Chapter 479: I Am the King of the World!

To chase a goody-two-shoes, you take her to be rebellious.

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

To chase someone who has never been in a relationship, you should create a perfect love for her.

To chase someone who has been lacking love since childhood, you pursue her crazily, giving her all kinds of warmth in the details and a sense of ritual.

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

To chase someone from a good family background, the more you mistreat her and ignore her, the more she loves you.

To chase someone from a poor family background, then ten thousand words are not as good as giving her money to spend directly.

To chase a cold goddess, you need to use your intimacy to pull her into the water.

And all the methods above belong to the routines of ordinary people in love.

A true high-end player...

Needs nothing.

Only needs to give her a kiss in front of the whole world when winning an Oscar.

No matter what type she is, as long as she is a woman, it is almost impossible for her to escape your jeans in her entire life.

Liu Yifei was like this.

Although it was difficult to define this woman with a single attribute, under this unexpected kiss, she still almost couldn't even figure out what her surname was, whether it was An or Liu.

The blood in her whole 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 gather here, although it was only a fleeting moment, and the time their lips stayed on each other was at most two seconds.

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

Their lips parted.

From contact to parting, her eyes looked at him without blinking.

She couldn't bear to even blink.

She gazed at those clear and firm eyes, seeing a light smile belonging to a winner at the corner 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 of Hengdian who rushed up to hug him, walked with vigorous and light steps toward that golden and brilliant stage.

She stood in front of her seat, full of excitement, her mind intoxicated, looking at the man's back, and clapped along with everyone in the audience.

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

Liu Yifei, somewhat impolitely, didn't turn her face to respond, still looking in the original direction, smiling with her teeth showing, and nodded.

If in one place, someone felt she was the luckiest person in the world.

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

Harvey Weinstein was just such a person.

When the word "Inception" came out of Tang Mu Cruise's mouth, Harvey was like someone nailed to his chair, and the expression on his face was almost distorted. At that instant, he completely forgot about so-called expression management; his features were like someone had pressed the pause button, frozen stiff, without a trace of blood, looking exactly like a failed gambler who had lost his bet.

Fortunately—truly fortunately—at this very moment, the man on the other side of the venue was kissing his companion in front of the global camera, and that enthusiastic and flamboyant scene quickly sucked away the attention of all 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 use "Harvey's moment of defeat, facial twitching" to grab attention.

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

Therefore, even if he was ten thousand times unwilling and annoyed in his heart, Harvey still immediately adjusted his expression, gritted his teeth, and pretended to be graceful as he raised his hand to applaud for that damn Chinese monkey.

But in his heart, he was truly full of questions—

Where exactly did it go wrong?

Which link collapsed?

Why did the most important award, Best Picture, drop the chain despite his all-out efforts?

The same question also 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 vote bank" 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, if there were a God's-eye view, ignoring the limitations of time and space, it would see this scene—

An invisible line, silently pulling countless ballots, in the final counting stage, gently tilted toward a direction that was not predetermined.

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.

This was originally a voting mechanism to encourage consensus and avoid extremes.

As a result, although *The Artist* led in first-place votes, because of its silent black-and-white style, it was relatively polarized, leading many voters to simply exclude it, not even choosing it as their fifth choice.

But *Inception* was different; it not only had a stable vote bank in the first position, but more importantly, it appeared extremely frequently in the second and third positions of most ballots. It was a film that few people particularly loved, 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 recounted the ballots according to the next preference—the votes for *Inception* surged like an undercurrent, finally achieving a comeback at a certain critical point.

A miracle happened just like this in a gap in the mechanism that no one expected.

The Oscar for Best Picture was just dragged away by it.

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

No.

Although Warner Bros. used resources, connections, private screenings, and media paving, everything that should have been done was done, but the effect was only to a certain extent of influence, far from being able to manipulate the market.

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

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

And the male lead of *Inception*, who was also one of the film's investors, feeling that his chances for Best Actor and Best Director were slim, simply didn't attend the dinner, but returned to China low-key to eat dumplings with his parents. This was also something he had promised Pan Chengrong initially.

After the matter was exposed by the Academy officials, his act of refusing to attend the dinner this time was actually treated as news by the media, reporting on his unconventional behavior, how he valued family affection over winning awards, and even incidentally promoting the Chinese Lantern Festival.

And such self-willed behavior, valuing family affection more than winning awards, happened to hit the soft spot of some literary-minded members within the Academy.

Some of these people were exactly the "iron vote bank" of The Weinstein Company.

So, about a few dozen of them, while decisively supporting *The Artist* in the first position, thought about it in the second and third positions, remembered the various labels given to someone by the media such as "anti-Hollywood," "cultural self-awareness," and "independent spirit," and thus cast their votes for that commercial film they had originally disdained.

In the end, a miss by a hair is a miss by a thousand miles.

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 difficult to find:

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

They were just pushed out by equal luck amidst countless factors such as rules, mechanisms, publicity, relationships, human feelings, 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 dirty; it is a delicate and huge makeshift stage.

Exactly so.

When Chen Nuo walked onto the podium, although he didn't know the coincidences involved, he definitely knew that this must be the result of a luck bonus.

How many years had it been?

What was the last blockbuster film that set a box office record to win the Oscar for Best Picture?

The moment his palm touched that heavy, icy, metallic little golden man from Tang Mu Cruise's hand, his heart felt like he was licking a beautiful foot... no, a popsicle in the dog days of summer, feeling refreshed from head to toe.

He turned around and saw in the crowd the male lead of the last film to receive both "super box office" and "Oscar Best Picture," the legendary adulterer who had played at hooking up with a young lady on the vast ocean, "Jack," Mr. Leonardo DiCaprio.

At this very moment, Leonardo was standing in his seat, smiling and clapping for him.

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

He laughed loudly, and toward that direction, with his right hand, he held the little golden man in his hand high in the air.

Following this action, his figure seemed to overlap with that blonde boy on that big ship more than a decade ago, and it seemed as if they were both shouting:

I am the king of the world!

"Wow!"

In the Kodak Theatre, thousands of seats were already empty, and everyone standing accelerated their movements; the applause in the hall suddenly rose again.

Whistles, cheers, whether it was sincere applause or polite encouragement, 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 world along the radio waves.

"Oppa is too handsome!"

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

"An incredible scene, Chen won his second little golden man in his life at the Kodak Theatre! This is a 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, Seoul, Tokyo, or Canada, Los Angeles, and New York, more people saw him raise the trophy and stir up the atmosphere toward the audience in the theater, all of which could be said to be filled with mixed feelings.

Afterward, in the Kodak Theatre, Chen Nuo, who was intoxicated by victory, finally sobered up a bit.

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

At this very moment, all the members of the *Inception* creative team present tonight had ascended the stage.

He looked back and saw Chairman Xu Yong'an, 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 ten people stood behind him; they hugged tightly under the spotlight, talked, and congratulated each other.

Every face was filled with unreserved smiles.

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

Against this background, according to what was agreed upon beforehand, as the representative of the largest investor, he should be the first to deliver the acceptance speech.

Thinking about it, it was really quite magical.

Actually, who could have really imagined it? It was said there was confidence, but after chatting casually, at least Chen Nuo never thought that it could really come true.

First, he looked back at the companions who had walked all the way with him, took a deep breath, and then looked at the audience, saying solemnly: "Thank you to the Academy, thank you for the infinite honor you have given this film tonight."

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

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

Saying this, he turned sideways and looked at the Nolan brothers, "Their talent is obvious to all; without them, there would be no such wonderful film. They are the creators of all miracles."

Both brothers looked at him with the subtle smiles unique to 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 make this film go smoothly. She is the unsung hero of this film. Every one of us feels incomparable admiration for her professionalism."

At this moment, in a conference room in Hong Kong, everyone's eyes gathered in a complex and inexplicable way on a blonde beauty in the main seat. She saw the black-haired man speaking on the TV screen with her emerald green eyes, her gaze flickering, and a faint smile hanging on the corner of her mouth.

"Holy shit!" someone muttered in the corner of the conference room: "This blonde devil... turns out she really is the executive producer of *Inception*!?" ===== CHAPTER 480 =====