The Face of Time - POV - Aarhus Universitet

A Danish Journal of Film Studies 51
outer or overt conflict between characters and I was nervous about
having him take a stab at a rewrite. I emphasized to him that I was
going for a much quieter style of film than the ones he was used to
making. I like to think of my style as less melodramatic than his.
Anyway, I asked if he wanted to read the original story. He said no,
that that would influence him too much. He took my old script and
came up with Taro's reluctance to change his answer and the
teacher's ultimatum. These changes were so crucial that I finally felt
confident about actually shooting the script. In fact, Chris wanted to
make Taro even more overtly defiant. I pulled him back and
explained to the actor that the main reason he doesn't answer at first
is because he is embarrassed and scared of saying the wrong thing.
Later he refuses to change his answer because he is mad at the
teacher for embarrassing him and not for political reasons.
The cushion and tops O-Yoshi brings to Taro are also your own inventions.
Can you tell me why you added them to the story?
We took out the scene where Taro cries and O-Yoshi consoles him
so we are left without a reason for Taro to fall for O-Yoshi. I hate
love stories where we are supposed to assume that the male protagonist
falls for the girl simply because she is pretty and for no
other reason. I wanted scenes that concretely showed O-Yoshi's
kindness towards him and showed them playing together,
becoming friends. In the original story Lafcadio Hearn is able to
simply write something like "and they played together and had such
a wonderful time." I had to come up with something specific that
expressed this. I called my Japanese tutor from high school and
asked her to brainstorm some different kinds of games that kids in
1930s Japan might play. Somehow the tops felt like the quietest