Exploiting Hollywood 1980 - Chapter 962

Chapter 962 Chapter 102 hoarding scripts for the script shortage

The joint strike of the two major screenwriter unions has lasted for several weeks. What is most uncomfortable now is not a director like Ronald, nor a small production company like Daydream. It’s the Big Seven studios.

The reason for this is also very simple. The bigger the company, the more it cares about the timing of film and television production. For a small company like Daydream, if the script is affected by the strike, it is very simple, just postpone the shooting. Anyway, when it is released, it is mostly selected for the off-season of the box office or when the box office of blockbuster movies is not good.

But the big productions of the seven major studios are often scheduled one to one and a half years in advance. Those affected by the strike will be greatly affected. And the most uncomfortable thing about this strike is that we still don’t know when it will end. I don’t know when to arrange the production of the new film.

What is more uncomfortable than the seven major studios may be the mid-sized Hollywood studios. If the big studios are only damaged in shooting schedules and arrangements, then the losses of medium-sized studios are very real. Their projects often have to prepare filming funds through various financing methods, which are delayed and expensive interest is paid every day.

Besides, Wall Street is now in an interest rate hike cycle, and money is tightening. After the stock market crash, many Wall Street investment banks themselves have suffered serious losses, and they have begun to draw back a lot of funds for postponed filming. The postponement and loan withdrawal made the wailing of many mid-sized company presidents louder than the top seven CEOs.

And the ones that are worse than the medium-sized studios are the three major wireless TV stations. There is a cycle for movies to be released, and now audiences can still see movies shot last year. The shooting cycle of TV stations is very short, and it is a common mode to broadcast one episode a week on weekends.

The audience has watched the rebroadcast for more than a month, and they can hardly bear it anymore. The lost advertising revenue is already in the millions of dollars every month. Moreover, viewers of TV dramas do not have new movies to watch, and they are lost to the cable TV network, which is really digging the foundation of the three major wireless TV stations.

Ten years ago, the three major wireless TV networks, ABC, NBC, and CBS, accounted for 92% of the TV audience. Cable TV and ITV have just 8% of the market. Today, over-the-air TV’s share is down to 70 percent, while cable and independent TV’s share has risen to 30 percent.

If this strike continues until June when the new season of the TV series starts, the figure of audience loss will make the CEOs of all TV stations look very ugly. Viewers who have watched premium cable TV stations are all high-quality viewers. They are lost, but they may not come back.

Cameron Crowe’s script was written and improved during the strike, and he cannot be blatantly signed. Fortunately, the two had a close relationship, and they made a verbal gentleman’s agreement that as soon as the strike ended, Ronald’s Daydream would immediately sign a contract with Crowe and let him be the director.

The script of “Deep Love” still has various minor problems, especially at the end, the climax is not enough. The audience may not be happy seeing this. This will hinder the reputation of the film.

Ronald agreed to continue discussing with Crowe how to improve the script. The two tentatively planned to chat about the script once a week, and Crowe would go back and revise it according to Ronald’s opinion until it was polished.

Another script, that of Nora Ephron, a female screenwriter whom I ran into on the plane, was also sent. As soon as she got off the plane, she called Ronald’s agent and gave a copy of the script to Richard in person. Germany’s hands.

Now the screenwriters union catches private transactions, just like catching thieves, so all secret communication must be done like a spy. Otherwise, if you send a courier or mail the script, and if other screenwriters know about it and report it to the screenwriters union, then you will be suspended or even cancel your union membership.

In the past two weeks, such a tragedy happened to several TV screenwriters. They made deals with the TV station privately and wrote scripts for the TV station’s evening talk show. As a result, he was reported by his companions, and the words “scab” were pasted on the door of the house.

The screenwriter who thought that using a pseudonym could pass through, not only did not get paid, but even lost the eligibility to receive union relief money. In the end, I could only go to the pawnshop to mortgage my belongings. One of the unlucky screenwriters also appeared on NBC’s TV interview program. Although his face was mosaiced, everyone familiar with him knows who he is, and it is reported that he will face disciplinary punishment from the labor union.

After reading the entire script, Ronald was very interested in this untitled project, especially if the ending could be replaced with the two eventually getting married.

In order to further discuss the script, Ronald called Nora Ephron and asked to meet and talk in detail.

“My friend Rob has a party. Come to it? All the people are friends, so it’s easier for us to talk.” Nora Ephron understood Ronald’s meaning, so she thought of a way to celebrate at the party. Chat privately. In this way, even if a colleague saw it, they would not be able to report the two friends who had a good chat at the party.

“Oh, it’s you…” Ronald went to the place where the party was held, Nora Ephron’s friend Rob’s house, only to find that this Rob was the same Rob he had met several times at the director’s union Lehner.

After filming “The Princess Bride”, Rob Reiner stopped directing new films, but participated in the project of “Throwing Mom Off the Train” directorial debut of his friend Danny DeVito as an actor.

The actor in that movie was Billy Crystal, and the jokes he told were still available at the Oscars. Ronald was familiar with both of them, a group of old friends chatting over ale at Reiner’s house.

“So, both of you are Jewish?” Ronald looked at the two of them. They happened to be chatting about the recent “first major intifada” in Palestine.

At the end of last year, a Jewish truck broke into the “Gaberia refugee camp” in northern Gaza province, crushing and killing four Palestinians. Later, Fatah, the PLO government-in-exile in Tunisia, did not make a timely statement.

Some more radical organizations that broke away from Fatah quickly organized large-scale protests in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem. This time their strategy was very different. They asked many teenagers holding stones to provoke the heavily armed Israeli soldiers. In this way, if the opponents could not help but fight back, they would be photographed by the waiting camera crew and provided to the major Western countries. Oriental media.

This matter did not cause much disturbance on the news in America. Ronald just saw the news that the United Nations passed two resolutions, 607 and 608, condemning Israel’s violence.

“I’m not Jewish, I’m a **** atheist.” Rob Reiner doesn’t like being told he’s Jewish. He didn’t understand that it was already in the 1980s, how could anyone believe that all the records in an ancient book thousands of years ago were true.

“My dad [Carl Reiner], he said he didn’t believe in God after the massacre. Where was God? Was he busy playing with zebras and rhinos?”

Rob Reiner doesn’t believe in Judaism, and he also laughed at those Jews who insisted on tradition, and children can’t enjoy the fun of unwrapping Santa’s presents.

“I did have a Jewish bar mitzvah, but it was for the fun of my relatives on my mother’s side. I don’t believe in any organized religion, I’m only a little sympathetic to Buddhist ideas.”

“Ever since he divorced Penny, he has become cynical.” Billy Crystal, his close friend next to him, started joking to calm down the very outrageous Reiner.

Christo saw Ronald looking at him, and smiled, “I don’t like the customs of the synagogue, we are all believers in America, no matter who you are, the most important thing in America is success, success You are right. Even if you go to church every week and confess to the rabbi that you bullied your classmates when you were a child, this is the secret of success.”

“You’re not like the other Jews I’ve seen in Hollywood.” Ronald felt right for two very secular Jews.

“Ha, of course we Jews from New York are different. I grew up in the Bronx and Billy was a rich guy on the Upper East Side of Manhattan whose father’s record company basically invented jazz. Nora’s parents were theater too This time, her father named her after the heroine of Ibsen’s Doll’s House. What about you, Ronald?”

It turns out that these are the second-generation children of the New York literary and art circles, no wonder they are biased towards the values ​​of the left-wing liberals. The Upper East Side of Manhattan, New York, and Long Island, are full of such wealthy families.

“You’re all rich Jews. I **** grew up on Staten Island. My parents were pure patriots who fought for Uncle Sam.” Ronald laughed.

“I’ve been to Staten Island, where the scenery is great, and many people have only one lover for a lifetime, grow old, and have a bunch of children.” Rob Reiner suddenly became sad, “Just like my father and mother. ”

“Why can’t we find a lover who can never change his heart?” Over there, Nora Ephron also began to sigh.

“That’s why you’ve been able to write a script like this, and a lot of it is drawn from my life with Penny. And you and Bernstein. Like the one where I run into my ex-wife in the store.”

No wonder, Ronald understood why this script had such a sad ending in the end. The two protagonists, Harry and Sally, still haven’t come together.

Nora Ephron, and Rob Reiner, are divorced losers. And it’s the kind of party that wants to grow old but can’t.

Rob Reiner’s ex-wife is the female director of “Growing Up” starring Diane, Penny Marshall. Both of them were children of a family of performers in New York, and their circle of acquaintances was basically the same, which made the divorce extremely painful.

And Nora Ephron’s ex-husband is even more famous, the famous journalist Bernstein who exposed the Watergate incident. Dustin Hoffman played the role of Bernstein in the movie “The President’s Men” that previously reflected this incident.

Nora Ephron’s divorce situation is even more tragic. When she was pregnant for the second time, her husband Bernstein cheated on the daughter of the former British Prime Minister, the wife of the British ambassador at the time, Baroness Margaret Jay. Almost caused a political scandal.

Nora Ephron is not easy to mess with. She wrote her husband’s scandal into the script “Heartfire”, which was finally put on the screen by Jack Nicholson and Meryl Streep. Although the box office was not good, but during the marketing, the ex-husband was pulled out and whipped in the media.

Seeing Nora Ephron in painful memories, Ronald thought for a while, “I’ve always had a question, just so you might tell me.”

“What’s the problem?” Now Nora, Rob, and Billy are all interested.

“You said your ex-husband was Bernstein who exposed the Watergate incident, so do you know who Deep Throat is?”

“Aha… Hurry up, tell Ronald, the urban legend you like to tell people the most.” Rob Reiner laughed out loud, apparently Nora has revealed the secret to his friends more than once.

“Hey, this is my own reasoning. I think Deep Throat is the deputy director of the FBI, Mark Felt. I read Bernstein’s notebook, which abbreviates Deep Throat as MF. I look up all possible candidates. However, only the deputy director of the FBI has the initials MF.”

“Hahaha, I don’t believe it. Is the FBI so amateurish? It must be a pseudonym.” Ronald didn’t believe it.

“Hahaha, I also say the same, Nora, you must have read too many detective novels by Agatha.”

Several New Yorkers hit it off right away, and everyone chatted about everything. But New Yorkers are like this. In this kind of chat where each other expresses their opinions, even tit-for-tat, they can immediately feel that they are also New Yorkers.

The remaining things are much easier to handle, and that’s how we New Yorkers do things. Those Los Angeles rednecks don’t get it.

“To be honest, I haven’t made up my mind to make this movie.” Rob Reiner talked about Nora’s script.

Reiner and his friends opened Castle Rock Productions (CastleRock Productions) last year. The name is based on the name of the fictional town in Stephen King’s novel.

His dream is not to be taught how to make movies by the administrators of major studios, but to make movies according to the ideas of creators and artists.

Reiner’s first film in Castle Rock, “The Princess Bride”, was a surprise box office success, and they wanted to take their idea a step further.

But unfortunately, there was a stock market crash. Colombia, which originally invested, has now suspended all financing projects. If you rely on your own funds, the risk of investment is relatively high. So Reiner was a little hesitant.

“I can actually invest, there is only one condition.”

“You can talk about anything,” said Rob Reiner, one of the founders of Castle Rock. He was interested. “You can talk about anything, but we signed a distribution agreement with Columbia. We will make 15 films within three years. Movies, distributed by Columbia, if your company wants to get in the distribution business, you have to get a nod from Columbia.”

“Hey, my company can’t afford this kind of theatrical film distribution. We can only distribute small productions like ‘Hairspray’, or do video tape distribution.” Ronald shook his head, expressing that he didn’t want to get involved in the distribution business. All three looked at Ronald, wondering what his conditions were. ”

“My conditions are very practical. You may think I am vulgar, but I want the two protagonists to be together at the end of the movie. Only in this way can the investment be made.”

“Oh? Do you think so? Actually, we don’t completely disapprove of the traditional ending. Nora said you suggested that we watch ‘Sullivan’s Travels’. We did see it in college before, which does make sense.”

Rob Reiner didn’t just want to satisfy the layman of the artist, he looked at Nora Ephron. In fact, the prototype and many details of this script are based on the lives of myself and Nora. Both of them are divorced. If it is written as a happy reunion, will Nora have that kind of meaning?

But the two are too familiar, they don’t feel like a couple.

“Do you think it is necessary to hire celebrities? About how much investment?” Reiner is still interested, and it is very beneficial to cooperate with Ronald.

“I think in the end it takes a hot young female star to play Sally, and then pair it with a convincing Harry, like Billy.”

“Ha… ha…, it’s funny, my salary is not as good as that of the stars.” Billy Crystal laughed. As a comedy star, he hasn’t had any big hit works yet. Compared with those popular male stars, his salary may be as low as others less than half of that.

“I dare not ask Billy to play the role. If the box office is not good and he fails to become a top male star as he wished, I will be sorry for him.” Throw mom off the train”, neither box office nor awards, really cheated my friends.

“If there are stars, I think the price of about 15 million can be covered.” Ronald quoted a figure. Now that star salary inflation is serious, the average production cost of medium-sized productions is higher than before. It has risen for two years.

“You know, I think it’s better for our company to sign a strategic cooperation agreement, so that Nora’s book is confirmed, and we can start to evaluate the project. In this way, once the screenwriter’s strike is over, both of our companies will have new films that can be shot quickly. , just in time for release before the end of the script shortage next year.”

Reiner felt that this was feasible, so he asked Ronald to agree on cooperation first.

“Of course, we let lawyers do the paperwork.”

“It’s very interesting that you are directing a female film. I will go to the set to see it.” Reiner was very happy, and brought a box of biscuits bought from the supermarket, opened it and asked Ronald to eat it.

“Aren’t you the director?” Ronald picked up a piece, took half a mouthful and put it down. The taste of corn candy was much worse than that of his aunt’s handiwork.

“Me? I’m actually afraid of directing such a work, it will always remind me of the time when I divorced my ex-wife.”

“Isn’t that very real? Who else knows better than you what it should be like? If I direct, I will only shoot the ending where the two are together.” When Ronald heard that he wanted to direct by himself, it was a good deal , must have a happy ending.

“That depends on what Nora wants.” Reiner respects the autonomy of the screenwriter, and this kind of thing still has to be decided by the screenwriter.

…

Soon, the lawyers of both parties prepared the cooperation framework. Both parties have priority rights over the other’s films. Under the same conditions as competitors, the other party will first let the other party invest in their own projects.

“That Australian cowboy friend of yours made Paramount miserable.” The lawyer who came to sign the contract was gray-eyed Mickey, a famous Hollywood lawyer, Mickey Kantor.

“Isn’t that still your power?” Ronald laughed.

“Crocodile Dundee” star Paul Hogan, with the appearance of Kanter, found a showdown with the domestic distributor Paramount. Paramount Home Entertainment, which played tricks on video tape sales, had to admit under the evidence that its own accounting statistics lagged behind sales.

Paul Hogan received a generous commission that should have belonged to him and his wife. By the way, I also checked the accounts of 20th Century Fox, an overseas distribution company, and dug up some box office accounts that were behind schedule.

Finally, Gray-eyed Kanter also helped Hogan solve a small trap in the distribution contract of “Crocodile Dundee II”.

It says the sequel must still be distributed by Paramount in America. Kanter changed him to priority under the same situation. If the terms are dead, the third part may not be filmed if the other party uses some reason not to release it.

Hogan was very happy and called Ronald to thank him. It also said that Ronald will go to Australia for filming in the future, just go to him. He can enjoy himself there, no matter in the music industry or the film and television industry, he has connections. As long as Ronald proposes, he can guarantee resources and give him the lowest price. .

So, actually relying on Mitch Kanter’s professional ability and reputation to get good results, Ronald just recommended a suitable candidate.

“By the way, I still have some business and I need your help.” After Ronald signed the contract, he dragged Kanter to continue talking about business.

“It’s about the copyright of the video tape. I have some movies, and some of my friends’ movies. I want to buy out the copyright of the video tape, and then publish a better version of the video tape. By the way, take back the copyright of the video tape.”

“The seven major studios now understand the potential of videotapes. It’s not cheap if you want to buy them.” Kanter said with a smile.

“It doesn’t matter, money is not a problem. The original box office of the movie was not very good, but my colleagues analyzed that it might be suitable for video tape.”

(end of this chapter)

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