Exploiting Hollywood 1980.

Chapter 1309 Pink Alliance and City Heroes

"How is it? Is it suitable?" Tom Hanks chuckled and handed over a synopsis of the script.

"Where is the right place?" Ronald was full of doubts. He took a look and saw the cover of the book "A League of Their Own". He couldn't help but blurt out, "What is this?" "It was in 1943. The European and Pacific battlefields were raging. The Major League Baseball could not find enough suitable players, so a women's baseball league was formed. It actually sold a lot of tickets..."

"How come I don't know?" Ronald was skeptical. Are you kidding me? I've never heard of American women playing professional baseball. Besides, this casting is too...

"I don't know either. This is what director Penny Marshall learned from a documentary in 1987. Later, she worked with the director and screenwriter of the documentary to write the script. I like this story very much. Although the Pink League was disbanded in 1959, the spirit of this kind of women is very interesting. The movie starts with Dottie Hinson, the catcher of the Pink League's Peaches Team, being invited to participate in the memorial event..."

"Then why choose these female stars? What role do you play?" Ronald still couldn't be sure that this was not an April Fool's joke.

"I play their coach. Have you noticed that these female stars have one thing in common?" Tom Hanks looked at Ronald with a smile.

"Yes... No, no, is there or not?" Ronald was sweating guiltily.

"Yes, they are all very strong. Look at this still from one of their previous movies. They all have strong arms and hips, like a baseball player..."

"Oh, oh...that's right..." Ronald took out a handkerchief and wiped the sweat off his face.

"Hey, what's wrong with you? Why are you still sweating in this weather?"

"Ah, nothing. I drank too much last night... and now I'm still a little... ahem, it's not important. The women's baseball team has so many players, right? Who else are you going to ask to act?"

Ronald tried again. If Hanks was trying to play a joke on him, he would be exposed.

"What do you think? I think these female stars have become a hot topic. Hollywood female stars co-starred in the all-star women's professional baseball team that year... If you can get more stars to star in it, it would be even better."

"Um, what do you think of Annette Bening and Kim Basinger? They are very popular right now..."

"That doesn't seem to work. Bening and Basinger don't look like female athletes, and they're not the type to wear baseball uniforms. Of course, if you want to specify, we can go talk to Penny together..."

Ronald was completely relieved. "No, you're right. This is a movie about women's independent spirit. We want female baseball players, not baseball players' girlfriends..."

"By the way, why isn't Penny here?"

"Hey, she's not in good condition right now, I'd like you to meet her..."

……

"Oh, Ronald..." Penny Marshall has suffered a lot of unfair treatment in the past two years (her good works have not been nominated for Oscars). She does not have the status of Barbara Streisand and the help of the Jews to speak out, so she can only bear it silently.

This "A League of Their Own" made her suffer a lot of nerve damage. At the beginning, the film was sold to 20th Century Fox, but encountered resistance from the top management. When it was about to get the green light, it was put into the circulation library on the grounds that "no one would watch a movie about women playing baseball."

After that, they went to Warner Bros. to sell the film. This time, their senior executives went even further, using sexist language and attacking the script in a nonsensical way, which made Penny Marshall cry on the spot.

She had no choice but to take the script back to Fox to try her luck, but this time she encountered excessive things. They deprived her of her directing rights and replaced her with David Anspaugh, the director famous for shooting the basketball movie "Slam Dunk".

Penny Marshall didn't sign her name on the script originally because she was the director and didn't want to overshadow the screenwriter's reputation, so now she gets even less.

She then directed other films, but the projects encountered problems and were delayed. Many female stars were unable to take part in the films due to schedule issues, so she regained her directorial power, but without a distributor and a leading lady.

Penny Marshall went to Sony Columbia to try her luck again, and this time she was lucky. Gubel liked her new movie "Awakening" very much and insisted on finding the female star Debra Winger, who had been resting for many years, to play the heroine, Catcher Dottie.

Just when everything was going perfectly, Gubel hired singer Madonna to play a supporting role, a female taxi driver turned center fielder, and she started a conflict with Debra Winger again.

Debra Winger was dissatisfied with Madonna's acting skills and felt that it would lower the level of the entire film and ruin her plans to return to Hollywood, so she had to choose between the two.

However, Madonna's current fame would bring a lot of free publicity to the film, and she took the initiative to reduce her salary to $2 million to act in the film, which was a great bargain for the film company. As a result, the filming was at a stalemate again, and it was about to be postponed or cancelled. Tom Hanks could not sit still, and took the opportunity of Ronald's fame in Hollywood after winning the award to ask for help.

"What's in it for you?" Ronald looked at Tom Hanks. He didn't believe that he would work so hard for a feminist movie.

"Me? I don't have a very handsome face. When I was a child, my mother told me that I had to learn to tell jokes. Only if I make women laugh can I get a girlfriend. So I have always been a comedian in Hollywood..."

Tom Hanks is not a star like Tom Cruise. His popularity with the audience depends on the roles he plays. Only when the audience identifies with the story and likes his role can he become a top actor in Hollywood.

The film, about a group of female baseball players and the only male coach, is a great character for the audience to like. Hanks didn't want to let it go.

"Of course, they also paid me 5 million for the film..."

"Hey, I agreed, but she doesn't want to join," Ronald crossed out Meg Tilly's name.

"As you say..." Hanks was overjoyed. With Ronald's appeal among female stars, they would definitely be willing to come.

The next day Ronald had his first meeting with Hanks and Penny Marshall.

"You should have come to see me earlier, Penny...Diane says hello to you." Ronald said.

Penny Marshall shrugged and said she had no idea this would go wrong.

"Anyway, I won't interfere with your casting and creative freedom, but it's better for Madonna to stay because she's so popular now..." Ronald said that he is still the angel producer who respects the creative freedom of artists.

"Then let Debra Winger go..." With the confidence of Ronald's support, Penny Marshall no longer tolerated the troublemaker on the set who had conflicts with Shirley MacLaine in the past, and directly confirmed the lineup of several leading actors.

Brooke Shields is tall, so she plays the role of a strong hitter as a left fielder.

Diane can try pitching first.

Demi Moore replaced Debra Winger in the role of Catcher Dottie.

……

Because of Ronald's endorsement and participation, Sony's CEO Guber was overjoyed. He wanted to snatch the project back from Ronald's preferred TriStar Pictures and offered to give Ronald some shares of the first round of investment.

This is not because Guber has a guilty conscience, but because many female stars heard that the movie was produced by Ronald and was a baseball movie about the independent spirit of women. They knew it was an opportunity to become famous, so they all expressed their willingness to take a pay cut to star in the movie and create an all-star cast.

Demi Moore took the initiative to reduce her salary to 1.8 million, Diane said she was willing to act for 1.5 million, Brooke Shields said she was willing to act for 1.2 million, and Madonna couldn't compete with the three female stars for the top spot, so she took the initiative to reduce her salary to 1 million, just to get an important role. Only Debra Winger, who was kicked out, insisted on taking 2 million in compensation according to the contract.

Everyone set aside time to receive special training from the university baseball team coach William E. Hughes, learning the correct posture for pitching, catching and baserunning.

Ronald finalized the project and turned a corner to go to Mike Medavoy's office at TriStar Pictures.

"I heard that this project was originally intended for me?" Mike Medavoy said with a bitter face.

"I'm here now, and I have a good project. It depends on whether you dare to take it..."

"Do you have anything else?"

"That's it. I'll make a phone call..."

Michael Douglas rushed over immediately after receiving the call. His new movie "Falling Down" lacked a courageous distributor and was about to be sold to HBO as a TV movie.

"Michael, your movie will have no distributor?" Mike Medavoy didn't believe it.

"You'll understand once you read it," Michael Douglas handed over the script.

"Oh, my God, your movie is so exciting..." Mike Medavoy exclaimed, it was hard to tell whether it was admiration or surprise, as soon as he read the script.

If "A League of Legends" is a film that praises the bright side of American society and is inspiring, then "City Heroes" simply faces all the dark sides of America.

It looks like a common Hollywood theme, the plight of a middle-aged man, but once you look at the details, it's all magical realism irony.

William Foster was an engineer at a military-industrial enterprise, but he was fired because of the end of the Cold War. After that, he was very depressed and pretended to go to work every day. His wife divorced him, and he was not invited to his youngest daughter's birthday party.

William was stuck in traffic, and he was so upset that he left his car and walked into a Korean-owned grocery store, hoping to find some change to make a phone call. However, the Korean-owned store owner made things difficult for him, refused to give him change, and insisted that he buy something.

The items in the Korean grocery store were very expensive, and William refused to give in. The Korean proprietress picked up a baseball bat to defend herself, and William snatched the bat and smashed the store.

Later, when he was resting in the park, gangsters came to rob his briefcase again. He picked up a baseball bat and beat the gangsters away, but stole their pistols instead. Then he gave the briefcase to a beggar who was even worse off than him. There was nothing in the briefcase except his lunch.

William went to a fast food restaurant to order a breakfast burger. After waiting in line for a long time, the waiter told him that it was already lunch time. The burger he bought was much smaller than the one in the advertisement, and the food was not right. Because of an argument with the waiter, he pulled out a pistol and fired randomly.

He then called his ex-wife through a phone booth to ask to attend his daughter's birthday, and his ex-wife called the police.

William passed by a bank and saw another black man protesting at the door because he was denied a loan. He was taken away by the LAPD. Before leaving, the black man told William not to forget him.

William is completely out of control and goes to a weapons store, where the homophobic owner sells him a rocket launcher.

On the way to his ex-wife's house to celebrate his daughter's birthday, the road was blocked again because of road construction. William was so angry that he jumped out of the car and scolded these people for digging and repairing the road for the government budget. In a rage, he blew up the construction site with a rocket launcher.

Finally, facing the gunpoint of a retiring police officer who came to arrest him, he asked: "Am I a bad guy?" and tricked the police officer into shooting him.

All the scenes in this movie are about the infuriating things that an ordinary white American encounters, such as divorce, child support, Korean grocery stores that are too smart and can't apply for loans, hamburgers that are much smaller than advertised, digging on the road and wasting money, and the ubiquitous traffic jams in Los Angeles...

All of these happened to one person, it's really maddening...

But it is precisely because of these things that people feel sympathy for William, an engineer who worked in a military-industrial enterprise, which was once a reassuring protector of Americans, and became unemployed due to the end of the Cold War.

However, this movie is somewhat inconsistent with the current social trend. This is also the reason why a big star like Michael Douglas is willing to play the leading actor William, but no distributor is willing to release it.

"Your movie..." Mike McDavoy pondered for a moment.

"You're not scared, are you?" Ronald deliberately provoked him. "If there is anyone in Hollywood who can respect the creative freedom of artists and not care about other interference, it's you and the original United Artists and Orion..."

"And you, are you investing too?" Mike Medavoy turned the tables on Ronald.

"Okay, but I have to change the project company..." Ronald thought to himself, this movie will definitely have audiences, but we can't do marketing too aggressively. In order to prevent the protest army, we still need to do some technical processing.

"Okay, I can distribute this movie on behalf of TriStar Pictures. Are you the director?"

"Ha, no..." Ronald looked at Douglas.

"Joel Schumacher..." Michael Douglas immediately named his preferred candidate.

"For the movie Pink Shoes, even though many female stars took pay cuts, the cost still exceeded 40 million U.S. dollars, and they had to rebuild a baseball field. Except for Michael, this movie..." Seeing that he was still hesitating, Ronald immediately told him the most important KPI assessment indicator for him.

"I know him, that's it. I'll report to President Price." Mike McDavoy thought to himself, I really like this script.

……

"It's that simple? It's done just like that?" After leaving the office, Michael Douglas still couldn't believe it. He had visited many production companies and failed to negotiate the distribution, but Ronald had managed to do it just like that?

"You have to understand Mike McDavoy. He is a producer who has always advocated respecting the creative freedom of artists since the United Artists era. This is the last bastion in Hollywood. You have to press his buttons..."

"Anyway, thank you, Ronald." Michael Douglas extended his hand. "I also heard some gossip among the Jews. You have to be careful..."

Ronald handed the investment documents of the two films to Michelle Cannold and asked him to handle it. He went home and wanted to discuss the news conveyed by Michael Douglas with Richard and Niceta.

"Ring, ring, ring..." Just then, Shinberg from Panasonic Global called.

"I owe you one, Ronald. You convinced Steven, which did a great favor to our tribe."

"Don't say that. I can become a director thanks to you..."

"Hahaha..." Sheenberg laughed heartily. He liked this about Ronald, his nostalgic demeanor of an old-school Hollywood man.

"When will it start shooting? Can I go and see it?" Ronald was also very curious about how Spielberg would make this kind of movie.

"He won't shoot it yet. I want him to shoot another monster movie first. Schindler's List is too depressing. I think he won't have the heart to shoot commercial movies after he finishes it. He should take a break for at least half a year..."

"So amazing?" Ronald also knew that this kind of movie would consume a lot of mental energy, but he didn't expect it to be to this extent.

"By the way, I have something else to ask you. Is that lightning lamp a product of your company?"

"Yes, what, you want to use it?" Ronald thought to himself, is this the reward? He liked this about Simberg, one of the few Jewish executives who liked to give immediate returns.

"It's not that simple. That monster movie uses all kinds of special effects. Can your lightning bolt be used under high-intensity lighting or sunlight?"

"I've been waiting for someone to ask me this question for a long time. Our engineers have been developing a flashlight that can be used for shooting in daylight. The instantaneous power is enough to make the lightning effect visible even under the sun. If you want, I'll have them make it right away..."

(End of this chapter)