Exploiting Hollywood 1980

"Rick, what happened?" Ronald returned home and immediately called his agent Nicita. "It seems that the audience has gone crazy. They shouted and refused to let the main creators leave. They dragged them to sign for more than half an hour. You know, they were small actors who were ignored before."

"You are going to be rich, Ronald." Nicita put the receiver on the other side and took the note from the secretary. "I heard about the premiere and sent five assistants to the cinemas in various districts to watch it. Every show was a hit. I guess you should print more copies."

"Wait a minute, don't hang up, Ronnie", Nicita picked up another phone, "Hello, it's me, I'm Ronald Lee's agent. Do you want to talk to him about the new script? He's a hot new star... Yes, I'll arrange it, wait until he comes back from Cannes."

"Ronnie, the agent and producer with a good sense of smell have already contacted me, I will answer them uniformly, wait until you come back from Cannes to talk."

"Hello?", another phone rang, Nicita seemed to have opened a hotline, every time she put the phone back, it would ring again after a while.

"Ronald, I have to hang up first, you have a good rest, I guess starting tomorrow, there will be a lot of people looking for you, or the media will want to interview you, I will send Richard to help you deal with things. Paula will go too, she has more experience in handling public relations, you are famous, man."

Ronald put down the phone excitedly, walked around the room twice, and then punched hard, "Yeah!", is he going to be famous?

"But why?" Ronald still didn't understand. He didn't perform particularly well? He picked up the phone again and called Donna in New York.

"Donna? My new film 'Breakdance' is out. Have you seen it?"

"I bought the ticket for the first show tomorrow," Donna planned to go see it on Saturday. She had to learn calculus in advance on Friday.

"Okay, do me a favor. When you go see it, talk to other people about why they like it. The audience in Los Angeles seems to be very enthusiastic. I'm not sure."

"Okay, but it may not be popular in New York. I'll call you after I finish watching it." Donna hung up the phone.

"That's right. It's not necessarily that the East Coast likes this kind of dance. They have their own style of street dance and rap music." Ronald's mood calmed down a little. "But even if the West Coast is popular, the box office is far beyond expectations."

Ronald, who was at home, couldn't help walking around the house. He felt a breath of air stuck in his chest. He was always very confident in his directorial achievements, but this time he didn't expect that the reaction to "Breakdance" would be so strong.

Why is it?

Ronald picked up the phone again and called his former boss Roger Corman.

"Roger, you are going to be famous. The audience likes your performance very much."

"Hahaha, is that so? You are a good boy. You gave me a lot of lines. I had a great time acting." Roger Corman has not watched his own performance yet.

"I have a question. The audience seemed to be crazy today. I guess the box office will exceed expectations. I don't understand what happened."

"Hahaha, do you feel that the movie you made has become popular for no reason? You don't know what you did right to make it like this?" Corman has decades of experience in making movies and is very experienced in this.

"Yes, yes, yes, I am a little dizzy. A voice in my heart seems to say that I am not that great, but another voice says that maybe you are that great!"

"Yes, you can still keep a clear mind now, much better than when I was young." Roger Corman talked about a past event.

"One year I saw a news story in the newspaper about a gang of motorcycle riders who called themselves the Hell's Angels. I asked Peter Bogdanovich, who was a film critic at the time, to revise a script and then cast Henry Fonda in the film.

I thought it was OK, but just average. Who knew that the film would hit on something and sell tens of millions of dollars in one fell swoop? All the films I've made before, combined, couldn't compare to it.

Sometimes, God will be on your side. As long as you stay in this industry long enough, you will encounter one or two times when your film hits the trend of the times and becomes inexplicably popular."

"So that's it!" Ronald put down the phone and realized something. He felt that he should have hit the trend of the times in the form of breakdancing.

Breakdancing has been developed for more than ten years since it was invented by black people. After Latinos took over and continued to develop it in the 1980s, the skills have continued to improve. Now the skills and art of breakdancing have reached a very high level. More and more people are dancing, and it is slowly becoming popular and gradually entering the mainstream media's field of vision.

Last year, there was a movie called "Flashdance" that had a one-minute breakdancing scene, which made more people start to pay attention to this kind of dance, and more and more teenagers are dancing this kind of dance on the streets. Breakdancing seems to be on the verge of an explosion, and it just needs the final push.

In this way, I took advantage of the speed of shooting and got ahead of Orion's movie of the same theme "Hot Street Kids".

The next morning, Ronald got up early, picked up the newspapers of the past few weeks, and began to study the box office situation.

March is the peak season, and a large number of blockbuster movies were released at that time. Today, nearly ten weeks have passed.

Like Robert Zemeckis’s “Emerald,” Ronald almost directed “All About Us,” the comedy “Police Academy,” and finally a movie in which Diane almost co-starred with Tom Hanks. "Mermaid", these four movies have all received a box office of 40 to 50 million, but they are gradually showing signs of weakness, and the box office is declining week by week.

Just in time to hit a gentle bottom, "Break Dance" comes out of nowhere and should explode this weekend.

On Saturday afternoon, Donna first called from the phone booth outside the cinema to report, "I went to see it, Ronnie. There were so many people. The audience went crazy. After watching, many blacks and Latinos jumped in front of the screen. The stage jumped up by itself, and there were many white people there.

"Ah? Do you think it looks good? Where does it look good?" Ronald asked loudly, and he started to get excited again. It seems that the East Coast is also exploding.

"I don't know. Anyway, those dances were so exciting. By the way, MJ's moonwalk was really taught by Mada..."

"Is that so?" Ronald began to hold his breath happily again.

It seems that the blacks and Latinos on the East Coast didn't mind at all that the dance in this movie was West Coast style. They were overjoyed to see their dances appear on the big screen. The small style gap between the east and west coasts should be nothing.

Now I am really going to make a fortune.

"Minahan, congratulations, you are going to get rich." Ronald called Minahan immediately.

"We are going to get rich, you bastard, we are going to get rich! You are a genius, you are a genius, genius! Gagaaaa..."

Minahan was also incoherent. For so long, the two Israeli brothers, who had always been looked down upon by other major studios in the American film industry, finally succeeded.

He put down the phone and looked at his cousin Yoram, who was also filled with tears. The two hugged each other tightly and cried in each other's arms.

"Yoram, Yoram, it turns out that we can still make money by making movies in America!"

"Yes, we will sell it to Europe, East Asia, and the whole world!"

"Stop, stop..."

Donna walked out of the phone booth in New York, preparing to hail a taxi and go home with her best friend Diane. However, the taxi seemed unable to see them and showed no intention of slowing down.

"You should come like this." Diane took out a ten-dollar bill and waved to the driver.

"Gah..." the taxi stopped.

The two chatted in the taxi and talked about Ronald's new movie.

"This time Ronnie is going to be famous!" Donna said in Diane's ear.

"The dance is so beautiful. In fact, it's not difficult to perform in this movie." Diane looked reserved, but the regret in her heart was also clearly shown on her face.

"Then let Ronnie take you to shoot." Donna kissed Diane's armpit.

"I do not want it."

The two girls were laughing and joking in the car.

The car turned around the end of the street, and there was a long line outside the theater. Everyone was patiently waiting for tickets to "Break Dance."

The large billboard put up by MGM was carried out from the corner by the staff and placed in the most conspicuous position in the hall.

Everyone was happy, except for a thin Latino young man, who squatted on the ground and patted the ground remorsefully.

"I'm so stupid! I'm so stupid! I believed your ghost!"

He was the one who originally turned down Ronald to play his own "Crazy Legs" in Orion Pictures' "Hot Street."

This was originally mine!

"Hot Street Kids" hadn't even come out yet, and break dancing had stolen everyone's attention. All the New York kids were practicing the authentic West Coast dance steps of the Boogaloo in "Break Dance," and no one came back to practice "Flash Dance." ", New York East Coast style space pace.

Originally a mature dance, through mass media such as movies, it was magnified and played on the big screen. It seems that in the future, the dance steps of the East Coast will be completely overshadowed by the West Coast.

"Orion sucks, it sucks!"

Ronald hid at home and was so excited that he stayed up most of the night.

On the third day, Sunday, the day the first weekend schedule ended, Ronald simply waited at Cannon Pictures, staring at the fax machine with Minahan to read the numbers reported by MGM.

After midnight, after early morning, it was already broad daylight.

"Squeak..." The fax finally began to protrude from a piece of paper.

"Bang", Minahan tore off the fax paper. On it were MGM's preliminary statistics.

The first weekend box office of "Break Dance" reached 7.86 million. It was released in 1,000 theaters, beating "Sixteen Candles" in 1,240 theaters. The box office of a single theater exceeded 7,300. , fully twice as long as "Sixteen Candles".