Mamoru Oshii - a Screenrelish Exclusive Report - Screenrelish

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33 Two New Posters For SIN CITY: A DAME TO KILL FOR Tagged as Batou Bell Lightbox Garm Wars Ghost in the Shell ICWOshii James Cameron Kenji Kawai Makoto Katsuragi Mamoru Oshii Oshii 7 Mistakes You Missed 40 Best Opening Patlabor in Michael Bay Movies Sequences in Movie Sky Crawlers History The Last Druid TIFF “How do you draw time?” – Mamoru Oshii Wachowski Brothers

Tw eet 0 “Just so you guys know, GHOST IN THE SHELL was never successful in Japan.”

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1 The auditorium reacts like they’ve been hit with a magic trick. This is ‘cause the statement comes from the director, Oshii-san himself. 10 Recent Movies That The Biggest X-Men Movie Are Worth Watching Mistakes Again “I never imagined that it would be this kind of a hit in North America and Europe,” Related he goes on to say. “So my life changed slightly. Just a little.”

Fans know that public appearances by Oshii-san are rare, especially outside of Japan. With all the fans in the full auditorium, it’s hard to think that his work Five Films To Get doesn’t have the same level of appreciation at home. There weren’t many that knew You In The Mood that here. For The Summer Holidays 15 Batman Villains That 7 Terribly Acted Scenes Last weekend, TIFF brought Mamoru Oshii to English-speaking fans, live, for their In Need Their Own Movie That Are Hard To Watch Conversation With… series. While video of the event will be released on TIFF’s YouTube channel in the future, ScreenRelish has extended highlights from the conversation, capturing some of Oshii-san’s thoughts, ideas, and reveals for you to Screen Relish’s enjoy now. Saturday Screamer: THE FUNHOUSE

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HERCULES In London: Preview Recent Comments And Q&A With Cast And Director frankie09 on GHOSTBUSTERS Gets A 30th Oshii on Stage, with Jesse Wente and Maki Terashima-Furuta (photo credit: Alex Anniversary Re-Release Trailer Davies, TIFF) frankie09 on ‘Ghostbusters’ 30th Anniversary Summer Re-Release!

The Science of… Film Cutting on UK Trailer For Abel Ferrara’s X-MEN: DAYS OF - WELCOME TO NEW YORK FUTURE PAST: Part 2 “I know we’re all gonna tweet this,” said Jesse Wente, earlier while setting the house Film Cutting on Frosty US Trailer For Atom Egoyan’s Crime Thriller THE CAPTIVE rules for the presentation. “I may do it from this chair.” Lincoln Crisler | Come Back to Me on As Head of Film Programmes for TIFF, Wente hosts and moderates the In Fantastically Intense Trailer For Indie Shocker ‘Come Back To Me’ Screen Relish’s Conversation With… events. What makes him especially qualified for this one with Saturday Screamer: Mamoru Oshii is that he, too, is a fan. DEMONS Categories He points to the video cameras just beyond the stage. “You didn’t think I was gonna Awards not film this, did you?” Box-Office Tweets are allowed, and the hashtag #ICWOshii was encouraged. With that, Wente GUARDIANS OF Comic Con THE GALAXY introduces Maki Terashima-Furuta, VP for Production I.G. (EVANGELION), who will Featurette: be translating for the guest of honor, Mamoru Oshii – filmmaker, television Character Competitions Insights director, writer, and pop cult icon. Featured

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US DVD & Blu-Ray GHOSTS OF ‘GHOST’: Archives Oshii-san leans comfortably in his chair, his eyes pensive under the bucket hat. He strokes his beard while formulating more thoughts on his films. July 2014 http://www.screenrelish.com/2014/07/16/conversation-mamoru-oshii-screenrelish-exclusive-report/ 2/12 7/16/2014 ScreenRelish - In Conversation With... Mamoru Oshii - A ScreenRelish Exclusive Report - ScreenRelish

Sometime in the mid-90s, a younger Oshii-san was coming out of an era as a June 2014 struggling filmmaker. He wrapped two PATLABOR movies with commercial success, made a lot of money, and decided he was done with city life. May 2014

April 2014 “I bought a house away from Tokyo, hidden in the mountains,” he says. “And I was just gonna live the rest of my life with my dog.” March 2014

February 2014 You can tell, from his tone, that it was a happy memory. “Six months later, approximately, I realized I didn’t have money.” Meta Oshii’s dry, relaxed humor is not lost in the live translation. His hand moves away Site Admin from the beard to reveal a smile. “So I actually made my own pitch, and I took my pitch to Bandai Visual. The producer of Bandai Visual took me to a sushi restaurant Log out that was on the second floor of the building.” Entries RSS

Cultural note: “Just so you know, the second floor of the sushi restaurant is Comments RSS somewhere ‘special.’ It’s a very intimate room where you want to talk about something secretive. It’s actually not a good thing when a producer offers to take WordPress.org you to sushi on the second floor.”

Was Oshii about to present his take on GHOST IN THE SHELL, only to be turned down? “As soon as I was about to take my pitch out of my bag, he got out another pitch and gave it to me.”

“And that was the original comic book of Ghost in the Shell by Masamune Shirow.

“‘You do this.’

“So I had to.”

It surprised many that GHOST IN THE SHELL was given to him, and not something he initially wanted to pursue. Creating GHOST IN THE SHELL was more challenging than the finished product would have you believe. And not in the way you’d think.

“It was interesting, but a very difficult manga,” he says about the original book. “My job as a director is to make this complicated book into a simple movie. But there was no time and there was no money.”

Released in 1995, GHOST IN THE SHELL was a flagship work that brought anime to a wider audience in North America. For many, it was the film that got people to consider anime less as “cartoons” and more as a serious, artistic medium.

In GHOST IN THE SHELL, technology allows the human form itself to be customized, with upgrades to enhance senses and thought. The film’s world is not too dissimilar from our own – as Oshii notes, it’s the concept of the cell phone, but installed in ‘us’ rather than kept in our pockets. A “ghost” could be the digitized form of a human soul, or – in the case of the main character – an artificial consciousness.

It’s a film The Wachowski Brothers screened to convey their approach for crafting THE MATRIX. It caught James Cameron’s attention with its themes, concepts, and storytelling style. Its 82-minute run time tours a rich, detailed world; no one would http://www.screenrelish.com/2014/07/16/conversation-mamoru-oshii-screenrelish-exclusive-report/ 3/12 7/16/2014 ScreenRelish - In Conversation With... Mamoru Oshii - A ScreenRelish Exclusive Report - ScreenRelish assume it was created on a budget.

Oshii keeps his words at a relaxed pace; pensive. “There was no waste of money, not even a single piece of artwork or shot that was omitted… I believe we made it in 10 months… All the people in the studio were still young and lively back then. If they were to do it now, it would probably take 3 years…”

The audience laughs. Even the translator, Maki-san, breaks character. Oshii muses on the memory. “… When I made GHOST IN THE SHELL 2: INNOCENCE, it took 3 years…”

He lets the punchline settle. “It took that long, but what actually had to be done was the same as GHOST IN THE SHELL… I spent probably 6 times as much money as I did back then, but we pretty much did the same thing. We did use a lot of new technology.”

Since its release into pop consciousness, people have seen echoes of the film’s “ghost” in what’s followed: from the metropolitan city at the start of AVATAR, to concepts in Spielberg’s AI. GHOST left a strong influence on sci-fi sensibility, no doubt; in terms of how this speaks to ‘creative originality,’ Oshii tells it plainly.

“Copying in general is not really that bad. I copy Hollywood movies, Hollywood movies copy my movies, so we – kind of – pretty much copy each other. That’s how the movie industry is.

“There was one thing that our production staff was saying, which was ‘We don’t wanna make exactly the same as BLADE RUNNER.’ But ultimately, it turns out that it’s raining in town – in the city… There’s a whole bunch of Asian people in town… But the main character, she did not eat Udon.

“What’s important is not whether it’s the copy or the original, but how you copy it.” 4

Tw eet

CREATING WORLDS:

While the comparisons Oshii makes are strong parallels, ultimately they’re superficial, ‘cosmetic.’ The visual cues are found in the ‘paint’ of both worlds, but obviously not the main focus for either.

Perhaps the heart of what’s considered original would be in how the concept is born. Oshii has found thCato hnist apcptroach is considered by some to be atypical.

“Probably more than 10 years ago,” he says, “I had an opportunity to work with James Cameron. He said a movie is made up of three elements: characters, story, the world. As long as you don’t mix them up, and you prioritize them in order, you will make a successful movie.

“In Hollywood, you need to think about the characters first. Somebody very identifiable and attractive. Then you need to make a story that would not bore the audience. Third is make a world that is slightly different from the real world. As long as you follow these directions, you will be successful in Hollywood.” http://www.screenrelish.com/2014/07/16/conversation-mamoru-oshii-screenrelish-exclusive-report/ 4/12 7/16/2014 ScreenRelish - In Conversation With... Mamoru Oshii - A ScreenRelish Exclusive Report - ScreenRelish With Oshii saying ‘in Hollywood,’ there’s the sense he’s bookmarked the difference between that formula and his. “Up until he told me this, I was thinking of it in reverse order. For me, I think about the world first: I have to decide what kind of world the story takes place in. And then I think about the story. And then I think of characters that are suitable for this world and the story. And I still do it like that.

“I don’t think I would be successful in Hollywood,” he jokes.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF OSHII-SAN:

Regardless, Oshii has been making films for quite some time. His perseverance has him recognized as avant-garde at home, and a cult-to-mainstream genius abroad. The idea of being a director was with him since he was 17.

“I started making a movie when I was in college, and that’s when I thought I would eventually become a director,” he says. “I shot in 8mm and I sent it to the studio. And when they looked at it, it was all black.

“The shutter of the camera was closed. So my debut film is bad. It ‘never occurred.’”

Rather than quit entirely, he simply quit 8mm and upgraded to 16mm. Working a part-time job, he saved enough to buy a Bell & Howell Military camera – the kind used in World War II, with manual wind. “When you drop it, it’s not gonna break. I was super-happy.”

Thinking about the Bell & Howell, there was also a certain rhythm learn in the crank motion to get the right frame rate. For Oshii, though, this wasn’t a problem. “I actually didn’t have enough money to buy the actual film,” he says.

“I would carry this empty camera, without the film, take this camera out to town, and shoot without the film. And nobody thought that it was empty.”

The imaginary works did more than just benefit Oshii through the practice. “It actually was very helpful down the road. It actually worked out well for my future part-time job. I had to really work out to be able to lift this heavy thing. I did a lot of push ups on a daily basis. I would work at an automobile shop…. The construction sites… During college, that’s pretty much all I did. Never went to school.”

Like most raised in the 1960s, Oshii’s parents had more practical aspirations for their child. “My father always thought that I should become a lawyer or a doctor,” he says.

But inadvertently, it was his father that developed the inspiration for Oshii to be a storyteller. “My father was a Private Eye, but he was pretty much jobless… One of the reasons I got very interested in film is that, back when I was little, because he wasn’t working, he used to take me to the theaters all the time. So almost every day after school, I would go to the movie theater with my father.”

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Coming out of college, it would take a while before Oshii would land a project that would catch the public’s eye. “Back then, I was a director that didn’t have that many projects. I actually made a movie called ANGEL’S EGG prior to PATLABOR, which was not successful at all. So I was very poor. I could not even pay rent for the following month.

“PATLABOR is not something I planned; it was planned by my friends,” he says. He sets up another joke at his expense: “Again, it’s not even a matter of inspiration: I needed the money. When you’re in that situation, you tend to come up with the greatest ideas.”

In the reminiscing, Oshii comes up with a formula of his own. “The way I make movies since PATLABOR is that I think about all these different ideas after I am given the job. The ideas that make you guys happy… and make me happy… and the producer as well.

“It’s important to make everybody happy. If I make a movie that only makes me happy, then I’m not gonna get the next project.”

THOUGHTS ON KEY WORKS (SNIPPETS):

Throughout the intimate conversation with the creative director, TIFF prepared a short selection of scenes from his films for screening. In return, Oshii highlighted his sensibilities while making them.

PATLABOR (1989) – ‘Memories of Tokyo’:

I’m actually born in Tokyo, raised in Tokyo. That is my hometown, but after a certain point, I feel like I ‘lost’ my hometown.

Tokyo is a very strange city. Everything changes every year. All the old things get broken down and new things are invented. If you don’t visit the city for a while, it looks completely different. People that used to live there are no longer there. The worst case would be that there used to be an ocean there, but no longer there.

I made this at the time when I was contemplating all that. I didn’t know whether

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that was a good thing or a bad thing. I don’t think about that stuff anymore. I just think about what kind of destination I will follow; that’s the only thing I think about now.

For me, the city of Tokyo – I feel – it’s not for me anymore. Ever since PATLABOR, I wanted to live away from Tokyo and see – from the 3rd person point of view – what would happen to the city. PATLABOR 2 is the movie I put those feelings into.

At one point, I realized it was no longer my town. I work in Tokyo still, but to me it’s a very foreign city. That’s how I feel about Tokyo.

GHOST IN THE SHELL (1995) – ‘Animation Style’:

My animation style is basically to control the amount of information. GHOST IN THE SHELL probably has 3 times as much information as that of PATLABOR. GHOST IN THE SHELL 2 probably has 3 times as much as GHOST IN THE SHELL. I had to really struggle as to how much information I could put onto the screen. I believe that’s how my animation style was created.

It was more like building an architecture rather than a movie. But it was a fun project for me. Probably not so for the animation staff. There were a lot of people who told me they would never want to work with me again. Their hands stopped moving.

At one point, my decision of increasing the amount of information in animation has changed. I felt that there were other things that need to be controlled, things other than information.

You will see that in THE SKY CRAWLERS. The amount of information is tremendously decreased, but I there’s that something else I have to control: Time.

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THE SKY CRAWLERS (2008) – ‘Time’:

A movie is something that time will ‘tell’. The time that only exists within a movie. The feelings of people, the movement of the world – they’re there to control ‘time’. I finally realized that after I became this age. It’s actually very, very difficult to portray time in the animation.

And let’s say you’re filming this water bottle with a film camera. What’s shown is not the ‘bottle’, but the ‘time’ that’s flowing in this environment. You can’t really do that in animation, because only the image exists.

No matter how detailed the art is, you really cannot draw time. How do you do that? I thought of it many, many times. And I came to one conclusion. And you will see that, hopefully, in this film.

50 PERCENT KENJI KAWAII: THE LAST DRUID: GARM WARS (2014):

Oshii’s visit to Toronto is, in part, convenient opportunity. Oshii and his team have been spending some time nearby – in Montreal, Quebec – finishing up his latest live-action film, THE LAST DRUID: GARM WARS.

“This is a movie that we are currently final mixing in Montreal,” he says. “We shot this movie last year in Montreal. It’s a fantasy movie composite of live-action and CGI. The production style is similar to the Hollywood production style, but overall, the movie style is very different.

Oshii had a surprise promo clip to reveal for the film. “Tomorrow we all go back to Montreal again and continue with the final mixing. What we’re about to show you today is something very short, but the producers are gonna get very mad at me if we show more than that.”

There isn’t much of it available online yet. The world is a mix of Medieval and high tech, with a touch of Steampunk thrown in. For the initiated, think ESCAFLOWNE, FIVE STAR STORIES, a touch of FINAL FANTASY.

The choral music resonating through the preview brought up questions about his frequent collaborator, composer Kenji Kawai.

“It’s probably been more than 25 years since I started working with Kenji Kawai,” he says. “Somebody referred me to him. Back then, he was still working on music arrangement. When I first met him, he had a cigarette in his mouth, playing a guitar. He was kind of, like, a crazy young guy.

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Kenji Kawai in 2007

“I got worried. I didn’t know if he could really do this for me. But he just came up with this beautiful music. It’s been 25 years since then, and he never disappointed me, not even once.

“I think we will continue to work together for the rest of our lives. He tells me that when I make a picture, he can naturally hear the music out of my picture. And I believe that. However, he’s not gonna compose anything unless the picture is complete. It’s a happy thing to be working with him, but schedule-wise, it’s very challenging.

“Of course, I love the music for GHOST IN THE SHELL, SKY CRAWLERS, and AVALON, but this music that he gave to GARM WARS is just amazing. Astonishing.

“For my movies, he is somebody crucial. I don’t know what to do if he ever died… It’s a matter of who dies first.”

It was a joke in the conversational style everyone’s gotten used to by this point. It’s no secret that he’s an older man; his tone and pacing shows a developed maturity. But the way he sits, the way he jokes carries a youthful vibe.

It was only for a brief moment here, reflecting on his friendship with Kawai, that he reveals the nuances of age.

When the laughter dies down, he lets a silent moment linger. “I feel very thankful that I met him. Because half of the movie is made of music. If he disappears, my movie will only be half.

“I want him to live a long time.”

So what was that pitch that Oshii had in that bag, 20 years ago, when he was asked to do GHOST IN THE SHELL?

“That eventually was made as JIN-ROH,” he revealed, to the applause of the fans. The story is told across various media, including radio dramas, live action, and animation between 1987 and 2007. It is Oshii’s magnum opus, but has never enjoyed the success of GHOST IN THE SHELL. It is, however, a project that does make him happy.

“Had I made JIN-ROH back then, I probably wouldn’t be here today,” he says. “Again, back then I needed the money, so I had no choice but to do [GHOST]. The way filmmakers meet movies, or projects, happen something along this line.”

Twenty years later, the practicality of his genius has made him a success in a way http://www.screenrelish.com/2014/07/16/conversation-mamoru-oshii-screenrelish-exclusive-report/ 9/12 7/16/2014 ScreenRelish - In Conversation With... Mamoru Oshii - A ScreenRelish Exclusive Report - ScreenRelish that even he didn’t expect. Thanks to that malleability in his aspiration, Sci-Fi pop culture has certainly become richer for it.

Mamoru Oshii and Jesse Wente, post-conversation (photo credits: Jesse Wente, TIFF)

Techno-Human: The Films of Mamoru Oshii will be running at TIFF until July 25th.

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