Hideo Kojima x Shinya Tsukamoto (1999)

—Do you play games, Tsukamoto-san?

Tsukamoto: No, I never have. There was talk at one point about turning Tetsuo into a game, but it never went anywhere. Many people seem to think I play a lot of video games though. I was actually a bit worried when they asked me to do this interview with a game producer, since I know so little. So I went and watched some video footage of Metal Gear Solid and, wow, it was amazing.

Kojima: Thank you.

Tsukamoto: Seriously though, I was astonished. It was like, "whoa… this is incredible." With the amazing level of detail and design sense I can certainly see the cinematic aspect, but there's also something going on there that's wholly distinct from cinema, and that surprised me. I sometimes have the occasion at press events to see games up close, and the level of expression is getting more and more impressive. When I saw Metal Gear Solid it was like, "whoa… look how far they've come!" The mecha movement was great too, I can't imagine how that was done. It must be very time-consuming to create, no?

Kojima: From the point of conception, it took about 5 years in total. The actual production time with the full staff was only 2 years though.

Tsukamoto: Do you divide the work into different teams and sub-teams, like a movie production?

Kojima: In essence yes, but each group communicates with each other throughout the development. In anime, I understand that they have the genga and douga groups working separately in completely different locations, but in our case everyone sits right next to each other. Whenever a problem comes up we can call a meeting easily.

Tsukamoto: I know anime and cinema productions operate in similar ways, but I have no understanding of how games are made.

Kojima: I think games and anime are similar in that the whole world is created from your own imagination. And if you end up not liking something, you can easily change it. Cinema, on the other hand, has a live quality. There's not much you can do about the weather on a given day, or the interplay of light and shadow at a certain time. And that's what I love about it, the way a cohesive work is stitched together from moment to moment. In movies if you don't like a certain scene, you're stuck with it. But with games you can always rework something. Which is why game development can become neverending. (laughs)

Tsukamoto: I see, there's no limit there. The fact that you have to craft the entire world yourself is incredible, and in some ways intimidating. You can really lose yourself in all the details.

Kojima: There's also a lot of freedom with where we can place the camera. First, we create a rough storyboard, then we set the polygons up on screen, and then we can adjust the position of the lighting and the camera lens to our heart's content.

Tsukamoto: That makes sense. So first you create the basic scene layout and characters, and then you can freely experiment with the camera angles.

Kojima: Yeah, and that's why I said the work is neverending. The thing I made today, tomorrow morning I might not like it. (laughs)

Tsukamoto: I see. Recently I was thinking I should get used to using computers, so I started trying to make posters on my computer, and do editing there. People say that analogue and digital are polar opposites, but for a "made-by-hand director", I think that handcrafted feeling can be realized in the digital medium as well. There's also a lot of potential for gags, and so I've been giving it my best, but I just can't get used to working this way. (laughs) So when I hear about game production, it sounds like a distant universe to me… how long does it normally take one to play through this game?

Kojima: Two or three days, maybe.

Tsukamoto: That's incredible. So much detail, you can craft the very white on their breath. But doesn't that prospect seem a bit daunting, too…?

Kojima: When I think of having to create all that detail, yeah. (laughs) There's still always something that we can use the camera to hide, though. With games today, the characters are like dolls or puppets, so you can't really get "performances" out of them. You can animate them, and there's the voice actors, but that's it. You can't really get anything subtle. I'd love to be able to convey emotions like that but it's just not possible yet.

Tsukamoto: That would be great, wouldn't it… to have nuanced performances like a Yasujiro Ozu movie. Something where you have just two actors sitting across from each other, but the nuances make it supremely suspenseful. I bet a game like that would be interesting. (laughs)

Kojima: I want to make a game based on a novel or other work, but it's difficult.

Tsukamoto: How so?

Kojima: Ultimately, games are all about the gameplay. I'd love to make a game based on one of Kobo Abe's novels though. I've also been thinking about saving up some money and trying to buy the rights to Yojimbo from Toho Cinema.

Tsukamoto: Ah, Yojimbo would definitely make a fun game. (laugh)

Tsukamoto: I think I probably love it and hate it in equal measure.

Kojima: I'm not a fan myself. (laughs)

Tsukamoto: When I go to the beach in the countryside with my family, the darkness of the ocean is somehow unsettling, and I feel a strange fear. When I get back to Tokyo, in those moments the smell of the exhaust from the cars is comforting. But yeah, once I turned 30, Tokyo started to feel confining and claustrophobic to me.

Kojima: I grew up in the countryside myself, so I used to love the commotion of the city… the rust, the crowded roadsides, the electric wires. I loved all that. But after I turned 30 or so, it started to get a little tiresome…

Tsukamoto: After 30 you begin your gradual transformation into an "old man"—you stop being able to resist gravity, and you start drawing closer to the ground, to the earth. But the concrete beneath your feet in a city makes it hard to return… I find the city so claustrophobic sometimes, I have extreme thoughts like that. One time it was so bad I wanted to run off to Africa.

Kojima: Hah, nice. Please make a movie like Born Free while you're there. (laughs)

Tsukamoto: (laughs)

Kojima: We're the same generation, aren't we. We're the manga and movie generation.

Tsukamoto: They call us the "manga generation".

Kojima: I feel like Bullet Ballet is a movie about the conflict between our movie generation and the younger video game generation. There's a gun in Bullet Ballet. Our generation, raised on manga and western cinema, got used to the sight and idea of guns, but growing up here in Japan, in our actual lives there were no guns or gun violence. Our generation also witnessed the rise of environmental destruction and pollution, and an "end of the world" mentality was planted in our minds.

For the gamer generation, on the other hand, things like gun violence and the destruction of the environment were facts of life established before they were born, so they accept them as perfectly normal, and the games they play feature these elements. I think it's the gap between these two generations that is on display in Bullet Ballet.

Tsukamoto: "The conflict between our movie generation and the younger game generation"… I like that! I'm going to use it. (laughs) Next time I'm asked a question like that during a magazine interview or something, I'm going to act like I came up with it myself. Please don't say anything. (laughs) The original inspiration for Bullet Ballet for me had more to do with seeing the oyajigari (old man hunting) incident in the news, 1 and how the young perpetrators of that violence acted like perfectly normal good boys at home… that sent a chill up my spine.

But your interpretation about the generations honestly isn't that far off. Just like in The Matrix, both of those generations are struggling with a lack of reality, and in that shared struggle I think they are the same. They may sense a gap between themselves as you mentioned, but in actuality they are both animals caught in the same trap.

Kojima: When you turn on the TV today you can't avoid the news about gun violence. Back then it was something you saw only in manga or movies.

Tsukamoto: It's a big problem in America right now, with the mass shooting at that high school. I think tragedies like that have happened throughout history, and yet they seem to be much more frequent right now. And while there are no guns in Tokyo, incidents like those boys hunting old men show that a similar level of violence is taking place here, too. Reality is more frightening than movies. When I go overseas, I often hear complaints that "all you make is violent schlock", but that isn't my intention.

Kojima: People have said that about my work for a long time, too.

Tsukamoto: Really?

Kojima: Right around when the Columbine shooting took place in Colorado, shortly after there was an E3 event, and I heard a lot of criticism then. The Americans are really up in arms about this stuff. I've heard the American military is using video games as training tools now too, making their soldiers play DOOM. Apparently people are more willing to pull a trigger on the battlefield if they've played these games. Of course, this leads to the impression that "games are training for murderers!"

Tsukamoto: Yeah, you can say that, but there's more to it.

Kojima: The Europeans also make a fuss. They make all kinds of demands, like "you have to change the color of the blood in this game to green!"

Tsukamoto: Like Gamera. (laughs)

Kojima: Because of that every game now uses green blood, but I'm thinking I'd like to subvert that in my next game and make the blood white.

Tsukamoto: White, eh.

Kojima: I mean, if you shoot someone the blood should be red colored. In the same way that a person who's been shot has to show a painful expression on their face. It's how you get people to recognize and understand that being shot with a gun actually IS painful.

Tsukamoto: I always say that, with my movies, I'm trying to show the world as it is, not in some warped form.

Kojima: It's a difficult issue isn't it.

—I apologize if it's too early to ask, but do you have plans for your next movie, Tsukamoto?

Tsukamoto: I want to continue the Tetsuo saga with a "flying Tetsuo" character.

Kojima: Please, please let me be in this. (laughs)

Tsukamoto: My idea is to make it look like an American movie. Not using American capital or investment—it will still be my own independent production—but setting it in America, with American actors, with me directing it. Separate from that, I've been given some money by someone in France for a production, and while it would be small scale, I'd be free to shoot what I want more or less. These two ideas are pretty much polar opposites, so I'm very divided over what to film next. Do you encounter similar dilemmas with what game you want to make next?

Kojima: Yeah, there's a ton of stuff I want to make, just waiting on the backburner.

Tsukamoto: So you don't work on multiple games at once?

Kojima: I'm afraid I'm too clumsy to juggle multiple projects at once.

Tsukamoto: I also prefer quality over quantity; I prefer to pour my heart and soul into a single project for 4-5 years.

Kojima: Would you ever do a Hollywood production?

Tsukamoto: There was some discussion along those lines about eight years ago, but I declined. I can't deny that it's an intriguing idea. I'm half-joking and half-serious, but I would love to make Alien 6. (laughs) I'd love to include a bunch of deadpan gags. In Tetsuo, there's the part where his dick turns into a drill, and it's meant to be this funny thing you can laugh at, but everyone watches it with bated breath, in total seriousness. That's a favorite pattern of mine though. I was thinking, in Alien 6, to defeat the alien they would need to use the "Tetsuo Virus" found in Japan, and they would inject that into Sigourney Weaver to make Tetsujou (Iron Woman)… and despite being a gag I would film all this in a complete deadpan, serious way. I'm almost 40 but my head is still full of dumb stuff like this. (laughs)

Kojima: Metal Gear Solid sells more in Europe and America than Japan. I was unapologetic about making something Japanese in taste, but amazingly it was received with more passion and enthusiasm by people overseas.

Tsukamoto: Tetsuo, too, was initially popular in Spain and Italy… among those passionate people who fight over every soccer game, who can't hide their burning blood. And Mamoru Oshii's animated films, and anime in general, has an extremely fervent following overseas. I'm not surprised to hear the same is true about games.

Kojima: Video games and anime have this big "Made in Japan" brand image. Whether its Japan or Sega, being made in Japan means a certain guarantee of quality.

Tsukamoto: I can see how games, in particular, have a global market. The characters don't necessarily have to be Japanese, and you can always change the voice acting for the target region. Games are something the whole world has in common…

—Tsukamoto, are you more interested in games now after this conversation?

Tsukamoto: Yeah. I never really cared much about them, but everytime I see the graphics for these newer games I'm blown away.

Kojima: You can watch DVDs on the Playstation 2.

Tsukamoto: Oh yeah? I heard about that.

Kojima: You can pause your game and pop in a DVD. All on the same machine.

Tsukamoto: Wow. Looks like I'm finally gonna have to get into games. (laughs)

Kojima: I've been waiting for you. (laughs)

—I think it would be amazing if you both collaborated on a game.

Kojima: I think you would find making games far more fun than playing them. Definitely.

Tsukamoto: When I really get into something, ironically it ends up making me more anxious since I become invested.

Kojima: What if, for this new Flying Tetsuo movie, you had everything up to where he flies be a movie, and the flying and after could be a game that we create? We could also make just the middle part a game, so people who didn't want to play it could just skip it.

Tsukamoto: Ah, that would be something new, wouldn't it. But I must admit that I still have some apprehension about games. I sense the threat games pose to cinema, of replacing and overtaking it.

—Yeah, the younger generation is more inclined to play video games than go to a movie theatre.

Tsukamoto: Ah hah! I just realized you are my enemy, Kojima! I must crush you before you grow too powerful! (laughs)

Kojima: No, no. (laughs) With game consoles now being able to play DVDs, I actually feel like there will be a return to film. Kids that have only known games up to now will be able to buy DVDs and realize how interesting that world is—maybe more interesting to them.

Tsukamoto: You really think so? (laughs) But the game industry is super lucrative, isn't it?

Kojima: Well, only if your game sells. Right now it's a bit of a slump. I guess you could say the market is very lopsided… the big hits sell big, but smaller titles make nothing. If you hit that jackpot though, it's huge.

Tsukamoto: I think no matter how good of a movie I make, or how hard I try, I will never hit that jackpot. (laughs) I've learned a lot today.

Kojima: As have I.

—Thank you both for your time today.

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