mondo cinema and beyond 1960s — 1980s
invented a lot of the early teleprompter controls and gaming controls—was adept. We were shooting on 42nd St. in New York, and he would put the microphone, in its wind bonnet, under his arm, with the business end of the microphone pointed behind him, and then he would back up to whatever we wanted to mic. And he was wearing a kind of invisible earpiece, so he could focus the direction of the microphone. He picked up drug deals and all kinds of stuff going on, stuff we never ended up using, but we obviously shot and captured a range of activity, much more than we used.
I know the film had some kind of release in Japan, but what was the overall release life?
SR: Well, it actually played everywhere in the world. Te Australian company Roadshow took part of the overseas distribution, Golden Harvest Films out of Hong Kong took a lot of Asia, but the producing company was Toho- Towa, who had done Kurosawa films and things like that. Another way that I was approved as a director is that the head of Toho-Towa was the husband of the head of the Japanese film archive, Madame Kawakita, who I knew from my days as a film archivist. So they were following it all along. But towards the end, as usual, time got tight. Tere’s never enough time or enough money at the end to do things the way you want. And this was the first time that I’d made a real feature film; I wasn’t really experienced with all of the aspects of feature film post-production, with mixing, and I had to learn. I’m not particularly good with music, so I had other people who worked with the composer. On the other hand, I’m extremely experienced directing voice. I directed the dubbing of several features—one film which won the Academy Award, Mephisto, I did the English version of that. Akira, the Japanese animation film, I’d done the first English version of that. So those things I clearly
neither/nor
knew how to do and I did, I thought, a good job with. And the narration was very important. But you have to remember, the person who was writing the narration was Len. So, it’s Len and Mata’s vision, primarily. But the only person who was there for every second of it, for all meetings, was Lee Percy.
How would you describe the response to the movie?
SR: In Japan the initial market was theaters. Tere it was not referred to as Te Killing of America, it was referred to as American Violence. And it was number seven in the box office that year. It played in every major market. Recently I was in a movie made by Australians about Cannon Films called Electric Boogaloo, because I had written Lambada, and also incidentally directed the dubbing for that, because the director didn’t like voice-over. Tey flew me down for the interview, not so much because I’d written Lambada, but they all wanted to meet me because it turns out that Te Killing of America is a huge sleeper among college students in Australia. Everybody has their own print; they watch it like a midnight movie.
But it never was released in the U.S. At the cast and
crew screening at the NuArt Teater in Los Angeles, about a third of the guests walked out. It was a very upsetting film. It was upsetting even to me, even though I had been there for every moment of it. And I think it’s taken this distance for people to be able really to look at it and understand what it’s about. It’s something that we’re really still dealing with. We’re living in a country which is, as was pointed out in the debate last night, the country in the world which incarcerates more people yet has more violence than any other country. And with all the police shootings now, these subjects are coming up again. I’ve had more interest in this film in the last four months than in the previous twenty years.
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