Hollywood Domination Chapter 213: Thousands of sparks

"You're late." Karen said, she looked inquiringly at this well-dressed and personable lawyer. She had never heard of Michael Clayton, who had been working for 17 years and hadn't gotten into a partner yet. , not even an ordinary junior partner - but in front of this big case of hundreds of millions, the law firm sent him to save the scene, he must not be a simple person.

This case is extremely important to Karen. Of course, for u/notrh, similar lawsuits are always coming one after another, but she is about to get a key promotion. At this time, things must not get out of control. It’s not a big deal for the company, but losing a lawsuit in which they have an advantage, and losing a lawsuit because of Karen’s mistake in choosing a law firm, can’t bring down the company, but at least it will bring down Karen, so this matter must not go wrong, Unstable factors - that **** madman must be ruled out, she has to judge who is her opponent and who is her partner.

Michael Clayton also looked at her, and his feelings for her were clearly written in his eyes: he hates Karen, he feels that he has seen through her, and he thinks she is those high-level executives who sold their conscience , the dirty face is hidden under the professional mask. Michael is familiar with such a character, he has spent a lot of time in his company, and he hates her as much as he hates himself. In fact, Michael and Karen understand each other to some extent, They were all pushed to the point of suffocation by their professions, and they were only a little bit short of being overwhelmed.

But neither Karen nor Michael have sympathy for each other. In fact, Michael's fragility can only make him more resentful to Karen. I hate working with such a person. What the company needs is absolutely professional legal services and does not require human struggle. No one knows better than Karen whether this drug will cause adverse reactions, but so what? She doesn't need a lawyer with a good conscience, that will make everything more variable.

She thought Michael was going to be that variable, and she hated it.

She also knew that Michael believed she would be a ruthless client, he guessed what she was going to do, and he hated her too.

They were silent for a few seconds, and no one spoke, but the atmosphere was not so dull and boring. On the contrary, the air on the set was like a desert oil field before a storm, dry and full of static electricity. A single friction seemed to spark a fire Start a prairie fire. Jenny and Daniel kept looking at each other, feeling that something in her body was being pushed upwards in a straight line, as if she had been injected with adrenaline, her heartbeat began to soar, but her mentality was unexpectedly calm, as if she had been injected Psychedelic drugs, when 'Karen' was speaking, there was a detached Jenny looking at her and Michael calmly above Karen - it was like splitting two personalities at the same time, one was feeling Karen's despair is venting her own despair, while the other is thinking about fragments and jumping thoughts, just like a lucid dream, which feels weird but addictive.

"You know what he did," Karen said, placing a stack of papers in front of Michael. "It was a parking lot where people pick up their cars, and he was standing there."

She paused and pursed her lips to choose the right words. This is Karen's habit. She is always a little uncertain about what she is about to say, but she is unwilling to expose her weakness in front of Michael. .

"He stood there naked*." She chose neutral words, not controversial, more literal, this is the instinct written in Karen's blood, Karen's lines have always been so mediocre , her point lies in her performance, the consideration under these calm tone and words. "Shouting words that no one can understand, reciting psalms-someone must take responsibility for this matter."

A sneer flashed across Michael's face, he was not afraid to expose Karen to know: his fear and scruples towards her, the ultimate goal is to know well, Karen needs someone to be responsible for the current loss of control, she herself is responsible for this The characters have no interest.

"Listen," he said, with a weary but irresistible force, "he's just been in a bad state lately, he's divorced, his daughter left him, and all his Just this case, he didn't take his pills one day, that created the situation, but he's still the lawyer who knows the case best. You don't hire him for his depression, you hire him for his intelligence, concentration , his devotion to the case over the past six years—"

Uncomfortable, Karen realizes she's having trouble getting her way: Pressing the firm for another lawyer, Michael takes over. So she deliberately broke the rhythm of Michael's persuasion, "Sorry, but we have been paying for his time every minute of these six years."

She decides to end the conversation, it's never over, but she's done with Michael Clayton, the man bores her, Karen bores a lot of people, but Michael—Michael just hit it her nerves.

"Listen, I know you want an explanation—" Michael tried again, but the knowing expression already showed that he knew Karen's weakness, that he knew Karen was going to end the conversation.

"In the morning, I'll call Marty Bach." Karen let herself ignore Michael's thoughts, and quickly packed her briefcase, "But of course you know this, thank you Your time, Michael."

She stood up, her eyes briefly crossed with Michael again, time seemed to be frozen here, and an unpleasant bleak aftermath spread from the point of sight contact, both Karen and Michael were a little caught off guard, at this moment , They seem to have penetrated into each other's spiritual world, and saw their embarrassment - abjection, depression, confusion, numbness, and the future is a gloomy fog for them. The unknown embarrassing side——

During this short communication, what was brewing was not the emotion of sympathy, but the anger and wariness that were seen through. Karen came back to her senses, nodded briefly and stiffly, and strode away from the cafe. And Michael lowered his head and looked at the tableware used in the cafe, and seemed to have a strong interest in them.

"cut! good!" With the director's yell, the whole set became active, and Jenny returned from Karen's world to the reality, and felt a sense of "real and illusory" for a moment, but, she had to Thanks to the years of using cheats, she quickly came out of this hallucination, smiled and came to Tony's side, watching the playback on the monitor.

"This shot will be a good material." Tony's cheeks were blushing with excitement, and he clapped his palms vigorously, "This time the performance of several shots is very good, I think we will finish this scene Already."

And Daniel also came to the side of the monitor. Although he still had a feeling of Michael, he didn't really have a split personality. He returned to his role as an actor and asked with concern, "The silence just now is on camera. How does it look inside, do you need to cut it off?"

"No need." Tony shook his head, his tone became more excited, "That feeling is very good, it's amazing—that kind of feeling that words can't express, I think the pause of that second fully echoes this scene The silence at the beginning fully expresses the script."

As a director and screenwriter, his words are of course very convincing, and the atmosphere on the set is also cheerful and exciting. Jenny re-watched her performance twice and felt very satisfied. She said with a smile, "It seems that we You can go to lunch on time."

"Yes, yes." Tony said absent-mindedly, seeming to be completely immersed in his own thoughts, he lowered his head and said to himself, "Maybe we can retake a few shots..."

After finishing this scene, the morning schedule is complete, and Jenny is also a little hungrier than usual, as if she just ran a hundred meters, she didn't say hello to Daniel, but just nodded to him Nodding, I found Mary and went to the cafeteria to have lunch with her: Although she moved Daniel and made him agree to take "Michael Clayton", it does not mean that Daniel and her are sympathetic friends, especially Especially during the filming period, the two should reduce their communication as Jenny and Daniel, so as not to destroy Daniel's sense of being in the play.

Of course, for Daniel, the way he handles Jenny is more than welcome. When they meet occasionally, he always refers to Jenny as 'Karen'. She has a feeling that Daniel can be so fast. In addition to the fact that this role is relatively simple, it is also difficult for Daniel to find the point of anchoring himself in previous performances, but now he has found Jenny, who is fast and stable. It inspired him and quickly grasped Michael's intricate emotional world, so he would come over and interact with her from time to time as Karen and Michael, just to maintain a constant connection with her in his inner world. point of contact.

It is completely the first time for Jenny to act with an actor of this level. Among the actors who acted with her before, no one can be called a master, at most he can only be regarded as a master. As a personality actor, of course Christopher has become the emperor, but that's because last year was indeed not a big year. Compared with Daniel, Christopher is completely sloppy. Of course, Jenny feels the tension when she plays with Chris, but that tension is still essentially made up of sexual attraction, the unresolved **** between them. The tension is added to Roger and Sally, It makes the interaction between the two more attractive. But for Daniel and her, the tension between them has nothing to do with **** between men and women, but more like a collision—Jenny has no shame calling herself a genius, she has been in the industry for five years, and she is only relying on Karen This character and her resonance feel the joy of acting, the first glimpse of acting - so she would not call this collision a collision of genius and genius, but it is undeniable that under the chemical reaction between her and Daniel , the performance status of the two seems to have been improved, as if two star clusters were spinning alone, and suddenly collided, colliding with thousands of sparks, or as if the lines drawn by the two nibs are intertwined, It has reproduced a magnificent epic picture by itself. In the scene she and Daniel just played, the life stories of Michael and Karen seem to be constantly writing themselves, and their collision is so layered, so full and deep, that it is beyond the control of Tony, Jenny and Daniel. ——

As the setting itself is a supporting role, Karen, whose life story is not so perfect, is fine, but as Michael, some new points discovered by Daniel here are almost already done to Tony's Michael. Out of fullness and a certain rewriting, of course, this also inspired Tony's inspiration, and the three resonated, so Tony would consider reshooting the previous shots to make Michael's personality unified, and he may even rewrite some The plot, in order to make the script more suitable for this Michael who is more in-depth and contagious than the original setting.

This is the power of a master actor. If ordinary vase actors can barely complete performance tasks, senior actors like Clooney can undertake most of the clear performance requirements, while master actors can transform and improve The level and depth of the entire script - of course, there are very few actors who can do this at any time. Among the actors who are still active in the United States, there are probably only a few who have such abilities.

It’s not that Jenny has not acted with actors of this level before, and Meryl has collided with her. However, no matter how deep it is, "prada" is always a chick-flick, a business-oriented female film , her core theme is not so deep, and the emotions of Andy and Miranda are easier to capture, and they still embody relatively shallow and soft contradictions. What's more, at that time, Jenny's understanding of acting might not have been fully cultivated. She was running with the character with a wave of emotion, unlike Karen, who really immersed her heart and found The resonance of the two may have similar performance effects, but the performance mentality is very different—maybe because of this, the perception and touch she gained in the cooperation with Daniel, the invisible improvement, is better than that in the cooperation with Meryl. She has absorbed more power. This is not to say that Meryl or Andy are bad, but that Daniel and Karen may resonate with her more. After the scene just now, Jenny clearly felt She seems to understand a little bit more about acting, she can't tell what it is, it seems to be a kind of indescribable hazy experience, but indeed, this kind of trance-like "epiphany" state makes her enjoy her current work even more .

It’s no wonder that Daniel almost never accepts commercial films, and Meryl seldom acts in films with purely commercial appeals. Now that Jenny goes back to accept films of the "Unlucky Venus" type, she really feels bored. The box office and the salary seem to be insignificant before the fun of acting, the joy of finding a good character and its resonance, of course, intellectually speaking, Jenny should still play "Avatar", but emotionally, she is really for "Avatar" I don't have much interest anymore, this film does not challenge her acting skills, and the story of the Na'vi people can't impress her, it is really purely for commercial purposes. ——Although the irony is that "Avatar" will definitely win the global box office championship, pushing the record to an unmatched height, and "Michael Clayton" has assembled her and Daniel, if nothing unexpected, The performances of the two will not be bad, but it can be expected that the box office results will not be too good.

If Jenny is a complete artist personality, self-centered enough to not care about everything else, then she may really change to the route of art films, and since then she will be obsessed with finding such in-depth roles that resonate with herself, but her The pursuit is more complicated than Daniel, and Daniel is an actor after all, he has much more room for choice, just like "9", no matter how many actresses there are, he will still be determined, and no matter how good Jenny is, even if it is To play his wife, in the finished film, he still has to be reduced to one of the background boards to set off Daniel together with other Oscar actresses. If she changed to Daniel’s route, she would only go more and more unpopular and narrower. Therefore, such an idea just came up by chance, and was quickly suppressed by her—it’s okay to pursue movies that are both artistic and commercial , People have to pursue a little bit, but they can't just think about playing a role that resonates with them. After all, people have to be down-to-earth while pursuing.

"There's nothing I need to care about recently, right?" During lunch, she asked Mary: Because of the cooperation with Daniel, the production of "Monroe" has been stopped, and Jenny is also living like a retreat. Indeed, she doesn't want to be distracted by the never-ending chores of her career when she's playing Karen.

"Apart from the year-end box office statistics, there is no big news." Mary checked her email, "Oh, by the way, we may be back in Los Angeles in two weeks—the DVD of "Pirates of the Caribbean 2" is coming soon It’s sold, and you need to go back and do some activities.”

Because the film crew is filmed in chronological order, Karen's role is intermittent. It is not a problem for Jenny to leave the film crew for a few days. She nodded indifferently, "The final box office forecast of "Unlucky Cupid" is out Is it?"

December has already entered, and "Unlucky Cupid" has been released for more than half a month. With the gradual landing of Christmas blockbusters, it will definitely reduce the number of films. At this time, there will not be many variables at the box office. According to a certain statistical law, it will gradually decline, so the estimated national box office at this time will be a more accurate figure, and the data at the end of the full release, sometimes the difference will not exceed hundreds of thousands. One of the proofs of rapid development, when Jenny first entered the industry in 2001, this algorithm was completely invisible.

"It should be fixed in the range of 60 million domestically." Mary said happily, "As for overseas, the UK has already entered the market, and the numbers are not bad. If the statistics of all overseas countries are collected, it is not a problem to receive 10 million to 20 million. If you're lucky, you should be able to break through 100 million."

The cost of 20 million yuan received a box office of 60 million yuan domestically, and the box office has already fully paid back. As much as it can sell overseas, it will be profitable. In the end, the number obtained by Dameng will be more than the investment share. Because they have a commission from the publisher, Jenny nodded with satisfaction: This means that in the near future, Big Dream will be able to make its first dividend.

"Where is "Pirate"?" She asked again, since the dvd is ready to be released, it also means that the world is almost the last place where it will be released--the small-ticket warehouse that is still ignored by people. Some time ago, It should have passed the review of "Pirate" and arranged for the film to be released. "What is the final global box office?"

"Including the box office in China, domestic 420 million, foreign 760 million, global 1.18, it should be the second in film history." When Mary said this, her mood turned pale-because Disney did not pay dividends It means that compared to the one-buy price of "Pirates" and the poor DVD dividends, the economic benefits brought by "Unlucky Eros" to Dameng and Jenny may be higher and longer than "Pirates", "Of course, the global The champion and the North American champion can’t run away. The fans of "Lord of the Rings" are very angry recently. You know, although there are new market development and inflation factors, but "Lord of the Rings" is suppressed by "Pirates", or most of them Human cognition."

"Ah," Jenny smiled, "It seems that the mainland market has developed rapidly in recent years, and it has contributed a total of ten million US dollars."

——Compared with the Chinese market in 2014, where the box office was tens of millions of dollars or hundreds of millions of dollars, at the beginning of the 21st century, for Hollywood, the Chinese film market basically did not exist, not only because of Chinese films The size of the market is very small, and even almost completely dead for a certain period of time. Before the release, there are erratic standards and a review mechanism with ridiculous reasons for review. The possibility of simultaneous release is very low, and piracy is rampant, leading to the final box office. Converting the figures into US dollars is simply worthless, and because the box office share in mainland China is uniquely low in the world, Hollywood can only take 25% of the box office in mainland China, so the box office figures in mainland China are only counted in the total box office. The quota is good to use, but the money actually received is extremely small. Although in overseas markets, a single country can contribute 10 million U.S. dollars, it is not too little, but in the end it was 2.5 million, which is very pitiful.

For a cash machine like "Pirate", whether it is the first five million dollars or the second ten million dollars, in fact, it is not an interesting figure in the end, but Mary seemed to be aware of Jenny's consistent strong interest in the Chinese market, and she also said cleverly, ""Pirate 1" seems to be PRC's box office champion that year - if "Pirate 2" is also the same, then compared with three years ago, the champion's The box office has more than doubled, and it's really a growing market—it seems like China is really on the rise in every way."

Jenny smiled and didn't say much: In fact, there was an ulterior reason why she paid so much attention to the performance of "Pirate 2" in the mainland. That is, in her memory, the original world line "Pirate 2" was not actually released in the mainland, the reason is very outrageous-it is said that "Pirate 2" has too many horror scenes, skeletons and fantasy elements, so it is not suitable for children , so did not pass the review.

Chen Zhen has a deep memory of this incident, mainly because before that, "Pirate 1" with more skeleton images was released smoothly, and the smooth and easy switching of this standard is really amazing. 2" she finally went to Hong Kong to watch, and after all, she saw it on the big screen. After that, with the launch of Disney's investment projects in Shanghai, almost all the film projects promoted by the group were released at the same time. It has never been subject to such erratic scrutiny. Although "Pirates 3 and 4" have "horror elements" comparable to 2, they can also be launched in the summer file, and they have not been left behind at all.

At that time, as a viewer, she didn't think too deeply, she was just scolding the radio and television, but after traveling, Jenny's way of thinking also changed to a certain extent. She thought that "Pirate 2" would also meet in China for similar reasons. Frustrated, I also want to remind Bob to remember the layout in China so that he can grab a beach in the future, but for some reason, "Pirate 2" passed the review smoothly in this world. Although the schedule is not synchronized, it is consistent with the original Compared with his fate, it is not easy.

Is there any special reason behind this incident? Disney started to settle with China early? Are there any changes on the mainland that are not here? Jenny is not omniscient, she can't think of the reason, but this small change reminded her more deeply: the world was originally different from her timeline, and now, with her joining and participation, the differences will definitely become more and more serious. Well, the part of the golden finger that belongs to the foresight advantage is becoming more and more difficult to use, maybe, the expiration time will be earlier than she thought...