Something Like an Autobiography - Akira Kurosawa [63]
I never saw Yama-san get angry at an assistant director. Once for a location scene we forgot to call out one of the two lead actors. I hastily consulted then chief assistant director Taniguchi Senkichi (later a director who filmed my scripts Ginrei no hate (To the End of the Silver Mountains, 1947), Jakoman to Tetsu (Jakoman and Tetsu, 1949) and Akatsuki no dasso (Escape at Damn, 1950). “Sen-chan” didn’t hesitate for a moment, but went straight to Yama-san and explained the situation: “Yama-san, X won’t be coming today.” Yama-san stared at him in surprise and asked why. “Because we forgot to call him,” said Sen-chan in a high-handed tone as if it were Yama-san’s fault. This was a specialty of Sen-chan’s that no one else at P.C.L. could imitate. Yama-san took no offense at all at this attitude, and just said, “All right, I understand.” He went ahead and managed to do something that day with the actor who had come. He told him to turn his back and yell over his shoulder as he walked away, “Hey, what are you doing? Hurry up!”
When the picture was finished, Yama-san took Sen-chan and me drinking in Shibuya. We passed a movie theater where our film was playing and Yama-san suddenly stopped. “What do you say, shall we have a look?” he asked. We all went in and sat through the whole thing. When it came to the part we shot without one of the two leads, we watched the solitary actor look back over his shoulder and say, “Hey, what are you doing? Hurry up!” Yama-san turned to us and said, “What do you suppose the other fellow’s doing there—gone off to take a crap?” Sen-chan and I both stood up in the dark movie theater, bowed our heads and said, “Our deepest apologies.” The other people in the audience turned around in surprise to stare at these two large men suddenly standing up and bowing.
That’s the kind of person Yama-san was. Even if he didn’t like the footage we brought him from second-unit shooting, he always included it. Then when the film was finished and released in the theaters, he’d take us to see it. He would point out what we had done and say, “Wouldn’t it have been better to do that this way?” and patiently explain why. His attitude was that in order to train his assistant directors it was worth sacrificing his own pictures. At least, that seems to me the only possible interpretation.
Yet the same Yama-san who educated us in this exceptional manner made the following claim in a magazine once: “All I ever taught Kurosawa was how to drink.” How is it possible to express one’s gratitude to someone so selfless? I learned so much about movies and the work of being a movie director from Yama-san that I couldn’t begin to describe it all here. He was without question the best of teachers. The best proof of this lies in the fact that none of the work of his “disciples” (Yama-san hated this term) resembles his. He made sure to do nothing to restrict his assistant directors, but rather encouraged their individual qualities to grow. He managed to do this without any of the stiffness associated with the image of “teacher.”
But even this marvelous Yama-san had his scary moments. I remember once we were on an open set for an Edo-period film. I’ve forgotten what they were, but some characters were written on a signboard outside a merchant household. One of the actors asked me what was on the signboard. I couldn’t read what it said either, and didn’t know what kind of goods it meant they were selling, so I just guessed and told him it was probably medicine. Suddenly