GETTING ANY? 1995

Getting Any? (みんな～やってるか！, Minnā yatteru ka!, literally: "Is everyone doing it?") is a 1995 Japanese film, written, directed, edited, and starring Takeshi Kitano. Yatteru (やってる) is the colloquial form for yatteiru (やっている), yatteru coming from the Japanese verb yaru, which is an informal word meaning 'to do', and has become slang for sexual intercourse. The film is a sex comedy. It showed Beat Takeshi, originally a very popular manzai performer, returning to his comedic roots. The movie features an Airplane!-like assemblage of comedic scenes centering on a Walter Mitty-type character whose obsession is to have sex. The film met with little acclaim in Japan where its release was barely noticed. Kitano said in 2003 (while in production for Zatoichi), that Getting Any? was one of his three favourite movies among the ten he had directed by that time. According to him, this work was the basis for many of the movies that followed, including the acclaimed Hana-bi, as it features all his recurrent themes plus its shares of violence and sorrow. According to Kitano, his purpose in this movie was to laugh at his own gags, to make a mockery of them. He also wanted to laugh at the young Japanese men, those born after World War II, who were simple-minded and much too direct and simplistic when it came to talking with girls about having sex. Kitano denied satirizing Japanese society, and claimed that his aim in this movie was to make the audience laugh.