Made in Hollywood

"There was a special celebratory party after the performance of The Anne Frank Diaries."

Some words are only suitable to be said among Jews, especially Duke's position after Mel Gibson's incident was very clear, so Natalie did not have much scruples when he said it, "Many Jewish celebrities living in New York have When I attended the party, I saw Mrs. Leah at the party, and although she only talked a few words, her charisma was very admirable."

"Thank you!" Duke nodded.

When talking on the phone, he also heard from his mother that a large number of Jewish celebrities from New York attended the end of the performance of "The Diary of Anne Frank". When the performance ended, because the atmosphere in the theater was too warm, the crew had to continue. Four times on stage for the curtain call, the time lasted for more than 40 minutes.

Duke is not at all surprised by this situation. Who made this "Anne Frank's Diary" much more influential than "Schindler's List", and Jews sometimes cannot use ordinary people's thinking To measure, especially those who have lived through the war years, whether they have persecution paranoia or whether they like to stick together, these people can always burst out with great enthusiasm and support for certain people or things. .

Maybe it was in "Anne Frank Diaries" that Natalie Portman won the favor of some people.

After all, there are too few actresses like her, and there are no less people or events around her than other Hollywood actresses, but the mainstream media hardly reports her negative news. It would be too much to say that her public relations team is very strong. strong...

When the topic of Duke and Natalie came to an end, George Lucas suddenly asked, "I heard that you are going to adapt Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings" trilogy?"

"It's already in preparation."

As time went on, the news gradually spread among some high-ranking people in the industry. Duke didn't need to deny it either. "A lot of people on my team are currently in New Zealand."

Lucas nodded, "No wonder you refused to be the director of Star Wars, so you chose a more difficult project."

Duke smiled but said nothing, George Lucas himself publicly admitted. The world structure of Star Wars borrows heavily from The Lord of the Rings.

Natalie at the same table was a little surprised. She did not expect that the director sitting next to her had rejected Star Wars. In her knowledge, how many directors in this world could refuse the position of Star Wars director?

Even herself, she pretended to be naive, cute, and showed her precociousness appropriately, and it took a lot of effort to get Lucas's approval. When receiving Amirada's invitation, she had frequent insomnia for a whole week, not nervous, but excited, because she knew it. Padmé Amidala is enough for her to realize a large part of her ambitions and desires, and she will become a female star that the whole Hollywood and even the whole world admires!

She looked at Duke, and combined with the reports she had seen in the media in the past, she determined that this is a director with a very firm goal and mind.

Said a few words about the topic of their respective films. Duke looked at the time and was the first to leave the restaurant. There is other work to do in the afternoon.

"I won't interrupt your work." Naomi Watts was also about to leave. "Goodbye, Duke. I'll come and see you when I have time."

"I'm always welcome."

Watching Naomi Watts get on the battery car and go away. Duke turned and walked into the studio. Panney Kelly, who had just flown in from Los Angeles, and Doug Walter, the head of distribution for Warner Bros., were already waiting in the adjacent office.

The two sides simply greeted, and Panney Kelly pointed out the window, "Is that person Naomi Watts just now?"

"Yeah." Duke nodded and sat on the chair opposite her. "She's on vacation, stop by and see."

"She is in the limelight now, and the topic is..."

"and many more!"

Hearing this, Duke directly interrupted the PR's words, "Pani, this is not a niche movie, but a summer science fiction movie."

"Duke, I don't mean anything else." Panney Kelly said innocently, "That kind of propaganda can only be used once in a while, and it won't work if you use it too much."

"So, that was the first and last time."

Duke knew very well that propaganda methods like the one he and Catherine Zeta Jones did in "Chicago" can only be used once, and if they did it again, it would be causing trouble, and any fool could see that there was a problem.

The most important thing is that he is going to return to the summer program, making sci-fi action movies, not the niche genre of musicals.

Doug Walter sat next to him and saw that the discussion between Duke and Panney Kelly was temporarily over. Then he said, "Duke, can you tell me the specific completion time of the film now?"

Because of the relationship between the actor's training progress, Duke has not determined the real completion time of the film, which also makes Warner Bros.'s publicity work a little behind.

Duke thought about the training situation of Keanu Reeves, combined with the plan formulated from the perspective of the greatest difficulty, after thinking for a while, he said, "The beginning of April next year will not exceed the end of April at the latest."

"That's in time for the summer season." Doug Walter opened his briefcase, dug out his work log, and read it for a while, "The third weekend of May, judging from the release lists announced by major companies, this weekend will Without a heavyweight film, The Matrix will be released in North America on May 15th, what do you think?"

"You are professionals." Duke has no opinion on this. "The specific release plan is still up to you to make."

"Then the pre-promotion can also start."

Although Warner Bros. and Duke Studios held a press conference for the project, and released a lot of news in conjunction with the audition, there was no systematic publicity on a large scale. Now that the film's release date has been basically determined, the entire publicity plan can also be officially launched.

And Warners have long been prepared. Sarah, a female reporter from the Los Angeles Times, followed Doug Walter and Panney Kelly to Fox Studios.

In the face of Sarah's reporter's microphone, Duke also cooperated to accept the interview. Since the film is still far from being completed, Duke also talked about some brief introductions about the film.

"I started with the assumption about this film that everything and every part of everyone's body today is created by the electronic world, what we see, smell, hear... …”

He picked up the coffee cup and took a sip in front of the camera, "Even what I tasted may be fake, it's just a signal forcibly imposed on us by some forces that manipulate the world."

"If you found this out," Duke asked, looking at the female reporter, "what would you do?"

"Of course it is to reveal the truth to everyone." The female reporter Sarah said very well.

"What if other people don't believe it? They only believe what they see and hear. Even if some people find out, they choose not to believe it. Change often means pain."

The current Duke, who has completely become the prophet in The Matrix, said very bluntly, "Throughout history, since the birth of human civilization, there have been people who have been making unremitting efforts to find the profound meaning of life, and have achieved amazing results. So, in this story, I just want to focus on a small group of people who questioned and got shocking answers. I want their discovery to be the beginning of the story, not the end, which I'm interested in It's how they respond."

Sarah quietly rolled her eyes as she memorized it in the notebook. The director opposite was obviously out of the primary stage of attracting audiences with simple explosions and visual stimulation. After playing with humanistic care and black singing and dancing, she was ready to engage in mysticism. .

However, she understood the purpose of her coming here, temporarily suppressed these thoughts, and asked, "It is said that all the actors in the film will undergo three to four months of hard training?"

"All the main actors must have a certain foundation of kung fu."

Now is not the future, the topic of kung fu is not very attractive in North America, Duke just mentioned it by the way, and then turned to the actors, "This is a problem for the actors, the whole training plan is in a hundred Days or so, and these actors may be doing other films at the same time, what should I tell them? But the end result surprised me because all the actors were willing to make sacrifices and agreed to complete all the hard training. Thank you for the effort and sacrifice, and proud of what they did."

A few other routine questions were asked, and this part of the interview about Duke came to an end.

This is not the first time the two have interviewed and been interviewed. Putting away their work attitude, Sarah asked casually, "When did you believe in mysticism?"

"Believe in mysticism?" Duke shook his head at her. "Just borrowing."

Just like kung fu, as long as it's good for the film, he doesn't care where he comes from or where he comes from.

After the assistants finished packing, Sarah left the office and went to the studio to interview all the leading actors. When there were four people in the office again, Duke suddenly remembered another aspect.

"Doug, do you understand networking?" he asked.

"I know some." Doug Walter looked at Duke strangely. "Influenced by your film, I went to study computer networks."

"Don't you think our propaganda can spread to the computer network?" Duke added, "Film is closely related to computers and the Internet, and most of the users of the Internet are teenagers, who are also the main audience for science fiction films. group."

"Duke, actually..." Doug Walter laughed. "We've teamed up with Yahoo, and we're already working on a publicity strategy."

Duke nodded. Although he didn't take it seriously, how could media companies fail to see some of the convenience of the Internet?

He turned to the other side, "Pani, is my personal website finished? I think it's time for it to work." (To be continued ~^~)