King of Bad Movies

In the spring of 2003, Hero earned 3.7 billion at the global box office, and Chinese cinema entered its most flourishing era; at the same time, the United States built a Hollywood film and television base outside Los Angeles, trying to create a dream factory of its own for North America. Because this world lacks the classic Hollywood works we are familiar with, the course of film history has diverged from real history. That summer, Du An, a college graduate who lost his job right after graduation, spent twenty yuan on a fake directing diploma from the Central Academy of Drama and, with a script dashed off in three hours, set out to secure an investment of one hundred thousand yuan, even if it meant being charged with fraud afterward, or even going to prison. That script was titled Saw. Since childhood, Du An has had an ability he cannot quite explain: he can always see complete stories clearly in his dreams, and those stories are the very films that have vanished from this parallel world. Step by step, he goes from a con man who swindles investment to a director who stirs up the entire industry; the borrowed stories fill the gaps in the content of his films, but how to turn what he takes and make it his own is the real problem he must face. The book revolves around this process, portraying the protagonist's repeated struggles and inner growth as he navigates capital, censorship, public opinion, and creative ethics.