Email from Matt Alt,
Patrick,
My wife and I had the chance to play a pair of yokai in Miike's latest,
Yokai Daisenso. Was an amazing (if backbreaking) experience and I was
thinking of Miike's interviews with you for Tokyoscope while I was
doing it.
It wasn't exactly the worlds most closed set but it wasn't easy to take
photos, so we don't have any of us in our full get-ups. I was wearing a
sort of Japanese peasant outfit, with a straw "raincoat" on my
shoulders, a cone-shaped straw hat, a huge (styrofoam!) rice bale, and
a fairly staid, wooden, and female (!) mask reminiscent of the ones Noh
dancers wear.
My wife Hiroko, who dislikes frogs intensely, of course somehow got
assigned to wear an enormous, accurately sculpted frog head for the
duration of the five hour shoot. Ah, fate! It was a blessing in
disguise of sorts as the costume was one of the real stand-outs and
Miike kept moving her to the front of the scenes. (Other yokai included
a guy wearing an oversized cat head, people with buckets, giant shogi
pieces, and what looked like a dead crow for a head, a giant "tototro"
looking furry monster one, and my personal favorite, a woman in a
kimono with a cherry blossom tree sprouting where her head should be.)
We were really interested in seeing the dynamics on the set and "people
watching" (insofar as possible through the slits in our masks!) and
were standing within ten feet or so of Miike for most of the shoot. He
only stepped in to direct us personally when things got "messed up"
("NO! You aren't at a soccer game! You're undead! Cheer like you're
freaks! Like,'duh-h-hhh-rrr!'" (throws arms into air spasmodically.)
Generally speaking the directing was pretty hands-off, though ("Just
act natural, like your character would in the real world!" being one of
said directions, causing Hiroko to wonder how a five-foot-tall frog in
a kimono acts "normally" and me to wonder how the hell to "emote" with
a wooden mask and a giant rice bale on one shoulder.) Hiroko being the
frog and me being the only white guy anywhere near the place, we got
more than the usual amount of attention from him and the assistant
directors during the shoot ("Hey, Mac! Matt? Whatever! You're totally
drunk in this scene, got it?")
Anyway, here's a link to the shots we took -- thought you might be
interested. We're going in for more punishment on the 15th of this
month. I'll let you know how it goes, if you want. Keep in touch!
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