"Meeting Hollywood halfway" (The Last Samurai)

> From Japan Times:
>
>
> Meeting Hollywood halfway
>
> By MARK SCHILLING
>
> Hollywood and history have never gotten along very well. Hollywood
> makes entertainment and history has a tendency to be boringly
> complex, so accuracy and authenticity often gets lost on the way to
> the multiplex.
> Some Hollywood filmmakers, however, are trying harder to get it
> right. One is Edward Zwick -- the director of "Glory," "Legends of
> the Fall" and, as I learned by e-mail from Zwick himself in June
> 2002, "The Last Samurai." Zwick said he needed people in Japan --
> including me -- to help him with the Japanese dialogue and the
> historical details. In short, to get as much as right as possible
> without sacrificing the drama.
> He admitted to heavily fictionalizing the real-life rebellion, led

> Saigo Takamori, that inspired the film. "I know full well that [the
> rebels] took up modern arms to overthrow the Tokugawa Shogunate,

> that I've fudged the dates of conscription and the edicts," he
> wrote. "What I need is for you to highlight those descriptions,
> interactions, issues that will evoke giggles, if not outrage, from
> the Japanese audience."
> This, he added was not just a commercial consideration, but "a
> personal and artistic one." "I honestly believe," he

> this is, perhaps, the greatest hubris of all) that I can present
> rounded, complex, heroic Japanese characters to an international
> audience; that 16-year-olds everywhere might just come away with an
> awakened sense that our history and that of Japan were intertwined
> long before Pearl Harbor; that words like honor and duty have
> resonance throughout history; and that the birth of the modern and
> such wrenching transitional moments have resonance and application

> our present circumstance."
> How could I not sign on? My first job was to send Zwick notes on

> script. I picked a few nits, found a few howlers. One of the
> characters, a young samurai, was called Yoritomo, the name of a
> famous 12th-century warrior and statesman. It was, I wrote Zwick,
> like calling a character in a 19th-century British period

> Sheriff of Nottingham."
> Zwick ditched the name. He also accepted several other of my
> suggestions, such as changing the martial art the samurai practice
> from karate -- which was then known only in Okinawa -- to jujitsu.
> Several others, however, he passed over in silence. In one scene,

> rebel leader flings his sword end-over-end at an enemy. Couldn't
> happen, I said -- samurai weren't knife throwers. But Zwick liked

> image -- and it stayed in.
> More importantly, I found him a Japanese scriptwriter who could
> rewrite the Japanese-language script -- a direct translation from

> English that Zwick admitted was "horrible." Yo Takeyama is a period-
> drama veteran whose credits included the hit NHK drama "Hideyoshi"
> and the Kon Ichikawa film "Ka-chan." Meeting several times during

> summer at a Tokyo ryokan, we went over the script line by line. I

> to make sure Takeyama's rewrites were reflected accurately in the
> English script. In several scenes, he not only corrected the
> Japanese, but added new dialogue, all of which had to be

> We also met with Zwick once in Tokyo. Late for our appointment in

> lobby of the Imperial Hotel, I spotted a short, bearded, dark-

> man eyeing me through the crowd, rushed over to him and starting
> apologizing in Japanese.
> It was Zwick. In my panic I had taken him for a vaguely Japanese-
> looking assistant -- but he loved being mistaken for one of the
> natives. He also hit it off with Takeyama, a tall, lanky former

> who is an engaging raconteur and had the answers to his questions
> about Meiji court etiquette.
> Early in September, Takeyama and I sent off our final batch of
> corrections. That October, we went to see the final day of shooting
> in Japan, which took place at a temple in Kyoto. When I got to the
> set, at around 7 in the morning, Zwick was preparing a simple

> Tom Cruise walking up the temple steps with two foreign

> Beaming, he introduced me to his star, who was being frantically
> fussed over by three women -- one in charge of his Army officer
> costume, the other his makeup, the other his hair.
> I had the odd feeling of stepping out of sleepy, early morning

> and into a hyper-charged Hollywood moment. I noticed that Cruise

> tiny crow's feet around his eyes, wore a retainer on his teeth and
> was looking straight at me with that trademark burning gaze. No
> surprise there; I had never expected Cruise to be laid back. I was
> even ready for the retainer, having read about it on an Internet
> gossip column.
> What shocked me, first, however, was his height -- I had thought it
> was about the same as mine. I later realized that his boots had

> him stood several centimeters taller.
> Second, he really wanted to talk, asking me where I was from, how
> long I had been in Japan, and how I liked Tokyo. He was trying to

> me at ease, but a normal conversation with Tom Cruise was my idea

> the bizarre. Also, I had my own questions -- but it wasn't the time
> or place to ask about Nicole.
> That brief encounter, and a check, were two of my big rewards for
> being what Warner Brothers called a "Japanese script liaison." I

> got several later revisions of our own revisions, considerately
> forwarded to me by Zwick's company, Samurai Pictures.
> At least one of my ideas made it into the final version, as I
> recently saw at screening for the press: Samurai practicing jujitsu
> in the tall grass. In Hollywood, scriptwriters commonly get

> out of existence -- I felt lucky to have, in some small way,
> survived.
> But will they spell my name right in the credits?