Hideo Nakata Interview 2 - Ring 2 by Martyn Palmer Previous Q: Did you like Gore Verbinski's film, The Ring? The first western version… A: Oh yes, I liked it a lot and especially let's say my favourite scene is the ferry boat scene where a horse goes crazy and mad and commits suicide just by looking at Naomi's character. I thought that scene was fantastic and not only very different from my version but I thought it was very effective to let the audience feel what was going to happen on the island. I really liked Gore's movie and I anticipated that it was going to be very successful because I saw it before the release of the movie here. Q: What do you think are the themes that make The Ring series so compelling? A: When I made the first one it was at a time when every kid in Japan, or almost all of them, were getting VCRs and television sets in their own rooms, not just in their houses. One person has their own TV sets and VCRs and that's the most common item for them. And then their came the movie which is about a killer video and watching a tape which can kill. And that sounds pretty absurd but at the same time if it really happened in our life it would be really chilling. If the television screen would be the threshold to hell it would be really scary and because it is so common it is kind of realistically scary if you know what I mean. And I think that is the key element in why it became so successful I think. Q: You and other Japanese directors have almost created your own genre of horror movie now. How is the approach different between Japanese and western filmmakers? A: I can't analyse it critically. We are also influenced by lots of excellent Hollywood and European and British horror movies, I have watched a lot of them but I have to say I'm not a horror expert. I have not been a very big horror fan but of course I researched horror movies and I would say there is a different approach in how to show ghosts. This may sound too simple but Asian ghosts can stand just behind you and can stare at you and doesn't say anything, just stands and stares at the main character. And that could be scary from our point of view. Q: And western films have been rather more explicit with the scenes of violence? A: Yes. Whereas western movies, in general, westerns ghosts are an evil existence and are meant to do something to the victims, they attack the victims. So that is a difference that active feeling, the aggressiveness of the apparition in the western horror movies whereas in the Asian ones it's not. But of course there are exceptions like the Robert Wise film The Haunting or The Turn of the Screw, those movies the ghosts were just there. In fact with The Haunting there was no ghost whatsoever in the movie, so there are some exceptions. Q: Walter Parkes and Laurie MacDonald, the producers, were saying that you had some troubles on the set. They said you called in a Shinto priest after a few incidents to perform a purification ritual. What happened? A: You mean, the purification? This movie deals with the scary or evil water, cursed water and the production office was flooded completely because of the malfunction of the air conditioning unit. And the production manager decided that we should do the purification and because I'm from Japan and my assistant is too, so we asked a Japanese Shinto priest to come and do the purification ceremony on the set. At the hospital location and he came and did a purification ceremony, it was in Los Angeles. Q: And hopefully it did some good? A: Yes. Q: What other films do you like in the horror genre? A: As a teenager I was really scared by watching The Exorcist and The Omen. When I became a movie director and somehow I had been directing horror movies and when I make a horror movies I feel like I need to be inspired by other masterpieces so let's say I will watch something like The Haunting, Robert Wise's film. Or Japanese ghost story movies. I need to be inspired when I make horror movies and these kind of films inspire me. Q: How was working with Naomi Watts? A: She is excellent and she understood my English instinctively and instantly. And he was very focused on her performance and in this movie she needed to give a very intense performance and I think she did a marvellous job. Q: And how was working with the youngster David Dorfman? A: He is very smart and very sensitive and understood what I was trying to achieve and his role is very difficult because the possession happens very gradually and he did it very well. 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