tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-17312058862735094242024-02-02T15:21:15.001-08:00L.A. After MidnightUnique and mysterious people and places in L.A.'s ever-changing film scene. Lost movies and movie theaters ... stolen moments in time ... desperadoes waiting for a midnight train.BARTOKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06787299064544972391noreply@blogger.comBlogger14125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1731205886273509424.post-71802093486284517992011-06-04T11:56:00.000-07:002011-06-05T07:10:33.385-07:00Eric Sherman: 2 Weeks With Orson Welles<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiypO1W9HL_QOu3-2lQxMGS2CaPvoi6OwJVBrqKo5x56Una0fTSTQt6AVtp-xVUfKDMY4S_0hhyphenhyphenN9FcL0EZTn-PcyXrDyTAhUrl-vAlwfUeYjJSYnqnF4iY4MaccuFN4gemgEAGLctukAQ/s1600/IMG_9454.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiypO1W9HL_QOu3-2lQxMGS2CaPvoi6OwJVBrqKo5x56Una0fTSTQt6AVtp-xVUfKDMY4S_0hhyphenhyphenN9FcL0EZTn-PcyXrDyTAhUrl-vAlwfUeYjJSYnqnF4iY4MaccuFN4gemgEAGLctukAQ/s400/IMG_9454.JPG" width="400" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">In late January the <u>Guardian UK</u> and other media outlets announced the news that a previously unseen movie by Orson Welles – <i>The Other Side Of The Wind </i></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">– could finally see the light of a projector. As die-hard Welles fans know, there are several lost/unseen projects out there in various states of completion including his version of <i>Don Quixote, The Deep </i></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">and others. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFgSnotrxvJ_gNdvtJk3788Ax0UdhKVa6WwV8DZ84rY-C6cwQtHPt2w5Hnv9E918TAyrtPeieZTBfzW8Pv2c5j0RBm6LoRvlsLhLum-J0IwxDb039AfTvbMQU40csDzOBdj5BFJA_U2Qsy/s1600/IMG_9449.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFgSnotrxvJ_gNdvtJk3788Ax0UdhKVa6WwV8DZ84rY-C6cwQtHPt2w5Hnv9E918TAyrtPeieZTBfzW8Pv2c5j0RBm6LoRvlsLhLum-J0IwxDb039AfTvbMQU40csDzOBdj5BFJA_U2Qsy/s320/IMG_9449.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">This isn’t the first time (and may not be the last) that someone announces the imminent release of <i>The Other Side Of The Wind</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">. It seems like every five years or so the movie resurfaces, like a cagey old trout that rises to the bait but won’t be caught.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">The aura of mystery surrounding these uncompleted projects (most of which have been screened, at least in fragmentary form, at various cinematheques and museums world-wide) is one of the ways in which the Welles legend is kept alive, and maybe that’s not a bad thing. There’s an argument to be made that keeping some things out of sight keeps them powerful, and that no unseen Welles film, no matter how good, could live up to the one we see in our minds. (Witness the general disappointment a few years ago at director Jess Franco’s bastardized reconstruction of <i>Don Quixote.</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">) <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">Beyond their actual movies, great, charismatic directors tend to gather groups of people around them – collaborators, friends, film buffs and scholars – who also help keep the legend alive after the directors are gone. There’s still a powerful circle of Peckinpah admirers and collaborators (Peckinpahites?) here in Los Angeles who keep the torch lit.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">As with so many other things, Welles may throw the longest shadow on this score. And one of the many ironies is that <i>The Other Side Of The Wind</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"> is about the last hours of a great, charismatic filmmaker – played by John Huston, himself no slouch in that department – who’s been widely interpreted as Welles’ alter-ego. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">By lucky coincidence, right around the time news surfaced of this latest Welles project, I got an e-mail from an old friend, Eric Sherman, who asked if I’d be interested in talking with him about the two weeks he worked on … <i>The Other Side Of The Wind.</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"> As things happen our conversation wound up covering <i>Bonnie & Clyde</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">, big cigars, George Bush … and yes, Welles. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9n-EEm_Nx6IYb9Sb0CV2cPKfWufnorvacCHLa9eS8GYXPbKEzbjzJeRoeGDQWEc6v6uyU7gEdEs8an4zx3Pf522R-ZjrvA4C1ak6_uFvAmreCuN8agcQIRD0BqIatfOMECnD6SVklxJZx/s1600/IMG_9419.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9n-EEm_Nx6IYb9Sb0CV2cPKfWufnorvacCHLa9eS8GYXPbKEzbjzJeRoeGDQWEc6v6uyU7gEdEs8an4zx3Pf522R-ZjrvA4C1ak6_uFvAmreCuN8agcQIRD0BqIatfOMECnD6SVklxJZx/s320/IMG_9419.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">I met Eric years ago through the American Cinematheque where he helped organize retrospectives on directors Roberto Rossellini, Sam Fuller and others. One of the most fascinating, erudite and colorful guys I’ve met in Los Angeles, Eric has written several seminal books on filmmaking and the film industry including <u>The Director’s Event</u> and <u>Directing The Film</u>; he currently teaches production, film business and directing at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena and California Institute of the Arts (Cal Arts). </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">You can read much more about him at his own website <a href="http://ericsherman.com/">here</a>. Himself an acclaimed filmmaker and producer of the Peabody Award-winning PBS Series <i>"Futures With Jaime Escalante," </i></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">Eric grew up on the inside of the film industry. His father Vincent Sherman was a highly successful studio director in the 1940’s and 1950’s who made such beautifully crafted films as <i>Mr. Skeffington</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"> with Bette Davis and Claude Rains and <i>The Damned Don’t Cry</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"> with Joan Crawford<i>.</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2NxN8DJcWjLs8hQ8tRKcO5AvDf7Rbeog-X3zaTf7_6AcvOmcud8axuWGfdYy09VxgIcJAXRV73v__sTlPEBiHKmoNzSONvauGEuUPhkSczxYhyphenhyphenoBdyl8sDLJ2DiQkGcQwKIvWJAlekOzA/s1600/IMG_9460.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2NxN8DJcWjLs8hQ8tRKcO5AvDf7Rbeog-X3zaTf7_6AcvOmcud8axuWGfdYy09VxgIcJAXRV73v__sTlPEBiHKmoNzSONvauGEuUPhkSczxYhyphenhyphenoBdyl8sDLJ2DiQkGcQwKIvWJAlekOzA/s320/IMG_9460.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 17px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;"></span></span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 17px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;"></span></span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 17px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;"><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 17px;">Two of Eric's heroes: his Dad and Sam Fuller</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 17px;"><br />
</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 17px;">Eric greeted me in the driveway of his new home in the east Pasadena hills. “We’re still absorbing stuff,” he said, pointing out rooms filled with boxes. “We’d been renting for over 30 years, we never owned a house before.”</span></div></span></span></span></td></tr>
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</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 17px;">He led me inside through the garage, which now serves double-duty as his office – a convenient arrangement since Eric, a life-long cigar smoker, refuses to smoke inside the house, so instead he lights up downstairs with the garage door open. He proudly showed off a collection of DVDs of his father Vincent’s films: “We’ve got over 15 of his movies released on DVD so far,” he said with a son’s true love. An original Frank Stella hangs in the corner, near a cartoon from Sam & Christa Fuller … nearby is a photo of Roberto Rossellini with two of his “pupils,” Vittorio de Sica and Federico Fellini … </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 17px;"><br />
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</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 17px;">It’s a house filled with totems of art and film. In many ways Eric is an unrepentant hippie idealist who still believes in the power of art to transform us all.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 17px;"><br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">A son's proud collection: his Dad's movies</span></td></tr>
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</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 17px;">One photo that stuck out in this pantheon of great filmmakers and artists was a shot of Eric with his college classmate, George W. Bush. He smiled, pointing at it:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 17px;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWIQ6sY7FspvU0bMFfa5CLP2ZKBYNxKdhk6yxqLLRQOcbU-tD1yQeWbDcNDNGL4yi9k5rvN0fU9wf19NYoWk9EIJfD5PcUK2-KYJb3AR0yA7E2rKgMC8LTUofHYAnWTbDVNUbo-YEoeSXy/s1600/IMG_9442.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWIQ6sY7FspvU0bMFfa5CLP2ZKBYNxKdhk6yxqLLRQOcbU-tD1yQeWbDcNDNGL4yi9k5rvN0fU9wf19NYoWk9EIJfD5PcUK2-KYJb3AR0yA7E2rKgMC8LTUofHYAnWTbDVNUbo-YEoeSXy/s320/IMG_9442.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">“I went to college with Bush, he was a fellow Yalie with me and Lloyd Kaufman of Troma. Bush used to come to our Yale Film Society screenings with a case of beer and a big busty blonde on each arm. I met him a few years ago at the White House … You know me, I’m a real leftie from a Jewish background. I was totally charmed by the guy. Very intelligent. I don’t know if he’s gotten bad press or what, but in person he’s incredibly friendly.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">As he made a pot of strong black coffee, Eric kept talking:<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgv2hwgiJ6jRB39cLvcLdeOc47SAEnfDpNWMOZj1OPhX52nfp9cJu8tcl5Zhj9lWPwQxgZjz3mvELItAYg_FgmfXhnPaKBo_eXE-ZHrreQqio_vPu1An1dPkd4JIkjifmFc6mUMc6PGZ0t0/s1600/IMG_9444.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgv2hwgiJ6jRB39cLvcLdeOc47SAEnfDpNWMOZj1OPhX52nfp9cJu8tcl5Zhj9lWPwQxgZjz3mvELItAYg_FgmfXhnPaKBo_eXE-ZHrreQqio_vPu1An1dPkd4JIkjifmFc6mUMc6PGZ0t0/s320/IMG_9444.JPG" width="240" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">“I’m at the age where I ask myself what we’re really doing here. As Jack Warner said, we’re here for the 3 E’s: to Educate, to Entertain, to Enlighten.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">The greatest art is genre art. Shakespeare was genre. Bach was genre. A movie is a universe because it contains space, time, energy and matter – which are the components of this universe. Every movie presents an alternative universe to this one … I don’t think this universe likes film because it’s too threatening. So the artist really has to be a tough guy. Real big balls.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">When my dad’s autobiography came out, <u>Studio Affairs</u>, we had a book signing at Sam French. Sam Fuller hobbled in – Sam had had the stroke – he and my dad embraced, they were both studio survivors. One of my students came over and thanked Sam, said he’d been a great inspiration. Sam responded with great effort, ‘what … do you want to do?’ My student responded he wanted to make films. ‘Then you gotta have … <i>big balls</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">,’ Sam said with great difficulty.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">In 1967 – when you were 2 years old – <i>Bonnie & Clyde</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"> was released. It was absolutely panned by critics. We saw it opening weekend and thought it was a major event. We were in the middle of the Vietnam War. We found Arthur Penn on his farm in Massachusetts. Arthur Penn was a very sweet man, very intelligent. We were 20 years old. He was quite sad about the reaction to the film. We asked him what he thought, he said ‘I’m disappointed in the reception to the film, I was trying to provide a wake-up call to the American public that if you live by the sword, you die by it. Don’t think you’re going to live by the sword and make the world safe for no swords.’ Most filmmakers I know base their failure or success on box office, even though they’re artists.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">We did an extensive interview with Penn and published it in the <u>Yale New Journal</u>, a monthly magazine. Joe Morgenstern of the <u>Wall St. Journal</u>, then-critic for <u>Newsweek</u> who was also a Yalie – he got a copy of the interview we did with Penn and re-reviewed the film for the first time. He said thanks to an interview done with Penn by two Yalies, I realized I’d completely missed the boat on the message of the film. On the strength of that review, Warners re-released the film with a different ad campaign. And Arthur had already sold his points to Warren Beatty because he thought the film wouldn’t make anything. And he never gave Arthur even a tip. (That’s why Lucas is loved on <i>Star Wars</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">. I know a number of people who get generous checks from Lucas.)<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">In 1967 because my dad was in the industry, I was able to get these guys’ phone numbers. We went over to Sam Fuller’s house, his wife at the time had just divorced him. He was moving all his stuff out, he had this big Cadillac. He said ‘Guys, c’mon and give me a hand!’ We arrived at 2 PM and helped move him out until midnight. Then he said, ‘What can I do for you?’ We said we wanted to interview him, he said ‘Okay but let’s eat first.’ He threw 3 big steaks on the grill – one for me, one for Marty [Rubin, Eric’s partner at the Yale Film Society] and one for him – it’s some of the last meat I’ve eaten, I’ve been a vegetarian for decades. He said what’ll you drink? I’ve never been a drinker – Marty said I’ll have whiskey, Sam said ‘No you don’t, you’ll have vodka’ and poured us 3 huge vodkas. ‘Have a rope? Your dad smokes doesn’t he?’ Sam pulls this cigar out – this big, like a kosher salami – and he pulls out a railroad spike from his belt, like a guy would carry a knife, and poked the end of the cigar. He shoved it in my mouth, I was green. By 2 AM, Marty had had 3 or 4 glass fulls of vodka. Sam finally says ‘whaddaya wanna talk about??’ And we talked for 18 hours straight, and that was the interview that went in the book. We became friends and were friends for his whole life. In fact Christa gave us Samantha’s baby clothes – so my boys grew up wearing Samantha’s clothes.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgb4qJJmo08J2h__TvCDe7Btfb17vzlDweQGiQ-vHDzxq5nDECW46aN67XGCA9-7xm54RxSSKHNIYYbxODqpnDfjOj-SQtDSTywzrGps7sMbR767gasvz4P3bkWwxcyzoqTnNkjC1iaehIt/s1600/IMG_9447.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgb4qJJmo08J2h__TvCDe7Btfb17vzlDweQGiQ-vHDzxq5nDECW46aN67XGCA9-7xm54RxSSKHNIYYbxODqpnDfjOj-SQtDSTywzrGps7sMbR767gasvz4P3bkWwxcyzoqTnNkjC1iaehIt/s320/IMG_9447.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">Eric took a pause. “We came here to talk about Orson Welles, right?” He jumped up and fished around for a video – a few moments later he showed me a clip of Welles on “The Dick Cavett Show.” <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">Eric shook his head, smiling as he remembered. “Welles was a giant, nearly 6 foot 4, in black silk pajamas … Peter Bogdanovich, who I’d met 3 years earlier when I was interviewing him for my book, called me. He said, Eric – do you still have your 16 mm. camera? Yes. You still have your friend Felipe Herba? I said, yes. Well come right over, and Peter gave us an address in Trousdale Estates, which was kind of a nouveau development in Beverly Hills which was already nouveau enough.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">Orson had rented and taken over this house as a location for the film he’d started in 1970 and was still working on in 1985 at the time of his death, it’s called <i>The Other Side Of The Wind</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">. It’s about a cult movie director who’s having trouble finishing his last film. The movie director was played by John Huston. The picture is essentially finished – Gary Graver, the DP who was a buddy of mine, used to show scenes from it from time to time at the Fairfax. Talk about an eye popper.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">So we arrive at Orson’s house and God himself steps out. We used to say 'There but for the grace of God goes God.' He was gigantic. You can see his size, he just towered over everybody. Not just physically, you could sense when he was near. Mentally and spiritually, he was huge, huge. I had become an avid cigar smoker since I was around my dad and Sam – according to afficianados, Orson was the second most famous cigar smoker after Winston Churchill.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoJ7b9Ss2e6tBDF9WZwHsx_hMJFjSI7IH-ERVcjdUFPDkHnGOpotkMyvBZvLWpQ_YlLFZrixdP58B8DDF30YYYk0yLkAHUP2z8TFbix1XU2ujpZE6KkxjJmPnHGe2sK5eg9JGDgtBR23eE/s1600/IMG_9435.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoJ7b9Ss2e6tBDF9WZwHsx_hMJFjSI7IH-ERVcjdUFPDkHnGOpotkMyvBZvLWpQ_YlLFZrixdP58B8DDF30YYYk0yLkAHUP2z8TFbix1XU2ujpZE6KkxjJmPnHGe2sK5eg9JGDgtBR23eE/s400/IMG_9435.JPG" width="400" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">I had bought for Orson the largest commercially available cigars at the time, a couple Double Coronas, 7 and ¾ inches long. I presented them to him, ‘Mr. Welles – from one cigar smoker to another.’ With great kindness he said, ‘Oh no thank you, Eric, I only smoke <i>large</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"> cigars.’ He reaches in his pocket an pulls out an enormous honker ... I said where on earth did you get that? He said they make them for me. There was no commercially available size that would be more than a cigarette for him.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">Let me describe the environment at this house. There was Welles, this giant figure in black, in black silk pajamas and a black robe, which is the only clothing I saw him in for 2 weeks. Various beautiful men and women were walking and running around the house, 24/7, and some of them were completely naked. It was another universe, Dennis – I was 23 at the time.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">I learned that one of the beautiful women was Oja Kodar, his consort for the last 10 or 15 years of his life, with whom I’m still in touch. And it was not as though I’d died and gone to heaven, but it was as if I’d been transported to a different universe. These people were not marching to the same drummer as most.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">This is how Orson would direct – he’d never look through the camera. He’d say give me a 16 right here, holding his fingers out in a circle. If I set it up here or there, he’d say ‘No!, that’s not what I said.’ He never looked at the camera but he knew if I was an inch off. And he never paid too much attention to it – except he KNEW. The certainty, the absolute knowledge that he had, was pervasive. I’m talking about a level of human intellect and awareness way above the norm. I call it learning by permeation rather than study.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">I worked on <i>The Other Side Of The Wind</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"> for 2 weeks. I was one of 2 cameras – and I acted playing a camera crew with Felipe, portraying what we were doing, which was kind of experimental for those days, a multi-camera shoot. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">The general description is, we pre-lit the entire house, every room in the house. And Orson said, ‘all right, Gary – when I say roll, you roll from here, give me a 17 here,’ – holding his finger in a circle – ‘and after a minute, Eric, you start from here, and give me a 15’ – and he hold up his fingers again. A roll of film is 10 minutes long – so when Gary would roll out I’d have one minute left. Gary would race to camera position three which had been pre-planned, replace his magazine of film. He would start – and I would have one minute left and do the same.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">So we’d leap frog through the house for an hour. The actors HATED this – they’d have to remember an hour of dialogue. So we’d set up over an hour of shooting – it was the party scene which was still in the movie. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">Now, two sub-stories within it:<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">You know the famous pregnant pause in acting? Dennis, this is the pause … ‘To be or not to be, that is the question ….’ Pause … ‘whether tis nobler in the mind …’ Pause, look in the other direction.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">Every place Orson looked on a pause was a cue card man. You know the famous story of Brando in <i>Last Tango In Paris</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"> where he’s weeping over the coffin of his wife? There were cue cards in the coffin.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">There were about a dozen cue card guys for Orson. One was on a ladder, another was on the ground. It was clear to me that Orson never read the cards though he looked in their direction. It was the ultimate security blanket. The cue card company was called Barney Cue Cards, and Barney just passed away a few years ago, wonderful guy.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">The second story was this… You understand I have an obligation to have my lens exactly where Orson said, right? My camera position three was very awkward, I’d be crouched like this bent over, too high to sit. On about my 3<sup>rd</sup> or 4<sup>th</sup> camera position – 30 or 40 minutes into this – even though I was 23 and in good shape, my back starts really cramping, I grab my back and stand up. Orson says CUT! Eric, how do you expect me to concentrate with all that motion???! Now Dennis, there are a dozen guys running around, guys with cue cards, guys on ladders – I make one motion and he says cut! <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxtW0s29nAoyiYAhwXkksczBiFiMuDPwXA9B6yNuZx9owbAAoBgI8XJTYfipIEbOAoD0LmuCZJ-q40lQm775cO6sM5dajD6Ebj9Hk_no2Rtwc8AaiiFhjmm30ZGkM72eBlwl8ZxxreX2Er/s1600/IMG_9456.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxtW0s29nAoyiYAhwXkksczBiFiMuDPwXA9B6yNuZx9owbAAoBgI8XJTYfipIEbOAoD0LmuCZJ-q40lQm775cO6sM5dajD6Ebj9Hk_no2Rtwc8AaiiFhjmm30ZGkM72eBlwl8ZxxreX2Er/s320/IMG_9456.JPG" width="240" /></a></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">I say Mr. Welles, there’s 30 guys running around all over the place.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">He says ‘Yes – but I didn’t plan <i>yours</i>.’ He could tolerate infinite motion – if he put it there. But one motion of 12 inches he couldn’t tolerate.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioM3EpLuyzfVlBpL3tVCfZEX7Y5QDd33LKGTPiDPgScPxsbsBQqS7TrlXRRakOfXUAQML6AoybyjWeQ9nIv-Gh-YQiJEl6qBruBbG53w9Dt-Ltq9zxvahJvRKuzRLj57XNR7OscV9YxyCz/s1600/IMG_9457.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioM3EpLuyzfVlBpL3tVCfZEX7Y5QDd33LKGTPiDPgScPxsbsBQqS7TrlXRRakOfXUAQML6AoybyjWeQ9nIv-Gh-YQiJEl6qBruBbG53w9Dt-Ltq9zxvahJvRKuzRLj57XNR7OscV9YxyCz/s320/IMG_9457.JPG" width="240" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">I said that’s genius. Now I know what a genius is. That’s the way the shoot went.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">The crew turnover was 50% a day, because not everybody could take that degree of intensity. I lasted two weeks.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">Our call time every morning was 6 am. Wrap time was 2 am. Meaning we had a 20 hour work day, which was quite illegal. But nobody complained, they just quit. When we wrapped at 2 am, Orson would be sitting at his typewriter typing the pages for tomorrow. We’d go home, take a shower, lay the body home for an hour. We’d come back at 6 am – and he’d still be sitting at the typewriter. Meaning I didn’t see him sleep for 2 weeks. You get that image? In the same goddam black silk pajamas and robe.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">We had one meal break every day, it was a 2-1/2 hour lunch. Catered by the Beverly Hills Hotel or Chasen’s. When it was Chasen’s they’d bring buckets of their famous chili. I never saw Orson eat.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">While we would be eating he’d be recording Eastern Airlines and Gallo Wine commercials. Am I describing to you an eccentric man? Gigantic in size, I never saw him eat, I never saw him sleep.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">There’s a famous scene in the movie. The female lead is played by Oja Koda. She has sex with the driver of the car – I think played by Bob Random, in the Boetticher film <i>A Time For Dying</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">, and they really go at it, it’s one of the more erotic scenes ever. We were driving through Century City at 5 am one morning. Remarkable point: Orson – this is the days before video monitors – Orson wanted to be present in the car. Not because he feared anything sexual – but he directed by permeating a setting, and he just infused in us all the knowledge of what he wanted.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">Now a man Orson’s size couldn’t fit into the car really. It was a Lincoln Continent Town Car, which had the largest trunk of any car made at the time. I hope this doesn’t sound insulting because I really love the man – he insisted we lower him into the trunk, and cut a little hole in the trunk through the back seat so he could see. It took us about 2 hours to lower him into the trunk. But given his size and height and weight, it took over 2 hours to get him in. And then we closed him in. I was afraid he’d suffocate but he didn’t. So we drove around Century City while Oja and Bob Random were simulating fucking in the front seat.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">So the 2 weeks go by and we wrap that sequence of scenes. And this led to the Event that inspired me to contact you and say I’ve got an L.A. After Midnight story. All of this was a preamble:<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">It was around midnight and we wrapped. Orson said, ‘Eric, you seem to know the town pretty well – what’s open late? I want to take everybody to a wrap party.’<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">There was a Mexican restaurant – still is, I think, in the Silverlake area called Nayarit, near Barragan’s, on Sunset near Alvarado. So 15 or 20 of us drive over there and we start dinner about 2 am. And the place is normally open till 4 am but they stayed open for us until 6. And that’s when I saw Orson consume more food and drink than I’ve ever seen anybody eat. He ate continuously for four hours. Every form of Mexican food, just platter after platter. And pitcher after pitcher of margaritas. During that four hours, I sat next to Orson – we talked about everything I wanted to talk to him about. Art and film and women and politics. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">I’d like to tell you three things he told me that night that always stayed with me:<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">Number one, his favorite artist was Duke Ellington. Duke was to music as Orson was to film. He spoke so lovingly of Duke.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">The second thing he told me was that he hated Richard Nixon for one reason. My generation used to burn the American flag as a protest. Nixon made that illegal and would pursue anyone who’d burn the flag. Orson said, ‘how stupid could you be? A flag is a symbol. How could burning a symbol be a crime?’<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">The third thing was, I would say Orson probably had had his share of women, beautiful ones, being married to Rita Hayworth and consorting with Oja. And he stated to me his view of women. He said obviously, women are the superior gender. Obviously. They go through child birth – we men appear to be stronger but that’s because we puff out our chest. Why are we doing it? To impress women. Physically, mentally and spiritually women are superior.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">We embraced, we wrapped – and Orson continued to shoot the film for 15 more years.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">I’m going to give you a coda. Approximately 14 or 15 years later, Doug Edwards [former head film programmer at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences] called me. A very good friend, a true gentleman in every sense of the word.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">He called me and said, Eric, would you like to produce a film to be written and directed by Orson Welles? I said Doug, was Christ Jewish? Give me a break, what’s the script? He brought me a copy of a script Orson wrote called “The Dreamers.” It was a combination of three short stories written by Isak Dinesen, the character played by Meryl Streep in <i>Out Of Africa</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">, a Danish woman whose real name was Karen Blixen. She’s the only person Orson spoke of, of whom he was in absolute awe. He’d fly to Denmark and stand in front of Dinesen’s flat, awe struck.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">So “The Dreamers” is probably the greatest screenplay that I’ve ever read … Mindboggling, huge, about an opera singer named Pellegrina in Europe. It’s about the nature of creation. All I can say is it’s an older artist’s testament like Bach’s the Art of Fugure or Beethovens 9<sup>th</sup>, or Brakhage’s final works. Stunning.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">He had prepared a budget, at the time it was about $10 or $12 million. I said to Doug, I’d love to talk to Orson about this. So I had one more meeting with Orson, just before he died, in 1984 or 1985.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3Gu8hz3LBt1cIYPupvC24nC9PwnIabrIBM9bRS1RKsyCJCkG1OKiSQdb-HPcv9wwg8NR3Da91F-HepFaqLqje26C94VWegc-x4G82hKu3ryCULgIw1pq1CwigEugw_2kwx7g_s1Qqb0ym/s1600/IMG_9417.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3Gu8hz3LBt1cIYPupvC24nC9PwnIabrIBM9bRS1RKsyCJCkG1OKiSQdb-HPcv9wwg8NR3Da91F-HepFaqLqje26C94VWegc-x4G82hKu3ryCULgIw1pq1CwigEugw_2kwx7g_s1Qqb0ym/s320/IMG_9417.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">I said to him, ‘Doug has asked me to produce this, and I have a question for you. If I produce it, I’m going to be responsible to the investors to watch their money. And you have a reputation for being profligate with investors’ money, and I want to know, do you think I ought to take on this assignment?’ <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">Orson looked up wistfully in the air, then he said: ‘Eric, I don’t think you should.’ I said, why?<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">‘Because I hate people with money,” Orson replied. ‘So if you produce it, I will abuse you – and the investors’ money. I’ll keep writing scenes rather than finish the film.’<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">Dennis, do you get how moving this was to me? He was stating right there the key to his life and career. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">I’ve always thought that, on the one hand, I didn’t help a group of investors lose $10 million – and on the other hand, we don’t even have the shards of a lost masterpiece. So I’ve had mixed feelings about that.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">But I think I grew up really during that meeting, because I no longer looked at Orson as a blighted artist. I looked at him as self destructive – <i>with awareness</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">. That was a profound realization.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div>BARTOKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06787299064544972391noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1731205886273509424.post-68826903975516188182011-03-01T16:28:00.000-08:002011-03-01T20:14:28.711-08:00Jane Russell: Memories of Robert Mitchum and "Macao"<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">Like many in Hollywood and beyond, I was saddened to hear the news of Jane Russell’s passing yesterday. She was one of film’s enduring icons, a great star from an era when being a star seemed to somehow mean more than it does today.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">Reading tributes to her from a number of bloggers, including Leonard Maltin’s very fine piece on her <a href="http://blogs.indiewire.com/leonardmaltin/archives/remembering_jane_russell/#">here</a>, I was reminded of a tribute Russell herself shared with me a few years ago, to her co-star Robert Mitchum – a colleague and friend who’d stood up for her at a time when she truly needed it. In 2005 I was involved in organizing a retrospective tribute to Russell at the American Cinematheque’s Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood. One afternoon I received a last-minute phone call from Marvin Paige, a well-known casting director who was helping to coordinate the retrospective and Russell’s appearance there. “I’m at Musso & Frank’s with Jane. Come down and join us,” he said, then hung up. I grabbed my colleague Gwen Deglise by the hand and we hustled across Hollywood Blvd. to Musso’s.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">Russell was sitting with Marvin in one of the big red leather booths, wearing an eye-popping green blouse and pants outfit she’d designed herself – and clunky white sneakers. It was an incongruous pairing that fit her personality well. She was an actress and icon who seemed to have no illusions about the film industry, or life in general. She talked openly with us about serious eye problems she’d been dealing with: for the past year and a half she’d been suffering from macular degeneration, and had been coming down to L.A. for experimental treatments at UCLA medical center which involved “sticking a needle into my eye,” as she said matter-of-factly. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">While discussing which films to show in her upcoming tribute, she mentioned <i>Macao</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">, the dark, exotic crime film she’d made in 1952 for her <i>The Outlaw </i></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">producer Howard Hughes, and co-starring Robert Mitchum. She had nothing but kind words for Mitchum, but the same couldn’t be said for the man who directed the film. <i>Macao </i></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">was credited to director Josef von Sternberg, the legendary helmer of such visually ravishing films as <i>The Blue Angel, Shanghai Express </i></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">and <i>The Scarlet Empress </i></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">among others. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><i>Macao </i></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">was in fact von Sternberg’s last Hollywood film – he was replaced during production by Nicholas Ray (later of <i>Rebel Without A Cause</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"> fame) – and Russell shared some fascinating and very personal insight as to why he was fired. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">“Mitch [Robert Mitchum] and I worked with Josef von Sterberg on that film,” she said over lunch. “Everything was very stiff and posed, except for the stuff Nick Ray shot. He was great fun to work with. Von Sternberg was arrogant as could be. He used to say things like ‘What are we going to do with this beautiful stupid broad in this scene, Mitch?’, and Mitch would just look at him without saying anything.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">It was obvious, listening to her tell the story, that von Sternberg’s comments still cut deep, even five decades later. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">“Finally it got so bad it couldn’t go on,” she continued. “Mitch told his secretary to bring him a big picnic basket to the set one day. He spread out a blanket and sat down, right in the middle of everything. Pulls out a sandwich, opens a bottle of champagne and pours himself a glass, just like that.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">“Von Sternberg’s standing there and watching him with the rest of the crew. His face is going red. He’s literally shaking he’s so angry. Finally he rushes over to Mitch and shouts ‘What are you doing?! Who do you think you are sitting down and eating on my set??! You can be <i>replaced</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">, you know!’”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">“Mitch just looked at him and said, ‘No, <i>you </i></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">can be replaced.’ And that afternoon von Sternberg got a letter and he was gone.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">Russell said it was Mitchum’s own personal way of standing up for her, when she was suffering abuse from a co-worker and colleague. It was a gesture she never forgot. <o:p></o:p></span></div>BARTOKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06787299064544972391noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1731205886273509424.post-61578453904925986602011-02-17T07:09:00.000-08:002011-02-18T10:24:13.626-08:00Tokyo After Midnight: a B-movie Mystery<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">[The final chapter in the story of my mother LeAnn Bartok’s lost career in Japanese movies in 1959-1960 – and the search to find some trace of it over thirty years later.]<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">A few months after finally seeing the long-missing <i>Kimi Wa Nerawareteiru</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">, I e-mailed my friend Chris Marker, the legendary French director of <i>La Jetee, Sans Soleil </i></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">and <i>The Last Bolshevik.</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"> Chris has a long, rich association with Japan – there’s even a tiny bar in Tokyo called “La Jetee” that’s dedicated to him and his movies – so I thought he’d get a kick out of the saga of LeAnn and finding one of her Japanese B-movies<i>.</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"> <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">After I told him the whole story, he e-mailed back:<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><i>“My, my, if that ain’t the greatest story since the Man Who Would Be King … And what a script it could beget: ‘The case of the lost movie’! … If you could join to the package a copy of the tape [of ‘Kimi Wa Nerawareteiru’] that would make my day, my week, my year … And having a mother who’s able to carry a pistol hidden in her stockings surely helps to build one’s character. (My Russian grandmother knew how to roll a cigarette on her boot single-handed, which isn’t bad, but you can’t compare.)”</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">I sent him a copy of the movie, and he sent back this wonderful little artwork incorporating an image of LeAnn from <i>Kimi Wa Nerawareteiru </i>and his beloved cat, Guillaume-en-egypte:<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDQ9b_0ZCmqiMLITFc3GEGb0HqzWx6BWf5C_AZI6crd-HF3bhaebFp3TT_vPjNEhyphenhyphen2pTaFCqThyphenhyphenCa1RKxhUFEVxcer1sqeRd3kI8XQr4aiznTYffkzMLu93A8jSW6otcSgGKWQgw_kI1bx/s1600/GEE+mom+%2528Chris+Marker+LeAnn%2529.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="170" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDQ9b_0ZCmqiMLITFc3GEGb0HqzWx6BWf5C_AZI6crd-HF3bhaebFp3TT_vPjNEhyphenhyphen2pTaFCqThyphenhyphenCa1RKxhUFEVxcer1sqeRd3kI8XQr4aiznTYffkzMLu93A8jSW6otcSgGKWQgw_kI1bx/s400/GEE+mom+%2528Chris+Marker+LeAnn%2529.JPG" width="400" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">The image continued to bounce around in mysterious and unpredictable ways. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 17px;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 17px;">Once the genie is out of the bottle it’s impossible to contain.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">Jump cut to: <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">I’m lying in bed, it’s 2008. I’m watching Seijun Suzuki’s landmark 1963 crime movie <i>Youth Of The Beast.</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"> It’s close to midnight, my wife and son are both asleep.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">It’s nearly half an hour into the movie … I’m starting to get drowsy too … Without warning, Jo Shishido – he of the huge, chipmunk cheeks – bursts into the office of a movie theater holding a rifle.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><i>Suddenly I hear a voice, crying out … I’ve heard it somewhere before, this voice.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><i>In fact I’ve heard it thousands of times. It’s LeAnn’s voice, calling from half a lifetime away.</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">I bolt upright like I’ve been shot with electricity. There on-screen, looming larger than life behind Shishido and the others, is the ghostly B&W image of my mother’s face.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVS9DeEj1Mdq6j1jjMWuv4LOF-ZLAtvENGyCwnhRihHaVFv-FpStbKHFIuidhVBMMJ9TZG0rsLlJZyiAh3zZFPnJST7ZQpTDSEPoe4vENeNu1HE43Cgwt5CGHnK9QvnEoLluCvtnVNMXKK/s1600/LeAnn+-+Youth+of+Beast+1.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVS9DeEj1Mdq6j1jjMWuv4LOF-ZLAtvENGyCwnhRihHaVFv-FpStbKHFIuidhVBMMJ9TZG0rsLlJZyiAh3zZFPnJST7ZQpTDSEPoe4vENeNu1HE43Cgwt5CGHnK9QvnEoLluCvtnVNMXKK/s320/LeAnn+-+Youth+of+Beast+1.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">It’s her once more, in a scene from <i>Kimi Wa Nerawareteiru</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"> made three years earlier.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">The same studio, Nikkatsu, had made both films. They needed to show a movie projecting in the theater during the gun battle -- and for some reason, someone decided to pick this particular scene with LeAnn. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEil3_7ziSue6aQgudEDV1XkEM0CbHLzvKfjIKKDvHvaIva18Wy2JoO1bTut5w5inVQWC5kssotqiG9e6jtslEptLpgFFPhyphenhyphen7yvL4b0KhxeCfFWHyGdW_N5wxOc6IVt-SUp_kkj0v8o6MX3I/s1600/LeAnn+-+Youth+of+Beast+3.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEil3_7ziSue6aQgudEDV1XkEM0CbHLzvKfjIKKDvHvaIva18Wy2JoO1bTut5w5inVQWC5kssotqiG9e6jtslEptLpgFFPhyphenhyphen7yvL4b0KhxeCfFWHyGdW_N5wxOc6IVt-SUp_kkj0v8o6MX3I/s320/LeAnn+-+Youth+of+Beast+3.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">It’s a crazy world, isn’t it? You go looking for something, and then you find it -- or it finds you.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">And then it keeps finding you, over and over.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">In late 2002, as Kinji and his son Kenta were preparing to begin shooting <i>Battle Royale II</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">, Toshiko e-mailed to tell me that Kinji was dying of cancer and didn’t know if he’d be able to finish production.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">In fact Kinji was only able to complete a few days of shooting when he grew too weak to continue.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">Kinji Fukasaku died on January 12, 2003. Toshiko e-mailed the sad news:<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><i>“Kinji left us about an hour ago, shortly after 1 AM Sunday, Japan time. He couldn’t pull a miracle for himself, Kenta and all of us.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><i>I am tempted to shout ‘Baka!’ (which means “idiot!”) He didn’t have to die now if he were more prudent, but who is to say how one should live one’s life also.”</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOJKg5KX5CUEMJsB_ie8WjQ3wa_1_n8xSx3S-x0NiSCg2-9NcVlw5XkKiqN40mMX27cPWEnIMlWR_lTUNJI6LVsONnE9W6r6ktZJvMIkLQPRttuEA2b4DICeyJTVbpRkRZJwlAg3F9ijRj/s1600/Kinji+Kenta+Susan+-+Last+Photo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="286" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOJKg5KX5CUEMJsB_ie8WjQ3wa_1_n8xSx3S-x0NiSCg2-9NcVlw5XkKiqN40mMX27cPWEnIMlWR_lTUNJI6LVsONnE9W6r6ktZJvMIkLQPRttuEA2b4DICeyJTVbpRkRZJwlAg3F9ijRj/s400/Kinji+Kenta+Susan+-+Last+Photo.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 17px;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCwxaQ7lgbxBgMGe1Q7gVBU1xk2iXLudCA3E4zbj97FQILypKvyMDapjCvrLPPo2TnPE0I0N0ZUMglkGhfqTfoJaiiAxMxSFnWI-9oag_ObaMMbBtS0yNkn-FkLnjStbKaWwepji6hdGf9/s1600/Kinji+Isao+Toshiko+Dinner.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="328" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCwxaQ7lgbxBgMGe1Q7gVBU1xk2iXLudCA3E4zbj97FQILypKvyMDapjCvrLPPo2TnPE0I0N0ZUMglkGhfqTfoJaiiAxMxSFnWI-9oag_ObaMMbBtS0yNkn-FkLnjStbKaWwepji6hdGf9/s400/Kinji+Isao+Toshiko+Dinner.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 17px;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 17px;">[Fond farewells -- our last dinner with Kinji Fukasaku in the Ginza district. </span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 17px;">Top photo, left to right: Kenta Fukasaku, Susan Gold, Kinji.</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 17px;">Bottom photo: Isao Tsujimoto (far left), Toshiko Adilman (far right)]</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 17px;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">Toshiko’s husband, Sid Adilman, one of the best-loved film journalists in Canada, died several years later after a long illness … My last memory of Sid is sitting in his bedroom as we watched Kinji’s <i>Virus</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">, the movie that brought Toshiko and Kinji together for the first time, and Sid laughing his ass off at how silly it all was.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 17px;">Flash forward again, or maybe sideways … Linear time has little meaning now:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">I’m standing on the chilly rooftop of Toei Studios in Tokyo, as a Shinto priest conducts a blessing ceremony for the movie I’m there to produce, a segment of the film <i>Trapped Ashes – </i></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">inspired, in fact, by the haunting memories of the hanged man my wife and I had discovered in Nanzenji Temple in Kyoto.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">It’s nearly 47 years since LeAnn came to Tokyo and wound up making movies. And here I am, following her footsteps.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">Our last day of shooting wrapped up at nearly 5:00 AM – ironically at the same soundstages where Kinji had made the very first <i>Battles Without Honor & Humanity</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">, and where his son Kenta was currently prepping his new movie.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">The wheel turns, and turns.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">I went back to the hotel and collapsed, exhausted. Two hours later I shook myself out of my stupor, showered, and climbed on a train. It took me an hour outside Tokyo, where I was met in the cold morning rain by my buddy Yoshiki.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">I was there to see an old family friend. One I’d never met before.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">Yoshiki got on the phone and made a call.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">A few minutes later we walked to a nearby coffee shop. A slight, elderly man with glasses came up to us carrying an umbrella, and smiled broadly.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><i>“I’m Motomu Ida,” </i></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">he said. <i>“I directed Kimi Wa Nerawareteiru.”</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
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<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 17px;"> <i> </i></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">An enormous thank you for all their tremendous help and encouragement over the years to: Toshiko Adilman; Kinji Fukasaku; Motomu Ida; Isao Tsujimoto; Tadao Sato; Susan Gold; Shari Bartok; Jayce Bartok; Yoshiki Hayashi; Tiffany Bartok; Chris D.; Chris Marker; Stuart Galbraith; Marc Walkow; Christian Storms; Tom Abrams.<br clear="ALL" style="mso-special-character: line-break; page-break-before: always;" /> <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgu-umMh6GhAelgoSzt_64w5rPb68lH6-az5c4gq3iEQxYpFKvWlM-GJ1cg8_AyOIFDOEcHwH5ZsUxDMJ-DLXO0X3zCZUSfgGesnLsv0nzcwcI5tH-psygBhLkE8t6AEqtVykJZAnrJAWPy/s1600/IMG_9132.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="163" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgu-umMh6GhAelgoSzt_64w5rPb68lH6-az5c4gq3iEQxYpFKvWlM-GJ1cg8_AyOIFDOEcHwH5ZsUxDMJ-DLXO0X3zCZUSfgGesnLsv0nzcwcI5tH-psygBhLkE8t6AEqtVykJZAnrJAWPy/s320/IMG_9132.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBrFhbeaiSDSKBILQHg48FytGVaKlDyKhYfJ0iRKG3se_0fdTkFsPI1yGXBazgmPSoQPW8nxHIwA45r3L2iSC5G6Fq3zyAUfzE-wILJZXgJ8Ou_n8-t3oJm5pYvcfmHErrwKs-jYSAcmvE/s1600/LeAnn+Skyworks+Photo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBrFhbeaiSDSKBILQHg48FytGVaKlDyKhYfJ0iRKG3se_0fdTkFsPI1yGXBazgmPSoQPW8nxHIwA45r3L2iSC5G6Fq3zyAUfzE-wILJZXgJ8Ou_n8-t3oJm5pYvcfmHErrwKs-jYSAcmvE/s320/LeAnn+Skyworks+Photo.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><br />
</span></div>BARTOKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06787299064544972391noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1731205886273509424.post-67580566167093717032011-02-09T06:59:00.000-08:002011-02-10T20:34:58.786-08:00Tokyo After Midnight: a B-movie Mystery<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">[Part 6 in the story of my mother LeAnn Bartok’s lost career in Japanese movies in 1959-1960 – and the search to find some trace of it over thirty years later.]<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0uci68YZoPoPhI-YFcZqnpajMOMDoFpt06MQESjS7f1Ikh9PSiuigZ6Vqujl2liLqxhEm6c1H-DlXlLfHYLX5BvmFIoGHnCG97uVWRV3OOeaSGXtnZQ1OuqlDaOWu4g6PzLwG1ajUQyvd/s1600/IMG_9183.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="183" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0uci68YZoPoPhI-YFcZqnpajMOMDoFpt06MQESjS7f1Ikh9PSiuigZ6Vqujl2liLqxhEm6c1H-DlXlLfHYLX5BvmFIoGHnCG97uVWRV3OOeaSGXtnZQ1OuqlDaOWu4g6PzLwG1ajUQyvd/s400/IMG_9183.JPG" width="400" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">A few months later in November, 2002, I got a message from my friend Yoshiki in Tokyo: the long-lost <i>Kimi Wa Nerawareteiru</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"> had just screened on Japanese television and he’d taped it for me.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 17px;">I was dumbfounded … it didn’t seem quite possible. Nearly 10 years of actively searching for the movie and here it just happened to serendipitously turn up on Japanese TV. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">Thank God for coincidence, I thought.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAdJEh3PBY36bEo5xl8vZT_Hu0tIZI0gEzoLQZ5I6n3czQfBdX4e0M_ijsLnxOpE1An7gKyXyKLp900LXQAItbV6JtAPnHmuoz_0WOB6tHFgPItDn33lgB2eZIG77x2_HLuHkFUDXgnRI2/s1600/IMG_9163.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="198" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAdJEh3PBY36bEo5xl8vZT_Hu0tIZI0gEzoLQZ5I6n3czQfBdX4e0M_ijsLnxOpE1An7gKyXyKLp900LXQAItbV6JtAPnHmuoz_0WOB6tHFgPItDn33lgB2eZIG77x2_HLuHkFUDXgnRI2/s400/IMG_9163.JPG" width="400" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 17px;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 17px;">A few days after that Toshiko Adilman forwarded a letter to me from Mr. Ida:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><i>“Dear Mr. Dennis:<o:p></o:p></i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><i>It’s been five years since I last wrote to you, but I am Ida who directed ‘Kimi Wa Nerawareteiru.’<o:p></o:p></i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><i>How is your mother? I really would like to have a chance to see her, but it’s difficult, wouldn’t you think, given we are so far apart from each other. Today, I have good news.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><i>The film produced 40 years ago was broadcast this month by the Tokyo CS Channel. It’s ‘Kimi Wa Nerawareteiru.’<o:p></o:p></i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><i>In the film your mother’s performance is strong and she looks smashing. I would like you to see it as soon as possible.”</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">I started crying when I read his letter. Sometimes life is very good.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjG77PhwKThV0k7MR8lxc_xUmxLMs7ujpoK8G9jX27A00RL25nLFVnoaQKSPabbSan52LzsvgI91FeWRRaIOt04Dz_EMZGj475jMahY2EHcoGvjnUzVm4dmbHoRtOsc_4gbHGZJXJDpBrf1/s1600/Kimi+Wa+Local+Poster.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjG77PhwKThV0k7MR8lxc_xUmxLMs7ujpoK8G9jX27A00RL25nLFVnoaQKSPabbSan52LzsvgI91FeWRRaIOt04Dz_EMZGj475jMahY2EHcoGvjnUzVm4dmbHoRtOsc_4gbHGZJXJDpBrf1/s400/Kimi+Wa+Local+Poster.JPG" width="288" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 17px;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 17px;">It was also very sad to read his message to LeAnn.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 17px;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 17px;">He didn’t know she’d passed away a year and half earlier.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">Ida, too, had videotaped the film and was sending me a copy. (As it turns out I received copies from several other friends in Japan afterwards … I guess I’d talked to a lot of people about it.)<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 17px;">I wrote back to him, sharing his joy at the film finally turning up again, and telling him the news of LeAnn’s death.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 17px;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 17px;">I told him more about her own career as a painter and filmmaker, and how she treasured her time in Japan, how she carried it with her her whole life.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 17px;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 17px;">I promised to send him a copy of one of LeAnn’s last Mt. Fuji paintings (I’d earlier given one to Kinji Fukasaku as a gift for all his friendship and support.)</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlbfsQqgG8jwp6x7Mzpxz8h1qYPKZVz9-UnLsdUoYAYqHsrhYutDixMCTxWBBkhw2V25IvdG-B0eiqv2TEJTD4Z8GQJ8tzO0g1YaJLJg9m3ovx9BIb4GuMA7GhPpFfDrz1IBp2ySia9UE0/s1600/LeAnn+Photo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlbfsQqgG8jwp6x7Mzpxz8h1qYPKZVz9-UnLsdUoYAYqHsrhYutDixMCTxWBBkhw2V25IvdG-B0eiqv2TEJTD4Z8GQJ8tzO0g1YaJLJg9m3ovx9BIb4GuMA7GhPpFfDrz1IBp2ySia9UE0/s400/LeAnn+Photo.jpg" width="266" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">Soon after, VHS tapes of <i>Kimi Wa Nerawareteiru</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"> started showing up at the American Cinematheque office – first from Ida, then Yoshiki and others.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">It took me a few days to actually sit down and watch the movie. To be honest, I was a bit scared of seeing it after all this time. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizL9N8bm_c0jt6-Kb_xuIiJoJZx6BnDUGysc8z6mnkyMV_pgejV-PkuoBeJ_TGHN3mox8vmHCHI6PIkKW1gas3Fg0gPurb4Fijbp3OU2ZFAi94K2pOl5fhP7MPFLRFWluDB1qwMie_Pai0/s1600/Kimi+Wa+VHS+%25231.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizL9N8bm_c0jt6-Kb_xuIiJoJZx6BnDUGysc8z6mnkyMV_pgejV-PkuoBeJ_TGHN3mox8vmHCHI6PIkKW1gas3Fg0gPurb4Fijbp3OU2ZFAi94K2pOl5fhP7MPFLRFWluDB1qwMie_Pai0/s320/Kimi+Wa+VHS+%25231.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 17px;">[Above: Years of searching -- and it comes down to this.]</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 17px;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><i>Kimi Wa Nerawareteiru </i></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">literally translates as <i>“You Are Being Aimed At,” </i></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">or probably better, <i>“You Are The Target.”</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"> LeAnn always referred to it <i>“The Man They Tried To Kill”</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"> since that was the translation on her script. It turned out to be a tough, taut little crime movie, barely 55 minutes in length, with more than a passing resemblance to Hitchcock’s <i>North By Northwest.</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"> Motomu Ida later told me the resemblance was no accident: the head of the studio had apparently seen Hitchcock’s movie, then called Ida into his office and said: “I want you to make me a <i>North By Northwest.”</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">Shot in beautiful B&W Cinemascope, the movie opens with shots of Tokyo: an elevated train track, people bustling in the streets. The Tokyo LeAnn would’ve known in 1959. It’s the story of a reporter, played by Yuji Odaka, who gets mistaken for an undercover policeman named “Henry Yamanaka” who’s been trying to infiltrate a Japanese crime syndicate.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipM0mjr52H1JKXFnmSkJ4EuL95qDfn9y8AiXx2yyzMm9qWSwmYxM-yptlkjrinx-g28zgC2ynq_KgXUTzw4lDTDijS8m7PY49RPU1P9xOwm6fy292WMn-83xQRn-fJXnebto-DwJKj_qLl/s1600/IMG_9111.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="203" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipM0mjr52H1JKXFnmSkJ4EuL95qDfn9y8AiXx2yyzMm9qWSwmYxM-yptlkjrinx-g28zgC2ynq_KgXUTzw4lDTDijS8m7PY49RPU1P9xOwm6fy292WMn-83xQRn-fJXnebto-DwJKj_qLl/s400/IMG_9111.JPG" width="400" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 17px;">Here, finally, was the elusive “Henry Yamanaka” I’d heard about so many times as a kid.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">And here as well, playing one of the mob enforcers, was LeAnn’s mysterious agent: the Turkish/Russian actor and sometime pimp, Osman “Johnny” Yusuf. The man who claimed he was in love with her.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">Watching the film, I feel like I’m looking at a lost member of the family … I only wish I could’ve met the guy.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><br />
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</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">The movie clips along at a brisk pace with the reporter getting into and out of scrapes with the mob enforcers, helping to rescue an innocent girl (Kyoko Hori) and locking horns with an enigmatic, dark-haired beauty (Hisako Tsukuba) who works for the drug bosses.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">The similarities to Hitchcock’s film are apparent in a number of scenes. Here, the reporter played by Yuji Odaka brings the police back to the house where he was drugged – just as Cary Grant does – only to be met by caretakers who claim the place is empty:<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj62I2pRSc4uWZAOAMAGotJQ-uCQ772hBunlBSjqFT1GzZb_SmwvOYBn0bLh1TFl9MdYHTh9FVUIHb8-jdl8OQo8LX7mQRXW4_TlDAcMwniHzix7hCFO-5dQLAyNPbt9-b6MTf8iDTQQnZ6/s1600/IMG_9477.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="164" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj62I2pRSc4uWZAOAMAGotJQ-uCQ772hBunlBSjqFT1GzZb_SmwvOYBn0bLh1TFl9MdYHTh9FVUIHb8-jdl8OQo8LX7mQRXW4_TlDAcMwniHzix7hCFO-5dQLAyNPbt9-b6MTf8iDTQQnZ6/s320/IMG_9477.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">And here, mimicking the famous scene at the United Nations, Odaka is trapped in an elevator with a man who’s just been knifed – a crime he’ll be mistakenly blamed for:<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnfeyzGgV0SHq9srnYMaLuCpbzIpdsLNKzL41xXzTFI4bSDdcNI00IvpVr6NkDMXzldZesRh8Z5bFDbjnaWAzrvxiFAiCwd6hd-hwkSP8YBAY3JKPON5fiwPOrj4Icev1xNqYeXtkEge-t/s1600/IMG_9479.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="163" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnfeyzGgV0SHq9srnYMaLuCpbzIpdsLNKzL41xXzTFI4bSDdcNI00IvpVr6NkDMXzldZesRh8Z5bFDbjnaWAzrvxiFAiCwd6hd-hwkSP8YBAY3JKPON5fiwPOrj4Icev1xNqYeXtkEge-t/s320/IMG_9479.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhr8ufVD8Ij7j8-i635vIRFbvOD_dnfuE8tzJKJyy6Rm7h_EmK5TGBPLzaWpZHOie64ukAAol2JqJ9SgtQPOtJy3LFFBWBIr8AneZgPCoGhKUXf_HIuaZNNHj7CqZLcNaVJtJB4Lmzz6mkb/s1600/IMG_9480.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="168" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhr8ufVD8Ij7j8-i635vIRFbvOD_dnfuE8tzJKJyy6Rm7h_EmK5TGBPLzaWpZHOie64ukAAol2JqJ9SgtQPOtJy3LFFBWBIr8AneZgPCoGhKUXf_HIuaZNNHj7CqZLcNaVJtJB4Lmzz6mkb/s320/IMG_9480.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">For all its influences, <i>Kimi Wa Nerawareteiru </i></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">stands on its own. Ida’s eye for composition is especially strong, framing his characters in simple, unobtrusive Widescreen shots that increasingly throw a noose around Odaka’s trapped reporter.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzBOr6LRdgFi9rwpf5xFDo6RTZIEUEDI_QiZFX577qDBxXDUfMqzSm2JVItPNjatwfQrGny81LilQtz_pQb5Z8-WkgsvEuRvR7bDlTx6Pf70FHXeRHiSRUvjUFk9lbNkTsURYXJdvi7Be7/s1600/IMG_9536.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="160" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzBOr6LRdgFi9rwpf5xFDo6RTZIEUEDI_QiZFX577qDBxXDUfMqzSm2JVItPNjatwfQrGny81LilQtz_pQb5Z8-WkgsvEuRvR7bDlTx6Pf70FHXeRHiSRUvjUFk9lbNkTsURYXJdvi7Be7/s320/IMG_9536.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 17px;">The only problem was, it was nearly 35 minutes into the movie … and I still hadn’t seen a sign of my mother. I started scanning every scene for her profile – was it possible that after all these years, we’d gotten it all wrong? That LeAnn didn’t appear in the movie after all -- or she was just some walk-on part, visible so briefly even I didn’t recognize her?</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">Finally in Act III, there’s a big meeting of all the syndicate underbosses at a resort in Hakone. They all gather in one room, but the seat at the head of the table is empty, reserved for the mysterious Boss of Bosses.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCmzwmmugbUk_iKa3ld_loT-p9jCIRQ0NlGU7B7I1OFaHg1ZMPDsImPrFolH16ggBSXyaSXJDqyJ1-TaEhAd4827gpJYlaCq79KGaL8VF9iC_xCPOhA9i4fNgAoebkxRUOJC2sTsu-ys4o/s1600/IMG_9541.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="162" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiCmzwmmugbUk_iKa3ld_loT-p9jCIRQ0NlGU7B7I1OFaHg1ZMPDsImPrFolH16ggBSXyaSXJDqyJ1-TaEhAd4827gpJYlaCq79KGaL8VF9iC_xCPOhA9i4fNgAoebkxRUOJC2sTsu-ys4o/s320/IMG_9541.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">The door opens, they all turn around … and my mother walks in. Wearing a white sequined gown, with bleached blonde hair and dark eyebrows, looking like a cross between Veronica Lake and Frida Kahlo. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">Then she starts to talk – in English! – and she’s the cocktail waitress from hell, swearing and cursing and just beating the hell out of the poor underbosses for their failure to capture “Henry Yamanaka.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7AtX1dEA0iKp6JfXppsL7eayo6ff1ZIhtuMqDhMBSdyy1-loIO2ziuhbKLAwQuX-gi2tKwww8MPayMhshydoLxlop0NSJkPhpN_sjFGrr2jA1AaKr0ySDG5neJ4nC4ZhGtWAKA7YmzHZv/s1600/IMG_9147.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="162" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7AtX1dEA0iKp6JfXppsL7eayo6ff1ZIhtuMqDhMBSdyy1-loIO2ziuhbKLAwQuX-gi2tKwww8MPayMhshydoLxlop0NSJkPhpN_sjFGrr2jA1AaKr0ySDG5neJ4nC4ZhGtWAKA7YmzHZv/s320/IMG_9147.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAlpm9AzX3abTdfhbfMM0HJ_ToLrWbxLuqINcSkPDMh4K1WvONMO28ZAX-zYJOgWIKsWBEJDzv9U7aAP_of2Qm0U6HDIjYV6EAm4iDm-LNpk8cDkWzLrIWWoWqtOuHxWbXZI5871OyuvNz/s1600/IMG_9150.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="220" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAlpm9AzX3abTdfhbfMM0HJ_ToLrWbxLuqINcSkPDMh4K1WvONMO28ZAX-zYJOgWIKsWBEJDzv9U7aAP_of2Qm0U6HDIjYV6EAm4iDm-LNpk8cDkWzLrIWWoWqtOuHxWbXZI5871OyuvNz/s320/IMG_9150.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">Big plot twist: Henry Yamanaka turns out to be a woman, the dark-haired beauty played by Hisako Tsukuba. Exactly like <i>North By Northwest</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"> where the double agent is Eva Marie Saint.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbPVN2tYbt2DkdUlh-Zuvn2GTO7GOo90LHVu4tNynrXEbNIdHPLaBXzlTS70-xo_yWNtOfUpovi0HHlrNyaCHD0urJVAG4IOlcUbU3yVTCiCKo17TgM8mMa1nAQ-KYHwXhQOib3PdzXZnC/s1600/IMG_9161.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="188" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbPVN2tYbt2DkdUlh-Zuvn2GTO7GOo90LHVu4tNynrXEbNIdHPLaBXzlTS70-xo_yWNtOfUpovi0HHlrNyaCHD0urJVAG4IOlcUbU3yVTCiCKo17TgM8mMa1nAQ-KYHwXhQOib3PdzXZnC/s320/IMG_9161.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsfvgMHXX1HyuHXjxdkcVCKhzq-S9YKhrC4JrfSNfcaG8X6c95LokW5C08aq6_DcI7EQLe6AGWAtU9RAMMOcSRHUnEqGquOUvE_w4mbdkPQ1bj98FBY5R-aJkof8VBDi4A_4YGMy_i5JB4/s1600/IMG_9164.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="152" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsfvgMHXX1HyuHXjxdkcVCKhzq-S9YKhrC4JrfSNfcaG8X6c95LokW5C08aq6_DcI7EQLe6AGWAtU9RAMMOcSRHUnEqGquOUvE_w4mbdkPQ1bj98FBY5R-aJkof8VBDi4A_4YGMy_i5JB4/s320/IMG_9164.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">LeAnn chews scenery right and left, she shoves people around, she whips a little pistol out of the top of her stocking … She’s loud and abrasive and menacing as all get out.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFA-6PmbrCE4Afdm1cwkgyKCu_E8GD8fwKJpZpPeBWFF4X6RX4ieNgNHcd_34RlcvKuKkl1GkswfSDnfBKsVQ5ECzPq8sNYc8FcD6ltfbmttGxxvfC35kxyHEjtj2TdaEsNd8sHi-2H7ah/s1600/IMG_9134.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="148" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFA-6PmbrCE4Afdm1cwkgyKCu_E8GD8fwKJpZpPeBWFF4X6RX4ieNgNHcd_34RlcvKuKkl1GkswfSDnfBKsVQ5ECzPq8sNYc8FcD6ltfbmttGxxvfC35kxyHEjtj2TdaEsNd8sHi-2H7ah/s320/IMG_9134.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">In the end there’s a big shoot-out and the police burst in. She’s hauled off to jail, still wearing her white fur wrap and string of pearls. Still Mr. Big.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-zHfvUxWlDWvIJ6gWr2hbqf2lOMAfqsn_QGIZgUu31nLM3psGU4qndrfx653SU9GnShmeDL_5cVfjzr2DZsL5xBi59MpJUZXeObTw1my_bJRmQqeTgb8AXbvdtjan7CxK4vZ4_3K80sqM/s1600/IMG_9137.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="161" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-zHfvUxWlDWvIJ6gWr2hbqf2lOMAfqsn_QGIZgUu31nLM3psGU4qndrfx653SU9GnShmeDL_5cVfjzr2DZsL5xBi59MpJUZXeObTw1my_bJRmQqeTgb8AXbvdtjan7CxK4vZ4_3K80sqM/s320/IMG_9137.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">I can’t say she’s a good actress in the film – she’s way over the top in fact, screeching like some harpy from a roadside diner in an Edgar Ulmer poverty row movie. But in her way, she’s utterly fantastic. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">If you watch <i>Kimi Wa Nerawareteiru</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">, the thing you’re most likely to remember is that outrageous, beautiful, ballsy blonde that everyone’s afraid of.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9u3hG_Bc3S71D1ihySpgV68avg8k4RWWvFpqfu-hF1A5NEbJojeUKB15EaDDGY4yUo8kseto5gIIIArQZ6izzeaPeOa0wli9NiehaReo3sqHUm1z6rZ7G0nSmxTz3SrqcH06UqypobNF5/s1600/IMG_9132.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="203" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9u3hG_Bc3S71D1ihySpgV68avg8k4RWWvFpqfu-hF1A5NEbJojeUKB15EaDDGY4yUo8kseto5gIIIArQZ6izzeaPeOa0wli9NiehaReo3sqHUm1z6rZ7G0nSmxTz3SrqcH06UqypobNF5/s400/IMG_9132.JPG" width="400" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">That’s my mother, LeAnn.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 17px;">A few weeks later, my friend Isao Tsujimoto from the Japan Foundation e-mailed to ask if I’d seen the movie. When I said yes, he replied – wonderful, wonderful, our friend Tadao Sato will be so happy … <i>he’s the one who arranged to have the film shown on Japanese TV for you.</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">I was dumbfounded – what was he talking about?? Of course I remembered meeting with Sato in Tokyo a few months earlier. I’d given him some pages from the script and he’d promised to look into it – I never heard anything else and thought he’d forgotten about it. It was just pure coincidence the movie ran on TV.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">Not at all, said Isao. Sato had called an old friend of his at Nikkatsu who researched the film and confirmed that yes, there was an original negative in storage. When Sato explained it was for the family of an American woman who co-starred in it, his friend said I’m sorry, but the film has never come out on DVD and I could lose my job if I made you a copy. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><i><br />
</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><i>But what I can do, he added, is to arrange to have it shown on our own TV network, so you can tape it and send a copy to your friend in Los Angeles.</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><i></i></span></div><i></i><br />
<i></i><br />
<i><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">So through this incredible, roundabout way, <i>Kimi Wa Nerawareteiru</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"> was broadcast on national television in Japan so it could be taped and sent to me.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times; font-size: medium; font-style: normal; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 17px;">Somewhere, LeAnn was laughing her ass off.</span></div></i><br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhP1gY6r3455Skmg43lNudLURxeUfnC92Gty7kVm-0eHf7b3NxNnGsO4yI3CsFO9SnZjVSM02ooijHgONlC8jngEaAhNHKOn8ev141_EoVH-GkSDf9euaWaktkpyM7bvwYGMkXnVa38JtdF/s1600/Kimi+Wa+Local+Poster+Close+Up.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="248" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhP1gY6r3455Skmg43lNudLURxeUfnC92Gty7kVm-0eHf7b3NxNnGsO4yI3CsFO9SnZjVSM02ooijHgONlC8jngEaAhNHKOn8ev141_EoVH-GkSDf9euaWaktkpyM7bvwYGMkXnVa38JtdF/s400/Kimi+Wa+Local+Poster+Close+Up.JPG" width="400" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">(Next chapter: A lost movie that won’t stay lost)<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 17px;"><br />
</span></span></div>BARTOKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06787299064544972391noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1731205886273509424.post-77283808825732811922011-02-02T11:29:00.000-08:002011-02-10T15:00:59.591-08:00Tokyo After Midnight: a B-movie Mystery<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"> [Part 5 in the story of my mother LeAnn Bartok’s lost career in Japanese movies in 1959-1960 – and the search to find some trace of it over thirty years later.]<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">In January 1998, I received another letter from Motomu Ida, the director of <i>Kimi Wa Nerawareteiru:</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><i><br />
</i></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2tRDKjtrh260IXgNx9iD7fDGZziTo8NTsYWQ-yPU8Cv76JEKtfPdPOIDoPQsJmPNRbTxTH71_lWuKMl1TZ3Y-ZdenBXQfGwRHp_mhG28LVXGWs3EhixPpBNXE_wHGUDQy-xlSqyMyYtSz/s1600/Kimi+Wa+Poster+Close+Up.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj2tRDKjtrh260IXgNx9iD7fDGZziTo8NTsYWQ-yPU8Cv76JEKtfPdPOIDoPQsJmPNRbTxTH71_lWuKMl1TZ3Y-ZdenBXQfGwRHp_mhG28LVXGWs3EhixPpBNXE_wHGUDQy-xlSqyMyYtSz/s400/Kimi+Wa+Poster+Close+Up.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 17px;"><i>“Dear Dennis –</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><i>Thank you for your letter … I was surprised to learn, after so many years, that your mother was an American actress. No wonder she was so good in the film. I was told by the Nikkatsu casting department only that she was married to someone who worked at an American military base. Had I known that she was an actress I am sure I would have asked her to appear in several more of my films. I used to be very fond of using foreigners with Japanese subtitles on screen. What a shame. I can still remember her moving speech with menace in her voice.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><i>As Nikkatsu has since gone bankrupt, there is no hope to do anything further. I have been told that no one knows where the positives and negatives might be stored.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><i>I am sorry to hear that your mother is not feeling well. I wish her a speedy recovery.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><i>Although your kind words were heartwarming, I did not do anything out of the ordinary. I am just happy that I could be of some use … <o:p></o:p></i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><i>These days I teach performers and technical staff at a film school. After all I am getting old, you see.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><i>Motomu Ida”</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibk6dogQtX1fCYyJH1phZ4KV0IwSobgs95BXK0P7nhhSteERMV3PoHaHHrfwSxUhUnmP-dIqHsTx_5PLq910Zn_H20z2YLEIAtiaWSxdjaKw8kR9Yr6t94BTUZswCQ3uocmbtEVw_g6EYA/s1600/Motomu+Ida+%25233.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="273" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibk6dogQtX1fCYyJH1phZ4KV0IwSobgs95BXK0P7nhhSteERMV3PoHaHHrfwSxUhUnmP-dIqHsTx_5PLq910Zn_H20z2YLEIAtiaWSxdjaKw8kR9Yr6t94BTUZswCQ3uocmbtEVw_g6EYA/s400/Motomu+Ida+%25233.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">This wasn’t a complete surprise to me. The little I’d heard about <i>Kimi Wa Nerawareteiru </i></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">led me to believe it was one of the quickie, hour-long B-movies that Nikkatsu churned out to fill the bottom half of their weekly double-bills. The film had never been released on VHS or DVD in Japan; none of the film archives or libraries I’d contacted had ever seen a copy.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">It was just a commercial little action film that came and went, and was now lost in limbo somewhere.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">I never expected that if and when <i>Kimi Wa Nerawareteiru</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"> came to light, it would turn out to be some lost classic of Japanese cinema. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifzVnuU2MWYy-llyesAWNuPlBGLZYhylkmeq3gBZWUXjk3WH8kvaYACHC2M_gs9fcPgQTFxs881OPrmwuqSCLF2CZdzoe3BhAcaV5nhHmhcOvlzcxHuy2UG7NJQR18bh5cw-MxrdiFS9d2/s1600/IMG_9135.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="201" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEifzVnuU2MWYy-llyesAWNuPlBGLZYhylkmeq3gBZWUXjk3WH8kvaYACHC2M_gs9fcPgQTFxs881OPrmwuqSCLF2CZdzoe3BhAcaV5nhHmhcOvlzcxHuy2UG7NJQR18bh5cw-MxrdiFS9d2/s400/IMG_9135.JPG" width="400" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">My reasons for finding it were purely selfish. My mother was in it.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">In 2001 I took my first trip to Japan traveling with my Cinematheque colleague Chris D. and my best friend Tom Abrams.<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 17px;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 17px;">I took Xeroxed copies of the script pages for LeAnn’s movie with me and handed them out to whoever I met at film archives, film clubs etc., on the slender chance someone somewhere would have come across a print of the movie.</span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: auto;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 17px;"><br />
</span></span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhthafkD5A4TfoBotOaET54-_C7-_dRkRSrfAnzHPWkZMUDH77M3IHkObBiBqSnh2Qvpje_gAe-Kor4U3Srgp8apUgj7_-vE_KQJePATZQEoTM__2UStx_mHevYSMaHYBVdoCRxDJLbDyYN/s1600/Osaka+Movie+Theater.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="218" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhthafkD5A4TfoBotOaET54-_C7-_dRkRSrfAnzHPWkZMUDH77M3IHkObBiBqSnh2Qvpje_gAe-Kor4U3Srgp8apUgj7_-vE_KQJePATZQEoTM__2UStx_mHevYSMaHYBVdoCRxDJLbDyYN/s320/Osaka+Movie+Theater.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">In Osaka we met with a wonderful guy who ran a movie theater the size of a shoe-box with a projection booth you could barely squeeze into.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><br />
</span></div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">Upstairs his office was filled with stacks of film prints leaning haphazardly everywhere. It was the kind of place I recognized from film collectors in L.A. </span><br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-tDDZIJco0b65Z1mv1YRJc5qpd9GNqp8AP6dlHI8iJKAMtsSnJv783H_-ZqovfE_5f0_FHgPUiACFql9SyQ02zeLudZApHpn9gkowr4RCoVmTS6vjqxdlZ5RbTSdN_6oTA5FDRVvcYmQQ/s1600/Japan+Poster+Archive.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="325" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-tDDZIJco0b65Z1mv1YRJc5qpd9GNqp8AP6dlHI8iJKAMtsSnJv783H_-ZqovfE_5f0_FHgPUiACFql9SyQ02zeLudZApHpn9gkowr4RCoVmTS6vjqxdlZ5RbTSdN_6oTA5FDRVvcYmQQ/s400/Japan+Poster+Archive.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">When I asked if he’d ever seen a print of Motomu Ida’s <i>Kimi Wa Nerawareteiru</i></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times; font-size: small;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">, he scrunched his face for a moment then shook his head. </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 17px;">No, never seen it.</span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Times; font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 17px;"></span></span>I even met with someone from Nikkatsu who took the Xeroxed pages I offered, said they’d look into it, with no result.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">We had lunch with Kinji Fukasaku and his son Kenta, fresh off their incredible triumph with <i>Battle Royale</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"> (which Kenta had written). Kinji looked great. He was already prepping for the sequel <i>Battle Royale II</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"> which he hoped to get into production soon. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">No one knew it then but time was running short for him, too. He’d been secretly battling cancer for several years which had gone into remission, and then returned.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">With Chris and Tom and our <i>chanbara</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">-loving buddy, Yoshiki, we bummed around Tokyo and Osaka, seeing as much as we could, buying as many Japanese movie posters as we could carry. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 17px;">We made a midnight visit to one of Japan’s oldest movie studios with the mild-mannered head archivist, who turned out to have a very odd addiction (more on that in another blog.)</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 17px;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 17px;">It wasn’t the Japan that LeAnn knew in 1959 any longer.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 17px;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtubXT3B_zLcDbvOjOFgs5alPhLDkf6NKDOPBTOCiUFQAo94NzEFhlz55EHWZl-sCl4CAkMEe2ZefwPS8HBbJDBw1OnP1hlEX6mN0-46g4-_L4JvVtK9FU5r6HWd_e5UT_WOxY1V0Jj45n/s1600/IMG_9542.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="195" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjtubXT3B_zLcDbvOjOFgs5alPhLDkf6NKDOPBTOCiUFQAo94NzEFhlz55EHWZl-sCl4CAkMEe2ZefwPS8HBbJDBw1OnP1hlEX6mN0-46g4-_L4JvVtK9FU5r6HWd_e5UT_WOxY1V0Jj45n/s400/IMG_9542.JPG" width="400" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 17px;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 17px;">But it was killer.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-bZJLkZV7Aita_TXR03w8hyphenhyphenE3IO-RG4L-rieswSQ1JEpw9TPj3v-m9_QYw8UJjChJo3OGefiJZRhaJlBsdDBMj4PIBchtp6tUDKr5j43JmIxd7iicUgVl45i2yqhv4WIZMPamXuCsrOud/s1600/Japan+Street+Night.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="270" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-bZJLkZV7Aita_TXR03w8hyphenhyphenE3IO-RG4L-rieswSQ1JEpw9TPj3v-m9_QYw8UJjChJo3OGefiJZRhaJlBsdDBMj4PIBchtp6tUDKr5j43JmIxd7iicUgVl45i2yqhv4WIZMPamXuCsrOud/s400/Japan+Street+Night.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 17px;">I came back to the U.S. loaded down with stories and souvenirs for her.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">Two months later my mother LeAnn died. She was at home in her New York apartment with my sister Shari and younger brother Jayce.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">Her last conversation was talking with Mark Toscano, then at Canyon Cinema, about her films of the Skyworks multiple-mile drops. Right up until the end, she was still talking about the movies. She hung up the phone and moments later she died.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqskSjenQzK1kFN3cY6OSbeR9cDHWHWKveepOD5GDzMNsooZkhVdSUHBD2yx1zLJhrIssbXAYtGakwiMjhG-UQB_BdId0TiUDYwLtPblJAtrXfhVGtsyq4cWuuax4VnnKxbyzlx7TioX0g/s1600/LeAnn+Denny+Jayce.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqskSjenQzK1kFN3cY6OSbeR9cDHWHWKveepOD5GDzMNsooZkhVdSUHBD2yx1zLJhrIssbXAYtGakwiMjhG-UQB_BdId0TiUDYwLtPblJAtrXfhVGtsyq4cWuuax4VnnKxbyzlx7TioX0g/s320/LeAnn+Denny+Jayce.jpg" width="256" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">She never got to see <i>Kimi Wa Nerawareteiru</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"> again, but she did get to hear from the director, Motomu Ida, and that was something pretty amazing.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 17px;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 17px;">Much more important, LeAnn’s love for Japan never left her. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">She’d gone many places and done many things but Japan was always someplace special. When she taught herself to paint in the late 1960’s, some of her first works were a copy of a fierce temple guardian she’d seen in Japan, from the 9<sup>th</sup> or 10<sup>th</sup> century, and a primitive, lovely image of the baby Jesus, Mary and Joseph, all with Japanese features.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_LemaNdDlHDRMKEUKsoqi-joc0_Kyfxhx5JzEwEuzsevN9vUxvxyZJ_6Gr9Uv5xYrvprKcxl9_At1dGFA-Auxa6H0juznjnBRWQBs_RjRZE0GyWSgX3oQlF4ZOTQE13UpD2hslkNn3qVP/s1600/LeAnn+w%253A+Flowers.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="362" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_LemaNdDlHDRMKEUKsoqi-joc0_Kyfxhx5JzEwEuzsevN9vUxvxyZJ_6Gr9Uv5xYrvprKcxl9_At1dGFA-Auxa6H0juznjnBRWQBs_RjRZE0GyWSgX3oQlF4ZOTQE13UpD2hslkNn3qVP/s400/LeAnn+w%253A+Flowers.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">[Above: LeAnn Bartok -- painter, conceptual artist, avant-garde filmmaker and actress in Japanese movies -- in New York City, late 1980's]</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">The last great cycle of paintings she did before her death were over 150 views of Mt. Fuji, with the mountain, golden and radiant, surrounded by her red Skyworks mile streaming overhead:<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_KduBf84sZUfK-54LaYL55WaKOtgbsI1ImzS2dn7_GZBMYeyf81HZOTpZ6nIjjMFz0powANGMQ46qC1XdnW270B5RWC6iPYUJpH0bQM3J-3tBfmR2STVMnIx3MMayL9JaqJ4-GljOUBAe/s1600/Mt+Fuji+%25231.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_KduBf84sZUfK-54LaYL55WaKOtgbsI1ImzS2dn7_GZBMYeyf81HZOTpZ6nIjjMFz0powANGMQ46qC1XdnW270B5RWC6iPYUJpH0bQM3J-3tBfmR2STVMnIx3MMayL9JaqJ4-GljOUBAe/s400/Mt+Fuji+%25231.JPG" width="400" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxqGSKxr6Ul6t0yjkbIPIjr120oxJJ_PPJbzTY3z2tnXOjQZc5W9MWVEqy2sWmDFyRQrkhS6C2zQEh_mFISUlRwlydoLtQ9qEN6-xHiPTWMGvyQxugjcYM19nXIWUsqTvedMHc2DKMbs0j/s1600/Mt+Fuji+%25231+Close+Up.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxqGSKxr6Ul6t0yjkbIPIjr120oxJJ_PPJbzTY3z2tnXOjQZc5W9MWVEqy2sWmDFyRQrkhS6C2zQEh_mFISUlRwlydoLtQ9qEN6-xHiPTWMGvyQxugjcYM19nXIWUsqTvedMHc2DKMbs0j/s400/Mt+Fuji+%25231+Close+Up.JPG" width="400" /></a></div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLm0vJk4hFP8MaVe8A3-RSZ7bOCZpLNflXnZupOFSD7NJglt-JAU0d1a1WiFqI7rS0VHEBIJ8lNnIVRwLrItVkbAkJGfUr2f1zH8-k-QPJnTiOB4zk5L0_gzWY49_j7Wl4gqXRIKcPzrNB/s1600/Mt+Fuji+w%253A+Turtle.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLm0vJk4hFP8MaVe8A3-RSZ7bOCZpLNflXnZupOFSD7NJglt-JAU0d1a1WiFqI7rS0VHEBIJ8lNnIVRwLrItVkbAkJGfUr2f1zH8-k-QPJnTiOB4zk5L0_gzWY49_j7Wl4gqXRIKcPzrNB/s400/Mt+Fuji+w%253A+Turtle.JPG" width="400" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_dyAjroBZaTHfsELF9orY4PbfNu2Aabj5MsvBAC-d6uF1ILMIoX7yQOzaTGQhn5_M-zasKCotMrk4Wn7h_t6dtnoZL7dw3-JL3GMNbn6FUCB8yMaVjPeew6JqoW7QV8yuroRbB22ojCnf/s1600/Mt+Fuji+w%253A+Turtle+Close+Up.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_dyAjroBZaTHfsELF9orY4PbfNu2Aabj5MsvBAC-d6uF1ILMIoX7yQOzaTGQhn5_M-zasKCotMrk4Wn7h_t6dtnoZL7dw3-JL3GMNbn6FUCB8yMaVjPeew6JqoW7QV8yuroRbB22ojCnf/s400/Mt+Fuji+w%253A+Turtle+Close+Up.JPG" width="400" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">[Above: two of LeAnn Bartok's Mt. Fuji series of paintings with close-up details]</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">I was beyond heartbroken, as were my two brothers and sister. I woke up the morning after she died and the world seemed like a cold, unfamiliar place that I no longer recognized or wanted to be a part of.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">I returned to Japan in March, 2002, this time with my then-girlfriend (now wife) Susan. The <i>sakura </i></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">cherry blossoms were blooming early that year. We had some wild adventures, culminating in a haunting, disturbing episode where we found the body of a man who’d just hanged himself, in the forest behind the cemetery in Kyoto’s Nanzenji Temple, and then led the Kyoto Homicide Squad back to where the body was hanging.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">There were strange spirits in the air.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtp1bspmLfCfeRbnKLH3y88RMGwPNZAhw76bEBPEQe8tOtk69TMBxsqdM4vCb1q6KcN8TovKWOsz4QZMKEg8AG6dWWvoZ3436fU1O7TEBPJXm28rO4TnAW9kpJ3oEolKdD8WNdOIz7fych/s1600/Tadao+Sato.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgtp1bspmLfCfeRbnKLH3y88RMGwPNZAhw76bEBPEQe8tOtk69TMBxsqdM4vCb1q6KcN8TovKWOsz4QZMKEg8AG6dWWvoZ3436fU1O7TEBPJXm28rO4TnAW9kpJ3oEolKdD8WNdOIz7fych/s1600/Tadao+Sato.jpg" /></a><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">During the trip, my friend Isao Tsujimoto at the Japan Foundation had arranged for me to meet with Tadao Sato, an elegant and thoughtful man who is one of Japan’s best known and most influential film critics. (In December 2010 he was given the 38<sup>th</sup> Japan Foundation Award for Arts & Culture in recognition of his efforts to introduce films from across Asia to Japanese audiences.)<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">Over coffee I told Sato the oft-repeated story of LeAnn and <i>Kimi Wa Nerawareteiru</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">. In some ways I was more determined than ever to find the movie – it was a link to her past, one that she was no longer around to share with us. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 17px;">Sato listened to the story with polite interest and took the Xeroxed pages of the script I offered to him.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">I thought nothing more would come of it.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
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</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">(Next chapter: <i>Kimi Wa Nerawareteiru</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">, the lost movie)<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 17px;">[All photos of LeAnn Bartok and artworks: Copyright, courtesy Estate of LeAnn Bartok.]</span></span></div><br />
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</div>BARTOKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06787299064544972391noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1731205886273509424.post-33519230784284103162011-01-26T08:22:00.000-08:002011-02-10T15:02:56.402-08:00Tokyo After Midnight: a B-movie Mystery<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">[Part 4 in the story of my mother LeAnn Bartok’s lost career in Japanese movies in 1959-1960 – and the search to find some trace of it over thirty years later.]<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">In June 1997, the Cinematheque presented a sold-out screening at the DGA of the 1973 <i>yakuza </i></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">epic <i>Battles Without Honor & Humanity (Jingi Naki Tatakai.)</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"> It was an amazing reception for a film that had been virtually unknown in the U.S. for almost 25 years.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">After the screening William Friedkin interviewed the director of the film, a legendary helmer of that most hardboiled of all Japanese film genres. A hard man to impress, even he was astonished at the turn-out. “What are all these people doing here?” Kinji wondered aloud.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipnV09uUip_7HQrEQOKYoSCLZ7aeNpPVT3JrdslIRblwkrv5tEHpg_SxQAmR1egLjy7cWv2MhEmuVAt0fL3caXBmc3SeMfCk732w5K_2cqqBqZlvxi7qTFahMFwPDf1Y6r_Rv3fsEG1Ra4/s1600/Kinji+%2526+Toshiko.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="345" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipnV09uUip_7HQrEQOKYoSCLZ7aeNpPVT3JrdslIRblwkrv5tEHpg_SxQAmR1egLjy7cWv2MhEmuVAt0fL3caXBmc3SeMfCk732w5K_2cqqBqZlvxi7qTFahMFwPDf1Y6r_Rv3fsEG1Ra4/s400/Kinji+%2526+Toshiko.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">[Above, right: Kinji Fukasaku, one of Japan's greatest filmmakers, with Toshiko Adilman on the streets of Tokyo]</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">Kinji Fukasaku was in his late 60’s at the time. White haired, eyes usually hidden behind enormous sunglasses. Extremely articulate to the point of being long-winded (I’ll never know how his great friend and translator, Toshiko Adilman, managed to keep up with him during Q&A’s.) He inspired a kind of fierce loyalty and devotion from his inner circle of friends. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">I nicknamed him <i>“oyabun”</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"> after the term of respect given mob bosses in his movies.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgj8E1nqprie5kbEn7jNOYnWnjK5wq_pLcDeANNuGRM3FkKhRhRSLe0mLEtjF-3tu1g-gGotOooxISzj5JJROQ24ksYCNGK6V2GRMMms-D1gp7n8NINxQNe-Ek0xDvYS8bIX8d8Bok-QMm0/s1600/Yakuza+Graveyard+Poster.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgj8E1nqprie5kbEn7jNOYnWnjK5wq_pLcDeANNuGRM3FkKhRhRSLe0mLEtjF-3tu1g-gGotOooxISzj5JJROQ24ksYCNGK6V2GRMMms-D1gp7n8NINxQNe-Ek0xDvYS8bIX8d8Bok-QMm0/s400/Yakuza+Graveyard+Poster.JPG" width="296" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">[Above: poster for Kinji's 1976 <i>Yakuza No Hakaba (Yakuza Graveyard)</i>]</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi43CfC0NWeCrqr_SvS8mqjdmP181c7zP0NOvUf_vwOc56RT0zV7U4T4WZW7b57dB3l9TouSBiO8kgGiWAMyLcRtE8SwxxPDqly7Tc66e_g-znIMqhQotY6Bkt-RfuhXSoCvLLktDfBUpDY/s1600/Gamblers+In+Okinawa+Poster.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi43CfC0NWeCrqr_SvS8mqjdmP181c7zP0NOvUf_vwOc56RT0zV7U4T4WZW7b57dB3l9TouSBiO8kgGiWAMyLcRtE8SwxxPDqly7Tc66e_g-znIMqhQotY6Bkt-RfuhXSoCvLLktDfBUpDY/s400/Gamblers+In+Okinawa+Poster.JPG" width="296" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">[Above: Kinji's 1971 <i>Bakuto Gaijin Botai (Gamblers In Okinawa)</i>]</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">Kinji was apparently in the waning years of his career at the tim</span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">e, the period when directors start appearing regularly at retrospectives, start thinking of writing their autobiographies. He’d been directing movies since 1961 – coincidentally right around the time LeAnn was working in Tokyo – and his glory years of brilliant, subversive films like <i>Black Lizard, Under The Fluttering Military Flag, Graveyard Of Honor & Humanity</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">, and especially his awe-inspiring <i>Battles Without Honor & Humanity</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"> cycle, were seemingly decades behind him.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">Few could anticipate that Kinji would roar back, like a wounded wolf waiting for the chance to strike, with the most ferocious and incendiary Japanese movie of the past decade: <i>Battle Royale.</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">It would prove to be his swan song, a summing up of all the explosive anger and violence and distrust for authority that runs through his movies. A huge screw-you in the face of good taste.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzEmxdUslx6lZo4CNJEXGVPMPtxkXrj5HWeF8OJkPpA34EqZcgvR6Leeo5wcgY1qmthvTzMvpDG72PMgDWuUB2Gq_t0sbF9gWwFWmRi-oDXbZKZDBLxOBtVP9B9IBdYIEKiuQvgVIY2mpH/s1600/Yakuza+Graveyard+Image.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzEmxdUslx6lZo4CNJEXGVPMPtxkXrj5HWeF8OJkPpA34EqZcgvR6Leeo5wcgY1qmthvTzMvpDG72PMgDWuUB2Gq_t0sbF9gWwFWmRi-oDXbZKZDBLxOBtVP9B9IBdYIEKiuQvgVIY2mpH/s320/Yakuza+Graveyard+Image.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 17px;">It was the last masterpiece of a great warrior and artist.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">Kinji, it turns out, was president of the Japanese Directors Guild at the time. A good friend to have when you’re looking for lost movies. He was interested by the story of LeAnn’s career in Japanese movies … He’d never met her or heard of her, that would be too much to expect. But I think he liked the idea of an American woman very, very far from home, appearing in low-budget Japanese crime movies. It appealed to his outlaw sensibility.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEic4W7CjFOyHFbD51Ly966Yw-oRDJQraIuGbx2zF94fjG2nNKOeW7FOzo2Ytd799P8rx9smyzUv_-epYEdvTXtfKPcms8gZO4BinwK0Li7UouZnoPXoa4_j3MxQ8Jzpqw3WTMFHVLWUl5ZN/s1600/Yakuza+Graveyard+Image+%25232.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEic4W7CjFOyHFbD51Ly966Yw-oRDJQraIuGbx2zF94fjG2nNKOeW7FOzo2Ytd799P8rx9smyzUv_-epYEdvTXtfKPcms8gZO4BinwK0Li7UouZnoPXoa4_j3MxQ8Jzpqw3WTMFHVLWUl5ZN/s320/Yakuza+Graveyard+Image+%25232.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 17px;">He offered to help.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">I should say, he and Toshiko Adilman offered to help. Toshiko was one of Kinji’s most trusted friends, his translator and right-hand woman since they met in 1980 making <i>Virus, </i></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">his costly, ill-fated sci-fi epic. During shooting on <i>Virus</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">, the ship he and Toshiko were on hit a reef and they were stranded on Antarctic ice until being rescued by the Chilean navy. She laughs about it now. Toshiko is one tough <i>hombre</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">, a truly remarkable woman who wound up being the go-between and translator for Kinji and several other key players in this story. I can’t thank her enough. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">In October 1997, a few months after I met Kinji, I received a message from him via Toshiko:<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">He had managed to locate the director of the film LeAnn appeared in, <i>Kimi Wa Nerawareteiru</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">, a man named Motomu Ida who was still alive and in very good health.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsKOazyMh1JbgsziSMI6gRhEKfKK8sBjvJvJ1iIqh5olQdQQOSlckHJ-D7jUNQ0K5BdV8sHPz_DDBipa-AcZb-SwK54cHbg_GeiMQs35z6wGjs2Z9i1tAGOfXtR3epBJjXx9hXjDl7ST_A/s1600/Motomu+Ida+%25231.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="276" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsKOazyMh1JbgsziSMI6gRhEKfKK8sBjvJvJ1iIqh5olQdQQOSlckHJ-D7jUNQ0K5BdV8sHPz_DDBipa-AcZb-SwK54cHbg_GeiMQs35z6wGjs2Z9i1tAGOfXtR3epBJjXx9hXjDl7ST_A/s400/Motomu+Ida+%25231.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">[Above: Motomu Ida in 2004 in his office at the New Culture School, Tokyo] <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">It was the first really positive news I’d had in my search for some trace of my mother’s Japanese film career.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">Ida sent a short message in Japanese, translated as follows:<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHTeFHZ1DLjtJYmzbiEyrv5i-gFA8xnqQ-9RO1bwSbUB1uh5A9_ihYubpRDpf1NuC5XI8_F7ipLfm3jG3Vu6Oik9eBpAT6Z3KLFLVzjVXdij2w8XP1v1C8Yeo7GJK0sHveJJLXnFoweKgJ/s1600/Ida+-+1st+Letter+Japanese.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="310" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHTeFHZ1DLjtJYmzbiEyrv5i-gFA8xnqQ-9RO1bwSbUB1uh5A9_ihYubpRDpf1NuC5XI8_F7ipLfm3jG3Vu6Oik9eBpAT6Z3KLFLVzjVXdij2w8XP1v1C8Yeo7GJK0sHveJJLXnFoweKgJ/s400/Ida+-+1st+Letter+Japanese.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaNFdn-5p5SbtW5-bso1AUE3BLd7_PMaa-_wF1p4nPU_itpRHCGzxE3kKucC2hMqEeH8NdHmT26qQzlfyopgCKCp0I9DEbVoT2KXabFvjp9cu5AGH8lCWjqRXqP7D8H4Bs5UF6rNXg2gVA/s1600/Ida+-+1st+Letter+English.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="315" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaNFdn-5p5SbtW5-bso1AUE3BLd7_PMaa-_wF1p4nPU_itpRHCGzxE3kKucC2hMqEeH8NdHmT26qQzlfyopgCKCp0I9DEbVoT2KXabFvjp9cu5AGH8lCWjqRXqP7D8H4Bs5UF6rNXg2gVA/s400/Ida+-+1st+Letter+English.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 17px;">With it, he included a photo of his own copy of the film's poster:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiacyfBHY-TzwyRxQCv8ROFmTClRnt1MJ3apZUHiiBwX_sNeW1FG_u90eVe5LL1sWhNarAo9SvsHVsnTE7y0o3BDtg-TQEA5dDPyn-8q_sagtjehpBg9X-llED-BnP3B_PWohDVu074DE0K/s1600/Kimi+Wa+Poster.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiacyfBHY-TzwyRxQCv8ROFmTClRnt1MJ3apZUHiiBwX_sNeW1FG_u90eVe5LL1sWhNarAo9SvsHVsnTE7y0o3BDtg-TQEA5dDPyn-8q_sagtjehpBg9X-llED-BnP3B_PWohDVu074DE0K/s640/Kimi+Wa+Poster.jpg" width="456" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 17px;">LeAnn’s name was right there on the poster, 4<sup>th</sup> billed, written phonetically as "Lyn Barutooku."</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">As Toshiko later pointed out, Kinji himself had actually borrowed the photograph of the poster from Mr. Ida and arranged to have a copy made for us.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">LeAnn and I were both frankly astonished to hear Ida was still alive and that he remembered working with her nearly 40 years earlier.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">I wrote back to him a few weeks later:<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><i>“Dear Mr. Ida:<o:p></o:p></i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><i>I want to personally thank you for your amazing kindness in providing a photograph of the poster for my mother, and writing a note about your memories of her … I hand-delivered it to her a few days ago during the Christmas holidays – she lives in New York City now where she works as a painter. She was overjoyed to see the faces of actors that she appeared with so long ago, and to read your letter – it brought back many wonderful memories of when she worked as an actress at Toho and Nikkatsu … She was one of the few American actresses living in Japan at the time and she’s always been very proud of her work in your film.<o:p></o:p></i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><i>When I was a child growing up, my mother would often speak about Kimi Wa Nerawareteiu, or 'The Man They Tried To Kill' as she called it. She remembered carrying a gun and a knife in the film, and trying to corrupt the hero of the film. To be honest, I was always proud of the fact that my mother played such a shady character in a Japanese film – you may not realize it, but your film a great impact on my family, even though none of us had ever seen it!<o:p></o:p></i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 17px;"><i>I’d also like to apologize for the delay in writing back to you – my mother’s been ill for some time and confined to her apartment in New York. I wanted to deliver the materials to her myself to see her reaction before I wrote back.</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><i>Again, I can’t thank you enough … you’ve made both me and my mother very happy.”<o:p></o:p></i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 17px;">I’ve since learned quite a bit more about Ida and his career; he remains a criminally-unknown director outside of Japan. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7ccdberjm4vAadRenb62tan58Nwdq0rPIrM1_lafgvBq8z5Pq9kjC9pm7tmEOgrolBzC_ZPHwqxnJOnQkgAel_kgPkOmRSHNX-vSjdrxqs8si1y6u1WLJdtc4rxhAp9PustN7Q0vdp1mf/s1600/Motomu+Ida+Bio+Photo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7ccdberjm4vAadRenb62tan58Nwdq0rPIrM1_lafgvBq8z5Pq9kjC9pm7tmEOgrolBzC_ZPHwqxnJOnQkgAel_kgPkOmRSHNX-vSjdrxqs8si1y6u1WLJdtc4rxhAp9PustN7Q0vdp1mf/s320/Motomu+Ida+Bio+Photo.jpg" width="315" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">According to the <i><u>Dictionary of Japanese Film Directors</u>,</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"> Ida was born September 3, 1922 in Oe-machi, Kasa-gun, Kyoto Prefecture, and studied Japanese literature at St. Paul University. He began working in films as an A.D. in the mid-1940’s under director Keigo Kimura at Daiei’s Kyoto Studio; about eight years later he moved over to Nikkatsu where he worked with directors Hiroshi Noguchi and Isamu Kosugi.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 17px;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">He directed his first feature <i>Tokyo Wa Koibito (Tokyo, My Sweetheart) </i></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">in 1958, and was known mainly for lower-budgeted (“B- and C-class”) mystery/action films starring actors such as Michitaro Mizushima, Yuji Odaka and Hideaki Nitani. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">By today’s standards he was incredibly prolific, directing between 5 and 6 films a year. In 1960, the year he directed <i>Kimi Wa Nerawareteiru</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">, he also directed: <i>Devil’s Sigh, A Seductress Without A Shadow, A Man Who Threw Away A Shadow, A Bullet Mark That Disappeared, Bastard </i></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">and <i>Go To Hell.</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">The titles alone tell you all you need to know. Like any number of underrated American directors – William Witney, for example – here was a guy who knew how to turn out tough, hard-hitting little movies that got to the point and wasted no time.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3XbfKbm06-q9KV5PwDtOJNZjdb5Hby0hncVarFcUzWD5A4VOz4nq4_9n2XZMSuAxrR5KMK_vNAoP2oSA25eMXi8DRGFUwwImLsXbORt2aMspEj24SoUqiPedAYuaVrx2pyBkgHGuHZvZ4/s1600/Kenkajo+Poster+Motomu+Ida.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi3XbfKbm06-q9KV5PwDtOJNZjdb5Hby0hncVarFcUzWD5A4VOz4nq4_9n2XZMSuAxrR5KMK_vNAoP2oSA25eMXi8DRGFUwwImLsXbORt2aMspEj24SoUqiPedAYuaVrx2pyBkgHGuHZvZ4/s400/Kenkajo+Poster+Motomu+Ida.JPG" width="292" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">[Left: Poster for Motomu Ida's 1964 film <i>Kenkajo (Thrown Down The Gauntlet)</i>]</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">According to the <i><u>Dictionary</u></i></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">, his best-known movies were <i>“Ikite Iru Okami (Live Wolf) – </i></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">the sad story of a man and woman who lived in the pleasure quarters in mid-Meiji era … <i>Bakuha Sanbyo Mae (Before The Blast) </i></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">– a full-fledged spy/action film … <i>Tokyo Onna Chizu (Women’s Tokyo Map)</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"> – a story of hooligans which was a fore-runner to Nikkatsu’s action movies … and <i>Yoru No Saizensen – Onnagiri (Front Line In The Night: Girl Hunt)</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">[A huge thanks to Toshiko Adilman for her translation of the above.]<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">It goes without saying that these movies are almost completely unknown in the U.S., even to hardcore Japanese film buffs. Just another example of how we’ve barely scratched the surface of the vast pool of movies made in Japan in the post-war years.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">After directing over 50 feature films, in the late 1960’s Ida moved into television, where he directed approximately 150 more episodes – by his tally nearly 200 film and TV works all together. A simply staggering number that brings to mind directors of the early silent years; no director working today could ever post such numbers.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">The amazingly good news was that Motomu Ida was alive and well. But what about finding a copy of <i>Kimi Wa Nerawareteiru</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">, the film itself?<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">[Special thanks to Marc Walkow and Stuart Galbraith for their invaluable help in research for this article.]</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">(Next chapter: On the trail of the lost movie)<o:p></o:p></span></div>BARTOKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06787299064544972391noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1731205886273509424.post-25670160962777612462011-01-21T10:33:00.000-08:002011-02-10T15:04:38.675-08:00Tokyo After Midnight: a B-movie Mystery<div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 17px;"> </span></span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: large;"></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: large;"><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">[Part 3 in the story of my mother LeAnn Bartok’s lost career in Japanese movies in 1959-1960 – and the search to find some trace of it over thirty years later.]<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">I came to Los Angeles in 1992 and wound up working at the non-profit American Cinematheque, then screening at the Directors Guild theater on Sunset Blvd. At the time the Cinematheque was screening mainly classic Hollywood films.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">Not long after a guy walked into my office carrying two shopping bags. He was a solitary, intense-looking character: bushy black eyebrows and the dead-calm, disinterested stare of a professional hitman.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">He asked if I was interested in showing any overlooked Japanese movies. The bags were filled with home-made VHS tapes from his enormous personal collection, films by then-unsung genre masters like Kinji Fukasaku, Hideo Gosha, Kihachi Okamoto, Tai Kato.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSX1LDNmw4JX8Y7eJ0dqtKTAHqo7_p-Kvw2ZMI6Cwbo4ChTZ9VxiP0HjiNmq5app7_2AL7E8CEjeaN_3boPGbts2rMLz8wdGLcIBVKzRnmpjdkOBb79vRL8npE7bHMEbgU3NIwpJ0IupfZ/s1600/IMG_9200.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSX1LDNmw4JX8Y7eJ0dqtKTAHqo7_p-Kvw2ZMI6Cwbo4ChTZ9VxiP0HjiNmq5app7_2AL7E8CEjeaN_3boPGbts2rMLz8wdGLcIBVKzRnmpjdkOBb79vRL8npE7bHMEbgU3NIwpJ0IupfZ/s320/IMG_9200.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">[Above: image from Japanese 2-sheet poster for Kinji Fukasaku's subversive <i>Black Rose Mansion </i>(1969)] <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">Chris D. remains one of the most fascinatings guys I’ve met out in L.A. Punk rock singer and founder of The Flesheaters … indie director, writer, and actor as well as poet and lyricist (the recent anthology <i>“A Minute To Pray, A Second To Die”)</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"> … He’s also, for the purposes of this story, a walking library on Japanese cinema from the 1950’s & 1960’s to today. His book of essays and interviews <i>“Outlaw Masters Of Japanese Film”</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"> is essential reading for anyone interested in this subject.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgp2wOj_zr2wKHfuw90I5x9lSqaQTyc68fSrzRwBeOKaLE9lLAozfkoCYSyUYkcNbaoWmCfpsuKyW5iuZIDKPQNRh4XlLmF7cOll3_rUaH6n3aUFlF1FrHq8q6sT5SrbbV1Ts92KPgF8gu2/s1600/Chris+%2526+Yoshiki.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="295" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgp2wOj_zr2wKHfuw90I5x9lSqaQTyc68fSrzRwBeOKaLE9lLAozfkoCYSyUYkcNbaoWmCfpsuKyW5iuZIDKPQNRh4XlLmF7cOll3_rUaH6n3aUFlF1FrHq8q6sT5SrbbV1Ts92KPgF8gu2/s400/Chris+%2526+Yoshiki.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">[Above: Chris D. and our good friend Yoshiki Hayashi, who was enormously helpful in the hunt for LeAnn's films, in Tokyo in 2001]</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">Chris's love, and his knowledge, of these movies has a kind of incandescent, almost religious, fervor to it. He’s a dark preacher thundering on about films with titles like <i>Go Go Second Time Virgin, The Age Of Assassins </i></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">and <i>Graveyard Of Honor & Humanity.</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">Guided by Chris’s expertise – and partly inspired by my own unusual family connection to Japanese movies – the Cinematheque started screening dozens of unseen Japanese genre films in its annual Outlaw Masters of Modern Japanese Film series.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">Our partner in crime was another man who’d prove instrumental in learning more about my mother LeAnn’s brief career in Japanese films: Isao Tsujimoto, then Director of the Japan Foundation’s L.A. office.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">A spry, extremely cultured man with a mischievous wit, Isao turned out to nurse a secret passion for the same kind of subversive Japanese genre films Chris and I loved. He remembered camping out in movie theaters in Japan in the late 1960’s as a student to see the latest <i>yakuza </i></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">films. “As students we felt a kind of kinship with the <i>yakuza </i></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">anti-heroes,” he recalled. “They were outcasts and rebels like us.” It was Isao in fact who came up with the “Outlaw Masters” moniker.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidUQSRTpOf6OTl81FJwUmOy4JVNkz9sSgntGs63ThTHN81y5psHg_avS66WevMNo7SNK5Oly7cO-poo9wfRy-yS1uonM5EWQYdx4QtwoGu7PuWnhDSJcdpGaqU5rvXOqQexFmuan_Vy9gW/s1600/Kinji+Isao+%2526+Susan.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="283" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidUQSRTpOf6OTl81FJwUmOy4JVNkz9sSgntGs63ThTHN81y5psHg_avS66WevMNo7SNK5Oly7cO-poo9wfRy-yS1uonM5EWQYdx4QtwoGu7PuWnhDSJcdpGaqU5rvXOqQexFmuan_Vy9gW/s400/Kinji+Isao+%2526+Susan.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">[Left to right: Isao Tsujimoto of the Japan Foundation, Susan Gold -- and the man who'd play a key role in the hunt for LeAnn's lost movie] </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">Isao used his considerable influence to strike new 35 mm. prints of previously unseen films like Koji Wakamatsu’s scandalous <i>Go Go Second Time Virgin</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"> and <i>Ecstasy Of The Angels.</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"> (Wakamatsu remains <i>persona non grata</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"> with the U.S. State Department, unable to travel to America, as we found out when we tried to bring him in for one of our series.)<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">From me, Isao and Chris both heard the story of my mother LeAnn’s time in Japan and the few tantalizing details I had about her film career. We made some inquiries -- but Nikkatsu’s <i>Kimi Wa Nerawareteiru</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"> from 1960 turned out to be beyond obscure. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">It was completely unknown. No one we met had ever heard of or seen it.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">During this time my mother LeAnn’s health grew progressively worse from asthma she’d developed in the late 1970’s and from the onset of adult diabetes. She lived in Manhattan with my older sister Shari and younger brother Jayce, and we stayed in touch through almost daily phone calls. Money was always a huge worry.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">LeAnn and Shari practically begged me to help find a copy of one of her Japanese movies; it was a formative period in LeAnn's life that had obviously influenced and inspired her as a filmmaker and artist.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIKAAh-0szxT392ge645m4DoM0RNrqu_zQltPyn2patMkYrZi1i3gAmrE_ysjfiYEzwTL8-IqnfdYz4nk1U9ValNLvlSxWXCYDcpkEWKK-gjIMhHLHPk8qn2Nsll0psDjR6U6zobRVUkc8/s1600/LeAnn+%2540+Avant+Garde+Expo%253APassenger+Ship.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="315" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgIKAAh-0szxT392ge645m4DoM0RNrqu_zQltPyn2patMkYrZi1i3gAmrE_ysjfiYEzwTL8-IqnfdYz4nk1U9ValNLvlSxWXCYDcpkEWKK-gjIMhHLHPk8qn2Nsll0psDjR6U6zobRVUkc8/s400/LeAnn+%2540+Avant+Garde+Expo%253APassenger+Ship.jpeg" width="400" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">[Above: LeAnn Bartok during performance art event at the Annual New York Avant- Garde Art Festival at the Passenger Ship Terminal in New York in the early 1980's]</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">Still, I had no success in finding a copy of <i>Kimi Wa Nerawareteiru</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"> or any other movie she made in Japan in 1959-1960. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">It felt frustrating: my job was to ferret out lost and overlooked movies, I was essentially a film detective – and here I couldn’t find any trace of LeAnn’s film career. Not even a still photo. What kind of a son was I?<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">I knew on some level that time was running short for her. She’d been taking doses of steroids to control her asthma since the late 1970’s – as we later learned these can have serious side effects including a weakened heart and periods of deep depression. The diabetes only made a bad situation worse. But it’s hard to confront these things when it’s your own parent.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">I loved my mother deeply, and struggled as a child growing up to understand and appreciate her work as an artist … <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">It was difficult and all right at the same time, to borrow a phrase from one of her favorite writers, the great New York poet Frank O’Hara. I could feel utterly helpless at her titanic fits of temper. Ashamed and useless at her weeks-long bouts of illness and labored breathing, frustrated that I couldn’t do anything to help. So I’d retreat into the false safety of my own world of movies and vinyl records.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">I know now that it’s almost impossible for someone on the outside to understand what it’s like to live with chronic illness on a daily basis.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">Only slowly could I get some distance and really begin to see her as an artist. As a kid growing up, it was just what she did. There were paintings everywhere in our house, we leaned against them watching TV … there was a Bolex camera and editing bench in the basement. My brothers and sister and I ran around the desert, laughing, helping her gather the fallen streamers from her mile-length drops. We thought it was fun.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiciJUBpCQ8I0ESOtaSgW4PioRhOoUJhOorT3KPmsfIO6x7hzSn_4eNWT5A34C2-z1F3QgHCMFNXdBLPcZFkapaqGBVlrR562DLfCXjpXYUvksiqIQTD2Cc8fzMfQZMyKQF6gZvs5dwDom/s1600/DaySpring+LB+Poem.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiciJUBpCQ8I0ESOtaSgW4PioRhOoUJhOorT3KPmsfIO6x7hzSn_4eNWT5A34C2-z1F3QgHCMFNXdBLPcZFkapaqGBVlrR562DLfCXjpXYUvksiqIQTD2Cc8fzMfQZMyKQF6gZvs5dwDom/s640/DaySpring+LB+Poem.jpg" width="468" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">[Above: poem by LeAnn Bartok circa 1976]</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">Growing up in suburban Pittsburgh in the 1970’s, I was sometimes even embarrassed by her strangeness, her refusal to fit in: Why did she have to throw art out of airplanes? Why did she drive around in a van wearing a black cowboy hat like a female trucker?<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">I was a kid, what did I know? I knew she was different. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">Ironically there’s a famous saying in Japan, <i>“The nail that sticks out gets hammered down.”</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"> My mother was definitely the nail that sticks out. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">(Next chapter: Kinji Fukasaku, yakuza master)<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">[All photos, artwork and text by LeAnn Bartok: Copyright, courtesy of Estate of LeAnn Bartok]</span></div></span>BARTOKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06787299064544972391noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1731205886273509424.post-66427009763308519612011-01-16T08:10:00.000-08:002011-03-05T19:14:11.135-08:00Tokyo After Midnight: a B-movie Mystery<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">[Part 2 in the story of my mother LeAnn Bartok’s lost career in Japanese movies in 1959-1960 – and the search to find some trace of it over thirty years later.]<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 17px;">Living alone in Tokyo, barely able to pay the rent, my mother LeAnn felt disoriented, stranded. She looked into working as a nurse but her lack of Japanese, and the low nurses’ pay, forced her to look for better-paying work. She wound up teaching English to future Toyota executives, who treated her like a member of the family; during the brutal student riots in 1960 she remembered several of her pupils coming to class bruised and bloodied. Despite high anti-American sentiment in Japan at the time -- students were protesting the country’s entry into a security treaty with the U.S. – she never personally saw any sign of prejudice. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimuK7i7jhcGf88hiNwMsmHCREE15hBy129MQTw2drdEhdPVjLAwCK5qC1YZM_hpG2EoK1WWRamTWk3359PcgtuEtwKCg5D1uKnQuQkysizRP5nvwi8ZRauVkvLwzJlS3mxnmE4ESSpECYX/s1600/LeAnn+Japan+Steakhouse+Foto.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimuK7i7jhcGf88hiNwMsmHCREE15hBy129MQTw2drdEhdPVjLAwCK5qC1YZM_hpG2EoK1WWRamTWk3359PcgtuEtwKCg5D1uKnQuQkysizRP5nvwi8ZRauVkvLwzJlS3mxnmE4ESSpECYX/s640/LeAnn+Japan+Steakhouse+Foto.JPG" width="480" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="font-family: Times; font-size: medium; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">[Above: modeling photo of LeAnn taken at Tokyo steakhouse in 1959; this was apparently used in a Toyota sales brochure]</span></div><div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><br />
</span></div><br />
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">To this day I look at movies shot in Japan in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s and try to imagine what it looked like then. The Tokyo my mother would’ve known. I’ve been there several times myself, but it’s changed so radically. One night out walking with my friend Isao Tsujimoto he stopped and pointed at an enormous row of buildings: “when I was young those were nothing but empty lots,” he said, trying to remember the city that was lost and would never return.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">Years later, after LeAnn had trained herself to become a painter and avant-garde filmmaker, random memories of that long-past time in Tokyo would come floating by, like pages ripped from a diary and tossed in the stream … <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">A photographer noticed her on the street – she would’ve stood out, a young American woman in Tokyo – and hustled her to take a picture. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiKyFTl2l4ndrrcLXwxWLmu28Ns7VLkKl1JVipo7gMPqEZIwdcIMGDmXxb1BKAc4SzMdddeRFHXUiYUc1VB7REtuORfuo1vAl7MyYsrf72Rnlq5JAiX6FEAYwoB12ohEX5VG94v-SbxVxO/s1600/johnny+yusuf.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjiKyFTl2l4ndrrcLXwxWLmu28Ns7VLkKl1JVipo7gMPqEZIwdcIMGDmXxb1BKAc4SzMdddeRFHXUiYUc1VB7REtuORfuo1vAl7MyYsrf72Rnlq5JAiX6FEAYwoB12ohEX5VG94v-SbxVxO/s1600/johnny+yusuf.jpg" /></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 17px;">Through him she met the man who was instrumental in getting her into the movies: Osman “Johnny” Yusuf.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">If you look him up on IMDB you’ll find more than half-a-dozen screen names including “Johnny Osman,” “Yusef Toruko” and more. Fitting for a guy who worked as a part-time agent, actor and pimp.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYljxRwFaMl8Og7Q5hUc0BXQ7L1jZ61DVpwR9xxWCvT-4Chi5QpgnSoTBLsK-iiIw57bh4GjAACRNszpPvOhfkRAXRr8Pu9X0nwzruprE_n77Nc9d5qS8Xq4jlzjsOeZjxy5ouPKQvZUfS/s1600/IMG_9178.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="100" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYljxRwFaMl8Og7Q5hUc0BXQ7L1jZ61DVpwR9xxWCvT-4Chi5QpgnSoTBLsK-iiIw57bh4GjAACRNszpPvOhfkRAXRr8Pu9X0nwzruprE_n77Nc9d5qS8Xq4jlzjsOeZjxy5ouPKQvZUfS/s200/IMG_9178.JPG" width="200" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 17px;">Details are fuzzy on Yusuf: he was apparently born in Turkey, although he told my mother he was a “white Russian.” It could be true: his birthdate is listed as 1920, perhaps his family escaped from Russia to Turkey and he kept referring to himself by the mother country. (My friend, the director Hubert Cornfield, was born in Istanbul but insisted his family was Greek, not Turkish, even though they’d left Greece many decades earlier.)</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguogzzxZZZBxdghidh_VqjJUpmwG9XTY2rqBNhbOzjggC51LE28WyZnveculw4S0I3-9lQTbatlLKwcE2kNGp1ZteXH86Uo1wgjuJ_QBcf19Yt4oTUcrDW9FyaRABt8fdsPX2MFCswackp/s1600/IMG_9196.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguogzzxZZZBxdghidh_VqjJUpmwG9XTY2rqBNhbOzjggC51LE28WyZnveculw4S0I3-9lQTbatlLKwcE2kNGp1ZteXH86Uo1wgjuJ_QBcf19Yt4oTUcrDW9FyaRABt8fdsPX2MFCswackp/s200/IMG_9196.JPG" width="200" /></a><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">You can spot Yusuf briefly in any number of Japanese monster movies including <i>Mothra, King Kong Vs. Godzilla, Battle In Outer Space </i></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">and <i>Son Of Godzilla</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">, sometimes playing a submarine crewman or innocent bystander. Many years later when LeAnn was watching one of the Godzilla films with my brother Jayce she suddenly exclaimed, “Look, there’s my agent – he’s the one with the ray-gun.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">Yusuf took an immediate shine to LeAnn – she later claimed he was “in love with her,” although whether this was romantic or just paternal/friendly I never learned – and introduced her to his contacts at the Japanese studios.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh63PZQS4oy1ei17RdbaoO5Oh9n2-b18HCwJTpc4RZ65geqDC982XzQJPsQYoYzJjdfLeqlMlHvc18WEfubkhg7pf8UQdpY8yZAdyhOlcXgxNssXwB9w15aYeyKkhzmExHPQS67utwNQvGQ/s1600/IMG_9155.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="160" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh63PZQS4oy1ei17RdbaoO5Oh9n2-b18HCwJTpc4RZ65geqDC982XzQJPsQYoYzJjdfLeqlMlHvc18WEfubkhg7pf8UQdpY8yZAdyhOlcXgxNssXwB9w15aYeyKkhzmExHPQS67utwNQvGQ/s320/IMG_9155.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 17px;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 17px;">Yusuf was apparently a good man to know in Tokyo, if you were a man: in addition to working as an actor and agent, he’d occasionally field late-night phone calls from executives who’d noticed some attractive Japanese starlet on screen.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">If the actress was hungry enough – and pay in Japanese movies, then as now, was pretty weak – she’d agree to a date. As in Hollywood, young girls were easy prey.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8pm1ZMLv2FhIUZBBsHXL_r1tqoQX94eWZ59yLwlBVWCMaoGAPO_fcfl3vZ1M_3aN9-bCiwWHutCkNtX_HJFgAPJVlMi8aBdUihqqn6XRO70poA7mEiibM67p63m8r0SVzylCFeHOGk9P7/s1600/IMG_9130.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="158" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8pm1ZMLv2FhIUZBBsHXL_r1tqoQX94eWZ59yLwlBVWCMaoGAPO_fcfl3vZ1M_3aN9-bCiwWHutCkNtX_HJFgAPJVlMi8aBdUihqqn6XRO70poA7mEiibM67p63m8r0SVzylCFeHOGk9P7/s320/IMG_9130.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 17px;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 17px;">Maybe because she was American, maybe because he nursed a secret crush on her – but Yusuf apparently never tried to rope my mother into his sideline prostitution business. She knew what he was up to, but she still liked the guy. I like the guy too, in a strange way. He sounds a bit like Ben Gazzara in Bogdanovich’s <i>Saint Jack.</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">The Japanese film industry in the early 1960’s could almost rival Hollywood in sheer volume and variety. The major studios – Toho, Toei, Nikkatsu, Daiei, Shochiku and smaller distributors – were churning out hundreds and hundreds of pictures a year. Almost as important, they controlled vast chunks of Tokyo real estate where they shot their <i>yakuza </i></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">crime films, <i>chanbara</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"> wandering gambler movies and more. (Over a decade later, when the Japanese film industry more or less imploded in the mid-1970’s, several studios survived by becoming, essentially, real estate companies.)<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">It was a great time to be in the movies, in Japan in 1960. She wound up working for Nikkatsu and Toho studios.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">And there the details of her story ended, more or less.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8k5og4FL-tjVtMyJeC1oF_yytxHYE7PgxPXHeT_n9W4wVhOLUbsC8CLwUKHoqp02O3ETeYE1UokvNJAHSp0UHJroL7i9DQDDUw86oLvLo6hhEqWNX8hRRMesSsH7U6PDoZKv0J7osj_0y/s1600/IMG_9176.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="211" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8k5og4FL-tjVtMyJeC1oF_yytxHYE7PgxPXHeT_n9W4wVhOLUbsC8CLwUKHoqp02O3ETeYE1UokvNJAHSp0UHJroL7i9DQDDUw86oLvLo6hhEqWNX8hRRMesSsH7U6PDoZKv0J7osj_0y/s400/IMG_9176.JPG" width="400" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">There were other memories, here and there: <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">Vague recollections of various acting jobs. A lunch one day with Toshiro Mifune. How she got a part in a movie injecting a man with a needle because she was a trained nurse. How they bleached her hair so badly in another it began to fall out and they frantically rubbed fish oil into her scalp to save it. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 17px;">But just bits and pieces.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 17px;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 17px;">No names of film titles or directors she worked with, no paper trail to follow (not surprising:</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 17px;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 17px;">now as then, many Japanese film deals are done by handshake, with no formal contract.)</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">Except for one movie: <i>Kimi Wa Nerawareteiru</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">, a Nikkatsu film from 1960 directed by Motomu Ida.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQ9wjoyEof2fOeSi42NxaM_IFkgZdhLFN9BZnmpQU6c8ORdyMc_0NoEg09-D0g9DBNOjrr86an1TuR9VmY_mU4u2q1nytQHYiH0swwYoNWuUL6f2v6ffZ0TnoXMC0rq8akB-yRysAz3uWm/s1600/Kimi+Wa+Speed+Poster.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQ9wjoyEof2fOeSi42NxaM_IFkgZdhLFN9BZnmpQU6c8ORdyMc_0NoEg09-D0g9DBNOjrr86an1TuR9VmY_mU4u2q1nytQHYiH0swwYoNWuUL6f2v6ffZ0TnoXMC0rq8akB-yRysAz3uWm/s400/Kimi+Wa+Speed+Poster.JPG" width="140" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 17px;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">[Above: original speed poster for <i>Kimi Wa Nerawareteiru</i>.]</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">For some reason LeAnn saved the first two pages of the script for <i>Kimi Wa Nerawareteiru</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">, translated into English with the film’s title at the top. </span><br />
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</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTkiO6xKyXajWU010XD1RZkVRmBiSlwDLBOlXmtPRd4_sDLbQv6cyfdvJQOFas9uRGASVYPz6XgcKtQQhzvqQJFBvYuj6ml4I2Kdg7oIaW5wF4zwHv34cKetnna3EU1Pp7uFQne9W0zucX/s1600/Kimi+Wa+Pg1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTkiO6xKyXajWU010XD1RZkVRmBiSlwDLBOlXmtPRd4_sDLbQv6cyfdvJQOFas9uRGASVYPz6XgcKtQQhzvqQJFBvYuj6ml4I2Kdg7oIaW5wF4zwHv34cKetnna3EU1Pp7uFQne9W0zucX/s400/Kimi+Wa+Pg1.jpg" width="300" /></a></div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0ZysB_KTemT0t4aPjG6a3c3iZpb-NPKAoGyuc2ldkCpuwtGzbUvAG-bnwMPFDAICS0lCgMh5xhvCMfILhOFJ4RzKA9lOavq1G2WZbt0n0NN7Jj0qun6lXlOfKJXL-HGpiXu6ylN2kL5hp/s1600/Kimi+Wa+Pg2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0ZysB_KTemT0t4aPjG6a3c3iZpb-NPKAoGyuc2ldkCpuwtGzbUvAG-bnwMPFDAICS0lCgMh5xhvCMfILhOFJ4RzKA9lOavq1G2WZbt0n0NN7Jj0qun6lXlOfKJXL-HGpiXu6ylN2kL5hp/s400/Kimi+Wa+Pg2.jpg" width="307" /></a></div><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">Maybe she saved it because it was one of her bigger film parts: she remembered playing the boss of a narcotics gang. Carrying a pistol in her stockings. Smacking the hell out of people.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSPKF8j29MEEVfd0kgbd_ka05XLsXpQu2UvpfAT_f8b8vaUig81BL45YvIgl5OaSZUaAIRem1-QwnnmRChmlIe0WxLRDIGO6usuobp3HnvnMctPshvWL3rSaAIL_9KzjC698heSf-IbzZJ/s1600/IMG_9189.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSPKF8j29MEEVfd0kgbd_ka05XLsXpQu2UvpfAT_f8b8vaUig81BL45YvIgl5OaSZUaAIRem1-QwnnmRChmlIe0WxLRDIGO6usuobp3HnvnMctPshvWL3rSaAIL_9KzjC698heSf-IbzZJ/s320/IMG_9189.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 17px;">One of the characters in it was named “Henry Yamanaka,” that much she remembered clearly. I heard the name “Henry Yamanaka” growing up so often I thought he was a real person.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">Not long after making <i>Kimi Wa Nerawareteiru</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"> she got pregnant. (The bad joke around my family growing up was that my sister had “Made in Japan” stamped on her feet.) <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">LeAnn left Tokyo and returned to the states, where she would re-emerge a decade later as her own unique breed of cowboy-hat wearing, mile-length streamer throwing avant-garde filmmaker.<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5dbuV8RCESDtgkIBD7Fs4HMWEMzfq1JRVn-MkEgecLMZBUayVqDE8G3ghr37fNIWgwBCi59LjW6h_BBYqsJUZ3Ex7JkvpDjn9gOMouVrbdMdlBvra_pySfd7rqIcudzoYeFQzmlEY2cZC/s1600/Kimi+Wa+Speed+Poster+Back+1.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5dbuV8RCESDtgkIBD7Fs4HMWEMzfq1JRVn-MkEgecLMZBUayVqDE8G3ghr37fNIWgwBCi59LjW6h_BBYqsJUZ3Ex7JkvpDjn9gOMouVrbdMdlBvra_pySfd7rqIcudzoYeFQzmlEY2cZC/s320/Kimi+Wa+Speed+Poster+Back+1.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">(Next chapter: Trying to pick up the trail 30 years later.)<o:p></o:p></span></div>BARTOKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06787299064544972391noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1731205886273509424.post-58181404357237225102011-01-12T17:00:00.000-08:002011-02-10T15:11:56.888-08:00Tokyo After Midnight: a B-movie Mystery<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 17px;"><b>Chapter 1:</b></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 17px;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 17px;">This is a detective story, of sorts.</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 17px;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 17px;">“The case of the lost movie” as my friend Chris Marker put it.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 17px;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 17px;"></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">As with many detective stories there is something missing which must be found – the great whatsit as Mike Hammer’s Velda sneers in <i>Kiss Me Deadly</i></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"> … there’s a strange and unexpected cast of characters including a Turkish actor and occasional pimp, a hardboiled director of Japanese yakuza films … and, of course, a <i>femme fatale</i></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">. </span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial;"><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">Who in this case is my mother, LeAnn Bartok.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">Her face haunts me in two silvery black and white images from half a world and half a lifetime away. Japan. 1960.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvXTtYgAVVX4MpH2xerCNLwIbHmSfZFJdF5jddmNfTnpHmRzgP8mNr8sUsQOPw37c-nZyzJ0hyF9drqJXudfQEMSb7PwuQD8832mZ02AFHzLlb1rCmD4QS_xyGN1x785rv8-VC6Jth45q5/s1600/IMG_9132.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="202" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhvXTtYgAVVX4MpH2xerCNLwIbHmSfZFJdF5jddmNfTnpHmRzgP8mNr8sUsQOPw37c-nZyzJ0hyF9drqJXudfQEMSb7PwuQD8832mZ02AFHzLlb1rCmD4QS_xyGN1x785rv8-VC6Jth45q5/s400/IMG_9132.JPG" width="400" /></a><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">In the first she clutches a pistol, with bottle-blonde hair and a string of pearls (probably from Mikimoto, Japan’s famous dealer in cultured pearls). She’s the boss of an international drug syndicate. She spits out trashy B-movie dialogue: <i>“You’ll get what all rats deserve”</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"> and <i>“There isn’t anyone alive who’s pointed a gun at me and gotten away with it.”</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">She’s like a cocktail waitress from hell. But she’s in charge. She’s Mr. Big and everybody’s scared of her.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">In the second she peers through a window at Jo Shishido, nicknamed “Joe The Ace” in Japan. He of the huge, artificially-implanted cheekbones. Star of Suzuki’s <i>Youth Of The Beast </i></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">and <i>Branded To Kill</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">. This time Shishido holds the gun. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">But there’s something odd and unreal about the scene … She’s trapped in black-and-white while Shishido and everything else is in color. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
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</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeqO-yDIfaKRAVfKMB0ppb-RQg_M9MwleSWnv6LYmEqZxzOTHUJjC2oLiPOGhKtS70a_lCdiUR8flLCDxoUUh3Yds69lkTGRclTLSDggvre4ABo0tqaGzpIFhV5_X5BsbV7DqoRlovhtmV/s1600/LeAnn+-+Youth+of+Beast+1.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeqO-yDIfaKRAVfKMB0ppb-RQg_M9MwleSWnv6LYmEqZxzOTHUJjC2oLiPOGhKtS70a_lCdiUR8flLCDxoUUh3Yds69lkTGRclTLSDggvre4ABo0tqaGzpIFhV5_X5BsbV7DqoRlovhtmV/s400/LeAnn+-+Youth+of+Beast+1.JPG" width="400" /></a></div><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">She’s also twice as large as the others – she peers curiously at them from behind a window, like a goddess in an Indian temple, interested in the affairs of humans but always remote.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">These images seem like something from a dream, but they are in fact real. At least as real as Nikkatsu Studios could make them.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 17px;">This is the story of how my mother LeAnn – a young nurse from Ohio turned conceptual artist, painter and avant-garde filmmaker – came to work in Japanese B-movies at the end of the 1950’s. It’s also the story of the search for some trace of her long-lost career in Japanese movies over thirty years later.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDL8PqGSCGObC-cJI_xn3-LnjD-2-4B2ml9VJzgRhRFhVF_fyHLtA7mFHQhdrhIm9448uEFrsKdn0vItu7o2TVMgKb5PrYHCTTTDlB6Az2fMTAhz9hFNq6bIRwN20Nsn2iTOi38sNnuBVn/s1600/LeAnn+Skyworks+Photo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="281" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDL8PqGSCGObC-cJI_xn3-LnjD-2-4B2ml9VJzgRhRFhVF_fyHLtA7mFHQhdrhIm9448uEFrsKdn0vItu7o2TVMgKb5PrYHCTTTDlB6Az2fMTAhz9hFNq6bIRwN20Nsn2iTOi38sNnuBVn/s400/LeAnn+Skyworks+Photo.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">Growing up in the suburbs of Pittsburgh in the early 1970’s I often heard my mother LeAnn talk about her time living in Japan. In fact her professional bio from 1974 begins: <i>“Some background: Born August 1, 1937. Traveled to Japan, 1959. Lived one year, Tokyo. Active in filmmaking major studios.” </i></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"> But that’s about all we knew.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 17px;">LeAnn was already a filmmaker herself at that point, making wild, poetic, free-form experimental 16 mm. movies that documented her pioneering Skyworks projects. Huge scale, environmental artwork that involved dropping multiple streamers of heavy colored paper from airplanes, culminating in her mindblowing mile-length drops: The Black Mile, The Red Mile and others.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGkpGrbAJ0xEoamW2OcYfujPyr0yRRQJ3dC9T4roEwoXN2n6S8bpcvt5Hx31c7Idwnh79pzKpSRMYOT_uT65mHi0iizwL6T1SJhekve74AUc6nLLrCz4nG1mX4_8V9kdxUDkHXOxTgAHRg/s1600/Skyworks+Red+Mile.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="313" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGkpGrbAJ0xEoamW2OcYfujPyr0yRRQJ3dC9T4roEwoXN2n6S8bpcvt5Hx31c7Idwnh79pzKpSRMYOT_uT65mHi0iizwL6T1SJhekve74AUc6nLLrCz4nG1mX4_8V9kdxUDkHXOxTgAHRg/s400/Skyworks+Red+Mile.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">[Above: photo of Skyworks - The Red Mile taken by skydiver']</span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 17px;"><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 17px;">The 1970’s were a crazy time: Christo and Jeanne-Claude were doing the Running Fence in Sonoma … Otto Piene was making helium-filled inflatable sculptures … LeAnn was throwing mile-length streamers out of planes and filming them with cameras strapped to skydivers plummeting to earth with the artworks. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">The sky was literally <i>not</i></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"> the limit.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">She wound up being denounced on the floor of the U.S. Congress by Sen. William Proxmire who gave her his infamous “Golden Fleece” Award for wasting government money, for a small National Endowment of the Arts grant she received to fund one of her projects.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">Then as now, politicians weren’t supporters of the arts – and especially not experimental, environmental, sky-high art. From a woman.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguFGgfuoN8ZGxmpjL7S6PYCzuWivSuIMY8JISKyRClDVQxvIhWzlm78Lv-ZX7VsL8EzPp6HJ-RVDi_zeGeK3DlJO7qInGN9vVBKV7wDkA8CKc7JY27IUt1j4lih-xEHF9FWxitrLn6qkyU/s1600/Village+Voice+1976+Skyworks+article.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguFGgfuoN8ZGxmpjL7S6PYCzuWivSuIMY8JISKyRClDVQxvIhWzlm78Lv-ZX7VsL8EzPp6HJ-RVDi_zeGeK3DlJO7qInGN9vVBKV7wDkA8CKc7JY27IUt1j4lih-xEHF9FWxitrLn6qkyU/s640/Village+Voice+1976+Skyworks+article.jpg" width="436" /></a></div><br />
<div style="text-align: center;">[Above: "Village Voice" article from Sept. 1976 on LeAnn's Skyworks drops.]</div><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsM4V6Y9BrVALCGTa8sdXSZfTJiIX8Xsz9vxTbmKE_OHr74Od-p1XLSHAe2NxAHgThMaZPFXBjV6spp7DVfBJDcm3TwlYMrvvz47BrV8Y1dyDobNU7NJLn4NJj7rIUp6GvT8HrTHioNdU2/s1600/LeAnn+Decorated+Letter.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="207" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhsM4V6Y9BrVALCGTa8sdXSZfTJiIX8Xsz9vxTbmKE_OHr74Od-p1XLSHAe2NxAHgThMaZPFXBjV6spp7DVfBJDcm3TwlYMrvvz47BrV8Y1dyDobNU7NJLn4NJj7rIUp6GvT8HrTHioNdU2/s400/LeAnn+Decorated+Letter.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />
<div style="text-align: center;">[LeAnn would decorate letters and even utility bills with her Skyworks Red Mile line]</div><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">LeAnn was born in Martin’s Ferry, Ohio, a hardscrabble little town that straddles the hills on both sides of the Ohio River. I made a pilgrimage there a few years back to see where she grew up; she probably would’ve recognized it as much as the same. Her father, Joe – my grandfather – was a lean, handsome steelworker with a bad gambling habit in his early years. If you want to know what he was like watch DeNiro in <i>The Deer Hunter </i></span><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">– that’s my grandfather. He lived and breathed deer hunting.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">My grandmother Margaret was a lovely, fragile woman who worked at Sears most of her life and who looks a bit like Jean Harlow in early photos. She patiently followed her husband as he dragged her all over the Ohio and Pennsylvania hills, camping out in small hunting shacks with wood-fired stoves and no running water. She hanged herself in the basement of their house several months after Joe died, and broke my mother’s heart.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">My long-lost uncle sent me this picture a few months back; it’s one of the earliest I have of my mother, from Xmas, 1944. She kneels in the center of the picture holding a doll nearly her size:</span><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicAfUrl0isLt-emyJlgp7Xvu2j04BphoVX6TlEcHYztQFfwtr4sVPuXF-m2BgsPpeQ9IOzc_SNbr-xKyRffuVz4RC-yiS0eNBaIRZ1_RGVx0hnhtA5sBVNwpq0YFzbz8ee7unUQEwkvXzq/s1600/LeAnn+Xmas+1940s.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="281" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicAfUrl0isLt-emyJlgp7Xvu2j04BphoVX6TlEcHYztQFfwtr4sVPuXF-m2BgsPpeQ9IOzc_SNbr-xKyRffuVz4RC-yiS0eNBaIRZ1_RGVx0hnhtA5sBVNwpq0YFzbz8ee7unUQEwkvXzq/s400/LeAnn+Xmas+1940s.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">He wrote: </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 17px;"><i>"Enclosed is my fondest photo of Mom, Sis and yours truly taken while we were living at Grandma's (Bellaire, Ohio) house. It was 1944 - LeAnn was 7, I</i><i> was 2. Dad was working in Pittsburgh, New Castle (mills) and other mills during those early years during the war."</i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">This may not be the whole story; LeAnn told me her dad repeatedly gambled them out of house after house, so they may have been living with her grandmother because they had nowhere else to go. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">LeAnn grew into a pretty teenager in the mid-1950’s, joined the Range Rockettes in high school. But already there must have been signs that she was different, that her mind was focused on other horizons: when she graduated she promptly announced she wanted to join a convent and become a nun. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">Her father refused, so she entered nursing school. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">Years later she could still remember the patients who hadn’t made it. How she and her fellow nurses stood weeping when someone died. LeAnn met my father, a radiologist, at the hospital. It was the era when nurses would have to stop and stand at attention whenever a doctor entered the room, like they were in the military.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;">My father in fact was soon drafted into the Army and sent to Korea, after the shooting war there was over. <o:p></o:p></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 17px;">That’s how my mother came to live in Tokyo, since it was at least closer to Korea. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDMXbkJtoAX7Ne4T-VQQ5eP9Kfsj6BqGZvofgooDuLGow2-0lq7ev9RKlozVH65cjYpk1Xs9Z53ToJVbAxB1x-P-jmWxhb6uXePox23wdxmSYiWmijH3ku6DBRRwxL0wHOsRyWpgAsmdDP/s1600/IMG_9113.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="207" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDMXbkJtoAX7Ne4T-VQQ5eP9Kfsj6BqGZvofgooDuLGow2-0lq7ev9RKlozVH65cjYpk1Xs9Z53ToJVbAxB1x-P-jmWxhb6uXePox23wdxmSYiWmijH3ku6DBRRwxL0wHOsRyWpgAsmdDP/s400/IMG_9113.JPG" width="400" /></a></div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYgtOtpUH5vwVXLAOS9vheQOrRnA6EPo4vczVsilfhK0foT-5hwcG-KkiZb8qZRJNBAl5pUrAlikgQGD9ykvQXbVcMXA1cRiRm2cBlGd__8gdHY_x8_OCeeE0tCcgGm8E93icgS1MRCkrY/s1600/IMG_9115.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="207" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiYgtOtpUH5vwVXLAOS9vheQOrRnA6EPo4vczVsilfhK0foT-5hwcG-KkiZb8qZRJNBAl5pUrAlikgQGD9ykvQXbVcMXA1cRiRm2cBlGd__8gdHY_x8_OCeeE0tCcgGm8E93icgS1MRCkrY/s400/IMG_9115.JPG" width="400" /></a></div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 17px;">It was 1959. She was 22 years old, newly married, and nearly broke. She couldn’t speak a word of Japanese. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 17px;">For the first two weeks she sat in her apartment, crying.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 13pt;"><i>(Next chapter: An American girl in the Japanese movie business)</i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial;">[Photos of LeAnn Bartok and artworks/text -- Copyright, courtesy Estate of LeAnn Bartok]</span><br />
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</span></span></div></span>BARTOKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06787299064544972391noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1731205886273509424.post-33555986227911993132011-01-05T18:29:00.000-08:002011-02-10T15:14:56.294-08:00Budd Boetticher's "Arruza" Script: A Map With No Treasure<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhr98ZVkfe5EMt71mafcYyzzeaZAEd8jzYVjWZKMlyLpYJdOeqw0NwW0pQ_AX7zk08JMNszE-A762OuEZWXHIrc3Ru53XuOt7C1qVhpgnz-HE7Y7bf7vUJybg4OyolJl5CItm1vIiEqTtVf/s1600/IMG_9091.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhr98ZVkfe5EMt71mafcYyzzeaZAEd8jzYVjWZKMlyLpYJdOeqw0NwW0pQ_AX7zk08JMNszE-A762OuEZWXHIrc3Ru53XuOt7C1qVhpgnz-HE7Y7bf7vUJybg4OyolJl5CItm1vIiEqTtVf/s400/IMG_9091.JPG" width="300" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: ArialMT; font-size: 13pt;"> </span><span style="font-family: ArialMT; font-size: 13pt;">A few months ago I got a knock on the door well after 8:00 PM. It startled me since I wasn’t expecting anyone -- turns out it was a U.P.S. guy making a very late delivery. The package was from my film collector buddy Jeff Joseph who was in the process of selling and shipping out his entire collection (the end of another era.) Among the flotsam and jetsam and oddities he'd picked over the years was a copy of Budd Boetticher's original 1959 script for <i>“The Carlos Arruza Story,"</i></span><span style="font-family: ArialMT; font-size: 13pt;"> which he thought I'd like to have.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: ArialMT; font-size: 13pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: ArialMT; font-size: 13pt;">[Above: 1970's oil portrait of Budd by art director Leslie Thomas]</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: ArialMT; font-size: 13pt;">It was a timely gift: I'd been thinking a lot about Budd who’d passed away in 2001 after a legendary career as a filmmaker, bullfighter and world-class hellraiser. I’d met him in the early 1990’s soon after moving to L.A., and he’d become like a second grandfather to me; sometimes I still think I’ll pick up the phone and hear his gravelly voice on the other end. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: ArialMT; font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 17px;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOdqROF4ufi2GWEcPy7-GRdxlTX-N6fKNyY2fGl8pRsEoCs4Es6MQOpKBZsyACvO12i-cRpkOrVgSLbXTHnrDFc_MgUXo9dq8UNnz_zyMBj4aFRjfehDVnawEAufMfkLe9m2B356T1eNgX/s1600/Budd.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOdqROF4ufi2GWEcPy7-GRdxlTX-N6fKNyY2fGl8pRsEoCs4Es6MQOpKBZsyACvO12i-cRpkOrVgSLbXTHnrDFc_MgUXo9dq8UNnz_zyMBj4aFRjfehDVnawEAufMfkLe9m2B356T1eNgX/s400/Budd.jpg" width="363" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: ArialMT; font-size: 13pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: ArialMT; font-size: 13pt;">His later years were spent in self-imposed exile from Hollywood, living like an aging bandit king in the rocky hill country near Ramona, California with his wife, Mary. There, they bred and trained magnificent Lusitano horses, and Budd held court at home surrounded by mementoes, paintings and posters from his career.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: ArialMT; font-size: 13pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsEnNlAiKqgPt7KdEiM1J0mRGe3EGlMDdzk7FdKfnH3qKc3H2-QnMvLM5zoI5EHtlCl8CgFWm11TyTKFMrLO_NceIATFb9oeVgn3J4Sb03_2FQ2sEHjFCCkrH_bGMOp-ymMO6vVNAKOSia/s1600/Budd+Chair.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="210" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsEnNlAiKqgPt7KdEiM1J0mRGe3EGlMDdzk7FdKfnH3qKc3H2-QnMvLM5zoI5EHtlCl8CgFWm11TyTKFMrLO_NceIATFb9oeVgn3J4Sb03_2FQ2sEHjFCCkrH_bGMOp-ymMO6vVNAKOSia/s320/Budd+Chair.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: ArialMT; font-size: 13pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: ArialMT; font-size: 13pt;">[above: handcarved wooden chair Budd won bullfighting in Mexico in the 1940's] <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: ArialMT; font-size: 13pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: ArialMT; font-size: 13pt;">The last years were tough ones: despite the retrospectives and tributes, he was plagued by serious money worries and increasingly fragile health (including, unbelievably, surgery to remove a sliver of bull’s horn in his lower gut from being gored in the ass by a bull in the 1940’s.) As with Welles and too many other directors, everyone wanted to talk about the early movies – but nobody wanted to help him get money to make a new film. To be fair Budd could sometimes be his own worst enemy: once, I’d contacted a well-known Spanish producer who’d expressed interest in looking at Budd’s sadly never-made final project <i>A Horse For Mr. Barnum</i></span><span style="font-family: ArialMT; font-size: 13pt;">; when I passed the producer’s contact information on, Budd snapped back: “give him my number – if he wants to call me I’ll be happy to talk.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: ArialMT; font-size: 13pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5AAPAlyvQ58Gs8AlSP0SCCEqf-b5vnIEg6SR-2hdwbZe31484HmSsXb64CEz8UbNgb6QrIAVmUqzCb3hTU3IcWOPevBG8Nsg3oLYb4P2H46BJbDPsmXsXJQx7jvVdg4XF6LgyR4TNQy3e/s1600/Budd+Posters.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="263" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5AAPAlyvQ58Gs8AlSP0SCCEqf-b5vnIEg6SR-2hdwbZe31484HmSsXb64CEz8UbNgb6QrIAVmUqzCb3hTU3IcWOPevBG8Nsg3oLYb4P2H46BJbDPsmXsXJQx7jvVdg4XF6LgyR4TNQy3e/s400/Budd+Posters.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: ArialMT; font-size: 13pt;">To this day most biographies of Budd are split down the middle like an axe cleaving a log in two. There are the prolific early years as a studio director turning out tough, taut action movies, capped by the glorious cycle of Randolph Scott-starring westerns in the mid-1950’s – including <i>7 Men From Now, The Tall T </i></span><span style="font-family: ArialMT; font-size: 13pt;">and <i>Ride Lonesome. </i></span><span style="font-family: ArialMT; font-size: 13pt;">One of -- if not the single greatest -- director/actor collaborations in American film. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: ArialMT; font-size: 13pt;">Then the later years, after he returned from his strange, inexplicable odyssey to Mexico, when he managed to make only one more feature, the melancholy Audie Murphy-starring <i>A Time For Dying</i></span><span style="font-family: ArialMT; font-size: 13pt;">.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjhwodcvm6kdukwrWZdVesV-yYWTNboRKQC4en23ZDZvRcK9r1Hg7M7THg15kGFpMELMOWU2Qp4E0fB5DfkEwCljHlC_KB8opUlU9bGsNE2vdcTwGzba8BnfusXy94wLYvj6fBY_hYtipq/s1600/Budd+%2526+Mary.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjhwodcvm6kdukwrWZdVesV-yYWTNboRKQC4en23ZDZvRcK9r1Hg7M7THg15kGFpMELMOWU2Qp4E0fB5DfkEwCljHlC_KB8opUlU9bGsNE2vdcTwGzba8BnfusXy94wLYvj6fBY_hYtipq/s320/Budd+%2526+Mary.jpg" width="236" /></a><span style="font-family: ArialMT; font-size: 13pt;">Sitting right in the middle of his life’s story, like one of those weird, phantasmagorical creatures they used to draw on medieval maps to indicate unknown territory: the infamous documentary <i>Arruza</i></span><span style="font-family: ArialMT; font-size: 13pt;">. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: ArialMT; font-size: 13pt;">It occupies roughly the same position in Budd’s life as the white whale did in Ahab’s. There’s a before <i>Arruza</i></span><span style="font-family: ArialMT; font-size: 13pt;">, and an after <i>Arruza.</i></span><span style="font-family: ArialMT; font-size: 13pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: ArialMT; font-size: 13pt;">[Right: Budd and his wife, Mary Boetticher.]</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: ArialMT; font-size: 13pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: ArialMT; font-size: 13pt;">The movie itself is almost incidental to the story surrounding it: how Budd drove down to Mexico in the early 1960’s to start filming it in a white Rolls Royce with his then-wife, the starlet Debra Paget, and her mother … How Paget and her mama returned a few months later, leaving Budd to stay, and stay, and stay. Intent on finishing a documentary that had come to define his life much more than the man it was supposedly about … How he remained in Mexico, through divorce, bankruptcy, short periods in prison and a mental hospital … even through the tragic death (in an unrelated car accident) of his best friend and star, Carlos Arruza.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: ArialMT; font-size: 13pt;">The story itself, and Budd’s many re-tellings of it, came to take on the fabric of a modern-day medieval romance, with Budd on a never-ending quest, like Orlando Furioso, in search of an unattainable goal.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: ArialMT; font-size: 13pt;">When he finally emerged from the wilderness in the late 1960’s, film in hand – the world had changed around him. The New Hollywood era of <i>Bonnie & Clyde </i></span><span style="font-family: ArialMT; font-size: 13pt;">and <i>Easy Rider</i></span><span style="font-family: ArialMT; font-size: 13pt;"> was just kicking off, no one remembered him or his earlier films. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: ArialMT; font-size: 13pt;">He’d returned, finally, to silence and indifference.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: ArialMT; font-size: 13pt;">This then, sitting in a plain brown box with a U.P.S. sticker on it, was the script that started it all. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsRd4YHNd8K9ym5UEXMtdoczhnk8uuSEGqBWhtnfcYbgOY6ipJO9CmA1acNtuNPkgdvZTO5eF-qxLV6khdQlU3C6VDi2imSGwfE5WdJpf4fHG05reVo7z1fVGKbrwEkXdA3y1SFRQ2UdA2/s1600/Arruza+Cover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsRd4YHNd8K9ym5UEXMtdoczhnk8uuSEGqBWhtnfcYbgOY6ipJO9CmA1acNtuNPkgdvZTO5eF-qxLV6khdQlU3C6VDi2imSGwfE5WdJpf4fHG05reVo7z1fVGKbrwEkXdA3y1SFRQ2UdA2/s320/Arruza+Cover.jpg" width="245" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: ArialMT; font-size: 13pt;">It's dated June 5, 1959 -- which means it comes before the long, long years in exile in Mexico (although he'd obviously already spent a lot of time thinking about the project and shooting footage -- the script references film he'd already shot of numerous bullfights in the mid-1950's with Arruza.)<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: ArialMT; font-size: 13pt;">I read the script -- and it left me with very strong and very mixed feelings. Knowing everything that was to come after -- his divorce from Paget, the virtual end of his Hollywood career and all his contacts in the industry, Arruza's accidental death -- it's hard not to see it as a blueprint for madness. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: ArialMT; font-size: 13pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFyd0v_Oiac8ycljkvb0nKbZJ9Maj7rUuz_YCE6OQp-GNW5JCKMD0eS8DBesqlczhgT8McVjD23hUI0nW0tMk4JYXaadb3_h9lgNoGMhOaHslh3oKB3KupxFbqQaVF-96FEjQfFq_hqacb/s1600/Arruza+Pg+1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="640" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFyd0v_Oiac8ycljkvb0nKbZJ9Maj7rUuz_YCE6OQp-GNW5JCKMD0eS8DBesqlczhgT8McVjD23hUI0nW0tMk4JYXaadb3_h9lgNoGMhOaHslh3oKB3KupxFbqQaVF-96FEjQfFq_hqacb/s640/Arruza+Pg+1.jpg" width="523" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: ArialMT; font-size: 13pt;">I'd been reading a bunch of classic 1950's-era Donald Duck comics written by Carl Barks to my son recently. Many of them revolve around the discovery of a lost map. A journey into the jungle in search of fabulous Mayan treasure. The kind of adventure story Hollywood loved to make back then starring Stewart Granger or Victor Mature. Budd's vision of Arruza's life is definitely an adventure story of a kind -- and an unabashed love letter to the man himself. </span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: ArialMT; font-size: 13pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: ArialMT; font-size: 13pt;">Like Randolph Scott and Richard Boone in <i>The Tall T</i></span><span style="font-family: ArialMT; font-size: 13pt;">, this was a love affair, even if a platonic one.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: ArialMT; font-size: 13pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7Yxnas5MOk6zshulWPXpiCmpjQcvgcIwrty2U-Sj1LDy18gReRP1jwN_EmzKeGfZdzQ74hg30_Y8nnQlH0br_LsdKdu7SKbEx7vILJD6WdraSZDiR-2wSCQ_G-qLTT_PXU4n75tNoiuRC/s1600/IMG_9086.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7Yxnas5MOk6zshulWPXpiCmpjQcvgcIwrty2U-Sj1LDy18gReRP1jwN_EmzKeGfZdzQ74hg30_Y8nnQlH0br_LsdKdu7SKbEx7vILJD6WdraSZDiR-2wSCQ_G-qLTT_PXU4n75tNoiuRC/s320/IMG_9086.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: ArialMT; font-size: 13pt;">It's reading a lot -- probably too much -- into it, but Budd's Arruza script seems like a map with no treasure at the end. A journey with no real destination.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: ArialMT; font-size: 13pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2_L5b5S_8NTEVOBfzwGzL6JMmRNN6cfBYiST-D8laJ2hxBWMA-SQBHD6RhfKpQXO6saByXjx2qyfa59MW2EMClshzvAICotyjrjt00gIO3zuqK-jMhLqbwr6b0-cJQWUovs7nLWQlu9ag/s1600/IMG_9087.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg2_L5b5S_8NTEVOBfzwGzL6JMmRNN6cfBYiST-D8laJ2hxBWMA-SQBHD6RhfKpQXO6saByXjx2qyfa59MW2EMClshzvAICotyjrjt00gIO3zuqK-jMhLqbwr6b0-cJQWUovs7nLWQlu9ag/s320/IMG_9087.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: ArialMT; font-size: 13pt;"><br />
</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: ArialMT; font-size: 13pt;">Like the finished film, the script is a strange beast, neither fish nor fowl. It's a staged documentary recreating Arruza's retirement from bullfighting and his decision -- prompted by crushing boredom and ennui -- to return as a rejoneador fighting on horseback. </span></div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVhsdrAJIVONJ872gu-S1W4Y__q1294riPgLc1k-540-OQsjhhbR8cpkRCQoNoa0zWi-nSDRRSjgimQRWaNgwwhvCxQPiwtBgpGgUguE4AnsUobXN_Oq05uc9-mm7u1GCos1MIiV6TgtOU/s1600/IMG_9088.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVhsdrAJIVONJ872gu-S1W4Y__q1294riPgLc1k-540-OQsjhhbR8cpkRCQoNoa0zWi-nSDRRSjgimQRWaNgwwhvCxQPiwtBgpGgUguE4AnsUobXN_Oq05uc9-mm7u1GCos1MIiV6TgtOU/s320/IMG_9088.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: ArialMT; font-size: large;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 17px;"><br />
</span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: ArialMT; font-size: 13pt;"> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: ArialMT; font-size: 17px;">The "documentary" is so highly scripted by Budd though, that it's practically fiction. It's probably closest in spirit to the staged Disney live-action films of the 1950's about lovable gophers out in the desert etc. -- except in this case it's men drinking tequila and killing bulls. So it's hard to know who the target audience would've been for this, probably another fatal flaw.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: ArialMT; font-size: 13pt;">The thought suddenly hit me that the Arruza story would've been successful if Budd had just fictionalized the whole thing like his earlier films <i>The Magnificent Matador</i></span><span style="font-family: ArialMT; font-size: 13pt;"> and <i>The Bullfighter & The Lady</i></span><span style="font-family: ArialMT; font-size: 13pt;">, and hired someone -- Tony Quinn, Ricardo Montalban, George Chakiris -- to play Arruza. He'd done it before and those movies did okay, Hollywood knew what to do with that kind of story.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: ArialMT; font-size: 13pt;">But of course he couldn't do it here. He had to present his idealized, mythologized "love letter" to Arruza, bulls and horses in his own strange, half-real way.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-autospace: none;"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: ArialMT; font-size: 13pt;">It's over 50 years now since Budd started on that journey -- the film <i>Arruza</i></span><span style="font-family: ArialMT; font-size: 13pt;"> came out in a bastardized version edited by John Sturges, sank like a stone -- and he never really finished it. Never really stopped hoping he'd re-emerge from the wilderness to find a hero's welcome, wealth, a loving family, the adoring cheers of the crowd. All the things that the idealized Aruzza in Budd's script revels in. All the things Budd lost or threw away.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoRw5iVG5YEuAMhX7bJc1A5eEaveF4cl-nDo7-AQFMwISGqdcnrIhXEVRBhiwkSrtdRAknPoDZMKmZChQDbVWro7kDyTqUHdo3h-PoTSzT2wYkmRJXIVdSUGsnJFWicbtRZWeyioYhEf0b/s1600/IMG_9092.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjoRw5iVG5YEuAMhX7bJc1A5eEaveF4cl-nDo7-AQFMwISGqdcnrIhXEVRBhiwkSrtdRAknPoDZMKmZChQDbVWro7kDyTqUHdo3h-PoTSzT2wYkmRJXIVdSUGsnJFWicbtRZWeyioYhEf0b/s400/IMG_9092.JPG" width="400" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div>BARTOKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06787299064544972391noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1731205886273509424.post-79792541242838898822011-01-02T20:09:00.000-08:002011-02-10T15:16:22.198-08:00Robert Evans - The Lost Screening Room<div class="MsoNormal">In July, 2003 <i>Daily Variety </i><span style="font-style: normal;">ran an article by Army Archerd on a disastrous fire that broke out at producer Robert Evans’ Beverly Hills estate, destroying his screening room and trophy room. The piece didn’t go into specific details about what was lost in the fire other than saying that prints of his classic films were destroyed along with “all his trophies and awards.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="MsoNormal"> </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzJiB3MsrnbMxVgd6uhVObaBCdIrsf9a4v83hARm704apY_2eKGpLKzLmcBBeRLBEp9tMuaMjMI-l92vMsWm5ScAklsiEjZI7ylcpTHh3ANI23Xm0aaVEi0c6OKcBsbp5D5eN9k-6zrWJ9/s1600/IMG_9071.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzJiB3MsrnbMxVgd6uhVObaBCdIrsf9a4v83hARm704apY_2eKGpLKzLmcBBeRLBEp9tMuaMjMI-l92vMsWm5ScAklsiEjZI7ylcpTHh3ANI23Xm0aaVEi0c6OKcBsbp5D5eN9k-6zrWJ9/s320/IMG_9071.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal">I might not have noticed the piece, except for the fact that I’d spent an afternoon in the now-vanished screening room with Evans a few months earlier. We’d met to discuss an upcoming tribute to him at the American Cinematheque’s Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood, screening films he’d produced or overseen as a studio exec including <i>Chinatown, The Godfather, Harold & Maude, Love Story </i><span style="font-style: normal;">and </span><i>Rosemary’s Baby.</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> Evans was riding an all-time high, image-wise, with the success of </span><i>The Kid Stays In The Picture </i><span style="font-style: normal;">on film, book and audio-recording. “A lot of guys have more money than me, but fuck ‘em,” as he said at the end of the meeting. He’d neatly tapped into the public’s fascination with both unbridled, Rat Pack-style masculinity and nostalgia for the New Hollywood of the early 1970’s. Love him or hate him, he’d become the Last of the Red Hot Moguls: Dean Martin playing Irving Thalberg.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Evans’ house had acquired near-legendary status because it’s featured so prominently in <i>The Kid Stays In The Picture </i><span style="font-style: normal;">– he makes a big deal in the book of getting his home back after he’d sold it, it’s his own personal Tara. The house sits behind a high wall of greenery, and you enter through a small security gate, winding down a short tunnel of overhanging trees until the mansion appears on the left and you reach a circular front driveway. I’d arrived a few minutes early for the meeting, where I’d be joined by John Hersker, the extremely affable V.P. of Distribution for Paramount who’d helped set up the tribute. One of Evans’ small team of assistants, a dark-haired woman named Vanessa in her late 20’s, showed me to the back screening room. While I waited for Evans to finish a lengthy phone interview I had time to check out the room which was decorated with:</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">A miniature cannon</div><div class="MsoNormal">Round wood table with flowers and low leather chairs</div><div class="MsoNormal">Two pairs of reading glasses on the table; a phone on the green carpet floor</div><div class="MsoNormal">A Picasso and Negulesco on the wall: bullring and female nudes</div><div class="MsoNormal">Full bar, with a large pitcher of melted ice</div><div class="MsoNormal">A remarkable B&W photo on the wall: a huge blow-up of a fat female hand with $500 bills, wearing a pear-sharped diamond ring and the title: “Monte Carlo, 1982.”</div><div class="MsoNormal">Three small embroidered pillows: <i>“R.E. – Rejection Leads to Obsession, N.J.”; “He Knows Where You’re Sleeping”</i><span style="font-style: normal;">; and </span><i>“I’m In A Meeting! Darling, I Can’t Speak To You Now! I’m In A Meeting!”</i></div><div class="MsoNormal">Rear doors opening onto the tennis court<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">A Paul Klee (?) or Miro of fish on a plate<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">A large French poster by Lautrec<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">Circular pool visible outside with arcing water jets<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal">Metal cannisters placed about with loose cigarettes and matches<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">After about ten minutes Hersker arrived and we sat around talking about the house, Evans’ career, bad movies about Hollywood including <i>The Oscar, Myra Breckinridge </i><span style="font-style: normal;">and Evans’ own </span><i>The Last Of Sheila</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> -- and </span><i>The Kid Stays In The Picture’s </i><span style="font-style: normal;">chances of getting an Oscar nomination (“not too good,” according to Evans himself later.)<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Evans finally appeared, apologizing for being a half-hour late. The first thing I noticed was how firm his handshake is; the second, his bronzed pot-belly poking out from his shirt when he sat like a little Buddha. His face is the ruinous wreck of a good-looking man; he talks with the same raspy, bedroom whisper that’s become famous from <i>Kid</i><span style="font-style: normal;">, and everything he says sounds like it’s been scripted by some very funny writers.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">He immediately launched into a passionate discussion of how the studio’s marketing department had fucked up the trailer for his upcoming romantic comedy <i>How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days.</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> “They’re selling it for chicks. No guy is going to want to go see the film. He’d rather stay home and watch basketball re-runs. The poster’s not bad – except they’ve screwed up the whole point of the title. They’ve got </span><i>HOW TO LOSE A GUY</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> in big type, and below it, </span><i>in 10 Days, </i><span style="font-style: normal;">in small type like it’s not even part of the film. The whole joke is ‘howtoloseaguyin10days,” they just don’t fucking get it,” he sighed. He paused, reflecting a bit sadly on how things had changed: “In the old days I would’ve walked in there yelling and screaming till they fixed it … but I did that on </span><i>Sliver </i><span style="font-style: normal;">and got kicked out.” He apologized for taking us off on a tangent, then called another assistant in to show us a video reel cut by some MTV guys that would demonstrate how Evans thought the movie’s trailer should be cut. The assistant appeared, gave Evans a British paper with a glowing review of </span><i>The Kid Stays In The Picture’s </i><span style="font-style: normal;">release in the U.K., then disappeared. “Where’d the guy go?? Where’s the trailer?” Evans growled a minute later, pushing buttons on his antiquated speaker phone until the assistant came back. </span><i>“Robert Evans: Hollywood Legend” </i><span style="font-style: normal;">ran about four minutes and featured speeded-up clips of Evans’ early acting role in </span><i>The Sun Also Rises</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> intercut with scenes from </span><i>Chinatown, Harold & Maude</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> etc. – all set to a rap beat. “This is how the trailer </span><i>should </i><span style="font-style: normal;">look,” he said, jabbing his finger at the screen, “this is what kids pay attention to.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">We finally got around to talking about details for the tribute, which Evans seemed genuinely touched and appreciative for. He was in fact swimming in tributes, awards and accolades at the moment and couldn’t have been happier. He pulled out a binder filled with letters of invitation from the Producers Guild to receive their David O. Selznick Lifetime Achievement Award, from Larry King to appear at his Cardiac Foundation Fundraiser, even an unsolicited note from Alec Baldwin saying how much he loved <i>Kid </i><span style="font-style: normal;">– “I never met the guy before, he just sent this to me,” Evans noted – adding in the letter: “I was married to a fragile, unbelievably beautiful actress myself, and know what it feels like to see our fairytale marriage blow away like sand,” or something to that effect. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Like any good producer, Evans expressed concern for getting a big audience for the film tribute: “Maybe you should mention it’s a tribute to the recipient of the David O. Selznick Award from the Producers Guild, that sounds impressive,” he suggested, then grabbed the phone and dialed his publicist. “I never had P.R. guy before, never needed one – but I’ve got to have somebody to say ‘no’ these days,” he added. His publicist sounds like a character actor playing a hammy impersonation of a P.R. rep from a 1950’s film, he says things like “this won’t just be a home-run, it’ll be a MEGA home-run.” Evans launched into another tangent, ranting on the phone about the placement of his tribute ad to Sumner Redstone in a recent issue of the trades: “I’m the only one from the studio who took out an ad, can you fucking believe that? And look where they put it, in the back of the paper, across from some guy I never heard of. It looks like I’m paying tribute to this asshole, not Redstone. The sonofabitches woke me up at 3 AM in London about this ad, made me send a check right away. An apology won’t do, I want my money back!” he howled. His publicist promised to get right on it, and Evans hung up. He punched another button for his assistant Vanessa: “Ask Emmanuelle to come back here, there’s some people I want here to meet,” he said, then stood and walked into the back bathroom. <o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">“C’mere, there’s something I want to show you,” he said from around the corner. Hersker and I sat there, confused. “Hey, I said come here, you’ve gotta see this,” he ordered. We duly followed him into the bathroom, where he proudly pointed out two certificates hanging over the toilet from the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress: “I’m the only producer alive with two films on the National Registry. You should put that in the press release, it sounds impressive. This one says, ‘To Robert Evans, producer of <i>Chinatown.’</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> And this one, ‘To Robert Evans, creator of </span><i>The Godfather.’</i><span style="font-style: normal;">” He stressed “creator” twice, like he was particularly pleased by it. Hersker noticed a framed note from Bernie Myerson of Loews Theaters on the wall and mentioned that Myerson had just recently passed away. “He did? Aw Christ, I’m really sorry to hear that. I would’ve come to the funeral if I’d known but I was in London … Bernie cost me $6 million once, I called him The Six Million Dollar Man. Somebody wanted to buy me out of my percentage on </span><i>Black Sunday</i><span style="font-style: normal;">. Bernie told me not to sell.” The note from Myerson was, in fact, glowing praise about </span><i>Black Sunday</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> and ended with the prediction “It’ll be bigger than </span><i>Jaws!!”</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> “It wasn’t bigger than MY jaw,” Evans chuckled. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">His assistant Vanessa’s voice interrupted from the other room – “what do you want?” he shot back, until she reminded him that he’d asked for Emmanuelle to come back. “Emmanuelle” is Emmanuelle Seigner, wife of Roman Polanski and star of <i>Bitter Moon </i><span style="font-style: normal;">and </span><i>Frantic</i><span style="font-style: normal;">. She was standing in the outer screening room, patiently waiting for us to emerge from the bathroom. Evans introduced us, we shook hands politely and then Evans put a fatherly hand on her shoulder. “What are you doing tonight?” he asked. Seigner, bottle blonde and a little shy, replied that she was going out to dinner with Evans’ son, Josh. Evans nodded, then added after she left, “Roman likes her to stay here when she’s in town, he knows she won’t get into trouble.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">As the meeting wrapped up Evans led us around the circular pool with arcing water jets – but instead of taking us into the main room, he led us into his bedroom. It seemed a bit odd, like he wasn’t entirely sure which way to go – I had to remind myself that he’d suffered a devastating stroke in 1998. Even Hersker, an old studio friend, cautioned him to slow down his non-stop schedule of travel and personal appearances. “Yeah, I want to be around for the tribute, right?” Evans joked. He led us back into the main room of the house where Hersker pointed out a beautiful architectural detail: through an ingenious trick of design, the fireplace is vented off to each side so the architects could place a pane of glass right above it which looks out across the circular pool to the back screening room, which was has its own brightly roaring fireplace. “It’s an optical illusion, the two fires,” Hersker said – a casual comment that took on a sadder meaning a few months later when fire gutted the screening room. “Yeah, but you’re not seeing the illusion right,” Evans countered, as he struggled to light the fire in the main room. After fiddling unsuccessfully with the gas he called for Vanessa, who didn’t know how to get it lit either. “Once you get started with something you’ve got to finish it,” Evans said as he wandered off looking for long matches. He finally succeeded in getting the fire blazing in the living room, and we stood there for a long moment admiring the illusion, and the very real but somehow artificial-looking moon hanging perfectly over the circular pool outside. Evans asked his assistant to get him a drink, and as she left he sighed “I feel like a gynecologist in a whorehouse I’m so busy these days.” Hersker assured him that <i>How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days </i><span style="font-style: normal;">would be a big hit (which in fact it turned out to be.) “Yeah, I just don’t want to get hit in the balls,” Evans grinned as we walked out.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">As I walked back to my car I saw Seigner and Evans’ son briefly pulling out in a sports car headed to dinner, and for an instant thought that Evans would be left alone in his sprawling mansion. Then I remembered that he’d just been married a few weeks earlier – “my sixth, her first”, Evans noted – and his new wife was somewhere in the house; Hersker said he’d greeted her briefly when he arrived earlier, wearing a bathrobe. It was dark in Beverly Hills when I wound back through the tunnel driveway and headed towards Sunset Blvd. The thing that stuck most in my mind was one of Evans’ many tangents during the meeting: “You want to see the arc of my life?,” he asked unexpectedly. He turned and pointed to two plaques hanging on the wall in his trophy room. On the bottom was an award for Most Promising Newcomer of 1958 from <i>Photoplay </i><span style="font-style: normal;">magazine – and above, a certificate for Evans’ star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2002. “That’s me,” he said, then shook his head. “1958. Christ, that’s a long time.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>BARTOKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06787299064544972391noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1731205886273509424.post-23272548762770918052010-12-17T18:00:00.000-08:002011-02-10T15:18:58.048-08:00Ken's Tuesday Night Film Club<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYRE_yumTtAXfdifohvmUtx_lM8LiAL6pJYXBNM7a37qHfSGlcgWjcyebtDD54AS039QmcHqUVZW4lvhR81OtC6nR4Gf1Ufu1At0PPEtSqeGJzY_V_-pyJwyBipiAEudzk87fiBINIUYuR/s1600/IMG_7242.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYRE_yumTtAXfdifohvmUtx_lM8LiAL6pJYXBNM7a37qHfSGlcgWjcyebtDD54AS039QmcHqUVZW4lvhR81OtC6nR4Gf1Ufu1At0PPEtSqeGJzY_V_-pyJwyBipiAEudzk87fiBINIUYuR/s320/IMG_7242.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">I saw my friend Ken for dinner and a movie at his office and screening room in Burbank recently. The first thing you notice when you walk in the door is the pungent, bittersweet odor of old film prints; a projectionist friend of mine once described it as being a bit like oil & vinegar salad dressing. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-GqdT7I02qNGnbk7QkQKIlnzGxg0JKg655D0MS-sbR0_WoQ3guS2xGp5Jg7bBx-exxaw8aQQKYn4LHLp9KwjLMReG1pj7YUxlsX4PVne0xd8Q8n86OlSB_V6ONOIUSYjLl_124m5QyCXq/s1600/IMG_7294.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-GqdT7I02qNGnbk7QkQKIlnzGxg0JKg655D0MS-sbR0_WoQ3guS2xGp5Jg7bBx-exxaw8aQQKYn4LHLp9KwjLMReG1pj7YUxlsX4PVne0xd8Q8n86OlSB_V6ONOIUSYjLl_124m5QyCXq/s320/IMG_7294.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><div><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div> For several decades Ken was one of the most active 35 mm. film print and trailer dealers in the country. His private collection is still one of the finest in Los Angeles and includes treasures like an original 4-track mag Tech print of <i>Porgy & Bess</i>, probably the best in existence ... a superb collection of Technicolor Disney features from the 1940's, 50's and 60's ... color home-movie footage of Marilyn Monroe & Joe DiMaggio during filming of <i>The River Of No Return </i>... out-takes from George Pal's <i>War Of The Worlds </i>and <i>When Worlds Collide </i>... the list goes on. But like many of his one-time rivals for rare film prints, Ken’s now considering selling his entire collection of 35 mm. and 16 mm. prints. He says with a shrug, “I can’t really imagine the day when I won’t have film prints to show.” But the fact is that the film print market is rapidly changing: the hardcore collectors from the 1970’s and 1980’s -- guys like Ken, Jeff Joseph, Joe Dante who really defined obsessive print collecting, and who saved many treasures from disappearing all together -- are now getting older … and there are few younger collectors who share their passion and urgency to collect these movies, not with the ready availability of films on DVD and the internet.<br />
<div class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzan_p0QISd2mcN2r3a9q8eWX_lRYlX8KpfuF5U5VMwAcJae0yA1PJxWT18VL80K3B-HUlGgYvl0pCySe4atsa-n93UOoG7rbF8GnrkDoXh8J4Dbxlg2m3q_lXgRg6eS-IhgvBMG_y836p/s1600/IMG_7228.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzan_p0QISd2mcN2r3a9q8eWX_lRYlX8KpfuF5U5VMwAcJae0yA1PJxWT18VL80K3B-HUlGgYvl0pCySe4atsa-n93UOoG7rbF8GnrkDoXh8J4Dbxlg2m3q_lXgRg6eS-IhgvBMG_y836p/s320/IMG_7228.JPG" width="320" /></a>Ken swears he hasn’t bought any prints in 5 years – and then proceeds to tell us about his latest find: he spotted an ad in the Recycler (“it’s 8 pages now, barely there,” he wisecracks) that advertised “<i>Deep Throat</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> poster, loose film reels - $400.” Ken wound up paying $800, but got posters for </span><i>Deep Throat</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> and </span><i>The Devil In Miss Jones</i><span style="font-style: normal;">, a 35 mm. print of </span><i>Throat</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> with 50 – 60% color left, an excellent Fuji color print of </span><i>Miss Jones</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> … “But that’s not even the good stuff,” he grins. “The guy had an original 35 mm. black and white print of </span><i>A Hard Day’s Night</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> … and even better, a complete British Technicolor print of </span><i>Let It Be</i><span style="font-style: normal;">. The Academy doesn’t even have one, theirs is incomplete.” He claims someone’s already offered him $3,000 - $5,000 for the </span><i>Devil In Miss Jones</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> print, but he’s not selling (for now.) </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwVSIr3ebsQQi9sUxuEWhWNF9iv5wjnVp6g10lppBDdtH4WzwMF-2stwbc3wmuW_VTpiyxPSy3RDObB1bWXdxmDDxFmck7NGqe-2htCIBXtPx50XHhdwQNK65l9e_4_XVJgFh1BhKBqtbO/s1600/IMG_7266.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwVSIr3ebsQQi9sUxuEWhWNF9iv5wjnVp6g10lppBDdtH4WzwMF-2stwbc3wmuW_VTpiyxPSy3RDObB1bWXdxmDDxFmck7NGqe-2htCIBXtPx50XHhdwQNK65l9e_4_XVJgFh1BhKBqtbO/s320/IMG_7266.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Like all obsessive collectors, he only remembers the ones that got away: “Years ago I went through one of those phases where I swore to my then-wife that I wouldn’t buy anything more. A guy called me up that month and said ‘I’ve got the Lion costume from <i>Wizard Of Oz</i><span style="font-style: normal;">, do you want to buy it for $800?’ I asked him if it included the mask … that’s a joke, there was no mask for the Lion outfit. I turned him down … the thing sold a couple years ago for over $400,000.” So many years, so many treasures slipping in and out of his fingers: “I had one of the first movie poster stores anywhere … I think of all the posters I wish I’d held on to, but nobody wanted the stuff back then. I hired a guy to paint the sign outside the store, and instead of cash I told him he could pick out any poster he wanted. He picked an original one-sheet for </span><i>Gone With The Wind</i><span style="font-style: normal;">, the one with the flower border. The thing sold for 50 or 75 bucks back then …”</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOq__xRGTrbKPK_Yzb8r7DvWXZy2nyKTycXYapwP-IAHlDjRTo-b4XE77VzHngt8MjJuMt-sm9PBT8EE3ifFPmLEln-yx5JVcRi8jH7aUdAKQRkDWKc4dQdiPyT8GK6uCb246-wvb3lbDt/s1600/IMG_7269.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjOq__xRGTrbKPK_Yzb8r7DvWXZy2nyKTycXYapwP-IAHlDjRTo-b4XE77VzHngt8MjJuMt-sm9PBT8EE3ifFPmLEln-yx5JVcRi8jH7aUdAKQRkDWKc4dQdiPyT8GK6uCb246-wvb3lbDt/s320/IMG_7269.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">He went on: “I almost had the original Star Trek Enterprise model – the 15 foot one that’s in the Smithsonian now. I bought this alien reptile costume for 75 bucks from Paramount that was used in one of the Star Trek shows. I kept the head on my dining room table for a while, it bugged the hell out of my wife. A buddy of mine kept pestering me to buy it – I wasn’t even a big Star Trek fan – so I finally sold it to him for 400 bucks. I pack it up and ship it out … then I get a phone call. The voice blurts out, “Ken Kramer, you thief!” and hangs up. I go, what? Five minutes later he calls back … I say, “Listen, I don’t know who you are but don’t hang up on me again.” Turns out the guy is a producer at Paramount, he apologizes for the first call. He was in pre-production on a project that was written around the alien reptile costume I’d bought. The guy said he’d give me anything I wanted if he could borrow the costume back for a week of shooting: “I’ll give you the original star ship Enterprise model they used in the show.” I said okay – of course I didn’t tell him I didn’t have the damn costume any more. I call my buddy up I’d sold it to, I said listen, I need to borrow it back. He says sure, you’ve done me some favors in the past, I’ll just send it back to you. So I call the producer back to tell him the good news – and he says sorry, we don’t need it anymore, we found a second costume on the lot and we don’t need yours!” The list of lost treasures is endless. “I had the original Ming the Merciless costume from the Flash Gordon serial, the one with the big collar. Gave it to Debbie Reynolds when she was opening her costume museum in Vegas … don’t know where it is now. Poor Debbie. So many people stole from her over the years.”</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGay-U0OzcAyRT9HUYFZmI1m9W5txnbZA7iCp1Xc139fwLodrbOHMMEvjPUTOz0SK5hX4vci1DOJZFN-9AnW_sh_Xa1FKes_tw2CUj5yw4Y8HohPZO62b24y8NWSAWLxDVHgyGyQlyjBc7/s1600/IMG_7307.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGay-U0OzcAyRT9HUYFZmI1m9W5txnbZA7iCp1Xc139fwLodrbOHMMEvjPUTOz0SK5hX4vci1DOJZFN-9AnW_sh_Xa1FKes_tw2CUj5yw4Y8HohPZO62b24y8NWSAWLxDVHgyGyQlyjBc7/s320/IMG_7307.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal">There’s a photo in the corner of one that didn’t get away, at least for a while: “You see that Frankenstein dummy? I spotted an ad in the paper and called the guy up. He said, I’ve got this big Frankenstein dummy, I think they used it outside a store or movie theater. He wanted 75 bucks for it. We made plans for me to look at it the next day. So the next day I call him – and he says, oh I’m sorry – some other guy’s coming to look at it right now, if he doesn’t buy it, it’s yours. I ask him where he lives, he says King’s Road – well I used to live on King’s Road, so I race over there right away. I get there and I’m just starting to look at this thing when another car pulls up, the guy says “oh that’s the other buyer.” I hand him 75 bucks and grab the dummy and throw it in my car.”</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzK5CxUG7XmQDnycUpfxuc5NEf3orcdgFHxSp5rGnKgwwaBJiFl5Sb9gCUBTkut-4fJkKjOgugCgjUJZ0gbFb2qPtUk7rqddEbJZ4usWv2LW678UE2f4s0gjLWQQM5RRG5bnwhsv19oBpa/s1600/IMG_7298.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzK5CxUG7XmQDnycUpfxuc5NEf3orcdgFHxSp5rGnKgwwaBJiFl5Sb9gCUBTkut-4fJkKjOgugCgjUJZ0gbFb2qPtUk7rqddEbJZ4usWv2LW678UE2f4s0gjLWQQM5RRG5bnwhsv19oBpa/s320/IMG_7298.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">“I’m looking at it later and I can’t quite figure out what it is. The face is really badly painted, so I send it to a friend of mine to re-paint. He calls me up and says, ‘Ken – do you know what you have? I stripped off the paint and underneath is a life mask of Karloff’s face, beautifully painted in green.’ I say, what?? He does some more research and calls me back: ‘Look at the final scenes of <i>Bride Of Frankenstein</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> … There’s the Frankenstein figure surrounded by flames. But if you look closely you’ll see he’s not moving – it’s a model of him, they probably didn’t want to risk hurting Karloff. Your dummy has the exact same clothes, they’re torn in the same place. You’ve got an original prop from </span><i>Bride Of Frankenstein</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> …”</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmwt8ijtDWC8Z-FrKdoBOeM5Jd4Ze9jhcZxo6Qdl8t9zsnj_7xlAG01Nq81U863IQ6IpB3l365Lfh59DYTi2tkTYaHNGA5huiRKodjK0PfTNeBjPS6LFej0gEgWQ49MJhWurMksGCsuhT-/s1600/IMG_7302.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmwt8ijtDWC8Z-FrKdoBOeM5Jd4Ze9jhcZxo6Qdl8t9zsnj_7xlAG01Nq81U863IQ6IpB3l365Lfh59DYTi2tkTYaHNGA5huiRKodjK0PfTNeBjPS6LFej0gEgWQ49MJhWurMksGCsuhT-/s320/IMG_7302.JPG" width="240" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I ask him if he still has it. “No,” he sighs – “A friend was doing a memorabilia auction in London and convinced me to put it in. It was on the cover of the catalogue. But it was the same weekend they did a huge auction in New York where they sold the piano from <i>Casablanca</i><span style="font-style: normal;">. My Frankenstein dummy sold for $37,000 … imagine what it’d go for now.” To cheer him up I said, sure – but at the time that was a lot of money. And after all, a movie poster’s just a sheet of paper with some ink on it that we assign an artificial value to. You can’t eat it, you can’t take it for a walk by the lake. You sell this stuff and you use the money for something more important like buying a car or pursuing a pretty girl, real memories. Ken and his buddies nodded half-heartedly but I could tell they didn’t really believe me, they’d rather still have the Frankenstein dummy or the </span><i>Gone With The Wind</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> one-sheet. I’m not totally sure I believe myself. That’s the illness of collecting.</span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiebhhwEGxJKaFVZhN7L7_mwG30YqbPu2sJbxTIUPVrSjddloaMcYFEWiJhmsJaU-7EYerQo4G0VSfTKTC19N6QdbLCf7XgqnsFV6BRVGAqpqcSZgeO5ADa35Ky0huBblxc94oovRygUXV4/s1600/IMG_7257.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiebhhwEGxJKaFVZhN7L7_mwG30YqbPu2sJbxTIUPVrSjddloaMcYFEWiJhmsJaU-7EYerQo4G0VSfTKTC19N6QdbLCf7XgqnsFV6BRVGAqpqcSZgeO5ADa35Ky0huBblxc94oovRygUXV4/s320/IMG_7257.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcXbSPek65LeG-0SOtphduIyYmiGsA8Z_jBoLS8GaSaiwhi9UlbEZftJrN9KmiBmcTrT1Q4e025fzMpJbzTPZBgw2dJJN1UVW2A8dYUmCBrYrZ5a3nuK_hgjFJAfvyHDR4MLX9A0VN9B_S/s1600/IMG_7273.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhcXbSPek65LeG-0SOtphduIyYmiGsA8Z_jBoLS8GaSaiwhi9UlbEZftJrN9KmiBmcTrT1Q4e025fzMpJbzTPZBgw2dJJN1UVW2A8dYUmCBrYrZ5a3nuK_hgjFJAfvyHDR4MLX9A0VN9B_S/s320/IMG_7273.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6An5bSyjjfX141flLChX23YOJMvnyOCcjXrdKWWAXQEyUlsujTteZnSYVdVoEO94uSVbIkyW9ri2QIdgGFp2rrTx_cOeykafk9upmewNpvi-15BykVrEQ7Zw-1jyn7oBbchwz4bRGnt7o/s1600/IMG_7296.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh6An5bSyjjfX141flLChX23YOJMvnyOCcjXrdKWWAXQEyUlsujTteZnSYVdVoEO94uSVbIkyW9ri2QIdgGFp2rrTx_cOeykafk9upmewNpvi-15BykVrEQ7Zw-1jyn7oBbchwz4bRGnt7o/s320/IMG_7296.JPG" width="320" /></a>On Tuesday nights Ken gets together with a bunch of buddies for dinner at the family Thai restaurant next to his office, followed by a screening. This Tuesday there was a about half-a-dozen film buffs – all men, of course. As we walked into the restaurant Ken gestured to one friend: “He’s got diabetes like me but he doesn’t pay any attention to what he eats … he always falls asleep halfway through the movie. He’ll gobble down half a bowl of candy and then pass out from the sugar.” Of course Ken’s little theater is always well-stocked with red Twizzlers, bite-sized Hershey’s, popcorn, soda – very generous but maybe he should hide them when his diabetic buddies are around. To say the Tuesday Night Film Club isn’t the healthiest bunch around is an understatement: they’re all mild-mannered and highly excitable and look like those cave creatures that grow genetically adapted to life in darkness. (I’m one to talk: at Susan’s friend Stephanie’s pool party the other day Stephanie squawked out, “My God, you’ve got the palest chest I’ve ever seen.”) Compared with popping a DVD in the machine it takes a lot of energy and bother to project a film print, there’s a whole ritual involved – so it’s heartening to know that Ken is still doing his regular film club for the faithful.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhY8C4Ft7PbU22wGLwgtTNZh-iuV9T-guVKEgenMGDpqkjWPxXUGhfsLikqC4nPW8YfH_Cv67-Rml-qyFxdSknAzHd1QHiRMyKWRLkBO1lc9N1IGCIBs4RSuiKL7fTtk0YHCA21ywCJAamL/s1600/IMG_7237.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhY8C4Ft7PbU22wGLwgtTNZh-iuV9T-guVKEgenMGDpqkjWPxXUGhfsLikqC4nPW8YfH_Cv67-Rml-qyFxdSknAzHd1QHiRMyKWRLkBO1lc9N1IGCIBs4RSuiKL7fTtk0YHCA21ywCJAamL/s320/IMG_7237.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I wish I could adequately capture Ken’s sense of humor: like a lot of old-time movie buffs, Ken is rarely serious, he’s always looking to make a bad pun or to turn a line into a punchline. His sense of comic timing comes straight out of old Jack Benny radio shows and Hope & Crosby flicks … at the end of every sentence there’s a pause waiting for a “ka-ching” drum shot, and if you don’t oblige they’ll provide one themselves (Mike Schlesinger is notorious for this, he’s like Johnny Carson, Ed McMahon and the Tonight Show Band rolled into one.) Tonight’s crowd includes a slender guy in a baseball cap who works at Larry Edmunds Cinema Bookstore on Hollywood Blvd. and recognizes me from there (“I’ve worked at Larry Edmunds for 27 years – before that I worked at Eddie Brandt’s Saturday Matinee, they laid me off and the next day I got hired at Larry Edmunds …the internet had already practically killed us and now the recession, I don’t know how we’re hanging on but we are”), plus a guy named Stan Taffel who’s one of the co-organizers of the annual Cinecon movie buff convention with Bob Burchard. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal">During dinner Stan mentions that he’d recently been at a convention where he got one over on a friend of his: “I bought a film collection from a guy who’d died out in Palm Springs and among it was a print of this incredibly rare Monogram picture from the mid-30’s with Edgar Kennedy called <i>Money Means Nothing</i>. I spotted my buddy who’s written a book on Kennedy, and said I bet I’ve got an Edgar Kennedy movie you’ve never seen. He said no way, I’ve seen everything there is to see … So I bet him, I say, if I’m right you have to come to Cinecon and sell your book. I show him the print, and after he turns to his wife and says, ‘I guess we’re going to Cinecon this year.’” These are the small sweet victories for the hardcore faithful. I asked what else was in the film collection he bought and Stan’s eyes lit up: “I never met the guy but he was a gay Nazi. I’m not kidding: <i>a gay Nazi.</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> He had a bunch of movies all about WWII and the Nazis. One of his prints was the Julie Andrews film </span><i>Thoroughly Modern Millie</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> – with it was a little metal can marked ‘Jew outtakes.’ Remember in the movie there’s a scene where Julie dances at a Jewish wedding? He’d gone in and cut the whole scene out, put it in this little can.” </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPP_ioXOFVdKEdFT7zghkr4NopD-DLqTBtrAnGjH3iWbnFkL_wmygOKs_ufpampmz5snz0iyntWYaq3BWS3UKKM-IMZHeFcyYC36Xz2J_FLdqGZjqtn3jCnNcKnjbCKI-uugT-WMzGC-ls/s1600/IMG_7225.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPP_ioXOFVdKEdFT7zghkr4NopD-DLqTBtrAnGjH3iWbnFkL_wmygOKs_ufpampmz5snz0iyntWYaq3BWS3UKKM-IMZHeFcyYC36Xz2J_FLdqGZjqtn3jCnNcKnjbCKI-uugT-WMzGC-ls/s320/IMG_7225.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">After dinner, and after much debate, Ken settled on showing a 16 mm. Tech scope print of a middling Robert Ryan/Virginia Mayo/Jeffrey Hunter western called <i>The Proud Ones</i><span style="font-style: normal;">, which plays like Hawks’ </span><i>Rio Bravo</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> only with its balls cut off. Beforehand were Chapters 7 and 8 of a way-obscure 1926 silent serial called </span><i>Officer 444</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> directed by John Ford’s much less successful brother, Francis, and co-starring his nephew Phil Ford. The good thing about silent serials is you can ask questions while they’re playing and no one gets upset – Ken’s diabetic buddy in the rear explained that Francis Ford had been a contract director at Universal a few years before this, “but I think he had a drinking problem because he wound up doing these cheapie states’ rights movies that were sold off territory by territory.” The crowd ventured to guess that </span><i>Officer 444</i><span style="font-style: normal;"> was shot in and around Los Angeles – someone observed the rolling hills in one car chase looked like Chatsworth, or maybe Glendale pre-development – and in fact the outdoor locations, the views of a still relatively-unspoiled L.A., give it more interest than it probably deserves. The most excitement it generated was when a getaway car zoomed past a remote roadside diner with a sign reading “El Camino Inn,” and Ken’s buddies debated where the hell that was, but in the end nobody could say for sure. </span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirHENfB0NYIOjOj10OAexO08D4Er4t1L3kiUvEzqZRY7NwOmd2Lp4ETXhyblZ3nh4gTWOFXo9bY6tWqaSKZKMx26m1WUJI3BPV9dF0Wp1A97hCPwSScBwMP7yJzk06dA0mHFpgcUtf3SAy/s1600/IMG_7227.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirHENfB0NYIOjOj10OAexO08D4Er4t1L3kiUvEzqZRY7NwOmd2Lp4ETXhyblZ3nh4gTWOFXo9bY6tWqaSKZKMx26m1WUJI3BPV9dF0Wp1A97hCPwSScBwMP7yJzk06dA0mHFpgcUtf3SAy/s320/IMG_7227.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><br />
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</div>BARTOKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06787299064544972391noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1731205886273509424.post-15834454201345160832010-12-17T16:52:00.000-08:002011-02-10T15:20:59.561-08:00Lost Film Theater in L.A.'s Chinatown<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div style="text-align: left;">For years rumors have bounced around L.A.'s film scene about a long-shuttered movie theater in Chinatown with a forgotten trove of hundreds of Asian martial arts movies stashed away in it ... I was never quite sure if this was just wishful thinking on the part of hardcore movie buffs, until a few months ago when I got a chance to peek inside one of L.A.'s truly forgotten and forlorn movie houses. </div><br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEgUJc_CZJgd-Ill5QG2M3LIMokC9EnuvQHBZOgXHFwqoXXMw5E5RLkH-BGvb8uQtWyI6HKa9EzoTM0NdusCBVwp8WMAxstmpcaIshv_XOI5AJbxpbrLblRdXoPxgdoz8nLcJpKL1x8907/s1600/DSC02949.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEgUJc_CZJgd-Ill5QG2M3LIMokC9EnuvQHBZOgXHFwqoXXMw5E5RLkH-BGvb8uQtWyI6HKa9EzoTM0NdusCBVwp8WMAxstmpcaIshv_XOI5AJbxpbrLblRdXoPxgdoz8nLcJpKL1x8907/s320/DSC02949.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><br />
I can confirm that yes, the theater is there in the industrial heart of Chinatown -- and yes, it's amazingly and inexplicably filled with literally hundreds and hundreds of Hong Kong film prints, stacked haphazardly in the dusty lobby, running up the steps to the stage and overflowing both in front of and behind the screen ...<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlu6WSq441DloACnEHXGojQSkxPgxW9Lpq8sBUKRov8TMg_DTHoFVHpzPOfriespaqeYXIRxG9pRpPhWvxhAxmIX4MshDdSQuyo1WSLx3G5xD_U6IplHlIfPbTQjc3_rZwvYy5Ihovh6EW/s1600/DSC02952.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlu6WSq441DloACnEHXGojQSkxPgxW9Lpq8sBUKRov8TMg_DTHoFVHpzPOfriespaqeYXIRxG9pRpPhWvxhAxmIX4MshDdSQuyo1WSLx3G5xD_U6IplHlIfPbTQjc3_rZwvYy5Ihovh6EW/s320/DSC02952.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><br />
Apparently the theater was one of the last stops on a once-bustling Asian-language theater circuit across the U.S. ... I have fond memories of going to see John Woo movies at the now-demolished Sun Sing Theatre in New York's Chinatown in the mid 1980's. The Sun Sing was located underneath the spans of the Manhattan Bridge (the place would literally rattle when subway trains went by overhead) ... People would eat their lunches inside the theater, and two giant luminous clocks flanked the screen on each side like the perpetual eyes overlooking the ash heaps in Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby ... Now all gone.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzLBWNhHhb4suOzfLX0o7gyzugoEJ1ZP_NfQYFLYmNQ01g-JNbYSrDJcQVUCuoAccBVFVgDkYMaJ81SwJt7ZXrvNXad6_E5ldfdeey5cZhu5VOF2fh_M5V9lxPg5uIoY0LOqsV9wHEZUzi/s1600/DSC02957.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjzLBWNhHhb4suOzfLX0o7gyzugoEJ1ZP_NfQYFLYmNQ01g-JNbYSrDJcQVUCuoAccBVFVgDkYMaJ81SwJt7ZXrvNXad6_E5ldfdeey5cZhu5VOF2fh_M5V9lxPg5uIoY0LOqsV9wHEZUzi/s320/DSC02957.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><br />
I'm guessing that this theater in L.A.'s Chinatown was the last port of call on the Asian film circuit, and the prints just piled up there with nowhere else to go ... Apparently Quentin Tarantino had leased the theater out for a while and used it as a private screening room, lured by the tantalizing supply of H.K. film treasures just strewn about the place.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmE82QidGgUS-Y6V3-iizggGKZjJ2bZq1J2kBuBRAfUY5WTHMahG1WHGWJfz4kvC5tSGDY6DjLGO8m_RSZ8rXrarK_VaZaXRmACP-8zPNiCGP9oQzuiaFXzve8gXJexaM2J5dnj1JoJcF9/s1600/DSC02958.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmE82QidGgUS-Y6V3-iizggGKZjJ2bZq1J2kBuBRAfUY5WTHMahG1WHGWJfz4kvC5tSGDY6DjLGO8m_RSZ8rXrarK_VaZaXRmACP-8zPNiCGP9oQzuiaFXzve8gXJexaM2J5dnj1JoJcF9/s320/DSC02958.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><br />
Huge thanks to my friend Paul Rayton, head projectionist at the Egyptian Theatre for supplying these photos of our secret visit to one of L.A.'s abandoned movie spots ...<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWynB_UWE2KoOal1bpuGetwYzVAP6hOs91tZqQXh_Q9e5K7AkjXAHrqirHmbEgAjumQZdTX7R9gfClpI0tKJDD3xTaqAFZlaed-4eOngt9wL8I04k2zKFr2FL08GF5u_XoobpHoiNUJTcc/s1600/DSC02972.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWynB_UWE2KoOal1bpuGetwYzVAP6hOs91tZqQXh_Q9e5K7AkjXAHrqirHmbEgAjumQZdTX7R9gfClpI0tKJDD3xTaqAFZlaed-4eOngt9wL8I04k2zKFr2FL08GF5u_XoobpHoiNUJTcc/s320/DSC02972.JPG" width="240" /></a></div>BARTOKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06787299064544972391noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1731205886273509424.post-31380408149799313952010-12-17T16:15:00.000-08:002010-12-17T16:15:13.962-08:00Future of Film Projection in Jeopardy?<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">For all those concerned about the future of film projection -- here's some alarming news courtesy of Douglas Maclaren at the Music Box Theatre in Chicago:</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 15px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 15px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 19px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">"</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">LaVezzi Precision Inc, the manufacturer for 95% of projector sprockets in use worldwide, has decided to cease production on all motion picture parts. Sprockets, gears, shafts, and most importantly, the cams & stars for projector intermittent movement have all ceased being manufactured effective immediately.</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 15px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 15px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br style="line-height: 1.22em;" /></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 15px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br style="line-height: 1.22em;" /></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 15px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">That means the precision parts critical for running film on Ballantyne, Century, Christie, and Simplex projectors (including also RCA soundheads) are now limited to what is left on the shelf. Clearly, this has a major impact on the future of film projection and exhibition.</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 15px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br style="line-height: 1.22em;" /></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 15px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br style="line-height: 1.22em;" /></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 15px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">If you are involved in an institution with any of these makes of film projectors, I highly suggest contacting your service tech to determine what spare parts either you or your tech need to stock up on if you are to continue running film into the future, especially as it becomes more difficult to locate adequate replacement parts. As time goes on, some projector models will be easier to locate parts for than others, such as the Simplex XL, as it is incredibly common. Others, not so much (our theatre runs 35/70mm Century JJs, and my god it was already hard to source parts before this!).</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 15px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br style="line-height: 1.22em;" /></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 15px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br style="line-height: 1.22em;" /></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 15px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">If you'd like, pour some wine, put on some sad music and take a tour through LaVezzi's catalog:</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 15px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"> </span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 15px;"><a __removedlink__1830768939__href="http://www.lavezzi.com/X-LaVezziStore.html" href="" style="color: #1e66ae; cursor: pointer; line-height: 1.22em; text-decoration: underline;" target="_blank"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">http://www.lavezzi.com/X-LaVezziStore.html</span></a></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 15px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br style="line-height: 1.22em;" /></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 15px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br style="line-height: 1.22em;" /></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 15px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">cheers,</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 15px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br style="line-height: 1.22em;" /></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 15px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">-Doug"</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 15px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><br />
</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 15px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">And this quick response from my friend Paul Rayton, head projectionist for the American Cinematheque at the Egyptian and Aero Theatres:</span></span><br />
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<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" style="border-collapse: collapse;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="font: inherit; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;" valign="top"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;">"Yep, 'tis a sorry state of affairs. One could still have parts individually manufactured, of one sort and another, but I imagine the price will gradually move toward being prohibitively high. However, FWIW, there will be enough discards for museums to scarf up used devices and keep some semblance of "film" showable for centuries. That's at least some encouragement, albeit not enough to herald a renaissance of film projection equipment-making!<br />
<br />
Also, there are other manufacturers of projector parts, and they may take over some of the designs and/or n/c programs for such parts, so I don't think it's necessarily the end of the world. Cinemeccanica in Italy manufactures their devices in-house, and (I assume) controls all their designs and the manufacture of same. Kinoton (Germany) can still do some, though they're progressing toward all electronic devices, which will be even more dicey to keep in service. And other countries, including India, China, and Japan. But, of course, all will be facing declining users and increasing costs, so the shakeout will continue, as the years roll along.<br />
<br />
Wait till Kodak decides they need the money and they sell off the "film manufacturing" division to ... either a rival manfuacturer, or, worse yet, one of the dreaded leveraged buyout specialists, such as the speculators who have ruined "Harry and David" Co.! Then, they'll seek to "improve revenues" by dropping lines of stock, until only 3 or 4 camera neg stocks are made, and 2 or 3 print stocks. That'll be when it's really time to wax nostalgic on the tragic state of things!<br />
<br />
Cheers,<br />
<br />
Paul R."</span></td></tr>
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</span></span>BARTOKhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06787299064544972391noreply@blogger.com1