【Anti-theft Sticker Chapter】

As a country with a separation of powers, the legislative power of the United States is mainly in the hands of Congress.

The core work of members of the Senate and House of Representatives after being elected is to propose, enact, amend or repeal various bills according to the actual situation of all walks of life in the United States. Every year, the U.S. Congress accepts thousands of bills of various types, ranging from the national economy and people's livelihood to trivial matters.

Of course, there is also a distinction in the importance of the bill.

In the case of Hollywood, one of the highlights of the recent lobbying of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), which is mainly responsible for helping Hollywood studios lobby, wants to repeal the merger restriction act between Hollywood studios and the US public television network.

The repeal of this bill will involve tens of billions of industrial changes.

On the other hand, it is naturally impossible for a member of Congress to come up with certain bills out of thin air just by sitting in his office.

Most bills are obtained by the public, labor unions, business owners, interest groups, or federal agencies in communication with members of the House and Senate.

As a result, the United States has created countless professional lobbying firms that are responsible for bridging the gap between various groups and members of Congress.

Although the so-called lobbying in the United States cannot avoid behind-the-scenes power games or interest exchanges, it is very formal as a whole. At least on the surface, no legislator would be so stupid as to accept each other's invitations to dinner, gifts and red envelopes knowing that some people have something to ask for them.

To push for a bill, you first need to make contacts, usually lobbying firms.

If you can't find the 'temple gate', everything is in vain.

It is worth mentioning that most lobbying consulting firms are often established by politicians who have left their jobs at all levels of departments in the United States, and the more top-level politicians they are, the higher the fees, which is another form of high salary.

With the sheer number of bills introduced in the U.S. Congress each year, one can imagine the huge incomes of these people.

If you have connections, it is impossible for others to help you persuade a member of parliament to submit a bill, let alone directly stuff money into the hands of certain people on your behalf. If you want to push for any bill, you must collect and organize the corresponding data to prove the need for a bill to be enacted or repealed.

After obtaining sufficient data, the legislators draft a bill and submit it to the National Assembly, and then enter the process of deliberation, debate, and voting.

In most cases, the more important the bill, the more you can ensure that the bill is passed.

Then it is necessary for the promoters of the bill to continue to show their talents, such as political strife, mutual compromise, public opinion building, interest exchange, and so on.

The frequent back-and-forth between the White House and Congress over the annual government budget bill and even the shutdown of the government is the most intuitive manifestation of this game.

Of course, most of the obscure confrontations hidden behind the scenes are often not visible to ordinary people.

The bill that Simon discussed with Joseph Schlap this time that operators should not participate in the field of telecommunications equipment manufacturing is a relatively important economic bill, which will take about two or three years from the proposal to the vote, and may have to lobby together with other telecommunications control bills.

The two discussed for more than an hour, finalized some preliminary details, and saw off Joseph Schlap, and Simon boarded the plane at Westchester County Airport near Greenwich to return to the West Coast.

Back at Cape Dume, it's just lunchtime on the West Coast.

After having lunch with Janet and chatting casually about this trip to New York, Simon rushed to work at Daenerys Studios in the afternoon.

Today is Monday, May 20th.

The following Friday, the summer season of 1991 will begin.

However, today is another day, and another Cannes Film Festival in France is closing today.

There is a nine-hour time difference between Los Angeles and Cannes, and when he came to Daenerys Studios in the afternoon, Simon quickly received the results of the festival awards from Cannes, which was already night.

Daenerys Entertainment's two films that entered the main competition this time, the Coen brothers' "Barton Fink" and Spike Lee's "Jungle Fever", both failed to win the highest Palme d'Or in Cannes, but fortunately, they did not go home empty-handed, "Barton Fink" won the Best Director Award, and Samuel L. Jackson in "Jungle Fever" won the Best Supporting Actor Award.

In Simon's memory, "Barton Fink" actually won the Palme d'Or at Cannes.

It's just that the three Palme d'Or works in the previous three years, "Vulgar", "Cinema Paradiso" and "Wild at Heart", two are American films, two American films, one is produced by Daenerys Entertainment and one is distributed by Daenerys Entertainment.

This time, the Cannes jury clearly had some balance.

The final Palme d'Or winner was French director Jacques Rivet's The Unruly Beauty.

Jacques Rivett's fame is not too great, but one of the heroines in "Unruly Beauty" is well-known as Jane Platinum. Hermes's outrageously expensive platinum bag, which has attracted the attention of countless actresses and ladies, is named after Jane Platinum.

Because of such a gimmick, coupled with the blessing of the Palme d'Or, Ella Deutschman has been in contact with the copyright owner, hoping to get the North American distribution rights of "Unruly Beauty".

Neither Barton Fink nor Bush Fever won the Palme d'Or, but only won two minor awards, which also met Simon's expectations.

Daenerys Entertainment can't take all the light after all, and it is necessary to keep the light and obscurity properly.

Moreover, the focus of Gaomen Pictures' overseas awards this year is actually the Venice Film Festival. Due to the production schedule, Jane Campion's "Piano Love" could not participate in the just-concluded Cannes Film Festival, but it has already applied for the main competition unit of this year's Venice Film Festival.

Jane Campion's "Angels at the Table with Me" received good reviews at the Venice Film Festival last year, and "Piano Love" is obviously more suitable for Venice's artistic temperament than Cannes, and this film has a good chance of hitting this year's Venice Golden Lion.

The connections of Ella Deutschman and Sofia Faisi in the Italian entertainment industry are also enough to support "Piano Farewell" to win the championship on the other hand.

In addition to the Cannes affair, the week back on the West Coast, Simon's busy main work is "The Flash", which has been successfully completed in Melbourne and returned to North America.

As the first producer of "The Flash", Warner expressed a lot of doubts and dissatisfaction with Simon's move to visit Melbourne once during the filming of the film, Simon did not refute this, and he really didn't have time. However, Simon actually invested enough energy in this film to get him paid in the original producer's contract.

For several working days, Warner Bros. CEO Terry Semel would take time out of his day to review dailies with Simon.

It wasn't until it was confirmed that there was no big problem with the film dailies, and Simon personally presided over the finalization of the film's post-production plan, that Terry Semel was relieved.

It's Friday, May 24th.

The summer season of 1991 officially opened.

Just this week, a total of six new films above the scale were released, except for the Antarctic documentary "Ice and Snow World" released by Gaomen Pictures and the comedy "Troublemaker Fred" released by New Line Pictures in the summer, the opening screen scale of the other four films has reached more than 1,000 yuan.

The four films are the fire-type crime action film "Backfire" starring William Baldwin and Kurt Russell, which is still on the Universal Pictures distribution label for the time being, with an opening screen size of 2,036 pieces.

The Bruce Willis comedy action film "The Ultimate Condor" released by Columbia Pictures' Samsung label has an opening screen size of 1,621 screens.

Chris Columbus's new romantic comedy "A Man Gets Married", which was promoted to the front line by directing "Home Alone" last year, has 1,561 screens.

And finally, Disney produced a real story adaptation of the horse trainer-themed movie "Prancing Horse Hero", with a screen scale of 1521.

"Ice World" and "Fred the Trickster" have 687 and 821 screens respectively.

Perhaps because the competition is too fierce, or because none of the six new films have the potential to be a big hit, the first week of filming from May 24 to May 30, there was not a single film in North American theaters that grossed more than $20 million in a single week.

Universal's "Tempered" eventually won the single-week box office, with only $19.21 million in the first seven days.

Then, at second place on the list, it was an old Disney film "Genius is Crazy", which tells the story of a series of jokes made by the male protagonist starring Bill Murray because of a series of worrying insecurities about the world.

"Genius is Crazy" opened last week, and in the second week of its release, because of word-of-mouth fermentation, it actually received a 5% box office reversal under the attack of a number of old films, earning $13.53 million.

Bruce Willis's new film "Flying Tiger Condor" ranked third, but the box office fell directly to $8.64 million.

The production cost of "Flying Tiger Condor" is as high as $65 million.

The bad word-of-mouth, the dismal start of $8.64 million, according to the commercial action movie may reach a 50% decline in the next week, the total box office of the film in North America may be less than $20 million, Columbia Pictures is destined to lose all its money, and Sony, the big owner behind the scenes, has once again paid an expensive 'tuition' to Hollywood.

Chris Columbus's new film "Men Get Married" ranked fourth, earning $7.73 million.

Based on the film's $20 million production cost, it was also a failure.

Immediately afterwards, the fifth place is not Disney's "Prancing Horse Hero" or the new line's "Fred the Trickster", but "Ice World", which brings a refreshing coolness to this upcoming summer.

In its first week, "Ice World" opened with 687 screens, unexpectedly grossed $6.97 million at the box office.

After careful consideration, "Ice and Snow World" also became the only film with an average box office of barely more than 10,000 in the first week of the summer season.

As we all know, new films that are opened on a larger scale must exceed 10,000 in the first week, so they can be regarded as reaching the standard of big sales.

From the original fashion documentary "The Mark of Gucci", to this year's Easter Madonna music documentary "Truth and Brave", and then to the Antarctic scenery documentary "Ice and Snow World" at this time, Hollywood has no choice but to find that its own studio has been following the pace of Daenerys Entertainment as much as possible, launching fashion documentaries, brewing music documentaries, and now, a landscape documentary has jumped out.

What's even more devastating is that the documentary is said to be just a casual work by Daenerys Entertainment, with a budget of only $3 million, and it is just a birthday present from the Westeros to a little girl.

The box office of $6.97 million in the first week can be regarded as a direct recovery of production costs.

According to such opening data, the next step is to strengthen publicity, accumulate word-of-mouth and popularity, and appropriately expand the scale of screening, and it is not a problem for this documentary to easily accumulate $30 million at the box office.

The box office of $30 million, although it is still far from Simon's memory of "The Emperor Penguin Diaries", is already a rare success in the eyes of other Hollywood studios.

Compared with the budget cost of $3 million, the return rate is 10 times that of the North American box office alone.

Hollywood studios that were still following the trend and trying to prop up the success of the previous "Gucci Imprint" and "Truth and Brave" have set their sights on various scenic places on the earth after the box office of "Ice World" was released. Some producers have also begun to take advantage of the opportunity to sell studios expeditions such as the Antarctic and Arctic Amazon jungles and the Sahara Desert, and even a documentary project exploring the African savannah has appeared on Simon's desk.

However, in this series of film lists, Simon pays more attention to "Fred the Trickster".

Or New Line Pictures, the production company of "Fred the Trickster".

New Line Pictures in the original time and space relied on the "Ghost Street" series to make a fortune, entered the mainstream studio business after the box office of "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" exceeded 100 million, and was finally acquired by Time Warner, and created "The Lord of the Rings", "Rush Hour" and other best-selling series.

Now, "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" has been cut off by Daenerys Entertainment, and the potential of the "Ghost Street" series has basically been exhausted, coupled with the blind expansion of the number of film production and distribution in the past few years, it is not surprising that this "Troublemaker Fred" in the summer file can be regarded as an attempt before the last wave of decline of New Line Pictures.

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Compared with the budget cost of $3 million, the return rate is 10 times that of the North American box office alone.

Hollywood studios that were still following the trend and trying to prop up the success of the previous "Gucci Imprint" and "Truth and Brave" have set their sights on various scenic places on the earth after the box office of "Ice World" was released. Some producers have also begun to take advantage of the opportunity to sell studios expeditions such as the Antarctic and Arctic Amazon jungles and the Sahara Desert, and even a documentary project exploring the African savannah has appeared on Simon's desk.

However, in this series of film lists, Simon pays more attention to "Fred the Trickster".

Or New Line Pictures, the production company of "Fred the Trickster".

New Line Pictures in the original time and space relied on the "Ghost Street" series to make a fortune, entered the mainstream studio business after the box office of "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" exceeded 100 million, and was finally acquired by Time Warner, and created "The Lord of the Rings", "Rush Hour" and other best-selling series.

Now, "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles" has been cut off by Daenerys Entertainment, and the potential of the "Ghost Street" series has basically been exhausted, coupled with the blind expansion of the number of film production and distribution in the previous few years of New Line, it is not surprising that this "Troublemaker Fred" in the summer file can be regarded as a taste before the last wave of decline of New Line Pictures.