MTL - Exploiting Hollywood 1980-Chapter 20 negotiation
Chapter 20 Negotiations
Jerry Zack waved his hands excitedly and shouted loudly, and the waving hand swept Gail's nose at once, her nose was sore, and she began to cry, squatting on the ground, covering her face with her hands.
Jim didn't see what was going on, thinking that Jerry had hit Gal. He sped out from the inside, pushed Jerry away, and went to help Gail.
The trio looks like Jerry's brother, and when he sees his brother being pushed down, he rushes up to beat Jim...
Ronald stepped forward, grabbed the shoulders of the man who wanted to hit Jim, stretched one foot between his legs, hooked one ankle, and moved back gently, turning his upper body to take advantage of the trend. The man fell to the ground.
Then Ronald glanced out of the corner of the eye, quickly turned his head and squatted down, dodging Jerry Zack's fist from behind, turned his head and stretched out his hand to clamp his shoulders, and put his crotch away from Jerry's waist. Take it lightly...Jerry is also placed.
Ronald stepped forward and pulled Jim up, then shouted:
"Everyone, stop! It's all a misunderstanding!"
At this time, Roger Coleman also left the office, and other employees who worked overtime in the office also gathered outside the boss's administrative office to watch the excitement, forming a large circle.
Ronald explained to everyone: "This is a misunderstanding, everyone calm down, no one is hurt."
The third person in the trio, lifted Brother Zach from the ground and patted the ashes on them. "We're not here to fight, we just want to talk to Mr. Coleman."
He saw that Ronald had water on his hands, and the two of them just fell to the ground without hurting.
said he stretched out his hand: "Hello, we have no malicious intent"
Ronald shook his hand: "I'm Ronald Lee, you talk to Mr. Coleman first, I'll go see Gail."
Gail slowed down, and Jim helped her to the bathroom.
Roger Coleman waved to everyone, "Go back to work, it's alright." After thinking about it, he picked up the phone and connected to the front desk:
"I'm Roger. Are Julie and Joe Dante still in the conference room? Okay, please come up to my office."
Then Roger raised his hand and asked the trio to come into the office to talk. The three entered the door and picked three seats by the window at the conference table, and sat side by side.
After a while, the proprietress Julie Coleman and co-director Joe Dante also came, and the two sides were equal in number and sat opposite each other.
Ronald saw that Gail hadn't come back, so he went to make 6 cups of coffee, sent it in, and was about to take the door and leave.
"You also stay and listen, you can learn a little bit."
Roger Coleman looked at the number of people on the side, not dominant, and there was a woman. Still called Ronald, who had just made a big show.
Ronald closed the door, pulled out the chair closest to the door, sat down and listened.
It turns out that Jerry Zucker, his brother, and a good friend from high school, three people, a long-term cooperation trio, they wrote a comedy movie about an airplane and wanted Roger to shoot.
But Roger felt that the script was not good, it was all jokes, there was no storyline at all, and various fake advertisements were interspersed in the middle to satirize. No one paid for fake advertisements. It is unheard of for a low-budget film to have no story at all, although the story is not important.
In addition, Roger Coleman has rarely made comedy films in recent years, so he is reluctant to invest money.
Jerry Zack is the youngest of the three, but he is the most talented and the head of the trio. He joined "High School of Rock" as a second group director, and wanted to use his talent to impress Roger Coleman to reconsider investing.
What the trio didn't expect was that a woman they had previously approached La Investments had lunch with Paramount's COO Michael Eisner last week and recommended the trio to Ace accept.
Eisner expressed his interest in this subject and instructed his general Katzenberg to deal with it.
Katzenberg has read the script, and his views are the same as Roger Coleman. The script is unformed, just a collection of jokes. The trio was asked to spend two weeks, with Paramount's screenwriter doctor, restart the stove and rewrite a script. He was satisfied with the green light to release the project, with an estimated total investment of $3.5 million.
The trio was overjoyed, not expecting that something went wrong when Jerry negotiated with Roger Coleman. "High School of Rock" Here, Jerry still has 5 days to finish filming. So Jerry pestered Roger for a day today, wanting Roger to give up the last 5 days of his contract.
The two sides are deadlocked on this point.
Jerry Zucker proposed that the salary paid in advance could be refunded, and Roger would find someone to complete the remaining 5 days and let them go to Paramount to write the script wholeheartedly.
Roger Coleman felt that there would be no suitable replacements in a short time, so they stayed and went after the filming.
During the ten minutes of arguing between the two sides, Ronald listened carefully and heard two meanings.
The Jerry trio must go to Paramount. If Roger doesn't agree, they won't come to work. There will be legal disputes in the future, and there will be ways to remedy them in the future. And Paramount's big cake of $3.5 million is on the head. If this opportunity is lost, the next one will not know when it will fall again.
Roger Coleman's attitude is also clear, you can't leave the crew and run.
The second group of directors generally refers to the second group of filming staff who act separately from the crew. There is also a director and cameraman. The second group mainly shot some exterior scenes without the protagonist, empty shots explaining the environment, scenes between supporting characters, and so on. The purpose of setting the second group is to shorten the shooting cycle. The cost of the shooting stage is like flowing water. If you can save a few days, it is also a lot of money.
But Roger, the iron rooster, will be exploited until he runs out of money.
This caused the second group of directors of New World Productions to not only have the above tasks, but also to shoot a lot of plot content in parallel with the crew. If the filming of the crew is not completed one day, Roger Coleman will tear the remaining scenes from the script, and hand over to the second team to shoot those that can be made up, and throw the trash can if they cannot.
Such a shooting method means that the second group has also become a smaller crew, and the workload is not small.
Therefore, the director of the second group of "Rock High School" must be familiar with the filming situation of the crew. If you change someone rashly, it may be better to wait for Allen to finish filming the main group and then come back to shoot the content of the second group.
…
"This is unacceptable!" Jerry Zack was a little angry. Today Roger disagreed, which was a situation he didn't expect at all.
"Why not let Joe Dante film? He is familiar with the situation of the crew and can also act as the director, and it only takes a few days without delaying his other work. He and Allen were originally on the crew to help the director."
"Ellen needs Joe, and if Joe is not there, it will be a big bruise and unfair to him. Because last year, when the 'Piranha' was filmed, Ellen also helped on the crew and helped Joe complete the first film. The director works, and he's reciprocating," Roger Coleman replied.
This is of course part of the reason. However, Ronald feels that the real key is that Joe Dante has gotten out of the misery with the director's "Piranha" last year and obtained the highest membership of the Directors Guild. He came to help Aaron Akush as a favor, but he was not obligated to help Roger Coleman out of trouble.
Jerry Zucker certainly knew this, and he immediately argued: "This is complete nonsense. Allen's level is not bad, why does Joe have to be co-director on the set? This is not the federal government of America, there is a Great commander, but also a deputy commander to back up."
The two sides were about to quarrel again. At this time, the third person in the trio who shook hands with Ronald suddenly interjected:
"I heard from Jerry that your dailies yesterday were shot by a crew assistant, why didn't you ask him to shoot instead of Jerry?"
Jerry Zucker, Joe Dante, and Roger's wife, Julie, all looked at Ronald.
(end of this chapter)
