PDF Page 26 - Takeshi Kitano

065TDVD26 Zatoichi Feature P
19/7/04
11:35 AM
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film with a track-back shot of tap dancing. The farmers are
in the centre and it tracks back and we see the whole
picture of the shrine, of this building, and then the camera
tracks back further and we see the tips of the cameras, the
DP, the assistant directors, we see the rail of the tracking
itself, and other crew members – make-up people, prop
people – checking the monitor or the filming, some people
are wearing the crew jacket saying Zatoichi, some crew
members are wearing the Zatoichi cap, and the film ends
there. Then during post-production, my instincts told me,
’That’s a tad too artificial, Takeshi,’ so I dropped the idea of
including it. But I did actually shoot the tracking back shot.
Why, though, did you feel that you needed to
create this level of artificiality?
The fundamental elements of this movie are made up of
frequently used clichés of the Japanese period movie. At
the moment I shot that sequence, I thought, okay, because
this movie is just an accumulation of rearranged clichés, it
would allow the audience to feel it’s only a movie. Then
again, during the past, I thought the theatre audiences have
paid to watch this movie. To show them the background:
that’s being too rude to the audience.
Is the male geisha a typical cliché of this
genre or is playing with sexuality something
new in film?
I’m sorry but there is no reference. It is for a more pragmatic
reason that I came up with this character. I finished the first
draft and then Madam Saito came up to me and said,
‘Takeshi, would you be interested in using this kid? He’s a
good kid and he’s an actor in the vaudeville troupe that I
own and his name is Tachibana Daigoro. He’s in this
theatrical vaudeville group and it’s a very casual, down to
earth, very sleazy-style theatre.’ He’s not like a drag queen
but a female impersonator. Madam Saito
came up to me and showed me this
photo of this rather female
looking boy-actor and he was a
good kid. I rewrote the script.
Your films have
become increasingly
more colourful since
your motorcycle
accident, after which
you took up painting.
Are these two things
connected? Did
painting broaden the
colour palette of
your films?
My earlier films have a
more monotonous,
grey/blue kind of
colour tone and
when I come to
think of it, it
was after I
took up
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painting that I became less and less hesitant to incorporate
colours in my movies. My previous one, Dolls, is like my
colour palette movie. It’s not like I’m conscious about this
strange phenomenon or whatever, but starting painting
might have had an effect on my use of colours in my
movies. And in terms of Zatoichi’s colour, it owes a lot to the
costumes. The costumes played a very important part in
this movie as well. At the very first meeting we had with the
costume supervisors, Yohji Yamamoto and Kazuko
Kurasawa, Yohji said that since it’s going to be a period
piece, we shouldn’t mess around too much with the
shape or design or form of the costumes; instead, why
don’t we play with the colours of these costumes?
Obviously the first costume we had to design was Zatoichi’s
costume, and during the fitting, Yohji said, ‘Why don’t we
try blue for the kimono?’ I kind of liked the idea and said
okay. Blue. Cool. He then came up with green for the belt
and red for the cane-sword. Hence the blonde Zatoichi.
After that we were very conscious about what colours we
would attach to each character.
Did the accident change you in other ways?
I am no longer concerned about the box office on my
movies, or how my TV show’s ratings are, or how
much yearly income I can make. I no longer care about
those things anymore. Because when was that bike
accident? It was after I made Getting Any? It was after
the commercial disaster of Sonatine, and I used to be so
frustrated at not having Sonatine acknowledged by the
public. It was a disaster in Japan. All these things frustrated
me terribly before the accident. But after the accident, I
don’t care. Who cares? As long as you recoup enough
money to make a new one, I can get by. I don’t need box
office success or good ratings. I mean it’s only
now that I have a first-ever box office success in
Japan with Zatoichi.
You’re acting in it and starring in it
and you’re supposed to be blind.
Was this a total nightmare to do?
Well, okay, the first difficulty I encountered during
the whole production of Zatoichi was costume
fitting. I was with a bunch of crew members
and I was dressed and then I walk up in front
of the mirror and I pose how Zatoichi would
look, and I can’t even see how he would look
for myself, because I can’t open my eyes. Once
you open your eyes you’re no longer Zatoichi.
That was hard.
During rehearsal for the sword fighting scenes it
was dangerous, because when you close your eyes
it’s hard to tell the distance between you and your
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opponent. You need to have the precise sense of distance
between your opponents when you’re doing the sword
fighting. We did a lot of rehearsals and one time I accidentally
hit the shoulder of the opponent. It wasn’t serious or
anything, thankfully. The opposite happened one rehearsal
when the opponent guy swung the sword and he nearly
scratched my eye. Thankfully it was a notch below my eye.
Thank God I didn’t turn out like the Zatoichi in real life!
When I’m cast in my movies or in other directors’ movies,
I’m not really good at memorising my lines. I would ask the
Assistant Director to write my lines in bold letters on huge
pieces of paper, so I can sneak up and look up briefly to
utter my lines. You can’t do that with your eyes closed. Also,
just simply walking straight was hard. There is a shot in the
film where Zatoichi appears from the palm house and walks
straight up to the camera and basically shatters the lens. I
had to do seven takes just for this. It’s pretty simple but with
your eyes closed and the camera in front of you, it’s hard.
So those movements or scenes that I cannot possibly do
with my eyes closed, I had to position the camera on my
back if the actions or movements required were too
complicated. So it was difficult.
How do you select what movie to make?
My priority is always whether I can please myself or not, or
whether I can achieve what I wanted to do. So I’m happy
that the other people, whether it be European or whatever,
appreciate my films. But if you cannot make a movie that
you enjoy making and frees you after you have completed
it, there’s no way that you can entertain other people. Yes,
I would love to be conscious of European people but I can’t.
If I could I would have made a blockbuster movie.
You have said that Dolls, probably your most
beautiful film, is the most violent movie you
have made. What did you mean?
I said Dolls is the most violent film I ever made, yes. Certainly
it is in a psychological sense. But you see the biggest
difference between the violence in Dolls and in the other films
is the depiction of death of the characters. In my earlier films
most of the characters that die are either Yakuza gangsters
or cops, so they are facing the perils of mortality on a daily
basis in their professions. Maybe they are psychologically
prepared to die. All the characters that die in Dolls are not
prepared and it comes at a more unexpected time, in a more
sudden fashion, than in the gangster movies. In that sense
the impact of their death is much stronger than in my earlier
films. That’s exactly the point I want to make when I say Dolls
is my most violent movie Zatoichi is available to buy now from Artificial Eye, priced at
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