It is rumored that When Ning Hao laughs, he can pull 72 muscles on his face, living like a bad monkey.
From childhood to adulthood, Ning Hao's favorite hero is Sun Wukong, but Sun Wukong, who later achieved the good results of the True Scripture Cultivation, did not like it, preferring sun wukong who made a big fuss in the Heavenly Palace and was always restless.
In 2012, Ning Hao set up the Bad Monkey Studio, and there was a statue of the Fighting Buddha at the door.
The fierce evil bad monkey clutched the golden hoop stick with both hands and obediently placed it on his lap. It bowed its head, not knowing what it was thinking, and the next second it might jump up and point to the heavenly court again, or it might fold its hands and say: Amitabha Buddha.
I couldn't guess this statue, nor could I see through Ning Hao.
In 1997, his parents took 2,000 yuan from the pocket of 20-year-old Ning Hao to help his great cause of north drift.
The father patted his son's shoulder and said: If you can't mix in Beijing, don't be reckless, go home early.
In his eyes, this boy who was mischievous and mischievous from childhood to adulthood and skipped school and fights could not have taken root in Beijing at all.
Ning Hao nodded and said yes, he was having the great ambition of becoming a Chinese Picasso.
As a result, after the college entrance examination, I learned that I was actually "weak." ”
"After studying art for more than ten years, people suddenly tell you that you are weak, is there anything more absurd than this?"
The interview teacher said: How can you learn art with color weakness?
He also had a hard mouth: in fact, if he stood purely in the perspective of painting, it is not necessarily said that people with color deficiencies could not engage in it. For example, some of the previous Impressionists, it is difficult to define whether some people are weak or not. You will find that, for example, Coro's paintings are very light in color, and he is likely to be weak in color.
The teacher was stunned and finally brushed him off.
Therefore, Ning Hao germinated the idea of going to Beijing. He was admitted to the art department of Beijing Normal University and prepared to study directing.
When I arrived in Beijing, I rented a basement. The money in his pocket was not enough to pay the tuition, and he asked a fellow teacher to get through it.
The roommate who rented the same room would take photography, and Ning Hao followed the face of Pi Lai in order to rely on himself and live, and begged to learn photography.
The roommate never expected that this teaching would teach China's fourth billion box office club director.
The university days are still relatively elegant, Ning Hao is taking classes while working part-time in photography. He is really talented, and through self-study alone, his photographic skills have reached a professional level.
When it was time to take the exam, he would put the camera on the spot, come back from the exam and continue shooting, learning to make money without delay.
The fifth elder of the Tang Dynasty band admired him very much and introduced him to his friends.
A few years later, by filming music MV, Ning Hao bought a car and a house in Beijing.
In 2001, Ning Hao was about to graduate. He made a film called "Thursday, Wednesday," which won the College Student Award for Best Director.
At this time, Ning Hao suddenly felt that he might really be a director.
Therefore, he showed the script of "Incense" that he had secretly written in the previous class to the teacher, and the teacher greatly appreciated it. Helped him pull a big boss to invest, the boss is also very happy, gave forty thousand yuan on the spot.
But half of the forty thousand yuan was quickly used up, and the big boss also had no news.
Ning Hao took out thirty thousand of his own and finished shooting.
"Incense" is about a Small Temple Buddha statue collapsed, and a monk wanted to raise money to rebuild the Buddha statue. As a result, the brothers refused, and the leaders of the Cultural Affairs Bureau kicked each other. So he began to change his relationship, and it was difficult to get money, and he was judged by the police to confiscate all illegal income.
At the police station, the monk met several dusty women, and inspired by them, he began to set up a stall to tell fortunes, and when he saw that the money was almost ready. He was robbed by hooligans again. The monk, distraught, slept in the square and went home, where the driver who carried him was a devout Buddhist. The driver's wife had difficulty giving birth and asked the monk for help. The monk sold the small Buddha statue bought for 12 yuan to the driver for 3,000 yuan.
Enough money at once.
But when he returned to the temple and repaired the Buddha statue. The county leaders told him to tear down the temple and build roads...
This ironic literary film won an award at the Tokyo Film Festival.
Ning Hao began to have a small reputation.
Ning Hao continued to make efforts to prepare for the new work "Green Grass". It is also a literary and artistic film, which originally contacted the investor, but the other party escaped three days before the start of filming.
While cursing his mother, Ning Hao and his friends gathered 200,000 and drove to the Border between China and Mongolia. The grasslands are vast and the cold winds are howling. At night, they couldn't stand the cold, so they burned cow dung for warmth. As a result, in the middle of the night, the yurt was lit, and if it were not for the fact that his companion kicked him awake.
He died in the fire.
The next day, the actors did not come, and Ning Hao could not receive the signal when he ran to the top of the mountain. He drove to the actor's house, only to be told by an old man that the man had long since left.
The actor picked a pick, which was a big blow to Ning Hao. He cobbled together a bunch of people again, and when he finally finished, no one in the whole crew spoke, and no one smiled.
No one is optimistic about this play.
Driving home, Ning Hao was also silent, and his friend sat in the co-pilot smoking, one after another, and the fog drifted out of the window. Suddenly, one carelessly, the car overturned in the ditch.
Between the twists and turns, Ning Hao thought: Can you eat by being a director in the end? If this one doesn't work, I'll change it.
In 2005, "Green Grass" was nominated for the Best Film Award at the Asian Newcomer Award at the Shanghai Film Festival. At that time, Andy Lau had just launched the Asian New Star Director Program, and Ning Hao became one of the newcomer directors he liked.
Andy Lau gave him more than three million to make "Crazy Stone". In order to reassure Ning Hao, Hua Tsai also deliberately stressed: I don't need how much box office this movie can bring, as long as the story is good enough.
Ning Hao carried a backpack and traveled from city to city until he reached Chongqing.
At that time, Chongqing was developing rapidly, with high-rise buildings rising from the ground every day, and countless ancient city walls being torn down and flattened; young people with PHS hair dyed colorful, looking like new humans, and old people still liked to wear vests and trousers, play chess in the shade of ancient trees with fans, and ignore the strange land around them.
There is change all the time, and the pyrotechnics are full of two pounds.
Ning Hao stopped and decided that this was the place.
To understand the black humor in "Crazy Stone", we must look back at Ning Hao's growth process.
He was a native of Taiyuan, Shanxi, and his coal mines, steel, and black-lacquered factories filled his entire childhood and adolescence. Later, after studying art, Ning Hao still stubbornly believed that black was the most beautiful, deepest and most inclusive color in the world.
"Humor" comes from his innate cynicism, he knows too much about the life of the bottom, although he can't write about the princely generals, but the small people in the city are portrayed by him.
The most talked about in "Crazy Stone" are these points: the international thieves were tricked by a few hairy boys when they arrived in Chongqing; the jadeite that several forces racked their brains could not get was taken by the factory manager's son and used to make a girl; the real estate tycoon finally died at the hands of the killer he hired; the security guards stupid thieves took the real jadeite as a fake, and also made their own clever bags...
There are countless twists and turns, and each frame is a climax, which makes people can't take their eyes off it.
Although afterwards, Ning Hao repeatedly stressed that "Stone" has no innuendo and allegory, but is just a commercial film. The result is still a lot of things that are interpreted.
His works are so close to life that everyone can find their own shadow in them. Therefore, this film is often watched and often new, and it is also a pioneer of domestic black humor genre films.
By the way, the box office that year was 30 million, and pirated copies were sold out of stock.
Later, Ning Hao launched "Crazy Racing" directly exceeded 100 million at the box office, and he became the fourth director in China to exceed 100 million at the box office after Zhang Yimou, Chen Kaige and Feng Xiaogang.
It's just that he is different from the previous ones, he never shoots some stories of grand princes and generals, he prefers small people, and he likes to depict the sadness and joy of small people under the great changes of the times.
Such human fireworks are too much to like.
In 2016, Ning Hao announced the launch of the Bad Monkey 72 Change Plan to support new directors.
Andy Lau once told him, don't thank me, in the future, if you have the ability, just help someone.
The solid-eyed Ning Hao had always remembered that he had now helped a group of people.
"Embroidered Spring Knife" director Lu Yang, "I am not a medicine god" director Wen Muye. They were all greatly helped by him. So much so that Wen Muye said after winning the award: If there were no Ning Hao, there would be no "Medicine God", and Ning Hao would be my teacher for a lifetime.
Speaking of which, Ning Hao was also very interesting when he was a fledgling at the beginning of the year. After "Incense" won, he ran into the mall with money and asked the clerk to take him a large, thickest gold chain and put it around his neck.
Later, this habit was maintained, and now the family has saved eight or nine.
Friends couldn't help but ask him: How can an artist be so earthy?
Ning Hao said triumphantly: I just want to remind myself that I have always been a rude person.
Later, when he filmed "The Great Gold Robbery", he borrowed the mouth of Xiao Dongbei to express his views on high life: high society, every day knotty soup!
What's wrong with having money, not just like to drink knotty soup?
Article author Li Kan