

"The virtue of an agent is not to speak ill of others behind their backs. But you can see that the men are handsome and the women are retired actors. What do you think they rely on to become the president?" Nisita asked rhetorically.

"I see, it must be their unparalleled sense of humor."

"Hahaha..." Nisita laughed, "Ronald, you're more and more like a Hollywood director now."