"What I really want to do is direct." This phrase, heard everywhere in Hollywood from interviews with A-list stars to conversations between waiters at Hamburger Inn, has become a joke -- to everyone but the legions of gottabe directors themselves. Among this crowd, scriptwriters have traditionally been among the most successful in making their directing dream a reality, as the careers of Preston Sturges, Billy Wilder, John Huston, Oliver Stone, John Sayles and a multitude of others prove.

In Japan, it is harder to segue from writing scripts to directing them. Most Japanese film directors working today either served the traditional assistant director apprenticeship or started with their current job title, but using bottom-of-the-line cameras (yesterday Super 8, today digital camera). Newcomers from outside the industry tend to be either tarento (Takeshi Kitano) or directors from the worlds of advertising, television or music (Jun Ichikawa, Shunji Iwai).

Toshiyuki Morioka, who is making his directorial debut with the yakuza melodrama "Kurayami no Requiem (Requiem of Darkness)," is the ink-stained exception to the general rule. Interestingly, like fellow scriptwriters-turned-directors Koki Mitani ("Radio no Jikan") and Akio Murahashi ("Shiawase ni Naro ne"), Morioka found inspiration for his first film in his first love, the stage. The script for "Kurayami" began in 1994 as a play for Morioka's Straydog theater company.