"What do they want to do? Can you help me calculate how much it will cost?"
Ronald has recently seen that the entertainment pages of various newspapers on the market are full of articles praising "Pulp Fiction", which is simply abnormal.
This has gone beyond the scope of general film reviews. They are all specialized interviews with the main creative personnel. The interview reporters also come from serious industry professional publications such as film reviews, to local comprehensive newspapers such as the Los Angeles Times.
Ronald browsed through them all, and there was one about the leading actress Uma Thurman. She talked about how Quentin Tarantino made her put aside her worries, a 23-year-old girl from Massachusetts, to star in some very outstanding things.
The lens of the position...
Of course, in fact, many of the movies she shot before also had some more outstanding scenes, but she didn't think of them at the moment.
There are also some about Bruce Willis, mainly about how he liked this work so much that he voluntarily lowered his salary to act in it. Moreover, he also secured more investment for this film...
Similarly, Willis also selectively forgot that after starring in several bad movies, he no longer has much reputation among the audience in the domestic market. It is just because of the popularity of Die Hard overseas that his reputation in overseas markets
He still paid a lot of money, and he was able to use this to add part of the overseas pre-sales revenue to the movie.
However, of the eight million budget of Pulp Fiction, five million went into actors' salaries, and the biggest star among them, Bruce Willis, must have taken a lot.
In the interview, John Travolta mainly reviewed the swaying dance between him and Uma Thurman. He constantly reminded reporters and readers that he was once the most powerful dance king in Hollywood, and that Grease and Weekly
In Six Nights of Fever, most of the audience still wanted to watch him twerk in the cinema.
He emphasized that he was good at all types of dance, from tap dancing, to swing dancing, to disco. Faced with the situation that Uma Thurman didn't know how to dance, he danced all the dances to see if the other party could pick up the dance.
Just dance whatever you want, and the final effect is very good...
Of course, he also forgot that no one in Hollywood is making musicals anymore, and his dance moves were at least ten years out of date, and only middle-aged people would be excited.
Judging from the arrangement of these interviews, we can also know Harvey Weinstein’s plans for the Oscar awards. Starting in two months at the end of the year, there will be a large number of Film Critics Association Awards, various union awards, and some special category films.
Awards will be announced one after another...
All this will probably last until next year's Golden Globe Awards, and then the much-anticipated Oscar nominations will be announced.
Harvey Weinstein has two promising award-winning films, "Pulp Fiction" and "Bullets Over Broadway," which are starting to warm up from now on. It is basically certain that he will leave.
It’s the awards and film review route.
Historically, apart from the traditional methods of personal canvassing, party canvassing, etc., and the videotape offensive invented by Ronald in the past few years, there is also a relatively unpopular route that is not used by many people.
, which is the route of exchanging small prizes for big prizes.
Among the thousands of judges, no more than 10% can watch all the nominated films. Most of them learn about the nominated films based on film review reports and gossip in private circles, especially the competition for certain awards.
of.
Therefore, in the days before voting, whoever can occupy more impression points in the minds of the judges will gain a great advantage.
Therefore, in the distant past, in 1969, a similar situation occurred. In 1968, the heroines of two movies both received good praise from critics. One was the heroine in "The Lion in Winter"
Katharine Hepburn in Queen Eleanor, and Barbra Streisand in "Lady."
Both received good reviews, but Barbra Streisand was not yet a member of the Hollywood Academy. She had just started filming in Hollywood and needed more time to qualify.
Therefore, whether she was more powerful than those actors who had played supporting roles for many years and qualified to enter the academy became a hot news topic that year. It happened that the then chairman of the academy, Gregory Peck, wanted to speed up the replacement of the academy's judges.
A new batch of new generation actors were replaced, so they made an exception and allowed her to enter the academy and become a judge.
This incident also caused a lot of voices in the press and Hollywood, and everyone was talking about it. In the end, a group of more senior actors supported Katharine Hepburn, and another group of more knowledgeable and younger members supported Katharine Hepburn.
Barbra Streisand.
The two were equally divided in various Film Critics Association awards selected before the Oscars, and the competition between the two continued until a few days before the Oscars.
Perhaps because of the fierce competition, the other nominees for Best Actress were washed away by the overwhelming popularity, and these two became the only ones that the judges voted for.
In the end, the two were coincidentally evenly matched, with each receiving 3,030 votes, a rare tie for the Oscar winner of the year.
However, such a public relations method requires the right time and place. Not every Oscar selection can continue to arouse media coverage. If it were not for the two actresses, one old and one new, they would have won the support of almost two generations of actors.
, it is impossible to get so many votes at the same time if you keep arguing and attacking each other in the newspaper.
Therefore, when Ronald saw Weinstein exerting his strength at this time and launching a large-scale public relations offensive, he was a little worried.
This guy has always had the ability to continuously work hard on crooked tricks. Last year, he even went to a nursing home to show his movies to the old judges to enhance their impression. It can be said that he is the type who will do whatever it takes to achieve his goals.
Ronald quickly hired a private detective and began to collect dirty information about "Pulp Fiction" and "Bullets Flying Down Broadway."
"Ronald, I heard something recently. Someone is collecting negative information about Weinstein's movie?"
Soon, some people with a keen sense of smell in the circle, such as Cannold, who was in charge of distribution at Ronald's company, smelled something. He saw that the black material was mainly distributed between director Quentin Tarantino and the female director.
There were some speculations when it came to supporting the role of Uma Thurman, so I made a special trip to visit Ronald to ask about the situation.
"I am doing it, but I am not someone who takes the initiative to use these black materials to attack my opponents. I do this to protect myself..."
"Self-preservation?" Michelle Cannold didn't expect Ronald to admit it so quickly.
"Yeah, if you look at the interview with Quentin Tarantino in Film Review, it's hard not to think that he's attacking me."
Ronald took out a copy and handed it to Cannold.
This interview transcript is quite long. In it, the reporter asked Quentin Tarantino many questions about pulp novels, and Quentin's original answers were also published. The level of detail is completely different from ordinary interview transcripts.
For example, reporters have asked about the source of inspiration for many scenes in movies. This is not possible in ordinary director interviews.
Many directors design scenes based on the needs of the plot, the performance of the actors, and some of the content they want to express. In fact, it is not easy for ordinary reporters to see these subtleties, and they cannot ask very interesting questions.
Quentin Tarantino is different. The way he designs scenes is actually to borrow scenes from movies that he studied carefully when he was a clerk in a video rental store and then use them in his own movies.
This can be noticed by some reporters who are already movie fans.
For example, Jules, played by Samuel L. Jackson in Pulp Fiction, refers to some scenes in "Star Trek". A child uses his fingers to make a pistol and "shoots" at you. He is really passionate in his heart.
I thought it was a real "pistol".
In Reservoir Dogs, the scene where Tim Roth shoots Michael Madsen at the end of the torture scene completely "learned" some of Jimmy Stewart's acting methods in Hitchcock's "Rope of Souls."
.
He also answered some questions about the subtitle "Pulp Fiction," about what three stories in one story mean.
Quentin's answer indicated that he originally wanted to write a collection of multiple short novels. It was to integrate the plots from various suspense action films he had seen before. It was Harvey Weinstein who told him to do so.
integrated into a story.
Pulp novels, in fact, are meant to be like the kind of cheap short story collections sold in bookstores called "Story Clubs", where a few interesting short stories are picked out, made into unrelated short stories, and then put together.
What alarmed Ronald the most about this interview transcript was that at the end, Quentin criticized Hollywood genre films.
Quentin said that the core stories in his pulp novels are actually the stories that are overproduced by Hollywood - don't mess with the boss's woman, otherwise you will have problems.
He cited Coppola's "The Cotton Club" (which happened to star Diane Lane) and said that his movie doesn't care about the story, or that the core of the story can be very cliché.
His films are not limited to a certain type of film, they can be a collection of many types of films. Whatever type of film you want him to be, that is what type of film he is. He does not want to be the next "Ronald Lee", which is not to say that Ronald Lee
What's wrong with Nader is that such genre films belong to the past and a new era has arrived...
This kind of movie shooting method is of course very feasible. As long as you don't consider the problem from the perspective of the movie box office, you can reach a tacit understanding with the audience about what type of movie it is and what kind of audience it wants to attract.
Your movie can be made into anything, and even if there aren't many viewers to watch it and it won't be a big hit at the box office, it can still achieve good results by winning awards.
Quentin Tarantino is a very successful example on this path, winning the Palme d'Or...
But when he said that the era of genre films has passed, he was clearly preparing some public opinion for the Oscars. From this point of view, he can attack those genre films, which are made to cater to the audience and box office.
Commercial operations.
If we look at it from an artistic point of view, films like Pulp Fiction that do not belong to any genre, or whichever genre you want it to be, are innovative.
You know, in the traditional Hollywood circuit, the success of a movie is evaluated through the two dimensions of box office and film reviews. Quentin Tarantino and Harvey Weinstein behind him have almost no way to compare with
Ronald came to compete.
Whether it is box office or special effects, or artistic expression, handling of actors, and the public relations resources and budget necessary to compete for Oscars, the two of them are far from Ronald.
But if I can't compete with you on this track, what if I build a new track?
Just like when Barbra Streisand and Katharine Hepburn competed for the Best Actress award, what they competed for was not the artistry of the two movies or the box office. It was their different views on art.
, the struggle for the right to speak.
Should the Oscars be based on seniority or should they reward artistic innovation? Should a group of aging judges decide the awards, or should more actors and stars who are now in their prime be included and let them decide which artistic performances are more suitable now?
What today’s audience prefers.
All of these are seen again in today's outpost of the Academy Awards.
Should we submit to the system of big studios, big productions, and big stars? Or should we stand with "independent" production companies like Miramax?
Is it to reward directors like Ronald Dray who have inherited the traditional Hollywood narrative and the methodology of the three-act play? Or is it to be a practitioner of a new directing theory like Quentin who ignores the form of the three-act play and has no protagonists or supporting actors?
?
Anyway, the movie Pulp Fiction does not have any protagonists or supporting characters in the strict sense, nor does it have a main story in the strict sense. Although the story of Pulp Fiction is very scattered, it completely revolves around Forrest Gump's life opportunities.
It can be said that it is a competition between tradition and innovation.
This is completely a new era of Barbra Streisand vs. Katharine Hepburn. If the competition ends like the old version of the story, Ronald and Quentin share the Best Director Award, it will also make Ronald himself
His resume has been greatly reduced.
What's more, the same number of votes is a rare coincidence. If he really loses, he will become Quentin's stepping stone, winning the Palme d'Or and the Oscar, becoming a rising star.
Michelle Cannold also felt something was wrong and immediately expressed her loyalty and wanted to find out more dirty information about the Pulp Fiction crew in the industry to prepare for a counterattack in case Weinstein resorted to his own tactics.
In terms of public relations strategy, Ronald continued the original plan, mainly facing the judges of actors and directors. This strategy is not like Miramax, which shows up in the media, but it still costs a lot of money in private.
Ronald is not the only one who is as vigilant as Ronald himself. The main actors in Forrest Gump have also discovered the problem. After all, so many exclusive interviews about Pulp Fiction actors suddenly appeared in newspapers, for those stars who are interested in Oscars
is very sensitive.
Gary Sinise, who played Lieutenant Dan, was very unhappy and called Ronald to complain. After Ronald introduced some of his public relations plans to him, he also agreed to add an interview with him in the corresponding media.
Hedge Samuel Jackson's move.
On the other hand, Tom Hanks didn't think much about this. After seeing John Travolta's interview, he just called Ronald to report it. He didn't have much opinion. Hanks hoped to save money.
Some of his promotional expenses were given to Sinise, who was up for Best Supporting Actor, and Robin Wright, who was up for Best Supporting Actress.
As for himself, Hanks said no one would give an award to an actor two years in a row.
Among these people, only Robin Wright, who plays Jenny, reacted the most. She said that Uma Thurman and Dianne Wiest, the two supporting actresses in Miramax movies, invested much more in public relations than
He said that he must add some public relations expenses.
Ronald said that he also arranged an interview with a variety show, mainly to talk about some of her unique understanding of playing Jenny, and to clarify some misunderstandings about her role as Jenny.
However, Robin Wright seems not satisfied yet. She hopes that the interview arranged by Ronald will have more details about her own life. Like Uma Thurman, she will talk about some personal experiences of playing Jenny.
Gossip, and how to balance your career and life.
This is also a new track that Weinstein has opened up. In addition to her acting skills as an actress, her daily life has also become the content of public relations. She also has to play a public image to win the favor of the judges.
Ronald agreed and let the public relations department balance it. In this situation, with Miramax attacking and Ronald responding, the cost of the entire Oscar public relations has been raised to unprecedented heights. How could it not have started before?
Just spend so much money during awards season?
The entire award-winning public relations has gone from sending out videotapes and small gifts to expensive pages in newspapers... If Weinstein were to do TV interviews again, then except for rich people like Ronald, everyone else would not want to do it.