Exploiting Hollywood 1980

Exploitation of Hollywood 1980 Chapter 9 Star Participation

"The beginning of this script is too bland. I have to find the opening theme song in my dream, and then add the helicopter aerial shot, looking at the center of New York, Wall Street in Manhattan from the direction of Staten Island. It will directly shock the audience's new feelings and hold them tightly..."

"Tess and the chef Mick Dugan who wants to open a restaurant have been in love for a long time. Their breakup needs some appropriate foreshadowing. The two are not on the same path in spirit. Dugan has to cheat too much to anger Tess, so that the audience can rationalize the plot of Tess breaking up with him and refusing to reconcile, and will not vent their anger on this secretary who is trying to climb up."

...

Ronald wrote down the various inspirations he had when reading the script on a yellow post-it note with a pencil, and then posted it on the page that needed to be modified.

Kevin Wade's script is good at narrative and foreshadowing, but its shortcoming is that it does not jump out of the structure of the stage play. The characters and plots in it are arranged in several concentrated scenes, which is convenient for the stage scenery to switch between scenes.

But movies are different from dramas after all. You can use editing to jump out of the limitations of the setting and fly freely within the limits of the audience's imagination. So some hidden plot lines can be laid out and then jumped out. When needed, a shot can be cut over, and the audience will not feel confused.

Ronald didn't mind giving Wade a little help. Anyway, if he was a director, there was no need to sign the screenwriter. He just contributed without signing.

"Ding Dong..."

"Who is it?" Ronald asked unhappily because his thoughts were interrupted.

"Uh... It's me, Helen."

"Oh, wait a minute, I'll come," Ronald put down the pencil, got up and opened the door of the apartment

"Ronnie," Helen Slater took leave from the "Sticky Fingers" crew to meet her lover. As soon as she entered the door, she hugged Ronald and gave him a deep kiss.

"I thought you would come tomorrow. How is your rehearsal?" Ronald was very happy that Helen came back to see him. She was preparing for the movie directed by Kathryn Bigelow and had just started rehearsals before filming.

"Katherine wants us to rehearse for two weeks. I have memorized the script lines. This time you are here, so I asked her for leave, saying that I want to accompany you on the weekend. This excuse is impossible for her to refuse."

"What shall we eat tonight?" Ronald happily went to get his coat. Donna had a date with a handsome guy, so she didn't want her brother anymore. Fortunately, Helen could come, and finally someone would accompany her for dinner tonight.

"Whatever is fine, we can find a place to eat in the building."

"Okay, I'll call little Bud and tell him that he doesn't need the car tonight." Ronald went to the living room to make a call.

"Okay, I'll sit for a while," Helen sat on the chair next to the desk where Ronald had just worked. A heat left by the man came through the chair. Helen felt that it was ironed very well. She began to turn over the things on the table, "Hey, what is this?"

"Working Girl" A thick script appeared in front of her. Helen saw a lot of sticky notes on the edge of the script, and curiosity made her turn over the cover.

"Helen, Helen! Shall we go?" Ronald had finished his phone call, and seeing that Helen hadn't come out yet, he came over to call her.

"Wait a minute, this script is great, I have to finish it." Helen was fascinated by the story of "Working Girl" and Tess's experience, and quickly flipped through the pages.

"Uh..." Ronald put his coat down, wondering why he forgot to put the script away.

Helen saw Tess's loss after she found out that she was betrayed by her direct manager Catherine, who took the merger idea she came up with for herself. She was disappointed to find that there was a very wide gap between people with or without family background and those who had attended a first-class university.

After discovering that Catherine had cheated on her, Tess returned home in despair, and happened to see her chef boyfriend Mick Dugan having an affair with a black-haired beauty in bed. She was hit by a double blow in her career and love, and she suddenly lost her direction. After a night at the beach, looking at Manhattan across from her home, Tess was unwilling to be a secretary forever. She and her friend Xin came up with a crazy idea to pretend to be a colleague of her boss Catherine and complete the project while Catherine was away.

As a rich girl, Helen has never considered the problem from the perspective of those who are born without too many privileges. She was moved by the experience of the protagonist Tess, and her eyes were a little wet.

"I never thought that these secretaries and assistants would encounter so many difficulties in reality." Helen heard Ronald's footsteps, and she looked at Ronald, "Have you often been troubled by people with backgrounds like Catherine before?"

"That's all in the past, it's nothing..." Ronald thought of the various setbacks he encountered when he entered the industry, which is also a very normal thing in America. But there is one advantage of this country, that is, for those who work hard, there is still a narrow upward channel.

"Oh, poor Ronnie," Helen touched Ronald's face, "Ah, sorry, I read your script without your consent. I was just curious about the sticky notes you wrote, and I couldn't put it down after reading it."

"It doesn't matter, I haven't finalized the director contract for this movie with 20th Century Fox. Don't tell anyone else for now," Ronald replied.

"Then what happened to Tess? Did she defeat the evil-hearted boss Catherine, and did she and Jack Traynor get together?" Helen stood up and prepared to eat.

"Forget it, you can just read it here, I'll ask them to bring it to the room." Ronald motioned to Helen to sit back and read the script, and then he went to make a phone call to order a meal.

"It's a really good script, like those classic Broadway plays."

After nearly an hour, Ronald called for dinner to be delivered to the apartment. Helen also finished reading the script. She seemed very excited. The script was very suitable to her taste.

"You seem to like this script very much?" Ronald didn't expect Helen to like it so much. This is a very good indicator. Girls like Helen who grew up in the city are exactly the audience for this movie.

"Yes, I have never seen such a wonderful script since I was a child. You must make it look better."

"Why?" Ronald wanted to know more about the audience's perspective.

"I grew up watching movies where the women were gentle, beautiful, caring about their husbands and taking care of their children. This was the first movie I saw where women could be just as good at work as men. You can get ahead in a place like Wall Street, but it’s not necessarily a position that men can do.”

Helen came up and hugged Ronald, and said slowly, "You know, the one I shot with Michael J. Fox before; 'The Secret of Success', although she was also a working girl, but she had very few scenes. That role There are even fewer scenes involving professional work. The key parts of the mergers and acquisitions in the movie were all thought up by Michael’s character.”

"I like Tess in this movie very much. This is the career woman I want to play. Unlike 'Secret of Success', she is actually a beauty who is around a man. She even became a manager because she had an affair with the boss. Personal affair."

"Broken", Ronald thought to himself, and Helen's feelings clearly indicated that she was attracted to this character.

But Helen Slater's acting skills are still not enough to handle such a complex role. Tess was just a female secretary who had no self-confidence at first, but hoped to get out of the bottom competition and strive for higher development through hard work.

Later, the fake became real, and he pretended to be an M\u0026A manager and was able to work with ease in the workplace.

Tess before and after, both in appearance and inner temperament, need to perform the feelings of two completely different people.

This kind of acting skill that convinces the audience requires a particularly strong imagination, so that you can first believe it, become the character, and then impress the audience and make them believe it.

Helen, although her acting skills are also improving, she lacks life experience in the life of a low-level person in the workplace, a secretary who is irritated, and the temperament of a senior manager in the workplace. Ronald does not believe that she can act. good.

Sometimes this kind of thing can't be learned by relying on an acting teacher.

"Do you want to play this role? It will take a lot of time to prepare. Your new play?" Ronald felt that this matter had to be stated straightforwardly.

"Hey, if I hadn't been scheduled for the film 'Sticky Fingers', I would have auditioned anyway." Helen bit her lower lip, "I know I might not be ready to play such a role, but I was always reluctant to see it. When I graduated from high school, my classmates said in the guestbook that I looked more like a working girl on Wall Street than an actress.”

"Have you noticed that the roles of professional women are slowly increasing now. Whether it is movies or TV series. There will be opportunities in the future." Ronald patted Helen on the back to comfort him, "Besides, this is a female secretary who is almost thirty years old. , if you do it, you can’t play the role of a girl.”

"Ha..." Helen became happy again. Now she still looks like a girl. She can play a high school student or a college student.

"You will be the final director, right? I really want to see you direct this movie." Helen sat in the living room, chatting with Ronald while eating.

She is very happy. The movie she produced is about to start shooting. Director Kathryn Bigelow is very good to the actresses and has many inspiring tips for them, giving Helen a lot of room to play.

But it is a movie about two girls. This "Working Girl" contains classic drama elements such as business war, love, betrayal, conspiracy, etc. Helen was originally a drama fan, and Ronald's ability to direct such a classic drama movie was particularly to her liking.

She also liked to watch Ronald's previous commercial films, but as a girl who had been educated in drama since childhood, she still hoped that Ronald could one day direct a drama film, be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Director, and leave a mark in film history. This is the perfect boyfriend of my dreams.

"You know what? When you put it like that, I think the desire to direct this movie is even stronger. I really want to direct this kind of urban fairy tale movie to give every female employee who works hard in the company a hope, even if it's in the movie That hope.”

"Great, you will win an Oscar." Helen looked at Ronald lovingly.

"I'll figure it out. The original director Fox wanted was Mike Nichols. I'll win the chance to direct."

“Who?” Helen was startled. “The director of ‘The Graduate’, Mike Nichols?”

"You should have more faith in me." Ronald wiped away the food sauce stuck to the corner of Helen's mouth with his hand, put it in his mouth, and added a mouthful.

Seeing this scene, Helen couldn't help but put herself in Ronald's mouth.

…

After all, Helen Slater came here on leave. Everyone in the crew was waiting for her to rehearse, and she went back to the crew the next morning.

Ronald also started to get busy, calling his agent Nicita and naming the director he wanted to compete for the script.

"What is the main conflict between 20th Century Fox and Mike Nichols?" Ronald asked Nicita. The agent is always the first to know about these more secret conflicts.

"The main conflict between Nichols and 20th Century Fox is that he doesn't want stars to participate in this movie. For him, repeating the situation of "The Graduate" is the best. He likes stars that he can fully control. At that time, Dustin Hoffman was a fledgling boy who was hanging around on Broadway.

Several of his recent films, such as "Silkwd", used Meryl Streep and Cher. At that time, Cher didn't have much film experience, and Streep was not a star.

Last year, he directed "Heartfire", using the star Jason Nicholson, and his old partner Streep, ended up with a complete box office failure, with a little over 20 million US dollars, which was not as high as the production cost, after all, Nicholson alone accounted for 6 million.

So this year, for his new film "Genius Soldier", he went back to Matthew Brodick, who had just recovered from the fatal car accident in Northern Ireland. If someone asked him to act, he would definitely listen to the director. "

Nicita really knew a lot of inside information. Fox's Goldberg had a big budget this year. In addition to the few movies Ronald participated in, he had great ambitions when he just took office and wanted to make some achievements. At the end of this year and the beginning of next year, it is expected that five to six big productions will be launched. As long as one is successful, he can gain a firm foothold in Fox.

It is indeed the characteristic of 20th Century Fox, which likes to bet big. Ronald smiled. The commercial styles of the seven major production companies are not the same. Paramount, which was previously led by Michael Eisner, is obviously more stable and knows how to make movies with the greatest possibility of box office success.

He brought this style to Disney, but it was not going well. Disney, which was originally the bottom of the seven majors, actually needed a big gamble like Fox.

And 20th Century Fox is not doing well now, and what it needs is a steady strategy and a step-by-step approach. However, their tradition and the unfamiliarity of the Australian boss, an outsider, with America, made Goldberg not proceed from the best interests of the company, and gambled a few more big gambles for his own future.

"So, our key is to find the right stars to participate?" Ronald asked Niceta.

"That's right. In fact, you have never worked with real big stars in your previous success. They are very difficult to get along with. Sometimes, you need to play a few rounds of shoulder-bumping games on the set to determine who is the boss.

So the key is whether you can find a star who is willing to work with you, so that your resistance will be much smaller.

Goldberg's idea is very simple. He wants stars to participate in the film, so that he can increase the insurance of the box office. You have to choose one among the current first-line stars... It's a pity that Tom Cruise is not suitable for Jack Traynor in this movie. He may be able to play it ten years later."

"So Goldberg needs an A-list male star to participate?" Ronald asked.

"One A-level male star, or two A-level female stars. There is room for discussion. Goldberg prefers male stars, after all, they are more guaranteed to sell box office for theater managers."

"Who are the A-level stars in Hollywood now? Send me a list and I will slowly select them."

...

"Squeak..." Ronald in the business center of the building waited for a long time beside the fax machine before the long list faxed from Los Angeles was spit out of the fax machine.

With a hiss, Ronald tore off the fax paper, folded it quickly, and returned to the apartment.

It seems that I have to put a fax machine in the apartment in the future, otherwise I always come to the business center to receive faxes. If the information is leaked, it will be troublesome.

CAA has internal rankings for Hollywood male and female stars based on their status in the minds of fans. In addition, Eascre also provides similar sampling surveys.

However, the list sent by CAA to Ronald was only divided into grades, without the ranking of individual stars. Because one-third of the list is CAA's clients, they cannot be partial to one over the other.

Sean Connery?

The first place is always the former 007, Sean Connery. He was the first star signed by CAA, and he always occupied the largest office in the office building except for the partners.

Ronald felt that Connery was not suitable for the role of a Wall Street banker. After all, he was a New Yorker, not a Scottish gentleman.

pass.

Harrison Ford?

Ronald remembered that in order to force Bruce Willis to give up his privileges, he even held a party for Harrison. Harrison Ford expressed his desire to work with him once. This role of Jack Traynor has a lot of romantic love scenes, maybe he will try it?

aybe.

Warren Beatty?

Maybe he can't play a banker?

Jack Nicholson?

A bit too evil.

Michael Douglas?

Well, he is not bad, but he just played a Wall Street banker. I wonder if he is willing to repeat it?

Ronald looked through the list one by one, carefully evaluating each one. There are fewer A-level male stars, but more A-level female stars.

Meryl Streep

Jane Fonda

...

Anyway, female stars can generally play roles that are a dozen years younger than their actual age. These veteran female stars can also play roles like Tess and Catherine, who are just thirty years old.

Michelle Pfeiffer?

Hmm... The star status of female stars is actually much lower than that of male stars. The current A-level female stars generally only have one-tenth to one-fifth of the pay of male stars of the same level.

Therefore, actors who have played the leading role in two or three successful movies will also be listed as A-level female stars. Of course, the threshold of this A-level is a little lower than that of male stars.

I didn't expect that Michelle Pfeiffer, who I haven't seen for a long time, can now be included in the A-level list.

Names with beautiful faces and figures passed under Ronald's fingers one by one.

"Hmm? Huh..."

Ronald suddenly found a familiar name. Is she also an A-level star?