Exploiting Hollywood 1980

"Ah...hahahaha..."

Aunt Karen didn't react until she saw Tom Cruise and McGillis angrily driving a motorcycle chase on the screen. .

The feeling of the two of them rejoicing with each other made Aunt Karen look very excited. Cruise had visited the house once, and she liked the lad very much. She wasn't too interested in those aerial combat shots and the rivalry between pilots, but this romantic scene got her into it.

"call……"

Ronald breathed a sigh of relief, "Top Gun" is a high-concept movie. You like it if you like it, and if you don't, it's hard to like it through the progression of the story.

The young male audience started shouting as early as the first air battle.

The middle-aged men praised the dazzling tactics of the fighter jets. While watching, they discussed with the people next to them the sneak attack tactics that the MiGs were not able to recognize on the radar, and how to deal with the Tomcat automatic wings and advanced air-to-air missiles. The MiG has the upper hand in technology.

The young female audience also began to light up when they saw the sturdy pilots in the bathroom and the volleyball game on the beach.

Only middle-aged female audiences did not really appreciate this movie until this part.

"Watch every move in my stupid lover game

On this endless ocean, the ultimate lover knows no shame

Turn around and go back to some secret place inside

Watching you turn around in slow motion and say...

Take my breath away..."

The love interlude of the Berlin band sounded for the third time in the movie.

Because the passionate scenes of the two male and female protagonists were made up after the fact, there was no new music for them. Ronald had to play "Take My Breath" a few times in a row. This episode plays whenever Charlie and the Lone Ranger are alone together.

The young people around didn't feel the repetition and boredom at all, and some people hummed along with the song softly.

"call……"

Ronald let out another breath.

Once again luck was on his side.

In order to hedge the impact of the Challenger crash, Ronald contacted the Berlin Band through his agency. In between their tours, I took the initiative to shoot them the mv of this song.

More than a month before the film's release, "Take My Breath" began airing strongly on television, with the record company and Paramount co-financing it and hitting the charts.

Maybe it's the quality of the song itself, or maybe Ronald's MV was so seductive that "Take My Breath" quickly climbed to No. 1 on the American charts.

It was the first time a Berlin band had a single to top the charts.

Ronald remembered that when the MV was filmed, this MV was to be released in conjunction with the release of "Top Gun", so the plot was similar to a movie, and some unimportant movie clips were interspersed.

Frontman Terrinunn, dressed like a blue-collar worker in a blue overalls, was filmed soloing inside the wreckage of several planes on the set of the Mojave Air and Space Port.

The Mojave Air and Space Port is a famous aircraft cemetery. There are many retired fighter jets, bombers, reconnaissance aircraft, etc. from the Navy and Air Force parked here, as well as many old aircraft retired during the Vietnam War.

The band's lead creators, John Crawford, and Rob Brill, were not too happy.

They single-mindedly sang their own song, and rejected the pop-rock-style song, which was neither written nor composed by Berlin.

But the Berlin band's popularity is limited, and they don't have the same control over their own work as Bruce Springsteen. Under the pressure of the record company, he had to agree to release "Take My Breath" as the title song on the new album.

As part of the contract, they also have to cooperate with the performance of the mv. So when Ronald was filming the MV, he found that the two did not cooperate.

In order to shoot the MV as soon as possible, I had to separate the lead singer Terri Nunn from the little girl as much as possible. Anyway, most audiences who listen to pop music will not notice the difference between the band's style and the original work.

Only six lines of lyrics are sung over and over again, and they are superficial and without connotation, except that Terri Nunn sings happily, and the dissatisfaction of the two creative members is increasing day by day.

But as the band's first chart-topping song, they had to sing it at every concert when they were on tour.

"I don't really care about that. This song is so popular, I don't care who created it."

Ronald's thoughts pulled back from Terry Nunn's private complaints about him.

The movie was greatly loved by the audience, and finally defeated the MiG plane, the Lone Ranger and the Iceman settled their differences, and finally the Lone Ranger chose to return to the topgun school to be an instructor and reunite with Charlie.

All the stars stood up and applauded. The constant cheers and clapping and stomping from the audience made them all understand that Ronald's new film would be a big hit at the box office.

Tom Cruise, Val Kilmer, Kelly McGillis and others all took to the stage to receive cheers from the audience and then began answering questions from fans.

Others asked if they could actually fly fighter jets. Except for Tom Cruise's admission that he has a pilot's license, several other actors who played pilots were vague.

Ronald was delighted to see that these people were in the ground cockpit facility designed by Cameron, pretending to speak their lines and pretending to be in high-altitude aerial combat, they were more like them than they are now.

After sending off Spielberg, Lucas and other bigwigs, other young actors and guests, they all went to New York nightclubs to hold parties to celebrate the success of the premiere.

Ronald trailed behind and got into a limousine with the two producers.

"Is Sid still holding on?" Ronald asked Simpson.

"Yes, I think we should agree with him. The audience's reaction to today's premiere is a great sign of a big hit. Now the public is very high-spirited. If there is such a movie that lets them vent their patriotism, it will be a big hit at the box office. A little positive bonus."

"A week earlier, eh?"

Ronald deftly took a bottle of whisky from the freezer next to it and gave the two producers a glass each.

"Ronald, let's do it. Memorial Day is a small schedule. We will release it nationwide a week in advance, and we can take advantage of the situation to turn this small schedule into a big one."

"I just felt a little bit adventurous."

The marketing of the film, especially the box office in the first week, determines the size of the first audience. And then it depends on the reputation.

Paramount's distribution manager, Sid Ganis, came up with a risky plan. A week before Memorial Day, it was originally planned to be a weekend of small-scale release, and the release scale was expanded to make a full-scale attack.

More than 1,000 theaters will be used to open paintings, so that for the big weekend of Memorial Day in the second week, word-of-mouth will arouse more than 10% of the audience to watch "Top Gun".

The risk here is that if the audience's reputation is not as good as expected, then the number of viewers in the second week will not be as good as the regular operation.

The word-of-mouth of the movie takes time to ferment, and in the first week, the audience still chooses to watch the movie according to the marketing operation. Keeping the biggest suspense on the weekends with the most regular audiences is the norm for all of the original films.

It's a big gamble, but now that the audience's reaction to the premiere has exceeded expectations, the risk of gambling has been minimized.

"Okay, let's take a gamble." Ronald downed the wine.

"Sid," Bruckheimer picked up the phone in the car and dialed Paramount's marketing department. "The feedback from the premiere was good, and Ronald agreed. Just follow your plan."

"Okay, just watch it!"

Sid on the other end of the phone was very happy and immediately went down to make arrangements.

"In this way, our film review will be lifted next weekend." Don Simpson threw a schedule over.

"What do those bastards say?" Ronald picked up the schedule on the sofa, followed by comments from several famous film critics.

"Albert gave the film 2.5 out of four stars, Sisko gave it three stars, and most importantly, the audience surveyed gave the film an average rating of a."

Bruckheimer had seen it long ago, and he gave Ronald a brief introduction.

"Hmph, they won't give me four stars anyway." Ronald also knew that the popcorn movie he made was not well received by film critics.

But what he values ​​most is not the critics, but the scores of this emerging audience sampling company.

It is an audience evaluation survey company founded by founder Ed Mintz. Just because they were dissatisfied with the film critics' random scores on the film and disrupted their movie viewing choices, they came up with a concept to be a pure audience evaluation system.

They don't tell the producers in advance, but choose places at random and start doing random audience evaluation surveys on the first day of the show.

This time, Ed Mintz personally brought someone to New York to do it for the premiere. He wanted to break into Paramount and give them a consultation.

When the painting starts next week, it will appear in secret in any state in America, in any small town, and then do a more careful random sampling. The ratings given then will be more convincing.

Ronald ticked a tick in his notebook, indicating that the evaluation was also positive. He went on to read reviews from two Chicago-based film critics, who were bellwethers for audiences across the country, especially for the two producers, the Midwest, and the Deep South.

The Sun's Roger Albert said: "It's hard to comment on a film like Top Gun because the good parts are very good and the bad parts are very relentless. The melee is definitely since Clint Eastwood in 'Firefox' The most exciting aerial scene ever. But watch out for the boredom of people talking to each other."

Gene Sisko of the Chicago Tribune praised the action scenes but criticized the romance, writing, "It's a teenage fantasy movie, not a movie worthy of a real romance, if you're looking for any depth. value, you will be disappointed..."

"What good did Paramount give them? The score is not high, and the words are still scolding and helping."

"Hehehe, a travel voucher to Hawaii, and sponsorship for the annual meeting of the Chicago Film Critics Association."

"Here, gentlemen!"

The driver parked the car at the entrance of the nightclub, and Ronald came down to see that it was a nightclub with more luxurious decoration than Club 54.

"Tom, Cher", a bunch of couples are holding hands affectionately. Ronald stepped forward and hugged them separately.

Ronald looked around, and McGillis chatted with Jodie Foster and Jennifer Beals, who also held hands and whispered like sisters.

Ronald felt that it was not good to disturb him, so he looked around for Helen's figure. Only after asking did he find out that Helen was picked up by her father Gerald's special car.

Ronald smiled and simply sat down and looked for a new target.

"Ronald, your film is well done, but what I don't like a little bit, he's a bit American-style chauvinism, he makes the audience feel that wars can be won."

Ronald looked back and saw that it was Oliver Stone of "El Salvador" and "Field Platoon" who had just finished filming his first and second films. His characteristic gentle voice was in Ronald's ear. reverberate.

"Why, do you think we can't win the Cold War with the Suwell Alliance?" Ronald was a little strange to Stone's thoughts.

"No, I mean, there's no winner in World War III. I've been in Vietnam myself, no winner, no winner, man..."

"In a way, I agree with your idea."

Ronald had a toast with him, the poor conscripted Yale student who, like his dead uncle, was in the Army. Got a cannonball from the North Vietnamese in Vietnam.

The "Top Gun" navy, flying planes to bombard others indiscriminately, will not have this kind of horror of war.

"You're not going to speak ill of me in the papers, are you?" Ronald poured him another glass.

"No, but we can talk to each other and hype?"

"I like your idea, Oliver..."