Interview With "Evil Does Not Exist" Director/Writer Ryusuke Hamaguchi

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[00:00:30] You were listening to the Next Best.

[00:00:37] Rizuke Hamakuchi

[00:00:39] With the skin of the body?

[00:00:41] Yes, after eating the skin of the skin.

[00:00:56] I was suddenly surprised.

[00:01:00] I'm going to give you a guide on the management of the water and the flasks.

[00:01:06] The water flows down the river.

[00:01:10] And the water flows down the river.

[00:01:13] And the water flows down the river.

[00:01:18] The water in the city is always clean.

[00:01:22] The place where the gramping is not, it's the way to the city.

[00:01:29] The people here are not stupid.

[00:01:33] I understand that the people here are trying to do things from now on.

[00:01:37] That's what's touching the city.

[00:01:42] I'm glad you're here.

[00:01:43] I'm sure they'll be walking today.

[00:01:47] Hello everyone and welcome to the Next Best Picture podcast.

[00:01:56] I'm the host and owner of Next Best Picture dot com, Matt Neglia.

[00:02:00] And I'm being joined right now by Rizuke Hamakuchi,

[00:02:04] the writer and director for Evil Does Not Exist.

[00:02:07] How are you today?

[00:02:09] I'm good, thank you.

[00:02:11] Good, very good.

[00:02:13] My first question is following the massive success of Drive My Car,

[00:02:18] nominated at the Academy Awards for Best Picture,

[00:02:21] won the Academy Award for Best International Feature Film,

[00:02:24] you certainly got a huge boost with American audiences for your career.

[00:02:29] You also had a second film released the same year as Drive My Car.

[00:02:32] Like you were just the talk of the town.

[00:02:35] Do you have like extra added pressure put onto yourself then for Evil Does Not Exist,

[00:02:40] or did you just approach it like any other film?

[00:02:48] I would say for this film it wasn't that I felt more pressure.

[00:02:51] I was trying to create an environment where I had to feel no pressure actually.

[00:02:55] This film was very quite independent,

[00:02:58] a comparison to the other previous films.

[00:03:01] And it was a situation where I could feel a lot of freedom,

[00:03:04] perhaps creating even a situation where I don't have to feel pressure

[00:03:08] was a strong response to feeling pressure.

[00:03:11] But it was a very low pressure situation.

[00:03:14] So I understand that this project started off as being a short film

[00:03:19] that was inspired by the score provided by Aiko Ichibashi.

[00:03:24] Can you tell me how that then developed into a feature length film runtime?

[00:03:36] So I never actually said that it started as a short film,

[00:03:39] so I'm not sure where people are getting that.

[00:03:42] When Ishibashi-san first approached me about this project,

[00:03:45] I thought it was probably going to be about a 40 minute mid-length project.

[00:03:50] But as I spoke to Ishibashi-san,

[00:03:52] she said that she actually wanted a film that would be around 75 to 90 minutes long,

[00:03:57] all of it to accompany her live performances.

[00:04:00] So from the beginning it was supposed to be quite long feature length film.

[00:04:04] And in trying to make a film that was supposed to be for live accompaniment,

[00:04:10] it became important for me to create images that would maintain interest.

[00:04:15] And so I thought about how to approach this.

[00:04:18] And the simple progression was that I decided to turn towards what I'm used to,

[00:04:23] which is writing a script and then creating a film using my usual processes.

[00:04:28] Then using that as material to make a live as footage for the images

[00:04:35] that would accompany her live performance.

[00:04:37] As a result, there are two films.

[00:04:40] So there is Evil Does Not Exist, which is about 106 minutes,

[00:04:44] a narrative feature film.

[00:04:46] And then Gift, which is the live performance film that's about 74 minutes.

[00:04:52] So Evil Does Not Exist has now screened at the Venice International Film Festival,

[00:04:56] the Toronto International Film Festival.

[00:04:59] And now after this, right before this recording, the New York Film Festival,

[00:05:03] when can we expect to hear that live orchestra accompaniment for this?

[00:05:09] Or are there talks of doing that at some point?

[00:05:12] So actually in October, the film that we just discussed, Gift,

[00:05:22] will screen at the Ghent Film Festival in Belgium.

[00:05:25] And that's because last year Ishibashi Aiko received the World Soundtrack Award

[00:05:30] for her work on Drive My Car.

[00:05:32] And so in addition to a live performance, we will be screening Gift with the live accompaniment.

[00:05:39] That's awesome.

[00:05:40] The music in this movie is really great, but also too is the cinematography.

[00:05:44] I love the camera work in this movie so, so, so much.

[00:05:48] Can you tell me about the difficulties that you faced shooting on location

[00:05:52] in the woods for this particular project?

[00:06:04] Yeah, so first of all, the cinematography was done by Kitagawa Yoshio,

[00:06:08] who also did the cinematography for Happy Hour.

[00:06:11] And he truly has a really incredible sensibility when it comes to filming people.

[00:06:16] And this time, it was a challenge in that he was having to frame very widely

[00:06:22] and film also the environment in addition to the people.

[00:06:25] But he has a very particular sense of style, a very earnest way of seeing things.

[00:06:31] And I think that really became an asset in the film.

[00:06:34] So the first challenges shooting on location, I can't say there were very many challenges,

[00:06:39] but that's because we did a lot of prep beforehand.

[00:06:42] We stuck very closely to the script and shots were planned in advance.

[00:06:46] There was a lot of research done to consider even what kind of shots were possible

[00:06:50] in that environment.

[00:06:51] So I would say that there weren't very many challenges on set,

[00:06:54] but that's because we did a lot of preparation.

[00:06:57] That's great.

[00:07:00] So the first time I've ever heard the term glamping before,

[00:07:05] I've never heard that before I saw your movie.

[00:07:09] I'm sure for many people this might be their first time being exposed to what that is.

[00:07:14] What was the first time you heard about it and how did you know that that was going to be

[00:07:19] the example of capitalistic corporate greed

[00:07:24] that would seep its way into this village community?

[00:07:28] So I would say that glamping isn't that well known in Japan either.

[00:07:35] It's actually something that I heard of maybe a few years ago and mentioning here at the states,

[00:07:39] I noticed that some people know what it is, but maybe it's not as popular as

[00:07:44] or it's kind of the same range of being known as in Japan.

[00:07:49] I just want to say very clearly that I don't have anything specific against glamping

[00:07:53] or glamping as an industry.

[00:07:55] I don't think of it as a symbol of capitalistic greed.

[00:07:58] It's more that I wanted to draw attention to the kind of development that's happening in general.

[00:08:04] These types of projects that don't take into consideration the long term effects on

[00:08:09] communities and the environment and are only focused on short term profits.

[00:08:14] The glamping part of the narrative actually came out of research into the region that we were shooting in.

[00:08:21] There was a very similar situation that happened where a glamping project was presented to the community

[00:08:28] and critiqued heavily and eventually shut down.

[00:08:30] So that became a direct reference for the film.

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[00:09:47] Obviously environmental change, climate change is one of the biggest threats that we face as a species.

[00:09:54] It's not a certain part of the world problem. It's literally everybody's problem.

[00:10:00] So when you make a film like Evil Does Not Exist, which is tackling these themes in a not so direct way

[00:10:06] but is definitely getting people to ask questions and start a dialogue,

[00:10:11] what is your feeling now in terms of like what more people could be doing even just on a small level to help the problem?

[00:10:21] So I myself can say that I have a very deep awareness of climate issues or the environment,

[00:10:31] but it is something that I think all of us notice and is becoming very clearly a very visible and palpable issue.

[00:10:38] For instance, in Japan we recorded the hottest summer that we've ever had and I of course understand that a lot of these intense natural disasters that we're experiencing are a direct result of a lot of our economic activities.

[00:10:52] So I think that these are things that one can understand without having a very deep knowledge of climate change or the science behind it in particular.

[00:11:02] And of course on an individual level, there are only very small things that we can do like raising the temperature on our air conditioner or trying to recycle as best we can.

[00:11:15] There's very little we can do but I think that what is more important besides just kind of behavioral things about showing that we care about the environment is just to be very honest about,

[00:11:29] honest with ourselves when we notice things that are unsettling, that to understand that when we have a gut instinct on a gut instinct level that something isn't quite right,

[00:11:41] that we need to stop and think about what is what is going on there because that can often be a predictor for something very very sinister up ahead.

[00:11:50] And so in order for us to have that kind of ability to judge these scenarios what we really need is time. I hope that on an individual level we can all be in environments where we have the time to stop and think quietly about the various issues around us

[00:12:05] and be attuned to the things that we know aren't quite right.

[00:12:09] Well said. I'm going to put you on the spot a little bit here although I highly doubt you're going to give me any answers. I got to talk about the ending to this movie with Takumi, Hanna and Takahashi.

[00:12:22] I just want to know what was the intention? What questions did you want us to be asking when we left the theater? What did you want us to take away from it? You don't have to tell me what it means exactly because I'll tell you after last night's screening that was all anybody could talk about.

[00:12:40] Was that ending what it meant? And we just want to make sure that we're not misinterpreting anything and taking the wrong message away from this movie. So what was your intention with that ending?

[00:12:53] I guess I'd just like to say that there's no wrong way to interpret the film. In fact, I wanted for people to come away thinking what was that ending about and for people to leave the theater and talk with one another about it if it leads to a discussion that's all I could wish for.

[00:13:12] It definitely led to some really good discussion. I'll tell you that right now. We were all collectively together. It was quite a sight. There was like six, seven of us all in a circle talking about this movie after it was over. So bravo to you for creating that.

[00:13:26] I do want to just end here by talking about, you know, I mentioned three of the characters at the end. Your cast here, your cast of actors, particularly what went into the casting of Hanna? How many kids did you see? How did you know that Rio was the right person for this role?

[00:13:56] So Hanna was chosen through an audition and we saw three different young girls. And in the audition process all we had was for the girls to interact with the lead. And just to see how the chemistry between the two characters were.

[00:14:21] And so when we saw Nishikawa Rio, who ended up being cast, she just had the best chemistry with the lead actor. As you can see, she's just a very sweet eight year old girl. But as we started filming, something that I noticed was that she has such a very strong presence on camera.

[00:14:38] And thanks to that all of her scenes are really wonderful. She has such a free-ness in the way that she acts and I think that's very apparent in her scenes.

[00:14:48] I think too the rest of the cast gets a wonderful moment to shine and show what they can do during that play mode sales pitch sequence, if you will, to the villagers. I think that everybody gets really wonderful moments during that scene.

[00:15:04] Can you tell me how long did the scene like that take to shoot? And what was the rehearsal period like for that?

[00:15:12] The rehearsal takes about three days.

[00:15:25] So the scene took about two days to shoot. And as far as the rehearsal, we did a table read over three days. And I really appreciate you saying that each of the actors did an excellent job because this was the scene that we were shooting where I realized that this needed to be its own independent film and not just a film that was going to an

[00:15:46] accompanying a live performance, that it needed to be an actual film with dialogue and narrative. So as I said shot over two days and this was the first time that for instance the lead actor was doing the scene.

[00:16:01] And we did the scene about ten times through and each time it would just improve drastically. And so I'm very appreciative of the work that the actors put in because it was such a pivotal part of the film becoming its own independent feature.

[00:16:17] And it was funny too. Got a lot of laughs from the audience because it's so, it's almost incomprehensible how some people are just lacking awareness of what impact they're having on these people and on their lives.

[00:16:35] And so we're watching as spectators but it's like, it's amazing how we can see the, I don't want to call it evil but let's just say the horribleness of what these people are doing even if they got a job to do and they still push on with it.

[00:16:53] It's really, really brilliantly well constructed. I don't really have a question. I'm just like praising you at this point.

[00:17:00] I will end here by just asking a question that we ask everybody, which is what do you have coming up next. Are you allowed to tell us what you have coming up next.

[00:17:12] First of all, thank you so much for your feedback on that scene. I really appreciate it. I do have a few projects that I'm interested in and thinking about however I wanted to rest after drive my car but somehow that led me to making another film.

[00:17:28] And so I would like to give myself some time to rest and not be too busy for a while.

[00:17:34] Well, you earned it. So definitely rest up as long as you need to. We'll be watching Evil Does Not Exist, Drive My Car, Happy Hour, whatever it is that we have of yours to keep us satisfied in the meantime while we wait your return.

[00:17:49] Thank you so much Mr. Hamaguchi and thank you so much too for the translation. Really, really appreciate it.

[00:17:54] Thank you for your questions.

[00:17:56] Take care.

[00:18:11] Thank you.

[00:18:41] I'm Bruce Martin, host of Pit Pass Indie. Each week I go behind the scenes of the NTT IndieCar series and introduce our listeners to the biggest stars of IndieCar which features the Indianapolis 500 as its cornerstone event.

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[00:20:03] Join me every week as we talk to the stars of IndieCar including the legends of the Indianapolis 500 on Pit Pass Indie from Evergreen Podcast.