One of my major haunts, besides Lincoln Center, my synagogue, and the internet cafe where I write this blog and watch certain television shows on YouTube is the magnificent Film Forum, which shows lots of classic, silent (often with live piano accompaniment!) foreign, documentary, and "arthouse films". Membership there is $75/year, allowing you to see films that normally cost $11 for $6, and that includes double and occasionally even triple features. One of the best bargains in the city. However, in light of my less-than-ideal-but steadily-improving finances, I let my membership lapse last year because the upfront fee was a bit much. I also tended not to walk past the Film Forum on my way home from work or check their website because I didn't necessarily want to be tempted with what I couldn't afford (I missed War and Peace last November).
Well, I did check their website today, and found out, to my horror, that they were in the middle of a 7-week retrospective of the great Japanese actor Tatsuya Nakadai (Ran - where he's one of the greatest King Lears ever, Samurai Rebellion, Harakiri, Kagemusha, and many, many, others), the Japanese Lawrence Olivier (1), and not only did I miss some of my favorite films with him, and films I've never seen and wanted to, but ...
I MISSED NOT ONE, BUT TWO CHANCES TO MEET NAKADAI HIMSELF!!!!
Not only did Nakadai appear after a screening of Harakiri (one of my favorite of his films!) on June 20 [okay, that was the night of the Roberto/Angela concert, and I wouldn't miss them even for Nakadai-san (-sama?)], but Film Forum actually had an "evening" (live interview) with him on June 24 (the night I went to the Philharmonic in the Park, but that I would have been willing to miss!), and I didn't know about it! I also seemed to have missed every newspaper article about this - the New York Times, and frankly quite a few other papers, must have had an article on the retrospective, they always do for things like this!
Okay, I didn't miss Ran (2), and they are showing all three parts/ten hours of The Human Condition, and there are one or two other things I want to see - now I'm going to renew my membership and make absolutely sure it stays up to date! But I never met Toshiro Mifune, I never met Takashi Shimura (they're both dead) - I had hoped to meet at least one of the triumvirate of Great Japanese Actors! And I certainly never met Akira Kurosawa! Nakadai is now 75 (and still acting, apparently). What the hell are the chances of him ever leaving Japan again?
GAAAAAAAAAH!
(Not quite "samurai" enough. Maybe I should find some "smiley" on the internet of a Japanese swordsman hacking away and put it here. That would be a better description of how I feel.)
I've decided to see Mongol tonight - it's a big, sweeping epic about the rise of Genghis Khan. But that's a poor substitute for meeting Nakadai!
(1) Although he looks like a Japanese Elvis!
(2) The only reason the film isn't in my permanent collection is that there is some debate about the quality of the DVD transfer.
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