Exploiting Hollywood 1980.

Chapter 1535 Golden Steering Wheel
Back in New York, Ronald's acquisition was featured in the Wall Street Journal and the Hollywood Reporter before Christmas.

All of a sudden, all kinds of people flew to Los Angeles, looking for an opportunity to talk to the super-fast chairman of the media company.

Many local TV stations have actually fallen into a deep operating predicament, and they all hope that Ronald will pay attention to them. If they can get investment or even acquisition, it will undoubtedly be a golden opportunity for such local TV stations.

However, Ronald did not return to Los Angeles as everyone wished. Only CEO Ed Bastian came out to accept media interviews and selectively meet with some other local TV station operators.

Antitrust laws are in place, and DDH is very careful not to touch any market share that may lead to antitrust investigations.

Recently, the antitrust law, which had been dormant during the two previous presidential terms of the Elephant Party, has shown some signs of activity again. For example, Microsoft is under investigation for allegedly abusing its dominant market position by forcing hardware manufacturers to pre-install Windows on OEMs.

Although the American judicial system often gives such high-tech companies a pass and waits for the industry to develop, Ronald's Hollywood has no room for rapid growth and has long been a target for antitrust judges.

"Ed Bastien is quite photogenic. If he came to Hollywood, he might be able to get a good supporting actor job."

In the early morning of New York, Ronald saw an interview with DDH CEO Bastian by Fortune magazine. In the photo, he looked very righteous, and he was an old-fashioned male business leader - square face, big back hair, and a large hand-sewn American suit.

"Hehe..." Helen chuckled. As a director, Ronald hated actors with square chins and big faces. Whenever he saw such people, he would make fun of them.

The most typical example is Brad Pitt. Even though he has been nominated for a Golden Globe, Ronald still calls him the little punk from Missouri.

Regardless of his past experience of trying to gain personal advantage by dating Donna, the director was disgusted by this kind of face, which was handsome but not suitable for movies.

A square chin will be stretched flatter on the screen. A handsome guy with harmonious facial features in real life will become ugly on the screen, especially under the deformation of the widescreen anamorphic lens 2.35:1.

It is very rare to find an actor like Tom Cruise who is not only handsome in real life, but also looks handsome on the screen.

An actor like Brad Pitt, who is very handsome in real life, has an advantage that others don't have, which is that he is very attractive to female leaders who have climbed to middle and senior levels in Hollywood.

In their view, wouldn't it be their dereliction of duty if Brad Pitt, a lovely man, didn't make some hit commercial films and a few art films that would earn him awards and critical acclaim?

Brad Pitt, who is naturally attracted by the attention of these middle and high-level women, can easily get a leading role. As long as they can hook up with a powerful woman in the circle, everything will be smooth sailing in the future - because those women will talk about having such a handsome man with a square chin to try dating.

Actor Pitt, who is supported by them, will cause a lot of trouble for the director. These people want to see Pitt appear handsomely on the screen, so the director has to do special lighting for them and find special shooting angles.

The resulting delay in progress will then be blamed on the director as low quality and poor budget control ability.

If a real star comes, the director and crew can accept all these troubles. After all, the entire film project can be created by the influence of the star.

But actors like Brad Pitt are not really stars. They have a "good" reputation in the industry, but the audience doesn't know them very well. Without more budget, more expensive pre-sale contracts, more loans, and better box office expectations, plus a bunch of troubles, it would be strange if the director and the crew didn't talk about him in private.

Fortunately, Edward Zwick, the director of Legends of the Fall, was also an expert. He immediately let Brad Pitt grow his hair long so that the hair on both sides could cover the steep cheeks like hoes...

"Hey, I'm speaking from the perspective of Roger Corman's apprentice. If Roger had a look like this, he would definitely shoot it quickly. After all, supporting actors don't have to worry about ugly shots..."

Ronald grumbled a few words. It was a strange thing that an actor like Brad Pitt, who had neither acting skills nor successful works, could play the leading role.

However, Ed Bastian is now a darling of the media. It is said that in addition to Fortune magazine, Forbes, Newsweek, and the Wall Street Journal all want to interview him. It is possible that Ed Bastian will be a strong candidate for the best CEO selection of various magazines next year.

Although Bill Gates of Microsoft, Jack Welch of General Electric, and Louis V. Gerstner of IBM are still the most respected business leaders at this stage, Bastian has entered the field of vision of serious financial review magazines and will be very popular in the future.

Ronald also wanted to prevent his most capable and business-minded talent from being poached, so he has prepared a new contract, which he will offer to him when his options become exercisable in a few years, thus locking in a few more years of his career.

"Let's go to the movies..."

Christmas was coming soon, and Helen dragged Ronald to do something else that he didn't have time to do. They went to the cinema in the building where the Fifth Avenue apartment was located, and watched quietly in the back row wearing baseball caps.

Today's movie is Jodie Foster's "Nell," which was nominated for the Golden Globe Awards but had not yet been released in China.

I have to say that among all the actresses I have worked with, Jodie Foster may be the most intelligent and intelligent one.

"Nell" is a story about the growth of an autistic little girl. Nell was the result of a tragic crime when she was a child. Her mother later suffered a stroke and spoke slurred words. Nell, who also has autism, has always lived with her mother and finally learned a "stroke-like" English that no one can understand.

Liam Neeson's Dr. Jerry Lowell discovered Nell and eventually helped her adjust back into society, and she even spoke in court herself, convincing the judge not to send her to an institution that specializes in the disease.

At the end of the film, Nell plays with Dr. Jerry Lowell's daughter many years later...

This film was invested by Jodie Foster's "Egg Pictures", and she herself was also the producer. From the creation of the script to the selection of the director and other male and female actors, Foster played a decisive role.

The plot of this movie is obviously a female version of "Rain Man". From their illnesses to the warm and happy ending, the elements that won the box office and reviews of Rain Man and that everyone summarized afterwards were copied intact.

The two protagonists must be big stars, and the highlight of the role is concentrated on Jodie Foster, who plays Nell. The more difficult part of telling the story is given to Liam Neeson, who just shined in Schindler's List.

Finally, we used the Autism Care Association to organize joint activities, taking into account both charity and film publicity, and also found nominations for various awards for Jodie Foster.

But one-third of the way through the film, Ronald knew it was doomed to fail. Movies don’t just take the elements that made them successful and then replace the actors with similar ones.

Jodie Foster played a role in the filming and post-editing of the film, but she was an actress, and the scenery she saw was completely different from that of a director who watched the filming and editing behind the camera.

Actors tend to exaggerate the role of acting, but directors know that at least one-third of the charm of film performance comes from post-editing. Many times, after the filming of a movie, actors don’t know whether they performed well or not.

Jodie Foster was apparently still immersed in the fantasy of how good her acting was, and her public relations reports increased sharply during the awards season.

But to be honest, her performance in this movie is impeccable in technical analysis, but the problem with the story itself prevents her acting skills from being displayed. The editing seems to have been interfered with as some of Forster's shots are obviously unnecessary.

Of course, now Foster has established her own production company just like Tom Cruise, so even if Ronald told her these problems in person, she might not listen.

What fame brings is isolation from the public taste and unawareness of one's own aesthetic deviation. Directors like Ronald, Spielberg, and George Lucas, who have a clear understanding of this interference and who still maintain some innocence and some of the true qualities of the general public after becoming famous and rich, can be counted on one hand.

Finally, Ronald's business trip in New York ended and he boarded a private plane back to California.

On the plane, Ronald wanted to try to dream again, but failed. He simply asked the flight attendant to bring him a movie to simulate the feeling of dreaming, and then went to sleep.

"a ha ha ha……"

Who would have thought that the movie the stewardess chose for him was "Four Weddings and a Funeral." This romantic comedy has a lot of very British humor. The performances of the main characters are also very good, which made Ronald so engrossed that he didn't feel sleepy at all.

Speaking of this movie, it is also very popular in the video tape market, and the craze for rental and purchase continues to this day.

But can Daydream Pictures replicate the success of this film?
The answer is probably no.

This movie relies a lot on the personal charm and performance of the protagonist Hugh Grant. The male protagonist is so hesitant and clingy that he repeatedly misses the right woman. In the end, he agreed to marry a woman he had liked for a long time, but ran away from the wedding and ran away with Carrie, a woman from America.

If any other male actor played this kind of plot, he would be despised by female audiences. But only Hugh Grant could play this slightly cowardly male role in a way that makes people sympathize with him and make people rationalize some of his actions.

The performance of the heroine Andie MacDowell is well matched with Hugh Grant. Her exotic style (for the film) is compared with the more orthodox and polite society in Britain, and her wild and uncontrollable charm is very prominent.

In short, if the success of this movie is to be repeated, Hugh Grant must be brought in to film it. It is probably a very interesting spectacle to watch him cooperate with various Hollywood female stars. In Britain and America, many female audiences are ready to open their wallets just to watch him fall in love with many beautiful stars.

Slowly writing down his thoughts about the film in his notebook, Ronald finally yawned, as if the god of sleep had finally heard his thoughts and called him to feel new inspiration.

"Da da da……"

Ronald heard a sound similar to keyboard tapping. This time, it was strange that there was no screen directly appearing. Instead, there was a small screen in his field of vision. It seemed to be a computer screen, because along with the sound of keyboard typing, a line of words appeared in an input box.

Titanic

The screen refreshed and a lot of text results appeared on the monitor. Ronald was surprised to find that the result was a title, and the words "Titanic" were marked in red in each title.

Below each title, there is also a text description, which seems to be a brief introduction to each result.

"What is this? It looks very convenient." Ronald suddenly became interested. Now if he wanted to look up a specific topic, he had to go to the library. The retrieval system there was not very useful, and he had to look at the index cards or use a high-power magnifying glass on the machine to look at the microfilm magazines shot on film, moving little by little.

Often, half a day or a day would pass by for a problem. How could it be as fast as this thing in a dream? It seemed to come out in a second.

When you see the content you want to take a closer look at, just click on the result with your mouse and a new page will pop up immediately, listing the specific results in detail.

"What is this? It's so convenient?" Ronald squinted his eyes hard, trying to see the software on the screen clearly.

But the font was very small, and in the end he could only see that the software icon was a golden ship's steering wheel.

In the dream, after the mouse clicked on a document, the screen turned black. After more than ten seconds, when Ronald saw the screen again, the monitor in the dream also changed.

It is no longer a big CRT monitor, but a flat-panel monitor. It is much larger than the original monitor, but does not take up much space on the desk.

It was still the result of Titanic, but this time a black web page popped up with red words on it.

"20th Century Fox".

"what……"

Ronald was shocked. Could it be possible to watch movies directly on the computer?
The beginning of the movie is quite ordinary. It seems that a man named Jack won a subpoena in gambling, which allowed him to board the safest and fastest high-speed passenger ship across the Atlantic at that time.

Finally, Jack got on the boat. After boarding, Jack and his friends stood on the bow to admire the open sea. Jack opened his arms and shouted excitedly:

"I am the king of the world!"

Then the camera turned and a wide panoramic shot showed the historical appearance of the Titanic. It was really magnificent. I didn't expect that computer special effects had developed to this level. From lifelike dinosaurs to being able to restore the appearance of a real historical giant ship?
"Aha……"

After seeing many revelations about the future, Ronald became too excited and fell off his chair due to excessive joy.

"Mr. Li..." The flight attendant was shocked and hurried over to help Ronald up.

"Don't talk to me..." Ronald took out his notebook and quickly wrote down some of the scenes he saw before his memory disappeared.

A golden steering wheel, a flat-screen TV, watching movies on the computer, and the movie Titanic... Well, the male protagonist seems to have seen it before... As for the female protagonist, Rose who arrived at the dock with her fiancé and her mother, is there such a fat heroine in Hollywood?