Can best-selling authors "ride the wind and waves" when they enter the film industry?

Yangcheng Evening News reporter He Jing

Han Han: "I know very well what I want."

He Ping: "Their literature must have dried up"

The movie "Ride the Wind and Waves" is in hot screening. This is the second film directed by Han Han, who does not deny that the 160 million yuan film may be the "most expensive domestic comedy". Compared to his first film, "After Forever", "Ride the Wind and Waves" has caused more controversy. From the completion of filming and release in three months, to the "straight male cancer" storm caused by the theme song; from the writer Han Han to the director Han Han - Han Han has always been at the center of public opinion.

Like Han Han, there are not many writers who have entered the film world, and in 2016, there are Guo Jingming's "Traces" and Zhang Jiajia's "Ferryman", and the biggest dream of Cheng Er, director of "The History of the Demise of Romanticism", is also to be a novelist. More and more best-selling authors are transforming into directors, is this a good thing or a bad thing for the increasingly thriving Chinese film industry?

Phenomenon Writer is both director and screenwriter

"Riding the Wind and Waves" has a score of 6.9 points on Douban, which is the highest-rated film in Douban in this fiercely competitive Spring Festival file, and even higher than "Journey to the West" (5.7 points) jointly produced by Zhou Xingchi and Xu Ke. Audiences familiar with Han Han can find his shadow in "Riding the Wind and Waves", which can be said to be a film with quite "Han characteristics". In an interview with the Yangcheng Evening News reporter, Han Han said that he was very clear about what he wanted, so the shooting and editing were carried out at the same time: "Once you think clearly about what you want, the editing and post-editing can be carried out very quickly." Some film cuts take a long time, and that's because the director doesn't know exactly what to ask for. ”

This may also be one of the advantages of a writer's transformation into a director. Whether it is Han Han's "Riding the Wind and Waves", or Zhang Jiajia's "Ferryman", or Guo Jingming's "Traces" and "Little Times" series, the writers are both directors and screenwriters at the same time, which lays the foundation for the story and style of the film, and avoids the possible differences between the director and the screenwriter.

In recent years, most of the directors who have been transformed into directors are best-selling authors. If we trace back to the roots, this trend should start with the Taiwanese writer Nine Knives's self-written and directed "Those Years, the Girl We Chased Together". This movie makes people realize that the best-selling authors themselves are also big IP, and the popularity carried by the writers can be directly transferred to the cinema, which makes the film have a certain commercial guarantee and is naturally easier to attract investment. Whether it is Han Han, Guo Jingming or Zhang Jiajia, they all have a strong fan base, coupled with their own topic attributes, so from the moment they decide to enter the film and television circle, they are doomed to the box office will not be too bad. The cumulative box office of the "Little Times" series is nearly 1.8 billion yuan, the cumulative box office of "After the End" is 650 million yuan, the cumulative box office of "Traces of the Lord" is 380 million yuan, and the "Ferryman" has received 474 million yuan. As of yesterday's press release, "Riding the Wind and Waves" has accumulated 380 million yuan at the box office.

The film market is full of "pseudo-directors"

In addition to writers, the rapid expansion of the Chinese film market has led more and more screenwriters and actors to pick up the guide, including Wang Baoqiang, the director of the ongoing "Big Trouble Tianzhu". In this regard, people began to think about the question of whether the threshold is needed to be a director. Jiang Wen once joked that he found that "the director does not need to know anything in particular" before becoming a director. Film is a comprehensive art, in addition to directing, many jobs are done by screenwriters, photography, art, editing, etc. It seems that the director doesn't need much professional skills. However, a professional view is that the core of a film is always the director. The director is the most barrier-free position in the film industry, whether it is composition or editing, including adjusting actors, specific to each link, the director's professional vision is crucial. Citizen Kane director Orson Wells once said, "No one can be called a director until he edits it himself." ”

Recently, director He Ping posted on Weibo: "I said many years ago that when a writer in China works as a film director, he will not write good literature. The expressiveness, richness and uncertainty of the audiovisual sense far exceed the description of the text, if such writers appear in the directing industry, their literature must be exhausted, and making a movie is nothing more than to find some self-confidence. They are not writers at all, so with the best resources, they can't make author films. He added: "I am eager to see writers as directors who have insight into reality, history or the future, and if they are also on par with those vulgar works that are thoughtless and forward-looking, writers are indeed vain." ”

Although there are reasons for the cross-border transformation of writers, there are reasons for personal talents and interests, but the commercial interests behind them are more intuitive. Regardless of the reputation of the film, the economic benefits and influence brought by the film industry in this era are far from being achieved by writing books. Best-selling authors take up the guide tube, not only have more options, but also narrow the boundaries between literature and mass entertainment. Some people even bluntly say that there are too many "pseudo-directors" in today's Chinese film market, and these directors have only been pushed to the position of directors for various reasons.

【Link】 A famous writer who became a director

Duras is one of the most well-known female writers of our time, and "Lover" is regarded as a classic by many literary and artistic youth. She is very close to the writers of the French New Novel School, and the New Novel and the New Wave of French Cinema are emerging at the same time, and the exchange and integration of each other makes the film a platform for displaying the concept of the novel. As a director, Duras has shot many films such as "Song of India" and "Truck", and has also been shortlisted for the Cannes Film Festival as a director. For example, in the self-written and self-directed "Song of India", the voice becomes the protagonist of the film, the film tells the whole story in the form of a voiceover, and the text is still the real protagonist of the film.

Lee Cang-dong is arguably the most accomplished of the transition from writer to director, and now he has become a very representative director in South Korea and has won awards at international film festivals such as Cannes and Venice. As early as the 1980s, Lee was well known as a writer and won the Korea Daily's Creative Literature Award. Subsequently, he participated in the screenwriting as a writer and thus entered the film industry. His directorial debut "Green Fish" has been affirmed by many awards, and has officially entered the film industry since then. His representative works include "Mints", "Poetry", "Miyang", "Oasis" and so on.

Stephen King, as a best-selling north American novel author, has mostly been adapted into movies, including "The Shawshank Redemption", "The Shining", "Ten Days of Danger", "Carrie the Witch" and other well-known film masterpieces. In 1986, Stephen King released his self-written and self-directed sci-fi thriller Fire Demon Chariot, which tells the story of a machine that has a life and in turn competes for world dominance. There is no shortage of scenes of violence, thrilling and horror in the film, but the evaluation is very general, and he has never been a director since.

Paul Auster's entry into the eyes of Chinese readers probably stemmed from the publication of a translation of his novel The Phantom Book. And he himself is a movie fan, and "The Phantom Book" is written about the legend of silent film stars. Paul Oster co-directed "Smoke" and "Smoke Variations" with Chinese director Wang Ying, and later directed films such as "Lulu on the Bridge" as an independent director. However, his achievements in the field of directing are far less than his literary works.