Chinese Entertainment: Academic Director

Chapter 123 Another Wave

In October, Hou Keming called and said that "Secret Sunshine" had been taken off the screen and the box office had exceeded 4000 million, and asked Cao Yang if he had time to participate in this year's Golden Rooster Awards.

The Golden Rooster Awards announced the nomination list in September. Cao Yang's "Empty Room" received six nominations including Best Feature Film, Best Director, Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actor, and Best Editing.

Second only to Chen Kaige's "Together with You" with seven nominations.

A few days later, Jinji called the school and asked Cao Yang if he wanted to participate. The hint was obvious.

Or because of that rule, if you don’t go to the scene, the Golden Rooster will not give you the award unless there are special circumstances.

The school has been dragging its feet on this matter and has not given Jinji a reply. I wonder if they are trying to find a way to make this happen.

Cao Yang told Hou Keming clearly that there was no way he could participate this year, so just forget it.

Hou Keming just laughed and said, "If you don't have time, forget it. You are at a critical stage of study now. The school will issue a certificate, and you can just write a statement and record a speech."

Cao Yang was confused for a moment. Why was this the critical stage of learning?
Before he could think clearly, Hou Keming continued, "The school has sent you to Hollywood to study. You must work hard and bring back advanced experience. It would be best if you could make a movie to put it into practice."

Cao Yang was silent for a moment, and then he began to understand something.

Being a director making movies abroad is not a special case, but you will definitely not get an award if you don't participate in the Golden Rooster Awards.

However, he was sent abroad by the school to study and learn advanced Hollywood experience, so he was unable to come back in time to participate in the Golden Rooster Awards. This can be considered a special case.

The school took great pains to come up with this excuse.

"Thank you, Mr. Hou. Regarding your words of thanks..."

"Let's talk about the Best Director's speech. Tian Zhuangzhuang is still up for Best Film. But don't hold your hopes too high. You may not be able to use it. Just treat it with a normal attitude."

Cao Yang understood that he would definitely win the Golden Rooster Award for Best Director.

In fact, everyone knew about this matter. At that time, Sony Classics caused such a big fuss about choosing a director, and no one was a fool. How could they not know what Cao Yang was doing?

But sometimes, things are like this. Even though you know what is going on, you still turn a blind eye and pretend you are ignorant.

If last year's Golden Lion-winning films are not given awards like Best Director and Best Picture, how can the Golden Rooster Awards convince the public?

The current Golden Rooster Awards have not reached the point of giving up completely, they still have to maintain some dignity.

Those who know that Cao Yang didn’t participate didn’t give him the award, but what about those who don’t know? What about in the next few years?

After a few years, everyone will look at it and wonder, what happened this time? How come no movie that won the Golden Lion Award won the Best Director Award? When did the Golden Rooster Award become so awesome?

The judges of this session deserve to be scolded to death.

Cao Yang couldn't let the school down, so he recorded a video.

So, at the Golden Rooster Awards ceremony on the evening of October 22, the Golden Lion Award-winning film "Empty Room" won the three most important awards: Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actress.

In fact, Liu Ye's performance in "Empty Room" is more outstanding, after all, he has more scenes, but there is no way, these are already the three most important awards, and it is impossible to give him the Best Actor award as well.

Who made Yu Feihong win the Venice Film Festival Best Actress award? It would be unfair not to give her the Best Actress award. Liu Ye can only be wronged.

The most controversial is this year's Golden Horse Awards, which were viewed by "Taiwan's representatives of public opinion" who controlled the funding sources as a "united front threat" to Taiwan from mainland films, and even the budget of the Golden Horse Awards Executive Committee was frozen.

The direct consequence is that the scope of this year's Golden Horse Awards was artificially narrowed, causing its authority to be greatly reduced. Mainland films, as an extremely important part of the Chinese-language film industry, are hard to find on the Golden Horse Awards shortlist.

The only one left was Cao Yang's "Empty Room", a film that won the Golden Lion. Due to its huge influence, they had to hold their noses and give it a nomination for Best Picture.

Another film by Cao Yang, "Secret Sunshine", was also submitted for this year's Golden Horse Awards, but this film, which won the Best Director and Best Actress awards at Cannes, was not even nominated.

On the contrary, Chen Guo's "There is a Hollywood in Hong Kong", a film that entered the main competition unit of Cannes but failed to win an award, received fourteen nominations at once.

Cao Yang didn't know the news at first. When someone told him, he was very angry. It’s okay for you guys to just fight among yourselves, but now you’ve even got politics involved.

So, he held a press conference to announce the withdrawal of the nomination for "Empty Room", and made a direct decision at the press conference that all his future films would no longer participate in the Golden Horse Awards.

There was an uproar in public opinion for a while.

Cao Yang is no ordinary director now. He is one of the top three directors in mainland China and a leading figure of the new generation. His words directly put the Golden Horse Awards on the grill.

Subsequently, Fruit Chan, the director of "A Hollywood Story" which received 14 nominations, announced that he would not participate in this year's Golden Horse Awards.

She also said: "I met director Cao Yang in Cannes and attended the premiere of Cao Yang's "Secret Sunshine". Such a wonderful movie was not nominated. How can my movie be qualified to receive 14 nominations? I am very disappointed with the Golden Horse Awards..."

then.

Berlin Film Queen Li Xiaoran announced that she would no longer participate in the selection of the Golden Horse Awards in the future and expressed her disappointment with the Golden Horse Awards.

Venice Film Festival winner Yu Feihong followed suit and announced that she would no longer participate in the Golden Horse Awards, expressing her disappointment with the awards. Cannes Film Festival winner Gao Yuanyuan also announced that she would no longer participate in the Golden Horse Awards, expressing her disappointment with the awards.

Hong Kong actor Wu Qihua held a press conference and announced that he would not go to the Golden Horse Awards in the future and that he was deeply disappointed with the Awards.

Afterwards, many nominated Hong Kong filmmakers announced that they would not attend this year's Golden Horse Awards...

Unexpectedly, when Pang Bing was interviewed, he also said that he supported director Cao Yang's decision.

Although Dong Xuan is not a big star, she is also an actor in Golden Lion movies and participated in the filming of "Secret Sunshine", so it was not surprising that she also stood up to support Cao Yang.

After that, Ding Jiali, Zhou Yiwei, Wang Luodan, Liao Qizhi, Fu Dalong, Wen Zhengrong, Che Xiao...

All the actors who have participated in Cao Yang's movies have announced that they will no longer participate in the Golden Horse Awards.

Even Wang Jinsong, a teacher at Beijing Film Academy, tactfully stated that his main responsibility is still that of a teacher, and that acting in films is a combination of teaching and practice, not for the purpose of attending film festivals. Therefore, he will never participate in film festivals like the Golden Horse Awards.

Considering his status, it is quite remarkable that he can say such words.

It is said that there are more actors who want to express their views, but they were suppressed, saying that this would have too great an impact and would be detrimental to cross-strait unity...

This incident caused a huge uproar, and a large number of winners were absent. The award ceremony, which should have been star-studded, seemed overshadowed and ended in a sloppy manner.

Afterwards, Hou Keming made a special phone call to Cao Yang. He did not blame him, but instead explained why the school did not support Cao Yang. The nature of the matter would change if the school intervened.

Finally, they told Cao Yang that from now on, all films produced by Qingying Studio would no longer participate in the Golden Horse Awards selection, in order to express the school's attitude.

February 2003, 2 was the Spring Festival. Cao Yang worked hard but still failed to finish the post-production before the New Year.

I originally wanted to put down what I was doing and go back to my country for the New Year, but then I thought, I have almost finished everything, so I might as well finish it first and then go back to avoid the hassle of going back and forth.

I called my parents to explain the situation, and they said it was okay, that it was Chinese New Year no matter where I was, and that there was no need to come back specially. Finally, they told me to eat well, drink well, and take care of myself...

Cao Yang asked Lao Gu and Cheng Jianye to take the three people who came from the school for internship back to their country, as they could not help here.

Sometimes people are so strange. When Lao Gu and Cheng Jianye were still around, even though Cao Yang was busy with post-production every day and had little time to see them, he did not feel lonely.

But now that he's gone, I don't know why, but I suddenly feel lonely. Even if I see Berman often, I can't get rid of this loneliness in my heart.

He often received calls from Li Xiaoran and others, but the more they talked on the phone, the lonelier he felt.

Cao Yang couldn't understand the reason for this.

The Berlin Film Festival starts on February 2 this year, so I definitely won’t be able to make it. I can only wait until Cannes in May.

Zhang Yimou's "Hero" was released on a large scale in December. It has been nearly two months since then and it has not been taken off the screen yet. However, its box office potential is not much, and it is just hoping to slowly grind it out to 12 million.

In this era, a domestic director’s box office revenue of 2.5 million is a huge breakthrough. Before that, it was a great achievement for a normally screened movie to gross or million.

Zhang Yimou raised the number to 2.5 million in one fell swoop. For this era, the impact is no less than that of casting Little Boy in Little Days.

Although most serious film critics are criticizing Zhang Yimou for his nonsense films, their influence is insignificant and has no impact on the top management's estimates of market potential.

Interestingly, Zhang Yimou was criticized not only for the ridiculous plot, but also for the visuals of "Hero".

Film critics said that the screen of this movie was white, red, green and blue, which made people dizzy. They wondered if Zhang Yimou's eyes were blurry due to his old age, so he kept making up such mysterious things.

But regardless of whether film critics like it or not, Zhang Yimou's "Hero" has ushered in the era of domestic commercial blockbusters, allowing people to see that domestic commercial films also have great potential and accelerating the flow of funds to the film market.

It was not until February 2 that Cao Yang finally completed all the work on the film.

Fortunately, it is only February now and I can still return to China. Otherwise, after a while, when the epidemic is at its worst, returning to China will become a hassle.

Before returning to China, he held a press conference.

This was arranged by Behrman and Harvey Weinstein to promote the movie and let people know that "Mean Milk" has been completed.

At the beginning, the reporters certainly asked questions in this regard, but it was impossible for them to ask all these questions. One reporter asked out of habit at the end: "Director Cao Yang, do you have any follow-up plans after completing this film?"

Cao Yang thought about it and felt that this was an opportunity. He couldn't register five films without other directors knowing, and then their ideas would clash, right?

By speaking out first, it can also help directors who have these creative ideas give up the idea of ​​filming.

“I write the script for every one of my movies. I love writing scripts, and all kinds of weird ideas always come to my mind. I will write them down and then expand them into a script. When I feel I have the ability, I will start the project.

I have currently registered five scripts with the Copyright Office, and these scripts are all my subsequent film plans.”

(End of this chapter)