I got to interview a Japanese rock star. Yoshiki, the leader/drummer of the legendary band X Japan was in Austin to promote the release of Stephen Kijak and Drafthouse Film's WE ARE X, a documentary about the stories behind the iconic group of mysterious and flamboyant musicians. When I arrived at the Four Seasons Hotel for our scheduled sit down, I was whisked away to an upstairs suite. After a few minutes of waiting outside the door in the hallway, I was invited into Yoshiki's room, complete with press materials and at least 5 handlers decorating the room. It was all very befitting of the bonafide rock idol, and Yoshiki is certainly that. I was immediately introduced to the man of the hour, and we jumped right in to our chat.
Rebecca Elliott: Hello! Welcome to Austin. I really enjoyed WE ARE X, however I can imagine that it must have been hard to talk about the more emotional stuff? Or did you find it cathartic in a way?
Yoshiki: Very hard. It took several years to decide if we should do this film or not. My agent in America asked me to create a documentary. I said that I couldn't do it because it would be too painful. So, eventually people around me kind of convinced me that this story can save people's lives, and that's a great reason to do it. Then, I wasn't quite ready for that. At the beginning I was trying to avoid the subject. I just didn't touch the subject. But, eventually... I mean, it's a fact, you know, my father committed suicide, some of our members passed away, another member was brainwashed. It is a fact, so I couldn't avoid the subject. Eventually I started opening that door a little bit, so I might as well open it all the way.
RE: And I know Stephen (Kijak, the director) probably spent a lot of time creating an environment were you felt safe opening up.
Yoshiki: Stephen was kind of like...we had to create a sort of trust, right? It wasn't like I was being interviewed by a director. It was more like talking in front of the psychiatrist or something, ya know? So, it felt pretty good because it was therapeutic as well.
RE: It was really cool to find out that some of the musical sequences included in the film were filmed specifically for the doc. How much input did you have with those scenes?
Yoshiki: Regarding the film, I gave 100% freedom to Stephen, so I was not very involved. I mean, I just told Stephen one thing before we started this project. I said I don't want this film to be a horror film. I want people to have a positive feeling when watching this because we do have a positive side as well. So that was the only thing. So those were his choices of music as well.
RE: Well, I though it was a really cool way not only to save the film from being a talking head doc but also to feature a collaboration between artists.
Yoshiki: It's almost a too-crazy-to-be-true story too.
RE: Definitely. One of the sections of the film deals with X Japan's go at mainstream success in the U.S. You guys did have some success outside of Japan, but don't you think if you had today's technology, social media, etc back in the late 80's/early 90's you guys would have had a much easier time crossing over?
Yoshiki: That's true. I mean, the world's changed over the past 20, 30 years. Completely. It's not the same. The U.S. seemed very far away. Even though I went back and forth a lot, still it seemed so far off. But it's getting closer.
RE: Right. Instead of being across an ocean, exploring music is now just a click away.
Yoshiki: Exactly.
RE: Obviously you guys have been influencing musicians for decades now. Can you talk about some of the new metal acts like Baby Metal and how X Japan and other visual kei performers have influenced their brand of theatrics?
Yoshiki: I actually saw them in London, I happened to be in London. I'm like, whoa. Don't get me wrong, I love them, but some of the songs I was like, "That's my song! But different." It is cool though. The idea is cool to use the kind of very heavy music and then the cute ladies. Three of them. I think that's an amazing idea. So yeah, I saw them in London and they came to our show several months ago.
RE: Are you guys touring at all?
Yoshiki: So as of now X Japan has a show confirmed at Wembley Arena in London next March. March 4th. Then I have a show...I'm playing Carnegie Hall January 12th and 13th with the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra. Which is a classical one, so I'm doing both right now at the moment. Hopefully sometime I can come to the U. S. after the London show. We may be doing a world tour again.
RE: Well, thank you so much for your time today and for talking with me about your film. I can't wait for the rest of the world to see it.
Yoshiki: Thank you.
I also got to speak with the director of WE ARE X Stephen Kijak. Though our designated interview area was in a quiet corner of one of the hotel's corridors instead of an upstairs suite, I was very pleased to speak with a director whose prior work I already admired.
Rebecca Elliott: Straight away I just have to tell you that I am a fan of CINEMANIA.
Stephen Kijak: It's getting a reissue. The Cinema Guild is going to remaster it for the digital age. It'll finally be on iTunes, it's getting a second life. The funniest thing is that Harvey, one of my cinemaniacs from New York, was sitting front row center two nights ago at in L.A. at the premiere (of WE ARE X)!
RE: Really?!
SK: Yeah, like, "What the hell are you doing here?" He's like, "Hi there! It's me!" I'm like, oh shit! From my first movie! Everybody it's Harvey! Full circle. He sold the house in Queens and moved in with his brother in Los Angeles.
RE: Wow. What a trip. Is he the guys with all the stuff?
SK: No, Harvey is the running times guy. He knows all the running times of every movie.
RE: That's right.
SK: It was so amazing. I love that. The continuity of all of it. Full circle.
RE: How are you drawn to subjects for your films?
SK: The real passion project was the Scott Walker project- and we're talking about the cult-y British singer songwriter, not the evil politician. That one was, like, the six year plan- raise the money myself, me and my producer pushed that uphill. It was real. It was the passion project of all time. I just love music, I love musicians. I wanted to be him. I've been in bands. I just wish I was doing music or had chosen a slightly different path, but the next best thing? Let's just make films about them.
RE: Sure.
SK: So that one was like the heart and soul movie and it did really well on the festival circuit and eventually got the attention of the Rolling Stones. Then I made that movie...and from there on I gotta say they just come to me. And you have to make that choice after a point. Do I just stay in this pocket or try to do something else and not get stuck in a rut. So, it's either a very nice pocket to be in or you're in a rut and I chose the pocket. And the niche of music. Because once you start entertaining all these different subjects you realize that each one is wildly different, and the approach you can take can be wildly varied. There are as many approaches to telling the story as there are stories out there. Then you move away from your comfort zone and you start entertaining things like, "Ok, I hated the Backstreet Boys once upon a time, but now I"m going to make a film about them. And that's a challenge. And then you realize that you love them and they're great and the film is one of my favorite things ever.
RE: I guess one of the fun things about making a documentary is bringing a new subject or a new side of a subject to an audience that has never heard of it before. I guess as a film maker you have to take that leap as well?
SK: Exactly. You have to. It's fun to be the fanboy and to just focus on what you like, but it's just as rewarding to do the opposite. It's all just storytelling. They're all human beings with stories. And this was the extreme. I really had no awareness, and it was so "other." And then there were the language and cultural barriers.
RE: So you weren't a fan of X Japan prior to making the film?
SK: No! I had no knowledge of them. They had come to my producer through Yohsiki's management in L.A.. It was John Battsek, with whom I had done the Rolling Stones documentary, he produced SEARCHING FOR SUGAR MAN- he's one of the greats, and I'll do almost anything he asks me to do, right? Like, any subject, I just love working with John and his whole team at Passion Pictures. So, creatively it's gonna be fun. This subject was just phenomenal. Once I had scratched the surface a bit, it just had all the ingredients from the visual to the emotional and the sonic. The three levels of it, I thought, were so intense that we could do something really extraordinary on the visual plane alone. And then when you dig into the narrative, it's so melodramatic.
RE: How did you choose your approach and how you kind of branched off of the big show at Madison Square Garden. Was that always the plan, or did that just seem like the best format in editing?
SK: That was the first thing we shot. It was extraordinary. It was like watching the men who fell to earth. They looked like aliens rehearsing up there with their masks and sunglasses. I thought that it was so mysterious and interesting. And it just gave us so many visual things to play with. And then the backstage stuff was so weird and funky. And then you start seeing things like his two little blonde assistants who never speak. It immediately reminded me of the girls from THE SHINING but all grown up. This is so surreal! Like, what a world. So, I knew it had to be some kind of an anchor, and oddly enough, the first editorial approach didn't really pay all that much attention to that stuff. I thought, no man we gotta really use it! It's story. It's our present-day kind of frame that we can then weave in and out of and have some real fun with.
RE: Right, you don't want to include a bunch of tedious backstage nonsense, but some of the stuff that goes on tells an entirely different side of the story.
SK: Yeah, I mean as long as it was little counterpoints or visual queues or clues. It all had to kind of have a reason for existing because multiple stories are moving through the film. Some are really just on the visual plane, and others we are actually chronicling the history of this band. Which in and of itself was a challenge to get right.
RE: There were a few sequences that looked like straight up music videos. Were those actual videos or did you shoot those for the film?
SK: We rarely used their music videos. Most of it was sequences we created. Specifically one of my favorite bits- it comes of off a thing Manson says about how art is a way to exercise your demons and exercise with your demons. Then we delve into this sequence with their song Art Of Life. Our production designer decided, since your exercising with your demons then we should do this descent into hell concert. It's all very red and spooky, and she put devils behind them and we'd xray them. It was a psychedelic experience.
RE: I love that because it's a different way to break up a talking head documentary.
SK: And the visual aspect of the band told us that we had to go there. On the second album, you can see it there written on the record-it's their slogan. It's "Psychedelic violence crimes of visual shock." That became our aesthetic motto. So I said, whatever that is, let's spread it all over the film. That's what I gave to my graphic team who won the Excellence In Title Design here at SXSW this year. They got the trophy for our fabulous titles and graphics. We needed to step up to the visual level of X themselves.
RE: How was it approaching the emotional subject matter?
SK: You just have to do it. I've done so many interviews now with people, and you just have to go there. Thankfully I had five or six interviews with Yoshiki over time, but I realized that all that stuff was on the surface, and I had to grab it, you know? I had to go there and keep finding different ways to keep pushing him in to those emotional states, but have it be authentic. You really want to reveal how these things affected him. So much of the film is seen through his prism. I always told him not to hold anything back and that we could always cut things in the edit, but we have to just go for broke while we're shooting. Like, I have to make you uncomfortable. If you don't like it then throw something and leave the room, but you know, we're gonna keep trying to mine the depths.
RE: And there of course is an understanding that your going to ask the hard questions.
SK: Yeah. I mean, he wanted to make this movie. Once he decided to make the movie he knew he had to be an open book in a way. While still weirdly being an enigma, because you never really fully pick it. I mean, you only go so far, but that's kind of the beauty of it.
RE: Still a bit of mystery.
SK: Definitely.
RE: Dang! They're giving me the signal already, so I guess that was my last question. Thanks you so much for talking about WE ARE X with me.
SK: Thank you!
So that wraps up my interviews with director Stephen Kijak and Yoshiki in support of their film WE ARE X. The film expands around Los Angeles this weekend as well as Alamo Drafthouse locations in Dallas, Austin, and San Francisco, so go check it out if you have a chance.
Rebecca Elliott
aka Annette Kellerman
