- Document type
- Feature
- Published
- 17 September 2007
Paul Verhoeven liked it - Takashi Miike at the 2007 Venice film festival
Along the main drag of the Venice film festival, high above parading, bottle-blonde would-be starlets, rushed journos and picnicking daytrippers, stands a huge billboard. The poster shows a worm's eye view of a rising sun between a pair of legs in jeans and cowboy boots. Silhouetted against the glowing red disc is the outline of a hanged man with his neck still in the noose. It's not a tree he's been strung up on, nor the crumbling remains of a stone archway, but a torii. This ain't any old western, this is Sukiyaki Western Django. And anyone coming out of the Casino, the festival's main hub of activity just across the street, is going to know it.
A hundred meters further up the same street, on the beachside terrace of swanky Hotel Excelsior, Takashi Miike and his two stars Hideaki Ito and Kaori Momoi pose for photographers. Miike's wearing a t-shirt with the same image as on the billboard. Between now and the film's official unveiling tomorrow evening, dozens of festivalgoers will be wearing that same shirt (in either red or white, like the two warring clans in the film), have a silver Sukiyaki Western Django badge pinned to their jackets, and/or be cooling themselves with the official Django folding fan. Having Sony Pictures' promotional budget at your disposal has some distinct advantages.
At lunch half an hour later, Miike's having a Heineken. I tell him about the Dutch TV commercial the brewery made with Lee Van Cleef, just before the actor's death. Shot in close-up to emulate Sergio Leone but more importantly to hide Van Cleef's weakened body from view, he fires his Colt and shoots the cap off a bottle before taking a swig. Miike tells me my Japanese is improving. "It's about time it did," I reply.
The Django contingent numbers in the twenties and includes his CGI producer, manager and companion Misako Saka, actor/translator Christian Storms, set designer Takashi Sasaki, and screenwriter Masaru Nakamura, whom I've taken to calling tensai (genius) on account of his having been behind Young Thugs: Nostalgia and Dead or Alive 2, Miike's two best films. "If I'm a genius, what do you call Miike?" Nakamura wonders. "Motto tensai." Better than genius.
There is some apprehension about tomorrow's screening. It's taking place in the aptly named Sala Grande at midnight. They wonder if anyone will show up. Clearly, they haven't forgotten the same cavernous theater being half-empty when The Great Yokai War screened there at the same hour two years ago. The fears will prove to be unfounded: the official competition screening of Sukiyaki Western Django will be a sold-out affair with virtually no walkouts and rounded off with a standing ovation.
But first, the press conference. Why does a director known for his violent scenes put so much comedy into his new film, asks a lady from Hong Kong. "In Japan I'm seen as a man who makes children's films." What was it like working with Tarantino, asks another, and by the way, where the hell is he? The film's special guest star - and 'godfather' of the spaghetti western retrospective conveniently taking place elsewhere at this same festival - has yet to show his face in Venice. "Back pains" is the official word that arrives instead. He won't make it to Italy at all. Eli Roth is sent in to take over ceremonial duties for a day, looking somewhat out of place in a round table discussion that features two fistfuls of graying Cinecittà regulars, but he is already on his way back to L.A. by the time Miike, Roth's special guest star in the Tarantino-produced Hostel (you could call it an exchange of favours, but Miike did his bit for free, QT didn't), arrives in town.
Although Tarantino never shows, his presence is palpable. No matter what you think of him - and a lot of people think a lot of things - you can't help but admire how the man has put his stamp on cinema today, as a reference point at least as much as as a director. The two moderators of the spaghetti western program mention his name in virtually every intro talk they give. Understandably perhaps, in an attempt to give their work some clout with the young, but some of the directors and actors invited over for the event (a list that includes Franco Nero, Giuliano Gemma, Enzo Castellari, Tinto Brass, and Fabio Testi) are just as eager to drop his name.
But I digress. The world's number one Miike expert, critic Tokitoshi Shiota, tells me that at one point Sukiyaki Western Django was supposed to star SMAP member Shingo Katori. (You can tell a director is getting big in Japan when Johnny's wants a piece of him). Miike balked at the idea and said he would only agree to have Katori in the film if he could kill him off in the first scene. He kept his word. Instead he chose Umizaru star Hideaki Ito for the lead, because his face reminded Miike of Giuliano Gemma's.
These supposed language skills of mine come in handy when our director spots that very same Giuliano Gemma standing in front of the Excelsior smoking a cigarette one evening and there is no one else around to make the introduction. Roles are reversed: when he shakes the hand of Ringo, Miike looks just like one of his own fans when they come up to greet him, timid and in awe. As Gemma reminds us, his Ringo films were released as Django films in Japan (ringo being the Japanese word for apple), so the encounter is a particularly fateful one.
The next day, midnight on the red carpet. Under the glaring lights of the TV crews, Momoi has her name embroidered in sparkling letters all over the black sash of her kimono. It's a good thing we're not in Cannes; the French might have misread it as 'Moi Moi Moi' and mistaken it for a desperate cry for attention. Inside, the Django contingent receives the warm welcome so typical of Miike fans everywhere, but during the screening the audience is oddly calm, missing most of the meta jokes that got big laughs during yesterday's press screening. Has this generation never seen Yojimbo or the original Django? Nevertheless, they cheer and applaud for all they're worth by the time the credits run. Whatever apprehension there was has thoroughly dissipated: the lengthy standing ovation and cries of "Bravo!" bring tears to Miike's eyes. It's because I'm so sleepy, he says.
By the time the last autograph hunters have left the building it's nearly three o'clock. Sleepy or not, there's an after party waiting in the tent of the festival's main sponsor, a luxury watchmaker. Miike shows off the gift he received from them and remarks that the glittering timepiece is probably worth half his film's budget. He isn't the only one moved beyond recognition by the audience reception: "From now on I only want to do really interesting movies like this one," Ito exclaims enthusiastically. "No more of that Umizaru stuff." "Gasp!" goes the Japanese press delegation - an outspoken opinion, from Hideaki Ito no less. Had things gone differently, would Shingo Katori now be standing here renouncing Monkey Magic and tearing up his contract with Johnny's? We can only wonder.
It's four in the morning on September 6 when the get-together winds down. From 9.30, Miike has 70 interviews scheduled. He will spend most of September 7 sleeping. On the 8th he is on a plane back to Tokyo where production on the Haruki Kadokawa-produced God's Puzzle beckons. Back in Venice, Sukiyaki Western Django doesn't win any prizes. But Paul Verhoeven liked it.