"Rick, what happened?" Ronald returned home and immediately called his agent Niceta. "It seemed that the audience was crazy. They shouted and refused to let the creators leave, and they dragged them to sign half a contract.
How many hours of fame. You must remember that they were still little actors that no one cared about before."
"You are going to get rich, Ronald." Niceta put the receiver on the other side and took the note from the secretary, "I heard about the premiere and sent five assistants to go to the cinemas in various districts to watch it.
, it’s so popular, I guess you should print more copies.”
"Wait a minute, don't hang up, Ronnie." Nicita answered another phone, "Hi, it's me, I'm Ronald Lee's agent. You want to ask him to talk about the new script? He
But the hot new star... Yes, I will make arrangements until he comes back from Cannes."
"Ronnie, your agent and producer, who has a good sense of smell, have already started to contact me. I will give them a unified answer and wait for you to come back from Cannes to discuss it."
"Hello?", the phone rang again. Niceta seemed to have turned on the hotline. Every time she put the phone back, it rang again after a while.
"Ronald, I have to hang up first. You have a good rest. It is estimated that starting tomorrow, many people will come to you, or the media will want to interview you. I will send Richard to help you handle the matter. Paula also
Go, she's more experienced in handling public relations, you're on fire, man."
Ronald put down the phone excitedly, walked around the room twice, and then shook his fist violently, "Yeah!", was he about to get angry?
"But why?" Ronald still didn't understand. He didn't perform particularly well. He picked up the phone again and called Donna in New York.
"Donna? My new movie 'Break Dance' is released, have you gone to see it?"
"I bought a ticket for the first show tomorrow." Donna plans to watch it on Saturday. She will also study calculus in advance on Friday.
"Okay, do me a favor. When you go to see it, talk to other people about why they like to see it. The audience here in Los Angeles seems to be very enthusiastic. I'm a little unsure."
"Okay, but it may not be popular here in New York. I'll call you after I finish reading." Donna hung up the phone.
"Yes, the East Coast may not necessarily also like this kind of dance. They have their own style of street dance and their own style of rap music." Ronald's mood calmed down a little, "But even if the West Coast is popular, the box office far exceeds expectations.
Alright."
Ronald, who was at home, couldn't help but walk around the house. He felt a breath held in his chest. He was always sure of his directorial results, but this time he didn't expect "break dancing" at all.
"The reaction will be so strong.
Why?
Ronald picked up the phone again and called his former boss, Roger Coleman.
"Roger, you are going to become famous. The audience likes your performance very much."
"Hahaha, is that right? You're a good guy, you gave me a lot of lines, and I had a great time acting." Roger Corman hasn't gone to see his own show yet.
"I have a question. The audience seemed to be going crazy today. It is estimated that the box office will exceed expectations. I can't figure out what happened."
"Hahaha, do you feel that the movie you made became popular for no reason, and you don't know where to make it right?" Coleman has decades of filmmaking experience and is very experienced in this.
"Yes, yes, I'm a little dizzy. A voice inside me seems to be saying, I'm not that powerful, but another voice says, maybe you are that powerful!"
"Yes, you can still keep a clear mind now, which is much better than when I was young." Roger Corman said a story from the past.
"One year I saw the news in the newspaper about a group of motorcycle gangs who called themselves the Hells Angels, so I asked Peter Bogdanovich, who was still a film critic at the time, to change a script, and then Starring Henry Fonda.
I think the film was okay, but it was just average. Who knows what happened with this movie, and it suddenly sold tens of millions of dollars. All the movies I’ve made in the past put together can’t even compare.
Sometimes, God will be on your side. As long as you stay in this industry long enough, you will encounter once or twice that your movie will just hit the trend of the times and it will become inexplicably popular."
"So that's it!" Ronald put down the phone and had a realization. He felt that he should have stepped into the trend of the dance form of break dancing.
Breakdancing has developed for more than ten years since it was invented by black people. After Latinos took over and continued to develop in the 1980s, the skills have continued to improve. Now the skills and art of breakdancing have reached a very high level. Dancing There are more and more people, and it is slowly becoming popular and gradually entering the mainstream media's field of vision.
Last year, there was a movie called "Flash Dance", which contained a minute of break dancing, which made more people pay attention to this kind of dance, and more and more teenagers are dancing this kind of dance in the streets. Break dancing seems to have arrived. On the verge of an explosion, it just needs a finishing touch.
From this point of view, I took a huge advantage by shooting quickly and getting ahead of Orion's movie "Hot Street Boys" with the same theme.
The next morning, Ronald got up early, picked up the newspapers from the past few weeks, and began to study the box office situation.
March is the peak season, and a large number of blockbuster movies were released at that time. Today, nearly ten weeks have gradually passed.
Like Robert Zemeckis’s “Emerald,” Ronald almost directed “Body,” the comedy “Police Academy,” and finally a movie in which Diane almost co-starred with Tom Hanks. "Mermaid", these four movies have all received a box office of 40 to 50 million, but they are gradually showing signs of weakness, and the box office is declining week by week.
Just as it hit a gentle bottom, "Break Dance" came out of nowhere and should explode this weekend.
On Saturday afternoon, Donna first called from the phone booth outside the cinema to report, "I went to see Ronnie. There were so many people. The audience went crazy. After watching, many blacks and Latinos jumped in front of the screen. The stage danced by itself. There were many white people down below who were learning..."
"Ah? Do you think it looks good? Where is it good?" Ronald asked loudly, and he became excited again. It seemed that the East Coast was also exploding.
"I don't know. Anyway, those dances were so exciting. By the way, MJ's moonwalk was really taught by Mada..."
"Is that so?" Ronald began to hold his breath happily again.
It seems that the blacks and Latinos on the East Coast didn't mind at all that the dance in this movie was West Coast style. They were overjoyed to see their dances appear on the big screen. The small space between the East and West coasts The style difference should be nothing.
Now I am really going to make a fortune.
"Minahan, congratulations, you are going to get rich." Ronald called Minahan immediately.
"We are going to get rich, you bastard, we are going to get rich! You are a genius, you are a genius, genius! Quack..."
Minahan was also incoherent. For so long, the two Israeli brothers had always been looked down upon by other major studios in the American film industry, and now they finally succeeded.
He put down the phone and looked at his cousin Yoram, who was also filled with tears. The two hugged each other tightly and cried.
"Yoram, Yoram, it turns out that we can still make money making movies in America!"
"Yes, we will sell it to Europe, East Asia, and the whole world!"
"Stop, stop..."
Donna walked out of the phone booth in New York, preparing to hail a taxi and go home with her best friend Diane. However, the taxi seemed unable to see them and showed no intention of slowing down.
"You should come like this." Diane took out a ten-dollar bill and waved to the driver.
"Gah..." the taxi stopped.
The two were chatting in the taxi, talking about Ronald's new movie.
"This time Ronnie is going to be famous!" Donna said in Diane's ear.
"The dance is so beautiful. In fact, it's not difficult to perform in this movie." Diane looked reserved, but the regret in her heart was also clearly shown on her face.
"Then let Ronnie take you to shoot." Donna kissed Diane's armpit.
"I do not want it."
Two girls were laughing and joking in the car.
The car turned around the end of the street, and there was a long queue outside the theater. Everyone was patiently waiting for tickets to "Break Dance."
The large billboard put up by MGM was carried out from the corner by the staff and placed in the most conspicuous position in the hall.
Everyone was very happy, except for a thin Latino young man who squatted on the ground in regret and kept patting the ground.
"I'm so stupid! I'm so stupid! I believed your ghost!"
It was he who turned down Ronald to play his own "Crazy Legs" in Orion Pictures' "Hot Street."
This was originally mine!
"Hotboy" hadn't even come out yet, and break dancing had stolen everyone's limelight. All the New York kids were practicing the authentic West Coast dance steps of the Boogaloo in "Break Dance," and no one came back to practice "Flash Dance."
", New York East Coast style space pace.
Originally a mature dance, through mass media such as movies, it was magnified and played on the big screen. It seems that in the future, the dance steps of the East Coast will be completely overshadowed by the West Coast.
"Orion sucks, it sucks!"
Ronald hid at home and was so excited that he stayed up most of the night.
On the third day, Sunday, the day when the first weekend schedule ended, Ronald simply waited at Cannon Pictures, staring at the fax machine with Minahan to read the numbers reported by MGM.
After midnight, after early morning, until it was already broad daylight.
"Squeak..." The fax finally began to protrude from a piece of paper.
"Pah!" Minahan tore off the fax paper. On it were MGM's preliminary statistics.
The first weekend box office of "Break Dance" reached 7.86 million. It was released in 1,000 theaters, beating "Sixteen Candles" in 1,240 theaters. The box office of a single theater exceeded 7,300.