Hollywood Production - Chapter 36

Chapter 36: Junket Whore

With the budget 20th Century Fox provided, it was unable to attract those high-level socialites to the premiere of 《Speed.》

As for who is a high-level socialite, naturally it is North America’s top-notch group of film critics, such as Richard Christiansen of Time, Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times, Todd McCarthy of the Hollywood Reporter, and the famous Roger Ebert, etc.

They were much more fair than the critics who are here today, but their fairness was also hidden behind a lot of deals. To mention just one person, Roger Ebert, whose show “At the Movies” was one of the most commercialized review programs in North America, It’s not hard to guess what kind of changes a highly commercialized review would bring.

Even Roger Ebert, who was at the top of the food chain, is a junket whore.

For example, Roger Ebert gave his seal of approval for 《Terminator 2》 last year, and everyone knows that James Cameron’s film is absolutely worthy of such praise, but how many people are aware of the PR that 20th Century Fox did as a distributor?

According to Duke’s information, Roger Albert, who came to Los Angeles that week for the 《Terminator 2》 premiere, requested to play golf at a top private club in Malibu every day. Of course, 20th Century Fox would satisfy his request. As for whether the two sides had any other backstage stories privately, it was not something Duke could know.

As someone who has experienced the Internet era, Duke naturally understands how to deal with professional film critics. He can neither despise them nor pay too much attention to them. They are just tools he borrows to move forward!

After finishing up with the film critics, Duke went to another event where he got interviewed with other actors.

Like film reviewers, Fox only invited reporters from low-tier media outlets besides their own, and their attention was focused on the two most famous cast members, Keanu Reeves and Uma Thurman. Director Duke was hardly known, and even Naomi Watts, thanks to her looks and her agent’s connections, got more attention than Duke.

This is also related to Fox’s publicity strategy in the twentieth century. In the early 1990s, the directors were still behind the scenes. Unless the directors were already quite famous, it was difficult to attract the attention of movie fans and the media. The publicity strategy for the film was often developed around the actors.

When a reporter asked, Duke also said a few words, most of which were “confidence in the film” and “the male and female protagonists were very good”. The reporter lacked the perseverance to explore in depth, and Duke was also not interested in media interviews.

If giving an interview and having the media report on it could make the movie a big hit, Duke doesn’t care if he has to break his mouth open. But for him now, even if he hypes the movie up to the sky, it won’t do any good.

This screening and interviews was finally over close to evening. Duke walked out of the conference room and into the adjoining lounge to tidy up his things and prepare to leave. That’s when he saw Naomi Watts, accompanied by a woman in her early thirties, walk into the lounge as well.

“Hello, Duke.” She greeted him warmly.

She looked a little pale and troubled, as if she had run into some difficulty and was still struggling with it.

“Hi, Naomi.” Duke replied with a smile.

Although the other party in his memory had climbed to the top of Hollywood, Duke grew up close to Hollywood circles, and he didn’t know how many future stars he had seen.

In his impression, Naomi Watts is just like many of the young women who came to Hollywood to chase their dreams: she has some dreams, some scheming, some means, some looks, and some acting skills, of course, as well as some luck, at least much better than his past self.

“Won’t you introduce us, Naomi?”

The woman next to her suddenly spoke up, and Naomi Watts immediately reacted, bringing her over to Duke. “Nancy, this is Duke Rosenberg, the director of the film.”

“Duke, this is Nancy, Nancy Josephson, my agent.”

“Josephson?”

Repeating it to himself, Duke’s brow furrows slightly, as though he had heard the surname somewhere before.

“Nice to meet you, Miss Josephson.” He reached out and shook her hand. “Please call me Nancy. Can I call you Duke? Thank you.”

Both sides spoke a few polite words to each other, after which Nancy Josephson took a phone call, whispered something to Naomi Watts, then left the lounge first.

Both sides spoke a few polite words to each other, after which Nancy Josephson took a phone call, whispered something to Naomi Watts, then left the lounge first.

Nancy comes from International Creative Management (ICM).

Naomi Watts is very thoughtful and deliberately explained a few sentences: “She is the daughter of ICM founder Marvin Josephson.”

If you find any Mistakes or Poorly Written Paragraphs in this chapter, pleas tell me in the comments below so I can fix them.