1
Who was the main character of "I Love My Family"?
Many people might say Song Dandan, while others might say Yang Lixin or Tian Liang. In fact, none of them. The absolute first star of "I Love My Family" is Wen Xingyu, who plays Comrade Lao Fu.
There is no episode in the show where Lao Fu didn't appear, and other characters were more or less absent, and he had the most lines. It's hard to imagine what the whole drama would have been like without Lao Fu, the big honorable and lovable family, and if people would have loved them as much.
Some people may not realize that Wen Xingyu was only 52 when he played Lao Fu, and the character Lao Fu is 67 years old, which means that Wen Xingyu is playing an old man in his middle age. At first, the gray hair on his head was painted by a makeup artist.
Sadly, when Wen Xingyu left the audience who loved him in 2007, he was 66, not old enough to play Lao Fu.
2
Back in 1993, the cast of "I Love My Family" found the right person to play Lao Fu.
According to the preconception, Fu Ming was the head of the family and experienced the most historical stages, life phases and stories, so he was the prime character. Ying Da, the director of the entire drama, initially identified the actor as Zhu Xu, a veteran actor of the People's Art Department. Because of the relationship between Zhu Xu and Ying Da's father, Ying Ruocheng, Ying Da grew up calling Zhu Xu Da.
Zhu Xu has appeared in many classic plays on stage and has also worked on films and TV dramas such as The Last Emperor. During the script-writing process of "I Love My Family", Yingda deliberately invited Zhu Xu to play the most important role of Fu Ming, having invited Zhu Xu to read the script of "The Uninvited Guest".
The script was the brainchild of Ying Zhuang, one of the screenwriters. It later became the best of the drama because of Ge You's performance (which was reinterpreted as "Ge You Lie" in the summer of 2016). However, due to scheduling issues, Zhu Xu was not able to participate in the filming and went to work on the movie "Scent of the Heart".
Now imagine what would have happened if Zhu Xu had actually beaten up Lao Fu. I believe that with his old man's acting skills, he could naturally portray a typical image. But theater critic Shi Hang once made a judgment that Zhu Xu should also be able to perform an old comrade like Lao Fu in "Meng Meng," but certainly "not as cute as Wen Xingyu's show. Maybe it will be.
Yingda was busy looking for other candidates, and Ying Ruocheng recommended Wen Xingyu, the deputy director of the Central Experimental Theater (which was later incorporated into the National Theater of China).
3
Wen Xingyu was 52 in 1993. When he attended the acting department of the Central Academy of Drama, he was a good student at the school. He usually went to the library to read books and had solid professional skills.After graduating in 1963, Wen Xingyu worked as an actor at the Central Experimental Theater, where his colleagues called him "Dawenzi". Although he loved acting, he never had the chance to show off all his talents because of his limited image.
According to screenwriter Ying Zhuang, on the theater stage, Wen Xingyu cannot be a good guy or a bad guy. Wen Xingyu's teeth (plural of poor) are particularly large and his image is poor, so he can't play a positive role; then he plays the villain, but he's too tall at 1 meter 83. Standing on the stage was not favorable to other positive characters. After the Cultural Revolution, Wen Xingyu simply turned to become a drama director, and gradually became famous in the circle.
At the time, Wen Xingyu was a cutting-edge director who was good at practicing new ideas in theater. He directed works such as "Harmony", "Soul and Flesh", "Song of the Great Wind", "In Silence", "Aq Zhengzhuan", "When Will the Maple Leaves Turn Red? , and each play has a different approach. The Color and the Wo shows the process of female childbearing, which has never been seen on stage before, and is very exploratory. The Spirit and the Flesh also tries to be very different in its performance process.
For Ying Da, Wen Xingyu is a familiar face. In "Love You," Wen Xingyu served as the actor's acting coach and also played the role of Wang Bao. When Wen Xingyu was at home for some reason, Yingda was ordered to go to him. For playing the most important role of the whole play, Lao Fu, Wen Xingyu had some drums in his heart. He hadn't concentrated on acting for more than ten years and wasn't qualified.
So Wen Xingyu told Yingda, "I can try and do my best, but if I can't act for more than a few episodes, you can change. Yingda quickly decided to cast Wen Xingyu as Fu Ming. The company's main business is the development of a new product line, which will be launched in the near future," he said, adding that the company has been working on the development of a new product line for a long time.
4
According to the plot, Fu Ming was 67 years old, while Wen Xingyu was only 52 years old. The gap with his character's age also made him feel long after the drama started shooting.
The feelings are found gradually. Careful viewers will notice that in some episodes, such as "In That Faraway Place," Lao Fu speaks faster and louder, more like a middle-aged man close to his own age, and then changes.
Wen Xingyu tried to change the speed and tone of his speech, and found that the audience responded more enthusiastically to such speech, so he strengthened it, gradually forming the style of speech of Lao Fu's old cadres. This way of speaking became familiar to TV viewers, and Wen Xingyu used this "Wen's voice" many times in many movies and TV shows.
To play the lovely old cadre Lao Fu, Wen made reference to some of his father's images. His father worked at the Party School in Yan'an and was a real old cadre. But as he got older, he had that "old boy" quality that often made fun of his family.
When "I Love My Family" aired, it was accused of mocking the old cadres too much, but Wen Xingyu disagreed. In his eyes, a person is no longer high, you are first of all a person, there are also old people, most of the family have old children. Jokes do not mean offense, he is perfectly acceptable to the drama jokes.
5
The most frequent scene in the whole drama is Jia's living room, followed by the dining room, and there are not many shots of Old Fu's bedroom. You can see a photo of the couple hanging on the bedroom wall; it's Wen Xingyu and his lover, Zhang Kejing.
Zhang Kejing was a former professional diver who became nationally famous for starring in the movie "Female Divers in the Diving Team". After diving, Zhang Kejing joined the Experimental Theater where Wen Xingyu worked. At that time, he was the secretary of the theater's troupe committee. Wen Xingyu already knew Zhang Kejing. Zhang Kejing had never seen him before, but when she first met Wen Xingyu, she felt as if she had seen this person somewhere. This fate finally brought them together.
The black-and-white photo was taken in Dongdan Park. At the time, Wen Xingyu and Zhang Kejing had just been married for about a year and had no children. On that day, they went to Dongdan Park with a colleague to watch a play, and the colleague took a photo with them. In the photo, Wen Xingyu is wearing a hat, a habit he developed when he was young. He wore a hat every time he went out. For this reason, Zhang Kejing's grandmother also became suspicious and specifically asked Zhang Kejing. Why does the man you are looking for always wear a hat? Is he bald? On the contrary, Wen Xingyu had thick hair at that time.
When filming the movie the crew asked Wen Xingyu if he had a photo of himself and his lover at home, and when he got home he picked this one. The precious photo still hangs in Zhang Kejing's bedroom, as if his wife had never left.
6
On July 30, 2007, Wen Xingyu left this world forever due to illness.
In his last days, he was unable to speak, and both of them relied on their notebooks to write. Wen wrote a lot of "love" words, which overlapped because of his physical strength and poor eyesight. Zhang Kejing understood the word because they had never argued in decades and their eating habits could be changed for each other. According to her arrangement, eight words are engraved on the back of Wen Xingyu's tombstone: Youth is gone, love lives on.
Every year at the Ching Ming Festival and when Wen Xingyu died, Zhang Kejing would drive to the cemetery to see his wife and talk to him. According to their agreement, she would bring a rose with her every time she went up the mountain.