CH 26

Zhang Shuo and Qu Lingbei could hardly believe their ears when they received Lu Chengyu’s phone call. Mr. Lu had contacted the theatre chain so quickly, and the other side was the famous Yuhe Film City in China. This was beyond their expectations.

“This Mr. Lu is not a simple man.” Qu Lingbei recalled Lu Chengyu’s usual behaviour. He was a very graceful and easygoing young man. The crew, from the director to the handyman, had a good impression of him.

Furthermore, this person was aware of the shortcomings of an amateur director; when shooting films, he never criticized them, nor did he tell the scriptwriter to revise the script just because of an actor’s flattery. His actions were truly rare in the circle.

Writers in this circle —— apart from some famous ones —— for the most part, would be forced to change the script. Sometimes, they would even need to change the male protagonist to the second male lead, the female protagonist to the third female lead. At first, they thought Lu Chengyu wanted to act in this movie and use the investment money as a ticket to do so. However, contrary to expectations, Lu Chengyu didn’t have much interest in filming. He only played a minor supporting role in order to fit the image and save the cost.

“Ability is ability, but as long as I look at his face, I will unconsciously regard him as a fresh graduate student,” Zhang Shuo scratched his head. “Then, we will send the things to him now?”

“If you don’t send it over, do you intend to keep it for yourself?” He remembered that the poster was designed by Mr. Lu, and the poster maker was also the person Mr. Lu contacted. “Quickly go and move the things to the car.”

They moved the leaflets and posters to some worn-out vans and headed all the way to Yuhe Film City. When they arrived, Lu Chengyu was already waiting for them by the gate.

But they never thought that one day, things gonna change…

“Both of you have worked hard,” Lu Chengyu went to them and helped to pick up a box of items. “I already got in touch with Zhuang-ge. We’ll go up now.”

Zhang Shuo followed him nervously. After entering the elevator, Zhang Shuo asked uneasily, “Mr. Lu, how many showtimes a day will the owner of Yuhe Film City arrange for us?”

“Worried?” Lu Chengyu turned to Zhang Shuo and Qu Lingbei, both of whom were nervous, and laughed, “I believe in you guys. Even if they arrange fewer showtimes in the beginning, they will certainly add more later.”

Zhang Shuo and Qu Lingbei blushed when they heard this, but they felt that Mr. Lu’s words were sincere, and he wasn’t just speaking to comfort them.

The door wasn’t closed when they arrived at the office. Inside, they saw Zhuang Yu talking to someone on the phone.

Lu Chengyu took the two men back a few steps, waited for Zhuang Yu to hang up the phone, then went up and knocked on the door frame twice. Outside the door, he said, “Zhuang-ge, are you busy?”

“Xiao Lu?” Seeing Lu Chengyu with two other men, Zhuang Yu smiled and let them in. After a few words, he led the conversation to the main track and began talking about advertisements and allocating cinemas.

Nowadays, the profit share of the cinema chain wasn’t much, and Zhuang Yu also had no intention of competing for the benefits in this area with Lu Chengyu. Because Yuhe Film City had a lot of cinemas under its name, the main topic of conversation between the two was about division of cinemas for《Soaring Birds》.

Zhang Shuo and Qu Lingbei watched Zhuang Yu and Lu Chengyu calling each other xiong di, laughing and talking about the cinemas’ division. Clearly, it was a warm scene, but as they both stared, stunned, they couldn’t help but feel there were some kind of confrontation going on between the two men.

“Well, that’s it. I’m very grateful that Zhuang-ge has helped me so much this time.” Lu Chengyu sighed, “It’s really hard to invest in movies nowadays. There’s a lot of big and small expenses to consider. If I could get more than 35% of the box office returns, that wouldn’t be bad.”

“There’s nothing that could be done about it. Even investing in a cinema chain is not easy. To build a small cinema casually, including projection equipment, large and small, and other facilities, tens of millions of dollars are needed.” Both of them apparently have the same view. Zhuang Yu sighed, “To do all of this just to scrape a living, both of us certainly don’t have it easy, ah.”

Lu Chengyu nodded, looking like a man who was reduced to a beggar from a faraway place.

Zhang Shuo: “…”

Qu Lingbei: “…”

Did they really think about his and Qu Lingbei’s feelings when they said that?

Well, they did actually. Zhuang Yu didn’t know that he’s going to be the third man.

Eleven o’clock in the evening, on the fourteenth day of the eighth month of the lunar year, the 30th of September on the Gregorian calendar, 《Soaring Birds》was released silently. At this time, posters of the film had been hung outside the cinema. Although neither the director nor the actors were people they’d heard of, because the posters were very eye-catching and of good quality, some couples who had started their holiday bought tickets for the show with a dispensable mentality. Nevertheless, the attendance rate was less than 20%, which was very low.

However, from the beginning to the end of the movie, almost no one left early. From time to time, the audience burst into laughter, the atmosphere so warm it hardly resembled a theater with low attendance.

Halfway through the movie, some people already tweeted about the funny and humorous scenes in 《Soaring Birds》, but, because there was only a small number of people who posted, there was no response. By the end of the movie, however, there was more content about the film on Weibo.

“Lulululu: The hell, the way I watched the movie must be wrong. I seem to see the recently most handsome top scholar from Q University in this movie. The way the male god put on glasses is simply asking this old woman to scream “handsome la”. This movie is extremely hilarious. Tomorrow, I’ll watch this movie again and ask my friend to come with me.”

Lulululu was a well-known Weibo user. After she sent out her post, many people thought that it was an advertising post, while others began to get interested in the movie. Under the post, they asked who made the movie.

On the third day, 《Soaring Birds》 became a hot topic on Weibo. Some people even started making memes of the male lead in the movie and Gao Fu Shuai [1], played by Lu Chengyu, to make fun of * Si and Gao Fu Shuai.

[1]高富帅 [gāofùshuài]: “Mr Perfect” (i.e. tall, rich and handsome) (Internet slang)

But anyway, the picture of Lu Chengyu wearing gold-rimmed glasses and gently pushing them with his right index finger had gone viral on Weibo.

When the small-cost movie was in theatres at the same time as the famous ones, it unexpectedly was able to come through and win the battle in one strike. From an attendance rate of less than 20% to full attendance, many cinemas began inserting extra showtimes for the movie. Despite this, some people complained on Weibo that when they queued for tickets at 1 PM, they could only buy ones for 12 PM. Then, they expressed their hope that the cinema would continue adding showtimes for this movie, showing how popular it was.

Some media joked that 《Soaring Birds》was a black horse that killed this year’s film circle. Some experts came out to study the reason for the movie’s high popularity. Others said that this kind of low-level comedy movie was just a box of fast food; it seemed interesting, but it actually had no nutrition.

However, this argument was quickly taken down by the expert who made this criticism when others mocked him for not watching the movie. This was because even an ordinary person could tell that the directors and writers used comedy as a disguise to produce meaning and helplessness of the people at the bottom, show the protagonists’ optimistic attitude towards life, as well as express satire for certain social behaviours. Humour was interesting, but it could be full of meaning.

“This kind of film that can convey both meaning and humour is clearly a good work, but in some people’s eyes, it has become worthless garbage. Perhaps in the eyes of some people, if the movie doesn’t have an investment of more than 100 million yuan, doesn’t have famous actors, and is not the usual type of literature movie, it is not a good film. I don’t know if the expert or professor who has this view is lamenting about nowadays film circle or just have a black sense of humour?”

This was posted by one of the film critics and was quickly forwarded by many people making others who read this post pondered over his words.

On the fourth day of the film’s release, it was revealed that 《Soaring Birds》 had a total investment of fewer than three million yuan. In order to save costs, the director and the crew played as various passers-by roles.

The male lead actor, Gao Boyang, joked on Weibo, saying that the most valuable thing in the whole group was the sports car Gao Fushuai drove. If something had gone wrong with that car, even if he sold everything in the movie group, he still wouldn’t be able to afford it.

Someone asked him on Weibo: How did the crew get this limited-cost sports car when they were so poor?

Gao Boyang answered that the investors borrowed it from friends, but did not mention who the investors were or who the people they borrowed from were. However, the fans were not interested in the investors. In their impression, the investors’ appearance could be automatically blurred. Although there might be some good-looking uncles, they all had some sort of family background and couldn’t be inundated, so no one cared.

.

In this movie, the most famous actor was not male lead or female lead, but the male actor who had fewer scenes, Mr. Gao Fu Shuai. It had to be said that in this realistic society, having a handsome face was still very cheap[2].

[2] 占便宜 [zhàn pián yi]: gain an extra advantage by unfair means.

In just a few days, the number of fans on Lu Chengyu’s Weibo had risen to millions, and the enthusiastic younger ones called him ‘Male God’. However, some male movie fans seemed to be less polite to him. They just praise him a bit for his success in getting the role. Some fans who liked to ridicule and hate on the rich shouted out that he, Gao Fu Shuai, should be burned to death. They were so jealous of Lu Chengyu they called him the ‘zhuāng bī[3] man’.

[3] 装逼 [zhuāng bī]: a human behaviour that has two meanings:

a) to show off, pretend to gain vanity, self-satisfaction and even deception, to show others the temperament they lack.

b) to falsely conceal one’s abilities from others, but actually give others hints, when others really ask for help, he won’t help them.

Reference: https://baike.google.com/item/装B

However, since most of his fans on Weibo were cute and tough sisters, most of the time, these male compatriots would be attacked by their strong and rich language skills.

So recently, Lu Chengyu’s favourite thing to do was scrolling on Weibo and read comments of Meng Mezhis[3] waging war with the men. However, because of the strong fighting power of the sisters, Lu Chengyu made up his mind. In the future, he must be as warm as the spring breeze to his female compatriots, otherwise, if the female compatriots become a bone-chilling wind, it would be tragic.

[3] 萌妹纸 [méng mèizhǐ]: a network term for cute girl.

“My great heavenly Meng Mezhi is strong!” He sighed for a moment before sending out this post on his Weibo. Afterwards, he sadly found himself a wretched factor as this post unwittingly began spreading out. Fortunately, most people thought that he was thanking the female fans for helping him talk, so many of them praised him as cute on this post.

However, even so, there are still some creatures under this post that failed to understand.

Three hours after the post was sent out, he accidentally saw a comment, which was supposed to be from a man. From the man’s words, Lu Chengyu was deliberately flattering women. He also talked about how superficial heavenly women were, and how they only focused on appearances and wealth. He said they were inferior to the virtuous women from such-and-such country, going as far as to describe them as ‘nǚbiǎozi [4]’.

[4] 女表子 [nǚbiǎozi]: the woman expresses herself with the price tag; nickname for prostitutes. That is, women sell their bodies in a straightforwardly priced price and bargain.

Although Lu Chengyu was a man, most of the girls around him were very good, and his mother was also a very good person. The man who held such contempt towards women, so much that he even cursed them, probably making his mother feel sorry for giving birth and raising him. This type of man, afterwards, no matter how successful he was, he was nothing but a loser.

“May you have abundance year after year: I have been fond of pleasing people since childhood, to my parents when I was a child, to my teachers when I was a student, and to my supervisors and colleagues after graduation ╮(╯_╰)╭. But please remember, swearing friends, think about the people who raised you before you speak. Swearing at people will not make you look high and noble, but will only make you look too deplorable. For me, flattery is respect and cherishment, because only when you respect others, will others respect you.”

This post was similar to self-ridicule and admonishment, causing many people to forward it. Many male compatriots also stood on his side.

One day ago, a man who made fun of Lu Chengyu’s character in the movie also forwarded this post. He wrote the following sentence: “Male God, I also want to flatter you.”

This, of course, attracted a group of goodwill mockery. From then on, Lu Chengyu’s status as a male god was formally settled.

After reading his previous post, some male fans who did not like him found that there was no ostentation of wealth, no self-elevation, and no pretension of petty money on Lu Chengyu’s Weibo. Instead, he solemnly gives out some interesting professional theories, as well as some local delicacies. And these places were hardly high-consumption venues, but roadside stalls or small restaurants.

As a result, many male fans also had a good feeling for him, and gradually, there were less and less people calling him the zhuāng bī man. Of course, there were a few exceptions who were deliberately finding faults with him.

He looked at the lively Weibo, smiled, then closed it.

Lu Chengyu open the country’s largest public forum and sent out what had been prepared before. The good drama regarding the movie was already in full swing. Now, another good drama was just about to begin.