Call him the Jerry Bruckheimer of Japan. Fuji TV producer
Kameyama Chihiro has a track record even Hollywood
would envy. He first rose to fame for Bayside Shakedown,
a comic cop thriller that grossed nearly $80 million in
1998. Its hero, a rumpled, rule-breaking cop played by
Oda Yuji, became a national icon. In 2003, Kameyama’s follow-
up, Bayside Shakedown 2, set a new box office record
for a domestic live-action films, grossing nearly $170 million.
In December, Kameyama released an “international
version” of BS2 using a new sound mix produced by
George Lucas’s Industrial Light and Magic. Kameyama told
the press he got the idea after seeing Matrix Reloaded and
noticing that the gun shots and other sound effects, made
by ILM, were “totally different” from anything coming out of
Japan.
This year, Kameyama has fifteen new projects on his plate,
including a World War II submarine film, Lorelei, that Fuji TV
and its partners are making using a full-scale mock-up of
the sub, dry-docked at Toho studio. Talking in rapid bursts,
with an effortless command of his subject, he is the producer
as know-it-all, get-it-done dynamo.
It seems that more films based on TV shows are becoming
hits. Such films used to be very hit-and-miss in the
Japanese market. What’s the key to coming up with a winner?
Some hit TV shows are well suited for the transition to film,
others aren’t. The problem is how to tell the difference.
We’re not infallible by any means. One of our most popular
shows, GTO (about a delinquent biker who becomes a high
school teacher), didn’t do very well as a film. I think one
key is whether the show’s core members, including the
directors and stars, are able to make the leap to film. With
Bayside Shakedown we lucky in having a cast and staff that
worked well together. Their teamwork was key in making
the film a hit. We were also able to have that same core
team return for Bayside Shakedown 2, five years later.
Nearly everyone was from the TV show, except for the cameraman,
lighting director and sound man, were film specialists.
Also, the technical gap between the two mediums is
much smaller than it used to be.
Then there’s the problem of adapting the show to film. If
you make a film that’s just a glorified TV episode the audience
that’s not familiar with the show is less likely to come.
We wanted a film that even people who had never seen the
Bayside Shakedown show could understand and enjoy. At
the same time, we wanted to include all the characters the
show’s fans were familiar with, beginning with the hero,
Aoshima. In other words, the film was throwing a large
quantity of information at the audience. The trick was to
make it comprehensible, so that everyone would understand
the relationships and situations without a lot of
explanation. We wanted to make a real film, though, not a
TV special. On television you have to catch the audience in
the first three minutes or you’ve lost them for good. Also,
you have to write so the audience can quickly pick up the
story, even if they’ve missed several episodes. With a film,
you can afford to spend more time developing the story.
The audience is going to be there from beginning to end.
How did you introduce the characters to the cinema audience?
On television you have the same cast every week and the
audience gets to know them well. With a film you have to
convey who the character is quickly. So I had the actors try
to express who their characters were without a lot of
words. In other words, so that if two characters were talking
together, you could understand who was superior and
who was inferior just by the attitude they took with each
other. Show more than tell.
The plot of Bayside Shakedown 2 may be busier than that
of a typical Hollywood film but the structure is similar.
It has a three-act structure, just like a Hollywood film. It
took me forever to nail the story. I also had to decide what
the themes were going to be. Some were carryovers from
the first film, such as the conflict between the individual
and the group, as represented by Aoshima’s struggles with
the elite cops. I studied Hollywood films for ideas. A lot of
the plot, for example, is based on Toy Story. Another model
was Star Wars, whose three-act structure is close to perfect.
It is extremely easy to understand, with good guys and
bad guys clearly defined. I really learned a lot from that
film.
Bayside Shakedown unfolds in three days, over a long
weekend. The second film has a similar compressed time
frame. It took me more nearly a year to develop the story (for
BS2). First, I came up with nearly twenty plots. I even
thought about one based on The Godfather, but I had trouble
connecting it with the first film. At the end of Bayside
Shakedown, Aoshima goes into the hospital. Originally, I
was going to start the second film with him leaving. it. The
problem was that in the five years since the first film everything
had changed. In the Tokyo Bay area where the story
unfolds there are new roads, new buildings and a lot more
people. It’s become a tourist destination, which it wasn’t
before. I realised that it would have been harder to recreate
the look of 1998 than to change the story, so I decided
to set the second film in the present day.
The pressure to come up with a hit must have been
intense.
Right. Since the first film had done so well, there was this
attitude that the second would be a hit as a matter of
course. I literally couldn’t fail. I analysed Bayside
Shakedown thoroughly, trying to understand why it had
done so well. So I had a good idea of how to make the second
one a hit too. Even so the pressure was overwhelming.
Adding to that were production delays. We were running
around like crazy trying to finish the film in time for the
release date. That meant that we had only two press
screenings and, as a result, large section of the media didn’t
have much information about the film. So the audience
had little information as well. But that turned out to be a
plus. People had a strong curiosity about the film, so they
went to see it in larger numbers that they would have otherwise.
I learned something from that experience.
How do you choose your projects?
A very important consideration is whether we can show the
film on television. If we can’t do that, we can’t make the
film, no matter how well it might do in the theatres. That
makes certain subjects and treatments difficult for me.
Now that Hollywood movies with Japanese settings, such as
The Last Samurai and Lost in Translation, have done so
well, there’s a new interest in working with Japanese talent
in Japan. Have you had an inquiries from Hollywood filmmakers
about possible co-productions?
Not yet, but I would very much like to work with Hollywood.
I think that something good could come out of such a collaboration.
But again, we are looking primarily at the
Japanese market. If a co-production can work with our
local audience, then we are interested. We are confident
that we understand this market.
You wouldn’t be as interested in working with Asian partners?
Making a film together with Asian partners is a possibility.
Again, because we’re a TV network, the film would have to
work for the Japanese audience first and foremost. But to
be totally honest the Asian market is still relatively small.
Yes, it fine to work with filmmakers in Korea and Hong
Kong, but we want to see if we can succeed in the world’s
largest film market.
One difference between the Japanese film industry and
Hollywood is that Hollywood producers are more willing to
make an original script. Japanese nearly always prefer to
go with proven properties.
It’s true that we do make a lot of films from adapted material,
but we also make films from original story ideas. In
some ways, it’s preferable to work with original material.
You can shape it more easily. For me, the characters comes
first. Once you have strong, appealing characters, the
story will follow. Japanese filmmakers used to be good at
creating such characters, but now it’s become harder.
Characters no longer have the same staying power.
Adapting novels make the job of creating characters harder
in some ways. Instead of fitting the story to the character,
you often end up trying to fit the character into the
story’s framework.
Where do you go from here?
We have a production slate of some fifteen films. It’s good
to have a steady production pace. In Hollywood, it’s
accepted that maybe two out of ten films will be hits. To
make those two you have to keep churning out films. In
Japan the tendency is still to focus on one film at a time.
More is riding one each film, so if it’s not a hit, you’re in
trouble. But basically we need at least three strong films on
release at anyone time, so if one is sold out, fans can go
to another. They need more choices if they are to make
film-going a habit, not just a once-a-year event.
A lot younger filmmakers aren’t interested in filling those
multiplex seats. They’d rather make personal films that
might be released on one screen in Tokyo.
They’re expressing themselves in their films and that’s fine.
But if they hope to appeal to a wider audience, they have
to serve that audience, not just themselves. There are too
few directors like that now. The good thing about a lot of
young directors is that they approach television and film
work with the same spirit. They don’t see one as necessarily
being superior to the other.
Mark Schilling