Ryuhei Wars: Patrick Macias Chats Up Ryuhei Kitamura

All of you Japanese culture-whores out there - and I definitely include myself in that category - are likely already aware of who Patrick Macias is. When not filling his blog with tales of the rampant strangeness he is surrounded with as an American in Tokyo he is busy writing books on anime, Japanese film and Japanese pop culture. So when he dropped me a note asking if I wanted him to send reports from the now-running Tokyo Fantastic Film Festival I had to pause and wonder ... was that a rhetorical question just then? Yes, Patrick, yes I do want your interview with Ryuhei Kitamura.

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I had dinner with Japanese director Ryuhei Kitamura the other night. He was extremely gracious, he bought us chow and booze, and the conversation alternated between fascinating and laugh-out-loud hilarious. Unfortunately, much of what he told me was not fit to print, least of all here. There are these websites you see…some of them print unconfirmed rumors about film projects, and um, well, that's the sort of thing a director with his eyes on the big, big international-size prize cannot stand for. So, sorry in advance all you scandalmongers. I wouldn't want to piss him off.

Trust me, you wouldn't either.

That's because in person, Kitamura is an imposing figure, over six feet tall and dressed in stylish state of the art black gear, capped off by what appear to be leather cherry-red wrestling boots. You can almost imagine him at the controls of an amazing flying battleship, barking out orders to his crew while a city-block sized fire dragon dry humps the craft.

I met him after a screening of Thai film Tom Yum Goong, the opening night flick at the Tokyo Fantastic Film Festival. "I come here every year," he says in pitch-perfect English. "They play my kind of movies."

Kitamura, of course, makes *our* kind of movies. The fist thing I told Kitamura is that foreigners actually seemed to get his latest film, Godzilla Final Wars. They didn't give a fuck about the supposed significance of the "fiftieth anniversary of Godzilla," the debts owed to other films, or the fact that it only took one hit to kill the Smog Monster. Indeed, there were reports of people actually laughing and clapping and being (gasp) entertained whenever the film screened from New York to San Francisco. Kitamura had delivered the kaiju Kill Bill and only a humorless simpleton could fail to get the joke.

So on the cusp of Final Wars' impending release on R1 DVD in the USA (which means yo momma gonna get it for you at Best Buy), how does its director feel about it now?

"I'm proud of it, but I'm not the kind of guy who keeps looking back," Kitamura says. "I'm working on new projects now, but I'm proud of what I did."

So is it time to start saving up for a Final Wars director's cut disc, ala Versus or Alive? "No. It was exactly the film I wanted to make."

I'm glad it was. I almost burst into tears during the scene where the flying super ship Goten-go crashes into the Planet X homebase. The short-sighted said it was merely a rip off from Independence Day, but the visuals harked back to the long and noble tradition of the Japanese suicide spaceship dive: from Macross, Message From Space, Star Blazers, all the way back to the original Atragon. And when you compare such moments to recent Japanese kill-me-now snoozers like Linda Linda Linda and Nana, you really begin to appreciate the cinematic blender set on "Crazy" that was Final Wars.

Meanwhile, Kitamura has his own favorite scene from the film. "I liked the part where Gordon (Don Frye) is about to hit the female alien," he says. Fair enough. But again, for those of you who didn't hear him the first time, the guy doesn't like living in the past.

"I have a couple of movies out that I'm working on now. I can't tell you what they are, but I'm going to start shooting one of them in three days."

Is this going to be the legendary, much-rumored, what-could-it-be US debut?

"No, it's going to be an original project, a Japanese film for theaters. You can come to the set if you want."

But that's only if I play by the rules. If I keep my trap shut and save the best bits for later, revealing them maybe never. I'm willing to play along. Because it's just what I wanted since I guzzled down last year's Godzilla like a little kid with chocolate all over my face…my own personal Final War, with Ryuhei Kitamura as director.

by Patrick Macias.