Yesterday was Sunday, and I finished the first part of my voiceover for our documentary on Les Sewing Sisters in Japan tour. Les Sewing Sisters is a duo consisting of Lun*na Menoh and Saori Mitome. The band's theme is music made by the noise of the sewing machine and live vocals. Before COVID, Les Sewing Sisters played in twenty-one homes throughout Southern California, specifically in people’s closet spaces. We also did the same for Japan, playing throughout Tokyo, Osaka, Kyoto, and various countryside homes outside the large cities. The tour and shows were successful, but the only bummer was that I nearly had a nervous breakdown in Japan.
The documentary will be through my eyes and very much through my sensibility, so it will be Japan as I see it. Unfortunately, I was and still am dealing with anxiety issues, perhaps due to my Mom and Uncle’s passing in 2022. What I should have done was probably commit myself to a mental hospital and focus on the spots on the wall from my bed. Still, alas, I chose to travel and participate in my wife Lun*na’s project and confront my illness, both physical and mental, as it happens. Don’t worry; it is not a downer. I can turn misery into entertainment for everyone.
While writing the voiceover, my headspace was filled with films like Luis Bunuel’s Land Without Bread and Alain Renesis’ Last Year at Marienbad. Using those two films as the foundation led me to write my voiceover for the film. As I sat down at Director Jeff Mizushima’s home studio, I had this feeling of reliving the recent past, and I felt tinges of anxiety coming up. Still, I kept my feet on the ground and relaxed my body as much as possible. I read my script straight through, my voice didn’t crack, and I made only a few mistakes I could quickly correct. So, it was an excellent session. After Jeff edits the footage, I need to do more writing and do another voiceover, which will take a few months.
This is my third film project. My first script is about surf culture in the late 1950s/early 1960s, and then I co-wrote a screenplay based on my memoir TOSH with the filmmaker and writer Nick Ebeling. And now, this documentary. Writing for a visual medium such as cinema is very different from writing an essay or a work of fiction to be read. The vocabulary needs to be different, as does how the script is read for another medium. Throughout my life, I have been going to the movies and watching films at home. I read numerous books about the cinema and its surroundings. I imagined myself being a screenwriter working for a B-Movie studio, where I get a weekly paycheck and sit in an office on the movie back lot to turn out scripts. I wouldn’t even care if they become a film; it's just the physical pleasure of going to work every day and turning out a certain number of pages daily. Oddly enough, I never imagined myself being a successful screenwriter but just a working stiff among the others in the dream factory.
Photo of Tosh by Lun*na Menoh, May 19, 2024