Exploiting Hollywood 1980.

Chapter 1427 Inspection before startup

Doug Jr. and Donna smiled happily at the wedding. Their relatives and friends, seeing the big Hollywood star coming to support Donna, felt that the couple had a bright future and many friends.

Although the newlyweds were both well-informed New Yorkers, one was a wealthy local tycoon from Staten Island and the other worked for an investment company in Long Island. Their relatives and friends were not as accustomed to Hollywood stars as those white-collar workers on Wall Street. For a time, their wedding became the most fashionable topic among their friends.

Because Donna's father died young, Aunt Karen's current husband played the role of her father, holding her hand and taking her to the wedding scene, and then handed her over to Douglas Jr. Aunt Karen was very excited, laughing and wiping tears beside her.

The newlyweds were blessed by everyone, and then jumped into their sports car to happily go on their honeymoon. Ronald and Diane took little Roger to stay in the countryside of Staten Island for a few days, completely relaxing themselves and preparing for the "Forrest Gump" project that was about to begin.

During this time, Ronald didn't think about anything related to "Forrest Gump" at all, and deliberately maintained a state of hunger for movies, enjoying the warmth of his family. After that, when he arrived at the shooting location, he could arouse an unprecedented hunger and maintain a high sensitivity to all the details of the shooting.

……

After resting for a few days, Ronald came to Bluffton, Beaufort County, South Carolina, to personally check the progress.

"This house looks like the grandeur of an old plantation owner, but because Forrest Gump's mother has supported the family business for many years, there is not much money to repair it, so it looks a bit run-down..."

Ronald stood under a big tree far from the house, watching the house being built by the set design team from afar. This is a professional team under Paramount. Their best feature is that they can make various scenes look old according to your requirements, so that they always look right on the surface.

But once you go in, you'll realize it's shoddy work, nothing like a real house, and completely uninhabitable after filming.

This is partly because filming is always rushed, which is completely different from the idea of ​​building a good house that you can pass on to your descendants. It is also due to the needs of filming.

For example, Forrest Gump's mother, because she was a widow, had to use several rooms in the old house as a hotel. In the guest room where Elvis Presley once stayed, they wanted to shoot a shot looking in through the door, so they had to leave space in the narrow corridor outside the door to place the camera.

Therefore, the area opposite the house was not built according to the real house, but an extra piece of vacant land for no reason.

"Jenny's house should make people feel disgusted and not want to go in. It is the devil's territory..."

Ronald also visited Jenny's house, which was not far from Forrest's house and next to the cornfield. This was a typical cheap house built after World War II using new construction methods. This was where Jenny's father committed beastly acts against the two sisters, and where Jenny rebelled against her father and released the brakes of the tractor, causing it to hit and kill her father.

It's a pretty obvious metaphor for the sparsely populated Deep South states, where there aren't many neighbors for a mile, and where domestic sins are rarely exposed as they are in the big cities on the East and West Coasts.

Therefore, Jenny later pursued freedom and control over her own destiny in order to escape the misfortune of her childhood.

Therefore, Ronald wanted to build this house to make people feel uncomfortable, with a dark and dirty doorway, as if it would open its mouth at any time and release the demons inside to devour the childhood of innocent children.

“This is your Vietnam…”

Polly Pratt showed Ronald around the various scenes while she ate some baked cookies he had brought.

“God, this really feels like Vietnam to me…”

Ronald used the director's viewfinder that he had used for ten years to look at the bushes and bunkers below on the green. This abandoned golf course has now been planted with more than a dozen palm trees. Or at least they have been planted in place.

As for whether the palm trees would survive after the filming was completed, that was not a consideration at all. Anyway, there would be a napalm bombing like the beginning of "Apocalypse Now" to completely destroy this "evil" golf course full of Vietcong, and at the same time satisfy the course owner's wish to demolish it.

"Isn't this really great? When your camera is placed here, across from it is the path where Forrest Gump and he went back and forth to rescue Bubba several times. Each time he rescued a comrade, until he finally found Bubba, but he couldn't save Bubba's life."

Polly Pratt has obviously watched a lot of Vietnam War movies. There aren't many scenes in Forrest Gump that depict the battlefield, but they are very condensed. The main point is to make ordinary audiences feel the cruelty of the battlefield, and also make the veteran audiences who really know the business feel that their filming is very real.

"Well, am I right? Can we get a great shot here?" Seeing that Ronald didn't say anything, Polly Pratt turned to ask the director of photography Don Burgess on the other side.

"Of course, we can use a deep-focus lens to shoot this scene. As for the special effects shot of the explosion, we can use real explosives, or we can use post-production methods to synthesize the explosion into the foreground scene of Forrest Gump rescuing the wounded..."

Before coming here, Don Burgess visited Ronald's special effects team and happened to see some production manuals for the special effects shots of "Mortal Kombat". He was impressed by the way that computer special effects can be separated from real shooting and produced after the shooting is completed, so he also wanted to try it...

"Ronald, what's wrong with you?" Polly Pratt finally noticed something was wrong. Ronald was standing on the green, and he looked a little abnormal. His hands seemed to be shaking, and he didn't put down the director's viewfinder, as if he was trying to hide his excitement... Was the director sobbing?
Polly Pratt's ex-husband is the famous director Bogdanovich. She knows the fragility of artists very well. So she protects Ronald very much. After discovering this, she quickly sent away the director of photography Burgess, took Ronald's hand, and helped him sit down on the grass nearby to rest.

"This is exactly what happened to my father and uncle..." After Ronald calmed down, he talked about what happened to his father. Like Bob, his uncle also died after being rescued due to his serious injuries.

The cruelty of war is beyond the imagination of viewers who watch war-themed movies and TV shows in peacetime. In order to highlight the heroism of the protagonist, many movies and TV shows deliberately downplay the cruelty of the battlefield and then transform the protagonist into an omnipotent superman.

Especially in large-scale land wars, this is the area that America is most reluctant to get involved in. The Air Force and the Navy can both rely on advanced weapons to bully the enemy, but in land wars, everyone is a soldier wearing military boots, and a barrage of artillery fire, whether it is a farmer's son in Mississippi or a farmer working the fields by the Mekong River, cannot use their flesh and blood to resist the power of artillery shells.

"Oh, Ronald..." Polly Pratt understood Ronald's thoughts. He started shooting such Vietnam War themes in the 1990s. A big reason might be that his family history made it impossible for young Ronald to face such a lens in the 1980s.

……

"Hi, Director Ronald..."

After a few days, the various houses, sets, and preparations were all progressing at a rapid pace. Tom Hanks also arrived at the scene with Michael, the actor who played Forrest Gump.

This place is the main filming location for Little Forrest Gump, and many of his scenes were filmed here. Hanks spent the past few days hanging out with Little Mike, imitating his speaking accent and gestures, and he became more and more like him.

"Tom, you're here..." Ronald smiled and pulled him to the trailer. "This is yours, and next to it is Robin Wright's..."

As the male and female protagonists, their trailers must be the longest, widest and largest. And Tom Hanks, as the male protagonist, has a trailer that is more than a foot longer than Robin Wright, who has a smaller role.

The film set is such a place with clear hierarchy, no matter how good-tempered an actor is, he cannot escape this because it not only affects his own treatment, but also whether his agent can help him get the corresponding treatment, and whether the producer of the crew "respects" the actor's position.

After all, Hanks has an additional role as an investor, and this movie is completely supported by his acting skills throughout the entire film.

"Tom, I have something for you..."

Ronald took Tom Hanks to his hotel room and showed him the ID card that his aunt had given to his uncle.

"This is the ID card of my uncle who died in Vietnam. I hope you can take it with you when you take the photo. This is a little selfish of mine. My aunt is my benefactor. Without her, I would never have graduated from high school.

She had been waiting for me to shoot a movie about the Vietnam War, and my father and uncle had also experienced something similar to what happened to Forrest Gump and Bob..."

After Ronald said this, Tom Hanks was also very moved. He solemnly took the ID card and put it around his neck to try it out.

Then he began to ask Ronald about various details about his parents' experiences in Vietnam, saying that it would help him understand the mental states of Forrest Gump and Bubba.

But Ronald actually didn't know much. He could answer some questions but not others, so he had to call Aunt Karen to ask.

After several attempts, Aunt Karen also felt that telling Tom Hanks some of the true things she had heard and seen back then was very important to truly record the history of these Vietnam War veterans.

After baking a batch of cookies, she flew to South Carolina with her husband and brought many archives compiled by the Staten Island Veterans Association over the years for Tom Hanks to refer to.

Since Ronald made money, Aunt Karen's life has not been a problem. Her own shares and investments, after selling the leg warmer factory, are enough to support her carefree life.

So she donates money to the local veterans association and veterans hospital every year to make life better for the large number of local veterans.

These people also respected Aunt Karen very much. After she became the director of the Veterans Association, she set up a small archive in the town of Totville, collecting a lot of information donated by veterans of World War II, the Vietnam War, and even the recent Gulf War.

The Vietnam War was the most common. Ronald was very grateful for his aunt's thoughtfulness when he saw these materials. He and Tom Hanks read a lot of first-hand veterans' memories, their medals and retirement records, and got a better understanding of their mentality on the battlefield.

Aunt Karen was also very happy and decided to stay in South Carolina for a few more days until she saw her favorite actor Tom Hanks filming a scene wearing her late husband's ID card before leaving the crew.

"Don't you think that there is something very similar between the descriptions of many veterans about their experiences in Vietnam and their descriptions of injuries or awards they received..."

That day, Ronald found Tom Hanks and shared with him his feelings about reading these veterans' materials.

"Yeah, they... how should I put it, they were not prepared for war..." Hanks was also impressed by this. Many people wrote that the Vietcong's artillery and rifle design were all sudden.

In the tropical jungle environment of Vietnam, you often can't see where the enemy is. Suddenly, while walking on the march, you are greeted enthusiastically by AK47s and mortars. When you take down your weapons and start to fight back, the enemy seems to be invisible and disappeared. You don't know if you are shooting at them, you can only aim in the general direction and scare them.

A more common method is to call the artillery and aircraft in the rear by phone and have them drop bombs on the enemy's approximate location and bomb them indiscriminately.

For this purpose, Ronald also found a screenwriter and asked him to modify the plot of the Vietnam War. After using continuous long shots to reflect the dry season and rainy season in Vietnam, a plot suddenly occurred in which Forrest Gump's company was attacked by concentrated fire.

This can both shock ordinary audiences and allow professionals like veterans to empathize with what they experienced in Vietnam.

The Vietnam War scenes in this movie were very successful as they were appreciated by both general audiences and industry insiders.

After staying for a few more days, Robin Wright also came to the filming site. She had just given birth to her second child with Sean Penn two weeks ago, and she came to the crew regardless of her physical recovery.

As usual, Ronald showed her the hotel where she would live and the trailer where she would rest, and arranged for a nurse to provide her with special care the week before filming began.

"Ah, don't worry about me, I've already made preparations before I came..." There was still a deep maternal instinct on Robin Wright's face, but for the sake of the movie and the role of Jenny, she really gave it her all, handed her child to the nanny and relatives, and resolutely came to the scene.

"You should rest more. I will arrange some lighter scenes beforehand..."

Ronald was not blindly partial to her. As an adult, Jenny's main roles were still in hippies, anti-war, college, and even after returning to normal, she worked as a waitress. In Green Bay, Alabama, she and Forrest Gump had some scenes throughout.

"Anyway, don't worry. I have no problem completing my part..."

Ronald looked at Robin Wright and was very impressed. This white woman really had a very good physical foundation. Not long after giving birth, her figure was almost restored. The remaining maternal instinct was also very good, and she was able to interpret Jenny's unique temperament.

"Ronald..."

The next day, another plane arrived, carrying a white woman who arrived at the South Carolina set in a luxury car.

"What the hell is she doing here?" Ronald was surprised when he saw that it was Paramount's CEO, Shirley Lansing, who was also here.

"You don't have to worry about me. This is a habit I developed when I was an independent producer. When filming starts, I always want to be with my companions..." As she said this, Shirley Lansing raised her sunglasses and began to inspect the crew with her young assistant.

"Fuck you, you bitch, you came to check on my first day of filming..."

Ronald has been a producer many times and has a lot of experience. He understood it immediately, and he often does this, which is to check whether the director is competent on the first day of shooting.

But he only does this for directors who are making their first movie, such as Wes Anderson, Cameron Crowe who was directing for the first time... Ronald is a director whose movies are all successful at the box office, so when will it be Shirley Lansing's turn to test his quality?

Ronald was furious and decided to give this ungrateful old woman a lesson.

I'm not one of those lousy directors you produce. You should respect me like Sheinberg respects Spielberg...