Exploiting Hollywood 1980.

Chapter 1495 Box Office Competition
In its first weekend, "Forrest Gump" won the box office by a tiny margin of $30,000 over "The Lion King", which was already in its fourth week of release, and topped the box office chart.

This tiny gap really surprised Paramount's Sherry Lansing and Disney's Katzenberg.

If the difference is hundreds of thousands, it could be a public relations move, such as large-scale ticket giveaways, the starring star or director using his or her own money to buy tickets and give them to people, etc., to create a box office ranking or an integer threshold for the total box office.

For example, if a movie is released in the off-season, and the box office performance is good on Friday and the weekend, the leading star will buy some tickets to get into the top three of the box office list and add a line to his resume.

For example, if a commercial film is close to a round number, such as $100 million, the producer buys some movie tickets to give away to make their year-end summary look better, that is, a movie with a box office of over 100 million, rather than a movie with a box office of 99 million.

However, such an action could not be hidden from the industry peers, and no one could be so precise as to determine the shortfall of tens of thousands of dollars. In their view, this was a pure coincidence.

Only Ronald was scratching his head at home and feeling lucky. If he hadn't given away more than 10,000 movie tickets worth more than 60,000 US dollars at the Rangers' victory parade, the first weekend box office would have failed to break Disney's fourth week box office record.

Now, the first place in the box office rankings has become a must-mention for the movie "Forrest Gump" when it is mentioned in the future. Many years later, who will still delve into the fact that he achieved all this with free tickets to a hockey team's championship?
In fact, most of the die-hard fans of the New York Rangers hockey team are the target audience of "Forrest Gump." The season ticket fans who come on a parade probably account for more than half of all the season ticket fans.

Both of them emphasize the old-fashioned American values. As long as you work hard, be kind to others, add a little bit of luck, and discover and use the talents that God will give you (Forrest Gump also has a talent for playing table tennis), you will definitely succeed in America.

This kind of value belongs to the rough, upward-looking young America that does things before thinking about them. It belongs to the old America where white people account for more than 80% of the total population and most of them believe in Puritanism.

Under the impact of decades of continuous immigration, the proportion of these main populations in the total population has continued to decrease. Even if we add in Italians, Irish, Catholics, and other ethnic groups that were not traditional whites, and put them together, their current proportion of the total population has fallen below 70%.

However, one thing that is very beneficial to the box office of "Forrest Gump" is that although the proportion of these ethnic groups in the total population is shrinking, their absolute total population is also expanding. Moreover, since the black liberation movement and the anti-war movement in the 1970s, Hollywood has not produced and released a movie that reflects traditional Puritan values ​​for a long time.

"Forrest Gump" is a return to this kind of conservative traditional values, but it is not based on preaching, but is completely revealed through the subtext of the plot. So it is very much to the appetite of these people.

On Monday, in addition to receiving the box office statistics, Ronald also received audience evaluation scores from Cinema Score, which was obtained after a sample survey of audiences in five random cities across the United States.

Ronald once again received the highest score in the Cinema Score evaluation system, A+.

Generally speaking, the total box office of a movie with this rating will be more than five times that of the first weekend.

According to this figure, the total box office of Forrest Gump will be around 130 million, which is enough for the producers to recoup their investment.

But a more detailed survey report from Cinema Score shows that Forrest Gump's box office potential may be far more than that.

Generally speaking, random surveys distributed to the audience will get responses from about 65% of the audience, and 35% of the audience will not bother to fill out these surveys for a gift like a small piece of chocolate.

However, the response rate of the questionnaire after the screening of Forrest Gump was extremely high, reaching an unprecedented 85%. This shows that those viewers thought the movie was very good and left a very deep impression on them. So much so that they had to say something to express their feelings.

In addition, among the three age groups of the questionnaire received by Cinema Score, namely, under 3 years old, 21 to 22 years old, and over 35 years old, Forrest Gump received the highest number of responses in the group over 36 years old.

These married parents with children usually don't take the initiative to go to the movies. If they do go to the movies, they will take their children to see family movies.

However, once there is a movie that really touches them, their ability to spread word of mouth and market potential are undoubtedly the greatest. After all, people of these age groups grew up watching movies when they were teenagers.

At that time, the black-and-white TV screens were very small and could only broadcast some talk shows and very bad TV dramas. Compared with the teenagers who grew up in the late 1980s, who grew up with the aesthetic taste of TV programs, these relatively older middle-aged people also want to go to the cinema to relive the feeling of the past if there are good movies suitable for them.

After the first weekend, on Monday morning, in addition to looking at the box office data, Ronald also focused on the scores given to Forrest Gump by film critics across the country.

After having a hearty breakfast of Japanese-brand coffee, hot rice rolls from a Chinese restaurant and Italian salami, Ronald picked up Roger Ebert's film reviews to read.

"Four stars" was the first score given by Roger Ebert at the beginning of the film review, which was the highest score in his rating system. This boosted Ronald's spirits.

Roger Ebert said at the beginning that he had never seen a movie like Forrest Gump, nor had he ever seen a leading actor like Forrest Gump. Apart from Tom Hanks, he couldn't think of any other actor in Hollywood who could play this role.

This is not a warm story about an intellectually abnormal person like "Rain Man". Such a pattern is too small for Forrest Gump and has too many restrictions on the characters and the story.

The film is more like a meditation on our times, showing the great history of our times through the eyes of a man who lacks cynicism. Although Forrest Gump's IQ is only 75, his views on things are warm and direct.

If you read his story carefully, you will understand why some people are criticized for being smart. Forrest Gump is just the opposite, he is just the right amount of smart.

When little Forrest Gump was laughed at for being stupid by his peers, the mother, played by Sally Field, told him that stupidity was used to describe the stupid things someone did, not to describe a person's own qualities.

Some people might think that Forrest Gump isn't smart enough to understand everything that's happened to him, but Roger Ebert says he doesn't see it that way.

Forrest Gump understands everything he needs to understand, and everything else, as the movie suggests, is superfluous.

Forrest Gump is not as smart as others, but he also has concentration. As long as he thinks that this is what he needs to do, he will become extremely focused.

Forrest Gump even knows all the important things about the most important thing in the world - "love". Although the girl he fell in love with when he was a child, Jenny told him when she became a stripper, "Forrest Gump, you don't know what love is."

Roger Ebert also praised Ronald's special effects abilities, saying:

“Ronald Lee is a director who is very good at using special effects. In Ghost, we saw how he combined computer special effects with the plot very well.

Unlike his good friends in the industry, James Cameron and Steven Spielberg, who use computer special effects to create special effects spectacles that audiences have never seen before, Ronald is better at integrating special effects into the plot invisibly.

To be honest, many people may be like me. After watching Forrest Gump, they are still foolishly wondering whether the great presidents in history, JFK, Johnson, Richard, etc., as well as stars like Lennon and Elvis Presley, have seen Forrest Gump and left video footage?
I personally prefer this way of using special effects, which allows me to appreciate the humanistic spirit of old Hollywood."

In his film review, Roger Ebert did not forget to compare Forrest Gump and Jenny:
"Following Forrest Gump's life, it becomes a tour guide of American life over the past few decades. Jenny, played by Robin Wright, takes a parallel journey against mainstream American culture.

She left Alabama for California, where youth were expected to be, dropped out of college, embraced the hippie lifestyle, and began using psychedelic drugs.

She was addicted to psychedelic drugs and the so-called flower power of hippies. She participated in the "Make Love, Not War" rally and became a young person at the forefront of liberation and progress in that era.

The paths of Gump and Jenny apparently cover all the important cultural landmarks of our country in the past thirty years. At the end of the movie, Gump and Jenny finally reconciled and gave birth to a son.

This is just like what our country and our society have long dreamed of: the two factions in the great social rift of the 1960s and 1970s finally reached a dream of reconciliation.

What a great dream, what a great movie."

"Honey, what's wrong with you?" Diane looked at Ronald who was sitting in a daze at the dining table, carefully took the Keemun black tea in his hand and put it on the table.

"I never thought Roger Ebert would say this about the movie I made and give me such a high evaluation. When I die in the future, it will be enough to say this in the eulogy..."

"Ah?" Diane was startled and quickly picked up the Chicago Sun-Times to read. In the end, she was so moved that her eyes were blurred and she hugged Ronald for a long time.

"I'm so proud of you, Ronnie."

"I love you, Diane, I couldn't do this without you..."

In addition to Roger Ebert, other film critics generally gave high praise to Forrest Gump. Ebert's friend Cisco, rarely agreeing with Ebert, gave the highest score. He also thought that Forrest Gump had shortcomings, but these minor flaws were not enough to affect the overall greatness of the film.

Todd McCarthy of Variety magazine praised the film's quality, saying, "The film is excellent on every level and successfully accomplishes the difficult feat of telling an intimate and even subtle story against an epic backdrop with charming ease. It can be said to be the Citizen Kane of our time."

The Los Angeles Times film critic mocked Todd McCarthy's review, saying that Citizen Kane was a box office failure and that audiences at the time did not generally appreciate Orson Welles' innovative structure.

Forrest Gump performed very well at the box office. Not only was the film highly praised by professionals, but it was also loved by the general public. Many people said in interviews that the film gave them the long-lost feeling of excitement and goose bumps that one gets from watching a movie.

"Dear, Forrest Gump, can it really maintain the box office success they say it will?"

Diane seemed happier than Ronald himself, and she kept reading the newspaper in the car. Film critics from all over the country had very positive reviews on Forrest Gump, except for Janet Maslin of the New York Times.

While affirming that Forrest Gump tells a heartwarming story, she gave a general evaluation of the character of Forrest Gump, saying that he was a hollow person who congratulated himself in self-absorbed ignorance and was warmly embraced, fully embodying what meaninglessness is.

Ronald certainly didn't care about this. The New York Times, the national base of left-wing progressives, would have been in a good mood after seeing Jenny, a liberated woman who was at the forefront of the trend of the times in the 1960s and 1970s, being portrayed in the movie as irresponsible, taking hallucinogens, confused in relationships between men and women, and lost herself.

Plus, in the third act, the movie vaguely hints that what Jenny got is..., which makes Janet Maslin's words full of sour aggression.

As a fellow New Yorker, she did not attack Ronald personally, but praised his directing skills, only criticizing the script for losing some of the sharp cynicism of the original novel.

However, even a critic like Janet Maslin who spoke badly about the character of Forrest Gump was very optimistic about the box office prospects of the film. She believed that it was still worthwhile for ordinary audiences to go to the cinema to watch it. Ronald was like creating a Disneyland on the screen, allowing the baby boomers to relive everything they had experienced before on the screen.

"I'm not very optimistic, Diane. Jim (Cameron)'s True Lies will be released next week. I went to the preview of that movie and it was very intense. I think the intense scenes in it are enough to make two episodes in the hands of an ordinary director..."

After breakfast, Ronald and Diane drove to Pasadena, 25 miles north. At noon today, the Rose Bowl Stadium here would host the World Cup semi-final match between Brazil and Sweden.

By the time they had settled into the best seats in the upper deck of the stadium, the other semifinal match between Italy and Bulgaria in Eastern New Jersey had already begun an hour ago.

Italy's number 21, Roberto Baggio, scored with two long shots in the 25st and th minutes, while Bulgaria scored one goal.

This year, many strong teams were eliminated unexpectedly, which may be related to the unhealthy kick-off time. In order to ensure the broadcast time in the United States and Europe, many important elimination games were held at the hottest time in the afternoon.

"oops……"

The same was true for today's game. Although the temperature in Los Angeles was better than that in the East Coast, the direct sunlight made it difficult for the audience to watch.

Brazil's two forwards, Romario and Bebeto, seemed unable to adapt well to the game at this time. Together, they wasted five or six single-handed opportunities.

Just when the game was gradually drawing to an end and the Swedish team saw a little hope, it was the killer Romario who, with his tricky running and his very short stature, headed the cross into the goal.

"yeah!"

Ronald also likes the Brazilian team's style of play that requires strong individual skills. The cooperation between the two forwards is simply a work of art.

On the other side, Italy also eliminated Bulgaria with two goals from their star player Roberto Baggio and entered the final. The final will be held this weekend at the Rose Bowl.

"Are you going to the premiere of True Lies?" Diane asked him when they got home.

"No, I will watch the finals. This is also a box office competition between Jim and I..." Ronald smiled and gestured. Cameron and he are good friends, but it is rare for two movies to collide like this, and they also want to see who can get a higher box office and have a friendly competition.