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As of August 1, the box office of the movie "Catching Dolls" starring Shen Teng and Ma Li exceeded 2.4 billion. The recently sluggish movie market has finally started to pick up due to the popularity of the movie.

Many people lamented that "it was Shen Ma who finally saved the summer season", but to be more precise, it was the combination of "Shen Ma + Yan Fei and Peng Damo" that worked.

"Catching Dolls" is part of the Xihong City universe directed by Yan Fei and Peng Damo. Their previous popular and box-office-winning films "Charlotte's Troubles" and "The Richest Man in Xihong City" were also produced by the two.

From small theaters to Spring Festival Gala sketches, and then to the film industry, every expansion of Shenma and Happy Twist's business was inseparable from the behind-the-scenes polishing by Yan Fei and Peng Damo as directors or screenwriters.

In 2003, three young people from different backgrounds came together to form a film and television company - Beijing Free Element Film and Television Culture Communication Co., Ltd., which is the predecessor of Happy Twist.

One is Yu Kai, who graduated from the Chinese Department of Peking University and worked in the publishing industry. He planned to be responsible for the operation of the company. The other is Tian Youliang, who graduated from the Central Academy of Drama and stayed on to teach at the school after graduating from the Performance Department. He had directed several plays and was preparing to be the director of the company.

Together, they found Zhang Chen, who was running an architectural design company at the time, and he was mainly responsible for providing the money.

The three of them bought the film and television adaptation rights of a novel called "The Happy Life of a Diamond Bachelor" and planned to adapt it into a TV series. However, SARS came and the crew could not start filming. The first project failed and was shelved.

Tian Youliang later insisted on doing TV dramas, and eventually remade "The Difficult Love of a Diamond Bachelor" after leaving Happy Twist.

Tian Youliang felt that they could not sit idle and had to do something, so he turned his attention to the field of drama, in which he had considerable experience.

Two years ago, he directed the graduation drama of the 1998 class of the Performance Department of the Central Academy of Drama - the drama "Cuihua, Serve the Sour Cabbage", which was full of ridicule on social hot spots. He continued this spoof style and launched Happy Twist's first drama "If You Want to Eat Twists, I'll Twist Them for You".

They recruited Yu Na, who had starred in What Can I Do to Save You, My Love, He Jiong, who had just been hosting Hunan TV for a few years, and Xie Na, who had not yet become a permanent host of Happy Camp. Shen Teng, who had just graduated, played a small role as "Dongdong". This cast was not dazzling at the time.

Poster of "If you want to eat fried dough twist, I'll twist it for you"

However, despite their lack of experience, they directly rented the Shaw Theatre of the Central Academy of Drama, which can accommodate 1,000 people, and booked 40 performances at once. For private theatre troupes, it is a safer and more reliable choice to first try out in a small theatre with 80-200 people, and then gradually move the stage to a larger theatre after success.

As a result, due to the fact that the team was just a fledgling group and lacked attention, and the Shaw Theatre was in a poor location and there were frequent traffic controls, it was normal for the performances to have an equal number of audience members and actors.

At the worst time, only seven tickets were sold for a performance. The leaders and actors of Happy Twist refunded the tickets for these seven people one by one in the heavy snow and reimbursed their travel expenses - the cost of a performance was tens of thousands, and they could not afford the losses incurred by performing for these seven people.

After 40 performances, the attendance was dismal, but word of mouth was quietly growing.

At that time, most of the dramas on the market were serious in style. "If You Want to Eat Mahua, I'll Twist It for You" did not have those monologues with standard pronunciations. Instead, it was filled with all kinds of funny jokes and reviews of hot social events. The form was not limited to drama, but also included magic, crosstalk, dance, and everything else.

He Jiong, Xie Na, and Shen Teng recreate the drama looks of the year in variety shows

For the second round of performances, the stage was moved to the Haidian Theater. Although it was still a theater with a capacity of thousands of people, the effect was very different.

In Haidian, they found their audience—young white-collar workers who were familiar with the Internet’s spoof style and needed comedy to relieve stress. This round of performances was a hit, and the scalpers who followed them from the Central Academy of Drama to the Haidian Theater earned an average of 8,000 yuan each.

"If You Want Mahua, I'll Twist It for You Now" can be said to be the pioneering work of Happy Mahua. In 2008, Zhang Chen and others wanted to register a brand name with "Mahua". When they went to the Industrial and Commercial Bureau, they found out that "Mahua" was a food and could not be used to register a cultural trademark. A prefix or suffix must be added.

They jokingly said several names on the spot, and the staff also thought of it and casually said "Happy Twist", and everyone signed up for this name.

After registering, Zhang Chen's classmates said, "Your name is too rustic. How can this be a company name?"

Zhang Chen said: "A bad name is easy to feed, and it will be easy to get along with people if you call them that."

After the first play was a complete success, Happy Twist launched several New Year plays in the same style, and the troupe's popularity in Beijing gradually increased.

On the other hand, under the recommendation of "one pull one", the familiar Mahua lineup of the audience has gradually formed. The source of this "one pull one recommendation" is Shen Teng.

In 2003, Shen Teng was about to graduate from the PLA Art Academy. A female classmate handed him a script and said that the troupe was recruiting newcomers. He took a look at it, thought it was good, and applied for the job.

Shen Teng in his youth

On the day of the interview, he sat on the sofa in Ge You's pose, waiting for the interview. Afterwards, the director told Shen Teng that he got the job not by his skit performance during the interview, but by this pose.

In fact, the reason why Shen Teng collapsed on the sofa that day was not entirely due to his personality, but more because he had just undergone hemorrhoid surgery.

In this way, Shen Teng joined Happy Twist, which had just been established.

Yan Fei is Shen Teng's junior at the PLA Academy of Arts. When Happy Twist's first play was performed in 2003, Yan Fei happened to watch it and liked it very much.

Four years later, with the recommendation of Shen Teng, Yan Fei and his good friend Peng Damu, who were making a living by directing small dramas in a small theater at the time, officially joined Happy Twist.

The three of them collaborated on the drama version of Crazy Stone, with Shen Teng as the director and Yan Fei and Peng Damo as the executive directors. The golden partnership was basically formed.

"Crazy Stone" drama version poster

At that time, the three of them each brought in a number of classmates and friends who were having trouble drifting in Beijing, and brought them into Happy Twist.

Allen was Peng Damo's senior at the Beijing Film Academy. After graduation, he would hold his resume every day and blindly walk around the hotels where several film crews were stationed in Beijing. He did this for two years and got several extras - in Moment in Peking, he played a postman with only one line; in Happiness is Like a Flower, he had one page of lines, which was enough to make him as happy as a flower.

Alan's junior fellow student Peng Damo had seen his graduation play at school and thought he was suitable for drama, so he asked him if he would like to act in Mahua. Allen thought, if there is an opportunity to perform, just go, it doesn't matter what role, so he joined Mahua.

After graduation, Wei Xiang couldn't find any roles to play and his life was difficult. He almost gave up on drifting to Beijing. However, his classmate Peng Damu gave him a hand and recommended him to Happy Twist.

Wei Xiang in "The Killer Is Not So Calm"

Song Yang has also watched Happy Twist's first drama. He is Shen Teng's junior, but the two only knew each other in school and were not familiar with each other.

In 2005, Song Yang, who hadn't found a job for more than three months after graduation, called his senior brother Shen Teng and asked carefully if he could come and do something, even if it wasn't acting. Shen Teng readily agreed and asked him to come for an interview.

Du Xiaoyu is Shen Teng's classmate who lives across the street. When Shen Teng was directing the drama version of "Crazy Stone", he felt that there was a role that was quite suitable for him, so he called him to join.

After graduating from the Central Academy of Drama, Ma Li performed in serious dramas for director Lin Zhaohua. Because her family had just gone bankrupt and was short of money, she also went to other theaters as a guest actor and collaborated with director Peng Damu in a small theater.

Once, Ma Li played an archaeologist in the drama "The City Full of Golden Towers". Although her role was only a few minutes, her performance was very effective every time she appeared, making the audience laugh, including Peng Damo and He Jiong.

Ma Li plays an archaeologist in the drama "The City is Full of Golden Towers"

Therefore, when an actor was temporarily unable to perform in "Crazy Stone", Peng Damo immediately thought of Ma Li and contacted her to save the situation.

Coincidentally, a few days before being contacted, Ma Li had just watched "Crazy Stone" as an audience member. She watched it four times in a row and couldn't stop. She thought how honored it would be if she could become a part of this team.

A few days later, the olive branch came.

Among Happy Twist, the first person to taste the taste of popularity was Ma Li.

Since 2010, she and He Jiong have partnered many times in Hunan Satellite TV's Lantern Festival Gala and Spring Festival Gala, launching the "Super Happy Insoles" series of sketches.

Hunan TV initially asked He Jiong to prepare a skit program, but they were short of an actress, so he nominated Ma Li. When everyone was worried that no one knew Ma Li and whether she could do it, He Jiong assured everyone around him: "I think she can do it."

When Ma Li was performing in a small theater, He Jiong watched the same play three times and even secretly recorded the comedy clips of Ma Li's performance. In the next two months, he would watch them whenever he was in a bad mood.

In the sketch "Super Happy Insoles", the audience outside the theater got to know for the first time this girl, Mary, who introduced herself as "Mary from Taipei" but was actually from Northeast China, and her signature hearty laugh.

Ma Li and He Jiong collaborate on the sketch "Super Happy Insoles"

As a comedy group, more people in Happy Twist became famous thanks to their appearance on the Spring Festival Gala.

In 2011, the 8th CCTV Skit Competition invited the Happy Twist team, and the team finally handed the invitation to the two directors Yan Fei and Peng Damo.

At the beginning, Yan Fei and Peng Damu thought about it for several nights but failed to come up with any satisfactory ideas. Feeling that they could not come up with a wonderful sketch script in a short period of time, they decided to give up.

But Happy Twist's founder Zhang Chen and CEO Liu Hongtao felt that this was a rare opportunity. After several people discussed, they decided to adapt the opening scene of "The Earl of Wulong Mountain" directed by Yan Fei and Peng Damo into a skit "Falling Leaves Return to Their Roots" that satirizes the real estate industry, starring Chang Yuan, Wang Ning and Allen.

The skit eventually won the third prize in the competition, and Happy Twist also attracted the attention of Spring Festival Gala director Ha Wen. In 2012, the skit "Today's Happiness", written and directed by Yan Fei and Peng Damo, and performed by Shen Teng and Allen, and the skit "The Sky Net" performed by Chang Yuan and Wang Ning were performed on the Spring Festival Gala stage.

Since then, the works of Yan Fei and Peng Damo have been performed on the Spring Festival Gala stage for many consecutive years. The sketches "Today's Happiness 2", "Should I Help or Not" and "Catering to Their Tastes" are all their works.

Spring Festival Gala sketch "Today's Happiness 2"

In fact, the Spring Festival Gala requires a rigorous working mode, which is very different from Yan Fei and Peng Damo’s previous working styles.

Happy Twist's jokes are often revised over and over again during discussions and performances, so no two performances are exactly the same. The classic line "What defeats you is not innocence, but innocence (no shoes)" was a joke that was suddenly thought of two or three days before the live broadcast.

As a result, during the first Spring Festival Gala, the Happy Twist team was still revising the script and lines until the day of recording the backup tape. The Spring Festival Gala director Ha Wen was severely criticized for this.

Happy Twist is used to being casual at work on weekdays.

When Ma Li came to Mahua for the first rehearsal to save the show "Crazy Stone", she dressed up and wore a skirt. But when she arrived, she found that everyone was eating and drinking, the floor was full of snacks, and some people were even playing cards and playing Landlord - playing and creating at the same time is the working style of Happy Mahua.

Yan Fei and Peng Damo said frankly that their jokes were all made through chatting. At the wine table or by the hot pot, good jokes came out while chatting.

However, skits for the Spring Festival Gala are "urgent" and "tiring". Yan Fei once admitted that in the later stages of creation, he was "not just going to the Spring Festival Gala for the sake of being on the Spring Festival Gala, but he had to give a result to his one or two months of hard work, even if it was not perfect.

Shen Teng was much more open-minded. As soon as he started reviewing the program, he dragged Yan Fei to soak in hot springs and have a massage, and advised him not to think too much and just go home and celebrate the New Year.

The repeated suffering eventually brought fame to some people, especially Shen Teng.

He played the role of "Hao Jian" in a series of sketches, and in those years he almost became a meal substitute for the Northeast uncles.

Shen Teng's Spring Festival Gala debut

When Shen Teng appeared on the Spring Festival Gala for the first time, his girlfriend's family invited a large group of relatives to watch the Spring Festival Gala on TV. When they saw the show, everyone thought that their daughter's boyfriend was the 180+ tall Allen. When they knew that Shen Teng was "Hao Jian", everyone was silent.

"Hao Jian" made Shen Teng known to people all over the country, but they may not know his real name.

After the Spring Festival Gala, Shen Teng went to Sanlitun to buy shoes. He lowered his head to try on shoes, and the little girl next to him asked excitedly: "Are you Hao Jian, are you Hao Jian?" Some people even called him "Mr. Hao" directly.

In 2014, Shen Teng accepted an interview with "A Date with Lu Yu" and said that everyone thought his real name was "Hao Jian". If he starred in a TV series or movie, would it promote Shen Teng? It seems that there is no strength.

A few years later, some people may no longer know who "Hao Jian" is, but the name Shen Teng has become an unavoidable name in Chinese comedy movies.

At the end of 2012, "Lost in Thailand" directed by Xu Zheng and starring Xu Zheng, Wang Baoqiang, Huang Bo and others was released and achieved great success in both word-of-mouth and box office.

"What do you think, guys? Should we take movies seriously from now on?" After organizing the entire company to watch "Lost in Thailand", Zhang Chen, Yu Kai and others gathered in a cafe to chat.

In fact, Happy Twist has long had the idea of ​​entering the film industry. In their view, they already have the conditions to do so.

After nearly a decade of development, Happy Twist already has nearly 20 original drama scripts, and these scripts have been reviewed by the market. At the same time, Happy Twist has also signed a large number of actors, screenwriters, and directors.

When entering a new field, Happy Twist chose to enter the industry by adapting mature drama scripts. At the beginning, everyone chose "The Earl of Wulong Mountain", directed by Yan Fei and Peng Damo, which once won the annual box office champion of Beijing drama. In the end, the adapted script did not pass the review.

In 2014, the drama "Charlotte's Troubles", which has a strong story, a warm core and a wide audience, was selected for development first. It is worth mentioning that the first version of the script of "Charlotte's Troubles" was originally written by Yan Fei and Peng Damo for the movie, but by accident, it finally appeared on the stage of drama first.

Stills from the drama "Charlotte's Troubles"

Yan Fei and Peng Damo were inspired by a popular post on Tianya in 2010: "If one day you wake up and find yourself lying on your high school desk, with sunlight streaming into the classroom, and you suddenly realize that everything in reality was just a dream..." This post gave them a strong urge to look back on their youth.

Yan Fei admitted that in the past, Happy Twist’s repertoires were a hodgepodge of jokes, and many people watched Happy Twist as if it were the Spring Festival Gala.

Starting from "Charlotte's Troubles", Yan Fei and Peng Damu became increasingly aware of the importance of conveying things by telling a good story and shaping a character.

Driven by this concept, "Charlotte's Troubles" can be regarded as the drama with the least baggage among Mahua's dramas. Before it was staged, the leaders were even worried that it was not comedic enough and would not meet the audience's needs. However, the feedback from the audience was that they felt surprised by this story with both laughter and tears, and many viewers would post short essays online to express their thoughts.

Although the drama "Charlotte's Troubles" has been performed hundreds of times and received good responses, Yan Fei and Peng Damo still do not have the confidence to enter the film industry. After all, most of their film cast members are Mahua actors, and there is a lack of big-name stars who can carry the box office.

He Jiong helped promote "Charlotte's Troubles" on Weibo

The final market feedback was far beyond their imagination. After its release during the National Day holiday in 2015, "Charlotte's Troubles", which cost 21 million yuan to produce, took in 1.441 billion yuan at the box office.

"What kind of plum? What kind of winter plum?", "Yuan Hua's appearance with the BGM of "Yi Jian Mei" and other clips have become classic hot memes to this day.

After this movie, Shen Teng's film career took off and film offers came one after another. Before, everyone only knew him as "Hao Jian". In the years after the hit of "Charlotte's Troubles", "Teng content" even became a way to judge whether a film can be successful.

As the stage gets bigger and bigger, some people become the focus of attention, while others leave quietly.

In 2016, after the expiration of his contract, Wang Ning, an early meritorious actor of Happy Twist, chose to leave Happy Twist and not renew his contract.

The reason for his departure is still unknown. Xing Wenxiong, a screenwriter who has collaborated with Happy Twist many times, revealed that Wang Ning's departure was related to the replacement of the film "Charlotte's Troubles".

For a group of people who have gone through difficult times together, the most unacceptable thing is that one of them is left behind.

Initially, the role of Ma Dongmei in "Charlotte's Troubles" was not played by Ma Li, who played Ma Dongmei in the drama version. The investors thought she was not pretty enough and not famous enough. Ma Li waited for three months with great expectations, but in the end, she got nothing.

But this time, fortunately, the original female lead of "Charlotte's Troubles" later resigned for some reason, and the role of Ma Dongmei finally fell to Ma Li.

Stills from "Charlotte's Troubles"

However, lucky stories will not happen again and again.

In "The Richest Man in Xihong City", the heroine next to Shen Teng became Taiwanese actress Song Yunhua.

Shen Teng once explained that he and Ma Li were originally scheduled to star in this drama, but as Yan Fei and Peng Damo were writing, they felt that this role was not suitable for Ma Li.

Yan Fei said that they set this role as a Taiwanese girl, so the principle of casting was to find a Taiwanese actress who can act. Not letting Ma Li, who is from Northeast China, play the role was actually to protect her.

In an interview earlier, Ma Li also lamented that Yan Fei and Peng Damo knew her too well. "Many people asked me after watching the play, is that girl on the stage you? In fact, it's not me, but the director wrote it according to me. Yan Fei once told me, 'You are my number one heroine forever.'"

Crossing over from small theaters to the big screen, the larger market cannot accommodate too many tailor-made ones. Since then, Ma Li has also starred in many movies other than Mahua, but she often falls into the dilemma of bad movies.

After the success of "Charlotte's Troubles", Yan Fei and Peng Damo established Xihong City Film and Television Company. The top two shareholders, Yan Fei and Peng Anyu (also known as Peng Damo), hold 32.5% of the shares respectively, and Kaixin Mahua, as one of the shareholders, holds 15% of the shares.

Therefore, there were rumors that Yan Fei, Peng Damo and Happy Twist had separated.

In this regard, Yan Fei once made a clarification. He said that the establishment of Xihong City Film and Television was suggested by Zhang Chen, the founder of Happy Twist, and that Zhang Chen would often come to visit, "like inspecting the work."

Regarding the "Xihong City Label" that the outside world is looking forward to, Yan Fei also said that they have no expectations and will take it one step at a time.

Their subsequent actions in film and television were indeed as casual as they said.

After "Charlotte's Troubles", they originally wanted to make a comedy story about "how a wealthy entrepreneur trains his children to take over the business", and tentatively named the script of the film "Capital Successors".

They still follow their past casual and free creative habits, creating while playing, with no clear division of labor among them. Whoever feels more deeply about a certain plot will write it first, and then they will discuss and revise it together.

Yan Fei and Peng Damo have always been co-creators without a clear division of labor.

One day when they were on vacation in Sanya, they received a call from an executive of Universal Pictures. During the call, Universal expressed the hope that they could adapt an old Hollywood movie "Brewster's Millions".

Yan Fei and Peng Damo were very interested in the plot point of "spending 10 billion in one month". So the project of "Capital Successor" had to be put aside for the time being.

This story of spending 10 billion in one month is the movie "The Richest Man in Xihong City", and "Capital Successor" was released for many years. It was not until this year that it was renamed "Catching Dolls" and released in the summer vacation.

After "Li Cha's Aunt" in 2019, many films produced by Happy Twist were called "money laundering works". The reputation of Twist movies, once a hit by Yan Fei and Peng Damo, is in jeopardy. In "The Lone Moon", the Shen Ma combination is no longer a guarantee of comedy quality, but a gimmick to make money at the box office.

On the other hand, the two golden partners, Yan Fei and Peng Damo, have no desires but are steady and cautious. From "Charlotte's Troubles" to "The Magic Brush of Ma Liang" in "My Hometown and Me", each work has at least achieved remarkable results.

They have said frankly that they could not become money-making directors because they were too unproductive. They just lay back and relax, and spent more time playing than creating.

When asked about the most unforgettable trip in an interview, Yan Fei talked about their experience of going to France together, from which we can get a glimpse of their casual creative approach that starts from life.

That time, the boss took them to see the Avignon Theatre Festival in France, saying that they should get more exposure to the theatre circle.

In the end, they really couldn't understand or hear anything, and couldn't sit still, so they just watched the opening show and then ran off to watch street performances, acrobatics, and buy things.

When the boss found out, he asked, "What are you doing here? I bought so many tickets for the play."

Yan Fei said to the boss: Don't be disappointed, this is our first time to visit France, we have to understand the local customs and practices first. Watching a play is a higher level pursuit, we are already giving you face by watching a play.