Exploiting Hollywood 1980

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"Ronald, are you there?"

Ronald was on his way to the set the next morning to give the lead actors a little time to rehearse and start shooting right away. Suddenly he heard someone calling his name outside the apartment.

"I'm here," Ronald opened the door and looked. "Hi, you are, Tom. Hi, Rebecca, Paula."

Standing at the door is Tom Cruise, who is intertwining his fingers with a blonde with sunglasses, it is Rebecca De Mornay, whom he has fallen in love with for his co-starring role in "Good Guys and Crazy", They came to Ronald together. Followed by agent Paula Wagner.

"I brought you some cake," Tom raised his hand and took out a bag, "You're not in Los Angeles for New Years, I wanted to bring it."

"Oh, thank you." Ronald took the cake and ate one. "It's delicious. I'll take it to the studio to eat."

"Your new film? What is it about?"

"Break dancing, have you seen others dance?" Ronald put the cake in the car, "Would you like to come and make a cameo?"

"Yeah? Can it?" Tom Cruise's baby fat faded away, and the lines of his face became tougher. He still wanted to work with Ronald, his own nobleman.

"Tom..." Paula Wagner hurriedly stopped, "Sorry Ronald, Tom's current acting line is a feature film by a famous director, and it is inconvenient to appear in a low-cost production."

"It's okay, I'm just a suggestion", Ronald looked at Paula like a hen protecting his cubs, feeling a little interesting.

Tom Cruise's "Crazy Boy" spent fifteen weeks in theaters, grossing $63 million at the box office. He and his girlfriend Rebecca De Mornay quickly became popular, and they were not satisfied with shooting commercial films, and wanted to find a famous director to cooperate and enter the Oscar.

His other new film, "Step by Step" with Leigh Thompson, has just been released, and the response has been moderate, although because of the nude scenes of him and Thompson, it has attracted many young fans to repeatedly go to the cinema to watch those two seconds. shot of the clock.

The two chatted for a while, and Tom and his girlfriend also went to deliver cakes to other important people to maintain their relationship. This is the way Paula Wagner came up with to increase his contacts. Every year, he distributes cakes to friends at Christmas and New Years as a reminder to them to remember him.

"Hi... Seriously, are you really dating Brooke Shields?" Tom Cruise couldn't hold back his curiosity and asked Ronald when he was about to part.

"No comment," Ronald laughed, drove his Saab 900, and rushed to the rehearsal site.

"Are you really looking for a star to make a cameo? It's also good for the marketing of this exploitative film." Ronald thought, stroking his beard.

"What the hell is your real name?" Lucinda Dickey asked the black guy, Boogaloo Prawn, a few hours later, between rehearsals, "How can anyone call that a prawn?"

"It's the kind of name that only a few people can call." The prawn made a disgusted expression. He was very dissatisfied with Lucinda's dancing ability. There is a distinct jazz dance and gymnastics feel.

"Uh..." Unexpectedly, Lucinda, who was choked a bit, was a little embarrassed. She felt that she and the two leading actors were fighting each other. Boogaloo Prawn may be simply dissatisfied with her dancing skills, while Sabado is more provocative.

"His name is Michael Chambers. Boogaloo is his street dance name. They all have a nickname in the breakdance circle. You can also have one. Smile Lucinda or something." Ronald relieved her.

Lucinda's new haircut was short, with bangs and top hair styled high with mousse styling gel, giving it the look of an independent woman. However, her character is weak, and Ronald couldn't help it. He often left her to face the two breakdance masters alone to train her to be stronger.

"Yeah, then I'll be Smile Lucinda" Lucinda Dickie was born in the lower class, and she learned to dance with the money she saved by watching children for rich people.

Inspired by a strong nature. Gradually less afraid of the bullying of prawns and Champagne.

Sabadell and Boogaloo Prawn continued their dance, and Smile Lucinda continued her clumsy learning. Ronald didn't have much time. He couldn't give the three of them too much rehearsal time. Seeing that they were almost rehearsing, he asked them to come later. Ronald first went to Venice Beach to check the layout of the first shot of the whole film.

An avenue lined with palm trees leads directly to the edge of Venice Beach. The weather is very warm today, and there are people surfing in bikinis in the distance.

Ronald got off the Saab 900, saw Minahan on the terrazzo floor by the beach, where the dancing scene was filmed, and quickly walked over.

"You rubbish, rubbish, you can't even handle the Screen Actors Guild." Minahan, wearing a T-shirt and big sunglasses, was scolding an assistant.

"What's going on? What about the group performance? I'm going to shoot the first scene this afternoon." Ronald stepped forward and asked.

It turned out that the "Break Dance" crew had to prepare their own scripts and shooting plans in major trade unions in order to be screened in North America.

After being informed by the Actors Guild, they sent a special agent to supervise this small production. Knowing that all the group performances had not signed the contract in the standard format of the union, they immediately banned the actors from the film union from appearing on the grounds that the union had less than 65% of the actors.

Those group performers who were members of the trade union, or who wanted to take this opportunity to join the trade union, obediently listened to the words of the trade union commissioner and left the crew.

For other small-cost crews, generally speaking, you can bribe the commissioner, and then shoot again in two days. But this movie, which is racing against time, can't wait.

Minahan was also overwhelmed. He wanted to save some money. His assistant did not communicate and coordinate well with the trade union at first. Now, even if he came to the door to apologize, he would have to wait for a while to deepen their memory.

"It would be nice if we didn't shoot in Los Angeles, we should go to Israel." Minahan stomped his feet in anger.

"It's useless to say these things now," Ronald took off his sunglasses and looked around, "The people from the union are gone, won't they be back today?"

"What do you want? All the group performance agencies are their members, and we couldn't find any agency willing to temporarily recruit people for us." Minahan reminded Ronald to note that the control of the union is very important in Los Angeles. In-depth.

"Who said I was looking for them?"

"Hey guys," Ronald shouted to the men and women surfing on the beach with his hands around his mouth. "Any of you want to make a movie?"

"Making a movie?" Men and women walked towards the crew as soon as they carried their surfboards. Who wouldn't want to make a movie in Los Angeles?

"One, two, three, four..." Ronald counted seventeen in total, all wearing bikinis or shorts. The surfers are all in good shape, and have two great hips and chests.

"It's not enough, who else can you use?" Ronald said to Minahan. The crew is relatively streamlined, and there are not many staff members who can fill in and pretend to be the audience.

"Only two extras didn't leave, and they came back again. I heard that they were from the hair country, and they didn't understand the secrets of unions. They just wanted to appear in Hollywood movies."

"People from the hair country, that's all right," Ronald told them to prepare as well.

It wasn't enough, Ronald thought it would be nice to be in New York, call Eddie and pull people from the fraternities of the colleges, there are no connections here in Los Angeles.

"Find a way to find someone first, you can't bring your cannon staff..." Ronald took out the director's viewfinder and looked at the beach and palm trees.

The secret to shooting fast is not to have too much camera movement. The more the camera moves, the longer the shot, the more complicated the actor's scheduling, the higher the chance of repeating mistakes.

The rule Ronald set himself was to keep the camera as still as possible, poke there, and let the actors start dancing!

"Huh," Ronald found that there seemed to be a lot of people under the building next to the palm tree.

"Who are they?" Ronald asked Minahan.

"The homeless, they are all homeless people who usually wander here. For the purpose of filming, I asked them to leave and gave them a few dollars each."

Ronald looked again in the viewfinder. "Get them back."

Standing on the terrazzo floor and looking at more than a dozen homeless people, Ronald knew what to do. While filming "Night of the Comet", he had contact with homeless people, some because of misfortune, some because of divorce and unable to pay alimony and mortgages.

He left those who didn't look like drug abusers, then turned to the costumer, "Clothing, clothing, find fifteen sweaters!"

"Let these homeless people take a bath, change into sweaters, and be the audience behind the crowd. Don't give money, two meals per person, two cans of Coke, then wear the clothes themselves, and then buy some food stamps." Rhona De told his assistant to deal with it.

"Don't save money like this in the future, Minahan, or else it will delay things?" Ronald turned his head and said.

Soon Lucinda Dickey, and Sabado, and Prawn's RV arrived. Ronald had them change into costumes, get their makeup done, and get ready for their first seaside dance scene.

This was the first time the audience was shown breakdance, a very rhythmic and novel dance, a few minutes after the opening of the film.

Ronald gets ready to show mainly Sabado, Prawn, and their dance-fighting counterparts Falcon and Solomon.

The bougainvillea prawn is good at spacewalking and floor dance, and the highest level of robot dance is not Sabade, but his opponent Falken.

Arrange for both of them to perform a solo, and then Falcon provokes Sabadeh with a solo dance in front of Kelly, played by Lucinda Deitch.

The homeless were dressed and still posed in a loose circle around the terrazzo floor. The surfers were wearing bikinis, Ronald arranged for them to stand in the inner circle, and the two girls with great figures were given the opportunity to show themselves.

"Does everyone get it?" Ronald asked all the group performers.

"Understood."

"I repeat, no one is allowed to look at the camera. Whoever looks at the camera will be cut off, and the food and clothes will be taken away, do you hear?"

"learn!"

"Okay, we'll start shooting right away."

The actors began to stand still, and the camera crew metered them and measured the focal length. When everything was ready, Ronald began to call the shooting.

"recording?"

"All right!"

"camera?"

"full speed!"

"The first bar of the first break dance, slap," the field recorder put down the board.

"A!"

Sabado and Boogaloo prawns started to jump up hard in front of the camera.

A bikini beauty comes up from behind, the camera shows her hips for a second, then she walks away and returns the view to the two dancers.

The camera used a zoom lens, and it slowly focused into it. The dance movements of Sabadell and the prawn were very powerful, and the dual-card loudspeaker recorder on the ground next to it was playing enthusiastic music.

This is Ronald's arrangement after consultation with the director of photography. The fixed-focus lens is too rigid, and the slide rails have to be rehearsed repeatedly. Simply use a zoom lens, zoom in when the position is wrong, and frame the actor in the center.

The surrounding audience is carefully selected, and the surfers are masters of musical rhythm, and they begin to twist their bodies in accordance with the rhythm of the music.

Then there are the two hair-haired actors who are willing to disobey the trade union's orders and stay to perform. One of them was wearing a one-piece spandex bodysuit and was in very good shape. They were bigger than surfers, so Ronald arranged for a jagged background after the bikini surfers.

"Very good, keep going down," Ronald was secretly satisfied. In this way, the camera does not move, allowing the actors to fully utilize the shooting method, and the shooting is very fast.

"Huh?" Ronald frowned, the hair-haired actor squeezed left and right, and squeezed from the middle of the two group performers to the front. Then along with the music, he jumped up a lot.

"Fuxk! Cut! Cut! Cut!"

Ronald rushed to him, "Who the fuck do you think you are? Who asked you to steal the spotlight?"

The hair-haired man scratched his head embarrassedly, and said in English with a strong hair-haired accent, "My name is Jean-Claude, this is my friend Miguel, we have no ill intentions, we just want to show ourselves."

"I'll show everyone a chance, you don't do it yourself, OK?"