hollywood draw

On April 12, 1991, on an ordinary Tuesday, Wayne ushered in the first test of his life.

"Happy Day" will be available today in New York and Los Angeles, a total of 40 theaters in two cities, and will be launched in the North American theater market.

There is no glamorous premiere, no overwhelming publicity and publicity, all the promotions and promotions in the early stage of the film are only a promotional video of the evening program of Fox TV.

From the day the video was bought out by Fox, all this has nothing to do with Wayne. All he can do is wait for Fox's survey data and pray that the film will perform well.

Simien is a questionnaire investigator at Twentieth Century Fox. At this moment, he is standing in a theater in West Hollywood, waiting for the first preview of "Happy Day".

The film has not been widely promoted. Simien only saw a few movie posters in the theater. The poster simply printed a beautiful woman in panic and turned around, followed by a huge grimace mask.

Because he came early, he sat in a chair next to the ticket gate and observed the fans' choices. However, Simien sat here for half an hour, and there were not many viewers entering the "Happy Day" screening room.

It was not until the movie started that the opening advertisement came from the theater that he greeted the ticket seller and walked into the corner seats in the last row of the theater, which helped him observe the audience's reaction.

The theater arranged for "Happy Day" is not small, and the entire hall will be filled with more than 80 audiences, but now there are only a few more than 20 people, and Simien himself must be included.

Suddenly the lights dimmed, and the opening of the 20th Century Fox appeared on the screen. The men and women who were chatting quietly in the theater also began to focus on the film.

The film has no long staff subtitles or long-winded plot preparation, and it directly enters the theme of the story. A few minutes after the opening, the killer with a grimace mask stabbed Tylie to death.

“What?”

“oh my god!!!”

"what happened?"

Hearing the exclamations of the movie fans, Simien also focused on the film. The plot began to unfold quickly. After the slutty girl Tyri died once, she slowly started to find a way to leave the cycle of festivals.

The movie has only started to nearly ten minutes, and the heroine died in the early stage, which aroused the interest of everyone in the theater. Then Tyri was instantly resurrected, lying on the ground with blood in the first second, and the next second, she appeared in the dormitory where she woke up.

The video does not provide the audience with time to think about suspense. After the moment when the heroine was killed, she opened her eyes and woke up from the bed in the boy's dormitory.

So the male protagonist said the same thing, and his father called on time and copied everything.

"It's a time loop."

Simien heard what the front row audience said unconsciously, yes, it was a time cycle.

Sitting not far from him was a couple, who should be young, the girl was whispering to her boyfriend: "Jerry, you see she went to that party again. Can she escape this time?"

"Small voice, dear, holy sxxxt!"

The person who opened the door for Tylie in the video actually wore a grimace mask. Not only the front row audience, almost everyone was shocked, and they only breathed a sigh of relief when they saw it was a prank by their friends.

Just when everyone thought it was okay, Tyri's destined fate came again and was stabbed to death by blood again.

Simien instantly felt that this movie was not simple. She only used some simple techniques to attract all the audience's attention to the screen.

If you want to survive tomorrow, you must find the murderer. The heroine dies in a fancy way while excluding the subjects who may commit the crime. Since it is hard to escape death, it is better to let yourself go. The heroine tries different ways to make every day live fresh, and even goes out naked. Anyway, no one will remember it.

These rebellious and bastard approaches almost all touched the young man's nerves. He almost didn't hear any audience calling this slut girl, and they were following her to find the answer.

As the film enters the second half, there are no chats in the theater except for some laughter and horror.

But cycles and death also come at a cost. The damage she suffered physically accumulated, making her weaker and weaker. If this continues, it is very likely that she will die completely once.

If this continues, she will probably die completely once. Fortunately, she finally discovered who the real murderer was and saw her life clearly in these cycles of days.

Seeing this, Simien slowly walked out of the theater. He didn't need to watch the ending at the end of the film. It must be the happy ending between the heroine Terry and the hero, and the classic Hollywood test ending.

He had to wait in advance at the entrance of the cinema and try his best to collect the opinions of moviegoers. This was his job. Suddenly, the audience's applause came from the cinema, and he knew that this was because there were too few people.

This surprised Simien. He is half a senior movie fan, but this small-scale preview can make the audience applaud spontaneously.

At the end of the film, the audience began to slowly flow out of the cinema, talking about the story they had just seen.

"The finale is so touching, Tylie finally ended her ordeal!"

"The heroine is so beautiful, she is definitely the cheerleader in reality"

"I don't know if there is a mask for sale. I'll ask the theater later. I want to buy one and scare my roommate when I go back."

"Wayne Greenberg's work? I don't seem to have heard of this director?"

Looking at this group of viewers who are not old, no matter whether the ending is touching or bloody, or the vase-like heroine, they like to see these, aren’t they?

Simien walked to the first three viewers, shook the questionnaire in her hand, and asked, "Is that OK?"

"Of course, I chose A+, and it's rare that such a great horror movie can still be so touching." The only girl first drew a hook on the questionnaire. "Where are you, you can choose A+, this movie is worth it."

The friend next to the girl shrugged, took the questionnaire of Simien, and also chose A+.

"Okay, thank you."

After taking the questionnaire, he continued to move towards the movie fans. He didn't know how many times he did this kind of work. Unless he encountered a particularly disgusting movie, everyone was still willing to fill out the questionnaire and express their opinions.

The same job appeared in forty theaters on this ordinary Wednesday night. Simien returned the collected questionnaires to the company and recalled this unique horror film.

A theater near Century City just ended its pre-shot of "Happy Day". Wayne took Naomi's hand and walked out of the theater together.

"Nami, how do you feel? Are you satisfied with your performance?" Wayne took out the car keys, activated the pickup truck, and asked Naomi, who was sitting in the passenger seat.

"I didn't pay attention to watching the video, I just watched the audience's reaction." Naomi said, her mood was not high. "There are too few people. Have you seen it? There are only a dozen viewers, and the theater is empty."

"It's normal, Nami, today is not a day off. It's just Wednesday, and there are not many fans going out to watch movies."

It was originally a film directed by a novice director, and there were no famous actors. There were definitely not many people who chose this kind of niche.

"But I finally went into the theater to show, right? It will get better slowly, Nami. You will have some fame in the role of Tylie." Seeing that she was in a bad mood, Wayne comforted her.

"Of course, I hope we can all become famous for the film."

If Naomi might have become famous because of this, he would believe it more, but let it go.

No matter when the director is, he is just a behind-the-scenes job. It is still in the early 1990s, and the director has not yet reached the front desk and has his own fan group.

He first sent Naomi back to the apartment and refused her invitation. Wayne returned to his room and continued to write the script, waiting for the statistics.

At 11 o'clock in the evening, he received a call from Twentieth Century Fox and explained various data in detail.

Because there are only two cities and forty theaters to preview, all the first-day statistics of "Happy Day" have been released.

The average number of attendees in a single game is 19. Excluding the package members, the average box office is $90 per game, the average number of single-seat cinemas is 8, and the total box office of pre-shows on the first day is $28,800.

There is no room for comparison with the popular blockbusters like the ones in memory that can be a single $15,000 in a single library. This result can only be said to be extremely failed.

With a gentle sigh, Wayne put his wallet down the apartment building and walked towards the bar in the middle of the street. The Los Angeles area began to get a little hot in April. Although the breeze on the road was constantly on the way, he was sweating when he entered the bar.

"Joey, give me a big beer." He hasn't been here for a while, and since he started preparing for the movie, he has rarely felt completely relaxed.

Joey took a full beer, put it in front of Wayne, picked up the money placed on the bar, and asked casually: "Hey, Wayne, I heard that the movie I made was screened?"

"Your information is quite well-informed, how do you know?" He asked the other party curiously after taking a big sip of cold beer.

"This is Hollywood, Wayne." Joey held a large piece of cloth, rubbed the cup hard, pointed to the dance floor and continued: "From there, all news can be heard, and no one knows whether they will become movie stars tomorrow."

"Okay, Joey, I hope you can go to the theater and support my career. Maybe I will become a Hollywood director tomorrow."

Listening to Wayne's joking words, Joey put down the cup in his hand and said, "I saw you coming to Los Angeles to go to school a few years ago. I didn't expect you to have your own work so soon. Don't worry, Wayne, I will definitely mobilize my friends to go to the theater to watch your movies together."

Hearing the other party's words, he woke him up. Yes, although the box office on the first day was not ideal, he believed that fans who had watched the video would definitely lead their friends to watch "Happy Day" together. He knew how terrible the power of word-of-mouth is.

After all, the data from the questionnaire cannot deceive people!