ESSAY 7
DID MIE GO TOO FAR?
One fan's opinion on Mie's notorious starring role in 'Call Girl'
by Jeffrey C. Branch
It was in 1996 when I read Mark Schilling’s fascinating book, The Encyclopedia of Japanese Pop Culture that I was able to learn more about what happened to Pink Lady after I left Japan in early December of 1978. I mean, everything beyond their failed attempt to strike it rich on the Billboard charts with “Kiss in the Dark” in 1979 and the ill-fated, short lived NBC TV show the girls co-starred in with Jeff Altman the following year. Beyond discovering that Pink Lady broke up in early 1981 (Maybe I’m wrong, but I’ve since been of the opinion that the girls were burned out and welcomed the split, thank God it was an amicable parting, or we wouldn’t have had all those reunions, including 2003), what really shocked me was the revelation that Mie, having quickly launched a solo career starred in a movie where she portrayed, well, a whore.
Of course, I’m talking about Mie’s infamous star turn in “Call Girl”. My initial reaction upon reading about that was, and I quote, “Mie played WHAT??” Needless to say, it was quite a shock to the system, that one half of Japan’s most famous, not to mention most wholesome pop act would do a complete 180 and play such an incredibly provocative role. To give everyone a proper comparison, it would be like one of the Olsen twins ditching her sweet and cuddly Full House image to star as The Bride in “Kill Bill”. That’s how extreme this all was to me. It took almost four years before I finally got my hands on a VHS copy of the movie and watched Mie’s performance for myself, there she was, tarted up in that unfamiliar bob hairdo, jumping in the sack with nearly half a dozen men during the flick. To say that blew my mind would be an understatement.
Now, that reaction came from someone half a world away and eighteen years after the fact, imagine the reaction of fans right there in Japan who watched “Call Girl” when it debuted in theaters in the latter part of 1982. I can envision the shock had to have been considerable. Remember, this was barely a year and a half after the Farewell Concert, so the memories of Pink Lady were still fresh in the minds of their fans, I can’t help but wonder if Mie went too far, deep-sixing her own sweet and cuddly image as one half of Pink Lady to play a prostitute. Just typing those words made my skin crawl. After all, during Pink Lady’s heyday, a huge part of their fanbase were kids, the girls even starred in a TV show (“Super Monkey”) that catered to moppets for God’s sake, and yet, there was Mie, doing the horizontal boogie on movie screens all over Japan.
Now, let’s call a spade a spade: “Call Girl” was by no means a cinematic masterpiece. Bottom line, it was soft porn, there’s no other way I can describe it. And the plot, as described from Mark’s book was so threadbare (Mie’s character, Mari, sells her body for ransom money to rescue a kidnapped lover from terrorists), it made “Debbie Does Dallas” look like “War and Peace”. How did fans react to Mie’s performance? Were they stunned? Shocked? Horrified? Amused (If there are any PL fans who’ve seen “Call Girl”, write me, I wanna know what you thought!)? As for myself, I was borderline revolted, especially in one scene early on when Mie was being groped by a horny old businessman. I don’t mind admitting I felt dirty watching the movie because I had a hard time separating Mie the cute singing star from Mie the actress playing a hooker.
The inevitable follow-up question is: Did “Call Girl” help or harm Mie’s image? Were fans irreversibly scarred after viewing her controversial performance? Since I wasn’t in Japan back in ‘82, I have no idea, but, I’m guessing Mie didn’t wind up a pariah as, two years later, she got back together with Kei for the first of several Pink Lady reunions, and she was just as popular as ever. So, in the end, maybe it wasn’t a big deal. However, it’s interesting to note that “Call Girl” has, to my knowledge, never been released on DVD (Could that soon change since 2007 marks the 25th anniversary of it’s release?) while copies of the movie on VHS are impossible to find, even via online auctions, something that led me to joke with fans that Mie was so ashamed of the movie, she bought all the prints from the studio that produced it and had them burned.
As for "Call Girl", the single, that had been Mie's third release after the break-up of Pink Lady and, admittedly, it's my favorite of her solo songs. It was a smoky, jazzy song with a cool, subtle beat along with a strong bass line, it complimented Mie's sultry vocals, all of which made for a song that was as provocative as the movie itself. Like the movie, "Call Girl" was just the sort of song which said to J-Pop fans that Mie had definitely left her cutesy Pink Lady image behind. While Mie went on to more acting roles on both the big and small screen, her very first part in “Call Girl” will always be the most memorable. Even if, as fans like me would argue, for the entirely the wrong reasons.
Click on the single sleeve to hear "Call Girl"