“Is this object alive?”
"No."
"Bigger than my hand, or smaller?"
"Small."
“Does it use electricity?”
"want."
"Will it glow?"
"meeting."
…
Ronald accompanies Helen to a party with her acting classmates. Most of the attendees at this party are children from wealthy families like Helen.
Instead of playing loud rock music, everyone played a set of jazz music. With the accompaniment of soft music, Ronald and Helen's friends played the game "Twenty Questions".
As the name suggests, this is a question and answer game.
The respondent picks an object in the room, and then the rest of the people can ask her twenty questions, and the respondent can only answer with "yes or no." If no one can guess what the item is, the person who answered the question wins.
During the filming of the movie "Famous", most of the actors Ronald saw with majors in acting had graduated, and most of Helen's classmates had not participated in the filming at that time.
But they still talked about all kinds of interesting gossip about "famous all over the world". Because Helen's classmate Erica is playing the leading role in the TV version of "Famous", the Latino black girl Coco.
Another partygoer was Juilliard graduate Lori Singer, who also starred in the TV version as a cellist.
"Is it a TV?" Helen asked.
"no."
"Ah, Helen. You lost. You didn't guess that it was a desk lamp. It's not just the TV that lights up, but also the desk lamp." Lori laughed out loud. She won this round.
Everyone started drinking drinks happily, taking a break and watching TV.
"Lori, are you a real cellist?" Ronald had nothing to say and chatted with Helen's friend. This kind of music and games actually don't suit Ronald's taste.
The television version of "Famous" aired on the MGM network and received relatively dismal ratings. The sad producer Da Silva lost a lot of hair again. In the original film, only a few people including Ronald's younger brother Leroy participated.
Really big names, such as Erin Kara, who plays Coco, have long since stopped being involved in TV dramas.
"Yes, I played with the Oregon State Symphony Orchestra when I was thirteen. I even won the Bergen Philharmonic Competition in 1980." Lori is a cello prodigy. She looks very young and is still playing high school students. In fact, I have been married for two years.
"Oh, that's really amazing. Didn't you develop your career as a professional cellist later? Why did you become an actor later?"
"I really wanted to be a cellist. My father was the conductor of the Portland Symphony Orchestra. This was my childhood dream. But all my dreams were shattered at a music summer camp in New York that year."
"what happened?"
"At the summer camp held by Ms. Dupree, she had quit playing and switched to teaching. There was a Chinese boy who participated. He was two years older than me. After listening to his performance, I felt that it was impossible for me to reach that level. ”
Ronald shook his head. The careers of these classical music performers were worse than those of film directors. Unlike directors who can make different movies, they can only perform the same piece of music over and over again. After the popularization of modern recording technology, a piece of well-known classical music often only has one or two performers who can be popular among the public.
"So you're going to become an actor?"
"Yes, my uncle is a cameraman for a TV station, and my brother is also an actor..."
"I've thought about it, it's your turn to ask questions, Ronald." A girl came over and interrupted Ronald's chat, and the game continued.
"Okay, let me think about it." Ronald began to think about how he could ask questions to find out the answer as quickly as possible.
"Is it alive?"
"No"
“Does it use science and technology for entertainment, communication, or work?”
"Yes." The girl didn't expect Ronald to ask a stupid question, so she had no choice but to nod.
“Is it a product for entertainment?”
"Will it glow?"
"It's a television."
"You're cheating." Helen came over and rubbed Ronald's face. Everyone burst into laughter.
"Well, let's play a 'what if' game." Seeing that everyone was not interested, Ronald suggested changing the game.
"I'll give you a premise, if something happens, and then you use your imagination to tell me, what will happen next?"
"Okay, you can ask." The boys and girls gathered around, and they all looked at Ronald with interest.
"What would you do if a comet hit the earth and most of the human race was wiped out, and you found that there were only a few living people around?"
"That's great. We can go to Wuxi Department Store and grab those beautiful clothes that we usually can't afford."
"If most people become extinct, then I won't have to compete with other Bitches for handsome guys. And handsome guys will have no choice but to date me."
"Hahaha……"
Ronald didn't expect the girls' ideas to be so interesting and chatted with them some more.
Most of them still regard this kind of thing as an opportunity to indulge themselves and do things they usually dare not do.
"What's wrong with you? What are you thinking about?"
Seeing that Ronald was lost in thought, Helen came over to ask him.
"Your friend's answers were great, and I was wondering if I should write a screenplay using them."
"Oh, Ronald, don't forget us when the time comes. I want to play the leading role." Lori started to boo.
"Who knows? If the studio likes my idea, they will definitely ask you to audition."
"Spielberg, the director of et Alien, was revealed to have plagiarized a script written by Indian-American director Satyajit Ray..."
A burst of entertainment news came from the TV.
Ronald was startled and raised his head to look at the TV.
Everyone's voices immediately became quieter, and a girl walked over to help turn up the volume on the TV.
"Indian-Bengali director Satyajit Ray claimed that et.al.in plagiarized his 1967 script "The Alien". Ray said through reporters that without the script he created, ". "Alien" simply cannot exist."
"Is this true, Ronald?" Helen's fellow actors asked the director who was most familiar with Spielberg and Hollywood, Ronald.
"I can't say. The script and the final movie are not necessarily the same thing. And I haven't seen the movie Rey mentioned, so I can't answer this question."
Ronald fooled him with a few words.
Screenplay plagiarism is a serious accusation and it is illegal to do so without first contacting the original author. Not only will the original author have to be compensated for his losses in court, but it will also have a great impact on the plagiarist's reputation in the industry.
Sergio Leone, the director of "Once Upon a Time in America," the biggest-budget movie currently being shot in Hollywood, was once a plagiarist.
His famous work "A Fistful of Dollars" is Clint Eastwood's famous work, which tells the story of a western cowboy who saves a small town from villains.
In fact, every scene and every shot of this movie is copied from Japanese director Akira Kurosawa's black and white Japanese film, "Yojimbo".
Leon's movie just changed the story from ancient Japan to a small western town. The protagonist's weapon is changed from a katana to a revolver. Of course, such plagiarism would not stand up in court. After Kurosawa sued, Leon paid the money and settled the matter.
Of course, this is probably not the case with aliens. The script Rey talked about has not been made into a movie and is still in the form of a script. As Ronald said, the script is still far from being a film.
This kind of movie has many special effects scenes, coupled with Spielberg's unique brushwork, using light and shadow to draw a children's fairy tale. The effect of the finished film is not what can be seen in the script. Ronald was less convinced that Spielberg needed to plagiarize.
Ronald estimated that there might be some similarities in creativity and plot. This kind of thing is all about aliens, so collisions are inevitable.
When Ronald returned home, he called his agent Richard and asked about the alien situation.
"Isn't this Rey just here for a fight?"
"No, Ronald Rey is a famous Indian director, he is also a famous screenwriter and composer.
The film "Song of the Road" he directed won an award at Cannes, and later he made two other films, "Song of the River" and "Song of the Big Tree", with the protagonist Apu, which won the Venice Golden Lion Award, and West Berlin Golden Bear. "
"Um... I want to ask about the accusation of script plagiarism. Did Steven really plagiarize his script?"
Ronald knew that he was weak when it came to non-English films and films from Third World countries. He had not watched many of these films and was relatively ignorant compared to Spike Lee, an alumnus of New York University.
"I heard he will make a statement tomorrow."
Regardless of the various surprises brought about by the box office success of E.T., Ronald sat down at the keyboard and tried to write a synopsis of the script.
He wanted to seize inspiration and write a play by himself without the help of dreams.
Dreaming about movies has no rules and is difficult to recreate. If I want to continue in the film industry, I am afraid that sooner or later I will have to return to being a screenwriter and writing scripts.
"The comet hit the earth, and a catastrophe like the extinction of the dinosaurs in the Cretaceous came to the earth. New York and Los Angeles were destroyed...
Several young valley girls escaped death because they visited nuclear war protection facilities. How do they use the ideas of Valley Girls to solve a series of survival problems after the catastrophe. "
Ronald wrote in stops. There was no reference to the original work, and no movie in his dream to guide him. He wrote very slowly.
The TV screen was a bit glaring, and Ronald soon felt his eyes became dry and wanted to cry.
It seems that I still have to buy a Se·Hinton type computer with a dedicated typing display.
"Ask the dealer tomorrow and see how much it costs."
multiple copies
