Literary Master: Starting with Refusing to Be a Child Star

When the rough cut of "Low IQ Crime" came out, Luo Jinnian specially took a weekend to fly to Beijing and watched the whole series in the conference room of Early Spring Culture.

Zhao Bo sat next to him, with an empty seat between them. When the fourth episode was playing on the screen, Luo Jinnian chuckled softly.

Zhao Bo had been watching the boss's expression closely, and only then did he breathe a sigh of relief.

After watching the last episode, Luo Jinnian leaned back in his chair, remained silent for a while, and then said, "The overall tone is right, but you know... the pacing could be a bit tighter."

Zhao Bo asked him, "Where can we tighten up?" Luo Jinnian gave two suggestions: one was the dialogue when Ye Jun scouted the location for the second time, which could be cut a few seconds to let the audience see the "How did I go to the wrong place again?" expression on his face earlier; the other was the scene where Zhang Yi'ang was analyzing the map in the police station, which could be edited a few shots earlier.

Zhao Bo wrote down all the comments.

A week later he sent the revised version, and after Luo Jinnian read it:

"It's ready to be sold."

Zhao Bo asked, "Who exactly will it be sold to?"

Luo Jinnian said, "Let them come to us, there's no rush."

Three weeks later, Wang He invited Luo Jinnian to dinner. They didn't talk about the drama, but chatted about the weather and their recent situations.

Luo Jinnian knew he was waiting for him to bring up the copyright of "Low IQ Crime" first. Luo Jinnian didn't mention it. They talked for nearly two hours until Wang He finally put down his chopsticks and looked at him: "How's your comedy? Have you thought about airing it on the Mist Theater?"

Luo Jinnian thought for a moment, "Mist Theater is a suspense brand, and when the audience comes in, they assume they will see suspense. But the rhythm of this comedy is different. If we include it, some viewers may feel it doesn't suit them."

This is fake.

Wang He didn't refute after listening, but he didn't give up either. "So you mean you won't sell?" Luo Jinnian said, "Sell, but sell to the right place."

He paused, then said, "If you want to take it, you can, but I suggest you don't put it in the Mist Theater. If the platform is willing to dedicate a separate theater to it, or broadcast it in another timeline, the effect might be better." Wang He was silent for a moment, then said, "I'll go back and discuss it."

Wang He didn't contact Luo Jinnian again. But two weeks later, another platform contacted Zaochun Culture. This platform was promoting a comedy series section, but the recent comedy series had only performed so-so, and they hadn't found a breakthrough.

When Director Qin forwarded the message to Luo Jinnian, he added, "They asked if they could see the clip." Luo Jinnian said "sure" and sent over the rough cut. The response came quickly: "We want this series."

The offer was slightly lower than Luo Jinnian had expected, but the agreement on copyright ownership was better than anticipated. The platform purchased the first broadcast rights, while subsequent broadcasting rights and new media rights belonged to Zaochun Culture. This means that the value of this drama is not realized all at once, but can be continuously realized.

On the day the contract was signed, Luo Jinnian was in class at school. The math teacher wrote a big problem on the blackboard, and Luo Jinnian copied it down, wrote down a few steps on a piece of scratch paper, and then put down his pen.

That day, after school, he was walking home, and several thoughts were running through his mind.

One thought is about the broadcast effect of "Low IQ Crime." It's different from all of Early Spring Culture's previous works, but it has something that those previous works had:

The story is complete.

A script that doesn't rely on traffic, gimmicks, or trending topics, but only on solid quality:

When Ye Jun went to the wrong door, the audience was anxious for him; when Zhang Yi'ang analyzed the case, the audience wanted to go up and speak for him; and when the two finally stood face to face in the last episode, the audience could finally let out the breath they had been holding for more than ten episodes.

Another idea came up with the brand "Early Spring Culture". When this company is mentioned before, people think of shows like "The Hidden Corner", "The Silent Truth", and "The Long Season".

Now we can add something new to this list: "Low IQ Crime" will be included, becoming a different colored line in the company's product line.

When Luo Jinnian walked downstairs, Chu Qingning was standing under the streetlight waiting for him, holding two bottles of yogurt in her hand.

The two of them went upstairs one after the other, their footsteps making soft, rhythmic sounds in the stairwell, creating a warm ambiance.

Luo Jinnian held the half-finished bottle of yogurt, thinking that the comedy would appear at the right time and in the right place.

The broadcast time was set for early summer, a time slot that's neither as crowded as the end of the year nor as hot as the summer. The platform provided a lot of promotional resources, but the selling point of "Low IQ Crime" is quite different from the previous works of Early Spring Culture. In the past, the promotional copy for dramas followed the path of "explosive word-of-mouth" and "masterpiece of the year," but this time it has changed to a lighter tone of "bumbling thieves and bumbling cops in a hilarious chase."

The trailer was also very well edited, with close-ups of Ye Jun putting the license plate on backwards, Zhang Yi'ang drawing the wrong route on the map and being exposed by his colleagues, and his accomplice waiting at the door but ending up at the wrong door.

On the night of its official release, Luo Jinnian did not sit in front of the screen to check the number of views, nor did he refresh the Douban page to wait for the rating.

He finished writing the first draft of a short story in his rented room, closed his laptop, looked at the night outside the window, and then picked up his phone to send Zhao Bo a message: "It's on."

Zhao Bo replied with a "Like" and then sent another message: "It's my own drama. I'm a little embarrassed to watch it, but I want to watch it." Luo Jinnian looked at that message, smiled, then turned off the light and lay down on the bed.

When I woke up the next morning, my phone was already overflowing with messages. The Douban rating was out—7.9, lower than "The Hidden Corner" and "The Long Season," but for a comedy web series, this score was already pretty good.

The top comment in the short review section reads: "I finally don't have to cry over Early Spring Culture's plays anymore. I laughed all night until my stomach hurt."

"I never expected a crime drama to be so funny."

One reply below said, "Me too."

Many people were surprised, saying, "Was this produced by Early Spring Culture? The company that made 'The Silent Truth'? How did they come up with this kind of comedy?"

The discussion wasn't as heated as those suspense dramas of yesteryear, but a notable feature was that viewers would share the humorous moments from the show in the comments section after watching it. Some posted screenshots of Ye Jun going to the wrong door, captioning it, "This guy really has no brains at all, but he's so persistent." Others made a GIF of Zhang Yi'ang analyzing the map, saying, "If you're going in the wrong direction, the harder you try, the more bitter it becomes."

Towards the end of the broadcast, Luo Jinnian noticed an interesting phenomenon:

Some viewers have started shipping Ye Jun and Zhang Yi'ang as a couple.

The script used by Luo Jinnian for filming "Low IQ Crime" was not intended to be released in the Kiwi Fruit region, but was based more on the original work.

So this surprised him a bit, because they hadn't thought about it in this direction at all when they were filming. Ye Jun only had the gold shop in his mind, and Zhang Yi'ang only had the case in his mind. The intersection of the bumbling cop and the bumbling criminal was just "one wanted to run and the other wanted to catch". But the audience found a strange sense of tacit understanding in those chaotic chases and misunderstandings.

Someone wrote an analysis post on the forum titled "How a bumbling thief and a bumbling cop became the city's most reliable partners." The post analyzed every time the two crossed paths, every time they missed each other, and every time they missed each other at the last moment.

"This is love, damn it."

"I love Ma's twisted dough sticks."

After the series ended, although the final popularity of "Low IQ Crime" did not break certain records, its long-tail effect was better than he had expected.

A month after its conclusion, the number of comments and fan-created content remained at a stable level. Some people watched it repeatedly as a "dinner show," some made memes from the lines, and others compiled clips of Ye Jun's repeated "failures." The combined views of those videos were higher than many newly released dramas.

However, many viewers commented: "This is not up to the standard of early spring culture, it's boring."

Early Spring Culture fans have long been accustomed to enjoying more impactful plot developments, but this film is more about humor than gimmicks.

This is just one film. If there were more, previously hidden haters would jump out and discuss whether the author of "Early Spring Tea" had run out of ideas.

Of course, no one would dare to do that now. After producing high-quality works for three consecutive years, Luo Jinnian has long been regarded as a "genius creator who is rare in the Chinese entertainment industry."

Luo Jinnian felt ashamed to have single-handedly brought Huayu Entertainment to a level it had never reached before, but he also felt a sense of crisis—too many people coveted his achievements and wanted to bring him down, so he had to be extremely careful.