An Interview with Jerry Beck
news
fellow over the last few weeks as it seems several people on the new interviewed
him, myself included. I have written up a transcript of the interview which
shall be printed in the UT Anime Club newsletter and elsewhere, and which I
now post here for the net's benefit. I received Mr. Beck's explicit
permission to post this. So, below you see an exact copy of the article as it
will appear in our newsletter.
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Over the last several months here in Austin and elsewhere around the
country we have been seeing an amazing phenomenon. Japanese animation,
which for so long has been a hobby enjoyed by a handful of fans watching
multigeneration videotapes in people's basements, has begun appearing in
actual movie theaters. What's more, these have been well translated,
uncut prints of the original films, rather than the bowdlerized and
kiddified versions we have seen before. We are fortunate here in Austin
that the Dobie theater has played two such films, Hayao Miyazaki's Laputa,
and recently, Twilight of the Cockroaches. A new distribution company,
Streamline Pictures, has been wholly responsible for this wonderful
phenomenon. I spoke with one of the owners of that company, Jerry Beck,
in order to find out about how this venture got started and what we can
hope to see in the future.
From: am...@walt.cc.utexas.edu (Walter M. Amos)
Reply-To: am...@walt.cc.utexas.edu (Walter M. Amos)
Path: walt.cc.utexas.edu!amos
On a prefatory note, I should point out that Mr. Beck responded most
enthusiastically to my questions, so much so that he managed to answer
almost everything I had wanted to ask in one lengthy, rambling discussion.
I have attempted to break this up into a shorter question and answer
format and have tried to re-order some parts to facilitate a more flowing
and sequential article. Only those reading this will be able to determine
whether I've succeeded. If not, mea culpa.
Q: In the past we have generally seen that most Hollywood people who
would have the ability to distribute Japanese animated features in this
country generally haven't been interested. How is it then that a company
such as Streamline Pictures got started?
A: Well, for the most part Hollywood people are not interested in
animation, and that's why Streamline Pictures got started. Basically
Streamline Pictures is Jerry Beck and Carl Macek. Carl, as you probably
know, has been involved with Japanese animation for many years. He's
best known of course as writer and producer of Robotech and other
productions at Harmony Gold.I am an animation historian, and you may not
know me outside of Streamline. I come from New York. I've been
associated with Leonard Maltin; I was his research assistant on Of Mice &
Magic: A History of American Animated Cartoons; I did a book called Looney
Tunes and Merrie Melodies: A complete Guide to the Warner Brothers
Cartoons; I've been writing mostly on American animation for 15 years.
That's what I've been doing as a hobby, while professionally I've been
working in the motion picture business in Distribution for MGM/UA, Orion
Pictures, Cannon Films. I came out here [to Los Angeles] to work for
Expanded Entertainment, which is part of Landmark Theaters, who
distribute the Tournees of Animation, Festivals of Animation, Festivals of
Claymation; those are films Expanded Entertainment put together. I came
out here because of my love of animation and my work in distribution, and
also because of wanting to move to L.A. from New York. Basically I wanted
to get more involved with animation for a living.
Q: One would guess that to devote so much of one's energy to the
distribution of Japanese animated films in a high quality dubbed form for
the first time, you must be a devotee of the genre yourself. How did you
become involved in anime?
A: I'd been a Japanese animation fan since I was a kid,and I sort of
rediscovered it in the 70's with the film programs for Creation
Conventions in New York. We borrowed some animation in the 70's from
Toho and local NY offices of some of the other animation companies and it
got a great reaction. There seemed to be a cult following for Astroboy and
Speed Racer and Kimba and I was part of that. I enjoyed these when I was
a kid and I realized that these weren't bad. I liked the way they were
drawn, really good looking, very cartoony.
Meanwhile the C/FO [Cartoon / Fantasy Organization] in LA started up.
I've always been involved with Japanese animation and been aware that
there was quality work and that there were people interested in seeing it.
This was back in '79 -'80 when I got actively involved in it. I started the
C/FO New York; actually someone else started it and ran it for two
meetings and then I ran it for a year and a half after that. This was
somewhat before the video revolution so I was showing 16mm film rather
than video as C/FO LA had been doing. I was renting old Japanese animated
film features like Jack and the Witch and things like Panda and the Magic
Serpent, and all kinds of weird stuff, and some 16 mm prints of Astroboy
and Marine Boy episodes, as well as some American animation.One meeting
we were going to show Jack and the Beanstalk, a mid-70's release by
Columbia Pictures, a Japanese film dubbed in. I got a call on the phone and
the woman said, "Hi Jerry, this is Astroboy!" and it turned out to be Billie
Lou Watt, who was the voice of Astroboy. It turns out that she and her
crew, who had also worked on Astroboy, were the voices in Jack and the
Beanstalk, and they had never gotten to see the finished film. They had
heard we were screening it somehow and they all came down to see it.
That had to be the most amazing day of my life, being there with all the
voices from Astroboy and Kimba.
Anyway, I've always been into it. I've tried to introduce Japanese
animation to the companies I've worked for but usually to no avail.
Earlier, when Phoenix 2772 came to New York, I had written some articles
about Osamu Tezuka in some fanzines and somehow he had heard about
them. So, when he came to New York, he got in contact with me and I was
invited to see Phoenix 2772 at a screening at the Japan society. He had
brought the print with him direct from the lab; it hadn't even opened in
Japan yet. I spoke to him through a translator; it was great. I managed
to get a videotape of it and I took it to my boss at UA at the time and said
"Look at this, this is spectacular!" But they were unimpressed. They sat
through the first reel of it and said "This is a children's cartoon. We can't
distribute this; why are you showing us this?" The time was just not
right then, and that's been the attitude since. It too much looks like
Inspector Gadget or G.I. Joe, and they're unable to see beyond a still picture
of little kids with big eyes. So it's been a real uphill battle. In the early
80's then I thought the way to go would basically what we're doing now,
distributing the films to art theaters, because I think they're right, the
mass perception of animation in this country is that it's a kid's medium,
only G-rated stuff, and we had to change that thinking. This has to be done
all over the country and it's not something that's going to change
overnight.
Q: Why did you develop your idea to release these films to small "art"
theaters?
A: I thought if we went to art theaters directly a more appreciative
audience would come and we'd build up a sort of cult following. My bosses
there [at UA] didn't care, so ultimately I worked for Expanded
Entertainment. Here was a company that was going to distribute animated
short films to theaters around the country as a festival. That's a concept
that existed only sporadically before Expanded Entertainment. In New York
you could got to to the Museum of Modern Art and see the award winning
shorts that were produced that year. In L.A. you could go the county
museum and do that, but no one was going around to art theaters which is
what I thought should be done with Japanese animation. I wanted people
to appreciate animation as an adult artform, so I signed on with them.
Then once it was established that we could play these festivals of
animation at art theaters, why not do the same thing with Japanese
animation? Well, unfortunately the powers that be at Expanded
Entertainment barely understood the concept that they were working with,
which was short films. That they understood. But going one step beyond
that, taking Japanese animated features that were aimed toward adults
and doing the same thing ; that was beyond their comprehension. Again,
they would look at one reel and say "No, Saturday morning cartoons, they
are not the same as these fine art films."
Well, Expanded Entertainment also puts on a local animation festival in
LA, one week of short films from around the world in competition. I was
involved with two of these. In the first one they did the prizewinning film
in the feature category was Nausicaa, which [in its translated form] was
Warriors of the Wind. But that failed to light any sparks. That was before
I came out here, that was in '85. In '87 we did the second festival, now
that I was aboard, I looked around for other animated features we could
show. I went to the fans and some friends who were more into Japanese
animation than I was and I asked what was out there and what could we
get? One film was Laputa, the other was Robotech the Movie [Macross].
We showed Robotech the Movie on opening night in this large theater. I had
a gut feeling that we would sell that one out. So on opening night we had
Brave Little Toaster followed by a party for the animation community in
LA. Opposite the party at 9:30 inside the theater was Robotech. Well what
happened was that while everyone in the world went to see Brave Little
Toaster and then went to the party, all the Japanese animation fans went
to Robotech and they filled that theater while the party was going on. But
none of the people who could actually do anything about distributing
Japanese animation could see the giant crowd in there. I went back in to
see what the story was, and there was a huge crowd there. Although the
movie itself isn't that great, there was a huge amount of enthusiasm. Carl
Macek was also there in the back of the auditorium. I said to him, "See?
That looks great on the big screen. I know there is an audience out there
for these films. I've been trying to do this all my life and this is exactly
the scene I expected to see. I know that if I could get this film to play in
these art theaters, there would be a great response."
Well as it turned out I couldn't get that film, but the other film that
played at that festival was Laputa. The producers had already gone to the
trouble of dubbing it into English, and were also trying to sell it here. To
backtrack; the two anime features Robotech and Laputa sold out their
tickets in advance. There had been advance ticket sales to all the
programming at the festival. Only 3 things sold out completely in advance
of the festival. These were the computer animation show, and Robotech
and Laputa. I used that when I was still at Expanded; I said "Look, here is
this huge potential audience for these films, they both sold out in advance.
Doesn't that mean anything to you?" Well, no, it didn't. It meant
something to me. Was everybody else blind? So I said that no one else
seems to care about this, so I'll pursue it on my own. I was involved with
the organization of subsequent festivals, so at the following festival, the
one last year, we had Robot Carnival and the subtitled Castle Cagliostro,
the 35mm print. Only 35mm prints are shown at these festivals. These
also did very well.
Movie studios represent the average person and what they think the
average person thinks. Of course you have your New Worlds out there who
think there might be something in it so they dub these movies into kiddie
films. Tokuma was very disappointed with Warriors of the Wind, how it
was presented and sold. Miyazaki was the major creator and his work was
just ruined. We want to dub the films faithfully, essentially just to
present American versions of the same film. Hopefully we can start the
ball rolling. I mean, just having Akira out in movie theaters, we will have
people going to their video shops saying, "Have you got this thing Akira?"
And the video shop guy will say he never heard of it, and then they'll call
their distributors asking for Akira, and then the distributors will go to the
movie companies and ask "Are you putting this thing Akira out?" and
eventually the movie companies will get the idea to buy the rights to Akira
and put it out on tape. We just want to start the ball rolling.
Q: How did you go about getting the films you've presented?
A: We spent about a year talking to different Japanese animation
producers based here in LA, Carl and I, that we were a new film distributor
that wanted to distribute Japanese animation, but we didn't have any
films. We lucked out in that the patience of the Japanese producers for
selling their films in this country has just about worn out. For years they
have been trying to sell total rights to their films for a million dollars,
but no one wanted to pay big money for them. The Hollywood companies
don't know how to market these films, they don't know that there's an
audience for these films. The perception, and there's the key word,
"perception", of animation in this country is that it's just for kids; talking
dogs, singing dinosaurs, Disney and Bluth films. That's all they think of it
as. If you have a film where people are getting killed and shot up and
getting bloody or they're tackling social issues, there's serious love
affairs going on or whatever, it's not comprehensible to the American
public.
Q: What about the financial side? In Austin and Philadelphia I've seen
only positive reviews of the films that have played so far, Laputa and
Twilight of the Cockroaches. Has the audience response and box office
been encouraging enough to look like it's leading somewhere and do further
work?
A: Well, we just opened Akira in Washington and it got a rave review.
Two in fact. While the grosses aren't giant compared to the big box office
releases, we aren't doing much advertising really. We're only playing in
small calendar theaters like the Dobie in Austin. Advertising has been
kept to a minimum. Now in some cities like with Akira we'll be doing a lot
of advertising. We want to keep the film playing as long as possible.
Austin is a fluke that we've been playing there this long with Twilight of
the Cockroaches. Now Akira has only been playing in Washington for a
week, although admittedly it's a great week, the Christmas vacation week,
the grosses are already double what we got for Laputa and Twilight. Akira
has more of a name value and recognition than those others.
Laputa and Twilight have had problems, I feel, in their presentation.
While Laputa is different from American films and is certainly of high
quality, it fits the perception that American viewers have. There's nothing
wrong with it, but it follows the formula and all ages can watch it and and
enjoy it. Twilight is a less accessible film, more of an art film. It's a
less commercial film. Twilight can be pigeonholed as an art film, Laputa
fits in with the general perception of animation. Now Akira, here's the
true experiment. Although it has high visibility due to the comic book and
more people know about it, it is an R-rated cartoon. It's also state of the
art animation. Laputa, while having some beautiful animation, doesn't
have the full animation that Akira has. The artwork is different. In Akira,
the characters look Japanese. The big eyed look of most anime characters
is a negative to most American audiences. So I think Akira has a lot of
things going for it and I think it's going to be great film for us.
We're not making a lot of money on this right now. We're doing more
things than just distribution right now. We're also writing for magazines,
Carl is producing stuff. The film distribution right now is just barely
paying for itself. It's an investment, we hope to get the ball rolling and to
get cut in for more of it later on. Akira will answer many of these
questions. Essentially right now we're providing a service for fans and
anime producers. I get a thrill out of going to the theaters and seeing
these films with a big crowd, that's my reward. I'm glad I had something
to do with getting it here, because it wouldn't happen otherwise.
That's the situation, we're out here sort of alone on a life raft. A
Hollywood reporter just called, so we are getting some attention from the
media but it's along haul. Maybe 1990 will be a big year. I personally
think Japanese animation will become a fad sometime in the nineties, it
will start and stop, but I think it will catch on and die out but then the
fandom will be larger. There's so many good things in it that I don't see
how this can fail to make some sort of an impact.
Q: You touched briefly on the question of video distribution of your
films earlier. I gather that the video rights must be purchased separately
from the film rights, and no large distributor is yet convinced of the value
of these films. Could you elaborate?
A: We are at the moment only doing theatrical distribution. We are
engaged in some things outside of that, but we can't compete with the big
boys for the video market, which today is an even bigger market than the
theater. We are involved in other projects, and other things are happening.
There is one fellow who wants to do video comics distributed in comic
book shops. And he wants those to be just Japanese animation. That I
think will happen, and even if it's just one issue that will make an impact.
We [Streamline] are putting together an American version of the Akira
production video, essentially a behind-the-scenes look at the making of
Akira. We intend to market this directly on video, and sell it directly in
comic book stores. Right now we have only theatrical film rights and not
the video rights [to most films]. No one has the video rights to these
things. Basically the other companies are waiting to see how we're doing.
Q: What films can we look forward to seeing in the future other than
Akira and Lensman?
A: We are trying to get films that will grab people and are different.
Akira and Lensman both have that quality. We can't do certain pictures
that are made for video [OVAs - Original Video Animation] because they
won't look good on a theater screen. We feel the films we do have to have
a certain quality to them or else they won't get good reviews; we can't
just do the big fan favorites. If we're lucky we'll hit a film like Akira that
is both a fan favorite and a high quality film.
Beyond these, the only 2 films we've dubbed ourselves are the 2 post
Laputa Miyazaki films, My Neighbor Totoro and Kiki's Delivery Service.
These are on the shelf waiting to have something done with them. What's
going to be done with them, I don't know. It's really not up to us but to the
companies that own them. We're very proud of our Totoro. We had a test
screening of it and the response was spectacular. We were very careful
for precise dialog translation and good voice acting. Even under the
careful scrutiny of the Japanimation fans who saw it it was quite popular.
They felt that there may never again be an anime film dubbed as well as
our Totoro.
We are negotiating for two made-for-video films now called Manie
Manie and Take the X Train. These are two very offbeat 45 minute films
that we feel could work if properly dubbed and properly marketed, because
both are very RartyS but are still beautiful and unusual films.
Q: On what basis do you select the films you distribute here? Are they
the biggest award winning films in Japan, or the most popular, or
something else?
A: The idea is that the first few films we have, especially the first
three, are like points of a triangle, all different from each other. Laputa,
Twilight, and Akira are all as different from one another as can be. We
want to give the impression that if you've seen one Japanimation film you
haven't seen them all. If I came out with Akira, Lensman and a lot more
hardware pictures people might get that impression. We want to give the
impression that it's a really mixed bag. We want to keep that approach,
and that's why we're interested in the offbeat things like X Train and
Totoro and so on. There are a few other films I'd love to get our hands on
but we've had some difficulties in getting, like Robot Carnival, Golgo 13,
and Demon City. We want to go to all extremes, from horror animation to
G-rated type. We're also keeping our eyes open for what's being done now,
but production activity in Japan isn't quite as exciting as it was a few
years ago. More things are released on video now, so only the rare special
features go to the theaters. But of course that also means that those
things that play in theaters are of especially excellent quality. The ones
in theaters get the most effort , then OVAs, then TV shows are the third
rung. Right now we have Akira, then Lensman in the late spring-summer.
Then maybe Totoro. We are looking at getting other kinds of films, perhaps
live action things in the future, animation from other countries. There's a
great studio in Hungary. I don't want to stay "one note", but you never
know, the whole venture could fall apart.
Q: How large is Streamline?
A: Just myself and Carl. The first 6 months we were working out of
our apartments. Now we're just basically one or two offices.We also have
the small studio we used for the dubbing of Totoro.
The overhead of paying rent and phone bills eats up the profits from
these films. It's very difficult to make money from films. We have to
split the proceeds with the theater owners, also the producers of the film.
It has to be a really big success for us to make some money on it, so we're
hoping with Akira we may finally see that.
Q: I've noticed a positive trend recently between what you're doing and
the increasing number of fans doing subtitling on their own. I suspect the
latter comes because people like myself, who are interested in anime and
have graduated college are now in a position where they are earning enough
money to be able to buy hardware and have gained the technical expertise
necessary to run the computers and equipment to do it.
A: Years ago it wasn't the same. A videotape player was a new item
ten years ago. I had one in '76 or '77. That was when they cost $1000 or
more. Now it is more accessible and that has helped us. Of course we
want the fans to help us. Working together we can make anime accessible
and not this underground thing it is now. With Laputa and Akira we have
these English versions that aren't available on video; at least I hope
they're not at present. We want to give you something that you can't get on
video. We're trying to make it so none of these films can be bootlegged, at
least not our versions for the time being. We would prefer if they didn't
get around so much because we'd like to encourage fans, and also to have
them encourage people who aren't fans, to actually come to the theater to
see these movies the way they're supposed to be seen. Sometimes video
can be a deterrent; if people know it's coming on video or they have it
they may not bother to see the film in theater. Basically if these films
aren't successful in theaters you can forget it, then no one will ever take a
chance on them [for video or otherwise].
Q: You can rest assured that those in anime fandom are well aware of
that. The members of the U.T. Anime Club were exhorted to see Laputa and
Twilight as many times as possible in support of this venture.
A: Great.I Basically I'm just a fan like everybody else, I've just been in
this game for a while and I'm applying what I know to what I like, to try
and make something happen. If it wasn't me probably somebody would have
done it, but as it is I think we're really the first. These are good films but
the movie business people don't seem to see it, so "we'll do it" is our
attitude. We'll take these movies and get them out there.