One day in April 2010, in the conference room of the Xinyuan Hotel in Kyoto, Beijing, a high-level seminar was being held that brought together many well-known experts and scholars in the literary and art circles, and the object of the discussion was "Country Love 4", which was about to be broadcast on Station C.
At the meeting, Zeng Qingrui, a professor at the Communication University of China, publicly criticized Xiangai 4 as a "pseudo-realism". Zhao Benshan, who was at the scene, skimmed his lips and said:
Why don't you write a script, make one yourself, and if the ratings are higher than mine, I'll kneel for you.
When a grassroots has grown into a more contemptuous, even rude, contempt for the existence of some kind of official discourse, this is perhaps the most spirited moment in Zhao Benshan's life. However, this is a turning point of sorts. Prior to this, Zhao Benshan was the king of sketches on the 20th Spring Festival Gala and a tycoon of the film and television industry with a net worth of 1 billion. This was followed by the controversial last trip to the Spring Festival Gala of 2011, as well as eerie upheavals, controversies and retreats.
So today, we will talk about the king of sketches - Zhao Benshan. He accompanied our youth, but disappeared after growing up. He's an actor and a businessman with a billion business empires. He witnessed an era, and interpreting him also interpreted the glory and loss, development and transformation of an era.
01 From "First Blind" to "King of Sketches"
Before the age of 25, Zhao Benshan did not dare to imagine what a big person he could become in this life. He was born poor, lost his mother at the age of 5, his father went out to earn a living, and when he was young, he ate a hundred meals while learning to play and sing with his blind second uncle. With amazing talent, he entered the folk music troupe at the age of 17. At that time, Zhao Benshan's greatest wish was that he would not have to farm in this life, and he would be able to eat a full meal by singing songs.
The turning point came in 1982, when family planning became a national policy, and the curator of the Group Art Museum in the big city of Tieling responded to the call of the state and wrote a play to publicize family planning, called "Breaking the Three Strings", and the protagonist was a blind fortune teller. This role seems to be tailor-made for Zhao Benshan.
Sure enough, Zhao Benshan became popular with a performance that was enough to mess up the real thing, touring more than 1,000 times in half a year, known as "the first blind man in the northeast", and the name began to ring outside Shanhaiguan. This was the first gift from the times to him.
At that time, the northeast still had the yu wei and pride of the eldest son of the republic. Stars who come out of their own homes, they have to be praised. So in 1987, when Jiang Kun, who was already famous at the Spring Festival Gala with "Tiger's Mouth escape", came to the northeast to perform, there were also fellow villagers who coaxed under the stage:
You can't do it, it's not as good as our Zhao Benshan.
Stills from "Tiger's Mouth"
This coax coaxed out a skit king.
In that year, Zhao Benshan participated in the National Day gala under the recommendation of Jiang Kun. However, the Spring Festival Gala waited for three more years. At that time, the Tieling Cultural and Labor Troupe was anxious to let Zhao Benshan carry a box of Maotai to Beijing to give gifts, and as a result, old Zhao did not find where to open the door of the C station, and blindly turned around in Beijing for 6 days, a whole bottle of Maotai a day, and came back after drinking.
Finally, in 1990, Zhao Benshan let the people of the whole country know him at the Spring Festival Gala with "Blind Date". Immediately after two years of "Little Nine Old Music" and "I want to have a home", each of them was brilliant. In the first three years of Zhao Benshan's Spring Festival Gala, the theme of marriage runs through the whole process, which can be regarded as keeping up with the trend of the times.
Stills from "Little Nine Old Music"
In real life, Old Zhao also followed the trend. In 1993, he divorced his wife, who had been married for 14 years, on the grounds that:
No emotion, can not continue to lie to her.
02
China in the early 1990s was undergoing earth-shaking and profound changes. On the one hand, there was an unprecedented wave of peasants moving into the city to work, and on the other hand, the new word of layoffs began to circulate uneasily in the compounds of state-owned enterprises in the northeast.
The literary and art circles also keep up with the rhythm of the times, and in 1990, Huang Hong relied on the "blind stream" in "Super Life Guerrilla", and his popularity once surpassed that of Lao Zhao. But at the 98th Spring Festival Gala, a sentence "Workers should think for the country, I will not lay off who is laid off", and he lost the hearts of his compatriots in the northeast forever.
At this time, Lao Zhao was keeping up with another trend in the early 90s - going to the sea. In 1993, Zhao Benshan's hole-and-pop appearance fee had risen to 100,000 per game, but in his own words, it was too difficult to rely on this accumulation, and he could not always see the sky for 365 days. Therefore, he established the Benshan Art Development Corporation in Shenyang.
It is said that it is an art development, but Zhao Benshan, who was originally a businessman, did the business of selling coal unrelated to literature and art, selling the coal from Tieling to the steel mill in Benxi, which is called "right seam" in the northeast dialect.
In the northeast of this humane society, Zhao Benshan's well-known face has played a huge role, everyone is willing to see this Spring Festival Gala red star who came out of his own home, never can eat the closed door soup, coupled with the massive amount of old Zhao, a meal of wine, there is nothing uncertain. Since then, Zhao Benshan has used the same model to start the business of fruit tea, wood and steel, and has accumulated tens of millions of family properties in the 90s.
On the stage of the Spring Festival Gala, Zhao Benshan contributed the best works in my mind for several consecutive years. There are satirical "Uncle Niu Tigan", "Three Whips", and "Bye Nian", which shows the relationship between cadres and groups in the new era. It was also from this time that the image of the peasant with the bow head, the pot waist, the duck tongue hat, and the Zhongshan suit followed Lao Zhao for a lifetime.
To this day, I still remember the golden phrase "shrimp pulling eggs" in "Uncle Niu Tigan", the mayor of Fan Township who "spreads good news from the delivery room" in "Bai Nian", and the kneeling of Zhao Benshan at the end of "Three Whips", kneeling out of the bitterness of hundreds of millions of peasants for thousands of years.
Stills from "The Three Whips"
However, many years later, Zhao Benshan told the media that he did not like "Three Whips" and was too preachy. Since then, he has not had any works of this power at the Spring Festival Gala.
When the time came to the last year of the 90s, the sketch "Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow" really laid the foundation for Zhao Benshan's unparalleled status in the Spring Festival Gala, and the white cloud and black earth debuted. It is said that after this, the first thing the director of the Spring Festival Gala does every year is to go to the northeast to worship the dock of the King of Sketches.
White cloud black earth debuted
The success of the Spring Festival Gala gave Zhao Benshan a bigger stage. The real Benshan business empire is about to embark.
03
In 2001 Chinese New Year's Eve, Zhao Benshan and two fellow villagers, Fan Wei and Gao Xiumin, staged the classic "Selling Abduction", and their reputation went to a higher level. A few days later, on the fifteenth day of the first month, he returned to the northeast to relax his heart and was invited by Yan Xuejing to watch a two-person transfer.
Ten years after a long absence from this folk art, Zhang Xiaofei on the stage played "The Fool Pulls the Daughter-in-Law", which made Zhao Benshan laugh wildly while throwing money on the stage.
Zhang Xiaofei
That night, Zhao Benshan lost sleep, and he found that compared to the coal and steel sewing business, the two turned to be his eternal roots. Running competitions, collecting talents, filming TV dramas, and building art troupes, a series of plans quickly took shape in his mind. The Benshan Media Group, which has been in the future for 10 years, let him figure it out in one night.
2 months later, the first Benshan Cup two-person transfer competition opened, Zhao Benshan paid more than 1 million yuan, in exchange for Tang Jianjun, Wang Xiaoli, Wang Xiaohu and other first batch of Zhao family class, the future Ivory Mountain F4, half of it.
In another 2 months, Zhao Benshan stood at the gate of the C Station Film and Television Center. At this time, Old Zhao, who can not give him some thin noodles. Therefore, the director of the center, Li Peisen, gave a script, and Lao Zhao asked the royal screenwriter He Qingkui to add the two-person transfer element and named it "Liu Laogen". Zhao Benshan and the Spring Festival Gala have been related for 21 years, only in 1994 the work was killed, and the protagonist who was killed was called Liu Laogen.
In the end, this drama invested 5 million yuan, and it was bought by the father of the C station the next year, and it became popular all over China.
Running competitions and filming TV dramas, all of them are going smoothly, and the next step is to pull up people and horses. In 2003, Zhao Benshan found a leader in Liaoning and said that he wanted to run a folk art troupe, not to organize it, but to rely on it. The leader was very supportive and asked if he wanted to allocate some money. Old Zhao said on the spot:
Don't spend a penny on the state, don't ask me for a hospitality ticket.
In December of that year, Zhao Benshan built a big stage for Liu Laogen in Shenyang, but the initial operation was not smooth. The main problem is that "the people are used to giving away tickets, and they would rather spend money to drink than spend money to watch a play"; second, the people in the city do not recognize the two people.
The humane society in the northeast has made Zhao Benshan smooth all the way, but it has also made him have to pull down the black face and refuse the human love ticket. During that time, Old Zhao really offended many people. As for not recognizing the two-person transfer, it doesn't matter, just recognize the person, the group of apprentices he received from the two-person transfer competition will soon become the red people in the northeast land.
04
Since the premiere of "Liu Laogen" in 2002, Zhao Benshan's film and television empire has been unstoppable. In 2004, the Ma Dashuai universe was unveiled, and it is still worshipped as a god; in 2006, rural love was born, and the ivory mountains and rivers began.
Zhao Benshan is too clever, these earthy rural series, while satisfying the curiosity and feelings of urban audiences, while stimulating the kindness and goodwill of rural audiences. On a larger level, it caters to the national narrative of the construction of new rural areas.
Stills from "Marshal Ma"
Under the joint efforts of the three parties, the three series of Liu Laogen, Ma Dashuai, and Rural Love almost covered the prime time of Station C, and each must be broadcast, and every broadcast must be fired, and the ratings that far exceeded the news network were also recorded. The benefits brought by this, in addition to the tens of millions of profits per play, there is also a surge in the popularity of the apprentices participating in the show. They shoot dramas during the day and perform in theaters at night, and with the popularity gathered on the screen, Liu Laogen's big stage is gradually difficult to find tickets.
At this point, the industrial chain of Zhao Benshan's business empire has gradually taken shape, he has created a unified Liu Laogen IP, and then discovered actors through competitions, sent to blockbuster dramas to be gilded, and then fed back to offline theater performances. By 2007, the total income of Liu Laogen Grand Stage in China had reached 58 million. On the other hand, Zhao Benshan on the Spring Festival Gala stage made a series of big flickers and white clouds and black soil, and his reputation climbed to the top.
"Flickering" series
Turning the 08 Spring Festival Gala of the New Year, the host Zhu Jun improvised interaction before Zhao Benshan appeared, asking the audience who they were most looking forward to seeing, and the whole audience shouted Zhao Benshan in unison, which is undoubtedly the official strong endorsement of the king of the Spring Festival Gala. In the same year, Lao Zhao spent 550,000 yuan to enroll in Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business. On the one hand is the ceiling of the actor, on the other side is the top circle of the businessman, at this time, Zhao Benshan, it is not too much to say that he is the first person in the entertainment industry.
But at the peak, the most feared thing is fluttering. Shrewd as Old Zhao, is no exception.
05
At the Spring Festival Gala in 2010, Zhao Benshan's sketch "Donation" was controversial, the whole work was not so funny, more and more apprentices came up to gild, and more and more implanted advertisements. The three major gold lords of Guojiao, Sohu and Sanya paid a total of 12 million yuan, and it is said that Station C and Lao Zhao each took half of it.
The most explosive news of the year was that Zhao Benshan spent 280 million yuan, becoming the first person in The Entertainment to own a private jet. Subsequently, Benshan Media announced an investment of 1.3 billion yuan in the Hainan Boao Film and Television Base with "Northeast Style, Hainan Style", and as soon as the news came out, it was a hot discussion in the city.
At this time, the Benshan Empire, Liu Laogen's big stage revenue exceeded 250 million yuan a year. In terms of film and television dramas, only 2 rural areas, the entry broadcast fee is 40 million, the copyright fee is 5 million, plus each 800,000 patch advertisements and Mengniu and other sponsors are nearly 10 million sponsors, and the net profit is also more than 60 million, and the media began to sell more than 10 figures to Lao Zhao.
In the past few years, Liu Laogen Clubhouse opened in Beijing with a high profile, Cecilia Cheung came from Hong Kong in Lao Zhao's private plane, and Zhang Yimou, Feng Xiaogang, Jiang Wen, and Song Zuying were twinkling with stars. The sensitive geographical location, the special guest channel, and the minimum price of 180,000 a day highlight a certain psychological change of Lao Zhao.
But this change did not last long, and the story suddenly went weird. In 2014, Lao Zhao was absent from the Beijing Literary and Art Forum, followed by Liaoning and Tieling, and various rumors began to ferment on the Internet. People began to talk about his current wealth, the secrets of the past, and the domineering phrase "after passing through the mountain customs, there is something to find Benshan."
Subsequently, the C station took the lead, the local station followed, and they broke off the contract with the mountain media, and it seemed that everyone smelled the smell of the mountain rain coming, but everything quickly stopped. On New Year's Day of the following year, Zhao Benshan appeared in Shenyang and Beijing successively. Facing the camera, he said calmly:
There is a little bit of discussion in life, which is normal.
Since then, in addition to participating in the New Year film in 2016, Zhao Benshan has disappeared for 5 years. Until 2019, Liu Laogen finally picked up the file after 15 years, but Zhao Benshan in the play was already full of white hair. In the same year, Benshan Media, once known as Zhenjianghu, quietly changed its name to Liaoning Folk Art Troupe Co., Ltd. After that, Lao Zhao only appeared on camera by chance in the live broadcast of his daughter's apprentice.
Stills from "Liu Laogen 3"
The king of a generation of sketches, film and television tycoons, and jianghu gangsters bid farewell to the public eye in this way. Waving his hand away, Xiao Xiao Ban Ma Ming.
06
This year, Zhao Benshan is 64 years old. For actors, this age is the golden age of creation, but today's old Zhao has long been in a state of retirement. But even so, it is still difficult to summarize his artistic career.
The only thing that is certain is that Zhao Benshan has become a metaphor and symbol of an era. He rose in the rush of migrant workers in the 1990s and reached its peak in the heat of new rural construction after 2000. His sketches and films fill the gap in the peasants' right to speak, conform to the process of national development, and even if he later obtains another entrepreneurial status, the peasants are still his background.
But it is undeniable that in the later period of Zhao Benshan's creation, the countryside gradually departed from the real appearance, and the idyllic countryside and the rich and prosperous rural economy in those shots were like "tourist resorts" that had been beautified. Zhao Benshan, who regarded himself as a peasant, catered to the aesthetics and power of the urban class.
Night view of Ivory Mountain
In fact, along the way, Zhao Benshan has never lacked controversy. Especially in the later stage of the Spring Festival Gala career, the dull works caused some viewers to be aesthetically tired, and the call to replace Zhao Benshan gradually rose.
But when Old Zhao really left the stage, people found that every thirty nights of the reunion of the Ten Thousand Families, we still can't help but think of him. And what we miss may be the beauty of our youth, perhaps the warmth of the family sitting around, perhaps a relative who watched the Spring Festival Gala together and now never sees again, or the simple laughter that will leave us when we grow up.
Like everyone else, I also miss Zhao Benshan, but what impressed me most was a sentence that Zhao Benshan said in an interview with Yang Lan:
The only theme of the Spring Festival Gala is to bring people joy, although in the process, I have never been happy...