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The Japanese Sandman (Short Film)

Frameline / Year: 2007

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Duration: 7 days

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Synopsis

At once wry travelogue and heartbreaking tale of love lost, The Japanese Sandman is a visual interpretation of a letter William S. Burroughs wrote in 1953 to Allen Ginsberg (from the collection The Yage Letters). Told through Burroughs' incisive voice, cocaine snorting in Panama and post-prom handjobs in 1931 St. Louis becomes a meditation on loss, memory and the human condition.

Actor/performance artist John Fleck leads a stand-out cast through Burroughs' recounting of scoring opiates, whores and boys in Panama and, in the letter's "P.S.," a love affair with farm boy Billy Brandshinkel in the Ozark's of his youth. Imperial Teen's Roddy Bottum provides the lively and compelling score.

Media Quotes

"Buhr conjures up Panama through a judicious handful of interiors and a few tight exteriors, married with a sterling fast-paced editing job, fine crisp evocative cinematography, and a great bouncing soundtrack. John Fleck, the actor who plays Burroughs, does an excellent job mimicking the writer's unmistakable atonal voice, looks like him and even has his facial tics and tremors down to a tee. The Japanese Sandman is a lean, fat-free film, very faithful to the original fake letter it is based on, easily compacting the complex, poignant subject matter into its short, lively running time." — Realitystudio
"Shot and edited with intelligence and humour, filmmaker Buhr wonderfully develops and then twists the tone, shifting from the jazzy, noirish Panama to the warmer, more wistful reminiscence of youth. This change is extremely effective, moving from sharply hilarious to deeply emotional while adding some striking subtext about the nature of addiction. The result is entertaining and suprisingly moving." — Shadows On the Wall