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Reader question: Please explain “pulled out all the stops” in this sentence: The latest “Transformers” movie pulled out all the stops to appeal to a Chinese audience, illustrating how crucial China is to Hollywood’s fortunes. My comments: This is just another way of saying producers of the Transformers movie did everything they could to incorporate the so-called Chinese elements into the movie so that Chinese viewers can identify with it and, hopefully, come to see it again and again. Chinese elements such as, for instance (at least this being the case in the past), letting Chinese actors play small roles (house maids, for example), letting gangsters speak in Cantonese, etc. and so forth. At least this has been the case for movies made in the past. Nowadays they’re even allowing Chinese actors to play leading rolls and things like that. In other words, they’re doing all they can in order to appeal to Chinese viewers – in order, that, eventually Chinese viewers will fill the cinemas and thus putting more money into the collective pocket of Hollywood. Bottom line? Box office. Money and profit. All right. That is Hollywood in China and that is that. Now let’s examine the phrase “pulling out all the stops” a bit more closely. This is an idiom that one hears so often that people often ignore what it really means originally. I, for one, never paid attention to it before. | 
