We touch base with acclaimed director, Takashi Miike, on his latest movie, the hurdles of filmmaking, and how he juggles so many different genres.
Takashi Miike is one of those rare filmmakers who is seemingly capable of directing anything. He’s made significant contributions to the horror genre, most notably Audition, but he’s catapulted from Samurai films, to courtroom dramas, to high school musicals, to spaghetti westerns, to superhero films without batting an eye. Not only is Miike capable of variety, but his movies tend to contain extremely memorable set pieces that are emblematic of the director’s fearless, gonzo style. You may not always love a Takashi Miike movie, but there’s a guarantee that it will at least be something that you won’t soon forget.
With over 100 films now to his name, Miike isn’t showing any signs of slowing down. His latest effort, First Love, is a twisted love story that sees a boxer and a call girl get roped into a complex crime saga where there’s a growing body count. First Love makes for yet another strong example of how Miike is able to blend together so many different sensibilities and turn out truly unique pieces of cinema. We got to the opportunity to talk to Takashi Miike about First Love, but we also discussed the journey his career has taken, the level of responsibility involved with directing adaptations of other people’s works, and how he’s too afraid to watch his own horror movies.
Bloody Disgusting: First Love is such an interesting combination of ideas and themes. What about this story initially caught your interest?
Takashi Miike: “Absolutely. It’s a very simple story where there aren’t that many characters and some of the main characters are considered to be scum. They’re considered to be kind of useless to society. Then you have all of these people that have their desires and things that they want to achieve or obtain. From all of that, these two people fall in love, it becomes a love story, and everyone else kind of dies. But out of all of that death and chaos comes this one love story that will continue into the future, and I like that. I like the story. I like the idea. And so I decided I wanted to make this movie.”
BD: Was it a challenge to balance the romance and violence of this film? Were you concerned that there may be too much of one or not enough of the other?
Miike: “You’re right, there is a lot of violence and romance in the film, but I’m really not interested in objectively thinking about what the balance is like between them. The amount of violence is actually something that I don’t calculate myself. I actually kind of leave that up to the characters, so balance may be lost or completely broken in the film, but I think to some extent that can’t be helped because instead of me making the characters for the film, I focus on the characters in the script and I let them make the film. So honestly, I don’t particularly care if it’s a huge success or if there’s a balance there, but I just want to make a film that I like and I’m proud of how this one turned out.”
BD: I love the animated segment at the end of First Love. It made me think of the insane ending to Dead or Alive. Is it fun to sometimes make these crazy left turns at the end of your movies?
Miike: “Honestly, that scene in First Love speaks a lot to the current insecurities in the Japanese film industry. It’s because by the time that we got to that scene—and we added that scene at the end of the film in post-production—we were already over our budget. At the same time, there’s a big aversion to risks right now in the industry. Maybe there could be a car accident or something while we’re filming the scene. So because there’s an aversion to risk right now in Japan, a lot of the movies that are made are these big, warm, fuzzy movies that don’t really have any danger—like real physical danger—for the actors. So there are very few new stunt men that are being developed in Japan.”
“We could have said, “Okay, we can cut that scene because it’d be difficult to do with the current situation in the Japanese market. In a way, a car chase scene is almost clichéd for an action film, anyways.” But instead of cutting it, we decided that we’d find another way to do it and still honor that idea that was in the script. Now, if we had not filmed the movie in Hong Kong, we would have actually shot it, but we were, so we got creative.”
BD: That’s so interesting. To make something less physically dangerous, you turn it into what’s probably the most stylistically dangerous moment in the movie. On the topic of animation, a lot of directors struggle with bringing anime or manga series to life, but your adaptations are some of your best films. What’s so appealing to you about adapting anime?
Miike: “A lot of this can also be said about if I were adapting a novel as well, but specifically when dealing with a manga, when you’re turning that into a live-action film you’re doing that because you think that it’s just going to be fun. Or sometimes you read the original work and you’re like, “Okay, the original work is fun, so it’d be fun to turn that into a film while still respecting the intent and style of the original work and the writer’s intention. But at the same time, it’s more important for us to have fun with it than to rigidly stick to exactly what the original work was. When adapting someone else’s work you’re also freed in a sense because you want to respect the writer, but we don’t actually have that many meetings with the original writer—maybe just one “meet and greet” and that’s it, but what we do want to do is make something that the fans are going to love, even if we don’t specifically cater to them, but also a product that feels like it has my voice in it as well.”
BD: With the wide range of films that you have made, it really feels like you can literally adapt anything. Are there any projects that you’ve turned down out of fear?
Miike: “So this is maybe related to my experiences as an assistant director too, but what’s scary when you’re making a film is just realizing that it’s going to cost way too much money in some cases. At the same time, I’m not the one who’s funding the film, so I have to work within the constraints of my co-producers and sponsors. Now if they don’t think that we’re capable of making a certain film with the money we have, that’s fine, but what I try to always do is instead of cancelling or not accepting a project, I’ll brainstorm over modifications to make things cheaper, which usually also make things more interesting, too. We’re looking for a synergy there. A lot of people are usually funding these films, so we try to look at all of the possible ideas from everyone involved. Again, during my time as an assistant director I saw a lot of troubleshooting to pull off interesting ideas within budget.”
BD: You’ve done some very memorable work in the horror genre, but what do you think is your scariest film and why?
Miike: “I’m actually quite a scaredy cat, myself. Since a child I’ve been this way. I’ve even a little afraid of the dark. If I’m alone in the dark I’ll sometimes feel that there’s a presence behind me and I’ll even be afraid to turn around, but then if I do get the courage to turn around, I’ll just be scared that whatever was there has just jumped over to the other side of me. This sounds really silly, but as a child I’ve always been a bit of a coward so I don’t watch many horrors films myself. I personally think I don’t want to pay money to go to a theater to get horribly frightened! So even after I finish making horror films, I usually don’t go to a theater to watch them myself.”
“All of this being said, the scariest of the projects that I’ve worked on is “Imprint,” my episode from Showtime’s Masters of Horror series. Everyone kept telling me that America’s a free country and that I could really do whatever I wanted. It’s cable TV, so don’t hold back at all and make it as scary as possible. So I did that and then when I showed it to the producers in Japan, they were like, “I know we told you that you can do anything, but this is going too far. This is way too far.” We even had to publish this article in the New York Times apologizing that said that this was supposed to be a 13-episode series, but an episode’s been cut because it was too scary, so now it’s just twelve episodes. “Imprint” was definitely the scariest project that I’ve worked on.”
BD: Have there been any updates on a JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: Diamond is Unbreakable sequel? Should people still have hope?
Miike: “When we started that project, we expected that we’d be making a couple of them, but it was just not a big hit in Japan. It was way less well received than we expected. So that’s actually horror for a director that’s in that situation. So no, there’s no sequel planned and it wasn’t a hit.”
“That’s an interesting situation because the writer of the original work, Hirohiko Araki, liked the film a lot, which was one of my main objectives when making the film adaptation. When we talked to some of the journalists, many of them said they liked the film, but I couldn’t tell if they were just being nice or if they actually had fun with it. In any case, it was well received by the writer and a few other people, but no, there won’t be a sequel.”
Takashi Miike’s ‘First Love’ hits theaters in limited release on September 27.
