Exploiting Hollywood 1980

"Jonathan Demme, Ronald Lee." Nisita introduced the two clients.

Ronald and Jonathan greet each other with a hug. At first glance, Jonathan Demme does not look like a film director, but rather like a university professor.

"What movie are you busy with?" Ronald greeted and asked.

"Is it convenient?" Nisita asked Demi.

"It's not inconvenient. I know Ronald is a successful director of commercial films. I can just listen to his opinion. Can you give me some advice? Ronald."

Jonathan Demme spoke in a rhythmic manner, and Ronald shrugged that he could talk.

"Jonathan's new film has been edited, and the distributor Orion wants to release an erotic thriller that reflects the style of New York, mainly in the New York area and major cities. Jonathan has a slightly different view. We are coordinating."

"I haven't seen the movie, so I'm afraid I can't express my opinion." When Ronald heard this, he quickly shied away.

"I happen to have a copy here, why don't we watch it together? I'd love to know what my peers think about my film. This is my debut."

"This isn't your debut, Jonathan. His 1980 'Mevin and Howard,' which was a small release, was nominated for three Oscars and won two."

"Universal barely released that movie because they didn't know how to market a story of a loser. A story of helping a strange old man and finding out he was Howard Hughes.

Maven got the will given by Hughes and gave one-seventeenth of the inheritance to the young man, but he failed to obtain Hughes' inheritance in the end. "

"Look, I've had this problem all the time, making a movie and the distribution company doesn't know how to market it. The same goes for this movie now."

"Even if that movie is not released, you still have little confused tears (SwingShift)"

"That one doesn't count, you know, Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell's husband-and-wife duo is the director of that movie. I couldn't stand Goldie Hawn's dictation, I left the set, and finally It is only because of the protection of the directors' union that my name remains in the subtitles."

"Let's go watch Jonathan's movie first, Ronald. We'll talk about you later." Nisita took the lead out of the room and went to drive.

Ronald felt that this Jonathan was very free and easy. If he made a movie and won an Oscar, it was not released in the end. The second movie was robbed by the star and seized power. I am afraid that he will not be able to do the same as the other party, but he is still full of fighting spirit and continues to be the director.

"You also have trouble with being a star. If it's convenient, can you talk about it? I'm also making a movie starring a star. I want to hear your experience."

"Yes, in fact, the biggest problem with stars, and their biggest advantage, is that they have a fixed image. This image can attract audiences to the cinema.

If my first movie had a star in it, it wouldn't be a bleak box office. I learned my lesson from the second movie, but Goldie Hawn was dissatisfied with his image in the script again and asked to change the script every day.

Also, one more thing. Celebrities are actually very insecure about their image in the demo, and often ask for reshoots..."

Jonathan Demme and Ronald also walked out of the room and into the parking lot. They communicated along the way, and Demi shared a lot of lessons from his dealings with celebrities.

The two got into Nisita's car and drove to a studio with an editing room and screening room, where a copy of Demi's latest film was kept.

Nisita arranged, the copy began to show, and while the screen was still black, first a song full of Caribbean flair entered the ear.

When the screen lit up, a garbage ship traveled in the sea outside Lower Manhattan, New York. The slowly advancing ship, the dilapidated and garbage-filled neighborhoods on the shore, and the glamorous twin towers of the World Trade Center in the distance complemented each other. The opening of the movie.

"Oh, God,

That's what I used to see when I was a kid. ' Ronald called out, this is the view from the ship that Aunt Karen would have seen when she took her home from the hospital and sailed to Manhattan every week to see a doctor.

Ronald seemed to smell the peculiar smell of rust on the ship, and the stench of the garbage ships around him.

Music and influence, as if flowing slowly, fully awakened Ronald's memory.

At the beginning, sight, hearing, and even video and sound also aroused Ronald's olfactory memory. Putting people in the context of the story Jonathan is trying to tell is a brilliant directorial technique.

Ronald tilted his head to look at Jonathan. Such a level should not be unknown.

At the end of the music at the beginning, the stereo in the background condensed into a point-shaped sound source. On the screen was a black guy with a loudspeaker recorder on his shoulders, slowly twisting forward along with the Caribbean-style music.

The camera pans to a restaurant across the street. The music gradually faded away, and the story officially began.

Ronald couldn't help but tilt his head to look at Jonathan again. Very advanced mixing skills were used here, which were invented by Orson Welles and developed by Walter Murch.

"This episode, called 'Loor', has several 'WildThing' lyrics in it, which fits in well with the title 'Wild'."

Jonathan gives Ronald some of his thoughts.

Originally it was the flawless soundtrack of the record, but in the last two sentences, it was switched to the tape recording with a little noise from the tape recorder.

"Here you can use the soundtrack of the album's interlude and the recorder music recorded on the scene, and mix them according to the proportion. At the end, you can slowly adjust the proportion of the two. Don't switch it all at once, it will be more charming." De told Jonathan the skills he and Murch had learned.

"That's what they did in the wedding scene at the opening of the Godfather," Ronald concluded.

"Aha, that's what happened." Jonathan nodded and wrote Ronald's secret in his notebook. If no one tells you this technique, it takes a long time to break through.

An upper-body shot of a man in a suit appears in the restaurant, which Ronald recognizes as Jeff Daniels, the husband of Deborah Wenger in "Mother and Daughter."

After the man finished his lunch in the noisy cafe, seeing that no one was paying attention to him, he secretly picked up the receipt and got away with it.

A woman with short black hair rushed out, stopped the man, and finally half coerced, half seduced him into her car and took him for a ride.

"This is Melanie Griffiths." Ronald was impressed by the woman who had a fight with Tatum O'Neal for her role.

I haven't seen her for a few years, she seems to be a little older, and she is still in good shape. In the car, I chatted about the appearance of the skirt and was ready to drive, which was very sturdy.

"I'm Lulu"

"I am Charles"

The two heroines introduce each other.

Ronald could see it, Jonathan's shot was brilliant and the shot was very smooth. The two actors also acted very naturally. Jeff Daniels is a well-known actor, and it was time to ask Jonathan how he could act so well.

The movie continues, Ronald thinks the story is probably a story of an affair between a man and a woman, but soon, Jonathan surprises him.

Lulu abducted Charles to her home and introduced Charles to her mother as her husband. The film has an unsettling vibe, and Lulu's mother confesses to Charles the next day that she knows Charles is not Lulu's true "husband" and tells him to be careful with Lulu.

Charles also said that he has a wife and two children in New Jersey, and that he and Lulu only met yesterday.

Ronald felt the story might be a Hitchcock-esque mystery.

Ronald was surprised again. Lulu took Charles to the high school reunion. At the party, Charles found that one of his subordinates was also in the reunion.

Is it a movie about the exhortation that cheating brings disaster to the family?

Lulu found a man at the high school reunion, she looked scared and pulled Charles away. Charles is tricked into going to dinner with him.

In the end, the man revealed his true colors. It turned out that he was Lu Lu's husband. He was caught in prison for robbery, and now he escaped from prison to find Lu Lu.

What is this story?

In just one or two hours, the plot deviated from the channel four or five times, but the strange thing is that Ronald didn't get distracted at all. Although it didn't fit into any genre movie, the movie was still very catchy. The thought of not going out to the bathroom in life.

Lulu's husband grabbed the two and beat Charles. Charles was worried about Lu Lu, but he came back to save her. It turned out that Charles also panicked. He and his wife divorced. The so-called warm family was just his own lie.

As a result, Lulu's husband found Charles's residence through telephone fraud, rushed in to take Lulu away, and put Charles in the bathroom with handcuffs, and went back to the room to beat Lulu, who wanted to escape.

Near the end of the two-hour movie, Ronald couldn't hold himself back until he went to the bathroom to relax.

"This 'Shot Lulu', there is no place where you can guess the plot. It is really a very good movie." Ronald said, "But I really don't know how to market this movie, From the beginning to the end, my thoughts have changed many times, from what I thought was a pornographic film, to a suspense film, a police and bandit film, an action film, to a romance film..."

"But it's really pretty, isn't it?" Jonathan Demme said with a smile.

"Yeah, it's really nice." Ronald hadn't felt like watching a movie for a long time.

"I think your supporting roles are all well chosen. What's the name of the one who plays Lulu's husband? It looks scary at first glance."

"Ray, Ray Riota."

"Yeah, where did you get so many good actors? And Melanie Griffiths. She's wearing a black wig, and she's so different from the blond she's shown later. I don't even know her. So good at acting. Her previous films were very average."

"That's something I learned from my first boss, exploitation mogul Roger Coleman. He taught me a long lesson when he first asked me to direct 'Orange Is the New Black' .

One of the things is like this, every supporting role determines the quality of the movie, and when you cut a close-up of a supporting role, that movie belongs to him in those three to five seconds. If the character isn't convincing, then the audience's belief in the movie's story drops a bit at that moment. If you come several times, your box office will definitely be affected. "

"Aren't you the Jonathan Roger told me about?" Ronald looked up and down Jonathan Demme.

Although he is reluctant to admit it, his directing skills are indeed not as good as Jonathan Demme, who has not yet had a successful work from a box office perspective.

"I think the class he taught me must have been streamlined, he didn't teach me this." Ronald laughed, pulled Demi up, and wanted to go to dinner with him.

"How did you choose these good actors?" Ronald's own "Moonlight" also needs a lot of supporting roles with acting skills, and Demi's experience can be borrowed. In a fancy Manhattan restaurant, Ronald asks Demi for advice.

"When I cast roles, I pick people who interest me and you want to know more about them.

In the scene of Lulu and Charlie at the reunion party, a pair of group actors also danced there. I liked those two actors when I was casting, but when I started shooting, I realized that they were a pair of master dancers.

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The most important thing in casting is to choose villains, which must be selected according to the standards of the worst villains. Heroes are set off by villains. Without a bad villain, there will be no good hero. "

"This is what Roger taught you? I have to ask him why he didn't teach me."

"Hahaha, maybe he found these skills, and he didn't need to shoot his exploitative films."

The two talked about their origins. They were both students taught by Roger Coleman, and they were considered brothers in the same school.

"I still have a question. Why are the scenes you filmed and the actors' performances so natural. It seems that they have been rehearsed seventeen or eight times before, and after they have been very proficient, they are still shot after they are proficient." Ronald I asked myself the most incomprehensible thing. These actors are not newbies. It is impossible for Demi to be manipulated like this, right?

"I never rehearse, the actors' performances are all improvised on the spot, and what they perform is what they are."

"It's impossible, right?" Ronald didn't believe it, this was not rehearsed?

"In other words, I let them rehearse under film. The first performance is often the most full of emotions, and the reaction is often the most realistic. If the rehearsal time is the best effect, if I don't shoot it, then I won't catch it. ?

So I always let them take a good position, and then tell them to rehearse. During the rehearsal, I turn on the camera beforehand, which is usually the best one. If what I see isn't good enough, I'll have them take another shot. "

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