Chapter 242: True Freedom
Chapter 242: True Freedom
After a brief half-day rest, the crew chartered a flight to New York the next day. This time, Jeffrey still came to pick them up, and there was also a Firefly team here responsible for the pre-production work of both Sleepless in Seattle and Home Alone 2: Lost in New York.
Compared to Seattle, where most of the scenes revolved around Jonah and his father, filming the New York portions was much more troublesome.
Just in terms of characters alone, the New York scenes in Sleepless in Seattle involved not only Annie’s family, but also Annie’s friends, colleagues, and so on.
Eric felt this kind of plot design was probably intended to weaken the presence of Annie’s fiancé Walter, much like how Sam’s deceased wife Maggie only appeared in a handful of scenes.
Although for Sam and Annie, this truly was a very romantic love story.
For Walter, however, who was already engaged to Annie, getting dumped during a Valentine’s Day date for some “inexplicable” reason was honestly rather tragic.
Eric remembered that in some reviews from his previous life, there had been comments criticizing Annie’s disloyalty while sympathizing with Walter.
Still, in a country with a divorce rate as high as 50%, people did not seem to care all that much about such things.
To put it bluntly, whether in politics or romance, the people of this country pursued two words: freedom.
Eric remembered reading a sentence somewhere:
True freedom is not doing whatever you want, but not doing what you do not want to do.
Although the phrase carried a hint of pretentiousness, it fit Annie in Sleepless in Seattle perfectly.
Even after getting engaged, once she realized Walter was not the person destined for her, she still refused him without compromise.
“How are the negotiations regarding the Empire State Building and the Twin Towers going?”
After getting off the plane and sitting with Jeffrey in a business van, that was the first thing Eric asked about.
These two matters respectively concerned Sleepless in Seattle and Home Alone 2. Jonah and Kevin would each climb to the tops of New York’s two tallest buildings for filming. Even by the time Sleepless in Seattle began shooting, neither matter had been finalized yet.
“Everything’s settled,” Jeffrey replied, giving Eric a reassuring look before continuing, “though the management of both buildings didn’t give us very much time.”
“That’s fine. There aren’t many scenes anyway. The important one is the Empire State Building. For the Twin Towers, we only need a few aerial shots from the top.”
Eric nodded in satisfaction.
Jeffrey continued, “There’s one more thing. About the snow. I consulted the meteorological department in detail. The earliest first snowfall in New York will probably be November, possibly the first week of November, but nothing’s certain. After all, it’s only September now. You know weather forecasts are never accurate. Maybe we’ll get lucky and it’ll snow at the end of October. Or maybe we’ll get unlucky and there won’t be any snow even by the time Home Alone releases. In any case, you should be mentally prepared.”
Eric nodded.
“That’s not a problem. Just have people prepare artificial snow. I’ll try to leave the outdoor scenes for Home Alone 2 until the end of filming, but even delaying them won’t buy us much time. I think there’s a ninety percent chance we’ll need to use artificial snow.”
“I already had people estimate it according to your script,” Jeffrey said. “We won’t need to cover every scene, but if the artificial snow is realistic enough to fool audiences, the budget will increase by about 1.5 million dollars.”
Eric could hear the pain in Jeffrey’s voice. He patted him on the shoulder.
Although Firefly was growing larger and larger, Jeffrey still retained the same penny-pinching personality Eric had first encountered. But that personality also suited a producer best.
“Jeffrey, this isn’t last year anymore. When we made the first Home Alone, we had to count every penny. We even ran all the way to a small town in northern Canada just to save on the budget. But the budget for this film is very generous, so there’s no need to skimp on expenses that should be spent.”
“I know,” Jeffrey replied. “It’s just that instinctively, I keep thinking that if we swapped the release schedules of Sleepless in Seattle and Home Alone 2, we could save that 1.5 million.”
Eric smiled.
“If you put it that way, then yes, if we wait for natural snowfall, we might save that 1.5 million. But by delaying Home Alone 2 until Christmas, we might lose tens of millions at the box office instead.”
“You know from the performance of the first Home Alone that this is a children’s movie very suitable for long theatrical runs. That’s why we need to extend the holiday-season release window as much as possible. Late November marks the beginning of the Christmas box office peak.”
“Then why not move Sleepless in Seattle to late November too?” Jeffrey asked. “Even if it doesn’t directly compete with Home Alone 2, delaying it by a week should still be possible.”
“Because Sleepless in Seattle isn’t only aiming for the Christmas season. It’s also aiming for Valentine’s Day in February. It’s a romantic comedy. If we release it a month earlier, by February the film’s popularity will have mostly run out.”
“But if we release it around December 24, then after two months in theaters, entering the Valentine’s Day season could give the movie a second box office surge.”
“You know my films tend to have large-scale box office harvest periods lasting more than eight weeks. For example, the first Home Alone last year held the number one box office spot for ten consecutive weeks. Pretty Woman and Runaway were the same.”
Jeffrey smiled.
“I really don’t know where you learned all this from. Originally, I wanted to talk to you about the release date of The Others. You convinced Michael Eisner to release The Others on November 1, and I also thought that was very inappropriate.”
“Halloween is indeed suitable for horror films, but those are usually low-budget horror movies without much box office ambition. Although The Others is also low-budget, we’ve placed very high expectations on its box office performance.”
“Now that I hear you talk about it, though, I’m sure you already have your own ideas.”
Eric nodded without further explanation, and Jeffrey showed no intention of asking further.
In truth, although the concept of release windows in the American film industry was already relatively mature by now, compared to more than twenty years later, it was still extremely crude.
As someone from the future, even though Eric had never directed films before and had not worked in distribution, simply living through that information-explosion era had naturally taught him certain rules of film distribution through constant exposure.