Production
David Bowie was hired for the role of Jack Celliers after director Nagisa Oshima saw Bowie in a production of The Elephant Man on Broadway, saying Bowie had "an inner spirit that is indestructible." While shooting the movie, Bowie was amazed that Oshima had a two- to three-acre camp built on the remote Polynesian island of Rarotonga, but most of the camp was never shot on film. He said Oshima "only shot little bits at the corners. I kind of thought it was a waste, but when I saw the movie, it was just so potent - you could feel the camp there, quite definitely." Bowie noted how Oshima would give an incredible amount of direction to his Japanese actors ("down to the minutest detail"), but when directing him or fellow Westerner Tom Conti, he would say "Please do whatever it is you people do." Bowie thought his performance in the movie was "the most credible performance" he'd done in a film up to that point in his career.
Contrary to usual cinematic practice, Oshima shot the film without rushes and shipped the film off the island with no safety prints. "It was all going out of the camera and down to the post office and being wrapped up in brown paper and sent off to Japan," Bowie stated. Oshima's editor in Japan cut the movie into a rough print within four days of Oshima returning to Japan.
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Famous quotes containing the word production:
“The growing of food and the growing of children are both vital to the family’s survival.... Who would dare make the judgment that holding your youngest baby on your lap is less important than weeding a few more yards in the maize field? Yet this is the judgment our society makes constantly. Production of autos, canned soup, advertising copy is important. Housework—cleaning, feeding, and caring—is unimportant.”
—Debbie Taylor (20th century)
“... if the production of any commodity necessitates the sacrifice of human life, society should do without that commodity, but it can not do without that life.”
—Emma Goldman (1869–1940)
“The production of too many useful things results in too many useless people.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)