Father Geek is happy to be bringing you 2 very fine interviews with 2 great film makers this week as part of our Euro-AICN regular Monday Column. They are only here on these pages (thanks to our man in Paris, Grozilla) so dig in and get some of the inside story on these two phantastic men of the cinema...

Now here's Robert in Rome to start the ball rolling for you...

Hi people/geeks. Not much news this week, but if you’re a LOTR, or a Miyazaki fan you won’t be disappointed. Also(thanks to the great spy/reporter Grozilla) we have two fantastic indept exclusive interviews... one with the fantastic Japanese auteur Takashi Miike and the other with the wonderful "Monsters Inc." director Pete Docter. But first enjoy these bits of Euro-News….

LOTR-FOTR new pics!

I got new pictures from cut scenes of LOTR-FOTR. Between them, some shots of Uruk-Hai and orcs, Sam and Pippin in the swamps, Sam at Rivendell, a shot of the hobbits, Gandalf and Legolas at Moria, and, last but not least, the Fellowship at Lothlorien. Enjoy by clicking here: There Right Here

News from Screendaily...

Wild Bunch adds Spirited Away, amongst others...

French sales agent Wild Bunch is poised to pick up world sales rights to animated feature Spirited Away during the Berlin Film Festival. The picture, which was a late addition to the Berlinale competition, is the highest-grossing Japanese film of all time. Click Here for the facts

FilmFour, Karlsen team on Together remake, Pechero...

FilmFour is teaming with Elizabeth Karlsen's production outfit Number 9 on two new projects - an English language remake of Lukas Moodysson's Swedish hit Together and a film of the cult novel The Deadly Percheron by John Franklin Bardin Get all the Info Here

Una has some news about Lars Von Trier’s last project…

Una here. Thought you'd like to know that according to Lars von Trier's boss, he is setting up two new "American" movies after "Dogville" with Nicole Kidman and Lauren Bacall.

The first one is called "Dear Wendy" and it seems to me that this is the one that has moved most towards production. It's suppose to be about some "very, irritating white young people in Harlem". It's described as a "The Kingdom" meets "A Clockwork Orange".

Von Trier and the production company Zentropa will look for international, not relatively "unknown" actors for this one as the Zentropa-boss Peter Aalbaek Jensen, nicknamed "The Eel", says "Lars has to work with something else than big stars now". The script is under development.

Since Lars has anxiety of flying I think it's a good guess the film will be made in Sweden or Denmark where they are making "Dogville" now and where they made "Dancer in the dark". It could also be anywhere in Europe. The third film has it's theme from the American Civil War...It marks the end of Lars von Trier's American Trilogy and not much has been said about that yet.

Love, Una

Our great man in France, Grozilla has two wonderful interviews for us this week. The first is with incredible Japanese director Takashi Miike, the second with the Monsters Inc. creator Pete Docter.

Here they are:

The Takashi Miike interview...

The most used shortcut to qualify your work is excess. Aren't you afraid that this could become a kind of trademark, that audiences want to see your films just to know how far you can go?

Not at all. My movies are inherently part of me. This notion of excess is in some ways an extension of the way I see the world, of what and who I am. I'm not responsible for the effect of my films on the audience, or of what they're searching for by looking at them.

Isn't there a chance of misunderstanding with Audition, which is more a melodrama than the horror film it looks like on the surface?

Maybe. Audition is indeed more a love story leading to tragic issues than an horror film. And from this side more a melodrama than an horror film. Anyway, I never thought of my films in terms of genre.

What's your relation to Genre films?

I don't do films you could put in precises genres, that's because I always try to corrupt the genre. It's my nature to not fit in where I 'm expected to be. I was hired to do a remake of a Kinji Fukasaku's yakuza film. I've decided to start all over from the book it was adapted from, ordered a new script to make this new version a love story. The result could be seen as Yakuza genre only because the main character stayed a yakuza. I try to always use the same M.O. on each genre my films can be tied to. I'm not opposed to genre films, but that's not the way I would qualify my films. This is also a result of the nowadays economic Japan cinema situation, which has to deal with all these genres, but also with all the structures of production and distribution. I live within this system, between the laws of V film, television and movies, which all want just to fit into their plannings. For now, I'm lucky to be their pick of the month. I'm stuck between their orders and the movies I want to do. I guess it will be this way during the next two or three years, but then, I suppose they'll pick another guy.

Does this sense of hijacking the genre lead to your own approach of sexuality in your movies, which is very strong, but very far from the way it is generally shown in "Pink" movies?

I'm interested in sexuality and love as much as any human being. My own questions on this topic are quite usual. I just try to show it in my films without any shyness. It's something that's part of our everyday life. This has nothing do to do with "pink" movies. Anyway If I wanted to do Pink, I guess producers wouldn't allow me to.

You have said in many interviews, that your films are definitely not a point of view on Japan So what is your point of view on that country?

I have the feeling that the vitality of Japan is very down. Japanese should live with more intensity, more energy. I feel that their animal instinct nature is going to always be a downer.

Isn't this feeling at the heart of your movies, that usually start with a realistic situation being opposed by a very strong intensity?

Maybe that's a reflection of my way of living. I need the stress you can feel during a shooting to permanently be on the set to find new ideas, to find the urge to drive the film in many directions. I need to feed that fever, that tension because I know that it's in those conditions that you feel the more alive.

Two of your latests films, Visitor Q and The Happiness of Katakuris have been shot on DV. Did you choose this because it allows some urgency in the process of shooting a film?

I didn't use DV because it allows me to shoot faster, but because it allowed me to experience something different, something I wanted to feel. Just for the record: I, indeed, shot Visitor Q on DV, but for The Happiness, I used The 24PHD Cam, used these days by George Lucas... The DV allows me to not only do a movie with alot less money (7 millions Yens in this case), but also to test a different relation with actors, space and situations. It allows you a sensation of total freedom. The 24PHD Cam is something else, much more complex, but it's still something totally different than having a cameraman with the heavy camera for 35 mm. The size of the camera deeply transforms the relationship to what you are filming. My favorite format anyway is 16mm. Mainly because when I started to work as an assistant, it was on films made with that film stock. I have a very intimate relationship with 16mm I want to continue as long as I can. Now, producers give me enough money to shoot on 35MM, but when I use it, I always feel unfaithful to 16MM.

You mentioned earlier Kinji Fukasaku who was with Shohei Immamura, a man you worked as an assistant with among the new wave of Japan cinema in the 60's. By looking at movies like Fukasaku's Battle Royale or Immamura's Warm Water Under a Red Bridge, do you feel connected to this generation? Or more with the next one, with people like Shinya Tsukamoto, who you also worked with?

It's a question I'm too often asked about. Every journalist wants to know where I want to stand in Japanese cinema. I'm not sure filmakers are asking themselves about that. Not me any way. I can of course agree to some links with all these directors that journalists want to tie me to, but I definitely don't ask myself about my place in cinema. And if that was the case, it wouldn't answer me about what I am, or what I'm going to do.

Even if your films are very violent, I feel a strong sense of humor in it.

Humor has always been a part of me, and has grown by my observation of human beings which are always looking for some life goals, happiness goals that they can't ever reach. What's left but to feel despair in responce to this, or the humor and irony of life?

Does this sense of irony have to do with your relation to the use of graphic violence, which by always going so far leads to some absurd situations, like this table tennis duel as the climax in City of Lost Souls?

For this precise case, it was about a confrontation between one chinese mob and a yakuza who has to find itself a climax. By reading the script, I asked myself how to do something different with this usual kind of forced side of a story. I felt stucked in front of this dead end until I thought about this ping-pong duel. The language of writing in films always leads to the same situations. Absurdity is to me a way of escaping that. I 'll always look at it, even if my producers don't always agree with this point of view.

City of Lost Souls is maybe the film that represents what is to me the main link to your work: an interrogation of identity, of roots.

Your remark is very right: Even if I am recorded as a japanese born, my family had left, for reasons I still ignore, Japan before WWII, and lived in Korean and China then went back to Japan after the end of war. In Japan you're recorded as japanese born from the place your family lives not from the place you're born. My family has been recorded in Kyushu but I know either my father or grand father were born there. I was born in Osaka but my parents were just visiting this place when my mother delivered me. Because of this shadow over my past, my roots, my films are indeed always talking about what and who I am.

You were hired to work on Chrome Dragon, some project initiated by F F Coppola and Wayne Wang. But it didn't come about. What happened?

This was a project where six asian directors from different countries were supposed to direct a film about their vision on their own countries, to get an insider's vision of Asia. This was a very interesting idea, but the scripts we all wrote were found to be not attractive enough to the guys who backed up Coppola and Wang. Besides that there arose another problem : who was producing it : american or asian people? At the end, only one film was made by an asian-american guy, who shared culture from those two places. The result was an obviously too hybrid film, which I felt looked like some lousy American B movie.

Even if it concerns mainly HK cinema, what do you think of the nowadays Hollywood's frenzy about asian movie? About the hollywwod vision of asian cinema?

Hollywood is just picking up some films there. The real question is to know how,we as directors can stay truthful to ourselves with this foreigner look which has begun to be a contraint. But, for me, this asian mood is just an epiphenomenon from which we'll have to survive.

Seen from outside Japan, you're becoming a more and more famous director, courtesy of the festivals. What's your relation to this kind of acknowledgement of your work?

This acknowledgment is a good and a bad thing. Good point : The film distribution in Japan is such that it could maybe help my films to be shown in all japan, even if it's still inimaginable within that system. If it could only help to enlarge it, that would be wonderful. Bad point: If I try to analyse why I'm not known in foreign countries, I could be trapped by the false reflection of my work it gives to me. I must avoid this trap , if not, that would mean giving my audience what they're told to expect from me by journalists. It would mean copying myself. I just want to be able to do the films freely without asking myself about the image of me they could carry.

I've heard that among your projects is a Zaitoichi remake. Is it a way to linking you to a very strongly popular Japanese culture?

I'm indeed working on it. But I don't want to do a simple remake of this serial, but to revive the character as it was acted by Shintaro Katsu. If this actor was still alive, I assume he would still be acting it. For me, Zaitochi can't be apart from Katsu. I loved this guy because even if he was hugely famous, he never wanted to fit in the range that people expected of him. I'm afraid, the Zaitoichi series could be done again and his creation forgotten. That's why I want to do a film that could stand as a conclusion of the series, as its grand finale.

The Pete Docter interview...

Among others things, Monsters inc says that a laugh is worth more than a tear. It’s kind of an opposite message to what other nowadays animation films like Shrek or Nightmare Before Christmas which are darker or irreverant in their message...

We thought it was important, giving the subject of monsters, not being too dark and moody and gloomy. That’s central to the whole idea of the film, that you may think of this guys as nasty one but they just work at a factory, fill up paper work, clock in and clock out, talk about union dues, just like my dad did. These guy are not what they appeared.

Is it also a way to avoid cynicism, as opposed to Shrek, which is a cynical movie?

I think so. It probably reflects the way we thought about the world in Pixar, less cynical. We’re thankfully away from Hollywood, we can avoid its rules, and have fun. That shows in the film : we’re having a good time. We generally believe life is a positive experience, with great joy in there.

Quite all the Pixar films introduce an human character, and they’re more and more present, but purposedly not designed on a realistic point of view

We made a very conscious decision even way back on toy story that we’re not gonna try or catch reality. Our goal is not to do a photorealistic human to put actors out of work : we’re doing cartoons, making films with characters who could be believable and accepted by audience.

This subject matter kind of lead us to wherever we go. Most of the time we’re interesting in teling stories conected to our world but one step away, trying to representing familiar thing but with a twist, giving new way. That’s why toys come to life and monsters can be in a closet. On the other way, computer animation is kind of half way between 2D animation and live action. So we really get the best of both : the color and fantasy design from 2D and cinematography, lightning from live action. Our choices of character design quite releflects that. A lot of times, the shapes are very simplified, some of the textures are more real. There’s no way you could look at Boo and find she’s a photography of a real kid, it’s obviously a cartoon. We’re very aware of that, it’s a conscious choice. There’s nothing really interesting to me about trying to replicate reality. To me a Hirschfield character is way more interesting, it captures even more the essence of someone than a photograph would. We’re trying to do the same thing with the characters in our movies, by trying to capture the essence of a movement, a gesture. That’s a strength of animation, so we try to take advantage of that.

I guess you heard about this project of film using the face of Bruce Lee’s. What do you think of it?

Ultimately it seems kind of doomed to me. Nobody except that one particular actor would be able to make the choices, that’s what makes everyone unique. You could animate him, maybe make him look convincing but the real guy did it and it’s never gonna have the essence of what makes people go to the movies : actors bringing characters to life on the screen.

How difficult was it to find the right look, the right design for the right character?

One of the most difficult parts of the work, was early on, once we wrote the treatment, those 12-14 pages document that told the story, I gave that to a bunch of artists, and said : design these characters, I don’t wanna give you any visual inplug. They came back with many and very different visuals sketches. We just ask : how can we use that stuff and in what way. We decide to use a kind combination of real life texture : Sullivan has essentially the fur from a bear, his horns are impala’s. Mike’s skin is like a south american tree frog. We coupled this natural texture with the child like coloring : Sullivan’s blue with purple spots, something that can’t never really exists. The result is the marriage of those two.

Was there a step you couldn’t go beyond creating monsters because it could have been really scary for kids ? Did you reject some design because it was too scary ?

We were very conscious of that. Particularly that Sullivan needs to be believable as a monster : he needs to have horns and sharped teeth but not so scary that you don’t wanna watch it for one hour and half. He must be appealing and that you enjoy look at him. I can’t remember about something we really have to tone down. The basic concept meant that within a world of monsters, nothing is really too scary, it’s all in relation the kids. You’ll never know how the things will be received, when we first came up with the film, the first version screened one year ago, it opened with a child in bed, moonlight, something spooky going on, enter the monster, the kid sees it, raise and scream and the lights come out to show it was fake. It seemed to be a cool, clever way to introduce and let the audience familiarize with the film. But it was perceived as a very spooky movie, for ten minutes after this opening, nobody was laughing, even at stuff we knew was funny, but we weren’t giving them permission to laugh. So when we saw that in the screening, we went " oops, how to fix that? ". Then came the idea of the title sequence, very poppy and fun, that would telle the audience : this is gonna be fun, this is gonna be a comedy, a lighthearted, fun film. Ultimately it improved the film by showing that the monsters clearly are afraid of children, which is the central idea of the film.

On this film, John Goodman gives a very strong performance. You can’t dissociate Sullivan from his voice. How do you care of all the foreign dubbings?

We’re not able to check each version. We have to trust the dubbing people in other countries. Not only for the language, I don’t speak french or one one of the thirty-five other languages Monster’s inc is dubbed in. Generally they’ve done a very good job so far. It’s important for kids for any country to understand what they’re saying. . You’re right, the characters become so much a part of the voice talents and vice-versa. I was in a press screening in L.A. I saw John Goodman goin’ " hey Pete, howyadoin? " I first thought " hey, it’s Sullivan’s voice "ŠThe characters really come to life in your brain. You start to think : Mike wouldn’t say this, he would use these words or phrase it this way. It’s kind of cool, because of course, that’s the goal : create believable characters.

When Mike has to make Boo laugh, he tries with adult gags, like this standup comedy talk, but he has to go back to gag for kids to succeed. Is it a way you’ll always have to go back to kids?

Yeah. There’s a lot of that in the film: lots of jokes for kids and other for adults. We’re trying to make films for anybody : teenagers are 40% of our audience. Because of the many layers of what’s on the screen. I went see the film in theaters, looking at the audience while they were wathcing the film. You can hear different laughs, tell them from kids ones when there’s physical comedy, and adults’ when there’s intellectual jokes.

This is your first feature effort directing. It happens when Pixar’s leadership in CGI animation is threatened by other companies. Did you feel any responsibilities?

I was lucky enough to already be there on Toy Story. I really watched John Lasseter through the all process. I’ve also directed some shorts filmsand commercials on my own. So I kind of have a sense of how the whole process works. It’s really a group effort, the whole thing is a group of people working together creating the stories. I’ve had a lot of help but it was indeed stressful a lot of times but it was a lot of fun too. Pixar has such great, talented peoples; amazing painters, computer technicians, all working together to create these films.

At the end of the movie, the industry must move to another kind of work find a new life. Is it some kind of message to Disney, like, " your age is over, time to go on something else"?

(Laughs) No. It’s something John is very strong on it, and I think he’s right : the audience is not gonna feel good if leaving this film knowing the monsters are scaring kids. It’s just more kind of practical thing. We want to feel good that Sullivan has changed the world in some way, through his experience with this kid, he now can’t go back and stand scaring kids again. He needed to find some way of reinventing the way the world worked.

All Pixar’s film are about a individual confronting with the outside world. Is it on purpose?

Films are really about struggle. The characters need to change something. There’s three things he can struggle against : himself, another character or the world he’s dealing with. In most of our films, we try to make him struggle with all threes.

What the world gets you is a sense that it goes beyond just a personal change. On a very basic level, what we’re trying to do in every Pixar film is create characters who are interesting, that the audience cares about and then we watch’em grow and change in this film it’s Sullivan. At the beginning, all world is about his job, he’s the top scarer, he wants to be the best and that’s all that matters. When he’s stuck with this kid who he can’t stand, she eventually changes his life to the point he can’t go back to his previous life. We could have stop the film there but It feels like it has more sense to involve the world in some ways that as a result of this personal struggle, maybe that’s a sort of western prejudice that one person could change the world, and that’s something we really believe in, so this one person change and struggle has an effect on the society he lives in.

There’s also always some kind of manual work done by the characters in Pixar’s film, is that something conscious?

In order to take what they want, our characters has to take some physical action. The fact that they’re building something manually is a good way to show, to demonstrate that they haven’t accomplished their goal yet.

Is it wrong to say that the door chase in Monster’s inc is an hommage to the train chase in Aardman’s The wrong trousers?

There’s some of that. It’s a lot of elements put together. It came from the concept that once we put the idea that monsters gain access to the kid’s room by this doors, they must be stored somewhere. I wanted to go where all these doors go. Then, we looked a lot of chase sequences : the wrong trousers’ one, Indiana jones & temple of doom’s oneS What makes our scene unique is not only it is a rollercoaster highspeed thing but that it leads the characters anywhere in the world with all these doors.

From Will Coyote cartoons to this film or Wallace & Gromit films, there’s always machines in it. Machines seem to fascinate animated movie directors, why?

They’re fascinating in they’re also a product of the characters that use them. Very early on, there might be a link between the rythm the machines have and animation. Animation is very temperal, very closey related to music. Machines creates a kind of visual rythm.

What are for you the main differences between an animated movie director and a live action one?

They’re really kind of the same job : at the end, your job is to make an engaging film that hopefully gets the people emotionnal heart. In animation you’re doing this one little pice at a time, the director is the only guy who knows what it’s gonna look like together. With live action, most of the time, you’re on the set, with all the crew workin’on the same time. I guess it’s close to theater direction. I’ve never directed live action, but that’s my perception of it. In animation, you have to be a little more like a scientist in some ways. To get a good concept and then to be able to break it down into pieces, section it all and know how it’s gonna fit back together. It’s kind of tricky.

You Pixar’s guys seem to exchange the tasks for each film...

It’s just the way it’s worked out. I really don’t know why. I guess it keeps things fresh, kind of like in the Talking Heads band, they were all always switching instruments You get different ideas and point of views that way. The director, me in this case, is essentially the person that does everything from story to directing the talent animating, designers The co-directors are specialized in special areas, David Silverman work particulary on story and deal with problems in it. I check back at the end. By studying at Calarts, I learned a lot about computer animation but not much about staging or composition all theses rules of cinematography

Would you say that in a way your work is about to keep playing with toys?

Yeah (laughs). It’s a good job. We could go some toy store with the company credit cards For this film we had to visit a lot of factories. I loved factories as a kid, it’s kind of similar things now : you just got to keep experiencing the things you really love. The excuse is : well, we’re making a movie, so it’s research

Nowadays two differents use of animation are becoming more and more popular : Japanimation and Videogames. What’s your feeling towards those?

I’m kind of clueless to the videogames. I like the old ones like Tempest or Pac man. Anyway I guess it’s really important that they used real scripts, that even in a game human experience wants some progression that’s not just shooting’em up, wants sort of development and complication, it makes sense. Anime is giving a lot of people more and more inspiration. Like seven or eight years ago, there were people within LA that were discovering it and realizing how far advanced it was, more than what was going in Hollywood, that they were using innovative camera angles and techniques and telling stories that wre much further beyond what was being done in Hollywood. Miyazaki was one great inspiration for Monsters inc.

As a director, do you feel there’s anything really monstruous about kids?

They definitely could be scary, especially teenagers. We tried in this film to represent the whole picture of kids. My own daughter is three. She can go from this sweet little angel to devil in a blink of an eye. We wanted to show all sides of a child. One of the fault of many animated films with children is that in there, everything is nice and sweet and cute. It’s funny that in a monsters film the characterwe were the most afraid of was a little girl. No one knows how a monsters looks or moves or react, but we all know how a child do.

That's all for today, See you next week

Robert Bernocchi

euroaicn@yahoo.com

http://www.caltanet.it/frm/cinema/