Exploiting Hollywood 1980

But in order to please the audience, strengthen Sean Penn's role, and give him an end to the main character's treatment, it is necessary to cut out the scenes of others who are not so good first.

For example, Stacey and Linda take the stairs to the basement parking lot after cleaning out the pizza place. The two were discussing how to take the initiative to call the handsome audio salesman. At this time, a working girl from another school came and asked Linda for advice.

"Linda, I'm in... high school, and Judy said I could ask you something."

"Yes, you ask." Linda turned to Stacey and said, "I know Judy."

"My boyfriend and I want..." The girl looked down, as if asking a very embarrassing question, "We want... um..."

Then the girl covered her mouth with her hand and spoke in Linda's ear.

"Okay, are you an adult?"

"Yes."

"You go to something called a free clinic and tell them you're with your boyfriend on a regular basis, two or three times a week. You need those little pills."

"They won't tell my family, will they?"

"No, if you are over sixteen, they won't tell the family."

When the film was finished on the monitor screen, the editor suggested to Ronald, "This section can actually be deleted without affecting the overall follow-up story. There are fifty-seven seconds in total.

From the perspective of everyone's story development, this shot of Stacey and Linda talking is used to explain the background story. In fact, deleting most of them does not affect the development of the plot. "

"But the existence of free clinics is explained here, which foreshadows Stacey's unplanned pregnancy in the future." Ronald hesitated, "If we don't explain here, and the concept of a free clinic suddenly appears later, will the audience feel abrupt? ."

"Hahaha, Ronald, you're finally talking like a movie director." Editor Eric laughed.

"What's the meaning?"

"I've worked with a lot of directors, and they always come up with all kinds of reasons to keep their shots. Only you feel more like an edit to me, and don't have a lot of emotional remorse about cutting shots. But you're finally like a The director thought that way."

"Hi. I'm not afraid that the audience won't understand. Not all American audiences are familiar with the concept of free clinics in California. In many conservative states in the central and southern regions, such clinics are often vandalized, and doctors and nurses will be destroyed. people beat.

Two days ago, CBS TV also reported on a Texas case where a free clinic that provided contraception and abortion was burned. "

Although the Supreme Court's "Roe v. Wade" decision in 1973 gave women the right to be responsible for their own bodies under the Fourteenth Amendment and their privacy should not be violated.

However, the jurisprudence of the highest judicial organ in America is not automatically effective in each state. Each state needs to legislate separately to protect the old, and some conservative states can also use other legislation to hedge.

Southern states with strong religious and conservative powers managed to pass state laws, and in Texas, where Roe v. Wade took place, the concept of free clinics was unfamiliar to ordinary teenagers.

"Forget it, just relying on these fifty seconds of footage,

Can they understand the idea of ​​a free and open California? ' said editor Eric.

"It makes sense, let's cut this part out."

Ronald is no longer insisting, in fact, the name of the free clinic implies a lot. Free (Free) also means freedom in English. Moreover, although free clinics have no medical fees, drug fees and other expenses are not cheap.

Their name is also a deliberate use of semantic puns to evade state legislation and give women a safe haven.

Be aware that in some particularly conservative places, such as the Catholic South, women cannot even prescribe simple contraceptives.

A doctor prescribes someone's wife and it spreads throughout the town in less than half a day. Strong social pressure will make women give up any measures, the result is to have children one after another.

It is impossible for audiences in these places to have any in-depth understanding of the big city of Los Angeles that they have never been to through a conversation. But a hint of a name is enough to conjure teenage girls with the idea that Los Angeles is a place that is free about their own bodies.

This 50-second shot is actually similar to the name of a "free clinic" in terms of the efficiency of conveying stories and emotions.

Although a movie is created by an artist, the artist must also pay attention to efficiency. What can be delivered in a second, there is no need to schedule a minute.

"Remove this part, please note it down." Seeing Ronald's agreement, the editor instructed the assistant to record the number of this shot.

"Let's continue." Then the editor took a roll of film and loaded it himself.

The next scene is that after a period of time, the handsome guy in the audio sales never asked Stacey out again. A distressed Stacey spoke to Linda again.

"My 'stupid' mom answered his call and told her I was still in high school and he would never call me again. What should I do, go to the stereo store to find him?"

"Don't be silly, Stacey. He's just a stereo salesman, what do you want? Marry him and have him a baby?"

"In the future, I have to say that I am eighteen years old, so I am still in high school, and it is not easy to get through."

The editor finished watching this segment and said to Ronald, "Let's delete this segment too. Stacey was dumped by the handsome guy. You can guess from the story behind."

"No, this section cannot be cut." Ronald shook his head.

"The audience just saw Stacey dating the handsome guy from the stereo shop, and the handsome guy even sent flowers to Stacey's house. If you don't explain it, the audience will find it strange later."

"But then didn't Stacey date nerdy Mark again? Audiences would have guessed that she and the stereo shop dude didn't go on."

"Yes, that's why I want to keep this scene. The audience agrees that Stacey is a girl who values ​​emotions more than men and women. There must be an explanation here, otherwise Stacey and the cheerleaders are bold and unrestrained. What's the difference? How can she justify it when she ends up with Mark?"

"But isn't it superfluous?"

"No, you, like me, have read the story a dozen times. We all already know exactly what kind of person Stacey is. But those viewers who haven't read the original novel, know Stacey from the screen for the first time. Tessie, they're the ones the movie wants to please.

I don't want them to think Stacey is weirder and lessen their interest in the story. "

"Okay, you're the boss. It's only ten seconds anyway. Keep it."

Such trade-off decisions continued for several days. When the entire film was finally assembled, Ronald discovered that he had unknowingly cut about 20 percent of the footage. There are only ninety-six minutes left on the set of the movie.

Ronald and the editor went through ninety-six minutes of film through the horizontal editing machine.

"Do you feel it? The rhythm of the six characters' appearances is a bit unsmooth." Editor Eric took the initiative to provoke the conversation.

"Yes, you're right. And the actors' performances lacked the foreshadowing of other shots, and the emotional intensity was a bit off." Ronald also agreed with the editor.

This "bed of Proclustes" style editing method is very efficient in cropping shots. In two days, the cutting time that could have been barely achieved in 20 days was completed.

But at the same time, it also brought a lot of side effects.

An important side effect is that the proportion of each character's appearance is somewhat chaotic.

Take Mark the nerd, who had a crush on Stacey because he was shy by nature. Went to Stacey's house on the first date with Stacey's house. After kissing Stacey, Mark was very uncomfortable with the progress of himself and the goddess of secret love, and ran away from Stacey's house.

After this, it was a long time before Mark reappeared. This is Stacey, with his good friend Mike the scalper, having an unexpected pregnancy. During a visit to the hospital in biology class, Stacey remembered her surgery and ran out and vomited.

Mark went up to comfort her. His gentlemanly behavior made Stacey realize that what she wanted more was a stable, mutually supportive relationship.

But for dozens of minutes in between, Mark did not appear in the plot, and suddenly disappeared and appeared, which would make the audience forget the plot of this character.

"We've got to add a bit of drama to Mark. Or cut out the early scenes of him and scalper Mike and move it a little bit into the middle."

Ronald, fully aware of what editor Eric was thinking, walked over to the whiteboard on the wall and started looking.

But he didn't get anything, the six main characters' scenes were packed into 90 minutes of scenes, and everyone's plot was reduced to a little bit.

Nerd Mark has a date with Stacey and forgets to bring his wallet and asks Mark to send money. Later, it was learned that Mike robbed his girl and fought with him in the locker room.

But the logic of these shots and the front and back plots is very strong, and it is impossible to cut and move a part where Mark does not appear in the middle.

"What do you think of this?" Eric watched the opening scene over and over on the editor, and finally found an embarrassing shot of Mark.

This was originally the scene where the characters were explained at the beginning, and Mark clumsily avoided the two girls.

"We're adding it to the middle prep and Lincoln High school football prep footage?" Ronald asked.

"Yeah, here's another shot of Linda and Stacey talking about Mark running away in the middle of a date, we'll add that too."

Linda and Stacey on the monitor are applying masks to themselves.

"For a boy like Mark, you have to take the initiative and take the first step," Linda said.

"I'm very proactive. Not only did I take the first step, but I also took the second and third steps." Stacey complained, "Mark doesn't like my type at all."

"Adding this section adds more than a minute. And Stacey's role in these ten minutes is too heavy, and we have to cut out other scenes."

Editing is such a tug at the whole body. Move the weights to one side of the scale, and the rest of the balance is disrupted. Ronald and editor Eric, the two of them are playing this delicate game of balance.

After several days of permutations and combinations in the editing room, the two finally cut out a relatively balanced version of the characters and story.

Ronald moved the camera position on the whiteboard, and on the emotionally charged character scene, he used the color highlighter to paint a little deeper.

Then he stepped back a few steps and watched the various cards on the whiteboard make up a picture. Just like in Mondrian's paintings, it's just line segments made up of lines of various colors.

However, the color represented by the emotional intensity of the character is dark or light, and the number of colors represented by the appearance of the character is more or less. Each character starts from the occasional appearance of light color at the beginning of his own story, to the intensive appearance of dark color, and finally has his own ending.

The regularity of their appearance on the forty-odd cards is also evenly distributed.

Six protagonists represented by six colors, Brad, Stacy, Linda, Mark, Mike, Spiccoli, patchwork, plus an American history teacher, Mr. Hand.

Ronald picked up an imaging camera and took a picture of the whiteboard. Polaroid spat out the black photo, Ronald tore it off, tossed it in the air, and after a while, a photo developed on the photo

The colors on the whiteboard cards are arranged into a modernist painting. The colors represented by each character, like musical instruments with different timbres, tell their own stories.

Mark the nerd and Stacy, who has a crush, end up as a couple.

Brad was fired from his job as a foreman in Hamburg, and he was promoted to store manager because of an accidental capture of a robber.

There was a scalper Mike who borrowed money from everywhere to cover Stacey's surgery expenses, and was sprayed a liar on his car.

Because Linda couldn't make her imaginary "perfect boyfriend", she had to cry to her best friend at the dance that she was dumped by her boyfriend.

There was also Stacey who finally found out that she liked Mark after coming up with a few men, and the two returned to the normal high school love mode.

Of course, there is no shortage of wits and bravery with Spiccoli, and finally reluctantly went to Spiccoli's house to teach him history, and let him have a yard for Mr. Hand, who let him graduate.

There is also the confused Spiccoli, whose car was destroyed but he beat Jefferson, the black football star of Lincoln High School, who was almost dumped by Brad and finally dumped Brad's girlfriend Lisa... and so on. More than a dozen vivid supporting roles.

The various colors represented by the stories of these supporting characters and protagonists, scattered in pieces, finally converged into a grand symphony on the photo.

Editor Eric also came over and looked at the snapshot in Ronald's hand. "It's a beautiful picture, and I think we can connect the working film and give the producer a full screening."

"Yeah, how long has it been?"

"The total length now is eighty-seven minutes and thirty-four seconds." The editing assistant reported to Ronald with a notebook.

"Please pick up the working copy." Ronald tapped the photo with his hand. The red part representing Spiccoli is still a bit small. Would you consider taking some additional pictures? Give him an ending?

At the end of the novel, Spiccoli saves the life of the presenter Brooke Shields who accidentally fell into the sea in the surfing competition, and won a large bounty. And spent the money on the rock band Van Halen to celebrate his birthday, and ended up being a pauper.

"If you want to shoot these, you have to add an additional budget. Let the producers see it first. If they are satisfied, they can start lobbying." Ronald thought.

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