Something Like an Autobiography - Akira Kurosawa [69]
More than a week of riceballs and radish pickles is unbearable. The crew began to complain, so I went to the company administrative offices and requested a little consideration. “At least wrap the riceballs in dried seaweed,” I begged. The production office agreed to my request, so I returned to the set and announced to the crew that the next day the box lunches would contain something different. The grumbling ceased.
However, the box lunches the next day consisted of riceballs and radish pickles. One of the enraged crew picked up his lunch and threw it at me. I very nearly flew into a rage myself at that, but I controlled myself, picked up the lunch I had been hit with and set out for the production office. We were shooting on an open set a good ten-minute walk from the studio buildings. As I walked, I kept saying to myself, “Don’t fly off the handle, you mustn’t fly off the handle.…” But the longer I walked, the shorter my fuse got, and by the time I reached the door of the production office I was just a few seconds from exploding. When I stood before the chief of the production office, it happened. In a flash the production chief got the box lunch right in the face and was covered with sticky grains of rice.
There was another incident when I was assistant director for Fushimizu Shu, who had been an assistant director for Yama-san before me. We had to shoot a starry night scene, and I had clambered up to the top of the set to string together the spangles representing the stars. But the threads kept getting tangled and twisted, and finally my patience was at an end. Fushimizu himself, watching from below in his position next to the camera, was also getting irritated. “Can’t you hurry it up a little?” he shouted.
That was it. As if I wasn’t annoyed enough already! I grabbed a silver-colored glass ball that was in the box of spangles and threw it at Fushimizu. “O.K., here’s a shooting star for you!” I yelled. Later he said to me, “You’re still a child. Just a short-tempered child.”
Fushimizu may have been right. Even though I have passed the age of seventy, I haven’t been able to cure my quick temper. Now I sometimes put on a fireworks display, but that’s all it is. I’m like a space satellite that flies around but doesn’t leave behind any radioactivity, so I consider that my short temper is of a rather good quality.
Another time we had to record the sound of someone being hit in the head. We tried socking all kinds of things, but the mixer didn’t find that anything was suitable. Finally I exploded and hit the microphone with my fist. The blue light signaling “O.K.” flashed on.
I have a distaste for argumentation, and I can’t stand people who spout all kinds of strung-together logic. One argumentative screenwriter used some syllogistic reasoning to prove to me that his script was right. I became annoyed and countered that, no matter how logically he defended it, what was dull was still dull, so forget it. We fought.
Once when I was in charge of the second-unit shooting we were terribly pressured. We had finished a particular take and I was dead on my feet, so I sat down to rest. The cameraman came to ask me where to set up for the next shot, and I pointed to a spot near where I was sitting. This cameraman, an argumentative follow, demanded an explanation of the theoretical basis for my decision to select that spot. I became annoyed (this seems to happen a lot, and it always gets me in trouble) and told him the theoretical basis for my selection of that particular camera position was that I was exhausted and didn’t want to move. This camerman loved to fight, so imagine my surprise when he had no reply to this reasoning.
Anyway, I used to get annoyed very easily. According to my assistant directors, when I get angry my face turns red, but the end of my nose is drained of pigmentation—an anger that would lend itself well to color film, they say. Since I have never gotten angry in front of a mirror, I don’t know if what they say is true or not. But for