this beautiful world ♪ ♪ i felt the rain getting colder ♪ ♪ sha la la la la ♪ sha la la la la ♪ sha la la la la ♪ sha la la la la la la la laes. you grew up with them. they're burned into your brain. they're iconic sequences. framed and lit and seen through the lens in ways that changed filmmaking forever. all made by the same man. so, who made these beautiful things? where did he come from? it didn't begin in hollywood. it began here, in the streets of budapest. what about his life, his past, his upbringing led him again and again to look through a piece of glass and make images like these. but first, some context. and schnitzel. did i mention schnitzel? >> it's beautiful here. they said that, of course, that budapest is beautiful. but it is, in fact, almost ludicrously beautiful. a riot of gorgeous architectural styles, palaces, grand public spaces, former mansions of various princelings, the remains of a long-gone empire, still here. still here. if there was such a thing as building porn, it would be this. just looking out the window as you drive or trolley by, you think, i want that. who lives there? who lived there? wh

this beautiful world ♪ ♪ i felt the rain getting colder ♪ ♪ sha la la la la ♪ sha la la la la la la ♪ sha la la la la ♪ sha la la la la la law about tokyo? deep, deep waters. the first time i came here, it was like -- it was a transformative experience. it was a powerful and violent experience. it was as if -- it was just like taking acid for the first time. meaning what do i do now? i see the whole world in a different way. i often compare the experience of going to japan for the first time, going to tokyo for the first time, to what eric clapton and pete townsend must have gone through. the reigning guitar gods of england. what they must have gone through the week that jimi hendrix came to town. you hear about it, you go see it. a whole window opens up into a whole new thing. and you think, what does this mean? what do i have left to say? what do i do now? >> welcome to tokyo. you are not invited. this is the other tokyo. 12-hour flight and i'm baked. no sleep. might as well -- must -- go out. ♪ the kabukicho district near my hotel has the advantage of being where the subterranean life, the repressed i.d.s of the japanese

this beautiful world ♪ ♪ i felt the rain getting colder ♪ ♪ sha la la la la ♪ ♪ sha la la la la la la ♪ ♪ sha la la la la ♪ ♪ sha la la la la la lamerican as anything could possibly be. yet it also never shed what was there before in the layers and layers that have come since. it's a wonderful tricky conflicted hell broth in lack of a better word that you'd have to call paradise. >> no way it's a paradise. paradises don't exist. paradise is kind of in your head. >> wait a minute. you look at your window here. you look at those hills, those mountains, all that green, that blue sky. the clear sea. it sure looks like paradise to me. this guy knows. he's been everywhere. he's paul thoreau. novelist, essayist, he's a legendary travel writer. of the all the places he's been, all the places he's seen, he chose hawaii to live and he's lived here for 25 years. >> does it matter that it's america? >> it's the big thing that it's america. it has elements of the third world. the nicest elements of the third world which is that it is funky. there is self-respect. there's the pride. things that don't work at all. and then it's usa. where we ar