Beat Takeshi
Ever heard of a bloke called Takeshi Kitano?
He’s a very interesting Japanese bloke who nearly killed himself riding a moped into a central reservation at high speed. You might have seen him on challenge TV on a gameshow show called ‘Takeshi’s Castle’. He’s only ever on at the end riding a little space buggy and squirting water at people.
He used to do stand up comedy, and was well respected in Japan, then was cast in a gangster film called ‘Violent Cop’ and played a straight hard man who beat people up and was very nasty. Half way through the filming the director walked off the set and Takeshi directed the rest of the film himself, even though the audience found it hard to swallow him in a stright role. The film did very well. Takeshi made some more films, one of which won a ‘palm dorre’ award. He wrote books, presented tv shows and directed gangster films all at the same time.
Over here in the UK we have no comparison for ‘Beat’ Takeshi. Imagine if Ken Loach, Jefferey Archer and Terry Wogan were all one person, or something like that. We tend not to do multi-faceted talent.
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Actually yes we do, but our culture just isn’t very good at recognising it, or maybe just too many people prefer to use the pidgeonhole method of comprehending their fellow man because it requires less effort on their part.
The actor Peter Davison not only played doctor who, but also wrote the theme tune to button moon.
Actually that’s not a good example.
Did you know Osa Maki, the guy who playes ‘Hiro’ in the tv show ‘Heroes’ is both an actor and a digital animator who works for ILM (Industrial Light and Magic, The Stars Wars people). It’s true. Talented geezer.
“What’s you’re name and what do you do?”
I think there’s a point to this, but it’s possibly very egotisitcal. I did my one man show at the Leicester festival the other week, not much of an audience in, and a technical glitch with the sound at one point, but everyone left happy.
The show’s canny technical, uses animation and interactive slides as well as straight stand up, and still needs a lot of tightening up, but I’m pleased with how it’s looking. After the gig a guy came over and complemented the animated stuff, and asked who did it for me. I explained I did it all, and he was quite surprised. I was chuffed.