“Ah ah ah, ah ah ah, the beautiful scenery of the West Lake in March, the spring rain is like wine and the willow is like smoke…..”
That night, Tao Mu, who returned to the dormitory with the script, at Du Kang’s strong request, brought the three roommates in dormitory 301, and more than 20 students from class 1 of ’08 Beijing Film to Night. In Du Kang’s words, Tao Mu received such a good script so he had to treat everyone to dinner to celebrate. Of course, the root cause was whether or not Du Kang was afraid that Tao Mu would put on a face mask at midnight to scare him, then only Du Kang knew.
Recently, the food he had been eating was very nourishing. So when Tao Mu entered the private room, he subconsciously called Wen Juxiang’s order number and ordered a table of mutton hotpot. Wen Bao’s father cooked the food himself, and had a worker bring it along with the hot pot. Wen Bao was amused: “Eating mutton hotpot while karaoking, brother, you sure know how to enjoy yourself.”
“I’m just afraid you’ll be hungry after singing later. So let’s sing while eating.” In any case, the private room was big enough.
Several boys immediately clapped their hands and whistled to show their support. There was a saying in China that the growing boys could eat their old man poor, and even the boys in the drama department could not resist their physical needs. Besides, the living environment of male artists in the entertainment industry was relatively better than that of female artists. It didn’t matter if they were fatter, thinner, taller, shorter, or a bit ugly. So long as they had the acting skills and connections, they would always find acting jobs. They were not afraid to eat late-night snacks, and they even ate very happily. The beer in Night was moved into their room in crates, and the boys could demolish seven to eight cases of beer all by themselves.
The girls were a different story. They had to consider weight management, and did not dare to eat. But looking at the food they also got the cravings. One must know that Wen Juxiang’s mutton hotpot was a time-honored brand in Beijing. Usually, a plate of meat was 70 to 80 yuan, and the per capita consumption was above 200 yuan. In 2009, most students could not hold this level of consumption. Therefore, the girls were particularly conflicted when eating this meal. On the one hand, they were afraid of getting fat, and on the other hand, they were reluctant to waste the opportunity. So they could only eat the cabbage, mushrooms, fish balls and shrimp balls in the hotpot. Acting like they were eating poison whenever they picked a piece of mutton. So of course they did not dare to touch the beer even more.
Du Kang looked at them on the side and felt tired for them: “I say, you might as well have a good meal. It’s no big deal, you can just go on a diet tomorrow.”
“Don’t keep talking about us!” The girls were unconvinced and deliberately teased: “I say, Du Kang, half of this semester has passed. Except for the AA system, you didn’t treat anyone to a meal. Isn’t that not very buddy of you?”
“Yeah. Last time you filmed in the crew of “The Great Wall of Flesh and Blood”, didn’t you also get a small three thousand yuan in payment. Yet you don’t say to treat us to a meal.” A boy echoed with a smirk: “Why don’t you pay today’s bill.”
“I don’t have any money!” Du Kang cried out his poverty: “Besides, we sing karaoke and eat mutton hotpot today. There are so many of us, it will be at least 10,000 yuan in total. Towards such a large amount of money, only our big boss Mu can afford it. Yet you ask me to pay the bill. Just look at my clothes, is it even worth five hundred yuan in total?”
“Tsk!” Du Kang’s remarks were ridiculed by everyone. But no one refuted Du Kang’s words. After all, Tao Mu was a rich guy who could spend 9 million yuan to invest in a crew. He was different from these poor students.
To talk about the reason why Tao Mu was now able to have his call be responded to en masse in Beijing Film, even if he pulled his classmates to have dinner in the late evening, not a single classmate refused. In addition to Tao Mu’s popularity, there was also the reason that he could invest in film crews. Although the college students living in the ivory tower have not yet been tainted by society, and have not acquired too many utilitarian habits. But the instinct to seek advantage and avoid disadvantage was part of human nature. Tao Mu had money and could be an investor, and when he became an investor, he could introduce these classmates into the crew.
What actor didn’t want to film? But they couldn’t go to Tao Mu when it was about filming, and then ignore him when not. Besides, Tao Mu had a good personality, and every time he invited everyone out to play, he wouldn’t praise himself, or make everyone flatter him. The students all felt very comfortable. Some girls even had some secretive inetentions, wanting to spend more time with Tao Mu.
But Tao Mu was not at all enlightened in the romantic relationship department. All his keen sense of smell was trained on business investment.
“By the way, I heard that you are going to set up a film and television company?” After three rounds of drinking and everyone had drank and sang themselves high, Wen Bao asked casually, “Does your company sign artists? Or will it be like some studios, just serving yourself?”
Wen Bao’s plan was that if Tao Mu’s film and television company signed other artists, he would sign directly with Tao Mu’s company. He didn’t care if it would be awkward if his classmate became his boss, so long as there were acting jobs for him. Moreover, Tao Mu’s eye for picking scripts was very reliable. The most important thing was that Tao Mu was not the kind of person who only hogged all resources to himself. This could be seen from his investment in “The Great Wall of Flesh and Blood” crew.
Being roommates, Wen Bao was quite assured of Tao Mu’s character. He believed that Tao Mu would not cheat him. He would not go against his will, and make him take on some ridiculous and rotten scripts in order to make money for the company.
So after Tao Mu established a film and television company he’ll sign on, Wen Bao thought carefully.
As soon as these words came out, there was a slight silence at the originally lively dining table. All the students subconsciously paused their chopsticks and looked at Tao Mu. There were also a few classmates who were a little less urbane, and had obvious expressions of difficulty, consideration, hesitation and many other expressions on their faces.
Wen Bao suddenly came back to himself. It was only then that he remembered that this was not their dormitory, and the words spoken were too casual. It didn’t matter to him himself, but he was afraid that others would have ideas. For example, having a misunderstanding that he came out to take the lead, and deliberately tried to bring other people to sign to Tao Mu’s company or something. Actually he didn’t have such an intention at all.
Before Wen Bao could think of a proper response, Tao Mu took over the conversation calmly: “I haven’t decided yet. My Yao Dad didn’t even run down the formalities. You are well-informed though.”
Wen Bao instantly chuckled and said, “I heard it from my dad. My dad heard it from Mr. Song.”
Chu Sui’an, who had always been devious, immediately changed the subject and drew everyone’s attention to Du Kang: “What about you. Everyone has known each other for so long. Stop crying with us about being poor. Your clothes aren’t worth much money, but isn’t that body of yours not too shabby? It’s not a big deal, just sell your body to pay for it. I estimate that with your looks, you could actually make quite a fortune in Night. “
“Yo~~~~” Everyone immediately clapped and heckled, whistling and applauding.
Finally, the matter was smoothed over.
The foolery continued until after 3am in the middle of the night, when they finally walked out of Night exhausted and went back to school. Tao Mu couldn’t be bothered to go to the trouble, so he went straight to the boss’s office on the top floor of Night, pushed aside the resting room that Liu Yao had set up in the office, took a shower despite being tired, and fell asleep on the bed.
The next day was Sunday, and there was no class. Tao Mu studied the script for a day at home. Although he had played the exact same role in his previous life, but when re-reading the script, he still had quite a few different ideas.
Tao Mu had a notebook on the side, where he wrote a character profile while reading the script. Tao Mu had always been serious in his work. After the release of “Black and White” in his last life, he even went online to read magazines and found comments and reviews from all film critics and netizens. There were indeed many people’s analyses that were worth learning among the meaningless water army reviews that were either rainbow fart or plain anti hate.
In addition, Tao Mu also wanted to experience the police academy in Hong Kong for a while.
The system of Hong Kong was different from that of the mainland, including the establishment of police officers, the usual training and etiquette. When Tao Mu played the role of Zhou Yuanting in his previous life, many Hong Kong netizens responded that Zhou Yuanting’s role was not like a Hong Kong policeman at all. Instead, he just looked like a hooligan/gangster.
This was mainly because Tao Mu was incapable of doing the proper fieldwork in his previous life, and he had no idea what the police in Hong Kong was like. Even the gangster aura was discovered by watching movies. Fortunately, Tao Mu was acting as an undercover cop in a mafia gang at the time, so it didn’t seem so incongruous.
Thinking about it now, Tao Mu had no experience in filming in front of the camera at that time. He was not a professional, and he only worked as a martial arts stand-in a few times. In fact, at that time, he was indeed inferior to Shen Yu, who had played several leading and supporting roles. No wonder the entire crew rejected him because of this. In addition, he deliberately targeted Shen Yu during filming, and was deliberately suppressed in acting by best actor Yan Sheng, so his overall performance was not ideal.
However, that was Tao Mu’s first role in front of the camera after all, and he was even nominated for the Golden Crow Award for Best Newcomer for that role. Therefore, Tao Mu’s feelings for the character Zhou Yuanting were still different. Every time the movie was played again, Tao Mu was very regretful about his performance. He felt that if he could devote more energy to studying the script and character at that time, he could dig deeper into the contradiction and tragedy of Zhou Yuanting’s character. If his acting skills were sufficient, he could express more delicately in which expressions and which movements, and the complexity of the character could be interpreted in a more complete and three-dimensional manner.
Tao Mu had always believed that the role of Zhou Yuanting could be more classic and impressive. Instead of the thin 2D image that had been frozen on the big screen.
It was no wonder that the director and production team of “Black and White” disliked him so much. It was Tao Mu himself who failed such a good role.
In this life, Tao Mu had the opportunity to do it all over again. He just wanted to treat Zhou Yuanting with the care the role deserved. Therefore, he not only carefully studied the script and wrote character biographies and profiles, but also contacted the Hong Kong Royal Police Academy, wanting to use the weekend to go to the school to gain experience firsthand.
If it was an ordinary person, or an ordinary actor who made such a request, of course the Hong Kong Royal Police Academy would not agree. But Tao Mu was different. As the founder of FlyNews.com, and especially as a capital bigwig and a partner of Xiaoheng Capital, who was worth hundreds of billions of dollars, the Hong Kong Royal Police Academy was naturally too happy to agree to such a request. They even held the wish that once the bigwig could fund the school after the experience. Not only did they immediately agree to Tao Mu’s request, they also offered that if Tao Mu wanted to, they could even put Tao Mu into the Flying Tigers for a period of training. So that Tao Mu’s posture and gestures would be more standardized and beautiful when acting in front of the camera——
After learning about Tao Mu’s background, the people from the Hong Kong Royal Police Academy also knew that Tao Mu had once been a martial arts stand-in. When the film “Black and White” was promoted in Hong Kong, it was also called a cop and criminal film. It was conceivable that there would be a lot of action scenes and shootout scenes. The Hong Kong Royal Police Academy intuitively determined that Tao Mu would definitely do the action scenes in person rather than using a stand-in.
This was a pleasant surprise. Tao Mu’s eyes lit up, and he readily accepted the kindness of the Hong Kong Royal Police Academy.
So after Tao Mu hung up the phone, that night, the all-pervasive Hong Kong paparazzi immediately got the news that Tao Mu might be participating in “Black and White”, and before joining the crew, he even prepared to experience life at the police academy. Many paparazzi also introduced Tao Mu’s identity background while reporting the news——the main focus was that Tao Mu founded FlyNews.com and was also a partner of Xiaoheng Capital.
The crew of “Black and White” invited a lot of celebrities from both sides of the strait to participate in the film. This incident was not news in Hong Kong. But that the crew was able to pull in a bigwig worth hundreds of billions of dollars to play a supporting role. Towards this kind of news, even in the entertainment circle of Hong Kong where gossip was constant, it was also worth watching. After all, in the perception of public netizens, people who could be domineering CEOs would not be actors. But people who were actors always wanted to play the domineering CEO.
The domineering CEO in reality actually turned around to be an actor. It was indeed worth watching. What was more, the domineering CEO disclosed by the gossip paparazzi of Hong Kong was only nineteen years old this year. And looking at the photos, he was quite the handsome young man.
Seriously, at least give others some space to breathe!
All of a sudden, many people in Hong Kong who didn’t know Tao Mu or FlyNews.com started to search for related news online. Some people even went to FlyNews.com to register an account. After sating their gossip mongering hearts, they were then abducted into BulletScreen.com as well.
Then there was no stopping the trend at all.
But these were all afterwords.
Speaking of, the “Black and White” crew was still preparing for the launch, negotiating the shooting schedule with a lot of celebrities, and orderly arranging the follow-up shooting. Only to be pushed onto the hot search by their paparazzi. When they saw the news, they were all stunned.
They have heard before that the boss of FlyNews.com was a man who could raise a bloody storm in the entertainment industry. In fact, the reason why the crew of “Black and White” invited Tao Mu to play the role of Zhou Yuanting, other than because the director saw Tao Mu dancing in H Town and felt that Tao Mu’s image and temperament were very suitable for this role. The main reason was because of FlyNews.com.
The “Black and White” crew felt that by inviting Tao Mu to play Zhou Yuanting, FlyNews.com would at least be a big help when the crew was promoting in the mainland. Besides, there was no harm in making more friends with investors like Tao Mu who did not lack money.
But what they didn’t expect was——Tao Mu was not only a man who could raise a bloody storm in the mainland entertainment circle, he was also not any less weak in Hong Kong either!
AN: Small Skit——
Tao Mu: Yes, I am that man! ! !
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