Aunt Karen had no reaction until she saw Tom Cruise and McGillis chasing each other angrily on a motorcycle. After a heated exchange of words, the two suddenly kissed each other, and she suddenly burst into laughter.
.
Aunt Karen was very excited about the two people's feeling of being happy friends. Cruise once visited her home, and she liked the young man very much. She was not very interested in those air combat scenes and the competition between pilots.
But this romantic scene made her get involved.
"call……"
Ronald was relieved. "Top Gun" is a high-concept movie. If you like it, you will like it. If you don't like it, it will be difficult to like it through the progress of the story.
The young male spectators started shouting as early as the first air battle.
The middle-aged man praised the various dazzling tactics of the fighter jets. While watching, he discussed with the people next to him the sneak attack tactics of MiG aircraft that could not be recognized by radar when flying in a stack, and how to deal with Tomcat automatic wings and advanced air-to-air missiles.
MiG has the technological advantage.
When the young female audience members saw the volleyball scenes of the muscular pilots in the bathroom and on the beach, their eyes began to light up.
Only middle-aged female viewers began to truly appreciate this movie until this point.
"Watch every move in my silly lover's game
On this endless ocean, in the end lovers know no shame
Turn around and return to a secret place in your heart
Watch you turn around in slow motion and say...
Take my breath away..."
The love interlude of the Berlin band plays in the movie for the third time.
Because the passionate scenes between the two male and female protagonists were shot afterwards, there was no new music specially assigned to them. Ronald had to play "Take My Breath Away" several times in a row. As long as Charlie and the Lone Ranger were alone
Whenever we are together, this interlude will sound.
The young people around him did not find it repetitive or boring at all, and some were humming along with the song softly.
"call……"
Ronald let out another breath.
This time luck was on my side again.
In order to offset the impact of the Challenger crash, Ronald contacted the Berlin band through his agency. During their tour, he took the initiative to shoot the music video for this song for them.
More than a month before the movie was released, "Take My Breath Away" began to be played strongly on MTV, and the record company and Paramount jointly funded it to hit the charts.
Maybe it’s because of the high quality of the song itself, or maybe it’s because the music video shot by Ronald is very tempting, and soon “Take My Breath Away” climbed to the top of the American charts.
This is the first time a Berlin band has had a single hit the top of the charts.
Ronald remembered that when he was shooting the music video, the music video had to coincide with the release of "Top Gun", so the plot was similar to that of a movie, with some unimportant movie clips interspersed.
Lead singer Terri Nunn wore a blue overalls, like a blue-collar worker, and filmed her solo scene inside the wreckage of several airplanes on location at the Mojave Air and Space Port.
The Mojave Air and Space Port is a famous aircraft cemetery. There are many retired fighter jets, bombers, reconnaissance aircraft, etc. from the Navy and Air Force parked here, as well as many old aircraft retired from the Vietnam War.
The band's founders, John Crawford and Rob Brill, were not happy.
They only wanted to sing the songs they wrote, and were very repelled by this pop-rock song, which was neither written by Berlin nor composed by Berlin.
However, the Berlin band's popularity was limited. They did not have the same control over their works as Bruce Springsteen. Under pressure from the record company, they had no choice but to agree to release "Take My Breath Away" as the title song in the new album.
As part of the contract, they also had to cooperate in the performance of the music video. So when Ronald was filming the music video, he found that the two of them were not cooperating.
In order to shoot the MV as quickly as possible, we had to separate the small female lead singer Terri Nunn from their camera as much as possible. Anyway, most audiences who listen to pop music will not notice the difference between the band's style and original works.
Only six lines of lyrics were sung over and over again, and they were superficial and meaningless. Except for Terri Nunn singing happily, the dissatisfaction of the two creative members was growing day by day.
However, as the band's first chart-topping song, they had to perform this song at every concert during their tour.
"I actually don't care about that. This song is so popular, I don't care who composed it."
Ronald's thoughts were pulled back from Terry Nunn's private complaints about him.
The movie was greatly loved by the audience. In the end, the MiG aircraft was defeated, and the Lone Ranger and Iceman settled their differences. In the end, the Lone Ranger chose to return to Top Gun School as an instructor and reunited with Charlie.
All the stars stood up and applauded. The audience's constant cheers, clapping and stamping of feet made them all understand that Ronald's new film would be a big hit at the box office.
Tom Cruise, Val Kilmer, Kelly McGillis and others all took the stage to receive cheers from the audience and then began to answer questions from fans.
Some people also asked them if they really knew how to fly fighter jets. Except for Tom Cruise, who admitted that he had a pilot's license, the other actors who played pilots were all vague.
Ronald was delighted to see these people pretending to be engaged in high-altitude air combat in the ground cockpit facilities designed by Cameron, and they were much more similar than they are now.
After seeing off Spielberg, Lucas and other big names, the other young actors and guests went to a New York nightclub to hold a party to celebrate the success of the premiere.
Ronald dragged behind and got into a limousine with the two producers.
"Is Sid still insisting?" Ronald asked Simpson.
"Yes, I think we should agree with him. The reaction of the audience at today's premiere is a great sign of a big hit. The people are very enthusiastic now. Having such a movie that allows them to vent their patriotic emotions will bring great benefits to the box office.
A little positive addition.”
"A week in advance, huh?"
Ronald skillfully took out a bottle of whiskey from the freezer next to him and gave each of the two producers a glass.
"Ronald, let's do it. Memorial Day is a small release period. We will release it nationwide a week in advance. We can take advantage of this opportunity to turn this small release period into a large release period."
"I just felt a little adventurous."
In the marketing of a movie, the box office in the first week is particularly important, as it determines the size of the first audience. After that, it depends on the quality of word-of-mouth.
Paramount's distribution manager Sid Ganis proposed a risky plan. A week before Memorial Day, a weekend that was originally planned to be a small-scale release, expand the scale of the release and go all-out.
By opening the film in more than a thousand theaters, we can use word-of-mouth to inspire audiences to watch "Top Gun" for the second Memorial Day weekend, which is almost 10% more than in previous weekends.
The risk here is that if the audience's reputation is not as good as expected, the number of viewers in the second week will be lower than that of conventional operations.
The movie's reputation needs time to ferment. In the first week, the audience still chooses to watch the movie based on marketing operations. Keeping the biggest suspense on the weekends when the regular audience is the largest is the normal operation of all movies.
This is a small gamble, but now that the audience's response to the premiere has exceeded expectations, the risk of the gamble has been reduced to a minimum.
"Okay, let's take a gamble." Ronald drank the wine in one gulp.
"Sid," Bruckheimer picked up the phone in the car and dialed Paramount's marketing department, "the feedback from the premiere was very good, and Ronald agreed, so we'll go with your plan."
"Okay, just keep an eye on it!"
Sid on the other end of the phone was very happy and immediately went down to arrange it.
"In this way, our film reviews will be released next weekend." Don Simpson threw a schedule over.
"What do those sons of bitches say?" Ronald picked up the schedule sitting on the sofa, with comments from several famous film critics attached to it.
"Ebert gave it 2.5 out of four stars, Sisko gave it three stars, and best of all, audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film an average rating of A."
Bruckheimer had already seen it and gave a brief introduction to Ronald.
"Hmph, they won't give me four stars anyway." Ronald also knew that the popcorn movies he made were not well received by film critics.
But what he values most is not the film critics, but the scores of this new audience sampling survey company.
Cinema score is an audience evaluation survey company founded by founder Ed Mintz. They were dissatisfied with film critics giving random scores to movies and disrupting their own movie viewing choices, so they came up with the concept of a pure audience evaluation system.
.
They will not tell the producers in advance, but will randomly select locations and conduct random audience evaluation surveys on the first day of release.
This time, Ed Mintz personally brought people to New York to prepare the score for the premiere. He wanted to break into Paramount to consult with them.
When the painting starts next week, they will secretly appear in any state or small town in America, and then conduct a more rigorous random sampling. The ratings given at that time will be more convincing.
Ronald checked a box on his notebook, indicating that the reviews were also positive. He then looked at the reviews given by two Chicago film critics. They were from the Midwest, and the two producers in particular.
A weather vane for viewers of the Deep South.
The Sun's Roger Ebert said "A movie like Top Gun is hard to review because the good parts are so good and the bad parts so unforgiving. Melee is definitely the best thing to do since Clint Eastwood was in "Fox"
The most exciting aerial scene ever. But beware of scenes with people talking to each other.”
Gene Sisko of the Chicago Tribune praised the action scenes but criticized the romance, writing "It's more of a teen sex fantasy than a worthy real romance, if you're looking for any depth."
For the value, you will be disappointed…”
"What benefit did Paramount give them? The ratings are not high, and even the words they say are still a little scolding and a big help."
"Hehehe, a voucher for a trip to Hawaii, and a sponsorship for the Chicago Film Critics Association annual conference."
"Here we are, gentlemen!"
The driver parked the car at the entrance of the nightclub. Ronald came down and saw that it was a nightclub with a more luxurious decoration than Club 54.
"Tom, Cher", a group of lovers inside were holding hands affectionately. Ronald stepped forward and hugged them respectively.
Ronald looked around and saw that McGillis was chatting with Jodie Foster and Jennifer Beals, and they were holding hands and whispering like sisters.
Ronald felt uncomfortable going over and disturbing her, so he looked around for Helen. After asking, he found out that Helen had been picked up by her father Gerald's special car.
Ronald smiled, simply sat down and looked for a new target.
"Ronald, your movie is very good, but what I don't like is that it has a bit of American chauvinism. He makes the audience feel that the war can be won."
Ronald looked back and saw that it was Oliver Stone who had just finished filming his first and second movies, "Salvador" and "Platoon". His unique gentle voice was in Ronald's ears.
echo.
"Why, do you think we can't win the cold war with the Soviet Alliance?" Ronald was a little surprised by Stone's thoughts.
"No, I mean, if we fight World War III, there are no winners. I fought in the Vietnam War myself, and there were no winners, no winners, man..."
"To a certain extent, I agree with your thinking."
Ronald had a drink with him. This poor drafted Yale student, like his dead uncle, was in the Army. He took a beating from the North Vietnamese in Vietnam.
But the "Top Gun" navy, which flies planes and bombs people's heads indiscriminately, will not have this feeling of horror of war.
"You won't say anything bad about me in the newspaper, will you?" Ronald poured him another glass.
"No, but we can talk to each other and make some hype?"