Big In Japan

Synopsis: Intrigued by the modern phenomenon of instant internet celebrity-hood, self-avowed 'no talent'' David Elliot-Jones sets off from Melbourne to see if he can become big in Japan.

Unfortunately with Big In Japan we don’t get the Tom Waits song of the same name but we do get its “star”, David Elliot-Jones who with his pasty skin. lank hair, 98lb weakling frame and milk bottle glasses is to unprepossessing what George Clooney is to handsome. Far from the stuff of cinematic dreams it’s true but that is entirely the film-makers’ trump card - Dave is the man least-likely to make it.

Opening with Andy Warhol’s oft-quoted prediction that in the future everyone in the world will be famous for 15 minutes Dave and his two mates, Louis and Lachy, the latter two fulfilling the roles of cameraman and director respectively, set out to test the apparent fact that thanks to the internet Warhol’s future is here and now. They double their chances by heading to Japan, home of the bizarre.  If Dave has any chance of becoming famous they figure (well, Louis and Lachy do and the ever-pliable Dave complies) it is here in a country whose fascination with the West is only matched by its inability to “read” its culture and thus to distinguish between the real and the ersatz, the deserving talented and desperate wannabes. Or to paraphrase Tom Waits, to recognize those with “the style but not the grace”. To the Japanese apparently we all look the same.  And so we find out, Japan, or at least Tokyo, is a place where people who would be losers in their home country actually have a chance of becoming celebrities.

Investigating this phenomenon the lads meet three gaijin tarento (foreign talents) at various stages of their pursuit of fame: Bob “The Beast” Sapp, a mountain of an Afro-American who is at the top of his game, playing a kind of human King Kong; “Ladybeard”, another Australian whose gimmick is to dress in the de rigeur “cute” schoolgirl style while sporting a fine crop of facial hair and singing heavy metal music; and Kelsey Parnigoni, a Canadian member of a girlie pop trio whose fan base is made up of middle-aged men of dubious sexual motives.

Whilst these three characters take up a goodly portion of screen time most of the attention is on Dave as he muddles his way through various gambits but who, as we hear largely through his narration, has the wit to recognize the vacuity of this no-holds-barred pursuit of approbation. As his best efforts meet with little success and his resolve wavers (remarkably the project went on for two years) his more ambitious partners effectively browbeat him into continuing and this aspect of the film endows it with a good deal of touching pathos.

Crowd-funded to the tune of $28,000, despite its D-I-Y aesthetics Big In Japan is a well-structured, deftly assembled documentary that both edifies and entertains - as a portrait of Dave, as a window onto little seen aspects of Japanese society and simply as the record of one wacky odyssey. It’s as close to fame as ever Dave is likely to come but in itself that is quite something.      

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