Rebirth of Chinese Entertainment from the Oscars

In September 1999, the Beijing Film Academy opened.

Su Chen entered his second year of university. Although he was a sophomore, he didn't actually spend much time at school—he applied for exemptions from almost all the required courses on his schedule, only taking the final exams. This was extremely rare in the history of the Beijing Film Academy, but given that he had already won two short film awards at Venice and Cannes, the academy made a special exception for his application.

He needs to devote all his energy to the preparation of "Black Coal, Thin Ice".

The script was finalized, and the budget was secured. The prize money from the two short film awards, plus the remaining copyright fees, brought the production cost to approximately two million RMB. For a new director's debut art film, this amount wasn't small, but it was far from comfortable. Su Chen had to be meticulous in every aspect of the budget.

Of all the stages, the one that gave him the biggest headache was casting.

There are two key characters in "Black Coal, Thin Ice".

The protagonist, Zhang Zili, is a down-on-his-luck retired police officer who left the force after his comrade-in-arms was killed during a case. He works as a security guard in a factory in a small industrial city in northern China, spending his days drinking and living like a walking corpse. Later, he is drawn back into the investigation of a dismemberment case, and in the process of pursuing the truth, he gradually rediscovers a little meaning in his life.

The female lead, Wu Zhizhen, is a taciturn laundry worker with a deep secret hidden in her eyes. She is a "victim's wife" and also the most crucial figure in the entire case. She needs to possess a cold sexiness and a fragile vulnerability that could shatter at any moment.

These two roles demand a lot from the actors.

Zhang Zili needs an actor around thirty years old who can portray the roughness and despair of a person from the lower class, and who can also unleash tremendous emotional power at crucial moments. He's not the decadent domineering CEO from idol dramas, but a real person rotten in the mud.

Wu Zhizhen needs an actress between twenty-five and thirty years old, whose beauty is understated and whose coldness is not deliberate, who can convey a complex sense of story with just a back view, a profile, or a pair of hands washing clothes.

Such actors were hard to find in the domestic film and television industry in 1999.

Su Chen went through all the information on eligible actors in the country. The popular male actors were either too upright, lacking that "bad" vibe; or too handsome, out of place in a factory security guard's uniform. The female actors were even more troublesome—either too beautiful, too sweet, or too thin, none of them looking like a woman who had stood in a laundromat for ten years.

He needs a quiet, vibrant, and real person, not an "actor" "acting".

  

In mid-September, Su Chen met with casting director Liu Tianchi at a small restaurant near the Beijing Film Academy.

Liu Tianchi is a teacher at the Central Academy of Drama, where she teaches acting and also frequently helps various film and television productions with casting. Su Chen contacted her through Hou Keming's connections. The two ordered a few side dishes and sat down facing each other.

"I've read your script." Liu Tianchi got straight to the point, his tone carrying the admiration of a professional. "It's really well written. Cold, but not dry; that undercurrent of tension is so rare in domestic scripts."

"Thank you, Sister Tianchi. But the problem now is that we can't find good actors for good scripts." Su Chen pushed the teacup in front of her. "You have a wide network of connections at the Central Academy of Drama. Do you have any suitable candidates to recommend? The male lead should be around thirty years old, have a sense of being from the lower class, not too handsome, but someone whose face the audience can remember."

Liu Tianchi thought for a moment, then took out a stack of actor photos from her bag and placed them on the table, showing them to Su Chen one by one.

"This guy graduated from the Shanghai Theatre Academy. His acting skills are fine, but his looks are too conventional, so he's not suitable for playing a policeman."

"This is a stage actor with very solid acting skills, but he's a bit older, almost forty."

"this……"

She flipped through seven or eight pages, but Su Chen shook his head each time.

Liu Tianchi suddenly stopped, thought for a moment, and then said uncertainly, "There is someone, I don't know if you've heard of him. He's from the Shanghai Dramatic Arts Center, named Liao Fan."

Liao Fan.

Su Chen's heart skipped a beat when he heard the name.

In his past life, he certainly knew Liao Fan. The Berlin Film Festival Best Actor, the true male lead in *Black Coal, Thin Ice*—but that was in 2014, the version directed by Diao Yinan. In this life, *Black Coal, Thin Ice* was filmed fifteen years earlier, and the script was written by him, Su Chen, but the male lead's name still appeared before him after many twists and turns.

Some relationships are like plots written in a movie.

"What has he acted in?" Su Chen asked, pretending he wasn't familiar with the name.

"He's acted in a few TV dramas, mostly in supporting roles, and he had a guest appearance in a few episodes of 'Love Will Carry On.' I've seen his work, and he's good." Liu Tianchi carefully chose her words. "He has a certain something about him—not just handsome, but the kind of look you can't forget after just one glance. He has sharp features, a fierce look in his eyes, and an inexplicable wickedness when he smiles. He's also very good at physical comedy, and he has a lot of presence on the stage."

Su Chen nodded: "Do you have a photo of him?"

Liu Tianchi flipped through the photos and found a somewhat blurry still from the show. The man in the photo had a buzz cut, his features weren't particularly refined but were very distinctive, he was wearing a faded old shirt, and when he looked at the camera, he had an undisguised, wild aggressiveness in his eyes.

That's the face.

"Contact him and ask him to audition in Beijing." Su Chen put down the photo. "Who are your candidates for the female lead?"

Liu Tianchi frowned and thought for a long time: "To be honest, I can't think of a perfect match for Wu Zhizhen in your script right now. She's not a beauty in the traditional sense, but she needs to have something dangerous about her that attracts men. Cold, but not without warmth. This character... I'll go back and think about it some more, and I'll also ask around for you."

"Thank you, Sister Tianchi."

Su Chen paid the bill and walked out of the restaurant. In September, the sky over Beijing was ablaze with a fiery orange-red sunset. He stood by the roadside, gazing at the clouds, but his mind was still on the photo he'd just seen—Liao Fan's devilishly handsome face.

He knew very well that Liao Fan was Zhang Zili. But in this life, he needed a younger, more hungry Liao Fan. In 1999, Liao Fan had just graduated from the Shanghai Theatre Academy and was still struggling on the stage, like a treasure yet to be discovered by anyone.

And he wants to be the one digging for treasure.

Three days later, Liao Fan, carrying a small bag, traveled from Shanghai to Beijing by a slow train that took more than ten hours.

He received the audition notice while rehearsing for a small theater play, playing a villain who gets killed off less than ten minutes into his appearance. The pay from the production team was enough for him to live on in Shanghai for a month. The casting director on the phone, who identified himself as Liu Tianchi, said that a young director's debut film was looking for a male lead and asked him to audition in Beijing. He asked who the director was, and the other party gave him a name he had never heard of before—Su Chen.

"Who is Su Chen?" he asked an actor from the same production crew.

"You don't know? That genius student who won short film awards at Venice and Cannes! He's only sixteen or seventeen, from the Beijing Film Academy!"

Liao Fan was stunned. A director who was sixteen or seventeen years old?

He didn't have high hopes. A young director's debut art film was likely to be the kind of experimental film that no one could understand, and the so-called "finding a male lead" was probably just a young person's whimsical idea. But he still came, not because he had much confidence in the project, but because he really couldn't find any films to work on in Shanghai.

Come here.

The audition was held in a small rehearsal room at the Beijing Film Academy. Su Chen arrived early and quickly set up the room—leaving only a chair and a lamp, with light coming down from the side and above, creating a softly lit area around the chair.

When Liao Fan entered, the first thing Su Chen noticed was his eyes.

Those eyes held more depth than in the photograph. They didn't entirely belong to 1999—they belonged to a young man who had toiled for years on the stage, playing countless minor roles, yet hadn't given up. That hunger, that rough edge yet to be smoothed by opportunity, was perfectly set in his face.

"Director Su," Liao Fan called out, his voice not loud, but with a rugged, hoarse quality.

"Just call me Su Chen." Su Chen stood up and shook hands with him. Liao Fan's hands were rough and had distinct knuckles, unlike an actor's hands, more like those of a laborer who had done manual labor.

This is good.

"Have you seen the play?" Su Chen handed him a few pages of the script.

"I've read it." Liao Fan took the script but didn't open it. He had obviously done his homework beforehand. "I want to try scene thirty-one—the scene where Zhang Zili finds the body parts in the factory bathhouse."

Su Chen raised an eyebrow slightly. That scene was the most difficult solo performance in the entire script. Zhang Zili found body parts wrapped in newspaper in a locker in the bathhouse, and he needed to complete a complex psychological transformation within one minute, from shock to fear to feigning composure and then to the awakening of his professional instincts. There were no lines throughout the entire scene.

A young actor who comes to audition and immediately chooses the toughest challenge is either overconfident or foolish.

Su Chen wanted to know which one he was.

"Okay. Begin."

The rehearsal hall fell silent. Liao Fan closed his eyes and took three deep breaths. When he opened his eyes again, the look in them had changed.

He is no longer Liao Fan. He is Zhang Zili.

He stood in front of the "locker," first giving it a casual glance—the kind of look a security guard gives every day during his patrol. Then his gaze was drawn to something. He paused, tilted his head, and a hint of confusion appeared on his face. The confusion was faint, but Su Chen caught a slight twitch in the corner of his mouth.

He reached out and opened the cabinet door.

Then his body jerked back half a step. It wasn't an exaggerated stumble, but rather as if he had been hit head-on by something, his entire upper body involuntarily leaning back, while one hand instinctively went to shield him. His pupils dilated slightly, his lips opened and closed, and a barely audible, suppressed sound escaped his throat.

These are all physiological responses, with an astonishing level of precision.

Then came the most dramatic part—he forced himself to calm down. You could see his body trembling, but his expression began to tighten little by little. His lips pressed into a line, the wrinkles on his brow deepened, and the fear in his eyes was slowly covered by something else—professional instinct. He had been a detective, and this ingrained instinct was stronger than fear itself.

He approached the cabinet again, this time with caution and professionalism. He crouched slightly, turned his head, and examined the "thing" in front of him with the eyes of someone scrutinizing a crime scene. His breathing changed from rapid to heavy and regular, and his right hand unconsciously rubbed against the outside of his thigh—a subconscious action of an experienced detective when investigating a crime scene, as if habitually searching for handcuffs or a service weapon at his waist.

Liao Fan designed this detail himself without any prompting.

Su Chen applauded in his heart.