Chapter 663: Agreed Not to Be the Best Man

Without a doubt, "Life's Big Deal" is a realist-themed film.

The male lead, Mo Sanmei, is a mortician who specializes in tidying up the deceased's appearance, repositioning stiff corpses, and restoring bodies that have been mutilated beyond recognition, among other things.

The male lead clearly doesn't like his own profession. Before meeting the female lead—that is, the little girl Xiaowen—he had never really figured out how to live. Only after gaining this "daughter" did he gradually begin to understand everything he had been doing.

The overall tone of the film is very much like a Chinese-style fairy tale, using the most down-to-earth warmth of everyday life to soothe the heart.

This kind of theme actually has a very famous work called "Departures," produced over in neighboring Japan back in '08.

Once the film is released, plenty of people will probably think of it and compare the two side by side.

However, after Bai Liang finished reading the script, he actually felt that this thing and "Departures" are mainly similar in what the protagonist does. If you really want to find a "close relative," it's more like that film "Usagi Drop."

"Usagi Drop" is a 2011 Japanese film. The male lead is Matsuyama Kenichi, and the actress playing the little girl is the famous Japanese child star Ashida Mana.

Both are about a single young man adopting a little girl, and then mutual redemption and growing up—that sort of thing.

But the social contradictions the two films express are indeed different, and that's no problem—after all, if they were the same, it'd be done for.

Guo Xiaosi is still getting roasted over there~

As for "Life's Big Deal," after Bai Liang joined, many of the previous problems simply ceased to be problems, and it instantly went from difficult or complex mode to easy mode.

The entire production side had this feeling of "we're not lacking anything now!"

However, there was one problem that couldn't be solved just by throwing Bai Liang's name around, and that was the female lead!

It's often said that there are three hard things to film in cinema: children, animals, and water.

The difficulty of filming children first lies in casting.

Classic child characters in film history—like Totò in "Cinema Paradiso," Danny in "The Shining," and so on—were all one-in-a-thousand picks, the kind you stumble upon rather than seek out.

If the protagonist of a film is a child, then only by finding the right person can the film possibly work, like Ashida Mana, who has shaped countless classic child roles.

The role of the female lead Xiaowen in "Life's Big Deal" was once the biggest headache before shooting could begin.

The director was even repeatedly advised to cut down the child's scenes—after all, given his standards, this kind of child star was just too hard to find.

Hmm. Big Mi Mi back when she was still a child star might have met his requirements, but Big Mi Mi now is already over thirty.

In the end, they caught the current female lead Yang Enyou on a legal-education TV show.

In that show, Yang Enyou cried with great feeling.

But hey~ whether the film can succeed, the "bond" between Yang Enyou and Bai Liang is also very important.

For such a tiny little girl, talking to her about so-called acting skills is inherently a pretty troublesome thing. The best way is to build the relationship ahead of time before filming.

This really tests Bai Liang's "abilities."

If you can build a good relationship with a strange little girl in the shortest time possible, can the two of them express the feeling the director wants when filming?

"So... she just got dumped on me?"

"Teacher Bai, please take good care of our little actress, and teach her more."

Bai Liang looked down at the seven-year-old little girl—she was quite cute.

He didn't actually show that flustered, at-a-loss feeling like others had guessed.

Being flustered is normal—how many single young men who've never married and have no kids actually know how to take care of children?

At this moment, Yang Enyou was also trying hard to look up, sizing up Bai Liang with a curious gaze. She was a bit reserved too, though she wasn't actually afraid of strangers.

Director: That's not right? This child wasn't like this when she was facing me just now.

The next second, he saw the little girl timidly grab hold of Bai Liang's hand, then look up, her little face seeming to hold some anticipation.

To be precise, she had stuffed her own little hand into Bai Liang's.

The director turned around and walked off!

In his heart, just two words: badass!

He'd long heard that Bai Bai Daxian was especially popular with girls—after all, all those young ladies and older sisters had already given so many case studies.

You could say he swept them all, from eighteen to forty-eight.

Now that he saw it, he'd still underestimated it—might as well throw women of all ages into the mix.

Of course, handing such a tiny little girl directly to a "single" young man like Bai Liang was definitely a bit inappropriate.

After all, the crew was full of gossip, and on top of that, some perverted weirdos across the ocean had already pulled all sorts of stunts on that island of theirs.

But the director had also anticipated this in advance. See, before Bai Liang had even exchanged a few words with the little girl, Unlike Ni Ni and Big Sister Xiao Zhao caught the scent and came over.

"So cute!"

"This is our female lead, right~ What a good little girl! I like her!"

"Come here, let big sister hold you..."

Hearing these two big sisters' words, before Bai Liang could even open his mouth, Wang Yanlin couldn't hold it in and said: "By rights shouldn't it be 'auntie'? She just called me 'uncle' too~"

This guy mainly just didn't want to be the only one who seemed so "old."

But the moment the words fell, two gazes instantly locked onto him, as if they could wipe him out at any moment!

Little brat!

Cracking "that kind of joke" with female celebrities, are you?

Bai Liang patted his good buddy on the shoulder. "You really haven't died before, have you?"

Wang Yanlin immediately felt a chill on his scalp. Yesterday at dinner, weren't these two big sisters both quite gentle and magnanimous... well, this is a red line that cannot be crossed!

Fortunately, Bai Liang still stepped in to help his good buddy.

"I just remembered something—you're going to have to find another best man."

"What? Didn't you just agree to it yesterday?" Wang Yanlin said, somewhat puzzled.

Bai Liang spread his hands. "I dug through my memory and suddenly realized you already came to me about this thing last year."

"Did I?"

Wang Yanlin felt something was off about the whole thing, the corners of his mouth twitching slightly.

What do you mean, "flipped through the memories in your head"? Can that thing even be flipped through?

Are you sitting there searching data by keyword on a computer?

"Yeah~ I told you at the time, I can't be the best man."

"I remember now!"

Wang Yanlin slapped his forehead—there really was such an episode, back when they were filming "Full of Energy, Big Brother."

That time he had bet with Yang Yang, squatting in the hotel lobby to watch Bai Liang, wanting to see his state with those two Misses, so as to judge whose night he'd spent the evening with.

Men, after all, can be this bored sometimes.

The result was that Bai Liang caught him, and Wang Yanlin was immediately sold out by Yang Yang, who actually made up some excuse about having business with him, and then brought up the best man thing.

But to tell the truth, Wang Yanlin back then hadn't even proposed to his own girlfriend yet—that whole thing was something he'd squeezed out on the spot as a temporary excuse, and after more than half a year he'd simply forgotten all about it.