There’s just something about the 1979 movie, Boulevard Nights that continues to resonate with audiences. A gritty tale of gangs, car culture and the struggle to escape life on the street, the movie was remastered and featured at a special 45th anniversary showing at the Warner Brothers Studios in Burbank on November 21, 2024.
The screenplay, written by Desmond Nakano when he was 22, launched a long and remarkable career as a screenwriter and film director. Born and raised in Los Angeles, Desmond is a Sansei Japanese American who had been interested in becoming a rock musician as a student at North Hollywood High School. He’s still a musician but he’s best known for his work on dramatic feature films with many of the most recognizable names in the entertainment industry.
Following Boulevard Nights, Desmond wrote screenplays for Body Rock, a breakdancing drama, Black Moon Rising, an action movie starring Tommy Lee Jones, and Last Exit to Brooklyn, a drama set in the 1950s. In 1992, Desmond returned to the subject of gang life in East Los Angeles, co-writing with Floyd Mutrux the screenplay for American Me. Edward James Olmos starred in the movie which garnered critical acclaim, awards and a place on this year’s list of National Film Preservation winners.
White Man’s Burden, Desmond’s 1995 directorial debut of his own screenplay featuring John Travolta and Harry Belafonte, imagined a society in which the accepted roles of blacks and whites are reversed. Perhaps the most personal of Desmond’s films is American Pastime, which is set in the Topaz War Relocation Center and follows the Nomura family, Issei parents and their American born sons. Baseball plays a prominent role in the life of a younger brother while the older brother enlists in the 442nd Regimental Combat Team.
Desmond agreed to be interviewed via email about his career and how his family, from their experience in a Colorado incarceration camp to his father’s service in the famed 442nd, shaped his perspectives on race and the stories he chose to tell. Following is the interview, lightly edited.
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Esther Newman (EN): Boulevard Nights takes place in East Los Angeles and follows two brothers, one of whom is a gang member. How did you choose to write about this subject?
Desmond Nakano (DN): I was a junior in Paul Schrader's (Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, etc.) screenwriting class at UCLA, and he gave a class assignment to find an article from the LA Times that seemed like a good subject for a film, then come up with a story for it. Paul went around the class critiquing each student's article, with the exception of mine. He called me aside after class and said he thought my idea could be a “real movie.” With that, I immediately started writing and turned in the script. Paul helped me get an agent and the film happened.
One of the reasons I was attracted to the subject was because my father was from Boyle Heights, so I was not unfamiliar with East Los Angeles. I was always struck by the fact that East L.A. was its own city within the city of L.A., a wholly different subculture from what the rest of the city was.
EN: White Man’s Burden turns racial stereotyping on its head, where blacks are the elites and whites are confined to inner city ghettos. How did your background and personal experience shape the story?
DN: In retrospect, most of my films deal with race. White Man’s Burden came out of thinking about the L.A. riots. As a Japanese-American, being neither black nor white, I was in between, which allowed me a different perspective from other filmmakers. I was keenly aware of the racial issues of that time (unfortunately, still the same now), and wanted to find a different way of examining them.
EN: Baseball and patriotism are as quintessentially American as the injustice that results from racism. How did American Pastime explore family values, cultural conflicts and the image of a model minority? Did you need time before feeling ready to tackle a story based on your own family?
DN: While American Pastime was not directly based on my family, I put many aspects of their experiences into the film. Both my parents and their families were taken from their homes and put into the camps. For me as a Sansei (3rd generation Japanese-American) living in a different era, it was difficult to understand how it was possible for such a thing to have happened in the “Land of the Free.” American Pastime was an attempt to tell a camp story in a way that would be accessible to a general audience.
EN: Your father, Lane Nakano, a member of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, volunteered for the U.S. Army when he and his family were interned at the Heart Mountain Relocation Center. After the war, he became an actor, receiving second billing under Van Johnson who starred in the 1951 film, Go For Broke. Did he talk much about his wartime experiences? How did he and others in your community influence your career?
I think my father having been an actor and a singer (the Frank Sinatra of the Nisei community) made him (and my mother) different from most Nisei, in that the idea of being a musician (I started off intending to be a musician) or a filmmaker was never discouraged by them. I think most parents in the Japanese American community at that time would not have allowed their children to pursue music or film.
EN: As a writer, director, composer and musician, has your focus shifted back and forth among these pursuits or perhaps to something new? Future plans?
DN: The film industry has changed completely from when I started. The kinds of films I've made are no longer being made by the major studios and getting films made is more difficult in general. My focus remains on writing, trying to get films made independently.
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Boulevard Nights was inducted into the Library of Congress National Film Registry which recognizes films of “cultural, historical or aesthetic significance” in 2017. Look for Desmond Nakano’s movies on popular streaming sites.
© 2025 Esther Newman
