China Entertainment: Been working as a director since 03

Chapter 620: A Promising Masterpiece
"Director Li, please continue. I'm listening." Chen Kaige licked his dry lips, eager to hear the next story.

Li Yu did not keep the audience in suspense and chose to tell the story in detail.

"I think if you want to film the story of Emperor Xuanzong and Yang Guifei, and the collapse of the prosperous Tang Dynasty, you might as well film it this way. Let me ask you a question first. Do you know the Guanlong Group?"

"Of course I've heard of it." Chen Kaige responded immediately.

He calls himself a film poet, and in his early years he said that he was a literary youth.

If he has never heard of the term Guanlong Group, then wouldn't it be a waste of his title as a film poet? Wouldn't it make him seem very ignorant?

"History is continuous, and those contradictions did not form in one day. During the Southern and Northern Dynasties, the north of ancient China was divided into two countries, and there was another Southern Dynasty in the south of the Yangtze River.

There are three forces: the Guanlong Group formed with the Guanzhong clans as its base, the Hebei forces and the Jiangnan forces.

The unification of China by the Tang Dynasty was the result of the Guanlong Group defeating the Hebei and Jiangnan forces. "

Chen Kaige was stunned.

Aren't they talking about the movie script? Why is Li Yu giving him a history lesson?
As expected, they are Teacher Gao’s students, one is interested in Ming history and the other is interested in history.

"Director Li, you are not going to analyze the entire history of the Southern and Northern Dynasties plus the Sui and Tang Dynasties with me?" Chen Kaige was at a loss whether to laugh or cry.

"Isn't this necessary? If a director doesn't even understand that period of history, how can he make a good historical blockbuster? How can he make a historical masterpiece with ideas and connotations?" Li Yu asked back.

“……”Chen Kaige was speechless.

Although he knew that Li Yu was not talking about him, he still felt a prick in his heart.

Because he has made such historical blockbusters. "The Orphan of Zhao" tells the story of the Spring and Autumn Period during the reign of Duke Ling of Jin, but it ended up being a story about three men loving each other and raising children.

The fact that he was able to film such a story clearly shows that he did not have enough knowledge of that period of history, and he also let himself go and acted freely.

Maybe he felt so awesome while filming, but after the movie is released, the audience will vote with their feet.

"Director Li, please continue." In order to avoid being hurt again, Chen Kaige decisively chose to shut up and speak less and listen more.

When it comes to writing scripts and stories, he knows that even ten of himself tied together are not as good as Li Yu.

“I told you before that many of the generals that the court relies on are Hu people, and there are also many Hu people among the ordinary soldiers.

On the other hand, on An Lushan's side, the main advisers and generals with outstanding military achievements were basically all Han people, and the number of Han soldiers among ordinary soldiers occupied an absolute dominant position.

I think that’s how the movie should be shot…”

An Lushan was indeed not a good man, but an ambitious man. He used his own name to ask the court for credit on behalf of the soldiers who had made contributions on the border.

Let the soldiers only remember his good deeds and not the good deeds of the court.

In short, many of the things he did were for his own benefit.

But the question is, why did so many capable and knowledgeable Han generals and advisers want to join An Lushan, an ambitious man who was also a Hu people, and be willing to support or even encourage An Lushan to rebel?
Because most of the official positions in the court were held by the sons of aristocratic families from the Guanzhong region.

They have monopolized most of the positions in the imperial court, and those who are not in the same circle as them cannot be included.

Do you think that just because you have studied hard for more than ten years and acquired a lot of skills, you can be on equal footing with them?
They would say that their father helped them suffer all their lives when he started the rebellion with Li Yuan and Li Shimin.

A stinky outsider with lines running down his head?

Do you really think that just because you have studied for a few years, you are qualified to be on equal footing with the people of the Chang'an Zhenghuang Banner? Bah! What a bullshit.

In addition to monopolizing the upward channels, monopolizing business, merging land on a large scale, and concealing household registration, the Guanlong Group also does not pay taxes.

This is a problem that every feudal dynasty has, and it becomes more serious as time goes by.

In the Tang Dynasty, the wealthy Guanzhong and Luoyang regions could not collect much tax and the court was short of money.

When you are short of money, there are generally two ways to solve the problem: increase revenue or reduce expenditure.

At the beginning, the court chose to cut spending, but it was useless and failed to solve the fundamental problem.

The Guanlong nobles would not give up their luxurious lives just because of an order from the emperor, nor would they distribute their surplus grain to the poor.

So it’s open source’s turn.

When Yuwen Rong came to power as prime minister, he formulated a policy that could detect fugitives and hidden households. If every adult paid 1,500 coins, the court would exempt him from taxes for five years.

All of a sudden, 800,000 households that were originally registered under the aristocratic families were counted again.

It is easy to understand why they hide under the aristocratic families and become hidden households. This is because the aristocratic families are tax-exempt. They hide under the aristocratic families, and the money they pay to the aristocratic families every year is less than the taxes.

However, when the policy of requiring every adult male to pay 1,500 coins was put forward, they found that they would not have to pay taxes for the next five years after paying the money, which was more cost-effective than becoming a hidden household with the aristocratic families, so they were included in the statistics.

Yuwen Rong did such a good job that there were 800,000 more households on the imperial register. As expected, something unexpected happened and he was exiled.

This is already a big mine, and it is impossible to remove it.

Another big bomb was the Hebei forces. At the beginning, the Guanlong Group defeated the Hebei forces. In order to prevent the emergence of a force in Hebei that could compete with Guanzhong again, the famous ancient capital of Yecheng was directly destroyed.

The Guanlong Group has been sucking the blood of Hebei and has been suppressing Hebei's forces.

This can be seen from Dou Jiande and Liu Heita.

In particular, Liu Heita, who was defeated by Li Er once, went to the Turks to borrow some soldiers and came back. After a few months, he conquered half of Hebei again.

You have to know that Hebei at that time was a region that was as large as several provinces today.

The incident involving Liu Heita has proved that there are many people in Hebei who are dissatisfied with the Guanlong Group.

After Liu Heita was destroyed, this unhappy mood did not disappear, but was only temporarily suppressed. As long as the Guanlong Group did not give up the idea of ​​suppressing the Hebei forces, this bomb would explode sooner or later, and the longer it was delayed, the louder the explosion would be.

This is a pressure cooker, with pressure from both inside and outside the Tang Dynasty constantly pouring into it.

For example, Hebei region, with less than one-tenth of the population, contributes one-third to one-quarter of the tax revenue all year round.

For example, at that time, Hedong, Youzhou and Fanyang in Hebei Province had been the front line against the nomadic forces on the grassland, and most of the troops in the border areas were provided by Hebei Province.

To sum it up in one sentence, they paid the highest taxes, had to fight in the wars, and after the war, the status and treatment they received were totally disproportionate to their efforts.

An Lushan's rebellion was supported by many local clans and aristocratic families.

After An Lushan died, the three towns he once governed continued to confront the imperial court, becoming a major threat that could not be eradicated in the middle and late Tang Dynasty.

After the Anshi Rebellion ended, An Lushan was revered as a great sage and a holy teacher in the Hebei region.

Although there was an imperial examination system at that time, the names of the candidates were not covered on the examination papers, which was very unfair.

Du Fu was talented enough. He failed the imperial examination more than once, but he was finally noticed by writing an article praising the emperor's merits and flattering him, and was qualified to be employed. Until An Lushan's army entered Chang'an, Du Fu was just a warehouse manager.

A person of his level was not qualified to run away with Xuanzong, and even the rebels were too lazy to pay attention to him.

Du Fu's family background was pretty good compared to that of ordinary scholars at that time. It was so difficult for him to get by, so it was extremely difficult for ordinary scholars to make a name for themselves through imperial examinations.

Therefore, the only way for ordinary people to get promoted is through military merit.

A large number of talented and capable people who had no platform to display their talents came to the three towns managed by An Lushan, because this was the front line in the north.

As long as one had made merit on the battlefield, An Lushan would really help to report the merit to the imperial court, although he did so with the intention of winning people's hearts.

In summary, the Anshi Rebellion was bound to break out.

Because the social contradictions at that time were already very sharp, it only took a spark to make this powder keg explode instantly.

This is a situation that no one can change, and the only lesson humanity can draw from history is that people don’t learn from it.

At the end of the Ming Dynasty, Emperor Chongzhen, although the princes and nobles in the capital had added so much money, they were reluctant to pay even a penny for military expenses to guard the capital.

Li Yu talked a lot with Chen Kaige.

Chen Kaige was convinced.

He finally understood why Li Yu could write so many good scripts.

When Li Yu wants to write a script, he will really work hard and study it seriously.

If you write down what Li Yu just said, it will be a paper on the history of the Tang Dynasty, and it will be a very good paper.

After listening to what Li Yu said, Chen Kaige could understand that the wheel of history rolls forward.

It turns out that in the face of the general trend, no one can change it, and even very capable people can only delay the outbreak of the crisis.

For example, Yuwen Rong checked the number of hidden and escaped households, and added 800,000 households to the imperial household register.

He was immediately fired because he offended too many people.

It won’t be long before those 800,000 households will become hidden households hiding under the aristocratic families and not paying taxes to the court.

Chen Kaige thinks this is what makes Li Yu’s script so good.

He felt that it actually had a bit of the flavor of an art film.

Many people have tried hard, but without exception all of them have failed, and many of them have not had a good ending.

The wheel of history will truly roll over every rebel and crush his bones mercilessly.

"Great, really great, Director Li. After listening to the historical story you just told me, I feel that this script is ridiculously strong. Because of the combination of various insurmountable contradictions, the An-Shi Rebellion is bound to break out, and the prosperous Tang Dynasty will definitely collapse. I have a hunch that if it is really shot like this, this movie will definitely become a historical high-scoring work, and it can even be called a masterpiece."

Chen Kaige's eyes lit up with excitement.

He felt that the quality of the story told by Li Yu had surpassed "Man Jiang Hong" in terms of ideological depth, connotation and irony.

Chen Kaige was full of praise, and soon he thought of a new question: "What about the emperor and Yang Guifei? How should their story be filmed? I want to highlight the emperor's ruthlessness and Yang Guifei's tragedy."

The plot of the collapse of the prosperous Tang Dynasty is very much to Chen Kaige's liking. Both its logic and rationality are much better than his "Legend of the Cat Demon".

In the script of "Legend of the Cat Demon", the reason for An Lushan's rebellion was portrayed as wanting to get Yang Guifei.

This is outrageous. What kind of hero would start a war for a woman?
Even if it was Cao Cao who killed three sages with one shot, his original purpose of attacking Wancheng was not for Aunt Zhang Xiu.

After Zhang Xiu surrendered, Cao Cao entered the city and discovered that the woman's aunt was pretty. This was just a coincidence.

In short, after listening to Li Yu's script, Chen Kaige felt that his own script was even more unbearable to read.

How to write the story of Emperor Xuanzong and Yang Guifei? In the script of "The Legend of the Cat Demon", Chen Xuanli and other generals asked Emperor Xuanzong to execute Yang Guifei.

In order to quell the resentment of his soldiers, Xuanzong lied to Yang Guifei that she could use the corpse-reincarnation technique to enter a state of suspended death.

In the end, she was suffocated to death in the sarcophagus.

Li Yu felt that this plot arrangement was a bit unnecessary.

Xuanzong had tens of thousands of concubines in his harem. Do you really think that such an emperor would love a woman so much?

Maybe there really is love, but as long as his own life is threatened and he can survive by letting the woman he loves die, he will not hesitate at all.

This is what a ruthless emperor is. Why would he need to fabricate some story about fake death and resurrection to deceive Yang Guifei?

So, Li Yu said: "The plot line of the emperor and Yang Guifei is similar to your script, but don't use those fancy corpse transformation methods.

A true emperor would not be timid because of a woman, especially a cold-blooded man like Xuanzong, who once killed three of his own sons in one day.

If he wanted Yang Guifei to die, he needed to consider Yang Guifei's feelings and use the corpse-reincarnation technique to trick her?
As in history, Xuanzong fled with only a small number of concubines such as Yang Guifei, as well as a small number of ministers and royal family members.

The families of the soldiers who surrounded them were still in Chang'an, their lives or deaths uncertain, and the soldiers were starving on their way to Shuzhong.

The soldiers were already very resentful, and at this time their resentment was directly directed at the emperor.

Because the emperor abandoned the soldiers' families and asked the soldiers to escort the emperor away.

When the pressure is so high that it threatens to explode, a pressure relief valve is needed.

It just so happened that Yang Guozhong was still arrogant even while he was fleeing, and he really deserved to be killed, so his entire family was killed, leaving only Yang Guifei who was with Xuanzong.

The situation at that time was that either Yang Guifei died, or the responsibility for the collapse of the prosperous Tang Dynasty was placed on the Yang family and Yang Guifei, and Yang Guifei was charged with bewitching the emperor.

Either Xuanzong and Yang Guifei died together. In this case, what do you think Xuanzong would do after killing three sons in one day?

Corpse transformation? He hoped that Yang Guifei would die within a second, and not let him be implicated.

The real history has already shown the emperor's ruthlessness, I don't think it is necessary to add unnecessary details."

Li Yu said seriously.

"Director Li, just by listening to your idea, I feel that this way of filming is very promising. I can't wait to see the real script." Chen Kaige said with anticipation.

Based on his understanding of Li Yu, when Li Yu writes the real script, it will be more exciting than what Li Yu just said.

He had a deep understanding of this. In the past, Li Yu would also give him a rough outline of the basic story before writing the script for him, but this time he explained it in more detail.

Details are good, and details show that Li Yu put his heart into it. This script definitely has the potential to be a masterpiece.

(End of this chapter)