From I Love Lucy to Shogun and Beyond: Tales from the Other Side of the Camera by Jerry London & Rhonda Collier

Author:Jerry London & Rhonda Collier [London, Jerry]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: JRL Productions Inc
Published: 2017-06-12T16:00:00+00:00

Jerry the Samurai

Jerry the Shõgun

Director in action

Jerry with Toshiro Mifune

ONION RINGS AND BIG MACS

When Marilynn was with me, she did her very best to alleviate the numbing monotony of eating almost nothing but rice and fish or squid. She employed tactics such as trying to find something resembling chicken at a local market, and simmering it with noodles on a hot plate in our room into something akin to chicken noodle soup. She also brought jars of peanut butter from home. The delight that shot through my bones at the sight of a jar of peanut butter is a true testament to how badly my taste buds had deteriorated.

I wasn’t the only one suffering from Western food withdrawal; the steady diet of rice and seafood was wearing thin on everyone. One day on set, word began circulating that we were going to get onion rings for lunch. While onion rings may not have elicited anything more than a grunt back home, this was music to American ears. The chatter about the treat of simple onion rings created a flash mob, with everyone beating a hasty retreat to line up at craft services when the lunch break was called.

The groans of crashing disappointment were audible as we sank our teeth into the “onion rings,” only to find we were biting into fried calamari. More squid, only this time in rings! Perhaps to the Americans’ deprived palates, that calamari looked enough like onion rings to set off a seismic rumor. Such extended periods of time on a diet so alien to us created what can only be described as a food mirage on the culinary horizon.

After five weeks of this, we were nearing the end of filming in Nagashima. With just one week to go, the production staff brought to my attention that the weather was due to get a bit stormy, and that we might want to consider finishing things up earlier than scheduled, if possible.

They didn’t have to ask me twice. There were about two hundred hamburgers with my name on them waiting for me out there somewhere.

I studied the script, and figured out that I could rework a couple of the scenes so we could shoot them in Kyoto, our next stop. All agreed. With the storyboard revised, we managed to cut four whole days off the Nagashima schedule.

We wrapped the last day of shooting on Friday at about 2:00 p.m. I think I was on that bullet train for Kyoto by 2:01 p.m. The crew was to follow the next day.

Safely checked into my two miniscule rooms at the Kyoto Holiday Inn—one just barely fit my luggage, the other just barely fit me—I headed straight for the closest Golden Arches and stuffed myself with hamburgers, fries, and shakes. Cheap, greasy, fried food never tasted so good!!

Saturday came and went, with no sign of the crew. Sunday morning, I heard that a typhoon had hit our little village of Nagashima the night before. Much later, I learned it was Typhoon Tip—the largest typhoon in recorded history—that had hit that side of Japan.

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