Bao Shi’s collection of novels "Baizhuang" published in 2003 includes "The Story of Zizhou".
□ Yangcheng Evening News reporter Zhu Shaojie
Recently, director Zhi Li signed a contract with writer Bao Shi, and reached a consensus on adapting Bao Shi’s novel The Story of Zizhou. The two sides will jointly make a film of the same name. The Story of Zizhou is a literary IP with great market value (which can be used to adapt the copyright material of TV series and movies). In August 2006, it won the seventh "Guangdong Luxun Literature and Art Award and Literature Award".
In an exclusive interview with Yangcheng Evening News reporter, Zhi Li said that Bao Shi’s The Story of Zizhou made him read the characteristics of an era and a generation. The novel tells the story of an ordinary boy: a father who is rich in knowledge but poor, a beautiful and capable mother who loves money but is cold, and a 12-year-old boy can’t tell who is right or wrong. After his father died of illness, he went from the city to the town alone, went to his grandfather alone, and decided not to go back … … Zhi Li believes that The Story of Zizhou is a China version of Green Book, which tells the collision between rural and urban values in China. "Looking at the world of adults from the perspective of children is the uniqueness of this novel." He told reporters that the sincere feelings of three generations of grandfather, son and grandson in the novel made him cry twice.
Zhi Li saw The Story of Zizhou through a friend’s introduction seven or eight years ago, and he was already very interested in the story. He believes that China films need to speak with content. "Today, the audience in China has become rational, and creators need to use good stories to achieve a double harvest of art and market." Although Bao Shi’s story is very delicate, there is still room for adjustment in film expression. Zhi Li said that he and his team are currently adapting The Story of Zizhou, hoping to start from the original story and bring out thoughts on social values.
The Story of Zizhou is a companion piece of the film My Father and Mother. Bao Shi’s novella "Memorial" was adapted into the film "My Father and Mother", and the film won the Silver Bear Award at the 50th Berlin Film Festival, the Excellent Film Award at the China Film Watch Award in 1999, the Best Film Award at the 23rd Hundred Flowers Award, the Best Film Award at the 20th Golden Rooster Award, the Excellent Feature Film Award at the Shanghai Film Critics Award, the Sundance Film Festival Award in the United States and the Amethyst Award at the Iranian International Film Festival.
It is reported that the film "The Story of Zizhou" will start at the end of this year and be released in 2020. Bao Shi accepted an exclusive interview with the reporter of Yangcheng Evening News. He said that the novel "The Story of Zizhou" was written for intellectuals of this era and reflected the historical brand of an era.
Interview A wants to write about the situation of intellectuals.
Yangcheng Evening News: What is the opportunity for this adaptation of The Story of Zizhou into a movie?
Bao Shi: It has been 20 years since The Story of Zizhou was published. To be honest, it surprised me a little. In March this year, director Zhi Li approached me through a friend and asked about the purchase of the novel copyright. Soon he came to Guangzhou to sign the contract. When we first discussed it, the director also suggested that I be a screenwriter. For the sake of health and time, I declined and suggested that he hire someone else to be a screenwriter. Another factor is that I don’t want to be involved in this story again. The same thing made me do it for the second time, and I lost interest.
Yangcheng Evening News: What kind of work is the Story of Zizhou in your creation?
Bao Shi: This work was created in the 1990s, and it was published back and forth with the original "Memorial" of My Father and Mother. I hope to write about the situation of intellectuals at that time, including their living conditions, mental state and so on, through the story of Zizhou. The Story of Zizhou is just a shell, the core of which is to express and discuss the embarrassment of cultural people in society. They have neither money nor power, but they are particularly "stubborn". After the novel was published, it was included in one of my collections. When some friends saw it, they all said it was well written, and some even cried for it. Director Zhi Li told me that he was also very moved when he read this novel. I guess it was the emotion in this story that touched him.
In this story, Zizhou’s father works in a group art museum and writes novels in his spare time. Life is poor and stubborn, and no one around him likes him. His classmates and friends, including his wife, don’t take him seriously In his hometown, a small town, people’s attitudes towards him are quite the opposite. Many people in the town, including his first lover, think that he can write novels and publish articles in newspapers and periodicals, which is very promising. I just want to show such a phenomenon through such a comparison. I don’t know what this phenomenon can mean.
Being able to talk and feel is the premise of my cooperation with the director.
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Yangcheng Evening News: What do you think of the role of the novel author in the film adaptation?
Bao Shi: Film is the art of directors, and it is director-centered. As an original author or a screenwriter, you may have to obey the director’s feelings when creating. This is one of its characteristics. Then the author must understand this. But this is not to say that there is no author’s own voice. If you cooperate with a good director, and the director and the screenwriter respect and inspire each other, the screenwriter can provide better things to the director. The director has a vision and will recognize these things, which will add color to the work. If he meets a bad director, he will not adopt the writer’s good idea. In fact, there is nothing the author can do.
Yangcheng Evening News: How did you choose the director? How to cooperate with the director?
Bao Shi: According to my limited experience, it mainly depends on whether I can get along with the director. Being able to talk and have feelings is the premise of cooperation. Actually, I didn’t take the initiative to write a movie script. Since "My Father and Mother", others have been looking for me. All along, I have been writing novels at my own pace and from my own heart, and I have never thought of adapting them into movies. After "My Father and Mother", some directors came to me, and some of them were quite well paid, but I basically refused because I couldn’t talk properly and didn’t feel anything. Later, I only cooperated with director ZhangJiaBei in two films. One is Cherry, which was released and won several awards. ZhangJiaBei, an overseas Chinese in Japan, made a film in Japan, and once made a pottery humanoid, which had a certain influence. That year, he called me from Japan and wanted to shoot a story about mother’s love. Because he saw My Father and Mother, he thought I could write this story well, so he came to me. I didn’t say yes right away. I suggested to him that we’d better meet and talk, and then decide whether to cooperate or not when we feel it. Later, when he came back from Japan, we met in Shanghai and talked for a few days. I felt a little bit, so I wrote him "Cherry". The second film was called "Wind in the Sky" and was not released.
Yangcheng Evening News: Novelists write sharply about the complexity of human nature in their works, but they may not be able to fully present it in movies. What do you think of this trade-off?
Bao Shi: Generally speaking, novels are richer than movies. Novels are expressed in words, so there is a lot of room for imagination and tossing and turning, which can fully express the author’s own feelings. For example, when describing the beauty of a woman, you can imagine her beauty infinitely. Film is a weakness in this respect, because it fixes what you imagine. But its performance is very direct and intuitive. Therefore, some of the contents in the novel can’t be fully presented by the film, but it can only be said to be a regrettable art. But a good movie, it will express the words to the greatest extent possible. Classic movies can generally do it.
On the other hand, words may not be able to do what is to be expressed in movies. For example, a very classic expression may not be able to say many words. So my understanding is that literature and film have their own strengths. Now there are some people who write novels and despise film creation. I don’t agree with this view. When a movie was made, it was made with real money. The adaptation of literary works into films also requires strict screening. He (the director) should either consider the box office factor or the possibility of winning the prize. Of course, the level of film production is mixed, but there are also rubbish writers in the writers’ team. Therefore, you have no need or qualification to despise other art categories. To put it another way, the writer’s works are published, published and then adapted into movies and TV series, which objectively plays the role of promoting literary works. Why not? So there is no need to refuse it.
Young writers are not advised to write movies and TV scripts as soon as they come out.
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Yangcheng Evening News: Novelists and literary works play an important role in the development of China’s film creation. On the other hand, film directors often complain that there are too few good scripts and stories. What do you think of this?
Bao Shi: Most excellent films are full of characters and profound thoughts, all of which are adapted from literary works. This is already a consensus. Novelists can only write a good novel when they mobilize their rich life accumulation and work hard. When such a novel is to be adapted into a movie, its connotation and details are naturally much better than other scripts. Rather than film scripts adapted from excellent novels, most of them come from professional screenwriters. There is often a problem in the scripts they write — — The fabricated traces are heavy and make the audience feel fake.
This phenomenon was very obvious in the 1980s.
Professional screenwriters may pay too much attention to the plot, which is a prominent problem for them. Screenwriters and writers are actually two different ways of writing novels. Now the film, in fact, has a routine, forming a routine. But a good novel can’t fall into any routine, nor can it be repeated with any works.
Yangcheng Evening News: Many young writers now want to be screenwriters. What do you think?
Bao Shi: From my limited experience, I don’t recommend writing movies and TV plays as soon as I come out, because the success rate is relatively low. The output of movies is actually very limited, and the cycle is relatively long. There are only a few well-known directors. From the very beginning, I think it’s risky to write a script. From the most practical point of view, I suggest writing a novel first. It’s more likely that the novel will be published. With so many publications in China and almost no threshold online platforms, it’s relatively easy to publish a novel. Writing a movie is different. It’s better to write a good novel first. When a good novel comes out, a director may come to you.