Exploiting Hollywood 1980

   Chapter 270 Family Visit

  The progress of the crew is very fast. Almost all the scenes in the school, shopping mall, and Stacey's house have been filmed. The rest of the scattered scenes were carried out in Universal's studio.

  For example, Spiccoli's house, there is only a dialogue in the script where he was sleeping in bed and was woken up by his brother. In such a scene, there is no need to find a real location, and it is cheaper and more efficient to set up a scene in the studio.

  The studio is a large building without any pillars under the ceiling, just like a factory building. On a corner close to one side, there is a simple wooden house that has been refurbished as a bedroom set. This is the bedroom that Universal's woodworkers remodeled from sets from other films.

   A humble wooden bed covered with posters of Playboy magazine.

   "Are we going to pay for these?" Ronald asked, pointing to the largest poster. It was a poster for the tragically deceased model and actress, Dorothy Stratten.

"Yes, theoretically you have to pay for this portrait," replied producer Lin Sen. "But Playboy founder Hugh Hefner would love to see his centerfold in the movie, expanding the influence of his magazine. So we'll make a token price deal with him. "

  Ronald stared at Stratten's youthful body, and she smiled sweetly at himself on the poster.

   "Just remember this model who has a relationship with me." Ronald continued to tour the set with producer Linson.

   "I heard that your family will come to the studio to visit today?"

   "Yes, my aunt and cousin, they've never seen a movie, I made it today, the schedule is not so tight."

   "I heard that when Sean was filming, he didn't like having outsiders present?"

   "It's okay, I'll hide them where he can't see them."

   After watching the scene, Ronald expressed his satisfaction. The art director, Dan, came to prepare several interior scenes a week in advance.

   Spiccoli's bedroom is small, which fits his family background, which is not affluent. There are a lot of surfing-related equipment and magazines in the room, which is also in line with his interests.

   “It’s time to start lighting,” Ronald told DP Matthew.

  The lighting in the studio generally uses the traditional Hollywood method. When the camera shoots from an angle, the lighting must be set once.

   Taking advantage of the long lighting time, Ronald went out to wait for his family to arrive.

   This is the first time for Aunt Karen and Donna to come to Los Angeles, and I didn't have time to pick them up at the airport and take them to the tourist attractions in Los Angeles.

   Fortunately, Aunt Karen and Donna understood him very well and knew that this was the first directing job that was very important to Ronald. They found someone to play with him for a day, and only came to the studio today to watch Ronald work.

   "Hi, Auntie, Donna." Ronald saw his family walking down the taxi from a distance.

After    hugged them warmly, Ronald showed them around the studio and the scenes to be shot.

   "Are you directing movies here?" Donna asked.

   "Yes, this is Universal's studio where the movie 'International Airport' was filmed. The bigger studio next door filmed 'King Kong'.

  Actors will perform in this fake house and will be captured on camera. The long rod with the hairy head is used for recording. What the actors say will be recorded, and then synthesized together in the later stage, which is what you see on the screen. "

   "The actors are performing, the photographers are shooting, and there are people who are responsible for the recording. So what is your director's job? Are you watching?" Donna is a primary school bully. She doesn't quite understand why there are people who perform their duties, and why do you need a director.

   "Director, which T-shirt is Spiccoli wearing? Is this a white long-sleeved one, or a green short-sleeved one?" The costume saw Ronald entering the studio and hurried up to ask him.

   "Wear the white long-sleeved one on the inside, and the green short-sleeved one on the outside. Surfers often wear it like this." Ronald pointed out Spiccoli's outfit in the dream to the costumer.

   "I don't do anything, I just make decisions." Ronald answered Donna's question.

   "It will take two hours for the lighting. I will take you around. There are other crews filming here. When we go, don't make any noise and affect other people's filming."

   Ronald took Aunt Karen and Donna out of the studio and walked to a larger studio next to them.

   "This is Dolly Parton's crew filming, she...she plays a southern bar owner."

  It was not easy to explain the play in front of Donna, so Ronald changed his words.

   "And I will always love you

I will love you forever

you

  My dear, you. "

Just entering the greenhouse, Dolly Parton's iconic country music came. This is her song "I Will Always Love You (IWillAlwaysLoveYou released in 1974. An episode in "The Good Chicken House".

  Dolly Parton, in an old-fashioned southern dress, was rehearsing with her singing on the radio, lip-synching as she performed.

  This movie is a musical, and Dolly Parton has to do a lot of dance moves, which will affect the singing’s breathing, so it was lip-synching when filming.

   After the song was over, Dolly found Ronald, "Oh, Ronald, you're welcome."

   "This is my aunt Karen, this is Donna, this famous lady needs no introduction from me."

   "Hi Dolly, oh, it's really nice to meet you in person."

   "Hello Karen, your Ronald makes me jealous."

"What's up with him?"

"He won me at the Oscars, and I have to force him to pay me back in the future." Dolly Parton came from a hard life and knew how to communicate with people like Aunt Karen. In two words, Karen and Karen were compared to each other. Donna coaxed a laugh.

   "I've advertised for you for free in my movie, Dolly."

   Ronald also joked, "Don't bother you, we're going back too."

   "Goodbye, dear. I'll go to your movie later."

   "Dolly Patton doesn't have the air of a superstar at all, she's very nice." Aunt sighed.

   "Yes, I've dealt with her a few times, and sometimes she'll drop by me while she's waiting for the lighting.

   The group returned to the studio of the "Fast Pace" crew.

"Just wait in this corner, so that the actors can't see you. The actors are not used to the presence of people who are not from the crew when they are performing, and it will hinder them. After the filming is over, I have a two-week vacation. You go around Los Angeles together."

  Ronald pointed to the outside of the room, a place out of view from Sean Penn's angle, and asked Aunt Karen and Donna to sit down with their own chairs.

  The first assistant director Al knew that he was a relative of Ronald, and told them the main points of watching the filming, and then gave them a package of snacks.

   "Leave us alone, you'll do your thing." Aunt Karen waved him to work.

  Ronald instructed a few words, then went to sit on the director's chair, waiting for the various groups to come over and ask various questions for him to make a decision.

   "Recording? Camera? Action!"

   Ronald gave the order.

   The door to the prop house was opened, and a little actor walked in and said to Spiccoli, "Get up, Dad said you have to get up, or you'll be late again today."

   Sean Penn lay on the prop bed, covered with a quilt. He seemed to be still dreaming, and was very unhappy to be woken up. He reached out and picked up something from the table and threw it towards the door.

   "Dad, Dad, Jeff threw something at me." The little actor avoided the thrown object, blocked the door, and called to find Dad.

   "Cut!"

   "This is a print, the main shot is here, and the shoulder shot is taken below." The camera moved behind the child actor.

   There were only a few shots at Spiccoli’s house, so Ronald couldn’t focus his shots, so he had to take one shot in a different direction.

   "Is there a stranger here today?" Sean Penn took two breaths and asked Ronald.

   "Yes, my family came to see me, I put them in a direction you can't see, so it won't affect you, Spiccoli."

   "But I smelled it, the smell of strangers." Sean Pan muttered.

   "Let's go first, Ronnie, and we'll be waiting for you in the hotel." Aunt Karen and Donna, like most regular moviegoers, quickly got bored. Two hours of lighting, two minutes of shooting.

   "I'll let the crew driver take you."

   "No, we have a friend in Los Angeles, and she takes us to see tourist attractions."

   Ronald sent his family away and continued shooting in the studio.

  After two days of shooting in the studio, the last shot of the whole film was completed. Ronald managed the filming very well and ended up shutting down two days earlier than planned. It took seven weeks and four days in total.

  The crew moved to Universal's banquet hall and held a shutdown packing party. The cast and crew also brought family or friends to party and celebrate the end of filming.

   Cameron Crowe with his girlfriend Nancy Wilson, who made a cameo appearance as a beauty driving a sports car.

   Sean Penn never let anyone call him Spiccoli anymore, he's dating Pamela Springsteen on set.

  Heckline's husband shows up with her ex-boyfriend, and they remain friendly friends.

   Phoebe Cates' boyfriend also came from New York, he is a model agent.

  Jennifer Jason Lee, like her character Stacey, wants to take the initiative to ask the actor Eric Stoltz. But Stoltz's real girlfriend, Ally Sheedy, also came to the party and took him seriously.

   She turned to look at the director Ronald, only to see him with his family, ready to leave.

   "Does Ronald have a girlfriend?" Jennifer asked Phoebe Cates, who had become a good friend and best friend.

   "I don't know, why, are you interested in him?" Phoebe asked with a smile.

   "I just asked, and after the filming, I found out that he is not much older than us."

   "Yeah, I heard from my boyfriend that he is a genius. The script was picked by Jane Fonda, sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars, and won the Oscar for Best Original Song."

   "Hey, who is that new girl? Is that Ronald's girlfriend?" Jennifer suddenly saw a brown-haired girl and walked in to join Ronald and his family.

   "It seems to be a movie actor too, maybe the heroine of his next movie?"

   "Hi, Diane. I didn't expect you to be with Karen and Donna these two days, thank you." Ronald said to Diane Lane who entered the party.

   It turns out that the tour guide that Aunt Karen was talking about was Diane, who had just finished filming the racing movie in Los Angeles.

   "It doesn't matter, Karen is just like my mother. It happened that my movie was finished, and the new movie has not yet entered the group, so I will play with them."

   "Oh, Bert got you a new movie again?"

   "It's a TV movie about a beauty pageant winner."

   Finally got rid of the role of a child, Ronald looked at Diane, his height seemed to have grown a little bit, and his face was a little baby fat. Among white American girls, Diane Lane is one of the later ones to grow.

   "By the way, why hasn't your last movie 'Washed the Leads' released, it's been a long time since it's been filmed?"

   "It's now called 'Ladies and Gentlemen, The Magical Stain Band'. The director is the record company owner Lou Adler, and he doesn't seem to have enough material, and now the ending can't be cut."

   "Pfft..." Ronald burst out laughing at the champagne. Now that record companies are making a lot of money, they all want to imitate RKO's boss Sterwood and cross the border to make money from movies.

   But this Adler didn't trust professionals and had to go off the scene himself, and as a result, the movie couldn't even be finished.

   "What then?"

   "Who knows, maybe there will be reshoots? Add an ending clip at the end."

   "Ronald, are you going to edit too?" Donna interjected and asked Ronald about the schedule.

"No, it takes two weeks for the dailies in the early stage to synchronize the recording and film, which is the job of the editing assistant, and then I will take over. Anyway, I will take a vacation, and I will not take over the official work until the Christmas and New Year holidays are over. Editing work."

   "Well then, you will go back to New York to spend Christmas with us?"

   "Yes, I will go back to New York to rest for a while. I need some other things to dilute my memory of filming, and then I can look at what I have shot objectively and not be reluctant to cut scissors."

  …

  All the films that were shot have been developed, and Universal's laboratory has developed a special set of films on the negatives. Each frame has a number on it, which is called a working positive.

  This set of films is used for editing. All editing will be recorded with the film number, and finally sent back to the laboratory to cut the negative according to the number.

  Universal's small screening room, Jennifer Jason Leigh's father Vic Morrow, and a high-level person in a suit and tie, saw all the special clips.

   He was a Jewish executive at Universal Pictures, Ned Tanen. He privately lowered the working footage, and after watching it with Vic Morrow, he said to him:

   "Vic, to be honest, Ronald didn't mess around. Jennifer wasn't forced to shoot any bad **** shots. There are many more messy shooting methods in the industry. He is very disciplined."

   "I don't want my daughter Jennifer on screen... can you step in?"

   "This is not legal..."

   "But Jennifer is a Jewish girl..."

  Tanin was silent. Jews have a huge network in the film industry. It is true that Jewish girls want to enter the industry, no better than white girls of other races. They don’t need to make sacrifices like this. If this trend is adopted, what advantages do Jewish girls have?

   "It's a teen movie, and Jennifer herself agreed, Vic."

   "Then keep the shot of the black-haired girl."

   "I can't do that, Vic, Phoebe Cates' father is his own."

   "But her mother is half-Chinese..."

"Okay, I'll bring it up at the release meeting, but I can't promise anything. Did you sign up at the Rehab Center, Vic. It's hard to get you back from TV to movies and Spielberg. Leading project, don’t waste this opportunity.”

  Tanin considered himself the protector of Jews in the film industry, and he also began to remind Morrow during his speech.

   "I know," Vic Morrow waved. "You help me with this, Ned, count me as I owe you."

   (end of this chapter)