The soundtrack for "The Kid Part 2" was still handed over to Bill Conti, who worked on the first film. He rejected Stallone's invitation and chose Ronald and Weintraub instead.
"Here, when Daniel and Kumiko kiss for the first time, I wanted a pan flute, that ethereal Ryukyuan style."
Just like the first film, Ronald took out the edited work copy and discussed with Conti in detail the soundtrack he needed. This method is more suitable for rendering the atmosphere of the film than the common method of creating an episode soundtrack first.
.
Conti sat with Ronald for a day to fully understand his intentions, and the two made coffee and chatted for a while.
It's not that Bill Conti doesn't want to go to Stallone's "Rocky 4", it's just that the situation with Stallone has gotten extremely bad.
That girlfriend, Brigitte Nielsen, was in the editing room with Stallone throughout the whole process, hoping to ensure her screen time and close-ups. Stallone just let her, completely ignoring industry practices and contract issues, and put director John
·Avelson was so angry that he almost fell out with him.
"Normally, Stallone wouldn't be so obsessed with a female model turned actor, right?" Ronald found it incredible after hearing this. The woman's daily expenses were also very high, and Stallone paid for them all. Stallone was still happy and didn't take it seriously.
.
"You don't understand us Italians, Ronald." Bill Conti asked him, "What do you think of Italians?"
"Huh? They are good at food and picking up girls, and many of the gangsters are of Italian descent." Ronald replied. After the two-part "Godfather" became a hit, when Americans saw Italians, they thought they were part of the family.
people.
"Perhaps the Italians in Italy are indeed what you said." Conti replied, "But the Italians in America have often immigrated for two or three generations. In the Italian community in New York, the winter weather is very cold. Without them in Southern Europe
The geographical environment was unrestrained at that time.
In addition, we believe in Catholicism and are controlled by our mothers. In fact, many Italians are not very good at picking up girls. Our parents can also cook traditional delicacies, but in our generation, many people are like you and can only use heated food.
Frozen food and ordering takeout.
In addition, most Italians are engaged in low-level jobs, such as opening grocery stores and laundries, and there are very few who are actually gangsters."
"Oh", Ronald suddenly realized.
Stallone was also born in Hell's Kitchen, Manhattan, New York. In fact, he is not the romantic Italian in the movie. After becoming famous, he is not the kind of man who fascinates women. There is such a Nordic blonde model who actively throws himself into his arms.
For Stallone, he also fell into a gentle land.
Soon, the production of the second part of The Dragon King was initially completed. After Weintraub saw the sample film, he approved it very much. He organized employees from Columbia and his own company to watch a test screening while preparing to send it to MPAA for rating.
Ronald was free for a few days and was caught again by a call from his agent Richard.
"Ronald, the MPAA rating went very smoothly, but the producers feel that after the newly introduced pg13 rating, the pg rating has more room for scale. They hope you can add some ambiguous scenes between the male and female protagonists."
"Richard, you must be out of your mind, right? Boy Longwei is talking about teenagers, how do you shoot a particularly ambiguous scene?" Ronald was discussing acting skills with Helen Slater when he suddenly heard this request.
Almost squirted out.
"It's my fault, I didn't make it clear. I'm not talking about Dragon King 2, I'm talking about Top Gun."
"Huh? How do you reshoot this? It's been almost six months since Top Gun was packed, and Tom Cruise is now filming my teacher Martin Scorsese's 'The Color of Money'."
"Come on, producers Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer are looking for you all over the world, and they're insistent."
"Okay, I'll go to your office."
"Dear, I'm sorry, my producer asked me to reshoot the scene. Look, they don't respect me at all. How can I have to reshoot the scene after half a year of filming."
Ronald was really hoping that someone would find him. Helen was preparing for the next episode of "The Evil Husband". She heard that Ronald was free now and was attending Messner's acting training class, so she came to sign up to join the class.
It just so happens that Ronald is no longer in the same class as Michelle Pfeiffer due to scandals, so it would be nice to have a familiar new partner.
However, Helen's acting skills are really a headache. She always considers Messner's acting training from the perspective of Shakespeare's plays. The two art categories of drama and film actually have very different requirements for acting skills.
Ronald "rehearsed" his acting skills with her for two days at their vacation villa on the beach in Malibu. He was so broken that he no longer wanted to act with Helen. Richard's call just allowed him to leave without any burden.
"You go work on the movie first, that's very important. I heard that everyone in Hollywood is waiting for your Top Gun to be released. I'll just go back and rehearse with my classmates in the training class."
Helen came up and kissed Ronald. She actually has a gentle personality, outstanding appearance, and a very good figure. She is a first-class candidate as a partner. As long as she doesn't discuss acting skills with you.
"I've rented this villa for a weekend. You can come and have fun with your best friend Helen Hunt." Ronald put on his clothes and went to the bathroom to tidy up before leaving.
"Okay, she is taking a training class with me, so I will practice acting with her." Helen lay down, covered herself with a blanket, picked up the remote control, turned down the volume, and started calling her best friend Helen Hunt.
.
"Huh?" Ronald, who had combed his hair, came out and saw Orson Welles being interviewed on TV.
This film master, whom I haven't seen for a long time, now has a gray beard and has lost a lot of weight. His speech is a bit weak.
Ronald felt very sorry for him. Because of his reputation as a difficult person, no one in Hollywood was willing to invest in his movies. In his later years, he was in poor health and had no one to accompany him. At the age of twenty-four, he made "Citizen Kaye"
Well, this genius should really leave more classic masterpieces.
"I'm leaving first." Ronald kissed Helen goodbye.
"Well", Helen recovered from the long kiss, and then continued to call her best friend, "Ah, it's Ronald. What's wrong? I don't care about so much now, as long as I am happy in my heart. I can still play the leading role in a movie.
, thanks to him. You know both of my movies failed at the box office..."
…
"So why the sudden extra drama?"
Ronald arrived at CAA's office and saw Don and Jerry, two bearded men waiting for him.
"Ronald, we did a few more test screenings, in Chicago and Detroit in the middle, and in Houston and Atlanta in the south, and the response from the audience there was just as good as in New York and Los Angeles. But they had a little bit of the same feedback."
Bruckheimer took out an audience feedback scale and handed it to Ronald.
"They generally believe that the love and romance scenes between the male protagonist Lone Ranger and the female protagonist Charlie, the instructor, are not enough. They hope to add some ambiguous, kissing, and slightly erotic sex scenes."
"I don't quite understand? Why don't the audiences in New York and Los Angeles have this kind of feedback?"
Ronald read excerpts of audience comments, and indeed many people said that the Lone Ranger and Charlie did not have an earth-shattering scene, that it was not satisfying and not powerful enough."
"Remember Mom and Dad from Oklahoma?" Don Simpson said loudly next to him.
"Of course", Ronald remembered this saying that the two producers liked very much. They represented the aesthetics of parents in the largest small town in America. If you want to get the biggest box office, the aesthetic taste of the movie is best based on
They are the ones to rely on.
"Ronald, the 'truth' I know is that if you treat the American audience as idiots, you can make a lot of money."
"Ah?" Ronald was used to hearing Don Simpson's shocking words, so he didn't have much reaction, "How do you say this?"
Don Simpson explained to him slowly.
Compared with the east and west coasts where the people are more educated and have a liberal and open atmosphere, the vast majority of America's population actually lives in the Midwest (the Great Lakes of Illinois where Chicago is located, and Indiana, Kentucky, where values are conservative and education is relatively low).
The Missouri area, to the west relative to the East Coast), and the south (Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana, Texas).
Compared with the openness of the two coasts, people in these two areas have strong religious sentiments, like conservative values, and also prefer straightforward love between men and women.
Although Ronald filmed the Lone Ranger and Charlie, they kissed passionately on a motorcycle, and Charlie also imitated the lines of the stupid goose wife and asked the Lone Ranger to take her home. Teenagers in New York and Los Angeles have been immersed in movies and novels for a long time
, expressing this slightly ambiguously, they already understand the mutual attraction between the male and female protagonists.
However, for those teenagers in the Midwest and the Deep South, if two people don't have a passionate kiss and sex scene, they don't love each other.
"It's a very profound insight, but why didn't you tell me earlier? Now Tom is going to film 'The Color of Money'. My teacher Scorsese is famous for being strict. It's a bit difficult for you to ask him to cross over."
The two producers also smiled awkwardly.
In the past six months, America's movie rating standards have undergone relatively big changes.
Last year, in order to make an adventure movie like "Indiana Jones" have some scenes that cannot be rated with a PG rating, the box office was very good.
Spielberg, along with Lucas, pushed the MPAA to introduce a PG13 rating, between the PG and R ratings.
This level is defined as a strong reminder to parents to give special guidance for the attendance of children under 13 years of age, as some material may not be appropriate for children.
But as soon as pg-13 was born, it was taken advantage of by the seven major studios and rated some originally R-rated movies as pg-13.
Even John Milius's "Red Dawn," a movie about teenagers fighting guerrillas with the Soviet Union and the Cuban army in America, was rated pg-13.
This year, more movies have been classified as "PG13", which is equivalent to moving the original R-level here, and the R-level accommodates more scenes that can only be watched by adults.
In the second half of the year, MPAA even revised the definition of pg13 to "Parents please note that some materials may not be suitable for those under 13 years old", removing the sentence of special guidance.
As the overall content became looser, the original PG became less strict, and the studio was able to stuff more ambiguous scenes into it.
The more direct erotic scenes that used to be inconvenient can now be divided into PGs in a grand manner.
"Hey, okay." Ronald understood the cause and effect, and of course he would not refuse if he could get a higher box office.
"I flew to Chicago specifically to plead with my teacher Scorsese. I hope to lend Tom Cruise out for reshoots."