Exploiting Hollywood 1980

   Chapter 672 Chapter 302 Special Schedule Operation

   "Ah...hahahaha..."

Aunt Karen didn't react until she saw Tom Cruise and McGillis angrily driving a motorcycle chase on the screen. .

   The feeling that the two of them were happy with each other made Aunt Karen look very excited. Cruise had visited the house once, and she liked the lad very much. She wasn't too interested in those aerial combat shots and the rivalry between pilots, but this romantic scene got her into it.

   "Call..."

   Ronald breathed a sigh of relief, "Top Gun" is a high-concept movie. You like it if you like it, and if you don't, it's hard to like it through the progression of the story.

   The young male audience started shouting as early as the first air battle.

The middle-aged men praised the dazzling tactics of the fighter jets. While watching, they discussed with the people next to them the sneak attack tactics that the MiGs were not able to recognize on the radar, and how to deal with the Tomcat automatic wings and advanced air-to-air missiles. The MiG has the upper hand in technology.

  The young female audience also began to light up when they saw the sturdy pilots in the bathroom and the volleyball game on the beach.

   Only middle-aged female audiences did not really appreciate this movie until this part.

   "Watch every move in my stupid lover game

   On this endless ocean, the ultimate lover knows no shame

   Turn around and go back to some secret place inside

   Watching you turn around in slow motion and saying…

  Take my breath away…”

  The love interlude of the Berlin band sounded for the third time in the movie.

  Because the passionate scenes of the two male and female protagonists were made up after the fact, there was no special music for them. Ronald had to play "Take My Breath" a few times in a row. This episode plays whenever Charlie and the Lone Ranger are alone together.

The young people around    did not feel the repetition and boredom at all, and some people hummed along with the song softly.

   "Call..."

   Ronald let out another breath.

   Luck is on his side again this time.

   In order to hedge the impact of the Challenger crash, Ronald contacted the Berlin Band through his agency. Between their tours, I took the initiative to shoot the MV for this song for them.

   More than a month before the movie was released, "Take My Breath" began to be strongly broadcast on MTV, and the record company and Paramount jointly funded it to hit the charts.

  Maybe the quality of the song itself is very high, or maybe the MV shot by Ronald is very tempting, and soon "Take My Breath" climbed to the top of the American chart.

   This was the first time the Berlin band had a single that topped the charts.

  Ronald remembered that when the MV was filmed, this MV was to be released in conjunction with the release of "Top Gun", so the plot was similar to the movie, and some unimportant movie clips were also interspersed.

   Frontman Terri Nunn, dressed in a blue overalls like a blue-collar worker, was filmed soloing in the wreckage of several planes on the set of the Mojave Air and Space Port.

  The Mojave Air and Space Port is a famous aircraft cemetery, where many retired fighter jets, bombers, reconnaissance aircraft, etc., of the Navy and Air Force are parked here, as well as many old aircraft retired during the Vietnam War.

  The band's lead creators, John Crawford, and Rob Brill, were not too happy.

   They sang their own songs with all their heart, and were very repelled by this pop-rock-style song that was neither written nor composed by Berlin.

   But the Berlin band's popularity is limited, and they don't have the same control over their own work as Bruce Springsteen. Under the pressure of the record company, he had to agree to release "Take My Breath" as the title song on the new album.

   As part of the contract, they also have to cooperate with the performance of the MV. So when Ronald was shooting the MV, he found that the two did not cooperate.

   In order to shoot the MV as soon as possible, I had to separate the lead singer Terri Nunn from the little girl as much as possible. Anyway, most audiences who listen to pop music will not notice the difference between the band's style and the original work.

   Only six lines of lyrics are sung over and over again, and they are superficial and without connotation. Except for Terri Nunn, who sang happily, the dissatisfaction of the two creative members is increasing day by day.

   But as the band's first chart-topping song, they had to sing this song at every concert when they had to tour.

   "I don't really care about that. This song is so popular, I don't care who created it."

   Ronald's thoughts, pulled back from Terry Nunn's private complaints about him.

The    movie was greatly loved by the audience, and finally defeated the MiG plane, the Lone Ranger and the Iceman settled their quarrels, and finally the Lone Ranger chose to return to TopGun School to be an instructor and reunite with Charlie.

   All the stars stood up and applauded. The constant cheers and clapping and stomping from the audience made them all understand that Ronald's new film would be a big hit at the box office.

  Tom Cruise, Val Kilmer, Kelly McGillis, and others all took to the stage to receive cheers from the audience, and then began answering questions from fans.

   Others asked if they could actually fly fighter jets. Except for Tom Cruise's admission that he has a pilot's license, several other actors who played pilots were vague.

   Ronald was delighted to see that these people were pretending to be speaking lines in the ground cockpit facility designed by Cameron and pretending to be in high-altitude aerial combat.

   sent off Spielberg, Lucas and other bigwigs, other young actors and guests, and went to New York nightclubs to hold parties to celebrate the success of the premiere.

   Ronald trailed behind and got into a limousine with the two producers.

   "Is Sid still holding on?" Ronald asked Simpson.

"Yes, I think we should agree with him. The audience's reaction to today's premiere is a great sign of a big hit. Now the public is very high-spirited. If there is such a movie that lets them vent their patriotism, it will be a big hit at the box office. A little positive bonus."

   "A week earlier, eh?"

   Ronald deftly took a bottle of whisky from the freezer next to it and gave the two producers a glass each.

   "Ronald, let's do it. Memorial Day is a small schedule, and we will release it nationwide a week in advance, so we can take advantage of the situation to turn this small schedule into a big one."

   "I just felt a little adventurous."

  Movie marketing, the box office in the first week is particularly important, which determines the size of the first audience. And then it depends on the reputation.

   Paramount's distribution manager, Sid Ganis, came up with a risky plan. A week before Memorial Day, it was originally planned to be a weekend of small-scale release, and the release scale was expanded to make a full-scale attack.

   More than 1,000 theaters will be used to open paintings, so that for the big weekend of Memorial Day in the second week, we can use word of mouth to arouse more than 10% of the audience to watch "Top Gun".

   The risk here is that if the audience's reputation is not as good as expected, the number of viewers in the second week will not be as good as the regular operation.

  The word-of-mouth of the movie takes time to ferment. In the first week, the audience still chose to watch the movie according to the marketing operation. Keeping the biggest suspense on the weekends with the most regular audiences is the norm for all of the original films.

   This is a big gamble, but now that the audience responded more than expected when it premiered, the risk of gambling has been minimized.

   "Okay, let's take a gamble." Ronald downed his wine.

  "Sid", Bruckheimer picked up the phone in the car and dialed Paramount's marketing department, "The feedback from the premiere was good, and Ronald agreed, so just follow your plan."

   "Okay, let's watch it!"

   Sid on the other end of the phone was very happy and immediately went down to make arrangements.

   "In this way, our movie reviews will be lifted next weekend." Don Simpson threw a schedule over.

   "What do those **** say?" Ronald picked up the schedule on the sofa, followed by comments from several famous film critics.

   "Albert gave the film 2.5 out of four stars, Sisko gave it three, and most importantly, audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film an A on average."

   Bruckheimer had already seen it, and he briefly introduced Ronald.

   "Huh, they won't give me four stars anyway." Ronald also knew that the popcorn movie he made was not well received by film critics.

   But what he values ​​most is not the critics, but the scores of this emerging audience sampling company.

  CinemaScore is an audience evaluation survey company founded by founder Ed Mintz. Just because they were dissatisfied with the film critics' random scores on the film and disrupted their movie viewing choices, they came up with a concept to be a pure audience evaluation system.

   They didn't tell the producers in advance, but randomly picked places by themselves, and started doing random audience evaluation surveys on the first day of the show.

   This time, Ed Mintz personally brought someone to New York to do it for the premiere. He wanted to break into Paramount and give them a consultation.

   When the painting starts next week, it will secretly appear in any state, any small town in America, and then do a more careful random sampling. The ratings given then will be more convincing.

  Ronald ticked on the notebook, indicating that the evaluation was also positive. He went on to read reviews from two Chicago-based film critics, who were bellwethers for audiences across the country, especially for the two producers, the Midwest, and the Deep South.

The Sun's Roger Albert said: "It's hard to comment on a film like Top Gun because the good parts are very good and the bad parts are very relentless. The melee is definitely since Clint Eastwood in 'Firefox' The most exciting aerial scene ever. But watch out for the (boring) scene of people talking to each other."

Gene Sisko of the Chicago Tribune praised the action scenes but criticized the romance, writing, "It's a teenage fantasy movie, not a movie worthy of a real romance, if you're looking for any depth. value, you will be disappointed…”

   "What benefit did Paramount give them? The score is not high, and the words are still scolding and helping."

   "Hehehe, a travel voucher to Hawaii, and sponsorship for the annual meeting of the Chicago Film Critics Association."

   "Here it is, gentlemen!"

  The driver parked the car at the entrance of the nightclub. Ronald came down and saw that it was a nightclub with more luxurious decoration than Club 54.

  "Tom, Cher", a bunch of couples are holding hands affectionately. Ronald stepped forward and hugged them separately.

  Ronald looked around and McGillis chatted with Jodie Foster and Jennifer Beals, who also held hands and whispered like sisters.

   Ronald felt that it was not good to disturb him, so he looked around for Helen's figure. Only after asking did he find out that Helen was picked up by her father Gerald's special car.

   Ronald smiled, sat down and looked for a new target.

   "Ronald, your film is well done, but what I don't like a little bit, he has a bit of American chauvinism, he makes the audience feel that wars can be won."

Ronald looked back and saw that it was Oliver Stone of "El Salvador" and "Field Platoon" who had just finished filming his first and second films. His characteristic gentle voice was in Ronald's ear. reverberate.

   "Why, do you think we can't win the Cold War with the Suwell Alliance?" Ronald was a little strange to Stone's idea.

   "No, I mean, there's no winner in a third world war. I've been in Vietnam myself, no winner, no winner, man..."

   "In a way, I agree with you."

  Ronald had a drink with him, the poor conscripted Yale college student who, like his dead uncle, was in the Army. Got a cannonball from the North Vietnamese in Vietnam.

   And the "Top Gun" navy, flying planes to bombard others indiscriminately, will not have this kind of horror of war.

   "You're not going to speak ill of me in the paper, are you?" Ronald poured him another glass.

   "No, but we can talk to each other and hype?"

   "I like your idea, Oliver..."

   (end of this chapter)