Fire! Burst! It's furious!
At the beginning of 2023, the TV series "Crazy" with the theme of sweeping away gangsters and eliminating evil has ushered in a "double harvest" in terms of ratings and word of mouth - since its launch on January 14, the peak rating of eight sets of CCTV has exceeded 3; During the broadcast, discussions about the show were hotly searched almost every day, and it also broke the record for iQiyi's popularity value; "Sun Tzu's Art of War", which the villain protagonist Gao Qiqiang can't put down, topped the best-selling list of ancient books on e-commerce platforms; The search volume and sales of the same food in the play increased N times; When the "Qiangsheng Group", which has the same name as the mafia-related enterprise in the play, did a live broadcast, it attracted millions of views; What's even more rare is that Douban gave the play an average high score of 8.7 points...
So, why can the domestic TV series "Crazy" be so "crazy"?
Script: three-act style + double male duel + character comparison
"Crazy" uses the contradictory life curves of policeman An Xin (played by Zhang Yi) and fishmonger Gao Qiqiang (played by Zhang Songwen) to tell a fight against gangsterism and evil that spans 20 years. The plot begins in 2021: in the fictional Linjiang Province, the commendation and summary of the special struggle against gang crime and the mobilization and deployment conference for the education and rectification of the political and legal team was held, and Xu Zhong (played by Wu Gang), the special supervisor of the provincial anti-gang crime office, just accepted the award at the meeting, and was appointed as a new post after the meeting. Armed with a report from Jinghai City (a fictional city), Xu Zhong and his partner Ji Ze embarked on a journey of struggle against the normalization of anti-gang crime and evil. However, the city of Gyeonghae, which is at the center of the storm, is airtight. The guidance group decided to look for clues from An Xin, an ordinary policeman who wrote a "self-inspection and self-correction" report with a surprisingly careful report, and the past events of 2000 and 2006 began...
"All the IQ of the characters is online", "All the actors are racing their acting skills", "The plot is compact, there is no water injection", "The service road of each era is very careful"... This is the intuitive feeling of many people after watching the 39-episode TV series "Crazy". In the fields of anti-corruption, anti-gang and anti-gang crime, there are many word-of-mouth masterpieces in front of them, but "Crazy" can shoot a different new idea of "sweeping away gangsters and eliminating evil" and ride the dust, which is really not easy.
Above: Director Xu Jizhou.
Director Xu Jizhou, born in 1976, has filmed a large number of public security-themed film and television works since he began film and television creation in 2000, such as the drama "Chinese Criminal Police", "Fighting Black Storm", "Sniper", and the movie "City Light of Psychological Crime". For public security dramas, this Beijing master is just right.
In 2019, iQiyi and Liubai Film and Television Company are preparing to shoot a work to combat gang crime and eliminate evil to cooperate with the publicity of the three-year work of anti-gang crime and anti-evil work. In the same year, 43-year-old Xu Jizhou was invited to join the creation of the project. He recalled: "The Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission gave us a lot of files and took us to do a lot of interviews. In the early stage, there was already a drama of anti-gang crime and anti-evil broadcast, and in order to avoid repetition, the final tone was set against the background of the normalization of anti-gang crime and the education and rectification of the political and legal contingent... Since we contacted this project in 2019, we have made several drafts of the script and written it for scrap. It was not until 2020 that he cooperated with the current screenwriter Zhu Junyi and found the right direction, that he officially began to prepare. ”
Talking about the cooperation between the two, Zhu Junyi, a cutting-edge screenwriter born in Weifang, Shandong, said: "I myself graduated from the management department of the Central Academy of Drama and have been doing stage drama-related work. After meeting director Xu Jizhou, he turned into a screenwriter. He is my master, I wrote with him for eight years and benefited a lot. ”
In the fall of 2020, Zhu Junyi just finished writing the script of the urban emotional drama "8090", "Director Xu came to tell me that there is a theme of sweeping away evil forces, but the time is tight and the task is heavy, are you interested?" I agreed without even thinking about it, without resting at all, and immediately set about preparation. At that time, it was not called "Crazy", so I just made a name and started writing it. Later, Director Xu changed it to "Crazy", fortunately it was changed, otherwise it would have collided with a similar theme broadcast later."
Xu Jizhou's idea of naming "Crazy" first came from Chairman Mao's poem "Butterfly Love Flowers: From Tingzhou to Changsha", "An international tragic song, crazy for me from the sky". In his opinion, the first two sentences of this poem written in 1930, "June Heavenly Soldiers Conquest is Evil, Ten Thousand Changyun Must Bind Kunpeng" are very suitable for this TV series - a storm, revolution is coming, with the determination of strong men to break their wrists and the courage of the blade inward, only then can we truly achieve the eradication of evil and cure both the symptoms and the root causes.
As an original script, except for the three-act drama structure and the story framework of the two-hero duel proposed by Xu Jizhou, other content basically had to be built from scratch by Zhu Junyi.
The so-called "three acts" correspond to 2000, 2006 and 2021, each of which revolves around a core event, namely homicide, land acquisition disputes and guidance group handling cases.
Xu Jizhou revealed that the reason for choosing these three time nodes is because in 2021, the education and rectification of the national political and legal team, the results of the reverse investigation of 20 years, the blade inward, and the reverse investigation of 20 years is just going back to the beginning of the millennium, and two major events occurred in China at the turn of the century, one is China's formal accession to the WTO, the other is Beijing's successful Olympic bid, and the mainland's security environment is more complicated during this period; The year 2006 was chosen as the time node because a series of land regulation policies were introduced at that time, and one of the characteristics of frequent cases during this period was to exploit the loopholes of land regulation and control policies, find gaps in them, and seize greater benefits; 2021 is the beginning of the normalization of anti-gang crime and evil eradication and the education and rectification of political and legal teams.
And "Double Heroes Showdown" is when An Xin, an idealistic policeman played by Zhang Yi, and Gao Qiqiang, a local underworld force played by Zhang Songwen, met in Weiwei, but they went to a different path because of different choices. The two are each other's mirrored character settings, and the entanglement of fate that is difficult to decompose causes the audience to sigh with emotion.
In fact, the two roles of An Xin and Gao Qiqiang just represent the two sides of the rule of law society and the human society - Gao Qiqiang is well versed in all the loopholes and laws of the human society, and An Xin is an idealist whose position is to improve the rule of law, so behind them is actually a collision of two social concepts. In Xu Jizhou's view, if An Xin was not an idealist with the spirit of rule of law, he would not have to persist in fighting with Gao Qiqiang for 20 years, and the whole struggle was so cruel.
Because there are a lot of scenes in the play that describe the life of the police force, Zhu Junyi made a lot of phone calls to Fa Xiao, who was a criminal police officer in his hometown of Weifang, and asked for many details. The depiction of the old factory street where Gao Qiqiang's gang made his fortune in the play stems from Zhu Junyi's memories in his hometown in Weifang. "Gao Qiqiang's scene began in the vegetable market. I remember that when I was a child, the vegetable market was always a little dirty, crowded, and people quarreled. When I grew up, I used to go to the wet market, and I felt that it was more human than the supermarket, and I was no longer afraid of the noise, but I felt that I was in the world of fireworks and was very peaceful. Some people say that the performance of the present moment is the accumulation of all past experience. In the process of creation, I can read the case files and materials, but I put more effort into it on weekdays. ”
The character prototypes of An Xin and Gao Qiqiang are actually splicing together the images of many policemen and black bosses. Zhu Junyi said that the development of the underworld has commonality, and there will inevitably be changes in the form in the early, middle and late stages, from the beginning of violent means to finding a "protective umbrella", to later acting as a "protective umbrella" themselves, and even controlling the appointment and dismissal of officials, and the development to the later stage must be a similar form. "Like the fight for mines and casinos, I basically dismantled and used, and Gao Qiqiang's story borrowed some criminal tracks, first selling fish and then engaging in land demolition and real estate, and then putting on the cloak of legality to wash the industry as much as possible."
An Xin also does not have the original prototype, this character concentrates all the qualities of a good police officer, such as loyalty, responsibility, kindness, etc. In fact, some of the idealists in reality are more unsatisfactory than Anxin. Xu Jizhou revealed, "We came into contact with a political and legal cadre in Guangdong, 34 years old with gray hair, and the same 'axis' as An Xin. Sweeping the gang, like anti-drugs, is cruel, and the other party will use all your weaknesses to restrain you. So we designed Anxin to be orphaned, unmarried, and without a family, and we shielded all his weaknesses. If not, the power of Gao Qiqiang's gang will definitely knock out all your weaknesses and break through all your defenses."
An Xin, who is regarded as the "lonely brave", is also very particular about his appearance in the play. Producer Qin Ge introduced: "In 2000, Anxin's hair on both sides was shaved very short, and the hair on the top of his head stood up, and he was full of spirit; In 2006, An Xin's standing hair was all down, and his pulling and game with the underworld forces was difficult; In 2021, An Xin's hair was completely white, showing his efforts to compete with the underworld forces. ”
This ingenious design is not only in the styling, but also in the names of the characters in the play. In Zhu Junyi's writing, the names of the characters in the play are all designed, such as An Xin is An'an, and his partner Li Xiang is ideal. Sharp-eyed audiences found that the name of Zhao Lidong, the "umbrella" of the underworld forces in Jinghai City in "Furious Race", and Zhao Lichun, the "umbrella" in "In the Name of the People", are only one word different. In this regard, Zhu Junyi admitted frankly: "There is no connection, this is just a coincidence. If I had to say it, it would also be a tribute to excellent works."
It is worth mentioning that Zhu Junyi used a lot of control groups in the play, "An Xin and Li Xiang are a couple, Gao Qiqiang and Gao Qisheng are a couple, Meng Dehai and An Changlin are a couple, and there are similarities and differences in them."
An Xin is an orphan, and his father is also a policeman, but for some reason died young, Meng Dehai (played by Zhang Zhijian, Gao Yuliang in "In the Name of the People") and An Changlin (played by Shi Zhaoqi), who are also policemen, took great care of An Xin, and An Changlin adopted An Xin. An Xin and Meng Dehai's daughter Meng Yu is a childhood sweetheart. In fact, everyone does not have too high expectations for An Xin, hoping that he will be plain. But An Xin happens to be very stubborn, an idealist, and pursues the justice in his heart.
An Xin's partner Li Xiang (Li Jian) is from a rural area (the Mang village that appears in the second act). His parents hope that he will be a blockbuster, and Li Xiang hopes that he can stand on his feet, but fate dictates it, because he sheltered the dead master Cao Chuang (Hao Ping, also An Xin's master) is caught between black and white, and he can't help himself. Until he met Tan Siyan of the municipal government research office, who had been writing a letter of complaint, Li Xiang embarked on the road of relief. Although he and Tan Siyan were both sacrificed, Li Xiang provided An Xin with many clues before he died.
As for Meng Dehai and An Changlin, Zhu Junyi portrayed Meng Dehai as a "square" with a strong personality, angular and fragile, and destined to not have a bright end (in the position of chairman of the Standing Committee of the Municipal People's Congress, he was punished for his son-in-law Yang Jian's involvement in criminal crimes). And An Changlin's design is "round", more worldly and thoughtful, and Meng Dehai is a good partner, and it is also a rare positive character in the play to go to the end.
Along with these characters, there are also the methods of corrupting the political and legal teams of the underworld forces in different eras, as Zhu Junyi said, "Common bribery and co-optation methods have been brought over, and some of the more hidden ones are set up in the play, such as kindergartens and nursing homes in the third act." Gao Qiqiang specially set up kindergartens for the children of grassroots civil servants' families and nursing homes for retired cadres, and "captured" both ends of the officialdom in this way of buying people's hearts. Such a plot not only increases the viewing of the play, but also makes more people realize the difficulty and complexity of sweeping black at the realistic level.
Above: An Xin's partner Li Xiang (Li Jian), from a rural area (the village of Mang that appears in the second act).
Actors: All have social experience, and the crew writes and shoots while acting and changing
In recent years, domestic dramas have been widely criticized not only for the script problem, but also for the acting skills of the actors. Fortunately, "Crazy" not only has a solid script, but all the actors not only have online acting skills, but are even known as "crazy acting".
Whether it is the "Shuangzhang" (Zhang Yi, Zhang Songwen) game, the blessing of old drama bones (Wu Gang, Zhang Zhijian, Ni Dahong), or the sister-in-law Chen Shuting (Gao Ye), the killer Lao Mo (played by Feng Bing), or the son of the village branch secretary of Mangcun Li Hongwei (played by Aruna), the suitability of actors and roles is very high. In addition to the two protagonists of An Xin and Gao Qiqiang, many supporting roles in the play have also left a deep impression on people. "I'm looking for actors with life experience, because this play is about China's social ecology, and it has a span of 20 years. When I contact each actor, I don't talk about the drama or the role, but basically talk about the past life experience, family environment... When I go to talk to the actors, everyone will have a basic consensus on their respective characters. Most of the TV series I direct are written by myself, which will give the actors enough space to create a second time, and then explain their thoughts when they create if they don't understand. If there is a problem in the direction, I will discuss it with the actors, and everyone will collide and seek common ground while reserving differences. When encountering mutual intransigence, Xu Jizhou filmed two or three plans according to each other's ideas, and finally took them to the editing table to decide.
"Crazy" allows the audience to see the awe and strength of a group of non-famous good actors for their profession. Actor Feng Bing went to prison to experience life in order to play Gao Qiqiang's royal killer Lao Mo (Huang Yao's father Chen Jinmo), and also learned to fish and kill fish. In order to grasp the accurate single father figure, he went to the orphanage to enhance his sensibility, pondered Lao Mo's emotional support and character motivation, and thus established the character's lonely, moral, and crippled personality. Actor Lin Jiachuan, who played Gao Qiqiang and Ban Tang Xiaolong (nicknamed "Brother Dao"), repeatedly pondered with the director how to better express the characters' emotions and caution in a prison scene, and finally only retained two lines to silence Tang Xiaolong, in Lin Jiachuan's view, silence is an observation.
Sometimes, temporary changes to the actor's scene are more wonderful than the script. Zhu Junyi recalled: "For example, in the scene of the Anxin celebration party in episode 12, teacher Zhang Yi contributed a very wonderful performance. The original script wrote the bridge where he called Li Xiang, and the mobile phone was placed in his pocket, but Mr. Zhang Yi adjusted it well on the spot, he put the mobile phone in the bandage, and immediately connected with the previous injury, and it was much better visually. After he said that line, he also broke the microphone, which seemed more powerful from the camera. ”
Xu Jizhou revealed that in the crew of "Crazy", there are so many good actors, and everyone is also racing with each other, if you want to make a move, I also have to think of a move. Like Xu Jiang, played by Jia Bing in the first act, he finally fell down, went to make a public call, took out the money after the call, thought about it, did not give it, this is what he added.
In episode 24, when Gao Qiqiang went to "visit" Li Hongwei, who was beaten half-dead with frozen fish by his younger brother Gao Qisheng (Su Xiaoyue), he was stopped by the police in the hospital with a cordon line, and Gao Qiqiang followed a group of younger brothers to retreat. The shots here are clever, freezing the close-up on the word "police". And this scene is Zhang Yi's temporary intention on the set.
Inheriting Gao Qiqiang's old Mo in the fish stall on Old Factory Street, every time he kills someone or makes a major decision, he must eat a lollipop. This character feature is actually a temporary design of actor Feng Bing. He doesn't like to eat sugar in life, but this design can add a little human color to the role of Lao Mo beyond the killer. Even the scene where Gao Qiqiang eats a lollipop in front of Lao Mo is improvised. Zhang Songwen thought at first that Feng Bing was going to take out a cigarette, but he didn't expect it to be sugar, so he took it and ate it. At that moment, the two were more like equal acquaintances in addition to the identity of the big guy and the killer.
In addition to the actor taking the initiative to change the play on the spot, because the script is relatively long to polish, resulting in the situation of the crew "writing while shooting, writing while changing". It is reported that "Crazy" started on September 26, 2021 and was completed on January 18, 2022, and the script was written until January 5, 2022. Because the script had not yet been written when filming began, many actors did not know that they were "bad people" or did not know how they "received a box lunch".
For example, the old criminal policeman Cao Chuang in "Crazy" is the master of An Xin and Li Xiang, and is also the "inner ghost" in the first act. When the true face of the villain was exposed, the audience was taken aback. In fact, actor Hao Ping was as surprised as everyone else, because when he filmed episode 11, he thought he played a good cop. It wasn't until 12 episodes were filmed that the director informed him that he was an "inner ghost", and Cao Chuang was taken offline in episode 12.
Sun Yan, who played Tang Xiaohu (and Gao Qiqiang are both from the gang involved in the old factory street, Tang Xiaolong's younger brother), has always been alone when filming, but in episode 37 (a total of 39 episodes), the director suddenly said "tomorrow you have a scene with your wife" (in order to expose Gao Qiqiang's self-directed and self-acting Hong Kong murderer), Sun Yan was blinded, and then he also specially posted that "I just heard that Tang Xiaohu originally had a wife".
The third act (episode 27) begins in 2021, when Gao Qiqiang's wife Chen Shuting has died and has become a photo on the wall. But the actor at the time, Takaba, said that he did not know how the character died. It was not until episode 38 that the plot revealed that Chen Shuting died in a car accident in 2014, and the cause of the car accident was that the killer sent by Jiang Tian (played by Zhao Longhao), a businessman who was an enemy of Gao Qiqiang, crossed the mountain (played by Zhao Da) and moved on the car.
Fortunately, the actor's acting skills made up for the embarrassment of rushing the script.
Above: When Gao Qiqiang went to "visit" Li Hongwei, who was beaten half-dead by his younger brother Gao Qisheng with frozen fish, he was stopped by the police in the hospital with a cordon of police. This is one of the "famous scenes" of the series.
The location and props are very careful, but there are still "hard injuries"
In addition to good scripts and good actors, the location and props of "Crazy" are also remarkable.
"Crazy" was filmed in Jiangmen, Guangdong, and many Lingnan social styles in Xinhui, Taishan, and Kaiping abound in the play.
In "Crazy", many important scenes are completed at the dinner table. Some netizens suggested that "why don't the characters in the play eat intestinal powder and add soy sauce". In this regard, Xu Jizhou explained that in fact, the intestine flour bought was accompanied by soy sauce, but the crew basically ate it dry, because the dipping sauce was easy to stick to the face, and the actor's makeup was easy to get dirty. Once it's dirty, you have to touch up your makeup and shoot it again, and sometimes you don't take the scene. "It's the same when filming dumplings, everyone eats dumplings without dipping vinegar, it's all the same reason, I don't want to lose my makeup."
As for "obviously the filming location is in Guangdong, why do the characters in the play eat dumplings Chinese New Year's Eve?" Xu Jizhou responded, "I am from Beijing, the screenwriter is from Shandong, and dumplings symbolize reunion in our hearts." ...... Jinghai is a virtual city, it condenses the characteristics of the whole country, we thought of using dumplings as a clue at the beginning, a police officer and a bandit met through dumplings, and the last time we met was to eat dumplings."
At the same time, the crew did a lot of homework in prop collection, costume preparation, etc. In the early stage, the crew recycled a large number of old things in Taobao, Xianyu, etc., some things were outdated and eliminated in the mainland, but there may still be in the coast, when the audience saw the black Jetta, Santana car, PHS, Nokia N70 and other old things, the memory of the times came to the face.
Unintentionally, at the beginning, the crew arranged for Gao Qiqiang to read "Poor Dad, Rich Dad" recommended by An Xin. Because Xu Jizhou was particularly impressed, "In 2000, many people in our dormitory were reading "Poor Dad, Rich Dad", talking about how to get rich, it was a bestseller at that time, and Zhang Yi also suggested this book. Later, I didn't find the props, and I said that Gao Qiqiang would mainly watch "Sun Tzu's Art of War".
Of course, after the hit of "Crazy", fans also became woodpeckers and found many "mistakes" in the play. This may be due to the short shooting cycle and the problem of the epidemic, and many places in the third act were not filmed, resulting in some of the suspense buried in front of it not being revealed, and the final ending was somewhat hasty, and some character settings were not full enough or even some went against reality.
For example, when the stubborn An Xin killed his relatives (Master Cao Chuang, benefactor Meng Dehai), he had no ideological burden at all and lacked human touch. Even so, with the aura of the protagonist, he was adored by Meng Yu (Meng Dehai's daughter, reporter, played by Li Yitong), Gao Qilan (Gao Qiqiang's sister, doctor, played by Longni) and his colleague Xiao Wu (played by Wu Jingli), and the latter two have not even married for him. And how An Xin's father died in the line of duty was not revealed until the finale, and the audience previously speculated that it may be related to the underworld forces or inner ghosts in Jinghai City.
Although the screenwriter wrote a good picture of the life of the police force (the big competition was particularly wonderful), some explicit rules of officialdom appeared "hard wounds" in the play. For example, Secretary Wang has worked as Zhao Lidong's full-time secretary for at least 20 years. Since Zhao Lidong became the secretary of the Political and Legal Committee of the Jinghai Municipal Party Committee in 2000, Secretary Wang has been his full-time secretary. After Zhao Lidong was promoted to mayor in 2021, Secretary Wang still served as his full-time secretary. Under normal circumstances, secretaries of the same leader rarely transfer to new positions with the leader when the leader changes positions. And it is unreasonable for Zhao Lidong to serve as the main leader in the same city for more than 20 consecutive years.
As for the gangster Chen Tai (Ni Dahong), who was forced to retreat by Gao Qiqiang, and Huang Lao (played by Shu Yaoxuan), a retired old cadre in Linjiang Province who lived in Gao Qiqiang's old people's home, they did not explain the ending.
Xu Jizhou revealed that "Crazy" originally shot 43 episodes, but only 39 episodes were eventually broadcast. The deleted parts are mainly sister-in-law Chen Shuting's involvement in pornography and drugs, and some of Xu Jiang's overly violent scenes, which have little impact on the development of the plot. But careful netizens found that Meng Dehai's last few episodes of lip shape and dialogue did not match, and it seemed that the words were changed in the later stage. Netizens speculated that Meng Dehai was also an "inner ghost", but his "blackened" character seemed to make the plot too gray, so the crew "whitewashed" the role in the later stage.
This speculation of netizens is actually clearly indicated in the play. There is a scene where Secretary Wang came forward instead of Zhao Lidong to make peace for Gao Qiqiang and Jiang Tian, wanting the two to shake hands and make peace. Secretary Wang said to Gao Qiqiang: "Gao Qiqiang, the leaders will not pursue those small actions behind you and Meng Dehai and Yang Jian. This basically solidifies that Meng Dehai is also Gao Qiqiang's "umbrella".
It is reported that the original novel of the same name of "Crazy" will also be published by Qingdao Publishing House in 2023. I hope that the bugs in the episode can be fixed in the book, so that "Crazy" will truly become a classic of anti-black dramas. Reporter| Jin Ji