Exploiting Hollywood 1980.

Chapter 1560 Don’t Film in Open Waters

Young Bronfman and Barbra Streisand, one was very happy to have an equal conversation with the famous Diva singer, and the other was also very interested in chatting with a rich kid with 10 billion assets. Everyone had their own ideas and seemed to be having a very happy chat for a while.

Plus, Paulson from Goldman Sachs was also a wonderful guy, and several of them managed to spark Bronfman Jr.'s interest in talking. They talked about the record industry, the film industry, and also shared their own judgments on the latest industry trends.

Bronfman Jr. meant that today's media groups can actually be seen as a combination of "content" and "distribution channels." Whether it's Eisner, Redstone, or even himself, who he didn't say explicitly but always hinted at, everyone should follow this principle in their layout.

No matter how fancy your mergers and acquisitions are, the valuable assets in the end still fall into these two categories: either you can provide content that audiences love to watch, or you provide channels to distribute this content.

Ronald was also listening attentively. Bronfman Jr. was indeed a rich kid who had received the elite education arranged by his father. These must be research reports written by top analysts in the industry and consulting firms and the like. They made a lot of sense in Bronfman Jr.'s mouth.

He exchanged glances with Ed Bastian, who nodded, indicating that this analysis was indeed insightful.

But since Bastian was listening carefully, Ronald said hello and ran out, as he had some other things to deal with here.

"Tom, our recent investigation found that your winning the Best Actor award again this year doesn't seem to be a delusion..."

He first found Tom Hanks. Recently, when he was stepping up public relations for his Best Director award, he suddenly discovered that many actors mentioned Forrest Gump in the Best Actor award.

Although winning consecutive Oscars is almost impossible in this day and age, it is precisely because of this that this achievement is particularly convincing.

Even an actor like Tom Hanks, who has a good reputation in the industry, finds it difficult to resist such a unique temptation. You know, there are many actors who have box office appeal, many who have won Oscars, and many who have won multiple Oscars, but winning important awards consecutively is a monopoly achievement.

Only Spencer Tracy had previously accomplished this feat, with Captains Courageous (1937) and Boys Town (1938).

With such achievements, Spencer Tracy's acting skills were also praised as a textbook model, and he himself was called an actor among actors. When British acting star Laurence Olivier came to Hollywood, he praised Spencer Tracy as "the best actor he had ever seen."

Marlon Brando, who was often hailed as the best actor in Hollywood, also imitated Spencer Tracy's acting method at some point.

Frank Capra, the three-time Academy Award winner for Best Director and renowned director, also described Tracy's acting as "simple, direct, without any unnecessary embellishment," which is "true genius."

Even Hitchcock, who always regarded actors as beasts of burden and props and did not care about so-called acting skills, said that Tracy was a "silent genius" whose performance was natural and delicate, without relying on big movements or excessive facial expressions.

On the surface, it seems that Spencer Tracy is already recognized as the best actor in Hollywood!

However, Ronald, who has been in the industry for more than ten years and has a lot of public relations experience, knows that these are just polite words said when facing the media, and there is no lack of praise for Qu Saye in them.

When British actors come to Hollywood, they are often asked by nosy reporters what they think of the acting skills of Hollywood stars, because Hollywood actors have always been considered to have no acting skills in the eyes of their British counterparts and can only play similar roles in different movies.

They asked the same questions to all Hollywood stars at the time, but because Quinlivan had won the Best Actor award for two consecutive years, these comments were reported by reporters and then collected and organized by someone.

In the eyes of uneducated media reporters, the number of trophies and the difficult act of winning consecutive awards can be used to evaluate acting skills and even rank the acting skills of celebrities.

In Ronald's eyes, in Hollywood at that time, Tracy had some advantages in the naturalness of his performance, which was closer to Stanislavsky's later acting theory, but he obviously lacked explosiveness when expressing sudden and huge emotions.

For example, in the Nuremberg Trials, when the prosecutor needed to accuse the criminals of atrocities, Türzburg could only use silence and control instead of roaring.

His contemporary James Cagney has the advantages of both natural performance and huge bursts of energy at critical moments. In the eyes of directors like Ronald, he is considered a star with high acting skills.

Orson Welles, who was always outspoken, was not a big fan of Tracy. He said that the reason why Tracy's performance was so wonderful was that he chose the best scripts.

With Orson Welles' evaluation as a reference, when you read other people's evaluation of Tracy, you can taste some different flavors.

However, the fact that Orson Welles, who was always harsh in his words, could say something almost "tactful" also shows the decisive influence of winning the Oscar for Best Actor for two consecutive years on Hollywood and the audience.

Tracy Quinlivan’s acting skills have become a symbol and a legend. If you dare to say that his acting is not good, you will definitely be ridiculed as “you don’t understand”.

Ronald has studied this period of history and is also very emotional about it. Although it is sometimes difficult to compare the acting skills of actors, unless they have played the same role at different times, we can only make a limited comparison.

But the public doesn't care about all this, they just like to gossip and then rank celebrities. It seems to be a human instinct and they all like to rate them one, two, three, four, or the top ten acting skills.

Tom Hanks' acting skills also tend to be of this type. He rarely plays roles like Al Pacino that require explosive, angry, and long lines. This type of acting style has been seen since Tracy, and later in James Stewart and Henry Fonda.

This seems to have become an unspoken rule that this type of actor, in the language of Chinese Peking Opera, can be classified as a regular old actor, and they play the best positive roles and heroes in the movies.

James Cagney, or Al Pacino, who many people consider to be his successor, can be classified as second-rate actors, often playing marginal characters.

Tom Hanks smiled with his lips curled, unable to hide his happiness. To be on par with Tracy was an irresistible temptation for any actor.

"I can add some budget..." Tom Hanks also said that he would take a small portion of the high dividends he received from Forrest Gump and entrust Ronald's PR team to do the PR together. After all, everyone was nominated because of Forrest Gump, so it would be convenient to do the PR work together.

"Hehehe..." See if it works.

Ronald found an advertising sample to show Hanks. It was the type of advertisement inspired by Jennifer Tilly and published in industry magazines. "Tom Hanks invites you to enjoy Forrest Gump..." Below it were clips and stills from various movies that reflected his acting skills. It was like a report that said "In five minutes, I'll tell you why Tom Hanks' acting skills deserve a second golden statue."

Unlike Jennifer Tilly, who had no money and could only take out a $500 advertisement in an industry magazine, Forrest Gump's Oscar public relations advertisement appeared in the Hollywood Reporter and the film review pages of many major newspapers.

Moreover, these stills show Forrest Gump in different eras in the movie. He has different hairstyles, but he always wears a blue plaid shirt, taking the audience back to key moments in America's history over the past few decades.

This can resonate greatly with the audience, and also let the Oscar actor judges directly see Tom Hanks' acting skills. Compared with the other side of the page, John Travolta invites you to watch Pulp Fiction, and Morgan Freeman invites you to watch Shawshank Redemption, which makes those who have not seen the movie feel confused.

It may be hard for people outside the circle to believe, but even now, when the nominations have been announced and it is the final voting stage, there are still a large number of judges who have not seen the films of these nominees.

When they vote, they may just ask their friends or the maid at home who they like. Forrest Gump's advertisement, which can give them an idea of ​​what is in the play, is a great advantage.

However, if Tom Hanks really gets the chance to win the Best Actor award again, it will be difficult for him to win this award even if he gives an outstanding performance in the future.

After winning the Best Actor award in 1938, Spencer Tracy was nominated for the Best Actor Oscar six more times, but never won.

Hanks didn't care. After all, he had already reached the pinnacle, and being nominated was great. There was no need to compete with others for the award.

"Well, I have some parties to attend over there, so I'll take my leave now."

Tom Hanks himself has also been doing a lot of public relations, attending many parties to canvass for votes in person, shaking hands, hugging, exchanging smiles with the judges, and then asking, "Will you vote for me?"

How much of an effect it can have, no one can say, but everyone has to do it according to convention. Most importantly, if you don't do it, and John Travolta does it, and Morgan Freeman does it, no one can say for sure that the jury won't vote for these two people because of this.

"Don't forget to chat with Mr. Bronfman Jr..." Ronald said goodbye to Tom Hanks with a smile on his face.

There was also an Oscar winner for Best Director, Kevin Costner, who looked a little gloomy.

"Kevin...how's the new movie?"

This time, Costner's Waterworld has another big problem. During the filming of Dances with Wolves, someone gave it a nickname, "Kevin's Gate" (which rhymes with the biggest failure in Hollywood history, Heaven's Gate).

Dances with Wolves was a box office success and a big hit in the awards season, with Costner's directorial debut winning both Best Director and Best Picture. No one mentioned the nickname anymore.

However, this "Waterworld" once again encountered shooting overtime and budget overruns, so the nickname "Kevin's Gate" has become popular again recently.

“It was great. I felt like in the editing room, all the difficult shots due to the hurricane waves were magically connected.”

"Oh……"

Ronald didn't know how to respond. This answer revealed too much information.

Kevin Costner received artistic recognition after Dances with Wolves and commercial success after The Bodyguard, which made financing for his new film no longer a problem, so he did not seek cooperation with Ronald. He led the entire financing and production of Waterworld himself.

Finally, Universal agreed to distribute the film and act as the basic producer. Before filming began, the budget for this film was set at $120 million, which was comparable to Cameron's.

This also made Ronald feel very absurd. From what he had heard, the movie was about a wasteland story.

Due to global warming, the base ice cap melted, the sea level rose by 7600 meters, and the remaining humans had to live on ships. The male protagonist is a mutant who has gills to breathe underwater and fins to swim faster.

He had his own three-ship and saved a child from a woman's custody. Legend has it that there is one last piece of land in the world, and the map of that land is on the child's body.

Kevin Costner is also talking about his editing ideas. This movie will be an ocean version of "Mad Max", integrating the most popular environmental protection concepts.

The reason why the film had to be saved by editing was because the filming of this film was a disaster, comparable to Coppola's "Apocalypse Now".

No, maybe this statement is an understatement. The disaster level of this future Waterworld is ten times that of Apocalypse Now.

The film's exterior scenes were shot on the Big Island of Hawaii, where a real trimaran sailboat driven by Costner was built. An artificial atoll was also built using garbage-like materials as a habitat for future humans.

The film was planned to be shot in 90 days, but in the end, the atoll was severely damaged by the hurricane, and many props and sets were blown away without a trace. The tri-maran was even worse, and was also damaged by the strong wind and waves.

To resume filming, not only did they have to repair the atoll and the sailboat, but because the remaining atoll had been blown far away from its original position, the footage previously shot at the original location had to be discarded and re-shot at the new location.

This also added 60 days to the shooting period. Kevin Costner spent half a year last year shooting this movie, from summer to winter.

By the end of last year, when the final shoot was finished, 157 days had passed since the start of filming, and the budget had skyrocketed from million to million.

Seeing Costner still saying that his inspiration came from "Mad Max", Ronald couldn't stand it anymore and asked, "Do you know how much it cost to shoot Mad Max?"

"Eh?" Kevin Costner's face fell. Few people dared to talk to him like this now.

But Ronald is obviously qualified. He helped Ronald to complete many of the difficult filming of Dances with Wolves, which won the Best Director award. So Costner still respects Ronald.

"Let me tell you, the first Mad Max was made with $400,000 raised by the director himself, and the second one was a bit more of a commercial film, but it only cost $4.5 million."

Costner was also amused by Ronald. This was the first time he laughed in recent months. Indeed, in the final image, people could not see such a big investment gap. One is a desert and the other is an ocean. Why is there such a big cost difference?
"It seems I should have listened to Spielberg. He told me not to shoot in open water because he encountered huge production difficulties when filming Jaws, which ended up with serious budget and time overruns. Fortunately, the box office of Jaws made up for everything."

Costner did not keep the movie's predicament a secret from Ronald, and he is now in big trouble. He also wants to ask Ronald how he should deal with it.

"This movie still has the potential to be profitable..." Ronald thought for a moment and replied.

"You think so?" Costner himself didn't quite believe it. Even if 50% of the box office revenue could be returned to the producers, plus various publicity and copy production, the film would probably take $ million to make back its investment in China.

"The key is that you have to think and say this. The movie is good and the box office will be amazing." Ronald looked around and whispered in Costner's ear. Universal is facing a sale, and this Waterworld will be the biggest excuse for buyers to be picky. During this period, Costner had better maintain a particularly optimistic tone.