Exploiting Hollywood 1980.

Chapter 347
Pittsburgh is in Pennsylvania. Looking down from the plane, two rivers sandwich a delta in the center of the city, which gave Ronald a familiar feeling.

After he agreed to come to the "Lightning Dance" crew as an associate producer, Don Simpson immediately stuffed him with a plane ticket, and before he had time to read the script, he got on the plane and flew to Pittsburgh, the filming location.

"The estuary of the Ohio River, along this boat, you can go to Cleveland, Ohio, and if you go north and cross Lake Erie, you will be Detroit, the center of automobile manufacturing..." When he was about to reach the destination, Ronald woke up from his sleep and took Take a look at the Pittsburgh travel guide on the plane.

It used to be the location of the steel magnate Andrew Carnegie's Carnegie Steel Works, which once monopolized more than half of the country's steel production.Until now, Pittsburgh still has many steel mills.And Carnegie Mellon University, which he donated to establish after his death.

In addition to Carnegie, Pittsburgh has also produced power companies Westinghouse and Heinz Foods, which manufacture all kinds of food, clothing, housing and transportation products for Americans in an all-round way.

The crew stayed on Forbes Avenue, and Ronald left the hotel alone for a stroll.There is a slightly acidic smell in the air exhaled by the industrial city, and the color of the sunset is extraordinarily reddish by the exhaust gas.

The temperature in the evening in Pittsburgh in October was a bit low, and Ronald soon became unbearably cold and went back to the hotel.

A group of beauties in the hotel lobby were chattering about where to go to have fun. Ronald looked at them, his young body ready to move.

"Hi, Ronald."

The two leading beauties greeted him. At the airport, the producer had already announced Ronald's identity as an associate producer to the crew, and these actresses knew him.

"Hi, Cynthia, Sunny."

Ronald has a good impression of dancing beauties. These are the colleagues who play the protagonist Alex, and they are dancers dancing in bars.

Sunny Johnson has been playing a lot of supporting roles in Hollywood.Cynthia Rhodes is a professional dancer from the South.Both are over 25 in actual age, but dance training makes them look young.

This is the first time they have received a supporting role with many appearances.Together with them is a Chinese beauty with poor English and dancer Marlene Jahan.She will act as a dance stand for Jennifer Beals in the film.

Ronald invited the three of them to the hotel bar for a drink.The decoration of the bar in Pittsburgh is very hard, and the guests inside are also dressed very hard, with big and exaggerated hairstyles, high shoulder pads, and the only woman is also very masculine.

"Have you been rehearsing in Los Angeles for a long time?" Ronald ordered a few cocktails and motioned for the three beauties to pick them up.

"No, we came to Pittsburgh without any rehearsal after signing with the crew."

Ronald frowned slightly. This is a medium-sized project with an investment of 700 million US dollars by Paramount, and it's not the kind of small production that he shot. Why didn't he rehearse?

"Ronald, what does your associate producer do?" Cynthia Rhodes, a girl from the south, was relatively innocent, so she asked directly if she had any questions.

"It's for you."

"Hahaha..." The two beauties laughed together, only Ma Lin, a girl from the Hair Country, didn't know why.

Ronald, who returned to the room, quickly took out the script and read it.

There was no rehearsal, the director was changed before filming started, and the heroine was undecided. All the signs seemed to indicate that the film had serious problems.When I was in Los Angeles, I thought I was just working casually to earn some extra money, so don't fall into the trap.

The script of "Lightning Dance" is based on the real experience of Maureen Mudd, a female construction worker in Toronto, Canada.This way of writing shows that the producer paid for the adaptation of the original characters, otherwise, based on the adaptation of real characters, the filming of the film is tantamount to an open invitation to the other party to sue.

The plot is very simple. Alex, a girl who works as a welder in a Pittsburgh steel plant, earns money by dancing in bars at night. Her dream is to enter a ballet school and learn to dance one day.Her friend Jenny the bartender wants to be a figure skater.

Nick, the boss of her factory, walked into the bar where she was dancing one day and was attracted to her.Nick secures an audition for a ballet school for Alex, and Alex is upset to see Nick ride with another blonde.

Finally, the misunderstanding was solved, it was Nick's ex-wife. Encouraged by his retired ballet dancer neighbor, good friend Jenny and others, Alex was finally admitted to the ballet school.

Like director Adrian Lane said, the script is kind of dull.It's a bit underwhelming for a storyline.

"Isn't it a project for Don Simpson on purpose? Let him leave because of a failure at the box office?" Ronald began to wildly guess Paramount's intentions.

Big studios can often produce some unimaginably bad films, and the influence of high-level struggles is indispensable.

"But it's none of my business. As long as I finish my job well, the signature of an insignificant associate producer will not have much impact on my reputation. If it doesn't work, let the brokerage company find a way to withdraw my signature. gone."

Ronald tossed the script aside, took a shower, warmed himself up, and went to bed.

"First, when there's nothing...

but a slow glowing dream

your fear seems to be hidden in

deep in your heart

i hear music...

close my eyes and feel the rhythm

Wrap around and grab my heart
what a wonderful feeling

to exist is to believe

I can have it all, now I'm dancing for my life! "

A beautiful female singing sounded, and Ronald guessed that he was dreaming again.

The picture jumped out of the darkness.A girl wearing a hat with two big earflaps rode a bicycle through the streets of Pittsburgh in the morning light, and finally rode on a bridge.The morning sun in the background is red, and under a burst of smog, it is trying to shine its own light.

"It's this kind of opening shot that quickly explains the background of the story." Ronald thought to himself, this opening method must be learned by himself. One look at this kind of smog, it is an industrial city.Pittsburgh's iconic Carnegie Mellon University follows in the background.

This song is also very nice, it seems to be sung by a black singer, and it has that special way of vocalizing for black people.

The scene turned to a dark factory with hazy water vapor in the background. A female worker was welding the workpiece, and the name Alex was written on the welding mask.She lowered her mask, and it was Jennifer Beals, the lead actress.

"It's really a lightning dance. This character is very imposing when he comes on stage. A song and a few shots can clearly explain the living environment, work content, and beauty of the protagonist Alex."

In the cold room temperature, Ronald still felt comfortable under the quilt, and wrapped himself in the quilt. This movie was well shot, and it was by no means the kind of coping work he had guessed just now.

The picture seems to have advanced a lot. On a stage with a black background, a woman in a male costume dances on stage.With a black background and dim lighting, only the silhouette of a dancer appears.

Facing a chair, the dancer picks out all kinds of seductive dance moves.A shot cuts to a close-up of the dancer's face, with Jennifer Beals alluring in her glittery makeup.

"Wow..."

She took off her coat, danced sexy, and finally pulled the rope, and a basin of water poured down from above and poured on her.

The wet slow-motion replays, and she dances wildly, throwing water from her hair into the faces of the audience below, prompting a chorus of exclamations and whistles.

"Ah, these shots are really beautiful, and the rhythm is also very good. Director Ryan really knows how to shoot female beauty." Ronald was amazed.

The editing was a bit fast paced, though, and Ronald didn't see a few dance moves, nor did he get to see Jennifer Beals' face on camera.

"Couldn't they all be dancers?"

The screen was fast-forwarded for a long time, and the two dances of the two heroines seen at the bar today appeared on the screen.Cynthia Rhodes danced a dance in a bar. This time the editing took care of her panoramas and close-ups. It is very obvious that Cynthia danced by herself.

"The expressiveness of this dance is very good, but the makeup is too bad, making Cynthia such a beautiful woman so ugly." Ronald thought for a while, "Maybe it is to set off the protagonist, otherwise this wonderful dance will steal the scene .”

Sunny Johnson also had a lot of shots, but instead of dancing in a bar, she did a two-week dance on the ice with music.A beam of spotlights hits her body, and she slides on the ice with the music, which is also very beautiful.

"Ah..." Jenny, played by Sunny, couldn't stand still and sat down on the ground.

"This is too hard work. In order to set off the main character, all the supporting actors don't give a good dance scene shot." Ronald continued to look at the scene in a daze.

The scene shifted to the street again. Alex and Jenny were blocked by two break dancers on the road. They began to dance the moonwalk that Ronald was familiar with, and the "helicopter" lying on the ground and rotating on the back action.

"This level is not bad. Moonwalking is better than me." Ronald thought to himself, and tightened the quilt again.

The warm blanket made him sleep comfortably.

"what……"

Ronald was woken up again by an exclamation. On the screen, it seemed to be Alex. She was wearing a black exercise suit with high slits, and she seemed to have made a mistake and was lying on the ground.She was taking a dance exam in a large room with four judges sitting on one side of the room.

"Can I start over?" Jennifer Beals features Jennifer Beals as she resets the turntable's probe to the start position after getting permission from the referee.

In the bright large glass windows, the warm sunlight penetrated, and Alex began to dance to his heart's content.

It was still the nice song at the beginning, and Alex danced to the rhythm.

"It seems to be a double again?" Ronald felt that a double was also used in the shooting of this solo dance.The actor's hair was deliberately hanging down in front of his forehead, and he danced in front of the four judges. The intense dance rhythm made it difficult to see the actor's face clearly.

Then Alex landed on one foot and started spinning.

"It's definitely not Jennifer Beals, she couldn't turn a circle when she auditioned."

"Oh……"

Alex in the picture started to use the breakdancing moves that people on the street danced just now. She also lay on the ground, landed on her back, hooked her feet, and began to spin quickly.

"This stand-in, Ma Lin, is so good? Can a Chinese with black hair do this kind of dance moves?"

(End of this chapter)