Word: kameyama
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Dates: during 2003-2003
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...This scene from Bayside Shakedown 2, a Japanese cop drama debuting on July 19, is a terrific movie moment precisely because it's so charming and modest. But are charm and modesty the stuff of a box-office blockbuster? Chihiro Kameyama, producer of some of Japan's most memorable TV and film hits over the past 15 years, is banking on it. In a conference room high atop Fuji TV's futuristic Tokyo office building, he seems positively serene just days before the highest-profile movie release of his career. Kameyama predicts that Bayside Shakedown 2 will...
...Given the film's modest (by Hollywood standards) $8.5 million budget, Kameyama's lighthearted sequel would seem woefully overmatched by the summertime competition. But he's betting on an underdog formula that has worked magic before. Based on an 11-part TV series, the original Bayside Shakedown?which cost just $3 million to produce?premiered in 1998 and went on to become the most popular live-action Japanese movie in more than a decade. It ran in theaters for six months (most movies in Japan last about a month) and posted a box-office take of $84 million, becoming...
...Fuji TV producer and Bayside creator Kameyama argues that Japanese viewers already get plenty of fantasy from Hollywood and are hungry for domestic productions in which they can see reflections of their own lives and experiences. That's why the whole Bayside Shakedown universe was designed as a metaphor for Japan, Inc. "We wanted to depict the daily struggles that average salarymen and office ladies face every day," he says. "We simply transferred it to a police setting." This approach also makes abundant financial sense, adds leading man Oda: "There is no way we can compete with Hollywood budgets...
...course, the best of the breed, Bayside Shakedown. "We have learned a lot about viewer habits from our work in television," says Kameyama. "We give viewers what they want." This summer, he is gambling that what Japanese viewers really want is not Arnold Schwarzenegger or The One but a crime-fighting salaryman who, try as he might, just can't bring himself to litter...