Takeshis'

Takeshi Kitano plays two versions of himself in this 2005 film, which he wrote and directed. Beat Takeshi is a famous television and film star whose days are a blur of appearances, hangers-on and the surreal demands of celebrity. His double, a shy convenience store cashier also named Kitano, is an unknown actor who keeps failing auditions while waiting for a breakthrough. After the two cross paths, the cashier begins to lose his grip on reality, drifting into fantasies in which elements of the star's real life and his violent screen persona bleed together.

The screenplay grew out of Kitano's own reflections on how the public sees him, and the result is a loose, dreamlike comedy that quotes and reworks images from his earlier work. Kitano appears opposite Kotomi Kyono, Kayoko Kishimoto, Ren Osugi, Susumu Terajima and Tetsu Watanabe, several of them playing paired roles that mirror the film's doubled structure. It was produced by Masayuki Mori and Takio Yoshida for Japanese companies including Bandai Visual and TV Asahi.

Released in 2005, the film runs 108 minutes and followed Zatoichi, the ninth feature Kitano had directed; it was the tenth of the sixteen he has made. Audience response has been moderate, with a rating of 6.3 on IMDb from around 4,200 votes and 6.1 on TMDB from a much smaller sample. Reviews were less favourable, averaging 4.9 out of 10, below what viewers gave it.