Exploiting Hollywood 1980

  Chapter 347 No Face Shots

  Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, looking down from the plane, two rivers sandwich a delta in the center of the city, giving Ronald a familiar feeling.

   After he agreed to come to the "Lightning Dance" crew as an associate producer, Don Simpson immediately got a ticket, and before he had time to read the script, he got on the plane and flew to Pittsburgh, the location.

"The mouth of the Ohio River, along this boat, you can go to Cleveland, Ohio. If you go north and cross Lake Erie, it is Detroit, the center of automobile manufacturing..." When he was about to reach his destination, Ronald woke up from his sleep and took The Pittsburgh travel guide on the plane looked up.

  This was once the location of the Carnegie Steel Works of the steel king Andrew Carnegie, which once monopolized more than half of the country's steel production. Until now, Pittsburgh has many steel mills. And Carnegie Mellon University, which he donated to establish after him.

  In addition to Carnegie, Pittsburgh also produced Westinghouse, a power company, and Heinz Foods, which produced a full range of products for the necessities of the American people.

  The crew stayed at Forbes Street, and Ronald went out of the hotel alone. There is a slightly acidic smell in the air exhaled from the industrial city, and the color of the sunset is dyed extra red by the exhaust gas.

  The evening temperature in Pittsburgh in October was a bit low, Ronald quickly couldn't stand the cold and returned to the hotel.

   A group of beauties in the hotel lobby were chattering about where to be happy, Ronald looked at them, his young body was a little bit about to move.

   "Hi Ronald."

The two beauties headed by    greeted him. When he was at the airport, the producer had already announced to the crew that Ronald was an associate producer. These actresses knew him.

   "Hi, Cynthia, Sonny."

  Ronald is very fond of dancing beauties. These are all colleagues of the protagonist Alex, dancing girls in the bar.

  Sunny Johnson has been in Hollywood and played a lot of supporting roles. Cynthia Rhodes is a professional dancer from the South. Both were over twenty-five, but their dance training made them look young.

   This is the first time they get a supporting role with many appearances. Along with them was a hair-haired beauty with poor English, and dancer Marlene Jahan. She will act as a dance double for Jennifer Beals in the movie.

   Ronald invited the three of them to the hotel bar for a drink. The bar in Pittsburgh is very hard-decorated, and the guests inside are very hard-dressed, too, with big, exaggerated hairstyles, high shoulder pads, and the only woman wearing very masculine clothes.

   "Have you been rehearsing for a long time in Los Angeles?" Ronald ordered a few cocktails and motioned for the three beauties to pick them up.

   "No, we came to Pittsburgh without rehearsing after we signed with the crew."

  Ronald frowned slightly. This is a medium-sized project invested by Paramount with seven million dollars, and it is not the kind of small production that he shot himself. Why didn't he rehearse?

   "Ronald, what does your associate producer do?" Cynthia Rhodes, a girl from the south, is relatively innocent, and she asks any questions directly.

   "To serve you."

   "Hahaha..." The two beauties laughed together, only Ma Lin, the girl from the hair country, did not understand why.

   Ronald, who returned to the room, quickly took out the script and read it.

   There was no rehearsal, the director was changed before shooting, and the heroine was undecided. All signs seem to indicate that there is a big problem with this movie. When I was in Los Angeles, I thought I was just working casually to earn some extra money, but don't fall into the pit.

The script of    "Lightning Dance" is based on the real experience of Maureen Mudd, a female construction worker in Toronto, Canada. This way of writing indicates that the producer paid for the adaptation of the prototype characters, otherwise, based on the adaptation of real characters, the filming is equivalent to an open invitation to the other party to sue.

  The plot is very simple. Alex, a girl who works as a welder in a Pittsburgh steel plant, earns money by dancing in bars at night. She dreams of one day entering a ballet school and learning dance. Her friend Jenny, the bartender, wants to be a figure skater.

   Nick, the owner of her factory, walked into the bar where she danced one day and was attracted to her. Nick gets Alex an interview for a ballet school, and Alex isn't happy to see Nick ride with another blonde.

   The misunderstanding was finally resolved, it was Nick's ex-wife. Encouraged by his neighbor, a retired ballet dancer, his friend Jenny, and others, Alex finally entered ballet school.

  As director Adrian Lane said, this script is a bit dull. It's a bit underwhelming as a story for a drama.

   "Wouldn't it be a deliberate project for Don Simpson? Let him go because he failed at the box office?" Ronald began to speculate wildly about Paramount's intentions.

  The big studios can often make some unbelievable bad movies, and the influence of high-level struggle is indispensable.

"But it's none of my business, as long as I finish my work well, an insignificant associate producer's signature will have little impact on my reputation. If it really doesn't work, let the agency find a way to remove my signature. already."

  Ronald threw the script aside, showered, warmed himself, and went to bed.

   "First of all, when there is nothing...

   But a slowly glowing dream

   Your fear seems to hide in

   in the depths of your heart

   I heard music...

  Close my eyes and feel the rhythm

   wrapped around, grab my heart

  What a wonderful feeling

  To exist is to believe

   I could have everything and now I'm dancing for my life! "

   A beautiful female singing sounded, and Ronald guessed that he was dreaming again.

   The picture jumped out of the darkness. A girl wears a hat with two large ear protectors in the early morning, rides a bicycle through the streets of Pittsburgh, and finally rides a bridge. The morning sun in the background was red, and under a haze shrouded, it tried to emit its own light.

   "It's this kind of scene where the opening quickly explains the background of the story." Ronald thought, this opening method has to be learned by himself. When you look at this kind of smog, it is an industrial city. The iconic Carnegie Mellon University of Pittsburgh follows in the background.

   This song is also very nice. It seems to be sung by a black singer, with a special way of vocalization of black people.

  The picture turned and came to a dark factory, the water vapor in the background was hazy, a female worker was welding a workpiece, and the name Alex was written on the welding mask. She put down her mask, and it was starring Jennifer Beals.

   "It's really a lightning dance. This character is very imposing. A song and a few shots clearly explain the living environment, work content, and beauty of the protagonist Alex."

   In the cold room temperature, Ronald felt comfortable under the quilt and wrapped himself in the quilt. This movie was done well, and it was definitely not the kind of coping that he had just guessed.

   The picture seems to have advanced a lot. On a stage with a black background, a woman wearing a male costume dances on the stage. On a black background, with dim lighting, only the silhouette of a dancer emerges.

  The dancer faces a chair and picks out all kinds of tempting dance moves. One shot cuts to a close-up of the dancer's face, with Jennifer Beals wearing glittery makeup and it's alluring.

   "Wow..."

   She took off her coat, danced a **** dance, and finally pulled the rope, and a basin of water poured down from above and poured on her.

   This wet body was replayed in slow motion before she began dancing frantically, throwing water from her hair into the faces of the audience below, causing a chorus of exclamations and whistles.

   "Ah, these shots are really beautiful and the rhythm is very good. Director Ryan really knows how to shoot female beauty." Ronald tutted in amazement.

   But the rhythm of the editing is a bit fast, Ronald didn't watch a few dance moves, and he didn't see the camera's face to Jennifer Beals.

   "Aren't they all stunt doubles?"

  The screen was fast-forwarded for a long time, and the two dances of the two heroines that I saw in the bar today appeared on the screen. Cynthia Rhodes danced a dance in a bar. This clip took care of her panorama and close-up. It is very obvious that Cynthia danced herself.

"The performance of this dance is very good, but the makeup is so bad that it makes Cynthia a beautiful woman so ugly." Ronald thought for a while, "Maybe it is to set off the protagonist, otherwise this wonderful dance will steal the scene. ."

  Sunny Johnson also has a lot of shots, but instead of dancing in the bar, she did a double jump with music on the ice. A beam of spotlights fell on her, gliding across the ice to the music, which was also beautiful.

   "Ah..." Jenny, played by Sunny, didn't stand firm and sat on the ground.

   "This is too hard. In order to set off the protagonist, all the supporting characters do not give a good dance scene." Ronald continued to look at the picture in a daze.

The picture shifted to the street again. Alex and Jennie were blocked by two breakdancers on the road. They began to dance Ronald's familiar spacewalk, as well as the "helicopter" lying on the ground and spinning on the back. action.

   "That's a good level, the spacewalk is better than me." Ronald thought, tightening the quilt again.

  The warm blanket made him fall asleep comfortably.

"what……"

  Ronald was woken up again by an exclamation. It seemed that Alex was on the screen. She was wearing a black high-slit exercise suit, and she seemed to be lying on the ground by mistake. She was taking her dance exam in a large room with four judges sitting on one side of the room.

   "Can I start over?" Featured by Jennifer Beers, who, after getting the referee's permission, repositions the record player's probe to the start position.

  In the bright large glass window, the warm sunlight penetrated, and Alex began to dance to his heart's content.

   is still the nice song at the beginning, and Alex dances to the rhythm.

   "It seems to be a stand-in again?" Ronald felt that the shooting of this solo dance also seemed to use a stand-in. The actor's hair was deliberately hanging down in front of his forehead, dancing in front of the four judges. The intense dance rhythm made it difficult to see the actor's face.

   Then Alex landed on one foot and started spinning.

   "Definitely not Jennifer Beals, she couldn't turn around when she auditioned."

"Oh……"

   In the picture, Alex began to use the break dance moves that the people on the street just danced. She also lay on the ground, landed on her back, hooked her feet, and began to spin quickly.

   "Is this stand-in Ma Lin so good? She can do this kind of black dance moves even if she is a Chinese?"

   (end of this chapter)