Yes, this is Kunieda, reporting to you live from Talking Gorilla Central.
“Hey! You’re trembling again, limp-dick! Are you really so incapable of holding a fucking fork?!”
The gorilla appears to be ugly and annoying and no one wants him around. So there you have it! Kunieda, signing off!
As I wrapped up my mental broadcast, I watched as Nishikido leapt down the assistant director’s throat with the force of a thousand suns.
Settle down, grandpa. You’re investing way too much energy in this. Let me plug in my USB cable so you can charge my phone instead.
Nevertheless, I did not want to have to waste time and delay our schedule, so I approached the assistant director myself. “Could I have a minute?”
When covering food stories, it was essential to get a “fork shot” of the food in question being lifted from the plate. Believe it or not, this was a skill that took practice.
“If you use your left hand to support your right elbow, it should stabilize.”
“Oh, my god, it works! Thank you so much!”
“Hey, kid, we’re filming your taste-test after this. Better get ready.”
“My name is Kunieda.”
We were covering an American roast beef restaurant that had just opened its first branch in Japan. It was a collaborative effort with their PR team, so I didn’t need to direct anything. We were shooting indoors, and I would get to eat free food. It should have been an appetizing job in more ways than one, but the recent stress had done a number on my stomach, and I wasn’t hungry in the slightest.
The meat was bigger than my face, juicy and dripping with sauce, and accompanied by a whole bowl of mashed potatoes. By all accounts, it should have enticed me. I knew I needed to eat; food was an important source of energy, with added benefits for my skin and complexion, and without it, I’d look like shit on camera. But these days, whenever I ate solid food, my stomach screamed like it was being flattened by a rolling pin.
“Okay, on my signal, your line is ‘Time to dig in!’ Then you’ll cut the meat and lift it to your mouth. Pause to look at the camera, then take a bite and give your thoughts.”
“Got it.”
Don’t make me eat it! I don’t want to! I couldn’t even bear to look at it glistening in the light. But if I didn’t nail it on the first try, we’d have to do a second take, then a third. Summoning my courage, I erased all fear from my face.
“Time to dig in! Wow, this thing is huge. Not sure if I can finish the whole slice… Mmm, the sauce packs a punch! You can really taste the garlic and red wine, and it pairs perfectly with the robust flavor of the meat. Delicious.”
“Okay, perfect! One quick review…”
Pipe down, I silently growled at my stomach as I gazed at the little camera screen located behind the director. I already wasn’t looking forward to watching it—while there was no need for a retake, my poor condition would be clear as crystal on film.
“Time to dig in!” said the Kei on screen.
At this, I did a double-take. Why did I look so alive? My smile was flawless and brimming with delight, befitting my princely reputation. Was I always this charming? Did modern cameras come with some kind of added filter for that? If the viewers didn’t already know me, they’d call the station to find out who I was! Either that, or I was now so fatigued that my standards were dropping.
“Great job! Okay, now let’s get a fork shot.”
I chose a piece of meat dripping with sauce, stabbed it with the fork, and held it up. The shot was less than ten seconds (of 30 minutes total spent filming on set), but the moment I saw the footage, my stomach rumbled faintly. Luckily no one nearby heard it, so I held a straight face, but internally I was startled to find that my appetite had roared to life. I’d literally eaten the same thing moments ago and thought it tasted like rubber—but through the camera lens, I suddenly craved it.
“I gotta say, Nishikido-san has a real talent with filming food! He always uses his magic to make it look delicious. I’m full just looking at this footage!”
Despite the director’s praise, however, the man in question didn’t even crack a smile. “We’re interviewing the owner next, right?” he demanded impatiently. “Quit flappin’ your jaws and hurry it up!”
“Okay, okay…”
Evidently it wasn’t a camera filter—it was Nishikido himself.
Thus far I had only ever teamed up with him on crime coverage, so perhaps he simply hadn’t needed this technique up until now. All this time, I thought the camera was just equipment, that a cameraman’s only skills were composition and timing, that it all got edited into something decent by sheer luck. I figured it was brainless work that even I could do. But now, I could see the difference.
Back at the station, we climbed out of the news van and were just about to part ways in the parking lot when Nishikido called out to me. “Hey, kid.”
“My name is Kunieda.”
“Lemme borrow ya.”
“Where are we going?”
“Not far. Won’t take long.”
Just the two of us? Instantly I thought of about ten different work-related tasks I could invent to get out of it, but instead I chose to do as he asked. I wanted to know how he turned that boring, everyday footage into something so captivating, even if I ran the risk of getting another boilerplate “I love my job” type of answer. But if he says something creepy like “I put my love into the camera,” I’m calling the cops, just FYI.
We took a familiar path, and sure enough, we arrived at the same noodle bar that Asou had brought me to.
“One katsu curry bowl and one mushroom rice soup, thin, easy on the rice.”
“Sure thing.”
What the—did he just order for me without asking? He closed the menu with no explanation other than “You need to make sure you eat.”
“I apologize. I wanted to make sure I’d have room for the beef today.”
“Liar. You been skippin’ more than one or two meals. I can see it on your face.” And with that, he fell into a grumpy silence, arms folded.
“Um, Nishikido-san,” I began hesitantly, “what made you want to be a cameraman?”
“I never wanted to. They assigned me to the camera crew when they hired me, and that was that. It’s hard work, the equipment weighs a ton, and sometimes they send you out to dangerous countries where the camera on your back looks like a weapon. There ain’t nothin’ good about this job, I tell you what.”
“Then why didn’t you just stay retired?”
“For the money, obviously! My youngest is still in college. Dumbass thinks he’s smart enough for grad school.”
I was expecting a self-important “master of my craft” spiel, but instead what I got was dry, tasteless reality. I could hardly believe it.
“What, that not good enough for ya? If I had to pick something, I’d say I like going to the tech seminars they hold at the other O&Os. It’s like a free vacation.”
“Oh, no, there’s nothing wrong with your answer. I was just surprised, that’s all.”
“Yeah? Want an even bigger surprise?”
“What’s that?”
“I originally applied to be a newscaster.”
“What?”
I was glad we weren’t eating during this conversation, because otherwise I might have sprayed a mouthful across the table. Nishikido, a newscaster? With his caveman-looking face? He didn’t stand a chance unless he laundered his DNA through seven generations of marrying models like Triendl Reina, and even then, it was a gamble.
He took note of my stunned silence and clucked his tongue. “I’ll bet you think it’s out of my league, don’tcha? Well, for your information, they didn’t care so much about looks back in those days!”
Sure, but still… I decided to dig deeper. “Why a newscaster?”
“I loved baseball, and I wanted to be a commentator. ‘Going, going…aaand it’s gone! That’s a home run, folks!’ Fun, right? Kept asking ’em to transfer me to the sports department, but it never worked out.”
“I see.”
“Slapped the shit out of a dumbass for getting in my shot at the scene of an accident. Then he went on to become a big deal, and there went my chances.”
Somehow, I suspected there were at least a hundred more people with a similar grudge against this man. He heaved a sigh, and with it, his tone shifted from “hard as a rock” to…I don’t know, “hard as a tree” or something.
“The guy who got hired as an anchor over me, well, he was a player. Voice like butter. In the group interview, it was clear he was different from the rest—I’m sure every damn one of us must have seen it. And sure enough, he proved popular. But it wasn’t long before all that praise and attention turned him into a braggart. He’d go out drinking with a woman on his arm every night, and eventually he ended up missing two broadcasts. After that, he got shut out of the industry, and for good reason. No matter how handsome and talented he was, nobody’d wanna risk hiring him again.”
“What became of him after that?”
“After he quit, I never heard from him again. With his rep, he couldn’t go freelance either.”
Word traveled fast in an industry like ours. That was how everyone at the station knew the story about how I came to be hired.
“Everybody said it was karma,” Nishikido continued, his tone steeling up again. He was angry—no, that wasn’t it. He was sad. “He got too cocky and dug his own grave. And yeah, they’re right, but don’t the folks who kissed his ass share a part of the responsibility? What if one of you assholes had bothered to train him up right? Like, gimme a break here.”
He paused for a moment, then suddenly seemed to remember something.
“Y’know… I really liked him as an anchor. His talent proved to me that he deserved the job more than I did. And because of that, I let go of my resentment and started feelin’ proud of him instead.”