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On the first day of filming for the short film "Kaiju Bunraku" — which made its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival — Martin Holman refused to come out of his dressing room.
The 59-year-old BYU grad and professor of Japanese language, literature and theater at the University of Missouri arrived on the set with his traditional Japanese puppet theater troupe to discover that the filmmakers had built the sets on the floor. Traditionally, the sets are about 30-34 inches off the floor, "so you're standing up to operate the puppets," he said.
Filmmakers Lucas Leyva and Jillian Mayer weren't particularly pleased when Holman told them, "We can't operate like this."
"They said, 'Can't you just squat and move the puppets?' I said, 'No.' I put my foot down. So we just went back and stayed in the dressing room all day long. I felt bad because they're the filmmakers, but it wouldn't have worked."
Keep in mind that the shoot for the 13-minute film took a full week of 12-hour days.
"We might have done it, but we never would have stood up again," Holman said with a laugh.
The filmmakers relented and put the sets on pedestals. And one of them later told Holman that he was right.
"Kaiju Bunraku" is about a Japanese couple who live in a land infested with giant monsters. If you listen, you'll hear what sounds like Godzilla. He's not mentioned, but King Ghidorah (aka Ghidra) is. And Mothra makes an appearance.
Although it was filmed in the United States and features all American performers, the film is in Japanese with English subtitles.
("Kaiju Bunraku" screens again Thursday at 8:30 p.m. at the Egyptian Theatre in Park City.)
Holman said that, even as a child, he was interested in puppets. "The first thing I remember asking Santa Claus for was a marionette," he said. And the next year it was a ventriloquist dummy.
His interest in traditional Japanese puppet theater wasn't sparked until he took a class in puppetry at BYU in 1977. He spent time in Japan as an LDS missionary and when he was doing graduate work at the University of California at Berkeley. And when he returned to Japan as director of Cal's studies center there, he discovered a puppet theater near where he was living.
"They showed me around. I don't know that a foreigner had ever been to their theater," he said. "They showed me around … and I said, 'Can you train me as a puppeteer?' "
To his surprise, "They said, 'OK. You start tomorrow.' "
He spent a year training with the Japanese puppeteers. And when he returned to the U.S., he sent students to Japan to be trained. "And once I had enough former students who had been trained well … we started performing in the States about 14 years ago as Bunraku Bay Puppet Theater."
They've performed in 34 states, at the Kennedy Center and the Smithsonian. He even did a short bit for the short-lived NBC sitcom "Animal Practice" in 2012.
"Kaiju Bunraku" is "our first real foray into film."
Holman said he was "hounded" by a reality-show producer who wanted to do a show with him, "but I kept saying no. I don't want to completely go away from the traditions."
"Kaiju Bunraku" isn't exactly traditional, "but then again, if they had decided to do monsters it might very well have been like this. And I thought this one worked OK.
"And now that I've had enough experience doing absolutely traditional stuff and now that I'm turning 60 this year, it's OK for me. … I'm going to start doing a little bit of stuff that's not quite traditional stories."
Holman, who is now an evangelical Christian, is working on an adaptation of the Book of Ruth to perform in Japan.
"It's a story I think the Japanese will get, because it involves devotion beyond devotion," he said.
Twitter: @ScottDPierce —
Sundance '17
The 2017 Sundance Film Festival runs through Sunday in Park City and at venues in Salt Lake City and the Sundance resort in Provo Canyon. Ticket and schedule information at sundance.org.