I attended the press conference for director Takeshi Kitano's new film ``Kubi,'' which will be released on November 11rd. The venue was the Foreign Correspondents' Club of Japan (FCCJ), where I am a member of the Associate Members Committee. FCCJ stands for Foreign Correspondents' Club Japan, and is one of the oldest and most prestigious press clubs in the world. Since 23, we've been delivering news to the world. People from various genres give press conferences every day, so I'm sure many of you have seen this FCCJ mark on TV.
An original movie ``Neck'' starring, writing, and directing by director Kitano.
Director Kitano spent 30 years planning this movie. This is the first new work in six years since ``Outrage: The Final Chapter'' and is a Sengoku spectacle film made on a grand scale based on the ``Honnoji Incident''. The story depicts the confusion of ambitions and strategies of various characters, including military commanders, shinobi, comedians, and farmers, with a sprinkling of violence and comedy.
Director Kitano plays the role of Hideyoshi Hashiba himself under the name Beat Takeshi, with Hidetoshi Nishijima as Mitsuhide Akechi, Ryo Kase as Nobunaga Oda, Tadanobu Asano as Kanbei Kuroda, Naotomo Omori as Hidenaga Hashiba, and Shido Nakamura as Shigesuke Namba, a farmer who admires Hideyoshi. I am. Why did you decide to appear? Although he had not planned to appear in the previous press conference himself, he decided to appear after being persuaded and requested by those around him, considering his appeal overseas. How did Beat Takeshi and Hashiba Hideyoshi overlap in their acting?
``I really wanted to work as a director, but when it came to starring in a movie, I thought Hideyoshi would be the one I would be most comfortable with.For a long time, there were books that compared talents to Sengoku warlords.Nobunaga is Bonchi Osamu-chan.'' , Shinsuke is Akechi Mitsuhide, and I'm usually Hideyoshi (lol) After looking at various things, I felt that Hideyoshi was the one I was most comfortable with, and I wanted to play the villain in the shadows of the story. Because I'm working as a director at the same time, I get to watch other people's plays from quite a distance.That's why I chose Hideyoshi to be the director. , it's easy to do, so of course it happened."
Regarding the content of the movie, ``Sodomy during the Sengoku period was sodomy in the sense of men risking their lives to each other.Nobunaga had 22 children.The sexual relationship was different. That's because Japanese TV rarely depicts things like that.I wrote the script 30 years ago about the murky relationships between men and betrayals that happened during the Warring States period and all sorts of things happening at the same time. That's because I try to film period dramas once in a while.At the preview stage, it was very well received, so I'm very happy."
Since it was the first press conference at FCCJ in 20 years, many foreign reporters attended and asked a variety of questions.
Also, what kind of challenges do you face when trying to differentiate between a violent, dark movie and something completely different, such as comedy? I have a question. Then he said, ``Seriousness and comedy are two sides of the same coin. I believe comedy has its own demons.'' This is not a Chaplin quote, but it's not funny when a poor person steps on a banana, but when a great person like the Prime Minister steps on a banana... That's why it's the same with violent movies, where the comedy devil sneaks in at the same time as we're filming a very serious scene, and we end up laughing out loud on set.''
We also talked about the movie he is currently producing, and revealed that it is being produced with the theme of ``comedy in a violent movie.''
During the press conference, foreign reporters asked questions about issues with Johnny's and Takarazuka, as well as the dark side of Japan's entertainment industry. Regarding the question about the Johnny's scandal, he answered, ``Such rumors were common in the Japanese entertainment industry in the past, but for us we only thought that it was a natural thing.We never thought it would become such a big problem.'' "I guess it's just a trend of the times. There was an idea in the entertainment world of selling yourself as a product and using it as a tool to make money."
Director Kitano is respected overseas as well. I was impressed by the way he simply answered any questions I had. And, of course, there was humor, which fascinated the foreign reporters gathered at the venue.
Mio Shimamura
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