Top 50 Takashi Miike Quotes

I believe that the difference in genre of movies is a small thing.

I believe that when people try to live their life at the fullest, there’s a certain laughter that comes out of it. The more they try to live their life seriously, the funnier it is.

Some people have iconic directors in their mind, or they want to make particular styles of films they have seen before. I think this is a waste of time and energy.

For me, no matter what movie I make, no matter what the genre or the budget, they all have the same theme at their core: fear of death and happiness about living.

Boxing is a metaphor for hitting back and showing you can win in life.

First Love’ is one of my most hopeful movies. It’s about love and relationships, so in that way it’s different from my other films. That’s why it’s special for me.

The people who like my work, I know that I can’t trick them into laughing someplace where there is not a genuine reason to laugh.

I don’t set out to make a film for festivals abroad.

My style is that I have no style.

I loved spaghetti westerns but besides these pure entertainment movies, there was also something different.

Even if I were to try to imitate Kurosawa I know that it’s absolutely impossible. That era of film was just something else, including the actors. Everything about that era was on a completely different level.

It’s not my goal to make so many movies. It’s just sort of a natural process, and I’m just doing my job. And I’m not tied to any genre; I’m willing to do anything. I just keep going.

My films are like drinking a good beer, but pleasure doesn’t mean that it cannot change someone’s point of view.

Personally, I enjoy being able to see something that you haven’t seen before.

Kurosawa was truly inventive.

People tell all sorts of lies in order to live. That enables friendships to form and love to blossom.

I’m just curious how it’d look like if someone tried to remake my work. But I really believe that it’s hard to remake of any of my work.

When you see the violence of Hollywood movies, there is a tendency that the hero is combating and confronting many people, without much harm to himself. But in my films, the hero takes a lot of hits so the very act of the hero being the one on the receiving end, makes the audience cheer and connect with him.

Audiences are an unknown mystery to me, so I can’t really predict anything. For me, the best audience is myself, my crew, and the actors.

Visually, I want to try everything. But I believe that every shot of my films really expresses what I think about the story and the character. The most important thing is the story, not the images.

Actually the hardest films to make are comedies. In normal life, funny things happen by accident; to re-create those by design in a film takes real technique.

In film, in general, you have just so many cliche themes or stories that are told over and over again.

Bigger-budgeted films have more restrictions and less freedom to create. Because of this, I try to find freedom in the people I work with. I often work in ways I don’t want to. It’s more about controlling the situation. Lower-budget films are freer.

I felt that all of us working on our remake of ’13 Assassins’ had to honour the original director, Eiichi Kudo, and everyone else who created the original.

Normally sports day is once a year for kids, where you have fun, and everybody is jostling. For us, making movies is like having sports day everyday: competing with each other, doing your best. It’s like that except we don’t get awards every day in our sports day.

More than my films being influenced by manga I was indelibly impressed by Manga, and that definitely comes out in the films.

When I’m watching one of my movies in a festival with fans who are just into it and they love it? I end up feeling like my film is more interesting, it becomes more fun to watch and I get a special energy that feeds back into my process.

For a long time I was free. I didn’t belong to any type of studio, or any company. I kept a sort of freedom and a light touch.

In general, I’m probably seen as an unusual director.

Sometimes it’s good to know there are limits.

For the birth of one champion, there are many young boxers behind them who had setbacks. In terms of that, I think boxing is very dramatic.

Where there is love, there is a possibility of violence but it’s not that love is connected to violence but there’s a possibility.

I honestly do feel like the Yakuza film genre is going away. And I don’t personally feel like there’s any meaning in trying to artificially extend the life of the Yakuza film genre.

I think everyone really wants to just be happy and live the life that they want to live. But they come up against all of these obstacles and sometimes the way that react we react to that can be very hilarious. To me. It’s hilarious and laughable.

I’m just trying to make movies simply about life. Naturally, when I’m doing that, horror, violence, and all those kinds of things get mixed in. All those things happen in reality.

I just feel my body clock is different when it comes to making films than other directors. Being on set, and sweating, that feeling eases me more than actually when the movie’s over; being on set, moving around, to me feels more relaxing than being done with the movie.

That’s a very Japanese idea – that children are an extension of their parents. And that when you’re reborn, your new form reflects the sins of your previous life – you can’t escape.

I think I’m a director that is very easily misunderstood.

Once I started working as an assistant director, I just realized very quickly that working on a film set was just a perfect fit for me.

I’m even a little afraid of the dark. If I’m alone in the dark I’ll sometimes feel that there’s a presence behind me and I’ll even be afraid to turn around, but then if I do get the courage to turn around, I’ll just be scared that whatever was there has just jumped over to the other side of me.

I do enjoy children’s shows.

When I’m facing an issue or a challenge sometimes, it’s easier for me to avoid really facing that or dealing with it, and just go make films.

Boxing fascinates me.

I actually think women are stronger and more capable than men, that men are actually dancing in the palms of women, who are running the show.

Maybe ’13 Assassins’ is the mortal agony and death rattle of a Japanese film industry that has abandoned its creative talent.

I’m actually quite a scaredy cat, myself.

Regarding the responsibility that a director has to society, first of all, there are ratings. There’s freedom to make films, and freedom to watch them or not. It’s not like I take those films to a school and force kids to watch them.

In Japan, violence isn’t as controversial as it is in the West.

In ’13 Assassins’ the biggest challenge was that action period films, for budget reasons and because of the age of the actors involved, are not considered to be a good business decision by some companies.

Personally, it all feels like I’ve been filming just one long film the whole time and I have no personal like or dislike for any of the films that I’ve done. I feel like all of the all of them are important to me, all of the cast and all the staff that I’ve worked with have also been very important to me.