Jerry Zucker waved his hands excitedly and shouted. His waving hands suddenly swept across Gale's nose. Her nose felt sore and in pain, and she began to cry. She squatted on the ground and covered her face with her hands.
Jim didn't see clearly what had happened and thought Jerry hit Gale, so he rushed out from the inner room, pushed Jerry away, and went to help Gale.
The one who looked like Jerry's brother in the trio saw his brother being pushed down, so he rushed over to beat Jim up...
Ronald took a quick step forward, grabbed the shoulders of the man who wanted to hit Jim, put one foot between his legs, hooked one ankle, gently pulled it back, and turned his upper body, and the man fell to the ground.
Ronald then glanced at him, quickly turned his head and squatted, avoiding Jerry Zach's fist from behind, turned around and grabbed his shoulders with his hands, used his hips to hold Jerry's waist, and gently pulled his hands... Jerry was also put down.
Ronald stepped forward and pulled Jim up, then shouted,
"Everyone stop! This is all a misunderstanding!"
At this time, Roger Corman also came out of the office, and other employees who were working overtime in the office also gathered outside the boss's executive 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 man of the trio helped the Zucker brothers up from the ground, brushed off the dust on them, and said, "We are not here to fight, we just want to talk to Mr. Corman."
He saw that Ronald had put water on his hands, and the two of them just fell to the ground without getting hurt.
He extended his hand and said, "Hello, we mean no harm."
Ronald shook his hand and said, "I'm Ronald Lee. You guys talk to Mr. Corman first. I'll go see Gale."
Gale recovered, and Jim helped her to the bathroom to deal with it.
Roger Corman waved to everyone and said, "Go back to work, it's okay." Then he thought for a moment and picked up the phone to call the front desk:
"This is Roger. Are Julie and Joe Dante still in the conference room? Sure, please have them come up to my office."
Then, Roger raised his hand and invited the trio to come into the office to talk. The three of them came in and chose three seats by the window at the conference table and sat down side by side.
After a while, the proprietress Julie Corman and co-director Joe Dante also arrived, and the two sides were equal in number and sat opposite each other.
Ronald saw that Gale had not come back yet, so he went to make 6 cups of coffee, brought them in, and was about to close the door and leave.
"You can also stay and listen, you can learn something."
Roger Corman looked at the number of people here, and he was not in a dominant position, and there was also a woman. He still called Ronald, who had just shown his might.
Ronald closed the door, pulled out the chair closest to the door, sat down, and listened.
It turned out that Jerry Zucker, his brother, and a good high school friend were a long-term trio. They wrote a comedy movie about airplanes and wanted Roger to invest in it.
However, Roger felt that the script was not good. It was full of jokes and had no plot at all. It also interspersed various fake advertisements for satire. No one paid for fake advertisements. Although the story is not important for low-cost movies, it is unheard of to have no story at all.
In addition, Roger Corman has rarely made comedy films in recent years, so he was unwilling to invest money.
Although Jerry Zucker is the youngest of the three, he is the most talented and the leader of the trio. He joined "Rock n Roll High School" as the second group director, hoping to use his talent to impress Roger Corman to reconsider the investment.
What the trio didn't expect was that a lady they had previously approached for investment had lunch with Paramount's Chief Operating Officer (COO) Michael Eisner last week and recommended the trio to Eisner.
After hearing this, Eisner expressed his interest in this subject and ordered his friend and number two in Paramount, Jeffrey Katzenberg, to take care of it.
Katzenberg read the script and shared Roger Corman's opinion that the script was not complete but just a collection of jokes. He asked the trio to work with Paramount's screenwriter doctor to restart the script in two weeks and rewrite it. He would give the green light to the project if he was satisfied, with an estimated total investment of $3.5 million.
The trio was overjoyed, but Jerry had a problem negotiating with Roger Corman. Jerry still had five days of filming to complete for "Rock n Roll High School." So Jerry pestered Roger all day, wanting him to give up the last five days on the contract.
The two sides are deadlocked on this point.
Jerry Zucker suggested that the wages paid in advance could be refunded, and Roger could find someone else to complete the remaining five days, allowing them to concentrate on writing the script for Paramount.
Roger Corman felt that it would be difficult to find a suitable successor in a short period of time, so he asked them to stay and finish the filming before leaving.
The two sides exchanged sharp words for more than ten minutes. Ronald listened carefully at the side and heard two meanings.
Jerry and his three men must go to Paramount. If Roger disagrees, they can just not come to work. If there are legal disputes in the future, there will be ways to remedy them. But Paramount's $3.5 million pie fell on their heads. If they lose this opportunity, they don't know when the next one will fall.
Roger Corman's attitude was also very clear: you can't just abandon the crew and run away.
The second group of directors generally refers to the second group of filming personnel who act separately from the crew. They are also equipped with directors and photographers. The second group mainly shoots some exterior scenes without the protagonist, empty shots to explain the environment, scenes between supporting roles, etc. The purpose of setting up the second group is to shorten the shooting cycle. Money is spent like water during the shooting stage, and if a few days can be saved, it will also be a huge amount of money.
But Roger is a stingy person who will exploit his employees until there is no more profit to be made.
This resulted in the second group of directors of New World Productions not only having the above tasks but also having to shoot a lot of plot content in parallel with the crew. If the crew did not complete the shooting on a certain day, Roger Corman would tear the remaining scenes from the script, give the scenes that could be re-shot to the second group, and throw the scenes that could not be re-shot into the trash.
This way of filming means that Group 2 becomes half of a crew, which means the workload is not small.
Therefore, the director of the second group of "Rock 'n' Roll High School" must be familiar with the filming situation of the crew. If you replace him rashly, it might be better to wait for Allen to finish shooting the main group's shots and then come back to shoot the second group's content.
…
"This is unacceptable!" Jerry Zucker was a little angry. He had never expected Roger to disagree today.
"Why not let Joe Dante do it? He is familiar with the crew and can direct it. It only takes a few days and won't interfere with his other work. He was originally on the crew with Allan to help direct."
"Allan needs Joe. If Joe is not there, it will be a great setback and unfair to him. Because when we were filming 'Piranha' last year, Alan was also helping out on the crew and helped Joe complete the directing work of his first movie. He is returning the favor," Roger Corman replied.
This is certainly part of the reason. But Ronald thinks the real key is that Joe Dante has escaped from the sea of suffering with last year's "Piranha" and obtained the highest level of membership of the Directors Guild. He came to help Allan Arkush to repay a favor, but he had no obligation to help Roger Corman solve the problem.
Jerry Zucker knew this, of course, and he immediately argued, "This is complete nonsense. Allen's level is not bad. Why does Joe have to be a co-director in the crew? This is not the White House, where there is a president and a deputy president as a backup."
The two sides were about to quarrel again. At this time, the third person in the trio who shook hands with Ronald suddenly interrupted:
"I heard from Jerry that your sample film yesterday was shot by a crew assistant. Why don't you ask him to shoot it instead of Jerry?"
Jerry Zucker, Joe Dante, and Roger's wife Julie all looked at Ronald.