Ikebukuro West Gate Park and Emir Kusturica.
Nakano: [Southern's] shirt jacket ¥49,500 (Southern's 03-3487-5040), other personal effects of the stylist
Watanabe: [Needles] jacket ¥31,700 (Nepenthes 03-3400-7227), other personal effects of stylist
So, this is the first time the three of you have worked together on a film, so I was wondering if you could tell us how you developed communication. Individually, are Mr. Ikematsu and Mr. Watanabe your first time working together?
Watanabe:I had already had a relationship with Ikematsu since I had sung the theme song for a movie starring him, but this was the first time I had worked closely with him, so I was very excited going into the shoot.
What is the relationship between Mr. Ikematsu and Mr. Taiga?
Ikematsu:It's old. I've known him since I was a teenager, so it's been more than 15 years now.
Nakano:Moreover, we have had quite a few opportunities to perform together in recent years. I have known Daichi for about 10 years. We see each other privately as well, so I guess it's like I'm in the middle.
What do you often talk about? Since Taiga-san is a music lover and Watanabe-san is a musician, do you often talk about music?
Nakano:I've been talking a lot about the movies I've seen recently.
What did you think about when you were playing the roles of the three main characters, the members of the youth club? How did you feel about Mr. Ikematsu as Hansuke, who is somewhat apathetic and aloof, but who regains his own life when he starts living in the city?
Ikematsu:I had a lot on my mind, but as for Hansuke, I thought that as the guide of the story, as the eye closest to the audience, how to look at this city objectively or how to experience this city could be the vertical axis of the story.
The character was neutral, unbalanced, as if he knew the pain but had forgotten the pain, and was both lost and accustomed to that as well. We tuned that area.
As a youth group, we had the role of pulling the story along, so I think it was important to see how much we could play without letting go of what was important, and how much we could engage the viewers by enriching each scene. Because of the pain in this city, I wanted to try to achieve a kind of neo-friendship.
What about Watanabe-san, who plays the role of Okabe, a somewhat unreliable character who is kind to everyone from start to finish?
Watanabe:My role is the only one who is not a resident of the city and has not been displaced by the disaster. However, it came to my mind that I like the residents of that town and I am always in their circle, but maybe I have a complex about the fact that I have not been affected by the disaster. I wanted to be able to scent a little bit of that, not just be a fool.
Taiga-san, your character Tatsuya is basically a cheerful and passionate character, but he also has problems with his family and is placed in pitiful situations. In a sense, he is the character with the most intense emotional ups and downs.
Nakano:Tatsuya has lost his father as a result of Nani's damage, as well as various other complicated family issues that cause him pain and sadness. But he tries to look forward, and as a good-natured young man, he loves this town and wants to make it better, and he tries to make it more exciting as a youth club, but somehow he gets caught up in an unwise direction. In the story, there are many times when I feel sorry for him, but I played the role because I thought it was important for him to keep looking forward.
The supporting cast also included many actors with strong personalities in a good sense, such as Ms. Toruko Miura, Mr. Gaku Hamada, Ms. Hairi Katagiri, Mr. Bengaru, Mr. Yoshiyoshi Arakawa, etc. Wasn't the scene really interesting?
Nakano:Well, it was cold, the climate anyway (laughs). We were filming on location at an abandoned school in the city of Kata in Ibaraki Prefecture, and it was just so cold. We had to find ways to keep warm and drown out the cold....
(laughs). Was there anything memorable during the filming?
Ikematsu:I think as a youth club we just tried to spend as much time as we could, two and a half months away from the city, eating together. It was cold, so after filming we would go to a nearby public bath almost every day, take a sauna and soak in the open air, look at the stars, have a pint of beer, and go home, which was the routine for the youth club. Come to think of it, the moment Taiga turned 30 was also spent with these three.
Nakano:That's right! That was quite a memorial for me as well.
Watanabe:Ikematsu pulled me along like that and invited me to have dinner with him after the shoot at every opportunity. What I remember most vividly was the first day of shooting. Over dinner, we talked about the film and what we were going to do... Before we started shooting, I rewatched "Ikebukuro West Gate Park" (script by Miyafuji), and since I liked Emir Kusturica's works, I watched "A Time of Gypsies" before I started working on the film. At the dinner table, Ikematsu-kun mentioned that it would be interesting if we could add the atmosphere of Emile Kusturica's town and the modern "Ikebukuro West Gate Park" to the film, and I was surprised! I felt like I had a clear idea of where we should go.
