We can be Hiros...just for one day

(I'm cross-posting with my www.areavoices.com/vinyl/ blog just because this is so bizarre that nobody should be left out).

Suddenly the word "bhoot" (Hindi for "ghost") is everywhere I turn. So prevalent that I finally just accepted my fate and ordered the DVD of the 2003 Indian movie Bhoot. On the minus side, it supposedly contains no dance numbers. On the plus side: Ajay Devgan! (The picture they have on the IMDB don't do him justice, but for the uninitiated: http://movies.indiainfo.com/wallpapers/albums/album23/ajay35.jpg).

I guess having a word like this pop up shouldn't be any surprise, since things like Bollywood ghost stories are my business. Well, not business in the sense that I get paid for it or anything; more like the business in "mind your own."

Anyway, here's a much stranger coincidence. A few weeks ago I discovered that there had been a novelization of David Cronenberg's Videodrome. The whole movie novelization industry is pretty peculiar, especially when they concoct things like Fred Saberhagen and James V. Hart's novelization of Bram Stoker's Dracula, based on the movie based on Bram Stoker's Dracula. Usually these books are somewhere in the ballpark of unreadable, but they often give insight into earlier versions of a movie's screenplay, so the cult fanatic can find some points of interest.

Needless to say, I had to purchase the book. Those of you who have, like me, watched Videodrome a billion times will remember the early scene in which James Woods meets some seedy Japanese businessmen, who are selling a softcore tv series called Samurai Dreams. The novelization (remember: 1983) names these minor (but entertaining) characters. The guy who talks in the movie is Shinji Kuraki. And the silent guy with the beard? "My associate, Hiro Nakamura." (p. 17)

I was sure it was never mentioned in the movie, but still, that name seemed oddly familiar. Then I thought, well, I can only think of one other Hiro I've ever heard of: Masi Oka's childlike innocent, the teleporter through time and space, on Heroes. So I looked him up. You guessed it. Hiro Nakamura.

Is this name the "John Smith" of Japan? Are the Heroes writers into buying obscure novelizations of '80s flicks on eBay? Or is it that Repo Man "lattice of coincidence" running amok again?