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[personal] what's taking so long, and other things

october 23, 2024

hello. i haven't updated in a while since launching because websites are hard and i have a full-time job completely unrelated to what i'm doing here. thought i would do a post about what i'm working on and what i hope to have uploaded before the end of the year. i also haven't really taken a moment to say hi to anyone who might be reading this. hi! i'm happy you're here.

i have about 100 japanese movie pamphlets and a bunch more magazines and other literature, like zines, flyers, ticket stubs, etc. that are harder to categorize, that i hope to upload to the site eventually. one pamphlet takes about an hour to scan and edit, even longer if you account for the time it takes me to get things setup, doublecheck all the images, and then actually build the page for them. my whole process is very amateur. my "scanning station" is just a phone mount that clamps onto my desk and i use free software to do all the image processing. the lighting situation in my apartment is dire, which creates a whole set of problems. basically, i suck at this. but it's fun to do and i'm figuring out how to make it better as i go.

but that explains the slow progress on scans. i also like to upload scans in batches, which is maybe not the way to do it. maybe it's fine to just post one at a time. it probably doesn't matter. i reached ten pamphlets uploaded last month and i think doubling that by the end of the year makes sense.

there's also posting. i have a few topics lined up, but i don't get a lot of time to "blog" between work and other personal projects. still, i'm determined to post a bit more and i think the way to do it is more frequent, less formal entries. zonelets is a cool engine but it's kind of frustrating to not have a tagging system that lets me categorize and sort things better, but that's whatever. a problem to solve another time.

i have not had a public-facing social media account outside of stuff like letterboxd for a while, but i decided to start being slightly more active on bluesky. after remembering you could make your handle your URL, i decided to make one for the site. you can follow it here. i'm not good at social media. i'm not sure how i'm gonna use it. but i guess it's good to have.

less boring stuff

outside of the website, here are a few things i've been doing recently, and some things that are coming up:

i went to the punk rock flea market in seattle. they hold it a couple times a year and there are usually a few vendors that sell books, or antique dealers with small collections of vintage lit. one guy had a ton of issues of film threat magazine, which i collect, so i mostly just picked up a lot of those. i also found a 1980 issue of trouser press that had a feature on ralph records and the residents. i love the residents and have a few issues of buy or die!, the old ralph records mailing catalog. i was thinking of doing a post on them one day.

earlier this month, i also saw the new 4K restoration of raging bull, which was followed by an in-person Q&A with thelma schoonmaker. i got to meet her very briefly after the event. she was very kind and seemed happy to be there. i was amused by the way she answered one audience member's question, about whether or not raging bull could be made today. i'm paraphrasing from memory, but: "well, i'm not sure. it's certainly very violent. personally, i think boxing should be banned. it's insane."

this weekend is the antiquarian book fair in seattle. i always go with a wishlist of things i'm looking for. here's mine for this year:

some of my favorite book covers: queer by william s. burroughs, the hoods by harry grey, and the diary of a rapist by evan s. connell, jr.

film novelizations/tie-ins

other novels

photography

poetry

journals & magazines

ok, last thing. i recently watched the junky's christmas, a short claymation based on the william s. burroughs short story of the same name. it was cute, and i realized all the versions on youtube were pretty poor quality, so i uploaded a better quality rip. you can watch it below.

thanks for reading!




the history of the japanese theatrical pamphlet

september 30, 2024

most of the scans i've been uploading to the site so far have been japanese theatrical pamphlets, so i thought i'd talk a bit about what these things are.

japanese theatrical pamphlets are magazine-like booklets that contain information about a film, similar to a programme or a playbill. they have bios on the cast & crew, plot descriptions, behind-the-scenes details, reviews, the occasional essay, and images from the movie. in japan, film production and distribution companies like shochiku and toho make and sell them to accompany the screening of a film, whether that's a brand new domestic release, the japanese debut of a foreign film, or a special screening of an older movie.

theater programs have existed in some form in europe since the 1600s, possibly earlier. they began as simple leaflets and flyers, often hand-written or letterpressed, made to advertise upcoming plays and other events. the earliest versions were sometimes printed in newspapers and lean very text-heavy.

playbill for the theatre royal's production of macbeth from 1853 / source: archive.org

by the mid-1800s, with the advent of lithography and other advances in printing technology, it was easier for theaters to produce posters and brochures with more detailed illustrations. around this same period, theaters in japan were releasing illustrated booklets called ezukushi 『 絵尽し』 in the kansai region and ehon banzuke 『絵本番付』 in edo, or what is now modern-day tokyo.

like modern film pamphlets, these also included information about the performance's actors and descriptions of scenes. the one below was made from a woodblock and stencil technique called kappazuri 『合羽摺』 in 1822 and illustrates two plays from an osaka theater.

playbill for two japanese plays from 1822 / source: the british museum

since the earliest versions of these booklets were produced by the theaters themselves, it was common for them to feature more than one production, as they were essentially catalogs of what they had coming next. this was true for movie theaters as well. by the early 20th century, as cinema took root in japan, theaters were releasing short weekly pamphlets called "movie programs." these were typically free and would sometimes include advertisements for local businesses.

a catalog for the historic subaru-za theater. / image credit

isao chōsa, the owner of jimbocho vintage, identifies rhapsody in blue (1945) as the first film to properly receive the modern theatrical pamphlet treatment in japan—a single booklet, centered on a specific film, for purchase at the theater where it was being shown. that was in 1947, as part of the musical's japanese debut at the marunouchi subaru-za in tokyo. according to minatomachi cinema street, that pamphlet cost about 15 yen at the time.

the marunouchi subaru-za's 1947 rhapsody in blue theatrical pamphlet / image credit

quick aside!

the marunouchi subaru-za was a historic roadshow theater in tokyo's yurakucho district. opened on new year's eve 1946, it was one of the first of its kind in japan. the building's two-story layout could accommodate over 800 people. its early screenings of international films drew thousands of moviegoers and within a few months it had gone fully reservation-only.

people line up to see rhapsody in blue at the subaru-za in 1947/ source: subaru kogyo

because the original theater was built shortly after WW2, its materials were cheap and of poor quality, and it lacked important safety protocols like indoor sprinkler systems and other infrastructure later required by law. on september 6, 1953, a fire broke out in a storeroom during a screening of byron haskin's the war of the worlds. luckily nobody was killed, but the building—basically a giant plywood chimney, according to reports—was completely destroyed.

the billboard for easy rider outside the new subaru-za in 1970 / source: withnews

the theater shut down and was reopened as the yurakucho subaru-za in 1966, on the third floor of the new yurakucho building. smaller and with significantly fewer seats, it was still an incredibly important theater. its screening of dennis hopper's easy rider set its highest attendance record, bringing in over 170,000 people total. subaru kogyo's website has a whole timeline on the history of the theater, from the early days to its closure in 2019, if you want to know more.

before rhapsody in blue, it was rare for theaters to charge for programs, according to film archivist hidenori okada. up until WW2, these movie programs were distributed for free. it wasn't until the wartime paper shortage made the feasibility of free programs difficult that theaters began regularly charging money for them, which ended up having a couple effects over the ensuing years.

pamphlets became longer, more detailed, and could center on a single film, like the one for rhapsody in blue. by the '70s, theatrical pamphlets had evolved from the small, narrow catalogs of the '40s and '50s to the larger and more standardized 20- to 24-page A4-sized publications we mostly see now, though it isn't uncommon for newer pamphlets to be irregularly shaped or have some creative design that diverges from convention. charging for the programs ended up elevating them into a class of object all their own, beyond their original function as pure advertisement and into something of a cultural artifact.

random pamphlets from my collection

japanese theatrical pamphlets are still produced today. some older films have received several pamphlet treatments over the years for different screenings. some films never got a pamphlet at all, but you may be able to find flyers, handbills, or illustrated ticket stubs. there seems to be a thriving subculture dedicated to collecting and preserving the relics of classic hollywood in tokyo, and these pamphlets and mini-posters (also called chirashi) are some of the most commonly traded. several bookstores in the jimbocho area specialize in them, like vintage jimbocho and @wonder—two of my favorite book & magazine stores in tokyo.

it's really a shame we don't have anything like this in the united states. i think it's a cool way to memorialize films, make an event out of special screenings, and make theaters some extra money, especially at a time when theaters are struggling.

where to find japanese theatrical pamphlets outside of japan

if you're looking for a particular pamphlet online, there are a few things you can do to make searching easier. find the japanese title of the film and search for that, plus program booklet 『プログラム冊子』 or pamphlet 『パンフレット』 on google. i've found decent prices on ebay and sites like suruga-ya, though most of my pamphlets were purchased in japan. i'll make a post one day about some of my favorite bookstores in tokyo.

the only places i've been able to track these down in the united states have been at antique book fairs and shops that specialize in japanese imports. two that come to mind are osara commissary in pike place market in seattle (there is a very tiny section in the back with some vintage movie pamphlets and records) and billy galaxy over in portland—which is about as close to a nakano broadway-style thrift store that i've ever seen here in the states.

if you do decide to start collecting pamphlets, the one thing i'd ask as a random nobody on the internet who you don't have to listen to but you should because i'm right: don't be a dick and bulk buy them just to flip them in the states for a profit. last time i was in tokyo, i overheard an australian guy in jimbocho talking about buying a bunch of vintage sumo magazines for 100 yen and selling them at his shop in sydney for $20 bucks each. tourists have been doing the same thing with retro games, which devastates the local collector scene. don't do that.

if you want to learn more about japanese theatrical pamphlets, i'd recommend reading that hotaka sugimoto's interview with isao chōsa and hidenori okada i linked earlier, and also checking out the website for pamphlet uchuda, an organization dedicated to preserving the culture and history of movie pamphlets. the latter has a useful "A to Z" post that lists some of the main publishers (corporate and independent) and links to some places where you can buy them online.

thanks for reading!

references




dog day afternoon: comparing the novel to the film

september 19, 2024

"i bark. that man there, see him? he bites."

this post was originally gonna feature just the japanese theatrical pamphlet for dog day afternoon, but i actually have a couple of related things i want to share as well: the novelization of the screenplay by leslie waller, and the original article "the boys in the bank" by p.f. kluge and thomas moore, published in a 1972 issue of life magazine, which frank pierson's screenplay for the film is based on. both are easy to find online, but i just think they're neat.

dog day afternoon novelization by leslie waller (aka patrick mann)

the novel, also titled dog day afternoon, was written by leslie waller and published pseudonymously as patrick mann. the copy i have is the first dell printing from july 1975—released, apparently, before the film's US debut of september 21, 1975. film novelizations were common in the '70s so no surprise the era that produced some of my favorite films also produced some of my favorite paperbacks. i love the red title and that green edge common on dell books.

there are some major differences between the book and the movie—and, of course, the real-life robbery that inspired both. the main character in the novel is joe nowicki, or littlejoe, instead of al pacino's sonny wortzik. littlejoe is meaner, cruder, and far less sympathetic. same with sam, who is based on john cazale's character sal in the film. sam may as well be an entirely different guy. together, the two come off as cruel and obnoxious rather than the scared and desperate pair they are in the movie. there's also a bizarre amount of sexual menace (towards the female bank clerks) that does not occur in the movie and which makes both men even less like their film counterparts. i could have personally done without all that.

the novel also includes a lot more about its main characters' histories. here, littlejoe and sam are friends and well known in the local gay bar and nightclub scene, though neither of them thinks of himself as gay. some of this was true in real life. john wojtowicz (sometimes known as littlejohn basso) and salvatore naturile were friends who met at a greenwich village gay bar called danny's. the film chooses to write their relationship as more ambiguous. in one scene in the screenplay, sonny says to the bank manager, about sal, "you know, i don't know him very well—but he's not gay." this dialogue did not make it into the movie. what did make it in are two scenes where sal pleads with sonny, and then later FBI special agent sheldon (james broderick), to tell the TV stations to stop calling him a "homosexual." this is true to the actual live reporting of the heist, and the real john wojtowicz even told village voice reporter arthur bell something similar. "sal's not gay," he said. "i'm the only gay one here."

the magazine feature that inspired the film, from a september 1972 issue of life

maybe the biggest difference between the book and the movie is that the book takes almost 80 pages to get to the actual bank robbery. the movie, after some establishing shots, opens with it.

it's funny how spending more time with the novel's littlejoe, who is bitter, pompous, and misogynistic, positions him as much more villainous during the actual robbery. it ends up playing out like a more straight-faced heist novel from the era, like the dumb guy's eddie coyle. one of the things that made the real-life hostage situation and ensuing stand-off so famous was the media circus that formed around the event, due in no small part to the alleged humor and charms of the would-be robbers, who (as depicted in the film and the book) openly taunted law enforcement, courted news reporters, and sorted out personal affairs in front of a growing crowd of raucous onlookers.

"if they had been my houseguests on a saturday night, it would have been hilarious," shirley ball, one of the bank hostages, told life. "i really liked them both." (fun fact: john and sal robbed the chase manhattan in brooklyn in august 1972. swedish criminologist nils bejerot coined the term stockholm syndrome one year later, after the norrmalmstorg robbery in august 1973—an event also famously broadcast on live TV.)

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stockholm syndrome or not, the film works to build both sympathy and celebrity around sonny and sal because we meet them at the same time as the hostages do. sonny is so pathetic and fails so immediately you have to feel for him, and the cops that eventually close in are framed much more antagonistically because we've spent all of our time rooted in the point-of-view of their targets. while it may shatter the illusion built by the spectacle of it all, the novel might actually do a better job capturing what the real john wojtowicz was like in his personal life. john's wife eden, whose sex-reassignment surgery john planned to fund with money from the robbery, spoke of his "bad temper," calling him "sadistic" but also "good-natured" in an interview with the village voice. bell, the author of that same report, recalled john from their overlap at gay activists alliance (GAA) events as "pleasant, spunky, a little crazy." journalist randy wicker, speaking of the man's jealous and abusive tendencies, told inside edition, "nobody could put up with john wojtowicz."

not as much is known about the real sal, who was shot and killed by an FBI agent during their trick getaway. he was only nineteen-years-old. according to the village voice, a man named gary badger, a former bartender at danny's (the same gay bar littlejohn and sal were said to have met) showed up to a GAA meeting a few days after the failed heist trying to raise funds to bury sal, who he called his "best friend." he also had a lot to say about the alleged mob involvement with the heist... which is a whole thing i'm too lazy to get into. (and i'm not a reporter, just a loser who reads too much.)

something funny about that life magazine feature is its description of john wojtowicz having "the broken-faced good looks of an al pacino or a dustin hoffman." pacino was approached with the role and proceeded to accept and reject it several times before finally settling in. hoffman was apparently interested, but not even considered.

according to producer martin bregman, "i believed that only pacino could bring the sensitivity and vulnerability we needed here." i think he was right! (i was also amused by this quote from bregman, from the same book, which i'll link below: "it took a tremendous amount of courage because he was a leading man [...] and he's being asked to play someone who is gay. it was a big risk. when you play a character you become the character, especially when you're al, and that might have been a world he did not want to explore." he sure did some exploring just a few years later in william friedkin's adaptation of gerald walker's cruising—which i'll probably make a post about someday.)

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"GAY BANK ROBBERY FILM" thats so true gay scene magazine

i think i've written too many words about this now. before i go here's an issue of gay scene that i need to track down a copy of. until i do, i've posted scans from the japanese theatrical pamphlet of dog day afternoon as well as the front and back covers of the novelization. i've also uploaded my own scans for the life magazine feature "the boys in the bank" even though it's pretty easy to find it floating around online.

bonus: a stupid but funny scene early in the novel has littlejoe getting mad at his first wife tina and going to see the french connection in theaters, but only up until his favorite part, where popeye "blasted the rat on the steps of the el station and shot the big cop."

references




loneliness and the conversation

september 17, 2024

the conversation turned 50 years old this year. i caught a screening of the new 4K restoration on monday night, came home and thought maybe now was a good time to finally launch this site. so here it is.

i'd forgotten how scary this movie is. francis ford coppola described it himself as a "modern horror film" and it certainly builds dread better than most. context and intention become distorted through repetition, like a word heard over and over so many times it loses its meaning. innocuous things become uncanny. the opening shot is a great example. you have a pleasant day in san francisco's union square, people milling about on their lunchbreaks, tourists enjoying the sun, buskers performing their routines. we float above it, neutral. but the moment that electronic warbling starts up, it begins to feel wrong. the camera descends on the scene through a slow, motorized zoom. the shot is no longer objective but mechanical, intrusive, and alien. it begins to stalk. the nature of the sequence is revealed in the crosshairs of a scoped directional mic, manned like a sniper rifle by an audio technician on top of a nearby department store. we are in the midst of a tactical eavesdropping operation, made complicit in the technological violations that earn surveillance expert harry caul (gene hackman) his living.

the conversation is also a very sad film. harry understands how easy (and profitable) it has become to invade other people's intimate lives—he does it every day. his desire for a "safe" anonymity compels him to near obsessive-compulsive levels of precaution, at the cost of human relationships. and yet harry's paranoiac safeguards—the multiple locks on his front door, his refusal to give out his home phone number, the stealth visits to his girlfriend amy (teri garr), with whom he discloses nothing, not even his birthday—are not even enough to achieve the degree of privacy he thinks they get him. his landlord has no trouble entering his apartment, multiple people have his number, and his girlfriend knows him better than he thinks. "you have a certain way of opening up the door," she tells him. "you know, first the key goes in real quiet, and then the door comes open real fast..."

that's why technical security measures are not enough. harry has also stripped himself entirely of anything "worth" knowing. he lives in a modest apartment, works out of a faceless warehouse empty of personal effects, rejects friendly banter with his assistant stan (john cazale), and freezes up when a flirtatious woman at a party begins to ask too many questions. emotional vulnerability is exploitable—an unnecessary security flaw not worth the risk. he has become nobody. not even the mime who follows him briefly in the opening sequence can figure out how to imitate someone so nondescript. "i would be perfectly happy to have all my personal things burned up in a fire," harry tells his landlord, "because i don't have anything personal." his only discernible passion is jazz music. he is seen early on in the film, after the grueling task of wiretapping two young people's circular conversation around union square, listening to a jazz record and playing the saxophone along with it. for anyone else, this would seem like a normal hobby. people often practice improv over a backing track. for harry, it's hard not to read it as an additional calculation in his carefully-guarded lifestyle—he can't even express himself musically without the reassuring obfuscation of some background noise, absorbing, blending, and ultimately drowning his own articulations into the cacophony of other nameless sounds.

the conversation is a devastatingly lonely film. i love its recurring framing of people through layers of obscuring translucence—a panel of curtain, a pane of frosted glass, a grid of black chainlink, a rolling veil of fog. and then there's harry's raincoat, a semi-opaque plastic that he wears over his suit everywhere despite it never raining once in the film, like an additional synthetic barrier between him and the world. with anonymity comes emotional isolation. harry wallows in it, as well as in the grief and guilt over the evils his work enables. "i was in no way responsible," he tells a priest, alluding to several murders that occurred as a result of his espionage. "i'm not responsible." this is one of the few times he emotionally opens up to anyone in the film, and it is through the latticed partition of a church confessional. the other time is in a dream.

probably the first and only moment we ever see harry truly vulnerable and honest is at the end of the film. a threatening phonecall from a client leads him to believe his apartment has been bugged. he scours the usual hiding places, first with standard detection tools, then his bare hands, dismantling utilities, appliances, fixtures, and furniture before going in on the structure of the home itself. it is only when his apartment has been completely stripped—wallpaper flayed, laths and plaster exposed, subfloors laid bare—that harry is satisfied. the final shot is of him in a corner of his wrecked living room, playing the saxophone, only this time, perhaps with the peace of mind that he is not being recorded (or maybe in cathartic resignation to the fact that he can't escape it anyway), he plays solo, unaccompanied. alone. the irony is that harry is still being watched—by us. his lonely solo plays the film out as we pan back and forth across the room like the mechanical sweep of a surveillance cam.

thanks for reading me ramble about a 50 year old movie.

first scans uploaded!

i've uploaded scans (the first for this website!) for the japanese theatrical pamphlet of the conversation, which i obtained in april 2023 from @wonder in jimbocho, one of my favorite bookstores in tokyo. out of all the pamphlets like this i've seen, this is one of my favorite original cover art designs. if i'm not mistaken, it was a variation of the original japanese poster for the film, which you can see below.

posters for the conversation
japanese theatrical pamphlet for the conversation (left) / japanese poster for the conversation (right)

really striking design for what is probably one of the most gorgeous looking and sounding films ever made.

the pamphlet itself is in very good condition, too. it was printed and published in november 1974, presumably for the japanese release date, though i can't find any information about when or where it was screened. the pamphlet is 20 pages and has some beautiful black and white stills from the film and a few color. i really love these stills of gene hackman from the last page. :)

stills from the movie the conversation
gene hackman testing to see if his house is bugged (left) / gene hackman having fun when his house is not bugged (right)

you can find full scans for the conversation's japanese theatrical pamphlet here!