Shunji Iwai’s Vampire is currently being shoot in Vancouver. Twitchfilm was on the set to interview the staff, and of course, the japanese director. We learn more about the origin of this (personal, yes) project:
The decision to direct a film in another language is not an easy one – Iwai figures he correctly hears about 70% of what his actors say, in part because he’s allowing them to improvise a little to make the translation into English more natural. Nevertheless, he felt this film had to be made in English. Though this is partially about Iwai wanting a larger audience for this film, shooting Vampire in English is about more than economics.
“For this film, I’ve been writing the basic story over ten years. It was before All About Lily Chou-Chou that I wrote the first image, but every time a chance to make a film came up, I couldn’t make this one, so I’d keep writing.
Four years ago I found a good idea. At the same time I’m writing, the same case actually happens in Japan, and a guy actually kills people, and it turns out all the victims come from a suicide website. This guy was too creepy, too strange to be an interesting character. He’s just in it to kill others, but it made it harder for me to keep going because the Japanese audience was against the guy in that case, so I had to leave it alone again.
But two years ago, when I was doing New York, I Love You, I was talking with some guys at the bar, and they asked me about the murder cases in Japan, and I explained it to them, and then I realized I could make my story here. It takes a long time, and dark stories are kind of difficult, but sometimes dark stories are very beautiful, very challenging.”