Exploiting Hollywood 1980

"What's his reason?" Ronald came to Jonathan Demme's office again. After reading the script, Sean Connery declined the invitation and said that he would not play Dr. Lecter.

"He said he didn't want to play a serial killer..." Jonathan Demme looked unhappy. He refused immediately without even auditioning or interviewing. Such a direct refusal was not polite to a director like him.

"I'll ask his agent..." Ronald said and called Niceta. Sean Connery has a superior status within CAA because he is the first star signed by Ovitz. Now in the new building of CAA, Connery has a very large office. Many stars who are more famous than him only have a small office to use because of their lack of qualifications.

After a while, Niceta called back, "Ovitz called me himself. He said that Connery's star image needs to be protected and he can't play such a particularly bad villain. This is his personal decision."

"OK, I understand. Thank you." Ronald turned to Demme and relayed the reason.

Everyone knows that this reason makes sense. A positive male star with a good image is better off not trying to play a villain. Even if he plays a villain, it is best to be a villain with a compelling reason and various likable characteristics. Serial killers like Dr. Lecter should never be touched.

However, this reason is not valid for Sean Connery. After 007, Connery has no positive and popular new image. CAA strongly supported him to win the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor in 1987. The supporting actor award is a serious statement that Connery has degenerated into a character actor and can only play supporting roles in Hollywood.

If he still wants to play the leading role, he should either go to shoot the B-level movie "Highlander" or return to Britain to shoot his own European movie "The Name of the Rose".

Even in this situation, he still puts on a star's airs and refuses to act. Ronald undoubtedly thought that the real reason might be Ovitz's hostility towards him.

"Maybe Mr. Connery wants to go back to play Bond..." Ronald smiled helplessly at Demme and laughed at himself.

"It's not impossible, the current Bond is really too bad." Jonathan Demme has experienced many failures, but his fighting spirit and sense of humor are still there.

"What do you think of the male lead? Let's set some standards and then look for it." Ronald didn't know the actor in his dream, but he felt a little familiar.

"I still have the same idea, I want someone who has a fixed image of a good guy in the audience's mind to play the villain."

"Then who do you think is the best good guy in the movie you have seen?"

"Hmm..." Demme touched his chin and thought for a long time, "Do you remember David Lynch's Elephant Man?"

"The man with a deformed face?" Ronald had a vague impression.

"Yes, the British actor who played Dr. Treves in it, he was so good to such a deformed child, and the audience was very moved at the time."

"What's his name?"

...

The actors of each movie are recorded in the MPAA, but the fastest way is to call the casting director. Ronald called Julia Taylor.

"Oh, him. He's a stage actor who specializes in Shakespeare's plays. He played the role of Richard the Lionheart, the son of Katherine Hepburn in the film The Lion in Winter, which won her the Best Actress award. His name is Anthony Hopkins. I'll send you his audition photo.

But I don't have his phone number. His last Hollywood film, 84 Charing Cross Road, lost a lot of money. After that, he acted in stage plays and movies in Britain. You have to find his agent."

Anthony Hopkins' American agent has basically given up on his future. Ronald did not contact him through CAA again. He did not want Ovitz to get the news and interfere again.

So Ronald directly called Alan Rickman, the villain of Die Hard.

"Hopkins? I know him well. Do you want to find him? I'll call him." Rickman hopes to get more opportunities in Hollywood because of the huge sales of Die Hard, but everyone still looks for him according to the template of the villain.

"Of course, that's why I came to you. Also, what do you think of his ability to play a villain? The kind of villain with a lot of inner drama."

"Hey, don't you know? He played King Lear in the Old Vic Theater and Anthony in Cleopatra."

"Hopkins played King Lear and Anthony, there's no problem for him to play this." While telling Demme about the actor's qualifications, Ronald received an audition photo of Anthony Hopkins.

"Ha, I think he is Dr. Lecter." Ronald looked at the pair of eyes with a hint of cunning in the photo and handed it to Demme.

"There's no problem with his appearance. I need to talk to him."

"I've sent him an audition invitation, and he's coming over from Britain soon."

After dealing with the casting of The Silence of the Lambs, there was another problem with Minahan Glenn. He made an appointment with Ronald and brought the team of the musical "Lombard" to meet Ronald.

"Hi, Miranda, long time no see." Ronald was surprised to see the choreographer of Dirty Dancing in the team, and Miranda Garrison who played an important supporting role.

"Ronald, it's so nice to see you..." Miranda Garrison jumped up and hugged Ronald, and also led him to dance a few steps of Dirty Dancing.

"Gaga ga ga, my idea is to copy the choreography team of Dirty Dancing... How about it, it's not bad, right?" Minahan Gran said to Ronald with a smile.

The sales of Dirty Dancing's video tapes have been stable, and there are a lot of residual dividends distributed to those who participated in the event.

This remaining dividend is not a dividend signed by each actor individually, but a dividend that is uniformly allocated to the Actors Guild and then distributed to participating actors every quarter.

In a typical movie, a participating actor can earn dozens of dollars in dividends each time. Hot-selling movies may sell hundreds of movies a month. But a movie like "Dirty Dancing" with a long-running video sales boom brings a lot of surplus.

In particular, these special actors who perform highly dangerous actions such as dancing have been included in the remaining dividend list. Their income is thousands of dollars every quarter, and it is extremely stable. Since the video tape started selling, the check every time has been stable in four figures.

Ronald also saw several pairs of dancers participating in the choreography and performance of this Lombada when filming Dirty Dancing, and he really admired Minahan's intelligence. This kind of dance with special provocative movements between men and women is indeed the most suitable to find a Dirty Dancing team.

Minahan has a good eye for filmmaking and has good control over small productions. He can guarantee that he will not lose money every time and make a lot of money every year with one film. Just don't let him get dizzy and go make some big productions. That's really not his area of ​​expertise.

"This is the heroine, Miss Laura Harling. She was Miss America in 1985, and then traveled around the world to promote the concepts of world peace and environmental protection. But she studied drama at the London Academy of Performing Arts and also received Latin training in dance (including Argentine tango),” Minahan introduced Ronald to the heroine.

In this kind of dance movie, the most important thing is that the heroine is beautiful. Ronald was satisfied that Laura Haring was actually born in Los Mochis, Sinaloa, Mexico. A typical Latina beauty, she later settled in Texas. She worked her way up from local beauty pageants, won Miss Texas, and then participated in the Miss America pageant.

"Nice to meet you...Minahan is good at choosing actresses." Ronald shook hands with her politely.

The play was low-cost and Ronald was confident of making a profit. Minahan should make more B-movies like this from now on. To be honest, Ronald doesn't mind if Minahan remakes the plot of his Dirty Dancing. As long as the audience likes to watch it, and he cooperates with him to film samba, rumba, and tango, that's fine.

"So what happened?" Expressing satisfaction with the team and casting, Ronald pulled Minahan into the conference room. Isn't this going smoothly? What happened again?

"Hey, I...someone stole my...my...I lost the name of the movie."

"What the hell, how did you lose the name of the movie?" Ronald was confused.

"That's right, Ronald, don't be angry. My cousin Yoram", Minahan said his cousin's name, and spat on the ground to express his disdain, "He was on my twenty-first Century Pictures planted spies and learned that I was going to make Lombarda. They bought the rights to adapt the name Lombardy in advance and they also wanted to make the movie.”

"Ah? Why didn't you negotiate to buy it in advance?"

"On the one hand, the spy is a manager who can see my project documents. On the other hand, I want to save some money." Minahan smiled awkwardly and told the truth.

"Hey..." Ronald was helpless. Why do the two cousins ​​seem to be enemies now? Yoram is still eyeing Minahan's project, just to destroy his movie and prevent him from making a comeback to take revenge on him.

"Did you buy the right to use that song?" Ronald thought for a while and asked.

"Of course, I bought the right to use the interlude of Kaoma's song, but the title of the song was taken away by that bastard Yoram... drink, bah..."

"Don't spit in my conference room, you disgusting ghost." Ronald was so angry that he took a few napkins and threw them on the floor. This guy……

"Let me ask my lawyer..."

Ronald called Lindsay Doerr and told him all about the movie.

"Humph..." Lindsay looked up some case information there and came back to Ronald and said, "I remember that Lombada is the name of a dance, like tango, right?"

"Hey, yes, it's a proprietary dance name. It wasn't invented by Caoma, who sang this song. In fact, she also sang a Spanish song in Portuguese."

"That's easy. The name of this dance is legally a proprietary name and cannot apply for patent protection. The adaptation rights they bought can only control it. You can't just use the word Lombada as the name of the movie.

However, you can make a movie called Lombada - Magical Dance, Lombada - Sexy Dance or something like that. There is no basis for copyright law to award the name of this dance to them. Even if they sue, we have a high chance of winning, and the biggest possibility is that the case will be dismissed by the judge at the pre-trial stage. "

"Lombard, the forbidden dance..." Minahan heard the two names repeated by Ronald from the side, and he immediately called out another name that was more exciting.

For teenage audiences, the more taboo something is, the more they want to watch it. This is also one of the main reasons why the average box office of movies rated PG13 is higher than that of movies rated PG.

"Okay, let's call it Forbidden Dance." Ronald also approved the name.

"But, you can do this." Ronald picked up the pen and paper and started drawing on the white paper.

"Lombarda...the forbidden dance." Ronald wrote the three words "Lombarda" in a large size, while "Forbidden Dance" was several sizes smaller, squatting in the second line aggrievedly as a subtitle.

"Gah ga ga, Ronald, you are really an evil genius, but I like it. When the time comes, I will have a ring with Yoram's Lombada to see if I don't beat his **** out! Drink... bah …”

"Fuck you, get out of here..." Seeing that Minahan was about to spit again, Ronald was so angry that he pushed him out of the conference room.

…

"Hahaha, that's it. This unlucky guy forgot to buy the right to adapt the song's name, and the result is now like this, two production companies making one movie."

Back at the hotel, Ronald told Diane Minahan's jokes and the visiting Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman. They were all actors in big Hollywood productions, and they all laughed out loud when they heard about this low-budget B-movie mess.

Kidman, an Australian girl, is very tall. In order to match Cruise's height, she wears flat shoes. She originally wanted to hook up with Ronald, but unexpectedly fell in love with Tom Cruise at first sight.

Cruise invited her to serve as the heroine in the first movie "Thunder" that she served as screenwriter. Kidman is content with her charm and good luck in Hollywood. It wasn't until Cruise brought her to Ronald's place to formally introduce his new girlfriend to him that he felt lost again.

Ronald also showed Tom some photos of his luxury vacation home on the beach in Brisbane, Australia, and invited them to go on vacation together when they have time. There are two villas connected together, which is completely comfortable.

Kidman, who grew up in Australia, knows that it is the most luxurious holiday beach house that Australians desire most. It originally belonged to the wealthy local man Cass, who was able to send a private plane to pick up clothes for his wife.

That Diane is not as beautiful as herself...

"Ronald, Nicole has just come to Hollywood. Do you have any advice for her?" Tom Cruise was still very interested in this new girlfriend and asked Ronald directly, who was very experienced in training actresses. , I want to give Kidman some pointers.

Ronald looked at Paula Wagner who was coming with him. She and Niceta also came to the party.

Wagner made an "I think Tom's in it too" look. Tom Cruise's previous girlfriends were all more mature and older than him, with less aggressive faces. From Rebecca De Mornay, to Cher, to Mimi Rogers who has not yet finalized her divorce, they are not the most beautiful types in Hollywood.

But this Nicole Kidman is the glamorous type. Especially a very small oval face with rich layers, the type that is very popular with photography directors.

Ronald understood that this time Tom Cruise broke away from his usual aesthetics. He must have fallen in love in a very serious way, and the divorce would definitely cost him a fortune.

"It's hard to say anything about an actress's acting career. I can't give you any advice, and it might limit your performance." Ronald felt that in this case it's better not to be too specific, otherwise he might be blamed in the future.

"The only thing is, your hair is very distinctive, whether it is hair color or curly hair, it is actually very beneficial to maintain it like this. Hollywood lacks such a distinctive type that is easy to be remembered by the audience."

"Thank you..." Nicole Kidman disagreed. Everyone in Hollywood knows that blonde girls are the audience's favorite.

"Pfft", Diane next to him almost laughed out loud. Brother Ronnie liked his original hair color and hairstyle. Is this just to remind him?