Chapter 476 The Age of Innocence
This person is afraid of comparison.
Compared with Mo Yan, who can create a novel in a month, Yu Hua, who can only write two words in three days, is no different from a salted hairtail.
After receiving Lin Weimin's call, Yu Hua was indeed a little depressed.
These little eyes are haunting!
Yu Hua made up his mind that he would write his next novel as quickly as possible.
Mo Yan says thirty-five days, right?
My thirty days!
"Hey, Yu Hua, do you want to go fishing this afternoon?"
"Fishing?" Yu Hua hesitated.
Never mind, thirty-one days is shorter than those little eyes.
While Yu Hua was struggling over whether to slack off or go fishing, Lin Weimin, who was far away in Yanjing, received a long-distance call from the United States.
It was Arthur Miller who answered the phone. He didn't need to mail any packages this time, so he just called.
Arthur Miller told Lin Weimin on the phone that The Intouchables had been discontinued.
From 1984 to 1988, "The Intouchables" ran for four years at the Barrymore Theatre on Broadway, with 1,365 performances. It won the recognition and love of countless drama audiences in the United States and also won the Tony Award.
In the final stage of the performance, the audience attendance rate of Broadway theaters was less than 30%, and box office revenue dropped sharply.
So "The Intouchables" started touring mode. Compared with theater performances, the tour has rekindled the vitality of this drama.
After all, Broadway's audience is mainly New Yorkers, and the rest are tourists from the United States and all over the world. After a few years of performances, the audience potential has almost been exhausted.
But the tour is different. In other major cities in the United States, the number of drama audiences may not be as large as in New York, but at the same time, this is the first time that "The Intouchables" is performed in these cities, and the audience is full of freshness about this drama.
The tour of "The Intouchables" lasted nearly a year, with nearly 150 performances. The most important thing is that the ticket prices for the tour are usually much more expensive than those for theater performances.
This time, the profit was huge.
But even the best stage has to say goodbye. Just yesterday, "The Intouchables" ended its nearly one-year tour plan and returned to Barrymore for a farewell performance.
At the final performance, the Barrymore Theatre was packed with people, but everyone understood that this was just a last gasp.
Many audiences who loved "The Intouchables" couldn't help but shed tears on the night of the performance, and many media outlets reported the suspension of the play the next day.
After four years and more than a thousand performances, The Intouchables has become one of the few long-lived plays in Broadway history, accompanying millions of audiences.
When it comes to box office revenue, plays usually can't compare to musicals, but "The Intouchables" is an exception.
The cumulative box office revenue in four years exceeded 100 million US dollars, of which nearly 30 million US dollars came from touring.
This box office revenue is nothing in the Broadway musical market, but it is enough to rank among the top ten in history in the drama market.
Lin Weimin, the original author, also received tens of millions of dollars in box office revenue.
Of course, the one who earned the most was Arthur Miller, who served as an investor, producer, screenwriter and other personnel. As the biggest promoter of the play in the United States, Comrade Miller earned more than 20 million US dollars from this play.
Lin Weimin is not jealous of Comrade Lao Mi's income at all. With The Intouchables being introduced to the United States, he is making money without doing anything. Lao Mi not only works hard, but also takes risks to invest in this drama himself, so it is natural for him to get the share of the profits.
The suspension of performances of "The Intouchables" is indefinite, which does not mean that it will never be performed again. It depends on the situation. Maybe in another ten or eight years, when the audience has changed, it will have to be re-staged.
This is routine for classic Broadway plays.
Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman was first produced in the 1940s and has been revived twice.
After talking about the discontinued "The Intouchables", Arthur Miller inevitably felt a little melancholy. Lin Weimin then shifted the topic to "The Kite Runner", and Arthur Miller's mood, which had been low just now, became high again.
Compared to "The Intouchables", which was declining and had to be discontinued, "The Kite Runner" is at its peak.
Since its premiere in September of the previous year, the show has received rave reviews and achieved impressive box office revenues, especially after it won several Tony Awards in the middle of last year, when box office revenues exploded.
In just a year and a half, "The Kite Runner" has generated nearly 50 million in box office revenue, and it is only a matter of time before the total box office exceeds that of "The Intouchables". The only uncertainty is what kind of history it will create.
However, the most popular show on Broadway recently is "The Phantom of the Opera", which just moved from London's West End. As the latest masterpiece of the talented composer Andrew, "The Phantom of the Opera" became a hit in New York as soon as it premiered on Broadway.
Although there are many types of stage plays on Broadway, musicals are undoubtedly the most powerful among them.
With the foundation of classic musicals such as "Evita" and "Cats", and after more than a year of polish in London's West End, "The Phantom of the Opera" conquered the audience in New York City in just a few days.
When Arthur Miller talked about "The Phantom of the Opera", his tone was full of emotion and envy.
"Lin, I never thought that The Phantom of the Opera would be so popular."
When Lin Weimin wanted to invest in "The Phantom of the Opera", Arthur Miller had doubts, but now it seems that Lin Weimin's decision was undoubtedly correct.
"Luck is also part of strength!" Lin Weimin joked.
“Haha, that’s right!”
Chatting and laughing, the two hung up the phone.
After lunch at noon, colleagues were chatting in the editorial office and talked about a hot topic in the literary world recently.
Hainan was established as a province in 1987. Logically speaking, this has nothing to do with the literary circle.
Coincidentally, last spring, Zhongshan organized a writers’ conference on Hainan Island. After the conference, many writers who participated in the conference came back and spontaneously promoted the splendor of Hainan Island, which was like a paradise on earth.
The "Zhongshan" writing conference made Hainan Island famous in the literary circle, and the matter should have ended there.
But no one expected that someone would come up with the idea of moving to Hainan Island. In their words, they wanted to "build a spiritual island."
The first person to propose this idea was the writer Han Shaogong. Unexpectedly, his fantastic idea actually won a lot of response.
This group of people gathered in large numbers and were very active. Not only did they move their families, they also cancelled their household registration, transferred their children to other schools, and took their savings with them. They resolutely and mightily headed for Hainan Island.
For a time, it attracted the attention of the entire Chinese literary world, and countless people envied this group of people's eccentricity and romanticism.
Over the past year, Han Shaogong and others have been vigorously promoting their ideas.
Want a newspaper, a magazine, a publishing house, a correspondence school, a farm.
However, from last year to this year, the big move they were planning has never come to fruition, and many of the original envy and optimism have gradually turned into doubts.
"Weimin, do you think they can accomplish this?" Liu Yin asked Lin Weimin.
In recent years, Lin Weimin has heard a lot about the ideals of Han Shaogong and others. Their idea is to build an idealized paradise.
First publish a magazine, and then use the profits generated by the magazine to run a school and a farm.
All important matters must be voted on by all members, and the wealth obtained by the magazine, except for paying taxes, is jointly managed and controlled by all members.
The distribution of income is a combination of distribution according to need and distribution according to work. Everyone can get equal basic wages, public medical care, and direct family members can enjoy semi-public medical care. The labor input of different positions every working day is calculated as work points.
Does it sound familiar?
To put it bluntly, the idea of this group of people is to build an idealistic commune, but on a smaller scale.
"This kind of thing is just for listening. Human nature is complicated. If it were that simple, a country as big as ours would not seek reform," said Lin Weimin.
"A big forest has all kinds of birds, and a big country naturally has more problems and contradictions, so it's definitely not easy to establish communes and communism. But they only have so many people, and the scale is so small, so if they do it well, it should be possible, right?"
This idea won the approval of many people.
Indeed, it is extremely difficult to establish communes and communism among one billion people.
But if ten people were to do this, the difficulty would immediately be reduced by thousands of times.
"Haha, this has nothing to do with the number of people. It has to do with human nature. Human nature is selfish."
"So according to you, communism cannot be achieved?" someone asked.
Lin Weimin shook his head. "It's not that it can't be achieved, but the road ahead is difficult. I can't answer this question either. Maybe one day, when social productivity is extremely developed..."
"But we can't solve the problem of human nature!" someone interrupted.
At this point, everyone's mood became a little depressed; this is the gap between reality and ideal.
"I think this is a good thing!" Lin Weimin said this when everyone lowered their heads.
"Why?"
"Society is developing, productivity is improving, one day we will live a life without worries about food and clothing, the people will be rich, the country will be strong, and at that time,
The people are likely to fall into the trap of hedonism, and even the government will lose its way. What should we do then? Where is the way out for this society?
Communism, even if it is an unrealistic dream, can point out a direction for our society, allowing us to keep moving forward towards the ideal sea of stars, rather than being lost in the long river of time like those once prosperous ancient civilizations. "
Lin Weimin's eyes were deep when he spoke, as if he had seen the rise and fall from ancient times to the present.
Tong Zhonggui was moved by his speech and stood up excitedly.
"Teacher Lin is right, such an ideal is destined to be unattainable in a short period of time.
But it does not prevent it from becoming the consensus and long-term goal of our entire society. Maybe in a hundred years, maybe in a thousand years, as long as there is this consensus and goal, our society will burst out with endless motivation and keep moving towards this grand and ambitious goal. "
Everyone couldn't help but applaud and praised: "Xiao Tong said it well!"
After being praised by everyone, Tong Zhonggui came out of his excitement and scratched his head embarrassedly.
Debates like the one in the editorial department of Contemporary Magazine might seem ridiculous if we look back on them thirty or forty years from now.
But it doesn't feel out of place today, as this was an age of innocence.
(End of this chapter)
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