The Father of Asian-sploitation: An Interview with JON MORITSUGU

Mod Fuck Explosion, Scumrock, My Degeneration… the radical films of Hawaiian-born filmmaker Jon Moritsugu, like the self-released 45’s of a great punk band that refused to sell out, lie scattered across servers and dusty shops in various editions (some reputable, some bootlegged), waiting for the right people to find them.  On July 28th and August 4th, Austin drive-in theater the Blue Starlite is spotlighting one of his more notorious culture-bombs with a screening of Terminal USA, a feature loosely based on his experience growing up Asian-American, and which feels like if John Waters had directed that Rodney Dangerfield sitcom sequence from Natural Born Killers, despite it being financed by PBS(!) in ‘94.  Never one to rest on his indie cred, the prolific filmmaker just wrapped production on his 8th feature that was partially shot in Marfa, Numbskull Revolution.  Enter the Mind of Moritsugu…

[The following is the 2nd part of an interview conducted by Andy Ray Lemon, the first part of which appears in the print fanzine Drive-In Asylum, available at the screening & online.]  

ARL:  I’m a big fan of 80s Austin garage band Poison 13, and Tim Kerr and Mike Carrol’s previous band Big Boys are local heroes.  How’d Poison 13 end up on the soundtrack to your first feature My Degeneration?  

JM: I totally love these scrappy Texas punk/blues/skate bands!  I wrote to Tim and he graciously let me have a couple tunes, an absolute dream come true - cinematic moksha!

ARL: I saw that it made a Rolling Stone list of Greatest Punk Rock Movies of All Time, and it may be my favorite film of yours, up there with modern rock ‘n’ roll classics like Wild Zero.  There’s something about a director’s debut film, kind of like a band’s first record, where it’s just so raw and full of ideas.  

JM: No kidding, wow that’s cool!  Guitar Wolf is amazing, Wild Zero is superb… and what an ending!

ARL: It’s funny, my friend Nick met the band and asked about the making of that movie, and apparently they hate it!  They just said, “Shit movie! (pointing to their nose) Too much cocaine!” (laughs) Is it true that Ebert walked out of My Degeneration?

JM: Yeah, at Sundance!  He has that weird underground background and I honestly thought he would love the movie.  I was just trying to recoup the money at that point, so I was like, “I’m gonna use this as a selling point.” So I started advertising the movie as “the one that Roger Ebert walked out of after 7 minutes.” I actually pulled a John Waters, you know how his bad reviews were like emblems of pride, and it really helped to get people interested. “Everyone hated the movie but you’ll love it ‘cause you’re cool.”  

ARL: I suppose you could argue that Ebert’s done some good things for movies, and Beyond the Valley of the Dolls was cool, but by 1990 he seemed like he had lost touch with that kind of filmmaking, just out of touch in general, and to offend someone of that stature so deeply that he couldn’t even be bothered to finish the movie, the job he’s paid to do, that’s a pretty insane badge of honor.  

JM:  Yeah, I never got to meet him but I always thought of him as a kind of stuffy, full-of-shit dude, and even before that happened, ya know, I thought, I wouldn’t want to hang out with him, he doesn’t seem that much fun.  

ARL: I really enjoyed your other big punk feature, Scumrock. Especially the look of the film. 

JM: Yea, hi-8, super saturated.  I think hi-8 looks almost like super 8.

ARL: Totally, especially when it’s degraded.  Gear nerd question, do you remember what camera you shot that movie with?  

JM: It was a Sony, don’t remember the model, but it was a consumer machine loaded with awesome features like exposure/aperture control, shutter speed, and even decent audio inputs.  I loved that thing until it conked out.  

ARL: I love those Handycams, with the manual controls you can get a budget Wong Kar Wai slow-shutter effect.  How do you feel about his movies?  

JM: Ya know, I like them okay. I don’t love them. I think they’re really well put together, well acted, great technically and, ya know, really good themes and motifs and all. But I personally like stuff that’s a little more in my face, ya know?

ARL: His stuff is more meditative.   

JM: Yeah.  

ARL: You guys certainly illustrate the ways in which 16mm can be used to achieve very different moods.  I love the medium and it’s kinda funny because before I got into it, I had only shot super 8 and was intimidated about upgrading to 16, didn’t know much about it or where to begin.  And I thought, I wonder what Moritsugu uses?  So I read somewhere you used a Canon... 

JM: Oh yes, a Scoopic, yeah…

ARL: And so I got me a Scoopic. 

JM: It’s not a very good camera.

ARL: Well it’s too late! I already bought it!  (laughs) 

JM: You did!?  Are you loving it, though?

ARL: I actually do!  I got it years ago and I haven’t used it a ton ‘cause film is so expensive. But it was kind of like the thing where like, you know, I wanna play rock ‘n’ roll and don’t have a guitar, but Gene Vincent plays a Gretsch, so those must be the coolest and I need one too!  

JM: That’s awesome, I had one when I was in college and I had access to the film department.  They had a couple of Scoopics and they were so thrashed, like the lenses were literally falling apart. I did love how easy you could thread ‘em, and just like how no-nonsense those modern designs are. 

ARL: Apparently they were aimed at journalists to easily reload in war zones and riots.  

JM: The Scoopics we had were in such bad condition. I prefer the Bolex personally.

ARL: You don’t have to mess with batteries on those, right? 

JM: Yeah, hand-wind. Which can be a problem ‘cause you get like 17 seconds maximum per shot.

ARL: Well… I can see how that’s not too big of a problem for you because your movies move so quickly!

JM: Yeah, right. Like … 3 second shots. 

ARL:  I made a poster for the Spectacle Theater in New York awhile back, and I saw that they did a retrospective on your work.  They have some of the best programming anywhere, that must have been fun.  

JM: It was an honor and a blast - a whole summer of screenings including Mod Fuck Explosion in blistering 16mm. Amy and I had just moved out to Honolulu and we couldn’t make it out to NYC - wish we could have been there - but such a freakin’ cool bunch of people running one of the raddest theaters on the planet.

ARL:  As someone who has been embracing the aesthetic of small gauge film and consumer video and pushing its limits, I was curious what you thought of this whole VHS renaissance that’s going on and low-fi influence on everything from the underground up to pop culture.  

JM: I personally love it, just the same way when CDs came out and everyone was like “kiss your turntables goodbye.” Me and a bunch of friends were like “No, never, vinyl’s gonna make a resurgence,” and it sure enough it did. I love this rediscovery of outdated technology.  And as far as the VHS format, it obviously can wear out, the picture might be crappy, but the sound is so much better than a DVD.  I mean, I had friends in the 80s who would record their albums on VHS tapes just ‘cause of that big thick soundtrack.

ARL: I’ve heard of people doing that!  I guess it’s technically 1/2 inch analog tape.  

JM: Yeah, yeah, I still love VHS, and I don’t know, there’s something precious about it as medium that you know is gonna eventually wear out, it’s like your tape with your favorite movie on it, you’ve watched this maybe 25 or 50 times, but when is it gonna wear out, when is it gonna break, and it’s sort of sad but sort of awesome, it’s sort of like life, ya know?

ARL: Totally.  I was stoked when you reissued Terminal USA on a limited VHS run through the Random Man label not too long ago, ‘cause now I have this cool functional piece of art in my house, and people can see it when they come over and are like, ‘Whoa, what’s that movie?’

JM: Yeah, yeah, especially right now with streaming and digital and the cloud and everything like that, there’s just this intrinsic beauty of having a movie as a physical object.  

ARL: The only film of yours I haven’t seen is Li’l Debbie Snackwhore of NYC , was it ever released?

JM: It had a limited release on VHS in the late 80’s.

ARL: I saw that Austinite Don Swaynos was credited as an editorial consultant on Pig Death Machine.  I actually programmed his early short In Defense of Definitions years back at the Austin Underground Film Fest.  I also enjoyed his work on the AGFA-salvaged shot-on-video horror JUNGLE TRAP.  How’d you hook up with him?

JM: I was pals with him and during post-production, he stepped in and lended the huge hand that we needed.  He was our technical go-to dude who handled frantic late night panics and also gave us a mini-DV camera when we were totally tapped out financially.  Don saved our fuckin’ asses!

ARL: What was it like shooting in Marfa, and how did you choose that city as a location?

JM: It was a gas filming in the high art Mecca of the world... I love Marfa - lotsa great friends there.  Amy made this location happen, she said, “This movie is about art - the pretentious and the sublime, the low and the high... we hafta shoot in Marfa!” I totally resisted the notion, but she was right. A dream location for shooting kunst nightmares.

ARL: Nice!  I know your wife Amy plays a huge part in your filmmaking.  How do you two work together?  

JM: She would do a little bit more with each successive movie until Pig Death Machine where it was a full-on collaboration between the two of us.  She was someone who was born to be a filmmaker, she is so great with music and just thinking outside the box.  Sometimes I get little tunnel vision and she’ll just come up with ideas that blow my mind open, so she is just the best creative partner and yeah, it’s intense, ups and downs, a lot of ego battles... but it’s so worth it. We’re both glad to be making movies together, ya know?

To coincide with Terminal USA’s Austin screening, enjoy a career-spanning playlist of punk & synth nuggets from the impeccably-curated soundtracks of Moritsugu’s flicks!