Hello, my name's Justin the Klu, and I'm here today with Will Sloan.

And you're listening to The Important Cinema Club.

And on today's episode, we're going to be talking about everyone's favorite comedian,

Beat Takashi.

I mean, I think we all remember when we were growing up watching the two beats on Japanese

TV, listening to some of their classic Monzae comedy.

It's really the Jerry and Dean of our generation.

But, of course, you might not know this, but Takeshi Katano, also known as Beat Takeshi,

is actually not only a comedian.

He does other stuff? Kind of like the number 23 that Jim Perry did.

Well, putting that aside, he's a director, an actor, a painter, a novelist, a film critic,

a TV host, a magazine columnist, even a recording artist. At his peak in the year 1996, he had

seven network TV shows that he hosted. I just watched a documentary about him, and at one point

they say he has to go record one of the nine shows that he does. Okay, well, there you go.

That's insane. I actually talked to one of my friends, Christian Murdoch, who spent five years in Japan, and he said,

you could not turn on the television without seeing Takashi Katano somewhere.

Well, over here, though, his fame rests basically on two things.

The movies that he directed and starred in, particularly the Yakuza gangster films, Sonatine and

Hanabai, which translates to fireworks, and also the fact that he's the producer of most

extreme elimination challenge. Not only the producer, he's also the star, yeah, of most extreme

elimination challenge. Yeah, which one of many TV shows along those lines that he's hosted.

But he's also hosted, like, TV shows about the economy.

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