Exploiting Hollywood 1980

The time for Brooke Stan's commercial has not been determined, and the start time of "Endless Love" has not been determined either. Many booking plans have been interrupted by the strike. Ronald decided to go to San Francisco to learn editing from Walter Merz.

The trip to San Francisco has been scheduled with Merz, but before going, he has to go to CAA headquarters to formally meet with agents such as Niceta. Richard has told him several times. It happened that this time, while discussing the revised script, they got things done together.

Michelle Pfeiffer was busy taking acting training classes in Los Angeles. Sometimes she couldn't find anyone on the phone, so she had to convey her thoughts through her agent.

After bidding farewell to his family, Ronald took a Pan American flight to Los Angeles. This company, which originally specialized in overseas aviation, acquired National Airlines after President Trump relaxed aviation control laws and began to operate domestic routes.

"Ronald, I'm so glad you're finally here." The main agent Richard Lovett visited Ronald's hotel at night and hugged Ronald who opened the door.

Ronald took two bottles of drinks from the refrigerator, and the two young people talked in the room.

"Richard, how is Hollywood? Is it affected by the strike?"

"Hey, everyone is crazy. I just came from the office. Half of the people are still working overtime at 8 o'clock in the evening. The shutdown is a big blow to the actors. CAA has just entered the film industry in a big way. Now everything is messed up."

"I have brought my new script," Ronald took out a script from his luggage and handed it to Richard.

The revised draft is one-fourth thicker than the first draft, with a total of 119 pages. Ronald added a love line, a widow of a Vietnam War veteran, who works in the Veteran Services Department and usually takes care of the family of a fool who died in Vietnam after being forcibly conscripted.

Because the body of the fool was not found and no comrades could confirm that he was indeed dead in the mission, he could not be counted as killed in action, but could only be classified as missing. In this way, the pension and military family treatment of the fool were much lower than those of the fallen soldiers.

The retired platoon leader took the initiative to come and live in the trailer next to the fool's house to take care of the fool's family. The neighbors around him did not understand and discriminated against his identity as a Vietnam War veteran. The fool's family also did not understand him and was very defensive against him. Only the widow of the soldier from the Veteran Service Department understood the platoon leader's behavior and defended him to everyone.

The platoon leader was bullied, spat on, and stoned by the neighbor's children, but he never fought back. But when the widow of the soldier came to visit him at night and was robbed by a stranger, he decisively shot and beat the robber away. The widow only knew that he was a fighting master, and the two had further exchanges.

After learning about everything the platoon leader had experienced, the soldier's widow fell in love with the platoon leader, and the two had dessert on page 73. In the end, the fool's brother saw the platoon leader's diary and learned the truth. The family accepted the platoon leader, and the platoon leader also settled in the town of the fool's hometown and lived with the soldier's widow.

Richard read the script quietly, then closed the cover, and was silent for a long time. Suddenly, with a bang, he put the script hard on the table, which scared Ronald.

"What? Is there anything wrong?"

"No, this script is very good. It happens that Mr. Ovitz and Mr. Mayer are looking for scripts related to the Vietnam War for their clients. I will go back to the office immediately and ask them to see if they can recommend it to Sean Connery and Sylvester Stallone."

Ronald was also very happy to hear these names. One is the first generation of 007 and the other is the fiery Italian boxing champion. "Is there hope? But Sean is old, can he play the role of platoon leader?"

"It doesn't matter. The script will be adjusted according to the star. Let's replace the platoon leader with a senior sergeant major and see." Richard Lovett was very excited. Under the background of the strike, all shooting plans had to be adjusted. It was a good opportunity to sell the script to the big studio and then take the opportunity to insert stars.

Maybe it can also solve the current crisis of CAA. The strike has caused Sean Connery's film career to suffer another crisis. He has already confided to Ovitz the idea of ​​switching to William Morris. If the first head male star signed by CAA runs away, it will be very unfavorable to the company, and even Stallone, who has just signed, will be shaken.

And his client has a Vietnam War-themed script that is currently hot. Who doesn't want to get an Oscar nomination or even win the award with a good script like "The Deer Hunter"?

This is very valuable to Ronald, himself, and company executives such as Ovitz. Ronald, as a screenwriter, can respect the opinions of the studio and is a quick shooter, which is rare.

There are thousands of screenwriters who can write characters and thousands of screenwriters who can write stories, but there are not many screenwriters who can quickly modify their scripts according to the wishes of all parties and can come up with satisfactory revised drafts.

Many screenwriters think that their manuscripts are perfect. If they change a sentence or a word, they will feel as uncomfortable as digging their eyes out.

When asked to add a love scene, a love line was added immediately, and the original religion, war, anti-war and other plots were kept. It seems that Ronald is a gold medal screenwriter material, who can cooperate with stars and deal with all kinds of weird ideas and requirements from stars and producers.

Richard Lovett hurried back to CAA's office, leaving Ronald alone in the hotel room.

Bored Ronald called Michelle Pfeiffer again, but still no one answered. He had contacted her and her agent Limato before coming. Pfeiffer is now busy taking acting classes and trying to get a Lux soap commercial. He realized that he was not the only agent who relied on commercials to show his face during the strike.

Due to the time difference, although it was only 9 o'clock in the evening in Los Angeles, Ronald was already very tired, so he did not go to find Cameron and other old friends, but took a hot bath and went to bed, waiting to meet the bigwigs of CAA tomorrow.

The next morning, Ronald woke up early, opened the door and saw his agent Richard Lovett waiting at the door of his room.

"You came so early?" Ronald looked at the watch and it was only six o'clock. He got up early because of the three-hour time difference and was still in New York time. Richard seemed to have arrived for a while, and might still be standing at the door waiting.

"I arrive at the office at seven o'clock every day and leave at eight o'clock in the evening." Richard smiled.

"It's hard not to succeed if you work so hard." Ronald smiled, "Should I be glad that I found such a hard-working agent?"

"I should be glad, Ronald. Mr. Rick Niceta called me at midnight last night and said that he was very optimistic about your script and would recommend it to Mr. Ovitz this morning." Richard smiled happily, which was why he came to the hotel so early today.

Ronald asked him, "Are we going to CAA now?"

"Not so early, we can just be in the office at 9 o'clock." Richard now revolves around Ronald.

"Why are you here?"

"I'm here to accompany you. You just arrived in Los Angeles and many things need to be handled by someone. I'm driving a car and can take you to CAA when the time comes."

"Let's go have breakfast together." Ronald took Richard and had breakfast in the restaurant of the Holiday Inn. They talked a lot about CAA and some ideas about rewriting the script with Ronald. Then the two got in Richard's broken car and went to CAA together.

Rick Nicita and Paula Wagner stood at the door of the office to greet Ronald, "Welcome, Ronald, the youngest gold medal screenwriter in Hollywood."

This time Ronald did not make a mistake and used Hollywood etiquette such as hugging and kissing. In the entertainment industry, any greeting that is less than a warm hug will be seen as a big conflict with the other party.

"Paula, how is Tom?" Ronald and Paula hugged and greeted.

"He is very good. We will arrange for him to meet with Paul Newman next week. Thank you for arranging Scorsese to talk to him last time."

As the most senior of Ronald's three agents, Nicita took Ronald around the company and greeted all the agents in the office.

Ronald noticed that although it was not yet 9 o'clock in the morning, there were already more than 10 agents busy in the office, and some were still interviewing clients or talking on the phone. This is really a very dynamic company, and everyone is working hard.

"Mr. Ovitz is busy. His schedule secretary said he will be free at 10:30. We will then have a meeting with him and Mr. Meyer to discuss your script." Nicita and the others returned to their office and asked Ronald to sit down. "You can go around or I can introduce you to some of our clients."

"Please do your own thing first. If possible, I want to see Hollywood scripts in recent years. You should have quite a few here. I came to Los Angeles with the intention of collecting scripts this time."

"Richard!" Nicita snapped his fingers and asked Richard to take him to the lounge next door, and then moved a lot of scripts in his office to him.

"A large part of my work is spent on reading these scripts." Richard said to Ronald, "I help Mr. Nicita read the scripts, help him write summaries and opinions, and he helps me graduate from the mailroom and let me become an apprentice agent ahead of time."

Ronald was quietly looking at more than 20 scripts in the box. First turn to page 73 for verification. Sure enough, more than 15 of them have passionate scenes within the range of one or two pages before and after 73.

As expected, Hollywood now has to use some violent and passionate gimmicks to attract audiences to go out of their homes and watch something different from TV in the cinema. Since public television stations are directly aimed at children under the age of 18, the TV series of the three major public television stations in America are relatively conservative, only equivalent to the G-level in movies.

Ronald flipped through a lot of scripts, mainly musicals, biopics, and police and gangster action films. They are all the types of movies that sold well in the past two years. Needless to say, the quality of the scripts is much higher than that of Roger Corman's New World scripts.

However, none of them are about the Vietnam War. It seems that the appreciation of his "My Brother's Keeper" is mainly because Return and The Deer Hunter ignited the Vietnam War theme, which fits the current hot spots. Perhaps the quality of the Vietnam War scripts has attracted attention and is not wasted on low-level agents like Richard.

"Ronald, let's go see Mr. Ovitz together." Ronald, who was flipping through the script randomly, heard Richard's call, and hurriedly stood up and walked towards the meeting room with him.

In the largest office of CAA, Michael Ovitz, the president, is sitting inside. He is a middle-aged man with gray hair, wearing round glasses, full of energy, with deep wrinkles on his face and a square chin, showing that he is a very opinionated person. His perfect smile can well dilute the stereotype of his stubborn character.

Next to him were two secretaries, both well-dressed young women. One arranged his schedule, and the other followed the phone calls he was about to make.

"Mary, how does my tie match this suit? I'm going to meet a big client later." Ovitz repeatedly looked at his tie in the dressing mirror in the closet and asked Mary, the schedule secretary, what she thought.

Mary had just been hired as Ovitz's secretary and was a little scared. After thinking for nearly ten seconds, she still bravely expressed her thoughts, "It's ugly, a purple tie with a light blue shirt, it doesn't fit."

"Thank God, I finally have a secretary who dares to tell me the truth. I just felt something was wrong, but they all said it looked good." Ovitz's exaggerated expression made secretary Mary laugh.

"Mr. Ovitz, Mr. Niceta and his new client, screenwriter Ronald Lee, are here." The secretary in charge of Ovitz's schedule reminded him.

"Please ask them to go to the executive meeting room." Ovitz quickly changed into a navy blue tie and said to them.

"Ah, welcome, Mr. Lee." Ovitz sat at the table in the meeting room and greeted Ronald, but did not stand up to welcome him. The two secretaries next to him were still constantly following his instructions, fetching and sending away documents that needed his signature and other small notes to deal with issues.

"Hello, Mr. Ovitz." Ronald sat on the other side of the conference table with Rick Niceta, Paula Wagner, and Richard Lovett.

"I heard you have a script about the Vietnam War?"

"Yes, the Vietnam War, brotherhood, anti-war, fools, religion, love between men and women..." Ronald briefly summarized the selling points of his script.

Richard took out two copies and brought them to the conference table. Opposite Ovitz was another CAA partner, Ron Mayer.

Next was the regular introduction. Ronald talked about some of his experiences since entering the New World, and Mayer also introduced the history of CAA and some of the main stars represented.

Mayer picked up the script and looked at it, "My Brother's Keeper, um, this topic is very good."

Ovitz did not participate in the discussion, but buried his head in the script.

"He is very busy and arranges time according to 10-minute time periods." Richard whispered in Ronald's ear.

So will the meeting with me be 10 minutes? Ronald thought to himself, still agreeing with Mayer's comments on his script.

Less than five minutes had passed when Michael Ovitz suddenly stood up from his chair without saying a word and walked out of the meeting room.

"What a rude man!" Ronald secretly commented as he watched Ovitz walk out of the meeting room without saying hello.