Summer at the Keys

"They say that it was so hot in the city today, grown men were walking up to cops on street corners begging them to shoot them." - Ricky Roma, Glengarry Glen Ross

Like a dog under the blazing sun with its belly on the asphalt and its tongue lolling out of its mouth, the blog has pretty much ground to a halt. Tokyo is sweaty, I don't have a lot to say, and I'm being more selfish with my time these days.

For the next year or so I'm concentrating on screenwriting. While I've written some short pieces in recent years I haven't focused on features since the mid-noughties, though there have been plenty of J-E script translations. For my daiichidan (opening shot), I've written a dark thriller based on a treatment I banged out two or three years ago. I'm in the middle of deciding which ending to go with. Hope to have some good news regarding this project by the time the heat subsides.

In the effort to focus I'm limiting my other writing to Screen International and not much else. However, I was kindly asked by director Sabu to translate his 12-episode action-dramedy TV series Trouble Man (『トラブルマン』) earlier this year (see my April 26 entry). It's a fun show that Sabu wrote and directed as if it were a movie (he's not interested in TV, even labeling it "A Sabu Film" in the promos). The series' broadcast run on TV Tokyo just ended and there's a DVD box set coming out this August, but it's unsubbed of course. I'm also working on getting Trouble Man shown in the US. More on that later this year.

One additional small job I took on was subtitling a short film. Despite the mountains of film-related translation I've done since 2002 I realized I'd never translated a short, aside from some silent films back in 2005. The film, entitled Dark on Dark, is directed by well-known comedian, actor, radio personality and author Ôtake Makoto (大竹まこと). It's part of a larger feature omnibus called City Boys Film Noir ( 『シティボーイズのFilm noir』) starring the members of Ôtake's famed City Boys comedy troupe, established in 1979. Ôtake makes his directing debut while one of the other shorts was helmed by hot young director Okita Shûichi of The Chef of South Polar (Nankyoku Ryôrinin,『南極料理人』). The shorts became a hit as part the City Boys live performance in May and will screen as a late-show feature at Theatre Shinjuku from this Saturday (July 24) to August 6.