My good friend Jeremy

is holding the Tokyo Cowboys tapes for us.
All 500+ of them.
He is storing them somewhere.
He is our good friend.

I need those tapes.

If you are flying from London to the States,
let me know.
Perhaps you can take twenty or so tapes.
In this way,
perhaps it will take a year,
perhaps two,
but, in this way,
I can get the tapes back.

Hugs,

Daneeta

The Modern Day Samurai

Tokyo Cowboys in Saiyouken Video

Does Tokyo Cowboys have Legs?

"Tokyo Cowboys" has been haunting me these days. Maybe it is finished, but I don't think so. Maybe I'm crazy and just can't let it go at that.

Paul hooked me up with a producer turned distributor out in La La Land. He said TC could have legs. Cut everyone out except Ken, he says. I like the idea. Ken likes the idea. There is good YouTube footage, and I want to do another trip.

Everybody thinks I'm crazy. Including my business partner.

Robert thinks I should break it into Webisodes. I'm not a hundred percent sure what that is, but it sounds good. We shot over 500 hours of footage. A lot of interviews with a lot of guys. We shot some Japanese people. Lots and lots of people.

Anyway...

Where to go from here?

Tokyo Cowboys at Lusher Charter School

Tokyo Cowboys had its New Orleans premiere yesterday at Lusher Charter School Uptown. Head of Media Studies and fellow Loyola Alumnus, Christopher Jeansonne invited me to speak about Elektrik Zoo's debut feature documentary, working as an independent filmmaker and how I got from Big Branch to Tokyo to London and back home again.

I was quite impressed with the students. They were engaged and informed, aware of the world around them, not afraid to formulate their own opinions and not afraid to call each other on faulty logic. I was also impressed with Christopher's curriculum. This term he is screening Ozu, Kurosawa, Kitano, Lynch, and Wenders among others. I was quite proud to have TC screen along side films by these great filmmakers.

Tokyo Cowboys does Naperville

This from the Elektrik Zoo Blog:


Tokyo Cowboys will screen at the Naperville Independent Film Festival in Naperville, Illinois in September. In addition, Elektrik Zoo's debut documentary feature about the trials and tribulations of life on the post-modern urban frontier has been nominated for best documentary feature.

Read the rest on the Elektrik Zoo Blog.

Death by Overwork

The Mainichi Shinbun reports today on a 32 year-old man who has died from Karoshi, or overwork. Granted, I read a few of the Japan blogs, but this is the second Karoshi incident I've read about today.

We mention Karoshi in "Tokyo Cowboys"...how the Salaryman sacrifices everything for work...how the sacrifice can take years of training and can sometimes result in death by overwork. Some people think this line is funny, but it's not meant to be. The kids train from a very early age. I've worked in the schools. Freezing, no coats allowed...study, study, study....then sports and after school activities...then juku (cram school)...then studying until late at night. I have never seen kids so exhausted.

I have seen them...the Salarymen and women falling asleep standing up on the trains. I have worked in their offices. I couldn't do it. I would leave every day at 5 p.m. with an "o-saki ni..." (I'm going before you...I'm committing a great rudeness). I felt ashamed abandoning them. But I was not a modern day samurai.

There is always a bit of an outcry for something to be done. But this kind of work-yourself-to-death ethic is almost a part of the cultural heritage of the Japanese who, during Samurai days, would rather gut themselves than lose face.

Why didn't the young man just quit? Why didn't he just say: "Take this job and shove it!"

It's just not done.

There is another bit in Cowboys where our mysterious J-lady commentator says that the Japanese don't like to say "no" because it is rude. But asking too much can be a burden. So the responsibility lies on the person who asks and not the one who answers (as is typical in Western culture).

There is some kind of Catch-22 thing going on here, but I can't work it out in my head.

Thanks to TokyoMango for the heads up. Also pinched the .gif and following quote from them: "The image shows a placard that reads: Death from overwork. Be careful not to work too much."