You are now listening to the Someone's Favorite Productions podcast network.

All right, so welcome back to Wildside, the Official Mando micabre Podcast.

I am extremely excited we're gonna have as you all know, last time when we ended, we were talking about doing a Shinya Sukomoto special because Mando Micabro has two of Sukomoto's films that they released in Gemini and Hiroku the Goblin.

And I can't believe we are lucky enough to actually have Tom mess who y' all know is an author, a film writer, Japanese film historian.

Tom is actually here joining us for the discussion.

So Tom, thank you so so much for making time for this.

Thank you too, Chris, thanks for having me.

Of course, you know, I was just thinking we're having a conversation in English.

Your native language is Dutch, is unless you I'm assuming so, and you're fluent in Japanese?

How many languages do you actually speak at this point?

Four or five?

That's amazing.

It depends.

My German.

My spoken German is not is a bit well it's quite rusty, okay, but I understand it entirely.

That's amazing.

That's amazing.

I think I have a seven year old son, and I'd love to have them grow up in Europe for that reason of just being around other languages.

It's such a I don't know, we don't have that luxury in the US as much.

You have to really make an intentional effort, you know.

Yeah, foreign countries are always nearby if you grow up in Europe exactly.

Yeah, that's that's awesome.

And so you have speaking of foreign languages, I guess, and not not a European country.

But you've really made a focused effort in your career on Japanese cinema, and I'm just wondering, like, where did that kind of start from you, Like, how did you know that this was something that you were very passionate about.

That's really hard to say.

It started quite early, I think when I was about eleven or so, well and seeing some of Kurtusawa's films on TV and being really impressed with just that image of the of the samurai.

Yes, and that's what really kicked it off.

But I have no idea why that continued to fascinate me because I'm from a fairly simple, working class background and nobody had anything to do with foreign cultures.

Whatsoever.

Okay, culture halfway across the world, So I really can't explain why that fascinated me so much, but it continued to fascinate me, and so later I would watch you know, I got to the video store and went to other Kurtusaur films because aside from Cruise Oud wasn't that much more.

There was Mary Christophist Lawrence, which I also so when I was about thirteen and didn't really quite understand, but also it was really fascinated by.

And then when I was in high school, I started going to the Rotterdam Film Festival.

Oh yes, I was born and raised in Rotterdam, so it was nearby.

But I started going when I was in high school.

And Rotterdam has always been quite famous for showing Asian cinema.

There was lots of Japanese films and we're talking now early early nineties.

So then I started seeing new Japanese films.

So I saw started discovering like Takeshi Kitano, SATs Kamoto and Shi, and I was like, wow, today's Japanese its are really really interesting too.

Yeah.

So it's just you know, one thing led to another.

Really.

I remember when I was in college, I was in university in like from two thousand in to two thousand and five, and I saw Violent Boiling Point.

Do you mentioned Ti Kitana?

I saw Boiling Point in the theater.

I was just thinking, like, holy hell, like who is this guy?

This is amazing?

And then you know like Sonatine and Violent Cop and all these, I mean just every single thing he has directed.

It feels like it's so much his own, like so much his own vision and so unique.

It's just amazing to me.

Yeah, with him, he had like like to say, it's his own vision, kind of his own language, how to tell stories.

With Tamoto, he felt the same thing.

It's like such a unique personal style.

Of course, I mean I say, of course, I don't know if this is true for everybody, but for me, the obvious entry point for Tu Komoto is Tatsu the Iron Man, and I saw that in university as well.

This is one of those things that's kind of passed around, is like, what the fuck is this kind of movie?

You know when you're discovering cinema, And the first time I saw it, I mostly was just talking about this weird movie I saw with a drill penis, But you know, it's amazing to see.

As I've continued going down cinematic paths from different countries.

I love films from a lot of different regions and time periods and genres.

I keep finding my way back to Sukomoto in various ways, And I'm so happy to talk about him today with you because for that reason, I think he's somebody that if you only know him through Tetsu or The Iron Man, you're only getting ten percent or fifteen percent of this guy's personality and vision and skill, which we'll talk about with some of his later movies.

But he's quite quite an amazing artist actually, just full stop.

Yeah.

He's always been very independent, Yes, and he basically still works more or less the same way today as he did on Tetsuo.

Of course, it's professionalized than he has his you know, his infrastructure set up pretty solidly, and of course he has more money at his disposal, even though not that much, right, But I think his philosophy and his approach to filmmaking haven't really changed all that much.

Yeah, and it shows in his work too.

I think it's always very much his own, Like it feels, there's never a movie I've seen from him where I'm like, well, I wonder if he was just a director for hire or something like that, like they're all very much is.

Yeah, he's made a few movies for hire and Gemini and Hitco to Bublin or two of them, which is why, probably why people often think just think they're sort of odd ones out in his career.

But on the whole, every film he's made were his own idea.

Thinks he's developed himself over years often and so every film that he's done is really a personal work, personal project.

Yeah, yeah, that's right, and it's interesting to see because I think there there's a beautiful set.

Although this is the Mondo Macabro Podcast, we can't really talk about physical media and Sokomoto without at least mentioning that beautiful set from Hero that they did because they put so much care into it, and quite a number of his movies as well.

And you have a long or some writing in that as well as both commentaries.

You did quite a lot of work in that set, right.

Yeah, that's true.

They asked me at first to do commentaries on every single film in the set, which was essentially the entirety of what, give or take a few, the entirety of to come out as filmography.

Yeah, so, and then I recorded them in chronological order as well, and so then I really got to talk about and really point out how things gradually evolve in his work from one film to the next.

So that was a really rare opportunity.

And yeah, like you said, the set itself was put together with so much care and looks gorgeous.

Yeah, that's I think a real testament to what physical media can do and what the I think the inherent qualities of physical media are compared to any other way that people watch movies these days.

You know, I don't think there's an either or between physical media and streaming because each of those platforms has their own qualities and their own their own would you say, their own characteristics.

That streaming is really useful to have, and physical media also has something that's really unique to physical media that you cannot replace with streaming, no matter what the majority of people's say.

And that Comoto box set would be the ideal proof of that.

Yeah.

I've always said if I was a dictator and could dictate physical media decisions, everything would be a director box set because I love it's such a treat to be able to go through a director's work in the way that they did.

With that said, and just basically see so much of it.

But his film is kind of his career.

Excuse me, Soukomotive's career is kind of broken up into a few different eras in my head the way that I see it, And I think one interesting thing if we look about Hiroko the Goblin is pretty early on in his career, he was very much in this sort of steampunk phase of at least the product that he was making on his own.

If you look at the Adventures of Denshu Kozo and then Tetsuo and then Tetsuo too.

So I don't know, did you.

Mind giving a little bit of light on that, Like how did Hirouko come up?

I know you talk about it in the commentary, but for those that maybe don't have a chance to haven't seen it yet, how did this project come up for him?

So, Hikotakobnin was the first time that he was commissioned to direct, the first time he was a director for hire, and he was basically unknown at the time.

He had just worn an award at the pr Film Festival, which is a major festival in Japan for discovering new filmmaking talent, yeah, which just been going since the late nineteen seventies, and so unknowns around the country send in their homemade amateur movie and then there's a election that goes into the competition, and one of them wins the grand prize, and the grand prize comes with part of the budget for the next film, And so he was setting up the next film, but he won the prize not for Tetswell, but for the one you mentioned, the Adventure of Denchikozo, which is like the forty five minutes film that he shot on eight milimeters film, and.

It's an it sory.

I don't mean to interrupt you, but it's an interesting schort if you have a chance to see it, because it has that electric poll coming out.

It's essentially like a science fiction movie sort of, right, like a time traveling vampires.

Yes, yes, it's like a time traveling science fiction the vampire battling kids adventure movie.

Yes, that's right.

And so he sent that into the Pier Film Festival and got the grand prize.

But by the time that happened, he had already finished Tetswell, and so he was already shopping around tetswell.

So when he got the grand and the prizemen, he started developing a next project, which was going to be an adaptation of a kid's prot me, a novel like a children's picture book about a boy who can see this giant monster birt.

And somehow he was not able to get that off the ground properly.

There was like several investors in that project aside from the pre film festival, and they couldn't really agree on stuff, and so Tetso was sort of done and lying around, and Tetso really just made just more or less broke to Kamoto in several ways.

I mean, he used up all his money, and all his crew ran away during the making of the film, and his parents threw him out of the house.

So he said he was renting this really tiny, tiny room with walls so thin that he could hear the neighbor's fart, and so he was in a pretty rotten position.

And then you know, he got that award and that was great, and then suddenly he got this offer to make he too go to Goblin, and so he just said, okay, I'm gonna take it.

So and he was already thinking I think he was just releasing or doing the first couple of screenings of Tetsuo, and he already had the Tetsuo two idea for Tetsuo two in his mind and was he was going around the screenings with this sort of survey, and he asked people to watch the film to fill out the survey, and the survey included the question if I make another film, do you want to be do you want to be on the crew?

And in doing so he already gatted some people around him, because he lost all his crew on the first Tetsuo and these were just complete amateurs and newcomers who, driven by their enthusiasm perceiving Tedsodie iron Man, and so he took some of those people with him when he started making this professional project.

He could go to Goblin, which otherwise was made with this very experienced professional crew of filmmakers and this professional film crew, and so it was really sort of like an odd set of circumstances that led to him doing this all of a sudden.

And of course now we watch the film and we retroactively put it within the context of Takamoto's filmography, and certainly because it's between the two Testsuos, and it suddenly looks like such a completely different film.

Yeah, But at the time, you know, it was just he just made his first film, so and he got an opportunity to make a second film, which was a completely professional project with money, and so you know, you know, why would you say no?

At the time, it didn't seem so strange.

I like the way you phrased that.

That's right because for him, he didn't know about his whole career yet.

It was just a chance to go make a movie exactly.

Yeah, there's there's two things in what you said that I think is interesting.

One is one of my personal favorite things about him as a director and kind of as a human.

I guess, is this Diy spirit, Like he's so dogged about it, you know, he won't let it go.

Yeah.

Like I said, he's still making films essentially the same way when he was doing TETs.

It's still his project and he's he comes up with the idea, and he writes the screenplay, and he does the pre production, and of course he directs, and then he edits and he does all the promotion himself.

So he's on that from the very beginning to the very end.

There's an amazing quote from one of the actors in Gemini when they were in Venice, where he says, I'm going to get the quote wrong, maybe you'll remember it, but it's something like he's an angel on the storyboard and a devil in the shoot.

Or something like that.

But like he's he's a very meticulous person on set, and so there's not a lot of room for He has a very specific vision, I guess on set, and so it's difficult to work with him.

But if you step back and look at his ideas, they're beautiful.

So people keep doing it.

Yeah, I think the fact that he always keeps working with people that really want to work with him, well, the one had it's very practical because these are mostly newcomers and they can't they will work for little to no money.

But it's also because he has, like I said, this vision that he wants to see through.

And I've been to his film sets and I've seen him work, and indeed, he can be very intense.

Okay, he can be not all the time.

He's very very focused.

Yeah, that's true, but there's a lot of precision in his work, so it makes sense.

You know, there's not a lot of waste in his pictures.

Going back to Hiroku for a second, the other point I wanted to kind of bring up, I guess from what you're initially we're talking about, was, you know, I think Hiroku is interesting because people say it might be a little bit of an odd film in his filmography, but in some ways not really like you know, like if you kind of look at it, it's it still has a ton of creativity in it, and these little spider monsters with human heads that are kind of ghost heads.

There's still nightmare in nightmares.

You know, it's not you can't fully escape from his nightmares no matter even if it's in like a family film.

Yeah, it's true, but it also depends on what you look at.

I mean, if you purely defined to Kamoto as a cyberpunk and shaky cameras and lots of rapid editing, then yeah, you're not going to find that in Hinduko.

But while we were talking about adventure Ventchicozo earlier, I mean I described it as a kid's adventure movie Hiticolo Goblin, there's also very much a kid's adventure.

Yeah, it's you know, high school boy is you know on this on this summer vacation, has nothing to do and sort of like falls into this weird adventure exactly in that sense.

It's it's really not that unusual and to come up as in fact said to me about this whole issue that if you look at everything he had made up to and including he to go to Goblin, so it include some of his earlier like a millimeter stuff that he was doing as a high school student.

A lot of those are like you know, boys adventure stories, Okay, up until and including Here to Go.

Tetsu I was the odd one.

It's not here to Go.

Ah.

I like that.

Actually, you know, there's a I'm going to quickly detour and talk about Takashimiki, but I'll come right back to Sakamoto.

A lot of people just say make he's a horror director because they think of audition maybe or something right, But if you spend time with his movies, he's actually quite funny.

I think his movies a lot of them are quite optimistic.

Actually, like they're actually quite lighthearted, even though this content can sometimes be for adults, no question, but their spirit in the movie is light.

Like I think about even a movie like Rainy Dog, which is dark for so long and difficult to watch for so long, but at the end, it's like this kind of family that wouldn't find each other any other way, and they form this kind of beautiful bond and it's sweet.

It's very sweet, and I think makes understood in that way.

As a director, he's somebody who actually brings a lot of lightness into his movies.

And I think in the same way, Ssukomoto brings a lot more than he gets credit of from a human perspective, Like I think he actually writes he's comfortable with chaos, I think, and he's comfortable with like kind of maybe borderline more surrealistic art.

But there's a strong human connection in all of his movies that I think roots them and makes them rewatchable and kind of as another layer to them that I really love.

Yeah, I would agree.

I mean if we if we say that there are different phases to his career, then I think those different phases have also brought out this this human aspect into different degrees.

Yes, and again, if you if you just want to pig Sakamoto as the cyberpunk guy with the rapid fire editing and the shaky camera, then you're not going to be looking at this per se, but you know, stuff like Snake of June or Vital and then of course the more recent films which have become very strongly anti war, that aspect of him has come out quite forcefully.

Say yeah, yeah, I like I like that a lot.

There's I wouldn't say that Hiroko is a film that has a lot of political message or societal message.

I do think in some ways it's a more straightforward narrative.

Like you said, it's an adventure film.

And I do think it's plays.

I don't necessarily think there's layers on every rewatch like there might be with some of the Tetsuo films or Tokyo Fist or something like that.

I think it's to me, it goes pretty straightforward as far as the story goes.

One thing I.

Really like about it, though, as the movie's kind of playing along, is the first time you see there's so one of the main characters is this boy on summer vacation, like you said, and you see this face appear on his back, and you're kind of curious where the story is going to go.

And I think as the movie progresses, he starts to have more faces appear on his back.

I'm trying to think of what to say without giving away spoilers, but I'll just say, like, as as it goes on, I think one one similar to maybe like a Spielberg or similar to maybe some more Hollywood directors.

You always feel comfortable that they have control of where the story's going and you don't have to worry about am I going to find this out later on?

Or is this story going to get kind of wrapped up like in that film.

He's not trying to leave with ambiguity.

I think he's trying to kind of keep it clean and wrapped up, and so it's quite easy to relax with the movie, even though it has some scarier images in it, but it's quite easy to relax and just enjoy the ride.

I think, as well, Yeah, that's true.

I think that's something he really wanted to That's the kind of film he wanted to make.

Would I would imagine that, you know, he wanted to make this really enjoyable, thrill ride of a movie that could reach a large audience.

I think reaching a large audience has always remained a goal of his, but perhaps not enough to want to compromise his style all that much.

Occasionally there's been a film where he'd sort of like try to compromise a bit in order to find perhaps a big audience, But on the whole he wants to do it on his own terms.

And I think with hericle that really came together very nicely because it was just in the nature of the project to be the sort of like appealing, entertaining roller coaster ride movie.

Ironically enough, it wasn't very successful.

Fortunately, Yeah, that's too bad.

I don't know.

Maybe it was marketing, you hear.

Sometimes it's just some time studios have a difficult time understanding how to market the picture.

Has has Has he had any thoughts as to why it wasn't successful looking back on.

It, Yeah, he says it had to do with the marketing.

And he's normally he does all the marketing himself, and in this case it was the show Chiku Studio that you know, that regular marketing department that did the marketing.

He felt it wasn't very strong and I didn't really focus enough on certain appeal points, on certain points that could reach certain audiences.

Yeah, and so that was that sort of strengthen his resolve to continue to work on the marketing of his later films as well.

It's an interesting if you're such a talented artist and business person and the executive that you can kind of make these decisions better than the studios, you know, that's quite a unique gift.

One other thing you did mention that he likes to do his own camera work a lot of times, but it's maybe worth mentioning on Hiroko.

It was actually a very talented cinematographer, masa Hiro Kishimoto.

They did a lot of Godzilla movies, and I'm sure, I mean, I guess as far as I know, he was mostly just like a studio filmographer, but he was involved in some Godzilla films, and I think that there there is a nice maturity.

No maturity is the wrong word, but there is a more The film looks very different, and the film looks a little bit more, maybe aesthetically polished than some of the other films as well.

Yeah, a lot of the crew member before season seasons veterans, and not just the cinematographer, but I think a lot of a number of other people had worked on Toho mongst the movies, a specially effects movie, which of course it's come out of being such a big fan of those films.

It's kind of a dream come true to work with those people, so yeah, true, I mean they really that really decides the look of that film, and it definitely looks like a polished film shot by season veterans.

Yeah, of of of special effects entertainment movies.

That was That was one thing that I think was very sweet in the interview he gave on the disc was when he talks about his love for monster films like it's it's it feels very authentic.

Absolutely, Yeah, those films really shake him into into the filmmaker he would become.

Yeah, there's a little bit.

I don't think there's similar in styles, but Gilmo del Toro talks about monsters in a similar way where he really sympathizes with the monster, and I see that in a lot of Komoto's work as well.

Yeah, I think I think to Comoto growing up just sort of like not just sympathize, but just identified the monster on screen, especially in the good monster movies.

You know, the monster's always is always a slightly sad figure.

That's right, because he's sort of like you know, Godzilla, lumbers around because that's all he can do.

Yeah, lumber around because he wants to destroy stuff.

It's just like it happens to be really big and it happens to be that's right, that's right.

The same thing with King Kong and the same thing with Frankenstein's creature, you know, and they just kind of lumber the lumber around the human beings, split them in situations where they're going to cause damage.

Yeah, the Frankenstin novel comes to mind because there's that sweet moment where he's trying to be gentle and he wands up hurting somebody.

So it's like a very sad moment, right.

Yeah.

So I think for you know that that side of monster movies really have an appeal to to to people who s gott to feel themselves kind of like a little bit outcast or don't really feel at home in their environment.

And I think to Comoto was was a case what that was that that was really true.

I think with someone like Delta probably also, and it certainly feels that way from watching his.

Film If after Hiroko before Gemini.

So Hiroko was made in ninety one and then Gemini came out in ninety nine.

So he had that eight year period.

He was quite busy in that period he had to to two Tokyo Fist and Bullet Ballet, which it's only three or four films, but if you think about it in terms of finding financing and everything that he does for the films, it's I mean, he was must have been quite busy in those years.

I really went from one film to the next.

Yes, that's true, and.

His reputation group with each film as well.

Yes, yes that's true.

Because with Tokyo Fist in particular, really sort of made people sit up and was like, Okay, he can do, he can be she has to come out and all she needs to come out to qualities in a movie that isn't strange science fiction, there's actually about human beings and there's you know a lot of people have found a strong feminist message in that film as well.

So it made people notice him that maybe previously sort of a bit of dismissed him because of the science fiction element, and so that really established him critically even more strongly than the Teto films you know I've done.

Yes, we were talking a little bit about his internal drive and how focused he is on set.

I think in order for somebody to write Tokyo Fist you would have to be that personality because there's so much there's so much drive in that character and so much that that character is.

It's not written from a place of cliche.

He's written from a very like raw drive.

And I think it feels am I watching it feels like an insight into the Psukermoto's mind in a way.

For me.

I don't know if he's ever said anything about that, but I feel like I'm like, oh, wow, this guy's very griman.

Yeah.

Yes, I guess you're right.

He's becoming in that way.

Yes, But his characters tend to be, especially the characters that he plays.

I think a bullet ballet is the same thing that's true obsessed person.

In that case, it's it's trauma because his wife committed suicide, but the bullet ballet.

Also there's this guy who just doesn't will not stop until he gets what he wants.

Yeah, and if he gets beaten down time and time again.

That's true.

That's true.

And that movie really goes in some wild directions because he is essentially I'm gonna make the plot seam overly simplistic, but in his look for a gun, he essentially gets involved in mafia activity, right, and gets further and further down into it.

And but like you said, he's really listen his quest and he gets himself into a lot of bad situations.

And then after that, I don't want to say seemingly out of nowhere, but there's quite a big jump in tone aesthetics story going from Bullet bell A to Gemini.

It's quite a quite a departure.

Yeah, that's true.

But Gemini was sort of the next film that he was commissioned to do, and it was the same company as Hidcono Goblin that brought it to him, to a company called Cedic International, which also worked with Taka a good number of times and including ourselves like Thirteen Assassins, but also for people in China, and so there was already a bond there.

And plus it was an offer to adapt the stories of Edugawa Rampo, who was called Japan's greatest writer of history stories and kind of horror stories with the style that people call erotic grotesque.

Yes, and Camoto has always been a big fan of that writer, was very She is also famous for adapting Love with the Horror of Malfoon Men, which actually adapts some of the same material as a Gemini.

Mhm.

So that was another one of those occasions where you know, the conditions were made it difficult to say no.

And it was supposed to be I think originally like a forty five minutes to one hour film, like a mini feature.

At the time that was there was kind of a market for that because this is when like someone like Gasparnoe was coming out with his first sort of like medium length feature and was doing quite well internationally, And so that was the original intention.

That just sort of like blew up a bit and the whole project became bigger than bigger than he expected and took more time than he expected and more energy and everything.

But yeah, it was it was an occasion for him to really go into that Gampo world, which has a very specific aesthetic.

Yes, and it's the esthetic that that Gemini has.

You know, it's very kind of colorful, but slightly twisted, and just below the surface of the color, there's sort of like this decay and sickness that always hides.

There's this kind of a twisted sexuality that runs throughout everything.

So this is like you know, as I said before, erotic grotesque, as it's described that's.

Such a succinct and beautiful way to describe that whole movement.

You're exactly right.

There's you can see, especially in I mean in Gemini, there's a I just recently did a whole episode on tear.

These episodes, these movies are fresh in my mind.

But if we focus on I guess Gemini, the the eyes is where you see a lot of the decay and the teeth, especially those two, both in the performances and in makeup.

I think you see a lot of they look like almost like not ghosts, but on the way to becoming a ghost or something.

A lot with the makeup.

Yeah, true, Well that's a good point.

Yeah, of course, that's this.

He creates this uh contrast between the rich and the poor m m.

And then he has the rich being really stayed in ceremonial in their interaction with each other, but then the poor have this carnival esque sort of like you know, they move around in unexpected ways, but at the same time, with that celebration of life that they have is always underneath as always looking the danger of dying, et cetera.

And I think that's expressing what you mean, the makeup of the eyes and the teeth and it's likely, you know, odd looking skin.

Yeah.

I think that when you talk about the difference between poor and wealthy and Gemini is very strong.

You know, Cursa was praised for High and Low for a similar discussion, and this film is nothing like High and Low.

I mean, they're not the same movie by any means in story or anything.

But I do think there is an equivalent distinction.

And you immediately know in the film visually and the way that the characters are acting, and that everything is completely shifted when they go back and forth, and it does play quite an important role in the story itself.

Yeah, that's true.

Of course, to come up with as a big stile of kurtisol M's, that's one thing.

And I think the general seam and the divide is really very similar between the Gemini and High and Low.

Yeah.

But yeah, well I don't think it's a strange.

I don't think it's a very strange comparison at all.

It makes it makes sense to compare, to compare Gemini to High enough.

And I think I'm always selfishly Maybe I don't know if selfishly is the right word, but you know, I'm always trying to make an effort to compare Sukumoto to Corsa or Orson Wells if I can, or any director that is on the Criterion channel and gets this kind of pass at being an art house favorite, because I do think in general a lot of genre directors don't get that same level of respect, And I don't think that's fair because you have people like su Komoto.

The amount of artistry that goes into his stuff, it could easily be playing in MoMA and nobody would ever question it.

And I think I just want to make sure people here, you know, get that, get to hear.

That, you know what, Karmoto isn't a genre director.

I mean, you can call someone a genre director because his films, saying he'd makes science fiction, you know, a cyberpunk or whatever you want to call it.

So that's a genre and therefore he's a genre director.

That's one way of looking at it.

But if you look at genre filmmaking, usually there was someone, you know, some director who worked for a major studio who made films in the genre that's that were typical for that studio.

That's true in Japan, and that would also certainly be true for cud result for example, because you know, period period action films were a genre, a major genre, and it's also true for like MGM musicals in the nineteen thirties and forties something.

Yeah, that's true.

And so Kamoto was never part of that kind of infrastructure.

And he doesn't make genre films because he is told to do so by his employer.

And again, you know, if you look at the various phases of his career or the evolution of his career, then he's tried his hand at all sorts of types of stories and characters and jealouness.

So it's hard to label him a director.

Would say from that.

Perspective, that's a good point.

I'm glad you're saying that because I think especially well, especially after gem and I let me start there, and you can correct me if you think wrong.

But if you look at something like Snake of June, that's a beautiful.

Love story, very erotic story.

I mean, it's you know, you would never if you were to see Titsuo of the Iron Man, you would never expect to see a movie like that.

So I think it is important for people to see more of his films and kind of get a more broader perspective on who he is as an artist, and so I'm glad you actually corrected me on that.

I think you're right.

It's not fair to call him adge on director.

He's much His.

Talent is not only independent and not only his own visions, but it's also very high and kind of at the highest level of artistry.

Yeah, and also all depends on how something is received and positioned over the years.

You know, Kurtsawa was a genre director.

Iktsala was more of a genre director than SI to come outo true.

And but you know, he made a movie called The Russia Long, which is kind of an odd one out as the kind of genres that he had he made, and then somehow it ended up showing at a foreign film festival in Venice in nineteen fifty one where people considered it an artistic film and it won the Rand Prize, and then it went to America and it won the Oscar as well.

And so, but this is happening at a time when world politics are changing radically from World War Two, in which Japan was the enemy, to the Cold War, in which Japan is being sort of like set up and groomed to be the new ally in Asia and the Americans need to change the international image of Japan away from that idea of the former enemy, and they used this aspect of traditional aesthetics like the zen gardens and the flower arrangements, and the Summari film sort of fit into that.

So it all depends on the context what kind of world this film emerges from, and that's how Kurusawa was positioned as a great artist who made films that expressed traditional Japanese aesthetics.

Right with the Summari movies especially, Kurusawa was intentionally positioned as a creator of great art, great Japanese and so that was not the case with Takamoto when he came out.

It was with this movie that completely fit into what was going on at the time in terms of cyberpunk and body horror.

Yeah, whether just before that, we had of course Akira Castimos superb masterpiece, Anymal, but we also had we just had the Terminator and RoboCop, and we had the work of Clive Barker, and of course Cronenberg was always referred to when whenever someone was talking about Sakamoto.

So it really depends on the context in which this movie sort of like a lance suddenly, and in both the cases of Kurusawa and the Kamoto that's been sort of like defining their image for the rest of their careers essentially.

I don't know, I hadn't really thought of it that way before.

I really like that.

Because it's true when you talk about Tsukamoto people I mean, I started the podcast this way.

I guess people have a hard time getting over the fact that he's done more than Testo the Iron Man, or they just haven't seen it.

And so that's another reason why I'm so happy that Manda Macabo put these two out.

I think it does show a different side of him, especially if that's your only experience.

And both movies I think are quite accessible, so it's like an easier, it's easy film maybe like a more broad audience can can watch the film.

You don't have to be.

Too can be a little bit somewhat limiting and kind of who can enjoy it?

I think, And you know, but they also play a lot with imagination.

I think some of the imagery in Gemini is choreographed in such a way that it's quite haunting.

Like one of Theo's two images that stand out to me, one is, you know, there's the one on the cover where there a woman who had basically has her back turn and she's holding a man's head in a way that it looks like it's removed from his body.

But that image is duplicated throughout the film and quite quite a lot of time.

So there's every time they sleep at night, they pull their blankets all the way up to where there's only their heads showing, and so there's actually quite a lot of visual imagery throughout the film where it's only heads, and it kind of creates practical effects because there's no special effects, but just practical effects of this sort of horror that's lying underneath it.

I think is quite quite well made.

Yeah, good point.

That's a very interesting observation about the motif, the visual motif of the heads.

Yeah, definitely visual motive of the heads of Uticle to Goblin too, that's.

The thing with heads.

Yeah.

But I don't know what else there is to necessarily say about these two films.

I think for me, I've seen them all before, but revisiting Gemini, I was struck by this time by how beautiful of a film it actually is visually.

It's quite it's quite striking.

The whole, the whole thing.

Absolutely, yeah.

I mean that's also a film that had all the key crew members were these really hugely respected veterans designer and the makeup artist and the cin photographer I don't know at all, So he really got to work with the kind of a dream team on that one.

It does make me wonder if he wasn't so fiercely independent, just sort of what other projects he would say yes to.

That's a good question.

I mean it does occasionally.

I mean, he was at some point attached to doing the third adaptation of the Third Ring novel Okay which never which was never made this was anywhere, and so they initially went to him for that one, and uh yeah, yeah, that's one of those cases where it also depends like on the mood, on the mood of the person.

Really yeah.

Camoto is as a film lover.

He really loves many different types of films, and so I would imagine that inside him there's always the desire to try out the different kinds of films that he loves and to not to not be limited to being ga to Kamoto all the time.

M hmm.

Well, the good news is he's still quite young as far as directors go, he still has a lot of years ahead of him.

So is he he's.

Still going to I mean, as far as you know, he's still going to continue making films as long as he can.

Right he's making a film now.

Told him a while ago, and he said, right now, I'm making a big film.

So that's all the information I have.

So definitely there's there's more to look forward to.

Yeah, well that's great, Tom, Thank you so much for coming on.

Is there anything that I forgot to ask about these two movies that you would want to make sure people know about?

No, I think they covered pretty much all the basis as far as those two films are concerned.

Here, Yeah, for the sake of anybody that's curious, is there a way Maybe this is not a fair question, but is there a way that you would describe his career as it continues to involve sort of?

I guess the question for you is who is he now to you as a director?

Like, what is the way that you describe Sakimoto with his whole career?

Kind Of in retrospect, I.

Would say that in a world and also a film world has becoming increasingly radicalized, and yet conformist.

It's becoming increasingly sort of like, well, I mean, you're facing a world with that's going to go through a lot of changes in the future.

Yes, and there's I think a lot of people are reacting to that by holding on to as many of their old securities that they that they can and even if those securities are an illusion.

And I think Kamoto Film is doing this as well.

Yeah, things are getting more and more safe.

We get more and more remakes, we get more and more new adaptations of material that originates in the late twentieth century, whether it be comic books or movies or TV series that are getting remade.

And I think within that whole situation that we're in, Kamoto is the kind of filmmaker that makes you want to, yeah, believe in the future, keep hope.

He's one of those people like where you go like, oh, I'm really glad person like this still exists in the world, and the filmmaker like this still exists in the world because there's not that many.

And that's to me more than you know, the coolness of the cyberpunk and the old style or h just the interesting auturist.

Interesting, this filmmaker that sort of evolves very very gradually.

Right now.

I think that's to me the greatest aspect of Kamoto that keeps me, keep me fascinated.

I love that.

A really beautiful way to end, you know.

Actually, before we go, uh, Tom, there is one thing I wanted to ask you about, and shame on me for not bringing this up earlier, but you have a very unique connection to Mana Micabre in addition to Sokomoto.

It goes quite far beyond just him as a director, right.

Yes, that's true.

Monda Macabro when it was not yet label before that, it was a book written by the head of Mama Macabo Pee Toombs, And that's a book that came out in the late nineteen nineties, and that's a book that I owned and I bought right after it came out, and I'd say nineteen eight ninety nine sort of.

And Pete's approach to writing about films from other countries and other cultures really was a big inspiration on myself and Jasper Sharp for starting Midnight Eye, which is of course the website that he and I and my brother Martin started in two thousand specializing in Japanese cinema, and we wanted to write about Japanese films that we were seeing, that we loved and that nobody seemed to be writing about, and so, okay, that's great, and we set up this website and then between just or myself we did most of the writing.

We were talking about, how are we going to write about these films?

You know, what approach do you take, because at the time people were either there was either the sort of like the academic approach to Japanese cinema, or there was this sort of like extremely Fanish style of writing, which kind of we felt kind of was a bit disrespectful towards the actual film that people were writing about.

You know, it was kind of fashionable to look down on the films as you were writing about and to make fun of them, and that's something that we didn't want to do.

So that was too simple, and we said, if we're going to write about films from another culture, then and we love these films and we want people to see these films, then we also want people to sort of have a sense of where these films come from.

And so as much as we were able to, we wanted to put the films in their proper context and this is something that Pete did very very well.

When this is as far as I as far as I can tell, that was that was his whole point for writing the book, ye saying these films are amazing because and if you know this and this about the country they came from in the time in which they were made, you're going to appreciate them even more.

And so there's sort of this thing like better you know, more enjoyment through better understanding.

But how do you if you're a young writer who's interested in continuing down this path, how do you find that context?

Tom?

Research?

You know, research research your topic essentially, you know, don't there's I'm a teacher now, and when I teach film and students write papers, I always try to tell them, don't really lie too much on your own assumptions, because I don't know that they are assumptions.

And by doing research, you sort of challenge your own assumptions.

So I realized that, oh, hold on a second, No, no, no, that's not true, right, that stopped correct.

It was like that, But then right in front of you is the information that's says otherwise M and so.

But doing research I think is really really fun.

It's probably the most enjoyable part of the whole writing process.

And this research for you is mostly done through like like for example, let's say, because you know pe Toombs, I know a lot of it.

Was relationship driven.

He's a very relationship driven person, and he would go talk to focus and just learn the history, kind of verbal history.

And so was that your style as well?

Or were you in libraries, like where are you?

How are you doing this?

Both those things, I think that's that's there's a desk research aspect to it.

But then there was also from quite quite early on with me, basically from the beginning, even before actually before we started with like Ie already interviewed filmmakers the first couple of when we launched, already we had several interviews on there because we've been interviewing filmmakers.

We've already interviewed kinjik for example, we'd already interviewed Kiyoshika, and so that was always part of the whole mission to get that perspective as well, you know, so talking to the people who are learning to understand the films better through talking to the people that actually made mm hmm.

So it's it's it's a bit of both.

You know, you do the field work, but you also do the disk research.

Well, that reminds me of a question I should have asked as well.

But if you're going to point people to one place where they can support you, now, is midnight I the best place to go?

Now, where do you want people to be?

Night Eyes?

Big Night Eye retired fifteen years ago and you know ten years ago, yeah, fifteenth, So that's you know, it's it's the it's still up.

I mean, it's it's an old HDL based the website.

Yeah, I found because I was going to say I was reading through it before, but you're just saying it hasn't been updated and all I understand.

Yeah, so but it's still there.

So uh yeah.

Of course, social a social media presence.

That's one thing.

That's if there's there's news about stuff that I've been writing that's coming out, that's the place to find it.

There's been a lot of upheavals in the social media world as well, so where where to where to stay and where to go from them?

It's still somewhat great.

And I went to this other place, the blue Sky that people would be going like, oh yeah, that's so wonderful as soon as I went there.

It's not to be sort of like a liberal echo chamber rather than to write this echo chamber, and so you're like, what's the difference.

So I'm not really sure what what the base is going to be in the base will remain from now and of course you know, it's it's buy the book, buy the books like come most of My most recent one was Japanese Film and the Challenge of Video, which was about the the Japanese straight to video world few cinema.

It's great, and that's now sort of like having an effect because Ero is putting out a view cinema box set that I worked with quite extensively, and I hear't want to do.

Other companies are also dipping their their toes into the same waters.

So you know, basically, just you know, buy the product you you love and you're interested in, and that inevitably is going to benefit me as well.

Well.

Thanks so much for making time for this today, Tom, It's been really a pleasure to meet you and to speak with you.

Thank you me too, Hey, Thanks by.

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