Lost in Translation But Helped By a Stranger…

By Kevin Renick

Bob Harris (Bill Murray) to Charlotte (Scarlett Johansson): “Can you keep a secret? I’m trying to organize a prison break. I’m looking for an accomplice. We have to first get out of this bar, then the hotel, then the city and then the country. Are you in or are you out?”
Charlotte: “I’m IN. I’ll go pack my stuff.”
Bob: “I hope you've had enough to drink. It’s going to take courage.”
— Lost in Translation, 2003

Meeting strangers can be eventful. I have so much I could say on that subject, without a doubt. In 1980, I got stranded in a blizzard in southern Missouri. I was trying to reach a friend down in Cape Girardeau that weekend, but I was delayed. The snow got so bad, there was nothing for me to do but get myself to an affordable motel and wait out the bad weather. I was starkly alone and feeling very unsettled.

After I checked into my room and took stock of the situation, I did something a bit uncharacteristic. I went down and told the front desk clerk that I was bored and lonely, and if anyone else checked in who felt that way and knew how to play backgammon, let them know I’d love a playing partner. The clerk laughed and said he would do that. I did not expect any sort of response, really; after all, you take a chance when you go to a stranger’s motel room. Dozens of horror movies have told us so. But incredibly enough, barely an hour later, I got a call. Or it might have been a knock on the door; I’m not sure. But a woman who, like me was by herself, said she got the desk clerk’s message and wouldn’t mind a game of backgammon at all.

She was, I guessed, maybe 5 years older than me. Pleasant-looking woman with shoulder-length hair, friendly eyes and a good sense of humor. We joked about the weirdness of being open to visiting with a stranger on this snowy night and how we seldom did things like this. In fact, we began to laugh quite a bit as we shared thoughts about the blizzard, simple (but casual) details about our lives, and yes, backgammon. I think we played two full games. It was nice just to have someone to talk to in this bleak wintery circumstance, honestly. There was no hint of anything sexual – I had already come to believe by this time that men and woman have so many more ways of relating to each other than through physical intimacy. Society bombards us with a different message, but truthfully, there is something wonderful about just relating, talking and having a lovely time when “the sex thing” is taken out of the picture.

I don't remember the woman's name, and I think a handshake was all that happened to connect us physically. But we shared an enjoyable couple of hours, and we accomplished the goal of NOT being so lonely on a snowy night in the boondocks. I was very pleased about the whole experience! 

Another time just a few years later, I happened to be on a Greyhound bus traveling from Arizona to Los Angeles. I ended up seated next to a slender woman with wispy blonde hair and evocatively sad eyes. She was about my age this time, and attractive in a slightly "detached" way. We started chatting like you do sometimes do when you know this person will be your nearest companion for hours, like on a plane or a train. I'll call her “Laura,” even though I'm not at all sure that was her name. But Laura started opening up to me about her difficult home life...something involving disapproving/possibly abusive parents, and the trouble she had feeling safe or even HEARD. But I heard her loud and clear. She was lonely and restless, as I was.

We talked and talked, often in lengthy increments. Through the long hours on the bus driving through the endless Mojave desert, we grew casually closer. Laura ended up falling asleep with her head on my shoulder. It was sweet and affecting. I didn't want to shift and disturb her, so I simply stayed as comfortable as I could be, feeling sad and content that a strange girl had become trusting enough to fall asleep on my shoulder...

There's a scene in Sofia Coppola's excellent second film, 2003’s Lost In Translation, where young newlywed Charlotte (Scarlett Johansson) rests her head on the shoulder of the middle-aged actor she's just met, Bob Harris (Bill Murray) in the backroom of a Tokyo bar.  These two are not bound for an “affair” – they just happen to be two Americans stuck at a posh Japanese hotel, sharing a tendency to visit the bar during bouts of sleeplessness or to wander from the pool to their rooms and back. Both are restless, both have spouses they're not fully connecting with: Charlotte's husband is a busy music photographer with a deficit in the attention department; Bob's wife Lydia is stateside with their kids, not comprehending what Bob is going through in this strange Japanese city or even inclined to ask him much about it. Fate has thrown these two together: Bob is in town to shoot a whiskey commercial while pessimistically awaiting his next film project; Charlotte is with her hubby on a busy photoshoot. That's it, that's the setup. It's how these two strangers happen to be in one disorienting place at the same time, and by running into each other a great deal, they form a connection. It's one of the most low-key scripts ever conceived about strangers meeting, and director Coppola won the Oscar for "Best Original Screenplay" that year. I was happy for her. Because she was doing something really daring in this film, something many viewers couldn't fully get: showing a man and a woman relating for a short time, feeling lonely together, NOT having sex, but connecting in a way that was genuinely meaningful and memorable. I loved it...and I was destined to LIVE part of it myself.

One of the tricky things Coppola does in the movie is show how loneliness and isolation CAN produce a circumstance where strangers might end up having sex – but then she tells a different story. It wouldn't be right, of course. Charlotte is essentially a newlywed, even though she tells a close friend on the phone, “I don’t know who I married.” Bob is a married father who does love his wife even though they are having a difficult period. But he won't take advantage of Charlotte despite various elements conducive to such. One night the two sing karaoke at a party set up by Charlotte's friend Charlie; each memorably "sort of" sings to the other. Charlotte looks right at Bob when she sings sassy lines from the Pretenders' "Brass In Pocket" ("I'm special, so special/Got to have some of your attention/Give it to me!") and Bob quite memorably sings Roxy Music's "More Than This" ("More than this/There is nothing..." is the refrain) and you can tell, in this widely talked about scene, that the sad-sack actor means every word that's coming out of his mouth. He’s WITH Charlotte right now, in every way that counts.

Charlotte gets a bit inebriated by evening’s end, and Bob ends up carrying her to her motel room. She looks gorgeous and alluring; a lesser movie would have gone for the easy trick here. But Bob does nothing but tuck her in, with Murray giving us a memorably wise look about the nuances of the whole situation. A later scene finds the two displaced friends watching late-night TV together, a bonding scenario in ANY situation, whether physical intimacy takes place or not. Instead, they just TALK after their viewing activities, sharing details about their home life and various sources of angst. Bob gives Charlotte a casually gentle foot rub, and it feels powerfully real and affectionate. But no, it doesn’t lead to anything. A man and woman CAN behave like adults and respect each other's reality. That's one of the strengths of Lost In Translation. The intimacy is all on the shared emotion level, the “remember the time we wandered around that hotel in Tokyo together?” level.

Being stuck somewhere with someone in almost any scenario is naturally conducive to having that person become significant in your memory. I worked at the Grand Canyon for a summer in 1982, and the things going on in my life at the time made me a sad, lonely wretch. But a girl named Anne Koepper worked in my particular area and was friendly and caring. We talked and talked, hung out together and shared some laughs. She was THERE. But nothing physical ever happened. It didn’t need to.

The way that movies become personal in your life is absolutely unpredictable, and sometimes genuinely startling. I already liked Lost In Translation when it came out, as a portrait of two restless strangers getting thrown together in an exotic locale, and I had several viewings under my belt before 2010. I even bought the DVD. I enjoyed the lightly comic moments and the striking nightscapes of downtown Tokyo. Mostly I just loved watching Bill Murray’s and Scarlett Johansson’s characters interacting, reflecting the curious but sometimes awkward way that two friends in a specific and unconventional situation might actually behave. But in March of 2010, a wildly improbable thing happened in my life that profoundly deepened my connection to this movie. Because of my success with the song “Up In The Air,” chosen by Jason Reitman as the closing credits tune in his movie of that name, I was one of two official people from the movie asked to go to Tokyo to promote the premiere. The other person was actress Anna Kendrick, who played Natalie Keener in the film.

Although I met and hung out a bit with Anna, don't look for a parallel THERE. The parallels occurred with the overall atmosphere: I sat on a window ledge high up in the luxury hotel we were staying at each night, gazing out at all the shining red lights of Tokyo, just as Scarlett and Bill do in several scenes. The hotel in the film may have been the same hotel Ms. Kendrick and I stayed at, although someone told me it was a different luxury Tokyo hotel. I’m not sure. But I visited the same Shinto Temple that Charlotte does in a haunting scene from the film. I had some conversations with courteous Japanese “handlers” the same way Bob Harris does. And while the presence of an interpreter prevented me from having any riotous misunderstandings or flummoxed reactions to the language as poor Bob does in several comical scenes, I certainly came to THINK about language in a new way, and to realize how important facial expressions like smiling and nodding could become when you can’t speak the language.

I quickly learned the word “Konnichiwa,” Japanese for “Hello.” Safe enough to say on a daily basis! It’s also worth mentioning that I saw the endless Japanese enthusiasm for pop culture up close and personal after hearing about it for years and thumbing through celebrity-filled magazines like Roadshow. When the secondary character portrayed by Anna Faris (in Tokyo to promote a B action movie) is interviewed by Japanese media, director Coppola absolutely nails the atmosphere of exaggerated importance of mere celebrity. I had several real-life moments JUST like that when I was in Tokyo, appearing on TV, radio and live events. I was treated like a BIG deal. Just as Farris’ and Murray’s characters are. Show business was an impossibly hyped-up reality in this Godzilla-sized town.

And yes, I even had a minor flirtation: although it wasn't with a companion or Ms. Kendrick; it was with a Japanese photographer who'd been assigned to get shots of me during a press event. She was smiley and ethereal. With intense eye contact... You could easily get smitten with just a smidge of that sort of thing if you're thousands of miles away from home, and finding that virtually everything is unfamiliar. I wondered how to act in such moments.  

Lost In Translation shows Bob and Charlotte wondering how to act quite often, in fact. It is not always easy for them. But the conflicts simmer below the surface. And the ache that they both feel late in the film, when they know it’s almost time for the trip to end, is absolutely palpable. They’ve formed a bond by this time...they’ve been THROUGH something unique together. They don't want this adventure to end. In a key scene, Murray’s character has said goodbye hastily to Charlotte already, with his eyes revealing just how difficult that was, but then he spots her walking on the street from the window of his cab. He tells the driver to stop, and in a truly memorable moment, runs to catch up with Charlotte, who is stunned to see him again. This is the one time in the movie when the two friends kiss...sweetly and caringly. And then Bob whispers something in Charlotte's ear.

This scene is almost iconic, cinematically; it’s been discussed widely. Sofia Coppola decided to let the substance of this “dialogue” remain a mystery. It’s clearly something personal, and it brings tears to Charlotte’s eyes. But why must we know what Bob said? Why not keep it a secret, just as many of the deeper thoughts of these two have been throughout the film? It’s clear they will miss each other, and that they made a difference to each other on an otherwise lonely trip.

Director Sofia Coppola behind the scenes on Lost in Translation

Such things happen in life. It can be both beautiful and sad. But we usually have to return to our “ordinary” lives, the ones with familiar settings, predictable characters and routine obligations. A surprise may come along here and there, both in friendship and in adventures that may fall under the heading “love.” But much of life is predictable, repetitious. Perhaps this mysterious scene helps us appreciate how THIS moment is different from so much of life. Because someone entered the stage who wasn’t there before, someone who changed the dynamics of a situation and “translated” the meaning of life for us in a way we didn’t grasp before. Memories are made of this. And I treasure Lost In Translation for conveying this idea, using the naturalistic but soulful performances of two major stars and the distinctive ambience of one of the world’s most electrifying, exotic cities…

It was some years after my bus ride with “Laura” that I wrote a song called “I Remember.” Over a repeating, descending series of guitar chords, I wrote some narrative verses about various magical moments I recalled from my life. One was a family barbecue in the country, another was a visit to a completely deserted, wintery state park in Iowa with my friend Barry. But I wrote a long verse about the sad, introspective person I rode through the desert with one night long ago. I had so many separate memories I could have chosen for my folksy little tune. But verse four basically wrote itself:

I was once on a bus through the desert;

It was nighttime, and I must admit I was feeling alone.

Then I spoke to the girl seated next to me.

In a sad voice, she told me of problems that drove her from home.

And through those dark hours, our lives we would share.

We both felt such comfort, that a stranger could care.

With her head on my shoulder, I stared out at the night.

And I don't know her name now, but I sure remember that ride...