NABC Chapter 57 Jinhua and the Script of 127 Rejections
Chapter 57 Jinhua and the Script of 127 Rejections
In the days that followed, Lin Ruiyang divided his time into three segments. In the mornings, he would go to Kuntai to handle company matters that required signatures and procedural approvals, getting some of the hard stuff done.
I went back to school in the afternoon to attend classes. I had already missed half a semester's worth of classes. Although it wasn't mandatory, Liu Yibing didn't urge me, but he gave me a list of things I had to read every week. After reading them, I had to go to the office to give an oral report.
Back in my dorm that night, I read through the script of "The Plot" page by page, taking notes as I went.
One day, he remembered that he hadn't been in contact with the Jiangnan Wuju Opera Troupe for a while, so he made a phone call to Director Fan.
The voice on the other end of the phone was much hoarser than when we last met, but the tone was spirited.
"Teacher Lin! I was just about to call you anyway. Rehearsals are progressing faster than expected. Director Zhu is keeping a close eye on things, and the actors are giving it their all. We're now in the final rehearsals stage, and several key scenes are basically finalized. Would you like to come and take a look?"
Lin Ruiyang agreed.
After hanging up the phone, he realized that since signing the agreement in Shaoxing last December, he hadn't been to a single rehearsal.
He wrote the script stroke by stroke, but he had no idea how it would look on the stage in this era.
He took an early morning flight to Jinhua over the weekend.
The rehearsal hall of the Jiangnan Wuju Opera Troupe is located in a narrow alley. The exterior walls are covered with white ceramic tiles from the 1980s, and some parts of them are cracked.
There was no sign hanging at the entrance, only a handwritten rehearsal schedule, which was blurred by rain.
Pushing open the glass door, a smell mixed with sweat, pine resin, and old carpet wafted out.
The rehearsal hall was small, with a cement floor and high windows. In the corner were several old opera trunks, with thermos cups and towels on the lids.
There were no audience seats, only a few rows of folding chairs lined up against the wall, with two or three people sitting on them. Judging from their attire, they were veteran actors from the troupe, holding teacups and occasionally whispering to each other.
The scene being rehearsed on stage is the White Bone Demon's second incarnation—the scene where she transforms into an old woman.
Lin Ruiyang found a folding chair near the door and sat down without disturbing anyone on or off the stage.
Zhu Weimin stood at the edge of the stage, arms crossed. When he glanced at him out of the corner of his eye, he only nodded slightly and didn't stop.
The area of light on the stage was divided into several alternating sections of light and shadow by the sunlight streaming through the high windows.
On the lit side, the actors playing Sun Wukong and Tang Sanzang were rehearsing their positions; on the dark side, behind the side curtain, an old woman actress was squatting, already dressed as an old woman, hunched over and waiting for the drumbeats to start her performance.
The stage movement picks up right after the end of the previous "one-on-one" scene. After the actress dressed as a village girl is killed by Sun Wukong's staff, she quickly exits the stage, hidden by the side curtain.
At the same time, the old woman stepped into the light area from the other side, her back slightly hunched, her steps very short and shaky.
If there were any uninformed audience members, they would never associate this old woman with the same character who had just been walking briskly in the village.
Lin Ruiyang opened the script.
At the beginning of the second act, "The Second Fight," his stage directions consisted of only one line: "The White Bone Demon transforms into an old woman and enters carrying a basket."
On paper, it's seven characters; on the floor of the rehearsal hall, looking at the old woman, Lin Ruiyang personally experienced that words can only tell you what happened, but the actors in the rehearsal hall can let you see how it all happened.
The old woman stood in the center of the stage and began to recite her lines. Her voice was low, carrying a natural relaxation that came with the passage of time, with the last syllable falling downwards.
"There are demons in these mountains, and monks who are even more ruthless than demons."
The old woman on stage recited the words very softly, as if talking to herself. She squatted in the narrow beam of light, pretending to wash vegetables, her wrist movements unhurried.
Zhu Weimin did not call a halt. The old woman continued her action of squatting in the beam of light to wash vegetables for a few more seconds, and then Sun Wukong leaped out from behind her. The moment his golden cudgel swung down, a muffled thud was heard from the side of the stage, and the old woman's body fell to the ground.
It wasn't a real fall; it was a decoy handover that was carried out under the cover of the prop basket.
The old woman, concealed by the basket, quickly rolled into the dark area. At the same moment, Song Xiaoyue, the young actress playing the White Bone Demon, emerged from the other side of the curtain, stood where the old woman had fallen, and with a flick of her robe, the true form of the White Bone Demon was revealed.
The entire handover took less than two seconds.
"Okay, let's stop for a moment." Zhu Weimin clapped his hands. "The rhythm just now was right. The avatar falls to the ground, the true form appears, the cleaner the better. Now let's rest for five minutes."
The actors relaxed and went to drink water and wipe their sweat.
Zhu Weimin walked towards Lin Ruiyang.
"Teacher Lin, you've finally arrived. How do you like it? How different are these paragraphs from what you envisioned when you wrote them?"
"It's better than I thought. The rhythm of the dialogue, the way the characters use props, and the timing of the handover when they fall to the ground—I didn't think about these things in such detail when I was writing it."
"What I wrote on the paper was a single line of stage directions, but what you did on stage was a handover precise to half a second. You'll never know the difference unless you see it for yourself."
Lin Ruiyang stood up and sighed sincerely.
Zhu Weimin smiled, pulled over a folding chair, sat down, and handed Lin Ruiyang a bottle of mineral water:
"Now that this play has been rehearsed for so long, the old guys in the troupe have gone from being skeptical at the beginning to being really determined."
Your script truly captured the essence of the White Bone Demon, transforming her from a stereotypical monster into a soul filled with obsession and resentment. This gave the actor a clear direction, allowing them to focus their energy directly on the role.
Lin Ruiyang unscrewed the water bottle and took a sip, his gaze falling on Song Xiaoyue, who was sitting on the opera stage, panting.
She was wearing a simple practice uniform, and although she wasn't wearing makeup, the sparkle in her eyes stood out starkly in the dim light of the rehearsal hall.
Seeing Lin Ruiyang's gaze, Zhu Weimin said, "Song Xiaoyue has made great progress; it's like she's become possessed."
Lin Ruiyang nodded, and just as he was about to speak, his Nokia phone vibrated in his pocket.
He glanced at the caller ID; it was the law firm in Los Angeles. He quickly walked out of the rehearsal room and answered the phone while standing in the windy corner of the narrow alley.
"Mr. Lin, the copyright investigation you assigned regarding 'Dallas Buyers Club' has yielded preliminary results."
"The script rights are indeed currently held by Ron Woodruff's family and several early independent producers."
Since the project has been shelved for nearly ten years, the current valuation is very favorable, even lower than your expected $200,000.
However, one point to note is that Universal Pictures had an expired priority rights agreement, and we need some time to clean up the legal mess.
"Money is not the issue; the key is full copyright, including but not limited to remake rights, global distribution rights, and merchandise development."
Lin Ruiyang instructed in fluent English, "Be quick. This notebook is a worthless mess right now, but as soon as a little word gets out, the price will double."
After hanging up the phone, Lin Ruiyang sat on the stone steps at the entrance of the alley for a while.
His brain was like a finely tuned computer, with traditional Wuju opera emerging from the narrow alleys of Jinhua on one side and Oscar-nominated gems waiting to be reborn in the piles of documents in Los Angeles on the other.
127 rejections, an expired priority agreement, and a mess that nobody wants.
This extreme sense of dislocation gave him a feeling of destiny-like excitement.
During his two-day stay in Jinhua, Lin Ruiyang not only watched the entire rehearsal but also helped Zhu Weimin organize the rhythm of the final few scenes.
Before leaving, Director Fan held his hand and earnestly expressed that he would definitely invite him to go on stage for the curtain call during the official premiere.