Exploiting Hollywood 1980.

Chapter 1497: Forrest Gump Debate in Usenet
Ronald and Cameron talked about the bet. Ronald wanted Cameron's Harley Davidson, and Cameron wanted Ronald's Ferrari. Of course, the two of them couldn't reach an agreement. After exchanging several bets, they failed because Ronald's toys were too expensive.

Finally, the two reached a gentleman's agreement that the winner could make a reasonable request within the scope of the film, and the loser had to cooperate unconditionally.

"Hey, are you watching the OJ Simpson show too?"

After the bet, Ronald and Cameron heard the live broadcast on each other's phone. OJ Simpson was imprisoned in Los Angeles County Jail in the past two days. The prosecution also identified two senior prosecutors, Martha Clark and William Hodgman, as the main prosecutors.

The defense wanted a speedy trial, and elected District Attorney Gil Garcetti decided to bring charges in downtown Los Angeles rather than in Santa Monica, where the crime occurred.

The two ideas were submitted to the Los Angeles Superior Court, and the court decided that Japanese-American judge Ito would draw lots to hear the case.

Today, it happened that the chief of the two prosecutors, Martha Clark, came out for an interview.

"The Los Angeles District Attorney's Office will not include on the witness list those who sell stories to the gossip media. This is a court trial, not a TV show. I have made my decision..."

"Yeah, I'm watching Martha Clarke. She changed her hairstyle and looked a lot like Sigourney Weaver on camera..." Ronald began to complain that this prosecutor seemed to care more about her personal image than the case itself.

Is she not cooperating with those who broke the news in the media because she is afraid that others will overshadow her? Or is it a measure taken because of the rare exposure of the case?
Ronald didn't know, but among the exposed evidence, there were two that Ronald really thought were very favorable to the prosecution.

One was that shortly after the time the medical examiner estimated the crime had occurred, a witness saw Simpson driving his car through an intersection near Nicole Brown's home, running a red light and nearly hitting a roadside trash can.

Another incident was at the airport, where a witness saw Simpson, who was going to Chicago, throw a large bag of things that looked like clothes into the airport trash can.

Under Martha Clark's new policy, these two very powerful witnesses will not be called by the prosecution. Does she have more decisive evidence in her hands?
"She should get a more fitted suit and a custom-made skirt..." Cameron felt that this female prosecutor was a little half-hearted. If she really wanted to improve her personal image, she should just hire a Hollywood image consultant, right? Maybe the prosecutor's salary was not enough to pay for it?

……

Soon, by the third week, word of mouth had spread even more strongly among the audience. Ronald connected the telephone line to the modem and went to the Usenet news group to read the comments on the movie section.

Since AOL America Online launched a relatively cheap Internet package, more and more users have flocked to the Usenet newsgroups, which were originally mainly composed of college students and some middle school students who wanted to be elites and had talent in IT technology.

Every summer, newly graduated high school students and newly enrolled college students flock to Usenet. They don't know much about the discussion etiquette on the online BBS, and it often takes a summer of familiarization before they are educated and influenced by the old users and learn to abide by the discussion etiquette that has been passed down since the founding of the BBS.

But this year AOL has significantly reduced Internet access charges, and this summer, millions of AOL users will have access to Usenet.

With so many new users pouring in all of a sudden, the old etiquette of polite discussion, where old users would teach new users, could no longer be maintained. On the forum, various sections began to engage in a large number of meaningless discussions and quarrels, swearing, and personal attacks on each other.

Ronald, who had just opened the BBS software, saw that the computer screen was refreshing every minute. Inadvertently, a post he wanted to read was pushed to the back of several pages.

More than half of the posts used to contain useful information, but now even after browsing a dozen pages, you may not be able to find any useful information.

Many of the intellectual elites who used to be keen on sharing on it were driven away by these new users who were not well-educated and cursed. Ronald was so angry that he wanted to turn off his computer and stop caring about this mess.

But because of this, the new movie section here has more ideas from ordinary audiences than before.

Ronald was a little more patient and found a section called REC.ARTS.MOVIES, which has become a place where a considerable number of movie fans come to seek real feedback on the movies currently released.

From the moment Speed ​​was released, reviews of every popular movie would fill the BBS. Once you open a post with the Speed ​​title in the title, you can press the page-turning key dozens of times before you get to the bottom.

Ronald discovered that Roger Ebert had a high reputation here, and many people were used to discussing movies based on his reviews. Some people even collected his reviews over the years and put them on a server, so people could download and save them by clicking on the link.

No other famous American film critic received such treatment, and even Pauline Kale was only mentioned sporadically.

Ronald felt that perhaps decades later, those new movie fans would go to video rental stores to search for those popular movies that had long been taken off the shelves based on Roger Ebert's film reviews.

Not only that, when there are a lot of people, any details and topics will be discovered by others.

For example, in Life and Death, someone found many bloopers in the film and made a table showing the time points in the film where the bloopers occurred. Generally, audiences who go to the movies for the first time will not have the leisure and elegance to look for bloopers.

Only those veteran movie fans who buy the video tapes and watch them over and over again can find these things for fun.

Under this post about the blunder, many viewers responded to say that they had noticed the parts he pointed out and thanked him. Some even wrote to the director of the film, asking him to re-edit the film.

This new discussion environment where movie fans gather together, if it further expands the base of people using BBS, may also bring about some unexpected changes to Hollywood movies ten years from now.

Will there be directors at that time who would deliberately hide some hard-to-find plots in the movies, guiding the audience to actively discover and discuss them, and then go to the cinema again and again to confirm their guesses?

If there really is a director who can do this, his movie will definitely be a big box office hit.

Finally, Ronald, who kept flipping through the pages, found a forum discussion about the release of Forrest Gump. Someone had used his connections to get him a ticket to watch the movie during the preview, because he was about to travel abroad.

Seeing someone so passionate about the movie he directed, Ronald immediately replied below, "Your choice is definitely not wrong. This is also what I think is the best movie directed by Ronald Lee in the past ten years."

After watching the film, someone was so excited that he typed 17 Forrest Gumps in the title. He said he used to like Tom Hanks' performances, but he just acted well in Philadelphia.

In Forrest Gump, when Forrest Gump found out that Jenny's so-called performance was actually a striptease on stage, the expression on his face made people feel so real and pitiful. He wanted to invite Forrest Gump to his home to make him pancakes and comfort this poor child.

Ronald hadn't seen such direct communication between fans for a long time, and he immediately replied, "Dude, you're absolutely right. I think after Forrest Gump came back from Vietnam and reunited with Jenny under the Washington Monument, the director immediately cut to Jenny being with the hippie anti-war leader, becoming his girlfriend and leaving Forrest Gump. Jenny later returned to her hometown, lived with Forrest Gump for a while, and then left without saying goodbye. Tom Hanks also acted these two scenes very well. Like you, I think this is one of his best performances since he became famous."

About 80% of the comments on Forrest Gump were positive, and they strongly recommended friends on the forum to go to the cinema to watch the movie.

But there are good and bad sides, and it was precisely those old Usenet users, who considered themselves to be the elite, who were not very interested in Forrest Gump.

A person named Scott Renshaw from the Stanford University Legal Counsel's Office imitated Roger Ebert and gave his own film review. Obviously, such a convenient publication channel makes all intellectual elites feel that they can lead the audience's viewing trend like those famous film critics.

This is what Renshaw believes made him confused by "Forrest Gump." I was transported into an original and stunning experience and enjoyed it. But almost as soon as the end credits began to roll, I sensed something was wrong.

Many parts of Forrest Gump were deliberately exaggerated to achieve some entertaining effect. For example, he taught Elvis how to dance, and how he exposed the Watergate scandal? This was a bit too much, and it destroyed the original tone of a fairy tale.

He thinks Tom Hanks's performance is not as natural as Robin Wright's, who plays Jenny, and that many parts are very deliberate. Forrest Gump's famous quotes are like the Chicken McNuggets in McDonald's, which have been deliberately prepared for you to use at any time.

Forrest Gump is a very flat character, with almost no character arc from the beginning to the end of the movie, and no personal transformation. However, the characters around him all have their own characters, and the arc of their evolution appears very three-dimensional. This is a relatively unsuccessful work of Tom Hanks.

Finally, Renshaw, who claimed to be a lawyer from Stanford University, said that Forrest Gump was a flawed work and he only gave it 7 points out of 10.

Ronald was very familiar with this strong imitation of Ebert's writing style. He immediately responded: "I guess studying in Stanford Law School and working as an intern in the editorial office of the Stanford Law Journal must have been quite free, which gave you the opportunity to refer to Roger Ebert's film reviews and then imitate this so-called film review. (I guess you definitely don't have a Stanford film critic certificate that allows you to watch this movie for free in advance)
When you graduate from Stanford Law School, work as a lawyer for a few years, and come into contact with real life, I think you may have a different feeling about this movie and Tom Hanks' performance.

Forrest Gump is certainly not a flat character, and his perception of his situation changes significantly throughout the movie.

At the beginning, people around him treated him badly and even threw stones at him. At that time, Forrest Gump had no idea that he had done anything wrong.

Afterwards, he came to realize his repeated failures in love, and realized that his intellectual condition had brought huge obstacles to his life, work and love.

He is definitely not a character that remains consistent from beginning to end, and it is in these subtle and subtle places that Tom Hanks' superb acting skills allow the audience who have had similar experiences to resonate greatly.

We are not gods, we all have times when we regret our stupidity and feel dissatisfied with our lives. And Forrest Gump is the commonality of such a large group of people, a classic screen image that brings together.

Which of us has the same, unchanging outlook on life when we are 20, 30, or 40?
Maybe the flat characters you are talking about refer to the original novel by Mr. Winston Groom, where Forrest Gump is a clown from beginning to end. In the novel, you often find Forrest Gump's behavior ridiculous. In the movie, similar plots will make you feel a kind of warmth under the cruel reality.

Renshaw, maybe you should take some time to watch this movie again. You will feel differently then.

Another: Most film critics cannot live the life they dream of like Roger Ebert and win the Pulitzer Prize. I suggest you continue to be a lawyer, a very promising profession..."

After mocking Renshaw, Ronald laughed out loud and pressed the send button with satisfaction.

In the next few days, this post became a popular post in the forum. Every day when Ronald came home and turned on his computer, there were dozens or even hundreds of replies automatically sent to his reminder box.

Many people agree with Ronald's statement that this movie is definitely for people with a certain amount of life experience to appreciate carefully. The more people who have encountered setbacks and hardships in life, the more they can appreciate the subtext of the movie, which only says 30% of the inner thoughts.

What made Ronald laugh the most was a reply from a viewer who had obviously read the original novel.

He said that he had read the original novel and the movie, and that they were two completely similar but very different stories.

While watching the movie, the sentence that the audience may remember most is what Forrest Gump's mother told him: life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what it will taste like next (because many American chocolates are mixed with multiple flavors).

But if you’ve read the original novel, which is a very biting, cynical satire, you’ll know that the line in the novel is that life is definitely not a box of chocolates…

I prefer movies!

Ronald laughed out loud and replied with a "good, thumbs up, like!"

Who knew there was another reply from the poster below:

"Many of my friends who watched the movie with me had similar feelings. The movie is definitely better than the novel. But Winston Groom, the author of the original novel, didn't seem to agree with our point of view. When he was interviewed, he expressed great anger and dissatisfaction with the adaptation of the spirit of his novel in the movie, and said he would sue the producer and director."

"Ah? Uh..." Ronald quickly picked up the phone and called Sherry Lansing of Paramount. I heard that Winston Groom was going to sue us?

(End of this chapter)