Exploiting Hollywood 1980.

Chapter 1501: Want to own Kim Basinger's asset?
"What's going on? Why did you file for bankruptcy? Don't you know that after filing for bankruptcy, all your financial information will be made public? Even the bills for the private toys you bought in the past few years will be made public?"

Kim Basinger changed her agent last year, and this new agent is obviously much better to Basinger than the previous one who only relied on her to make money. When a client reaches a desperate situation, most agents will just cut off ties. But this new agent is also working hard to help find capable people in the industry to see if they can help Basinger out of the predicament, or simply take a movie and use the advance payment to get out of the predicament. After all, she is still a popular porn star worth millions.

So when he learned that Ronald had taken the initiative to care about Basinger's recent situation, he immediately went to find Basinger. He got from him that Ronald had a history of having sex with her one night. Combined with Ronald's good reputation in the industry, he made a prompt decision, asked Basinger to wear the sexiest clothes she could find, and ran to a Four Seasons Hotel near Daydream Studios, and used his credit card to book a room for Basinger...

Richard now has a good reputation in the industry and has been handling things for Ronald for many years without any problems. He informed Ronald through Richard that Basinger was only a ten-minute walk away from him and just wanted to meet him.

Thinking of how Basinger had treated him flatteringly, and that he wanted to use this incident to fight for a better working environment for Hollywood actresses, Ronald walked to the suite at the Four Seasons Hotel at lunchtime, bringing only a bodyguard.

Kim Basinger put on makeup specially because she filed for bankruptcy and everyone around her left her, including her personal hairstylist and makeup artist. She put on makeup herself and let her hair down to make it loose. She remembered that Ronald liked it this way...

"Hmmmm..." Kim Basinger had been in the suite for more than an hour, constantly thinking about how to beg Ronald to save her once and get rid of this nightmare. Who knew that the first thing Ronald said to her when he came in was such a sincere friend's concern, and she hugged Ronald and cried excitedly.

"Don't get too excited. What did Alex say about your situation?" Ronald calmed down the excited Basinger, who sat on the sofa, hugged one of his folded legs with both hands, shook his hair, and said, "Don't mention him. I can't do anything now. It's useless to regret marrying him. He can't help me with anything."

"As expected of the sexiest blonde in Hollywood," Ronald smiled, and even when crying, he did not forget to pose seductively. He took out a small bottle of whiskey from the small refrigerator, opened it, and handed it to Basinger.

"I really met the devil..." Kim Basinger half wanted to show her charm and let Ronald remember the past to help her. Half of her also really hated Jennifer Lynch and began to denounce how she colluded with her father to harm her.

The story behind this is a long one. At the beginning, Jennifer Lynch wrote the script of Helena the Box Beauty when she was 19 years old. The story is roughly equivalent to an upgraded version of her father's previous work Blue Velvet.

This time, the blonde beauty will have her limbs chopped off by the villain, leaving only her torso alive. There is also a very large nudity scene. In the first place, no sane producer in Hollywood would invest in such a crazy script.

But sometimes there are some abnormal producers who take a fancy to Jennifer's father David and plan to take a roundabout approach, first helping their daughter develop a project and then getting closer to her father. You know, his movies have been nominated for many Oscars and other awards.

The crazy production company is New Line Cinema. Not only did they invest money, they also tried to contact the famous singer Madonna. As we all know, although Madonna is already a queen in the music industry, her dream is to become an actress and win an Oscar one day.

At first, Madonna was very interested in the role because of the fame of Jennifer Lynch's father David, and she participated in the early preparations of the play, preparing to play the role.

But after reading the script carefully, even a bold woman like Madonna was confused by the plot. She was ultimately afraid of such inexplicable large-scale shots that did not help to shape the character.

In the end, Madonna withdrew from the project and gave a written statement, saying that "even Madonna herself could not perfectly interpret the role of Helena.

But Kim Basinger's agent at the time saw her ability to make money and persuaded her to take any role that showed Basinger's attractive body. Because Hollywood paid Basinger up to $3 million for such a role, which was more than three times her salary for a normal role that did not show nudity on the screen.

Kim Basinger, misled by the bad agent, publicly told reporters that she thought the role would be "a great showcase for the actress' potential." Basinger met with Jennifer Lynch, then 22, to discuss the film, including nudity involving "sensual" scenes and the treatment of some erotic scenes, and then verbally agreed to star in principle.

The record of this conversation was made into a meeting minutes, and at the urging of Basinger's agent, it became a memorandum of understanding between Kim Basinger and Mainline Pictures, Jennifer Lynch and others on cooperation and consensus reached. Because of this incident, Kim Basinger and this "Boxed Beauty Helena" were officially linked in the media.

Mainline Pictures is different from its name. It is a production company that does not follow the mainstream Hollywood production route. They got the news report and the meeting minutes, and quickly went to Europe to draft an overseas pre-sale contract of more than 680 million US dollars. In addition to the reasonable domestic pre-sale revenue of 300 million US dollars, the film was finally approved and prepared at a cost of million.

But two months later, Kim Basinger changed her agent. After checking her file, the new agent was shocked. This movie was not the kind of movie script that arranged nudity for the sake of film narrative or the need of atmosphere.

This is a script that is completely nude for the sake of nudity, and tries to shoot such controversial scenes to gain exposure and hype for the director. In places like Europe, such scenes may not be a big deal, but in Hollywood, such scenes can isolate Kim Basinger from mainstream Hollywood productions.

This discovery led Basinger to consult several senior industry insiders, who all agreed with her new agent's idea, which prompted her to change her mind and conclude that Basinger should not be in the film.

Because there was no formal agreement, Basinger withdrew a few weeks before production was about to begin. Those pre-sales were paid for Basinger's performance in Batman. So he was about to withdraw from the investment.

Jennifer Lynch's first directorial project was about to fail, but her father David Lynch came to her rescue and invited Sherilyn Fenn, who directed and produced the TV series "Twin Peaks", to take over the film.

Because of this incident, Jennifer Lynch ended up getting a much smaller filming budget and less creative freedom than what Basinger could have gotten when she starred in the film.

After the film was released, it received a lot of bad reviews. The MPAA gave it an NC-17 rating, which was changed to R after appealing and reshooting the ending. This fully shows that Basinger's withdrawal was wise, because this film was a B-level exploitation film made by using her status as a porn star to defraud investment.

Its market should be to not release it in theaters, but to put it directly into video rental stores and sell it as a curiosity movie to those audiences who have this interest.

But Jennifer Lynch refused to swallow her anger, and her debut failed. The second generation of Lynch's directorial career exploded before it even started to blow up. Christopher B. Stewart, the owner of Main Line Pictures, also suffered heavy losses and did not want to let Lynch and his daughter go. He also wanted David to pay off his daughter's debts.

David Lynch of course refused, and the three finally turned their attention to Kim Basinger, suing her in a California court for $10 million in filming costs because she withdrew from the film before it started, which led to the replacement of the film's cast and box office failure.

There are no such vulgar people in Hollywood, and Kim Basinger did not take it seriously. But when she responded to the lawsuit, Jennifer Lynch testified against her. Lynch also used her father's relationship to find several Hollywood producers as witnesses.

Their argument is that Hollywood contracts are based on verbal agreements that are not formally signed as "deal memoranda." Artists often authorize their agents to agree to appear in a certain film on their behalf, and this gentleman's agreement is established in Hollywood.

The reason for not signing a formal one is what the industry calls a "long-form agreement" - a formal written contract. Long-form agreements are usually negotiated by lawyers and contain many standard clauses.

Lynch and Mainline Pictures' defense is that although neither the box office nor Basinger signed a long-form contract, their verbal agreement is equally binding.

Because Basinger is still negotiating many terms with the producers, there are many ancillary or additional terms that may be negotiated and included in the written contract later. However, for pre-sale financing in Europe, only a transaction memorandum is needed, because long-form negotiations take a long time and they can't wait.

Kim Basinger was careless in this matter. She did not hire an expensive lawyer to defend the case. In the end, the judge was convinced by the biased testimonies of some industry producers invited by Lynch and his daughter.

After the first trial, Kim Basinger was ordered to pay Main Line Pictures more than 900 million dollars in damages, which immediately interrupted the career of this Hollywood porn star.

Because Kim Basinger had previously invested more than 20 million dollars in a small town ranch (also on the advice of that irresponsible old agent), and lost her income from her large-scale screen performances in movies such as "9 1/2 Weeks", the accountant finally calculated that she now has only more than 5.8 million dollars in assets.

Because this verdict is ridiculous, Kim Basinger also wants to hire a qualified lawyer familiar with Hollywood to appeal and overturn the verdict.

However, the compensation for the initial trial is here. If Kim Basinger wants to appeal, she must find a guarantee company to provide her with a guarantee to ensure that if she loses again in the appellate court, there will be enough money to compensate the plaintiff.

Generally speaking, bonding companies usually require people to be able to provide a bond equal to 1.5 to 2 times the actual amount of the judgment, which in Kim Basinger's case is approximately $1100 million to $1480 million.

If there were no such large amount of assets as collateral, the compensation would have to be paid first and then an appeal could be made. Basinger's husband, Alec Baldwin, was unwilling to take the risk for his wife and use his own property to help her appeal.

Kim Basinger was in a desperate situation. Seeing that the deadline for paying compensation was approaching, she had no choice but to file for bankruptcy. Because she and Baldwin did not merge their property after marriage, this was only her personal bankruptcy application.

At this time, Jennifer Lynch showed the bad genes of this family. She found the boss of Mainline Pictures and proposed a "plan" that would allow him to get not only the 580 million after Basinger's bankruptcy liquidation, but also the remaining millions, including interest.

The solution is to legally declare that Kim Basinger's image rights and the income from future film remuneration belong to Main Line Pictures. Main Line Pictures completely owns Kim Basinger's "asset". Main Line Pictures designates an experienced director or producer in the industry to be Kim Basinger's guarantor (such as herself) to "find (designate)" film and television projects for Basinger, and in addition to the minimum living expenses, all other income is used to pay the compensation in installments until it is paid off.

To put it more clearly, this method is equivalent to turning Kim Basinger into Jennifer Lynch's slave, letting her make whatever movies she wants, and using various methods to deliberately lower her pay and exploit this famous Hollywood porn star.

Ronald was furious when Basinger said this. This was not just a matter of personal grudges, but was going to ruin the future career of a female star who already had very fierce competition and few opportunities in Hollywood.

He picked up the phone and called Guber in Columbia, hoping that he would join him in the industry to put pressure on the Lynch father and daughter who were going too far.

"Ronald, this is going to make things difficult for me. After all, this is not my project. Even if you have a good relationship with Kim, this is a legal operation after all..." Gubel refused with difficulty. He always paid attention to his facial expressions and words, even when speaking over the phone, as it was said that this could increase his credibility.

"Peter, I'm not asking you for help because of personal reasons," Ronald first clarified his position and then analyzed the situation to Gubel.

Gubel doesn't know how to shoot a movie, especially one with excessive scenes. It's impossible to force the actress to perform these. Even if it's clearly written in the contract, it still depends on the director and the co-stars to make the actress trust them, so that they can finally shoot a movie with excellent acting skills, increase award nominations and increase the actress's salary in her career.

Therefore, these intimate scenes, whether small or large productions, require a certain degree of personal trust. The director can use deception, rational persuasion, or make the actress feel deeply loved by the director, and this is for her own good, to coax the actress into filming.

However, deception will eventually be exposed. Therefore, to film such a role, the overall environment of Hollywood needs to allow actresses to retain the option of withdrawing.

What Lynch and his daughter did was to completely destroy this trust and consensus.

"Peter, do you think that trust will disappear in the future? Before everyone shoots intimate scenes, they have to sign a formal long-form contract with many clauses, including how much nudity to expose, whether there are nude doubles, and where the male actors put their hands. Under such strict conditions, will there be more or fewer actresses shooting such scenes that the audience likes to watch? Will the beauty of actresses increase or decrease?"

"Fuck, this guy is going to dig up one of the two pillars of Hollywood box office? Without Kiss, Bang Bang alone won't attract many female audiences."

Guber came to his senses, and he quoted the name of Pauline Kael's film review book to refer to the two most popular magic weapons in Hollywood: eroticism and violence.

"Okay, I promise, I will call that bastard Lynch." Gubel agreed.

"Yeah, yeah... okay, that's it... ah... bye."

Ronald didn't say anything on the other end, just hummed in agreement, and then quickly hung up the phone. Basinger stopped sitting on the sofa, knelt up to make himself taller, and put his head close to Ronald to hear some good news.

When she heard Gubel's final agreement, she was so happy that she immediately hugged Ronald tightly and thanked him with all her heart.

With Guber's agreement to pass on the message, Ronald's next move became much easier. Sherry Lansing of Paramount was a lady, Madavoy of TriStar was an expert, and together with several executives from 20th Century Fox, they all privately conveyed a message to Mainline Pictures and the Lynchs that it would be best not to push Kim Basinger into a desperate situation.