After visiting Steve Ross and finishing up matters on the East Coast, Simon headed straight from Long Island to Kennedy International Airport and flew back to Los Angeles.
By the time he returned to Dume Point Manor, it was only a little past two in the afternoon on Saturday on the West Coast.
As he entered the villa, A girl Alison Norris came forward and told him that Janet had gone out shopping and was not in the villa. However, Ms. Veronica Johnston had come by that morning.
Simon went to the nursery on the first floor of the villa. Veronica was holding Melbourne and standing by the sea-facing glass window, seemingly still murmuring something to the little one.
Seeing Simon, Veronica looked a little surprised. Her arms holding the child paused for a moment before she greeted him, "You... Janet said you might not be back until Monday."
"Things over there were finished."
Simon replied, walked over to the nearby sofa and sat down, then looked at Veronica, who was wearing a very homey light green knitted dress today, but said nothing more.
Just as he sat down, D girl walked in, holding a milk bottle in her hand.
Seeing Simon sitting on the sofa in the room, Deborah also looked a little surprised, but she quickly smiled in greeting, handed the milk bottle to Veronica, and asked, "Boss, would you like anything to drink?"
Simon shook his head. "You go ahead and get busy."
D girl nodded, maintaining a casual expression, and only patted her chest lightly after walking out of the room.
It just felt too strange.
The atmosphere between her boss and the lady's aunt was really odd.
After D girl left, Veronica hesitated for a moment, then carried the child over and sat down on the single sofa beside Simon. She carefully dripped some milk onto the back of her hand to test the temperature. Still not quite at ease, she tasted it herself before bringing the bottle to the little one's mouth.
"I came over this morning. Um, there were some things to handle, so I took the chance to see Melbourne. I'll head back tomorrow."
Veronica's voice sounded again beside him, explaining in a self-talking sort of way.
Simon gave a barely audible hum and continued watching Veronica feed the little one.
Only after the little one had drunk most of the bottle did Veronica set it aside. She gently wiped the corners of the baby's mouth, then looked down at the child in her arms. Her soft gaze carried a trace of absentmindedness.
A moment later, Simon suddenly said, "In a few more months, once the child can fly, take him to Australia."
Veronica looked up, seemingly not understanding what Simon meant.
Simon paused, then explained, "Janet and I both have a lot of things to handle. It happens that you can come help look after him for a while."
As chief financial officer of Johnston Holding Company, Veronica was hardly idle.
However, after hearing Simon's explanation, Veronica nodded without the slightest hesitation. "All right." Then, as if covering something up, she added, "Everyone is looking forward to little Melbourne spending some time in Australia."
Janet returned half an hour later. When Simon mentioned the matter, she did not object. Having been sealed by the little one for a full year, she was actually more eager for some free space.
Although it still felt a bit strange, she had zero worries about handing the child over to her own aunt for care, especially since there was a whole big family in Australia
This year's Golden Globe Awards ceremony was set for January 18, a Saturday.
After the weekend, the 49th Golden Globe Awards ceremony drew steadily closer.
Compared with the information in his memory, the changes in the nominated films for this year's Golden Globes were even more obvious.
In his original memory, the winner for Best Drama Film at this Golden Globe should have been Bugsy, a biographical crime thriller directed by Barry Levinson that resembled Scarface.
However, this time Simon had not seen Bugsy appear on North American screens at all last year.
After the entanglement with Daenerys Entertainment and the box office failure of his previous directorial effort Avalon, although Daenerys Entertainment had not shown any obvious continued targeting toward the several filmmakers involved, no Hollywood studio dared to cooperate easily with Barry Levinson anymore.
Not only that, CAA, which should have reached the peak of its influence in recent years, had completely lost its original dominance under Simon's deliberate balancing of WMA and ICM.
Talent agencies were ultimately just appendages of the Hollywood film industry.
Simon had not paid much attention to Bugsy, but when he flipped through the list of Golden Globe nominated films in the new week, he unexpectedly discovered that another very important movie had also vanished from the nomination list.
Disney's 2D animated film Beauty and the Beast.
In the original timeline, the 2D animated film Beauty and the Beast, released at the end of 1991, had not only accumulated over 200 million dollars at the North American box office but had also won the Golden Globe for Best Musical or Comedy Film and become the first animated film nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars.
Now that movie had disappeared.
It was naturally effortless for Simon to learn about certain Hollywood matters now. After casually giving a few instructions, the results he received, combined with the information in his memory, ultimately revealed that the matter still had to do with Pixar.
The Beauty and the Beast project had indeed been fanned away by Simon, this big butterfly.
The story went back to the production process of 2D animated films.
Traditional 2D animated films were entirely hand-drawn frame by frame by animators.
For a 2D animated film, even calculating at a 90-minute runtime, the film totaled 5,400 seconds. At 24 frames per second, that required 129,600 drawings. This was still theoretical data. In actual operation, due to inevitable discarded drafts and other reasons, the workload was much larger.
However, even a skilled animator could only draw 10 to 20 frames per day.
Animators often each had their own drawing style. To ensure stylistic consistency in an animated film, it was not suitable to involve too many animators in one project.
Therefore, Disney's animated films in the past usually had production cycles of four to seven years.
In the original timeline, Pixar had launched a professional graphics computer that completely changed the traditional animation production process, greatly speeding up the drawing and coloring of 2D animated films. This allowed Disney to release a 2D animated film almost every year in the early 1990s.
It was precisely because of that graphics computer that Pixar and Disney's cooperation on Toy Story had been facilitated, along with many subsequent events.
However, this time Simon had acquired Pixar ahead of schedule.
Pixar's graphics computer of course still existed, but it was no longer sold externally.
As a result, Disney's animation department still maintained the old, slow hand-drawn production process up to now.
Because of the success of classic 2D animated film re-releases in recent years, Disney's senior management had once again begun paying attention to the animation department. However, that attention could not increase the production speed of animated films.
With limited production capacity, various projects had to be screened and prioritized.
According to the information Simon had gathered, a script for Beauty and the Beast had indeed been proposed, but after several rounds of selection, Disney had retained the better-known Aladdin project instead.
According to information from Disney's side, Aladdin would be released during this year's summer schedule, half a year earlier than in the original timeline.
However, the price of advancing Aladdin by half a year was the complete abandonment of Beauty and the Beast.
Simon knew even better that not only had this classic Beauty and the Beast been lost, but many years later its live-action version had sold more than 1.2 billion dollars globally, squeezing into the upper ranks of historical box office charts.
Under the control of Michael Eisner and Jeffrey Katzenberg, Disney had long since walked out of its early 1980s decline.
Even though Simon had taken Pretty Woman away, Disney had still released box office hits in recent years such as Good Morning, Vietnam, Three Men and a Baby, and The Rocketeer. The re-releases and video tape distribution of classic 2D animations had also brought Disney very substantial revenue.
However, compared with Disney during this period in the original timeline, the current Disney was still far behind in many ways.
One thing was certain.
If media industry regulations opened up in the next few years, Disney this time would have no strength to compete with Daenerys Entertainment for the acquisition of Capital Cities/ABC.
All of this was obviously because of Simon and because of Daenerys Entertainment's sudden emergence.
In recent years, the overall scale of Hollywood's film and television industry had been rapidly increasing. However, within a certain period, market capacity was ultimately limited. Simon also possessed a prophetic advantage that other studio heads could hardly match. Daenerys Entertainment had taken too large a share, so the other studios naturally fell into a situation of decline.
Among the current major Hollywood studios, besides Daenerys Entertainment, probably only Warner Bros. Pictures was stronger than in the original timeline.
Next, perhaps MGM could also be counted as slowly recovering from the bottom.
Jurassic Park would officially begin shooting on Kauai, Hawaii, on January 21.
In the week before the Golden Globes, much of Simon's energy had been focused on the final preparations for Jurassic Park. For this he had even flown to Hawaii for two days.
The flight from Los Angeles to Hawaii was about the same as from Los Angeles to New York, both requiring only four hours.
He returned from Hawaii on Saturday morning, and the Golden Globe Awards ceremony was in the evening.
Daenerys Entertainment had no particular ambitions for the major awards this award season, so Simon could attend the evening ceremony very relaxed and naturally with Janet.
Among this year's nominated films, both The Piano and Thelma & Louise produced by Daenerys Entertainment had made it into the Best Drama Film nominations. Kathryn had also received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Director thanks to Thelma & Louise.
Not only that, among this year's five Golden Globe Best Director nominations, three were women: Barbra Streisand for The Prince of Tides, Jane Campion for The Piano, and Kathryn Bigelow for Thelma & Louise.
Three female Best Director nominations was a first in Golden Globe history.
To pave the way for the Oscars in March, after this round of nominations was announced, Time Warner began a publicity campaign hoping to push Barbra Streisand into the position of the first female Oscar Best Director in Hollywood history.
Although among The Prince of Tides, The Piano, and Thelma & Louise, The Prince of Tides actually had the lowest media score, Barbra Streisand's decades of accumulated connections in Hollywood were not something Campion or Kathryn could match.
Of course, the most important reason was still that Daenerys Entertainment had voluntarily withdrawn from this year's awards competition.
Because of this withdrawal, The Silence of the Lambs, which should have shone brightly in this award season, only received two nominations at the Golden Globes: Best Screenplay and Best Drama Actress. For the upcoming Oscars, Sandra did not even have the intention of sweeping nominations.
The final results of the Golden Globe ceremony on Saturday evening saw Oliver Stone's JFK win Best Drama Film in the drama category competition, with Oliver Stone also taking Best Director.
This was of course not because Time Warner's publicity had been ineffective. It was actually still a strategy.
After all, The Prince of Tides had weaker reviews than The Piano and Thelma & Louise. If Barbra Streisand won, it would definitely spark media controversy afterward.
A woman winning an award was very "politically correct."
However, with three women nominated at the same time and Barbra Streisand's work ranked last, if this veteran actress won, it would still trigger controversy. Such controversy would undoubtedly affect the Oscar results.
The prestige of the Golden Globes was clearly far below that of the Oscars.
By comparison, if under the circumstance of three female directors being nominated simultaneously the Golden Globes stubbornly maintained "discrimination against women" and awarded the prize to a male director, then over the next two months until the Oscar ceremony, public opinion would absolutely shift toward sympathy for the three female directors and condemnation of Hollywood's discrimination against women.
Under such an environment of public opinion, the Oscars, which always prided themselves on political correctness, would have almost no other choice.
At this time, with Daenerys Entertainment's two films voluntarily withdrawing from awards publicity and Barbra Streisand having sufficient resources and connections in Hollywood to support her, the outcome was self-evident.
As for what happened after The Prince of Tides won?
The winner takes all.
In the original timeline, Gwyneth Paltrow had won the Oscar for Best Actress. Even if criticized by countless media for being too weak and lacking prestige, she was still the Oscar winner. In most media releases, she would be referred to as "Oscar winner Gwyneth Paltrow."
Those who did not receive the little golden statue, even if their acting was ten times better than Gwyneth Paltrow's, could not be crowned with the title of Oscar winner in the media.
This was the winner-takes-all reality.
Just as expected, after the Golden Globe ceremony, many media outlets indeed launched attacks accusing the Golden Globe voters of discriminating against women. Public opinion surged for a time, and the Golden Globe organization even had to publicly step forward to explain.
Immediately following the Golden Globe ceremony, the Oscar nomination list was announced.
In the 64th Oscar nominations, Barbra Streisand, Jane Campion, and Kathryn Bigelow continued to appear together.
Everyone in the industry knew clearly that among the three, Barbra Streisand had the most obvious publicity traces, while Jane Campion was the most deserving.
As for Kathryn Bigelow, Thelma & Louise was indeed outstanding, but most people could not help thinking of Simon Westeros.
Comparing people really was impossible.
The public opinion storm triggered by the end of the Golden Globe ceremony had not yet subsided when another heavyweight Hollywood entertainment news broke.
MGM publicly announced that due to irreconcilable disputes, development of the next 007 film would be temporarily shelved.
The importance of 007 to MGM was completely self-evident, so the news immediately drew intense attention from a large number of media outlets.