Exploiting Hollywood 1980

But in order to please the audience, strengthen Sean Penn's role, and give him a protagonist's ending, it is necessary to cut out the less outstanding roles of others.

For example, after Stacey and Linda cleaned up the pizza shop, they walked down the stairs to the basement parking lot. The two were discussing how to take the initiative to call the handsome audio salesman, when a working girl from another school came to ask Linda for advice.

"Linda, I'm... in high school, and Judy said I can ask you something."

"Yes, ask." Linda turned to Stacey and said, "I know Judy."

"My boyfriend and I want..." The girl looked down, as if the question she asked was very embarrassing, "We want... uh..."

Then the girl covered her mouth with her hand and spoke in Linda's ear.

"Okay, are you an adult?"

"Yes."

"You go to a place called a free clinic and tell them that you go out with your boyfriend regularly two or three times a week. You need those little pills."

"They won't tell my family, will they?"

"No, they won't tell my family if you're over sixteen."

The film on the monitor screen was finished, and the editor suggested to Ronald, "This section can actually be deleted without affecting the overall subsequent story. There are a total of fifty-seven seconds.

From the perspective of each person's story development, this kind of shot of Stacey and Linda talking is used to explain the background story. In fact, deleting most of it will not affect the development of the plot."

"But here the existence of the free clinic is explained, which foreshadows Stacey's accidental pregnancy in the future." Ronald hesitated, "If it is not explained here, the concept of a free clinic suddenly appears later, will the audience feel abrupt?"

"Hahaha, Ronald, you finally speak like a movie director." Editor Eric laughed.

"What do you mean?"

"I have worked with many directors, and they always come up with various reasons to keep their own shots. Only you feel more like an editor to me, and I don't have a lot of emotional reluctance to delete the shots. But today you finally think like a director."

"Hey. I'm just afraid that the audience won't understand. Not all American audiences are familiar with the concept of free clinics in California. In many conservative states in the central and southern parts of the country, such clinics are often destroyed and doctors and nurses are beaten.

Two days ago, CBS TV reported a case in Texas, where a free clinic that provides contraception and abortion was burned down."

Although the Supreme Court's "Roe v. Wade" ruling in 1973 gave women the right to be responsible for their own bodies and their privacy is inviolable under the 14th Amendment.

But the precedents of the highest judicial body in the United States are not automatically effective in each state. Each state needs to enact its own legislation for protection. Some conservative states can also use other legislation to hedge.

Southern states with strong religious and conservative forces have found ways to pass various state laws. In Texas, where Roe v. Wade took place, ordinary teenagers are not familiar with the concept of free clinics.

"Forget it, can they understand the free and open concept of California with just these fifty seconds of footage?" said editor Eric.

"That makes sense, let's cut this part."

Ronald no longer insisted. In fact, the name of the free clinic implies a lot. Free (free) in English also means freedom. Moreover, although there is no medical fee for free clinics, the cost of medicine and other expenses is not cheap.

They gave this name deliberately to use semantic puns to evade state legislation and give women a safe haven.

You have to know that in some particularly conservative places, such as the South where Catholicism is prevalent, women cannot even get simple contraceptives.

If a doctor prescribes a prescription to someone's wife, it will spread to the whole town in less than half a day. Strong social pressure will make women give up any measures, and the result is one child after another.

It is impossible for audiences in these places to have a deep understanding of the big city of Los Angeles that they have never been to through a conversation. But the suggestion of a name is enough to make teenage girls associate Los Angeles with a place where they have freedom over their bodies.

This 50-second shot is actually similar to the name of a "free clinic" in terms of the efficiency of conveying stories and emotions.

Although movies are created by artists, artists also need to pay attention to efficiency. If something can be conveyed in one second, there is no need to arrange a minute.

"Remove this segment, you remember it." Seeing Ronald's agreement, the editor asked his assistant to record the number of this segment.

"Let's continue." Then the editor took a roll of film and loaded it himself.

The next segment is after a while, the handsome guy who sells audio equipment no longer asks Stacey out. The distressed Stacey talks to Linda again.

"My 'stupid' mother answered his call and told her that I was still in high school. He never called me again. What should I do? Should I go to the audio store to find him?"

"Don't be silly, Stacey. He's just an audio salesman. What do you want to do? Marry him and give birth to his children?"

"In the future, I have to say that I'm 18 years old, so that I'm still in high school, and it's not easy to be exposed."

After reading this section, the editor said to Ronald, "Let's delete this section too. Stacey was dumped by a handsome guy, and everyone can guess it from the story later."

"No, this section cannot be cut." Ronald shook his head.

"The audience just saw Stacy going on a date with the handsome guy from the audio store, and the handsome guy even sent flowers to Stacey's home. If we don't explain it, the audience will find it strange later."

"But then didn't Stacey date nerdy Mark again? Viewers would have guessed that she and the handsome guy from the stereo store didn't move on."

"Yes, that's why I want to keep this scene. The audience recognizes that Stacey is a girl who values ​​emotions more than men and women. There must be an explanation here, otherwise Stacey and the bold girls of the cheerleading team What’s the difference? How can she justify her ending with Mark?”

"But isn't that superfluous?"

"No, you, like me, have read the story a dozen times. We all already know exactly what kind of person Stacey is. But those viewers who have not read the original novel will get to know Stacey on the screen for the first time. Tessie, they're the ones the movie wants to please.

I didn't want them to think Stacey was weird and take away from the story. "

"Okay, you're the boss. This section only lasts ten seconds anyway. Just keep it."

Decisions like this lasted for several days. When finally assembling the entire film, Ronald discovered that he had unknowingly cut out about 20% of the footage. There are only ninety-six minutes left on the film's set.

Ronald and the editor completely watched the ninety-six minutes of film through a horizontal editing machine.

"Do you feel it? The rhythm of the six characters' appearances is a bit unsmooth." Editor Eric took the initiative to start the conversation.

"Yes, you are right. Moreover, the actor's performance lacks the foreshadowing of other scenes, and the intensity of the emotions is a bit inconsistent." Ronald also agreed with the editor's view.

This "Bed of Proclus" style editing method is very efficient in cropping shots. The cutting time that originally took twenty days was completed in two days.

But at the same time, it also brought many side effects.

An important side effect is that the proportion of each character's appearance is somewhat messed up.

Take the nerdy Mark, for example, who originally had a crush on Stacey because of his shy nature. The first time he had a date with Stacey, he went to her house. After kissing Stacey, Mark was very uncomfortable with the progress between himself and his crush goddess and ran away from Stacey's house.

After that, it took a long time for Mark to appear again. This is Stacey who got unexpectedly pregnant with her good friend Mike the Ox. During a visit to the hospital in biology class, Stacey remembered her surgery and ran out to vomit.

Mark went up to comfort her. His gentlemanly behavior made Stacey understand that what she wanted more was a stable and mutually supportive relationship.

But for several minutes in the middle, Mark did not appear in the plot. His sudden disappearance and reappearance would make the audience forget about the plot of this character.

"We have to add a little drama to Mark. Or cut out the early plot between him and scalper Mike and move it a little to the middle."

Ronald knew exactly what editor Eric was thinking. He walked over to the whiteboard on the wall and started looking for it.

But he found nothing. The scenes of the six protagonists were crammed into a ninety-minute scene, and everyone's plot was reduced to a very small amount.

There was a plot in the past where the nerdy Mark forgot his wallet on a date with Stacey and asked Mark to send money. Later, there was a scene where she learned that Mike stole his girl and had a fight with him in the locker room.

However, the logic of these shots and the plot before and after is very strong, and it is impossible to cut and move the part in the middle where Mark does not appear.

"What do you think of this?" Eric watched the opening scene over and over on the editing machine, and finally found a scene of Mark being embarrassed.

This was originally the scene where Mark was introduced to the role at the beginning. Mark awkwardly avoided the two girls.

"We add that to the Central Prep and Lincoln High School football game prep pictures?" Ronald asked.

"Yeah, there's also a scene where Linda and Stacey are talking about Mark running away in the middle of the date, so we'll add that as well."

On the monitor, Linda and Stacey are applying facial masks to themselves.

"For boys like Mark, you have to take the initiative and take the first step." Linda said.

"I took the initiative. Not only did I take the first step, but I also took the second and third step." Stacey complained, "Mark doesn't like my type at all."

"If you add this section, it adds more than one minute. And Stacey's role in these ten minutes is too heavy, and we have to delete other scenes."

Editing is such a way to move the whole body. By moving the weights to one side of the scale, the other balance is destroyed. Ronald and Eric, the editor, were playing this delicate balancing game.

After playing with permutations and combinations in the editing room for several days, the two finally cut out a version with a relatively balanced character and story.

Ronald moved the position of the camera on the whiteboard, and used a colored highlighter to paint over the intensely emotional character scenes to make the color appear darker.

Then he took a few steps back and looked at the various cards on the whiteboard forming a picture. Just like a Mondrian painting, it's just a line segment made up of lines of various colors.

However, the colors represented by the character's emotional intensity may be darker or lighter, and the character's appearance may represent more or less colors. Each character appears occasionally in light colors at the beginning of his story, then appears intensively in dark colors, and finally has his own ending.

The pattern of their appearance on more than 40 cards is also evenly distributed.

Six colors represent six protagonists, Brad, Stacey, Linda, Mark, Mike, Spicoli, in a staggered arrangement, plus an American history teacher Mr. Hand.

Ronald picked up a one-shot camera and took a picture of the whiteboard. Polaroid spit out a black photo, Ronald tore off the photo and shook it in the air, and after a while, a photo appeared on the photo

The colors on the whiteboard cards are arranged into a modernist painting. The colors represented by each character are like instruments with different timbres, telling their own stories.

There is the nerd Mark and the secret love Stacey who finally become a couple.

There is Brad who was fired from the foreman job at All-American Burger, and was promoted to store manager because he accidentally captured a robber.

There is Mike, a scalper, who borrowed money everywhere to raise Stacey's surgery expenses, and someone sprayed the word "liar" on his car.

There is Linda, who couldn't turn into the "perfect boyfriend" she imagined, and had to cry to her bestie at the dance that she was dumped by her boyfriend.

There is also Stacey who, after having sex with several men, finally finds that she likes Mark, and the two return to the normal high school love mode.

Of course, there is also Mr. Hand who fought wits and courage with Spicoli, and finally went to Spicoli's house to tutor him in history and let him graduate.

There is also the confused Spicoli, the black football star Jefferson who defeated Lincoln High School after his car was destroyed, and Brad's girlfriend Lisa who was almost dumped by Brad but finally dumped Brad... and more than a dozen vivid supporting characters.

The various colors represented by the stories of these supporting characters and the protagonists, scattered, finally gathered into a grand symphony in the photos.

Editor Eric also came over to look at the snapshots in Ronald's hand, "This is really a beautiful picture. I think we can connect the working film and give the producer a complete screening."

"Yes, how long is the total length?"

"The total length now is 87 minutes and 34 seconds." The editing assistant reported to Ronald with a notebook.

"Please connect the working copies." Ronald tapped the photo with his hand. The red part representing Spicoli was still a little short. Should we consider reshooting some scenes? Give him an ending?

At the end of the novel, Spicoli saved the life of the award presenter Brooke Shields who accidentally fell into the sea at the surfing competition and won a large bounty. He spent the money on inviting the rock band Van Halen to celebrate his birthday, but in the end he was still a pauper.

"If we want to shoot these, we have to increase the budget. Let the producers take a look first. If they are satisfied, we can start lobbying." Ronald thought.