ryuganji: film news from japan

From remakes to sequels: “Always: Sunset on Third Street 2” opened last Saturday, and the promotional push is powerful and pervasive. Case in point: walk into any 7-11 and you’ll be greeted by a rack near the counter filled with old-school snacks and toys in retro packaging as a tie-in to the film’s Showa-era nostalgia (which is a wee bit ironic, considering that convenience store chains have helped kill off the sort of family-run Mom & Pop stores that the movie pays tribute to). Come to think of it, isn’t it a bit anachronistic to tack on a generic-sounding English title to a story dependent on Japanese baby boomers’ reminiscences of the good old days? Saigan Ryohei’s long-running manga, which the films are based on, has done just fine without it.

Distributor Toho should be guaranteed a tidy box office haul, but they’re apparently somewhat nervous about protecting their investment in the wake of Sawajiri Erika’s hilarious antics on the opening day of their lachrymose romance “Closed Note“. She’d become increasingly surly and non-communicative as the gruelling PR campaign dragged on, which was partially attributed to interviewers’ preoccupation with her image in the tabloid press as a precocious prima donna with a vindictive streak, especially toward rival actresses. This all came to a head when Sawajiri joined co-star Takeuchi Yuko and director Yukisada Isao on stage at an opening day screening. Folding her arms and staring downward as if she’d rather be anywhere else but there, she glared at the MC (an announcer from the same talent agency) and grunted back minimal replies to her questions. Inevitably the press reveled in her impropriety for several days until she made a tearful (and meticulously choreographed) on-air apology, and now she’s in the doghouse for the foreseeable future as punishment. Yukisada commented diplomatically that he was disappointed about all the attention being diverted from the film itself, which still managed to hover respectably around 2nd and 3rd position for a few weeks in the shadow of Kimura Takuya’s unassailable “Hero”, but Sawajiri did subsequently succeed in topping one particular chart: weekly magazine Shukan Bunshun’s October list of “women most hated by women”.

Although the “Always” cast is a far more compliant bunch, Toho was determined to extinguish any chance of a repeat of the “Closed Note” fiasco and came up with a novel method for massaging actorly egos. After the credits rolled at an opening day screening of “Always” where the stars and director Yamazaki Takashi were due to appear, an MC from Nihon TV directed the anticipatory full house to give the special guests a standing ovation once they’d all emerged from the wings. The audience eagerly complied and it was smiles all around, despite the unapologetically stage-managed nature of the whole thing.

Even more surprising to me is the way the Nikkan Sports source article mentions all of this so matter-of-factly, like it’s the most natural thing in the world to manufacture audience responses in this way, and without any trace of the familiar media self-censorship that often comes into play when trade secrets of the entertainment business are involved.

Still, spare a thought for makers of big-budget movies like Toho: they have their work cut out for them just prying people away from their TV sets, let alone making sure their more volatile charges don’t chuck their geta into the promotional machine.

Update: See what Jason Gray has to say about all of this.