Takashi Miike
I would recommend 'Lesson Of The Evil' to be given as a DVD gift on a child's 15th birthday. In Japan, children under 15 are not allowed to watch it. Plus, 'Lesson Of The Evil' is one film where the older you get, the more you will be able to understand and enjoy the film.Collection: Birthday
I myself have always had that secret desire to become something completely different and enact revenge on certain things. So I do that through my movies. My desires become reality in the movie because it can't become real in real life.Collection: Movies
You know when I was a high school student I wasn't a very good student. Upon graduation we were asked if we would become a full working adult or go to university. I decided to go to film school and still to this day I try to avoid being a full working adult.Collection: Graduation
Where there is love, there is a possibility of violence but it's not that love is connected to violence but there's a possibility.
I am like any other human being; I am full of different sides.
People say that my movies are violent. I do not think so.
I wanted to make '13 Assassins' in the old manner, to use old techniques and not to rely on modern-day ones such as CGI, or editing that changes the speed.
I guess, in a sense, 'Audition' was a film that gave me an opportunity that I hadn't had up until that point. So that's definitely one that is important to me. Then there's 'Visitor Q' that kind of taught me that there are some kinds of films that can only be made as low-budget films that really wouldn't work as anything else.
My generation was a special generation. I was born in 1960 and in my childhood we were all big manga consumers that was the culture. We were brought up in manga. Manga evolved around what was being made to cater to kids. All children at that time read ridiculously thick manga books every week.
I don't choose to make low-budget films. But that is the reality of surviving in the Japanese film industry. However, the trade off is, since we're working on small budgets, we have freedom. You can't buy this freedom with money. With this freedom, I think there are an infinite number of possibilities.
For better or worse, I refuse to live my life with regret. Sometimes, I'll look back on my past mistakes with fondness. But I never wished I wouldn't have made them. That's why I don't like re-takes.
Manga, as a medium, is very different from cinema. Its creators are free to express themselves with harsh, cruel stories, and they enjoy vast distribution throughout Japan.
Bigger-budgeted films have more restrictions and less freedom to create. Because of this, I try to find freedom in the people I work with. I often work in ways I don't want to. It's more about controlling the situation. Lower-budget films are freer.
More than my films being influenced by manga I was indelibly impressed by Manga, and that definitely comes out in the films.
Filmmaking is not a balancing act, although some directors think it is. I don't believe in it. I like ups and downs. They're the best way to translate my feelings to the screen.
Some people have iconic directors in their mind, or they want to make particular styles of films they have seen before. I think this is a waste of time and energy.
Sometimes it's good to know there are limits.
It's not my goal to make so many movies. It's just sort of a natural process, and I'm just doing my job. And I'm not tied to any genre; I'm willing to do anything. I just keep going.
That's a very Japanese idea - that children are an extension of their parents. And that when you're reborn, your new form reflects the sins of your previous life - you can't escape.
People tell all sorts of lies in order to live. That enables friendships to form and love to blossom.
You hide your instinctive self and instead create a social self with lies. That's how people are able to get along with each other. What's scary is when you strip all the lies away to get at the essential you. What if it's pure evil? You don't want to face that. So lies aren't all bad - we need them to live.
First Love' is one of my most hopeful movies. It's about love and relationships, so in that way it's different from my other films. That's why it's special for me.
Boxing fascinates me.
Boxing is a metaphor for hitting back and showing you can win in life.
I'm not good at anything else. I just don't have a talent for anything other than filmmaking. Luckily, it's worked out.
When you see the violence of Hollywood movies, there is a tendency that the hero is combating and confronting many people, without much harm to himself. But in my films, the hero takes a lot of hits so the very act of the hero being the one on the receiving end, makes the audience cheer and connect with him.
Live life before making movies, because you cannot make films about life, without having lived one.
In Japan, violence isn't as controversial as it is in the West.
Every medium has its own kind of freedom. I don't want to just cross from one to the next. I want to enjoy the freedom each one has. Sometimes, you can do something for TV that you can't do in the cinema.
I am attracted to bad people because they are very human.
The hero has to be an archetype; they have to be like a dream; they have to be perfect. The evil is closer to us.
My films are like drinking a good beer, but pleasure doesn't mean that it cannot change someone's point of view.
Pleasure can also be a mirror of the anxiety we feel in everyday life, it can have a message inside.
It wasn't really my intention to make movies quickly - it's more to do with the reality of the Japanese film industry. That's been the only way for me to change my situation; to prove how little time you need to make a good film.
Visually, I want to try everything. But I believe that every shot of my films really expresses what I think about the story and the character. The most important thing is the story, not the images.
I am discovering myself as a director all the time.
Maybe '13 Assassins' is the mortal agony and death rattle of a Japanese film industry that has abandoned its creative talent.
As a film-maker, it's only natural to feel happy about new possibilities opening up.
I felt that all of us working on our remake of '13 Assassins' had to honour the original director, Eiichi Kudo, and everyone else who created the original.
Even if I were to try to imitate Kurosawa I know that it's absolutely impossible. That era of film was just something else, including the actors. Everything about that era was on a completely different level.
I admire Akira Kurosawa. I have a deep admiration for him and I would love to make films like that.
I personally wouldn't pay money to go watch a really scary movie!
One Missed Call' was one of many J-horror films at that time.
For a long time I was free. I didn't belong to any type of studio, or any company. I kept a sort of freedom and a light touch.
I loved spaghetti westerns but besides these pure entertainment movies, there was also something different.
You could not imitate Fellini. His beauty was above anything else, but that intelligence was typically Italian. This helped me to realise that I had to create something that was distinctively Japanese.
In film, in general, you have just so many cliche themes or stories that are told over and over again.
The people who like my work, I know that I can't trick them into laughing someplace where there is not a genuine reason to laugh.
We have this desire for that balance between death and life or death and joy. We want to believe that something we can also have.
I honestly do feel like the Yakuza film genre is going away. And I don't personally feel like there's any meaning in trying to artificially extend the life of the Yakuza film genre.