text=Lily in Hong Kong. A boy in Taiwan
During the 1999 New Year Holiday, Shunji Iwai was in Hong Kong shooting a
commercial. But he took time to attend a concert by the famous canto-pop
star Faye Wong (star of Wong Kar Wai's CHUNG KING EXPRESS). "I realized
that I was looking at her through the eyes of a teen, a teen just like one
of the main characters in the screenplay I was just beginning."
In 1997, Iwai met with award winning director Edward Yang, in Taiwan.
Shortly after, they agreed to collaborate in the near future on a series of
films entitled at the time the Y2K Project, which was also to include Hong
Kong director Stanley Kwan. The project was aimed at breaking down borders
between Asian cultures, the driving theme being Asia's shift into the 21st
century.
"ALL ABOUT LILY CHOU-CHOU" was the originating project, set to be shot in
Taipei. It told the story of a charismatic Hong Kong artist born in Taipei
and of a local Taiwanese boy. Spending time in Taiwan, the director worked
on the plot, developing a first draft of the screenplay when...
GLIDE, Sudden stop, a devastating earthquake...and "Kyomei"
The Taipei earhtquake changed everything. Composer and longtime Iwai
collaborator Takeshi Kobayashi was crushed by the news. He'd worked hard on
creating the fictitious Hong Kong artist LILY CHOU-CHOU, moving beyond the
actual presence of an actress or performer, in order to reach the essence of
that character. Which was what the story required, that spirit like quality,
and what proved to be the most difficult thing to achieve during filming.
After months of hit and miss, Kobayashi could finally introduce Iwai to an
unknown singer
"I was surprised to see that she looked like how I had pictured Lily
herself."
The singer eventually took on the role of Lily. To get things started, Iwai
shot the first 'video inside the movie' single, GLIDE. After which everybody
was expecting shooting to start withing a few months.
"The story was set, almost finished. But something was missing. The center,
the identity of the film, something like that."
The director went back to the screenplay, rewriting in spite of his
colleagues' strong objections. Filming was postponed indefinitely. And then
Taipei was hit by a massive earthquake. An omen, good or bad? In any case,
all crew members were uninjured. The Japanese media coined the disaster 'The
Taiwan Earthquake' while in Taipei it went under the name of "Chou-Chou
earthquake", site of the quake's epicenter. Art,nature, synchronicity.
By the end of that year, Kobayashi invited Iwai to his home and made him
listen to another track, "Kyomei". Although the film was shelved, all those
characters were still living inside the composer. He couldn't let go of that
world and songs kept on coming to him. Lily was less and less of a
fictitious character.
"It doesn't need to be a film. There could be a more suitable medium for it.
It's what I thought as I listened to "Kyomei"."
How the Prototype for an Internet Novel came to be
In April 2000, Iwai returned to Lily in the shape of a new mode of novel
writing for the net, one which truly would be interactive by integrating
into the text the user-input. The result: "ALL ABOUT LILY CHOU-CHOU".
"It was a gamble.I couldn't predict what was going to happen next, and I
wasn't sure people would relate to this way of looking at things. But as
soon it appeared on-line, the digicrowd just threw in one story after
another".
On April 1st, the novel finally took off.
http://www.lily-chou-chou.jp
However, this had little to do with a traditional novel. Users were
confronted with a Lilyholic website managed by someone named Satie. Of
course, this site was also part of the fiction.
Many people left messages on the BBS, day after day. They often mentioned
the word "ETHER"...
"I was stunned that a word like ETHER would be used so readily by people.
They all talked about what Ether actually is, or what it is for them. Our
picture, our sense of what Ether was in our story completed coincided with
theirs".
This BBS is the heart of this story. Iwai developed the story by creating
many user-names which he used to reply to incoming messages, in order to
make the story move ahead.
"Making a story with faceless people was the most exciting experience I have
ever had. "
A murder took place at a Shibuya concert hall. At that same moment, Lily's
fan site, LILYPHILIA, disappeared,went off-line. A story began to take form,
linking the two events. Who did it? How much of this did Iwai actually
write? Such questions were a source of pleasure and intrigue for those who
logged on to solve the riddle.
"But I had to betray all participants before long. "
At the end of the story, the BBS suddenly vanished. Iwai had staged all
this. It was only after that the true story began. All participants were
shut out from the site and the story went in an unexpected direction.
All the fans could do was just read it, logging onto Shunji Iwai's Official
Site "the Yen Town Report" to post messages with each new chapter. Sometimes
they wrote angry messages, criticizing the shocking and disturbing aspects
of the story. "I don't want to read it any more!" Many across the country
expressed and voiced out their frustration.
ALL ABOUT LILY CHOU-CHOU was serialized in a magazine over a 3 month period,
afterwhich the related BBS was opened up once more. Messages appeared
immediately. It appeared the on-line novel wasn't quite finished yet.
Returning to the film. But it's no longer just a film...
"I felt I'd reached something that had escaped me a year ago. I thought this
could make me for a very good film. It seemed more tangible to me now."
Once the serialization was complete, Iwai went back to the screenplay, and
completed the second draft.
That same year, the film world was faced with another digital discovery and
a potential revolution in the future of film making. A new Digital Video
camera, called the 24 Progressive came on the scene. News soon followed that
George Lucas would be using it for his next 'Star Wars' episode and interest
in the camera peaked in the movie industry. Iwai and his technical crew
opted to use this camera for LILY, aware that in the near future digital
video projectors (the DLP) will make their way into movie theatres. In
short, digital technology has made its way into all aspects of film making.
The golden age of film reels is coming to an end.
" Film stock is currently a much better medium than digital video, but I'm
familiar with the specific problems of video. Once those are out of the way,
film may disappear. "
"LILY CHOU-CHOU" will be Japan's first film shot with this digital camera.
Iwai has often been a technological groundbreaker in his country, having
used non-linear Avid systems for the editing of his film UNDO, and adopting
DTS (Digital Theater Sound) for his APRIL STORY.
"The aim isn't to be the first to use those tools."
While he was struggling with the screenplay, test footage shot with the
digital camera was screened for him. 'Combining art and technology, art
science', such combinations are natural for Iwai and may account for the
beauty and haunting pastoral glow of his climactic sequences.
Shooting began on August 10th, 2000
In August 2000, the digital binary birth of Lily begins.