Rental Family with Hikari and Nicole Holofcener (Ep. 590)

I feel like the loneliness, right? It's like epidemic of loneliness. It's just happening everywhere. No, it's not just Japan. I mainly focused the story based in Tokyo, the business itself existing Tokyo. But for me, and also reason why I brought a character like Brandon Fraser's character, because it's happening not just in Japan but everywhere. [Music] Hello and welcome back to the director's cut, brought to you by the director's Guild of America. In this episode, a lonely American actor lands an unusual gig with a Japanese agency and director Hikari's comedic drama, "Rental Family." The film tells the story of Philip, an actor struggling to find work and purpose in Tokyo. After discovering a company that hires actors to play a role in real people's lives, he immerses himself in his clients' worlds and rediscoveres purpose, belonging, and the beauty of human connection. In addition to rental family, Hikari's other directorial credits include the feature film, "37 Seconds," and episodes of the series, "Beath," and "Tokyo Vice." Following a screening of the film, at the DGA Theatre in Los Angeles, Hikari spoke with director Nicole Holliff's center about filming "Rental Family." Listen on for their spoiler-filled conversation. [Music] Wasn't that a really lovely movie? [Applause] Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Really lovely. And I found it such a surprise. I mean, the opening scene and Brendan Frazier's reaction at the funeral? I mean, what a reaction. It was really, really funny. And then, before you know it, you're kind of crying, right? Which is kind of the perfect blend of movies. So we were just talking about how different it is to shoot in Japan and have a co-financing with the US searchlight. Searchlight, yes. And a Japanese company? Yeah, oh, the whole "Entry Finance" came from "Searchlight." They were really brave enough to trust me with this film in Japan, which is they never shot anything outside. I'm except for Banji's, you know, a couple of years ago. This is their first time shooting, anything in Asia. So I'm very grateful that they took a chance on us. But that she was telling me that, you know, those big apartment buildings that she had to get permission from every tenant to shoot in one apartment or two. Yeah, one apartment. And then a couple of apartments to hold the cast or location, you know, crew, etc. Right. But in Japan is very challenging place to shoot. It's what works here does not apply there. So if the neighbor said, "You guys were shooting here? I didn't know anything about it even though they knew if they don't like it." They can say, "You can't do this. You can't do that. And you have to listen to them." You can't pay them off. No, we can't hear. And then when you try to pay them if I try it once, that person have to be a member of Yakuza. And your what? Yakuza. A member of Yakuza. Oh. Yeah, like a mafia. Yeah. Yeah. So they're like, "Well, well, you're going to have money. How much are you going to bring more?" And we're like, "Well, we don't really have money." And the whole thing, and then just everybody came out. Yeah, there's so many nightmare stories. But for this one, there's a couple of things that I really wanted to use, Dali, or Craneshaw. And that-- How could you? How could you? I know of you. They're like, "Ah, you can't." You couldn't. So even though they're supposed to be okay, they said no. Yeah. And that's scary. So a lot of things that I still have a dream about. And I'm like, "Oh, that will be an amazing transition shot." Don't we all? I didn't have it. Don't we all stay up at night? Right? What? What if I-- Or if I couldn't I? Yeah. Well, those shots of the buildings, I did notice a lot of through the window and out the window. Did you guys see that? Like everybody in their boxes. Even when it's satisfying and beautiful, he's still looking out the window. Yeah. Well, I'm sure we're all curious. This happens. I mean, I've heard that people come to funerals to cry for strangers. Yeah. That happens in China, Korea, Italy, surprisingly. That's like a common whaling woman in Italy, right? Yeah. That's-- Is that because they don't have friends? Just because they want to people to-- Like the person who ever died is having a funeral for. Yeah. In those countries, they just want to show how popular they were. So more people cry like, "Scream." That means how popular-- I guess they represent the popularity in their each countries, which is not a case in Japan. We don't scream. We're like very much like, you know, holding back your tears. That's kind of our style. But to people who are at the funeral know that have these people are crying fake? Well, you just-- You know, if you know in Japan, you just don't know because you're just there, right? I think wedding is more popular. Wedding is like probably the most blooming business to have a fake guest so that it doesn't look like the part-- You know, it's filled, you know? And then the real story is that the one girl, she-- she was only had a single parent. So mom was the only person. But then she lied to a boyfriend or a fiancé or husband at that point. You mean the scene where-- Yeah, well, this is the real story. And that people are actually hiring people to play the cousins and fathers and ankles in every single person so that she's just don't have one family if she's her mom. I don't know what happened to that, but those things happens. That's amazing. Like, you're not good enough to just be a mom. I know, right? Yeah. It's lovely that he does that for the young woman. And of course, his first experience is so gratifying and positive, and cheering him. Thank you. But the child, the situation with the child, does something like-- I mean, are these-- did you make all this up? Well, this is good question, right? No, it's not great. I love it. I love it. So the rental family business exists since the '80s. And there's about 300 companies that provide similar services throughout Japan. And one can be just renting a wise old man, and he only has like four or five older men to give advice to younger people too, renting a lap, because somebody wants to just cuddle with somebody. So we have all these services. The rental family business itself is started in the '80s. And you can pretty much get anybody, whoever you ask for, you can get it. The story here is somewhat my experience, I would say, when I first came to America, I lived in Utah as an exchange student. I was the only Asian girl for long as I remember. And you know the isolation at first, because you only want-- you don't speak the language-- and you say, oh, hi, how are you? How do-- But then the people I met through that experience, it was just like such a profound, and they like became my best friend, my family, my host family. I still talk to them. I'm still close with them. Like, I have 20 friends that I constantly talking. So-- but I also learned the isolation, obviously. And then I wanted to kind of flip the idea, and what does it look like, if, you know, American guy, lives in Tokyo, I have a lot of friends who were expats living in Japan. And I've always here their experience being feel like an outsider, even though they speak the language. And reuse lonely as he was, because that was so sad. Yeah, yeah, it's pretty, yeah. But you know, I feel like the loneliness, right? It's not just Japan. I mainly focused the story based in Tokyo, because of the business itself existing Tokyo. But for me, and also reason why I, you know, brought character like random phrase, just character, because that-- it's happening not just in Japan, but everywhere, right? And how can we bring those gaps, you know, gaps, or how can we bring those people close together? And I wanted to really reach-- ask the question or reach the audience, say, you know, if you're feeling a certain way, like you are with Philip or any other characters, then you could-- I mean, you don't have to rent a people, or you don't have to work for the company, but you can find a connection through, you know, reaching out to your friends, because for me, friends, or people you work with, becomes your friend. family, right? Right. She plays like a set. So often they stay friends with the people that they've been working. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. Wow, like the child. Yeah. Let's talk about her. Me. Oh, yeah. Me. Yeah. Yeah. How did you find her? And why is she so good? Yeah. We auditioned her. This is that was her first time acting ever. And a good director. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. She came to audition. She was one of, you know, we only got to see probably around 100 girls from around the world. I didn't want to be limited to Japanese and Caucasian. I just kind of opened up to Asian, you know, and have Caucasian half-agent. As long as you speak Japanese, that was kind of the thing. And so we saw very many different girls. And then she came and obviously she never acted before. So she was so nervous. But she just the way she listened, the direction to the way she was observing was just out the sky. I was like, wow, this girl really can listen. So when we start rehearsing, I just asked her like, don't take any acting classes. And just remember memorize all the lines, right? And then just all you have to do is listen and react. And really that's only they all did that. Yeah. I don't mean in your movie. I mean in general. Yeah. Yeah. She really, that's this, and Brandon still, they were like, we're also close. But yeah, Brandon really taught her, brought her in, taught her how to hit the mark because she didn't know what the mark was. So I was like, you know, that's an Oscar waiting actor. Yeah. The mark. That's kind of special. Does she want to continue acting? Yeah. I'm sure. Yeah. She really likes it. And Brandon Frazier was just so good. So good at that face is just constantly like holding back tears. Oh, right. She really wanted, he really wanted to be here about he's in New York doing his round, doing his stuff. And so the little girl, the relationship between them, I really thought it was going to end terribly. Right. That this child could actually forgive him. Did you ever wonder like how should I make this happen? Should I not? Well, so little girl's stories kind of based on my story. Wow. Do you want to go there? Yeah. Sure. I mean, I love about it. It's so funny though. Okay. So my mom used to lie to me all the time. And that was kind of one of my things. She cares because she lied because she cares. But she lied to me that my father was dead for a long time. And when I was seven, I find that from my neighbor that she wasn't he wasn't dead. And then she told me, oh, yeah, your father, sorry. He's that guy. And he put on at the television. And it was very handsome. No, he wasn't. Okay. It was just dashing a sexy actor on television who was like the probably the most popular guy on that at that time. And I believed her for like six months. And I find that that he wasn't right. He's half half American, half Japanese. There's nothing half in me or quarter in me. And so when I find out, I was like, you know, why, you know, who would see whatever. And she pointed television again. And he's like, okay, you're lying at this point. But yeah, from there, I just, you know, being a single, I was raised by a single mom. And she was hustling. She's working hard. And you know, she just really wanted to protect me, right? From whatever the experience she had with my father, biological father. And she, you know, she was like, I don't, you know, am I giving enough love by, you know, take care of you? Are you happy? And it was like, yes, of course. And, you know, he wasn't a nice guy. So that whole experience kind of gave me inspiration that the parents, single parent, your parents in general do anything for you. And especially in the Japanese culture, where everything you so determined as a kid, which I don't quite, you know, know if it's it's a right thing or not. But, you know, it people, they weren't probably your mom probably wasn't telling you. Be a filmmaker. Right. She's right. I know. Right. She, she, she, she kept telling me, though, that when I was pursuing acting, that I should never be actor because I've not pretty enough. They don't give someone so loud. I couldn't she lie then. That's the time to lie. Yeah, I know, right? That's a good question. No, she's, yeah. It's interesting. You know, I, I just watched her other movie and it's called 37 seconds. I don't know if you've seen it. Oh, thank you. And a lot of that is based on lies as well. And that was a Korean movie, The Farewell. What's that? Farewell. Farewell was based on a lie, right? That was a, what, farewell was a, it was Chinese American. The line is very much a part of Asian culture, which is not the case here, but you, you know, you can get good plots that way. Yeah. Right. Yeah. I think it's, I think the pair, like from what I understand is, again, the family member wants everything just makes the perfect scenario for your future. However, you've become so, yeah, I guess it is. It is. We kind of quite, I mean, I don't, but my family is quite a lot of pressure, a lot of pressure, yeah. Yeah. Maybe in like creative families, it's not as much driven to having, you know, the perfect education. Yeah. I don't know. Yeah. My, see, my family, I come from a very much working class family. My family on the mill factory. I was, you know, helping my grandparents in the factory since I ever since I can't remember. So we were, like, has nothing to do with entertainment, right? I just kind of liked performing arts and all these little drawings and such and watching, you know, Akira Kroza, Blaka, White, Samurai movie, two Hollywood movies, you know, from the 80s and 90s in back of my grandmother's t-shop. That was kind of my escape. And then I think that's kind of got me to took me a long time to get here, but eventually got me to play. And you started with acting. I start with, yeah, singing actually. Singing. When you want to tell them the song you were singing. That was her. Second to last song. That very last song. The very last song. Yeah. It's me and Yonsei from Siguross and Alex Summers are composers and me singing same verse for like 16, 17 times to get that 48 layers. That's all you. That's beautiful. Thank you. Yeah, they're, they're allowed, I don't know, they were so kind to allow me to sing. So I'm grateful. I was like going to ask you, well, everyone should see 37 seconds. Her first movie, if you like this movie, you will love that movie as well. The cinematographer. Is that somebody you worked with again and again? Yeah. Yeah. Actually, we start working back in 2012. I was doing a little bunch of commercials for Super Rose in Japan. Super. Super car commercials. Yeah. And Takuro was my, that's how we met. He was my DP for many commercials and he did a short film for me as well. That's great. I made a, yeah, a little comedy. And we've been friends. We kept friendship and I, you know, this is the first time, obviously, the United States, you know, the search light coming to Japan and he actually studies cinematography here in the United States. And he was the first day C for "Loss in Translation" who the D.K. So he was, yeah, he was running around Tokyo and he knows so much about Tokyo because he grew up there. And so yeah, I was like, I need to talk to him and he was, he's so busy always because he's shooting in Japan and he's shooting here, but just happened to be that two or three months he was available. So it was like really blessing. It's great to be able to work with the same person over and over. Yeah. That was great. And we have such a, you know, we literally, I call him like my brother, he, I feel like we're so close and he knows how I'm very particular with the shots and, and you know, sometimes it's difficult to express what the shot you want, especially to a D.P. that who has, you know, a lot of experience and I get a little hesitate to request, but he's like, yeah, put it wherever here. Don't know, right? Sure. Go for it. You know, that's great. So that was really incredible. It's just nice to have somebody who understands my style of directing. Of course. Yeah, working with someone new can be daunting. Right? So I'm curious how your mom responded to this movie. Oh, she loves it. She does. Yeah. I took her to Toronto for the world premiere. We also went to London Film Festival. Yeah. Yeah. She's, she's having great time, you know. She's very, yeah, she's like, oh, it's like so bad. Oh, story, huh? Well, I know that bad person. Yeah. I'm not bad. It's okay. And the gentleman, the old man. Yes. He's a, he's a, yeah, I can't tell you what. Thank you. Apparently he's a very big celebrity. He is very famous actor. Does everybody know that? I didn't know that. He's a legend. You do know everything. Yeah, he doesn't know that. Yeah, I could say, I mean, I grew up watching him in the comedy too. He did. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He must have been huge. Yeah. And that was his first time speaking English. So we have to audition him, feature. I was like, oh my god, audition. He started, you know, Akira Emo to, and he was like, sure, I'll come in. And then he came in, no, prepared. And you know, because he walks in and is already presents, right? And I like, I got so nervous during auditions. And but he was so open. I was able to request a certain adjustments. And you know, he cried in the second time. Well, he read the tree saying, because that was one of the things that I really wanted to see if he can get there. And he was just really open. And it was very interesting because, you know, KikuO to fill up to Mia, to I go, everybody comes from such a different background. So kind of, you know, working on set with everybody in the, I mean, giving directions is so different. Yeah. Was especially somebody like Akira. So did people have different styles like someone to rehearse a lot and some didn't? Yeah. Well, yeah, I tend to, I like to talk about the character a lot in backstory and where they come from. And sure, we rehearse a little bit. But this was, you know, because Brendan had to speak Japanese. And he learned how to speak Japanese for this movie. Yeah. He, that's us to shame. Yeah. Yeah. I know, right? He put me in shame because I was like, oh my god, you can speak better than that word. Yeah. I have an Osaka accent and he learned to, you know, the Tokyo accent. So you speak clean Japanese than I do, perhaps. And yeah, he took like four months, five months of Japanese class. And Akira also took four, five months of English class. And so we had a bilingual, you know, the coaches, dialect coaches. So constantly like shifting. For me, how the Japanese would be said or how English in Japanese, how to switch is kind of, was important because some Japanese can be very difficult to pronounce and then vice versa. So finding the balance was, you know, when to switch, when to keep it, you know, that was you can't say that you said it terribly. Say it in English. Right. And then like we'll switch it off, right? Like, yeah, okay, that can, I can't understand it. So I know you practice it, but let's switch to Japanese. So now we have to, yeah, you could do that. Yeah, right, right. You can't do that if it's just in English. Right. Like you just said that badly. Say it again in English again. Yeah, that was great that you did that. Yeah. And there, thankfully both Brandon and, you know, somebody like Akira was so like really open was like, tell me if I'm doing it wrong. Just let's do it again. So and especially Brandon was that way. So we, I was able to fix it. If it doesn't, we'll switch it over and then we'll teach him, we'll memorize the English right there. And then Akira would speak Japanese that way, that conversation flows better. And then at one point we'll switch it back to what we practiced. So it was constantly we're dealing with that every time. But you know, somebody like them, they're like so dedicated. So yeah, thanks to my team too. It would be so it sounds like it was a good shoot. Well, yeah. Yeah. I mean, did tell us something horrible. Well, the weather is that we're there. Yeah, that's Japan is that year that we shot it last year. And it was really cold spring. So the cherry blossom didn't bloom. And that was our thing. They were all fake. No, no, no, you did. We kept pushing the shoot. So we have to shift, you know, we have to change the location. Obviously, okay, we were shooting this Saturday looking at the car ender. It's not going to blew up until next Saturday. So we kind of have to bring the schedule, my thank God for my first date, you know, my assistant directors. They were just constantly changing the schedules and the final funeral with Kikuwa, right, with that we'll funeral the last one. No fake's there. So that day was supposed to be full bloom. So that was we're expecting and it was raining and the first three hours of shooting, it didn't rain. And we start shooting outside. And as we were, was we start shooting, it was like, well, I think it's start raining. And then we couldn't get too close up. We start shooting wide. And then we couldn't, yeah. So we shot everything again from the beginning. So the first three hours just went out the way at the door. And then now we're like, okay, we don't know. Nobody has umbrella. Go buy umbrellas. Get the thousand umbrellas from like convenient, you know, near convenient stores and just everybody bring it in. And I just wanted to make sure that the, you know, Brenda will be able to see. So I'm a he's tall and we're like, get the clear umbrella so we can see everybody. I loved how he was so much bigger than everybody in the subway. You know, big American. Yeah. Toys. You're allowed to shoot in the subway. We rented a couple trains. Yeah. Just the trucks. And then we had, we had how many two hours? We had, I think we had two hours one day. I can remember. Traveling to, towards the end of the movie when we're traveling to the island, we had about like an hour and a half to shoot everything. It was very quick. But for everything else that all the trains seeing, we had one day to shoot. So everything you saw was all shot in one day. How quick was the shooting? How fast was the shoot? Well, we shot about two and a half months, like 50 days. Wow. Yeah. I want to shoot in Japan. Wow. Are you sure about that? I'm not sure. Wow. Wow, that's a lot of days. So I guess the budget was, was handsome. Well, thank you. Well, thank you so much. I think I, I think what it is is that in Japan, because Tokyo is really tight, right? If you do our two different locations, it, it, it, it, it takes about three, four hours over 12 hours to do a look. Yeah. So we're going to move, company move, if you're going to have everybody. So those are always calculated into the days. And we shot a lot of not, I think there's about, like 15 days that we were had a whole day, but then every other day we were moving constantly, moving to, one to do. I mean, you try not to have any of those. Yeah. So I think the, the 50 days, I mean, I wish we had 55 days. Yeah. That's what it's like, sir. Yeah. The movie looks beautiful. It looks like a big budget movie. I mean, it is gorgeous. Thank you. Yeah. Our team will definitely love to hear about. Say that again. Our, uh, the, the team, we will be definitely happy to hear. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. Well, um, thank you so much. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you. Thanks for listening to another DGA Q&A. The director's cut is available wherever you listen to podcasts. And please share, subscribe, rate, and review. We'd love to hear your feedback and you can help follow Film Buffs, find the show. Thanks again for listening and we'll see you next time. This podcast is produced by the director's Guild of America.