Chapter 85 Birthday

"A supernatural movie?" Spielberg asked after hearing Su Yun's plot summary.

"It can be considered a film, but it may not be. The main story is about the protagonists. The ghosts don't appear on screen for a long time, so it's more like a suspense film," Su Yun replied.

After receiving Spielberg's response, Su Yun started writing the new film script "The Sixth Sense" after the statutory working hours for post-production ended.

While writing the story under the stage light, I thought about the actors who would play the corresponding roles: since the storyline was based on the original movie, the name of the yin-eyed child naturally had to be changed from a boy's name "Cole" to a girl's name "Ke'er". As for the actor, it was undoubtedly herself.

The mother of the child, Lynne, could be played by someone similar to Jane Fonda, the psychiatrist's wife Anna could be played by Meryl, who is still a graduate student, and the male lead, McCann...

Although she really wanted to use Hoffman, firstly to follow up on the success of "Artificial Intelligence" and secondly because it was easier to talk to someone she knew. However, after making a phone call to ask, she found out that Hoffman had already signed another movie, so the role of the male lead was vacant.

After flipping through the address book, a name jumped into Su Yun's eyes: Al Pacino.

Looking at the photos of the two, apart from their slightly different temperaments, the distribution of their facial features is almost a bit like copy and paste - perhaps handsome people always have an inexplicable similarity. These two plus the future Robert Downey Jr., the three of them look like long-lost brothers...

Su Yun got this contact information from Pacino, who was sitting next to her at the Oscars ceremony.

Dustin Hoffman and Al Pacino are an Oscar-winning couple. The former only won the award after his fourth nomination. The latter was even worse. He was nominated for Best Actor and Best Supporting Actor in turn, and only won the award after his eighth nomination...

In contrast, Su Yun, who was sitting next to me, won the award on her first nomination. I don’t know what he felt at the time.

However, he only received his second nomination at the time, so he was not compared too badly. It's just that the future Oscar battle line is much larger than that of Leo (nominated for the fifth time and won the award), who is ridiculed as an emoticon by everyone.

Fortunately, he was born in an earlier era, otherwise, among all the Oscar haters mocked on the Internet, this guy would definitely be the runner-up and hope to win the championship...

She hurriedly wrote the script by the end of July, and spent a few days reviewing it with the screenwriter friend invited by Spielberg. On the first day of August, Su Yun began to prepare for the filming of "The Sixth Sense".

Because this movie does not have too many big scenes that cost a lot of money, and Su Yun can do the ghost special effects herself, which saves a lot of budget, so the filming funds are tentatively set at 2 million US dollars. Holding a large stack of documents, Su Yun solemnly handed them to Zou Yunhua who came to Los Angeles.

At the beginning, she was able to scare the people from Warner with her nonsense, mainly because she caught them off guard with the black technology special effects that were ahead of their time. If negotiations really came to a head, Zou Yunhua, who was able to connect with Warner in this era, would be the real "negotiation expert."

Zou Yunhua was not at all surprised that Su Yun had a new film project so quickly: according to Hong Kong's fastest film shooting speed of "seven days", Su Yun's "Memoirs of a Geisha" and "Great White Shark" together took more than half a year to make these two films, which can be regarded as extremely slow work.

"This is a really good story, I think it's worth doing, but are you sure you want to use such a young director?" Spielberg was still relatively unknown at the time, and Zou Yunhua was a little worried.

"Kubrick admires him very much, and his previous film, "Straight Outta Compton," also won the Best Screenplay Award at Cannes and was nominated for the Palme d'Or." Su Yun patiently explained, "He pays great attention to the commerciality of movies and pays more attention to box office than any other director I know."

After hearing the last sentence, Zou Yunhua was immediately satisfied.

"Okay, I'll try my best to help you get what's in the plan." Since Su Yun was planning to make another profitable movie, Zou Yunhua, as the boss, would definitely not have any objections.

It was another busy week of post-production and contacting old friends, but since she was willing to do so, Su Yun quickly contacted Jane Fonda and Meryl.

At the same time, Zou Yunhua also successfully negotiated with Warner and brought Al Pacino, who had just finished filming "The Godfather Part II", over.

"I can act opposite Al Pacino?!" Meryl, who was still studying at drama school while doing minor roles to earn tuition and experience, widened her eyes when she heard the news from Su Yun.

"Yes, your role in this movie is the wife of the psychiatrist played by Al Pacino." Su Yun nodded seriously.

After bidding farewell to the overjoyed Meryl, Su Yun went through many twists and turns and finally met Jane Fonda, who had temporarily ended her lecture tour.

"This story..." Jane Fonda was a little enlightened when she saw the gloomy-eyed child's mother resenting her grandmother from the beginning in the script, and then when the child explained that it was not that her grandmother did not care about her at the beginning, but was secretly expressing her deep love for her daughter, she thought of her own story.

"Yes, it is somewhat inspired by the story of you and your mother." Su Yun blinked, "Sometimes, as children, we always feel that our parents don't care about us - but in fact, both sides love each other deeply, but the communication method is wrong, which leads to regrets."

"No wonder you came to me again." Jane Fonda sighed.

"Besides this reason, you and I are more familiar with each other, and you are very affordable now, which is why I came to you again." Jane Fonda's main job now is to follow her husband on lecture tours. Besides the fact that it is difficult for others to contact her, the price issue is also a very difficult problem to solve.

If you give her too little, she is still a famous and excellent actress with an Oscar to her name; if you give her too much, the controversy caused by her anti-war deeds has not been truly resolved - didn't you see that in the movie "Artificial Intelligence", she was claimed to be the heroine, but in fact her role was not even at the level of a heroine?

On the contrary, Su Yun, who is known as the supporting actress, should be the real heroine of the movie.

However, due to her young age and the need to win awards, she, like Tatum, took the same shortcut of using the main role transfer to bid for the Best Supporting Actress award but failed.

In this "The Sixth Sense", Jane Fonda also plays the second female lead, and the real main storyline is about the yin-yang-eyed child played by Su Yun and the psychiatrist played by Al Pacino.

However, Jane Fonda didn't mind at all. After learning about the scheduled shooting time and remuneration, she officially signed the contract.

Su Yun quietly put away the contract: she understood why Jane Fonda would lower her own price to play the second female role. In addition to the fact that she was moved by the story, the lack of funds on the lecture tour was also a very important point.

Every time Jane Fonda returns to filming, it is to support her husband's career.

When Su Yun thought about the final outcome of this couple, which was that the husband Hayden divorced Jane Fonda because she was tired of her obsession with making money from movies and thought she was a vain woman, she felt a little uncomfortable and aggrieved.

Even though Hayden was a social activist who awakened many confused people, Su Yun couldn't help but despise his behavior of living off others in the family.

However, love is like drinking water, only the person knows whether it is hot or cold. At her age, Su Yun can't really say anything. So she can only arrange to start filming the new movie as soon as possible and let all the friends she brought in get involved in the work as soon as possible.

The hectic and busy filming seemed to make time fly by. Before we knew it, the hot summer faded away and the autumn wind gradually rose. At the end of September, the earth was covered with golden fallen leaves.

In the blink of an eye, Su Yun's tenth birthday is just around the corner.

The filming schedule was so tight that it was impossible for her to go back to Hong Kong to celebrate her birthday, so after thinking about it, Su Yun had no choice but to flip through her address book and call everyone one by one.

"Really? You have a very important game and don't have time to come?" Su Yun called in order of distance, but she didn't expect that the first person, who was closest and had the highest probability of coming, started to refuse.

When filming "The Sixth Sense" was originally planned, Tom could have been given a minor role. However, Su Yun considered the past incident in which he was unhappy about calling her, so she decided to leave Tom alone to prevent him from "taking advantage of her favor and becoming spoiled"...

Unexpectedly, this seemed to have caused our friendship to capsize.

This is her tenth birthday, the first double-digit birthday in her life, and she can’t have none of her good friends be there!

So Su Yun quickly called home on another international long-distance trip: "Oh, you can't take leave - are you kidding me? If I can't go back, you can't come over either? I'll cover all the round-trip airfare, food and accommodation!"

"Okay, my studies are important, and so is my mother-in-law's health. I understand..." After hearing the responses from Wang Jiaju and Grandma Su on the phone that neither of them planned to come over, Su Yun sighed, and continued to take another international long-distance trip to Japan without giving up.

"Oh, the movie hasn't been finished yet, you can't leave - okay, I get it." Zhuang Long was the last straw that successfully crushed Su Yun's originally enthusiastic and confident weak heart.

Since no one she knew came, Su Yun didn't plan to hold a birthday party. On the morning of October 1st, she still devoted herself to the filming work.

Unexpectedly, a neighbor is worse than a distant relative. After the lunch break, Spielberg did not issue an order to continue filming. Instead, he led a group of actors and staff to push a big cake to her.

Although Su Yun is a half-boss here, her young age and appearance make people want to pamper her more. Since they know that today is her first tenth birthday, everyone decided to take a break for half a day and give her a simple and warm birthday party.

It was also a good opportunity for the crew, who had been busy for a long time trying to catch up with the filming schedule, to relax.

Listening to the birthday song sung by everyone and chewing on the birthday cake, Su Yun was moved to tears: "Thank you... Woohoo, the cake is so delicious, give me two more, no, I can finish three more!"

"Don't be so anxious. There will be surprises coming up." Seeing Su Yun eating a mouthful of cream without any image burden, Jane Fonda smiled and touched her head.

"I know! Is there a birthday present?" Su Yun quickly put down the cake and stretched out her hand without hesitation.

"No..." Jane Fonda hadn't finished her words when a car horn honked.

When Su Yun saw Tom and his family getting out of the car, and Tom holding a big cake in his hand, her eyes lit up: "So this is the surprise! Thank you!"

Seeing Su Yun giving her a grateful look and then jogging towards Tom's family, Jane Fonda opened her mouth in surprise, but finally swallowed back the words she wanted to explain.

"How did you get into this state?" Seeing Su Yun's mouth full of cream, Tom had no choice but to ask his sister for a piece of handkerchief.

"Who told you to lie to me like this! You said you didn't have time to come, but it turns out you privately asked Jane for the address here and wanted to give me a surprise!" Su Yun couldn't help but tap his golden-haired little head, her tone mixed with complaints and surprise.

"Why are you asking for the address? Didn't you tell me on the phone—" Tom hadn't finished his puzzled words when a taxi hurried over.

"You didn't explain the address clearly on the phone, and it took us a long time to find it!" The man arrived before he even made a sound, and it was undoubtedly Wang Jiaju, the loud-voiced man.

"Grandma!" Su Yun decisively ignored Wang Jiaju and the eldest brother of the Wang family who came out of the car carrying cakes, and rushed towards Grandma Su, jumping into her arms like a young swallow flying into the forest.

Here the affection between the grandmother and grandson is so heartwarming, while over there the two little boys are staring at the cake boxes in each other's hands, but they have other thoughts in their hearts.

But before they could open their mouths, another taxi stopped here.

"Sorry, I'm late because I was waiting to get the birthday cake... huh?" Zhuang Long got out of the car with a cake box in his hand, smiling. However, when he saw that there was already a cut cake and two unopened cake boxes on the field, he immediately put away his smile and fell silent.