Long time no update, I know, but there’s honestly not much for me to write about these days (and not much I feel like writing about). Life’s ok, nothing special going on. College is, well . . . college. Not going too great (fucking Asian Literature assignment grr), but I’ll survive (don’t I always?). I am quite unwell right now, though, I have to say. Sinus problems, probably due to both the haze and my earlier short battle with the flu. I’ve basically been suffering from headaches 24/7 over the past few days, with no respite in sight. It’s not helped my mood or made doing any of the things I should be doing (reading, writing) easier.
Sleep’s been tough too, what with the aforementioned headache and the fact that I can’t really breathe through my nose, which results in me waking up quite often at night. And during the day, too, during the times I try to get some sleep during the day. Sleep is all I feel like doing, honestly, but it’s just so hard to do. Which sucks and, again, makes me somewhat less-sociable than normal.
The only things that have kept me alive are listening to music and watching movies (and, oh, okay, a bit of reading and writing as well). Videogaming is somewhat out of the question, as my condition (haha) means is suck about 50% more at CoD4 than I usually do. Which just frustrates me. So I’ve been avoiding that. Watched Koji Wakamatsu’s Go, Go Second Time Virgin and re-watched Leone’s The Good, the Bad and the Ugly over the past two days (this is the first time I’ve seen The Good… with my newfound appreciation for the art of film) and enjoyed both greatly. Also re-watched Eli, Eli Lama Sabachthani? for, what, the third or fourth time? I love that movie, man.
Speaking of Go, Go Second Time Virgin, I seem to have developed a bit of an interest in pinku eiga (read: Japanese softcore porn films) lately. No, no, it’s not because of the porn aspect. Hardly. The ones more focused on porn don’t really interest me (well, unless they’re either significantly wierd/out there or trashy or campy or all three). It’s the films that come off more as films that just happen to include sex/rape scenes (instead of sex/rape scenes that just happen to have a film around them) that interest me more. The darker and/or more vulgar/violent/wierd/fucked up they are, the better, of course. Films by directors such as the aforementioned Wakamatsu, Takahisa Zeze and Kazuhiro Sano. Low-budget, well-directed, experimental, artistic, stylish, that sort of thing.
I guess this quote from a Zeze interview sums my interest up:
Pink film is often seen as one of the last few reserves of the auteur. It is often said that as long as you deliver so many sex scenes in one hour, the director can fill the rest of the running time with whatever he wants. Is this true?
Yes it is. We believed it was true at the time, so we tried to make what we wanted to make, but some theatre owners and the “ojisan”, the “old men” who just came to see pink films weren’t too happy with all the politics. The ones who upset them happened to be the ‘Pink Shitenno’, ‘The Four Devils’ – this was around 1992 when the critics first came up with this name.
In both pink film retrospectives at Rotterdam [in 1997] and Udine, the pink genre was presented as a kind of training ground for directors, a way to learn their craft but also a way to express themselves. Is this the way you felt about it when you first stared out making these films?
I do feel that in my case, it was a kind of training ground, a space for experiment. Maybe other directors feel differently, but for me that was certainly true. But even though we’re talking about training or experimenting, it’s not like going to school where you learn and prepare for the real thing that follows after. I made independent films that were shown in cinemas, so it was not just training and learning. The fact that I was actually already making films was always on my mind.
Even though I’m now in my forties, I haven’t changed much from those days. I’m more experienced, but I’m still directing pink films. They are made with low budgets and when you have such a low budget there is more room for experimental approaches. Because if you don’t do this, there’s no way to compete with the bigger productions. So it’s the low budgets that are great for trying out something new.
Won’t lie though, the sex doesn’t hurt. It’s not a positive (generally), but it sure as hell ain’t a negative. Unless, of course, it comes across as very obviously fake, which does turn it into someting of a negative. Go, Go Second Time Virgin totally falls flat when it comes to the sex, I will admit, but dammit, it succeeds on so many other levels. Like the direction, cinematography, soundtrack and style. And, at the end of the day, that’s what I really like.
Fuck, I should do this more often.
