Comics who direct films may start by making audiences laugh, but if they are at all successful they typically turn serious. The classic example is Charlie Chaplin, who went from slapstick two-reelers to speechifying against totalitarianism in "The Great Dictator."
In Japan, TV comic and MC Takeshi Kitano cut out the transitional period altogether: His first film as director, the appropriately titled "Sono Otoko, Kyobo ni Tsuki (Violent Cop, 1989)," starred Kitano as a sadistic cop who metes out violence the way a department store Santa hands out candy — with indiscriminate glee. His subsequent films were also more notable for their body counts than their laughs.
But Hitoshi Matsumoto, who succeeded Kitano as the number one comic on Japanese television playing the boke (half wit) of the popular comedy duo Downtown, has so far rejected this route to auteur-hood. The three films he has directed to date — "Dainipponjin (Big Man Japan, 2007)," "Shinboru (Symbol, 2009) and "Saya Zamurai (Scabbard Samurai, 2010)" — are all straight-up comedies, if ones filled with social, cultural and even religious commentary, in often goofy guises.