jürgen fauth’s muckworld

Apparently, Japan is home to an underground industry of “pink films,” a genre of softcore porn that is still exhibited in theaters. Genitals are strictly taboo, but from the evidence of this film, generous helpings of cum and warped political allegories reenacted with GI Joe dolls are just dandy.

The Glamorous Life of Sachiko Hanai is a repurposed version of a pink movie called Horny Home Tutor: Teacher’s Love Juice, in which a role-playing prostitute (Kuroda Emi) is shot smack-dab in the forehead by a North Korean assassin/rapist. Instead of killing her, the bullet gets lodged in her brain and turns her into a genius who gets off at the mere mention of Noam Chomsky. In her handbag, Sachiko finds the cloned trigger finger of George W. Bush, who appears to her at the bottom of a water bucket, and later, on a rooftop, where her bush is fingered while a deranged version of the infamous Mission Accomplished speech plays on a TV that materialized out of nowhere. (It’s the best masked impersonation of a U.S. president since Ultrachrist!)

After that, things get really strange. I might have fallen asleep and dreamt the part about the wind-up toy that saves the world from nuclear holocaust, but it’s clear that The Glamorous Life of Sachiko Hanai is some sort of obscene, elaborate joke at the expense of the Bush Administration. With its flashes of violence and gross-out humor, endless sex scenes, and bizarro political commentary, it’s the trashy midnight weird-out that Grindhouse could have been. The Glamorous Life of Sachiko Hanai is currently playing at Cinema Village.

Hatsujô kateikyôshi: sensei no aijiru. Mitsuru Meike, 2003. ***

• The Glamorous Life Of Sachiko Hanai at Rotten Tomatoes
• Manohla Dargis’ Review
• Official Palm Pictures site, with trailer

You gotta pay attention to coincidences, so here are three recent moments that put me in proximity to celebrity: during a pee break at the screening of The Queen yesterday, I bumped into everybody’s favorite pig farmer James Cromwell, who plays Prince Philip in the movie. His handler/girlfriend/pr person asked me where the press conference was going to be, so I guess it wasn’t much of a sighting, but it was pleasantly disorienting to run into James on the way to the John. He was wearing a beanie hat, perhaps to hide the scars from the electro shock treatment he had to undergo as George on Six Feet Under.

This morning, I walked out of Paprika (more on that later) just in time to run into Cindy Sheehan on Sixth Avenue. She saw me recognizing her, we smiled at each other and mouthed hello, and kept on going. It wasn’t much, but it felt warm and genuine and made me like her even more than I already did. You know those magnets that say “Freedom isn’t free?” Cindy Sheehan is one of the few true contemporary American heroes.

And finally, Entertainment Weekly mentioned me in the same sentence with Anthony Hopkins and Dan Aykroyd. Another lifetime ambition checked off!

[tags]celebrity, jurgen, james cromwell, nixon, ultrachrist, cindy sheehan, anthony hopkins, dan aykroyd, nyc, nyff[/tags]