Similarly, the new cinemas added after the expansion of screenings are still located near the Chinese community.

Ronan was not blindly optimistic because of the excellent box office performance in the first week of screening, let alone overestimating the status of "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" without award protection among American audiences, before this film can win a heavyweight award, the mainstream audience group has always been Chinese.

Expanding a little further, East and Southeast Asians can also be counted.

It's true that many Americans who have seen "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" in theaters think that this sci-fi film has fascinated them, but other situations have not happened.

For example, when some old beauties saw the flying steel wire shots, they laughed collectively.

"Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" doesn't have any funny scenes.

There are even many old beauties who think that this is a Japanese film, and some people will argue with others if they refute it.

In the test screening, except for Chinese and Asian, there are not many other types of old American audiences, unless "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" wins important Hollywood awards such as Golden Globes or Oscar nominations, denying the situation will not change much.

Americans always take themselves too seriously and don't take others too seriously.

Countless foreign movies have been miserable in the North American market.

Fortunately, Ang Lee is a smart person who knows how to shoot in order to please the audience.

In recent days, Ang Lee has also been spinning in a row.

Going on a breakfast date with Los Angeles Times critic Kenneth Turan in the morning, lunch with the directors of the Producers League at noon, and Schmidt from the Directors Guild for a drink in the evening sounds like a dreamy schedule that is nothing more than an ordinary day in the awards season for an award-grabbing officer.

In just one week from Christmas to New Year, Ang Lee participated in two film pulls, three media interviews, a public television talk show, and visited more than 10 senior members of the academy under the arrangement of Embassy Pictures.

He even personally gave some old men a hardcover DVD of "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon", as well as matching souvenirs, porcelain ordered by Embassy Pictures in the British Royal Albert Company, and the porcelain was printed with the relevant patterns and logos of "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon", claiming to be the props used in the film, so that the judges could appreciate the serious and responsible attitude of the crew when shooting the film.

Similar excuses can always be found.

"I have a feeling. ”

On the way to an event, Ang Lee finally had some free time and said to his agent: "Ronan and the public relations of Embassy Pictures seem to be pressing the line like Harvey Weinstein. ”

The agent said: "It's okay, the bottom line of Oscar's PR has long been pressed low by Harvey Weinstein and Miramax. ”

Ang Lee was a little worried: "This was supposed to be an art award, but it has become a money game." ”

The agent said with a smile: "The art of cinema is never inseparable from money. ”

Li An was silent for a while, nodded slightly, and had a deep understanding of this, for this "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon", he and Xu Ligong were about to smash the pot and sell iron.

The car soon arrived at the hotel that had been agreed with Vanity Fair magazine, and Ang Lee got out of the car in good spirits and showed his best mental state.

Many times, the quality of a film is a very subjective thing, and it is also very easy to be swayed by the opinions of others, because it has no criteria for judging, and the Oscars are different from those film festivals in Europe, it is voted by thousands of judges to produce the results, so it is possible to influence the votes of these judges in public opinion.

Oscar PR is like a campaign battle, all activities are like battlefields, you have to build momentum for yourself, you have to intrigue with each other, and you have to canvass for votes like an election, which is physically and mentally exhausting.

Every event is accompanied by a banquet, and the chicken in Los Angeles is like plastic, and this 'plastic chicken feast' has to be eaten at least twenty or thirty times before it can win an Oscar.

For the sake of the little golden man, no matter how unpalatable the 'plastic chicken' is, you have to swallow it.

In the face of the media, you have to smile at each other, talk to film critics to make them feel like a spring breeze, and the actors' union and the director's union must have to pull the relationship, you can't talk nonsense, you have to step by step to win the Oscar.

Ang Lee knows very well that the unspoken rules behind the Oscars are full of controversy: art is never the only criterion, luck, popularity, public relations and other factors will determine the attribution of the award in the end.

On the last weekend of 2000, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon expanded to 300 theaters in North America, and the expansion strategy was still dominated by theaters close to the Chinese community.

Due to the film's accurate distribution strategy and targeted publicity, the North American reputation was extremely good, and the expanded screening not only did not see a single-theater box office plummet, but the trend was unusually stable, with the average single-theater box office of 300 theaters on a weekend as high as $28,900.

This is also the third weekend of "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon", with a total of $13.45 million at the North American box office.

Ronan was pretty sure that the film, which cost $8 million to buy out the North American rights, would inevitably bring profits, even if it didn't win anything at the Oscars.

If you can win something at the Oscars, it will not be difficult to win tens of millions of dollars in profits.

Investing in an Oscar makes sense because it pays off financially for a work that has been favored by the Academy and the judges, and that a work can be nominated or even won an Oscar.

The re-release of the film, the sale and re-release of DVDs, the sale of merchandise, and even the investment in other films of the company will become a matter of course, which is the "reputation" effect.

In addition to newspaper ads, Ronan's public relations firm placed outdoor billboards in areas where Hollywood filmmakers lived, such as Beverly Hills and Santa Monica, and began to adapt to new media trends by creating websites and blogs to canvass for "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon."

Many people see canvassing as a "shady" Oscar and scoff at it, believing that a film is good enough to kill everything, but the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences encourages public relations within the prescribed scope, believing that it is a manifestation of the will to free competition.

In order to stand out from the crowd of strong competitors and get the desired result, Ronan did not hesitate to resort to a somewhat over-the-top move, placing a full-page ad in the New York Times, touting "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" as "the best movie of the year".

The same propaganda campaign, directed at voting academy members, is more cost-effective and effective.

To this end, the embassy film industry and public relations companies spared no expense, in addition to filling the mailboxes of the judges with relevant graphic materials introducing "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon", they also did not miss the daily activities of the judges.

Just after entering 2001, nominations were announced for a number of important outpost awards, including the Golden Globe Awards, and the name of "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" appeared on many nominations.

At the Golden Globe Awards for American Film and Television, "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" was nominated for Best Director, Best Motion Picture and Best Film Score.

In terms of the Hollywood Industry Union and Association Awards, which can be regarded as the vane of the Oscars, Ang Lee was nominated for Best Director at the Directors Guild Awards, "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" was nominated for Best Picture at the Producers Union Awards, and Pao was also nominated for Best Cinematography by the Cinematographers Guild.

The nominations for these awards almost guarantee that "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" will be nominated for several Oscars, and even Best Director and Best Picture are not impossible.

Nominated for these awards, "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" has attracted more attention.

Embassy Pictures and Xu Ligong's Zongheng International once again made a big effort, buying a large number of media advertisements, sponsoring a number of programs, and winning many famous critics to blow "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" in this time period that was already ready to vote.

If you want to win a prize, you must have enough cheekiness, dare to blow it, and even be afraid to blow it.

If you don't think the film is good, how can you let others recognize that your film is good?

Vanity Fair magazine also published an interview with Ang Lee, with a commentary at the end of the interview.

"Although "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" is not perfect, this film that combines women, love, martial arts, suspense, philosophy and oriental beauties has captivated Western audiences. It has an entertaining side, a deep side, ironic humor, and tragic romance, so much so that after watching it, it's hard to give the movie an exact classification. When the film was released in the United States, it was first screened in art cinemas in the United States as an art martial arts category, and the screening areas were concentrated in California and New York, which have a large number of Chinese. ”

But to everyone's surprise, American audiences of different ethnicities formed a rare long line at arthouse cinemas, with one arthouse cinema expert saying that for the first time in more than two decades he had seen audiences line up so long for a foreign film that it was even sold out on weekends in New York. ”

After that, the film began to be shown in hundreds of theaters, and the box office soared to the top five of the American film rankings. Even in the Vanity Fair editorial office, even the female secretaries began to watch this subtitled foreign movie......"

At the same time, the second round of publicity bombardment by The Hollywood Reporter also kicked off.

"Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" has received rave reviews from the American news media, praising it as a great work that illustrates that 'women are not weak'......

Ronan received data privately collected by a public relations firm that confirmed that more than 600 judges had voted for Best Foreign Language Film and ranked "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" first.

According to the Oscar nomination rules, for a film to be nominated for Best Foreign Language Film and Best Picture, it must not only get enough votes, but also have at least five percent of the jury votes to put the film at the top of the voting list.

Based on all the data, Ronan can be sure that "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" has a more than 80% chance of being nominated for Best Foreign Language Film.

While Ronan was working on the Oscars, he received a call from Paris Hilton, the wealthy daughter who came to Los Angeles to try her hand at being an actress.