All living beings in hell

Chapter 117 - Hollywood Female Directors
The lotus lantern at the entrance was lit up, and the office welcomed No.70 guests.

The voice of a woman humming came from the door. The tune was full of Latin American style, and it was like a nursery rhyme to lull a child to sleep. The rhythm was strong and light.

The wooden door was pushed open, and a brown-skinned lady in a white shirt, dark brown overalls, and an exaggerated hat brim came in, kicking her boots and swinging her hips.Putting her hands in her pockets, as if trying to imitate the male cowboy's emphasis, she gave a deep cough and spit on the floor.

"What should I call you?"

I glanced at the drool on the floor and frowned.

The woman stepped on the wooden chair with one foot, put her elbow on her knee, and raised the brim of her hat slightly: "You don't know me?"

I tilted my head and glanced at the face of the woman under the brim of the hat. It looked like a certain movie star, but I couldn't remember the details.

"do not know."

"Jennifer Katie. You don't know me?"

"do not know."

Jennifer sat sideways on my wooden table with some displeasure, took off her black leather gloves, and tapped back and forth on my wooden table with her long nails painted with black nail polish.

"That shouldn't be the case, my lord. How could someone not know my name?"

"Move your hips to the chair, please. Thank you. You're getting in the way of my writing."

"cut."

After hearing what I said, Jennifer removed her plump buttocks from the table very dissatisfied, and sat on the wooden chair with her legs crossed.Compared with her overall image, this wooden chair seems a bit too approachable and amiable.

"Why did you find me today?"

"What's the matter? Aren't you the master writer who knows everything? Do you need me to say it?"

"Well, I need you to speak up, because I don't know."

Jennifer smiled disdainfully: "The rumored writing master is nothing more than that, not as good as your fortune tellers on the streets of China. They can guess my birth date without me asking."

"Then you can also go out now and turn left to find a fortune teller to chat with, so you don't have to talk nonsense with me."

"Just said a few words? The writer is annoyed now? It shouldn't be, aren't hell officials very patient?"

I raised half of my eyebrows expressionlessly: "The guest respects me, and I respect the guest. If the guest doesn't respect me, I should treat him as a guest."

Jennifer kicked my desk a little annoyed: "No producer in West Hollywood dared to say that to me."

"I'm not a producer, I can say whatever I want. So are you going to tell me what you are here for? If you still let me guess, go out by yourself, I won't give it away."

I put the quill on the table, ready to get up and see off the guests at any time.Jennifer stared at me, her nostrils opening and closing.Just when I was about to get up, Jennifer changed her attitude and showed a standard American smile.

"Just kidding, Mr. Writer. Please sit down and let's have a good talk."

"What do you want to talk about?"

"I was an actor, director, and activist. I died of an overdose in 12 years and I came here. Before I died, I was making a movie about hell and heaven, maybe I was obsessed with depicting the scene of hell, and I always thought about it. When I lost consciousness and woke up again, I was already on a beach formed by white broken bones."

"What happened to that movie?"

"After I came to hell, I don't know if the movie was made or not. But judging from the situation when I left the crew, it was very difficult, very difficult."

"What exactly happened?"

"It's a grand story with heaven, earth, and hell. There are gods, humans, and ghosts. There are many epic fighting scenes and heavyweight actors. If they can be filmed, they will definitely be from a completely different angle. The heroic epic. What I hope to be able to do is a diversity of heroic stories from the perspective of women. It is completely different from the heroic movies I see on the market now!"

Jennifer was full of praise for her work, and her words were full of pride.

"Sounds like one, two, three, and it's expensive."

"That's right, it's a big-budget movie. We have a long-term plan. We probably want to complete two prequels within five years, and then decide the next plot direction based on market feedback."

"Many American dramas are also produced in this way. The direction of the plot is determined according to the audience's feedback, but the cost may be much lower than yours."

"American dramas are also very expensive now, as long as we can find a reliable production company and producer, they can still be executed. Unfortunately, I made a fatal mistake. I had already raised the budget to shoot three quarters of the movie. In addition, I put a little bit in it myself, and it can always be shot. However, I found the wrong person and the wrong production company."

"Tell me specifically?"

"I won't say the name of the production company. In the real hell, there is nothing to say. I can't seek revenge from them later. This is not the story of the Avengers."

The corner of my mouth slightly curved: "...what an American cold joke."

Seeing that I understood her joke, Jennifer seemed to relax a little and continued.

"This is a new production company. It doesn't have a lot of commercial film production background. It has been producing small independent films before. These independent films have not entered any famous film festivals. It has been tepid for three years. The head of the company and I met at a film festival, when my short film won the best of the month, and the head of the company asked me if I was interested in making a feature film. Is it even a question? Feature films have always been My dream!"

When Jennifer said this, her hands began to shake. She took off the exaggerated cowboy hat on her head, took out a small yellow medicine bottle from the pocket of her overalls, and poured two white pills out of the bottle.He didn't even drink water, so he just swallowed it dryly.

"Would you like some hot water?"

Jennifer shook her head, swallowing hard.I still poured a glass of room temperature water and put it in front of her.If there is ice, maybe some will be given to the American, but ice is a luxury in hell.

"It tastes like toilet water, damn it." Jennifer took a big sip, rinsed off the tablet stuck in her throat, and complained a few words.

"Should be better than toilet water, at least without chlorine."

She ignored my joke and continued on her own.

"I started writing the script, and I had such a story in my head a long time ago. Epic, big scenes, involving heaven, hell and earth. Now this story is finally going to be moved to the big screen, I Literally willing to give my all for this story.

As soon as the first draft of the book was approved by the studio, I knew it was a great idea and I was very excited.Several online streaming platforms signed up the screening rights before we even started, we got a big investment, and everything was beautiful.You know how complicated it is to set up a film, and I was pretty tired out of my ass before it even started.I barely slept six hours a week, and the rest of the time was spent working, answering emails, and going over details over and over again.Detail details, all details. "

"and then?"

"Everything was going to be fine, fuck, until the tenth day of filming. The production company, the boss, suddenly took me aside and said we were out of money."

"How come there is no money?"

"Yeah, how the hell is there no money? I told him it's impossible, our budget is sufficient. He didn't explain too much, and we closed the group hastily after filming that scene. I Confused, I don't know what to do. What the hell is going on!

I called the boss that night and the guy just disappeared and ran away with the money.I called almost everyone around the boss, but no one knew what was going on.In the end, I found a certain predecessor of the leader. His predecessor told me that the leader owed a lot of debts, and probably ran to Mexico overnight with money. "

"The boss really ran away?"

"Some people said that he took the money to go to Las Vegas and lost it all. Some people said that he traded in stocks and lost his underwear. He said everything. In short, the remaining 6800 million US dollars are gone. .In the middle of the movie, there's nothing left. All that's left is me and a contract that I can't fulfill."

"It's a real headache."

"It's more than a headache. I can't sleep all night. It's good to close my eyes for two or three hours a week. Can you fucking understand when writing? You won't understand. This is a dream I once had, My dream! My dream is like this, crushed into a mess, thrown on the ground, everything I worked hard for is shit.

I don't know how to explain it to the studio.They recommended other production companies to me before, but I declined.How the hell am I so stupid, why on earth did I refuse! "

"I'm sorry for what happened to you." I said heartily.

"Sorry, sorry, it's useless. My life is ruined, so it's good to come to hell now, at least I don't have to solve that mess. Whoever wants to solve it, I don't want to worry about it anyway."

Jennifer took out a few more white pills from the medicine bottle, and poured them into her body with the normal temperature water she hated.

"Actually, you know what, writing. When I think about it now, I was just too eager to get it done."

"How to say?"

"Trilogy, such a grand story, how can I, a director who has only made short films, be able to control it all at once?"

"It's not necessarily impossible... This is something that no one can say for sure."

"That's what I thought at the time, but now I'm like why the hell am I in such a rush to do a trilogy all at once?"

"Yes, why?"

"Before that, I had been an actor for more than ten years. Although I also starred in TV dramas, I was not satisfied. I wanted to pursue higher pursuits. So I chose to start making movies and relearned the skills of screenwriting and directing. Knowledge, is this step wrong?"

"In my opinion, there is nothing wrong. You are pursuing what you want to do, which is fine. I am curious, why do you think it is urgent to come up with a trilogy?"

"Because this is...almost impossible! It's almost impossible! No white male director's debut has ever done this, let alone me, a Latino female director? But I have a big I just want to do something different, something that no one else has done. I really want to be that 'No.1'."

"How can I become 'No.1'?"

"I want to be proud of the Latino community ... we have a lot of proud predecessors, and I want to be one of them."

"what about now?"

"Maybe fate doesn't allow me to do that... maybe I can just be a good little actor, why bother to pursue so many things. If I didn't go through so much trouble, I might still be alive now, starring in another family soap opera. Although not satisfied, maybe at least it will not end up like this.”

"Jennifer, let me help you sort out the logic a little bit, okay?"

"Come on, you sound like my therapist."

"In reverse, your death was caused by a drug overdose. The drug overdose must have been caused by some kind of mental condition. A lot of film work aggravated this mental instability you already had, Let you take more drugs to control yourself. From this point of view, the problem is that you want to rely on increasing drug intake to suppress a certain unstable mental state, so as to continue to work and complete your ambitions .

Okay, so first of all you can't blame everything that happened to fate, it's a typical victim mentality.In victim thinking, the person concerned always feels that he is innocent and that the outside world is hurting him and preventing him from succeeding. "

Jennifer interrupted me: "I know what you're trying to say, my therapist told me the same thing. Don't make yourself a victim, everything that doesn't kill me makes me stronger, blahblahblah. But You see I'm dead now, I'm not strong."

"In a way, you should be stronger than when you were alive, because you really can't die anymore."

Jennifer laughed: "This is a very funny joke."

"What do you think you have learned from these things in your life?"

"What am I pursuing? My original life was pretty good, and I played myself to death."

"You said you were seeking to become the 'No.1 Latin female director.'"

"Now that I think about it, it was just a title. I could have saved another three years, bought a nice house in Beverly Hills, got a golden retriever. Married if I wanted to. If not, I I change my boyfriend every year. What a wonderful life it would have been!"

"Then what about your ambition?"

"Maybe it's not that fate is unfair to me, it's that it's not my time yet, I'm not ready yet. I'm still so young, why did I take medicine to death."

"What would you do if you came back to the world with a new identity, maybe no longer Latino?"

"Well, who knows? Live your life. Fuck the movies, I'll drink good champagne and eat beef tongue tacos and New York pizza. Damn, I can do whatever I want, go fuck the movies. "

"Well, it seems that you know what you want to do."

Jennifer put her jumbo-brimmed sun hat back on and adjusted the position of the hat.

"You really don't know me?"

"I'm sorry, I really don't know you."

"It's Always Sunny in California, have you seen this show?"

"Sorry, no."

Jennifer coughed again and spat on the ground: "No taste, I haven't seen this before."

"In hell, if you don't take medicine, it shouldn't matter. Your physical body has disappeared, and all existence is just an illusion. If you want, you can try to take a deep breath every time you tremble or become mentally unstable. Sit quietly. Slowly wean off the medicine."

"Why would I do that?"

"All souls can overcome the turbulence and pain in the past to increase your strength. It is not a long-term solution to obtain temporary relief by shielding the pain signal. Of course, this is just a suggestion, and it is ultimately up to you."

"You don't know how important my medicine is to me, and you're not a doctor, so you're not qualified to say that."

"The soul doesn't need chemical pills, the body does, but the soul may need to maintain a certain habitual behavior to maintain comfort. Maybe your soul needs this comfort."

"I need solace? Funny."

"Well, it's just a suggestion."

Jennifer patted her thighs and stood up from the chair: "I know you priests like to talk about mysterious things. These things have nothing to do with us humans."

"okay."

She stared at me as if hesitating about something.

"Anything else?" I asked.

"Can you really stop taking the medicine?"

"You can try it. If it doesn't work, you can continue to eat. The choice is entirely up to you, I'm just giving advice. And you also said that I'm not a doctor, and the advice I give is not professional."

Jennifer looked at the medicine bottle in her hand, shook it up and down a few times, and put it back into the pocket of her overalls.

"That's it, let's go."

"Goodbye." I said.

Jennifer used exactly the same body posture she walked into the office, kicking her boots, shaking her hips, and walked into the rustling leaves.

(End of this chapter)