Exploiting Hollywood 1980.

Chapter 1420 Have they ever played a couple?
"Ronald, I'm glad you can really put Rita at ease. You know, she has always had a say in my career choice. She was even recommending another script to me before..."

Tom Hanks was still a little thin, so Ronald told him to prepare himself to look like Forrest Gump when he was young. Hanks nodded in agreement and sent Ronald out. When the two were together in private, Hanks also told Ronald the truth.

Rita Wilson was Hanks' second wife. Hanks divorced his wife and remarried for her. The two children he had with his first marriage, Colin and Elizabeth, also made Rita a stepmother.

This made Tom Hanks feel a little guilty towards Rita Wilson, and he converted to the Orthodox Church of his Greek-American wife before remarrying. Rita Wilson also had a considerable say in his acting career.

"Oh, you seem to like that script. If you value it, it must be a good script..." Ronald found it interesting.

“Yeah, it’s an adaptation of a Stephen King novel called The Shawshank Redemption, and they want me to play the main character, Andy.”

"What?" Ronald asked subconsciously when he heard the complicated and un-English movie title. He has never been good at pronouncing non-English names like Shawshank.

"The Shawshank Redemption, never mind, I don't understand what it means. See you when I audition with other supporting actors..." Tom Hanks also felt that the name was too difficult to pronounce, and smiled as he saw Ronald out.

……

"God, you got Tom Hanks. It's a triumph of casting. John Travolta is much closer to the original in appearance, but Hanks...oh, I'm so proud of you, Ronald..."

It turned out that Ronald's casting teacher, Julia Taylor, was asked to be the casting director for this Forrest Gump. When she heard that Tom Hanks had been confirmed as the male lead, she was immediately very happy.

This is the theory that her line of casting directors adhere to. Whether the actor's appearance matches the original is not the most important thing, but whether the inner temperament matches the original is the most important. From Al Pacino in The Godfather to Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate, both of them are candidates whose appearance is very different from the original, but whose temperament is particularly suitable.

Pacino is short, but his acting is explosive, which makes him more suitable for the handsome second-generation godfather in the original book. Dustin Hoffman is a typical Jew, who has nothing in common with the blond handsome man in the original book, but the role of a sensitive and delicate young man is particularly suitable for him.

In the original novel, Forrest Gump is nearly two meters tall, strong and powerful, and good at all kinds of sports. John Travolta, who was born as a dancing king, is indeed very suitable in terms of appearance. However, in the adapted script, Tom Hanks is the most suitable actor for the kind of honest and trustworthy, slow-witted and perseverant character traits.

"Yeah, when I saw the script, the first person I thought of was Tom Hanks. It seems that the things you instilled in me before are now working...hahaha...by the way, I heard that Tom also wanted to cast him for other scripts. Fortunately, I was smart and joined forces with Shirley and Lansing to finalize him..."

Ronald boasted about himself smugly, and Julia Taylor, who didn't know his background, was very happy. She went out of her way to pour him a cup of coffee to express her satisfaction.

"By the way, the movie you mentioned about Hanks, isn't it the one that the Weinstein brothers of Miramax are making? I heard that they found a director genius..."

"Um, it doesn't seem so. I heard Hanks mention it. It was released by Columbia. It's called...it's called..."

Ronald was stuck. The name of the movie was hard to pronounce and had no clear meaning. "Uh, Xiaosha... No, Shenxiao... Atonement... No, Help... Anyway, it's adapted from Stephen King's novel..."

Ronald was about to collapse. As a director and producer, he couldn't remember the names of the scripts he had heard. He only remembered that the first word was a place name with a difficult foreign pronunciation, and the second word seemed to have some religious meaning, which were areas he knew very little about.

This movie is about a prison break. How nice it would be to just give it a new name, Prison Break. It would be simple and clear and the audience would understand it at first glance.

Julia Taylor was confused by what Ronald said, and she couldn't even remember that this was an adaptation of Stephen King's best-selling novel. "Oh, I'll ask someone, but it's definitely not the movie I mentioned. The Miramax project is called Pulp Fiction, not a high-concept movie, and they also want to find someone with good acting skills to play it."

"Pulp Fiction?" When Ronald heard this name, he felt that it was much better than that Shoshaka. In general bookstores, there is a type of novel called Pulp Fiction, which has revealing names, strange and explicit descriptions, and specializes in telling stories that sound untrue and are only read for entertainment by the lower class. There is a special area for selling them (in fact, the translation that is closer to the Chinese context is Story Club).

Although it is not as clear as "Prison Break", it is also very eye-catching and not mysterious, which makes the audience curious to see what the story is about. It is much easier to understand than "Sasha Ken's Life-saving".

"But we still need a backup candidate..." Julia Taylor said. Although the male lead has been selected, the casting is still a process stipulated by the Screen Actors Guild. Unless you use actors who are not members of the Screen Actors Guild and the project is not registered with the Hollywood MPAA, you cannot bypass the public casting and do it privately.

"Who do you think is suitable?" Ronald asked.

"John Travolta is definitely not a good choice, how about this?" Julia Taylor found an actor's resume. This person is very tall and has a reserved temperament.

"Tim, I know him, he does have the potential..." Ronald recognized that this was Tim Robbins, who played a backseat weapons officer with the call sign Merlin in Top Gun.

"And our old acquaintance..." Julia Taylor handed over another photo, which showed Madonna's ex-husband, one of the leading actors in Ronald's debut film, Sean Penn. He also looked mentally retarded.

"Okay, I have no problem with that. Ask them to audition and you can make up any excuse you want..."

"Hahaha, what do you mean by making up?" Julia Taylor was amused by Ronald's joke. "I just said that if the main candidates have other projects, they can be the second substitutes..."

"You have the final say, boss..." Ronald said something he often said when he was a portrait photographer for Julia Taylor in New York, and the two immediately started selecting other roles.

"What do you imagine the heroine to be like?" Julia Taylor asked immediately.

"I don't want a traditional hippie girl, preferably one with southern looks, innocent, sensitive, insulted and bullied, who has been in the hippie circle but still has a trace of pure ideals..."

Ronald thought about it and shared his understanding of the character of Jenny. Movies are visual art, and readers can have their own understanding of Jenny in the novel. But the male protagonist like Forrest Gump in the movie is definitely the audience's perspective.

So what kind of Jenny can be accepted by the audience without feeling psychologically unacceptable after abandoning Forrest Gump again and again?

This Jenny must first have a kind of vulnerability of a victim. All the bad things that happened to her must be the result of a series of tragedies imposed on her by the outside world.

Besides sympathy, she also had the kind of close feelings between two children who were not accepted by the group. It was hard to explain, but it was a lifelong bond...

That is to say, the audience can think that Jenny's choices are wrong, but they cannot regard her as a completely bad woman. At some moments, the audience must also feel that there is a soft spot in her heart that is reserved for Forrest Gump.

"Jodie Foster..." Julia Taylor recommended immediately. Such a role requires a hard-lined face and restrained and rich acting skills.

"I'm not saying she's not good, but..." Ronald thought the actress in the original version was good, and Jodie Foster sounded like a good choice, but... her salary was a bit too expensive.

"Demi Moore..."

Another actress with strong lines, but again, she’s expensive.

"How about Robin Wright? I heard my friend Robert Reiner talk about her performance in The Princess Bride." Ronald said the name directly.

Julia Taylor found the audition photo and looked at it carefully for a long time. "You know, Ronald, if you had been a casting director, you would have been a top-notch one in Hollywood."

This Robin Wright is tall enough, and looks purer in static photos, but in some clips from The Princess Bride, the determination in her eyes to pursue her own ideas is very similar to Jenny.

"However, her physical condition may be a little troublesome..." Julia Taylor talked to her agent on the phone for a while and came back to tell Ronald.

"Ah? She hasn't given birth yet?" Ronald felt strange. The last time when The Trap was filmed, Robin Wright said that she was pregnant. How come it has been so long and she hasn't given birth yet?
"Her agent said the due date is in the next few days. If we start filming normally, it depends on how quickly she recovers..." Julia Taylor also pouted. Robin Wright's boyfriend is Sean Penn. There are a lot of gossips about these two people. They have been together and separated many times, and some things are hard to figure out.

"It depends on her own wishes..." Ronald scratched his head. Although he didn't have to have her, her performance in the dream was still wonderful, so he still gave her a chance.

"Where's Bubble?" Ronald continued to play another important role, the black soldier who became good friends with Forrest Gump in the army, Benjamin Buford Blue, nicknamed Bubble.

"I have a few candidates here, Dave Chappelle, Ice Cube, Tupac..."

Julia Taylor handed over several candidates. These black people have one thing in common. They are all the "civilian black faces" that are often seen in life. They are not the "elite black faces" like Eddie Murphy and Denzel Washington who are very delicate and can quickly blend in with white people.

"What do these two guys do?" Ronald looked at the faces of Ice Cube and Tupac. They both had the ferocity of street gangsters, and the names didn't sound like the stage names of serious Hollywood actors.

"They are rappers, but they are all natural actors. They have all been in John Singleton movies. Ice Cube was in that Boyz n the Hood movie. Tupac and Janet Jackson played Justins who wrote poetry... all directed by Singleton."

Ronald looked at the photo Julia Taylor handed him and then remembered that this was John Singleton, the black director who broke his own record for the age of Best Director nominees at the Oscars. One of his films became a big hit, and the other was a box office flop.

However, the performances of these two actors are quite natural, and they both meet Ronald's requirements for the role of Bub, which is not to have the kind of black elite style passed down from Sidney Poitier.

Regardless of the extent of racial discrimination, Hollywood always has one or two black actors who can ignore the color of their skin and make white audiences see him as one of their own, rather than those black people.

After Sidney Poitier, it was OJ Simpson, a former football star, and then Eddie Murphy. In the past two years, Denzel Washington also has a very good chance of taking over the legacy.

But the character of Bubba is just an ordinary black man who is compared with Forrest Gump. Instead of viewing them as black elites who are not like black people, the audience must see them as black people at first glance.

The most interesting thing in the script is that Forrest Gump's name, Forrest, is the name of the founder of the Ku Klux Klan in the South. But in the army, he and the black man, Bub, became best friends.

To him, Bob is like Jenny in the army, a character who is also discriminated against and insulted, but he can find the purest friendship in Forrest Gump, who is kind and pure in heart.

After John Singleton's training, the two actors, Ice Cube and Tupac, should have no problem conveying this kind of emotion. The only concern is that one of them looks too fierce, and the other one is not silly enough. However, this needs to be confirmed through auditions.

Finally, it was Lieutenant Dan and Forrest Gump's mother's choice.

Lieutenant Dan, Julia Taylor recommended the Oscar winner for Best Supporting Actor, Joe Pesci, who recently jumped out of Scorsese's gangster film, and Kevin Bacon, who started out in musicals and has a typical white appearance.

As for Forrest Gump's mother, Ronald immediately thought of Sally Field, who also played a traditional white mother from a wealthy southern family in "Steel Magnolias". All the backgrounds were similar, and Sally Field, a double Oscar winner, was obviously very familiar with the role.

"You have to consider one thing, Ronald. Sally Field and Tom Hanks played roles that were suggestive of a couple a few years ago... If the audience remembers this, it will be troublesome and they may laugh."

"Ah? They played a couple before? What movie was it? I need to find it and watch it..."

(End of this chapter)