APRIL 12TH
THE LEGEND OF THE STARDUST BROTHERS (1985)
Meet the Stardust Brothers, a 1980s Japanese pop duo manufactured by a shady music mogul when he brings together two wannabe stars—punk rock rebel Kan and new-wave crooner Shingo—and transforms them into a girl-friendly, silver-jumpsuited, synth-pop sensation. Along with their appointed #1 fan, who herself dreams of a music career, the duo rockets to stardom, only to discover that, as the lyrics of one of their insanely catchy songs makes clear, "Once you reach No. 1, you just go down."
In 1985, Macoto Tezuka (son of the great manga artist Osamu Tezuka) met musician and TV personality Haruo Chicada who had made a soundtrack to a movie which didn’t actually exist: The Legend of the Stardust Brothers. At the time Macoto was just 22 years old, a film-student with many short experimental films under his belt, but yet to make a feature-debut and of course had the pressure of the TEZUKA name. With Chicada as producer, Tezuka then adapted this “fake sountrack” into the real movie story of “The Stardust Brothers”.
With inspiration from “Phantom of the Paradise” and “Rocky Horror Picture Show”, Tezuka assembled a cast of some of Japan’s most famous musicians of the time, including such greats as Kiyohiko Ozaki, ISSAY, Sunplaza Nakano and Hiroshi Takano, alongside many famous names in Manga such as Monkey Punch (Lupin the 3rd), Shinji Nagashima (Hanaichi Monme), Yosuke Takahashi (Mugen Shinsi) and even many upcoming film directors of the time such as Kiyoshi Kurosawa (Tokyo Sonata) and Daihachi Yoshida (The Kirishima Thing). The resulting film “The Legend of the Stardust Brothers” is the exact definition of a cult film.