Chatroom
Hideo Nakata made hisname with movie such as Ring and Dark Water in the later ninties and early noughties and returned at the end of last year with Chatroom.
Boasting a British cast the Japanese filmmaker turned his attention to the thriller - which is now out on DVD.
- Chatroom is coming to DVD here in the UK so for anyone who hasn’t seen it yet can you tell me a little bit about it?
It is a suspense thriller film based on Enda Walsh’s play, which is about 5 teenagers meet online chatroom and share their thoughts and frustration on their rather boring and depressing lives.
They want to be rebellious to their parents and the society. It seems like safe and comfortable place for them to express their honest opinions, but it turns out the protagonist boy is trying to let a depressed boy who has a family based trauma to kill himself. So the film gets darker and darker as the real story unfolds.
- The movie is based on the play by Enda Walsh so how familiar were you with the original story and what was it about the script that made you want to get involved.
I had not known about the play before I was approached to direct the film. Enda’s adaptation as the film script clearly deals with the ongoing phenomena that internet has the power to amplify people’s negative and dark emotions.
For some online addicted people could believe by suggestions and twitters from others that they can reset their depressed life and will be reborn. The script echoes with this kind of reality, and I really liked it.
- And it was Walsh who adapted his play into a screenplay so how was he to work with and how flexile was he with any changes that you wanted to make to the story?
It was such a wonderful and enjoyable experience to work with Enda. As he used to be a punk rock singer from Ireland, he has a specific point of view to the British class society.
The first thing I asked was to change the third act drastically. Originally it ended with rather light heartedly with jokes, but I quoted Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train as the two protagonists can be described as 'Stranges on the Web', One is a spider and the other is a prey.
He liked the idea, so we exchanged the ideas by going together to places we actually shot the important scenes such as the canal and the Camden market. He was very flexible to revise the script, he even gave me a go ahead for me to edit his script so that we could shoot all the scenes as scheduled.
- The movie has a very young British cast with Aaron Johnson, Imogen Poots, Hannah Murray and Matthew Beard so can you talk about the audition process- did you have anyone in mind for the roles?
We went through so many audition and reading sessions. It took us a whole year to finalize the five actors. But Ireally enjoyed it. I was very much impressed with the fact that so many good young UK actors were there.
When I was in LA, I was also amazed how many talented and named actors would come and read for rather small role. I had prejudice that actors who work only in UK films and TV could be a bit inferior to those in LA.
I was completely wrong. The ones who appear in Chatroom have a long career since child actors. And they would freely work from feature film, TV drama, to stage play. And we all appreciated that all of the five actors really wanted to be in the film, some of them turned down a big Hollywood film offer for Chatroom.
Through the long audition process and the very focused rehearsal sessions just before the production started, they did understand the theme of the film and their characters perfectly.
- How did you find working with the young cast?
They were such talented and experienced actors from childhood. Aaron seemed to have something in common in his real life with his character. So he worked so hard to express the real emotions.
Sometimes we had to wait for him to focus before rolling the camera, Aaron kicked and screamed whenever he had to be intense.
Quite interestingly Matthew had a quite different approach to his character. He was such a calm and intelligent person and he mingled with the other cast and the crew off set, but once he was on the set he could be as focused and passopnate as Aaron instantly.
Imogen was also very professional, too. Her character was required to express complexity of her feeling to Aaron’s character. She was smitten with Aaron’s character at first chat but she began to suspect he may be a completely different person in reality from how she had imagined, so she is torn with the opposite emotions until the end.
Imogen perfectly expressed it. I also was impressed with Hannah. She had a very good instinct how to play her character, so I was just watching her performance carefully and made just few comments.
Daniel is also a writer so he seemed to have a viewpoint of a creator, so it was such a fun to discuss with him about each of his scenes. He was such a funny and witty guy.
- Chatrooms and cyber bullying is something that is very relevant in the UK at the moment so how much research did you do into this subject.
Yes, the same kind of internet bullying is going on in Japan, too. There is an underground website for middle school students specially created for a school, where a kid can be a victim of internet verbal bullying by his/her classmates, and they can cheerfully communicated the victim at school and at the same time they write terrible cursed words on the victim.
Some bullied kids by this way committed suicides. Without an intense research, this kind of terrible and depressing news are running all over the world now. Please confer the document of my directorial statements as well.
- Chatroom is your third English speaking movie so how have you found the transition away from Japanese movies?
The British way of film making looks like somewhere between Hollywood and Japan. Fortunately I know the both, so I tried to introduce the good aspects of the each way.
I quite enjoyed the shooting process as I was given the creative control on the set whereas the pots production was rather hectic, I would say.
- And are English speaking movies and American movies something that you would really like to explore more? And if so what kind of movies do you have in mind?
I would love to make either a tearjerker melodrama or a Hitchcock style thriller.
- You are very much at the forefront of Japanese horror movies so how do you feel when people call you a visionary and a leader in this genre?
It is the genre that made me famous in the Japanese film industry and it actually gave me the ticket to Hollywood and this British film. So I really appreciate it.
But I have to confess that I have never been a horror film fan. I just did my best to make my horror film look and feel scary. Now I would like to make other kinds of films, too.
- You are famed for the horror movie so what is it about this genre that interests you so much?
As I mentioned above, it was purely coincidental that I became a horror film maker, although I have made other kinds of films they are less known and strangely I made horror films at every crucial point of my career, so I began to think it is my destiny to make the genre film. I might be a reincarnated witchcrafts man... I cannot escape from the fate.
- And you have gone on to influence American horror movie filmmaking so is this something that you are very proud of?
Yes and no. Yes, I am honored that three of my Japanese original films have been remade into English films, when even Kurosawa’s were two, I think. No, because it would have been much better if my films had been released in the English speaking countries first.
- How did the 2002 remake of The Ring come about? And were you happy with Gore Verbinski’s interpretation of your work?
One of the executive producer of The Ring, Roy Lee saw my original film and he thought it would be interesting to remake it, and he ran the screening sessions for the major studios. And then Dreamworks made the fastest and the heist bid.
I think Gore did a very good job and I was very much intrigued by some new scenes such as a horse goes crazy and jumps off from the ferry boat, which was such a gloomy omen for what would happen on the island.
I heard that it took a week to shoot a scene with CGI effects on post production whereas we had to shoot the ferry boat scene within two hours while the boat was just sailing to the island.
I also heard that Gore fought for the scene as the studion wanted to edit out the entire scene. I admire Gore’s courage as it was one of the best scenes of the film.
- Finally what’s next for you?
That's a secret.
Chatroom is out on DVD now.
FemaleFirst Helen Earnshaw
Hideo Nakata made hisname with movie such as Ring and Dark Water in the later ninties and early noughties and returned at the end of last year with Chatroom.
Boasting a British cast the Japanese filmmaker turned his attention to the thriller - which is now out on DVD.
- Chatroom is coming to DVD here in the UK so for anyone who hasn’t seen it yet can you tell me a little bit about it?
It is a suspense thriller film based on Enda Walsh’s play, which is about 5 teenagers meet online chatroom and share their thoughts and frustration on their rather boring and depressing lives.
They want to be rebellious to their parents and the society. It seems like safe and comfortable place for them to express their honest opinions, but it turns out the protagonist boy is trying to let a depressed boy who has a family based trauma to kill himself. So the film gets darker and darker as the real story unfolds.
- The movie is based on the play by Enda Walsh so how familiar were you with the original story and what was it about the script that made you want to get involved.
I had not known about the play before I was approached to direct the film. Enda’s adaptation as the film script clearly deals with the ongoing phenomena that internet has the power to amplify people’s negative and dark emotions.
For some online addicted people could believe by suggestions and twitters from others that they can reset their depressed life and will be reborn. The script echoes with this kind of reality, and I really liked it.
- And it was Walsh who adapted his play into a screenplay so how was he to work with and how flexile was he with any changes that you wanted to make to the story?
It was such a wonderful and enjoyable experience to work with Enda. As he used to be a punk rock singer from Ireland, he has a specific point of view to the British class society.
The first thing I asked was to change the third act drastically. Originally it ended with rather light heartedly with jokes, but I quoted Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train as the two protagonists can be described as 'Stranges on the Web', One is a spider and the other is a prey.
He liked the idea, so we exchanged the ideas by going together to places we actually shot the important scenes such as the canal and the Camden market. He was very flexible to revise the script, he even gave me a go ahead for me to edit his script so that we could shoot all the scenes as scheduled.
- The movie has a very young British cast with Aaron Johnson, Imogen Poots, Hannah Murray and Matthew Beard so can you talk about the audition process- did you have anyone in mind for the roles?
We went through so many audition and reading sessions. It took us a whole year to finalize the five actors. But Ireally enjoyed it. I was very much impressed with the fact that so many good young UK actors were there.
When I was in LA, I was also amazed how many talented and named actors would come and read for rather small role. I had prejudice that actors who work only in UK films and TV could be a bit inferior to those in LA.
I was completely wrong. The ones who appear in Chatroom have a long career since child actors. And they would freely work from feature film, TV drama, to stage play. And we all appreciated that all of the five actors really wanted to be in the film, some of them turned down a big Hollywood film offer for Chatroom.
Through the long audition process and the very focused rehearsal sessions just before the production started, they did understand the theme of the film and their characters perfectly.
- How did you find working with the young cast?
They were such talented and experienced actors from childhood. Aaron seemed to have something in common in his real life with his character. So he worked so hard to express the real emotions.
Sometimes we had to wait for him to focus before rolling the camera, Aaron kicked and screamed whenever he had to be intense.