Joseph Gordon Levitt is the half-Japanese son of an aging Yakuza boss.
The film opens in Tokyo. An assassin takes someone out. It is unclear who the assassin is.
Cut to JGL in America. He runs one of his father's legit companies. Seems like a normal enough guy. He gets a call. It's time to come back to Japan. It was his half-brother (big shot in the Yakuza clan) who was assassinated.
JGL returns to Japan. We discover that he grew up there -- he is fluent in Japanese. His mother was one of the American girls brought over to work in one of his fathers sex joints. In a super cool reveal, we see JGL back in his Tokyo apartment. He takes off his suit and shirt and we see his FULL BODY TATTOO.
JGL's family is being assassinated one by one. His father doesn't know who is doing it. JGL and his half-brothers must HUNT THE ASSASSINS while being HUNTED THEMSELVES.
Alegiances are unclear. The brothers are all in competition to take over from their father. The father doesn't want to give up his position and has been undergoing surgery to unnaturally extend his life. The family's new gig -- human organs.
In the end, one of his brothers turned out to be involved with the assassins, and JGL's father is pretty diabolical (we'll work in him doing something bad to JGL's american family, or some backstory with JGL's mother).
JGL ends up on top, for himself and nobody else. One for one, and one for all.
Yakuza meets EASTERN PROMISES meets HISTORY OF VIOLENCE...
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
ANOTHER interesting story approach...
Our hero is half japanese. He is the bastard son to japan's biggest mob boss. He was conceived in america while his father was on a business trip at the four seasons. At the time his mother was a hostess at the hotel restaurant.
He's never met the japanese side of his family but has always been eager to. One day, our hero gets word that his father is on his last legs....he decides it is his duty to meet the man before he passes away...
The story could begin with him on the airplane or already in japan?
His father is old, very weathly, very powerful- in a wheel chair yet still in control of his booming business.
Our hero realizes he has two older brothers, both full japanese. They are both VERY competitive, and very ruthless- both want take over their father's position..They don't view our hero as a threat because he is half japanese.
These brothers introduce our hero to the culture- women, money, power, drugs, and tradition. The longer he hangs out with them the more he falls in love with the city. He gets his first tattooo, etc.
But this is a scary and turbulent time for our family. The rival "yamato" clan knows the head yakuza is dying and has used this as an opportunity to strike while they have been structurally weak. For months, they have been hunted down, family members have been getting picked off one by one .
EVENTUALLY One of the brothers gets assassinated in a gun fight in an arcade. We reveal that this son, was who the father wanted to take his place as boss.
EVENTUALLY, the father dies and the remaining brother is crowned head mob boss. He appoints our hero as his right hand man. our hero vows revenge against the rival family that killed his brother.
As the story goes along, maybe he kills his brother? maybe our guy ends up taking control in the end? maybe it was someone in his own family who orchestrated the killings??? maybe even the father??? if we could figure out a good rationale???
He's never met the japanese side of his family but has always been eager to. One day, our hero gets word that his father is on his last legs....he decides it is his duty to meet the man before he passes away...
The story could begin with him on the airplane or already in japan?
His father is old, very weathly, very powerful- in a wheel chair yet still in control of his booming business.
Our hero realizes he has two older brothers, both full japanese. They are both VERY competitive, and very ruthless- both want take over their father's position..They don't view our hero as a threat because he is half japanese.
These brothers introduce our hero to the culture- women, money, power, drugs, and tradition. The longer he hangs out with them the more he falls in love with the city. He gets his first tattooo, etc.
But this is a scary and turbulent time for our family. The rival "yamato" clan knows the head yakuza is dying and has used this as an opportunity to strike while they have been structurally weak. For months, they have been hunted down, family members have been getting picked off one by one .
EVENTUALLY One of the brothers gets assassinated in a gun fight in an arcade. We reveal that this son, was who the father wanted to take his place as boss.
EVENTUALLY, the father dies and the remaining brother is crowned head mob boss. He appoints our hero as his right hand man. our hero vows revenge against the rival family that killed his brother.
As the story goes along, maybe he kills his brother? maybe our guy ends up taking control in the end? maybe it was someone in his own family who orchestrated the killings??? maybe even the father??? if we could figure out a good rationale???
Monday, August 31, 2009
What do you think of this version?
NEAR FUTURE. TWO YAKUZA FAMILIES HAVE MAJOR HOLD OVER THE POLITICS OF TOKYO. AND AS IT TURNS OUT, ONE OF THEM IS DEALING IN HUMAN ORGANS.
[2] one night she comes home all beat up. turns out that she didn't catch a beating, on the contrary, there is a rift in the Yakuza family (which our guy doesn't even know about until this point). the old concigliare wants her to take over from her father, the new dude wanted to take over himself. new dude attacked her and she killed him. our guy realizes that the family he married into is more than he bargained for.
[3] when news gets out of the killing (which was in self defense) the rival gang thinks that this was a power move, and they kidnap her. now our guy has to go to his father in law. our guy gets all yakuza to get her back.
[4] he takes out the rival gang and gets his girl back. thing is, now this has sucked him deeper into the family. he finds out that his father in law has [a] been dealing in blackmarket human organs, and [b] been using the organs and spinal column cells from humans to try to give himself an unnaturally long life.
[5] our guy decides to stop his wife's yakuza gang because what they are doing is too disgusting. he goes against them in a final bid to end their reign and get out. but will his wife still love him...?
Friday, August 28, 2009
STRAY CATS ROCK: WILD JUMBO
Noraneko Rokku - Wairudo Janbo - 1976 - Color - 16:9 Anamorphic - Extras
The second in the movies series that made KAJI Meiko an international star!
The Pelican Gang is well known on the beach for their wild antics, scams and fights
with rival gangs. Their lives make a sudden turn when one member starts digging up
the grounds of a local high school and their leader meets a strange girl, and devises
a complicated place that will either make them rich or destroy them…
Directed by: FUJITA Toshiya
Cast: KAJI Meiko, HAN Bunjaku, CHII Takeo, FUJI Tatsuya
DELINQUENT BOSS: WOLVES OF THE CITY
Furyo Bancho - 1968 - Color - 16:9 Anamorphic - Extras
The first in the FURYO BANCHO series of movies, starring
legendary Toei actor UMEMIYA Tatsuo!!!
Kosaka Hiroshi is a small time swindler and the boss of a motorcycle gang in
Shinjuku. Living only to make money, he never made the big time until he gets
involved with a Yakuza's daughter. But when he gets involved in a scheme to
blackmail a Yakuza gang and a land developer, he realizes he's gone way over his
head…
Directed by: NODA Yukio
Cast: UMEMIYA Tatsuo, TANI Hayato, OHARA Reiko, SMUROTA Hideo
Thursday, August 27, 2009
another interesting story approach...
We could start our story with a guy (our hero) who just moved to tokyo to be with his japanese fiancee and start a family in japan. HE works some dead end job and the culture is jarring (plenty of lost in translation moments). SHE works during the night as a waitress at a nightclub or kareoke bar... For the first couple months everything is hunky dorky- they visit the sights and sounds, we get introduced to the culture, she gets knocked up...tokyo is foreign but at least he's got the love of his life by his side.
ONE NIGHT, she doesn't show up after work. He stays up and waits for her but the door never opens. As he's getting ready for work, she enters the apartment with a big black eye, she's beaten and bruised but she dismisses it as a simple accident- "some guy at work" OR "i fell down the stairs"
a jealous boyfriend? what the fuck is going on?
Our hero decides to get to the bottom of this, the next day he takes off work and follows her. At first her chores are mundane (a trip to the supermarket, etc). But as the day goes along they get weirder and weirder- a meeting in a sketchy place here, a meeting in a sketchy place there. He soon finds out that she's not a waitress. She's full blown yakuza. Not only is she full blown yakuza, but her father is japan's biggest mob boss....
from here, our hero confronts his fiancee and SOMEHOW gets catapulted into this seedy underground yakuza world...
AT SOME POINT his pregnant fiancee could get kidnaped, which would enable our hero to get in close with this mob boss. This could become a revenge story.
ONE NIGHT, she doesn't show up after work. He stays up and waits for her but the door never opens. As he's getting ready for work, she enters the apartment with a big black eye, she's beaten and bruised but she dismisses it as a simple accident- "some guy at work" OR "i fell down the stairs"
a jealous boyfriend? what the fuck is going on?
Our hero decides to get to the bottom of this, the next day he takes off work and follows her. At first her chores are mundane (a trip to the supermarket, etc). But as the day goes along they get weirder and weirder- a meeting in a sketchy place here, a meeting in a sketchy place there. He soon finds out that she's not a waitress. She's full blown yakuza. Not only is she full blown yakuza, but her father is japan's biggest mob boss....
from here, our hero confronts his fiancee and SOMEHOW gets catapulted into this seedy underground yakuza world...
AT SOME POINT his pregnant fiancee could get kidnaped, which would enable our hero to get in close with this mob boss. This could become a revenge story.
yakuza moon synopsis
Yakuza Moon is brutal, honest, and scary. Shoko Tendo takes you through her turbulent childhood and the life built around her yakuza father. She recounts the many times he came home drunk in the middle of the night and tore the house apart and later beat Shoko. Soon she has fallen in with a tough crowd and has become a yanki, what basically amounts to a juvenile delinquent.
When she gets older she moves on from sniffing paint thinner and ditching school to shooting up and dating married men. She quickly becomes a kept woman who is shuffled about, never really being her own person, and all of this before she is even 23 years old.
Yakuza Moon is hard to read at times. The almost constant abuse that Shoko went through is heartbreaking and painful to read about. It is written in such a direct manner. The hard core drug use, the different boyfriends beating her, attempted suicide, and rape is presented to the reader as simple fact, with a sort of detachment through which you can only feel horror or pity for this young woman.
A lot of things happen off stage, as it were, and you are only treated to the highlights of a very painful past. There are incidents mentioned in passing that are never fully explained. But for the most part it does not distract from the flow of the story. The overall impression is of a young woman who went through hell but came out the other side a stronger person. This is a woman who has earned respect finally, and is not afraid to demand it.
After everything she is strong. The world is full of people struggling to survive and overcome - striving to be the person that they always dreamed that they could be, that they hoped deep down was still inside and had not been killed off by their mistakes. Sometimes the hardest thing to overcome is yourself, the person in the mirror can be your own worst enemy and learning to put the past behind you the hardest lesson to learn in life. Yakuza Moon is a triumph simply because Shoko Tendo overcame the atrocity that her life had become.
INTERESTING STORY ANGLE?
-establish- our hero (a white guy) in japan....
one day, through a series of coincidences, our hero ends up saving the life of this random person on the street. let's say this person is crossing the street and is about to get hit by a car but our hero pushes him out of the way. OR, Maybe there's a mass suicide in the middle of a public area (say a bunch of people about to jump in front of a moving train). Our hero takes notice and prevents this ONE person from doing so - then walks off.
This random jester of heroism and kindness (whatever is it) has really affected the guy who was saved. He decides he must find our hero and express his gratitude- he follows our hero, he stalks him even, write down his every movement for A MONTH. EVENTUALLY, he confronts him and we REVEAL that his father is the head mob boss to the biggest crime family in japan. He takes our hero under his wing and we are introduced to the seedy underworld of japanse yakuza
one day, through a series of coincidences, our hero ends up saving the life of this random person on the street. let's say this person is crossing the street and is about to get hit by a car but our hero pushes him out of the way. OR, Maybe there's a mass suicide in the middle of a public area (say a bunch of people about to jump in front of a moving train). Our hero takes notice and prevents this ONE person from doing so - then walks off.
This random jester of heroism and kindness (whatever is it) has really affected the guy who was saved. He decides he must find our hero and express his gratitude- he follows our hero, he stalks him even, write down his every movement for A MONTH. EVENTUALLY, he confronts him and we REVEAL that his father is the head mob boss to the biggest crime family in japan. He takes our hero under his wing and we are introduced to the seedy underworld of japanse yakuza
BRAINFARTS
-i think the right side of the mob boss's face should be completely scarred from a fire. 2 years earlier the rival yakuza gang set fire to his bullet proof cadillac while driving in the middle of the crowded street. His limo driver and wife died but he managed to escape with a completely disfigured face. He refuses to get plastic surgery because he wakes up everyday, looks in the mirror and it reminds him of the pain- and how he must vow revenge against the goons that killed his wife
-yakuza own an arcade business and rig the machines to loose on certain levels. They extort all these young video game playing fanatic nerds. They loose on a certain level which keeps these kids popping in their quarters- this will keep our story young....
-tourist scams, the yakuza uses our hero (a white guy) to extort money from american tourists....
-exporting truckloads of porno into japan from america and eastern europe?
-does our hero become an informant for the police? does this movie turn into goodfellas?
-at some point i think someone should get plastic surgery on their face to hide their identity...
-yakuza own an arcade business and rig the machines to loose on certain levels. They extort all these young video game playing fanatic nerds. They loose on a certain level which keeps these kids popping in their quarters- this will keep our story young....
-tourist scams, the yakuza uses our hero (a white guy) to extort money from american tourists....
-exporting truckloads of porno into japan from america and eastern europe?
-does our hero become an informant for the police? does this movie turn into goodfellas?
-at some point i think someone should get plastic surgery on their face to hide their identity...
WHAT IS THE NEW ANGLE (CONTD.)....
we've seen yakuza movies, the key to cracking this puzzle is to find a new spin on on the genre:
1. maybe we take famous children's stories and meld them into our world:
ROMEO AND JULIET- two people from rival yakuza gangs fall in love.
LITTLE RED RIDING HOOOD-
THE BOY WHO CRIED WOLF
THE UGLY DUCKLING
CINDERELLA
THREE LITTLE PIGS
SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS
2. children yakuza (a gang of highschool drop outs- think, City of god)...
3. maybe we follow a group of ASSASINS hired to wipe out an entire yakuza family
4. a MOCUMENTARY / DOCUMENTARY yakuza movie. Yakuza hire a crew to document their lives, shot with interviews, etc. the story is told through their eyes
5. a group of prostitutes form their own gang and vow revenge against the yakuza
1. maybe we take famous children's stories and meld them into our world:
ROMEO AND JULIET- two people from rival yakuza gangs fall in love.
LITTLE RED RIDING HOOOD-
THE BOY WHO CRIED WOLF
THE UGLY DUCKLING
CINDERELLA
THREE LITTLE PIGS
SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS
2. children yakuza (a gang of highschool drop outs- think, City of god)...
3. maybe we follow a group of ASSASINS hired to wipe out an entire yakuza family
4. a MOCUMENTARY / DOCUMENTARY yakuza movie. Yakuza hire a crew to document their lives, shot with interviews, etc. the story is told through their eyes
5. a group of prostitutes form their own gang and vow revenge against the yakuza
What is the new and unique angle on Yakuza story --
Alice In Wonderland (Teen girl that is bought as child for sex ring/pornography turns into a badass Yakuza)
Detective Story (like CHINATOWN)
Supernatural (there has gotta be a great version here)
King Lear
Hamlet
Blaxploitation
Zombie
Documentary
All Girl Yakuza (maybe too close to KILL BILL)
Identity Story (like BOURNE IDENTITY or OLD BOY)
Revenge
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
OUR hero could somehow be involved in tourist scams
The yakuza's tentacles reach into many different areas, principally corporate extortion, gambling, smuggling, loan sharking, money laundering, narcotics, real-estate, sports, entertainment, stock manipulation, tourist scams, sex tours, prostitution, slavery, pornography, and gun running.
Sex-related enterprises are the yakuza's bread and butter, and they cater to the wild side of Japan's overworked, buttoned-down "salary men." The yakuza smuggle truckloads of pornographic films and magazines into Japan from Europe and America. They control prostitution rings throughout the country, commonly holding young women from other Asian countries captive as indentured servants and forcing them to work as "comfort workers." The Japanese euphemistically refer to the act of prostitution as "selling spring," and Japanese johns have a taste for very young women, as demonstrated by the national obsession with young women in school-girl outfits complete with short pleated skirts and knee socks. The yakuza buy unwanted female children from China--where the law restricts couples to only one child and the cultural preference is for boys--for as little as $5,000 and put them to work in the mizu shobai (literally the "water business"), the yakuza's network of bars, restaurants and nightclubs.
Sex-related enterprises are the yakuza's bread and butter, and they cater to the wild side of Japan's overworked, buttoned-down "salary men." The yakuza smuggle truckloads of pornographic films and magazines into Japan from Europe and America. They control prostitution rings throughout the country, commonly holding young women from other Asian countries captive as indentured servants and forcing them to work as "comfort workers." The Japanese euphemistically refer to the act of prostitution as "selling spring," and Japanese johns have a taste for very young women, as demonstrated by the national obsession with young women in school-girl outfits complete with short pleated skirts and knee socks. The yakuza buy unwanted female children from China--where the law restricts couples to only one child and the cultural preference is for boys--for as little as $5,000 and put them to work in the mizu shobai (literally the "water business"), the yakuza's network of bars, restaurants and nightclubs.
THE YAKUZA (EVERYTHING AND ANYTHING)
http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/gangsters_outlaws/gang/yakuza/1.html
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