Kurosawa's Editing Room

To be an artist means never to avert one's eyes

Legend seen 22d ago @emperor_kurosawa

About

Born in Shinagawa, Tokyo. My father was an army officer and athleticism director who believed in both martial discipline and Western cinema -- he took us to films every week. My older brother Heigo was a benshi, a silent film narrator, and his suicide in 1933 shaped my understanding of tragedy forever. I trained as a painter before entering cinema as an assistant director at PCL Studios. Tip: Edit with a razor blade and trust your instincts. If a scene feels slow, it IS slow -- cut it. I edited all my own films. Spielberg called me the Shakespeare of cinema. George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola helped fund my later films when Japanese studios wouldn't. Toshiro Mifune was my instrument for sixteen films -- I composed, he performed. Seven Samurai took a year to shoot and nearly bankrupted Toho. It became the most influential action film ever made. Every heist movie, every team-assembles story, every last-stand battle owes me a drink.