"At that time, Ge You was already a big-name actor, and was filming "Alive" at Zhang Yimou's place, and Yingda heard that he was going back to Beijing to do something, so he took Song Dandan and Liang Tian to his house to block him."
Journalist/Rye
Yingzhuang (Photo by Yu Chuzhong)
How three generations of a family were set up
Sanlian Life Weekly: What was the experience of joining the group at that time? How did the characters come out of the play?
Yingzhuang: I was relatively involved in the back, and the first people who knew that I wanted to shoot this scene were Yingda, Wang Shuo, and Song Dandan, and I was the fourth to participate. At that time, the old man who came in to listen to us talk about this play was an old gentleman, that is, YingRuocheng. Later, as soon as the elder interjected, we asked the elder to go out and rest for a while. At that time, the British elderly had retired from the position of deputy minister of culture for a few years.
I remember that the first time I heard Yingda mention this play, it was at the shooting scene of "Haima Song and Dance Hall", he took me to the crew to walk around, the impression was that Liu Bin, Ma Weidu, Wang Shuo, Liang Tian were all there, Yingda saw people and said "this is my brother", people look at me, oh, the young man is so staying, study physics! I made that impression.
I came in as a screenwriter in the first place. At that time, I told Indah that I couldn't write this play, it was too big. Indah said it was okay, and Wang Shuo, "You will write with him." Just when we were about to write, we couldn't find Wang Shuo. What's going on? At that time, these dramas that were popular on TV and popular novels on the market were all written by him, and he should have gone to hide in other places at that time, and it was said that he was "reclusive" for a while, when the pressure was too great and had to be slow.
I heard that a relative in the northeast of our family was willing to invest money in this play, so I wrote for a while and found that this character was a little wrong. The earliest characters in "I Love My Home" are like this, Peace is called Jia Heping, the daughter of Lao Fu, and Yang Lixin's Zhiguo is the son-in-law of their family's upside-down door, and this son-in-law is still a southerner, from Shanghai and Jiangsu. At that time, he was not called Zhiguo, called Wu Yuntang, we were specially designed this name at that time, the name of Yuntang sounds a bit southern, and it is particularly serious, but he is partial to the surname Wu, so it gives people a feeling of bad luck, but also for the comedic effect.
At that time, I just couldn't grasp this Wu Yuntang, maybe my level was limited, and I did have a sense of distance from the southern characters.
Before this, there were two actors who had already been established, one was Jia Zhixin played by Liang Tian, and the other was Jia Heping played by Song Dandan, and later Liang Zuojin grouped us to have a meeting, and everyone decided to adjust the two people of "Zhiguo" and Jia Heping. In this way, it feels smooth: the Jia family has three children, two sons and a daughter, exactly the same as the Liang Zuo family, Liang Zuo was the eldest in the family at that time, and the second was Liang Tian, an intellectual, and the younger brother of "Hanging Er Lang Dang". The brothers decided, there was almost a name, "Jia" and "Zhi" had it, I contributed a "guo" word, in that era, Zhiguo was also a very common name.
Sanlian Life Weekly: At that time, three generations of a family had been set, was the circle set at the beginning?
Yingzhuang: It was decided at the beginning, we said that this drama must have a child, a family drama, you can see the growth in the child, this child also bears some interesting story lines, and her function is unique. At that time, I decided to find a girl of about 10 years old, there was a reason, girls will be a little precocious than boys, and the stories that happen to them may create better dramatic conflicts, such as early love, conflicts with the family, anyway, more drama than boys.
The episode "The Uninvited Guest" was created by Yingzhuang based on the "deeds" in the magazine (Photo by Wang Xiaojing)
How did "Ge You Lie" come about
Triptych Life Weekly: "The Uninvited Guest" was written by you?
Yingzhuang: I wrote it, but I actually encountered some confusion at that time, when it was the middle of the first 40 episodes, and my writing material encountered a bottleneck. I remember that at that time, we were bored in a relatively closed unit on the west side, and I lived in a house with Yingda, and Liang left lived in a house opposite, and we were separated by an aisle. Liang Zuo was already writing on a laptop at that time, he loved to write on his stomach in bed, this person slept very lightly and needed to be quiet. We have basically no contact with the outside world, unlike today when I casually flip through my mobile phone to see some new things, I brought a lot of magazines in order to find materials, and one night after eating, I accidentally turned to a Reader's Digest.
What did you read about? It is about an ordinary northeastern driver at that time, it is said that he was a famous "inventor", invented a bunch of things with no scientific basis, and later this person made a "water-based fuel", saying that adding this mother liquor to the water, you can decompose the hydrogen atoms and oxygen atoms, find a match and throw it into the water, and the flames will be poofed. Reader's Digest was reported as a positive publicity story, and I was a science student at North University, and I was happy to see it at the time.
With professional sensitivity, I took this strange article and chatted with Indah, we said that if this mother liquid is invented, the Middle East countries will definitely be in a hurry, and the days of war will be destroyed by this person as soon as the war breaks out, and the days of peace in the world will be ruined, and so on, and it will not be long after the Gulf War ended. While making up and having fun, the two of us talked for a night, and when the music was over, I wrote the story I was talking about into this episode, and of course, I later deleted a lot of lines that were not allowed to be broadcast on TV. Within a few years of the broadcast of "I Love My Home", the inventor was arrested.
Triptych Life Weekly: How did the story in the script come about?
Yingzhuang: You listen to me next. Liang Zuo was living in simplicity at that time, and I was making Ji Chunsheng on the door. Because you have to put this story on a person who can walk into this door, I think of the place where I lived when I was a child, Fuyou Street, which is diagonally opposite the north gate of Zhongnanhai, in the early days, across the road was a petition station, I used to go there to chat with them when I was a child, these people are all kinds, holding up large character newspapers with all kinds of tearful stories, I see their lines are particularly interesting, their clothes are very typical, you can see the characteristics of the profession. Later, when I grew up a little, I learned that there were some scammers mixed in, who came to cheat subsidies.
There is a Beijing native language called "reclining", which refers to people who want food in the old society, and at that time, they could often meet such people in the city. Thinking of this, the image of Ji Chunsheng became clear.
Sanlian Life Weekly: Why chunsheng?
Yingzhuang: To name a comedy character, you have to grasp the measure, it is too dramatic, just like crosstalk, a bit deliberate, after all, it is a drama, but also real and lifelike. At the beginning, everyone called this person a parasite of society, well, I let him surname Ji, and then according to this harmonic sound, a Ji Sheng Chun, after writing I read it several times, I felt that this name was particularly awkward, I turned the last two upside down to read it, Chun Sheng, Beijing dialect can also add a child's pronunciation, it sounds local, it feels right.
Sanlian Life Weekly: What did you think of Ge You's performance at that time?
Yingzhuang: When I was writing the script, I said to Yingda: "You have to find Ge You to act, you don't look for him to act, and I wrote this book in vain." Indah said to me, "You write it, I'll find him." "Later, when filming was about to start, the characters in the script were already more three-dimensional, and when we were chatting about eating and smoking, we said once again to find Ge You, and Indah left.
At that time, Ge You was already a big-name actor, and was filming "Alive" at Zhang Yimou's place, and Yingda heard that he was going back to Beijing to do something, so he took Song Dandan and Liang Tian to his house to block him. Originally, Liang Tian was quite familiar with Ge You, but he couldn't erase his face a bit, plus Ge You's time might not be free, so the two of them simply went together.
Sanlian Life Weekly: How was Chunsheng's line prepared at that time?
Yingzhuang: Director Yingda is busy, so I will assist the costumer in finding clothes. My mind was full of people at the petition station, and I docked with the costume artist. At that time, Zhongshan clothes were not very good to buy, and they could not wear a new one, who cares who wants food, right? So we took the crew's car and ran to the jintai road, I knew that there was an old clothing wholesale market at that time, clothes for a dollar, a lot of migrant workers bought clothes there, we walked around for a while and found this discolored Zhongshan suit.
When I bought it back, I soaked it in disinfectant water to disinfect it, eliminated the poison for two days, and after a day of sunbathing, we put this dress into a ball and put it under the mattress of the big sister of the costume, just to make it look tattered. A few days later, we took out this clothing that had been "disinfected eight times and crushed five times", Ge You especially understood, and directly put it on, I looked at it, almost, and then hung the prepared satchel and water tank on him.
Triptych Life Weekly: Did the actor's lines improvise on the spot?
Yingzhuang: Yes, but very little, more in the last 80 episodes. It's not that we didn't give the actors this power, mainly because the script was polished by Liang Zuo and basically seamlessly. Ge You has a scene, the line is, this fried sauce noodles should be under the pot, when he said it, he added a stomp, which he added himself. There is also the familiar "Ge You Lie", there may be a small hint on the script, similar to the word "sleepy", but this body language must be Created by Ge You himself, he is so crooked, it is very vivid.
Me and "Dr. Yang"
Sanlian Life Weekly: Do you have the most feelings for the role of Jia Zhixin?
Yingzhuang: The knowledge structure of Liang Tian and I is not the same, but the specific experience is very similar. He is a more down-to-earth person, not the kind of person who is high up, we have all done small business, so I wrote a bathhouse pouring steel, Spending April Fool's Day, and picking up BP machines, and he grasped them accurately.
Sanlian Life Weekly: How did the role of Dr. Yang, which you played, appear?
Yingzhuang: "Dead and Alive" was written by Liang Zuo, the doctor in that episode is not a role, there is no name, but that was the first time I went on stage to act, after 80 episodes, the screenwriting team wanted to portray more neighborhoods, I acted and did not want money, so Dr. Yang came out.
Dr. Yang's plays are basically yingda told me how to act, he mentioned to me a doctor we know together, the repetition of the last sentence is the characteristics of this person's speech, I remember he always said "very normal, very normal", I completely followed his performance. Because I can't act and act blindly, I may have jumped out of the box.
A year after the filming of "I Love My Home", I finished eating and walked outside to the company, when suddenly someone shouted behind me: "Dr. Yang! "I didn't even think I was calling me, and after calling me a few more times, I reacted, and I really called me." I really didn't expect that such a small role could be remembered.
Triptych Life Weekly: After the last 80 episodes, you become the director of production?
Yingzhuang: Later I wrote a "lost memory". By the end of the first 40 episodes, my bullets were gone, after all, I didn't have much experience in writing scripts, the baggage was a little slow, and some of the material that could be expanded was shaken clean by me. In the later stage, the production cycle became shorter, and the number of screenwriters became more, there were more than a dozen at the peak, and many things Liang Zuo was clearer, but unfortunately he died young.
The production director was like a fire brigade, there were not so many people at that time, in addition to managing money, where there was something to top, some "guest stars" came, some had to take care of it, and some accompanied people to eat a meal and drink a drink.
Sanlian Life Weekly: What was everyone in during that period?
Yingzhuang: The overall creative environment is very relaxed, and I think one is the result of the long-term accumulation of creators. Many of us have not been released for a long time before writing "I Love My Home", when the shape of society was relatively rigid, and this drama is like an outlet, so that many people who are good at writing have found a kind of freedom.
At that time, the actors were not like the stars now, the cost of the screenwriter was higher than them, I remember that the screenwriting episode was hundreds of pieces, it may be higher, I and Liang Zuo were the highest, like Liang Zuo 2500 yuan an episode, I 2000 yuan an episode. The cost of the actor is not as high as the technology, Song Dandan is about five or six hundred yuan, Yang Lixin is 300 yuan, and the cameo stars are nothing more than a few hundred pieces.
Triptych Life Weekly: The atmosphere in this group is very good.
Yingzhuang: Yes, there are many factors together, and everything is suitable.