Remembering Akira Kurosawa's cinema -- and his laughter -- on his birthday

On this date in 1910, Akira Kurosawa was born in Tokyo. And I remain ridiculously proud of the fact that, during a Manhattan press conference tied to the 1985 New York Film Festival premiere of his masterwork Ran, I made the sensei of cinema smile.

I was asking a question, through a translator, about his reputation as a director of unforgivingly harsh and often brutally fatalistic dramas. And I wanted to know if he thought that was a bad rap, because there actually were some upbeat movies on his resume — like the sweetly romantic One Wonderful Sunday, a deeply affecting 1947 tale of life and love in post-WWII Japan that did not get wide US release until the early 1980s.

“Now, I’m not saying that you’re a party kind of guy…” I continued. But then I had to pause, because at that point, Kurosawa exploded into laughter. Which, of course, made me wonder how much he really needed that translator.

But seriously folks: Here is an appreciation of Akira Kurosawa and his work — tied to a 2010 retrospective at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston — that I wrote back in the day for CultureMap Houston. 

What's the Buzz? The Buzz Lady is back -- on the Map

Happy to report that the vivacious Roseann Rogers, my former colleague at Channel 2/KPRC-TV, has rejoined me at CultureMap.com. She'll be contributing videos of celebrity interviews like this one, a chat with Will Ferrell and Zach Galifianakis about The Campaign. Funny stuff. I must admit, though, to a certain amount of puzzlement (if not serious jealousy) as I note that Roseann -- a.k.a. The Buzz Lady -- actually appears younger now than she did back when we worked together in the mid-to-late 1990s. Trust me: Time hasn't been nearly so kind to yours truly.

Not coming soon to a theater near you

Well, gosh, now I'm really glad G.I. Joe: Retaliation didn't make the final cut for my summer movie preview story. And I'm really, really glad I didn't reference it on Great Day Houston -- if I had, they might not ever ask me back on the show.

TV Alert: Great Day Houston, 9 AM Tuesday

I'll appear on Great Day Houston at 9 AM Tuesday (May 22) on H-Town's Channel 11 to talk about summer movies like Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter -- and shamelessly plug my CultureMap article. Because that's how I roll.

Talking Truffaut (and Darling Companion) with Kevin Kline

Here is my favorite Kevin Kline story: We’re riding the elevator down to the lobby of a swanky L.A. hotel at the end of a long day of interviews during the 1991 press gathering for Grand Canyon. And he’s politely listening to my whining about a decision I have to make soon – very soon, like within an hour or so.

As a film critic for The Houston Post, I really, really should go out that evening to see a nationally advertised advance screening of The Last Boy Scout, because I’ve already missed the press screening of that Bruce Willis flick back home in H-Town.

But gee whiz, a rep-house theater within an easy drive from the hotel is showing newly restored prints of two Francois Truffaut movies – Mississippi Mermaid and The Bride Wore Black – on a double bill. I’m flying home tomorrow morning, so tonight will be my only chance to see them. But Bruce Willis is a big star, and Last Boy Scout may be a big film. But I’m a big Truffaut fan – hell, I’m still mourning his 1984 death – and these two particular films aren’t in wide rep-house circulation. But I do kinda-sorta have a duty to my readers. But I…

Gently but firmly, Kline interrupts my blather. He looks me squarely in the eye, smiles just a bit, and says: “You’ve already made your decision, haven’t you?” His tone signifies he is not making a query, but stating a fact. And, of course, he is absolutely correct.

Flash forward 21 years, and wouldn’t you know it: Even as Kline and I are settling down for a chat about his latest movie – the wise and witty Darling Companion, in which he co-stars with the lovely and talented Diane Keaton (above) – we’re still talking about Truffaut. And other things as well. You can read the rest of my CultureMap.com Q&A here.

Update: And you can rent a DVD of the movie starting Aug. 28 through Redbox.

Big Al is coming to H-Town

And you can read all about it here, in my Houston CultureMap.com preview.

The second smartest thing Peter Bart ever did is ask me to write for Variety

And the first smartest thing, of course, was push for Francis Ford Coppola to be hired as director of The Godfather. You can read more about that in my CultureMap interview.

Additional dialogue: Anthony Perkins on Psycho

While preparing to introduce Psycho this Wednesday as a Culture Map Night at the Movies offering at the Alamo Drafthouse West Oaks, I've been reminded of how ambivalent Anthony Perkins felt about being typecast by the role of a lifetime: Norman Bates, the boyishly shy motelkeeper who loved his mother not wisely but far too well. Indeed, for more than a decade after he starred in the film, he deeply resented the lasting legacy of Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960 masterwork.

During this period, it should be noted, Perkins enjoyed a wide range of roles on Broadway, playing leads in The Star-Spangled Girl, Equus and Romantic Comedy. In films, however, he usually was hired to play some variety of neurotic, psychotic or arrested adolescent, most notably in The Fool Killer (1965), WUSA (1970), the cult-fave Pretty Poison  (1968) and (opposite no less a leading lady than Diana Ross) Mahogany (1975). It was almost enough to drive him – well, psycho.

It required a serious attitude adjustment on his part – and the encouragement of his supportive wife, photographer Berry Berenson – for Perkins to fully appreciate the upside of achieving immortality in a classic movie. By the mid-1970s, he was ready to embrace his notoriety, and even mock himself in a classic Saturday Night Live sketch. (“Here at the Norman Bates School of Motel Management….”) By 1983, three years after Hitchcock’s death, he was willing to re-open the Bates Motel in Psycho II.Two years later, he took full control of his destiny as director and star of Psycho III.

Perkins, who died of AIDS in 1992, seldom discussed his private life or sexual proclivities with interviewers. In the 1980s, however, he offered some astonishingly candid revelations in a People magazine profile. The son of film and stage actor Osgood Perkins, he was raised by his smotheringly protective mother after his father died when Anthony was 5. Inadvertently, she aroused ambivalent, sexually charged feelings in her son, feelings often accompanied by pangs of Oedipal guilt. In later years, Perkins told People, he was emotionally ill-equipped to sustain relationships with women. (That changed in 1971, he claimed, when he met Berry – who, in a horrible twist of fate, eventually died aboard one of the aircraft that crashed into the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001.) On the other hand, Perkins’ traumatic childhood may have helped to make him a true soul mate of The Master of Suspense.

Perkins addressed the latter issue, among others, during a 1985 interview with me at his Universal Pictures production office shortly before he started work on Psycho III.

Q: Alfred Hitchcock once said actors should be treated like cattle. How do you think he would feel about cattle taking over the corral as directors?

A: That’s a good question. Actually, when we made the first Psycho, he was tremendously on my side with everything that I tried to bring to the picture. He encouraged my co-operation and collaboration with him at every turn. And I know that was not his well-known way of being. So maybe there was something between the two of us that he responded to. Or maybe he simply was tired of hearing what a dictator he appeared to be, and how actors resented his lack of communication.

Q: Do you think he may have seen a little bit of himself in you? According to Donald Spoto’s biography, The Dark Side of Genius, Hitchcock also had to contend with ambivalent feelings about a domineering mother.

A: That’s an inventive idea. I hate speculative answers, but I like that as a theory. It’s possible, I suppose. But how will we ever know? I certainly have wondered why he was so kind to me, and would accept my suggestions. It was strange: He wouldn’t even be curious about what changes I wanted to make. He’d say, “Enchant me on the set.” He didn’t want to know about them before.

At one point, when we were filming the scene where Norman finds Marion Crane’s body in the bathroom, I jump back and sort of huddle against the door. Well, when I did it the first time, a picture fell off the wall, and hit the floor. Hitch was setting something else up, so I said, “Look, this bird picture fell off the wall. Why don’t we include that? We could even do an insert shot of this picture hitting the floor…?” And suddenly, that got the entire set quiet. Because it’s one thing to fool around with the dialogue, or do your own clothes. But when you tell The Master of Suspense to shoot an insert, you may be sticking your head into the lion’s mouth.

But all he said was “Oh, lovely. We’ll do that.” So, to answer your question: Yes, it was spooky how far he went with me. And I, of course, never tried to take advantage of his generosity.

Q: Do you know why he cast you as Norman Bates?

A: Well, Hitchcock was unique in those days – and probably in these days as well. He never used to cast actors from readings or auditions of any kind. He cast them from seeing them in other pictures and previous roles. That was his way. He’d seen me in Fear Strikes Out (1957), in which I played Jim Piersall – the baseball player who had a nervous breakdown. So, by the time of my first meeting with him, I already more or less had the part.

But I didn’t realize that he would be so relaxed to the point of where he would pull $100 out of his pocket and say, “Here, now that we’ve talked, I have to be on to some other business. But why don’t you go down to a store and buy what you think Norman Bates would wear, and give it to the wardrobe man? Those can be your costumes.” I thought that was awfully good of him to trust me that way, first of all. And second of all, it was good of him to demonstrate that trust, not by just saying “I’m sure you’re gonna be wonderful, and I’m looking forward to this,” but by doing something pragmatic and evidential of his trust.

I immediately went out and bought $100 worth of – well, I don’t want to say low-class stuff. But it was definitely the slouchy early ’60s look. And Hitchcock barely looked at it when I returned with it.

Q: Despite his actions, Norman had always remained an oddly sympathetic character. Why do you think that’s so?

A: Well, I think one of the things that made the first Psycho an enduring film is that Norman’s crimes were always committed out of love, out of an excess of love, rather than an excess of hate. Norman never hated anyone. And he’s not a person who works from the emotion of hate, or even responds to it. So I think that is one thing that has kept audiences kind of on Norman’s side, because they realize he’s been pushed to these extremes out of love. Also, it’s because Hitchcock had the brainstorm to cast the role not as it was written in the original Robert Bloch novel, as an older, overweight, disconsolate sort of half-stupefied man. Instead, he made Norman a younger, more sympathetic character. I think that was a very intelligent thing for him to do.

Look, over the years, maybe tens of thousands of people have come up to me in airports and theater lobbies and hotel lobbies and restaurants. And no one has ever walked up to me with anything but a smile. That’s because they found Norman was someone they could warm up to. No one has ever seen me and cried, “Oh, my God! It’s Norman Bates!”

Q: Even so, weren’t you resentful for a long time at being so closely associated with Norman Bates? I have the impression you weren’t able to resign yourself to your image until well into the 1970s, when you spoofed Norman on Saturday Night Live.

A: I have definitely made peace with it. Years ago, my wife pointed out to me that the more resistance I had to the public association of me and Norman Bates – and vice-versa – the more people would come away from an encounter with me confirmed that their suspicions were correct. And from that very casual remark of hers on, it’s been very much easier for me to accept that people still literally say, “Hi, Norman,” when they meet me. Actually, it’s an honor to be associated with a movie that has lasted and gone on through a generation, and is still able to quicken the pulse. I think it’s great. I prefer that to walking down the street and having people say, “Oh, look, that’s… that’s… uhhhhh…”

Once Mad magazine has done you, and Saturday Night Live has done you, and once you’ve been anthologized in everything, and your sequences are shown to film schools – you’re just part of the national grain, that’s all.

The night Shirley MacLaine grabbed my ass

Had a lot on my plate these past few days while covering the Cinema Arts Festival Houston for CultureMap. But, mind you, I'm not complaining. Got to write about Isabella Rossellini, Alex Gibney, rodeo champ Clint Cannon and other luminaries in attendance during the five-day event. Best of all, I was privileged Saturday evening to do an on-stage Q&A with the exquisite Shirley MacLaine -- an ageless icon for whom I've long nursed a shameless crush -- after a special screening of Terms of Endearment (the best movie ever made in Houston) at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. (That's where my CultureMap colleague Carolina Astrain snapped the above photo.)

Being the saucy little minx that she is, Ms. MacLaine thought it would be a nifty idea to kick off the evening by acting out a memorable scene from Endearment, the one in which she and Jack Nicholson  share a touching (in every sense of the term) farewell at an airport. So when she embraced me on stage before our conversation, she... she... well, she grabbed my ass. And I felt it would be only good manners on my part to respond in kind. The audience, it should be noted, sounded as though they heartily approved.

Yes, you guessed it: In addition to talking about some of her other classic movies -- including one I was happy to learn we both still enjoy, Ronald Neame's Gambit (1966) --  Ms. MacLaine devoted part of our spirited conversation to a discussion of her fascination with metaphysics. Specifically, she talked -- knowledgeably, passionately -- about dreams. I wonder if she knew that she fulfilled one of mine last night?

Chainsaws, Slackers and Spy Kids -- Oh, my!

Alison Macor wrote the book on indie moviemakers and moviemaking in Austin – literally – and Tuesday she’s coming to the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston to tell us all about it. You can read my Houston Culture Map preview/interview here.

Filmmaker was in the right place at the right time for 9500 Liberty

Years before Arizona passed its draconian measure to broaden the power of police officers to detain suspected illegal aliens, officials in Prince William County, Virginia, thought it would be a nifty idea to adopt an ordinance requiring police officers to question anyone they had "probable cause" to suspect was an undocumented immigrant. The legislation polarized an already divided community, leading to unintended consequences – some local businesses saw their customer base decline when Hispanics, documented or otherwise, left the community – and triggering a grassroots pushback against the law. Korean-born, Houston-raised filmmaker Annabel Park was there at ground zero (along with her partner and co-director, Eric Byler) to cover the situation in 9500 Liberty, the acclaimed documentary opening today in Houston at the Angelika Film Center. Here is the Q&A I had with her for Houston Culture Map.