Makoto Tezuka's The Legend of the Stardust Brothers (1985) is playing exclusively on MUBI starting March 18, 2021 in many countries in the series Rediscovered.
It’s ironic that Legend of the Stardust Brothers, a film about the meteoric rise, fall, and disappearance of two pop idols, nearly suffered the same fate as its protagonists. A giddy live-action cartoon full of surprising cameos, the film’s plot is sketched around insanely catchy tunes by eclectic pop musician and TV personality Hauro Chikada mocking industry, government, celebrity and scene drama. The anarchic musical was the first feature from up-and-comer Tezka, nee Makoto Tezuka, who at 22 had already garnered national attention for his creative shorts. Family name recognition probably didn’t hurt, as he was also the son of “God of Manga” Osamu Tezuka (creator of “Astroboy”). The film is a charming time capsule of Japan at the dawn of its booming bubble economy, and a prescient predictor of entertainment industry machinations to come. So how could a film like Stardust Brothers flop and disappear? Unfortunately, timing is to film as location is to real estate. And turns out, it takes a lot of work to create a cult movie.
Competing musicians Kan and Shingo (real-life musicians Kan Takagi of Tokyo Bravo/Tiny Panx Organization and Shingo Kubota of Sunny Kubota/Crystal Vacation) are plucked from the underground indie scene by mysterious svengali Atomic Minami (legendary velvet-voiced crooner Kiyohiko Ozaki, still sporting his trademark sideburns). He’ll make them stars, but it’s a package deal—they perform together... or not at all. Ditching bands and ideals, the newly minted “lucky, sexy twins” get a prefab look, sound, and backstory, flying straight to the top of the charts. Along for the ride is idol hopeful Marimo (Kyoko Togawa), saved from Atomic records’ security skinheads by becoming head of their fanclub. Fame’s shallow rewards soon sour compared to the banality of idol stardom. As they sing during “Strong Enemy Atomic,”
“Once you reach number one / stay up, keep going / sing the same song again and again forever!”
Stardust Brothers should have launched Tezka onto a Tim Burton trajectory of bigger budgets and idiosyncrasies. Instead, the film’s failure put him off making another feature for decades. After its brief 1985 release, Legend of the Stardust Brothers vanished until 2014. That's when Third Window Films distributor Adam Torel caught it at a fundraiser screening and made it his mission to get the movie out to the world.
The story begins (and literally ends) with Phantom of the Paradise—Stardust dedicates itself to Winslow Leach, doomed anti-hero of Brian De Palma’s 1974 rock musical. Back in 1979, Hauro Chikada split from his group Haruophone and went solo. Needing a backing band for live performances he formed BEEF, named after Gerrit Graham’s indelible rock god in Phantom. After a year BEEF broke up and reformed as juicy fruit, after Phantom’s in-house band The Juicy Fruits. In 1980, with Phantom still clearly on his mind, Chikada wrote the soundtrack for a nonexistent rock opera: The Legend of the Stardust Brothers.
A few years later, a chance to actually make the movie came up. Chikada didn't know anyone in the film industry, but while hosting a variety TV show, he'd seen some idiosyncratic 8mm shorts that matched his style. Their director, Makoto Tezuka, was the only man for the job in Chikada's eyes.
Tezka had already built up a reputation for himself. At 17, his first-ever film FANTASTIC ★ PARTY (1978) won an award at a national 8mm competition judged by Nagisa Oshima. His next two shorts UNK and HIGH-SCHOOL-TERROR (both 1979) were selected for the nascent Pia Film Festival, one of Japan’s earliest film fests, where judges including Shuji Terayama, Toshio Matsumoto, Nobuhiko Obayashi, and Nagisa Oshima viewed and selected jishu-eiga 1 (“self-made”) films.
Stardust Brothers was Tezuka’s first commercial feature but in 1981 his jishu-eiga MOMENT garnered him national attention and even a TV show. The 8mm film follows schoolgirl Pocky coping with a fortune-teller’s prediction she's doomed to die in three days. Featuring fantasy, horror, and yes, even a musical number, the feature was a watershed for “self-made” filmmaking. The American equivalent would be darkness: The Vampire Version winning Leif Jonker national acclaim.2 That same year Tezuka played the nominal host of “Dr. Ochanoko's Horror Theater,” a TV showcase of jishu-eiga 8mm horror and sci-fi shorts. It was soon pulled from the air, according to a DVD release of the remaining footage, because it “shocked the living room that is familiar to ordinary TV programs and said 'too scary!' 'Cruel!'”3
Tezka and Chikada bonded over a shared love of (of course) Phantom of the Paradise, Monty Python, Night of the Living Dead, and other cult films. The script became a team effort. Tezka built a script around Chikada’s existing songs, and Chikada wrote three new songs based on characters Tezka wrote: “Marimo’s Feelings,” “Peace mark baby,” and “Real Star.” Casting began with the Stardust Brothers themselves. Tezka picked Kan and Shingo, close friends of his and Chikada's, because it was the simplest way to ensure an easy-to-work-with crew. They built the rest of the cast around the non-actors.
Kyoko Togawa, playing Marimo, was one of the film’s few seasoned experts, having appeared in The Man Who Stole The Sun and TV series Ultraman Ace. (Her older sister, musician and actress Jun Togawa, makes a cameo as “Beautiful woman of the Stardust Car.”) It’s possible Tezuka was able to reach out to Kiyohiko Ozaki, a household name at the time, via their Nobuhiko Obayashi connection. The singer appeared in HAUSU and His Island, Her Motorbike, and Obayashi was another champion of Tezka’s work. In Tezka’s telling4, he flat-out asked Ozaki with the overconfidence of youth, and the singer was immediately in. For the part of Niji’s father, the politician manipulating the manipulators, Tezka wanted to startle the audience. He first reached out to Toshiro Mifune. “He agreed to do it,” Tezka told the FCCJ, “but also said if we used one second of footage, it would cost ¥1 million.” Next he asked Akira Kurosawa and Nagisa Oshima, but both were in the middle of shoots (Ran and Max Mon Amour). Tezka even tried architect Taro Okamoto, who built Expo 70's Tower of the Sun. But when Okamoto heard the role was a politician, he said he didn’t like them nor wanted to play one. In the end (no spoilers) Tezka managed the same effect with a classic punk shock tactic.
Stardust Brothers' extras and cameos are a pop culture sampler: film directors Kiyoshi Kurosawa (Cure) and Daihachi Yoshida (The Scythian Lamb), sci-fi writer Motoko Arai (Green Requiem), wrestler Akira Maeda, cult novelist Nakajima Et. Al, Kazuhiro Watanabe (illustrator and editor of Garo magazine), artists Monkey Punch (Lupin The Third) and Shinji Nagashima (“father of sheinin manga”), and musician Sunplaza Nakano as an Atomic Record guard, among others. The anti-professional touch befits the film's title inspiration. Chikada lifted it from Battles Without Honor And Humanity actor Shingo Yamashiro, who’d cracked he wasn’t a “star,” just “stardust”. And in contrast to the lack of polish on set, the film’s inspiration came from Japan’s tightly-managed idol culture.
“Nowadays, idols often keep going for a decade or so after making their debut,” Chikada told Japan Times. “Back then, people would be popular one minute and then they’d vanish.” Americans understand fame’s fickleness (we made four versions of A Star Is Born, after all), but the social contract between idol and audience is different from stateside celebrity. More of a one-way street here, Japanese idol worship is offset by the humble attitude of the performer. Their main skill isn’t singing, but conveying charm and earnest striving to do their best for their fans.
Idol culture took off in the 70s, when young people drained by violent student riots eagerly consumed prepackaged, optimistic pop stars. Performer management companies, called jimusho (“office”), recruited future idols from television audition shows. Unbeknownst to the public, the company shaped every facet of their marketability. Songwriting, choreography, hair, makeup, and personal lives were strictly controlled. Most idols were female and chosen to appeal to middle-aged men. As Japan’s 80s bubble economy swelled, “CM idols” ("commercial media" stars created by advertising agencies and secretive mega-organizations like Burning Production) became the norm, with visuals and personality trumping vocal ability. Stardust Brothers took the conspiracy one step further: Atomic Record executives colluding with the government to promote villainous Bowie doppelganger Karowu Niji (played by future visual-kei star Issay) as a form of soothing social control.
A 1983 NYT article cites the debut of 100 idols a year5, with, as Chikada observed, most quickly disappearing. Had it come out with Chikada’s album in 1980, Stardust Brothers might have gained wider popularity. But five years later, the increasing transparency of the idol-making machine Stardust Brothers mocked caused fan disillusionment. 52-member schoolgirl group Onyanko Club also formed in 1985. They marked idol culture's decadent turn to larger groups, outlandish costumes, and winking acknowledgments of idols’ manufactured personalities.
Focusing on male idols, Stardust Brothers’ highlit idol culture’s gender disparity. Queer spaces and characters, including Atomic Minami, appear without judgment (Minami' & his ‘no women’ policy are also a direct allusion to infamous jimusho head Johnny Kitagawa, creator of SMAP6). Flashes of poverty, pain, and marginalization appear during "Gasoline Rain." But the industry's self-parodying outpaced Stardust's genuine subversion.
The film was both too late and too early. The 90s saw a rise in independent film productions that, if not successful, at least found audiences and bolstered their creators' careers, including those of Shinya Tsukamoto, Gakuryu Iishi, and Sion Sono. The bubble economy Tezka just missed gave audiences extra spending money. That, in turn, built up “mini-theaters,” independent cinemas screening films ignored by the larger industry. These smaller venues grew into a powerful enough minority that larger companies began taking risks on less commercial, experimental productions.7 Stardust Brothers was distributed by Tokyo mini-theater Cine Saison (which closed its doors in 2011), but also played in TOEI Cinemas, a larger chain. I even found a ticket stub on an auction site showing the film played at adorably-named mini-venue Banana Hall in Osaka. It might be that pre-bubble, general audiences wouldn’t take as much of a financial risk on a non-studio film. Perhaps the DIY reach wasn’t yet strong enough to get the film out to audiences. Or that Japanese critics refused to take a smaller, sillier film, and the limitations it came with, seriously.
Considering those limitations included a minuscule budget and cast of non-actors, Stardust Brothers is a marvel of playing to strengths and making something out of nothing. SEIYU department stores financed the film, putting ¥50,000,000 (less than $470,000 U.S. dollars) towards the production. Tezka shot on Super 16mm, blown up to 35mm for editing. He storyboarded the entire film but for the animated sequence reached out to now-famous horror manga artist Yosuke Takahashi (Mugen Shinshi, Gakkō no Kaidan), who he was a fan of (Tezka didn’t even think of asking his father’s studio; that would’ve cost their entire budget, while Takahashi animated for free). But harsh critical opinion almost derailed Tezka from making movies again. The film’s reception was so poor it traumatized Tezka and the crew to the point that they let Stardust Brothers be forgotten. The rights shifted from Cine Saison to Kinema Junpo, and somewhere along the way the original 16mm negative was lost. Enter Adam Torel of Third Window films.
Third Window Films focuses on overlooked Asian gems never released in the West. Stardust Brothers was barely released in Japan. Getting permission from Tezka to distribute the film was a first step towards digging Stardust Brothers out of obscurity. But for a film to have any audience, even a cult one, it has to be known, seen, and promoted. Torel oversaw a remaster from disparate 35mm theatrical prints, created DCPs, wrote subtitles, and re-interviewed everyone who was willing. Most importantly, he got the film into over 30 festivals worldwide, including its 2019 U.S. premiere at Japan Society’s Japan Cuts. The result is The Legend Of The Stardust Brothers finally gets to shine in all its subversive, catchy glory.
In a beautiful twist, the film does end up like its protagonists—it's a bit late to actually help, but finally gets its deserved applause. Like the film’s coda “Crazy Game” says:
“Those who believe shall be saved / Crazy, crazy, game! A new chance comes every day.”
1. http://www.midnighteye.com/features/the-pia-film-festival-and-jishu-eiga/
2. Author’s note: It should have.
3. https://web.archive.org/web/20040218182649/http://www.ponycanyon.co.jp/wtne/dvd/021218maco.html
4. http://54.64.156.74/events-calendar/film-screenings/movie-committee-blog/item/1156-stardust-brothers/1156-stardust-brothers.html
5. https://www.nytimes.com/1983/12/24/arts/japanese-phenomenon-teen-age-idol-singers.html
6. https://asianmoviepulse.com/2019/05/interview-with-makoto-tezuka-japanese-industry-around-that-time-wasnt-really-interested-in-newcomers/
7. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/culture/2014/09/03/films/quarter-century-japanese-films-review/