[Interview] Takashi Miike on New Movie ‘First Love’ and the Evolution of His Filmmaking – Bloody Disgusting

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. Hes made significant contributions to the horror genre, most notably Audition, but hes 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 directors fearless, gonzo style. You may not always love a Takashi Miike movie, but theres a guarantee that it will at least be something that you wont soon forget.

With over 100 films now to his name, Miike isnt 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 theres 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 aboutFirst Love, but we also discussed the journey his career has taken, the level of responsibility involved with directing adaptations of other peoples works, and how hes 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. Its a very simple story where there arent that many characters and some of the main characters are considered to be scum. Theyre 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: Youre right, there is a lot of violence and romance in the film, but Im really not interested in objectively thinking about what the balance is like between them. The amount of violence is actually something that I dont 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 cant 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 dont particularly care if its a huge success or if theres a balance there, but I just want to make a film that I like and Im 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. Its because by the time that we got to that sceneand we added that scene at the end of the film in post-productionwe were already over our budget. At the same time, theres a big aversion to risks right now in the industry. Maybe there could be a car accident or something while were filming the scene. So because theres an aversion to risk right now in Japan, a lot of the movies that are made are these big, warm, fuzzy movies that dont really have any dangerlike real physical dangerfor 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 itd be difficult to do with the current situation in the Japanese market. In a way, a car chase scene is almost clichd for an action film, anyways. But instead of cutting it, we decided that wed 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: Thats so interesting. To make something less physically dangerous, you turn it into whats 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. Whats 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 youre turning that into a live-action film youre doing that because you think that its just going to be fun. Or sometimes you read the original work and youre like, Okay, the original work is fun, so itd be fun to turn that into a film while still respecting the intent and style of the original work and the writers intention. But at the same time, its more important for us to have fun with it than to rigidly stick to exactly what the original work was. When adapting someone elses work youre also freed in a sense because you want to respect the writer, but we dont actually have that many meetings with the original writermaybe just one meet and greet and thats it, but what we do want to do is make something that the fans are going to love, even if we dont 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 youve turned down out of fear?

Miike: So this is maybe related to my experiences as an assistant director too, but whats scary when youre making a film is just realizing that its going to cost way too much money in some cases. At the same time, Im not the one whos funding the film, so I have to work within the constraints of my co-producers and sponsors. Now if they dont think that were capable of making a certain film with the money we have, thats fine, but what I try to always do is instead of cancelling or not accepting a project, Ill brainstorm over modifications to make things cheaper, which usually also make things more interesting, too. Were 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: Youve done some very memorable work in the horror genre, but what do you think is your scariest film and why?

Miike: Im actually quite a scaredy cat, myself. Since a child Ive been this way. Ive even a little afraid of the dark. If Im alone in the dark Ill sometimes feel that theres a presence behind me and Ill even be afraid to turn around, but then if I do get the courage to turn around, Ill 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 Ive always been a bit of a coward so I dont watch many horrors films myself. I personally think I dont want to pay money to go to a theater to get horribly frightened! So even after I finish making horror films, I usually dont go to a theater to watch them myself.

All of this being said, the scariest of the projects that Ive worked on is Imprint, my episode from Showtimes Masters of Horror series. Everyone kept telling me that Americas a free country and that I could really do whatever I wanted. Its cable TV, so dont 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 episodes been cut because it was too scary, so now its just twelve episodes. Imprint was definitely the scariest project that Ive worked on.

BD: Have there been any updates on a JoJos Bizarre Adventure: Diamond is Unbreakable sequel? Should people still have hope?

Miike: When we started that project, we expected that wed 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 thats actually horror for a director thats in that situation. So no, theres no sequel planned and it wasnt a hit.

Thats 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 couldnt 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 wont be a sequel.

Takashi Miikes First Love hits theaters in limited release on September 27.

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[Interview] Takashi Miike on New Movie 'First Love' and the Evolution of His Filmmaking - Bloody Disgusting