So Kayo
won two free tickets to go to the "super premiere" of Pearl
Harbor ("Love in Tokyo Dome")!
Arrived
at 4pm, waited in line in the rain til 4:30. Entered the dome at 5.
Was supposed to check my camera, but didn't want really want to (it's
just another line to wait in before and after the show). So I showed
the guards my fanny pack, they rummaged through it, didn't see my
camera (it was wrapped in a purple handkerchief -- i haven't found
a case for it yet!) and let me pass. I think probably they half-suspected
the thing was a camera, but the hassle of explaining their no-camera
policy to a gaijin overwhelmed their sense of duty.
So we
get in, get a bag of Pearl Harbor advertisements that's supposed
to take the place of an actual program/memorbilium, and take our seats
-- awesome ones on the arena floor. But the chairs were terribly uncomfortable
(tiny and hard) and were packed so close together even the Japanese
high school girls there were having trouble with elbowing their neighbors
accidentally. So this ruined the evening for me!
Plus
all I had to read for the long-ass wait was a crappy crappy CRAPPY
Ed McBain novel, Death of a Nurse ("Join the Navy... And
Die!"), which is so porrly written compared to the book I just
finished reading, John LeCarre's The Honourable Schoolboy,
that I decided to buy the entire John LeCarre library, even though
I've already read every book he's done, and most twice. (Ed McBain's
87th Precinct stuff ain't so bad, but Nurse was one of his
earliest works, and my god, you can't believe the clunkiness.)
Around
6:30, most everyone's seated (the Tokyo Dome is now 1/3 full, with
everyone in the stands in the sections behind home plate -- although
they had a giant green tarp down, so it's not like we're standing
in dirt!) Then for 15 minutes they introduce the guests; a few noteworthy
older actors, and a slew of people no one recognized, like new singing
acts and actresses. You could tell the place was mostly girls because
any attractive female celebrity got only token applause, whereas the
goofy old male actors and comedians got giant cheers. And there's
this one fake-blond gaijin newscaster (who speaks Japanese) that came
out that i recognized, but to my horror everyone only laughed when
they saw... it was terrible! I'm not sure if he could tell though.
So after
that, they finally bring out Jerry Brickheimer (the producer), Michael
Bay (the director, who I thought was pretty cool) and Ben Stiller...
no, Ben Affleck, right. They said a few words, got some cheers (Ben
got the most, but not nearly a much as I had expected) a translator
translated for them, they spent a very awkward couple minutes posing
for photographers (just in front of 10,000 people waiting for them
to finish.. it was weird) then they took their seats and I realized
that I wouldn't be able to leave after the big battle scene (I'd seen
the movie before, and the chair was SO uncomfortable you can't believe)...
but if I left, the producer, director, and star would SEE me leave,
and I'd have to make a big commotion stumbling over everyone, so squeezed
in were we. That seemed very bad form-like, so I was stuck there for
the whole flick.
There
weren't many differnces, either. They kept all the "It's the
Japs! Kill the Japs!" lines, (I wanted to look over at Ben Affleck
during those lines, to see if he had his face buried in his hands
or anything, but didn't want to draw attention to myself) but the
translation said "Japanese Army", Kayo says. I still cringed
each time they yelled the slur. The Japanese actors' voices were overdubbed,
and most of the scenes with japanese actors elicited giggles from
the college guys on my left.
They
also kept the shots of Japanese Zeroes strafing the fleeing nurses
at Pearl harbor's hospital, which I was surprised by, and the shots
of the planes shooting the unarmed sailors just floating in the water
were, if anything, more numerous than in the American release!
The
only thing actually CUT from the film, that Kayo or I noticed, was
from the bombing-Tokyo section: the shots of Tokyoites looking up
at the bombers were removed. Specifically, I remembered the kimono-girls
that look up -- they were absent. No shots of Japanese citizens during
the bombing.
By 10:30,
the movie was done and everyone applauded and stumbled out of the
stadium. Afterwards, we grabbed some grub at a 24-hour noodle shop,
and I ended up stopping by Seven Eleven ("Sebun! Elebun! Iki-bun!"
goes the commercial jingle) for chocolate crunch ice cream bars. Yummy!
One
tidbit of advice: get your return trip train ticket BEFORE the show
lets out! Otherwise you face a big line afterwards, when everyone
else is buying their tickets!
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