“We inadvertently began the hip-hop movement in Japan”: Fran Rubel Kuzui on the return of her 80s indie gem Tokyo Pop

To speak with Fran Rubel Kuzui is to feast on fascinating stories from the international art and film worlds of the late 20th century, to the extent that a full transcript of our entire unedited conversation could plausibly sustain a small fanzine. I mention that specific type of publication for the scrappiness inherent to its form, where vibrant tributes to cultural scenes are born from people pulling together what they can out of sheer love for their subject. Tokyo Pop (1988), Kuzui’s debut feature as director, is an underseen gem of American independent cinema that’s very much in that same spirit.

Co-written with Lynn Grossman, Kuzui’s film follows punkish American singer Wendy (Carrie Hamilton) travelling to Tokyo and crossing paths with underachieving musician Hiro (Diamond Yukai), the two misfits gradually falling in love as she joins his rock band. Alongside being a sweet culture-clash comedy (respectful rather than mocking), the film is also a vivid portrait of bubble era Tokyo and its pop culture.

“It wasn’t my favourite experience,” Kuzui tells me when I briefly bring up Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1992), her only other feature directing credit. Since that troubled foray into Hollywood, Kuzui has had an eclectic career helping unique cinematic visions get released with far less creative interference. As a producer, she’s worked with the wildly different likes of Thai arthouse filmmaker Pen-ek Ratanaruang (Last Life in the Universe, 2003) and South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone (Orgazmo, 1997). She and husband Kaz Kuzui also established Kuzui Enterprises, a major player in independent film that distributes American movies in Japan and imports Japanese films for the US market. They first met when Kaz came to New York from Japan to be an assistant director for the film Proof of the Man (1977), which Fran had joined as a script supervisor solely “because I owed a favour to somebody”.

Following the rediscovery of sound elements thought lost for decades, Tokyo Pop has received a 4K restoration, released on Blu-ray and digital platforms in the UK through Third Window Films.

What were the origins of Tokyo Pop?

I’d always wanted to make films, but even when I was in film school nobody took the women in my class very seriously. At the time, I was friends with Jim Jarmusch, Spike Lee and the Coen brothers, and they all really encouraged me.

I had lunch with Charlie Ahearn recently, who directed Wild Style [1982], the very first hip-hop movie ever. Wild Style really was the impetus for making [Tokyo Pop], because Kaz and I saw that and we both went, “We have to show this film in Japan.” Kaz convinced a Japanese studio to buy the film and hire us to distribute it. We knew nothing about distributing movies. We were Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland: let’s just rent a barn and put on a show.

We brought 35 kids from the South Bronx, who were in Wild Style, to Japan to promote the film, and inadvertently began the whole hip-hop movement there. We did 20 disco shows and curated graffiti shows in galleries. Watching these kids’ reactions to being in Japan was the inspiration for making Tokyo Pop because I thought this was a fish-out-of-water story that nobody had told, and probably nobody would if I didn’t. And so, I started writing a script about what it meant to be a foreigner in Japan.

What’s been the feedback from people discovering Tokyo Pop now?

When I first made it, Tokyo was someplace people weren’t particularly curious about. The film had fans but didn’t really reach many people. This time two years ago [when the restoration premiered], Tokyo was the place to go. It was all anime, kawaii and all the rest of that. And it was fascinating to me because some people came to see it expecting everybody in cosplay and all the clichés that the movie is about not wanting to be.

When making it, I said there’s not going to be any Mount Fuji, geisha, anime. It’ll be the real Japan as I’ve experienced it. At the time, it was about how Japanese people idealised the United States, jeans, rock ‘n’roll and hamburgers. They aspired to be very Western. Over 30 years later, the reaction became about Western people idealising Japan now. People were seeing lots of things in this movie that didn’t exist when I made it.

At the Edinburgh Festival [in 2023], they told me that their volunteers could sign up for one free screening and this was the most requested film. I went, “It’s because it’s called Tokyo Pop. They all just wanted to see Tokyo.” And it was packed even though it wasn’t marketed. It was just listed in the catalogue, doesn’t have stars and Sofia Coppola never said she liked it or anything like that. I’m just being a little facetious. If you watch Lost in Translation [2003], she was quite influenced by Tokyo Pop, although she insists that she wasn’t. But I wish her well and it’s all good.

How did artist Keith Haring get involved with the film?

Keith, Kaz and I were very good friends, and he had said, “You should open a Pop Shop in Japan.” One day we woke up and went, “Wait a minute, this is called Pop Shop Tokyo and we also have Tokyo Pop.” We hadn’t even realised the synchronicity. So, I told [Keith] I was making this film and he asked to do the titles.

He came to Tokyo for the first week of shooting and we never signed a contract. He just said, “Here’s my drawings, use them.” When restoring the film, I wondered what to do, because legally I don’t know who owns this. So, I contacted The Keith Haring Foundation and, knowing who we were, they said, “If they’re on the film, we can’t really say anything. You have our blessing.”

Tokyo Pop strikes me as maybe the only 80s film about American-Japanese relations that hasn’t aged as a ‘problematic’ artefact, certainly compared with studio movies like Ridley Scott’s Black Rain (1989).

As a female filmmaker, I was conscious that I wanted to see what men didn’t see there. I really felt strongly, from a historical perspective, that the objectification of Japan you talk about was a male objectification. In Black Rain, [yakuza as] the shogun of that era was all a very male perspective. I think one reason [Tokyo Pop] holds up is that I approached it from a very different place, one that’s now encouraged and more commonplace.

Tokyo Pop is out now on Blu-ray from Third Window Films.