Chapter 87: Returning to 17
With the two main stars of "Old Friends" joining the movie, plus Lin Ming Yang, a popular Hollywood actor, the movie "Back to 17" was no longer as unknown as "Cinderella's Glass Phone" before the shooting started. From the plot revealed in the promotional materials, Hollywood reporters found the perfect hype point. In the movie, Lin Mingyang and Jennifer Aniston are paired together in a subversive "young married couple" storyline, which has whetted the audience's appetite.
Some paparazzi even went a step further and found out that Lin Mingyang will kiss Jennifer Aniston lightly in the drama, and all the entertainment media seemed to be pumped with chicken blood, with related reports coming out all over the place. Facts proved Kenny Ortega's great prophecy, whenever there is a beautiful woman and Lin Ming Yang stand together, the next day the Hollywood media will put the two together, a lace news for the public in the after-dinner entertainment was born.
Readers actually do not care about the content of the report, because these articles at a glance know is in the bullshit, but the media did do a good thing, is to help the film free publicity once, before the audience did not know the film, now basically know, Lin Mingyang this can not stand the loneliness of the guy again began to "toss" the new film.
This time, Disney's reaction speed is very fast, the script read immediately sent to contact with Eckles, they in the copyright ownership, profit sharing and director selection without exception made great concessions, and finally gave the film 10 million dollars of shooting budget. MGM was one step too late and lost the opportunity to work with Lin Mingyang again.
All Hollywood studios are optimistic about Lin Ming Yang's future development, so most of them are interested in establishing a good relationship with Lin Ming Yang, Disney's "generous" concessions on the filming of this movie is a positive signal. Generally, when shooting this kind of small production movie, even if the director is very famous, in the end, the filming budget will not be more than 10 million dollars. Although everyone still valued Lin Mingyang's fame rather than his directing prowess at this time, this kind of progress also signaled that as long as there were more opportunities, Lin Mingyang's directing ability would be slowly recognized by everyone, and his youth would gradually be overlooked as his strength and fame grew, eventually transforming it from a disadvantage into an unparalleled advantage.
Despite this progress, but Lin Mingyang as a director to spend a lot of money "problem" still has not changed, before is to spend their own money, Lin Mingyang do not hurt, and now spend other people's money, of course, he will not be polite and soft. Jennifer Aniston and Matthew Perry's honorarium has been spent half of the budget, the film has not yet started shooting, the preparations for another 1 million dollars, as a producer of the Eckles has given up efforts to persuade, but focus on how to help this crazy idea full of guys plugging the leaks.
In addition to spending money, of course Lin Mingyang also made some efforts to save money. The movie was written and directed by him, and he saved the money of three people. Eckles, who has successfully "repaired himself", makes a cameo appearance in the movie as Ned, Mike's best friend, and has a heavy role in the movie, but Lin saved his share of the money as well.
"Why? The federal Labor Law explicitly states that workers have the right to be paid!" Eckles complained while visiting the set of his villa with Lin Mingyang.
"Ecks, don't just see such a small profit in front of you, you have a share in the copyright of this movie, that's what you need to keep your eyes on!" To deal with Ecks, Lin Ming Yang first enticed him with a favor. Eckles played Ned in the film is a crazy movie fan, all the decorations in his villa are all kinds of movie famous props, in which it is like visiting a small movie history museum, which has King Arthur's sword inserted in the stone, there are also various laser swords in Star Wars.
"And then you saved my entire paycheck for these?" Ecks pulled out a laser sword and inadvertently touched the button and the whole thing lit up at once, startling him. "This plaything is real?"
"Take it easy, this is a collector's edition that I went through a lot of trouble to get from Industrial Light and Magic, we'll have to have a fierce battle between 'Skywalkers' when we shoot the movie!" The set of the villa basically matched Lin Ming Yang's expected look, "Not to mention that part of your fee, part of it was divided by me to Ms. Martha, I was under a very great deal of pressure when I read the script to her."
"And what did she say in the end?" Ecks was very "incoming" to this topic, and as soon as Lin Ming Yang brought it up, he put the matter of asking for money behind him.
"The first ones were fine, but did it really have to be like that in the end?" Lin Mingyang mimicked Martha's original whiny voice, even he himself was a bit unable to stand it, but Ecks listened with great interest.
"I think it's going to take a while for her to accept that last clip!"
"Yeah, not all women can be pulled into bed with money, am I right?" Lin Ming Yang squeezed his eyebrows and looked at his manager, realizing that the other party actually accepted his mockery quite openly.
"I'm no longer the prodigal guy I used to be, so please don't look at me that way in the future!" Ecks said seriously.
"Well, to celebrate the return of our prodigal son, if you can really nail Martha this time, then I'll give you this villa!" Lin Ming Yang clapped his hands and gave away more than a million dollars with decoration and furniture.
"This will take time!" Ecks wasn't optimistic about the form.
Lin Ming Yang gave Ecks a precautionary shot in advance, "Don't expect me to waste film while you two are acting opposite each other, if there's a shot that doesn't work three times, I'll immediately replace you, you have to put in the effort outside the scene to pick up girls!"
"There has to be a buffer for this, right?" Ecks knew that Lin Ming Yang's warning was no joke.
"The big deal is that for the last scene where you guys are in bed, I'll cut a few more times so that you can properly 'exchange' your feelings, so that's always okay, right?" As they spoke they had arrived at the bedroom door, Lin Ming Yang twisted the door open, "Welcome to your bedroom!"
Ecks pointed at the space ship in the room with a stunned expression, "Are you sure this thing is a bed?"
"This is high class, in Star Wars this thing's speed is comparable to a supersonic airplane!" Lin Ming Yang pulled open the cabin, this so-called space ship was nothing more than a shell, inside the real deal was a mattress with pillows and quilts, "This is a special model of SLEEPEEZEE bedding, don't get it dirty while filming, and I won't have to give it away again when you get married!"
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Lin Mingyang is a director who is afraid of trouble, anyway, the movie "Return to 17" was hotly debated by the media for a while before, and there was no need to invest more experience in the pre-publicity, so before the movie officially started shooting, he just held a small on-site conference. With half an hour of question time, the press conference was hastily declared over before the reporters had a chance to finish their questions.
The movie officially started shooting at Falco High School in Arkansas, and in order to make the movie flawless, the gymnasium of Falco High School was repainted and the name of the gymnasium was changed to Hyde High School. Lin Ming Yang had never been brave enough to use such a personalized name as "Falco" in the film, and the school's board of trustees, who had always wanted to change the school's name, took the opportunity to officially change the name of the school to Hyde High School. A permanent flagpole was erected on the playground to accommodate the filming.
This shoot tested not only Lin Ming Yang's skills, but also presented a brand new challenge to his acting skills. It is important to realize that all along, Lin Mingyang's roles have been of the youthful teenager variety, so to play someone with a mind in his 30s was not a small difficulty in the eyes of others.
This was an area of acting that Lin Ming Yang had never dealt with before. If his character is still a teenager, the feeling is not strange to him at all: first kiss, crappy date, disconnection with parents, etc., but the only thing he hasn't tried is to have a daughter who is about the same age as himself, and then the relationship between the two of them is still very bad... In other people's eyes, it's a very challenging role, but for a young body like Lin Mingyang's, it's not. Lin Ming Yang, a geek with a mature soul in a young body, such a performance is truly in character.
In the performance of comforting his daughter in the playground, Lin Mingyang showed everyone in the cast his "mature" acting style. With a worried, concerned and distressed expression, Lin Mingyang began to "recite" the classic line in front of the camera, "When you're young, you're young, you're young":
"When you're young, everything seems like the end of the world, but it's not, it's just the beginning. You may meet more bad guys, when one day you will meet a boy, will treat you like a treasure, like the sun rises and sets with you."
Through the lens of the camera, Lin Mingyang's performance gives off an undefinable sense of the unknown, and that feeling is very special.
"He's really talented in acting!" Martha, who was standing on the sidelines watching, said with emotion.
Eckles, who had been acting as the "flower protector" since the start of the movie, of course had to say a few good words along with the other side: "His talent is rare among his peers, and not just in acting. Although he does things a little 'crazy', but the other side of the 'crazy' is focus, no matter in the theater or outside the theater, he can be fully committed to any of his identity role, and do almost perfect! In these two years, I've witnessed firsthand how much he's grown and progressed by leaps and bounds."
"He fooled almost everyone with his performance in my office the other day!" Through these days together, Martha also gradually realized what Ecks was up to. She was a very intelligent woman, and after slightly connecting the before and after situations, she guessed the mystery.
"You're not talking about renting the school grounds?" Ecks asked with feigned surprise.
"Come on, don't tell me I didn't know beforehand!" Martha glared at him with her wonderful eyes, "When I saw the script, I realized that I was fooled by the two of you guys working together. You said Felix was immodest, I think you're not in your right mind as an agent either, actually following him around."
Being a veteran of love affairs, Ecks knew that whatever he said at this moment was wrong. The best thing to do was to remain silent for the time being and see the female's attitude before deciding how to pick up the conversation. Sure enough, Martha did not continue to pursue the meaning of Ecks heart secretly relieved, and finally did not forget to invite Martha to dinner, this time there is no twisting, Martha is very direct on the promise of Ecks invitation.
Lin Mingyang, who had just finished his performance, was watching the cameraman's replay, so he didn't realize that at the other end of the set, Eckles had already succeeded in taking a big step towards his goal.
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The second touching scene in the filming of the movie occurs when the heroine files for divorce from Mike, and during the court trial, Mike makes his final speech in place of 'himself': "Before you go through all of this, I want to remind you of September 7th, 1988, the first time I met you, when you were reading the lessthanzero book, you were wearing a Guns N' Roses t-shirt, I had never seen anything so perfect, and I remember thinking in my head that it was either be with you or die, and then right at the homecoming party, you whispered in my ear that you loved me. I felt, so calm, so safe, because I knew from that day on, whatever happened, it wouldn't be too bad, because I had you."
Lin Mingyang became very involved after entering the role, he had completely taken himself as Mike in the movie, and when he read Mike's letter to his wife, he felt that something very soft was gently touched inside of him, and that natural outpouring of deep love inadvertently made his low tone with a magical infectiousness that struck the hearts of the crowd word by word.
Jennifer on the opposite side also seemed to be infected by this emotion, she also forgot that she was performing, but like a wife who was so excited after hearing such a heartfelt confession from her husband that it was hard for her, she bowed her head and hid her face, her eyes brimming with tears.
Luckily, the photographer hadn't forgotten his job, he pointed the camera at Jennifer, and immediately afterward, Lin Mingyang's tone became a little heavy, with a faint sense of reluctance and pleading:
"Then I grew up, lost my way, and attributed my failures to you. I know you think you have to do this today, but I don't want you to. Do but I guess if I love you, I should just let go and let you move on to a new life!"
Immersed in this otherworldly atmosphere, everyone was deeply moved by the two performances, and finally it was the end of the show, when Lin Ming Yang let out a deep sigh before clapping his hands and calling "Stop!" Only then did the crowd come back to their senses. When the cameraman took the camera out of the shooting mode, the other actors and actresses all applauded this wonderful performance.
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