Chapter 1586: Stealing the Show

So be it if she said it, yet she had to make it sound so cheesy. She was clearly sucking up to him and making it so obvious that it made people feel disgusted.

Zheng Yuan secretly pursed her lips. Xu Ziyi also secretly rolled her eyes.

Dong Jingxi was still trying to sow discord and talk bad about Lu Man in front of Princ.i.p.al Liu just then. Now, Deng Xu was even invited by Han Zhuoli. Why did Han Zhuoli invite him?

Wasn’t it also because of Lu Man?

It could not possibly be for the school or for them, right?

In other words, it was precisely because of Lu Man that Deng Xu was standing here and guiding their acting.

Yet Dong Jingxi still had the gall to curry favor with Deng Xu here.

Who knew if she was really dumb or just acting dumb?

In their eyes, Dong Jingxi was just trying to act smart.

At this kind of moment, wouldn’t it be better to forge better ties with Lu Man?

But although they despised Dong Jingxi’s bootlicking ways, no one wanted to let her steal the limelight either, so they all agreed.

“Yeah, we really hope we can try acting out one of your works.”

“Your works can really put our acting skills to the test. We want to give it a try and see how far our acting standards can reach.”

Everyone expressed that they wanted to act out one of Deng Xu’s films.

Deng Xu nodded and did not reject the idea.

Actually, he also preferred to use his own works to let the students perform.

Not because he was proud of himself, but because it would just not be appropriate for him to re-direct another director’s film.

It would be fine if he was not famous, but he was one of the more reputable directors in the country after all.

If he did it well, even better than the original, what would the director of the original film think?

If he directed it worse than the original film director, insiders would know that this was due to differences in style between the two and to various other reasons, but outsiders would just say that he was not as good as that director.

Anyway, no matter what the result was, it would not be good for him.

Since he’d agreed to come over to help, Deng Xu also wanted to use this chance to create some hype for himself.

Usually, this kind of compet.i.tion would not receive much attention.

But Lu Man was in the compet.i.tion.

As long as Lu Man was there, Han Zhuoli would definitely support it.

With the added partic.i.p.ation of the Han Corporation, it would be difficult to keep this compet.i.tion low profile as well.

“Let’s confirm the film and the part to perform now,” Deng Xu said. “Which film are you all more interested in?”

“‘After Sunset,’” Dong Jingxi said.

Everyone thought to themselves that Dong Jingxi was pretty good with her choice. This film happened to be a film that Deng Xu won awards for in the Venice Film Festival last year, bagging the awards for Best Director and Best Picture.

Zheng Yuan said to Lu Man in a small voice, “Lu Man, why are you not saying anything?! It was clearly Young Master Han who invited Director Deng, yet Dong Jingxi keeps trying to make her presence known here. How fresh of her.”

Lu Man smiled indifferently. “There’s nothing much to say. Dong Jingxi is just trying to fight for herself. There’s nothing wrong with that.”

But whether she would be able to wrestle something for herself, that was hard to say.

“Anyway, even if she did not say it, ‘After Sunset’ would still have been the film chosen in the end,” Lu Man replied in a small voice.

“Why?” Zheng Yuan asked, perplexed.

She had all along felt that her IQ could be considered high. Especially when placed beside Pan Xue, she came out looking quite smart.

But ever since she got to know Lu Man, Zheng Yuan always felt that her brain was really not working fast enough sometimes.

“Although Director Deng asked us which film we chose at first and everyone wanted to choose his works, in fact, even if no one mentioned it, Director Deng would also have chosen to use his own films for this, because this is the safer option. He is more familiar with his own films and has better mastery over them.”

“I didn’t think of that. And since we’re in front of him, everyone would definitely choose his works,” Zheng Yuan said.