Exploiting Hollywood 1980

"Daryl Vidal is no longer in Los Angeles. I checked his old karate gym and it has closed down and deregistered the company. His name is also not on the phone number register in Los Angeles and surrounding counties. I am trying to find a way to find it. His last record of renting a house may have been in other cities.”

Richard reported to Ronald in the office about finding a karate instructor.

"Thank you, Richard. If you can't find it, I'll find another way." Ronald was very satisfied with Richard. He was always very attentive to the tasks he assigned.

"This is the karate you want, the information about Japanese Americans in California, and the records in various libraries in Los Angeles. I called you and asked..." Richard took out another piece of paper and recorded it. Several libraries have relatively complete collections of historical records of Ryukyu Karate.

Since the Japanese were hostile to America during World War II, they do not have complete cultural institutions in Los Angeles like other ethnic groups to collect and preserve the historical records of their nation. Many existing cultural institutions were built with money from Japanese companies after the economy took off, and there is little history of local Japanese.

Over the next few weeks, Ronald spent time in various libraries, searching for the history of karate and Japanese Americans. He brought sorting cards and recorded interesting history whenever he saw it.

It would be better if the library can make photocopies. If you pay a little money, you can photocopy the contents of old magazines and newspapers. Even more convenient are several university libraries in Los Angeles, which are equipped with a microfilm photography system that can be queried on the computer, and then the microfilm can be retrieved, browsed with a special microscope, and printed directly when the required materials are encountered.

After Ronald's investigation, he discovered that Japanese Americans had actually settled in California on a large scale before World War II. It also introduced traditional martial arts such as karate and judo to the West Coast.

Before Bruce Lee was born, karate still focused on stopping, that is, until the point is reached, the moves will stop before they hit the opponent's vital points, and they will not really hit. This method dissatisfied the passionate American people, and the karate competitions held never attracted much support from the audience.

It wasn't until Bruce Lee demonstrated some of his unique skills at a karate conference that people became interested in karate. Various competitions began to be organized and held in various places.

Under the influence of Bruce Lee's ideas, everyone began to formulate various karate rules for real fighting. The common point is to score points by hitting the effective part of the opponent's body. However, the rules of each tournament are different. Some only prohibit hitting the eyes, throat, lower body and other vital parts. Some pursue safety and must wear a lot of protective gear. Even kicking the head and hitting the back of the body are prohibited.

In general, karate competitions in California are still in a chaotic state of being held individually. There is no unified organization and association to set standards, and the levels vary greatly.

On this day, Ronald walked out of the Albert Kinney Memorial Library next to Venice Beach, which contains some information on early Japanese Americans in Los Angeles.

Ronald lived here for a while while filming "Rock High School" and also ran a portrait photography studio for a while, making a little money.

Break dancing is becoming more and more popular in Venice, Los Angeles. The scene in "Flash Dance" in which the heroine learns to dance with several Latinos and black people has become a new popular trend. Ronald saw several young men also forming a circle next to the terrazzo floor, imitating the dance moves in the movie.

One of the young men, who was using crutches, was still correcting movements and teaching essentials to others. He seemed to be the boss of break dancing in this area.

Ronald felt curious, so he stopped and watched why so many dancers were convinced by a normal person.

"Come on, come on, Handyan." Several young men shouted, asking the disabled person to dance a piece.

Handyan's original meaning is a repairman, but this nickname is a bit strange to describe this man on crutches. Not only were his legs unable to walk, but Ronald looked a little stunted, a classic symptom of polio, and he must have been a bad repairman who had to climb up and down.

Handyan didn't refuse. He threw away his crutches and fell to the terrazzo floor. Then he prepared his hands, got up, and started the Thomas full rotation of gymnastics. His legs were weak, but it didn't hinder his wonderful movements at all, and he was almost out of his mind.

Then he straightened up like a carp and began to lean on his back to make a fulcrum on the ground and spin. Although his legs and feet are disabled, his movements are smooth and smooth, which is very beautiful. A pair of disabled legs turned, and there was no problem at all. All supported by two hands.

"No wonder he's nicknamed 'Handyan.'" Ronald couldn't help but applaud beside him.

"Ronald, is that you?" A middle-aged woman passed by with a cloth bag and couldn't help but screamed when she saw Ronald.

"Ah, hello, Mrs. Weber!" Ronald recognized her neighbor who was renting a house in Venice at the time. He had hired her and her daughter when doing portrait photography.

Ronald hugged her warmly and said, "I still work in the film industry, but I haven't seen you for a long time. How are you? How are you doing recently? How is your daughter?"

"I'm fine. My daughter graduated from high school and works as a cashier in a supermarket. She works very hard. Her boyfriend is a nice Latino boy. After graduating from college, he works in a law firm..."

Mrs. Weber has some Irish ancestry. In fact, she has a feud with her cousin, who is of British descent in America. They are also mainly Catholic, so they don't shy away from marrying Latinos who also believe in Catholicism. Moreover, Latinos can go to college and work in law firms. For Mrs. Weber's daughter, they are very good marriage partners.

I invited Mrs. Weber to have a cup of coffee. Meeting old neighbors was an unexpected surprise. Ronald decided to set the background of the protagonist to Mrs. Weber's family. An Irish single mother, for a job opportunity, drove all the way to Los Angeles with her daughter, no, in the script it was her son, to pursue her dream.

And the dream lover of this Weber boy was set as a local upper-middle-class family. They had a large independent house in the suburbs. His father had a good job and his mother was a full-time housewife. She was also the school belle at school.

The school beauty's boyfriend is a classmate of the same school. He also belongs to the wealthy middle class. Because of his violent tendencies, he formed a bullying organization with a group of little boys and bullied weak boys every day. When he beat the protagonist one day, his violent behavior was discovered by his girlfriend, so she broke up on the spot.

The school beauty's boyfriend thought that this was caused by the protagonist. He wanted to reconcile with his girlfriend but failed, so he came to bully the protagonist every day. The protagonist's face and body were covered with scars due to his bullying.

The protagonist couldn't bear it, so he found a karate training class, worshipped the Ryukyu karate master as his teacher, and learned the secrets of authentic Ryukyu karate. The protagonist shined in the championship and won the championship.

But the dream lover heroine saw that the protagonist also learned martial arts and won the championship by violent means. She thought of the violent ex-boyfriend in her heart and was indifferent to the protagonist.

The school beauty's ex-boyfriend failed to get back together again, and this time he beat the protagonist again. After learning martial arts, the protagonist defeated the bully and ordered him not to harass his ex-girlfriend, the school beauty, again.

When the protagonist finally beat the bully boy hard, he put down his fist again, because martial arts does not necessarily require the same violent means to bully back.

The heroine who happened to see all this also changed her view of the protagonist because of this incident and kissed him.

After the main story was written, Ronald began to add details and character stories to it every day. Without the help of dreams, it is estimated that this movie may not have a good box office, and it was not made into a videotape, and it was not seen in the previous life.

While Ronald was working hard every day, "Valley Girl" has been screened for the fourth week, and his "Night of the Comet" will be released next week.

He came to the office of Atlantic Pictures again. Martha Coolidge, the director of "Valley Girl", was also there, and Ronald chatted with her.

In the first two weeks, the reputation of "Valley Girl" was quite good, and the average box office in the second week dropped by 30%. The movie, which was originally prepared to be taken offline for a month, only dropped by 5% in the third week.

The Atlantic thought that the word-of-mouth had reversed, so it arranged 100 more theaters, hoping to get a Cinderella (Sleepyg hit), but the box office in the fourth week was disappointing, falling more than 40% from last week.

After four weekends, the weekly box office of "Valley Girl" has fallen below $1.5 million. The Atlantic's prediction was basically accurate. The audience of this kind of urban funny teen romantic comedy is very concentrated in big cities, and the potential audience is also rapidly decreasing.

The Atlantic has concentrated more on filming in those theaters that have performed well in the early stage. The total number of theaters showing the film has fallen by more than 200, and it is estimated that it will continue to fall next week, and the weekly box office will fall below $1 million.

"Anyway, the total box office is close to $9 million. I finally succeeded." Martha Coolidge was also very emotional when she talked about it. This movie was also difficult to make, but fortunately the final result was good, and she is not afraid that she will not be able to gain a foothold in Hollywood in the future.

"Yes, congratulations, your first movie has made more than 10 million at the box office. It is estimated that it will exceed 15 million after long-term screening."

"Good luck to you, Ronald. I hope your movie will be successful."

Ronald knew that Martha Coolidge was still a little unconvinced. Her movie's weekend single-theater box office figures were still good, around 2,000. If his "Night of the Comet" could not surpass that by a large margin, Atlantic would still allocate more theaters for her "Valley Girl".