A grand feast for the Chinese entertainment industry

Chapter 33 Take it!

"Spicy Love Soup" tells the story of a young, unmarried couple preparing for their wedding. The process involves meeting each other's parents, decorating their new home, registering their marriage, buying rings, and taking wedding photos. This serves as a central thread, leading to five short stories about relationships at different ages, divided into five units: "Voice," "Photographs," "Toys," "Thirteen Spices," and "Mahjong." These five units are connected by the central theme of "Marriage."

It doesn't look like it's going to be a box office hit at all.

But thinking about it again, it's true that China isn't very good at making commercial films these days. I remember watching a lot of "looking back 20 or 30 years" series on Douyin in my past life. For big-budget commercial productions in China, we had to wait for Zhang Yimou's "Hero" before it really started.

So, in this day and age, this film is probably considered pretty good?
It doesn't matter, I have my wife!
Unfortunately, Gao Yuanyuan's role is in the "Voice" segment, where she plays a high school student, which is a natural fit for her age. While Lin Jianlu is the right age to act opposite her, his overall demeanor makes it impossible for him to portray that kind of naive, immature young man.

If he were to act opposite Gao Yuanyuan, this scene would fall apart.

Looking closely, including both confirmed and unconfirmed roles, there are only two characters most suitable for Lin Jianlu to play: the male lead and Xia Xiaowan, a wedding photographer. Both are the right age.

Lin Jianlu could never play the male lead; if they were to film that, it would take at least two months!

So, after looking at it over and over again, the only role he can play is Xia Xiaowan. "How many days will it take to film?"

"Your time is precious, so you can come first. Everyone else can go play somewhere else. As long as you're there, we'll take your picture first, and we'll try to get it done in a week!" — Damn! They said two days when they were trying to fool us!

Actually, I really don't want to act in it, because I won't be acting opposite my wife!
After much hesitation, and with the conversation already so far, I decided to continue acting, mainly because it would give me an excuse to stay on set and get to know my wife—so I reluctantly agreed in the end.

Having received the promise, Zhang Yang happily picked his teeth and disappeared.

That afternoon, I received a call saying that Xi'an Film Studio had agreed to allocate one million yuan. "Hey... from today onwards, you're my brother. Your name is really useful! But I have something to do. Shall I come over so we can talk some more?"

"Forget about attracting investment!"

"Don't..."

…………

On May 1st, Su Huilun's new album "Lemon-tree" was released. The title track "Lemon-tree," with lyrics by Lin Jianlu, was an instant hit, selling over 70,000 copies in its first week in Taiwan and exceeding 100,000 copies in its second week. In the same week, "Cold to the End," after dominating the charts for ten weeks and achieving sales of over 100,000 copies for nine consecutive weeks, finally dropped to second place. It can be said that Su Huilun climbed to the top by stepping over Lin Jianlu.

One hundred thousand and a few hundred, that's still over one hundred thousand! We could even boast it's one hundred and twenty thousand!

Su Huilun has successfully taken a big step forward by taking this opportunity!

This album has a very good chance of selling over 500,000 copies!
When she called again, she was smug and boastful, claiming that she had gotten revenge on Lin Jianlu for saying that she needed Lao Duan's flattery to achieve a weekly sales volume of 100,000 copies!
But things took a turn for the worse in the third week—"Cold to the End" maintained its sales of over 70,000 copies and returned to the top of the charts, while "Lemon-tree" suddenly dropped to only around 40,000 copies sold.

When he called again, he was dejected.

"It's alright. Think about it, you once trampled on Lin Jianlu, who was famous all over Taiwan, and ravaged her for a whole week! A whole week, isn't that enough to make you arrogant?"

"Pfft... What you said... is so lewd!"

"Hey, don't get your thoughts all dirty, you pervert!"

"You're the one with impure thoughts! It was you who said it was lewd!"

"If you keep this up, I'm going to tell you a joke!" "Go ahead and tell me, let's see how dirty your jokes can get!"

"Hey...you're asking for trouble! You know, students learn ABCs, that's normal, right? But one student refused to say it, and the teacher got angry and asked him what was wrong! The student said, 'My mom told me not to say B, it's a swear word!'..."

"puff……"

Despite her arrogant demeanor, Su Huilun is actually very funny and has a very low threshold for laughter.

"The teacher is very angry. Your mother's B and the teacher's B don't mean the same thing..."

Before she could finish speaking, Su Huilun on the other end of the phone was already laughing so hard she was about to pass out. As Lin Jianlu spoke, she covered her mouth, seemingly laughing so hard she was convulsing.

Tch, that's the way to deal with stubborn people—take them down!
However, after hanging up the phone, I felt empty. I've heard too many dirty jokes and can tell too many dirty jokes. I can make almost everyone laugh, but it's hard for anyone to make me laugh anymore.

…………

Old Duan wants us to shoot a music video again!

With the release of the music video for "Bei'er Shuang," a somewhat unserious promotional campaign was launched in various Southeast Asian countries. Unexpectedly, the album's sales soared in these countries. Even though the subsequent music video for "Tong Hua" was said to have moved countless people and dominated the Hong Kong and Taiwan music charts, "Bei'er Shuang" remained firmly at the top of the charts in many Southeast Asian countries!
Old Duan called personally to say that the music video for "Bei'er Shuang" was a hit, which led many non-Chinese people in the area to buy the album as well—this wave of influence is quite significant!

It's all thanks to that dance!
Of course, in May, which is about to end, Fairy Tales is still the most popular.

The music video's promotion across Mainland China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong resulted in "Fairy Tale" consistently topping the charts in various regions. Even in Japan and South Korea, the music video was reported as having "touched countless young men and women." As a result, album sales in various regions barely dropped, and in some places even increased.

Given this powerful and widespread impact, Rolling Stone has decided to postpone the release of the music video for "Ten Years," originally scheduled for mid-May, to early June. Naturally, "Hua Tian Cuo" will also be postponed.

In short, Rock Records aims to make "Cold to the End" the first album in the entire Chinese music scene to achieve massive and long-term sales! Furthermore, considering the strong sales performance in mainland China, the company even believes that there is a good chance of achieving global sales of over 9 million or even 10 million copies!
Well... we don't have enough music videos, we need to shoot more!
Rock Records even plans to film the remaining six songs as well, and release a "Cold to the End" video. They also hope that Lin Chien-lu can take some time to go to Taiwan to discuss and select one or two songs to make a remix version. They plan to add them to the album when it reaches a certain sales milestone, and not sell them separately, but bundle them with the "Cold to the End" video as a "10 Million Celebration Edition" or something similar.

Well... when it comes to doing business, you guys are still the best!
Now that it's bundled together, wouldn't it sell for NT$599 per set? Selling 10,000 sets would be NT$599 million, which is equivalent to RMB 1.4 to 1.5 million. That would almost cover the cost of making the music video!

Then they can sell one more set and make a profit!
This was within her job responsibilities, and whether she liked it or not, Lin Jianlu had no choice but to agree. After all, if you make money from someone and they support you, then it's within your job responsibilities, and you can't shirk your duties.

So, Rolling Stone demanded that the next six music videos be of the highest quality possible, meaning they all needed a story script. This is where all the friends he'd made before came in handy. Lin Jianlu made phone calls, invited people to dinner, and gathered a group of directors and screenwriters.

Let's all compile stories, and Rolling Stone will foot the bill.

But after assigning the tasks, Lin Jianlu suddenly remembered that this time there would be six films, each with a story and a female lead—Holy crap! If I want the female leads to be different, where am I supposed to find six young and beautiful girls?

Jiang Qinqin directed "The Flower Field Mistake," Liu Ruoying directed "Fairy Tale," and Liang Yongqi directed "Ten Years"—they've set the bar a bit too high! These days, finding young girls with similar looks to those three is probably not easy! Surely they can't just find Gao Yuanyuan right now? Wouldn't that be a bit like forcing growth?

He called Xue Zhongding, and Lao Xue burst out laughing.

Half an hour later, he personally delivered a thick stack of documents, saying, "You want to shoot a music video? Do you still have to worry about not finding a female lead? Look, I've received these in three days. You can choose!"

Lin Jianlu took it, opened it, and wow...

(End of this chapter)