1982 Started from Hong Kong

Chapter 184 Golden Apple

"The movie 'A Better Tomorrow' was shot by your company, Mr. Zhai?"

The night outside the window is getting darker.

In the Golden Apple Nightclub on Portland Street, Pretty Mom sat on a chair, looking at Zhai Yuan with surprise in her eyes: "Pick! I used to be a fan of Di Long, but I didn't know he became such a loser now. But his brother in that drama is very handsome, Mr. Zhai, please introduce him to me when you have time."

The stick demon beside him also nodded repeatedly, licking his lips and saying, "He is indeed very handsome. I checked and found out that his name is Zhang Guorong."

Zhai Yuan considered the possibility of calling Zhang Guorong now and asking him to attend the drinking party, but after thinking about it, he decided to put the idea behind him, fearing that he would be scared by the scene.

"What do you think of my suggestion, pretty mom?"

Zhai Yuan leaned back in his chair and repeated what he had just said: "As long as the pretty girls in your place appear on the screen and have the aura of a star, the price she charged for a customer before, 200 yuan, can be raised tenfold or a hundredfold. If our videotapes are sold to Southeast Asia, the customers there will also be interested in trying them out. By then, you will not only be the pretty mom of Portland Street, I'm afraid all the perverts in Asia will come to you for pleasure and pay a high price to buy your horse for sex."

Shi Nansheng’s suggestion to 91 Entertainment was to shoot a certain number of blockbusters, mid-range films and small films each year.

But Zhai Yuan can't find so many directors and actors now.

Moreover, after the money is invested in VCDs and optical discs, it will be dispersed like water, and there is no visible return for the time being. If you don’t find ways to make quick money from other places, you will sooner or later run out of money.

So when he met the pretty mother, he turned his attention to the third-level films he produced when he started his video hall business.

But this time it’s not about purchasing, but production.

Low cost, short shooting cycle and few competitors.

The Hong Kong pornographic films of this era, like the Japanese infantry and cavalry, are an uncultivated oil field.

However, Toyo is limited by regulations that have not yet been introduced.

Hong Kong, on the other hand, is limited by the uneven quality of its filmmakers.

In the 1960s, Yang Quan's films "Pink Diamond" and "Seven Times to Capture and Release the Seven Seductive Men" did not even have any exposed scenes.

The erotic films shot by Li Hanxiang in the 1970s pioneered the trend.

Although Lui Kei and Ho Fan were bolder in their filming in the 1980s, the plots were disorganized, and they occasionally mixed in a lot of moral criticism, which was putting the cart before the horse.

Of course, there is another more important reason. High-quality strippers, both male and female, are still rare in this era.

Well-known actresses such as Shuang Ye, Li Zhen, Ya Lun, Weng Hong, Shu Zhen and Shu Qi began to emerge in the 1990s. Male stars such as Simon Yam and Shan Liwen were not stereotyped because of this, which triggered a trend among major companies to shoot male gigolo films.

Now the beautiful girls resources under Liangma can perfectly make up for this shortcoming.

"Mr. Zhai, what you said seems to make sense."

After hearing Zhai Yuan's big promise, the pretty mother did not blindly choose to follow Zhuang. Instead, she looked embarrassed.

She rubbed the fat on her neck and shook her head, "But I'm not afraid to tell you the truth. I've tried your method two years ago and it doesn't work at all."

"Oh?" Zhai Yuan looked at her in surprise. She was worthy of being the horse king of Portland Street. She was actually walking in front of me.

For the sake of Axe Jun, Liang Ma was very polite to Zhai Yuan. She was afraid that she would embarrass him by speaking up, so she kicked the stick monster next to her.

She cursed at the stick demon, "What you did before caused me to lose millions. Tell Mr. Zhai about it yourself."

The stick demon had just put a piece of egg tart into his mouth, but upon hearing the boss' instructions, he hurriedly spit it out, wiped his mouth, and forced an ugly smile at Zhai Yuan.

"What the boss said is right. I did have the same idea as Mr. Zhai at that time. This is what we call great minds think alike!"

He then explained to Zhai Yuan, "To be honest with you, Mr. Zhai, I usually like watching movies the most, especially those martial arts movies by Zhao. Men are naked and fighting on the screen. I often get a reaction from watching them, which is more effective than drinking Sanbian Decoction..."

This was the first time that Zhai Yuan knew that Zhao’s movies had this effect.

The pretty mother raised her bald eyebrows and kicked the stick monster again: "Pick that mother! Get to the point!"

"No, sir, this kind of thing needs to be laid out in detail, with cause and effect explained clearly!"

The stick demon rubbed his thigh with a wronged look on his face and continued, "A few years ago, I watched a movie called "Hong Wending Destroys the White Lotus Sect Three Times". I originally went to see it for the muscles of the leading actors, but in the end, I saw a dancer who used to dance at Miramar Nightclub in the movie. Her name was Kara Hui."

Zhai Yuan interrupted and asked, "The Hui Yinghong who is good at fighting?"

"Yeah, that gossip is so pissy!" The stick demon said, "I used to work as a clerk at Miramar, and I was very familiar with the girls in their dance group. Later, I found out that Miss Kara Hui was so good at dancing that she was picked by a big director to act in a movie. The girls of her generation later went out to sell themselves, and could get a night out for just a few dozen bucks. But Kara Hui is different now that she's a star. Some customers paid tens of thousands of dollars in cash to buy her out, but she was beaten up by her martial arts brothers and couldn't get out of bed for half a year."

"So I had the same idea as you, Mr. Zhai. Why would we lack beautiful women in our industry? At most, I could learn from Kara Hui and make a few movies to package a female star, and then sell her to those perverts at a higher price." "Then why didn't it work?"

"How should I know? My boss agreed with me at the time and gave me several million to find directors and rent cameras. I made three movies in total, but the theaters said they were too bad and refused to show them on their screens. In the end, they only showed them a few times in some old theaters and released a batch of videotapes. In short, from the beginning to the end, I almost lost everything."

After angrily recounting his experience as a producer, the stick demon sighed heavily, and said to Zhai Yuan earnestly, "So Mr. Zhai, as someone who has been through this, I still want to advise you not to make this kind of movie. Just focus on making your A Better Tomorrow and find a few more handsome guys like Zhang Guorong. I will definitely buy a ticket to support you!"

"Is it just as simple as losing a few million?"

When the beautiful mother heard about this old story, she was also aroused and scolded: "I gave you the seven most popular golden flowers at that time to film a movie, but after the filming, the wealthy customers who used to look for them were unwilling to come to your house, saying that their looks in the movie were too ugly and their styles were too bold, and they didn't feel like they were in love before, and they were afraid of being laughed at by their friends if they were taken out.

Pick that mother! Those seven golden flowers combined used to earn me at least 200,000 or 300,000 yuan a month, but later they were reduced to being used by white-collar workers. When the video came out, it was even worse. People could find five girls at home facing them. The seven golden flowers became seven shit flowers. I haven’t even calculated the amount of money!"

The stick demon shrank his neck after being scolded by her, with a smirk on his face.

Zhai Yuan asked curiously, "Which director did you invite to film the movie?"

The stick demon said, "I don't remember his name, but he said he used to be Zhao's director, and he had to personally perform every scene. In short, he did a lot of Seven Golden Flowers during that period."

Zhai Yuan asked: "Is the videotape still there?"

The stick demon said, "Yes, after all, it is proof that I have worked in the film industry. I specially kept a copy and now I am showing it to you."

After he said that, he walked out of the box, and came back after a while with a few more videotapes in his hands.

After putting the videotape into the machine, the three of them watched it in the Golden Apple's box.

"Hey! This Xiaohong, she was my top pick back then. This Xiaoli, I spent several thousand yuan on her bra fillings in the 1970s..."

The pretty mother introduced it to Zhai Yuan while looking at it.

Zhai Yuan only had to start to understand why the stick demon who had the same idea as him would fail without making any splash.

Rather than saying that he made a movie, it would be more accurate to say that it was an adult version of "Paranormal Activity".

All three movies follow the same routine of prostitutes waiting for customers to come to their homes, and then engaging in physical fights, with some plots plagiarized from somewhere interspersed in between, such as a gang coming to collect debts leading to a physical fight, and a neighbor peeping at a girl taking a shower leading to a physical fight. In short, the plots are simply hard to describe.

The camera is fixed most of the time, not to mention the lighting. The whole movie is shrouded in a gray environment. There are either no details or the actresses are randomly photographed with their strengths and weaknesses.

They used film to shoot the photos, and Zhai Yuan felt sorry for the shabby stuff they turned out to be.

Zhai Yuan asked: "When you were shooting these movies, besides the director and actors, were there any other staff on the set?"

The stick demon said, "Yes! The director wants the male lead to go into battle, sometimes I am responsible for watching the camera, and sometimes other brothers come to help."

Zhai Yuan looked at the bald male protagonist in the movie and indeed had no impression of him at all. However, it was such a young director who could only fiddle with a camera that deceived the group of amateurs like Liang Ma and made them lose both their money and their lives.

Different professions are like different worlds.

Zhai Yuan took a lot of effort to explain to Liang Ma that the movie he was shooting was completely different from the director they had hired before.

But having suffered heavy losses once, the beautiful mother still feels that this is not a reliable thing.

The pretty mother looked embarrassed: "Mr. Zhai, if you want to vent your anger, you can pick any woman in my place, but if you ask them to make pornographic films, then those perverts will buy a box of videotapes and find the fifth girl to solve the problem at home, which will affect my business."

Zhai Yuan said: "But if they become popular, won't you earn more?"

"There are not so many ifs. Among all the Miss Dancers, only Kara Hui has been popular over the years."

The pretty mother smiled and said, "I mean, they can make movies, but don't let them make pornographic movies. I'll pick out a few top stars, and you let them learn from Kara Hui and make martial arts movies. Maybe they will be more likely to become famous."

Of course Zhai Yuan would not agree. Not to mention that it takes time and effort to train the actors to make a serious movie, he could not afford to delay the shooting cycle of a year or two.

After starting to build the factory, money became less and less sufficient, and even the secret garden of cash cows could not sustain it. Zhai Yuan urgently needed a new blood transfusion machine.

It takes only ten days or half a month to shoot a Category III film. Even if you make less money, you can make up for it with quantity. Besides, you own the theater chain and distribution rights, so you will not lose money anyway.

We have to hurry up, otherwise it will be too late to enter the market when Mak Dang-jie appears with "The Secret of the Imperial Palace".

If the pretty mother refuses to be an actor, we can only wait until we meet Nishikie Iwana tomorrow and make a Sino-Japanese co-production first.

(End of this chapter)