Can it get any crazier? The “Pulp Fiction” director appears in a kimono and speaks to an electronic dog.
Of course, the world has known about the bizarre commercials from Japan for a long time. The Land of the Rising Sun has a tradition of making strange speeches to its own audience, who seem more willing to buy washing powder when presented by grotesque figures.
Apparently one of director Quentin Tarantino’s aspirations in life was to be a part of such a spectacle himself, or so he appeared in a 2009 commercial for a Japanese telecommunications company called SoftBank.
The product featured in the movie is a phone speaker in the shape of a dog, which is SoftBank’s mascot. Tarantino, dressed in a kimono and apparently out of his mind, introduces himself to a family as Uncle Tara, babbles something about the “samurai spirit” and performs a few kung fu moves. Then the electronic dog comes into play, something like an animal cell phone speaker. The director is asked by a blonde from across the ocean to move back to her immediately. Which Tarantino then does like a gopher stung by the tarantula.
Only Japanese know what’s going on here
Sound weird? Well, it gets even better: The family, a hodgepodge of Japan’s most popular advertising protagonists, consists of a father-turned-dog, a black son who appears to be American – and in the background of the video Prokofiev provides the appropriately dramatic acoustic Dramaturgy.
Maybe all of this is itself a parody of Japanese advertising culture and we just don’t check it. But Tarantino certainly had his most obscure acting gig since From Dusk Till Dawn.