More reflections on pink films and other popular genres

[Peter Larson]

"If the catch is the thrill of watching audiovisual
representations of certain kinds of sexual activities,
is a handful of poorly-acted, dubbed, simulated sex
scenes worth a 1800 yen triple feature when you could
go to Tsutaya and rent three hardcore videos with real
sex scenes (or at least more convincing fake sex
scenes) and sync sound to watch in privacy for half
the price"

I always looked at them as an overpriced homeless
shelter when I would miss my train. Often I would ask
myself if they were making these movies as some sort
of community service to give people a place to go in
the middle of the night. While i was always excited to
be there just because I like movies, folks around me
would often be sleeping. 

--- M Arnold <ma_iku at hotmail.com> wrote:

> Happy New Year everybody.
> 
> I wanted to return very briefly to last month's
> conversation on pink films.
> 
> Aaron Gerow may be right that my drinking partner
> person posed a rather
> disingenuous question. This person himself is a
> Japanese researcher who's
> interested in pink film, and I know he understands
> the motives of foreign
> pink film researchers better than he was letting on.
> The non-Japanese pink
> film researchers we both know are all very careful
> to look at the broader
> picture and bring industry, spectatorship, and other
> issues into
> consideration. Nonetheless, he did seem to be
> concerned with the kind of
> images of Japan foreign critics and researchers may
> be constructing through
> their work. At any rate, I don't want to take his
> question more seriously
> than it was intended to be, as this was all in the
> context of a casual
> conversation at a Shinjuku bar late at night, but it
> did get me thinking.
> 
> I believe one point he was trying to make was close
> to the issue Aaron
> raised about the problems in the auteurist approach
> (especially as
> justification for an interest in pink). Essentially,
> is that a productive
> way to observe the pink film _genre_? Why focus on
> pink when there are
> presumably more profitable ways for auteurist
> filmmakers to succeed?
> Certainly we have our Zezes and our Satos, but
> they're few and far between.
> Most pink films don't warrant that kind of
> attention. (On the other hand,
> does the auteurism model fit with an image of pink
> cinema-as-art cinema that
> studios themselves are consciously trying to
> produce? Drinking with pink
> people recently, I keep overhearing comments about
> Kokuei's conscious
> attempts to create the image of an auteurist cinema
> . . . ) Another part of
> the problem is that the work of the auteurs is
> usually what lasts over the
> years, so when you want to go digging through
> archives to research pink
> film, Wakamatsus and Zezes are the first things
> you'll find. The "average"
> films are much harder to dig up.
> 
> I admit, my interest in pink film started from an
> auteurist angle when I
> read about interesting directors from some Western
> scholars and people like
> Yomota Inuhiko, who tied certain pink directors into
> political issues,
> although now that I've seen more uneven work from
> the auteurs as well as a
> jumble of other titles recently, that's starting to
> change. I need to take a
> closer look at the critical discourse on pink film
> in Japan too--I'm not
> sure that Japanese critical writing on pink is
> biased towards auteurism to
> begin with.
> 
> After experiencing the wonderful world of Japanese
> pink theaters a few times
> in recent months too, I'm stumped to understand how
> this genre manages to
> exist. If the catch is the thrill of watching
> audiovisual representations of
> certain kinds of sexual activities, is a handful of
> poorly-acted, dubbed,
> simulated sex scenes worth a 1800 yen triple feature
> when you could go to
> Tsutaya and rent three hardcore videos with real sex
> scenes (or at least
> more convincing fake sex scenes) and sync sound to
> watch in privacy for half
> the price? Some say that pink theaters are still
> dangerous "deai no ba"
> where lonely men go to look for 'action' (according
> to an acquaintance who
> went a few weeks ago, the Shinjuku Kokusai Gekijo is
> still quite busy on
> weekend nights), but I'm sure there are any number
> of ways to find that kind
> of attention in Tokyo these days. Are people just
> looking for a dark, quiet
> theater where they can drink, smoke, and kill an
> afternoon or evening
> without worrying about the staff throwing them out
> after each screening? Is
> anyone even watching the movies?
> 
> I'm coming back to this discussion now because I
> enjoyed a couple of
> pink-related events in December that kept my
> attention on such questions.
> After Meike's "Hanai Sachiko" film finished its run
> at Pole Pole, his
> "Bitter Sweet" played for two weeks. I went out to
> see the film for the
> first time since viewing it at the stinky Kokusai
> Gekijo last year, and was
> surprised that my initial positive reaction wasn't
> far off. The general
> response among people I spoke to was that "Bitter
> Sweet" was a much better
> film than "Hanai Sachiko" (at least the extended
> director's cut of Hanai
> Sachiko), and I agree. It completely lacks the
> comedy and political angle of
> the earlier film, but makes up for it with a
> narrative that makes sense
> without being overly simplistic, effectively subtle
> direction, and acting
> that is--excuse me for saying this--outstanding for
> a pink film. At times I
> almost thought it reminded me of Cassavetes or Suwa
> Nobuhiro. The only part
> I couldn't swallow was Sano Kazuhiro's ridiculous
> wig at the beginning of
> the movie. I hope Bitter Sweet has a shot at
> overseas screenings as well.
> 
> I also had the opportunity to observe the shoot of a
> new pink film from
> start to finish during the winter break. It was very
> educational to watch a
> crew and cast of about seven each put together a 60+
> minute feature film in
> four days. This is a "gay pink" film and has
> slightly over the standard pink
> budget (3,500,000 yen is what I was told), but the
> budgetary limitations
> were immediately apparent. The main staff was made
> up of director, two or
> three assistant directors, cameraman and two
> assistant cameramen (who also
> did the lighting). Costume and sometimes
> transportation were the actors'
> responsibilities, and one of the actors helped out
> with everyone's makeup.
> Lunch and dinner were cheap nori bento. Shooting was
> done at a handful of
> locations--one rented "studio" (basically a big
> apartment in Tokyo), two
> small bars, one stretch of road and small shrine two
> hours from Tokyo on the
> Chiba coast, and a road by a Tokyo park (a few
> permit-less guerilla shots on
> the last night of shooting). Of course no sound was
> recorded. There was only
> one take per shot with no retakes at all as far as I
> saw. Most of the shots
> were fixed, with a few handheld and pan shots, one
> shot from a moving car,
> and (at least) one makeshift tracking shot that was
> abandoned after a couple
> of tests. Apparently the director hadn't really
> planned things out
> beforehand, and the cameraman was figuring out the
> angles and cuts as he
> went along. The opening and closing credits were
> created on a computer, and
> then the camera filmed the monitor as they played
> back. Nonetheless, the
> whole thing was shot on a real Arriflex with 35mm
> film and Zeiss lenses.
> Perhaps this is obvious, but the crew spent much
> more time and effort
> (=money) shooting the sex scenes than they did
> shooting the non-sex scenes.
> 
> The various devices and optical tricks used during
> one karami scene was a
> fascinating lesson in itself. Of course the actors
> were covered up with
> maebari (the usual combination of gauze and tape to
> conceal their private
> parts), but when the time came for one to 'perform'
> fellatio on another,
> apparently a fist and bobbing head wasn't convincing
> enough. One of the
> assistant directors colored the top of actor A's
> tan-colored maebari with a
> black marker pen (pubic hair), taped a worn-out pink
> dildo to the front, and
> then tucked that all under the actor's underwear, to
> be later 'revealed'
> during the shot by actor B. What realism! At the end
> of 
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