“This was the first film I went to see at a movie theater by myself, at the OS Theater in Osaka. I have a lot of memories of this film.”
Kojima says the first film he went to see alone at a movie theater was Rollerball (1975), at the OS Theater in Osaka, and that he has many memories of the film.
Kojima first discovered 2001 in 1978, in his third year of junior high, when he bought a mook—purchased for its Star Wars coverage—that also included full-color images, diagrams and interviews about Kubrick’s film. As a reader of hard SF who dreamed of becoming an astronaut, he felt more drawn to 2001 than to space-opera. While waiting for a rerelease he read Arthur C. Clarke’s novel and listened to a radio-play adaptation, and he was fortunate to see the film for the first time in Cinerama in Osaka. From then on he attended every subsequent rerelease on the big screen.
Kojima saw his first foreign movie at age three, not in a theater but via the analog TV signal in his tatami‑matted living room thanks to Sunday Foreign Movie Theatre; he identified his first Japanese movies as the double feature Gamera vs. Barugon and Daimajin. Those Western film broadcasts came before home video, satellite, and cable.
“These games had their own worlds and stories. I felt a certain authorial quality in them.”
“The first one I bought myself was for "The Towering Inferno." ... he said "Hideo, you don't need it. I've already got one." I didn't want to share it, and it made me angry ... So, I stopped going to the movies with my brother. I went alone and bought the pamphlet by myself.”
“Ever since middle school or thereabouts, for the longest time, I had wanted to make movies.”