Chapter 260: Long-term Planning

The administrator of the "Cao Yang Tieba" is quite interesting; he pinned and highlighted the post predicting and analyzing the Venice Film Festival awards.

The replies below are all from people coming to "whip the corpse" and mock him—a film that won the Venice Golden Lion and Best Actress is, in your eyes, "trash"?

You really are something!

Grandstanding.

Making up the numbers.

A clown.

Things of this nature are what many people replied to him.

This made a certain director, who was already feeling overwhelmed, very angry.

What made him even angrier was that his post was made under his real name; now everyone knows who he is, but it is definitely not a good reputation.

What made him angriest was that when he logged into his account to quickly delete the post, he got a system error pop-up!

In other words, he couldn't delete his own post.

So, he hurriedly contacted the administrator, only to receive a reply that the Tieba system had a bug recently, and some posts would end up like this when deleted.

To hell with the bug.

He contacted the official Tieba staff and received the exact same answer.

As for when this bug would be fixed, the official reply was always: "Please don't be anxious, we are working hard to fix it, you must trust our technical staff..."

Then, more and more people came to watch the "corpse-whipping," as if they had been deliberately funneled there.

He is truly famous throughout the world overnight now.

Actually, if it weren't for the pinned replies that followed, it might have been fine—everyone is entitled to their own opinion, and I just happened to have a different view, which is no big deal.

But the key is that one reply mentioned that his status as a special guest critic was something Cao Yang helped him secure.

The invitation letter sent by Venice clearly stated: "Recommended by Venice Film Festival Golden Lion winner Cao Yang..."

They even posted a picture of the invitation letter.

He was dumbfounded; he hadn't seen the invitation letter at the time, had he?

His teacher told him to contact the Venice Film Festival official catalog directly and just state his name.

He did exactly that, and the other party didn't say anything.

Damn, so there was an invitation letter after all!

But now, these things no longer have any meaning for him.

Cao Yang also heard in Venice about Old Hou standing up for him. To be honest, Old Hou's way of handling it was a bit too blunt; with Old Hou's current status, there was no need to step into the arena and confront him directly.

Such a method of handling it is satisfying, but it is also easy for people to criticize.

However, you have to admit, the more direct Old Hou was, the more moved Cao Yang felt.

Cao Yang doesn't know if Old Hou did this deliberately for him to see, but regardless, it is certain that the relationship between the two has taken a step forward.

Of course, since Old Hou did it, he definitely had to respond.

"Dean Hou, you were a bit impulsive. For such a small matter, there was no need to go to such lengths."

Cao Yang called Hou Ke-ming and said with a smile.

"Cao Dao is the banner of the Beijing Film Academy. In my eyes, there are no small matters when it comes to you."

Hou Ke-ming emphasized seriously over the phone.

This left Cao Yang speechless for a moment; the words he had prepared were made difficult to say by Hou Ke-ming's serious tone.

Hou Ke-ming then laughed and said:

"Just now, I was speaking on behalf of the school, wanting to tell you solemnly that Cao Dao's business is the Beijing Film Academy's business. I haven't congratulated you yet, Cao Dao—your second Golden Lion. In terms of the number of top awards from the three major European festivals, you have already caught up with Old Mouzi.

If you manage to win a Jin Xiong sometime and achieve the European Grand Slam, that would be the greatest glory for the Beijing Film Academy, and my greatest wish."

Cao Yang thought about it. Indeed, regarding the top awards of the three major European festivals, Old Mouzi has two Venice Golden Lions and one Berlin Jin Xiong, while he has two Venice Golden Lions and one Cannes Golden Palm.

Looking at it, the achievements are similar, but the reason Cao Yang is more famous and influential abroad than Old Mouzi is that he also has an Oscar for Best Picture and an Oscar for Best Director.

Of course, there is another important reason: so far, he has cultivated four Best Actresses from the three major European festivals and helped Depp win the Oscar for Best Actor twice.

However, wanting to achieve the European Grand Slam is an extremely difficult thing.

It's not that the Berlin Jin Xiong is hard to win, but for Cao Yang, the Berlin Jin Xiong is hard to win.

The Europeans will never sit by and watch a Chinese person achieve the Grand Slam of the three major European festivals and become the fourth person in history to do so.

If you want to win a Jin Xiong, you can only wait for the opportunity, but whether that opportunity will come, who knows.

Domestic media gave repeated reports on Cao Yang winning the Golden Lion again; after all, this is currently one of the world's top awards for art-house films.

Even CCTV's 30-minute news broadcasted it in the form of a brief.

Here in Venice, Cao Yang still had things to attend to. Socializing is one thing, but he also had to negotiate the copyright for *Black Swan*. For this kind of art-house film, selling the copyright directly is definitely the most convenient way.

Even after finishing things here, he couldn't return to the country; he had to go directly to Canada to check on the preparation of the main exterior locations for *Inception*.

After negotiations, the European copyright was sold first.

MK2 was quite sincere, offering 6 million US dollars directly. For an art-house film, this is already a very high price.

However, after careful consideration, Cao Yang did not sell the copyright to MK2, but chose the UFA film company, which offered a lower price.

UFA film company has a fairly good distribution network in Europe. This company is German and has significant strength and influence in Germany; it is a cartel organization that unites major producers.

With not much difference in copyright fees, selling to UFA film company is currently the best choice.

Perhaps UFA cannot help Cao Yang win the Berlin Jin Xiong, but a cartel organization like them definitely has the ability to ensure Cao Yang does *not* win the Jin Xiong.

Regardless of whether there is a chance to win the Jin Xiong in the future, it is always good to plan ahead, so as not to regret it if the opportunity comes and you can't grasp it.

For a pure Chinese-language film like *Black Swan*, after winning the Golden Lion, it might have good box office results from long-term screenings in Europe, but it's hard to say in North America.

The North American box office might not even be as high as the box office in Japan.

Before leaving, Han Zong had a talk with Cao Yang.

It was mainly about the release of *Black Swan*.

Generally speaking, as long as you win a major award, you must release it while the buzz is still there. A major award is the best promotion and can save a lot of promotional expenses.

Cao Yang had no special requirements regarding when to release it; he let Han Zong discuss it with the Youth Film Studio.

On the eve of returning to the country, Dong Xuan was a bit excited.

Actually, it wasn't just tonight that she was excited; ever since winning the Venice Best Actress award, she had been obviously very thrilled.

At night, even if her shy personality dominated, she would still shyly let Cao Yang try different things, and occasionally she would even be slightly "assertive," pinning Cao Yang underneath to act bossy.

However, even when "assertive," her movements were not large; it was completely the performance of a novice, and her expression was very shy. As long as Cao Yang stared at her, her ears would heat up and turn red.

It was very interesting.

The two different personalities were like ice and fire.

(End of chapter) ===== CHAPTER 261 =====