In early June, Boston's evening breeze carried the coolness characteristic of New England, and the air was filled with the damp, salty smell of the Atlantic Ocean.
The flight from Shanghai to Logan International Airport had just landed. Lin Qi got into the black sedan that had come to pick him up. The car drove away from the airport and was soon forced to slow down as they entered a section of Boston's famous "Big the Big Dig " highway construction site. Outside the window, huge cranes and intricate scaffolding stood like steel monsters on both sides of Interstate 90, and dusty crash barriers made the city's night view look rough and full of industrial feel.
To break the monotony of the traffic jam, the driver turned on the car radio. On the station, a sports commentator was furiously shouting, frantically discussing the shocking scandal that had just rocked American sports: Chicago Cubs MLB superstar Sammy Souza's bat broke during a game, and he was caught on the spot using a banned cork bat. The entire nation's sports media was in a frenzy of conflict over "cheating and the rules."
Lin Qi had no interest in the baseball scandal. He pressed the speakerphone button on his car phone and connected with David Fincher, who was in Burbank, Los Angeles.
"Long time no see, David. How's ' Kingmaker ' coming along?"
"The two back-to-back films are basically finished, except for some cameo appearances by current players during the offseason." David Fincher's voice on the other end of the phone sounded heavily weary, yet also tinged with an almost manic excitement. "Lin, I'm locked in the editing room all day. The amount of footage we're facing exceeds our initial expectations."
Lin Qi looked at the construction site searchlights slowly passing by outside the car window and calmly asked, "Didn't you take enough pictures?"
"It's not too little, it's too much. The amount of footage is enormous. Shooting two films back-to-back, we accumulated more than four times the amount of negatives needed for a typical Hollywood drama." Fincher rustled through something on the other end of the phone, "You'd never guess how much effort we put into post-production. To perfectly recreate the Old Boston Garden from the late 90s, I not only used the original parquet flooring you brought over, but I also had the special effects team painstakingly reconstruct the dome structure of the stands and the dim, yellowish shadows of the spotlights using CGI."
"You're using CGI for this kind of thing? People usually use it for big scenes, right?"
"Oh, once during a live-action shoot, I accidentally caught a glimpse of a water bottle that wasn't produced until after 2000 in the background, and another time an extra was wearing the wrong pair of sneakers that didn't belong to that era, so I used CGI to erase them all."
Listening to the neurotic complaints on the other end of the phone, Lin Qi couldn't help but smile slightly, " David, you're a hopeless control freak."
"Likewise, Lin." Fincher chuckled on the other end of the phone. "Speaking of control freaks, I even filmed an extra scene last month. The plot was that you ran to the sidelines... what you always call 'micromanagement,' interfering with the team's formation, seriously offended the head coach's authority, and as a result, he pointed his finger at you and gave you a good scolding."
Lin Qi paused for a moment, then frowned. "Which head coach? Rick Adelman? He's always had a good temper; we've never had this kind of conflict in real life. David, you're making this up."
"This is Hollywood, Lin. We need this kind of dramatic tension; it's a necessary dramatic adaptation," Fincher retorted confidently. "Besides, it's not entirely fabricated. Before filming, I specifically asked Coach Adelman, and he admitted that when you were pointing at his whiteboard on the sidelines, he did indeed have a few moments where he wanted to curse at you. I just translated his inner monologues into the movie."
Lin Qi laughed at this absurd logic and shook his head helplessly.
Fincher's tone then turned serious, tinged with excitement. "However, what torments me the most, and what fascinates me the most, is the material you had shipped from the Boston warehouse."
Fincher was referring to footage Lin Qi had arranged for the team's internal cameramen to film several years in advance, documenting Boston's four-peat.
"The documentary footage you gave me is a treasure trove. The crude surveillance footage of Rick Carlisle raging in the meeting room, the handheld video of champagne spraying in the locker room during the shortened 1999 season, and the scouts' hidden camera angles. The composition is a mess, the lighting is terrible, but I can't bear to cut them!" Fincher's speech quickened, like a madman who had discovered a new continent. "Now I'm having the post-production team cut out the more interesting parts and see how we can use them. I plan to forcibly downgrade the image quality of our 35mm film, even deliberately adding the kind of noise, snowflakes, and slight screen tearing typical of late 1990s television broadcasts. The boundary between feature film and documentary will be completely erased, and the audience in the theater will feel like they're watching a leaked, top-secret internal videotape. Doesn't that sound interesting?"
This extreme pursuit of realism is precisely the core reason why Lin Qi chose Fincher to direct the film. This two-part " Kingmaker " will be an important part of his efforts to reshape his public image and counter David Stern.
"If you need additional budget for post-production editing and color grading, just contact the production team. The funds in the escrow account are enough to cover those expenses," Lin Qi got to the point. "I just need to ensure the quality of the final product."
"You can rest assured about that. I'll show you the sample footage as soon as the initial cut is out. It'll definitely surprise you." Fincher hung up the phone decisively.
Half an hour later, the car finally drove out of the congested highway and into a suburban community of Boston.
Lin Qi pushed open the door, handed his suit jacket to the butler who came to greet him, and went straight to the living room.
The living room was lit only by a few dim floor lamps, and the television screen flickered brightly. Beth Finneran, the fiancée, was wearing a comfortable cotton loungewear set, her legs curled up on the sofa, intently watching the television broadcast.
Hearing Lin Qi's approaching footsteps, Beth turned her head, a fleeting moment of embarrassment flashing in her eyes, and instinctively reached for the remote control on the coffee table.
In the house where they lived together, there was an unspoken rule: basketball was not discussed at home.
But tonight, that rule didn't apply.
Because on television screens, ESPN was broadcasting a special preview of the NBA Finals. This epic battle between the Boston Celtics and the Los Angeles Lakers had completely spilled over into the sports world. Even the movie " Finding Nemo," which had just been released in the US at the end of May, paled in comparison to this basketball craze. The "Celtics-Lakers rivalry" had become the only unavoidable topic of conversation on every street corner in America.
As a sensible fiancé, Lin Qi didn't mention the broken rule. He went to the bar, poured himself a glass of iced water, then walked to the sofa, sat down next to Beth, and casually glanced at the television screen.
"Do you need to adjust to the time difference?" Beth gave up looking for the remote, took off her headphones, and leaned on Lin Qi's shoulder.
"I slept the whole way, I don't need it anymore." Lin Qi took a sip of ice water, feeling the coolness of the ice.
Due to David Stern's suspension, Lin Qi is not only unable to go to Staples in Los Angeles, but he can't even enter his own New Garden. This means that for all the upcoming NBA Finals, he can only sit on this sofa and watch them through the broadcast cameras like any other ordinary fan.
This is a first for me; it's a wonderful outsider experience.
2003 NBA NBA Finals.
Boston Celtics vs. Los Angeles Lakers.
It's about to begin.