Exploiting Hollywood 1980.

Chapter 1516 Attacking from Different Tracks
"What do they want to do? Can you help me calculate how much this will cost?"

Ronald recently noticed that the entertainment sections of various newspapers on the market were filled with articles praising "Pulp Fiction", which was simply abnormal.

This has gone beyond the scope of general film reviews. They are all special interviews with the main creative staff. The interviewing reporters come from serious industry professional publications such as film reviews to local comprehensive newspapers such as the Los Angeles Times.

Ronald read through them all, including the one with Uma Thurman, who talked about how Quentin Tarantino had allowed her to put aside her concerns as a 23-year-old girl from Massachusetts and do those very out-of-this-world scenes…

Of course, in fact, many of the movies she filmed before also had some more outstanding shots, but I just can’t think of them at the moment.

There are also some from Bruce Willis, mainly about how he liked the work so much that he was willing to reduce his salary to act in it. And he also got more investment for the film...

Similarly, Willis also chose to forget that after starring in several bad movies, he no longer had much audience reputation in the domestic market. It was only because of the overseas popularity of Die Hard that the overseas market was still very willing to pay for it that he was able to use this to add part of the overseas pre-sale income to enter this movie.

However, out of the $8 million budget for Pulp Fiction, $5 million went into the actors' pay, and the biggest star among them, Bruce Willis, must have taken a lot.

In the interview, John Travolta mainly recalled his Twist and Swing dance with Uma Thurman. He kept reminding reporters and readers that he was once the best dancer in Hollywood, and that in Grease and Saturday Night Fever, most audiences went to the cinema to watch him twerk.

He emphasized that he was good at all kinds of dance, from tap, to swing, to disco. When Uma Thurman didn't know how to dance, he danced all the dances to see what she could do, and the final effect was very good...

Of course, he also forgot that no one in Hollywood makes musicals anymore and his dancing moves are at least ten years out of date and only middle-aged people would be excited about them.

From the arrangement of these interviews, we can also know Harvey Weinstein's plan for the Oscars. Starting from the last two months of the year, a large number of film critics association awards, various union awards, and some special category film awards will be announced one after another...

All of this will probably continue until next year's Golden Globe Awards, and then the much-anticipated Oscar nominations will be announced.

Harvey Weinstein has two films that have the potential to win awards, "Pulp Fiction" and "Bullets Over Broadway", which are starting to warm up now. It is basically certain that he will go the route of awards and film reviews.

Historically, in order to influence the selection of Oscar judges, in addition to the traditional methods of personal canvassing, party canvassing, etc., and the videotape offensive invented by Ronald in the past few years, there is another less popular route that not many people use, which is the route of exchanging small awards for big ones.

Among the thousands of judges, no more than 10% are able to watch all the nominated films. Most people learn about the nominated films, especially the competition for certain awards, based on film reviews and gossip in private circles.

Therefore, a few days before the voting, whoever can gain more impression points in the judges' minds will gain a great advantage.

So, in the distant past, in 1969, a similar situation occurred. In 1968, the heroines of two films received very good praise from critics. One was Katharine Hepburn who played Queen Eleanor in "The Lion in Winter", and the other was Barbra Streisand who played "Funny Girl".

Both received rave reviews, but Barbra Streisand was not yet a member of the Hollywood Academy, and having just started filming in Hollywood, it would take her longer to qualify.

Therefore, whether she was more talented than those actors who had played supporting roles for many years and was qualified to enter the Academy became a hot topic in the news that year. It happened that the then president of the Academy, Gregory Peck, wanted to speed up the replacement of the Academy's judges and replace them with a new generation of actors, so he made an exception and let her enter the Academy as a judge.

This incident also caused a lot of discussion in the press and Hollywood. In the end, a group of more senior actors supported Katharine Hepburn, while another group of more knowledgeable and younger members supported Barbra Streisand.

The two were evenly matched in various Film Critics Association awards selected before the Oscars, and the competition between the two continued until a few days before the Oscars.

Perhaps because of the fierce competition, the other nominees for Best Actress were washed out by the high popularity, and these two became the only two people that the judges paid attention to in their voting.

In the end, the two were coincidentally evenly matched, with each receiving 3030 votes, making them a rare tie for the Oscar for Best Actress that year.

However, such a PR method requires the right time and place. Not every year's Oscar selection can continue to attract media coverage. If the two actresses, one old and one new, had not been supported by actors of almost two generations and had not been arguing and attacking each other in the newspapers, it would have been impossible for them to receive so many votes at the same time.

So, when Ronald saw Weinstein launching a large-scale public relations offensive at this time, he was a little worried.

This guy has always had the ability to continuously work on crooked tricks. Last year, he even went to a nursing home to screen his movies for the old judges to strengthen their impression. It can be said that he is the type of person who will do anything to achieve his goals.

Ronald quickly found a private detective and began collecting dirty information about "Pulp Fiction" and "Bullets Over Broadway".

"Ronald, I heard something recently that someone is collecting negative news about Weinstein's movie?"

Soon, some people with a keen sense of smell in the circle, such as Cannold, who was in charge of distribution in Ronald's company, smelled something. When he saw that the negative information was mainly distributed around director Quentin Tarantino and supporting actress Uma Thurman, he had some guesses, so he specially visited Ronald to ask about the situation.

"I am doing this, but I am not someone who would actively use this kind of dirt to attack my opponents. I am doing this to protect myself..."

"Self-protection?" Michelle Cannold didn't expect Ronald to admit it so quickly.

"Yeah, you look at the Film Review interview with Quentin Tarantino and it's hard not to think he's attacking me."

Ronald produced a copy and handed it to Cannold.

This interview transcript is quite long. In it, the reporter asked Quentin Tarantino many questions about Pulp Fiction, and also published Quentin's original answers, the level of detail is completely different from the general interview transcript.

For example, the reporter asked about the inspiration for many scenes in the movie, which is impossible in a general director interview.

Many directors design scenes based on the needs of the plot, the performance of the actors, and what they want to express. These subtle details are not easy for ordinary reporters to see, so they can't ask very interesting questions.

Quentin Tarantino is different. The way he designs scenes is actually to borrow scenes from movies that he carefully studied when he was a clerk in a video rental store and then apply them to his own movies.

This is something that some reporters who are already movie fans can notice.

For example, the character Jules, played by Samuel Jackson in Pulp Fiction, was based on some scenes in "Star Trek", where a little kid makes a gun-like gesture with his fingers and "shoots" at you, and he really believes in his heart that it is a real "gun".

The switch to Tim Roth shooting Michael Madsen at the end of the torture scene in Reservoir Dogs was completely "learned" from some of the performance methods of Jimmy Stewart in Hitchcock's Rope.

He also answered some questions about what the subtitle of "Pulp Fiction" means, three stories about one story.

Quentin's answer indicated that he originally wanted to write a collection of short stories, integrating the plots from various suspense action movies he had seen before, and it was Harvey Weinstein who told him to integrate them into one story.

The original meaning of pulp fiction is actually to pick out a few interesting short stories from the cheap short story collection "Story Club" sold in bookstores, make them into unrelated short stories, and then put them together.

What made Ronald most wary of this interview transcript was that Quentin criticized Hollywood genre films at the end.

Quentin said that the core story in his pulp novels is actually the same story that Hollywood has overused - don't mess with the boss's woman, otherwise you will get into trouble.

He cited Coppola's "The Cotton Club" (which happened to star Diane Lane), saying that his movies don't care about the story, or that the core of the story can be very clichéd.

His movies are not limited to a certain genre, but can be a collection of multiple genres. Whatever genre you want him to be, it is that genre. He doesn't want to be the next "Ronald Lee". It's not that there is anything wrong with Ronald, but this kind of genre is a thing of the past, and a new era has arrived...

This kind of filmmaking method is certainly feasible, as long as you don't consider the problem from the perspective of the movie box office, and reach a tacit understanding with the audience about what kind of film it is and what kind of audience you want to attract.

It doesn't matter what kind of movie you make. Even if there aren't many audiences watching it and it's not a huge box office hit, you can still get good results by winning awards.

Quentin Tarantino is a very successful example on this path, winning the Palme d'Or...

But he said that the era of genre films has passed, which is obviously a preparation for the Oscars. From this point of view, he can attack those genre films, which are some commercial operations made to cater to the audience and cater to the box office.

If we look at it from an artistic perspective, a film like Pulp Fiction, which does not belong to any genre, or is whatever genre you want it to be, is innovative.

You know, in the traditional Hollywood track, the success of a movie is evaluated by two dimensions: box office and film reviews. Quentin Tarantino and Harvey Weinstein behind him have almost no way to compete with Ronald.

Whether it's box office, special effects, artistic expression, treatment of actors, or the public relations resources and budget necessary to compete for the Oscars, both of them are far from Ronald.

But if I can’t compete with you in this track, what if I set up a new track?

Just like when Barbara Streisand and Katharine Hepburn competed for the Best Actress award, what they were competing for was not the artistry of the two films or the box office, but their different views on art and the right to speak.

Should the Oscars be based on seniority or should they reward artistic innovation? Should a group of old judges decide who gets the award, or should they recruit more actors and stars who are now in their prime and let them decide which artistic performances are more in line with the preferences of today's audiences?

All of this was seen again at today's Oscars outpost.

Should we succumb to the system of big studios, big productions, and big stars, or should we stand with "independent" production companies like Miramax?
Should we reward directors like Ronald Lee who inherited the traditional Hollywood narrative and the three-act play methodology? Or should we reward practitioners of new director theories like Quentin who ignores the three-act play format and has no main or supporting roles?

Anyway, the movie Pulp Fiction doesn't have any main characters or supporting characters in the strict sense, nor does it have a main story in the strict sense. Although the story of Forrest Gump is very scattered, it is completely centered around Forrest Gump's life opportunities. It can be said to be a competition between tradition and innovation.

This is a new-age version of Barbara Streisand versus Katharine Hepburn, and if the competition ends like the old story, with Ronald and Quentin sharing the Best Director award, it will also take a lot of shine off Ronald's resume.

What's more, the same number of votes is a one in a million coincidence. If I really lose, I will become a stepping stone for Quentin, winning the Palme d'Or and the Oscar, and becoming a rising star.

Michelle Cannold also felt that something was wrong and immediately expressed her loyalty, saying that she would find out more about the dirty laundry of the Pulp Fiction crew in the industry in case Weinstein resorted to trickery and retaliated.

In terms of public relations strategy, Ronald still continued with his original plan, mainly facing the judges of actors and directors face to face. This approach is not like Miramax, which appears in the media, but it still costs a lot of money privately.

Ronald was not the only one who was alert, the main actors of Forrest Gump also found the problem. After all, the sudden appearance of so many interviews with the actors of Pulp Fiction in the newspapers was very sensitive to those stars who were aiming for Oscars.

Gary Sinise, who played Lieutenant Dan, was very unhappy and called Ronald to complain. After Ronald introduced some of his own public relations plans to him, he also agreed to add an interview with him in the relevant media to hedge against Samuel Jackson's actions.

Tom Hanks, on the other hand, did not have much of an opinion on this. After seeing John Travolta's interview, he just called Ronald to report it, and he did not have much of an opinion. Hanks hoped to save some of his publicity expenses and give them to Sinise, who had applied for the Best Supporting Actor, and Robin Wright, who had applied for the Best Supporting Actress.

As for himself, Hanks said no one would give an award to an actor two years in a row.

Among these people, only Robin Wright, who played Jenny, had the biggest reaction. She said that Uma Thurman and Dianne Wiest, two supporting actresses in Miramax films, had invested much more in public relations expenses than herself, and said that she must add some additional public relations expenses.

Ronald said that he had also arranged an interview with a variety show, mainly to talk about her unique understanding of playing Jenny and to clarify some misunderstandings about the outside world's comments on her role as Jenny.

However, Robin Wright seemed unsatisfied and hoped that the interview arranged by Ronald would contain more details about her own life. She wanted to talk about some personal gossip about playing Jenny and how to balance her career and life, just like Uma Thurman did.

This is also a new track opened up by Weinstein. In addition to the actress's acting skills, her daily life has also become the content of public relations. The whole person has to play a public image to win the favor of the judges.

Ronald agreed to it and let the PR department balance it. In this situation, Miramax attacked and Ronald responded, and the cost of the entire Oscar PR was raised to an unprecedented level. How could such a large amount of money be spent before the awards season even started?

The entire award-winning PR process, from sending out videotapes and small gifts, has escalated directly to expensive newspaper coverage... If Weinstein were to do this kind of TV interview again, then except for rich people like Ronald, wouldn't everyone else be able to try?