Writing about Japanese films in English, I am usually flying below the radar of the local industry -- I can skewer a director's latest triumph on this page and meet him laterat a party secure in the knowledge that he has not the foggiest idea of what I've said about his movie. Once in a while, though, I do catch it.
One memorable evening the producer of Katsuhito Ishii's feature debut, "Samehada Otoko to Momojiri Onna (Sharkskin Man and Peach Hip Girl)," called me to cuss me out, in English yet, for my review, in which I described the film as "less an eiga (movie) than an eiga gokko (movie game)" and compared Ishii unfavorably to Quentin Tarantino, whom he obviously worshipped (and who, incidentally, raved about "Sharkskin" to its director after seeing it at the Hawaii Film Festival).
It was an interesting experience, hearing the f-word 20 times in five minutes from an urbane, sophisticated Japanese man fluent in English, though in the heat of the moment his favorite insult began to sound a katakana rendering of "far king." Oh well, I'm sure I couldn't do any better with "kono yaro."