Did you know this episode marks the fifth anniversary of Hell Is For Hyphenates? If you didn’t before, you do now. So no playing dumb.

Last year when we celebrated our 50^th episode (we mark every possible occasion available to us), we noted that it was fitting we do so not with a big-name filmmaker of the month, but rather with someone we hadn’t actually heard of before. If this show is all about discovery (and it is), then there’s nothing more appropriate.

So it’s cool that it’s happened again.

We were pretty excited when screenwriter Mark Protosevich agreed to be our guest, and were fascinated by his choice of filmmaker: Masaki Kobayashi.

Other names were bandied about as possibilities, but Mark chose Kobayashi largely because he’s a filmmaker who rarely gets his dues. And when we began watching his work, it became clear that we were dealing with one of the all time greats. How is Kobayashi not as big a name in cinema as Kurosawa, his contemporary, colleague and friend?

If, like us this time last month, you’re not familiar with Kobayashi’s works, then this is the episode for you. We talk the Samurai epic Harakiri, the terrifying ghost story Kwaidan, and one of the most impressive cinematic achievements of all time, World War Two epic The Human Condition.

As always, we begin by reviewing a few key films from the past month, and this time they all reflect our future in some way: Brad Bird’s Tomorrowland, George Miller’s Mad Max: Fury Road, and Alex Garland’s Ex Machina.

But that’s not all. Our middle segment this month is one you have to hear if you’ve ever complained about a screenwriter ever. We look at the way in which writers are credited in Hollywood: complex guild arbitration means that the credited writer may not actually be the one responsible for the script. What seems like an insane system from the outside starts to make sense once you examine it, and there’s no one better to talk about this than Mark. We were hoping for a few generalised stories that avoid specifics, but what we got was both candid and eye-opening.

“I have sole credit on that film, but not a single line of dialogue in the film was written by me.”

If you’re not a subscriber and only listen to the occasional episode, then this is one you have to hear. And it’s not always the done thing to ask for a gift, but if you could swing by iTunes and leave us a positive review, that would be a lovely birthday present.

If you want to brush up on the films of Masaki Kobayashi first, remember to check out our Cheat Sheet here, before listening to the episode here.

Five years! Five whole years! That’s how long Hell Is For Hyphenates will have been running when our next episode is released at the end of the month. That’s a whole lot of guests, a whole lot of filmmakers, and a frankly insane number of films. Which is just how we like it.

Joining us to celebrate the occasion will be our special guest: screenwriter Mark Protosevich. Mark has worked on 2000’s The Cell, 2006’s Poseiden, 2007’s I Am Legend, 2011’s Thor and 2013’s Oldboy. He’s also worked with Steven Spielberg on the fourth Jurassic Park, and wrote the script for the unproduced Batman Triumphant, which would have been the fifth instalment of the Tim Burton/Joel Schumacher series of Batman films.

We’re delighted to have Mark on the show, and equally delighted at his Filmmaker of the Month:  Japanese filmmaker Masaki Kobayashi!

It wasn’t the filmmaker he chose that got us excited (although we are very excited to explore this little-discussed ouvre). It was the part of his email:

I woke up this morning and knew exactly which director I wanted to choose – Masaki Kobayashi. HARA KIRI is one of my top ten favorite films of all time. That’s not hyperbole. Also, I feel he’s not discussed as being in the ranks of the great directors, and I fully believe he is. Not just in terms of Japan, but the world.

The whole idea of our show is that we look at a filmmaker through the eyes of the person who loves that filmmaker more than anyone else. It doesn’t matter if the guest wants to talk about Stan Brakhage or Brett Rattner: so long as they’re setting out to prove why their filmmaker of choice is the greatest, we know we’re in for a great show.

So who is Masaki Kobayashi?

Kobayashi was a firm pacifist who was drafted into World War II. In protest, he refused any promotion above the rank of private, and later spent time as a prisoner of war. When the war ended, he returned to filmmaking and directed his first film Musuko no Sheishun (My Son’s Youth) in 1952.

He is best known for three key works: the Human Condition trilogy, which from 1959 to 1961 explored the effects of World War II on a pacifist; the afore-mentioned Harakiri, which won the Special Jury Prize at the 1963 Cannes Film Festival; and the1964 ghost anthology Kwaidan, which also won the Special Jury Prize at Cannes, as well as receiving an Academy Award nomination for Best Foreign Language Film.

In the late 1960s he broke out of the studio system and formed the independent “Yonki-no-Kai” or “Club of the Four Knights” with Akira Kurosawa, Kon Ichikawa and Keisuke Kinoshita. In case you’re wondering what The Avengers would look like with 20^th century Japanese filmmakers.

But as fascinating as that biography is, there’s far more to Kobayashi’s work. How much more? Join us for our 5^th anniversary episode on May 31 to find out!