Exploiting Hollywood 1980.

Chapter 672 Chapter 3 Special schedule operation

"Ah...hahahaha..."

Aunt Karen didn't react until she saw Tom Cruise and McGillis angrily driving a motorcycle chase on the screen, and the two suddenly kissed each other after a fierce verbal confrontation, and she suddenly burst into laughter .

Aunt Karen was very excited to see the feeling of the two of them rejoicing as friends.Cruise had visited the house once, and she liked the young man very much.She wasn't too interested in the aerial combat shots and the rivalry between the pilots, but this romantic scene got her into it.

"call……"

Ronald was relieved that Top Gun was a high-concept film.If you like it, you like it, if you don't like it, it's hard to like it through the progress of the story.

The young male spectators started yelling as early as the first air battle.

The middle-aged man greatly appreciated the dazzling tactics of the fighter jets. While watching, he discussed with the people next to him the sneak attack tactics that the MiG aircraft stacked and could not be recognized on the radar, and how to deal with Tomcat automatic wings and advanced air-to-air missiles. The MiG has the technological upper hand.

The eyes of the young female audience began to shine when they saw the strong pilots in the bathroom and the volleyball game on the beach.

Only middle-aged female audiences started to really appreciate this movie until this stage.

"Watch every move in my silly lover's game

On this endless sea, the ultimate lover knows no shame

Turn around, go back to some secret place inside

Watching you turn around in slow motion and say...

Take my breath away..."

The love song of the Berlin band, played for the third time in the film.

Because the passionate scenes between the two leading actors and actresses were filmed afterwards, there was no new music for them.Ronald had to play "Take My Breath Away" several times in a row.Whenever Charlie and the Lone Ranger are alone together, this episode plays out.

The young people around didn't feel repetitive or bored at all, and some people hummed softly along with the song.

"call……"

Ronald let out another breath.

This time luck was on his side again.

In order to hedge against the impact of the Challenger wreck, Ronald contacted the Berlin band through a brokerage company.During the interval between their tours, I took the initiative to shoot the MV of this song for them.

More than a month before the film was released, "Take My Breath" began to play strongly on MTV, and the record company and Paramount jointly funded it to hit the charts.

Maybe it's the high quality of the song itself, maybe it's because the MV shot by Ronald is very tempting, and "Take My Breath Away" soon climbed to No.1 on the American charts.

This is the first time the Berlin band has a single to win the charts.

Ronald remembered that when shooting the MV, this MV was to coincide with the release of "Top Gun", so the plot was similar to a movie, with some unimportant movie clips interspersed.

Lead singer Terri Nunn, dressed in a blue jumpsuit like a blue-collar worker, was filmed solo on set at the Mojave Air and Space Port, inside the wreckage of several planes.

The Mojave Air and Space Port is a famous aircraft cemetery. There are many retired fighter jets, bombers, reconnaissance aircraft, etc. of the Navy and Air Force. There are also many old aircraft retired during the Vietnam War.

The band's frontrunners, John Crawford and Rob Brill, were not too pleased.

They single-mindedly sang their own songs, and they were very repulsed by this pop-rock song, which was neither written by Berlin nor composed by Berlin.

However, the popularity of the Berlin band is limited. They do not have the control over their own works that Bruce Springsteen has.Under the pressure of the record company, he had no choice but to agree to release "Take My Breath Away" as the title song in the new album.

As part of the contract, they also have to cooperate with the performance of the MV.So when Ronald was filming the MV, he found that the two did not cooperate.

In order to shoot the MV as soon as possible, we had to separate the little girl lead singer Terri Nunn from their camera as much as possible.Anyway, most audiences who listen to popular music will not notice the difference in band style or original works.

There are only six lyrics sung over and over again, and they are superficial and without connotation. Except that Terri Nunn is very happy to sing, the dissatisfaction of the two creative members is growing day by day.

However, as the band's first chart-topping song, they had to sing this song at every concert when they were touring.

"I don't really care about that. If this song is so popular, I don't care who wrote it."

Ronald's thoughts were pulled back from Terry Nunn's private complaints to himself.

The movie was greatly loved by the audience, and finally defeated the MiG aircraft, and the Lone Ranger and Iceman settled their suspicions. In the end, the Lone Ranger chose to return to Top Gun School as an instructor and reunited with Charlie.

All the stars stood up and applauded.The audience's constant cheers, applause and stomping made them all understand that Ronald's new film will be a hit at the box office.

Tom Cruise, Val Kilmer, Kelly McGillis and others all took to the stage to be cheered by the audience before taking questions from fans.

Others asked if they really knew how to fly fighter jets.Except for Tom Cruise who admitted that he has a pilot's license, the other actors who played the role of the pilot were vague.

Ronald was very happy to see that these people were in the ground cockpit facility designed by Cameron, pretending to speak lines, pretending to be more alike when they were in high-altitude air combat than they are now.

After seeing off Spielberg, Lucas and other big bosses, other young actors and guests, they all went to a nightclub in New York to hold a party to celebrate the success of the premiere.

Ronald trailed behind and got into a limousine with the two producers.

"Is Sid still holding out?" Ronald asked Simpson.

"Yes, I think we should agree with him. The audience's reaction to today's premiere is a great sign of big sales. Now the people's hearts are very high. There is such a movie that allows them to vent their patriotism, which will give the box office a lot of money. A little positive bonus."

"A week early, huh?"

Ronald skillfully took out a bottle of whiskey from the freezer next to him, and gave each of the two producers a glass.

"Ronald, let's do it. Memorial Day is a small schedule. We will release it nationwide a week in advance, and we can take advantage of the situation to turn this small schedule into a big one."

"I just thought it was a little risky."

In the marketing of a movie, the box office in the first week is particularly important, which determines the size of the first audience.Then it depends on the quality of word of mouth.

Sid Ganis, Paramount's distribution manager, came up with a risky proposition.The weekend before Memorial Day, which was originally planned to be a small-scale release, was expanded to a full-scale attack.

Using more than a thousand theaters to open the show, so that for the big weekend of Memorial Day in the second week, word-of-mouth can be used to arouse audiences who are several times higher than previous weekends to watch "Top Gun".

The risk here is that if the audience's word-of-mouth is not as good as expected, then the number of viewers in the second week will be lower than that of the conventional operation.

The word-of-mouth of the movie needs time to ferment. In the first week, the audience still chose to watch the movie based on the marketing operation.Reserving the biggest suspense for the weekend with the largest regular audience is the usual operation of all original movies.

This is a small gamble, but now that the audience's response exceeded expectations when it premiered, the risk of the gamble has been minimized.

"Okay, let's take a gamble." Ronald drank the wine in one gulp.

"Sid," Bruckheimer picked up the phone in the car and dialed Paramount's marketing department, "The feedback from the premiere was very good, Ronald also agreed, and we will follow your plan."

"Okay, let's just watch it!"

Sid on the other end of the phone was very happy and immediately went down to make arrangements.

"In this way, our film review ban will be lifted next weekend." Don Simpson threw over a schedule.

"What do those sons of bitches say?" Ronald picked up the planner sitting on the sofa, with comments from several famous film critics attached to it.

"Ebert gave it 2.5 out of four stars, Sisco gave it three, and most importantly, audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film an average rating of A."

Bruckheimer had already seen it, and he briefly introduced Ronald.

"Hmph, they won't give me four stars anyway." Ronald also knew that the popcorn movie he made was not liked by film critics.

However, what he values ​​most is not the film critics, but the scores of this emerging audience sampling survey company.

Cinema Score is an audience rating survey company founded by founder Ed Mintz.It is because they are dissatisfied with the indiscriminate scoring of movies by film critics, which disrupts their viewing choices, so they came up with a concept to be a pure audience evaluation system.

They will not tell the producers in advance, but they will randomly choose the place themselves, and start random audience evaluation surveys on the first day of the show.

This time, Ed Mintz personally brought people to New York to make the score for the premiere. He wanted to enter Paramount and give them a consultation.

When the painting starts next week, it will secretly appear in any state in America, in any small town, and then do a more rigorous random sampling.The rating given at that time will be more convincing.

Ronald ticked the notebook, indicating that the evaluation was also positive.He went on to read the comments given by two Chicago film critics, who are the vane of the national audience, especially the audiences in the Midwest and Deep South that the two producers are looking for.

The Sun's Roger Ebert said "a film like Top Gun is hard to review because the good parts are very good and the bad parts are very relentless. The melee is definitely the best since Clint Eastwood in "Firefox" Most exciting aerial scene ever. But watch out for scenes where people talk to each other (boring)."

Gene Sisko of the Chicago Tribune praised the action but criticized the romance, writing, "It's more of a teen sex fantasy than a movie worthy of a true romance, and if you're looking for any depth value, you will be disappointed..."

"What benefit did Paramount give them? The score is not high, and what they say is still a small curse and a big help."

"Hehehe, a travel voucher to Hawaii, and a sponsorship for the annual meeting of the Chicago Film Critics Association."

"Here we go, gentlemen!"

The driver parked the car at the entrance of the nightclub, and Ronald came down to see that it was a nightclub with more luxurious decoration than Club 54.

"Tom, Cher", a bunch of couples inside are holding hands affectionately.Ronald stepped forward and hugged them respectively.

Ronald looked around, and McGillis chatted with Jodie Foster and Jennifer Beals, holding hands and whispering like sisters.

Ronald didn't feel comfortable going to disturb her, so he looked around for Helen's figure.It was only after asking that Helen was picked up by her father Gerald's special car.

Ronald smiled, sat down and looked for new targets.

"Ronald, your film is very good, but what I don't like is that he has a bit of American chauvinism. He makes the audience feel that the war can be won."

Ronald looked back, it was Oliver Stone who had just finished filming his first and second films, "El Salvador" and "Platoon", his characteristic gentle voice, in Ronald's ear reverberate.

"Why, do you think we can't win the cold war with the Sowell Alliance?" Ronald was a little surprised by Stone's thoughts.

"No, I mean, there's no winners in WW[-]. I fought in Vietnam myself, no winners, no winners, man..."

"To a certain extent, I agree with your idea."

Ronald had a drink with him, the poor Yale conscript who, like his dead uncle, was in the Army.In Vietnam, I was bombarded by the North Vietnamese.

However, the "Top Gun" navy, flying planes to bombard other people's heads indiscriminately, will not feel the horror of war.

"You won't speak ill of me in the papers, will you?" Ronald poured him another glass.

"No, but we can talk to each other and make some hype?"

"I like the idea of ​​you, Oliver..."

(End of this chapter)