亚裔富人“撒钱”为《疯狂的亚洲富人》包场
上个月，一群硅谷风险投资和科技人士在加利福尼亚州洛斯阿尔托斯(Los Altos)一家老字号喜福居聚餐。
Tucking into Peking duck and Dungeness crab in kung pao sauce, the diners, most of them Asian-American and some fierce competitors with one another, set about to tackle a common goal.
席间各位多数都是平日里相互激烈竞争的亚裔美国人，他们往嘴里送着北京烤鸭和裹着宫保酱汁的珍宝蟹，而他们则要着手达成一个共同的目标。
“The question to all of them was, ‘How can this be successful, sustainably?’ ” said Bing Chen, an entrepreneur who organized the event.
“对我们所有人来说，问题是‘它如何能成功，并且持续下去?’”组织了这场活动的企业家陈冰(音)说。
They were not discussing a start-up, a scholarship program or a political campaign. The task at hand was to take one of the summer’s most anticipated new movies, “Crazy Rich Asians,” and turn it into a bona fide cultural phenomenon.
他们并不是在讨论某家初创企业、奖学金项目或政治竞选。他们手头上的任务是让这个夏天最受期待的新电影之一《疯狂的亚洲富人》成为一个实实在在的文化现象。
[Read A.O. Scott’s review of “Crazy Rich Asians.”]
[点击阅读A·O·斯科特对《疯狂的亚洲富人》的影评。]
From that meeting a social media hashtag campaign called #GoldOpen was born in anticipation of the movie’s opening nationwide on Wednesday. But that would not be enough — a number of those at the dinner, after all, were rich Asians themselves.
在那场会面中，为了迎接这部电影周三在全美的上映，一个名为#GoldOpen(黄金开画)的社交媒体标签活动诞生了。但这可能还不够——毕竟这场晚餐上有很多人自己就是亚裔富人。
So from New York City to Los Angeles, Houston to Honolulu, these industry leaders and others have spent many thousands of dollars renting out dozens of theaters for special screenings of the movie before and during its opening week. The campaign aims to fuel widespread interest in a film that could blaze a pathway for greater Asian-American representation in Hollywood, which organizers as well as the film’s creators and stars say is long overdue.
于是，从纽约城到洛杉矶，从休斯顿到火奴鲁鲁，这些行业领袖和其他人花了数以千计美元，租下数十家电影院，在开画周之前和期间举行特别放映活动。这么做的目的是为了引发外界对这部电影的广泛兴趣，而该片可能会成为亚裔美国人在好莱坞获得更多代表的一个途径，放映活动组织者和以影片主创人员、演员都表示，这样的代表早就该出现了。
“High tides raise all boats, so we wanted to see if we could be that high tide,” said Andrew Chau, a co-founder of Boba Guys, a bubble tea chain. He chipped in for screenings in San Francisco and in Texas.
“水涨船高，所以我们想看看自己能不能让水涨起来，”珍珠奶茶连锁店Boba Guys的创始人安德鲁·周(音)说。他也为旧金山和德克萨斯州的放映活动贡献了资金。
The backers have been spending $1,600 to $5,100 per screening, depending on the size of the theater, its location and whether the film is shown during prime time. Those tickets have then been distributed for free to Asian-American youth and community groups, friends and the occasional V.I.P.
这些支持者在每场放映活动上花费了1600到5100美元，具体金额取决于影院的大小、地点和影片放映时间是否为黄金时段。这些放映活动的电影票被免费分发给亚裔美国年轻人、社区团体和朋友，偶尔还把票发给贵宾。
“When’s the last time you’ve seen so many Asians in a theater?” said Tim Lim, a 33-year-old political consultant, following a screening in Washington on Monday. His friend helped pay for the screening, and Mr. Lim vowed to see the movie on his own dime, at least three more times.
“你上一次看到这么多亚洲人在电影院是什么时候?”33岁的政治咨询顾问蒂姆·林(音)周一在华盛顿的一场放映活动结束后说。林先生的朋友帮忙出了放映费，他还保证会自掏腰包去看，至少还要再看三遍。
“I want this to make as much money as possible,” he said. “I’m going to watch the IMAX, 3D, $25 version to get the cost up.”
“我想让这部电影尽可能多地赚钱，”他说。“我要看IMAX巨幕版、3D版，25美元版本，推高票房”。
It’s not the first time communities have organized buyouts for films. Earlier this year, African-American school groups, churches and businesses bought seats in New York City and Chicago for “Black Panther.” In 2008, “Sex and the City” saw dozens of coordinated screenings for sororities and bachelorette parties.
这不是各个社区第一次组织这种电影包场活动了。今年早些时候，非裔美国人学校、教堂和企业在纽约城和芝加哥买下了《黑豹》(Black Panther)影院座位。2008年，《欲望都市》(Sex and the City)多场协作放映会成了姐妹会和单身派对的观影场所。
The social media push also recalls past hashtag campaigns of #whitewashedOUT and #StarringJohnCho, which lamented the lack of Asian-American representation in Hollywood. The slogan #GoldOpen was chosen not just as a play on the film’s opening, but also in part to blend and co-opt the racially tinged labels of “yellow” and “brown” sometimes attributed to Asians.
这次的社交媒体推动力量也让人想起过去哀叹好莱坞缺乏亚裔美国人代表的#whitewashedOUT(洗白出局)和#StarringJohnCho(让约翰·赵[John Cho]来演)标签行动。选择#GoldOpen这个标语不仅是在影片开画上做文章，还有一部分原因是混入、借鉴了亚洲人身上有时候被贴上带有种族色彩的“黄色”和“棕色”标签。
But in keeping with the light tone of the film — a romantic comedy about a Chinese-American professor’s friction with her boyfriend’s ultrarich Singaporean family — #GoldOpen was meant to capture the excitement surrounding the film and to encourage, rather than criticize.
但是为同电影的轻松基调保持一致——这是一部华裔美国教授与男友的新加坡富豪家庭发生摩擦的浪漫喜剧——#GoldOpen旨在捕捉围绕着电影的种种兴奋情绪，作出鼓励，而不是批评。
The movie, which reportedly cost $30 million to make, is expected to have a modestly successful opening and sell $26 million in tickets through its first weekend, according to a survey of analysts by The Hollywood Reporter. While the #GoldOpen campaign is independent of the film production, the director — Jon M. Chu, son of the Chef Chu’s owner — and its actors have conducted a parallel PR campaign. Before showings, the film’s stars appear in a brief trailer, asking moviegoers to spread the word about the film on social media.
据报道，这部电影耗资3000万美元，《好莱坞报道》(The Hollywood Reporter)分析师的一项调查显示，该片上映的第一个周末有望取得小小成功，取得2600万美元的票房。虽然#GoldOpen活动独立于电影制片，但导演朱浩伟(他是喜福居餐厅[Chef Chu]所有者的儿子)及其演员已经开展了齐头并进的公关活动。上映之前，片中主演出现在一个简短的预告片中，要求观众们在社交媒体上宣传这部电影。
Some of them even showed up at a #GoldOpen screening in Los Angeles on Aug. 8, as did Adele Lim, one of the screenwriters. Being L.A., the screening, paid for by Kevin Lin, a co-founder of the streaming website Twitch, was V.I.P. heavy: Hollywood insiders, company founders and even the Olympic figure skating siblings Alex and Maia Shibutani.
其中一些主演甚至出现在8月8日洛杉矶的#GoldOpen放映活动中，此外还有该片的编剧之一阿黛尔·林(Adele Lim)。放映由流媒体网站Twitch的联合创始人林士斌出资，由于在洛杉矶举行，所以来了不少贵宾，其中不乏好莱坞内部人士和公司创始人，甚至还有奥林匹克花样滑冰选手，艾利克斯和米娅·涉谷(Alex and Maia Shibutani)兄妹。
The audience booed in unison at an instance of racism in the opening scene, whispered during a montage of Singapore street food and reveled in Mandarin, Cantonese and the dialect Hokkien splashed into the dialogue.
观众们对影片开始一幕的种族主义报以整齐的嘘声，在新加坡街头小吃的蒙太奇镜头中窃窃私语，并且沉浸在片中的普通话、粤语和闽南语对话之中。
When the movie ended, the film’s male lead, Henry Golding, and fellow “Crazy Rich Asians” actors, including Selena Tan, Harry Shum, Jr., and Jimmy O. Yang appeared and thanked the attendees for their support.
影片结束时，《疯狂的亚洲富人》的男主角亨利·戈尔丁和陈美廪、岑勇康、欧阳万成等演员登台感谢出席者的支持。
“We just checked Rotten Tomatoes,” Mr. Yang told the audience. “We currently got 16 reviews, and we’re at 100 percent!” (As of Wednesday morning, rottentomatoes.com — one of whose founders, Patrick Lee, is a #GoldOpen backer — had counted 67 reviews, 96 percent of which it considered positive.)
“我们刚看过烂番茄，”欧阳万成告诉观众。“我们目前有16条影评，好评率是百分之百!“截至周三上午，rottentomatoes.com上关于该片已经有了67条评论，其中96%是好评，该网站的创始人之一帕特里克·李(Patrick Lee)，是#GoldOpen的支持者。
While walking out of a Monday screening in the heart of Washington’s Chinatown, Mr. Lim, the political consultant, said he could not believe that it had been 25 years since the film “Joy Luck Club,” the last Hollywood film with a majority-Asian cast that wasn’t a period piece.
政治顾问蒂姆·林周一在华盛顿唐人街中心看完片子后，表示无法相信电影《喜福会》是25年前的事，它是上一部主要由亚洲演员饰演，而又不是历史剧的好莱坞电影。
“It’s something we should be embracing and seeing more of,” Mr. Lim went on. “I hope the uniqueness that it is for me, for my kids they’re like, ‘Oh, this is a normal thing.’ ”
“我们应该接受，并且看到更多的这样的东西，“林先生还说。“我希望只有我会觉得很特别，而我的孩子们则会觉得，‘哦，这很正常。’”
