January 28, 2023 issue | Total Issue 3130
Uncle, what an affectionate title.
In the Northeast dialect, the meaning of uncle is actually "brother-in-law", referring to the youngest of the mother's brothers. But searching for these two words on Baidu Encyclopedia, more than half of the information on the homepage points to a rapper named Dong Baobao.
In this era when Northeast culture swept the whole Internet, everyone can be called "Lao Tie", but Dong Baobao used the word uncle to establish his own unique logo.
In fact, his acting career is indeed often accompanied by the word "old", but it is not a melancholy story of an old man who is finally eliminated, but a cool plot that miraculously counterattacks.
In 2018, 32-year-old Dong Baobao participated in China's hottest rap variety show "China New Rap" at that time, trying to wrestle with young people, but failed to pass the audition. A year later, his book "Wild Wolf Disco" swept the Internet, creating tens of billions of traffic.
Different from the Northeast symbol popular in short videos, "Wild Wolf Disco" has also received high praise from many professionals, calling it "a Northeast stew that mixes humor, liveliness, bitterness, market, yearning, roughness, delicacy, fantasy and life, singing humorous and ridiculous scenes, actually hearing death and pain, and is a rap interpretation of Northeast scar literature." ”
As soon as he became famous, Dong Baobao's career development was sent to the fast lane, and he couldn't stop for a moment with touring and countless interviews. But this is the cruelty of overnight fame, and what is more difficult than being embraced on stage is how to walk home alone after the show.
Talk shows in the venue of "Spit Conference", go to the stage of "Annual Comedy Competition" as an assistant guest, and host cross-border in various TV programs. Now, he has given a new answer in various attempts.
In the suspense drama "Moses on the Plain" broadcast during the iQiyi Spring Festival, Dong Baobao played Zhuang Dezeng, a "social person" with an oily face. He and Fu Dongxin, played by Haiqing, are husband and wife, and the opening blind date and wedding banquet have laid the nostalgia and smell of life in the whole drama, and their gradual separation highlights the absurdity and desolation of life. Zhuang Dezeng enters and exits the dance hall alone, baking a fire alone, which is probably the most touching moment in the play.
As an "older newcomer" who has just entered the film and television industry, Dong Baobao interprets this role in a good way, which is his talent and comes from years of precipitation.
Dong Baobao said to the film and television monologue, "I used to be in awe of this circle, but now I also come in." ”
The courage to sink
Sink down to float. In Vanity Fair, nine out of ten people will say so, but there are very few who can really sink, and Dong Baobao is counted as one.
When performing all over the country, he always likes to go to the wet market and feel the local fireworks, which is the starting point of all his creations. Before the wave of rap, he was more perceptive than anyone, from examining Kuaishou and studying the tune style of the Pop Divine Comedy, to immersing himself in the charts of major music platforms, experiencing the thoughts and states of young people, and then integrating his own experience and memories to create the popular "Wild Wolf Disco".
When he became famous, Dong Baobao had already passed his old age, and despite the attention everywhere he went, he was unusually calm.
"Few people really treat you as a person, they think that you are a flow, just a flash in the pan, you are a person or a ghost has nothing to do with him, anyway, the next one will come."
In a follow-up documentary with the theme of "After Dong Baobao became famous", a tired Dong Baobao said this with a wry smile.
The documentary was later seen by Northeast writer Ban Yu, and Dong Baobao's ambivalent mentality and state in the film made Ban Yu realize that the singer had the potential to become an actor, and was slightly similar to Zhuang Dezeng in Shuang Xuetao's novel "Moses on the Plain". So, he recommended Dong Baobao to Zhang Dalei, the director of "Moses on the Plain".
In the summer of 2020, Zhang Dalei asked Dong Gem to eat through WeChat. Also an important symbol of the "Northeast Renaissance", Dong Baobao is no stranger to Shuang Xuetao's novels, and he told Zhang Dalei about his understanding of the character of Zhuang Dezeng and expressed his willingness to star.
In fact, for a rapper who needs to go around performing to maintain exposure, it also takes a lot of courage to make this decision. Dong Baobao has the consciousness of a rookie actor, and he almost pushed off all the announcements, "throwing all the months into this play." Dong Baobao used the word "honor" to describe this cooperation.
And the way he sinks is more like a clumsy, uncleverly learned process of a rookie actor.
First of all, he first went to watch Zhang Dalei's "August" and other works in full, and had a general understanding of his work style.
Secondly, outside of the script, he reread the original book again. "Zhuang Dezeng's experience is very complete and subtle in the original work, such as he is a trendsetter of the times, a father and husband with a sense of family responsibility, and there are also forbearant parts of his body. As an actor, I need to make a complete construction of it in my mind first, and when it comes to filming, I can show which side the director needs to focus on, and I can take it out without fighting an unprepared battle. ”
For Dong Baobao, shaping Zhuang Dezeng also has a unique advantage. Before people labeled him a "rapper," he was a standard literary youth and even a "poet," even after becoming famous, he would post poems he had written on Weibo.
His favorite poet is Haiko. Perhaps it is precisely this layer of identity that he also has a lot of reading of some literary works, especially Northeast literature.
The characters in those works are not Zhuang Dezeng, but they are all rich mines of actors, and Dong Baobao can use this to piece together the concepts and impressions of various characters of that era, and then combine with childhood memories to glimpse a corner of that era.
This feeling reached its peak after arriving at the shooting scene. Whether it is the family building or the school set, it is what Dong Baobao looked like when he was a child.
"When I was in those scenes, I felt like I had really crossed over. It gave me a very strong urge to perform, come on, isn't it just filming? It's a mule or a horse, pulled out and walked. ”
Acting by instinct in old memories
Dong Baobao said that he was a little drumming in his heart about acting, but he was not afraid.
Years of acting career have given him a natural closeness to the camera, and acting is just a different way. What he is worried about is that he is not a professional actor, and he does not have a very accurate understanding of the changes in the position of the scene, the distinction between shots, and the state of the characters. He feared that he would cause damage to the whole of the work because of his unprofessional parts.
Fortunately, Zhang Dalei has rich experience in the tuning of amateur actors. "He will present you with a whole set of behavior patterns for this character and clearly tell the actor what he wants." This largely removed the baggage and pressure in Dong Baobao's heart.
In those moments when the performance is not in place, one of the most common words Dong Baobao hears is encouragement: "It's okay, let's do it again." "When the director and the actor are always on the same side, the integrity and unity of the work are guaranteed.
A clear example is that before filming began, Dong Baobao and Zhang Dalei had several discussions about the level of Zhuang Dezeng's character. Dong Baobao wants to perform the sleek and shrewd side of Zhuang Dezeng.
Zhang Dalei said that this may make the style of the whole drama go off-track, because "Moses on the Plain" contains many elements, both era narratives and suspense elements, and is also full of the sense of fate of the characters. He hopes to bury some of the characters' personalities and experiences under the iceberg and be discovered by the audience, if it is purely expressed by images, it is easy to have a sense of jumping.
In the original novel, Zhuang Dezeng was a Red Guard who beat people "in a muddle". Judging from the way he later entrusted the relationship to go through the back door, he was also a trendsetter and beneficiary of the reform era. The undertones of these characters are all integrated into the silent shots.
This is also the biggest gain when Dong Bao filmed this drama. He said, "The first time I filmed seriously, I entered a very professional crew, from the set props to the performance of various types of work, everywhere was telling me what a professional and high-quality crew should be, and everywhere gave me a good demonstration." ”
The director strictly controls the direction, but encourages the actors to play boldly in the details, which is very obvious in the image. Under a large number of fixed shots, the actor's position and rhythm are not fixed, which always tests the actor's understanding of the role.
Based on this, Dong Bao's characteristics as a non-professional actor are also highlighted, sometimes he will find something to do in the character dialogue, even walk out of the camera, and then walk back, and the director will not stop. These details are connected to deepen the quality of life of the series.
When he really sank into the role, Dong Baobao found that he didn't need to act.
The scene where a family of three and former co-workers party together, Dong Baobao wants to perform Zhuang Dezeng's journey from happiness to loss to dazedness, after sending away his wife and son, he walks to the house alone, there is a fire on the side of the road, he stops to bake the fire for a while, and then continues to walk, and when he walks out of the camera, tears fall irrepressibly. The director came over and said to him, "Zhuang Dezeng, it's done." ”
"The reason for this is that all of Zhuang Dezeng's actions in that scene came from the instinctive reaction of the characters, not my design. In fact, in the process of acting, I didn't realize that I had actually added so many scenes to myself. Dong Baobao said.
Of course, this relatively comfortable-sounding way of acting also has limits, and from the first day of entering the crew, the director warned him that Zhuang Dezeng and you do have similarities, but you must not play yourself.
So like those scenes in the ballroom, Dong Baobao never let himself fly, although for a rapper, this is his home turf.
He knew in his heart that from singer to actor, from stage to set, learning to converge is a necessary quality.
epilogue
Liu Qing wrote in "The History of Entrepreneurship" that although the road of life is long, there are often only a few steps at the critical point.
Regarding the story of "overnight fame", Dong Baobao has another version here. When a group of hip-hop artists came out of variety shows, he felt that the ecology of the rap industry was changing, "In a simple sentence, you find that these people who used to make small troubles suddenly became famous." ”
Although he did not enjoy the first wave of dividends, he keenly felt that this was just the beginning, and after the beginning, everything would pass quickly.
When the economic situation was not good, he chose to fight the war, quit all his jobs, locked himself at home and concentrated on writing, writing 50 songs a year.
After a song became popular, almost everyone predicted that he was just one of many meteors and would soon dissipate, but three years later, he once again appeared on the stage of the Spring Festival Gala on the main stage, and also explored another possibility of himself in the film and television industry.
Sink down to float. Dong Baobao said that at the beginning of acting, just to better serve the stage, he wanted to make himself more comfortable, more handsome and more exciting when singing, but after experiencing the tempering of "Moses on the Plain", he began to regard acting as another focus of his career.
He never shied away from his age, and he was soberly aware that there were limits to his abilities.
"I take "Moses on the Plain" as a beginning, this beginning does not mean that I will show my face in many film and television dramas in the future, but more importantly, I must participate in the creation of excellent works, since people see through this show that I do have the ability to act, then I will try my best to continue this impression."
【Text/Xu Xinqiang】