America 1987

Chapter 21 Script Adaptation

After leaving the restaurant, David thought about the conversation he had just had.

By the way, in the original timeline, the initial choice for the female lead in this work was not Judy, but rather Kelly McGillis, the Tom Cruise actress who rose to fame last year with Top Gun.

However, it seems that the person had a psychological aversion to the rape scene in the movie because of a real experience of being raped in a home invasion many years ago, which ultimately led to their refusal.

Then, she went on to play the role of Catherine, the prosecutor who fought for justice in the film.

Catherine? What a perfect name, it's almost as if it was tailor-made for Zeta Jones. David suddenly realized this amazing blind spot while recalling the plot.

That said, the movie "The Robbery of Pear Blossoms" didn't seem to perform very well at the box office, and its commercial value and popularity boost was negligible. It only received a Best Actress nomination at the Oscars, which it ultimately won.

There doesn't seem to be much else; apart from Jodie Foster, the others didn't see much of a boost to their careers.

The director goes without saying; this is the only decent film she's made. Kelly McGillis's subsequent career development was unremarkable, and she even gradually faded from mainstream commercial films after the 90s, slowly disappearing into obscurity.

So much so that when Tom Cruise was filming Top Gun 2, the 2022 global box office champion that grossed $14.82 billion, surpassing Avatar 2 and Jurassic World 3, he had no intention of inviting her back for the sequel and simply had Jennifer Connelly replace her in the role.

When interviewed by the media about her feelings on the matter, she could only say with a touch of self-deprecation that she was "old and fat, but looks her age" and expressed her understanding that she had not been invited to return.

After careful consideration, David Ovitz felt that replacing the actor in the role would not cause much damage to his acting career.

Having reached this conclusion, he finally finalized the main cast for his second film.

Catherine's acting talent is absolutely enough to win an Oscar for Best Actress. In the original timeline, she only won Best Supporting Actress, purely because she preferred to make commercial films and rarely ventured into art films.

Having transmigrated here, it would be a disservice to my identity if I didn't make any changes.

Let Catherine work with a strong contender who will win two Oscars in the future first, so she can gain some experience.

Judy's ability to win two Oscars certainly speaks to her exceptional talent. Even if the Oscar judges favor her image as a Yale graduate with no scandals, they cannot completely ignore the objective level of her acting.

But those are things to consider later. For now, let's finish filming the last few scenes in New York.

They are currently in an apartment in Manhattan, the same apartment where the male and female protagonists in the movie lived.

The next scene to be filmed is the most controversial scene in the entire film—the scene where the villain almost NTR'd the male lead.

In short, the villain Carl takes advantage of the situation, while the protagonist Sam watches from the sidelines as a victim. Finally, just as they are about to kiss, he angrily pounces on them, but accidentally knocks over a picture frame on the coffee table, thus finding a way to break the deadlock.

This plot can be considered the turning point in the movie's "introduction, development, climax, and resolution" structure. The beginning has been suppressing the audience's emotions, making them feel increasingly frustrated. Just when the protagonist is about to be cheated on, both the male lead and the audience reach the peak of frustration and anger. Then, a turning point occurs, and the male lead finds a way to take revenge.

What follows is a steady rise in mood, gradually releasing the pent-up frustration and other negative emotions accumulated in the first half of the film.

It's a very standard "building up to a climax" technique, which fits the basic formula of commercial films, and judging from the result alone, this approach is indeed very correct and successful.

but……

"Tony, don't take advantage of that girl," David Ovitz warned him one last time before filming began. "Cathy is under 18, a minor, and can be reported for workplace sexual harassment!"

"OK, OK," Tony raised his hands in a gesture of surrender, looking quite helpless. "I know you've got your eye on her, David, but you don't have to repeat yourself like this so many times. From yesterday until now, count how many times you've said that. Didn't I already agree to it?"

Yes, David encountered a real problem that all men in the entertainment industry face when looking for a girlfriend: what to do if your girlfriend has intimate scenes with other male actors during filming?

Before he transmigrated, he had read several entertainment novels and found that most authors basically avoided talking about this issue.

Generally, the author won't write about the specific plot or filming. After all, readers may not have seen the movie being plagiarized, and even if they have, they may not remember the specific plot. Even if a reader remembers the specific plot and points out the problem in the comments, the author can simply pretend not to notice and not respond.

Anyway, it's just a novel to pass the time, and most readers won't mind unless the author mentions it.

However, David was very bothered by this. He did not consider himself a fictional character created by someone, nor did he think that this was just a fictional world in a novel.

He will encounter all sorts of real-world problems here. Just because the entertainment articles he has read don't mean they don't exist.

Therefore, he had already considered this when choosing which movie to copy.

There are some intimate scenes in "Ghost" that aren't too explicit, but they're mostly between the female and male leads, so it's not a big deal. He was happy to use this as an excuse to get intimate with Catherine during filming.

In the original film, there were two intimate scenes between the female lead and the villain Carl. One was when Carl gave the female lead a light, comforting kiss before leaving her and heading to the gunman's house.

When David first watched this movie, he was stunned for three seconds by this inexplicable plot point. He thought that ordinary friends in America don't say goodbye like this. It's not like they would kiss each other on the lips. At most, they would just exchange a cheek kiss.

Moreover, this brief scene, lasting only a few seconds, is not particularly important to the overall story; in fact, it could be considered dispensable, purely a matter of the director's or screenwriter's personal quirks.

Therefore, it was only natural that David Ovitz would cut this scene when writing the script.

The other location is the scene they are about to film.

Whether the villain and the female lead kissed in the original film is not clearly answered, because there was no close-up shot of their faces. Instead, the film was shot from behind, showing only the villain Carl's back and the male lead Sam standing behind the sofa with an angry expression.

Therefore, this scene could be filmed using a camera angle trick. In addition, the director and male lead, David, was on set and had warned Tony multiple times, so Katharine and him did not have any intimate contact.