Like most of your films,
Monday revolves around a regular guy whose normal life is turned upside down by
circumstance, when by accident he becomes involved in a crime. What's the
interest in this premise for you?
The main interest for me
there is the drollness of normal peoples' everyday lives, how simply it can turn
into something bizarre. Let's say that this helplessness sometimes shows you how
funny life can be. People are supposed to be composed and know how to behave,
but can suddenly deviate from what is expected as normal behaviour. Those
moments are very reflective on how people really are, I think.
Obviously chance and
coincidences play a large part in your films.
It might appear as
circumstance of course, but if you look at it closer there's always a reason why
you are somewhere in someplace at some time. Just like I'm visiting Holland now
and have a chance to meet with you and talk about my film, whatever we talk
about today might appear somewhere in my work later on. Even though from the
outside it looks like things happen without a reason, there's still also a kind
of necessity there. When you move about or when you are confronted by a
situation in which you end up by luck or whatever, it is still your reaction to
it that creates something new. So it is not entirely by chance that these things
happen.
So it's like Chaos theory
almost, a sort of Butterfly Effect where one little event can set a whole chain
of increasingly bigger events in motion?
Ah, that's a new angle for
me...
Now the thing that interests
me about your films is that the main characters are always regular guys, like a
salaryman or postman, people that are quite familiar to everyone. Even if you
aren't a postman, for example, you see them on a daily basis. It's almost like
you're giving the viewer the chance to have the day in the life of a postman,
and what would you do if they were given that chance? I think I'd be tempted to
take the postbag back home and sit down in my apartment reading everyone's
letters, like the main character in Postman
Blues does, for example. The idea of a salaryman taking on the yakuza, for
example, it's a very down to earth form of escapism that anyone can identify
with.
I think you have a point
there. Another reason why my main characters are always regular guys is because
the people they are up against, like the yakuza, have a very clear image in the
public's mind. They are always rude and they don't care about what people think
of their behaviour. So the contrast between the main character and the other
people he meets throughout the film are that these are more stock figures, and
for normal people they can be sometimes quite frightening. It's very dramatic I
think.
The yakuza characters in your
films aren't very smart, unlike the hardboiled portrayals we are more used to in
the work of Kitano, for example. Your films often seem to be pastiches of the
yakuza genre. Are you parodying the genre, or the actual yakuza itself?
Of course this is a genre in
Japan that is still treated very seriously, and there are a lot of films in
which they are shown as real cool guys that the viewer either tries to emulate
or feel nostalgic about. And actually the young people that go to watch these
films sometimes end up going on to become yakuza themselves. I think that's not
a good thing, because in the end gangsters are not actually very nice people. On
the other hand, because they have such a clear and dangerous image it's very
easy to make fun of them.
I acted myself for a very
long time and I've done a lot of yakuza roles, so I know how you are supposed to
look as a gangster and I think to myself, it's very hard to look mean all the
time. The scene in Monday where the boss starts complaining about how tough it
is to be a yakuza, it's not completely beside the truth, because when you start
thinking about what type of life they lead, and really think seriously about it
and not believe all the things they show you in normal yakuza films, you start
wondering whether it's such a nice way to live. The thing I picked out was
comedy, but there are lots of other things we can imagine about the yakuza.
The character Noguchi in
Postman Blues worships a big portrait of Ken Takakura in his bedroom. Is
Takakura an especially influential character for you and your generation?
For me, compared to other
leading actors of these yakuza roles, he's of a different class altogether. In
most stories it's about this lone wolf who has to choose between loyalty to his
gang and, let's say something he's done outside of the rules of the mobsters. In
the case of Takakura, he's just very cool and attractive as a male. I think he's
incomparable with the rest of those actors.
In the same film, Ren Osugi's
character Hitman Joe also looks a lot like Ken Takakura. Was this intentional?
I don't think I wanted to
make him look like Ken Takakura. Ren Osugi is a well-known actor in Japan, and
he plays a hitman. For me the image of a hitman is someone who wears a
trenchcoat with his lapels turned up, even though probably in real life he'd be
too conspicuous to operate, but somehow all these things in Postman Blues about
hitmen, the competition between them where everyone has his own style, is also
influenced by other films, from the genre itself. I think that proper hitmen are
also influenced that way. They want to look like Bogart of something. If were a
hitman myself I think I'd want to look like he does.
So this is why there's a very
funny audition scene where one of the prospective hitmen is dressed like Jean
Reno from Luc Besson's Leon?
(laughs) Yes.
How do you feel about the
yakuza films of Kinji
Fukasaku, a director who revitalized the genre in the 70s?
When I used to act I used to
do a lot of yakuza roles myself, so I watched them then to study, but since I
moved on to directing I'm not so interested any more, because I have a different
purpose in my films and a different way of looking at things.
Can you tell me more about
your early acting career?
Before I directed my first
film I acted for about 11-12 years, mostly gangster roles, yakuza or punks.
After about 6 years I got a role in a film by Katsuhiro Otomo, director of the
anime Akira. This one, World Apartment Horror was a feature film obviously.
Again I played yakuza, but this time it was a completely different experience
for me; the director was a lot more demanding and I had to work a lot harder for
this role, and it was very interesting to do. Since then I became a little bit
spoilt and raised my level for the sort of roles I would accept, but the level
of the scripts of the work that was offered to me at that time was below this
level, so I kept on acting but after a while I started to think that it might be
better to start writing and directing my own stories. So this is why I chose to
switch to directing.
With World Apartment Horror
you won the "best newcomer" award at the Yokohama Film Festival. This
must have been quite a breakthrough for your acting career. Can you tell me a
bit more about this film?
The story is about a group of
foreigners who live in an apartment in Tokyo and I played the main role of a
yakuza again who comes after them to pester them. First of all there's a big
conflict between us and I don't treat them very well at all. They're a bunch of
black people, Asians, and generally unwanted aliens, and I tell them to go back
to their own countries. Meanwhile there's a kind of ghost in the apartment that
starts to pester me, and they help me, so we end up bonding rather than being
enemies.
The first film you made was
called Sorobanzoku in 1986, directed by Yoshimistsu Morita, who made Lost
Paradise, a film that was very popular in Japan. What was this first film
about?
It used a very famous comedy
double act that broke through at around this time. It is about an advertising
agency that makes commercials, and I auditioned for the role of a star for one
of these, someone that could make a mean face. It was a lot of fun to play.
And prior to this you were a
musician.
I started out when I was in
high school in Wakayama where I grew up, singing in a cover band. I didn't
really want to be a vocalist because I was very shy, but after a while I found
out that it was really rewarding to do, and fun working with the rest of the
band. Then I got fed up with just doing covers, so I changed the members of the
band and started writing my own material. We wanted to make an album, so we
raised production money by selling coupons to people before it was done, and we
raised about a million yen. So we made about 500 copies and gave it to the
people that bought the coupons!
At this stage me and my
friends were ready to leave high school, and everyone went off and started
working or went to University. I thought at this stage I could make it as a pop
star, so I went off to design school for 2 years in Osaka and started again
there. By the time I graduated I decided to move to Tokyo and take it from
there, but no one else wanted to come along so I went by myself and became a
member of another band.
So you weren't really famous
as a musician in Japan.
We had quite a lot of fans in
Wakayama, but not really, no.
As an actor you used your
real name, Hiroyuki Tanaka, but as a director you started using the pseudonym
Sabu. Why is this?
Up until World Apartment
Horror I used my real name, but after that I played some characters called Sabu.
On the set it is common for the actors to call each other by their character's
name and it stuck as my nickname so I decided to keep on using it. A lot of
people asked me about it. It sounds good and it stands out and people always
remember it. When I started directing I stuck to this name.
You don't appear to have
acted so much recently.
The reason I haven't acted
outside of my own films recently is that when I started directing, some of the
former I directors I'd worked for started bad-mouthing me a little bit and I
wasn't being offered any more roles. Now I've become acknowledged as a director
myself perhaps it's a little more difficult for other directors to work with me.
I have just played in a Takashi Miike film, Koroshi Ya Ichi (Ichi the Killer).
We knew each other because we had worked together before and the fact that Miike
invited me made me confident that he was appreciative of my acting, so I didn't
hesitate to yes.
So you don't really consider
yourself an actor any more, and will only act when you are asked?
Yes, or in my own films.
I didn't realise you had
appeared in your own films.
Excluding Monday I've been in
all my films in small parts. Unlucky Monkey, DANGAN
Runner and Postman Blues. As a yakuza.
You always use the same lead
actor, Shinichi Tsutsumi. He's a very impressive actor, and he carries each film
remarkably. Is this why you use him all the time?
Actually my wife introduced
us. She knew him from before we were married, and I've used him in all my four
films and the wide range of his acting ability surprised me. He's very talented
and I'm glad that you single him out with that comment. He's actually a stage
actor so he doesn't come from a screen background.
So this is why I haven't seen
him in any other films. Do you think he will ever become more established as a
screen actor?
He only really acts on stage.
It is his real love. He does get offers, but the quality of Japanese films at
the moment, maybe you have a good impression, there's a lot of rubbish out there
as well. So he declines a lot of offers to work for less money on stage.
It's interesting to hear you
say that a lot of Japanese films are rubbish. Obviously, with the small number
released outside of Japan we only get to see the best. However, I've noticed
that in recent years the type of Japanese films being shown in Europe fall under
one of three categories. Firstly there's the hardboiled, violent Yakuza films
typified by Gonin and the work of Takeshi Kitano and Takashi Miike. Secondly
there's the type of "arthouse" category of pictures favoured by
Cannes, made by directors such as Shinji Aoyama, Naomi Kawase and Hirokazu
Kore-Eda. Thirdly there's been a strong interest in Japanese horror films such
as The Ring and Cure
recently. Your absurdist approach to comedy doesn't really seem to fit into any
of these.
I don't think it belong into
any of these three.
But how are you and your
films looked upon in Japan?
There's different ways to
determine my position. First, for the people that watch my films, either on TV
or video or in the theatre, I think my fans are increasing enormously in Japan.
In fact I can tell, because Monday has attracted a lot of people who have now
become interested in my earlier films, so when you now go to a video store all
my films have become the first or second most popular rentals. Then another
thing is the people that work in film, the actors and musicians have become
interested in working with me, and people now come up to me and ask if we can do
something together. So if I do co-operate with these famous people, then that
will help me to become more established in Japan. The critics, it's very odd,
but they don't seem to see me at all. I haven't received any awards in Japan,
and I'm not written about much by the so-called serious critics. It's curious to
me why this is so, because I have a lot of fans.
You've received awards
outside of Japan though? Monday won the FIPRESCI Prize at Berlin last year, I
believe?
Actually, when I came back
from this event there was a festival in Japan where my film was being shown and
I was asked to say something on stage, so I made some remark about having to go
outside Japan to win this prize, and there were a lot of Japanese critics in
this audience, so I guess you get the picture!
As I mentioned, your films
are very different from the other types of film being put out from Japan at the
moment. Is there any definite influence from foreign films? At times I was
reminded of the Coen Brothers quirky comedies, for example.
I like a lot of different
cinema, including the Coen Brothers. They're one of my favourite directing
teams. But also someone like David Lynch, and I've mentioned in some of my other
interviews Sam Peckinpah. They are influences, but it's a very mixed bag, and no
single dominant influence. I also take a lot of impressions from other media
outside of film too, and somehow these all find their way into my scripts.
Postman Blues reminded me of
a Norwegian film called Junk Mail which came out at around the same time. Do you
know this film?
Actually we traveled round
all the film festivals together, so I met many times with this director! In fact
it was impossible not to notice many similarities between our films.
One criticism of your work
I've heard is that your films have all adopted a similar style, which though it
is very distinctive, every film just seems to be a refinement of this style,
with different characters in different settings but the same plot structure and
narrative approach. The films are getting better and better at what they do, but
ultimately they are doing the same thing each time. Are you going to continue
exploring this style or move onto another approach with your future work?
Well actually it's been 5
years since I started working as a director and I've made four films. When I
started I'd been saying to a lot of people that there weren't a lot of
interesting films to act in, and to watch probably either. So I made a
commitment to myself to do something that hasn't been done before, and
throughout these four films I think I've developed a style that is based on
putting people in unpredictable situations, but also by letting the story
develop in an unpredictable way.
Partly that was born out of
necessity maybe, or budgetary restrictions. For example, in DANGAN Runner, my
first film, I made them run throughout the film. If I would have had to do a car
chase it would have cost a lot more money, so in that way there's always a
limitation when you make a film, and from the limitation I differ from other
people in that I can make a kind of shift and develop a story that's
unpredictable for viewers, I think. Probably that will remain my style from now
on as well. I think it's proven to be successful and to achieve what I want, to
entertain people and also to get them thinking about the points in the story. I
am still the only person that does it this way.
And do you have any definite
plans for your next film?
We're set to start filming in
the middle of September, and I've finished the eighth draft of the script and am
halfway through writing the storyboards, which I do myself. When I get back to
Japan I will finish this off and then start looking for locations. Probably the
locations I have in my mind right now won't be possible so maybe I'll have to
adapt the screenplay a bit. The shooting date is fixed, so it's very concrete.
What's the story for this one
then?
It's probably more
interesting if you don't know too much about it.
Oh go on. Please?
The title will be Drive. One
thing is that I am always learning from the comments of my previous film. A
comment I got on Monday is that it might have been nicer to end the film at the
point where everybody drops their guns on the street in front of the hotel. That
would have been too comic an ending. It wouldn't really work in cinema. It
wouldn't be convincing for the reality cinema has. But I've kept the idea for
the next film, so Drive will end a lot more happily than Monday.