Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with a little chat I had with Hideo Nakata. I jumped at the chance to talk to Mr. Nakata because more than any other current filmmaker he's responsible for the new wave of horror. While the long black haired ghost had existed in some Asian folklore, it didn't become the new image of terror until his original RINGU. You can't watch any Asian horror film that doesn't have a variation of his original RINGU. Thankfully, American horror is starting to drift away from the self-referential horror that was all that you could find post-SCREAM and into the atmospheric character driven horror jump started by Nakata's original film. While I might not be a big fan of the American remake of THE GRUDGE, I'd take it any day of the week over shit like VALENTINE.
I'm very curious to see what Nakata does with RING TWO for Dreamworks. Gore Verbinski did a bang-up job with the remake of THE RING, but there was a lot of creepiness lost in the translation. On the other hand Takashi Shimizu's American remake of his own THE GRUDGE captured so much less of the original film's scares, pacing and creepiness that it's actually quite shocking to me that he directed it. It felt like an average no name upstart American filmmaker took the idea and put in typical Hollywood characters (the cop that explains everything in a 3 minute long exposition scene) and ridiculous CG (slot machine eyes, anyone). My hope is Nakata finds a perfect balance between Verbinski's less creepy, but otherwise perfect remake and Shimizu's complete miss.
Anyway, I've rambled enough. Let's get on with the interview which was done over the phone. Mr. Nakata speaks English pretty well, so there was no need of a translator, but I tried to keep his speech pattern intact. That's about all you need to know! Let's go!
QUINT: I noticed that when the original RING hit in Japan it was kind of like a bomb. There were knockoffs almost immediately and there even began a subculture in America of people passing along tapes of this new kind of horror film. It's catching on in the American mainstream now and has definitely been saturated in Japan, but the long black hair covering the face is becoming the new horror icon. What is it about this image that really disturbs us and how did you settle on it in the original RING?
HIDEO NAKATA: Um, basically other than covering her face completely with the hair, the long black hair with white dress and even from the well is actually kind of very faithful to the tradition ghost image in ghost stories in Japan. We do have traditions of Kabuki Theater and... well, most of the ghosts are women who died with very vengeful emotions. The most famous one... she gets killed by her husband because of his condition and he poisoned her and had a terrible distortion on her face because of the poison... the hair falls off of her head. She died, of course, and she's getting revenge on him. That's always the most popular ghost story you'll see in Japan.
Another ghost story is about a girl who was the maid of a big house and she miscalculates the number of dishes she's washing... anyway, she commits suicide by falling into the well of the big house where she's serving as a maid. That's another traditional ghost story and that ghost image has a similar quality, too.
That's the tradition, but probably the new thing is about just covering up her face completely. I decided to do that because in my first feature film I revealed, at the end of the movie I revealed the ghost's face completely and that actually affected the... you know, some people didn't think it's scary enough. I went in a completely different direction. OK, let's cover her face up completely. Again, we had to show something, so we decided to show the one eye of her. That's actually based on a tradition and based on what I had done in my first movie, called GHOST ACTRESS.
There was kind of similar attempts prior to THE RING in the
Japanese Ghost... they were actually not feature films, but straight to
video things. They tried to find strange movements, used long hair. So,
I... researched... My whole team tried very hard to find the scariest
image.
QUINT: I'm glad you brought up the concealing of your actress' face
because while I loved Gore Verbinski's remake, I think one part he
didn't nail was keeping the girl supernatural and mysterious...
HIDEO NAKATA: And then... [To] Japanese people, Asian people long
black hair of a woman has somehow a kind of supernatural power or
emotion just by itself, so if you look at Kwai Don (____) there is a
kind of subconscious fear for women's long black hair by itself. If
they find on a bed an enormous amount of long black hair... (laughs)
that's scary by itself. That's somewhat different, maybe, from Western
Culture.
QUINT: Were you inspired by any particular films from around the
world or your own country?
HIDEO NAKATA: I admire the Robert Wise original version of THE
HAUNTING. He achieved the frightened emotion from the characters
without showing any ghosts in the movie. That was quite an achievement,
so I looked at the original HAUNTING again and again before I made THE
RING. Another movie movie which influenced me a lot is called TOKAIDO
YOTSUYA KAIDAN (The Ghost of Yotsuya). That's a masterpiece of Japanese
ghost story. If I should name one Japanese movie, I'd name TOKAIDO
YOTSUYA KAIDAN from director (Nobuo) Nakagawa. It's 75 minutes long.
You know, it's a low budget movie, but it has really good emotion.
Nothing similar story wise or visually, but it's got a strength of a
horror movie. I'd say these two movies influenced me a lot.
QUINT: You've had the dubious honor of having a film of yours
remade. Is that weird at all to you? What do you think of Gore
Verbinski's American remake?
HIDEO NAKATA: Ahh... Um... Maybe you know there was a Korean version prior to the American, to the Gore (Verbinski) version, called THE RING VIRUS... I saw THE RING VIRUS in Montreal, Canada and I didn't know it was a remake because I was told that it was a movie based on the same story, not the remake of my movie. There were so many similar scenes, so I kind of... I was a bit offended. I couldn't smile for an hour or so after I watched it.
But Gore's version... I mean, Dreamworks bought the remake rights, so maybe I was expecting something a bit more... let me say monsterous, and threatening to the people in a very violent manner. Actually, I visited the set of RING 1 three years ago and Gore told me directly that he respected my version very much, so the key scenes are kind of similar and I really appreciate the fact that Gore kept the kind of similar atmosphere that I created. It's not that obvious, but it appealed to younger audiences.
They were waiting for the realistic kind of horror, but they
heard about it at first and they don't see the curse video at the
beginning of the movie until Rachel goes to that cabin. I insisted on
that structure. Someone told me, "It's too late to have the scare scene
30 minutes (after) the beginning of the movie." But Gore kept that
structure, which I really appreciated. I really liked it. The original
scriptwriter, (Hiroshi) Takahashi and I shared the same opinion that
the new movie, the Gore's THE RING, was going to be really successful
because it was so different from other mainstream American horror
movies.
QUINT: I've noticed that a lot of your films make great use of
water. DARK WATER, RINGU and it now looks like there's some creepy
water stuff in RING TWO. Did you have a bad experience with water
or...
HIDEO NAKATA: (laughs)
QUINT: ... or did you just find that it creeped audiences out?
HIDEO NAKATA: I don't know. I'd have to ask my subconscious! (Laughs) First of all, when I was very little I often went to my relative's house, which was a farmhouse with a rather strange looking well. As a kid, of course, my parents told me "You should never go too close to that well!" I was imagining that this well was bottomless or if I put my feet in the water I'd be drowned or grabbed by some strange creature.
That's my particular experience, but I can safely say that Japanese people, because we are living in such small islands and we do have lots of floods from the river or tsunamis, we do have some casualties from water natural disasters. I don't know if it's in the DNA or not, but we do have some indigenous fear of water in real life.
Like in DARK WATER, Japan has at least a month long rain season and typhoon as well, so it rain always is a thing that makes (a person) blue and you just have to deal with it. Again, that's totally a different thing, different feeling from you guys... well, let's say American people. I was asked about my water obsession in France. A French film critic asked me that question because, you know, scientifically speaking water is the mother of life, so why do you view water as a scary thing?
I answered that question, "Well, I think a lot of Japanese people agree with me, at least people living close to the river or to the ocean, they love the water, but sometimes there's an everyday life fear of the water. They have to be careful. There are some real casualties. The ocean can give birth to the life, but it also can swallow life.
For RINGU TWO I have been dealing with water.
QUINT: Was it much different working on an American production of
RING TWO since you directed the original Japanese film and it's sequel.
Did it feel like you're making this movie for the second time?
HIDEO NAKATA: Yeah, well... I would say it's different. As you
already know, THE RING TWO has a completely different story and is not
based on RINGU TWO. You may find some similar scenes (like the) well
chase. The well chase was not intended to look like the original one in
RINGU TWO. I can safely say that these two sequences or two scenes in
two movies are completely different.
QUINT: What did you find to be the most challenging aspect making
RING TWO?
HIDEO NAKATA: I would say... It was challenging for me to make a big Hollywood movie. Also, when I make an American movie or a Hollywood movie, I kept thinking of American audiences, of course. I would do the same thing in Japan, knowing my audience was Japanese. I kept thinking about how an audience would react... of course, there is a bit of a difference from Japanese and American audience reactions. Actually, it has been a really interesting process.
On post-production when I'm cutting the movie I keep thinking
about American reaction to it. I try to consider their reaction, but at
the same time keep my taste as a director.
QUINT: Now that the long black haired ghost image has proliferated
all the world's cinema for a while, what do you think the next step is
for horror? Where do you think it's going to go from here?
HIDEO NAKATA: You may laugh at this, but I am not... When I make horror movies, I make every effort to make my movies scary, but I have never really been a horror fan as a movie fan, so it's very difficult to answer that question... Unless I make up something out of the blue!
I'd say now American audiences can accept realistic horror as with THE RING. They are scared, they are really frightened by a ghost just standing behind you, but American horror they used to attack the victim, but now the audience can accept the ghost just staring at you. From now on, I don't know. We can go deeper in that very realistic, atmospheric one...
If there is a chance for me to make another horror movie in the
near future, then yeah... I'd like to find something different, but I
can't say exactly what direction we are heading now in terms of the
world of horror filmmaking.
QUINT: Cool. Can you tell me a little bit about your next
projects?
HIDEO NAKATA: There are 4 potential projects. There are two in Japan which I'm going to work with the same producer who produced RINGU, DARK WATER and THE GRUDGE as well. Takashige (Ichise). And we have two traditional ghost stories. One of them is actually set 200 years ago in Samurai period. It's based on a long, long Japanese ghost story created by a genius storyteller a hundred years ago. It's a very complicated story, but I'm pretty sure I can make a good one. It's about a playboy samurai who has a really bad curse in his life and women who love him, but most of the women who love him must die.
And here in Hollywood I have two potential projects. One is a
remake of THE ENTITY. We had a discussion last night and it may happen
very soon. The other one is called OUT based on a Japanese suspense
novel which was also made into a movie in Japan, but it's not a remake!
Now a scriptwriter is going to write a first draft very soon, I hope.
There you have it, squirts. I know we ended up talking more about
horror on the whole instead of RING TWO, but when you get the chance to
talk to someone who creates a horror icon, it's hard not to dwell on
that. I also apologize for not having a title for that first movie he
mentioned. I searched and searched, but came up empty. He told me the
title, but it was the Japanese title and I can't for the life of me
figure out how to spell what he said, being the ignorant American that
I am. If anyone out there knows this story (the title starts with
"Kaidan") feel free to email me or leave it in talkback!
Anyway, I hope you liked the interview squirts! I have to give big
thanks to Neil for helping me figure out what the hell TOKAIDO YOTSUYA
KAIDAN was! Also, I'm in the final packing stages before heading out to
cover the Santa Barbara Film Festival, so you'll see a fair amount of
reports filed by yours truly from the home of John Cleese and Doc
Brown! 'Til then, this is Quint bidding you all a fond farewell and
adieu.
-Quint
