Hollywood Director 1992

After the Cannes Film Festival awards ceremony, Link was invited to attend a reception held at the Palais des Festivals et des Congrès.

He attended with the beautiful Sophie Marceau.

At the party, Link also met several international filmmakers.

Including Italian director Giuseppe Tornatore, best known for *Cinema Paradiso*, Taiwanese director Edward Yang, famous French director Luc Besson, famous actors Ge You, Catherine Deneuve, and Isabelle Adjani.

And Director Zhang, who wore a long face and didn't seem to like him much.

He talked with several international filmmakers about cooperation, saying that if their film projects lacked funding, they could try Guess Entertainment, which would be happy to cooperate with everyone.

Except for Director Zhang, several international filmmakers responded positively.

During the conversation, he heard that director Luc Besson's new film *Léon: The Professional* was also participating in the Cannes Film Festival, but it was not participating in the film award selection.

Hearing about *Léon: The Professional*, he expressed his desire to see it.

After watching the film in the screening room, he offered $4.5 million to buy the film's theatrical and video distribution rights in North America.

The film's production cost was $16 million, and it has not yet been released, so the box office situation is unknown.

The $4.5 million copyright was the highest offer among all distribution companies, and director Luc Besson readily agreed.

After finalizing the cooperation, Link came to Paris to sign the copyright contract and stayed in Sophie Marceau's apartment for two days and two nights before flying back to the United States.

After the close of the Cannes Film Festival, news that Link's new film had won the Palme d'Or for Best Film was widely reported by the American media.

At the same time, it also caused heated discussions in the Hollywood film circle.

Many people did not understand how Link, the famous 'garbage film director,' could have his film recognized by the Cannes Film Festival jury and win the highest award.

This was very unscientific.

Some media people suspected that the Cannes Film Festival's selection criteria had declined, and Link had picked up the Palme d'Or by chance.

Others speculated that Link had spent a lot of money on public relations during the film festival to buy the Palme d'Or, after all, he was worth over a billion dollars and didn't lack money.

Many people were curious about what Link's new film was about and why it could win this award.

To this end, many media reporters ran to interview the chairman of the jury of this year's Cannes Film Festival, the famous American film actor and director Clint Eastwood.

Director Eastwood briefly answered the reporters' questions in the interview.

He said that Link's new film was a classic, and whether it was the plot design or the use of shots, colors, editing, visual effects, etc., they all reached an extremely high level, and awarding him the Palme d'Or was out of respect for film art.

Clint Eastwood won the Academy Award for Best Director in 1993 for *Unforgiven*. He is a representative of Hollywood's powerful actors and directors, with a reputation and status in the entertainment industry that belongs to the highest level. His reputation and prestige are very high, and he would not speak carelessly.

Hearing Eastwood's praise of Link's new film, everyone became even more curious about how high the level of this film was?

Even Quentin called Link to ask him what this film was about and why it could win the Palme d'Or?

Link said it was a secret.

Guess Entertainment also announced the release date of *Se7en* at the right time, July 15th, welcoming everyone to come and give their opinions on the film and see if the Cannes Film Festival's selection was fair and just.

After returning from France, Link continued filming *The Butterfly Effect* in the Vancouver studio.

"Scene 312, take one!"

This scene was filmed after the protagonist experienced his second time travel, finding Kelly again. His first love, Kelly, had become a prostitute with an ugly scar on her face, and her life was very bleak.

In order to play the role of a prostitute well, Renée Zellweger found two low-level streetwalkers to help her during filming, to understand their lives, learn their way of speaking, body shape, and walking posture, as well as occupational diseases, etc.

During the performance, Renée put on makeup and swayed from side to side when walking, twisting her hips randomly, immediately transforming from a sunny and cheerful Texan girl into a low-class prostitute who had been tortured by life.

"Are you sure you don't want your wallet?"

Kelly picked up Evan's wallet in the restaurant and asked.

"I don't need it. Where I'm going, I don't need a wallet."

Evan said with tears in his eyes.

"What, are you going to change everyone's life again? Is that right?"

Kelly rudely left the wallet on the table and said loudly, "Maybe next time you wake up, you'll be in some mansion, while I'm doing even lower business in Tijuana."

"You know I'm fed up with all this. Every time I try to help someone, everything goes wrong."

Evan said painfully.

"Is that so? Don't give up so early. You've already done so much to me. Why don't you go back in time and save Mrs. Hapbell and her baby?" Kelly said fiercely, "Maybe that way Lenny wouldn't have gone crazy and killed Tommy, and my family wouldn't have been destroyed. No, why not just go back to when I was seven years old and just kill me for the things my dad did to me in front of the camera."

Kelly staggered to her feet, picked up the wallet, threw it at Evan, and turned to leave the restaurant.

Evan covered his face, looking pained.

"Cut!"

"Good."

Even though he had called cut, Leonardo still sat in his seat, crying, with a depressed and painful expression.

It was as if he was unable to extricate himself from the role.

This was also the result of Link's deliberate guidance over the past month.

Under his guidance, Leonardo and several other leading actors had an increasingly deep understanding of their roles, and their sense of immersion became deeper and deeper. Their emotional expression was very full during the performance.

This state made their performances more and more natural and smooth, and their acting skills became higher and higher. Many scenes were completed in one take, and it was almost impossible to find any problems.

However, there were also disadvantages. The leading actors were too deeply immersed in their roles, which led to an increasingly depressing atmosphere in the crew. When communicating with them, it was like communicating with the film characters.

There is no mistake in every word and every meaning!

This situation was especially serious with Leonardo.

In the early stages of filming, Leonardo was the most active member of the crew, often playing and joking with the cast and crew, which made people very uneasy.

When filming reached 1/3, as the plot developed, Leonardo gradually became melancholy, and the situation became more and more serious in the end.

According to the second male lead, Mark Wahlberg, sometimes Leonardo would be alone in his room, staring blankly at the script, like Evan looking at his diary, which made people feel creepy.

For this reason, Link had to arrange for a psychologist to supervise the situation of the leading actors on the set to prevent them from becoming too immersed in their roles.

Excessive immersion would make the actors' reactions become sluggish, and it would take a long time to adjust during scene transitions, which would also be detrimental to the crew's filming.

"Leo, are you okay?"

Link sat down in front of Little Leo to chat.

"I'm fine."

Leonardo wiped the corners of his eyes.

"You should know that we're filming a movie, right?"

Link poured a cup of hot cocoa and pushed it in front of Little Leo.

"I know."

Leonardo nodded, holding the hot coffee, staring blankly at the hot mist coming out of the cup, "I just remembered when I was a kid, when I was eight years old, a very good friend of mine accidentally fell into the swimming pool and never got up again. I was wondering if his death had anything to do with me. If I had been there that day, advised him not to go into the water, or called for help in time, he might not have died. He would have gone to college, married and had children, and grown up happily."

"Your way of thinking is wrong. Buddha said that life and death are impermanent. Everyone's life from birth to death is predetermined. Even if you can save him once, you can't save him a second time.

In addition, his death is also a warning to the people around him to stay away from dangerous areas, not to do dangerous things, and to cherish life. If his death did not warn everyone, you and other children would go to deep water to take risks and do some life-threatening things. You want to save him, which is equivalent to murdering other people."

"Ah, this..."

Leonardo was stunned by his words. He wanted to refute, but found that what he said made a lot of sense.

After someone drowned in the swimming pool when he was a child, the community closed the public swimming pool. They lost a place to play in the water, and at the same time, he also became afraid of water and did not dare to swim in too deep places. Other children also had this situation.

If there was no drowned child, would they be afraid of water? Would they go to deep water to take risks?

"Let go of the helping mentality and respect the fate of others. This is the healthiest attitude to life."

Link patted him on the shoulder.

Leonardo nodded silently, looked at Link's leaving back, and suddenly admired Link a little. This guy was only 22 years old, but he was as mature as a wise and knowledgeable elder. This kind of person was worth learning from.

After Leonardo adjusted, the crew continued filming.

Since this film did not have many big scenes and did not involve many scenes and special effects, it was very simple for him as an old filmmaker to shoot.

In addition, the actors in the crew were very helpful, and Link spent less than two months filming all the scenes of *The Butterfly Effect*.

After filming the movie, Link took the crew back to Los Angeles to have a good rest for a few days and take the time to accompany his girlfriends.