Dear Mr. Teriyaki:
I am very excited to be having my novel filmed by an American studio owned by such an eminent Japanese entertainment entity as yours. After all, we have only given the world Orson Welles, Frank Capra, Steven Spielberg—while you have given it Mothra. And I am humbly aware that your Godzilla knocked the crap out of our King Kong—which is surprising, considering the outcome of World War II, which has been over for fifty years.
I have been asked to write an article for a major American magazine to celebrate the legendary—nay, immortal-achievements of the Japanese cinema in general and of yourself in particular, with my collection of letters to you as the central theme of the piece. Would you please assist me by sending a list of your favorite movies and the names of any starlets with whom you have done the funky monkey.
Before Hideaway was released to theaters, we got my name out of the title and out of major advertising. We could not get it out of the screen credits or prevent it from being referenced in publicity materials; nevertheless, I felt we had achieved 80 percent of our objective, which was to separate me from association with their tedious, sleazy movie. My attorney’s fine work was most likely entirely responsible for our success, but in the bad-boy corner of my heart, I like to think that my letters to Mr. Teriyaki contributed to the cause.
The movie tanked, as it deserved to. It was a ghost of a ghost of the book. After stripping story, character, and theme from the novel, the director and studio execs failed to replace them with anything, resulting in just a series of images and noises.
I do not—and at the time did not—hate the director. Hating him, even going after him with a crow bar, could not have done the damage to him that he did to himself by abandoning the essential elements of the novel. I never sent him hate mail, and I never will. He won’t get a dinner invitation, either.
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