Now that Zhang Songwen is the top of internal entertainment, no one should have any objections, right?
Zhang Songwen has always been the best acting actor in my heart. As long as you have seen his plays (not limited to "Crazy"), you will enter the pit vertically and be completely conquered by his sense of faith.
Others are "acting what is like", Zhang Songwen is "acting what is what".
In "Crazy", he is the Chinese "godfather" Gao Qiqiang, who was born as a fish seller. Even if he becomes a gang boss, he still has a sense of pathos that he is manipulated by fate.
In "Hidden Corner", he becomes the selfish, cowardly Chinese father. He is powerless to save the tragedy, and he is powerless to change reality.
In "A Cloud Made of Rain in the Wind" (hereinafter referred to as "Wind and Rain Clouds"), he played Tang Yijie, the director of the Urban Construction Commission, who is the most "realistic" character in the entire play.
As soon as he appeared, he shouted at the villagers with a loudspeaker, which made me instantly believe this strange story that happened in Guangzhou. Some people also think that this is really looking for someone who has been demolished to act.
This is Zhang Songwen. Every role he plays can leave a real mark on your heart.
Before "Crazy", he had the strength to become a "top stream". It's just that the 6 billion views of "Crazy" make him seen by more people.
During this time, you should have seen a lot of reports related to Zhang Songwen.
His experience of "late bloomer" really touched me, who was also entering middle age but still hesitating on the road to ideals.
Therefore, this article can be regarded as a personal feeling. It's not a complete character story (after all, there have been too many before), but a few resonances that I felt in Zhang Songwen's experience. Hopefully, it will also touch you who are working on something at the moment.
All past experiences
It's all about preparing for a moment in your life
Zhang Songwen, who became popular at the age of 47, has a very tortuous life experience.
He was 24 years old when he decided to leave his hometown Shaoguan and study at the Beijing Film Academy. And before that, he, like most of us, was looking for what to do.
Zhang Songwen's mother died of cancer when he was in his third year of junior high school. Without his mother's care, Zhang Songwen matured earlier than other children. After graduating from vocational high school, Zhang Songwen began to work in the society.
He has printed wall calendars in printing houses, washed dishes at food stalls, washed bottles in soda factories, worked as an air conditioner installer, and waitress in hotels.
During this period, he worked for a long time, working as a tour guide in a travel agency for five years.
After these seven or eight years of social experience, Zhang Songwen entered the acting department of the Beijing Film Academy and is 25 years old. He once had low self-esteem because of his age.
But his past time spent in society was not meaninglessly consumed.
They have become the nourishment of Zhang Songwen's performance in the future, allowing him to better understand the world and allowing his characters to land solidly.
Zhang Songwen believes that an actor plays life experience.
His past life has played a very important role in his performance.
There is a scene in "Hidden Corner": Zhu Yongping speaks Cantonese when he plays cards with friends. However, as soon as he saw his son Zhu Chaoyang come in, Zhu Yongping immediately spoke Mandarin.
This is the detail that Zhang Songwen observed from his Guangdong friends around him. "This is the ecology of Cantonese people now, I am back to Guangdong now, and all my classmates speak Mandarin with their children."
There is also the scene mentioned earlier in "Wind and Rain Clouds" shouting at the villagers with a loudspeaker, Zhang Songwen's Cantonese and his call for the villagers' name "Wang Bo" are all his own plays.
Zhang Songwen just remembered that when he used to be in Shaoguan, he would call the old people "Wang Bo" and the like. This kind of life-like interpretation suddenly narrowed the distance between the audience and the characters.
And this down-to-earth is Zhang Songwen, who has social experience, and the biggest difference from other actors.
He likes to draw inspiration from life:
When he buys vegetables, he pays attention to how the vendors bargain with customers;
When he goes shopping and sees workers laying bricks, he will wonder how the tiles are attached;
Sometimes, it is a 30-meter road, and Zhang Songwen will carefully observe when he sees the staff eating. Then, he found that the crew liked to break chopsticks as toothpicks after eating boxed lunches. "Oh, so they do. Even if you don't understand it at the moment, you at least have a sense of portrait. ”
The best performances can't be designed. It comes from life and is part of life.
The experience of the bottom layer in the past has made Zhang Songwen know how to write the word "life".
If you want to go deeper, the death of his mother and his tour guide experience have made him deeply understand what "life and death parting" is.
Zhang Songwen has a textbook famous scene in "Hidden Corner": Zhu Yongping sat on his daughter's seat after his daughter's death, holding back tears while swallowing his daughter's favorite wontons.
In this scene, Zhu Yongping remembered the scene when his mother died. At that time, the most uncomfortable thing for him was that after waking up every day, he suddenly found that his mother's departure was real.
The collapse of people is instantaneous. For Zhu Yongping, the moment he collapsed was the moment when he found his daughter absent after packing an extra bowl of wontons.
Experience and experience have increased the texture of Zhang Songwen's performance.
If you only look at the correlation of things, it seems that the handymen he has played and the actors are professions that cannot be beaten.
However, life has never had such simple and crude boundaries.
Each of our experiences is not a parallel line. They meander and then meet in the long river of time. Your past flows in your present time.
So, no matter which path you are on at the moment, you don't need to be overly anxious. In life, there is no wasted time.
Love lasts a long time
Experience can nourish life, love it, and enrich it.
The second point that touched me was his insistence on "love".
In one interview, the reporter asked him: "Do you think enough love can resist the cruelty of reality?" Zhang Songwen said without hesitation that if you ensure your food and clothing, then love can offset everything.
This sentence hit me all at once. Regarding love, this is the first time I have heard such a firm answer among middle-aged people.
Zhang Songwen, who is now so determined, did not have "love" at the beginning.
After five years as a tour guide, Zhang Songwen discovered that what he really loved was not the job he was currently doing, but the movies that made him feel relaxed.
After realizing this, Zhang Songwen immediately resigned and flew to Beijing in the afternoon to enroll in a film training class.
It was 1999, when the average person might earn less than a thousand a month. Zhang Songwen, who became an in-house manager in a travel company, already had a monthly salary of 20,000 at that time. If you look at it from the current perspective, Zhang Songwen at that time undoubtedly belonged to the victory group in life. However, he still gave up the high salary and went to "chase his dream" without hesitation.
△ The interview is from the variety show "Acting School"
The sudden dream made Zhang Songwen forget the consideration of reality.
When he arrived in Beijing, he found that his conditions for being an actor were not very superior. The first is language. As a Cantonese, his Mandarin is rotten and has a pronounced accent.
During class, Zhang Songwen read the tongue twister, "four and ten" are not distinguished, which amused the class. (I have experienced similar things, and when I was studying in Shanghai, I often used "Guangpu" to make other people laugh)
The teacher even gave an ultimatum that if he failed the Mandarin exam after four months, Zhang Songwen would be expelled from school.
But Zhang Songwen didn't give up, he practiced tongue curling in his mouth with a stone in his mouth every day. He practiced every day, said every day, and relied on a tenacity to pass the language barrier.
The language is passed, and the acting class in the school is difficult for the diligent Zhang Songwen. He graduated with the first major that year.
But when he entered the crew after graduation, Zhang Songwen found that he had to face another problem: that is, his appearance had no advantage in the actor.
He once said that when he and Monday went to interview the crew, they were taken as a negative example by the assistant director, saying that they were people who could not be actors. "One is that the dwarf is particularly short, and the other is a sausage mouth."
At the worst time, Zhang Songwen interviewed more than 360 crews a year and were rejected. Because he couldn't find a job as an actor, Zhang Songwen could only teach acting.
But even though he was rejected and "humiliated" like this, Zhang Songwen still did not give up.
He said that the words that comforted him at that time were "tomorrow will be fine."
Zhang Songwen cherishes every opportunity to perform in a group. Even if it is a character without lines, Zhang Songwen has to think about the name of that character and the character biography.
When he filmed "Jingwu Fengyun", it was a group actor without a name, and all the scenes were filmed in four days. However, after filming, Zhang Songwen did not leave, but took the initiative to stay and shoot the whole play.
His serious attitude left a deep impression on Liu Weiqiang and Chen Jiashang, who filmed "Jingwu Fengyun". Therefore, the second drama Chen Jiashang asked Zhang Songwen to shoot. Gradually, he had some small roles with lines to play.
Although he can film, Zhang Songwen still has not much room to choose.
Zhang Songwen is the kind of person who would rather have no income than take on a play he doesn't like.
Because of his low income and lack of money to rent a house, Zhang Songwen moved to the Beijing suburb of Shunyi.
One winter, Beijing was particularly cold. At home, Zhang Songwen has to be wrapped in a cotton jacket. At that time, there happened to be a play looking for him, the salary was not bad, and after taking this play, Zhang Songwen could buy a boiler to burn coal for heating. However, Zhang Songwen was disgusted with that character. Therefore, he refused to accept that play even if he lived or died.
The other party persuaded him: "Young man, you first buy the coal for the winter before you say, okay?" ”
Zhang Songwen replied very ruthlessly: "I'm cold to death, and I won't shoot (this play)." I don't. ”
When Zhang Songwen looked back on this incident, his resolute tone startled me.
If it weren't for his own retelling, I wouldn't have thought that Zhang Songwen, who looked so gentle on the outside, would say such cruel words.
This is a story of not bending the waist for five bucket meters in reality. Zhang Songwen has a bottom line, a firm hold, and no concessions.
It is precisely with this insistence on faith and taking every choice and role seriously that Zhang Songwen can wait for the appreciation of a good director and usher in an outbreak in his life.
Although there was a very hot search before, it was said that Zhang Songwen still had no money to buy a house at the age of forty. However, Zhang Songwen explained, he did not feel miserable at all. That was the life he wanted to live, and the houses in the suburbs were also taken care of by him beautifully, with flowers and plants, cats and dogs.
Zhang Songwen said that he has never been discouraged in performance. Because it's what he loves, he's always reserved his choice. "I believe that those who work hard will wait for the results at some point."
"I changed my life in twenty years, why can't you?"
"Are we short of coal?
What we lack is this heart that can sit in the cold."
The subtitle was said by Zhang Songwen's good friend Zhou Wei.
I personally like it too.
After Zhang Songwen told the story of cold death and did not shoot, Zhou Wei said that when Zhang Songwen spoke, he would definitely lend him money. But if he doesn't open his mouth, he won't take the initiative to help him, and he won't buy him coal. Because he knew that what Zhang Songwen wanted was this "cold".
"If I buy him that little thing, will he still be able to stay quiet?"
"Are we short of coal? What we lack is the heart that can sit in the cold. ”
In fact, Zhou Wei did know Zhang Songwen very well.
He knew that what Zhang Songwen wanted was not material, but to act seriously and stay away from right and wrong.
And after Zhang Songwen has fame and traffic, he is also trying to keep his distance from fame and fortune.
After becoming popular in 2019 because of "Wind and Rain Clouds", Zhang Songwen still maintains the frequency of filming three or four plays a year.
In an interview at the end of 2019, he revealed that his annual income at that time was less than one million. "When you film with directors like Lou Ye and Jia Zhangke, how much can you ask for? The investment in the whole play is less than 15 million, and the director does not get a million. ”
After "Crazy" became popular, Zhang Songwen was very low-key, and he did not accept other interviews except for the publicity and interviews arranged by the crew.
However, Zhang Songwen was active on Weibo like a fake number, and very seriously replied to questions raised by netizens about "Crazy". He prefers plot discussions rather than self-promotion.
△ Pay attention to the message time, Zhang Songwen really answered after the broadcast. Too serious.
Regarding the issue of buying a house that everyone is most concerned about, Zhang Songwen also responded.
He said it wasn't that he couldn't afford it now, but that his mind was completely off buying a house. He didn't have the time or energy to think about it.
What he wants to do most now is to shoot the scene at hand.
Zhang Songwen admits that he has a heart that wants to be red.
Because on the one hand, red, his life can be better. No one wants to live in poverty.
On the other hand, he wants to be popular, in fact, he also wants to encourage entertainers in this circle.
He hopes to use his experience to tell everyone that a person who has been doing things seriously for 20 years can live a good life.
"I hope that after I succeed, I can let many of my peers see hope, and I hope that I am really worthy of you to use me to encourage myself."
Those who work hard should not be let down.
This is the motivation that Zhang Songwen has always insisted on.
And after many people have written Zhang Songwen, I still want to write about him again, which is also the reason. I hope that Zhang Songwen's popularity is a small signal that the world is getting better.
He represents the most scarce "integrity" of our time.
Zhang Songwen embraced the ideal, towards the love in his heart, worked hard for 20 years, and finally gained recognition and achieved a certain degree of success, isn't this the road to the ideal that we ordinary people are most likely to copy?
The world of the past was always full of rushes for quick success.
Everyone wants to become popular overnight.
As a result, red is a group of people. However, few have stood the test of time.
Look at the recent news, those traffic, idols, will always kill themselves in extremely stupid ways.
The shortcut to becoming popular through resources is actually no longer possible.
On the contrary, powerful people such as Zhang Songwen and Zhang Yi who do not take shortcuts are beginning to be seen.
Looking back at Zhang Songwen's experience, the key words are nothing more than "hard work", "love" and "perseverance".
These things, it seems, anyone can do it.
But who can last 20 years like him?
Zhang Songwen always reminds me of Liu Qing's words - "If a person is still an idealist at the age of 40, then he will always be an idealist." ”
I sometimes talk to my friends about this and they don't understand. Because in the eyes of most people, ideals will always be consumed by reality.
But Zhang Songwen used his experience to prove once again that idealists can change the environment. As long as you don't forget in your heart, that piece of the ideal Eden, one day, reality will give you enough rewards.