"Galaxy Writer" is a film about young people's "dream film circle", the story takes place in Changying, outside the Fifth Ring Road in Beijing. The word "Changying" may be unfamiliar to foreign audiences, but for film and television workers in Beijing, this place where film and television companies gather is the beginning of many people's film dreams. The "Changying Heavenly Street", "Man Coffee" and "Three Brothers Shabu-shabu" that appear in the film...... Almost makes up most of their daily lives.
The film's protagonists, Zhang Yi and Sun Tan, are two aspiring screenwriters who usually shuttle through the streets of Changying, calling one café a company, the other a unit, and the surrounding restaurants as their canteens. In order to realize the screenwriter's dream in their hearts, they had to follow Party A's request and revise their scripts over and over again until they gradually lost confidence...... Thankfully, they eventually regained their passion for creation.
The screenwriters in "Galaxy Writer" Zhang Yi (right, played by Song Muzi) and Sun Tan (left, played by He Wenjun). Courtesy of the filmmaker
As a "meta movie" with the screenwriter as the protagonist, "Galaxy Writer" is indispensable to implant stalks that only fans understand, such as the acquaintance of the hero and heroine because of the first line of the character of the Joker in "Batman: The Dark Knight", but more audiences are moved by the texture of the "North Drift" life in the film. In the shared house of Changying, young people laugh and play and break up in love; in the hot pot restaurant late at night, when they are awake, they push the cup and change the lamp, and when they are drunk, they hug their heads and cry; in the conference room of the office building, they have to compromise with Party A again and again, "Anyone can come and change my script"......
At the end of the movie, Zhang Yi and Sun Tan gave up the script they had worked hard for more than a year, and buried it with a special sense of ritual and built a script tomb. But on the way back, Zhang Yi, who originally wanted to go home and change careers, had a new story temporarily under the inspiration of Sun Tan, and the more the two chatted, the more excited they became, they decided to write it.
The directors of "Galaxy Writer" Li Kuo and Shan Dandan are a couple, in Li Kuo's view, the screenwriter is the person who creates the universe, even the most inconspicuous writer, they are all trying to write their own stories in the vast galaxy. Shan Dandan told Southern Weekend that at least half of the plot of this movie comes from reality, and many details come from the real experience of the main creator. After ten years in the industry, after countless setbacks and self-doubts, they can already feel comfortable with their work.
At the end of the movie, the future humans discover the script of Zhang Yi and Sun Tan's burial, and they put it in the museum as if they had found it. It turns out that the script of the future is done by AI, and this script is the only script written by a human found in the future, on the grounds that "it is not perfect".
On March 30, 2024, "Galaxy Writer" finally waited for the opportunity to meet the audience, but this movie without stars and special effects seems a bit niche in the highly competitive Qingming Festival schedule. Shan Dandan is optimistic, she said: "Sincerity is our greatest weapon. ”
Directors Li Kuo (second from left) and Shan Dandan (first from right) during the filming of "Galaxy Writer". Courtesy of the filmmaker
"I have to try to be a director"
When he was in college, Shan Dandan liked to write, and was later admitted to the Chinese Department of Peking University for graduate studies. In 2014, Shan Dandan, who was about to graduate with a master's degree, created a drama and appeared in the Peking University Centennial Lecture Hall, which was widely praised for a while. Forwarded by a teacher's circle of friends, Liu Hongtao, president of Happy Twist, threw an olive branch to her. "He said you don't have to go to work, which appealed to me." After graduation, Shan Dandan joined Happy Twist and officially became a professional screenwriter. She had been engaged in pure literary writing until now, and she began to enter the world of comedy.
In the 5 years of Happy Twist, Shan Dandan has to pull a comedy every day, make a systematic learning summary, and submit a comedy outline every week. Back at the office, there are about 10-20 people who meet together almost every day to give advice. She still remembers that the weekly meeting usually ended late at night, and she had to rush to catch the last subway. "Once, I was listening to a song on the subway with headphones on, and I saw my face on the glass opposite, and I realized that I didn't know when I was crying. ”
is also in the Happy Twist Company, Li Kuo, who is a professional in acting, is an ordinary actor in the stage drama department, and can only play some supporting roles with few lines. In order to make some extra money, he began to write scripts with friends to make money, 2,500 yuan per episode, and wrote a total of three episodes. After writing it, it worked well, and he started writing sketches again. When writing "Happy Comedian", Li Kuo met Gao Qun, and the two hit it off to form a brother partner, short videos, online dramas, and online movies...... Take any job.
Gradually, Shan Dandan also began to get in touch with some film and television projects, and every time he talked with the producer, he had a good conversation, but none of his works were filmed without exception. Sometimes, even when the investor is about to kick the door, the investor suddenly withdraws. The life supported by the screenwriter's deposit lasted for five years, and Shan Dandan thought to himself that he had to try to be a director.
In March 2019, Shan Dandan worked as an assistant director to a friend's online movie crew in Xiangshan Film and Television City, and it happened that the screenwriter of this drama was Li Kuo. "I quickly found out that almost all the jobs in this group were panicked, and only the screenwriter knew that it was he who told everyone what to do every day. ”
After getting acquainted, Shan Dandan said to Li Kuo, "I think you can be a director." "But how can you become a director?" Shan Dandan remembered that there was a FIRST Youth Film Festival. "There's a venture capital club over there, let's get a script over there, and as long as someone is willing to invest, they can be directors. And just like that, they decided to start creating a world of their own. The plot after that was somewhat logical, Shan Dandan and Li Kuo developed from friends to lovers and entered into marriage.
The first script they sent to the FIRST venture capital conference was called "Martian Driver", which shined at the 2020 film festival and attracted many film companies to negotiate. Shan Dandan and Li Kuo once thought that success was imminent, but in the later stage of polishing the script, they encountered countless unexpected difficulties. "The investment company has put forward a lot of revisions, which are actually very pertinent, but we just can't change them. ”
Shan Dandan later summed up the lessons of failure, which was neither Party A's fault nor his own problem, it can only be said that "Martian Driver" is a work destined to require a large amount of investment to complete, and it is not suitable for himself at that time.
After getting married, the pressure of starting a family and starting a business followed, and for the first time, Shan Dandan felt that she didn't have to make movies, she thought about where to be a teacher, and the plan to have children also needs to be put on the agenda. "I think no matter how much you love art, in the end you have to go back to the most realistic questions. Shan Dandan said.
"Martian Driver" has been changed for several years without results, Shan Dandan wants to give it a last chance and raise money to make a movie by himself, if it doesn't work again, he has to give up. If the problem with "Martian Driver" is that the protagonist is a middle-aged man with an 18-year-old daughter, and he can't grasp it well when writing, "Galaxy Writer" is a story of a young man through and through, whether it is the scene or props, so that every "North Drift" young person feels familiar.
In the movie "Galaxy Writer", two frustrated screenwriters bury the "grave" of their script. Courtesy of the filmmaker
"Will there be a day when you will come out?"
For a writer, Li Kuo said, "The first happy moment is when you create it." He likes to be alone with headphones on, sitting at a small table late at night, polishing the plot of the story little by little. However, once the script is released, there are all kinds of uncertainties: "There is no first, and anyone can put forward some opinions." ”
Shan Dandan and Li Kuo both come up from time to time with the idea of "Am I not suitable for this industry". In fact, this kind of mental crisis has been present since the stage of entering the industry, but after the age of 30, it becomes more anxious.
After graduating from university, he went back to his hometown to work as a salesman for a while, and most of his job consisted of making sales calls.
Another time, Li Kuo's parents came to Beijing to watch his performance, and they found that he had few lines. After the performance, the family went to eat shabu-shabu, and the pot was boiling in front of them, but no one moved their chopsticks, and without saying a word, tears kept flowing. Li Kuo recalled: "At that time, they felt that I had wasted my life and could not see any future, and they were very disappointed. ”
His parents hoped that Li Kuo could go back to his hometown, so he found a friend who took over his rental house, packed his luggage, and prepared to go to the express station to mail it home. As soon as I walked to the courtyard of the community, I suddenly cried, "I regret it, I can't go, I really can't go back, I can only tell my parents my decision, and I went back." But because the room he rented had been transferred to a friend, he had to sleep on the sofa for half a year until the house expired.
In the role of Zhang Yi, Li Kuo has a lot of personal projections, he said: "My anxiety is the same as Zhang Yi, sometimes I am very conceited, after watching a movie, what do you think this is filming? I can shoot it too." But sometimes I feel that I am not really talented, and my ambition seems to be not supported by ability. ”
There is a birthday scene in "Galaxy Writer", which is the 30th birthday of the character in the movie, the frustrated producer Boss Cai. He cried and drank at the same time, and told all kinds of unsatisfactory things, and the distress of getting gout at a young age.
On his 30th birthday, Shan Dandan experienced an "all-round defense breaking moment". At the time, she was renting a one-bedroom apartment on the first floor with little sunlight. At 1 p.m., "the sunlight was instantly sucked away by the upper floors in front", and the whole house immediately went dark. It is said that she is thirty years old, and she has to review her life: she has been single for N years, none of the projects have been completed, the savings are only enough for rent, and there is nothing. "I thought, how did I get so miserable, and I started crying in the hut. "But when I woke up the next day, I had to write the script as if nothing had happened.
Shan Dandan (right) at the filming site of "Galaxy Writer". Courtesy of the filmmaker
Like a dream
Before really doing the work of a director, Shan Dandan told Li Kuo that Spielberg said that 95% of a director's time and energy are used for coordination, and 5% can be used for creation. Li Kuo didn't understand it at the time, but when he really became a director, he realized that the most difficult thing was not the creation at the artistic level, but the solution of various unexpected problems in the implementation process.
The original investors of "Galaxy Writer" temporarily reduced the budget, and the two directors finally tried their best to finally get the filming funds...... The crew was too rudimentary to complete in the shortest possible time, and the summer part was only filmed for 24 days, and the winter part was less than a week. Fortunately, the atmosphere is very harmonious. "Everybody thinks only about how to shoot every scene. Shan Dandan recalled.
There is a particularly important scene in the movie, which is the office of a skyscraper, which is impossible to set up temporarily, so you can only ask a friend to borrow it. Li Kuo and Shan Dandan used all their connections to finally get the opportunity to talk to the person in charge of a company, and the two of them spent 20 minutes to impress each other and borrowed two days of filming time from their company. Another plot of the movie needed to borrow a mansion, and they used the same method to borrow a model room from a real estate company, but it could only be filmed at night, and the whole crew stayed up for two big nights.
In July 2023, Shan Dandan and Li Kuo came to the FIRST Youth Film Festival with "Galaxy Writer". Compared with some crews with stars, they think they "belong to the unknown echelon", and they have experienced the miscarriage of "Martian Driver" last time, and they are "holding their breath" there.
They were worried that no one would come to the 500-person screening hall, so they made a lot of roll-up banners at their own expense, and even designed a T-shirt with "Galaxy Writer" and "Director's WeChat Please Add" written on the front, and a huge WeChat QR code on the back, walking around the venue.
Li Kuo still remembers that before the first official screening began, his hands were shaking when he pushed open the heavy iron door of the theater. Shan Dandan and the producer leaned against the wall, nervous to the point of weakness. Fortunately, the feedback was enthusiastic, and the laughter and applause from the audience calmed them down. At the awards ceremony, the film won the Grand Jury Prize and the Best Screenplay Award.
Back in Beijing, everything was like a dream, and "Galaxy Writer" took them to places they couldn't have imagined before. Through FIRST, Stephen Chow knew that there was such a low-budget movie, and happily invited the two directors to meet in Hong Kong. Because she was too nervous, Shan Dandan retreated for a while, she was afraid that the aura of her idol would disappear. When they met, Stephen Chow told them that because of the system, it took him almost two days to watch the movie, and said, "If you have the opportunity, can you let me watch it smoothly once."
Li Kuo acted in front of Stephen Chow in a clip from "The King of Comedy", which made Stephen Chow laugh. "He hopes that one day he can participate in Stephen Chow's movie, which is even happier than us directing a movie. Shan Dandan said happily.
After the release of "Galaxy Writer", the box office was not ideal. Shan Dandan wrote in the circle of friends: "In this industry, applause and recognition are fragile, and only self-doubt is durable. There is a lot of pain for creators to remember, but no one can say whether the pain can become nourishment for future creations. ”
Southern Weekly reporter Yu Yaqin Southern Weekly intern Dong Jiadi
Editor-in-charge: Liu Youxiang