Exploiting Hollywood 1980

"Hey, he still refuses to marry a girl from our ethnic group..."

On the rooftop of a high-rise building in New York, an old man got off the helicopter, and next to him was the assistant who greeted him. After hearing what Ronald asked his son Michael to say, Kirk Douglas stood on the tarmac in a daze. After a moment, he waved his hand to dismiss the messenger.

Kirk Douglas is over seventy, but still full of energy and traveling. He came to his room through the exclusive elevator and called Michael Ovitz of CAA.

"Michael, your golden boy rejected my offer..."

"I just said that he is not old enough to get married yet." Ovitz was not convinced by this old-school blind date method at the beginning. Today's audience is much more tolerant of men and women living together before marriage than in Hollywood back then.

Nowadays, the cohabitation of male and female celebrities is equivalent to marriage in the days of Hays Code. Breaking up now is equivalent to divorce back then. After President Franklin of the Donkey Party took office, the tax laws were very unfriendly to entertainers, and the social atmosphere was very conservative.

There are even two tabloids in Los Angeles, which are famous for discovering the romantic affairs of celebrities, and then colluding with several major studios to blackmail their stars, making them obey and make movies they don't like.

This trend continued until the 1950s, when Ingrid Bergman's marital infidelity was brought to the attention of the Senate. However, after the Vietnam War, urbanization intensified. Men and women left their families to work in the city, and living together before marriage gradually became normal. This is also reflected in the plots of Hollywood movies.

Therefore, after people's acceptance increases, they will no longer be so harsh on celebrities. As long as you don't openly make other girlfriends or get caught during the period when your relationship is officially open, there will be no problem.

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Besides, since the current commander-in-chief took office, the tax burden on people in the entertainment industry has been greatly reduced. Everyone is a wealthy person. After getting married in California, the spouses have joint ownership of half of the property. Under this law, the old age will be used again. He used a trick to win over Ronald, but in fact Michael Ovitz was not optimistic about it at all.

"Are there any beautiful girls among our ethnic group?" Kirk Douglas became stubborn as he got older. He didn't think it was because there was something wrong with his strategy, or because he thought Jewish girls were not good-looking.

"No more... Annette Bening has become the best resource in the industry in recent years."

"How about you take a look and see if there are any beautiful girls from other ethnic groups who match his aesthetics. As long as we provide some convenience, it will be the same for her to join Judaism."

"Mr. Douglas, this is too far-fetched. I think Ronald likes money and awards more than beautiful women..." Ovitz was anxious. What's the point of just giving away beautiful women? He still had half of his words left unsaid. In fact, perhaps what Ronald valued more was the freedom from being manipulated by others.

"As long as he has pursuits, there will be weaknesses. Give him more conveniences, just like we give Steven (Spielberg) more 'good scripts' to open the door to convenience."

Kirk Douglas consciously found Ronald's weakness and wanted to give him more dramatic and literary scripts just like he did when he guided Spielberg to the "right path". As long as he has the idea of ​​pursuing an Oscar, he must be able to control him to a certain extent (which is exactly what Ovitz can do).

Also, it would be better if Ronald's desire to win the Best Director Oscar is overwhelming. In major studios controlled by Jews, many of these films appeared to be critically acclaimed, but were extremely commercially risky.

Feed him more scripts like this. As long as he shoots two money-losing movies in a row, he will definitely have various financing difficulties for his next movies, so much so that he will have to turn to these old Jewish men.

"That sounds good..." Ovitz hung up.

This old man's ideas are stubborn and old-fashioned. It's not like the days when big studios held big-name directors and stars under five-year or even ten-year contracts. He owns the largest agency in Hollywood, and he doesn't dare to say it's 100%. The land can secretly allocate resources and guide these directors to make the movies they want them to make.

Just like Spielberg, I did let him fulfill his wishes in many projects and used many actors signed by CAA. However, the agency always has a weakness for directors and stars, and that is the law in the contract. If you go too far to protect artists, they will most likely go to another agency for the next contract.

However, Kirk Douglas's idea does have merit. Being able to exert influence on the director is always the most convenient shortcut to gaining power in Hollywood. Compared with a studio owner who has his own B-movie hair channel and is well-funded, Ronald, who doesn't have enough money to make big productions and needs CAA, is much more useful.

However, there are operational problems with Old Kirk's method. This year, Ronald has been shown a little bit of CAA's influence on Oscar nominations, and he should be given a stronger shock next.

As for Jewish people controlling Hollywood, that is an unrealistic delusion. If they really have that ability, they might as well control Hollywood themselves...

No matter what religion or ethnicity, they are just excuses to hide their shame. Kirk Douglas himself, not for his own purposes, is now able to accept non-Jewish beauties to influence the director?

…

Ronald knew nothing about this. He hurried to George Lucas's ranch. In the house built by his ex-wife Martha, he met Industrial Light \u0026 Magic, employees of Pixar Studios, and computers with Pixar logos.

"Is this the computer that can render particles?" Ronald touched the computer with a dark green curved shell, curious.

Each of these computers is larger and heavier than the IB he uses. Pixar engineers call it a workstation. The computer screen has a color screen that looks well calibrated, which is several times larger than the office monitor.

There is also a computer without a monitor, and the mainframe is as big as a double-door refrigerator. There are also a few words "renderan" on it. According to the engineers, it is specially used to render the final picture results. Those special effects such as lightning and fireballs are transformed from zeros and ones in the program to realistic pictures that the audience can see.

"Let me show you something good..." Alvy Ray Smith, executive vice president of Pixar, smiled and opened a file on a "Pixar special effects workstation".

"XO Jr." Ronald read the title.

Sure enough, a white lamp appeared on the monitor of the workstation, and a colorful ball rolled over. The lamp shook its lampshade and stared at the ball, just like a person shaking his head and staring at it when he is curious.

"Is this all computer-generated? There is no real shot?" Ronald saw something wrong. Whether it was the lamp or the ball, the color tones were very consistent, which was completely different from the color in real life.

"Yes, our Pixar slogan is that everything is rendered." Alvy Ray Smith smiled and answered. Many directors were surprised when they saw the small lamp they demonstrated for the first time.

However, some people enthusiastically asked if it could be made into a feature film, while others were defensive and found fault with Pixar. Like Ronald, who saw the key at a glance and was interested in many technical details, there were only one or two people besides Lucas.

The small lamp also had a child, the small lamp, and they played with it like a father and son playing with a ball. Finally, the little desk lamp was naughty and jumped on the ball, flattening it. Although there were two desk lamps, the coordination of the movements and the emotions conveyed were no different from a real-life performance.

Ronald lay on the table, staring at the monitor intently. This thing was really familiar, and the demonstration was very fascinating. In the future, can we make a movie with a computer without actors?

"We can..." Vice President Alvi came to introduce Ronald. Unexpectedly, Ronald was faster than him and pressed the shortcut key combination to restart the animation.

"Uh, have you seen this computer before? Did you go to the computer graphics exhibition last year?" Alvi felt that Ronald's movements were more skillful than his own, and were almost the same as those animation engineers who worked every day under him.

"Ah... that's not important..." Ronald didn't quite understand why he had this feeling. He pointed to the small desk lamp on the screen. How did you model it? How did you calculate these light and shadow relationships?

The magic of this animation is not only that all the characters were created by computer engineers out of thin air. And there is nothing wrong with the light.

The lamps emit light, and the two lamps are still twisting their lampshades like people. Ronald, who is a photographer, can see clearly the two spotlight sources, the diffuse reflection caused by the table and the wall, and the brightness and saturation difference of the colors on the colored ball when the light shines on them. There is no mistake in the logical relationship.

"This is all developed by our engineers, who develop software from scratch bit by bit."

"Can you take me to see it?" Ronald asked.

"Of course, we have a team next door working on George's new film. We can go and see how they work." Vice President Alvy Ray Smith was very happy to see Ronald so interested.

The retired president of Apple, Steve Jobs, is a boastful person and has no good face for employees who disagree with him. He said that he would buy some shares for 5 million and inject 5 million, but in this purely money-burning industry, it would not make many splashes.

Steve Jobs was unwilling to continue investing. He also had a new company to develop a so-called computer to compete with Apple, his old company that kicked him out. So for Pixar, he just asked them not to update more hardware, but to sell the software they had already built together with the latest graphics workstations to make some money to keep going.

Jobs was a computer businessman, while Ronald was a film artist. In comparison, artists must be more willing to invest in a distant dream.

"This is a modeling engineer," a bearded employee sat in front of the computer, using the mouse and keyboard to rotate and scale a colorless three-dimensional model that looked like a ceramic cup.

Every time you drag and scale, the monitor will freeze for a while before it can show the scaled appearance. It refreshes frame by frame, as if the computing power of the workstation is not enough.

"Shxt," the bearded man cursed. When he demonstrated it to Ronald, the whole software crashed because he dragged and dropped too fast. A window popped up on the screen with error messages.

"I haven't saved it yet, damn it."

"Well, we can take a look at that. After the model is built, various special effects are added there." Vice President Alvi quickly covered up and took Ronald to see the subsequent processes. Finally, they came to the computer that looked like a refrigerator. "Finally, the model was added with various special effect equations, and it was rendered here to look like what you see."

"Interesting..." Ronald looked at them one by one, and they all felt familiar, as if he could use those software.

"Are you selling these computers?" Ronald asked.

"Ah, yes, yes, we not only sell hardware, but also software. We guarantee to teach you, and we can also provide training for the entire process. You can recruit some animators, computer engineers, and programmers, and you can make a small table lamp yourself in half a year."

"Then give me one of each." Ronald pointed to the different computers used in the process, and finally pointed to the "refrigerator". Give me one of that, too. How much is it?

"That one is not for sale. We only have two available. If you have the finished files, you can burn them on a CD and bring them here or to our office in Los Angeles. We will charge 20% off the rendering time for customers who buy computers."

Ronald was deeply shocked when he heard that the computer used for rendering cost tens of thousands of dollars per second. But what they said made sense. Rendering is not successful in one go. They have to debug the parameters repeatedly and charge according to the generated results. This price is already very cheap.

It seems that it is not so easy to make a movie that can be shown in theaters in a short period of time. In addition to various R\u0026D and engineers, they also have to cultivate various process management talents. This time, I will buy some and take it back as an investment to familiarize myself with those flame and lightning special effects. I will try to recruit people myself.

After writing a check, Ronald did not mention the investment, but ordered a few workstations first.

"Ronald, are you interested in learning more about our Pixar..." Vice President Alvy was still there promoting. Buying a computer is of course good, but investing in shares is what he wants most.

"Hmm... Hmm..." Ronald agreed absent-mindedly. He was not stupid. Obviously, these software were not stable enough. He had no idea whether he could make movies with computers. Buy some back to do feasibility research.

"What is this?" Ronald saw a corner of the office, with several animation original paintings and a storyboard. On it was a monkey with a big smile, and the anthropomorphic expression was very vivid.

"This is a cooperative project between us and Shogakukan Publishing House in Japan. They provide the story and original paintings, and we provide the technical force. We are preparing to co-produce a "Journey to the West."

"Ah?" Ronald thought, don't lie to me, isn't this the story of Journey to the West? He was also treated to watching the animation filmed by the Fine Arts Film Studio in Xujiahui.

"This monkey is a circus master and magician. He started from China and went all the way west to learn knowledge from the master in northern India."

Vice President Alvi was still there introducing, "This is the first animation jointly produced by Japan and the United States, and it was shot with the latest technology. We made some storyboards. Are you interested in seeing it?"

Due to the insufficient development of technology and the insufficient running speed of computers, this Japan-US joint venture movie has been delayed for three years, and the Japanese side is about to withdraw. If Ronald can inject capital into this project, it can also greatly alleviate Pixar's current dilemma.

"I still need to study it first..." Ronald shirked his responsibility and took the two original paintings of "Journey to the West" given by the vice president and went back to think about it.

"You still want to deceive me, Journey to the West is obviously a Chinese story, and they have made several movies and TV series. A Sino-US joint venture is more like it."