Chapter 420 Carefully Selected
After successfully luring the most famous leading actress in the plan into the group, Su Yun decisively began to allocate the other three supporting roles, continuing her usual practice of taking advantage of the big names before they grow up.
The members of this team are set up as a typical "big fusion". The male commander and the female spaceship voice-controlled operator are a white male and a white female from the Blue Planet, the spaceship pilot is black, the chief engineer is Chinese, and as for the second male lead, the doctor, he is an alien whose appearance is different from that of humans from the Blue Planet, which encompasses many arguments and controversial points.
In particular, the heroine's job seems unimportant but is actually extremely important: in the control of the spaceship, in order to prevent the computer from being unable to distinguish the importance of urgency among the many instructions, the spaceship's main control computer is set to only recognize the heroine's voice. Therefore, the heroine's job is to be responsible for repeating everyone's words that need to communicate with the spaceship, and contact the spaceship's main control computer system to perform corresponding operations.
However, this strategically crucial job, because people only see her beautiful appearance and the fact that she has no other job except repeating other people's words and computers, has left the heroine with only a vase impression like "Repeater Girl" in people's memory...
This is also the best irony of the early days when female actors had not yet risen to prominence and could only play marginal roles such as vases and background boards in such group plays.
Sigourney likes this role very much, and frankly said that this role is similar to her previous role in the Alien series, but also different: in "Alien", she is a fighting hero with blurred gender, and many times what the audience remembers is not her as a person, but the metaphor she represents, which reveals the meaning of "safety".
Characters that are too powerful in a play always give people an indescribable sense of security - just like Lin Jingying. Once he appeared in a zombie movie wearing a Taoist robe, Su Yun and many of her friends felt that this was definitely a safe choice.
Similarly, Sigourney's role as "Ripley" is equivalent to the space version of "Uncle Ingram", and her appearance gives people a sense of security.
As for Gwen in “Galaxy Visitor”, because of her “easy” job as a repeat reader, the audience regarded her as a vase tool to relax their tense minds. Since then, fans have sent her letters and interviews with reporters, expressing how beautiful she looks in the uniform in the play and how well she shows off her figure... Oh, what do you think of the character you played?
Apart from the fans who support her character and the conductor as a pair, everyone else, when faced with this question, would subconsciously ask back, "What... role did you play?"
Very true, but also quite ridiculous.
“So, I have this idea – beauty and strength are not a pair of adjectives that cannot appear at the same time. On the contrary, if they can be blended together in a clever way, it will be more appealing than just beauty or just strength.” Su Yun is not saying that appearance is the only thing that matters, but that the character needs to have enough highlights.
Being handsome, cool, cute, and beautiful are certainly the quickest ways to win someone's favor at first sight; however, beauty has always been a scarce resource in this world, and when one lacks natural talent, one can naturally make up for it with hard work.
Even if you don't have outstanding looks, but you have connotation, acting skills and strength, and can successfully bring the character to life, it may not reach the level of so-called "plastic surgery-style acting", but "resemblance in spirit" is far more important than "resemblance in appearance".
Of course, if the gap between the attributes and the character settings is too big, it is another matter - for example, the "whitening" due to various reasons in the early years, and the "blackening" due to political correctness later...
If we want to forge a path through this deep-rooted mountain of misconceptions, then we must undoubtedly walk out of it step by step.
She and Zhuang Long were already the first group of people to test the waters in the co-production film business. Now that new opportunities have begun to emerge one after another, it is time for their people to launch a second charge.
When Zhou Yuanfa received Su Yun's long-distance call, he was worrying about the thick pile of scripts in front of him.
Ever since "A Better Tomorrow", a film he co-starred with his good friends Ti Lung and Zhang Querong, broke Hong Kong's box office record and became the annual box office champion last year, he has finally turned around from being called box office poison and has become a hot commodity that all major producers and directors are vying for - it is rumored that not only can he make money, but he is also likely to win the Best Actor award at this year's Hong Kong Film Awards.
If he signs the contract in advance before he is crowned as the best actor and his salary goes up again, he can save a lot of money.
"So what do you think?" Su Yun asked with a smile after hearing his current situation.
"As for money, I have it now. Although I can't just wave my hand like a rich man like you and get a Hollywood movie, at least I don't have to worry about food and clothing..." Zhou Yuanfa has always been a particularly funny person. He first chatted and laughed with Su Yun for a while, and then told her his plan, "Earlier, Xu Anxia wanted to make an art film. I promised her at that time, even though I was still a box office poison at that time. So I want to finish her movie first, and then arrange other scripts that I am interested in."
As for the reason why he did not agree immediately before, it was because he saw how much Xu Anxia valued this art film, so he was worried that his box office poison attribute would affect her hard work; also, Su Yun also asked Xu Anxia to film "Ladder of Love", so it was delayed until this year.
"Oh, I talked about this with her on the phone before. She was a little worried that your current salary is too high and she can't afford it." Su Yun couldn't help laughing, remembering that Xu Anxia had tentatively asked her if she wanted to invest in "An Autumn Fairy Tale" and carefully said that it would not cost a lot of money.
Although she laughed, she also knew that Zhou Yuanfa was a loyal person and would definitely not raise the price.
As expected, Zhou Yuanfa made it very clear on the phone that he would charge according to the previously agreed price, and said that he would fly to San Francisco to prepare for the filming after Su Yun and Xu Anxia returned from the battle in Cannes.
"I think... it would be better for you to fly over earlier." Su Yun pondered for a moment, then invited him.
After hearing the content of Su Yun's invitation, if Zhou Yuan said in his heart that he was not excited, that would be a lie: although Hong Kong is known as the Oriental Hollywood, there is still a gap between it and the real Hollywood. This is due to many factors such as geographical location, resource level and cultural status, which are difficult to overcome at present.
As a Chinese actor in Asia, he can play a positive role in a Hollywood-level movie. He doesn't need to play an ugly, old or weird role, but a serious and important supporting role with a certain amount of screen time. Except for legends like Lu Shaolong, Su Yun and Zhuang Long who cannot be predicted by common sense, he will undoubtedly have the best opportunity.
It is easier and less laborious to advance along the path that has been paved by predecessors, and it is less likely that you will fall.
"So you agreed?" Su Yun asked again.
"I will arrange my affairs right away, and then go over to join the crew to prepare." Knowing that Su Yun's invitation this time was a huge bargain that many people were longing for, Zhou Yuanfa decisively pushed away the pile of scripts in front of him.
In recent years, Su Yun and Zhao have been planning to export "normal" Chinese actors to Europe and America through co-production. Now that the first phase has achieved some results, it is natural to continue to export the next batch of personnel.
This is an opportunity, but also a challenge - but now that Zhou Yuanfa has experienced the ups and downs of the circle, he is very stable psychologically: although if he wins, he will return home in glory, and if he loses, he will go back to being called the Poison, but if he does not try and fight in life, he will never know the scenery ahead.
After securing the actors she wanted most, Su Yun contacted two other candidates for important supporting roles through the company's channels.
In theory, both of these names will become famous movie stars in the future, but now one is just a small actor playing supporting roles, while the other is a young member of a small rap group.
These two men, one is called Sam Rockwell and the other is called Will Smith.
Comparing their future worth with their current "price", Su Yun is definitely willing to spend a little effort to get these two people.
Moreover, the character positioning in the play is even quite similar to their current situation: Sam Rockwell's character was a minor actor in the early years of the series. Although he has never had a name, he is always proud of his experience of having participated in this series. Corresponding to the most numerous but most easily forgotten supporting actor in the world, the character setting is quite rich in layers in terms of connotation exploration.
As for Will Smith's role as a spaceship pilot, his acting skills don't need to be very good for now, but he must have the youthfulness that is unique to young people: in the character setting, he is a genius pilot who participated in the filming of a classic interstellar-themed TV series at a young age.
When this character grew up, he was invited to space by aliens who mistook them for real space heroes. When the alien fans replicated their "spaceship" one-to-one based on the TV series and asked him to be the real spaceship pilot, his "Excuse me" expression was probably going to become the "first black question mark" in the era of the origin of emoticons for future generations of silly netizens...
Of course, if they continue to dig deeper, they will find that this movie positioned as a "children's film" is actually a movie that makes adults reminisce about their childhood. There will be many powerful actors with the strength of movie emperors and actresses hidden in it. It can be said to be a dream configuration for this kind of movie...
Even if reality bends the backbone of past dreams, those old dreams and loves that exist in virtuality but are deeply rooted in memory will never change with time.