Exploiting Hollywood 1980

After a night of thinking and a long-distance call with his main agent, Richard, Ronald finally agreed to give up the screenwriting job for the "Grease" sequel and instead adapt the screenplay for "fast-paced Richmond High."

The reality of Hollywood is the main reason why. But after Ronald was kicked out of the crew twice, he knew more about the importance of participating in filming rights. If your dream is just to write a few movie scripts, then of course you should stick to the Grease sequels with big productions and big stars.

But my dream is to make a classic and even leave a name in film history. So truly participating in the filming and post-editing from beginning to end is the most important path to take at the moment.

However, he was cautious and asked CAA to specify in the new contract that the plots he wrote in the two versions of the Grease sequels must not be used in the final revised version requested by Timothy Hutton.

If the script "borrowing" limit set by the Writers Guild is exceeded, Ronald has the right to pursue liability and request attribution.

A few days later, the contract reviewed by attorney Lindsay Dole was sent back, and Ronald and Cameron Crowe had a phone call to officially start revising the script.

The first job is to kill the character.

There are many characters in Cameron Crowe's original novel. But the movie can't accommodate so many people. As a typical youth exploitation film, Ronald asked Universal executives and learned that the studio would only give 90 minutes of film time.

This kind of exploitation film does not require much marketing investment. When young audiences go to the cinema and see the posters, they decide to watch it temporarily. This is the main source of the audience for exploitation films. So compressing the film length and allowing cinemas to schedule one more show every day is a more beneficial way to increase box office growth.

This is different from blockbusters or sequel movies with big stars and big budgets. For those movies, audiences will go to the cinema specifically to watch blockbusters. Those movies are usually 120 minutes long, which is too short for the audience to enjoy.

Based on experience, Ronald calculated that each character needs at least 20 minutes to have a complete story. In addition, the scenes between different characters are in the same frame, so the movie can only accommodate up to 6 main characters.

Ronald starts with the two central characters.

Brad and his sister Stacey are the opening and closing characters of the novel. The scenes of many other characters are all linked together by him, and he is a character that cannot be omitted.

Brad Hamilton is an 18-year-old 12th grade student at Richmond Middle School in Southern California. He usually works at a Burger King fast food restaurant. Because he is serious and responsible, he became a foreman and earns a good salary.

He used the mortgage to buy a 1958 Buick Saber. This old-fashioned car has soft shock absorption, a full-size length, and a high-horsepower engine. It attracts the attention of girls when it is driven.

He has a girlfriend, Lisa, but he wants to break up with Lisa, enjoy the "freedom" of his last year of high school, and try a life with different girls.

Unexpectedly, he got into a conflict with an annoying customer who thought the breakfast hamburger was not delicious but refused to fill out the order and demanded a refund, and was eventually fired by his boss.

In order to ensure the last few installments of the car mortgage, Brad had to join the "Captain Hook" fish fry fast food, wearing a ridiculous pirate costume and hat to deliver food...

...In the end, Brad found a job as a cashier in a convenience store. When he was robbed during a night shift, he cleverly picked up hot coffee and poured it on the robber, and was appreciated by his boss and promoted to store manager. .

Ronald started writing a plot summary of Brad's character on the typewriter. A short summary becomes a 2-3 minute long scene in the finished film. Ronald wrote more than 30 paragraphs in one go, and the plot was greatly overrun.

Not knowing which plots should be cut, Ronald simply went to CAA's New York office and faxed these pages of Brad's plot to Los Angeles and asked the novel's author, Cameron Crowe, for reference.

Along the way, various cheering signs for the upcoming election came into view. Ronald had watched the debate video and had already decided to support the former California governor. He calculated that according to the governor's tax reduction method, he could pay about half of the tax. .

"Please vote... let's work together to make America great again, Let'sMAGA!"

There were many canvassing volunteers along the way, taking advantage of the last few days of canvassing opportunities to win over a few more voters. In addition to door-to-door phone calls and door-to-door visits, there are also volunteers canvassing votes on the street in some lively neighborhoods.

Ronald looked at it and found that in addition to the volunteers for the general election, there were also some volunteers for the New York State Senate election and some volunteers for the House of Representatives election. This year happens to be the time when one of the New York State senators needs to be re-elected. The veteran senator refuses to align himself with the values ​​of California's governor, while his challenger insists on calling him governor.

"I won't vote for you if I don't support tax cuts," Ronald thought to himself.

Cameron Crowe quickly called, and the two argued on the phone for a long time. The novelist was even more reluctant to delete his beloved characters. I also don’t want to delete any of the characters’ plots.

"Cameron, the length of the film is only 90 minutes. Don't delete this or that. We can only make a TV series. Only then can we accommodate all the plots in your novel." Ronald joked.

"Ronald, you know, I spent a whole year undercover writing this novel. All the character prototypes are my friends in life. I don't know how to delete them. It's up to you to decide."

Yes, Cameron Crowe has left this difficult job back to Ronald.

Ronald's adaptation work encountered a bottleneck. The characters and plots are not a single unit drama, but an organically connected group. Reducing this character's plot will affect the growth of that character.

If more time is spent on this character, his opponent's role will be underdeveloped and out of place.

This kind of group drama is adapted from someone else's novel. Ronald felt that he was restricted everywhere and did not have the freedom of his own creation. The first time he was the main writer of this kind of group drama, the difficulty exceeded Ronald's imagination.

Strictly speaking, "Famous All Over the World" is also a group drama. But at that time, Ronald only focused on improving some fragments of lines and making a certain character plot more reasonable, which was modified on the original screenwriter's framework.

This time, we have to plan the development of the stories of the six protagonists from a global perspective. Building a framework and developing details are completely different things.

We have to make everyone have a beginning, middle, and end, and we have to find a way to insert the other six or seven supporting characters in the original work.

Gu\u0026lt;/span\u0026gt;Ronald wrote many times at the typewriter, and each time he wrote the character plot time much longer than the standard.

Early that morning, Ronald had to interrupt the slow progress of the script adaptation because it was November 4, the quadrennial election day of the President in America.

Because the voters were registered in Staten Island, Ronald picked up Aunt Karen early in the morning and went out to vote in Totville, Staten Island. In addition to the President, there was also a New York State Senator and a congressman in the constituency to be elected.

Aunt taught him how to check the candidates, and then the two of them marked the ballots and lined up to put the ballots in the box.

"Are you really not going to ask who I voted for?" Ronald asked Aunt Karen.

"Citizens should have the right to choose for themselves, unless you want to tell me yourself."

"I chose the former actor of the Elephant Party."

"Me too, the Elephant Party advocated ending the Vietnam War. If the impeached liar had come to power earlier, maybe there would not have been that war." Aunt Karen said.

The two returned to their apartment in Manhattan and started watching NBC's live show. The results usually come out in the evening. Aunt Karen cooked some steak and waited for Donna to come back to eat together.

"Oh my God, even Massachusetts has turned red." Aunt Karen exclaimed. The states in Northeast New England began to announce the results first.

Massachusetts has always been a stronghold of the Donald Party, but it turned out to be a red state this time.

"There are only more than 3,000 votes left, and a recount is needed." Ronald pointed to the subtitles and said, but this may not be relevant to the overall situation. The Northeast New England states where the Donald Party has been operating for decades have chosen the governor of California, and the president is expected to lose the election.

In New York, where they are located, the candidate of the Elephant Party won 2.67%, more than 160,000 votes.

On the map in the NBC studio, one grid after another was filled in red. In the end, the governor of California is expected to have won more than half of the 538 electoral votes.

At about 8 o'clock in the evening, NBC took the lead in using the exit poll data and announced that the candidate of the Elephant Party, the 69-year-old former governor of California, had won.

Aunt Karen switched to CBS and ABC, which were still waiting for official data and had not announced it. However, their host also knew the exit poll data used by NBC, and began to keep up with the discussion about the upcoming new president.

Ronald looked at the map. America is not a direct election. The winning candidate in each state will get all the electoral votes given by the state based on population. Then the candidate who gets more than half of the 538 total electoral votes wins.

Ronald's heart moved, as if he had found some inspiration to solve the problem of too many characters and plots.

If I can't start with the plot to cut, it's better to start with the total length, just like the election, the plot that can fill the total length will win and stay.

Ronald took out a piece of paper and started writing and drawing.

Before 10 o'clock in the evening, the current president announced his defeat and congratulated his opponent on winning the election. He only won 5 states, including his own and the vice president's hometown, and DC. No current president has ever lost so badly.

"Is there a big stationery store here?" Ronald suddenly asked his aunt.

"There is one near our school." Donna didn't sleep either, watching TV and answered Ronald's question.

I'll check the phone number and ask them to deliver the goods to my door tomorrow. Ronald thought to himself.

The next day, Ronald wrote down the characters in the novel on classified cards. Then he wrote down the outline of each plot on the card.

"Ring, ring, ring..."

The next afternoon, the doorbell rang. Ronald took off the intercom. There were two delivery workers at the door of the apartment downstairs. The secret weapon he ordered had arrived.

The two workers brought up a huge pine board. After paying, Ronald found a good location, nailed it on the wall, and installed the large pine board on the wall.

Then he took out a box of thumbtacks and pressed the character cards of Brad Hamilton and others on the top of the pine board.

Then he took out a ruler and used a pencil to draw four horizontal lines through the pine board. Put the plot cards in the gaps marked by the four horizontal lines.

Each card is like a racing car, and the horizontal lines on the pine board are like a track. Each track can accommodate 10-12 cards.

The scenes and plots of each card are about 2-3 minutes after being edited into a movie. So to fill the 90-minute duration, Ronald can only fill in about 40 plot cards at most.

In this way, the plot and characters can be adjusted.

With an intuitive feeling, Ronald really felt that the work of cutting characters became easier.