Chapter 66 Audition
After taking a small notebook and writing down the name of Kamachi Houzi and the name of the TV program, Su Yun went out and called the staff.
"Please help me call this number." Su Yun held up the note with the phone number of the Iwasaki Geisha House.
After the staff helped to get through the call, Su Yun started talking to Iwasaki Mineko: "...Yes, I saw a very smart little girl on a TV show, about my age. The name of the show and the girl's name were..."
Iwasaki Mineko is a top-ranked geisha in Japan who has been working for many years at a young age. Her connections are naturally unimaginable to ordinary people. When she heard Su Yun say this, she immediately agreed: "Okay, I understand. I will ask someone to contact my friends in Kyushu to help keep an eye out."
Su Yun nodded, and after chatting with Iwasaki Mineko about the next actor audition issues and time, she hung up the phone and turned to look at Zhuang Long who had been staring at her.
"Why are you looking at me?" Su Yun raised her head.
"You are too busy. You don't look like a kid of your age at all." Zhuang Long said with a smile.
"I don't think that as someone who left home alone at such a young age and traveled halfway around the world, I have any right to say that I am not old enough." Su Yun snorted.
Thinking of how he also accepted a meager grant to go to the United States to make a living when he was very young, Zhuang Long shook his head and laughed: Yes, how could he be qualified to judge others, everyone was just forced to grow up early in order to survive.
I didn’t feel it when I was going through those hardships, but when I saw Su Yun, a little kid, having to work so hard running around, I inexplicably felt a little distressed, perhaps because we were in the same boat.
"Oh, don't take it to heart. I just don't like to be taken advantage of when I talk. I'm not going to argue with you. I'm very generous—" Su Yun hadn't finished persuading her when she saw Zhuang Long's sympathetic eyes again. She felt a little numb all of a sudden. "Don't look at me like that. I really enjoy this kind of life running around!"
"Being able to see different things from all over the world, and they will change with the development of the times, this feeling is so wonderful, it is simply incredible!" Su Yun fantasized with a look of longing: You can't rely on the Internet to stay at home. Wandering around the global village, wouldn't it be just as wonderful to change her approach, follow the wheel of history, and measure the earth with her feet?
From this, we can see what the Internet has become in this extremely underdeveloped era...
"Okay, I'll listen to you." When the two were alone, they naturally spoke in their hometown dialect, Cantonese. Zhuang Long once again put on that Totoro-like smile that left Su Yun speechless, and responded in a very doting manner.
"听曬你话" means "I'll listen to you in everything", which is usually used when the younger generation talks to the older generation or when men talk to women. If Su Yun was a few years older, this scene would have a somewhat ambiguous and hazy atmosphere.
Now - in fact, the age difference between the two is not that big. A 12-year gap is not a problem at all for adults. The pity is that Zhuang Long is not yet 22 years old this year, and Su Yun is not yet 10 years old... Such a comparison is very shocking.
As for Su Yun, she looks like a little lolita. No matter how cute she is, she can never think of love.
Not to mention that neither of them has any interest in love right now, they are all focused on their careers.
However, other feelings still exist: to outsiders, they are friends regardless of age difference; Zhuang Long probably treats Su Yun as a sister or even a daughter - he was a senior brother in his youth and took care of his junior brothers and sisters so much that he developed the habit of subconsciously taking care of the weak.
And Su Yun, who seemed to need to be taken care of, had such a mentality——
Look, this is the beautiful SSR baby I just got!
You have to take good care of it! When it grows up, it will earn me a lot of money!
Su Yun, who has been completely spoiled by all kinds of kryptonian mobile games in the future, now looks at people as if a controller who has worked himself to death is looking at all kinds of dazzling magic cards in the card pool...
With this thought in mind of collecting stamps in advance, when the audition day arrived, Su Yun happily followed Iwasaki Mineko and Kurosawa Akira to the actor audition place.
Because they released the movie version first, there was no need to carefully delete and adapt the story she had experienced and even drastically change the names of the characters, as Iwasaki Mineko did later when she made the Japanese version of "Flower Wars: Memoirs of a Geisha", just to separate it from the Hollywood version of "Memoirs of a Geisha".
Kurosawa Akira also liked to write and direct his own films. After everyone read the first draft of the script in the hotel room that day, Su Yun made a lot of suggestions for revisions based on his experiences in the previous and subsequent lives and the differences and similarities between the two versions of the film's plots.
The first draft that Iwasaki Mineko asked someone to help write was too focused on displaying all kinds of knowledge about geishas. It was like cramming, trying to cram a lot of things about geishas into the short time of a movie, so that the plot was extremely thin - this is also a common mistake when outsiders want to interfere with insiders.
Fortunately, Iwasaki Mineko knew where to delegate power. After Su Yun and Kurosawa Akira frowned slightly after reading the script, she generously told them that the story line of her old experience was like this, and asked them to make a certain degree of branch lines and details suitable for filming based on this main line.
As long as it is not a random adaptation like Gao Dun did, Iwasaki Mineko will not say a word.
So Su Yun and Kurosawa Akira, the old and the young, really got together and started discussing without any hesitation, and temporarily determined the main line of the story: from "Chiyoko" in childhood, to "Yuriko" in teenage years, and then to the life of "geisha house owner" after adulthood.
It was her first love that inspired Chiyo to make up her mind to become a geisha despite all the hardships and dangers. At the same time, his accident was also the reason why Yuriko was disheartened and abandoned her career and was overtaken by her peers. After experiencing highs and lows, Yuriko regained her spirits and eventually defeated all her competitors, truly becoming the heir and owner of the geisha house.
Being a geisha is a profession that relies on youth. Even if they remain charming and beautiful as they grow older, their fate is either to retreat to the second line and serve as a supporting role for the new generation of geishas according to the rules; or to quit their career as a geisha, start a family with the person they choose, have children, and live a quiet life.
So the truth is, geishas are not like what is said in Gao Dun's story, that they can only be "half-wives" kept outside by men and can never truly stay with the one they love for their whole life.
Instead, as long as they choose to retire from their career as geishas at the right time, women who are no longer geishas can still build a peaceful but beautiful family with the one they love, just like ordinary women.
The world and human emotions are so wonderful. The love that Iwasaki Mineko did not expect in her teenage years, she encountered after she became successful.
In addition, the knowledge and perspectives accumulated from her many years of working in the industry and chatting with great literati in teahouses have enabled her to gradually discover that the geisha industry is no longer in line with the tide of social development. However, even as the owner of a well-known and old geisha house, she alone cannot compete with the traditions and rules of the entire geisha industry.
The traditional culture represented by geisha will eventually decline with the passage of time.
Even if a genius may emerge in the future to innovate and improve it to suit the times, it will no longer be the "geisha" it once was.
Therefore, she decided to retire at the age of 29, when geishas should gradually retire to the second line, to separate tradition from reform and make herself a part of the "tradition" that retires with time.
Now Iwasaki Mineko is 25 years old and has 4 more years at her peak to prepare for her retirement.
No wonder she has already started preparing her memoir at such a young age: because what this memoir recalls is not actually her life story, but a traditional profession that was once glorious but is bound to decline and change.
Having said that, the first people to audition today must be those who are auditioning for the leading role.
Because she was sitting next to the director and it was not convenient for her to go over and ask about his well-being and get close to him, Su Yun just stared at the Showa beauties who came for the audition without blinking.
Yamaguchi Baihui, who auditioned for the role of Yuriko, is still a 15-year-old young rookie who has only debuted for two years. Although her appearance is not the traditional beauty of a three-part and five-eye beauty, her unique and unconventional temperament that takes time to understand is very moving.
Moreover, her age and acting skills match each other perfectly. She played the freshness and naivety of a young girl very well, which made Kurosawa Akira, who was a bit picky in his heart, give up his original thoughts because he thought that her appearance was not a beauty at first sight and her style was not the same as Su Yun's.
After it was basically decided that Yamaguchi Momoe would play the teenage years of the heroine, the next choice was Yoshinaga Sayuri, a stunning and attractive beauty at first sight who had a similar style to Su Yun.
This legendary actress, whose acting skills, image and even name is Yuri, is a perfect fit for Yuriko, who later became the owner of a geisha house. Therefore, Su Yun and Kurosawa Akira did not need to look at anyone else and decided on the role directly.
When preparing to audition for the other two adult female supporting roles with more scenes, Iwasaki Mineko, who had just returned from a phone call, spoke first: "I contacted Kabuki through a friend I knew before. Fuji Junko retired from the entertainment industry in 1972 and married into a Kabuki family - of course, she has changed her name to Fuji Junko now."
"Through our efforts, Fuji Junko said she can make a comeback and take on the role of 'Mamiu' who guides Yuriko." Iwasaki Mineko put the information on the table.
Unlike Zhuang Long who didn't know Japanese and could only remain silent and pretend that he was a set-up and could also serve as a tool when necessary, Su Yun pretended to be curious and went over to take a look: Fuji Junko, the daughter of a famous Toei producer, so the films she starred in were all equipped with the top lineup and production team that Toei could achieve at the time, and even Takakura Ken was a minor role for her...
Although her family conditions were favorable, this actress did not win easily - the image of women in Japanese films is mostly weak and quiet, but she is weak on the surface but violent in nature. She is a rare female martial arts star who presents a strong image, and with this, she created the era of Toei's hero films.
Perhaps the world line will always be repaired in an imperceptible way: in the later Hollywood version of "Memoirs of a Geisha", the role of Zhen Miu was played by the famous Chinese martial arts actress Yang Zhiqi.
Not only is she a rare female martial arts star, but even their temperament and appearance are somewhat similar.
Although Toho, where Akira Kurosawa works, and Toei, where Junko Fuji comes from, are competitors, the person pulling the strings now is Iwasaki Mineko, who is quite influential in both fields, so the two companies can only cooperate helplessly.
After deciding on the role of Mamiu, Su Yun and the others began auditioning for the next role: this time, they were looking for the former courtesan Hatsumomo, who had been bullying Kochiyo because she was jealous of her qualifications.
Unfortunately, our luck this time was not as good as before. We looked at more than a dozen new actors and actresses but none of them were suitable. The spirits of the group of people became dull.
"Next." The staff called the next auditionee in.
After seeing clearly the appearance of the next person coming in, Su Yun suddenly became energetic.
However, the person being stared at was completely unaware.
After greeting everyone with a slightly reserved and respectful attitude typical of a newcomer, she began to introduce herself at Kurosawa Akira's suggestion: "My name is Tanaka Yuko, and I'm a student majoring in drama at Meiji University..."