Exploiting Hollywood 1980

The crew is progressing very quickly, and almost all the exterior scenes in schools, shopping malls, and Stacey's home have been filmed. The remaining scattered scenes were performed in Universal's studios.

For example, in Spicoli's house, there is only a dialogue in the script where he is sleeping in bed and is woken up by his younger brother. For such a scene, there is no need to find a real location, and it is cheaper and more efficient to set up the scene in a studio.

The studio is a large building with no pillars under the ceiling, just like a factory building. In the corner near the side, there is a simple wooden house, which has been renovated into a bedroom set. This is a bedroom that Universal's carpenters remodeled using sets from other movies.

A simple wooden bed with Playboy magazine posters all over the bedside.

"Are we going to pay for these?" Ronald asked, pointing to the largest poster. It was a poster of the late model and actress Dorothy Stratten.

"Yes, theoretically you have to pay for this clear portrait." Producer Lin Sen replied, "But Hugh Hefner, the founder of Playboy magazine, would like to see his centerfold girl in the movie." The influence of his magazine. So we will reach a nominal price agreement with him. "

Ronald stared at Stratten's body, which was full of youthful vitality. She was smiling sweetly at him on the poster.

"Let's just commemorate this model who had a close relationship with me." Ronald continued to inspect the set with producer Lin Sen.

"I heard that your family will come to the studio to visit today?"

"Yes, my aunt and cousin, they have never seen a movie. I made a reservation for today. The shooting schedule is not that tight."

"I heard that Sean doesn't like outsiders being present when filming?"

"It doesn't matter, I'll hide them where he can't see them."

After watching the scene, Ronald expressed satisfaction, and art director Dan came to prepare several indoor scenes a week in advance.

Spicoli's bedroom was small, in keeping with his modest family background. There are a lot of surfing-related equipment and magazines in the room, which also suits his interests.

"It's time to start lighting." Ronald said to the director of photography Matthew.

The lighting in the studio generally uses the traditional Hollywood method. When the camera shoots from an angle, it needs to light once.

Taking advantage of the long lighting time, Ronald went out to wait for his family to arrive.

This was the first time for Aunt Karen and Donna to come to Los Angeles. I couldn't pick them up at the airport, and I didn't have time to take them to the tourist attractions in Los Angeles.

Fortunately, Aunt Karen and Donna understood him very well and knew that this was Ronald's first directing job that was crucial to him. They found someone to take him around for a day, and only came to the studio today to watch Ronald work.

"Hi, Auntie, Donna." Ronald saw his family getting out of the taxi from a distance.

After giving them a warm hug, Ronald took them around the studio and took a look at the scenes they were about to shoot.

"Is this where you direct movies?" Donna asked.

“Yes, this is Universal’s studio, where the movie ‘Airport’ was filmed. The bigger studio next door was used to film ‘King Kong’.

Actors would perform in this fake house and be captured on camera. The long pole with the furry head is for recording. What the actors say will be recorded and then combined together in post-production, which is what you see on the screen. "

"The actors perform, the photographer shoots, and the recording is done by someone. So what do you do as a director? Do you just watch from the side?" Donna is a bully in elementary school. She doesn't quite understand why there are people who perform their own duties and why a director is needed.

"Director, which T-shirt will Spicoli wear when he arrives? The white long-sleeved one or the green short-sleeved one?" The costumer saw Ronald entering the studio and hurriedly came up to ask him.

"Wear the white long-sleeved one on the inside and the green short-sleeved one on the outside. Surfers often wear it this way." Ronald pointed out to the costume designer what Spicoli was wearing in his dream.

"I don't do anything but make decisions." Ronald answered Donna's question.

"It will take another two hours to set up the lighting. I will take you around. There are other crews filming here. When we go there, don't make any noise and affect other people's filming."

Ronald took Aunt Karen and Donna out of the studio and walked to a larger studio next to it.

"Dolly Parton's crew is filming here. She...she plays a southern bar owner."

It was not easy to explain the play in front of Donna, so Ronald explained it differently.

"And I will always love you

I will Always Love You

you

My dear, you. "

Just entering the greenhouse, Dolly Parton's iconic country music came. This was the song "I Will Al; Love You" she released in 1974, and she used it again this time. Doing an episode in "The Best Chicken Room in Texas".

Dolly Parton was rehearsing in an old-fashioned Southern dress. Her singing voice was playing on the radio and she was lip-synching as she performed.

This movie is a musical, and Dolly Parton has to do a lot of dance moves, which will affect her breathing when singing, so she lip-synched during filming.

After the song was played, Dolly found Ronald and said, "Oh, Ronald, you are welcome."

"This is my Aunt Karen, and this is Donna, a famous lady who needs no introduction."

"Hello Dolly, oh it's so nice to see you in person."

"Hi Karen, your Ronald is making me jealous."

"What's up with him?"

"He won me at the Oscars, and I have to force him to pay me back in the future." Dolly Parton came from a difficult background and knew how to communicate with people like Aunt Karen. In just two words, she made a difference between Karen and Donna laughed heartily.

"I've got free advertising for you in my movies, Dolly."

Ronald also joked, "I won't bother you anymore, we are going back too."

"Goodbye, honey. I'll go see your movies later."

"Dolly Patton doesn't have the airs of a superstar at all. She is a very nice person." her aunt sighed.

“Yes, I have interacted with her several times, and sometimes she would visit me when she was waiting for lighting.

The group returned to the studio of the "Fast Pace" crew.

"You guys just wait in this corner so that the actors can't see you. The actors are not used to having people who are not from the crew present when they are performing, and it will hinder them. After the filming is finished and the camera is turned off, I have two weeks of vacation, so I will be back with you during the filming." Let’s go around Los Angeles together.”

Ronald pointed to the outside of the house, to a place invisible from Sean Penn's perspective, and asked Aunt Karen and Donna to take their chairs and sit down.

Al, the first assistant director, knew that they were relatives of Ronald, and told them the key points of watching the filming, and then gave them a plate of snacks.

"Leave us alone, go and do your work." Aunt Karen waved him to go to work.

Ronald gave a few instructions and then went to sit on the director's chair, waiting for each team to come over and ask him various questions for him to make a decision.

"Recording? Camera? A!"

Ronald gave the order.

The door to the prop house was opened, and a young actor walked in and said to Spicoli, "Get up, Dad said you have to get up, otherwise you will be late again today."

Sean Penn is lying on the prop bed, covered with a quilt. He seemed to be still having a sweet dream and was unhappy to be woken up. He reached out and picked up something from the table and threw it towards the door.

"Dad, Dad, Jeff is throwing something at me." The little actor dodged the thrown thing, blocked it with the door, and shouted to find his father.

"Cut!"

"This is a print, and the main lens ends here.

There were only a few shots of Spicoli's house, and Ronald couldn't focus on shooting, so he had to take one shot in another direction.

"Are there any strangers here today?" Sean Penn took two breaths and asked Ronald.

"Yes, my family came to see me. I put them in a direction where you can't see them so that they don't affect you, Spicoli."

"But I smelled it, the smell of a stranger." Sean Penn muttered.

"We're leaving first, Ronnie. I'll wait for you back in the hotel." Aunt Karen and Donna, like most ordinary viewers watching the movie, soon felt bored. Two hours of lighting and two minutes of shooting.

"I'll ask the crew's driver to take you there."

"No, we have a friend in Los Angeles, and she takes us to see various tourist attractions."

Ronald saw his family off and continued filming in the studio.

After two days of shooting in the studio, the last shot of the film was completed. Ronald controlled the filming schedule very well and finally shut down the camera two days earlier than planned. It took seven weeks and four days in total.

The crew moved to Universal's banquet hall to hold a shutdown and packing party. The cast and crew also brought their families or friends to have a party together to celebrate the end of filming.

Cameron Crowe brings along girlfriend Nancy Wilson, who makes a cameo appearance as a sports car-driving beauty.

Sean Penn doesn't let anyone call him Spicoli anymore, and he's dating Pamela Springsteen on set.

Heckerling's husband appeared with his ex-boyfriend and they remained friendly friends.

Phoebe Cates's boyfriend also came from New York. He is a modeling agent.

Jennifer Jason Leigh, like her character Stacey, wants to hook up with supporting actor Eric Stoltz. But Stoltz's real girlfriend, Ally Sheedy, also came to the party and kept a close eye on him.

She turned to look at director Ronald, only to see him with his family, preparing to leave.

"Does Ronald have a girlfriend?" Jennifer asked Phoebe Cates, who has become a good friend and best friend.

"I don't know, why, are you interested in him?" Phoebe asked with a smile.

"I just asked. After filming the movie, I realized that he was not much older than us."

"Yeah, I heard from my boyfriend that he is a genius. The script was liked by Jane Fonda and sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars. He also won the Oscar for Best Original Song."

"Hey, who is that new girl? Is she Ronald's girlfriend?" Jennifer suddenly saw a brown-haired girl and walked in to join Ronald and his family.

"It seems that she is also a movie actor. Maybe she will be the heroine of his next movie?"

"Hi, Diane. I didn't expect you to be accompanying Karen and Donna these two days, thank you." Ronald said to Diane Lane who walked into the party.

It turns out that the tour guide Aunt Karen was talking about was Diane, who had just finished filming a racing movie in Los Angeles.

"It doesn't matter, Karen is like my mother. I just finished shooting my movie and the new movie hasn't been cast yet, so I just play with them."

"Oh, Bert has picked up a new movie for you again?"

"It's a TV movie about a beauty pageant champion."

Finally getting rid of the role of a child, Ronald looked at Diane, who seemed to have grown a little taller and had a little baby fat on her face. Among white girls in America, Diane Lane was a late bloomer.

"By the way, why hasn't your last movie, 'The Stain', been released yet? It's been filmed for a long time, right?"

"It's now renamed 'Ladies and Gentlemen, The Magic Stains'. The director is Lou Adler, the owner of the record company. He doesn't seem to have filmed enough material, and now the ending can't be edited."

"Puff..." Ronald laughed and sprayed the champagne. Now that the record companies are making a lot of money, they all want to imitate RKO's owner Stewart and make a fortune in the film industry.

But this Adler doesn't trust professionals and wants to do it himself, but he can't even finish the movie.

"What should we do then?"

"Who knows, maybe we can reshoot it? Add an ending clip at the end."

"Ronald, are you going to edit it too?" Donna interrupted and asked Ronald about the schedule.

"No, it takes two weeks to prepare the sample film in advance. It is the job of the assistant editor to synchronize the recording with the film, and then I will take over. Anyway, I will take a vacation, and I will take over the formal editing work after the Christmas and New Year holidays."

"Well, you will come back to New York to spend Christmas with us, right?"

"Yes, I will go back to New York to rest for a while. I need something else to dilute my memory of filming the movie, and then I can look at the content I shot objectively, so that I won't be reluctant to cut it."

...

All the film has been developed. The Universal Film Processing Plant has developed a set of special films from the negatives, and each frame has a number on it, which is called the working positive film.

This set of films is used for editing. All the editing will be recorded with the film number, and finally sent back to the processing plant to cut the negative according to the number.

In the small screening room of Universal, Jennifer Jason Lee's father Vic Morrow and a senior executive in a suit have watched all the special clips.

He is Ned Tanen, a Jewish executive of Universal Pictures. He privately checked the work samples, and after watching them with Vic Morrow, he said to him:

"Vic, to be honest, Ronald didn't mess around, and Jennifer was not forced to shoot any bad nude shots. There are many more chaotic shooting methods in the industry. He is considered to be very disciplined."

"I don't want my daughter Jennifer on the screen... Can you intervene?"

"This is against the rules..."

"But Jennifer is a Jewish girl..."

Tanning was silent. Jews have a huge network of relationships in the film industry. It is true that Jewish girls do not need to make sacrifices like this to enter the industry, unlike white girls of other races. If this trend is set, what advantages do Jewish girls have? "

"This is a youth film, and Jennifer herself agreed, Vic."

"Then keep the shot of the black-haired girl."

"I can't do this, Vic, Phoebe Cates's father is also one of us."

"But her mother is of mixed Chinese descent..."

"Okay, I'll mention it at the distribution meeting, but I can't guarantee anything. Have you registered at the rehabilitation center, Vic. It's not easy for you to return to the film industry from TV, and you can even join a project led by Spielberg. Don't waste this opportunity. "

Tanning regarded himself as the protector of the Jews in the film industry, and began to remind Morrow while speaking.

"I know," Vic Morrow waved his hand, "You help me with this matter, Ned, I owe you one."