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interface news reporter | hu yujing

interface news editor | zhang youfa

just like the title of the original novel, "there are no faithful men and women here," the tv series "half mature men and women" portrays a group of protagonists who are "all slightly flawed" in love. if these urban men and women are simply defined with labels, buzzwords in modern contexts such as scumbag, hooker, phoenix man, exquisite poor, and career batch, may appear frequently.

among the main characters in the play, he zhinan and gao peng stepped on the red line of "cheating" after having been in a long-distance relationship for many years. han su went to hong kong to pursue career development, leaving the moral pressure of the breakup to qu yipeng. sun hanhan hunts for high-quality human men and gets entangled with married men. everyone has trade-offs, calculations, and plans in love, and love is just a little bit of sincerity.

but this is only the surface of the story of "half-mature man and woman". encapsulated inside this box full of labels is a story of female growth.

in an exclusive interview with interface entertainment, wu nan, the screenwriter of "half mature couples", said that the theme she refined for this drama is growth. "the desire girl" keeps falling in love and realizes that the emptiness in her heart cannot be filled by men. , and then we can find the direction to reconstruct the coordinates of life. the heroine who pursues a career "is not formed in a vacuum." she has moral flaws and repressed emotional needs. if these needs are not resolved, her life plan will not be able to enter the next stage.

after the broadcast of "half-mature man and woman", the audience once favored han su who was engaged in career over he zhinan, because in the current social context, this would appear "much smoother".

but in wu nan's view, the special thing about "there are no good men and believers here" is the choice of he zhinan as the heroine. because there is no distinction between emotional exploration and career exploration in nature, the emotional experience is deliberately removed. on the one hand, it is divorced from reality, and on the other hand, it is divorced from reality. on the other hand, it is also the oppression of women.

at a time when "rejecting love" has become a trend of political correctness in some chinese dramas, the high-concentration love scenes in "half-mature man and woman" provide an observation window for young people to face their inner desires, conduct deep emotional exploration, and try out dialogue and understanding between men and women.

wu nan does not want the pleasure of a public trial and venting, but wants the audience to compare themselves with the characters through the sense of alienation brought about by the change of perspective, "stop there and think about it", and then move toward self-growth.

the following is a conversation between interface entertainment and wu nan, the screenwriter of "half-mature man and woman":

maintain sharpness without jarring the viewer

interface entertainment: why did you choose this novel by liu cuihu to adapt? have you seen some changes in the audience's demand for romantic dramas?

wu nan:at that time, ningmeng film and television gave me this novel. my first reaction after reading it was that it was so enjoyable and exciting, which aroused my desire to create. in fact, there was no market research and it was more based on physical sensation.

interface entertainment: what content specifically makes you find it enjoyable and exciting?

wu nan:the novel writes about the character's heart from a relatively private perspective, the "back door", without being high-sounding or pretentious at all. in addition, the relationships weaved between the characters are also very interesting, and the relationships between girls also open up space for creation.

interface entertainment: this drama is positioned as a "love allegory drama". how does "half-mature man and woman" reflect the revelatory nature of the fable?

wu nan:"half-mature man and woman" has some edge, something that challenges, provokes, and pierces the emotional core, so "fable" is a way to establish a certain connection with the audience and bring reminders through subtext and extracting the essence.

our entire team is relatively mature and unwilling to do things that are sensational, but we also won’t take absolute risks. to put it bluntly, it is pragmatic creation - we must not only maintain the sharpness of the content, but also make the sharpness reach the audience, and then use a this strategy has brought it to where it is today. so from the inside to the face, we used some methods to keep it sharp without hurting the audience.

interface entertainment: i heard that the small theater in the film was added later. what were the considerations?

wu nan:yes, the small theater is added by the director after the script is basically written. he wants to put some things that cannot be said in the script into another form (show them). because the small theater itself is satirical, the protagonist is not a character in the play. so you can be bold and straightforward.

if we want to use the characters in the play to say these words, it will take a lot of trouble and there will be losses. so after discussion, we felt that this could be a way to enhance the sharpness on the one hand, and on the other hand, use a sense of alienation to examine their feelings from a different perspective.

in fact, there is no narrative loss in removing the small theater, but if you put it in, the play will become an organic whole and complement the plot.

interface entertainment: the lines in the small theater are very interesting. for example, two people sit down to play cards on a blind date, and the cards they play are 985, 211, and several properties in several first-tier cities. the appearance card alone is equivalent to suicide, etc.

wu nan:yes, these cannot be expressed in the discourse system of the main text, and they are too extreme. but when put in an extreme expression, it becomes interesting. we are not doing it for the purpose of making a small theater, but because of the need to create a sense of form.

interface entertainment: what are the core principles in the adaptation process?

wu nan:first of all, it must be a tv drama story. a novel is a novel and a tv drama is a tv drama. this may not make much difference to the audience, but as creators, we know what the difference is. of course, this is a technical issue. the second is to refine a theme that is acceptable to the tv series, because the novel did not do this, but i had to do it.

interface entertainment: these two points are very interesting. the first is about technical issues. what is the difference in perception between the audience and the screenwriter?

wu nan:the audience mainly looks at the results;what is received in the novel is not equivalent toin tv seriesreceived. because the tv series needs to be reconstructed through text and film, and to restore what the audience saw in the novel, it may not be possible to use the materials in the novel.

for example, the character's temperament, the tv series requires a large number of external scenes and actions to be completed, and the character's characteristics and situation need to be expressed in a continuous sequence. what takes two sentences in a novel is needed in a play15arrive20minutes, three or four scenes, if you only rely on those few adjectives, wouldn’t the amount of information be very thin?

in addition, the timeline of all aspects of the drama's logic is much more complicated than the novel requires. this is a purely technical issue.

interface entertainment: then there is the theme. what is the theme refined for "half-mature man and woman"?

wu nan:it’s still about growth. the ending of the original work is a bit open, but i have to give the audience a more gripping ending.

the standard of audience acceptance is sometimes not easy to achieve. the collective will of the audience is sometimes less about the "feudal" restrictions on women and moral conservatism, and more about the intolerance of "love-onlyism." the voices of various schools of thought are all very powerful. when it comes to your work, the key point is that i say "this is not me" and they say "no, this is you".

in female coming-of-age dramas, the heroine is not born in a vacuum

interface entertainment: the audience recognizes women like han su who are pursuing careers more, and there may be some trial for he zhinan. but this may make it harder for everyone to see real "realistic" love in domestic dramas.

wu nan:yes, it's either love that's three feet above the ground, or it's not love, it's either black or white.

in my opinion, the "heroine" itself is a "cancer" of feminism.when it allows us to emphasize female independence, it also sets a standard for all women - only those who are strong and have a career are worthy of talking about female independence and liberation. if you are someone who likes to fall in love and has emotional needs, you will look down on people at the lower end of the chain, which is unfair to girls.

and have you ever cared about the "big heroine"'s heart? how does the heroine become a strong woman? this long and arduous process is complicated, and the heroine is not formed in a vacuum.

this kind of trial of the "love brain" is not caused by men and patriarchal society. it has a very complicated logic, which has been deduced step by step into the current situation.

looking back, for women’s growth, which one is higher or lower is emotional exploration or career exploration? it varies from person to person. removing emotional needs is, on the one hand, divorced from reality, and on the other hand, it is also a form of oppression.

when a girl who studies well and has a career wants to fall in love, will she feel ashamed? or if a girl doesn’t have good grades at all, doesn’t pursue a career, and just wants to enjoy the pleasure of love, should she be labeled as a “love brain”?

all these discussions have to go back to the starting point - what is female independence? a woman's career does not mean that a woman has a "self" and cannot be equated in this way.

self-exploration and recognition are based on all aspects of life, and emotions are a very important category. the relationship with men is one of the important propositions for many girls to grow up. why should we avoid or belittle it? i don't accept this.

here is also our attitude: we should try our best to view our career, emotions, and materials from an equal perspective, because they are all problems in our lives, and there are many dilemmas that need to be explored before we can find a relative solution. i don’t particularly like being biased when facing things with a positive direction and attitude. falling in love is a kind of "existence", and you can't ban this "existence" just because a man does bad things.

interface entertainment: perhaps the audience has watched too many pure love dramas in the past stage, and is now in a metabolic period.

wu nan:but what these characters face is not only the problem of love, but also the problem of human nature and self-growth. now he zhinan is adjusting the relationship between self and cognition. she stumbles in love because she cannot recognize herself. the source is her inferiority and arrogance. inferiority reflects excessive emotional needs. this is a psychological mechanism that causes of. even if she doesn't face love, there will be problems in her growth process.

"half-mature man and woman" opens with a growth story. a girl in this situation, how did she fall in love, and then how did she get up? can she rebuild herself? what is the direction of reconstruction? who can help her rebuild? what will she gain after reconstruction? in fact, we are writing a story like this.

many of the obstacles in he zhinan's relationship are due to inner deficiencies. she needs to be healed and filled, but no one can help her fill it in except herself. this cannot be filled by a man whether he loves her or not, even if100a man loves her over and over again, but she doesn't realize this problem and is still not satisfied, and may even be hurt more seriously.

han su and sun hanhan are not perfect either. han su seems to have no moral flaws, but the plight and psychological barriers of her native family that are now being foreshadowed are all hurdles that she needs to overcome. what happened to women with careers? is there no problem?

girls, we are responsible for our own strength, and we cannot rely on men for this. it doesn’t mean that you are strong if a man loves you, or that you are strong if a man doesn’t love you. in fact, this matter has nothing to do with men in essence. (men) are all revolving doors. qu yipeng is offline, and then there will be new ones. men, there are always one after another.

soften the audience’s blood vessels with works

interface entertainment: will the audience’s judgmental attitude bring restrictions to creation?

wu nan:not at all, i will not be limited by these labeled concepts. of course, i not only write female stories, but also write many other things, such as "city within a city". i write political dramas, but also men's dramas and children's dramas.

but for "half-mature man and woman", i will naturally use all my life experience as a woman to create it. the process is very much like chatting with girls, but we do not exclude men from entering, participating and understanding.

after all, we all need to reach an understanding with men instead of antagonizing and tearing them apart. of course, women must feel more oppressed in real life practice, so they need to be released in their works.

if it relies on public trials of men to obtain traffic, then i think this kind of traffic is too cheap and the social significance it brings is also very negative. i created "half-mature man and woman" from a female perspective, but i still don't want to put men on trial or beat them up, but i still want to explore how men and women get along.

interface entertainment: among the men in the play, qu yipeng is the male protagonist. from the label, he is a villain, but if you understand his family and demands, some people will sympathize with him.

wu nan:yes, when the audience doesn't like a certain character, they will naturally mind empathizing with him. this requires us to create more plump characters in each of our works, "feed" them to the audience, and challenge and broaden the audience's emotional capacity.

looking back, we can see that this is also caused by us (creators). works that homogenize and solidify labels one after another, as well as the media and social environment, have "cultivated" the audience to become like this.

now we have to use one work after another to soften the audience's blood vessels and broaden their understanding. because when you empathize with someone you don't like, you develop tolerance and tolerance, which will also be helpful in life.

we must first see this kind of human nature. we should not beat him to death with a stick, but let him go to trial first and then vent his anger. emotional helplessness is a huge existence. some works are just for venting and falsely solving the problem, but some will make you stop and think about it. maybe "half-mature man and woman" is a work that leans toward the latter.

interface entertainment: the audience’s mentality of chasing dramas may also be related to the influence of short videos and short plays.

wu nan:yes, the theater viewing environment now is very different from three years ago.

interface entertainment: what was different three years ago?

wu nan:at least not this muchcut, the content that everyone paid attention to at that time was immersed in the experience within contextual logic. nowadays, before the audience pays attention to a work, slice cuts out the so-called essence and gives you the results, but the problem is that the process and context have been banned. how it comes about is all logical and process-driven.

how many minutes is it now?cutit is of great help to the promotion of the drama, but at the same time, the drama studio also has to bear its impact. the audience no longer enters the show from "zero", but has already formed a judgment about the play, and looks at it with colored glasses, which will bring great challenges to long videos.

to put it bluntly, the advantage is that long videos may no longer pursue bloody and explosive content, because no matter how popular they are, short videos cannot be as popular. audiences who choose to watch long videos must be able to see its value.

butcutthis type of video will change the rhythm of watching dramas, and the audience's demand for long videos will become very impatient. therefore, in the end, long and short videos will form a diversion. maybe the audience of long videos will be smaller than before, but the ones who will stay in the long term will definitely be the viewers who demand in-depth experience.

this in turn requires long videos to have a sufficient process experience, rather than just relying on some nonsense and sugar to retain viewers, because all the viewers who could be retained have gone to short videos.

as creators, we have to constantly face this change. this is a normal thing, there is nothing to complain about and nothing to cheer about.