I Am In Hollywood

Quentin and Lawrence had felt doubtful about Eric"s invitation to the Firefly Film Company. After seeing him disregard this matter so easily, however, they started to feel disappointed, regretting not having agreed at once. This mood fluctuation had such a big effect on the two that they reacted slowly to what Eric said then. Not until Eric finished speaking and looked up at them did Lawrence finally start to respond. He tried for confirmation by asking joyfully, "Eric, is it true?"

Then Quentin also realized what had happened and looked at Eric full of joy.

Eric nodded once again:"Of course. But I have several conditions."

The two suddenly understood what was going on. In the meantime, they felt at ease since it was quite unreasonable for Eric to both make an invitation and promise investment without mentioning any conditions. The two just hoped that Eric would not interfere too much in the film production.

"Above all, the cast of the film must be selected from the entertainment company called uta. Do you know about it?" Eric asked uncertainly at the end of his statement. In these days, he had paid little attention to the operation of uta and had only called Kapoor Cid several times. So he knew almost nothing about the company except that the business was thriving. Since he was becoming much more famous now, Eric had, in order to avoid suspicion, hardly got involved in the management of uta. Surely, there were some media agencies that had tried to find fault with the monopoly of uta. In the end, however, their efforts did not pay off. In fact, the ant.i.trust laws in North America were not as strict as they were imagined to be. Several decades ago, the Paramount Act stipulated that film companies could not vertically manage cinemas. The decree had already lost much of its binding force on major film companies. One could not say it existed in name only, but the truth was that the cinema screens owned by major film companies accounted for more than 1/10 of the total. The geographical advantages of theaters chosen by big film companies were undoubted and the 1/10 of all cinemas were the best among them. Secretly, major film businesses controlled an even larger scale of cinemas. It all resulted from the federal government turning a blind eye. The then Paramount act had ended the monopoly of major film studios but dealt a serious blow to the Hollywood film industry. Now the business was booming with a bigger profit, exerting an influence on even the whole globe. Everything was going so smoothly that those big film companies were gradually expanding their business. In this case, the government would not be so silly as to ruin all of this without the interference of strong forces.

Hearing Eric"s question, Lawrence Bender hurried to nod his head:"Of course, we definitely know about it." Then Lawrence and his best friend looked at each other before he started to reply:"We can meet this condition."

"Moreover, some changes should be made to the script... " Eric continued to speak. Quentin heard this and found the requirement displeasing. However, he dared not show his annoyance. Eric smiled slightly and said:"You can rest a.s.sured that I am quite satisfied with the content. I just find the name of The Seven-colored Robbers strange. We can use another great name. "

Quentin then felt at ease and so did Lawrence. If Eric made big changes to the script, Lawrence would be quite worried about his friend raising a direct objection and spoiling the cooperation. Luckily, Eric just proposed to change the film name and this was acceptable.

Eric lowered his head, grabbed a pen, directly wrote down two words on the script and pa.s.sed it to the two.

Quentin and Lawrence moved close and read the words out in unison, "Reservoir Dogs?"

"Yes, that"s it," Eric smiled playfully, "I feel that this name matches the plot exactly. All the characters in the story are like reservoir dogs, aren"t they?"

This time, Lawrence Bender looked at Quentin. The latter used his index finger to rub against his big forehead and hesitated for a while before nodding, "Okay. Let"s call it Reservoir Dogs." In fact, Quentin also felt that the name was much better than the original. As a scriptwriter, though, he felt a little unhappy when the name was changed by a young man sitting opposite him.

"Moreover, I feel that there should not be 7 robbers. Six is Okay. I have looked through the script. 3 of them died directly but several paragraphs are about them. So the relevant dialogues seem a little redundant. Of course, what I said is just a suggestion and it"s you who have the final say." Eric added. This idea came up suddenly and was only intended to make this cla.s.sic B-movie as playful as the edition in the previous life. If Quentin did not want to make the changes, that was Okay since the script was simply characterized by its nonlinear narrative structure.

If all got condensed, the story would be quite a boring one: the head of a gang called together several robbers with colors as the code names and asked them to rob a jewelry store of its diamonds. However, the group was betrayed and then besieged by the police. Some died in the gunfire and the remaining robbers fled into a warehouse. A series of fights happened and it was the internal conflict that killed all in the very end.

That was all.

The advantage of films was that they could, in various narrative methods, present in an interesting way a company that was too mediocre to be noticed.

"I will consider it," Quentin nodded after sensing that Eric was just making a suggestion. Quentin"s first reaction was refusal but he did not refuse directly. What he should do then would not be decided until he discussed with his best friend.

"Well, the rest is fine with me." Eric leaned comfortably against the chair and looked at the two, "Do you have anything else to discuss?"

Quentin pulled the script over and placed it under his hand before asking, "Eric, what about...what about the film director?"

Eric smilingly shrugged his shoulders, "I have promised investment and that surely means I have agreed to your previous conditions. I will say nothing about the content of the film and you can arrange it as you like. Moreover, you are in charge for the final editing." He had no expectations of the box office receipts. In his memory, this film was quite famous but failed to achieve a box office success. Some outstanding actors and actresses were put in the spotlight, though. That was the biggest attraction for Eric. As long as Reservoir Dogs was cast by only actors from uta, all was worthwhile for Eric even if only a little fame was won and the costs were not recovered.