Chapter 479: I Am the King of the World!

To pursue a "good girl," you must lead her to be a little rebellious.

To pursue a lonely young married woman, you must accompany her to seek pleasure everywhere.

To pursue someone who has been single since birth, you should create a perfect romance for her.

To pursue someone who has lacked love since childhood, you must pursue her crazily, giving her warmth in every detail and a sense of ritual.

If you are pursuing someone gentle and virtuous, show your gentlemanly demeanor and respect for her.

To pursue someone from a well-off family, the more you mistreat her and ignore her, the more she will love you instead.

To pursue someone from a poor family, a thousand words are not as good as simply giving her money to spend.

To pursue a cold, aloof goddess, you need to use your approachability to pull her into your world.

Yet all the methods above belong to the routines of ordinary mortals in love.

A true high-end player...

Needs nothing at all.

They only need to give her a kiss in front of the whole world when receiving an Oscar.

No matter what type she is, as long as she is a woman, she will almost never be able to escape your jeans for the rest of her life.

Liu Yifei was exactly like this.

Although it is difficult to define this woman with a single attribute, under this unexpected kiss, she still almost forgot her own surname—whether it was An or Liu.

The blood in her entire body seemed to surge to the point of contact with him, and her heartbeat was so intense that she could hear her own pulse in her ears.

At this moment, in her consciousness, the eyes of the whole world seemed to have converged; although it was only a brief instant, their lips lingered on each other for no more than two seconds.

However, what is the difference between these two seconds and eternity?

The lips parted.

From contact to separation, her eyes watched him without blinking.

She couldn't even bear to blink.

She gazed into those clear and firm eyes, seeing a hint of a victor's smirk at the corners of his mouth.

As a woman, what Liu Yifei felt at this moment was truly indescribable.

Without saying anything more, her boyfriend turned around and, together with Chairman Xu from Hengdian who had rushed up to hug him, walked with vigorous and light steps toward that golden, magnificent stage.

She stood in front of her seat, her heart surging and intoxicated, gazing at the man's back, applauding along with everyone in the hall.

At this moment, a smiling voice came to her ear: "Liu, you are a lucky girl."

Liu Yifei, somewhat impolitely, did not turn her head to respond; she remained motionless, looking in the original direction, smiling broadly and nodding.

If in one place, someone thinks she is the luckiest person in the world.

Then according to the "Law of Conservation of Luck," in the same occasion, there must be someone who feels he is the unluckiest person in the world.

Harvey Weinstein was just such a person.

When the word "Inception" came out of Tom Cruise's mouth, Harvey felt as if he had been nailed to his chair, the expression on his face almost twisted. In that instant, he completely forgot about so-called expression management; his features were as if someone had pressed the pause button, frozen stiff, without a trace of blood, looking exactly like a failed gambler who had lost his stake.

Fortunately—truly fortunate—at this very moment, the man on the other side of the venue was kissing his companion in front of global cameras, and that passionate and flamboyant scene quickly drew away the attention of all the photographers and directors. Otherwise, if his ugly state at this moment had been recorded, by tomorrow morning, who knows how many entertainment gossip headlines would have used "Harvey's moment of defeat, facial twitching" to grab eyeballs.

Although he had always claimed that he had long since stopped caring about the opinions of those "loser" critics and paparazzi, he knew—real trouble often starts from such details.

Therefore, even with ten thousand points of unwillingness and annoyance in his heart, Harvey immediately adjusted his expression, gritted his teeth, and feigned grace as he raised his hands to applaud for that damn Chinese monkey.

But his heart was truly filled with questions—

Where exactly did things go wrong?

Which link collapsed?

Why did the most important award, Best Picture, slip through his fingers despite him going all out?

The same question appeared in the minds of all the members of the American Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences who voted for "Best Picture." And among these approximately 6,000 screenwriters, directors, actors, producers, and technical union members, 312 were particularly surprised.

Because they were all members of Harvey Weinstein's network, the "iron-clad voting bloc" he had built bit by bit through years of connections. When they voted, they also tacitly wrote down that vote according to "The Artist."

But if, suppose there were a God's-eye view, ignoring the limitations of time and space, it would see this scene—

An invisible line, silently guiding countless ballots, gently leaning toward a direction that had not been preset during the final counting process.

For the 2012 Oscars, "Best Picture" still used the "preferential ballot" system.

Under this system: every member, when voting, does not just choose one favorite film, but needs to fill in multiple works in order of preference, from first to fifth place.

This is inherently a voting mechanism that encourages consensus and avoids extremes.

As a result, although "The Artist" led in first-place votes, its silent, black-and-white style was relatively niche, causing many voters to simply exclude it, not even choosing it for fifth place.

But "Inception" was different; it not only had a stable voting bloc in the first position, but more crucially, it appeared with extremely high frequency in the second and third positions of most ballots. It was a film that few people particularly favored, but also very few people particularly disliked; it was a typical "widely accepted" type.

Thus, when the voting system eliminated the films with the fewest votes round by round and re-tallied their ballots according to the next preference—the votes for "Inception" rose rapidly like an undercurrent, finally achieving a comeback at a certain critical point.

A miracle happened just like that in the cracks of a mechanism no one had anticipated.

The golden statue for Best Picture was snatched away just like that.

And in this series of twists and turns, was there anyone secretly manipulating it?

No.

Although Warner Bros. mobilized resources, connections, private screenings, and media groundwork, and did everything that should have been done, the effect only reached a certain level of influence, far from being a controlled operation.

If one had to find a turning point, it could perhaps only be traced back to a seemingly insignificant detail:

The official Oscar nominees' dinner happened to clash with the Chinese Lantern Festival.

And the male lead of "Inception," who was also one of the film's investors, felt at the time that his hopes for the Best Actor and Director awards were slim, so he simply did not attend the banquet, but instead returned to China low-key to eat dumplings with his parents. This was originally something he had promised Pan Chengrong.

After the matter was revealed by the Academy officials, his act of refusing to attend the banquet was actually treated as news by the media, reporting on his non-conformity, how he was willing to give up such a good promotional opportunity for family affection, and so on, even taking the opportunity to promote the Chinese Lantern Festival.

And this kind of "doing things his own way," valuing family affection more than winning an award, happened to hit the soft spot of some artistic members within the Academy.

Some of these people were precisely the "iron-clad voting bloc" of The Weinstein Company.

Consequently, about a few dozen of them, while decisively supporting "The Artist" in the first position, thought about it for the second and third positions, remembering the labels the media had given to someone—"anti-Hollywood," "cultural consciousness," "independent spirit"—and thus cast their votes for that commercial film they had originally disdained.

In the end, a miss by an inch is a miss by a mile.

Is it a coincidence?

Of course it is.

But in fact, if you stretch the time scale longer—looking at the Oscar selection process over the past twenty or thirty years, it is not hard to find:

Among those works that finally took home "Best Picture," perhaps more than half were not the most popular in the first round; and two-thirds of those who finally took home the "little golden man" for Best Actor, Best Actress, and Best Director were not favored from the beginning.

They were just pushed out by sheer luck among countless factors such as rules, mechanisms, publicity, relationships, human sentiment, topics, and trends.

Just as Nassim Taleb said in the "Black Swan" theory: "What truly determines fate is often not calculable necessity, but unpredictable contingency."

This world is actually not just dirty; it is also an exquisite and huge makeshift stage.

That is exactly it.

When Chen Nuo walked onto the podium, although he was not clear about the coincidences involved, he definitely knew that this must be the result of a luck bonus.

How many years has it been?

What was the last blockbuster movie that set a box office record and won the Oscar for Best Picture?

The moment he took the trophy from Tom Cruise's hands, his palms touched the heavy, ice-cold, metallic little golden man, and his heart felt like he was licking a beautiful foot... like a popsicle in the dog days of summer, feeling refreshed from head to toe.

He turned around and immediately saw in the crowd the male lead of the last film to simultaneously pocket "super box office" and "Oscar Best Picture," the legendary adulterer who once played at picking up a good girl in the vast ocean, "Jack," Mr. Leonardo DiCaprio.

At this moment, Leo was standing in his seat, smiling and applauding for him.

That smile was sincere, with his signature dimples; it was clear that, at least for the moment, he had forgotten the defeat from a moment ago.

He laughed loudly, facing that direction, using his right hand to hold the little golden man in his hand high in the air.

With this action, his figure seemed to overlap with that blond boy on that big ship more than a decade ago, and both of them seemed to be shouting with arms raised:

I am the king of the world!

"Wow!"

In the Kodak Theatre, thousands of seats were already empty, and everyone standing, under this action of his, quickened their movements, and the applause of the whole hall suddenly rose by another notch.

Whistles, cheers, whether out of sincere applause or polite encouragement for the occasion, in short, this group of well-dressed millionaire celebrities were all cheering for this rare double-harvest film.

The whole scene was transmitted to the whole world along the radio waves.

"Oppa is so handsome!"

"OMG!!! Inception really won the Oscar for Best Picture!"

"An incredible scene, Chen won the second little golden man of his life at the Kodak Theatre! This is carnival time for hundreds of millions of Inception fans around the world!"

"Chen Nuo-san, ganbatte, 'Inception' is the best!!"

"So awesome, Nuo-zai, we will always love you!"

Besides the comments on the internet, it was the same in reality.

Whether in Beijing, China, Seoul, South Korea, Tokyo, Japan, or Canada, Los Angeles, and New York, more people saw him raise the trophy and stir up the atmosphere for the audience in the theater, which could be said to be a mix of many feelings.

Afterwards, at the Kodak Theatre, Chen Nuo, who had been dizzy with victory, finally sobered up a bit.

As the last award of the night, "Best Picture" had a unique privilege.

At this moment, all the members of the "Inception" creative team present tonight had boarded the stage.

He looked back and saw Xu Yong, Christopher Nolan and his wife Emma Thomas, Jonathan Nolan, Keira Knightley, Ryan Reynolds, Elliot Page, as well as cinematographer Wally Pfister, editor Lee Smith, composer Hans Zimmer... more than a dozen people standing behind him, hugging, talking, and congratulating each other under the spotlight.

Every face was beaming with unreserved smiles.

Without a doubt, this was their shared moment, the glorious time of this film.

Against this background, as agreed beforehand, as the representative of the largest investor, he should begin to deliver the first acceptance speech.

Thinking about it, it really is quite magical.

In truth, who could have really imagined it? One might say they have confidence, but after chatting casually, at least Chen Nuo never imagined that a dream could actually come true.

First, he looked back at the companions who had walked this path with him, then Chen Nuo took a deep breath, turned his face to look at the audience below, and said with a solemn expression: "Thank you to the Academy, and thank you for the infinite honor you have bestowed upon this film tonight."

"I am now speaking on behalf of everyone behind me."

"The reason we are able to stand here today is because of two people. It was they who wrote such an incredible story and brought us all together. This is the beginning of all this glory, and they are our mutual friends, as well as my guides, Jonathan Nolan and Christopher Nolan."

As he spoke, he turned to the side to look at the Nolan brothers, "Their talent is plain for all to see; without them, there would be no such brilliant film. They are the creators of every miracle."

Both brothers looked at him with the reserved smiles characteristic of the British.

Chen Nuo turned back and said to the camera: "I also want to thank my friend, Luo Rui Eisner. I have no way to tell you how much effort she put in as the executive producer during the filming process to ensure this movie was completed smoothly. She is the unsung hero of this film. Every one of us feels immense admiration for her professionalism."

At this moment, in a conference room in Hong Kong, everyone's gaze gathered with complex and inexplicable expressions upon the blonde beauty in the main seat. She watched the black-haired man speaking on the television screen with her emerald eyes, her gaze flickering, a faint, elusive smile hanging at the corners of her mouth.

"Holy crap!" someone in the corner of the conference room muttered under their breath, "This blonde devil woman... she really was the executive producer of *Inception*!?"