Spencer Nakasako

(as told to Alvin Lu)

Spencer Nakasako was recently referred to by a young, up-and-coming filmmaker as an "old-timer."

100 Words on the NAATA Film Festival

At first, I thought Curtis Choy was an asshole... This was before NAATA was NAATA, before there was a NAATA film festival. It was 1980 at UC Berkeley. This was the conference that actually was the formation of NAATA. It was organized by Loni Ding, and all these producers flew in from all over the country.

We had it set up so one night everyone could show their work, and Curtis was demanding that we get a double-system projector, ya know, picture and sound separate, so he could show a rough-cut. I didn't know what a rough-cut was, so I didn't know what the hell he was bitching about. I mean, I was a nobody, right? The guy that turned the lights on and off and made sure things got plugged in. Anyway, turned out VC [Visual Communications] brought up a double-system from LA, so I was off the hook with Curtis.

It was the first time I saw a rough cut of his MANONGS, which took him another five or six years before it became FALL OF THE I-HOTEL. That to me was like... my first experience where people actually talked about a film. It was like a who's-who was there. Loni was doing stuff, Christine Choy was doing stuff, and VC and Steve Ning and Wayne, but Curtis' thing was the most, ya know... I'd never seen rough-cut before, so I was like an idiot, like how come there's all these X's and splice marks and stuff? But his shit was good, ya know what I'm saying?