Fantasia 2014 Interview: Iguchi Noboru Talks LIVE And More

My introduction to Iguchi Noboru came when I saw him running down the aisle of a cinema in Montreal, bedecked in a too-tight yellow jogging outfit. There to introduce his film Live to the Fantasia Film Festival crowd, he taught the audience how to say "butts" in Japanese ("Oshiri!"), and encouraged yelling the phrase out during the film's running time.

The man is positively cherubic, a wide grin on his face that evokes a young child that knows he's getting away with something. His films play this way a bit, a mix of chaste with provocative, something that's blithely adolescent with an undercurrent of both playfulness and perversion.

The next day, he introduced Nuigurumaa Z (aka Nuigulumar Z aka Gothic Lolita Battle Bear), a film that also seems to stretch the boundaries of taste, but in a way that seems almost adorable. This time he was wearing a suit jacket and (coveted by most of the audience) Manga drawing of the central character of his film. It was almost like he wasn't just a caricature of the wacky former pornographer, now messing with the heads of genre audiences worldwide.

I spoke at length with Iguchi about audience expectations, how he feels his films have changed over the years, and about his own limits and proclivities. Speaking through a trilingual translator, with a lot of hand gestures and back-and-forths and some interpretation during the editing, Iguchi and I managed to make sense of one another.

Do you see these two films, LIVE and NUIGURUMAA,  as a new phase for your filmmaking?

Yes, each is a little bit different, the touch is different. These two films were projected in major film festivals, not just genre film festivals. There were meant to be accepted by the wider audience, not just the maniac one.

So, in some ways are these "safer", while still remaining a bit "spicy"?

Yeah, I tried to push it safer, but a lot of people say that it is still the "Iguchi taste" and it always has the same funny things in the middle.

Your films are a collision of the tragic, the funny, the juvenile and the ridiculous. When you watch films, is that what you look for?

I like movies that focus on the human feeling directly. All of those aspects that you mentioned are for the service to the audience. I want to make human feeling movies, but sometimes I do too much.

I know you worked in adult video for many years. Was that good background to please a genre audience?

It was good training to do adult video because it is something that is very practical. The aim of the adult video is perhaps more practical, as there is an explicit aim for porno audience: to excite and to deliver the good moment. Between those moments, you're simply trying to not be boring.

I prefer fiction. In adult video, you ask an actor to do something and they will do it and it's not very creative for him. Violence and eroticism, I want to create it all. Genre is more difficult but that's the place where I want to be.

 

In adult video, you have story and then sex and then story and then sex. In a good genre, action is story.

That's very right. When I was making porno videos, I thought that the sex scenes were less sexy. What was more erotic was all the elements leading up to the sex scene.

I was making a lot of movies with longer stories to go to the sex scenes, but the audience didn't want to wait. They wanted to have the scenes quickly!

That's the reason why I stopped making those videos.

 

When you intro'd both films you joked that your budget wasn't quite on TRANSFORMERS level. Are you jealous of Michael Bay?

[Laughs] I'm not jealous! If it were me, I'd do it another way. I have a vision.

What is your vision for TRANSFORMERS?

The transforming is too fast! You need poses and they don't see too much. I want to cut a lot of action and the story. Oh, Michael Bay, your story is too long! I want to cut a lot of things.

 

There are plenty of North American or European directors making use of Japanese cinema iconography. Are there any that, for you, get it right?

I don't think that only Japanese can understand and make some Japanese thing. With James Gunn and Super, he has a sort of effective Japanese sensibility.

Zack Snyder, Peter Jackson, Guillermo del Toro -  there's something "Japanese" to all of them, the way that they are putting the feeling their imagination. They're quite near to the Japanese sensitivity. The way Peter Jackson used the feeling of the dead girl's soul in The Lovely Bones, it's a very Japanese image.

Are you finding more Japanese looking to American and more to the West for their sensibility?

There are young Japanese directors like Shimizu Takeshi or Yamaguchi Yudai that I know and they are watching a lot of American movies, they know all of the patterns. After they assimilated those kinds of things, they put their own touch, and thus they are not imitating. American films are having a lot of influence, but [these directors] are doing their own thing.

Do you think people underestimate your films because they are silly? Your films are many things - they are rude, they are crude - but they are not simple.

In Japan, large audiences look at movies by category. They categorize too much. They look for action, horror, violence, all of those categories. So there a lot of people who don't see the real face of my movies.

Outside Japan, here at Fantasia and similar film festivals, the audience is of course also waiting for a certain category, certain expectations, but they are also looking inside. The inside is the important part.

This is the aspect of film festivals that I'm encouraged by.

I can probably guess, but are you an ass man or a boob man?

[Laughs] Ass man! Oshiri!

In LIVE you put a GoPro on a bicycle seat for one prominent ass shot

That's something Michael Bay cannot do, so I wanted to do it.

Do your films match your own sense of humour and eroticism, or are you completely focused on the audience's expectations?

Both, but I do service the audience. I first have to like it, otherwise, I can't transmit the emotion and the comedy. It would be very impolite to show something that I don't feel is funny or interesting to the audience, but I start with myself.

So, where do you set your limits? Have you shot something and later in editing thought that you went too far?

I've never shot something and then rejected it. There are taboos I wanted to explore, but I've never done something that was too difficult to understand or that is much too surrealistic.

I would like to challenge, to do some aspect that he thinks would be difficult to understand for the audience.

Did you have a teddy bear when you were a kid?

I slept with a teddy raccoon. I couldn't have done Nuigurumaa  if I didn't understand the love that a girl would put on a teddy bear.

LIVE is about battles and making tough decisions, so here's one: HUNGER GAMES vs. BATTLE ROYALE

I saw Hunger Games, so Battle Royale.

BATTLE ROYALE vs. LIVE?

It's interesting, [Director] Fukasuku Kinji was very near the war when he was a child. Everything in the film is very logical and well done, it's more than just a violent movie. I admire Battle Royale, but of course my movie is Live, it has my touch, it's different. But I think Battle Royale is a  very good movie.

You shot both movies with two week shooting schedules. Are you able to do that because of preparation, or simply lack of sleep?

There is a lot of preparation, and we discuss things a lot. There is always the wish and frustration to have more time.

For example, the scene at the factory in Nuigurumaa  where they are all fighting the zombies - it took me less than one hour, nearer to 30 minutes, to shoot. If I had only 15 minutes more I could do something better, but the 15 minutes is very precious. When I started sunset was approaching, so we did it very fast, and didn't have time to even drink a glass of water.

What is one of your movies that you think people haven't seen enough but should see, a film that is not as successful but should be seen?

Tomie: Unlimited, which was also projected here at Fantasia. There are fewer funny things, and it's a very simple story, but there are aspects in it that I developed a lot. I'd wants this to be looked at closer to see more of what was inside.

What is a movie that he loves that would surprise us?

There's a new film by Ôbayashi Nobuhiko - he's a guy who influenced me a lot. It's called No no nanananoka [in English Seven Weeks]  It's a very experimental film, and it's like David Lynch. It's got a taste of his [1977 film] House. There is some aliens coming at the end, and there is a big eye on the stomach, on the belly.

That sounds fun, but that does not surprise me that you like Ôbayashi  

[Laughs]