- Born
- Height6′ 1″ (1.85 m)
- Ryûhei Kitamura was born on May 30, 1969 in Osaka, Japan. He is a director and writer, known for The Midnight Meat Train (2008), Azumi (2003) and Versus (2000).
- Stylized offbeat camera angles, hyper-kenetic camera movement (very similar to Sam Raimi's "old school" style).
- Over the top & bombastic action sequences
- Dark and edgy tone
- Was offered the job directing The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, but turned it down, citing a poor script.
- Briefly studied film making in Australia
- Has cast actor Tak Sakaguchi in every one of his films but 2008's The Midnight Meat Train.
- Speaks fluent English
- Was introduced to an American agent by Samuel L. Jackson, whom he met at a party and discovered was a great admirer of his work.
- I never say to my girlfriends, 'Hey, let's go check out the new Godzilla movie.' But if you ask me, that's the kind of movie I want to make. I want guys 17-20 to say to their girlfriends, 'Hey, this time Godzilla looks cool. Let's check it out.
- In fact I loved the Godzilla movies back in the '70s, but not so much the ones released in the 1980s and '90s. Godzilla movies back in the '70s were never just monster movies... There were always messages and themes that reflected the time and world within which they were made, and they combined this so well with straight-out entertainment. They lost that touch in the '80s.
- Just because you've watched thousands of action movies doesn't mean you can make a great action movie, right? That's tough. And a lot of what I get are bad rip-offs of Versus, which isn't what people should be doing. I never want to compare myself to someone else. I always try to fight the enemy within. I'm always telling myself, "No, it's not good enough, you have to try harder, more, more, more."
- Twenty years ago when I was a movie otaku in Japan, I never dreamed that Japanese movies and comics would ever be exported like this. It's good, of course. I get a lot of support from overseas otaku. They are the guys who love my movies and give me energy. But it's a little bit sad that anime, manga, and games are the main things expanding Japanese culture over the world, not live-action movies.
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