After Janet became pregnant, weekends were supposed to be off.
Because I had been away from Los Angeles for almost a whole week before, I couldn't relax this weekend.
At five o'clock in the afternoon, Simon ended the production meeting of "The Last of the Mohicans" and briefly said goodbye to all the main creators before returning to Point Dume Manor.
Today is September 14th, Saturday.
When I got home, I handed the briefcase to Alison, the girl A who came over, asked a question, and walked to the seaside living room of the villa.
Janet was leaning on the sofa, her calves resting on Girl D's thighs, being gently kneaded by Deborah, very much like a lady from the Eastern Palace. Six months into pregnancy, when the belly gets bigger, women will inevitably experience edema, which is common among pregnant women. Fortunately, it is not serious.
Seeing Simon, Janet hummed a few times, with a bit of pity on her expression.
Simon sent Girl D away, sat down where Deborah had just been, and started to help Janet knead her calves. Men are always stronger than women. Janet snorted a few times comfortably, and then said: "It's so annoying."
"How about going to Europe with me tomorrow, changing places, and resting in Italy for a while?"
Although he had just returned to Los Angeles a few days ago, Simon had to leave again this time for Europe.
The closing ceremony of this Venice Film Festival is September 16th, next Monday, which is the day after tomorrow. Daenerys Entertainment's "The Piano" has been shortlisted for the main competition unit of this Venice Film Festival. According to the feedback from Ella Deutschman, not surprisingly, "The Piano" has been locked in the Golden Lion prize.
Simon plans to attend some Venice Film Festival after-parties.
In addition, the opening of Milan Fashion Week this year is September 26, and Sofia also hopes that Simon can attend.
The above two are actually just incidental. The filming of "Wonder Woman" has entered the second half. Recently, it happened to be filmed in several filming locations in Italy. Simon followed the crew for a week at the beginning of the filming in July. As the filming is approaching, he plans to Follow up again for another week.
As a project in the DC Cinematic Universe that is essentially entirely owned by Daenerys Entertainment, "Wonder Woman" deserves Simon's attention.
Janet naturally knew Simon's itinerary in advance. She shook her head when she heard this: "I don't want to go. Now I suddenly regret being pregnant with this little guy. I really want to get him out of my belly right away."
Simon smiled and continued to knead Janet's calves with one hand. He reached out and stroked the woman's round belly with the other hand and said, "It has to be time. Have I kicked you today?"
Janet wrinkled her nose: "Kicked, I scolded him a few times before he stopped."
The smile on Simon's lips grew wider. He thought about it and said, "Or, if you don't want to go to Europe, why don't you go back to Australia and live for a while? I can take you back to Australia tomorrow?"
Janet blinked her eyes for a few times, stared at Simon and said, "You want to go back to Australia, right?"
Simon wondered: "Why do I want to go back to Australia?"
"Hum hum."
"What does it mean?"
Janet raised her chin, looking like you know it in your heart.
Simon played dumb unswervingly and changed the subject: "What do you want to eat tonight?"
Janet suddenly lost her temper and said in a hoarse voice: "I want to sleep."
Speaking of which, Simon has always suspected that the woman used to smoke.
Otherwise, how could she have such a slightly hoarse voice, but Janet never admitted it, and Simon never saw her smoke.
Without struggling with this idea, Simon nodded immediately: "I'll take you to the bedroom, sleep for a while, and then I'll call you when dinner is ready?"
Janet's tone was more naughty and coquettish: "I want to sleep on my stomach."
“…”
Janet's tone suddenly became aggrieved again, and she repeated: "I want to sleep on my stomach."
"This is very difficult. Besides, sleeping on your stomach is really unladylike."
"Well, it's all your fault."
There is no reason to talk about a woman’s temper when she comes.
Simon had no intention of trying to reason with the pregnant woman, and he followed Janet's tone of voice to comfort her for a while before she gave up her sudden idea of sleeping on her stomach.
After comforting Janet, Simon went to explain the dinner in person.
When she came back again, Janet had returned to her usual appearance, as if the childishness just now didn't exist.
Let Simon sit down on the other side, with his pillow on his man's lap, watching the red sunset sea view outside the floor-to-ceiling window, while talking small words.
It wasn't until dusk fell that Girl A came over to help turn on the lights in the living room. Under the light, the scenery outside the window was completely gone.
Dinner was ready, Janet was lazily unwilling to move, and was carried to the restaurant by Simon.
As usual, she sat down next to Simon and ate food specially prepared according to pregnancy recipes. Janet also talked about some serious matters: "Forbes will release the new annual list of the 400 richest people in the United States next Monday. However, I have already I got the information, you can look at it later."
Simon asked directly: "How much?"
Janet started to show her off: "You can see for yourself."
Although he has not made detailed statistics, Simon occasionally estimates his wealth in private.
In any case, except for the tycoon royal families in the Middle East who live in the oil fields, in terms of non-national individuals, there are certainly few people in the world who are richer than Simon.
It's always hard to avoid the theory that if you have too much money, it becomes just a number.
Simon has often had similar thoughts this year since he topped the rich list last year.
However, Simon also knows that the main reason for this idea is because of his lack of background. His personal wealth of tens of billions of dollars has not exerted its due influence.
Moreover, for Simon, no matter whether it is US$21 billion last year or this year, it is not enough.
At the peak of the Rockefeller family, the private wealth accounted for 1.5% of the US GDP. Based on the US GDP figure of US$5.98 trillion in 1990, Simon would need to accumulate about US$90 billion in personal assets to be on par with the Rockefeller family at its peak.
Of course, the peak of the Rockefeller family was already in John Rockefeller's later years.
Compared with John Rockefeller back then, Simon, who is only 23 years old this year, still has too much time. With the current expansion speed of the Westeros system, it is only a matter of time before he surpasses the Rockefeller family and surpasses the influence of the Rockefeller family in the United States. Not too far away.
The next day continued with a busy morning, and Simon boarded a private Boeing 767 flying directly to Venice, Italy in the afternoon.
There is a 10-hour time difference between Los Angeles and Venice.
The time was calculated in advance, and after about 12 hours of flight, the Boeing 767 arrived in Venice at five o'clock in the afternoon on September 16, local time.
Simon had no plans to attend the closing ceremony, but made arrangements to attend the subsequent closing dinner.
As the headquarters of Gucci, with successful operation experience in the two major film events of Oscar and Cannes, Sofia will naturally not let go of the Venice Film Festival.
However, in order not to steal the spotlight from the closing dinner, Gucci's Venice Film Festival themed party was held two days ago, on Saturday night.
Speaking of which, it was not out of the question to win the naming rights for the closing dinner of the Venice Film Festival, but just to avoid suspicion, Gucci did not do so. Otherwise, it would be too easy for people to imagine that the film produced by Daenerys Entertainment won the award, and Gucci, which also belongs to the Westeros system, sponsored the closing ceremony dinner.
Even if it is to hide one's ears and steal the bell, many things still have to be done superficially.
The three cities of Venice, Florence and Milan are very close to each other. The distance between them is only about 200 kilometers, which is about half the distance between Los Angeles and San Francisco. They can be reached by private planes.
Therefore, Sofia also specially came from Milan.
The woman is currently in Milan preparing for the Gucci show at Milan Fashion Week next week, and the two plan to stay at Simon's mountainside villa on Lake Como in Milan tonight.
Simon did not purchase property in Venice.
On the one hand, there are no suitable properties.
On the other hand, Simon has some instinctive resistance to this water city.
As for the reason, it's probably the same as Simon not being interested in private yachts. The feeling of floating on water made Simon instinctively feel a certain sense of insecurity.
After rushing to Venice, I met Sofia Fasci and Ella Deutschman and had a simple dinner together. Everyone discussed the recent developments of Gaomen Pictures in a suite at the Venetian Boutique Hotel on Lido Island where the closing dinner was about to be held. some things, while waiting for the award results that kept coming at the closing ceremony.
When the news came that Holly Hunter won the Best Actress at this Venice Film Festival, everyone knew that the overall situation was decided.
The film festival jury may give secondary honors such as jury awards to some films that cannot win the Golden Lion in order to balance the situation, but Best Actress is not included in this category.
While waiting for the final news, Simon also heard another name.
"Raise the Red Lantern".
The film won the Silver Lion along with two other films.
Last year's "Ju Dou" received a pretty good response. Ella Deutschman has already won the North American distribution rights of "Raise the Red Lantern" in advance, and plans to once again compete for the best foreign language film Oscar this year.
Because Daenerys Entertainment will voluntarily give up competing for major awards such as the Oscar for Best Picture next year, and public relations resources are free, it will be very easy to win marginal awards such as Best Foreign Language Film.
Simon neither deliberately promoted nor hindered this matter, and just allowed Deutschman to operate on his own.
At around nine o'clock, the closing ceremony finally came to an end.
"The Piano," directed by Jane Campion and starring Holly Hunter and Harvey Keitel, successfully topped the list and won the Golden Lion, the highest honor at the Venice Film Festival.
After the closing ceremony, the guests left the Cinema Palace and began to gather at the Venice Boutique Hotel, which gradually became lively.
When the crew of "The Piano" arrived, Simon and others left the hotel suite and rushed to the banquet hall to congratulate the film's main creators.
Not many people knew in advance that Simon would appear at the closing dinner of this film festival. As the news spread, there was some commotion in the dinner hall. Even many closing ceremony guests who had not originally planned to attend the dinner were temporarily Came over.
The turmoil in Europe or Eastern Europe will basically end with the disintegration of the Soviet Union at the end of this year.
In the next few years, while continuing to integrate and expand the local market in North America, Daenerys Entertainment will focus a large part of its energy on developing the European market.
The general direction is, of course, that the US government has come forward to require European countries to increase their efforts to open up their local film markets through relevant trade negotiations.
Specific to each Hollywood studio, they need to show their talents.
Daenerys Entertainment's next goal in Europe is to penetrate the UK, France, Germany, Italy and Spain, which are important movie ticket warehouses in Europe. Daenerys Entertainment has already established branches in these countries.
If you want to develop the film market, connections are crucial, so participating in more film festivals like this will only benefit Daenerys Entertainment executives.
Speaking of which, not only Daenerys Entertainment, but the entire Westeros system will begin to slowly penetrate into Europe in the next step.
The future development of Microsoft, Intel, Cisco, Igret and other companies that Westeros holds shares or controls will be global. If we want to avoid these companies being troubled by the EU every day in the future, Westeros The system must arrange enough chips in Europe.
Not only integrating the Westeros system into the American economy, but even into the entire world, this is something Simon has been thinking about recently.
Establishing intertwined interests, if the EU wants to take some targeted measures in the future, it needs to consider the consequences, whether it will damage its own economy, whether it will cause unemployment for its own workers, whether it will cause a reduction in its own tax revenue, etc. wait.
As his vision continued to change, Simon became increasingly aware that Apple, Microsoft, Google and other companies later tried every means to adopt tax avoidance measures in Europe, which was not a very smart decision.
Leaving more profit taxation to each country will definitely bring more benefits to the development of these companies in the markets of these countries.
After all, even if it is transferred back to North America, unless there is a targeted major tax reduction, these profits will still have to be fully taxed.
Just for tax avoidance, large sums of money remain in the offshore market for a long time and cannot be used. They can only rely on some international fixed income investments to earn some dispensable income. It is a waste in any case.
However, the choice of avoiding taxes as much as possible is actually understandable if you are at the level of professional managers of large companies.
The job of professional managers is to create and retain as much profit as possible for shareholders.
In comparison, Simon is now on another level.
The lively and noisy closing dinner lasted until late at night. Simon was a little drunk from the entertainment of countless people. It was already past midnight when he and Sofia returned to the villa on Lake Como in Milan.
Probably because he travels frequently, it has become very easy for Simon to adapt to the time difference.
I didn't go to bed until after two o'clock in the morning last night, and woke up before nine o'clock local time in Milan the next day.
Sofia got up earlier, looking radiant.
At breakfast time, some local newspapers will be read during breakfast.
The news that Simon attended the closing ceremony of the Venice Film Festival last night has been reported by Italian local media.
Probably because of Simon's appearance in Italy, the local media in Italy seemed more lively today. However, the topic discussed by these media was not the closing ceremony of the Venice Film Festival last night, but the new annual list of the 400 richest people in the United States just released by Forbes magazine in North America yesterday.