When the two Israeli filmmakers saw that they had no hope of winning awards, and that if they stayed in Montreal, they would only be asked embarrassing questions by reporters, they decided not to wait for the festival to end and changed their tickets to go to America in advance.
Before leaving, Minahan and Ronald had breakfast together and exchanged contact information. During the conversation, they learned that Ronald's script was valued by Jane Fonda and sold for a sky-high price, so he immediately invited Ronald to discuss with Cannon Pictures in Los Angeles.
His "Intersection" script.
"Ronald, if we work together, we will win an Oscar. We will make him a replica of the greatest family movie in Hollywood in the past twenty years. Family movies are about to become popular in Hollywood."
"The greatest family movie?", Ronald thought for a moment, "Is it 'The Godfather'?"
"No No No, it's 'guess who's coming to dinner.'" Minahan shook his head.
Ronald knew that this movie was about a white daughter bringing a black boyfriend back to her parents' house for dinner, and then they understood each other and finally reconciled.
However, he was very afraid that his "Intersection" script would be filmed by Minahan into a musical about Chinese and Italians dancing together, so he declined his offer because he still needed to polish the script.
Minahan has just entered the Hollywood game. He knows an insider who sells scripts for sky-high prices. He will not let it go. "Anyway, you have to come to Cannon Pictures to talk to us. You are a genius screenwriter and I am a genius director."
, our cooperation will definitely be a great success.”
Well, Ronald only agreed to go to Cannon Pictures to take a look. He didn't want his script to be made into a movie that would be criticized by the audience.
The films participating in the film festival were screened at a rate of about one a day, and Ronald began his real career as a film buyer. Roger Corman did not give him a film purchase quota, but only suggested that if there was a promising film, the price would be right.
If so, you can contact Gale in the New World.
So Ronald just picked some movies that he was interested in watching, regardless of whether they were new or old movies. If he still wasn't interested after watching them for twenty minutes, he would get up and leave.
For example, Hitchcock's daughter brought two films as a tribute to Hitchcock. Ronald brought the two films "Rear Window" and "Vertigo" to the screening.
Saw it.
Although both films are Hitchcock's masterpieces, Ronald never had the chance to see them. He had never seen them re-screened in that cinema in America, and he had not even attended Scorsese's film appreciation class.
It turned out that Hitchcock knew that his daughter's qualifications were mediocre and that she had no future in the film industry, so he bought the five color films that he was most satisfied with, including these two, as well as To Kill a Murderer, The Case of the Dead, and Rope.
The copyright is left to my daughter.
With the copyrights of these five movies in hand, my daughter and her family can have enough food and clothing.
These two movies are exquisitely conceived, and the photography and acting are excellent. As a movie fan, Ronald watched it again and wanted to watch it several times to learn about the techniques. Especially in "Rear Window", Grace Kelly's close-up filled the big screen.
, became her appearance in the entire movie, which is very stunning.
When "Vertigo" was shown when Jimmy Stewart was going up the stairs, a sliding zoom (Dolly Zoom) appeared, creating an effect where the male protagonist remained motionless in the camera while the background moved rapidly to show that the male protagonist was afraid.
High dizzy feeling.
At this time, the audience applauded and cheered collectively, and it seemed that they all knew what they were doing. This was the first time in film history that the sliding zoom technique appeared on the big screen, and was later used by Spielberg in "Jaws."
In addition to satisfying his own curiosity, Ronald's main focus is on non-English films. The competition for English films is too fierce.
For example, "The Stunt Man" starring Peter O'Toole has been bought by 20th Century Fox and screened in America. Even the second-run screening price was much higher than Ronald's budget.
s price.
The first thing that attracted his interest was a Soviet Union film "Stalker". According to reports, the artistic value of this film directed by Andrei Tarkovsky was highly praised.
Even though Ronald had the buyer's badge, he still went through a lot of trouble before entering the venue and finding a seat in the back row.
Most of the people who come to see it are movie insiders and movie fans who are attracted by the publicity.
This movie tells the story of a mysterious place that seems to contain alien relics. The stalker is a tour guide character who takes others through this mysterious place. Some people want to get riches through the mysterious place, some people want to get artistic inspiration, and some people
They think it is evil and want to blow it up.
Others, like Ronald, found themselves hypnotized.
The pace of the movie was extremely slow, and Ronald would fall asleep from time to time. After two hours and forty minutes of fighting with the Sandman, the screening finally ended. A head of the Soviet Union State Film and Television Committee (Goskino) was being interviewed and asked questions by the audience.
.
"Yes, the pace of the film is very slow, and Goskino also made the same suggestion to director Tarkovsky, asking him to speed up the pace and shorten the duration.
"No, we don't interfere with the director's creation, we just make suggestions. Director Tarkovsky's intentions have been well preserved."
The whole movie indeed shows a completely different technique from commercial movies, and you can feel the strong personal style of the author and director. In the middle section, the protagonist Stalker also quoted a passage from the Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu, "People are soft and fragile when they are born.
Die hard and strong." It gives the film a philosophical temperament.
However, Ronald looked around and saw that most of the viewers were under a sleeping spell and the quality of their sleep was quite good. No one in America would dare to buy this kind of movie and release it on a large scale.
Ronald saw that most of the buyers had left the table, and the head of the National Film and Television Commission looked quite lonely, so he went over to talk to him through an interpreter for a few words.
He told Ronald that in order to promote cultural promotion, the alliance gave a lot of subsidies to film exports. The film was screened at several major film festivals. He hoped that it could be seen by the people of America and should not just focus on profits.
For this purpose, Goskino is willing to sell the film screening rights at a very low price. If you are interested, you can contact the Cultural Counselor of the Soviet Embassy.
Ronald was interested in the low price, but there was really no market for this film. Maybe artists in the industry would learn some useful exploratory shooting techniques from it, but general audiences? Maybe try selling it to insomniacs?
Of course, he didn't dare to say this to Goskino's people. Ronald asked, "Do you have any works with strong storytelling? Stories with plots and twists, the kind that reflect the lives of ordinary people? Only movies that some people watch can make people happy.
American audiences know you."
After listening to the translator's report, Goskino's boss replied through the translator, "Yes, there is a movie that was recently shown in our country, which has broken the league's audience record. This time, a copy was also transferred to participate in the screening.
You are welcome to come and see us.”
Ronald quickly wrote down the show time, hoping that this movie would not make people want to sleep.
Another film that aroused Ronald's strong interest came from Japan and was the entry "The Call of the Mountains". The director was not Akira Kurosawa, whom he was familiar with, but a guy named Yoji Yamada.
This movie is about a middle-aged love story. Ronald is going to learn some experience and see if his "My Brother's Protector" is not mature enough in the middle-aged love story.
The story tells that a man named Tajima Kozo broke into the house of a Hokkaido herdsman widow on a rainy night and asked for shelter. The widow Minzi and her son Takeshi raised cattle and depended on each other. After taking Tajima into shelter from the rain, Tajima asked for shelter at Minzi's house.
part-time job.
Minzi considered that the family needed a strong laborer, so he agreed. Tajima won the favor of Minzi's mother and son with his down-to-earth and hard-working style, and he also helped Minzi fight off the peasant association cadres who came to the widow's door to play rogue. Takeshi also brought Tajima to
Rely on as a father figure.
Two years later, Tajima's brother came to see him and gave him some money. It turned out that Tajima was a murderer. He committed suicide because his wife couldn't repay the loan he borrowed for stock trading. Tajima accidentally killed him in anger and came to the funeral to collect the debt.
The creditor fled to Hokkaido.
To fulfill Takeshi's wish, Tajima participated in a horse racing event in the countryside of Hokkaido. Tajima won the championship on the racecourse, but was recognized by the police who followed his brother and was taken away.
Because of the creditor's provocative behavior, the court found that Tajima's death was not intentional and was manslaughter. Finally, Tajima was sentenced to three years in prison.
On the train that was escorting him to where he was serving his sentence, Minzi brought food and boarded the same carriage. With the consent of the police, she sat next to Tajima and chatted with fellow villagers, telling Tajima who was sitting next to her that she had
Sold the cattle, prepared to move to the city, and prepared to wait for Tajima to return.
The whole movie was shot in a simple and smooth way. Ronald felt very friendly when he saw this oriental implicit movie style. The shooting techniques of the movie are a bit old-fashioned, but it is more emotional than real. It brings together an orphan and a widowed mother, and their fake father.
The emotional relationship between the characters is very touching. Combined with the scenery and folk customs of Hokkaido, it is a movie that audiences will like.
Ronald had the idea of buying the screening rights of the film and approached the manager of the Japanese distributor Shochiku Pictures to discuss distribution in America.
"..."
"What? I don't speak Japanese, can you speak English?" Ronald requested embarrassedly.
"I said, this is English I speak?"
Well, Japanese people's English is really difficult to understand. Ronald hired a translator from the organizing committee to help, and he was able to communicate normally with the manager of Shochiku Pictures.
"What? Half a million dollars? No way. It's too expensive."
"Laura Narudsan, this movie is worth the price. You can see that many viewers were in tears."
"Yes, I proposed to buy the distribution rights in America because this movie is simple and touching. But this movie has no stars and it is a foreign language film..."
"This movie has no stars? Laura Narudosang, Shochiku's manager pulled Ronald in front of the poster. The male lead Tajima is played by Takakura Kensang, who is Japan's top star. The female lead Minzi is Beisho Chieko
Acting, she is a national female star. If the audience does not see her during the New Year and Bon Festival, it will be difficult for them to celebrate the festival."
"I understand that they may be stars in Japan, but no one in America knows them. I also like their performance very much, so I want to introduce them to America. If you can lower the price to less than 80,000 US dollars, I can consider it.
Show it in theaters in big cities so that our people can become familiar with your country's stars."
"I'm really sorry. This is beyond my scope of authority. I'm very sorry to disappoint you." The manager of Songzhu Pictures kept bowing and apologizing, but refused to lower the price.
Ronald was also a little disappointed. The film was very well made, but its values and culture were incompatible with American audiences. It could only find a market among those who like foreign films and art films.
For example, at the end when Tajima and Minzi meet on the train, if it were placed in America, Minzi would definitely go up to communicate with the police and let the two meet and chat. In the end, they would definitely hug and kiss, and the passengers on the train would applaud.
In Japan, it was impossible for Tajima to speak directly to Minzi. On the one hand, the police were not allowed to violate regulations, and on the other hand, Tajima could not face Minzi.
American audiences really couldn't appreciate this kind of implicit beauty, and they felt that Minzi's feelings for Tajima were not deep enough. This huge cultural difference made Ronald afraid to make up his mind to pay a high price.
He went to the organizing committee of the film festival and sent a fax to New World Productions about his expectations and opinions about "The Call of the Mountains". Ronald was ready to continue watching the film.
"Protest against apartheid, protest against racial discrimination!"
A group of people shouted slogans from a distance at the entrance of the screening room to boycott the movies shown here.
Ronald immediately became interested. He showed his buyer's badge to the staff and walked into the empty theater with few spectators.