“So young and pure, right? Who’s she think she’s fooling?”
We both laughed.
It occurred to me that tomorrow I was turning twenty-four.
“You send out invitations yet?” My college buddies had been bugging me to throw a birthday party, as an excuse to get the gang together. To shut them up, we were asking ten of them over for dinner.
“Of course. Everyone’s already said yes. It seems like your mother’s gotten a head start on the cooking, too. But tomorrow’s another long day for you. You might not make it home.”
“Yeah, I know.”
I knew it all too well.
By the next afternoon, it was clear that we would probably be shooting well into the night, but I didn’t ask Kayo to call my mother and say that we’d be late. If anticipating my arrival was a part of the festivities, then surely my absence was part of the feast. That’s right. It’s better for a star to be completely absent. No matter how serious the obligation, a star is more of a star if he never arrives. Absence is his forte. The question of whether he’ll show up gives the event a ceaseless undercurrent of suspense. But a true star never arrives. Showing up is for second-rate actors who need to seek attention. Tonight I’d come home to find the table heaped with dirty plates, a sign that everyone had gone home satisfied, and then I’d climb the stairs and fall asleep.
The people wait for me, checking their watches, standing at their doorsteps, but I am a speeding car that never stops. I’m huge, shiny, and new, coming from the other side of midnight. My gliding mass is strangely solid for a phantom, clad in a metal that’s lighter than air. Vaulting from the abyss of my garage, deep in the deepest folds of night, I blast forth, almost floating off the ground, and rattle the sky with a crash of silver. Trees damp with dew sag and weep as I race past them, and the nocturnal birds flocking after me lay screaming in my wake. One by one, I overturn the traffic signs that line the road like white memorials. The gas stations I pass erupt in flames, leaving pocks of fire on the expanse of night… I ride and ride and never arrive.
Something strange happened that night during filming, an unlikely tragedy that did not feel like an accident. It was the perfect birthday present.
Takahama moved us into Studio 3. The space was packed wall-to-wall with scenery for the edge of town.
We were filming Scene 65, Shot 9.
Neriko Fukai was playing a seamstress from a local dress shop. Her brother, a gangster, was murdered. Neriko hates everything about the yakuza. Her brother was like a brother to me, too, and when I get out of jail and hear about his death I vow to take revenge. The scene before this, where Neriko finds me walking home from jail and breaks the news to me, is the one we shot out by the tracks.
I ask Neriko for help, but her disavowal of the yakuza makes her want no part in the revenge. Before long, I fall in love with her. She rebuffs my numerous advances◦— she’s had enough of the yakuza, myself included. But deep inside, I know she loves me, too, and only pushes me away because she fears my passion is a calculated step in my revenge.
Once I confirm the whereabouts of my enemy, I resolve to take him down alone. I stop by Neriko’s dress shop to say goodbye. She’s busy tidying up before closing. I lean in for a goodbye kiss, but she puts up a fight. If I want to die so badly, she says, I should go ahead and die already. She kicks me out. With a knife in my waistband, I leave to face my death. Neriko rushes out to stop me but I don’t look back. Scene 65, Shot 9 opens with the camera behind me as I’m heading off into the night.
There are too many movies like this to count. From this snippet alone you probably get the feeling that you’ve seen this one a couple times at least. But there’s something timeless about the mediocrity of the story, no matter how many times I find myself inside it. The yakuza with his simplistic attitude toward death and the pretty woman who resists him, hiding her true feelings, are bearers of a special kind of vulgar, trifling poetry. A hidden poetry that will be lost if any mediocrity is shed. Genius is a casualty. The poetry must never be conspicuous◦— its scent is only detectable when subtle. What makes the majority of these films so great is that they’re shot in a way that overlooks the poetry entirely.
In the pale light of midnight’s foggy street,
I’m haunted by the goodbye in your eyes.
Who would ever notice that this cheap and tired lyric has terms so rigid not a single word could be replaced? People permit its existence because they think it’s harmless and derivative, with the lifespan of a mayfly, but in fact it’s the only thing that’s certain to survive. Just as evil never dies, neither does the sentimental. Like suckerfish clinging to the belly of a shark, threads of permanence cling to the underbelly of all formulaic poetry. It comes as a false shadow, the refuse of originality, the body dragged around by genius. It’s the light that flashes from a tin roof with a tawdry grace. A tragic swiftness only the superficial can possess. That elaborate beauty and pathos offered only by an undiscerning soul. A crude confession, like a sunset that backlights clumsy silhouettes. I love any story guarded by these principles, with this poetry at its core.
When the film starts rolling, I’ll open the curtained door of the dress shop and look over my shoulder to this girl I may never see again. As I lean into the doorframe, I look out upon the neon of the empty street. This, too, perhaps for the last time. Touching the handle of the knife in my jacket, I walk out into the town.
The camera was behind me. The test run had been quick, a matter of adjusting how I prop my hand against the doorframe.
“Action!”
The clapper snapped and the buzzer rang. Despite the mass of people present, you could feel the silence ripple through the set.
Unreal time resumed its flow. I was stripped bare◦— deep inside a dream.
I cast a parting glance at the girl and leaned into the doorframe, with my back turned to the camera. For a time it films my back in silence, capturing the scenery of night. Once I walk out the door, the camera will slide along a wooden rail and follow me down into the street.
With my back squarely to the lens, an uncanny landscape spread before me.
It was unlike anything I’d ever expected. A normal town at night, but through the eyes of a man who had resolved to die. What town it was, I couldn’t say. I had no idea where it had come from. All I knew was that these were the lights of someplace special, someplace dear to me. They had to be.
The town was still, no one in sight. I faced three forking alleys. Willows drooped; neon signs glowed high and low across the cramped façades. Light spilled from the window of a garret apartment, of all places. Red neon gently strobed the half-torn movie posters on the telephone poles.
The neon signs flashed out of sync, and the jumbo lanterns outside the bars hung still. The doors to the bars were conspicuously dark and snugly shut. Through the glass doors of the cafes, the shadows of potted rubber trees loomed across the walls. In the window of a townhouse, mostly blocked by a partition, I spotted a red cloth covering a mirror.
What had made this town so quiet? And what had made these people hold their breath? They must have resigned themselves to the blinking of neon, the green light that the letters “lido” cast from the second floor of the neighboring building into the shadows of their eaves. What had left the ominous grime on the glass storefront of the realtor, papered from the inside with flyers for apartments? And what had set the door askew at such a subtle, damning angle?