The Man Who Stole the Sun

Cult classic The Man Who Stole the Sun is ranked by Japanese critics as one of the best films ever made but has rarely even been screened internationally. Director Kazuhiko Hasegawa cast 70s rock icon Kenji Sawada as a high school teacher who steals a plutonium capsule from a nuclear power plant and then succeeds in building an atomic bomb in his apartment. He extorts the government with demands for uninterrupted baseball games and a concert by the then-banned Rolling Stones. A brilliantly eccentric mix of explosive thriller and satirical black comedy. Presented on an archive 35mm print.

‘There was this weird, stupid magazine called “Assassin”, and Len [Leonard Schrader, Screenwriter] had read an article before a flight to Japan entitled “Become the First Guy to Produce an Atomic Bomb in Your Town!”, and the article helped him to think of the idea. While we were in Los Angeles, we chatted about Japan and I asked him “What do you think about Japan?”, and he replied “It is a very strange country where nobody makes any complaints even if everything, head to toe, is red-taped by bureaucratic rules and regulations”. He would think the strict and non-flexible time slot for airing a baseball game was a perfect symbol of the “red-taped Japanese society”. Len asked me if I liked the idea, so I responded “So Stupid, So Good”.’

Director Kazuhiko Hasegawa, from an interview on eigagogo.free.fr by Kaori Arai and Jerry Turner.