by Edward Champion

The Bat Segundo Show: Kiyoshi Kurosawa

Filmmaker Kiyoshi Kurosawa appeared on The Bat Segundo Show #244. Kurosawa is most recently the co-writer and director of Tokyo Sonata, a film that played the New York Film Festival and that will be released by Regent Releasing in the United States on March 17, 2009. For more information on this extraordinary film, please see our review.

We also wish to express our many thanks to translator Linda Hoaglund, who assisted us during the course of this interview.

Condition of Mr. Segundo: Voiceless, per the requirements of a sonata.

Guest: Kiyoshi Kurosawa (director of Tokyo Sonata)

Subjects Discussed: Delving into the issue of whether or not contemporary Tokyo is now a city without a voice, collaborating with screenwriter Max Mannix, Ozu’s trains, crossing the axis, the noisy train behind the family house, characters pretending to be employed, the artistic blood within the family line, pretending as a coping mechanism, pretending to pretend to pretend, whether or not the idea of being adult involves accepting a false allegation, weapons of mass destruction, the relationship between authority and active behavior from subordinates, framing characters so that the audience doesn’t see a phone call, blocking actors so that they walk in very precise lines, the Tokyo organization men, showing more ancillary characters, the human infrastructure of Tokyo, using a pen as a microphone, symbolism, cleaning fluid and specialization, and the dramatic presentation of conformity.

EXCERPT FROM SHOW:

Correspondent: You have this train running behind the Sasaki home. And this suggested to me, along with the fact that you cut this film frequently crossing the axis in the editing — crossing the 180 line — it almost suggests an Ozu parody. Or the kind of movie that Ozu would have made if he were to live in our particular times. And I wanted to ask you how this visual style originated, as well as the subway line.

Kurosawa: (through translator) Yes, Ozu was the name I was most dreading hearing, if only because I’m such a huge maniacal fan of him. I really tried to shut him out of my brain. But I guess subconsciously a little bit of his influence remained.

Correspondent: Back to this notion. Ozu was not a part of developing this script? The subway line, I didn’t get an answer for the train behind the house. And I’m very curious about that. Because it very much reminded me of Ozu’s trains.

Kurosawa: (through translator) Actually, that train and the proximity to the house of the Sasakis was not in the script at all. It wasn’t intentional. As I wandered around Tokyo looking for the right home for the Sasaki family, there happened to be a train track next to that particular house.

BSS #244: Kiyoshi Kurosawa (Download MP3)

This text will be replaced

Listen: Play in new window | Download

by Edward Champion

Responding to Orwell: October 30

George: I must again commend you on your succinctness. “Fine, not very hot. One egg” likewise describes many sad Sunday mornings in my twenties. There was a period in which I would wake up alone in my San Francisco hovel after a night of unsuccessful carousing, realizing that it was “not very hot” in both the literal and figurative senses. I would then walk to the refrigerator, ponder breakfast, and observe that there was one lone egg in a cardboard carton. (Which in turn reminds me of my crazed attempt to soundproof a basement at the age of nineteen. But that’s another story, George, for another one of your dutiful diary entries!) I had developed a strange habit of cooking many eggs on Saturday morning, but had not yet developed the dexterity to cook a decent omelette. But I was more ashamed by my failure to count the eggs. Looking at the sad shelled elliptic leftover, it seemed somewhat futile to whip up some scrambled eggs from one yolk. “Scrambled egg” was the more accurate breakfast appellation, but it sounded like a 75 cent side item on a dive menu. You could have the “scrambled egg” if you had were a bum with change jangling in your pocket. But real men ordered “scrambled eggs, sausage and toast” for $4.99. Regrettably, I was often too lazy to walk to the convenience store down the street. It was an altogether different walk of shame from me — a bachelor who couldn’t keep track of his eggs, much less perform shopping with any reasonable frequency. And so I would cook the one egg, sometimes singing a Ray Davies song to tap into some irony that really wasn’t applicable, consume the scrambled concoction and realize that it wasn’t what you might call a reasonable breakfast. Fine, not very hot. One egg.