Exploiting Hollywood 1980

"Why aren't the lights on?" Ronald and Brooke Shields sneaked back to the hotel after the opening ceremony.

"Sir, the balloons released at the opening ceremony fell on the electric pole, causing a major power outage in Los Angeles. Our hotel switched to the backup generator, so the lights in the lobby were not fully turned on."

"This...? It really told the people of the city that the Olympics had opened, but in an unexpected way." Ronald protected Brooke, and the two sneaked into the elevator.

"Well..." Brooke was going to the Bahamas the next day, and the two of them took the time as soon as they got out of the elevator. They kissed and entered the room.

"I'm going to be spoiled by you." Early the next morning, Brooke lay on the bed, eating the brunch pushed by Ronald, feeling satisfied.

"The first gold medal of this Olympics was awarded to Xu from China... He won the 50-meter pistol competition. This is also the first time that an athlete from the Eastern Continent has won an Olympic gold medal."

"Huh?" Ronald turned on the TV and the first news was a surprise. Didn't they say that China's strengths are women's volleyball and gymnastics?

After sending Brooke to the airport and waiting for the plane to take off, Ronald came to the "Back to the Future" set in Burbank.

During the opening ceremony yesterday, Ronald received a favor from Spielberg and made a big advertisement for his movie "Breakdance" in front of hundreds of millions of TV viewers around the world who watched the opening ceremony.

Spielberg was anxious to go home to reunite with his girlfriend and son before going back to shoot "The Color Purple". Ronald happened to return a favor to him and went to the set as his representative to see Zemeckis's shooting situation.

"Robert is my old friend and I have great confidence in his ability. The distributor Universal wants me to submit a report on the progress of the shooting. I won't go. You go and see it for me." Spielberg didn't take it seriously, so Ronald came to take a look on behalf of the big boss of Amberlin and check out Helen's class.

The shooting has been going on for a few weeks, which is just a watershed. The crew, who cooperated tacitly, should have been fully run-in by this time period, and the engine has reached its maximum output power.

The conflicted crew, at this point, the actors are getting more and more fed up with each other, and they are holding their breath and tripping each other up every day, and are on the verge of collapse.

"Back to the Future" seems to belong to the former. Everything is in order in the small town where the filming is taking place.

"This is a time-travel shuttle modified from a DeLorean DC-12 sports car." Director Zemeckis personally accompanied Ronald to visit the set. Although Spielberg has a good relationship with him, he still takes this person who comes to supervise the progress of the filming seriously.

"We bought a total of four cars for different purposes." Zemeckis opened the door. This pure American sports car has been discontinued due to poor sales, but the swan-wing-like side-opening door is still very beautiful.

Ronald wanted to sit in, but the dashboard in the front cabin was equipped with several diode digital displays, which served as time-travel displays. Ronald, who was tall and strong, couldn't sit in the narrow driver's seat at all.

"It was also difficult when Stoltz was filming." Zemeckis scratched his head. He chose DeLorean to promote American manufacturing. He didn't expect that the sports car factory invested by Johnny Carson had design problems and was only suitable for short people under six feet. No wonder it went bankrupt.

He continued to visit the set. It has been arranged into a street in the 1950s. Except for the DeLorean, the rest of the cars on the road are old cars from the 1950s.

Ronald looked around and still admired Zemeckis. All the sets have been verified and are in the style of the 1950s. The actors' costumes are also in the style of the time. At least Ronald can't see any problems.

It seems that today's report is easy to write. "Zemeckis is a genius, everything is very good!" That's it.

"Ronnie," a beautiful woman came over and called him. It was Helen Slater.

Zemeckis walked away and went to do his own thing.

Ronald raised his hand and greeted her. Although there was no role in the plot of traveling to the 1950s, Helen still insisted on coming to the scene to learn every day. There is nothing to complain about her hard work, except that she is too persistent sometimes, and even becomes depressed after her hope of becoming famous as a "superwoman" is shattered.

"How are you doing here?"

"Very good, the male lead Eric Stoltz is a very good actor, and it is a pleasure to act with him." Helen talked a lot about her experience of acting with method actors.

"He doesn't want people to call him by his name Eric now, and he will only agree if we call him Marty. He said that this will keep him in the state of the role."

Ronald nodded. This should be a habit that this little brother learned from Sean Penn when filming "Fast and Furious". But in front of Helen, it is not easy to accuse this of being a boring and unnecessary trick.

"Hi, Jennifer, I haven't seen you for a long time."

Eric Stoltz, wearing a jacket, jeans and a pair of running shoes, passed by the two and greeted Helen Slater. He called her by the name of Helen's character in the movie, Jennifer, and said the same words in the plot.

"Didn't we just meet yesterday? Why do you look at me as if you haven't seen me for a year?" Helen responded with the words in the script.

Stoltz didn't seem to see Ronald, and didn't come to say hello, and went to rest in the trailer.

"That's how he is, he concentrates on the play. Sometimes we use lines like this to test each other's reactions on the spot." Helen explained.

Ronald frowned, this kind of crooked method really made him uncomfortable. And I was the first director to support him. Even if I was immersed in the role, wouldn't I want to say hello?

"Hello, Ronald. It's so nice to meet you. I went to see your Breakdancing and Dragonboy. They are real works of genius, and Elizabeth Shue looks great in them."

Unlike Stoltz, Leigh Thompson, who plays Marty's mother Lorraine, respects Ronald. She made her debut in the Burger King commercial and is now the real heroine of this movie. It was Ronald who recommended her.

"Nice to meet you too, how do you feel here?"

"It's pretty good. It's much better than the conditions in the last 'Red Dawn'. John Milius really asked us to camp like he was training guerrillas. There is at least one trailer here." Leigh Thompson heard about it. Today, a big shot from the production company came to inspect, but I didn't expect it to be Ronald.

"That's different. It's a realistic movie that changes the timeline. It's a light-hearted movie. It's science fiction in name, but it's actually a light comedy."

"Light comedy?" Leigh Thompson felt that Ronald's words made sense. There were not many science fiction elements in this movie. It was just the theme of time travel that was incorporated into the plot. Many scenarios, such as charging back to the 1980s with the energy of lightning, are also quite far-fetched.

"Light comedy? Who said that?" Before filming today's scene, while waiting for lighting, Lea Thompson, Helen Slater, and Eric Stoltz sat together to rest and talked about Luo When Nader made this comment, Eric Stoltz became dissatisfied.

"Isn't this a light comedy?" Leigh Thompson was a little surprised. What did Stoltz think?

"Of course not, it's a tragedy."

"Tragedy? How do you understand it?" Helen Slater was very interested in Stoltz's statement. They all said that the core of comedy is tragedy. Did Stoltz have something to say?

"Look, Marty traveled back in time and changed history. His parents no longer were submissive, but became successful people. So when he comes back, will his parents still be the same parents?

Is the girlfriend Jennifer, the Marty she fell in love with, still the same Marty? All the people look the same on the outside, but are completely different on the inside. Marty travels back in time, and only he remembers everyone's original appearance. He is the loneliest person in the world. Isn't this a tragedy? "

"That makes sense." Helen nodded.

"Stop talking." Lea Thompson saw Ronald walking over with Zemeckis, fearing that they would hear what Stoltz said. Ronald is a well-known commercial film machine, and he doesn't know what to think of such "high talk" in his eyes.

Ronald did hear this "high talk", and he felt a little disgusted. These actors always take the performance of their acting skills as their highest goal, don't they care about the overall temperament of the movie?

This is originally a light-hearted commercial movie. Everyone accepts the assumption that you can go back to the past, and then leads to some stories, and finally solves the big problem. The protagonist also returns to his time, corrects the mistakes of his father's generation, and still has a relationship with his girlfriend. Take it one step further.

There was a near miss, the good guys prevailed, and the bad guys were defeated.

At this time, if you want to perform a Shakespearean tragedy, it is simply superfluous.

"cut!"

Ronald finished watching one of Zemeckis' scenes. He originally wanted to report that everything was going well, but felt a little hesitant.

In this scene, Marty has just returned to the past and saw the clothes and scenes of the 1950s on the street. He didn't know where he was, and he looked surprised and at a loss.

You can't say that Stoltz's performance is substandard, but he always acts in the direction of film noir. That feeling of surprise and bewilderment, as if someone had just been killed and in constant panic.

"Wrong casting," a thought came to Ronald's mind.

Actors all have their own qualities. Some are better at acting and can cover roles with different temperaments. Some are more suitable for playing roles that match their temperament.

Marty McFly, the protagonist, should be the kind of optimist who is a bit timid. We all had such a classmate when we were in school. He was a very nice person and got along well with everyone, but he didn't dare to fall out with the bad guys who bullied him. .

Stoltz is obviously too different from this temperament. In fact, Zemeckis initially chose Michael J. Fox, which was the most suitable candidate.

Stoltz's so-called method is to start from the inside out, first internally identifying yourself as the same person as the character, and then replace the character's reaction with your own natural reaction.

But if the actor's interpretation of the character is wrong, that's big trouble.

"I'd like to see a sample of the shoot." Ronald pulled Zemeckis over and told him gently.

"Is there any problem?" Zemeckis raised his eyebrows. Didn't he just agree to go through the motions?

“I don’t know yet, so I need to see samples.”

"You, take Mr. Li." Zemeckis pointed to an assistant and asked him to take Ronald to the church in the small town set, which is also where the crew watched the samples.

"Kala..." The last reel of samples ended, idling on the projector, and editing marks composed of black and white characters flashed on the screen.

"Tsk..." Ronald was a little embarrassed.

In the sample films accumulated over the past few weeks, Eric Stoltz is actually very good at acting. His performance is very organized and layered. It can be thought of that he filmed the film "" directed by Peter Bogdanovich before. "Mask", his acting skills have made great breakthroughs under Bogdanovich's training. It's several notches better than when I directed him in a "fast-paced" style.

But the problem also arises from this. His character in that movie was a child with a facial deformity. Wearing a big hood, you can only rely on your eyes and body movements to convey emotions. The face is expressionless. Ronald also saw a few scenes from his "Mask" in the film library, which Zemeckis used to cast.

This kind of acting is really suitable for his method. Every move is initiated from the heart, so that the audience can feel his acting skills.

But on the whole, this acting method is too deep, and Stoltz did not adjust it and directly copied it to "Back to the Future". It's like a light comedy in which the protagonist is still playing a tragic role with deep hatred and bitterness.

No matter how good the acting is, it will have a negative impact on the overall quality of the film.

"Ronald, how would you write a report?"

Zemeckis ended the day's shoot early, growing increasingly uneasy about Ronald's request to see dailies.

"I don't know, I want to hear your opinion." Ronald gestured to the projectionist to start showing Stoltz's Marty again.

"I don't think there's anything wrong with his performance."

"eon! For God's sake, of course I know his acting skills are fine. But this is a commercial film, not Shakespeare's King Lear."

"Hey... what do you want me to do?" Zemeckis certainly knew about Stoltz's problem, but filming had already started a few weeks ago. When shooting a commercial movie, it is impossible to stop and replace people, or the entire crew to pause and wait for Stoltz to find his groove.

"This is your hard work, Robert. I know that you went through all the difficulties in order to make this 'Back to the Future'. In order to gain the trust of a major studio, you also went to film 'Emerald' to prove yourself. Don’t you want the movie to perfectly reflect your original intention?”

Ronald also felt that the matter was difficult, but when it came to a dilemma, no matter what choice he made, he had to endure it.

"Of course I know, in fact Michael J. Fox is the best choice, but that son of a bitch 'Family Ties' producer Goldberg didn't agree. We couldn't find Fox to play the role, so we settled for the next best thing. Looking for Stoltz.”

"In this way, Robert," Ronald thought for a while and said, "I will truly reflect the situation to Steven and see what he says. If he thinks it's okay, then of course it's best.

If he feels that he needs to change, we will sit down and think of a solution then. It’s almost the weekend. Why don’t you stop filming first and wait for him to make a decision? "

"That's all." Zemeckis looked at Stoltz's performance on the screen. After being exposed by Ronald, I felt dazzled no matter how I looked at him. This performance is indeed incompatible with the entire film.

"Shxt!" Zemeckis picked up a bottle of Coca-Cola and threw it to the ground.

"Crash..." The glass bottle shattered on the floor. The staff came over quickly to clean.

"What's wrong?" The actors outside were still resting and eating when they heard the noise in the church.

After a while, the staff poured out the broken glass?

"Is this a quarrel?" Everyone looked at each other.

"Did you hear that? Ronald introduced Helen Slater to the crew to play the vase."

"Today Ronald said the movie should be a light comedy, and Stoltz angrily denounced this statement."

"Oh, I've seen him and Helen call each other by character names."

"Helen", Leigh Thompson pulled the angry Helen, "Let's go over there and ask, don't get angry with these extras. Ronald is a professional first. I was in love with Dennis at the time, and Dennis' His ex-wife was a good friend of his, and Ronald didn’t make things difficult for me. He still gave me very positive recommendations, and I got my first leading role.”

"Is he really jealous because of me and Stoltz?" Helen looked at the broken glass on the ground, and memories from the past surged in her heart.

"Is nothing wrong? We all heard noises outside." Leigh Thompson asked Ronald and Zemeckis as they walked out of the church.

"It's okay, there was a little accident." Ronald smiled at them.

"We need to make some changes to the set. Ronald made great suggestions, so we will take a temporary break tomorrow. You guys will come back next week." Zemeckis didn't want to cause chaos to the crew, so he made an excuse.

"Okay, director." Leigh Thompson was quite happy. Her boyfriend Dennis Quaid was filming in Germany, so they could reunite during the holidays.

"Ronnie, I..." Helen stared at Ronald with wide eyes.

"If you have nothing to do these two days, just follow me. I have something to ask you to help with." Ronald looked at Helen. She was five feet eight inches tall (1.73 meters), which would be a good match for Stoltz. If she really changed As Michael J. Fox, his height of about five feet four inches (1.62 meters) is not easy to play with.

I still have to help Gerald to the end for what I promised. If I change someone, I have to find a protagonist for Helen.

"Oh..." Helen responded, peeking at Ronald, not knowing what she was thinking.