Exploiting Hollywood 1980

Ronald returned home, not feeling sleepy yet, so he took out the script of "Footloose" and started reading it.

The original author, Dean Pitchford, wrote a story about the writing and attached it to the front of the script.

The screenwriter Pitchford is a top student who graduated from Yale. He explained the ins and outs of the script in a few words.

In 1980, Pitchford saw a news report that dancing had been banned in the small town of Elmore, Oklahoma since 1900, and the town had never held a dance in 80 years.

The last eleventh grade student in high school challenged and overturned the law. In the graduation season of 1980, Elmore Public High School held its first high school graduation dance.

The whole movie is adapted from reality. The three protagonists, Len who proposed to abolish the legal ban, Ariel, the pastor's daughter who maintained the ban, and Ariel's best friend Rusty, all have prototypes.

Pitchford himself is a lyricist. He also wrote the lyrics for all the episodes that are expected to appear in the movie and attached them to the script.

For example, the opening is an interlude with the same name, "Footloose", and the lyrics at the beginning are

Footloose, Footloose, kick off your weekend shoes.

Please, Louise, help me take off my boots.

The lyrics are very rhyming and rhythmic. The title "Footloose" actually has a double meaning.

On the one hand, Footloose is a description of the rhythmic sound of footsteps, which refers to the rhythm of dance. On the other hand, it means to loosen the footsteps and abolish the ban on dancing.

Ronald admires the literary quality of the lyrics of the Yale top student.

However, Pitchford seems to have never made a movie. Many parts of the script are not written in a standard way. Some plots cannot be filmed according to the script and must be processed again.

For example, there is a plot that Ronald obviously feels cannot be considered a script. He plans to start revising it from this part.

The male protagonist, Len, who transferred from the big city of Chicago, has a conflict with Ariel's boyfriend. The two agreed to have a coward duel with a tractor.

The two drove the tractor towards each other. Whoever got scared and turned before the collision lost.

"Len's shoe got stuck in the clutch by accident, and he tried to jump out of the car, but failed. Ariel's boyfriend Chuck saw how Ren was trying to escape, and he smugly stepped on the accelerator and continued to move forward. With no way out, Ren had to step on the accelerator as well, which scared Chuck into jumping out of the car instead."

This had to be divided into many scenes that could be filmed, and Ronald began to design a plan for the entire scene. The words in the script must be filmable. How to give a close-up of the clutch being stuck? How to try to jump out of the car?

The audience needs to understand why Ren can't jump out of the car, and Ronald thought about it for a while, and changed the shoe being stuck to the shoelaces being entangled. In this way, when lifting his foot to jump out of the car, a close-up of the shoelaces being entangled in the clutch can be cut, and the audience can also understand why the protagonist Ren can't jump out.

As for the emotional description of "smugly", it is acceptable to turn a blind eye, and the director will give on-the-spot guidance, and the actors can just perform.

After writing for about half an hour, Ronald began to feel sleepy. Today, I went to Paramount first, then to Beverly Hills. After returning home, I took Demi to the hospital. Ronald couldn't open his eyes.

"Take a rest and write tomorrow." Ronald struggled to get up and walked to the bed and lay down, pulling a blanket over him.

"Bang cha cha, bang cha cha... bang cha, bang cha." A drum beat started, and Ronald seemed to see a dark background picture appear in front of him.

There was no detailed background, no face of any character, only close-ups of two feet on the screen, dancing to the rhythm.

Men's feet, women's feet, feet in high-heeled sandals, feet in leather shoes, feet in boots, feet in dirty sneakers, and two feet in leg warmers.

A background voice was singing the lyrics with a brisk rhythm

Footloose, Footloose, kick off your weekend leather shoes.

Please, Louise, help me take off my boots.

"This editing is good." Ronald realized that he had dreamed of "full of energy".

The dance at the beginning ended with the interlude, the screen went black, and then brightened again.

A middle-aged pastor was preaching in the church.

"God could have just waved his big hand and wiped all these evils off the ground. But he didn't do that, he designed a test for us, a test!

If it wasn't for this test, how do you explain the popularity of the evil, obscene, and depraved rock music that is popular now?"

"This is probably the male lead, Lun, who transferred here." Ronald guessed that the director's technique was not bad. After the opening pointed out the main theme, the first scene that appeared after the black screen was a conservative pastor in a conservative town, preaching conservatively.

Coupled with the disdain of Lun, a white guy who transferred from the big city of Chicago, the dramatic conflict at the beginning came out.

But Ronald was too tired today and started to want to sleep again.

"Ah..." I don't know how long it took, a girl driving a car on the screen screamed.

"Ah..." Then the man driving another car driving parallel to the side screamed.

“Toot…” A whistle sounded, and the camera cut to the truck on the opposite side.

It turned out that there was a girl standing between two cars, with her feet on the doors of the two cars, as if she was doing stunts. She ignored the men and women in the two cars who were screaming for her to get off, but continued to stand there with a crazy smile to welcome the truck on the opposite side.

The boy driving the pickup truck seemed to be the girl’s boyfriend. The other three girls in the opposite car were her best friends.

A girl with a big nose sitting in the back seat desperately slapped the door, asking the girl doing acrobatic moves to get off quickly. "

“Chuck, be careful. Ariel, Ariel… Come back quickly, there is a truck in front,” she shouted desperately.

“This is probably Rusty, the best friend of the protagonist Ariel. With such a big hump nose, she must be Jewish. How can she act in a movie even if she is so ugly?” Ronald thought to himself, and at the critical moment, he gave her a shot.

“Ahahaha…” The camera cut to the girl who stepped on the doors of the two cars and bravely faced the truck.

“Hey! "

Ronald found that he knew this girl. Wasn't she the cellist in the TV version of "Famous" at Helen Slater's last party, Lori Singer (Ler)?

"She is the heroine of this movie?" Ronald was a little puzzled. There were only some dancing scenes in the script of this movie, but no cello performance? Why did they choose her? Maybe it was because of her father?

Ronald had read the script and knew that Ariel was the protagonist, so he was not very worried that she would get into trouble. However, the editing of this section was very skillful. The audience who watched it for the first time would probably be brought into the mood of worrying about the girl.

At the critical moment, Ariel, played by Lori Singer, got into her boyfriend Chuck's car and narrowly avoided the truck. The pickup truck stopped on the side of the road. On the other side, the girl drove the sedan into the ditch.

"Well ", Ronald fell asleep again.

"Woo...woo..." After an unknown amount of time, the sound of two engines starting woke Ronald up again.

On the two tractors, on one side was the protagonist, Lun, and on the other side was Ariel's boyfriend, Chuck. The two turned on the loud speaker tape recorder, and drove the tractors against each other with the accompaniment of music.

Lun tried to escape several times, but his shoelaces were entangled in the clutch pedal and he couldn't jump out of the car. In the end, it was Chuck who was forced to turn the steering wheel, and the tractor drove into the ditch next to it, and he fell in.

"The editing of this section is not very good." Ronald thought to himself, "It's a bit too complicated. It seems that the audience is afraid that they can't understand Lun's tense state that he can't escape. The close-ups of the clutch pedal, shoelaces, and Lun's panic expression were cut back and forth several times. "

"Why is the editing level so different before and after?" Ronald didn't quite understand, "At the beginning, the close-up dance of various shoes was very creative. The thrilling shots of driving to face the big truck later were also okay, but the editing of this tractor duel seemed to be downgraded. "

The sleepy feeling continued to come, and Ronald was woken up again in a daze.

"Hey hey...what are you standing there for? I heard this is a party, let's dance! "

Ron, wearing a dress, rushed into a dance party decorated with glittering ribbons and stickers.

"Aoaoao..." Men and women began to shout along with the strong rhythm of the theme song "Footloose".

Boys and girls invited each other to rush into the dance floor and began to dance a mixture of disco moves and old-fashioned swing dance steps.

The boyfriend of the big-nosed Jewish girl was a silly big man. He also made a signature one-armed appearance of John Travolta in "Saturday Night Fever", which caused another round of cheers from men and women.

All kinds of glittering powders fell from the sky. The boys lined up in a row, and the girls also lined up in a row, dancing relative to each other.

The camera was aimed at their shoes for a close-up. The high heels raised glittering powder, and the picture was very delicate.

Ronald just curled his lips when he saw it. This seemed a bit old-fashioned from the 1930s and 1940s. It looked like an early musical. In those Civil War or British aristocratic period dramas, there was often this kind of dance form where men and women were filmed in two rows inviting each other.

Where is this kind of dance in modern America? It all focuses on personal display.

The dance form is ancient, and the steps are also a bit ancient. Disco is also mixed with some old-fashioned tap dance styles, making the floor clacking.

Finally, the two rows of students began to retreat, and the male protagonist Len and Rusty's boyfriend began to stand in the middle of the dance floor and dance solo. It was still a combination of ancient dance and modern disco, but it was better than before.

The girls also began to dance solo, shaking their long hair and kicking their thighs, finally having some professional dance moves.

Then the boys came out one by one, robot dance, noodle dance, and gymnastics Thomas full spin on the floor. It seemed like the kind of break dance that Ronald would dance.

"Huh? "Ronald began to feel incongruous again. These black break dances appeared in this movie, and it was indescribably strange for white people to do them.

These are dance steps that require systematic training, and they are not very popular now. How can these students who were born in a small town that has not danced for 80 years dance?

Fortunately, Rusty's boyfriend's dance steps are still relatively immature and clumsy, which fits the character image. He dances silly. The expression on his face is also a bit like Sean Penn in "Fast and Furious", just a silly high school student.

Finally, Len took the lead, followed by Ariel and Rusty. The male and female students lined up in a column and danced towards the camera. The theme song stopped abruptly, and the scenes in the dream turned black.

Ronald woke up immediately.

He looked out the window. It was not yet dawn. He had only slept for a few hours.

Ronald got up and took advantage of his memory to write down his evaluation of several scenes in his dream as a director, writing a large piece of paper.

"The camera is dragging and not suitable for the rhythm of modern audiences in the 1980s.

There are problems with the dance design. The dance design is very old-fashioned. The actors are either too bad or too good.

The camera is aimed at the shoes for a close-up, which is very creative.

The opening narrative is smooth and brings the audience into the plot at once..."

After Ronald finished writing, he read it again and felt a little contradictory.

This movie is shot very strangely. In some places, it looks like a very experienced director who has been shooting movies for decades. In some places, it is shot very awkwardly, like himself when shooting "Fast Pace", a fledgling film director.

Also, is this a high-concept or low-concept movie?

If we count the actors, none of them are famous, so it should be considered a high-concept movie configuration. But the plot is not high-concept at all. Dancing is not allowed in small towns. What era is this?

If Ronald hadn't read the writing background written by the author Pitchford, he would have thought it was a made-up story.

"Wait..." Ronald suddenly realized his own thinking error.

This is indeed a high-concept movie, but it is not for young people like me who live in big cities, but for tens of millions of young people living in small towns.

Religion and conservative forces are strong there, and people's lives are not much different from decades ago. Going to church to listen to pastors' sermons on weekends, there are no new things like disco bars and rock concerts.

Dancing those dance steps that combine ancient and modern is a very extraordinary behavior for them.

This is also why the director has to use some old-fashioned editing methods. Those small town youths, like me in my hometown of Staten Island, will probably have to wait for a year or two to see rebellious movies like "ET the Alien" and "Fast and Furious Richmond High School".

They are still familiar with the old slow editing rhythms of the 1970s. Maybe some movie theaters are still playing "Singin' in the Rain".

The black breakdancing at the end is also a little dessert for them to open their eyes, right?