Honored as Commended Winner in Non-Fiction, 2014 Self-Publishing Review Awards.
Part armchair travel book, part personal memoir, Bill Zarchy's Showdown at Shinagawa: Tales of Filming from Bombay to Brazil takes readers inside the international adventures of working film crews making a living in the fascinating, unpredictable, sometimes dark, often comical world of the film and video business.Â
Showdown features 18 tales (from Japan, India, China, Uganda, the Philippines, New Zealand, France, Singapore, England, Taiwan, Mexico and Brazil) and 21 pages of color photos, the rich experiences of a director of photography whose assignments have taken him to 30 countries and 40 states. Zarchy brings us along for the ride on a darkly funny bus trip down the deadly Bombay-Pune Road in "Wrecks and Pissers," drags us through the disorienting milieu of Singapore's high-tech cleanrooms in "No Worry, Chicken Curry," faces a surreal Tokyo bowling-for-budget match in the title story "Showdown at Shinagawa," and shares the challenge of filming former President Clinton while dealing with family tragedy in "Dog Years." And so on, across six continents, over three decades of his work.Â
Sometimes he deals with famous people-Clinton, Steve Jobs, and Morgan Freeman-more often with ordinary folks. Despite the numbing jetlag, cultural disorientation, frustration with clients, and unpredictable weather that are an inevitable part of international film shoots, Zarchy maintains his sense of humor and the ridiculous, and a strong belief in the warmth of people all over the world.
Zarchy's first filming trip abroad was a shoot for a Hong Kong-based tour company that took him to eight countries in Asia in 1975. Two years later, he accompanied the band Fleetwood Mac through Japan and Hawaii. Since then, he has shot projects of all kinds all over the world. In the course of traveling and working with clients and crew people from everywhere, he has developed a fine ear for dialogue, a witty style of storytelling, and a keen insight into the dissonance that often occurs when people in other countries emulate the style and outer trappings of American society, within the context of their own cultures.
Showdown at Shinagawa is more than a travel memoir. It is also a book about the film and video industry, a workaday account of doing business in a myriad of locations across the U.S. and around the world. Where many travel narratives detail searches for interesting encounters, environments, and experiences, Showdown at Shinagawa tells of going places with an agenda--a job to do, a crew to hire, a production to shoot. Unlike tourists visiting to see the sights or seek enlightenment, the author and his colleagues deal with the locals in substantive ways, and the results are often poignant, puzzling, or comical--sometimes all three at once.
