拉斯·梅耶

Bosomania!: The Sex, the Violence, and the Vocabulary of Russ Meyer

Our conception of Russ Meyer’s work begins in defining the word Vixen. There are other terms Meyer appropriated in his singularly loquacious career – including Buxotic, Cantilevered, and his video nameplate, Bosomania – but Vixen is the one that most precisely exemplifies his preoccupations with sex, violence, and language. It is used in the title of three of his films: Vixen!, in 1968; Supervixens, 1975; and Beneath the Valley of the Ultra-Vixens, in 1979. Each of these films is anchored by the image of an exaggeratedly voluptuous woman, a living cartoon whose manner of speaking is often as embellished as her figure.

This woman is always of untenable interest to the red-blooded, middle-class American men in Meyer’s films. And in most each of them she remains dissatisfied and discriminated against, yet fearsomely powerful. It is this power that characterizes a woman in a Russ Meyer film—she is not used merely to excite, but equally to frustrate or domineer. Meyer’s women are eligibly cast according to their bust size, but breasts are indicators of power in a Russ Meyer film; his women are like an army of female praying mantises, poised to seduce and then kill. A Vixen is in turn one of cinema’s true icons, fully transcending her superficial utility to arouse.

Distinguishing Russ Meyer’s Vixens for their power and not for their obvious and insatiable sexual potency is a reasonably futile endeavor, I realize, although this is precisely one of the many aspects of his career we intend to clarify over the course of the next few weeks, in which we will be reviewing each of Meyer’s narrative films. And this notion of feminine power vis-à-vis objectified sexuality notwithstanding, there are other aspects of Meyer’s career and work that mark him as a man of immense, if undervalued creative ingenuity.

This difficulty in evaluation is enhanced by the scope of cinema peripheral to Meyer’s career. His first feature, The Immoral Mr. Teas, delighted more liberal audiences in 1959. At this time, and for the ensuing remainder of his career, Meyer’s films would remain outside the critical and popular mainstream, save for a brief contract with Fox in 1970 that produced two films—Beyond the Valley of the Dolls and The Seven Minutes. Despite this, many of his films were inordinately successful. Ultimately, this difficulty in firmly positing Meyer’s career within what is the most creatively potent era of cinema is exemplified in the hesitance and rarity in which he is cited as an auteur. His obsessions notwithstanding, he is a figure for whom the term is descriptive enough, but it pronounces an aspect of academicism that seems unbecoming of a man whose work screened more exclusively in drive-ins than in art houses.

In retrospect Russ Meyer seems less interested in cinema as an art than as a craft. And by this measure, he is as practiced and developed as any of his peers – having financed, produced, shot, written, directed, and edited most of his films entirely himself – only more of a common man than an academic in regard to his artistic and psychological preoccupations. His body of work – sixteen narrative films within the span of twenty years – is remarkable for its consistency in tone and narrative construction. Meyer’s films often begin impatiently (many even have a title song) with song or dance, and each is told in a peculiar, although assured, slang-laden language. From the narrator’s fatalistic preface in Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill!:

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to violence, the word and the act. While violence cloaks itself in a plethora of disguises, its favorite mantle still remains… sex. Violence devours all it touches, its voracious appetite rarely fulfilled. Yet violence doesn’t only destroy, it creates and molds as well. Let’s examine closely then this dangerously evil creation, this new breed encased and contained within the supple skin of woman. The softness is there, the unmistakable smell of female, the surface shiny and silken, the body yielding yet wanton. But a word of caution: handle with care and don’t drop your guard. This rapacious new breed prowls both alone and in packs, operating at any level, any time, anywhere, and with anybody.

Meyer’s films would become much more robust in their scope, to the point that they became almost abstractions—it is easy to envision them bulging from their sprockets as they were initially projected. For measure, the aforementioned Mr. Teas is comprised, simply, of a series of static, narrated scenarios that find the title character in a variety of morally compromising scenarios; and one of Meyer’s final films, Up!, contains Adolf Hitler and a Greek chorus, not to mention Meyer himself.

Perhaps it is futile to label Meyer an auteur, as the very term seems too staid and colorless to describe a man whose films are titled regularly with exclamation marks and in lettering shaped like genitalia. But there remains a propensity to critically evaluate Russ Meyer’s work, this despite the shot-on-a-weekend haste that characterizes many of his films—in description they’re less considered psychological and moral scenarios than they are relentless entertainments. But objective description – which, it should be noted, Meyer did a rather misleading job of himself in penning the copy on the VHS sleeves of his films – says little of the subversive feminism, slapstick wit, and moral/political ultimata that occurs in each of his films. They are entertainments, foremost, but nonetheless potent grounds for discussion.

One of Meyer’s most noteworthy creative collaborations began in the late 60s with Roger Ebert, who penned three of Meyer’s films, at least in part: Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, Up!, and Beneath the Valley of the Ultra-Vixens. In addition, he has written extensively on Meyer: his original review of Vixen!; an overview of Meyer’s work, in 1985; his review of Beyond the Valley of the Dolls; an interview with Meyer; and an obituary at the time of Meyer’s death in 2004. Ebert was kind enough to respond to some of our questions regarding Meyer and his collaborations with him.
Rumsey Taylor:

Would you describe your first meeting with Russ?
Roger Ebert:

I wrote a letter praising the Wall Street Journal’s first article on Russ, and he called when he was in Chicago.
RT:

When did you first notice Meyer’s work receiving critical attention?
RE:

In 1959 or 1960, with the Leslie Fiedler article in Show magazine calling Mr. Teas the best comedy of the year.
RT:

Meyer’s first success as a filmmaker occurred in 1959 with the first of what I deem his “cinematic peep shows,” The Immoral Mr Teas. How influential or revolutionary were these films at the time?
RE:

I think Mr. Teas was a leap beyond the “peep shows” that preceded it. The professionalism was evident. In my hometown of Champaign-Urbana it played for more than a year.
RT:

In several instances in his films, Meyer associatively edits sex scenes with elements of sometimes outrageous discrepancy. In Finders Keepers, Lovers Weepers!, one tryst is cross-cut with a pair of Mennonites flying a kite, and in my favorite example, in Vixen!, one of the title character’s bedroom escapades is intercut with a verbal defense of Communism. It’s apparent in these examples that Meyer may be subverting the natural utility of a sex scene. Is this subversion something he knowingly engineered, or was he just being irreverent and playful?
RE:

He was irreverent and playful, and knew it. He found straightforward “sex scenes” boring—“they slow down the action.” The only example of an uninterrupted sex scene in his work is the lesbian scene in Vixen!.
RT:

You’ve written that Meyer’s productions may have resembled his experiences in WWII—that is to say, highly rehearsed and regimented. Do you think that the more objective aspects of the war – namely violence and oppression – may have inspired Meyer? For measure, his films contain numerous instances of hostility, enacted upon both sexes.
RE:

It was the production that evoked his war experiences. He was platoon leader, rousting people out of bed at dawn and summoning them to mess. Deploying his equipment and troops. Requiring total dedication. There are so many Nazis in his films because they represented a mocking triumph over the enemy. Most of the hostility between sexes is visited upon men, who, in his films, play the mindless sex objects.
RT:

How did working with Meyer in particular inform your career as a critic?
RE:

The daily experience at 20th Century-Fox was an education.
RT:

One the aspects I most admire in Meyer’s work is his language, which is even carried over to the descriptions on the VHS sleeves of his films. How conscientious were you in sustaining this language in your collaborations with him?
RE:

He wrote a language all his own. I never tried to write like that. He would add words and phrases.
RT:

Being a professional film critic at the time of the release of Beyond the Valley of the Dolls, how sensitive were you to the film’s initial reception?
RE:

It was all over the map. I would say, on balance, it was favorable. Even the negative reviews were dumbstruck. See John Simon’s attempt to describe the plot. As the credits promised, there had never been anything like it. It defied description and category. Today, it is possibly the most-revived film of its year.
RT:

Your remaining projects with Meyer – Up! and Beneath the Valley of the Ultra-Vixens – are both more freeform and kaleidoscopic than Dolls. What were the inspirations behind these films?
RE:

I only wrote some extra dialog for Up!. Beneath was inspired by Russ, who provided most of the story.
RT:

Would you describe your unmade projects with Russ—the Sex Pistols film Who Killed Bambi? and The Bra of God?
RE:

Bambi would have been a sensation, but the Pistols went broke. The Bra of God was never anything but a title. I wrote the unproduced screenplays Viva Foxy! and Son of Beyond the Valley of the Dolls.
RT:

In what films or filmmakers do you recognize Meyer’s influence?
RE:

None. Maybe a shade of Austin Powers.

Our reviews of Russ Meyer’s films will begin on Monday, August 25th.

萨罗，或索多姆的120天（洛杉矶时报）

'Salò' on Criterion: 1975 film still a shocker
Director Pier Paolo Pasolini was killed after finishing the film, which weaves Marquis de Sade writings with Mussolini fascism.
By Dennis Lim, Special to The Times
August 24, 2008
"SALÒ, OR the 120 Days of Sodom," the final film by Pier Paolo Pasolini, owes its considerable notoriety not just to the unrelenting parade of degradation and torture that it serves up on screen but also to an unfortunately resonant act of off-screen brutality. On Nov. 2, 1975, just weeks after the movie was completed, Pasolini's mutilated body was discovered in a vacant lot outside Rome. Police investigations concluded that he had been killed by a 17-year-old boy he had attempted to pick up.

A lapsed Catholic and a gay Marxist, Pasolini was the provocative sum of his contradictions. He was a true polymath -- a filmmaker, poet, novelist and playwright -- and a habitual firebrand, an outspoken public intellectual who made no secret of his homosexuality or his taste for teenage rough trade. And as with so many artists who die violently or before their time, his demise quickly became the prism through which his work -- "Salò" in particular -- was viewed. Michelangelo Antonioni remarked that Pasolini had been "the victim of his own characters."

More than three decades later, it finally might be possible to free "Salò" from the shadow of Pasolini's grisly death. The alleged killer recanted his confession a few years ago; many people now believe that the murder was politically motivated, undermining the once prevalent view that it represented something of a death wish on Pasolini's part.

As for the film itself, reissued this week by the Criterion Collection in a two-disc edition richly supplemented with essays and documentaries, its extreme, claustrophobic force is undiluted. The 1970s was a hotbed of scandalous art cinema, but "Salò" -- unlike such X-rated shockers as "Last Tango in Paris" or "In the Realm of the Senses" -- has not been tamed by the passage of years. If anything, there is a cruel, chilling timelessness to both its imagery and its logic. The shock hasn't worn off in the slightest.

While Pasolini mingled the sacred and the profane in much of his earlier work, "Salò" exists in an utterly godless realm. It combines and explicitly links two unmentionable subjects, transposing the Marquis de Sade's "120 Days of Sodom," a massive and minutely detailed catalog of sexual torture perpetrated by four wealthy libertines in 18th century France, to the Republic of Salò, the puppet government that Benito Mussolini established in the final days of World War II.

The authority figures in "Salò" are fascist officials whose regimen of humiliation seems motivated less by sexual desire than by the exercise of total power and control. They round up nine boys and nine girls and proceed to a remote villa, staffed with armed guards and a few middle-aged prostitutes who set the mood by recounting their sexual exploits in vivid detail.

Structured as a series of infernal Dantesque "circles," "Salò" progresses inexorably, as an escalation of horrors and a descent into madness. The boys and girls are leashed like dogs; one is force-fed food laced with nails. Next come some truly stomach-turning experiments in coprophagy, building to a Last Supper-like feast of human excrement. The film culminates in a grueling torture sequence: In an enclosed courtyard, victims are whipped, branded and scalped, their tongues sliced and eyeballs gouged. Meanwhile, the fascists take turns watching from a window. Pasolini presents the grotesque action from the captors' point of view, from above and through binoculars -- a distancing device that forces the viewer into the position of voyeur.

Before embarking on "Salò," Pasolini had completed a trio of popular literary adaptations known as the Trilogy of Life. "Salò," for him, was a refutation of the trilogy's affirmative eroticism, which he eventually came to view as suspect.

The 1940s setting of "Salò" is a bit of a red herring: Pasolini's premise acknowledges the perverse erotic appeal of fascism, but his main concern was with what he considered the "new fascism," the rapacious rise of consumer capitalism and its ability to reduce human bodies to commodities. "Salò" is not the most coherent political allegory -- Pasolini himself said of the film, "It does not need to be understood." That might be so, but as an agonized cri de coeur, a wail of absolute despair in the face of a dehumanizing world, its power is overwhelming.

日本性电影：粉红帷幕的背后

Interview with Jasper Sharp

by Tom Mes

Why a book on Japanese erotic films? Hasn't this topic been covered quite exhaustively and exhaustingly enough already? What more is there to be said?

There's been a few books on the subject already, the best being Thomas Weisser's Japanese Cinema Encyclopedia: The Sex Films. The others I've read are sort of redundant, just scene-by-scene descriptions of what you see on screen without any sort of context or insight. Weisser's book is pretty exhaustive, but it is basically a reference guide. It tells you what's out there, and details about the cast, directors etc. It is a good book though. It does what it sets out to do pretty well.

But I was always more curious about the industry as a whole - when did it all begin, why and how did the pink film get so popular in the first place, who makes the films, who watches them and where do they watch them, and why is Japan still making sex films for the cinema when no other country seems to be - these kinds of questions. I knew when I first started looking at them that a lot of pink films had political elements or that you needed a certain background context to understand what they were really trying to say - I'm thinking specifically of the films of Takahisa Zeze and the other Four Devils directors, but this applies just as much to older directors such as Koji Wakamatsu. It was also clear that from the beginning pink directors were making films that reacted against the type of films being made before, both in and outside of the genre. There's always been something punk-ish about the whole industry. Anyway, clearly to me there were a whole lot of questions that remained to be answered. I guess the best thing to say is that Weisser pioneered the subject; he first marked out the boundaries on an empty map, and I've come back to draw in the contours and put up signs to other areas on it that might warrant further investigation.

This was also a big part of the appeal for me. It is very rare when you are writing about cinema that you find an entire substrata of films that can be grouped by their content, their makers and their production circumstances and that haven't been covered in any real detail before. It was like discovering a lost continent - there's been at least 5000 films made in the pinku eiga genre, and this isn't even counting Nikkatsu Roman Porno, and only a small trickle of these have made it through to the West before. And owing to the films' erotic or violent content, the field has never really been seen fit as a subject for scholarly research, analysing how these films fit into the cultural climate of when they were made and what they actually mean.

More importantly though, when I was living in Tokyo, just getting to know Japanese cinema better in general and getting to meet other fans, researchers or people in the industry, I ended up getting pretty close to some of the filmmakers working in pink cinema, and talk to them about what they were trying to do within it. And at this time, Masao Adachi was just released from prison and there were retrospectives all over the place of his work, so after finding out a little more about this almost forgotten figure with links to Middle Eastern radical politics and tracking down a few of his earlier films on video, which I really loved, I realised there was a whole hidden story here which no one really had recounted in full before. I hope what comes across in the book is that there are some fascinating characters who've worked in pink. This book is as much about them as their films.

The usual explanation for why these films have never really taken off in the West is that they're too hard to qualify as softcore and too soft to be hardcore. Would you agree with that and do you see these films still catching on here beyond a small circle of devotees?

Actually back in the 60s there were a surprisingly large number of these films circulated in sex cinemas all over the world, but most slipped under the radars of the critics. There was evidently quite a big interest in "oriental" flavour exoticism. In the VHS age of the 80s and 90s, I think a lot of the films were generally perceived as too strong in terms of the violence and perversity to get released - I think the violent aspects of Japanese erotic cinema do tend to get overplayed though.

But maybe their popularity now has something to do with the general problem Japanese cinema faces, in that Japanese companies aren't very good at selling their films abroad and that foreign audiences don't know what's good if they haven't seen it or know anything about it. Most people don't know what's out there and most of the pink producers are small companies and far more focused on the domestic market.

If we're talking about the films as sex films and not for their other points of interest, then I believe that even in the days when anyone can download hardcore porn off the internet for free at the click of a mouse button, there is still a market for not-so-explicit, and genuinely well-made erotic films with a story. Who was it that once said "Erotica is using a feather, pornography is using the whole chicken."? Well, I'd say pink films fit into the feather rather than the chicken category.

There are a lot of striking images in the book. How did you go about getting hold of these?

I was lucky because I had a lot of cooperation with studios like Shintoho, Nikkatsu and Wakamatsu Pro, who actively wanted people outside to know more about their films. Also I had a whole load of earlier magazines from the 60s with some fantastic ad material. Yes, there's some great images in the book.

You said you got to meet a lot of directors, but did you talk to any of the performers? What is their general attitude toward their work? Are women who were Roman Porno starlets in the 70s still eager to talk about those days or would they rather forget?

Yes, I met a couple still working now in the industry - Yumeka Sasaki, Yohta Kawase and Hotaru Hazuki. They see themselves as actors primarily, and have appeared in other film, TV or theatre work. There's another older guy I met when I was on the set for Zeze's A Gap in the Skin, Daisuke Iijima, who was regaling me of tales of wrestling with Tom Conti when he played the role of one of the soldiers in Merry Christmas, Mr Lawrence. Lots of actors in the 80s came from this background, for example Tomorowo Taguchi and Ren Osugi. They certainly don't deny it. Remember that in the 70s and 80s this type of film was what kept the industry afloat. It's actually not so different from Britain or France maybe - actresses like Joanna Lumley and Rula Lenska were in all these British softcore films in the 70s. I didn't really meet any Roman Porno performers, but many have gone on to other careers, including a couple of TV presenters.

In the interviews with pink and Roman Porno directors that you've done for various DVD releases, the general attitude is that the genre allowed these filmmakers to talk about human behaviour. This suggests there is more to these films than just stringing sex scenes together. From your experience, is there a basis of truth in these claims of artistic merit or are they just making fancy excuses for having done skinflicks?

I met quite a few of the Nikkatsu directors for the Artsmagic Angel Guts interviews, and the impression I got was that in the early days at least, Roman Porno was trying to do something very different from pink films. This was to talk about adult sexuality, and as you say, human behaviour, in a more open fashion. If you look at the Roman Porno films from the first five years, the best films by Noboru Tanaka, Tatsumi Kumashiro and Chusei Sone, I don't think they're particularly explicit, and there's certainly a lot more going on beneath in the films than just sex or nude scenes. These directors were all contracted to Nikkatsu, and the Roman Porno line really just allowed them to make the type of films they wanted within a certain formula. Certainly none of them seemed like they were ashamed of their work, nor were making excuses for it, and I would say that films like Watcher in the Attic or World of Geisha do have considerable artistic merit.

The pink film was a little different. Obviously the bulk of this was intended as exploitation, but this sub-industry soon developed a highly efficient production and exhibition network of its own, and it allowed many directors who wouldn't have been employable by the major studios to make the type of films they wanted, produced through their own companies. Wakamatsu is an ideal case in point, because he always said he was never interested in sex films, but in dealing with subjects that were of interest to youth audiences. He just exploited the distribution possibilities that the pink industry provided, and his works clearly stand out from the others of the period.

In the 90s things came full circle. After several decades in which pink was just considered a very profitable genre in which it wasn't really necessary to make great artistic statements, but it was a way for new directors to at least make films - and quite a number of directors working in mainstream or art cinema today entered the industry via this route - pink film started losing popularity to straight-to-video pornography. The pink companies were still making films, and still had this established distribution network, so directors like Takahisa Zeze and Hisayasu Sato saw again that this was a way in which they could make the kind of artistic statements they wanted and get them screened. And again, it goes back to the sort of anti-establishment "punk" attitude I mentioned - you could talk about social or political taboos that weren't permissible in mainstream film.

I think the key is not to dismiss either pink or Roman Porno as just skinflicks. The industry as a whole has co-existed alongside mainstream Japanese cinema for almost 50 years now, and really operates as an alternative distribution network, with some directors going on to greater things and others staying to enjoy the comparative artistic freedom - pretty similar to V-cinema for example. These are still films being shot on 35mm and projected in cinemas, so it seems bizarre for anyone with an interest in film culture to overlook a whole swathe of titles just because they are catering to a specific audience. Certainly the directors themselves don't see any real division between whether they are making pink or mainstream films.

So yes, the best of these films certainly have more to them than a string of sex scenes. That said, the main bulk of these films, by jobbing directors who have no real ambition of making a career outside of the industry, probably don't have great artistic aspirations. I am thinking in particular of the company Xces, whose films pretty much deliver what you'd expect.

Which films, directors or stars do you feel are most in need of wider recognition?

Wakamatsu is definitely going to enjoy a lot of exposure in the coming year or so because of his new film, United Red Army, which is the most exhilarating viewing experience, Japanese or otherwise, that I've had in a very long time. But the real discovery was his collaborator from the 60s, Masao Adachi. These films have a freshness, a sense of ambition and an engagement with real world issues that I haven't seen in a long time. From the same era, Kan Mukai has been very much neglected, but I've managed to get a new print of one of his old films Blue Film Woman made up for a special tour, and it's pretty wild - one of the first ever full-colour pink films from the 60s, and boy is it psychedelic! Sadly he died a few months ago, so didn't get a chance to find out about this. Mamoru Watanabe also made some really good stuff around the same period. From Nikkatsu, definitely Chusei Sone and Atsushi Yamatoya - Yamatoya is definitely very interesting. He was mainly a scriptwriter, not a director. He wrote the script for lots of Seijun Suzuki's films, including Branded to Kill, and made a pink film called Dutch Wife of the Wasteland around the same time which is really similar, just as surreal.

From the 80s, I think Yojiro Takita's sex comedies are very funny and entertaining. He of course is well known for his more mainstream films like The Yin-Yang Master and When the Last Sword is Drawn, but I think his pink films are more fun. Kazuyuki Izutsu, the director of Pacchigi, is another one who made some really interesting films in the 70s. Nowadays I'm not so sure where the genre is heading in the long term. It will be interesting to see if there are any surprises left in store.

How many hours of Japanese porn do you actually have under your belt by now?

"Under my belt"? That's an interesting way of putting it! Far too many, as a glimpse at the filmography at the end of the book will reveal. Yes, it all became a bit too wearing towards the end….

日本性电影：松井良彦

From his 8mm debut Rusty Empty Can in 1979, Yoshihiko Matsui emerged as one of the towering figures of the 80s jishu eiga underground scene, alongside other familiar names including his early collaborator Sogo Ishii. His masterpiece cult movie The Noisy Requiem (Tsuito no Zawameki) is an epic 3-hour trawl through the daily lives and sexual peccadilloes of the misfits and outcasts who inhabit Osaka's Kamagasaki district. Described by its new DVD distributor as "a soulful hardcore fantasy", it was one of the most talked about titles of its day. And then its director disappeared from audience view for almost a quarter of a century. Now he's back with a new film entitled Where Are We Going? (Doko ni Iku no?), which candidly and un-sensationalistically portrays a burgeoning romance between a transsexual bar hostess and a gay shop assistant.

Midnight Eye caught up with Matsui to talk about his new film, and to cast a nostalgic eye back over the making of Noisy Requiem, which has just been released on DVD in Japan for the very first time, in an English-subtitled, HD re-mastered collectors edition with a raft of extras including a documentary in which members of the original cast and crew go back and visit the film's locations.

Midnight Eye would like to express our thanks to Ryohei Masuoka of Geta Films/Bio-tide for his invaluable help in coordinating this interview, which was conducted by email.



It's been 23 years between The Noisy Requiem (Tsuito no zawameki) and Where Are We Going? (Doko ni iku no?) Why did it take so long for this new film to reach the screen?

With The Noisy Requiem I managed to thoroughly depict the contradictory aspects of love and hatred, beauty and ugliness, passion and violence, all within one movie. Luckily a good number of people have seen the film. However, producers in Japan didn't seem to like it so much. I don't really understand why this was. After I finished The Noisy Requiem, I wrote a good number of screenplays and took them to production companies, but none of them said "Okay, let's start this project." So I couldn't make any movies during this period. Its not like I was shirking away from filmmaking at all.

23 years seems a long time to be away from filmmaking though. What were you doing in the meantime, and how did it feel to be on the film set again?

I continued writing scripts. Aside from that, I went to a lot of art exhibitions, because I like paintings, and also sculpture, block printing and contemporary art. Paintings in particular give me inspiration and inform the basis of a lot of my images. When I didn't go to exhibitions, I would generally spend the day looking at art books or prints. Also, since I've lived in Kyoto, it's been a great environment to enjoy all the events that take place across the four seasons, the different scenery, the temples and shrines, the traditional culture and food, etc. Also, I watch a lot of sports. I am especially interested in soccer now. Experiencing great culture, art, sports, or food leaves a very deep impression in me. And for a person working in an expressive or creative medium, I think it is really important to be constantly stimulated and exposed to such culture, to provide sustenance and form to your own creative activity.

As for my new movie, Where Are We Going?, first of all I would like to express my immense gratitude to Mr. Yoichi Kobayashi (the film's executive producer and the president of Ace Deuce Entertainment), who encouraged me to direct it. The fact that he likes the movie is the most pleasing thing for me. Furthermore, it was officially selected for the 30th Moscow International Film Festival, so I traveled with him to Russia this June. It was the most unforgettable experience of my life. So I am sure now that it was a good thing that I didn't quit the film world.

Where Are We Going? has a very unusual theme. Where did you get the idea from?

It's not an unusual theme at all. If you think that love between a transsexual woman and a young man traumatized by being forced to be a homosexual is odd, then you'll find it a problem. When you love someone I don't think it matters if your partner is the same or a different gender, or even a doll as in The Noisy Requiem. There shouldn't be any discrimination or prejudice against someone just because of who or what they love, or the nature of their desire, I think.

How did you go about casting for the two main characters in this new film?

I asked Shuji Kashiwabara, who plays the role of Akira Tachibana, to appear in this movie because he has a sad smile. As for Anzu, who plays Kaori Yamamoto, when I first met her I felt intuitively that only she was right for the role. For a start, she actually was a transsexual and had changed her gender, and I'd thought that it would be impossible even for a professional actress to play this role. The other thing is that I felt she had an amazingly strong presence. Of course, she was a complete amateur when it came to acting. However, the atmosphere she creates around her is both very beautiful and compelling. All I had to do with these raw ingredients was to "cook" them. I'm used to "cooking" amateur performers. Most of the cast in The Noisy Requiem were amateurs.

Kazuhiro Sano plays in your new film, and in fact has acted in all your films. The name is familiar to overseas fans of Japanese cinema from his status as one of the Four Devils of the pink film, along with Takahisa Zeze, Hisayasu Sato and Toshiki Sato, but I don't think so many people know about his work before he became a pink film director, when he was very much involved in the "indie" scene. Can you tell me about how you came to meet him, and what qualities he has that makes him so suitable for your films?

I asked Mr. Sano to appear in my "virgin work", my first movie, Rusty Empty Can. At that time, he was a university student, and I was introduced to him by a mutual friend. First time I met him, I thought there was something really sexy about him, so since then he has shown up in all my movies. His contribution to my movies is that he understands what images I am trying to create, and works with me to enhance these images to make a better movie.

I'd been led to believe that you first met him while you were both members of the same filmmaking group, Kyoeisha, led by a certain Sogo Ishii, when he was at Nihon University (Nichidai). Sogo Ishii was the cameraman on your first film. How did you all come together, and do you all keep in touch?

Kyoeisha was a group formed by Sogo Ishii and Ryuji Oya and a number of their university acquaintances who were all big movie fans. I applied to join them when they were recruiting staff through PIA magazine. Then I met them, and we got along smoothly so I became a member. I occasionally meet Ishii-san now. The other members I meet on special occasions. That's right, yes - I met some of the members recently when Hiroshi Kobayashi passed away - he was a producer and the chief manager of the Kamiita-Toei movie theatre, and an essential person if you want to talk about Kyoeisha. I was really happy to see them all again.

The state of the Japanese film industry at the time couldn't have been very encouraging for filmmakers, could it? At this time, the major studios had stopped taking on apprentices, and yet at the same time, Nikkatsu remade Sogo Ishii's first 8mm film as a feature in 1978, and you had other new opportunities like the PIA Film Festival, which began in 1977. Can you tell me a little bit about the film scene at the time - how many people were making 8mm films like you guys, and where were you screening them, what sort of reaction did they get etc. When you began making films, did you even expect to make a career as a filmmaker?

In the 70s, the Japanese movie industry was in a transitional period. The major studios were really just groping around. It was a similar sort of situation to Hollywood when the American New Cinema emerged. Back in those days, quite a lot of jishu eiga filmmakers started screening their movies to the public. It was like a new social or cultural movement. The magazine PIA, which was central to youth culture at that time, responded by establishing the PIA Film Festival.

These 'self-made' independent movies were screened at various places. I was fortunately able to get screenings at movie theatres, but most filmmakers just screened their movies at places such as public halls, college auditoriums and classrooms, open-air screenings, live music venues, cafes and bars etc. They were screened all over the place. The reactions varied according to the directors and the films, and to the demographics of the audiences; men and women of all ages and different backgrounds and careers. It was all really diverse and interesting. As for my career, of course I decided to live as a filmmaker when I started filmmaking.

You mentioned his name before, but there's another guy credited as working on a number of early Kyoeisha films, Ryuji Oya. I've only seen one film listed that he directed, The Day the Gods Lapsed (Kami no Ochite Kita Hi, 1979), and you are credited as the assistant director on this. Can you tell me a little more about this film, and also what happened to this director?

Ryuji Oya, along with Sogo Ishii, was one of the leaders of Kyoeisha. I heard that he was about to make a movie, so I told him it would be a great pleasure if I could be his assistant director. The Day the Gods Lapsed was produced by Hiroshi Kobayashi, who I mentioned before. Kobayashi-san managed to raise the movie's pre-production budget and pioneered the remarkable feat of getting the movie theaters to produce the movie. Nowadays, Oya-san works for a home entertainments company.

You seem to have been closely associated with Shuji Terayama at the time. What was the nature of this relationship?

I only met Shuji Terayama several times. For me, Terayama is the one single creative person I have reverence for. I only really thought about trying to proceed in this industry after I first saw his movie To Die in the Country (Den-en ni Shisu, 1974). I showed Rusty Empty Can and Pig-Chicken Suicide to Terayama. He really admired the first one, but the latter he dismissed as garbage. I'll never forget what he said to me though, and his words became a great asset to me. I am just very sorry that I wasn't able to show The Noisy Requiem to him because he passed away just before I started shooting it.

Your first film was Rusty Empty Can (Sabita Kankara, 1979). Can you tell me a little more about it?

Round about that time (1979), homosexuals were marginalized and discriminated against compared to now. They weren't a visible presence in the public sphere as they now are. I don't see that there is any difference whether your partner is the same gender or a different one to you or not. This was the starting point for the movie, with the emphasis on the fact that the most important thing for any person is to love someone else.

Nonetheless, if I am honest I would say that I myself was a bit prejudiced against gays when I started production on Rusty Empty Can. Yet with every step, from pre-production, though shooting and editing to post-production, I became 100% convinced that there is no difference between whether you have a man or a woman as your partner, as I mentioned before. This narrow view inside me vanished. I feel that I became much thoughtful and humane after this project, so it was very good for me to make it.

The jury at PIA Film Festival that year - Nagisa Oshima, Yoichi Takabayashi, Nobuhiko Obayashi and Shuji Terayama - were all filmmakers I'd really admired when I was a high school student. Rusty Empty Can played in competition and it was especially picked out for praise. This gave me a tremendous amount of self-confidence about my raison d'etre as a filmmaker.

I've seen Sano's first film he directed, the 8mm Ode to the Earthworm (Mimizu no Uta, 1982), and also his first pink film, Last Bullet (Saigo no Dangan, 1982), which has a similar story to his debut. In these films he seems to play a similar role to that of your first collaboration together with Rusty Empty Can. It seems that you and Sano have quite similar ideas about filmmaking, and very similar ideas you want to explore. Do you think this is true?

Ode to the Earthworm was Sano's first film, and he made it after I made Rusty Empty Can. He's a smart person, so he combined his experiences in making Rusty Empty Can with his own original ideas, and the fruits of this were his own original movie. I've not seen Last Bullet, so I can't say anything about it. I am a little embarrassed that you think Sano's and my approach to filmmaking are similar. I am just making movies about themes and ideas that originate spontaneously from my own feelings. So, I don't really know about Sano's mind-set. I'll leave this up to the audiences' imagination and reception.

Your second film, Pig-Chicken Suicide (Tongkeig shinjyw, 1981), has a great title. Where did you get it from, and how does it relate to the film?

Thank you very much. The title came from my focus on people who are discriminated against. I used "chicken" as a metaphor for infancy and "pig" for adolescence, or emergence into adulthood. I used this chicken and pig metaphor to refer to creatures who are given discriminatory treatment as an analogy to an individual's unfulfilled existence after having progressed from infancy of adulthood.

A lot of your films focus on taboo subjects, like the status of zainichi Koreans in Japan, and also the Emperor's war responsibility. Your films are like the dark underside of the Bubble Economy years. Were there any other directors tackling these sorts of issues at the time, and what kind of reaction did you get to your films?

Certainly, Korean-Japanese people have appeared in most of my movies. The reason for this is that I have many Korean-Japanese friends from when I was a child, so this is something very ordinary for me. I have no prejudice towards them, and my portrayal of them is something natural and spontaneous. Pig-Chicken Suicide is the only movie in which I've talked about the Emperor. The audiences are free to think that I am talking about the Emperor's war responsibility, but this wasn't my intention.

You're quite free to think that zainichi and the Emperor are taboos in Japan if you want, but I believe fundamentally that there aren't any taboos in our world. This is especially true for people who engage in creative expression and present their works freely to the public, and this is the importance of our existence for us. I just make movies about what I am honestly thinking or feeling.

I made Pig-Chicken Suicide based on these thoughts. That is, that all humans are the same: the Emperor, zainichi and Japanese citizens are all equally human beings, and there are no class distinctions between them. There may be difference in races, religions, skin color and eye color, but fundamentally they are all humankind. This is the point I focused on especially when I made this movie.

The answer for "Were there any directors like me?" is that I think so, but they may have a different way of expressing their feelings or ideas. As to the reaction, well, my movies always cause strong arguments between those for and against.

The Noisy Requiem has a very exciting improvisation feel, similar to punk music. Was it challenging to shoot?

I don't like punk music and so because I hardly listen to it, I don't know it well. I don't know if the film was a challenge to make or not. I just wanted to make it, so I made it.

The film makes prominent use of Osaka for its locations. Can you tell me a little more about its settings and the world you portray?

The reason why I chose the Kamagasaki district of Osaka for the location was that I felt that the place had a neglected sort of feel to it, since the characters who appear in the movie are also alienated by society. In these circumstances of ongoing "neglect", each of the characters lives their lives taking pleasure in their own individual way; the beloved mannequin, the younger sister, dwarfism and the crotch-shaped piece of wood. Each form their love takes deviates from the generally accepted values of society. In other words, they are "abnormal" and "degenerate". The characters' actions are entirely motivated by their expressions for the people and objects they love. These may be unforgivable criminal acts, but I find their direct expressions of love beautiful. I think they behave like this because of their insatiable blind purity.

As an example, a beautiful young man has sex with his sister and kills her. Then he buries her, but he can't stop himself and still has obsessive feelings in his mind. He wants to bury her inside of him by eating her flesh, so he eats her. This is an abnormal and criminal action in terms of public order and morality. However, I feel there's some kind of beauty in his acts. At the end of the movie, the dead sister becomes a ghost, and she tenderly watches her brother playing. Her feeling towards her brother is "Thank you for loving me." So, as a person engaged in creative expression, I would like to think about these questions: "Is the love people in the world have close to or the same as this type of love?", "Is the love you feel something pure or just superficial, something artificial and tatty?" What I am trying to express is that love is something much more vast and profound.

To avoid being misunderstood, I would like to stress that the expressions of love contained within the movie are depicted absolutely as just that: expressions within an artistic production, and in no way as positive affirmations of violence. With this in mind, I'd like to say to your readers please live your life prudently, and with love. Where Are We Going?, The Noisy Requiem, Pig-Chicken Suicide and Rusty Empty Can - all of my movies are about love.

The documentary on the disk follows Sano and some of the other staff members revisiting the locations. It seems to have changed a lot, hasn't it?

In line with the times, I feel.

Obviously you didn't have shooting permits, but there's a scene in the film where you set fire to a rooftop and then came back later to film the fire fighters. This is real guerrilla filmmaking! Did you get in trouble for anything like this?

As far as I heard, nothing happened.

Your producer on this was Takaharu Yasuoka, who was the assistant director on Kazuo Hara's The Emperor's Naked Army Marches On (Yuki yukite shingun) and later produced Tatsuya Mori's two films about Aum, A and A2, and the Iraq documentary Little Birds. How did he become involved?

I met Yassan (ie Yasuoka-san) when he got involved as one of the production staff on Pig-Chicken Suicide. At the time we got along well together because we had many points in common about the type of movies and directors we liked. I asked him to read the script for The Noisy Requiem, and he said "This looks interesting!" That's how he became a part of the movie.

One of the things one notices about The Noisy Requiem is its length. For a low-budget underground film, it has a very epic feel to it. How did you raise funding for the project? Was it all self-financed?

It was fully financed by me and the producer Yasuoka.

The Noisy Requiem has a legendary reputation for an 80s underground cult film. Where did it play, and how did it become such a big success?

It wasn't released for a while after we'd completed it, but we held preview screenings so it became something of a talking point. Also, I showed it to some international film festival programmers. However, not one theatre manager or festival raised their hands and said they wanted to screen it. I'm not sure of their reasons.

This was the situation when Hiroshi Kobayashi, who I mentioned before, introduced me to Takahiro Hosoya, the manager of the Nakano Musashino Hall movie theater in Tokyo. After this I was able to screen it. At the preview, before it opened to the public, the critics and press divided into two factions - those who highly praised the movie and those who rejected it - and this became quite a hot topic. At that time, people focused on the movie's scandalous nature and its challenge to taboos etc that you mentioned, which were not the points I had originally intended. Still, a lot of people came to the theater to watch it, and it was a relief when many people told me that they realized it was a movie about love. The reason why the movie was so successful was that it was a movie about true love, I think.

I heard it also was very controversial with some audiences. Was the problem with the overall tone of the film, or were there specific scenes that some people didn't like.

I don't really know about that. Movies are completed in the audiences' minds I think, so you'd better ask them.

It's amazing that The Noisy Requiem only just came out on DVD in Japan last year, so most people haven't had a chance to see this ultimate cult film since it first screened. Since then, it has acquired a legendary status. How do you feel about the film today? Has it attracted a new generation of viewers?

Actually, almost every year for over a decade the movie was screened in theaters in Tokyo and Kyoto. After the theaters closed, we screened it at the college festivals or rented halls; so you could always see it if you really wanted to. Movie theatres are not the only places to screen movies. All you need is a projector and large sheet of white cloth or paper. If you have these things in place, then you have a movie theatre. It's quite an honour though when I hear people say that The Noisy Requiem is a legendary film, because so many movies made all over the world have been forgotten or passed by unnoticed by most people. It doesn't matter if we're talking about a new generation or an old one though. People never change as human beings, I think. So please feel free to watch The Noisy Requiem and form your own impressions.

I hope its not going to be another 20 years before you make your next film. Do you have any projects you are working on at the moment?

I hope so too. I'm writing a new screenplay at the moment, which I can't tell you about at the moment. I hope you understand.