Author 丨 Oko bai
Column "Writer No. 111 Anthony"
In 2014, Zhou Xun was struggling to cast his own film.
This is her first time as an executive producer, and she has spent more than half a year in order to find an actor who plays the male protagonist "Anthony".
Because he liked the role too much, Zhou Xun originally planned to play it himself.
"Or should we change the character setting to a girl studying abroad?"
"Or I'll dress up as a boy and get taller..."
It was not until he found the young actor Liu Chang that Zhou Xun finally gave up and gave up the idea of acting on his own.
And the prototype of the role that makes Zhou Xun's heart and mind is Anthony, the original author of the movie "Accompany Anthony through the Long Years".
What he makes people remember is not only his sincere and warm words, but also the eternal and unchanging appearance of loving life.
Anthony's real name was Ma Liang and he was born in Dalian.
Before attending elementary school, he lived with his grandfather and grandmother in the countryside and spent a particularly happy time.
Go swimming in the reservoir, catch fish, touch shrimp, pluck bird eggs, and lie in the cool shade for half a day...
The slow-paced atmosphere of life in the countryside and the love of various crops made him feel more secure than ever.
Growing up in this uninhibited environment, Anthony's personality is gentle and casual, although he looks lazy and laid-back on the outside, he can accurately and quickly capture the delicate emotions between people and people.
At the age of 13, in the bumpy bus back to his grandmother's house in the countryside, Anthony finished reading "The Little Prince" for the first time.
The French writer Saint-Exupéry brought the little prince hundreds of millions of light-years away to our planet and touched the hearts of countless people, including Antony.
At the end of the book, the little prince is bitten by a poisonous snake, and his body gradually becomes cold.
But he was voluntary, and only then would he return to his own planet, to his beloved rose, and watch the sunset with her.
Because of this story, Anthony climbed onto the roof of his grandmother's house and for the first time in his life seriously watched the sunset.
When the orange sunlight changed from harsh to gentle and then slowly disappeared behind the mountain, "The Little Prince" became a lamp in Anthony's heart that would not go out.
After that, Anthony would read "The Little Prince" every once in a while, and slowly, it was read almost 100 times.
When he grew up, whether it was the hardships of studying outside or the loneliness of people in a foreign land, he survived, because the lamp in his heart "has always been on, emitting a warm light."
Perhaps Anthony at that time would not have thought that one day, his words would also become the lamp that illuminated the hearts of others.
In the year of the college entrance examination, Anthony originally wanted to apply for the China Agricultural University, because for him, learning to plant flowers and vegetables was a particularly happy thing.
But in the end, he did not get admitted, and after two years of university in China, he had the idea of studying abroad.
In order not to add a burden to the family, Anthony studied hard while working hard to earn living expenses.
He worked three jobs at the same time, went out at seven o'clock every day, went to the language school and then took an hour's bus to the suburbs to work, and it was already midnight after the work, and he had to climb a hill on a bicycle to get back to the dormitory.
At that time, he had to work five or six days a week, and when he was sick, he couldn't be absent from work, and sometimes he was so hungry that he took a cup of water and put some sugar in it, and used a little sugar to support himself from fainting.
Once, he found a job sorting out containers, and worked all night before he took out all the goods in the box and put them on the shelves one by one.
When he was done, he found that his entire face was black, and even the paper that wiped his nose had turned black.
Even if the days outside are very hard, Anthony can always face it optimistically and discover the beauty of it.
Because the school was on the mountain, Anthony could often see kangaroos passing by, and when he came back from work late, he would meet the wild rabbits in the mountain road, and these beautiful little things dispelled his tiredness of the day.
Later, in order to relieve the loneliness of people in a foreign land, and in order to alleviate the concerns of his parents on the other side of the ocean, he began to record his life on the blog with light words.
Unexpectedly, the original simple life log changed the trajectory of his life.
One day, Anthony typed "Anthony space" into the web page and found that the first place in the search results was not his own blog, but a strange blog called "Spending a Long Time with Anthony".
Curious, Anthony clicks in and finds that it is all silhouettes of his life, but presented by a comic rabbit named Fuji.
Since then, he has become good friends with echo, the owner of the blog, and the rabbit has always been with him.
More and more people are starting to pay attention to Anthony and spend those lonely moments with him.
A year later, through the introduction of a friend, he was invited by Guo Jingming to publish these blog posts in "Minimal Society".
At that time, "The Smallest Story" was one of the platforms that young Chinese writers and many writing enthusiasts longed for, bringing together a large number of outstanding writers and painters.
Among the many contracted writers, Anthony is undoubtedly very special.
Because of his early blog writing, he was accustomed to not adding punctuation marks, using spaces to indicate pauses between sentences, and combined with the diary style of writing, his articles appeared unique.
For this reason, he has been criticized a lot, but he still insists on his own way of expression, and over time, it has become a feature.
The light-hearted and affinity of the text also brings immunity to his works, and readers are extremely tolerant of this formal "difference", and even deliberately protect his difference.
Some say it's because Anthony adapted to the people's need for words in this era—simple, warm.
It is also said that his words can give people illusions, and he himself brings everyone a good way of life and the courage to act.
In 2008, Anthony's blog post was favored by the publisher and published under the name of "Spending a Long Time with Anthony 1", which sold 300,000 copies, bringing him into the ranks of best-selling authors.
Later, he collaborated with his good partner Echo on the picture book "These Are the Loves You Give Me", and completed the 5 works of the Rainbow Book Series "Spending a Long Time with Anthony".
The fresh and warm text has attracted many young readers, making Anthony's works long-term on the best-seller list, and also making him a writer who has become popular again because of the characteristics of the "healing system" after a few meters.
He not only ranked 8th in the "7th China Writers Rich List" with 9 million royalties, but also more than 100 million yuan in works.
Recalling Anthony's popularity, the boss Guo Jingming also felt very wonderful: "In his works, I read a feeling similar to lying on the beach on a long vacation, reading a best novel, drinking iced tea, and listening to music. ”
Anthony's works, like himself, are sincere and simple, and accompany many people through their youth.
When he spoke with readers with warm and clear words, he inspired all the people who loved him, and life also prepared unexpected gifts for him.
In 2012, Hong Kong screenwriter Qian Xiaohui saw "AccompanyIng Anthony through the Long Years" and contacted Anthony through social media to adapt his book into a movie.
Anthony's first reaction was that it was impossible, he didn't think his experience was special, and he was worried about wasting someone else's time.
But Qian Xiaohui flew to Melbourne not far away, dispelled Anthony's concerns with sincerity, and finally got the adaptation rights of the work.
She did a lot of homework, added a lot of dramatization to the second half of the story, and ate and lived with Anthony's parents, capturing their daily conversations and writing them into the script.
After more than a year of preparation, at the end of 2013, Qian Xiaohui finally completed the script creation and handed it over to Zhou Xun.
In Zhou Xun's eyes, everything depicted in this work is particularly real, and she herself has been touched by the love conveyed in the story several times.
After much thought, she decided to bring this story to the big screen herself.
As the original author, Anthony was not involved in the production of the film, and even though the film was filmed near home, he rarely visited the set.
He knew very clearly that books are books, movies are movies, and professional things should be left to professional people to do.
While a series of works has been recognized and the huge commercial value of best-selling authors has begun to appear, Anthony has never felt like a "writer" but more like a "writer".
He believes that a true writer is someone who knows a lot of things and then works extra hard and has a fixed time to write almost every day.
Anthony did not do writing as a full-time job, during his study abroad in Melbourne, he studied finance, worked as a chef, and opened a design studio after graduation, constantly trying more possibilities in life.
He attributed his popularity to "accidents", never thought that words would be liked by so many people, and never thought about how to succeed in the next step.
In his view, chefs, designers, writers, these seemingly different professions are all derived from life, and there is not much difference in itself.
Therefore, after becoming famous, he has been living abroad, always maintaining a slow pace of life, looking for food while traveling, and then recording the feelings of life and accumulating them into a work in two or three years.
He said: Anyone has worked hard, but under excessive pressure, they will become a boring person, and then they can only be friends with boring people and live a boring life.
For Anthony, the sense of experience of life is more important than the degree of completion, and after experiencing it, he is satisfied.
Fast forward to 2022, and looking back, Anthony seems to have been out of the mainstream crowd for a long time.
About two or three years ago, Anthony left Guo Jingming's most worldly culture, and now he occasionally shares the daily life in the countryside on Weibo, promotes new books, and is comfortable in a very "small" world.
In the group of youth idol writers who fled from the world's most worldly culture, they became directors, seven years of trying to transform creation, Diane got married and had children, and disappeared Binnie for a long time without news... Their lives began to run to their respective hills after a brief overlap.
It seems to have "dimmed", but everything seems to be back on track.
In the information age of e-reading, they are still being mentioned as representatives of the ancient youth wound literature, and they themselves have already embarked on a new journey in life.
From an ordinary international student, to a super popular writer, to his own story being put on the screen... Along the way, Anthony always seems to be hit by all kinds of good luck.
In the great adventure of life, it is not easy to be a person who is always simple and happy, and Anthony has done it.
In the face of life, he rarely felt confused.
For the future full of curiosity, he always felt that their undertone was bright.
He believes that life will always have unexpected warmth, and with hope, you can always wait for the sun.
As dad taught him from childhood: "If you have a dream, do it well, and one day it will embrace you in turn." ”
Author 丨 Okobai ©️ Submission Guide