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SY: I have -- before we go to that, though, I have Fools Dance?

RN: Oh, yeah, I did a few films in between, yeah.

SY: And that was while you were teaching?

RN: Yeah.

SY: And these were independently, you independently --

RN: Yeah. The Fools Dance was done for a PBS series called Matters of Life and Death, and there was this story idea and script that Karen wrote and we submitted it and we got funded. This was after Hito Hata, right?

SY: '83.

RN: Yeah, yeah. And so it had Esther Rolle and Mako, and a really wonderful Latino actor, I can't remember his name. It had, I had quite an experienced cast, which was kind of intimidating for me to direct.

SY: And it was narrative?

RN: It's narrative, yeah. It's a story of... in Buddhist history, there are people called Myokonin, and they're naturally enlightened. They didn't have to study or meditate, they were just people who are enlightened. And there was a famous woodworker named Saichi who would write these Buddhist poems on wood shavings. So Karen thought, what would it be if we transported him to U.S. culture and put him in a retirement home? Because the Buddhist idea of life and death is very different from the Western view. So what impact would his life and teaching have on people, senior citizens in a retirement home? So that's the premise, and he's this kind of magical guy that comes in, very flamboyant. So it's Matters of Life and Death, so it's how this one character, not teaches, but presents a different point of view on death and dying to people who are kind of near...

SY: And this was kind of your first film that was really non-Asian specific.

RN: Yeah, yeah, except Mako was Saichi, so he's the main character. But we made it very multiethnic, like Esther Rolle's African American, and I forgot the... it's a very good actor who's Latino. So we made it kind of a multiethnic...

SY: And Karen actually wrote the script?

RN: Yeah, she wrote the script.

SY: And it aired on PBS?

RN: Yeah, as part of the Matters of Life and Death series.

SY: So you're still, you were still very interested in making films even though...

RN: Oh, yeah, yeah.

SY: All the time you were still teaching. And then I have another film that you did called Conversations: Before/After the War.

RN: Oh, yeah. That was more experimental. I wanted, it's so frustrating to do all these interviews on camp experience, and one persons says this, that's great, another person says, oh, this is terrific, and you wish you could just have it all said by... well, in this case, three people. So it's actually -- not scripted, it's... what do you call it? What is the word? It's not scripted, it's improv. Like the one woman is, I use my mother. Well, we used her real name. And so her experience is, we do her, it's all camp experience, and she does her, from her own viewpoint. So I gave her guidelines, but we had her...

SY: Your mother actually...

RN: ...kind of acting. 'Cause I put in, "Well, this part is not part of your life, but can you talk about this?" And so it's improvisational. So she was really good. And then Grace... anyway, she's the -- yeah, so my mom was the Nisei generation and the other, she was the Nisei, and then Warren Furutani was an Issei. He took on his father, all the things that he heard his father talk about camp and after camp. So Warren kind of improved using his father's life. So this way we're able to make statements we've always wanted to gather, but we did it not quite scripted, remembering lines or anything like that. So we kind of saturated them with, "This is what we want, just talk about it." It would have been much easier on videotape, 'cause we were shooting film there, so it began to cost after a while.

SY: I'm surprised that your mother agreed to do something like this. She had no hesitation?

RN: Yeah, she's fine.

SY: And by this time, was your father still alive?

RN: Yeah, yeah. But I had already used him in my thesis film.

SY: Lucky you have parents who liked to act. And it was, this film really sounds fascinating in the sense that it's really true stories told through people who actually --

RN: Yeah, kind of true stories but with... kind of guided. And then certain parts, totally someone else's experience that we wanted to weave in.

SY: And I'm just curious of what your mother said. What were the kinds of things that she...

RN: Well, they were real recollections of taking care of me and having a brother, my brother being born in camp. And she remembered things that I didn't remember at all, walking along the barbed wire, and early on, I loved strawberry shortcake, and I'd asked her, "Can we have some?" and she had to explain. So she recalled all that stuff.

SY: So you had an opportunity really to talk to her about her experiences.

RN: So, yeah, the outtakes, I mean, I have a lot of stuff.

SY: And was that something that you did for the first time or had you heard... I mean, had you talked to her about her camp experience?

RN: No, not that much, you know. And I realize I should have done that early on, I could have got her to talk about camp a lot --

SY: She was how old at this time? In her eighties? It was 1985.

RN: She's ninety-six now.

SY: And 1985, so it was twenty-five years ago. So still seventy-five.

RN: Seventy-five, yeah.

SY: That's fairly young, so she probably had a fairly good memory.

RN: Yeah, yeah, she did. Anyway, it was kind of experimental, out of frustration in not having a whole lot of money either to do that. And I left the talking heads, and then only did b-roll only during the breaks, 'cause that's why it's Conversations: Before/After the War.

SY: You...

RN: It's like a conversation as opposed to seeing a film with other visuals and everything.

SY: And where was that? Where did you show that? Was that something that you...

RN: It kind of did... PBS, not a national broadcast, but different PBS things picked it up, and film festivals and all of that.

<End Segment 29> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.