บท 100: Chapter 100 Hire Someone to Put Out the Fire
The time of this conflict on the set of Legend of the Dark finally ended hastily with producer Gary Lucchesi stepping in to mediate. Wiseman was forced to apologize to Lin Ming Yang, and only then did the crew agree to resume work. However, there is no impermeable wall in the world, this incident was soon known by the Hollywood media, the conflict between Lin Mingyang and Wiseman finally came to light under the media exposure.
First, director Wiseman insulted the lead actor, followed by Lin Mingyang "beating" the director, in the tracking of the incident, the Hollywood media gave full play to their imagination, although there was no reporter on the scene at the time, but the newspaper described those colorful details as if the author of the article had witnessed the incident. The whole process was as if the writer of the article had witnessed the event with his own eyes.
"Before it was a falling out with an actor (the Hilary Duff incident), and now assaulting a director, Felix Lim has now become a notorious Hollywood villain, I really don't know what he's going to do next, murder a producer or put a bomb in a movie theater to wipe out all the viewers?" The Washington Post directed its opinion commentary at Lin Ming Yang, while archrival The New York Times sang its praises.
"Felix is an innocent victim from the beginning to the end, because he is young but talented, out of the cottage but with dazzling results, so he is always subject to the jealousy of many people, and many people want him to make mistakes, so scandals, malicious insults and even naked provocations come one after another, and the genius of Hollywood is smeared in this way, and a rising star who has not yet fully released his own light is fall like this?"
...
All sorts of reports filled the pages of the entertainment media, because of the impact of the incident, the crew can no longer function normally, the filming of the movie has also come to a standstill. The producer, Lakeshore Films, was already in a state of anxiety due to the media and public opinion, but Lin Mingyang, who was one of the parties involved, was still in the mood to drag Kate around the city of Budapest.
The agent, Eckles, swooped into the set and called to find out that Lin Mingyang was having coffee with Kate.
Budapest had developed a unique café culture in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with the famous New York Café being more than 100 years old, and many writers, poets, and journalists liked to write in the café. When Ecks arrived at the cafe where Lin Mingyang and Kate were, he found them sitting at open-air tables and chairs, and the location was right next to the pedestrian street where people came and went.
"You know that the reporters are looking for you all over the world right now, and you're actually looking for such a place to drink coffee, do you think that you're not famous enough right now, and that you have to let the reporters report a little bit more hard news to hype you up even more?" Ecks didn't have the good sense to pull a chair and sit down himself, and for the sake of caution, his voice was lowered as he spoke.
After accusing Lin Ming Yang, he started criticizing Kate again, "Why are you fooling around with him too?"
Kate smiled slightly apologetically towards her manager, although she had been forced to come out together by Lin Ming Yang, she was helping to excuse the other party at this time, "Felix said that the more dangerous a place is, the safer it is."
"That's not the only thing I'm referring to!" Ecks had known that Kate would help Lin Ming Yang, he shook his head, "He's in trouble with Wiseman, why are you getting involved?"
Facing her manager's questioning, Kate replied matter-of-factly, "Felix got into a conflict with Wiseman because of me!"
"Well, now Wiseman is announcing his withdrawal from the cast!" Ecks pulled out a copy and dropped it on the table, "Are you two satisfied with this outcome?"
"Wiseman quit?" Lin Ming Yang first froze, then laughed, "This is one of the best news I've heard lately!"
But Ecks couldn't see a bit of joy on his face, "I've heard of changing actors in the middle of a movie in Hollywood, but I haven't heard of changing directors in the middle of a movie, this time you're famous!"
"It's him who quit!" Lin Ming Yang said in a very "aggrieved" manner.
"The rest of the cast and crew followed you in the 'rebellion', it would be strange if Wiseman could still stay in the cast!" Echolls grunted in dismay, "Lakeshore Films spent a quarter of the movie's budget to cast you as the lead, and then you killed off the movie's director... I think Gary Lucchesi's jumping in the river right now to kill himself!"
"Well, let's just get another director!"
"That's easy for you to say, the movie is partially shot, who are we going to get to take over this mess now?" Ecks looked at Lin Ming Yang with wide eyes, "You tell me, who would be willing to do such a stupid thing?"
"Do you want me to try?" Lin Ming Yang tried to ask.
Ecks really wanted to spray this guy to death with a mouthful of hot coffee, looking at the knife-like eyes on his agent, Lin Ming Yang duly stopped the thought.
"What's worse is that Wiseman took away the rights to the script, how do you think this movie can still be made?" Ecks was in a bad mood to the extreme, originally he just wanted to convince Kate Beckinsale through Lin Ming Yang, he didn't expect him to intervene and end up making the result like this.
"The copyright of that script wasn't Wiseman's in the first place, he copied the idea of a novel and then applied the plot content of a computer game, as long as Lakeshore Films gets the copyright permission from the author of the novel and the game company, Wiseman is infringing on the copyright!" Producer Gary Lucchesi was also aware of the situation Lin Mingyang was talking about, so he wasn't worried on this issue.
"Then what do you think we should do now?" Ecks was completely clueless.
"You can suggest to Gary Lucchesi to increase the investment in the movie, it's the only way to avoid the losses that have already been incurred, so that you can hire a good director for the movie in." Lin Ming Yang thought for a moment, "As an apology, my fee can go down by 2 million dollars as an increase in the filming budget for the movie."
----
Wiseman's resignation further escalated the media coverage of the Legends of the Dark conflict, Lakeshore Films was under tremendous pressure, and it was at this time that Eckles approached Gary Lucchesi.
"I am grateful for Felix's decision to cut his own salary, but we still haven't found a more suitable director at this time." Gary Lucchesi helplessly told Eckles that the biggest dilemma now was that there was no suitable director who could take over Wiseman's work, "Does Felix have any good suggestions there?"
Gary Lucchesi actually had two levels of consideration in asking this, the first because he was really at his wits end with this problem, the second was more out of helplessness, he didn't want to find another director and then have Lin Ming Yang have a new conflict with that director.
Hearing this Ecks was also smiling bitterly in his heart, Lin Ming Yang did recommend a director, he had even guessed that Gary Lucchesi was now at his wits end, any straw that saved his life, he would firmly grasp.
"Felix recommended John Woo."
"That Oriental master of violent aesthetics?" Like many Americans, Gary Lucchesi had only begun to truly recognize John Woo from the film The Changing Face. But what really made Gary Lucchesi sigh with admiration was the profound directing skills that John Woo showed in the movie Spy Kids 2.
Although like many Hollywood blockbusters, the 2000 release of "Spy Kids 2", the plot has not been able to get rid of the fate of the doggerel, the rough script has become a target, but the strong stylized images and cool Cruise personal show, drowned out the critics of the verbal attack, ignited the enthusiasm of the fans, the box office climbed all the way up, and created a supreme glory in history! --Topping all spy action movies at the box office, with director John Woo getting all the credit.
John Woo's efforts have been recognized by Hollywood, and he became the first Chinese film director to have his name on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, with his signature handwriting in English and Chinese right in front of the Chinese Theatre, where Chinese tourists like to take pictures of John Woo's square.
In Gary Lucchesi's opinion, John Woo is indeed a good candidate, but he also has his own concerns, "Our company and the Chinese director has not had any previous dealings, the gothic style of Legend of the Dark brooding and John Woo's masculine aesthetics of violence also seems a bit out of place. And the part that Wiseman filmed well, we couldn't possibly reshoot it all over again because of a change in director."
"If you guys agree, Felix is willing to go talk to John Woo and he'll do his best to convince the other guy."
----
Despite having a lot of glitz and glamor on his head, John Woo hasn't been doing well in Hollywood for a while now, and the reason for that is because of the box office failure of '02's The Windtalkers. When the post-production of this movie was not yet completed, MGM had a test screening of the demo for insiders' reference and evaluation only.
Although John Woo has been in front of the media before to emphasize, "This film is not another "Saving Private Ryan", although it also has a very lurid movie scenes, but it is closer to a documentary, I want to convey a message through this film, that is, we should stop the war." But after the screening of the demo, some critics immediately criticized John Woo's film, saying that he is a B-grade film that is a compilation of classic war films such as "Field Platoon" and "Saving Private Ryan"; Wu's signature style of "violent aesthetics" is completely replaced by a boring and Wu's signature style of "violent aesthetics" is replaced by one boring and crude explosion scene after another, disappointing those who had high expectations for him.
John Woo made changes in response to these comments, but it didn't change the movie's box office failure. MGM lost a lot of money due to the high production costs of the movie, and the company was even on the verge of bankruptcy.
In this matter, John Woo was hit by a lot, in Lin Mingyang's memory, the later generation of John Woo seldom recall this experience, "Windtalkers" suffered a tragic "Waterloo", and even dragged down the MGM studios stock plummeted, so he is in need of a box-office masterpiece to prove that he has not been exhausted.
Last year, John Woo and Paramount Pictures collaborated to shoot the first sci-fi film after entering Hollywood, "Memory Fracture", once again returning to the action film route, John Woo in the suspenseful thriller plot balanced through the romantic love clues, a blend of sci-fi, suspense and other types of, and with the help of computer technology, to play a thrilling game of violent aesthetics, but the film after the audience reflected the tepid after the movie was released. The producers barely recovered their costs, and John Woo still hasn't been able to get out of the shadow of the failure of The Windtalkers.
When Lin Mingyang paid a visit, he was greeted in the living room by John Woo's wife, who had been the "woman behind the successful man" for more than thirty years. Although her husband had been working hard in Hollywood, Mrs. Wu herself didn't pay much attention to Hollywood news, so at first she didn't know Lin Mingyang's identity, but just treated him as an ordinary visitor.
Lin Mingyang had won her favor with his fluent Chinese, and when Wu came down from his upstairs study, he was surprised by his first reaction when he saw Lin Mingyang talking with his own wife.
Lin Mingyang had an appointment with John Woo before he came, and despite never having met, being in Hollywood, John Woo was no stranger to Lin Mingyang. Lin Mingyang is able to speak fluent Chinese, and he himself is a mixed-race Chinese, and there is no interracial communication distance between John Woo.
"No wonder I always felt that in the movie, your performance had a sense of déjà vu, so you come from a martial arts family." Wu figured out the doubts he had been having, and his mood became enlightened.
"The Eight Extremes Fist's kung fu, I actually only learned a little bit of it, usually I don't dare to take it out and show it off to people, it makes Mr. Wu laugh!"
Mr. Wu had always thought that a Hollywood movie star like Lin Ming Yang, who became famous at a young age, would always have some arrogance in him. But after a brief contact, he found that Lin Ming Yang was very different from his previous knowledge, much less as frivolous and arrogant as some of the Hollywood media had said, with no one in sight.
With the appreciation of a young man, John Woo and Lin Mingyang seriously chatting, the two topic involuntarily involves John Woo's violent aesthetics, in the discussion Lin Mingyang mentioned the film "Windtalkers".
"I think The Wind Whisperer is not a product of the aesthetics of violence in the pure sense, you are merely following a ready-made American consciousness movie script to complete the re-creation of the picture."
"Oh?" No one had yet made such an intuitive evaluation of the film in front of John Woo, and Lin Mingyang's comment successfully aroused Woo's interest in paying attention, "You don't think that the artillery-filled war scenes in the movie are the ultimate expression of a kind of violence?"
"If this argument holds true, wouldn't the Spielberg-directed Saving Private Ryan be the quintessential work of violent aesthetics?" Lin Mingyang shook his head, "I've seen your earlier works, and before that, you never made value judgments on wars of political forces, like in Streets of Blood, you didn't judge the Vietnam War as a whole, but only scandalously expressed the looting nature of the South Vietnamese soldiers and the barbaric torture of the Vietcong, and only skimmed over the behavior of the U.S. Army. Although the three Hong Kong men shouted 'I am Chinese' in the midst of the chaos, they were not actually representative of Chinese perceptions of the war."
"And in Windtalkers, you are finally forced and seemingly for the first time to embrace the perspective of making national interest judgments about the shape of the war, in which you finally stand in the square of the regular army, and transform your full-blooded passion from the jadedness of a single individual into the collective consciousness of a group of people, whereas your previous works had never shown the collective spirit of a team so forthrightly. I don't know if this is the inevitable result of your joining the American melodramatic movie-making, but in this movie, I didn't see the John Woo I was familiar with!"
สถานะพลังงานรายสัปดาห์
-- การจัดอันดับด้วยพลัง 
-- หินพลัง