Exploiting Hollywood 1980

   Chapter 674 Chapter 304 Pauline Carr angrily reprimands Ronald

  The week before the Veterans Day weekend, the usual 1,000-plus theaters made a box office score of 9 million. This achievement made everyone in the crew look forward to the next week's Memorial Day weekend.

  Nisita's argument is that sometimes the schedule makes the movie, just like many commercial films released during the summer. Sometimes a movie achieves its schedule. A successful movie can turn an ordinary schedule into a good schedule. In the future, similar movies will be the main points of the Las Vegas trade fair.

The most typical example of    is Spielberg's "Jaws". In the mid-1970s, the summer box office was the time of year when the box office was relatively low.

His "Great White Shark" attracted a large number of teenagers during the summer vacation into the theater to watch, created a North American box office of 260 million, and directly changed the territory of Hollywood. In the future, the summer season will become a competition among the seven major studios. Every year best schedule.

  Memorial Day is a short holiday. The last Monday in May is connected with the weekend of the previous week. It was originally an inconspicuous small schedule in the film industry. But Ronald's "Top Gun" was released a week early, and it was pre-hyped.

  Wait until the weekend of Veterans Day, when word of mouth spreads, there will be an abnormal increase in the box office in the second week of horror compared to the first week. Such a virtuous cycle will continue to ferment, keeping the box office hot in the next few weeks. Paramount will also increase the number of copies according to the situation and continue to expand the scale of the release.

   "Thunderbolt No. 5", which was released in the same period, only had one-third of its box office, and other films also collapsed.

A series of operations can turn a small weekend schedule, stretched back and forth, into a large schedule of three to four weeks, and abruptly created one before the summer schedule, almost from the schedule exclusive to "Top Gun". , when the summer season is over, the second wave and the third wave of movie viewing peaks can also be formed.

   This is Paramount's release manager, Sid Ganis's leading adventure plan. If successful, it would be equivalent to giving Top Gun to enjoy two summer vacations that were five weeks longer than others in the summer of 1986.

Two Chicago film critics, glasses Roger Albert, and bald Gene Sisko, really released the previously written film reviews after they were released, and published them in the Chicago Sun and the Chicago Forum as quickly as possible. on the film review column of the newspaper.

   The two of them also talked about "Top Gun" in their film review program on PBS TV.

"In the opening moments of 'Top Gun', an ace Navy pilot flew upside down about 18 inches above a Russian-made MiG and took a Polaroid snapshot for the enemy pilot. He then gave the opponent a middle finger.

   It was a stunt as cheap as a hot dog (Cheap), but it made the pilot (Tom Cruise) famous among the small circle of Navy personnel who could receive information about close encounters with enemy aircraft. The pilot, code-named The Lone Ranger, was elected to the Navy's elite flight school, which is dedicated to the dying art of aerial combat. "

  The film critic talked about the plot at the beginning, and gave a grandstanding evaluation of Ronald's special effects. But Ronald didn't care. Over the years, he has long understood that film critics always prefer dramatic and story-driven movies, but the box office of their favorite movies is not as good as the exploitative films they made.

   "Aerial scenes always present a special challenge in a movie.

   There is a danger that the audience will be spatially disoriented.

   We're used to seeing things within a framework that respects left-right, up-down, but fighter pilots live in a world of 360-degree turns. The extraordinary achievement of 'Top Gun' is that it presents seven or eight aerial encounters that are so well choreographed that we can actually follow them most of the time, and the film gives us a good look at aerial combat what it might be like. "

   put a lot of effort into Ronald, carefully edited aerial combat footage. Both Sisko and Albert had a lot of good things to say. Here's Ronald's strengths, combining the fast-paced techniques of filming music videos and commercials with the techniques of predicting audience psychology taught by Walter Murch into these short aerial combat scenes.

  Ronald is very confident, and no other director can do better than himself. Although the aerial combat footage is not long, every three or five seconds is cut, which is a few minutes in total, but the time and energy spent here account for almost one-third of all editing time.

At the premiere of    at the Miramar Naval Base, those real fighter pilots, even if they were not satisfied with the fighting action, recognized the rhythm of the air combat and the real sense of pursuit.

   This is probably why the teenagers are very satisfied with the two big air battles at the beginning and the end. Some military magazines, and even "Scientific American", have published articles discussing combat maneuvers in air combat and the unique skills of various types of American fighter jets.

  Listen to Nisita, in addition to Ray-Ban glasses and flight jackets, even the Navy's F-14 Tomcat fighter jets, licensed aircraft model and toy manufacturers, also received large orders.

"The chemistry with Tom Cruise and Rebecca De Mornay in 'Crazy Too,' and Kelly McGillis and Harrison Ford in 'The Witness' Cruise and McGillis' chemistry is pale and unconvincing in comparison. Kelly McGillis is clearly more emotional when looking at the camera..."

"Cruise and McGillis spent a lot of time squinting uncomfortably at each other, communicating like air-to-air missiles, and when they finally got hot, the two leads looked like the stars of one of those **** newcomers. Perfume ads.

   No flesh, no emotion, director Ronald Lee is amazing, wiped out McGillis' top emotional performance in "The Witness"..."

   "Hey, you film critics don't understand at all, McGillis is looking at me behind the camera..." Ronald smiled and read the 2.5 and 3 star reviews.

  Ronald is not easily angry with film critics now. He remembers that his teacher Scorsese said that film critics are like cavalry. When directors and actors are exhausted from fighting on the battlefield, they lightly come to harvest the results.

   But Ronald's preferred comment comes from a book by Richard Feynman, an expert on the Board of Inquiry into the Space Shuttle Challenger crash. He bought a just-published autobiography, "Stop it, Mr. Feynman." It's rare for a physicist to write so well.

  Feynman quotes a passage from Einstein in the book, and all creators need not take the critics’ words too seriously.

  If they have the creative ability, they must go and make movies by themselves. Ronald remembered that Roger Ebert had written an exploitative film before becoming a critic when it didn't do well at the box office.

  As a New Yorker, Ronald pays more attention to the evaluation of his films by New York film critics. I still remember that when my debut novel came out, I was also attacked by Albert. In the end, it was his hometown New York Film Critics who gave his name to himself.

Pauline Carr, a leading figure in the film critics and a film critic who wrote for The New Yorker magazine, gave herself a notarized evaluation and praised her talent, which turned things around and allowed Universal to print a batch of copies to get rid of it. There is no dilemma of national distribution.

  Richard is very careful about himself, and he keeps a bunch of film reviews in New York. He knows that he has the habit of watching film reviews on the second day of the first weekend. I came to the apartment very early to put the copy of the manuscript in place.

   Ronald picked up one by one, and sure enough, the New York Times, New York Post, etc. were all praised. Critics ended up strongly recommending that audiences go to theaters to watch "Top Gun," the film of choice for Memorial Day.

   "Huh? The New Yorker's review came out so early?"

   "Yes, Ms. Pauline Carr went to see it. She wrote a good review overnight, which is unusual for her." Richard picked one out and handed it to Ronald.

   Ronald took it over happily and saw how the old lady praised herself this time.

   "Top Gun features a super long MTV.

   I'm here, I'm posing, I'm a hero...

Burly Kelly-McGillis is an astrophysicist employed to teach elite fighter pilots in training at Naval Air Station Miramar in San Diego; she enters the room sideways, languid so she doesn't overwhelm Her co-star, the relatively short Tom Cruise.

   He should be the most daring of her students, molesting the teacher in public.

   But when McGillis leaves the screen, the movie is a shiny **** commercial: the pilots strutting around the locker room, towels dangling precariously around their waists.

   As if masculinity was redefined as a young man half-dressed, as if narcissism was all there was to being a warrior.

Between shirtless maneuvers, footage of jets with ugly nostrils taking off, whizzing through the sky, and landing, while the soundtrack conjures Armageddon and the Second Coming—though we watch Here comes the training exercise.

   What is this movie selling? Just sell things, sell Ray-Ban sunglasses, sell leather flight jackets, sell Honda motorcycles, and Ferrari sports cars! Because that's what producers Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer would do.

   This is also what famed advertising director Ronald Let It Shine Lee knows how to do.

  Sale is what they think the film is made for. The result is a whole new "art" form: advertising disguised as a movie. "

"This?"

  Ronald put down the New Yorker review in a bit of a daze.

   Then he picked him up again, "You're right? Are you sure Pauline Carr wrote this?"

  "I'll check it out", Richard didn't read this film review, he also thought that Pauline Carr would, as always, prefer Ronald, a fellow New Yorker.

   "Ronald, I'm Nisita. I confirmed with New York that it was indeed the film review written by Pauline Carr. She asked to show it to you specially."

   "Me? Hey!" Ronald sighed. He was just shooting some high-concept movies with popcorn. Why did Pauline Carr, who supported him, scolded him?

   "Did she say anything else?"

"She said she was very disappointed with you, that you had lost the spirit you had when you were filming 'Fast-Paced Richmond High School' and became a craftsman, and said that when you go to New York, you can have a debate with her, she Wondering what you're thinking and why you don't keep making films that are artistic and commercial."

  Nisita retells Pauline Carr's words.

   "Okay, next week I'm going to Staten Island on Memorial Day. You help me arrange it. I'm going to visit Pauline."

  Although Pauline Carr gave Ronald a ruthless hand, she sneered fiercely. But the young American apparently ignored the old lady's criticism.

   In other words, even if they see it, they don't care, but they will regard the shortcomings she pointed out as advantages, and be sure to check out what's going on with the so-called super-long MV of the so-called air battle with goods.

   Monday's box office continued to boom. The average box office for a single hall rose to 11,000 US dollars. Paramount's distribution department happily invited dancers to perform in the office. Marketing manager Sid Ganis climbed onto the desk himself and gave everyone a jump.

   After opening more than a dozen large bottles of champagne, which were sprayed everywhere, Sid Ganis dragged the two producers into the manager's exclusive office. After "Top Gun" sold out, I'm afraid he will also be promoted to a bigger office with two glass sides around the corner.

   "Ronald, come on too, this time the videotape, I'll need your help." Don Simpson pulled Ronald into the discussion.

   "Is there anything else about me?" Ronald was puzzled. The sales of video tapes have always been handled by a distribution company like Paramount, and the director has no room to talk.

"I made a plan. This time, for Top Gun, we will change the pricing model of videotapes. I have calculated that if we sell at a lower price, we can increase sales by more than ten times, so that we can make small profits but quick turnover. , and it can reach several times the previous price of $99.”

   "Oh, tell me more about it?" Ronald was interested in the sale of the videotape, so he asked Sid Ganis to explain it in detail.

"$99 is a good deal to sell to a video rental store, and there are thousands of them across the country. But what if we could get the price down to $49? I'm afraid there are tens of thousands of families who will buy a tape and watch it back home and watch it over and over again. Not paying the $3 per night rental fee.

   What if it could be reduced to $39, $29? How much more can we sell? Even if only 50,000 copies were sold, the profit was greatly increased. "

   "This?" Ronald thought for a while.

   Indeed, there is a $3 per night video rental fee, plus a penalty for overtime. If it is a very good-looking movie, you can collect one for $29, which is the price of watching it 10 times. There is such an explosive "Top Gun" at home, and it's a good thing to have friends over and watch it while drinking beer.

   What if your child’s classmates come to watch it?

   "However, is Paramount willing to sell it so cheaply?"

   "It depends on our plan..."

   (end of this chapter)