Bed Head

Patrick's dad bought us a bed for Patrick's birthday. It was delivered today, and our lives just got better. After two years on the floor, we now have a mattress that we can put on the bed frame that Vonda and Ross gave us months ago.

This is a picture of our mattress.



This morning I woke up, and for the first time in 4 and a half years my body didn't hurt.

Just to Continue

"Just to continue should be your purpose." Suzuki again. Been reading Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind by Shinryu Suzuki. I've had the book for over 10 years, but I've never been able to get through it. This time I'm flying like the wind. It's informal talks on Zen meditation, but I find it helpful to apply his advice to finishing Tokyo Cowboys. It's funny how it applies. Maybe I should start meditating as well.

Desperate

I was so desperate for cash that I was a doorman for an hour for 15 quid. That will get us food for the next two days. It was fun anyway. I got to meet an old time alum from LFS.

Logging is going well. Michael is right. The more I look at the footage, the more things start to solidify in my head. And transcribing is really helping as well.

Independence Day

Independence Day. I met with a potential editor today. A good guy, but only the initial meeting. I think the most important thing is to be able to get along with the guy. I feel comfortable with him. We're gonna meet again after he sees the trailer and some of the sequences Patrick and I cut together ages ago.

Nothing on the money front.

Arranging the Dots out of Order

Suzuki says "It is almost impossible to arrange the dots out of order." I know this is supposed to be a comfort, but with 450 hours of footage, I keep thinking that it might be possible to fuck it all up.This whole project has been overshadowded by money...or the fact that we don't have any. Patrick says this is what independent filmmaking is. And I guess he's right. But it must be just a little easier when you are the heir to the Speigle catalogue fortune. We will be completely out of money by Monday. Enough to pay the rent, but food will be a luxury we can't afford. And is this affecting the film? I wonder...

Get it on Amazon

Lunch out with the Girl

Met with HP, one of the TC investors today. She took me out for lunch, and I really appreciated that. We're so broke that it was my only meal. I stuffed myself on bread and sucked every last fishbone dry. It was awesome. She gave me 150 quid to get my visa. I am truly looked after, and I am thankful.

Zygmunt Bauman

Met up with Ben, who is an independent producer. He's acting as a sounding board. I babble about what the film is about, and he plays devil's advocate.

I've also been calling all of my contacts in Tokyo trying to get money to finish the film. No luck yet. I've made a list, and I'm calling round every day.

There's a guy called Zygmunt Bauman. He's a professor at Leeds Univ., and he's written loads of books on postmodernism. My library is the Boarders on Charring Cross Road. There's a coffee bar there, and they don't mind if you bring their books in. So, I use it as a library. I must remember to thank Borders in the credits of the film. That's also where I did all of the research for the film. And, of course, that's where I discovered Bauman.

Francois' Birthday

Francois' birthday. We got too drunk and stuffed our faces on Claire's free food. It was the only meal we had today, and the only beer we've had for ages. But it cost us 4 quid to get the bus there, and that was a hit. We rented the sound equipment out to F & D for 25 quid. That will last us three days of food and travel. Today, color me thankful.

Cancer of the Knee

Patrick does not have cancer of the knee. He does, however, have oesto-arthritus. The good news is that we'll be able to tell the weather by his knee. So, he was shooting for 6 weeks, walking up and down stairs and humping all of that equipment with arthritus. He's a saint...an angel sent from heaven.

Simon the Composer

Met with Simon Rogers. He was something that dropped out of the sky. I put an ad on shooting people looking for a mentor. Three people responded--a producer, an editor and Simon. Simon is a composer and has been in the business for a long time. He sent me a CD last week, and I really liked his stuff. I went by his studio today, and we talked about him scoring TC. Some of my ideas were to sample cowboy voices with different strains of music to create a theme for each one of them. I'd also like to keep it Western as this is western. Some of my references are Dead Man, Zatoichi and Rabbit Proof Fence. Dead Man because of the Western themes only replacing some of the traditional western instruments with Japanese ones. That's where Zatoichi comes in. The music was amazing. Then, in Rabbit Proof Fence, Peter Gabriel used a lot of sounds from the desert landscape. I told Simon that I'd like to use sounds from the urban landscape to make up the layers of the score. It was a good meeting, and Simon is coming on board.

This is Simon in his Studio, which happens to be in his back garden!

WIIF

Went to the Women in Independent Film networking party tonight. First of all, I think it's funny how the English refer to it as a networking "party." The English network in a different way to the Japanese. The English get drunk, then they can network. I guess we got drunk in Japan as well, but there seemed to be more networking and less drinking. Anyway, there were about 150 young desperate women filmmakers, me included. Is that what it is to be a woman in independent film? Most everyone was a director looking for a producer, which means, they were looking for someone to find them money. The producers were mobbed. In any case, it's good to go to these things. It's good to keep up the skill of networking.

Rage

"Rage, rage against the dying of the light..." not Suzuki.

Looking for an editor. This could go on for ages. But, the thing is that we can't start editing until we get the funding. But, I guess I'm not ready to start editing yet. I have to have a paper edit. I have to review footage. There is a lot to do. So the fact that we don't have the money is not such a bad thing. Trying to write what I see in my mind's eye.

Shooting Schedule

11.20 Kenny Allen (Akasaka Mitsuke, Citibank Plaza)
12.30 Akasaka Mitsuke Shots (River and Boats)
Lunch
15:00 - 18:00 Ken (Inspiring People Internationally)
19:15 Arrive at J-Wave
20:00 Patrick Harlan's Radio Show
21:00 Interview Patrick Harlan

Information Overload

There is so much information here. It's mind-numbing. And the more Japanese you learn, the more overwhelming it becomes. Information overload.

The Japanese are reengineers--reinvention. They can take an idea, a product, an entire cultural phenomenon and rework it. Then export it back out. This is their strength. They have no natural resources save themselves...their collective imaginative powers...the entire country.

Every man, woman and child is plugged in. Mobile phones...they are as ubiquitous as people themselves. But the city is surprisingly lo-tech. This fusion prevents Tokyo from becoming a Wm. Gibson novel...but only just. And only for now.

A lot of people sleep on the trains. Some of them sleep standing up. If their knees buckle, the weight of the crowd holds them up. I think sleeping like this, they dream of space...space...there's no space here. The only space is inside of their heads. It's so guarded that they would never let anyone inside. Honne/Tatemae.

Let me be clear: Tokyo is not Japan and vice versa. Tokyo is a different planet...a self-contained bubble city, loosely based on a larger Japanese culture. There are things here that you only imagine in your best dreams and your worst nightmares. Once you live in Tokyo, you can never get it out of you. Like a permanently implanted chip or a virus that never quite kills you.

Some people mark their time here by the exact date they are going to leave the country. It's as if they never want to believe they are actually here. They just count backwards...

God Speed: Raise your Skinny Arms, Track 1 & 2

On the Plane to Hawaii

Trashed after all night binging. I still can't get to sleep. Days melt into years, and I can't remember when it was I got here or how the fuck I'm getting home. It's like being trapped in Disneyworld on acid. The strong don't survive here. They leave. It's the weak who can survive the long term. This city deals and pimps to the weak until they too become her whores.
This is based on a true story. Something that happened to me once.

To Do

Call Natwest re credit card
Call Takeshi
Cherry Blossom shot list
Send Package to Chris Peck
Package to Sam
Call Mark re wedding
Jane Doolan
Sort out package for email
email
Call &*^% re HBO/BBC, New Cinema Fund, A&E, Alt TV

Tokyo

the place to go for a mid life crisis.

Akiko came into town today. That was weird seeing her here.

My horoscope says:

Much depends on you fostering the right frame of mind and nurturing your small opportunities, rather as if they were seedlings.

Fear or Laziness

Which is the most universal human characteristic? Fear or laziness?

Met with Ben Gibson today who is suggesting to start talking to production companies about the film. Most of the production companies he's suggesting are for TV. I really can't bare to make TC into format TV. Everyone is telling me to sell out...get the money...make what they want you to make. Who is "they," for one thing? And, I'm not 22. I don't have the time to make what they want me to make. I only have time to make the things I want to make.

Alexis de Tocqueville Democracy in America.

"The Whole Catastrophe"
This human shape is a ghost
Made of pure light
Sometimes cruel
Trying wildly to open
This image tightly held within itself.

Rumi

Stream of Consciousness

Cowboys' voice over. Sampling phrases to music. They tell their own stories, rambling, stream-of-consciousness fading in and out. Words coming out of their mouths fading out and fading in is an internal dialogue. do we have it? do we have it?

Skimming the Surface

There's something about Tokyo that lulls you in. And, when you wake up, it's 10 years later. Or seven years in my case. You can live three lifetimes in those 10 years...or seven.

What is it that keeps people there? There is a sense of freedom. You are not Japanese. You live by certain rules, which apply only to foreigners...Gaijin rules. And these rules change. You push the envelope. You see how much you can get away with. Some people crash and burn. I know a guy who took too many drugs and tried to saw off his own foot. But that's an extreme case. You skim along the surface of society moving at a million miles an hour.

Morality gets all messed up. You don't know what's right and what's wrong. It's hedonistic...not for the Japanese...they live by their rules...but that's not right: they are hedonistic as well. I lost my sanity in Tokyo...we all did. You never wanted it to end. I expected it to end when I left. And, when I returned, there it was again...all of the insanity. We had become lost. We were the lost Americans still searching for the American Dream, whatever that is.

Tokyo is like another planet. It's familiar, but not. Strange things, strange people, a Starbucks on every corner.

If reinvention means getting a second chance, then Tokyo is the reinvention capital of the world. One day you're an English teacher, the next year, you're the president of a Bank.

If you can have, do or be anything you choose, you can get bogged down in a quagmire of choices. In a way, unlimited freedom is an impossibility. As soon as you start to make choices, you limit your possibilities. Unlimited freedom is a philosophical idea...an abstract. No one is telling you what to do. There is no family, no friends, no God. You make your own choices. You take 100% responsibility for those choices. No one is there to tell you what's right and what's wrong. There is only you. There is only you.