Exploiting Hollywood 1980.

Chapter 1543 Audiences’ Demand for Authenticity Increases
"Hey hey hey..."

Although he said he looked down upon the Golden Globe Award, after receiving the trophy, Ronald still placed it in a prominent position in the display cabinet and admired it for a long time with a smile.

"Don't you think highly of the Golden Globe Awards?" Diane wondered. Could it be that men are just like women, saying things calmly but actually longing for them deeply?

"Ah, yes, I suddenly realized that between these Oscars, we need a Golden Globe Award to balance things out, hahahahaha..."

Ronald was a little embarrassed. This award was indeed not authoritative, but the Oscar for Best Director that he had been longing for was just around the corner, and winning a Golden Globe was still a good sign. As for the Directors Guild Awards and the awards from various film critics associations, they were all on the lower level of the display cabinet and could not be compared with the Oscars and Golden Globe Awards. Of course, if there was a Cannes Golden Palm or Venice Golden Lion, they could still be placed on the same level as the little golden man.

Ronald took out a jewelry box that his assistant had just delivered and handed it to Diane. He pressed the switch, and the lid of the box popped up. A necklace made of sparkling diamonds appeared in front of Diane.

"What is this? Pretty Woman?" Diane had a gemstone necklace, the same style that Julia Roberts wore in the movie Pretty Woman. The shape of this jewelry box was very similar. She smiled and stretched her head to look...

"Ha..." I didn't expect it to be a diamond necklace. The round brilliant cut made the necklace emit a dazzling light under the light of the chandelier, which scared Diane. Next to the flawless large diamond, there were also small diamonds inlaid to set off. This necklace seemed to be twice as expensive as the original one.

"What's wrong? Why did you give me a diamond necklace?" Diane smiled and turned around to let Ronald put it on for her. But she still wanted to ask. Today is not a wedding anniversary or a birthday, could it be...

"You forgot, dear, our first date was at the Academy Awards." Ronald fastened the hinge with a smile. At the Oscars that year, Diane was Timothy Hutton's companion, but the arrogant Hutton had a quarrel with her, so Ronald snatched Diane away to be his companion.

"Hmm..." Diane also remembered what happened back then and gave Ronald a deep kiss. This is Ronald's third Oscar nomination for Best Director, and he will definitely win the award. As his wife, I have to give him some face, so I ordered two Armani haute couture suits early, and I will pick the most outstanding one to wear. This necklace is perfect to match...

……

"The latest news is that the estimated number of injured in the Great Hanshin Earthquake has exceeded 10, and the number of casualties has not yet been counted. More than 1000 people have been left homeless, and the estimated direct economic losses exceed trillion yen (about billion US dollars)."

The evening news showed images of Osaka and Kobe in Japan. The earthquake, which had a magnitude of 7.2 on the Richter scale, occurred at about five in the morning local time. About 14 buildings were destroyed and a 20-kilometer-long, 4-kilometer-wide area in the center of Kobe was completely devastated.

Even after a few days, the tragic scenes on TV still frightened the audience. Ronald knew that Los Angeles was also in an earthquake zone. After the previous Los Angeles earthquake, Ronald hired a team of experts to investigate the fault zone near Beverly Park. Fortunately, his home was not on the Hollywood fault zone, and the house was built according to the highest earthquake-proof standards, so there was no problem.

But the problems caused by the earthquake are more than that. Kobe is an important trading port in Japan. Many automobile and electronics exports to the United States were affected by the port shutdown. The Nikkei index fell rapidly, and stocks in many industries in America also fell.

Hollywood's reaction, unsurprisingly, was: Do we have any disaster movies to make?

Disaster movies have always been a genre with good box office, but not every era in history has produced excellent movies. The Great Hanshin Earthquake has been the focus of global news attention. These days, the images of CNN, NHK and other TV stations are also being broadcast by TV stations in all countries, which has increased the audience's interest in disaster movies. Ronald is no exception and began to look for disaster movies in the film library that may be upgraded with computer special effects technology.

However, movies about earthquakes were ruled out first because it was too expensive to depict earthquakes. Not only would a large number of buildings shake and collapse, but all the buildings in a wide area would collapse at once. The depiction of ruins, whether it was computer-generated special effects or real-life scenes, was very expensive.

Therefore, Ronald is looking for relatively cheap disasters, such as fire, flood, avalanche, monster, or alien invasion, which Hollywood can learn from relatively cheap ways of expressing.

"The first Chechen war that broke out at the end of last year continues. As of today, Russian troops are continuing to besiege the Chechen capital Grozny. The fighting is extremely fierce, causing international concern about a humanitarian crisis."

This international news footage also attracted the attention of many viewers. The army wearing Russian tank caps and driving T-72 tanks into Chechnya, and the occasional sound of gunfire, brought people back to the Kuwait War.

However, unlike the war with Kuwait, which involved a large number of air strikes, there were more ground attacks and old-fashioned artillery preparations, which made the strength of both sides appear a little more even.

Ronald also noticed that news from Chechnya also had high ratings.

Will American and global audiences regain interest in more realistic war films? It is difficult to say what the reason is for the popularity and decline of genre films. But there is no doubt that if there is any news that frequently appears in front of the audience at that time, this type of film will attract more audiences than usual.

For example, the last large-scale land war movie that used real weapons was the Tank Battle of 1965. It happened to coincide with the escalation of the Vietnam War and the Indo-Pakistani War. With the full coverage of television media, the scenes of various tanks and infantry fighting behind the tanks appeared in the news all the time.

Therefore, this tank battle starring Henry Fonda was also one of the best-performing movies at the box office at that time.

Recently, the world has not achieved peace immediately with the end of the Cold War. On the contrary, various conflicts continue to emerge in various places.

In addition to the wars mentioned above, there was a humanitarian disaster in Rwanda, wars among warlords in Somalia, and even the defeat of the US military. And Europe also had wars between the various Yugoslav republics that succeeded the Union.

In particular, the Bosnian War and the Siege of Sarajevo once again brought the cruelty of modern war to the public through television programs.

However, these battles were not armored assaults like those in World War II. Instead, the cruelty of various infantry battles was more impressive. Especially in urban street fighting, in addition to Sarajevo, it is said that the Russian army is also in trouble in Grozny. There was also the Black Hawk helicopter crash in Somalia, which was also a street fight between the Marines and the Aidid militia in the city.

Therefore, if Ronald wants to revive the genre of hard-core war films, he also has to consider the style of war. When was the last time there was a war that relied on infantry fighting on foot?
Vietnam? The paratroopers in World War II? The Normandy landings? Or the earlier Boer War, or the Revolutionary War?
"The jury selection for the OJ Simpson case has been approved by the judge. In addition to the 12-member jury, there is also a 12-member alternate jury. They will listen to the entire cross-examination of the prosecution and the defense, just like the official jury.

Due to the high profile of this case and the repeated media coverage, Judge Ito said that in order to prevent jurors from being forced to withdraw due to bias caused by media reports, resulting in the case being invalid, the alternate jury will be added to the official jury at any time. Only when the alternate jury members are exhausted will an invalid trial be declared and a retrial be held.

The case will be heard in court for the first time at the beginning of next month. The families of the two victims have expressed that they will attend the trial until justice is served..."

The long-running OJ Simpson case is finally going to court. The American media has been following and reporting on it for such a long time, and it is finally time to enter the trial, which is more interesting than the courtroom TV series "Law & Order".

Both parties make opening statements, the prosecution presents evidence, the defense cross-examines, the defense presents evidence, the prosecution cross-examines, and then both parties make closing arguments, and then it is left to the jury to discuss and reach a unanimous result.

People have learned a lot about courtroom common sense on television through court trial dramas, which have never faded since they were invented, but this is the first time to watch a real-life court trial.

Fortunately, Judge Ito allowed the trial to be broadcast live on television to ensure transparency and fairness to the greatest extent possible because he was afraid of being accused of favoring one party and causing riots.

For this reason, all major TV stations have reserved prime time for special programs, and I wonder if many of the popular court dramas nowadays will lose ratings due to more realistic and exciting live court trials.

In short, these events have provided some directions for experimentation and inspiration for themes for Hollywood and the TV industry. In order to gain the most profit in this round of revival of old genre films, Ronald's idea is to be as realistic as possible.

Satellite broadcasting technology and the rise of 24-hour news broadcasting stations such as CNN have brought contemporary audiences closer to the "truth" than ever before. After watching the Tomahawks launching and hitting targets in the Gulf War, the precise bombing from the perspective of fighter-bombers, and the real footage of tanks rushing through the desert, it is difficult for audiences to tolerate the plot of setting fire to gasoline barrels to stop Tiger tanks in the "Tank Showdown". Their requirements for "authenticity" are the most demanding among all generations of audiences.

Anyway, after seeing the real thing, you won’t be interested in seeing the fake one. Either you shoot something as rigorously documented as possible, so that it looks almost real. Or you shoot something that is impossible to show in the news, such as an alien invasion… This way, the audience won’t think your film is fake because they haven’t seen it before.

Fortunately, the next few films to be produced are relatively close to reality, or the reality imagined by the audience.

"Jerry Maguire," starring Tom Cruise, tells the story of the life of a sports agent, a profession that is far away from the general audience, making it difficult for the audience to discover the unreal parts in it.

For example, Jerry Maguire suddenly had the idea to stop deceiving his clients and making more money by manipulating them. He wanted to become an honest broker.

If this plot appeared in CAA, most of the agents would undoubtedly be fired by Ovitz.

After all, the biggest advantage of a young agent at CAA compared to other agencies, such as William Morris, is that he can scare the producers by saying that if they do not use CAA's services, Ovitz will call them personally and put pressure on them.

The first thing they said to compete for potential clients was also full of lies, saying that having multiple brokers serve one client would make him more satisfied. This was purely a preventive measure for Ovitz to prevent his subordinates from starting their own business with clients (just like he did back then).

The idea that packaged services can bring more performance opportunities to clients is also a specious lie. It is true that from the overall perspective of CAA, there may be more performance opportunities, but clients also have to rank according to seniority within CAA, and those roles that are obtained must first satisfy the old clients who joined CAA earlier.

Therefore, there are many complaints from CAA's new clients. If there is an agent like Jerry Maguire, it would be a miracle for them to survive.

Fortunately, this movie was Ronald's daydream and Cruise's CW Films, and was filmed for Diane's pleasure and for Tom Cruise to expand his acting career and win awards. Otherwise, if CAA was responsible for organizing the project, many of Jerry Maguire's speeches and the direction of the story would have to be "guided" by Ovitz.

At least Maguire's boss in the script, the character that can be associated with someone at first glance, must have undergone some revisions in appearance description and tone of voice.

Speaking of this, another movie that Ronald agreed to invest in is "The Double", directed and starred by Barbra Streisand. She plays a literature professor and the romance with a mathematics professor played by an undecided male lead is also an unknown industry, the life of a university professor.

However, compared to brokers, which are somewhat mysterious and have little contact with ordinary people, university professors still have a lot of intersections with ordinary audiences. At least any audience who has been to university has seen university professors...

They have certain authenticity requirements for the profession of university professor. Ronald thought of this and was also worried that this increasingly serious demand for authenticity among the audience would also affect romantic comedies.

So he called Yang Yanzi and wanted to see the final version of the script that had been revised by Streisand and rewritten by other screenwriters.

Soon, he received a response. Barbara Streisand was still revising the script. She hoped to submit it to Ronald after thoroughly revising it, rather than hastily giving him a half-finished product and disappointing him.

When Ronald heard this, he knew that Barbara Streisand was hiding something from him. "Well, send Barbara a bouquet of flowers and leave a message saying that I look forward to seeing the final version..." Ronald told Yang Yanzi on the phone, "Also, find a way to steal a copy for me to read..."