Yi Yue
Because of "Jiang Gong's Face", as a screenwriter born in the 1990s, she had early knowledge and drama experience that no one else could match.
In the past ten years, Wen Fangyi, a junior at Nanjing University, went through postgraduate studies, studying for a doctorate, starting a family, and finally becoming a mother; "Jiang Gong's Face", which brought "the most unpalatable meal", was written in a movie. The appearance of the campus drama was released, and then it became famous for the ivory tower. It was awarded the title of divine drama and started a national tour. So far, it has staged more than 400 performances in major theaters.
Facing her debut novel and becoming a famous novel, Wen Fangyi admits that it will indeed bring a lot of pressure to subsequent writing, because new works have new risks of failure, but she will not stop working hard to make good works and write good works. Complexity, written bizarre and reasonable.
1. The Birth of "Jiang Gong's Face"
Wen Fangyi and her junior year homework
"Jiang Gong's Face" is ten years old.
On the 15th of this month, this original drama, which was praised by the audience as "the best drama of the Republic of China", completed 443 performances and ushered in its tenth anniversary.
Screenwriter Wen Fangyi reposted the crew's celebratory tweet in the circle of friends, with a brief and solemn "Grateful Heart".
Going back ten years ago, Wen Fangyi, who was still a junior in the Department of Drama, Film and Television Art at the School of Literature, Nanjing University, never imagined that the script he created for the school year would become famous in one fell swoop, not only going out of the campus, but also entering the commercial performance market. And showed a strong vitality, enduring performances so far.
There has been a legend in the history of NTU for a long time. In 1943, Chiang Kai-shek wanted to be the president of National Central University (the predecessor of NTU). He was afraid that his identity would be difficult to convince the public, so he invited several professors to have a New Year's Eve dinner. Why don't you give Jiang Gong this face?
In May 2012, coincided with the 110th anniversary of Nanjing University, Professor Lv Xiaoping from the Department of Drama and Literature felt that this legend was in line with his drama view that "drama is to bake the soul of a person on fire", so he arranged this topic. As a "proposition composition" for the students in his class.
As a writer, Wen Fangyi has had the most trouble writing narrative essays since she was a child. She was born and raised in Nanjing. The primary school teacher arranged to write a travel journal. She handed in a tour of Xuanwu Lake, which was criticized as a "running account". It was only after she wrote an argumentative essay that she found the main venue. Several arguments were supported by arguments. The logic was rigorous and the rationality was clear, which was her favorite expression.
Still in middle school, the teacher asked everyone to analyze Maupassant's classic short story "My Uncle Jules". Most of the students paid attention to whether their views were correct or not, and analyzed how the text reflected the weak human feelings of the bourgeoisie. The child's mentality" empathy and analysis "if Yule is his uncle", whether the secular family can stand the test of reality, it makes sense, and the teacher likes it very much.
So with some vague intuition, Wen Fangyi felt that he could "go this way", dare to express, and dare to show his humanistic concern.
With the topic of "Do you want to give Jiang Gong this face?", Wen Fangyi, a college student, devoted herself to reading a large number of historical materials about the lives of intellectuals during the Republic of China. "The pain point is "embarrassment".
"My feeling is that the intellectuals of the Republic of China are really miserable, but this misery does not mean that they are very poor, but their status is very embarrassing. They want to be elites, but many realistic pursuits cannot be achieved, and they want to guide the general public. The public, but there are many gaps with the real public. I have an idea to express this embarrassing state."
So in her writing, there is a Chinese professor who is devoted to philosophy, stubborn and stubborn, and a suit-suited Chinese professor who resolutely refuses to go to the banquet. Jiang Gong's "lobbyist" Bian Congzhou; there is also Xia Xiaoshan, an elegant scholar who wears a long gown and loves food and bird warfare.
This three-person match, each with its own characteristics and playing with each other, is like the three friends in "Art", showing a complex chemical reaction in the confrontation of dialogue.
"All the political and academic issues that the three professors discussed before, in fact, these topics themselves are not important, what matters is what they are doing, they are seizing the spiritual high ground, for intellectuals, you are spiritual or The moral superiority is actually fighting for some kind of legitimacy for your subsequent actions.” The tight logic and comfortable fluidity of the three quarrels, although the screenwriter himself summed it up lightly as “As a beginner, I unexpectedly found myself still very Good at writing dialogues, at least basically human words", but it is still talked about by the vast audience.
Some humorous and witty language burdens, such as the recurring "I play mahjong" and "I have no experience in escaping", were printed on the peripheral merchandise of the play and became a cute and meaningful cultural symbol of the play.
Soon, the campus drama "Jiang Gong's Face" premiered on the campus of NTU. The two-hour performance was full of applause and laughter.
That night, Wen Fangyi went home and swiped the comments on the Internet. It was well received, and he was satisfied, thinking, "This is the pinnacle of life."
Unexpectedly, because of the excellent word of mouth, the repertoire ushered in a re-run on campus in October of the same year. At the beginning, ten performances were scheduled, and it was difficult to get a ticket for the performance. The crew simply wrote the additional performance information on the poster, intermittently from October 23. It ran until December 2, doubling the original plan.
The young screenwriter received business cards from all over the world, including seniors in the industry, as well as film and television companies, and various job opportunities.
Wen Fangyi "was so happy and scared. Because I didn't know how to deal with it, I just dealt with it without dealing with it." Still thanks to Mr. Lv Xiaoping's advancement, "Jiang Gong's Face" turned to commercial performances the following year. Under the urging of the teacher, Wen Fangyi and the group undertook the administrative work of connecting with theaters in various places.
2. On the tour
Slowly landed in the ivory tower and social life
Wen Fangyi claims to be a "screenwriter without a story".
Her creative path is not a heroic creation through the suffering of "a hundred evils in the sky", nor is it an effortless genius growth history, her career choice and life experience are a bit random. sex.
For example, when I was a child, watching TV "can't beat my parents", I followed many traditional opera programs, which was a little seed; for example, during the college entrance examination, my father happened to see that the first year began to recruit drama majors and thought it was a "good way to go to NTU." ”, when she started, she thought she would embark on the road of traditional opera research.
Another example is "By chance" wrote "Jiang Gong's Face".
But a fact that cannot be ignored is that in the face of a random exam paper that seems to be full of passives, it is already heroism in ordinary life to be able to mobilize one's strengths and fill in the answers in a hurry.
During the days of working in the touring crew, Wen Fangyi felt that he was a person who "had no other creative inspiration except books", and he had not even receded "the useless shyness of students". It's hard to tell a small request like turning on the air conditioner.
Fortunately, the companions of the crew are all family members, and they are mostly tolerant and protective of her. She is very grateful for this work experience, which allows her to slowly land from the gap between the ivory tower of the university and the real working environment.
Affected by the epidemic, Wen Fangyi's interview with the "Beijing Daily" regrettably could only be conducted by phone. The conversation was over. When she said goodbye, she was thinking about a "small thorn in her heart", which was also from that youthful era. Another small piece of evidence.
At that time, the script of "Jiang Gong's Face" was published in a single book, and she was invited by the publishing house for the first time to attend the signing event at the Shanghai Book Fair.
I'm nervous, I'm nervous to write any word other than my own name.
At this time, a gentleman asked to sign the reader's name, "I really hoped that he could show me his business card or ID card, but he didn't have it. He just said it, and his surname was Cai." He wrote a word "vegetable", and then hurriedly erased it in the readers' astonished inquiry.
After that, she imagined herself back to that moment countless times, and calmly said to the reader, sorry, then I will send you a new one and sign it again.
It's a pity that in reality, the signature next to the blotted ink dot still left the same physical evidence for Wen Fangyi's less relaxed youth.
"I always think that I have to tell this kind of black history myself. If the reader sees the newspaper and can contact me, I will send him a new one right away!"
3. Fight Stress
Art creation is an adventure
In June 2018, the first season of the Shanghai-language drama "Flowers", written by Wen Fangyi and directed by Ma Junfeng, was adapted from Mr. Jin Yucheng's novel.
A major difficulty in adapting "Flowers" is to reduce the length and retain the flavor.
The original work is 350,000 words long, and the story spans from the 1960s to the 1990s. The whole book is written in half-written Shanghainese and describes the ups and downs of a generation of Shanghai children.
The volume of the adaptation of the drama "Flowers" is 3 hours, that is, the number of words in the script of more than 30,000 words.
Due to space and story constraints, the main creator decided to divide the whole story into three seasons. In the first season, Wen Fangyi did not simply intercept the pre-edited content of the novel, but extracted the storyline of a group of protagonists, and presented the main plot lightly. The plot is compact and clear, and there is no Shanghai style.
During the performance, the Shanghai language performance was boldly used, which attracted applause from the audience who were fans of the original work.
With "Flowers", Wen Fangyi won the best screenwriter of the year in the "One Drama Awards" in 2019. As Wen Fangyi's second play, it can be considered that he did not lose face of "Jiang Gong".
Wen Fangyi didn't speak very fast, but the narration of her conversation was very smooth, with few out of rhythm pauses.
Just like being a screenwriter with a very high starting point, Wen Fangyi also has his own spirit and pace that is neither hurried nor slow.
She said that she was not in a hurry to succeed, or to surpass anything, but to write slowly.
For a work, you should "put on your makeup and then come out to meet people".
Before the premiere of the new play "Activities Become Humans", a young staff member of the Guangzhou Opera House interviewed her and asked her how to maintain high-quality creations. She was delighted, "I (at that time) only had two works, so this would also Is it called maintaining high-quality writing?" She claims to be lazy and does not have a particularly strong creative impulse. Compared with those writers who can produce a work every year, she is an ultra-low-productivity screenwriter.
And, in her opinion, "The way to always maintain high-quality creation is that after you create high-quality work, you don't create it again."
"All creators will hate the term Jiang Langcai, but the only way you can avoid it is to never write after having a successful work. When your debut work is a famous work, it does bring great benefits to subsequent writing. Because new works have new risks of failure, art is like this, art has no permanent qualification certificate, even a master-level person will inevitably fail in his life. This is the deepest part of the creator's heart. Anxiety. But even then, I won't stop trying to make a good work."
4. A different kind of "pregnancy"
The screenwriter in the delivery room didn't stop watching
In the following years, Wen Fangyi's steps were brisk and balanced. She successfully completed her postgraduate studies and continued her doctorate under Professor Lv Xiaoping. Her research direction was Cantonese Opera in Guangdong. It was a return to her freshman year. 's original intention.
At the same time, she also started her own family.
In 2021, Wen Fangyi ushered in an unprecedented high-yield year. In addition to the second season of "Blossoms", which came as scheduled, there is also a stage play "Activity Changes Human Shape", which was adapted from writer Wang Meng's novel of the same name and directed by Li Bonan. It is the story of the intellectuals in the arranged marriages of the 1940s, and it still has extraordinary practical significance today.
What prompted Wen Fangyi, who has always been calm, to take on two plays at the same time, was a nurturing that was as important as creation.
Also in 2021, Wen Fangyi "upgraded" to become the mother of a pair of lovely twin boys.
The moment I learned that I was a mother for the first time, my vague career plan had specific and subtle goals, to work and to make money.
It is almost a mother's instinct, she wants to provide a solid enough backing for the upcoming two little lives.
So I communicated with the crews on both sides about the possible physical condition and expected date of birth during pregnancy, and I started the double homework of being a screenwriter and a new mother.
At work, she soaked in the literature of the desk work, and watched various documentaries about childbirth, amniotic fluid embolism, high blood pressure, high blood sugar, and looked at the worrying terms, but Wen Fangyi was indifferent, probably because Being in the art industry, I know that every project and everything is ultimately accomplished, it requires hard work and luck.
She was thus cultivated to act under pessimism, and she always felt that since she had to prepare, she had to do her homework for all possible bad situations.
There are still two months before the due date, and babies who are less than 30 weeks old have to report in advance.
But when talking about this experience of premature birth, which ordinary people seem to be quite difficult, Wen Fangyi unconsciously said a series of "lucky".
"I think other people's nervousness seems to ease my nervousness. Compared with my husband, I am so calm. Just like in the middle of the night, I took a little time to judge whether the amniotic fluid was broken or leaking urine. I am sure it was amniotic fluid. After it broke, I was fortunate to have previewed the relevant knowledge, so I took the initiative to lie down and let my husband call a car."
"At the time, I thought we were very lucky. The hospital I chose was in an urban area, and the traffic jam was particularly severe during the day. Fortunately, it was only in the middle of the night when the incident happened. The doctor said that there was no major problem with the fetus, and it was best to lie flat for a week to protect the fetus. , I'm still figuring out how to work while lying down? I didn't expect contractions after a day."
"At first, I only thought it was low back pain. I thought I was lying flat for too long, so I asked my husband to press my waist until the pain was so severe that I felt like I was about to call out, so I called the nurse and went straight in. Delivery room. I guess the expectant mothers around me must hate this kind of person who can give birth just after arriving. The whole process is better than I thought, because the doctors are very kind and will always encourage me with the tone of encouraging children. "
"Because of the lateral incision, the postpartum suturing nurse is still chatting with me, 'Look how lucky you are, just now several directors are there. After your life is over, there is an emergency caesarean section over there, and all the staff are gone'."
"Then I felt that I was really lucky. Even giving birth to a child was viewed from a possible observational perspective. I saw that the mothers around me had been beaten without pain, and then I realized that I gave birth before I had time to beat the painless. It's over, I observe where these doctors are standing, what are they doing, when a full-term baby is born, the nurse will let the baby suck on the mother's nipple, because my baby goes directly into the incubator, I just watch them compare this The two children cry differently..."
She was accustomed to taking a part of herself out of her mind and examining it rationally even if she was immersed in a certain moment.
When experiencing the emotions of the moment, with the perspective of the creator, take a step back and observe yourself at this moment.
For example, when we talked about our psychological changes after becoming a parent, "I once thought about whether I should be a little rebellious, not take a job in any unit, and be a freelance screenwriter, but after having children, people will really become a lot more timid. ."
After speaking this sentence, the screenwriter Wen Fangyi looked at her mother Wen Fangyi and corrected the description, "It can't be said to be timid, but for the sake of greater responsibility, I wronged some of my free thoughts."
end
Details are a screenwriter's weapon
Before you know it, you laugh at yourself as a "screenwriter without a story". You have a magical weapon that belongs to screenwriters. You can carefully collect and store the subtle details of your life. In the future, it will be like kneading homemade old yeast into dough. Like, rub the details into the work.
If you're also a story-obsessed reader, you may find that some of the best screenwriters of our time have such weapons.
David Hare, who wrote the classic British realist drama "Skylight", has been obsessed with the details of life that fictional story writers can never make up, and called it "delicious situation".
Sakamoto Yuji, who wrote "Tokyo Love Story" and "Quartet", pursued to write the most daily trivial things in life in the TV series, so the protagonists with their own thoughts discussed at the table whether lemon juice should be squeezed into fried chicken. The evidence that friends who are together as family members is that everyone's hair emits the same shampoo scent.
The best screenwriters are raised by the minutiae of life.
Ten years after "The Face of Jiang Gong", the girl who once tremblingly signed autographs for readers has become an observer who collects details in the silent places of life, a struggle against being immersed in any past honor or good feeling She has become a professional screenwriter who is always rational and avoids being moved by herself, and a mother who can abandon the comfort in front of her for the happiness of her children.
In the next ten years, decades, she will be many, many others, and will continue to be, herself.