More Than Ever, Hollywood Studios Are Relying on the Foreign Box Office - New York Times
LOS ANGELES, Aug. 6 — In 1998 the director Bryan Singer was asked to give a speech at the Tokyo International Film Festival to introduce his movie “Apt Pupil.” Mr. Singer, who often traveled toJapan, decided to surprise the crowd by speaking in Japanese.
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Johnny Depp greeting fans at the “Pirates of the Caribbean” premiere in London.
After a brief greeting, Mr. Singer hoped to say, “I look forward to seeing you after the film.” But instead he bungled the translation, suggesting that he was looking forward to having sex. The crowd gasped. “It was,” he said in an interview on Thursday, “a disastrous mistake.”
So before he returned to Tokyo last week to promote “Superman Returns,” Mr. Singer said, he practiced his Japanese — a lot.