Author/Fat Tiger
The first theatrical feature film directed by Long Fei, starring Hu Ge and Gao Yuanyuan.
Hu Ge was still on the set of " Blossoms " at that time, and seamlessly connected to " stop and go ". "Mr. Bao" is in a suit and leather shoes, and is full of style, but "Wu Di" is a looker, with a shirt that has not changed for thousands of years, and a head of curly hair, which makes him a proper "crispy young man".
Hu Ge has successfully shed his aura as a male star and has become a wasted young man from third and fourth tier cities that makes people dislike, laugh, and be extremely familiar.
A man who left Beijing returned to his hometown and made a black and white movie. Why did you choose Hu Ge for "Stop and Go"? How to impress Hu Ge? In addition to his interactions with the actors, newcomer director Long Fei also shared this "life flow comedy" that penetrates the details of the audience's daily life.
(This article contains spoilers, please read selectively.)
Discovered another possibility of the actor
Hu Ge described Wu Di as a "spinning top", spinning in circles. After ten years of being a screenwriter, no one knew about him. After selling the refrigerator and the kettle used to grow flowers, he chose to return to his hometown to develop. He didn't like the jobs arranged by his family, and the job he found didn't accept people over 35 years old. He thought he might as well make a movie on his own! My parents and my sister put a few question marks.
Hu Ge is not a comedian in the traditional impression of the audience, so why are you looking for him?
First of all, it must be clear that Long Fei did not shoot this movie as a "comedy". Different from the conventional "make you laugh" comedies on the market, Long Fei defines "Stop and Go" as a "life flow comedy", which means retaining the true texture of life and revealing humor inadvertently. Therefore, when looking for actors, he looked for them based on the criteria of "serious drama".
From Hu Ge's previous works, Long Fei saw the possibility of him expressing small characters. This kind of "sadness" happened to be Wu Di's characteristic, so he initially targeted Hu Ge. But he didn't have high expectations. Regardless of Hu Ge's net worth, the characters in the two movies are from the same profession, which may not be new to the actor. I sent out the invitation with the idea of giving it a try. Unexpectedly, Hu Ge responded quickly and said he liked the role very much.
In Long Fei's view, Wu Di is a typical small citizen, who is grinding and grinding, has no idea, and has a natural optimism despite being stepped on by life. There is a huge contrast in personality with Hu Ge's previous roles. The two extremes and different sides of the same profession may also be interesting for actors. Is
also applicable to Jinjing without deliberately being funny? She is so lively in variety shows. But Long Fei fell in love with Jin Jing because of the drama "I'm Good in a Foreign Country". Jin Jing presented a desperate girl with a very realistic performance, and he saw the actor's versatility. But at the same time, I was still feeling uneasy. After all, Jin Jing gave people such a weird impression.
Let’s chat via video first. Long Fei remembers that Jin Jing was also in the group at that time. He had just finished filming and looked a little tired. He changed into his own clothes and lay on the bed in the hotel without makeup, "talking to us with his phone in his face." Jin Jing was very calm throughout the whole process, without the witticisms seen in variety shows. He often answered questions with "ok", "no" and "can", which made the scene a bit embarrassing at one point. At a certain moment, Long Fei suddenly thought: "Isn't this what Wu Shuang looks like?" It seemed that he was looking for the right one to find Jin Jing. Jin Jing never deliberately acts funny in the movie, and is even a bit serious throughout, but the chemical reaction between this "hardcore sister" and "cowardly brother" is often hilarious.
was able to attract so many outstanding actors, and Long Fei attributed it to the "good script". When she and Yue Hong were talking about the scene for the first time, Yue Hong choked up several times when she talked about the emotional parts, and even the people next to her wiped away tears. The characters are outstanding enough and the actors have a lot of room to play. They are different from previous roles, and they will have interest and great subjective initiative.
The entire movie is presented in Sichuan and Chongqing dialects, but among the five leading actors, except Yue Hong, there are three from Shanghai and one from Beijing. This initially made Long Fei a little worried. When he contacted the actors, he was vaccinated in advance. Unexpectedly, the actors readily agreed to speak in dialects without hesitation.Especially Hu Ge. At that time, he just came out of the crew of "Flowers". It was an all-Shanghai performance environment, and now he has to face a large number of Sichuan dialects. This is also a big challenge for Hu Ge. After he finished filming on the set every day, he would continue to practice his lines when he returned to the hotel. In fact, at the scene, almost everyone grabbed the dialect teacher whenever they had time and practiced like crazy, so that this Sichuan and Chongqing sketch could be presented in a light and natural way.
Because the characters are all people that the audience will meet in their lives, the actors did a lot of homework for the landing.
TV reporter Feng Liuliu, played by Gao Yuanyuan, is responsible for recording the life of Wu Di's family. For this reason, Gao Yuanyuan went to the documentary crew of two female directors to observe their on-site status, how to control the camera and how to operate the machine. She has been practicing since joining the crew. Feng Liuliu is a character with many Mandarin lines, but Gao Yuanyuan has always hoped to speak as many dialects as possible to make the character more realistic. If he must speak Mandarin, he will be designed as "Trump" with a Sichuan accent.
Jin Jing prepared for three months to play Wu Shuang, specifically observing the taxi driver's driving state. He designed some small expressions and movements during the actual performance, which he was reluctant to cut out during later editing. Due to Wu Shuang's "iron-blooded and black-skinned" setting, Jin Jing had to darken his skin heavily every day when he went to the set. Later, Jin Jing joked: "I am very mentally strong now and I am not afraid of anyone's 'smearing' in the future."
Movies are ideals, documentaries are life
The script of "Stop and Go" is "three parallels", Wu Di took his mother to make the movie, and Feng Liuliu's documentary recorded the whole process of "youth returning home", as well as the actual lives of several people, Screenwriter Huang Jia cleverly uses movies and documentaries to connect characters with each other.
Making movies seems to be in contrast to all of Wu Di's romantic ideals, while documentaries record the scraps of real life. At this point, Long Fei asked: But is this documentary real? The life that everyone finally saw was not real. This is a very interesting place.
Long Fei’s understanding of comedy is to maintain a sense of life and poke the audience through some fragments based on reality. Laughing is actually a kind of "breaking defense". When the audience breaks their guard and then punches you again, this is the real "prick". Therefore, the overall tone of "Stop and Go" is calm and restrained, interspersed with waves of "joy" and "sadness". The
script is very solid in restoring life. Hu Ge held his cell phone with his feet, and his father asked him to pour water and the whole family pretended not to hear. These designs made people smile, "Director, have you installed a monitor in my life?" Long Fei also confirmed that he and the screenwriter were indeed included in the script. He drew on his real experiences from some people he knew around him, such as throwing slippers into the trash can, which was something he did when he was a child.
The art and scenery of the movie are quite detailed. Long Fei wanted to find a place between a small town and a city. It had a TV station and a subway, but was mainly about old streets. There should be large trees in summer to give it a lush feel. Finally, he chose Neijiang, Sichuan. Photographed in Zigong.
Wu Di's home is a very smoky place, with a dim old house, an old balcony full of flowers, and the old oil on the kitchen stove that cannot be wiped off. In the movie, Liu Jun, played by Li Yuan, comes to Wu Di's house. During the filming, I even applied a lot of oil and praised "the art is very detailed", which created an interaction between the inside and outside of the movie.
The interior of the house was staged, down to the texture of the furniture, it was so real that Long Fei was surprised. However, the visual effects of the balcony's exterior were difficult to create and had to be shot in real time. This requires the artist to build half a living room and a bedroom at the connection point between the balcony and the interior, so as to restore the real scene and the studio scene exactly the same. When the crew walked into the newly built half of the set for the first time, the audience burst into applause for the artist.
In the real and relaxed life, there are little laughs buried one after another. The audience is usually made to laugh without any foreshadowing and is caught off guard. Under such an overall pleasant rhythm, the few emotional explosion points are small in quantity, but they are very powerful.
The "massage chair" is the emotional link between Wu Di and his mother.My mother wanted to buy a massage chair but found it too expensive. She kept waiting for a discount. When she was finally able to buy it at a discount, her mother was gone. The scene where Hu Ge was sitting on the massage chair in the mall was very restrained. People were coming and going, and the shopping guide lady was asking questions. He didn't hold his head and cry or burst into tears. Wu Di was just sitting on the massage chair like his mother in the past. Sit for a while.
This scene didn't exist originally. The script said that after Wu Di pushed the shopping cart away, he couldn't help but find a corner to sob. During the actual shooting, Long Fei still hoped to be more restrained and not cry. Hu Ge thought it was okay not to cry, so he went to sit down. Long Fei was also skeptical about "Sit Down", but he respected the actor's advice. It turns out that this action was one of the tears of many viewers, and the effect was very good. Long Fei said that he also learned a lot from the actors.
Another scene is the "stop and go" scene between Wu Di and Feng Liuliu due to traffic jam, which perfectly echoes the theme at the end of the film. Many years later, Wu Di and Feng Liuliu met again. Feng Liuliu took his children in a high-end SUV, while Wu Di became an ordinary taxi driver.
Everyone will encounter a traffic jam and be stuck in a traffic jam. If the car next door is someone you know, should you say hello or not? The screenwriter uses this way to allude to life. We will always stay at a certain time and meet at a certain time. In this stop and go, life has flowed in different directions.
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The day of filming this scene was very hot. More than 50 cars had to be mobilized before and after, and the actors sat in the cars all day long to shoot over and over again. Long Fei still remembers the look in Feng Liuliu's eyes towards Wu Di. It's full of mixed flavors. Director Ang Lee once said that a movie is sometimes remembered not just because of the story, but because of a "moment." For Long Feilai, "That moment was one of the most impressive moments in the entire film."
Stop and go, it is a movie and life
Everyone will have a "stop and go" moment, "Nine times out of ten, life is not going as you want, and you can only think about it." The so-called "lying flat", in Long Fei's view, means "going with the flow". If you keep moving forward, you will always get tired. "Stop and rest when you should stop, and then continue walking when you can move, or when you have the opportunity to walk."
Long Fei himself is the same. After graduating from the Film Academy in 2008, Long Fei experienced a long period of silence with no films to make. The mother played by Yue Hong in the film did not criticize her son too much after he came home, which is very similar to Long Fei's mother. "For a long time, my mother didn't know what I was doing, and I didn't know what I was doing, but my mother always supported me."
The desire for movies has never been extinguished in my heart. Since there is no film to make, I will Start with small-budget independent films. In 2017, the film "The Sofa Sleeper", which he collaborated with screenwriter Huang Jia, was screened online. Not only did it win the love of many viewers, it was also shortlisted for the first film festival. Inspired by this, Long Fei and Huang Jia decided to continue this style and make a movie with a larger structure, denser laughter, and an overall more mature film. It happened that at that time I saw a lot of talk about "youth returning home", and the two of them also had such friends around them, and that's how "Stop and Go" was born. Of course there are echoes between the two works before and after
. "The Sofa Sleeper" tells the story of a child who failed the college entrance examination and had nothing to do. Under the guidance of his "angry old" uncle, he fell in love with literature and found his direction in life. The film has a simple structure and few scenes, but it focuses on the unsuccessful "loser" and draws humor and inspiration from life, which is in the same vein as "Stop and Go".
Stills from the movie "The Sofa Sleeper"
Long Fei and Huang Jia undoubtedly focus on the little people, and they want to take pictures of the real lives of ordinary people. Everyone will go through trough periods, and the lives of ordinary people are more impressive.
Are you curious whether the director resonates with these characters? Long Fei said that he did feel like Wu Di at first, but then he felt like Feng Liuliu. I couldn't do what I wanted to do in a small city due to various reasons, but in the end I chose my ideal.
After saying this, the director sent another message to Taotao after the interview -
"I thought about it, and I still feel more like Wu Di. Wu Di stopped when he encountered resistance. I also had this kind of time, during that time No matter how hard I try, there seems to be no way to break through this layer of resistance. I have no chance to shoot what I want to shoot, and the script I write is not recognized. But no matter what, I still don’t give up on what I want most.”
Just like at the end of the film, when Wu Di turned on his computer again and started writing, his life seemed to be setting sail again after experiencing stagnation. Long Fei wanted to express that lying down is not scary. The key is to look back when you stop and ask yourself why you took this path in the first place. Why make this choice. When you see the direction clearly, your heart will become determined and strong, and you will have a clearer idea of what kind of person you want to be.
A new director, it was more of an "unpredictable" script creation for "Stop and Go". It took about one or two years, and was put on hold for three years due to the epidemic, and finally entered the financing stage in 2021. After the
script came out, Long Fei also tried to find some investors, but most of them were not interested. The structure is an anti-genre film, and it is not a traditional narrative. With two newcomers, it is normal for the film not to be trusted, and Long Fei understands it very well. By chance, they went to the First Surprise Film Festival, participated in the feature film laboratory, and were recommended by Li Ziwei, the executive director of the First Film Festival, and then got acquainted with Matt Culture, and this project finally got started. Therefore, when looking for investment, Long Fei also suggested that it is more important to find suitable investors. "What you make is different from the traditional videos on the market. Investors happen to be looking for something like this, so that is the best time."
Mai After joining in, the rhythm suddenly became faster. Filming will start in 2023. In 2024, it won three awards for Best Film, Best Supporting Actress (Yue Hong), and Best Screenplay (Huang Jia) at the 14th Beijing International Film Festival "Tiantan Awards". It was finally released on June 8 Theatrical release.
This is a glorious achievement for a new director. But in conversations with Taotao, Long Fei often mentioned that he had just entered the film industry and was still in the exploratory stage, and everything seemed unpredictable.
was asked what he thought of the two works that performed well in the festival. Long Fei said that you still have to shoot what you like. Festivals and exhibitions are random and difficult to control. He was also surprised that "Stop and Go" won the award. This kind of light comedy is not a style favored by film festivals. But this may also indicate that the market is becoming more diverse and open. Will
continue to make comedies in the future? I am still exploring my own style. What is certain is that he wants to try more genres and create innovative works.
From "The Sofa Sleeper" to "Stop and Go", this is a "coming out" learning process for Long Fei. "The Sofa Sleeper" was a small team job, and "Stop and Go" was the first time that he had gone through the entire industrial process of a movie, including how to communicate with the producers, actors, and coordinate various departments, from post-production to promotion. , all fresh.
Like the title "Stop and Go", this is a slow movie. It doesn’t have the excitement and excitement of short videos, and it doesn’t have the gorgeous packaging and gimmicks of commercial blockbusters. It just reminds you of a certain scene deep in your memory, and “poke” you from time to time, whether you cry or laugh, it’s all natural. When
"Stop and Go" won the award, Hu Ge mentioned the core line of the movie, "Gold always shines." Whether in movies or in life, I hope this sentence can apply to everyone.
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