POSTSCRIPT

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The only reason I agreed to appear in a TV program was because I thought, “If I’m on TV, it’ll probably help make me famous.” However, I’m not the most social of people, so it was going to be taxing to spend twenty days with the ten or so people involved (and due to a certain mishap, the time ended up stretching to twenty-five days). The trip itself was interesting. It consisted of Bran Castle (which remains for sale at present); the ruins of Targoviste Castle, where Vlad Tepes spent his youth; and Castle Dracula, towering up on the mountaintop. What surprised me during my second visit was that in front of the bridge leading to the castle, there was a little old man from a nearby village who was reading a newspaper, and he charged us admission. I suppose this is one of the effects of liberalization in Romania. The size of the wad of tickets he was carrying made quite an impression on me. In the castle’s garden were the remains of a bonfire started by tourists. To be honest, the structure seems a little too small to be called a castle. What we see in Coppola’s Dracula is far too grand. I suppose it’d be better to call it a fort rather than a castle. Movie or not, that anyone would transform it into such a mountain stronghold just goes to show what a master of embellishment Dracula author Bram Stoker must’ve been. (Laughs)

Speaking of Stoker’s embellishments, in the original novel and subsequent films, the scene where Jonathan Harker changes coaches at the Borgo Pass is unsettling, while in fact the place is a fairly gentle stretch of land that opens up after you’ve climbed a little bit. Couples were sunbathing at the very top of the pass, while to the right loomed what was, all appearances to the contrary, “Hotel Castel Dracula.” Naturally that’s where we stayed. I lay down in a coffin on display there, and they filmed me getting up out of it. Oh, it really was cramped in there.

It was from Romania’s neighbor Bulgaria and the port town of Varna that Dracula headed to London by ship. Though we went there, it was cut out of the finished broadcast. When we got up in the morning, fog made it impossible to see down the streets, which was quite fun. Well, seeing how Dracula was living out in the sticks with three wives who didn’t do a lick of housework and had no talent except for drinking blood, it comes as little surprise that he’d want to relocate to someplace lively like a major city. And when the ship pulled out of that port (supposing it was at night), I can picture Dracula shouting back to the brides he left behind, “See you, suckers!”

Finally, I’d like to end this with an experience that was more hair raising than an encounter with a vampire. When we were returning to Paris from Bucharest, there was a French TV crew with us, but when we arrived and were relaxing at a café, we suddenly heard an incredible explosion. Startled, we looked all around, but everyone else was perfectly calm. At that point, one of our cameramen, who’d gone off to the Lost and Found, came back and told us that apparently there’d been a bomb in someone’s luggage. When he went to check out the scene, there was video tape scattered everywhere. It seems the bomb had probably been in the other TV crew’s bags. But my blood ran cold at the thought of what would’ve happened if it had gone off while we were in the air.

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Hideyuki Kikuchi

March 16, 2010

while watching Dracula (Royal Winnipeg Ballet)