Oscar Bucher talks about Waiting for a Train

March 13, 9:16 AMLA Asian American Movie ExaminerEd Moy

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Oscar Bucher

"I like mixing fiction with non-fiction, both ways," says San Francisco filmmaker Oscar Bucher.

As a writer-director, Bucher co-founded the acclaimed Inquiline Theatre Company, which critic Mark Bieschke called “a fantastic mirror of our times”.

The company premiered nine award-winning plays in San Francisco theaters, which Bucher either directed or helped produce, including Burn This, Frank Rich is Dead, The Red Address, Raised in Captivity, and A Fair Country, among others.

However, audiences can catch a glimpse of Bucher's unique blending of fact and fiction at the premiere of his documentary short Waiting for a Train, which premiered at the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival in March. The film will also screen at the San Francisco International Film Festival, Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival and Mendocino Film Festival.

Bucher describes Waiting for a Train as "one part historical documentary, one part music video, and one part magic realism."

In Waiting for a Train, Bucher captures the true story of a native Japanese and now San Francisco resident, Toshio Hirano, whose life is transformed by the music of country musician Jimmie Rodgers.

"Documentaries are fiction and fiction films like your normal Hollywood stuff are a type of documentary in that they document our collective desires as a culture," says Bucher. "What do we think of as a hero? Who's our heroes right now? Who are they saving us from? That's what [Hollywood films] document. Whereas with documentaries, it's "truth" but it's fiction in the sense that it's still a story, a replica that only relates to reality."

Although born in Santa Barbara, California, Bucher chose to settle in the San Francisco Bay Area over Hollywood. He currently lives in San Francisco's Richmond district with his wife, Rebecca, and sons, Maxwell and Coleman.

Having left  the stage world to pursue his interest in film, Bucher currently attends San Francisco State University where he's a Graduate student working on his Master of Fine Arts degree in Cinema. He has also produced and directed several short films including a documentary on location in Switzerland for Masks.org, the documentary Time and Space about performance artist Conrad Schuler, and a series of PSAs for the Rainforest Action Network.

His short film for Moveon.org's "Bush in 30 Seconds" project ranked in the top five percent out of 1,500 submissions. Another short film, The Peephole, which he wrote, co-directed, and edited, also screened at several national festival competitions, winning an Audience Award at The Chicago Horror Festival in April 2005.

As a writer, Bucher's half-hour noir script, The Lost Coast, was recently optioned by First Sight Entertainment and nominated for the Humanitas award in 2008. With his co-writer, Barry Gifford (author of David Lynch’s Wild at Heart, Lost Highway) he also recently completed the screenplay, Rosa Blanca, which is described as "a smart thriller with a unique spiritual edge."

Working as a writer's assistant, Bucher also helped Gifford craft seven screenplays and five novels. In addition, he produced, recorded and created original music for a double-CD audio book of Gifford’s Memories from a Sinking Ship, which was released by Bucher’s production company OB3 Studios in September 2007.

But with his latest short film Waiting for a Train, Bucher embarks on a whole new journey into what he calls "hybrid documentary."

In highly-stylized fashion, Bucher's documentary tracks Toshio Hirano from Tokyo to Texas to San Francisco’s Valencia St. as he pursues his love of country music over the past 40 years.

Or as Bucher likes to point out, "Hirano is a man following his bliss and being rewarded with a life well-lived, filled with music, song and dance."

Toshio Hirano

Born in Tokyo, Japan in the 1950's, Hirano became interested in bluegrass and country music as a teenager and later became inspired by the Mississippi legend, Jimmie Rodgers.

Hirano learned to play banjo, guitar and mandolin and continued playing music through college, after which he immigrated to the USA to pursue his love of the music.

After first visiting the Appalachia region—the heartland of Bluegrass music—he then lived in Atlanta, Nashville, Minneapolis and Austin, Texas.

San Francisco has been Hirano's home since 1986 and he continues to play in cafes and bars around town, entertaining audiences with tales of trains and cowboys and broken hearts.

"Authenticity versus novelty is part of the film," says Bucher about his interest in how ethnicity plays into audience perceptions of the musician. "For me, Toshio is completely sincere."

For Bucher, Waiting for a Train evolved not only as a film project for his MFA program at San Francisco State University, but out of his passion for country music.

Himself a musician, Bucher's band, Load the Wagon, performs covers of old school country -- Hank Williams, Johnny Cash, and their own rockabilly songs at local venues such as the Mojito Bar.

Toshio Hirano

 "The image of a 'Asian cowboy' seems to disturb the conventional tropes associated with country music in way that delights us and somehow permits us to hear the music fresh and new once again, suggesting that sometimes it takes an outsider to show the ‘inside’ what its insides are made of," states Bucher.

Although the obvious novelty image of an "Asian cowboy" was nothing new to Hirano, according to Bucher it took a little bit of prodding to get him to open up and discuss the topic during interviews.

"As Toshio himself admits, the fact that he is Japanese helps gets some folks in the club door," states Bucher. "Of course, Toshio would prefer they were there just to hear the music and yet, quite often, it’s the 'novelty' that helps build a crowd. He takes pride, however, in the fact that many times he introduces Jimmie Rodgers music to young fans that have never heard him before. They may come for the novelty but they leave with something else much more profound."

Toshio Hirano

In the film, Bucher states that his team did not attempt to "show life as it was or is," but instead chose to create a "cinematic metaphor for the emotional truths embedded in Toshio Hirano's story."

"When Toshio first heard Jimmie Rodgers’ music in Japan, the music hits him like a train," Bucher states. "And in the film we get it — both literally and figuratively; Toshio will never be the same."

To capture the essence of Hirano's journey through Appalachia as a young man, Bucher chose to film on location aboard moving vintage passenger cars, along empty train tracks, and country farms.

"We were not trying to create a re-enactment of Toshio's trip to Appalachia but instead create a sort of re-remembering," Bucher notes. "Clearly Toshio is older, wiser, and as he walks the train tracks or hops on a freight car, the images not only recall his youthful adventures but they also allude to the iconic images embedded in the songs."

Bucher also wanted to create an iconic look for the film and admits that by shooting on Super 16 film, his team was able to create a look similar to the Cohen brother's film O Brother Where Art Thou?

Toshio Hirano

Additionally, Bucher states the film's title Waiting for a Train was chosen because of Hirano's love and obsession with Jimmie Rodger's country music from the 1920s and 30s.  The film borrows its title from one of Rodger's classic songs.

Rodgers, who was a brakeman, sang mostly about trains and the sad, heroic, and beautiful life they inspired.

In order to bring the imagery in the songs to life Bucher says he chose to film much of the documentary on location in train yards, and in, on, and around moving vintage passengers cars as they headed from Sunol to Niles Canyon, California, the site of the first Bronco Billy western films shot in 1912.

As Bucher recalls: "It was a great experience to shoot another type of 'western' in this historic location and as we prepared for the elaborate last shot of the production—we had the musicians in place, the crew ready, and the sunset lit the scene perfectly—we found ourselves missing one crucial element that wasn't due for another ten minutes. And so we found ourselves in the unique position on the last day and last shot of Waiting for a Train of sitting around, hands in pockets, waiting for a train."

On a thematic scale, Bucher's film  creates what he calls a "musical celebration of a man who follows his bliss."

Bucher adds that the film's music presents "a simple message [that] pours through each note and lyric, recalling the mythic ideals of the American dream: it doesn't matter where you grow up or what country you're from, as long as you do what you love, your soul will thrive."

For more about Waiting for a Train, please visit:  Ob3studios

Waiting for a Train screens on April 25 and May 3 at the Sundance Kabuki Cinemas as part of the San Francisco International  Film Festival. 

The film is included in a shorts program entitled Foreign Territories.

To learn more about the film festival screening, please visit:  SFIFF