neither/nor
them, from a very early age. Tey spent a lot of time plotting the murder of their father—at least that’s what Len told me. Paul never told me that. Ten they decided not to do it, because if they did it, they’d belong to him for the rest of their lives. But both of them had a real obsession with violence for a lot of their lives. Paul is still, of course, making films, directing films.
Leonard was very involved with Japanese culture. He 44
married a Japanese writer. His biggest credit is as the writer of a script called “Yakuza.” And he was deeply involved with the Japanese film industry as well. And so was I. I had written a script called “Hollow Point,” which was kind of my introduction to the movies business… Well, I’d been involved as a film archivist and film historian. I don’t really remember how I met Len. I had judged a film festival with his brother, and I had built a collection of films at the Pacific Film Archive that I started in Berkeley. It was at that time the largest collection of Japanese films in the world. Because they weren’t really preserving films in Japan, they would send
mondo cinema and beyond 1960s — 1980s
the films to America in subtitled versions for the Nisei market, and then it would be too expensive to return them or destroy them or store them, so I gave them a place where they could have them available if they ever wanted them without paying to destroy them or ship them. And in the end we ended up with Japanese film scholars coming to Berkeley to study Japanese films.
I spent a lot of time studying and getting to know people around violence, I guess, gun violence, to research the script I was writing. Somehow or another that ended up with me getting to know Leonard, and then getting to know Mataichirô Yamamoto, who was the producer that Leonard was working with. Te two of them, I think, had come up with the idea of doing a real film about homicide that was not just sensationalistic. Tey were having trouble finding footage and I put together some footage for them to look at and somehow it got turned around that I would function as the director and line producer on the film, which I did. But the film really began with Leonard. And a lot of people really were behind the shaping of it, but primarily Leonard, his wife, and Mata, who had come out of the Japanese manga—he had originally been a famous cartoon artist, then became a producer and produced a number of independent features and television. I had demonstrated defensive shooting technique for one of his Japanese TV specials, I showed him the famous “fast draw”—I guess that was another way I came on. Mata of course pointed out that I missed every single shot. But my form was good!
Tey needed somebody who could find the footage for them. I had done two TV series for PBS as a writer/ producer, and in the case of the series on Japanese films, co-director. So I had done “clip shows,” as they were called in the business, and I had built the largest
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