Chapter three hundred and ninety fifth accidental encounter(1/2)
"She is indeed in financial trouble. I have spoken with her agent team and David Letterman's agent to confirm that this matter is true."
Niceta had been on the phone with her wife Paula for a long time and confirmed the news through several channels. Cher was a little short of money.
"I remember very early on, Cher was a singer, so how could she be short of hotel room fees?" Ronald was a little puzzled.
"Her financial situation is indeed a bit problematic. Her most popular songs were all released before the 1980s. At that time, her producer and manager were both her ex-husband Sonny Bono.
You know, the best way for a man to control a popular female singer is to marry her. So when Cher was very popular, she received very limited income from those songs.
Most of Cher's new songs released in the late 1970s were commercially unsuccessful. She has not had a new song in the top ten of the charts for seven or eight years."
"But even if most of the dividends were taken away by her ex-husband, she shouldn't be unable to pay tens of thousands of yuan for the house, right? Is it tens of thousands of yuan?"
"Twenty-eight thousand dollars," Niceta got the exact figure from David Letterman. "You don't know the luxury of female celebrities. Ronald Cher has a very large exclusive team to support.
Personal makeup artist, personal hairstylist, and a bunch of assistants.”
"I don't really believe it. Even so, she is a big star." Ronald's calculation was wrong. "If Cher doesn't say anything else, it's not difficult at all to go to a concert somewhere and get tens of thousands of dollars."
Bar?"
"Of course, she once stayed at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas and was paid $300,000 a week."
As an agent, Niceta is very sensitive to this kind of remuneration.
"But you may underestimate how quickly a female star spends her money. Here she invests in a friend's restaurant, there she buys a little stock recommended by the singer, and boom! Six months later, with a single spell, the wealth is quickly gone.
Besides, Cher's efforts to switch to disco and rock music failed in the end. After that, she chose to be an actress. However, the studios were not willing to pay much, so she was sitting on nothing in the past few years.
In addition, she is a single mother of two children and has a difficult mother who is counting on her. She also has several young and ambitious boyfriends who want to make a career in Hollywood, except of course Tom.
I’m afraid it’s possible that I may not have enough cash at the moment.”
"Well, I didn't know her financial situation was so bad. The salary MGM gave her was not very high, only over 100,000 US dollars."
Then Ronald asked Niceta, "What's going on with Letterman? Why didn't he give Cher this reward? Twenty-eight thousand dollars is not very expensive compared to asking Cher to come and support her, right?"
"
"You may not know much about stand-up shows. In this kind of show, you can discuss remuneration or exchange some benefits in private, but this cannot be said publicly on the show. When Cher said this, Letterman had only one way to deny it. He has already had many
This is the first time I hinted at Xueer, but the other party didn't pick up the hint."
It turns out that Letterman's team, in order to hire star Cher to boost ratings, actually agreed to the other party's request and promised to pay her a room fee of US$28,000, plus reimbursement of air tickets.
But for some unknown reason, Cher had a strong objection to David Letterman himself, and the two had no good words for each other. Letterman first asked Cher why she had declined invitations so many times in the past. Cher seemed to lose control for a moment and put the truth behind her.
The reason is stated.
This creates a vicious cycle. David Letterman cannot admit that he paid in front of all the live viewers, otherwise it will cause other guests to follow suit and cause the budget to get out of control.
On the other hand, when Cher saw Letterman denying it to his face, she thought he was really unwilling to pay, so she went back on his promise and further deepened her prejudice against him until she said, "You are a big asshole."
The subsequent conversation between the two was like a disaster scene. Letterman quickly ended the conversation, and Cher went back to the hotel without taking the check.
"Ring ring ring ring..."
This was the phone call that suddenly came to mind. Niceta answered it and said a few words, then handed it to Ronald, "It's David Letterman."
"Hello David, what's wrong with you today?" Ronald picked up the phone and comforted poor Letterman.
"Ronald, I won't say much. Your agent called me just now and told me that you are about to let Cher star in your movie.
I urgently need you to give me a message and explain my difficulties to Xueer. If I publicly admit that I paid for her room on the show, it is impossible for my show budget to support the guests I want to invite.
.”
"What do you want, David?" Ronald covered the phone and gave Niceta a look for advice. Niceta looked strange, and he didn't understand why Letterman wanted to see him.
"It's very simple. I want to ask her to come back to my evening show again after the impact has passed. As long as she doesn't mention this matter, let us finish the show normally, so that everyone will remember her last night."
I said it as a little joke."
"I'll see what I can do." Ronald didn't fully agree and spoke vaguely.
"Let me be blunt, the ratings of the show just now skyrocketed after Cher scolded me. I don't hate her, but what she did made me a little confused. I don't feel hard for her, right? I
Treating some other guests a bit more 'badly' is just a common practice on late-night talk shows."
"I will bring you what you mean."
"Very good. Besides, she hasn't taken the check I gave her yet. We will give a reasonable price next time."
Ronald put down the phone with a funny look on his face. David Letterman, who was humiliated in public, almost got angry during the live broadcast. Now that the ratings have increased, he took the initiative to make up for the money and invited him to come again.
programme.
It seems that the pressure of these TV guys' careers is no less than that of working in movies.
Over there, Niceta had already found Xueer's hotel phone number. After connecting it, she handed the phone to Ronald.
"Cher, this is Ronald. I just watched your performance on Letterman..."
"Oh, everyone seems to know it? I don't care. That bad guy really deserves it. Someone should have scolded him long ago."
"So he really didn't reimburse you for the room fee?"
"Yes, the manager of the hotel has also watched the show now. He is trying to persuade me to leave by myself. The existing debts will be temporarily suspended. Listen to the faces of these people."
After she finished speaking, Xueer pointed the microphone at the manager on site.
"Hello, are you the manager of the hotel? I'm the director of Cher's next movie, Ronald Lee.
Does she need to move away? You don’t have to be in such a hurry, I’ll come over and I’ll take care of her debt.”
Ronald put on his coat, called Little Bud, and first went to NBC Letterman to pick up Cher's check. Then he drove it to the door of Cher's hotel room.
The manager politely told Cher that there was nothing he could do and that she had to leave the hotel.
"Ronald, you are here. Looking at these people, you think I will not be able to pay for the room."
"Don't bother, yes, I will take care of her debt." Ronald took out the check and handed it to Xueer, asking him to endorse it to pay for the room later.
"That's great. Ms. Xueer can stay here forever. I'm sorry for the inconvenience caused."
"No, she doesn't want to live in your place anymore." Ronald directed Little Bud, together with Cher's assistant, to start packing her things.
"Hey, Ronald, what are you doing?"
"Rehearsals are about to start, and I hope you can prepare in a better environment. Resting during rehearsals is very important, and there must also be good service. I think the service here is really terrible, if nothing else.
Already."
Xueer heard that the place she was going to had better conditions, so she stopped talking and even took the initiative to help collect some of her clothes.
Soon, Ronald took Xueer and her first batch of luggage to a fifty-eight-story high-rise building on Fifth Avenue.
The lower eight floors here are shopping malls, the upper floors are offices, and the thirty-ninth floor at the top are hotel apartment rooms.
Meeting with Niceta, who had come to prepare in advance, Ronald went to the hotel lobby in the middle of this golden building and opened an apartment for Cher for a month.
"Ten thousand dollars, thank you." The front desk quoted a price, and Ronald signed to confirm. The money was part of the treatment that the crew should pay to star Cher according to the contract.
“It’s really nice here, but the colors are a bit too tacky.”
Xueer was received with great respect here. Her room was on a high floor close to the attic. As she walked in, she felt that the privacy was good.
When he was about to reach his room, a handsome young man knocked on the door of another suite at the corner, "Demi, listen to me, I want to know what is going on between us and who am I to you?"
?”
The two looked sideways, and Ronald felt that the boy looked familiar. He seemed to be the male protagonist in John Hughes's "Pretty in Pink". He paired up with Molly Ringwald's character at the end, but because of the audience
A tragic actor whose ending was cut out due to poor response.
Ronald ignored him and sent Xueer into her room with a large group of people.
“I like it very much. You are right. It is much better than the hotel I used to stay in. The facilities inside are also very new.”
She was very satisfied with the large executive suite and spacious clothing room.
"I heard that the occupancy rate here is very high. A friend of mine used to live here for US$8,000 a month," Ronald said.
After tipping the waiters, Ronald asked them to bring some drinks.
"Why don't you like David Letterman? What did he do to make you so dissatisfied with him?" After Ronald calmed down, he asked Cher what happened at the scene.
"Huh, actually I don't hate Letterman. He has a good sense of humor. Sometimes I can't sleep in the middle of the night, waiting to watch his late show." Cher took a sip of wine and said to Ronald.
"Then why..."
"Because I don't like Letterman's attitude towards certain vulnerable guests. He sometimes treats guests very poorly on TV. He often attacks the other person's weaknesses, makes jokes that make the other person very disgraceful, and even makes fun of the other person's sad things.
."
"Hey, this won't mean..." Ronald shook his head. When these artists' emotions get...
"He denied agreeing to my conditions, and the way he used to bully those less famous guests came to my mind. I felt that he would do the same to me next..."
"So, you just want to strike first, right?"
Ronald knew that artists are always full of emotions, and sometimes their emotions get the best of them, and they don't think things through very carefully.
"He just called me and asked me to give you the check you forgot to pick up. He also said that your on-the-spot reaction was first-rate and that you were a very good guest for his talk show. He hopes that you can pass it for a while.
To be continued...