Before the 94th edition of "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" began filming, in order to close the good actors, Wang Fulin, who served as the general director, personally set two rules.
"Regardless of the size of the role, the actor must be nodded unanimously by six directors, and if one of them feels inappropriate, then re-select." In addition, the cast of actors does not look at fame and qualifications, but only looks at whether they are suitable. ”
It is precisely because of this rule that many newcomers and even non-professional actors have also been given the opportunity. For example, Chen Hong, who had just graduated at that time, was one of them.
Because there are more than 400 famous and surnamed characters in "Romance of the Three Kingdoms", and many of them are still well-known characters, whether they can choose actors suitable for the role has become the most headache for the director group.
Coincidentally, one of the most important characters has been delayed, and it has also gone through a storm. So, which one is this character? What kind of turmoil has the crew experienced?
This character is Zhuge Liang.
Before Tang Guoqiang entered the group, there were countless people who wanted to play Zhuge Liang, and many people had already auditioned, but the director group always felt that none of the people involved in the audition were suitable.
Just when the directors were at a loss, Tang Guoqiang, who came to audition for Zhou Yu, attracted the attention of Wang Fulin.
"I didn't think about playing Zhuge Liang at that time, because [the crew] asked me to play Zhou Yu."
General director Wang Fulin only looked at Tang Guoqiang once, and he overthrew everyone who had auditioned for Zhuge Liang before.
"As soon as I opened the door, the director looked me up and down, and then he asked me to draw Zhuge Liang first."
After putting on makeup, Zhang Guoqiang is like the Zhuge Liang in the original work who "faces like crown jade, lupine scarves, and flutters with the outline of a god", and everyone present has a bright eye and can't help but clap their hands!
But even so, the director team did not rush to fix him.
Because Zhuge Liang, as the most important soul character in the whole play, once selected halfway through the selection, it is impossible to change people.
Moreover, Tang Guoqiang played the role of some small fresh meat at that time, while Zhuge Liang was a role with a large age span and extreme testing of the level of acting skills.
Therefore, just the appearance fits, the director team does not dare to draw conclusions.
Wang Fulin recalled: "Of the six of us directors, as long as one person says that this "Zhuge Liang" is not like this, I absolutely cannot make a decision. Therefore, it took a lot of trouble to select Zhuge Liang's actors. ”
In order to confirm whether Tang Guoqiang can play Zhuge Liang well, Zhang Shaolin of the director group said to him: You are my male number one, and almost all of your plays are filmed by me, and I believe that you can act well. Why don't we walk around along Hanzhong Street pavilion Wuzhangyuan and feel it?
Tang Guoqiang knew the crew's concerns, but he also knew that he wanted to have a breakthrough in the performance, and this hurdle had to be overcome, so he nodded heavily.
What Tang Guoqiang did not expect was that the first scene that the director asked him to shoot was actually the scene of Zhuge Liang's "six out of Qishan" in his later years.
In this play, Tang Guoqiang must not only perform the old school of Zhuge Liang's later years, but also show the helplessness of ambition.
In order to play this play well, Tang Guoqiang was thinking about how to interpret Zhuge Liang's state every day, although it was not written in the original work, he still found that Zhuge Liang in his later years was shrouded in a sense of loneliness.
It is the sense of loneliness that "six out of Qishan is to attack and defend, knowing that it cannot be done", with this tone, Zhuge Liang's soul also has it.
Therefore, when shooting, there is often a look in the eyes and an action that makes the director clap his hands.
For example, the details of Zhuge Liang blowing the lamp, blowing a lamp in one breath, this small action will reflect the weakness of the old age to the fullest. After this scene was filmed, the director and everyone unanimously decided to let Tang Guoqiang play Zhuge Liang.
After fixing the angle, Tang Guoqiang's hanging heart finally fell to the ground.
I crept back into the house myself, flowing a tear. Because it is likely that after this failure, others will be even less likely to trust you. ”
What does Tang Guoqiang mean by this?
It turned out that Tang Guoqiang at that time, although he was already a star actor who had debuted for many years, he was in an embarrassing situation with no drama to shoot.
Director Wang Fulin recalled: Because he was always screamed by cream and cream, there were not many people looking for him, and he was in a trough stage. ”
When Tang Guoqiang was young, it was the standard red lips and white teeth, and as soon as he debuted, he became the Prince Charming in the hearts of thousands of actresses. But thirty years of Hedong, thirty years of Hexi, the audience's taste will change.
In the 1980s, with the release of the Japanese movie "The Hunt" in China, the image of a tough guy with a face full of vicissitudes like Ken Takakura was all the rage, and tang Guoqiang, a thin-skinned and tender-flesh actor, became a "cream boy" without manliness, and he was not popular!
Therefore, no one looked for Tang Guoqiang to shoot a movie in those years, and even if there was, it would be criticized by others.
After Tang Guoqiang's role in Zhuge Liang was finalized, director Wang Fulin was also questioned by many people: How can you find a "cream student" to play Zhuge Liang? It's not right at all!
The voices of opposition even alarmed the leadership of the Ministry of Radio, Film and Television.
Wang Fulin recalled: "After deciding that he played Zhuge Liang, there was a lot of discussion, thinking that I had found the wrong actor, and the complaint letter went all the way to the Ministry of Radio, Film and Television. ”
After receiving the complaint letter, the leader of the Ministry of Radio, Film and Television was surprised, and then a vice minister approached Wang Fulin several times to inquire about the matter.
In the face of the leader's questioning, Wang Fulin did not say much, but took out a copy of the "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" and directly turned to the paragraph where Zhuge Liang appeared, so that the leader could see how Zhuge Liang was written in the original work.
In the thirty-eighth episode of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, "Decision-making in the Three Divisions of Longzhong, Revenge on the Sun Clan of the Yangtze River", there is such a passage: "Xuande saw that Kong Ming was eight feet long, his face was like a crown jade, his head was wearing a scarf, he was covered with cranes, and he fluttered with the outline of a god." ”
Tang Guoqiang's big man of one meter and eight feet was not exactly eight feet long? The noodles are like crown jade, to put it in layman's terms, isn't it fine skin and tender meat? How can we say that Tang Guoqiang and Zhuge Liang are not on the same number?
Of course, Wang Fulin insisted on using Tang Guoqiang under pressure, and it was not only these two points. When Tang Guoqiang put on his beard and put on his costume, what kind of "cream boy" is it?
"They weren't very arbitrary, but asked for my opinion. I told him that you look at his sketches, look at his looks, stop talking, and come back in a few days. Finally after watching some of his footage, the deputy minister never mentioned it to me again. ”
Speaking of Zhuge Liang's makeup, there is also a small episode here. What interlude? Zhuge Liang "bumped his face" after makeup and Liu Bei finished makeup.
When the makeup artist had finished painting their makeup, the two stood together to prepare for the shooting, when they suddenly saw that everyone present was secretly talking.
Director Zhang Zhongyi pointed to Sun Yanjun and Tang Guoqiang and said to Wang Fulin: Director Wang, do you see that this is not a brother?
Wang Dao squinted his eyes to look left and right, and then smiled.
Liu Bei's actor Sun Yanjun and Zhuge Liang's actor Tang Guoqiang were born in 1952, they are not only of similar age, but also skin color, body shape, as well as headdresses, hair accessories are very similar, no wonder everyone thinks he is like a brother!
Later, Wang Fulin had to let the makeup artist change Tang Guoqiang's makeup, so everyone saw Zhuge Liang with hanging eyes.
In order to play the role of Zhuge Liang well, Tang Guoqiang is also "trying his best".
When filming the scene "Zhuge Liang Borrows the East Wind", it was the middle of winter, and the edge of Taihu Lake was even more windy and chilly.
It was such weather that Tang Guoqiang was dressed in a thin Daoist robe, took a gossip step, and stepped barefoot on the cold stone, and it was two days at a time.
After the scene was filmed, Tang Guoqiang not only froze into a heavy cold, but his two feet were also frozen red and swollen.
However, this is not the most difficult, the most difficult is that the screenwriting team has demanded the text and lines to the point of "perversion".
Zhuge Liang's lines are the most, so he is either on the road of acting or on the way of memorizing lines every day.
Zhang Guangbei, who plays Lü Bu, recalled: "All the lines, of the land, and the ground, cannot be wrong, and if you make a mistake, you have to start all over again." A punctuation mark cannot be wrong, that's what we are asked to do. Tang Guoqiang took a fan at home every day and fought with his tongue. ”
After the broadcast of "Romance of the Three Kingdoms", Zhuge Liang, played by Tang Guoqiang, not only won the recognition of hundreds of millions of viewers, but also won the best actor of the TV Feitian Award the following year.
Although the "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" was later made into various versions, in most people's minds, the most classic Zhuge Kongming is Tang Guoqiang's version.
Whenever the tactful and tragic "Song of Youwei" sounds, the "military master" played by Tang Guoqiang will always appear in front of every audience.