2001 Media Godfather

Chapter 1 Chu Shi Kuai

Two years have passed with many ups and downs, and I've finally come to realize that I'm really not cut out for business. I should just focus on writing books to earn money and support my shop.
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(text)
Early August 2001, Ningyuan Agricultural Machinery Factory residential compound.

Sunlight filters through the old elm tree, casting dappled shadows on the red brick wall. The crisp sound of the bicycle bell seems to echo through the ages.

Seventeen-year-old Chu An, his schoolbag dangling limply from his backside, was staring blankly at the apartment building entrance, a look of utter bewilderment on his face. "So this is what time travel is like," he muttered.

He transforms from a middle-aged man in another parallel world back into a tall, handsome 17-year-old "young man".
From feeling weak and sore all over, to feeling light and agile against the wind!

Of course, he also went from being a well-known agent with a net worth of tens of millions to a silly high school sophomore with only two 50-cent coins left in his pocket.

It seems pretty good.

A smile played on her lips as she gently tossed the two coins into the air, caught them steadily, and strode towards the building entrance, ready to embrace a brand new life.

"Click!!"

A furious shout startled Chu An, shattering the previously peaceful atmosphere, which was then filled with muffled laughter.

From behind a surveillance camera not far from Chu An, a bald man suddenly jumped up, yelling, "Casting director! Where the hell have you been?!"

The cameramen, sound engineers, and stagehands all shrank back in fright.

Okay, it seems Chu An has wandered into a film set; he's out of character.

Director Lu Mingze was clearly furious, venting hysterically: "Where did you find these extras? Don't they have any professionalism?"

After berating the casting director, she charged at Chu An, yelling, "You!! Did you even read the script!?"

"You've been rejected by a girl! You should act disappointed and helpless, preferably with a bit of high school student anxiety!"

"And another thing!" His spittle nearly sprayed onto Chu An's face. He abruptly grabbed Chu An's shoulders, twisted him 90 degrees, and turned him towards a pure and beautiful figure whose skin was practically glowing. "Are you blind?! Can't you act in front of her?! What are you laughing at, looking at a shabby gate?! Still laughing?!"

Director Lu Mingze is undoubtedly a big name in the Chinese TV drama industry, but he is also a notorious tyrant on set, and he simply cannot tolerate such unprofessional behavior on his turf.

He unleashed a torrent of abuse at Chu An, not caring at all that there was another hothead on the list of actors who had been brought to tears and broken down by his scolding.

Chu An could only look apologetically at the director, saying, "Sorry, I couldn't help it."
But you can't blame him for that. Anyone who travels back from their forties to their sixteen or seventeen-year-old self wouldn't care about the present moment, right?

After Lu Mingze's scolding, Chu An finally understood the situation.

It's true that I traveled to a parallel world, and it's also true that the time point is 2001 in this world. Even the fact that Chu An's family in this world is in this residential compound, this building, and even this apartment unit is correct.

The mistake was that a few days ago, Chu's father, Chu Jianjun, rented the house to a film crew for location shooting. Then, the casting director inexplicably visited last night, gave Chu An a thousand yuan, and asked him to play a role.

Then he time-traveled to 2001, to the TV drama crew downstairs from his own apartment.

As for the pretty young girl acting opposite Chu An, she is the female lead of the play, and the two are acting out a scene where a confession is rejected.

At this moment, the girl had already turned around and walked to the corner, quietly engrossed in the script, showing neither resentment nor sympathy towards Chu An; in short, she ignored him.

Logically speaking, being publicly humiliated would be unbearable for most seventeen-year-old boys, and their embarrassment would be indescribable. However, this clearly had no effect on Chu An.

Having spent half my life in the entertainment industry, this is nothing compared to what's to come.

Lu Mingze was still roaring when he saw Chu An remain silent. He raised his voice even louder, "Speak!! Can't you act?!"

Chu An looked up, staring blankly at Lu Mingze, and blurted out, "How about... we deduct ten yuan?"

Upon hearing this, everyone, from the crew members to the neighbors watching the spectacle, was stunned.

Even the female lead, who was reading the script, looked up at Chu An, her lips twitching involuntarily.

"I'll take it." Lu Mingze was also stunned, thinking to himself, a whole group of people wasted their time with you, and you think you can get away with just ten yuan.
"Pah!! This isn't about money!!"

Speechless with anger, she glared at Chu An, who was feigning ignorance, and after a long while, finally managed to utter, "What are you thinking?"

More than anger, Director Lu was clearly curious whether the child had a mental problem.

Chu An completely ignored Director Lu's questions and said firmly, "Don't worry, Director! I guarantee there won't be a next time!"

I, Lu Mingze, realized that I just couldn't connect with this hothead.
I say east, he says west!
Looking at Chu An again, he suddenly deflated and simply called out to the whole group, "Ten-minute break! Time for Chu."

If you can't remember the name, just say, "Give us 'Chu Shikuai' some time."

After speaking, he retreated behind the monitor, sat down, picked up his teacup with a blank expression, took a sip, and then spat it all out with a "pfft".

Well, Director Lu was so angry he laughed at himself.

For a high school student who has never acted before, their first scene, or even the first day of filming, is bound to have retakes. So why is the student getting so angry?

On the other hand, the entire crew breathed a sigh of relief when they saw that Director Lu had been fooled by a young man.

Lu Mingze's bad temper is notorious in the industry. When he gets angry, the whole crew can't have a peaceful time.

A slightly plump middle-aged woman in the crowd, seeing that Director Lu's anger had subsided, dared to squeeze out and jog to Chu An's side.

She is Ma Lan, the casting director whom Lu Mingze had been calling for for ages but hadn't shown up. Everyone in the crew calls her Sister Lan, and Chu An was brought into the crew by her.

She didn't offer any hindsight criticism of Chu An's mistake. In fact, she couldn't blame anyone else; the responsibility lay entirely with her.

It's not a complicated matter.

Although Chu An's role is small, with only a dozen or so scenes and about 20 shots, he plays a significant role in advancing the early plot and is quite memorable for the audience.

For a role like this, which involves a brief appearance in a famous director's drama but isn't too big or small, Sister Lan naturally had to arrange for someone with connections to get it, so she selected a student from the Beijing Academy of Drama.

But no one expected that Sister Lan's acquaintance would stand her up, only informing her yesterday, just before filming was about to start, that she had something to do and couldn't come.

Since Ningyuan was such a remote place and they couldn't find any actors, Lan Jie was stuck there, which is why they set their sights on Chu An.

Actually, she noticed Chu An when she rented the Chu family's house. He was a sunny and handsome high school student who could also play basketball. He was practically a carbon copy of Wang Xiaoshuai from the show.

Last night, when I found Chu An, I asked him two questions: "Do you want to act?"

Chu An shook his head, "I wouldn't dare."

Sister Lan, "Would you like to earn some pocket money?"

Chu An said, "Of course I want to."

"Then it's you!!"

So, Sister Lan tricked Chu An into joining the group with a thousand yuan.

Sister Lan was well aware of Chu An's abilities, so it was perfectly normal for something like this to happen.

At this moment, he patiently pulled Chu An aside and tried to explain the character again to help Chu An get into the role.

Chu An had no objection to this. Even if he didn't plan to develop a career in the entertainment industry in this timeline, he would still have to put in a little effort for the sake of a thousand yuan. However, as Lan Jie interpreted the character and analyzed the script, Chu An realized that this drama was rather bad.

The screenplay is adapted from the bestselling novel of the same name by female author Ding Xiangyu.

Because the author is from Ningyuan, the story takes place at Ningyuan No. 1 Middle School, and there are obvious regional elements in the background, the production team chose Ningyuan as the filming location.

The goal is to recreate the scenes from the novel as closely as possible in order to win over fans of the original work.

The story is about Liu Xia, a transfer student who moves from a big city to a small town due to her parents' job transfer. Here, she experiences confusion when she first arrives at her new home and unpleasantness among her classmates. Later, she gradually integrates into the small town life, makes new friends, and has unforgettable high school memories.

She eventually took the college entrance exam with the male protagonist, with whom she had developed feelings, and then they went their separate ways.

Complete book.

Based on Chu An's professional experience, the structure is also fine; it's simple and clear, and viewers won't encounter any viewing obstacles.

The casting was also fine; the actor playing the male lead is named Qu Lang, a rising young idol in mainland China.

The female lead is the pretty girl who just ignored Chu An; her name is Xu Shu. Although she's only seventeen, she's a true veteran actress, a national sweetheart who started acting at the age of seven.

With a work that has natural popularity, actors with a fan base, and a renowned director involved, it's already halfway to success.

However, Chu An still didn't have a good impression of the show. First of all, the female lead, Liu Xia, played by Xu Shu, had a lot of problems.

In any case, if any of his artists wanted to take the role, Chu An would rather break his leg than agree.

At this moment, Sister Lan was seriously analyzing the character, while Chu An was quickly flipping through the script, internally complaining when he saw Liu Xia's lines.

While telling Wang Xiaoshuai that she didn't want to date too early, she secretly developed feelings for the male lead. "The tea flavor is too strong."

As I flipped through the pages, my pupils constricted when I saw the word "abortion." "What is all this?"

The ending, where the protagonist and the female lead go their separate ways, "truly embodies the disillusionment of literature to the fullest extent!"

Not to mention, Liu Xia's high school life is a microcosm of the workplace, with palace intrigue, all sorts of open and covert struggles, and bloodshed—it's simply unbelievable.

"How brain-dead could a screenwriter be to write a teen campus drama like this?"

Although it was 2001, there were plenty of melodramatic TV series in any time period back then. But this one was just too outrageous; it was definitely going to flop.

However, despite seeing a whole host of problems, Chu An pretended not to notice, letting Sister Lan direct the scene and trying her best to get into character.

Firstly, whether it's bad or not is none of his business; he's just a temporary replacement, something to watch and have fun with.

Secondly, even if he wants to enter the entertainment industry in the future and continue to be his agent, it's much better to pretend he doesn't know some things than to stand out from the crowd.

In that original world, Fatty Wang once said something particularly insightful: "Many times, the director already knows it's going to be a bad movie before they even start filming."

Then why film it at all?

The waters here are too deep; it's not his place to meddle.

The ten-minute break passed quickly, and Lu Mingze calmed down and called the whole team to take their positions.

However, they didn't start filming immediately. Instead, they had Chu An go through the scene once, and then Xu Shu came over to help out with the scene.

Chu An was not intimidated at all.

Although I couldn't act in my past life, I've never seen a pig run or eaten pork, right? Besides, it's a campus idol drama that doesn't require much acting skill.

Following the lines, it flowed naturally.

"Liu Xia, can I wait for you to go to school together? Don't misunderstand, I still have two math problems I need to ask you."

Xu Shu, holding the script, recited the lines as she played Liu Xia, saying, "Sure! Let's meet downstairs at my place at one o'clock."

Chu An, "Are you going to watch the basketball game this afternoon?"

Liu Xia: "Probably, isn't the whole class supposed to go cheer you on?"

Chu An: "Then, then, will you go to every basketball game I play from now on?"

Liu Xia finally realized that Wang Xiaoshuai's expression was off. "Wang Xiaoshuai, what exactly are you trying to say?"

Chu An, "I...I want to..."

The last sentence is: I want you to be my girlfriend, okay?

Then, Chu An's lines ended. Xu Shu had a long line of rejection and friend-zone rejection. After speaking, she turned and ran away, leaving Wang Xiaoshuai standing alone downstairs at Liu Xia's house.

That's about all the scenes; it wasn't difficult for Chu An.
From a 2001 perspective, the dialogue was passable, but Chu An took it upon himself to change the last line, "I want you to be my girlfriend."

Instead, it was changed to just standing there, hesitantly saying "I think... I think."

So childish!

Although he didn't want to get involved in the messy affairs of the production crew, Chu An instinctively didn't want to portray the character as an idiot.

Xu Shu, being a professional actress, managed to convey the meaning of Chu An's lines even though she thought Chu An was having trouble with them. She picked up the line naturally, and the whole scene flowed smoothly.

He was neither pleased nor saddened by Chu An's unprofessional act of forgetting his lines, since it was none of his business.

Lu Mingze didn't say anything either. Although he had no acting skills and just read the script, you have to admit that Wang Xiaoshuai should have been nervous and uneasy.

Chu An's stammering and hesitant manner perfectly captured Wang Xiaoshuai's state of mind in this scene.

Therefore, Lu Mingze unusually did not lose his temper this time and tacitly approved of Chu An's handling of the situation.

He shouted loudly to Chu An, "Chu Shikuai, keep it up! All groups, get ready, filming will officially begin in three minutes."

Chu An secretly breathed a sigh of relief, but was also a little afraid that the director would be autocratic and do things exactly according to his requirements.

So, Lu Mingze is actually reasonable.

The scene immediately became busy. Although Xu Shu had been ignoring Chu An, she had no choice but to go over the lines with Chu An one last time.

Her extremely long monologue at the end, in which she rejects Wang Xiaoshuai and gives him the "friend zone" card, is also a true test of her acting skills.

This time, Chu An helped Xu Shu go over the long lines with her. After much deliberation, she still added one more line.

Pointing to Liu Xia's line in her script: "Wang Xiaoshuai, you've misunderstood. I don't dislike you, but I don't want to date in high school. You should focus on your studies." She suggested to Xu Shu, "It's best to remove these two lines."

……

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(End of this chapter)