you could check it all out atThe Awardist.
Do you like driving?
RYUSUKE HAMAGUCHI:I actually am not able to drive.
Hidetoshi Nishijima and Tōko Miura in ‘Drive My Car’.Everett Collection
Your movie is calledDrive My Car.
[Laughs] I do possess a license.
But in Japan, we have a saying, we call it a “paper driver.”
Janus Films
Because we’re just a driver on paper we don’t actually drive.
I do enjoy riding in cars with other people and talking with them.
Why don’t you drive?
Everett Collection
I didn’t think I was really suited for driving.
I’m getting a real scoop here.
You’re in the process of going somewhere.
And I think your mind goes to a bit of a different place when you’re communicating this way.
Meanwhile, Murakami’s car in the short story is yellow and a convertible.
Why did you change that?
We talked about the importance of having conversations in cars.
I thought this would be very difficult with a convertible because of wind noise.
So I went to a repair shop to look at different cars.
Someone rolled up in a car, and it was the red Saab 900.
And it really stood out from the scenery.
And I thought, Wow, that’s a cool car.
I wanted something that would pop, and red seemed to be the color for that.
It was a fortuitous decision, but that’s how I came to it.
And Murakami was cool with that?
With the shift to red?
To be honest, he actually had no feedback regarding the script or the production.
So I didn’t hear anything about the color change.
So I figured that he was okay with it.
Okay, got it.
One of the thingsDrive My Caris about is communication.
We watch your actorsrehearsinga production ofUncle Vanya, repeating their lines over and over without inflection.
Is that the way you do it?
And why was that important to put in a film?
This actually is a method I do employ, a really essential one for me as a director.
There’s no guarantee.
But I’ve seen a lot of three-hour movies that don’t repay the risk.
What are the advantages of having an audience calibrate to the durations you like to operate at?
I didn’t set out to make a long movie per se.
It just came out to be this length.
This is actually the cut-down version of what we had that was longer.
I thought if it was cut more, it might actually feel longer in a way.
Grief is something that takes time, both to evoke and to confront.
What’s the significance of setting the film in Hiroshima?
We were going to set it in Busan, in Korea, originally.
But because of coronavirus, we were not able to do that.
So we were looking for a domestic city in Japan.
This is where the atomic bomb was dropped.
So that’s why we picked that city.
How are you handling the Oscar crush?
Is it anything you anticipated?
And from there, it was a snowball effect.
I can only say that I’m extremely appreciative.
