Exploiting Hollywood 1980

Chapter 1274: Special marketing methods for new films. Timing is indeed very important. What happened in Moscow

On the third day of Mikhail's detention at the Black Sea resort, the Emergency Action Committee lost its momentum and lost the support of everyone.

Hundreds of thousands of people gathered outside Boris' office and promoted him as a hero. Many people said what they had been holding back for years... Not to mention Coca-Cola and McDonald's, even potatoes and beef are too expensive.

Comics with a rich alliance color also appeared on the scene. A typical Russian strong man who looked like Boris kicked the shrunken bad guy out of the house. It's just that the bad guy changed from an American capitalist pig to a cunning member of various ethnic minorities.

Mikhail, who was released from the villa on the Black Sea, returned to Moscow in a relaxed mood.

He had previously abandoned the old alliance treaty and wanted to sign a new treaty with the republics. He had carefully calculated this time, clearing out the old stubborn people through the Union Republic, and sweeping away those old stubborn people who lived in the past. Then, as long as a new union treaty was established, he could become a real leader like the President of the United States of America and seize all administrative power.

Mikhail was not unaware of Boris's performance in the past few days. He immediately appointed two confidants as the heads of the two most important Union Republics, and then returned to Moscow at Boris' invitation to attend the Russian Federation Parliament to explain to the members of the Russian Duma the necessity and details of the new treaty to be signed.

Who knew that Boris fully seized this fleeting opportunity and forced Mikhail to admit in the Duma that the coup had caused the loss of public support.

Mikhail tried to argue that not all people were bad, there were also good people. But every time he tried to speak, he was.

Boris revealed the true colors of a Russian strongman at this time. He stepped forward and handed a list to Mikhail forcefully, asking him to read it word by word. It was all the candidates for senior officials of the republics that he, Kravchuk and Nazarbayev had decided on.

After reading the list, Mikhail looked ashen. He knew that in this very short time window, Boris had received cooperation from many parties and abolished his legitimacy as the leader of the alliance in one fell swoop.

In American university admissions, many places are given to the children of alumni, but if you are not an alumnus, the money required is at least ten times more than that of alumni.

"Why, you said so too?" Summers became interested. The large-scale change of surnames by Jews is a scar in American history. Many stubborn Jews have not changed, just like his uncle.

After understanding it, Ronald turned to sponsor Summers.

Ronald, who realized that he had made a fool of himself, turned to talk to Summers about other things. Of course, the two naturally turned to the Soviet Union and what happened in this week that shocked the world.

Soon, Mikhail retreated weakly. Then, each member issued a declaration to withdraw from the alliance, leaving only Russia represented by Boris...

Ronald talked about his concerns and pressure at the time, and Summers laughed, "No one thinks that this movie is bad-mouthing the Jews, right? Didn't he benefit everyone in the end? And he got the beauty..."

The two had a good chat, and Summers took the initiative to suggest that the movie could be used as a class assignment for students, and write a short article after watching the movie as a regular score.

The professor, named Lawrence Summers, had black and white hair. Ronald knew he was Jewish when he saw his nose.

Summers laughed. He had decided to leave Harvard and work at the World Bank after the semester. However, he still happily thanked Ronald and advised him to set up a scholarship.

Ronald also had a good impression of this professor, and discussed how much money he had to donate to let his son Roger go to Harvard in the future. After learning that Ronald himself was not an alumnus, Summers smiled and said that he could find a school in California in the future, donate some money and get an honorary degree.

Ronald was also very happy and immediately said that he would sponsor the elites of Harvard Business School... Of course, he did not sponsor the business school, but the professor himself. Now Harvard University, especially the business school and law school, the amount of donations required for a lectureship nameplate is sky-high.

"So, your last name Summers was also changed later?" Ronald immediately discovered this coincidence. Samuelson and Summers, like Garfinkel and Garfield in "Other People's Money", changed their Jewish surnames to typical white surnames.

"Other People's Money" has an ingenious marketing method, which is to enter the business schools of many American universities and invite college students to watch it in advance. In theory, these people will be the elites of the business world in the future, so they can appreciate such a business war movie the most, and these people generally belong to the upper-middle class of society, and their reputation and influence can also be imposed on the main market for this movie through their families-big cities with developed commerce.

"I'm afraid someone will make the same connection. I think so, too. The old business owner retained the factory, the workers got a pay raise, the banker got a beautiful woman and made more money. Only the Japanese paid the cost. They had to set up a factory in America, which increased their production costs..."

He also told Ronald that he was an economist from his family. His uncle was the famous Nobel Prize winner in economics, Paul Samuelson, who wrote textbooks for most American universities, and his uncle was another Nobel Prize winner in economics, Kenneth Arrow.

However, Summers liked the plot of Ronald's movie very much, and praised the speech of Garfield played by Tom Hanks at the end, which was very consistent with business ethics. It was the only masterpiece that accurately described corporate mergers and acquisitions that he had seen in so many years.

"It's true. Mikhail is a little naive. Maybe it's the inertia of seven years, no, seventy-five years, that makes them think that the authority of the alliance center is innate. Unexpectedly, an old hand like Boris found a gap in the solid armor and hit it deadly..."

Everyone got along well, and Summers was not the kind of professor who only focused on academics. He had a lot of contacts with the industry.

This alliance that put great pressure on America for decades has actually ended, and only a death certificate is left.

"So that's how it is. It seems that we still need to be tough at critical moments, not weak." Ronald was chatting with a professor in the cinema of Harvard Business School.

"Hahaha, you are right..."

Summers is obviously more realistic than his two elders and does not believe in the economics in the books. He is also very flexible and likes Ronald's film, which is unprecedented in saying good things to bankers.

Those who have inextricable ties with Wall Street are actually most worried about their reputations getting worse and worse among ordinary people. A few years ago, New York State Attorney General Rudy successfully sued several Wall Street tycoons and put them in jail.

Huge wealth, public anger, and ethnic minorities, these three together are a combination of deep concerns everywhere. Summers likes film directors like Ronald who hold a fair stance.

Although Hollywood and Wall Street are dominated by Jews, they are not as strong as businessmen in the artist community. You can set up all kinds of "rules" to stipulate how the plot involving Jews should be written. But if you want the protagonist to be a Jewish hero, no matter how powerful the producer is, he can't force the director and actors to create it.

In fact, they themselves don't allow it. No one would want to watch such a movie.

Ronald's "Other People's Money" is a relatively obscure hint that Garfield is Jewish, and then he is not portrayed as a typical Hollywood hero, but an ordinary person with gluttony, lust, greed, cunning, and other shortcomings, who did some right things in an extreme environment.

Summers likes this movie very much. In addition to using the movie as a class assignment, he also wrote an article for the business school magazine that is half a film review and half an article explaining his own economic ideas. The main purpose is to advocate that America does not need to produce everything domestically, as long as it adheres to the Washington Consensus, it can become a leader in the world economy. (Of course, this also implies that if you don't adhere to this consensus one day...)

As the most famous university in America, Harvard's business school magazine has a wide influence. In addition to Summers's very carefully written review article, magazines from other schools have the urge to respond, and they have asked professors of economics and art to write articles.

Economics and art criticism are two fields with many schools of thought and often quarrel. Soon, most of the business schools or art schools of famous universities in the country commented on this movie.

Of course, as you can imagine, these comments are very controversial, and some schools even started to make accounts.

Among them, business schools and art schools are different.

In art departments, the East Coast naturally supports Ronald. In addition to the factor of fellow countrymen, the script of this movie is adapted from a Broadway play. This is a little psychological advantage that the East Coast relies on to despise the West Coast in art.

When it comes to commercial films, it must be your Hollywood box office hit. But your actors are still proud to be on the Broadway stage. When it comes to theatrical art, it is still our Broadway that can compete with Britain.

These authors who have watched the university previews and the film critics' special screenings all praised the deep thought of this movie. It's just that some people think that the ending is too idealistic, so it would be better to adapt it into a tragic ending, with the old generation of Puritan-style factories going bankrupt, all the workers unemployed, and the old factory director dying of grief.

On the West Coast, most people praised the acting of the main characters. Especially the big debate between Gregory Peck and Tom Hanks at the end. These two monologues are a rare confrontation between new and old male stars in many years. It is the peak of male dialogue since the performance of Michael Caine and Laurence Olivier.

Only people in Chicago, Detroit and other places in the Midwest criticized the movie. There are many industrial workers there. This movie speaks too much good words for capitalists. People on Wall Street just want to split up the factory and sell it to Asia, regardless of what the union gets. And those factory managers will not care about the workers like Gregory Peck, who took the money from the sale of the factory and started to build real estate, or moved to Florida to enjoy it.

The comments of the business school are just the opposite.

The University of Chicago, a major center of freshwater economics in the Midwest, appreciates the spirit of free trade in this movie very much. Only by eliminating backward production capacity can industrial progress and the welfare of the whole people be achieved.

Saltwater economic schools such as MIT on the East Coast and Berkeley on the West Coast criticized the film for not caring about social fairness and the life and death of the bottom blue-collar workers, and that it completely defended entrepreneurs...

"Controversy is a good thing. We will wait for the word-of-mouth from this test screening to slowly ferment."

In front of Ronald, unlike usual, what was placed in front of him was not a movie review, but a bunch of business reviews and art reviews. The marketing of this movie is different from other marketing.

After occupying the discussion space on the intellectual high ground, the next step is to have major newspapers reprint it to spread the strangeness of this film and arouse the curiosity of ordinary viewers. What is the content of the movie that has led to debates between Nobel laureates in economics across the United States?

"Roger Ebert's film review manuscript is here..." Richard handed Ronald a fax. Nowadays, film critics all have an innate preference for Ronald's films, and they cannot rate them particularly low anyway.

Roger Ebert, who watched the review screening, gave Ronald's new film three and a half stars (out of four stars) in the manuscript he sent.

"Tom Hanks is the right actor to play Garfield. He doesn't have to say that he uses big money to compensate for the lack of love in his life.

We know it from the look in his eyes, which sparkle when he talks about accumulating other people's money, but change into that of a spaniel who adores his mistress whenever he stares at Miss Kate Sullivan.

… The takeover bid culminated in a shareholder meeting at the plant, where both Jorgensen and Larry Garfield gave speeches. Gregory Peck's phrasing and delivery here reminded me of the key scene in Frank Capra's classic film, where the little guy stands up to defend traditional American values, gets a standing ovation, and the movie ends.

But in other people's money, after Pike sat down, Hanks stood up to defend Greed. What a brilliant argument he made. "

What a great guy, he actually compared himself to Frank Capra, the great director from the golden age of Hollywood, and even vaguely meant to surpass him. Ronald smiled brightly when he saw it, "Prepare some more vouchers, see if there are any companies that go to Australia or Japan for vacation, and arrange a two-week luxury trip..."

"There's more later..." Richard pointed to the newspaper. It turned out that the film review was not over yet.

"This movie is very comedic but also very funny. I really like the way director Ronald Lee handled it. It reminds me of those old Hollywood masterpieces...

However, I didn't like the last scene of the movie. The Japanese fell from the sky and everyone won. It feels like an afterthought, a contrived ending that was added by a Hollywood studio to provide an ending that is not in the spirit of the movie and is just for the sake of box office sales. It’s a knee-jerk Hollywood happy ending, so I gave it half a thumbs up. Heartfelt, only give a thumbs up recommendation...

Moreover, the shareholders' meeting is not the place to resolve such equity disputes. The previous board of directors decided it. This seems to be the film's only commercial factual error. "

"Huh, you know nothing about business, you just plagiarize Summers' comments." Ronald was very dissatisfied with this film critic's habit of always looking for flaws in masterpieces. "Well, don't give me a voucher for a Japanese vacation. Now that you have the coupon, let’s see if we can arrange a trip to Hawaii..."