Wang Chuanjun: In "All or Nothing", I am a trapped person

Author | Cheng Chi

Edited by Yan Fei

Title image/cover | Weibo @王传君

Before the end of the interview, we needed to take a set of portraits for Wang Chuanjun.

Wang Chuanjun sat on a chair and smiled cooperatively at the camera. After a few shutter blows, the photographer said to Wang Chuanjun, "Mr. Wang, can you do a 'meditative' movement?" He tried to adjust his posture a few times, and finally decided to give up. At that moment, the camera in the colleague's hand seemed to be some kind of weapon.

"Ahh For the first time, Wang Chuanjun showed discomfort during the interview and begged for mercy from the photographer.

So we finished the work, and he got more than ten minutes of free time to get ready for the next interview.

In August this year, Wang Chuanjun became one of the most impressive actors in the summer file. On short video social media, the clip of his role as "Lu Bingkun" in "All or Nothing" was marked with keywords such as "fraud leader" and "fraudster", and the likes often reached hundreds of thousands or millions. "Wang Chuanjun's Scene of Worshipping the Buddha's Name" has been on the hot search, and many people have even begun to imitate it.

The domineering and gloomy Manager Lu formed a strong contrast with Wang Chuanjun, who felt uncomfortable due to the filming in front of him, and it was so strong that there was a sense of comedy.

"The Man Crushed in the Middle"

Welcome to the world

In June this year, a month and a half before the release of the movie "All or Nothing", "Fifty Kilometers Taohuawu 3" was broadcast. In the new season, Wang Chuanjun was on the hot search because of a bird. After the filming of the show that day, everyone was gone, and a bird broke into the empty recording room - until it was discovered by Wang Chuanjun.

This is a female northern redstart, a common winter migratory bird in the south, and often haunts woodlands and gardens near settlements. The frightened northern redstart flew around the room in terror, repeatedly crashing into the floor-to-ceiling windows facing the mountain. Finally, the moment it finally flew out of the door next to it, Wang Chuanjun covered his face and began to cry.

In an interview later in the show, he said, "Actually, you're going to be bumping around in there... You're waiting for someone who's just going to open the door for you. When asked by the director of the show, "What do you think you are trapped in", Wang Chuanjun was just silent.

Photos taken by Wang Chuanjun during the recording of "Fifty Kilometers of Peach Blossom Dock 3". (Photo/Wang Chuanjun Weibo)

Previously, we were used to presupposing that variety shows were scripted. But when the interview ended, Wang Chuanjun was cramped and shy in the face of the photographer's request, I couldn't help but believe that he in front of me was the same person who was sentimental about the northern redstart in the show.

The filming time of each season of "Fifty Kilometers of Peach Blossom Dock" is a total of 21 days, which was completed in four shots. Wang Chuanjun said that this was his rare time off in a year. In the process of recording, everyone is in a relatively natural state, and the materials will be sorted out by the program team at the end - these states can hardly be created by editing, filters, and scripts.

"You may have worked for a year, and you will more or less accumulate some different emotions, and there will be some more negative energy. But when you enter the mountains, rivers, lakes and seas, you will be healed. Every year, I feel comfortable going to 'Taohuawu', like a vacation, doing some crazy things with my friends, I feel that life is beautiful. ”

Photos taken by Wang Chuanjun during the recording of "Fifty Kilometers of Peach Blossom Dock 3". (Photo/Wang Chuanjun Weibo)

The northern red-tailed robin, trapped indoors and slamming into the floor-to-ceiling window in vain, may be more like the state of Wang Chuanjun's life. And in "All or Nothing", he plays Lu Bingkun as a vulture.

In fact, in Wang Chuanjun's imagination at the beginning, "Manager Lu" was not a bird, but a cold-blooded snake.

"At first I was looking for something like a snake: cold-blooded, one that could devour everything, one that could entangle, one that could control everything. Later, it was found that Manager Lu was not a real boss, the real boss was someone else, he was nothing more than a middle-level cadre. ”

"After styling, I noticed that my forehead was very high, so I thought of vultures, and I thought it was particularly suitable. Because it hovers over your head forever, you don't know when he's going to come down. When he came down, he ate all the carrion, and it might not be his turn to eat the main meal. Thinking of this, I will feel that it is particularly in line with a character like Manager Lu, so I brought the vulture in. ”

Stills from "All or Nothing". (Photo/Wang Chuanjun Weibo)

Of course, animal simulating is only one aspect of getting closer to the character. The director gave Wang Chuanjun 1T material, which contained materials from various interviews, as well as a documentary about fraud. Much of the material is about the victim, not the perpetrator.

When seeing these deceived people tell their experiences, Wang Chuanjun will tell himself: "I believe that even if I break your leg today, I have no trouble in my heart about breaking your leg." ”

In the previous news, there were many "deeds" of Wang Chuanjun who sacrificed for the role. Looking back, Wang Chuanjun still feels that he is "still on the way to understand acting". He felt that he was definitely not a "drama idiot", and "idiot" would seem a little scary to him. If you don't perform too hard, the effect is better, but "when you want to act too much, you can't do it". Let go of some, and there will be more possibilities.

So in the whole "All or Nothing", we saw a villain who was just rightly labeled.

Stills from "All or Nothing". (Photo/Wang Chuanjun Weibo)

Over the years, he has been a judge of the First Film Festival, and has been paying attention to the changes of young creators. He found that in the past two years, there have been more young filmmakers who are willing to do content in a "commercial" direction. In many of his works in previous years, he found that the creator himself "didn't figure out anything and thought it was an artistic expression", but he was "moaning without illness".

"The problem with being young is that you don't really know the world yet, and it's hard to explain something clearly. ”

Wang Chuanjun also talked about Bi Feiyu's new book "Welcome to the World" that he was reading recently, and he felt that this work was almost "something that can be taken directly". When a friend recommended the book to him, he said that he was very much like the doctor hero in the story, "the kind of person who is pressed in the middle".

Welcome to the World

Bi Feiyu

People's Literature Publishing House, 2023-7

This feeling is similar to his understanding of acting. In his opinion, as an actor, like a director, he is "meat on the cutting board", and what kind of taste this pot of meat is made depends on who the chef is.

Looking back on his roles out of the circle in recent years, they are indeed those who have been trapped. Lu Bingkun in "I Am Not the God of Medicine" is not a "fraud leader", but also a person who is controlled and trapped - but they treat the predicament differently.

The city "does not sound"

The mountains, rivers, lakes and seas of "Fifty Kilometers of Peach Blossom Dock" are temporary rest, and Wang Chuanjun's daily life belongs to the city.

The day before the interview, Wang Chuanjun ended filming in Zhongshan, Guangdong. In order to catch the plane back to Beijing, he set off at four o'clock in the morning to say goodbye to the small city for a while.

Wang Chuanjun himself was a little strange as to why he liked this place. But in his narrative, a small southern town looms over – and those details are the reason.

"Love it (Zhongshan) starts with the architecture. I really like the building - the old one, the one that is close to each other, but not the arcade, because the arcade is not so well maintained now. It's the state of those people below the old building. Including trees in the city. I once went to a street stall and saw a field of mangoes, and I thought it was from the fruit stall. When I looked up, I was amazed that there were mango trees here. ”

"Zhongshan is not a big city, but it has all the food from all over the world, and it is quite delicious. The shop opens at 7 a.m. and closes at 2 p.m. The local area has a strong personality and is very laid back. ”

Wang Chuanjun described the city carefully, thought for a moment and added: "(They) have their own pride: our food is delicious." ”

Sun Wen Road Pedestrian Street, Zhongshan City. (Photo/Visual China)

Not only Zhongshan, but he also went to Taishan for the current series. He observed that the buildings in Taishan city are also close together, and "people seem to be able to touch each other easily, but the distance between people is actually very far."

Such an urban temperament always reminds him of his hometown Shanghai.

"Because I lived in an alley when I was a child, we also have a tiger stove at home, which sells hot water, and different people come to sell and buy water every day. Some people will stay in it to drink tea, and they can take a bath in the back, and they have seen a lot of strange things. At the time, I didn't seem to have any feelings about this, but when I looked back and thought about it, I realized that it was so interesting: when you were four or five years old, you had a very shallow impression, but you saw a lot of different people, such as a one-legged grandfather who said that his leg was blown off when he went to war, and an old man and two old ladies who would tell you unbelievable things. ”

"They were all people from that era, and they were fun. Because I grew up in a restaurant, my mom used to ask me, "How do you look at a person, how is that person?" ”

Shanghai, where Wang Chuanjun grew up, was "humid and silent". Just like the writer Jin Yucheng wrote in "Flowers", in Shanghai, everyone is trying their best to maintain a kind of decency, "There is no need to say a lot of things thoroughly, maybe you ask me a question, I smile, and this matter is over." ”

"Smile and pass" is also the mark of Shanghai in "Flowers".

《Flourishing Flowers》

Written by Jin Yucheng

Shanghai Literature and Art Publishing House, 2013-3

What impressed Wang Chuanjun the most in "Flowers" was the part where Xiaoqin fell from the building after Tao Tao and Xiaoqin were together. After Xiaoqin fell downstairs, Tao Tao inadvertently flipped through Xiaoqin's diary and found that he had never been loved.

In the diary, smiling is Xiaoqin's way of refusing love: "Now to Tao Tao, to anyone, I just smile, this is the best, I don't take a stand, keep smiling." Tao Tao, who finished reading the diary, hesitated, what time is it at this moment, which world is it, if now, walking alone by the Taihu Lake and seeing the blue waves, will he jump down immediately.

At this time, I remembered Wang Chuanjun's friend's evaluation of him: the person who was pressed in the middle. At the same time, he is also a "silent person".

Wang Chuanjun feels that each city has its own texture. "Every city has its own language, for example, director Jia Zhangke will shoot the same place for a long time. I think it depends on how much you love the city or the land, how deeply you want to observe, you can put that side of it in the image, and that's good. ”

(Photo/Poster of the movie "Flowers")

Books about the city are an important aspect of Wang Chuanjun's perception of the city. In the exchange with Wang Chuanjun, he also mentioned that he liked the writer Wu Liang's "Morning Xia". Professor Zhang Ning of Beijing Normal University commented that the novel "has romanticism, heroic complexes, salvation feelings, and slightly decadent idealism."

The night I ended the interview, Wang Chuanjun sent me a message asking about a work by a Shanghai writer I mentioned in the interview. I recall that it was "The Landscape of Waves" by the young writer Zhou Jianing. After learning the title of the book, he replied that he would buy it immediately.

He still seems to have a curiosity about the city he grew up in.

The Landscape of the Waves

Written by Zhou Jianing

Shanghai Literature and Art Publishing House, 2022-8

"Like the universe, you know?"

Wang Chuanjun will take the child into the crew. When talking about children, the interview seems less like an interview and more like talking to a friend who has become a father.

"Two years and seven months (at the time of the interview) happened to be cute. I said.

"It's so cute, it's so cute!" he was much more vivid than before.

Wang Chuanjun felt that it seemed that the child was teaching him how to look at the world anew.

The filming scene of "All or Nothing". (Photo/Wang Chuanjun Weibo)

Two days before the interview, he called a late finish. When he got back to the house, his daughter hadn't slept yet—because he had promised her to say hello when he came back from work. As soon as he entered the door, his daughter gave him a love match. Then Wang Chuanjun lay next to his daughter, ready to take her to rest.

"She's so close to me all of a sudden," Wang Chuanjun put his palm in front of his eyes and compared the distance, "so close to me! Wow, her two eyes are like the universe, you know? It's so beautiful, so close to me." ”

Children don't necessarily remember that moment when they grow up, and I can imagine in my mind the tremor a young father would feel when he bumped into his child's "cosmic eyes." He uses three "so close to me" in a row, such distances are not spatial distances, but distances that cannot be measured by physical units, and can make the future time infinitely close and infinitely far.

Wang Chuanjun plays with his family. (Photo/Wang Chuanjun Weibo)

"She took my hand and continued, 'Daddy, let's tell the story of the earthworm.'" Wang Chuanjun began to imitate the child's demeanor, "I really melted away all at once." You can't lie to your child, she remembers everything you tell your child. As long as you keep your promise, she will be happy. If you don't cash in, she'll suddenly ignore you. ”

Wang Chuanjun feels that the three-year-old child is already teaching him how to be an adult. His daughter constantly reminded him of many problems, "There is a part of yourself in her that you don't realize until you don't have her". The child is very stubborn, but he thinks that he is also stubborn. When you come into contact with your child, you feel like you're talking to yourself.

On the day of the interview, he left at 4 a.m. He hugged his daughter in the car, "My daughter slept so deeply, so I carried her all the way." I didn't dare to move, for fear of waking her up, and I had to wear a seat belt, and I couldn't put my shoulders down now, and it was so sore. He subconsciously moved his shoulder, "You just want her to be comfortable." Later, I thought that every parent might come over like this, and it was shocking. ”

Wang Chuanjun often shares pictures on Weibo, the most common of which are the moon and the sky. With the child in his arms, he should not have his hands free to take pictures of the dawn on the road that day, but he should remember the sleeping child in his arms in the dawn, the sore shoulders, and the lasting shock of being a father.

Proofreader: Lai Xiaoni

Operation: Lu Zirui

Typesetting: Yang Fang