MovieChat Forums > Kagemusha (1980) Discussion > kurosawa's book to fund the film

kurosawa's book to fund the film

posted 16 years ago by whitedogandharriet
5 replies | jump to latest

Believe it or not, I visited Martin Scorses's apartment after this film came out. It was the early eighties and he had a copy of the book Kurosawa wrote and illustrated to fund his movie. The illustrations were done in grease crayon, colored pencil and water color and were fantabulous. Vigorous and immediate. Emotional, generous, never intimidating or overbearing, brilliantly colorful and rough and articulate. Agh so so great. He obviously was in love with his subject-story.

It was obviously successful.

It feels like we as Americans and people all over the world rely heavily on this myth, hoping against hope one of the installed presidents-leaders will throw off the devices of their handlers and do a real job. Despite the threats. In our country, JFK tried. Unfortunately they die a lot. It would be nice if we could find a way, somehow be ready to protect the next imposter with untold courage.

[–] sr_wolfrider 15 years ago

Is this book commercial available? It sounds most interesting.

[–] Joao_de_Deus 15 years ago

You visited Martin Scorcese's apartment?

[–] bsrain 14 years ago

cool story bro

[–] christomacin (4529) 6 years ago

Did Scorsese share any of his blow, I wonder?

[–] thilo-950-73752 12 years ago

The illustrated screenplay was published in Japan in 1979, the year before Kagemusha was released.
Kurasawa writes in his foreword that he started doing the illustrations when the negotiations about Kagemusha's funding weren't going well. As two of his earlier projects had failed to get produced, he wanted to put his images of Kagemusha in some form to be seen. After drawing 200 illustration and showing them to studio executives, the funding went through.
What's especially interesting is that the illustrations of Shingen do not look like Tatsuya Nakai (who eventually played Shingen), but like Shintaro Katsu, whom Kurosawa envisioned as Shingen during the writing of the screenplay (and who was later cast as Shingen, but fired on the first day of rehearsals).

The procedure of illustrating his images became a habit of Kurosawa's after this (although he had ocasionally done it before, but not as extensively), and illustrated screenplays of Ran, Dreams and Madadayo were published subsequently (Ran has also been published in the US).
All are out of print now, but you might be able to find a used copy of the Ran screenplay on amazon marketplace.

If you want to see what the books are like, I've created an album with a couple of photos from each book here:
http://photobucket.com/kurosawa_screenplays

Unfortunately, the pics are not in the correct order, but start with the last pic from Madadayo, so I would advise you to go to the end of the album and work backwards.

- "Your money's no good here, Mr. Torrance" -