Director, Takashi Shimizu Interview
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Patrick Macias: What would you say are the biggest differences between the original video JUON and the new JUON movie?
TAKASHI SHIMIZU: I didn't expect that the video version of JUON would be such a huge hit. When it was, the producer (Ichise Takashige) asked me if I was interested in doing a new JUON movie. Since I still had a lot of ideas that I wasn't able to explore in the video, I agreed. But the main difference between the video and the film is that the video JUON didn't really have a main character. You could say that the main character was the cursed house itself. For the movie, it was agreed that we need someone to be the protagonist, either a hero or a heroine. It took a long time to come up with a JUON story that would work with just one main character. There were many scripts and all of them were radically different from each other. Some were stories simply about the origin of Kaiyoko, who was the first victim and the first ghost in the video. But I eventually decided I didn't want to make the movie a prequel. I wanted the film to have a male protagonist, a working class middle-aged guy, but producer Takashige said, "who wants to see some old guy?" So that's how we ended up with such an attractive female cast! (laughs)
PM: How exactly did you come to write and direct the original JUON?
TS: In 1998, I was working
as an assistant
director on both film and video productions. I was also taking a night
class in film production where the teacher turned out to be Kiyoshi
Kurosawa
(the director of CURE and KAIRO, and the executive producer of JUON the
movie). He gave us the assignment to make a 3 min short from an
original
script. It turned out that Kurosawa like my film very much, maybe
because
it was horror and that was to his taste. Actually, it's never been my
intention
simply to make horror films. I mean, I like horror films, but I
had
no real ambitions to make them before this assignment. Eventually,
Kurosawa introduced me to a
producer
at Kansai-TV who was producing a 90 min. feature for television. The
title
was Gakko no Kaidan G (School Ghost Story G). G is supposed to mean
"Great".Maybe
the producer came up with the title to compete with Dragon Ball Z, I
don't
know (laughs). It was going to be a horror anthology and I was assigned
to write and direct. But because I had no previous professional
directorial
experience, the producer had no confidence in me. I wrote many scripts
for 30
minute segments but the
producer
asked me to direct two and to cut them down to 3 minutes. I wondered,
how
can I scare the audience in so short a time (laughs)? But those two
short
segments that I made are actually the foundations of JUON. They lay out
the basic premise of the curse and it is almost like the true prequel
of
the story.
PM: Are you now especially fond of telling stories in a short episodic format, or is this a style particular to JUON?
TS: JUON 1 and 2 were a combination of many short scripts I had written by that time, so the finished work really reflects this. Theoretically, the movie should be more like a single piece, but I felt that it wouldn't be best to radically change the established JUON style.
PM: What are some of your approaches to directing a scary scene?
TS: To make an audience feel fear and to make them laugh are almost the same kind of thing. Its is all about controlling emotions. Ever since I was young, I was sort of mischievous and like to surprise people. Surprising and shocking people can be both funny and scary. So maybe that's my approach.
PM: How do you work with the actors when directing scary scenes?
TS: Timing is very important. You have to indicate to your actors exactly when a scream should come. Maybe at first a character hears a very strange noise, but they shouldn't scream right away. They might think "oh, something just dropped off the shelf" or "its only the wind." Doubt and fear will pile up little by little, and that makes for suspense. You have to calculate this, along with the timing, to perfectly control the audience. Also, I think the art of horror is the art of misdirection. You think something is over there, then you realize that someone is behind you and maybe its is not even human.
PM: How about working with children?
TS: Personally, I like kids. But sometimes they can be scary and even inhuman. Everyone was once a child, but once you get older it gets harder and harder to see the world through their eyes. It is kind of reminds me of the works of Katsuhito Otomo like Akira or Domu. The boy who plays Toshio is seven years old. We auditioned many, many kids but he stuck out because he behaved kind of mischievously at the audition. Naturally, I liked that very much. We asked him to make to make some scary facial expressions, they were good, and he was cast on that basis.
PM: What can you tell us about the house that is used in JUON?
TS: It is not a set. It is a real house in the Saitama prefecture. In some small neighborhoods there you can sometimes find abandoned houses where the owner will rent out the property for film crews to shoot in. It's funny because the same house in JUON recently has also been used on a TV drama watched by housewives. I think there is something very scary about that house, but maybe foreigners wouldn't think so. In America and Europe, an attic can be a room where someone lives, but in Japan it is always dark and abandoned. Even the closet in Japan are different, with sliding doors instead of doors that fold open. I think non-Japanese are afraid of what is under the bed. But in Japan people sleep on the floor. A lot of new Japanese horror is really based around the size and shape of the tatami room. I think a big challenge to re-make these movies in another country would be to make the horror work in a entirely different kind of house.
PS: When dealing specifically with ghosts and apparitions, like Toshio and Kaiyoko, how do you decide on how much, or how little to show to the audience?
TS: If you show a ghost
too much,
it can become laughable. That's often why ghost movies often try and
avoid
showing the ghost itself. Maybe they are worried that people will start
laughing. All the Japanese Neo horror movie makers like Hiroshi
Takahashi
(RING scriptwriter) and Kiyoshi Kurosawa try to obscure the image of
the
ghost and hide them. That's been one of their main strategies. But I
don't
want to do the same thing as them. I want to show the ghosts as much as
possible, even though I know some people might laugh. Actually, at the
first screening of JUON someone laughed during the film and told
me
afterwards, "it was very
funny!"
Butsomeone else told them "don't laugh at something so scary!" The
reactions
to JUON have been personal and diverse. And that's the kind of reaction
I want.
PM: Do you see yourself as someone who is still part of the Neo-horror movement?
TS: I think my movies are very American in style. I was an eighties splatter movie kid, so characters like Freddy and Jason are a big influence on me. Maybe now I'm somewhere in-between an American and Japanese style. A pure ghost story like Kiyoshi Kurosawa's films or Ring is just the opposite. They are ghost stories, not monster stories. I think an approach using both ways is best. I think even you could even make a Doraemon movie. Don' you think a robot cat is kind of scary?
PM: What do you think you'll be doing next?
TS: A personal film that I'll be financing by myself. Actually, it will be more laughable. Right now I'm also working on the script for the second JUON movie I'll hopefully start shooting in December, 2002. That' less than a month from now.
PM: So you aren't tired of JUON yet?
TS: Well, Tora-san ran 48 films so who knows? My friend Takahasi (Hiroshi)said that he thought the audience is already tired of JUON before the movie has even come out, but after he saw a screening he said "It think you made it fresh againî so that makes me think that it could become a continuing series. But the next movie will be the last one I'll direct. Maybe (laughs). Maybe some other director will step in like with John Carpenter's Halloween.
PM: Or you could do JUON 3
in 3-D.
* Discussion on the JUON movies 2003
* The original JUON video review 2000
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