During a recent interview with Portrait Magazine, Feng Xiaogang, a famous movie director and the chief director of the 2014 CCTV Chinese New Year Gala, said that he was not able to inject his personal style into the 2014 Chinese New Year Gala when he was the chief director. Feng said during the interview that “No matter what you wish to do, they always want you to follow their protocol. They claim that we must make the public happy. That is sheer nonsense. The prerequisite for the general public to be happy is that you must make the leaders happy because if the leadership is not happy, the public will not even get to see anything.” Feng also disclosed that the reason that he took this position this year was simply to return a favor he owed for the “Back to 1942” movie he directed in 2012.
[Editor’s Note: The CCTV New Year’s Gala also known as the Spring Festival Gala and commonly referred to by the abbreviation Chunwan (春晚), is a Chinese New Year special produced by China Central Television shown on the eve of the Chinese New Year. The program was criticized as having subtle political enhancements to glorify the progress China made under the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party. Since it was launched in 1983, the viewership of the program has continued to decline year after year.
Source: Xinhua, February 22, 2014
http://news.xinhuanet.com/politics/2014-02/22/c_126174516.htm
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CCTV_New_Year%27s_Gala