Hollywood Production - Chapter 9

Without any accident, Duke walked out of the Warner Building, hopeful and full of fighting spirit. Although, he hit a wall one after another, this didn’t stop him from pursuing that tiny opportunity.

This circle is one that pays attention to connections, qualifications, and successful experience. Duke’s resume is lacking in this area and if there is a movie with a box office of millions or even 100,000 dollars in his name. The treatment he would enjoy from film company’s will certainly be very different.

Unfortunately, the hardest part of entering the Hollywood circle is taking the first step. Opportunity is often more important than talent in Hollywood. You have to create and fight for opportunities; if you don’t, you’ll never get a chance.

For the next ten days, Duke was incredibly busy, going in and out of various studios in the Greater Los Angeles area like a Spartan. He left his footprints at Paramount, Disney, MGM, Universal, and Sony – all first-tier companies in Colombia. He also stopped by second-tier companies such as New Line, Carlock, and the newly emerging Miramax in Los Angeles.

During this period of time, Duke sent out a copy of the script and received numerous rejections. His head hit so many Hollywood doors, but he did not flinch!

After he went to all the larger film companies, he temporarily suspended his search for opportunities with film companies. He did not need to go to the remaining small film studios. They themselves did not have the strength to invest in this level of film, tens of millions of dollars will is a relatively high-investment after all.

James Cameron’s “Terminator 2” was released in July to much fanfare. Duke began finding ways to get to those famous producers, including Jerry Bruckheimer, Katherine Kennedy, Jon Landau, Annie Spielberg and others. However, all of his attempts to contact them have been met with refusal.

Not all companies and producers are not optimistic about the script. Paramount and Jerry Bruckheimer were interested, but shook their heads at Duke’s request to be the director.

Even when Duke offered to sell them the script for a token dollar in exchange for the chance to direct, the answer was still a hard no.

Even if Duke were to speak out, these people would not invest such a large sum of money into someone with no successful directing experience. After all they were neither friends nor relatives.

In addition to producers and production companies, Duke still has a way to seek investment from banks or foundations. Although there are not as many film investment funds in Hollywood in this era, there are still a few.

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In Malibu, Duke met a film fund manager.

“I Have made two experimental films, and graduated from CalArts’ film with all A grades, which can’t explain any problems…”

However, even with those qualifications, he couldn’t get his hand on the the AUG film fund.

Although big Hollywood companies often resort to falsifying accounts and concealing box office reports to defraud investors of their funds, Duke does not have the conditions to extract large sums of money from these vampires.

When nearly ten days passed in July, Duke, who was running into a wall, had to prepare to take the road he didn’t want to take, and the road that was slightly more likely to succeed, to find his mother’s best friend, who was famous in Hollywood and even the world. George Lucas.

Duke really wanted to use his own ability to win opportunities, but he also knows how to take advantage of favorable conditions to create opportunities for success, which is not a bad thing.

Of course, he took this as a final chance.

Duke won’t have long to prepare, according to the previous company’s and producers he met. Even if he makes some preparations, he won’t have much room to perform. It’s different with George Lucas. Duke won’t go straight to Lucas film, he will go to Lucas’ estate in the suburbs of San Francisco.

Before going, in addition to the script, Duke also planned to shoot a video. This is a video where the main plot will be in the car, and Duke’s shooting is naturally related to the car.

This is a video where the main plot will be in the car, and Duke’s shooting is naturally related to the car.

He retrieved his 16mm camera from the storage room, swiped his credit card to buy film, and used the weekly mowing lawn worker to drive his second hand car. He shot several times in the co-pilot and outside the car, it took half a day to basically get the shots he wanted.

As Duke edited the video, added a heavy metal soundtrack, and turned it into a videotape, an informal meeting about his script was quietly unfolding in Warner Bros CEO’s office.

“Kevin, I think the script of is operable.”

Jeff Robinov, who Duke had met before, gave advice to CEO Kevin Tsujihara who was sitting in a large office chair, “If you we capture the thrills in the script, and the quality is the chase scenes …”

“Jeff…” Kevin Tsujihara interrupted Jeff Robinov and looked at his assistant next to him. “Robert, what’s your opinion?”

Robert Solomon, a heavyweight in the industry, rested his arm on the armrest of the chair and rested his chin in his palm. After thinking for a while, he slowly said, “There is a situation, you can refer to it, Duke Rosenberg used to be a signed artist of CAA, and he was just given up by CAA this year. You know the way CAA do things, if he has potential, they will never give up on him.”

“And…” He moved his hand away and nodded at the script on the desk, “It’s never a wise idea to invest tens of millions of dollars in the work of someone who has no qualifications!”