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Oscar®-nominated Documentary Takes Us Inside the Unruly, Lively 40-year Marriage and Artistic Partnership of Ushio and Noriko Shinohara
“A movie that makes you feel less like a spectator than a guest, a friend welcomed into the home of an odd and fascinating couple.” —A.O. Scott, The New York Times
Cutie and the Boxer is a love story, an art story, a family story and a New York City story — all of them weird, funny and a little heartbreaking. It’s a Japanese story, too. As a young artist in Tokyo in the 1960s, Ushio Shinohara was a rowdy avant-garde painter destined for fame and fortune. Seeking international recognition, he moved to New York City in 1969. Four years later, at age 41, he met 19-year-old Noriko, who had made her own journey from rural Japan to New York in pursuit of her artistic ambitions. The stage was set for love and art to blossom. But something went awry on the road to a bright future.
The Academy Award®-nominated Cutie and the Boxer has its national broadcast premiere on Friday, Sept. 18, 2015 at 10 p.m. as a special presentation on PBS’s POV (Point of View). (Check local listings.) American television’s longest-running independent documentary series, POV is the recipient of a 2013 MacArthur Foundation Award for Creative and Effective Institutions.
Despite critical praise for his “boxing paintings” and cardboard constructions and his notoriety in New York art circles, Ushio never found it easy to sell his work. Noriko, meanwhile, put her ambitions on hold to act as Ushio’s assistant and raise their son, Alex. She also had to contend with her husband’s alcoholism and domineering personality. Even today, the couple lives a chaotic, hand-to-mouth existence Brooklyn, as the irrepressible 83-year-old Ushio keeps punching away for his big break. Yet something is changing. Noriko, 62, is finding her own artistic voice through a graphic series about her life with Ushio titled “Cutie and Bullie.”
Fresh from Japan in 1973, Noriko wandered into a SoHo studio in Manhattan and met Ushio. She was smitten by the older artist’s ebullience and confidence and the aura of promise that surrounded him—never mind the aura of alcohol. After their first night together, he was pleased to learn that her parents were supporting her and asked if he could borrow rent money. Noriko wrote him a check. Six months later, she was in love, pregnant and, since her furious parents had cut her off, as destitute as Ushio. Their marriage was not the beginning of a fairy tale, or maybe, in a very bohemian, New York art-scene way, it was.
Cutie and the Boxer provides a lively account of the 40 years that followed, full of financial struggle, inebriation, parties, exhibitions and Ushio’s single-minded dedication to his work. He begins paintings by punching at large canvases with boxing gloves wrapped in paint-soaked rags—his version of New York “action painting.” His other signature works are multi-colored cardboard constructions, many in the form of oversized motorcycles. Included in Cutie and the Boxer are scenes from a 1979 documentary that called Ushio “the most famous of the poor and struggling artists in New York.” A wrenching scene shows a drunken Ushio boiling in rage and self-pity over the fact that he is so praised, and yet, he says, “I’ve got nothing.”
But the essence of Cutie and the Boxer takes place in the present. The octogenarian Ushio has lost none of his fierceness, dedication—and self-centeredness. His life seems, as ever, caught on the edge of success. A visit from a curator of the Guggenheim Museum promises much but delivers little, despite Ushio’s spirited demonstration of his technique. Around the same time, he makes a quick trip to Tokyo, where he sells his works for modest sums: just enough, after expenses, to cover another month’s bills. But Ushio’s family life has not remained static. Son Alex, grown up, is an aspiring painter with an alcohol problem (health issues have recently forced Ushio to give up drinking). And though Ushio continues to demand Noriko’s assistance in his work, insisting that “the average one has to support the genius,” it’s done with the wry sense of a man increasingly beleaguered by his wife’s resistance.
The couple’s barbed banter churns with bitterness, devotion, biting humor, accusations and enduring forgiveness—forming the heart of Cutie and the Boxer. They have Rashomon-like recollections of a shared past. Ushio thinks Noriko’s early decision to quit school and start working with him was “the best move she could have made”; Noriko remembers it as “my worst time. After I met him, I became like naked. All my ideas, all my freshness, he took away.” Over the years, Noriko has developed a low-level guerrilla opposition to Ushio’s demands, and she is outspoken now about their lives together. Her retorts often leave Ushio with the guilty smile of a child with his hand in the cookie jar.
Something else has happened. Noriko has been working on a storytelling series of black-and-white drawings depicting the relationship of “Cutie and Bullie,” a thinly veiled, equally funny and painful recounting of her life with Ushio. She feels she has finally found her artistic voice. Ushio alternates between being flattered and being dismissive. When an upscale gallery plans a retrospective for Ushio—maybe, at last, his commercial breakthrough—Noriko shows the gallery owner her drawings. Impressed, he decides to mount a show of her art in a room adjacent to Ushio’s exhibit. Perhaps to everyone’s surprise, Noriko’s show sparks great interest in her sensual, whimsical “Cutie and Bullie.”
“Cutie is very good at taming Bullie,” Noriko says, “but it’s not so easy taming him in real life. . . . We are like two flowers in one pot. It’s difficult; sometimes we don’t get enough nutrients. But when everything goes well, we become two beautiful flowers.”
“This film started about seven years ago, when I first met Ushio and Noriko Shinohara,” says director Zachary Heinzerling. “I knew something special was there. Ushio is 83 years old, but has the energy and hunger for life of someone a tenth his age. Noriko exudes a calming grace and sly wit, perfectly complementing Ushio’s raucous nature. They live in a space that acts as a shrine to their storied existence: floors coated with years of old paint, drawings stacked on top of paintings on top of books, photos tacked to the walls hinting at past fame. I was immediately engrossed in their colorful world, where the lines between art and life were completely blurred.
“Career disappointments, gender roles, marriage, aging—these are all issues we encounter in adulthood. One of the biggest challenges was to shed light on the love the two artists undoubtedly have for one another, even if they rarely express it directly. I hope that audiences will recognize themselves in Ushio and Noriko’s story and consider their own relationships. My goal is to absorb the audience in the raw spirit and beauty that emanates from my subjects, to open a door onto the creative and very private world where the rhythms of the Shinoharas’ lives play out.”
Cutie and the Boxer, winner of a 2014 Grierson Award for Best Cinema Documentary and the U.S. Documentary Directing Award for Zachary Heinzerling at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival, is a production of Cine Mosaic and Ex Lion Tamer in association with Little Magic Films.
About the Filmmaker:
Zachary Heinzerling, Director/Cinematographer
Zachary Heinzerling is a film director based in Brooklyn, N.Y. He graduated from the University of Texas at Austin with a bachelor’s degree in philosophy. Cutie and the Boxer is his debut feature, for which he won the Charles E. Guggenheim Emerging Artist Award at the 2013 Full Frame Documentary Film Festival. The film was featured on many Top 10 film lists of 2013, including that of A.O. Scott from The New York Times and Joe Morgenstern of The Wall Street Journal. In addition, Heinzerling was selected as one of 25 filmmakers for the Film Society of Lincoln Center and IFP’s Emerging Visions Program during the 2011 New York Film Festival. He has worked on several feature-length films for HBO and PBS, including four Emmy Award®-winning documentaries, as a field producer and cinematographer.
Credits:
Director/Cinematographer: Zachary Heinzerling
Editor: David Teague
Original Music: Yasuaki Shimizu
Additional Editing: Andy Grieve, Akiko Iwakawa
Executive Producer: Kiki Miyake
Producers: Lydia Dean Pilcher, Patrick Burns, Sierra Pettengill
Running time: 86:46
POV Series Credits:
Executive Producers: Chris White, Simon Kilmurry
Co-Executive Producer: Cynthia López
Associate Producer: Nicole Tsien
Coordinating Producer: Nikki Heyman
About POV
Produced by American Documentary, Inc., POV is public television’s premier showcase for nonfiction films. The series airs Mondays at 10 p.m. on PBS from June to September, with primetime specials during the year. Since 1988, POV has been the home for the world’s boldest contemporary filmmakers, celebrating intriguing personal stories that spark conversation and inspire action. Always an innovator, POV discovers fresh new voices and creates interactive experiences that shine a light on social issues and elevate the art of storytelling. With our documentary broadcasts, original online programming and dynamic community engagement campaigns, we are committed to supporting films that capture the imagination and present diverse perspectives.
POV films have won 32 Emmy® Awards, 18 George Foster Peabody Awards, 12 Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Awards, three Academy Awards®, the first-ever George Polk Documentary Film Award and the Prix Italia. The POV series has been honored with a Special News & Documentary Emmy Award for Excellence in Television Documentary Filmmaking, two IDA Awards for Best Continuing Series and the National Association of Latino Independent Producers (NALIP) Award for Corporate Commitment to Diversity. More information is available at www.pbs.org/pov.
POV Community Engagement and Education (www.pbs.org/pov/engage)
POV’s Community Engagement and Education team works with educators, community organizations and PBS stations to present more than 650 free screenings every year. In addition, we distribute free discussion guides and standards-aligned lesson plans for each of our films. With our community partners, we inspire dialogue around the most important social issues of our time.
POV Digital (www.pbs.org/pov/)
Since 1994, POV Digital has driven new storytelling initiatives and interactive production for POV. The department created PBS’s first program website and its first web-based documentary (POV’s Borders) and has won major awards, including a Webby Award (and six nominations) and an Online News Association Award. POV Digital continues to explore the future of independent nonfiction media through its digital productions and the POV Hackathon lab, where media makers and technologists collaborate to reinvent storytelling forms. @povdocs on Twitter.
American Documentary, Inc. (www.amdoc.org/)
American Documentary, Inc. (AmDoc) is a multimedia company dedicated to creating, identifying and presenting contemporary stories that express opinions and perspectives rarely featured in mainstream media outlets. AmDoc is a catalyst for public culture, developing collaborative strategic engagement activities around socially relevant content on television, online and in community settings. These activities are designed to trigger action, from dialogue and feedback to educational opportunities and community participation.
Major funding for POV is provided by PBS, The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and National Endowment for the Arts. Additional funding comes from Nancy Blachman and David desJardins, Bertha Foundation, The Fledgling Fund, Marguerite Casey Foundation, Ettinger Foundation, New York State Council on the Arts, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, Ann Tenenbaum and Thomas H. Lee, and public television viewers. POV is presented by a consortium of public television stations, including KQED San Francisco, WGBH Boston and THIRTEEN in association with WNET.ORG.
Contacts:
POV Communications: 212-989-7425. Alternate contact: 206-790-8697.
Cathy Fisher, cfisher@pov.org; Brian Geldin bgeldin@pov.org
POV online pressroom: www.pbs.org/pov/pressroom
