Filmmaker Zachary Heinzerling discusses the making of the film, Cutie and the Boxer.
POV: Describe Cutie And The Boxer for someone who hasn't seen it.
Zachary Heinzerling: Cutie And The Boxer is a love story. It basically takes the journey of two artists Ushio and Noriko Shinohara as they're navigating the competitive New York art market. Ushio became famous for his boxing paintings in the early '60s, as a young rebellious artist in Tokyo. And so Ushio is a very boisterous, funny, charismatic personality. And has been relatively famous for most of his career, but since moving to New York has struggled to really have much financial success. And Noriko, his wife of 40 years has always been the assistant cook, manager, et cetera for Ushio for most of their marriage. And the film really picks up when Noriko's art has taken on this new phase and she's very proud of a recent work that she's putting together. And it gives her the confidence to present it to the public and fight back a bit against the position that she's been in with her husband for all these years.
POV: Now this couple of artists actually are local to Brooklyn. They're around the corner from here in DUMBO. When did you come into the picture? How did you meet Noriko and Ushio and what was it that drew you to them initially?
Zachary Heinzerling: I met the Shinoharas in 2009. I was introduced by a friend of mine who is a photographer and had done some portraits of them for a magazine. And he thought they would be interesting for a short film. So we came to their loft in Brooklyn, in DUMBO for an afternoon and shot for a few hours and immediately were kind of entranced by just their personalities. I mean on face value they're extremely entertaining and beautiful people. You know Ushio is ageless. And always performing. And as soon as we arrived he took his clothes off and did this boxing painting in which he dips these boxing gloves in black paint and just assaults a big white canvas. He was basically telling this story of himself through this painting and he's coughing and struggling through it the entire way. And with that first image, it was the first clue that this was an artist who deserved more attention than he was getting. And then immediately after seeing that it became clear that Noriko, who at first was a bit more shy, also had this interesting body of work that she showed us. The Cutie series, which depicts their tumultuous relationship and is this very funny but also very sad at times re-imagining of the history of these two personalities. So when we saw that it became clear that there was so much more of a layered story there, that the history of their relationship could be involved, but that the film itself would kind of play in these moments between them. I met them in 2009 and really the heart of the film wasn't filmed until probably around 2011 two or three years after I had met them. So it's really then when I got to know them and they got to know me and trusted me and my intentions that the kinds of scenes like them sitting around their house, eating dinner, started to feel more authentic and more indicative of who they were and what their relationship was like. And it showed a lot more truth I think in their relationship than anything that they would have said in an interview did.
POV: Had they ever had films done about them before or not to the extent?
Zachary Heinzerling: Yeah, Ushio has been the subject of many documentaries all done by Japanese production companies. He was the leader of this organization called the Neo Dada organizers that were kind of associated with the Gutai movement in the '60s. But they were media whores; they lived to be filmed. It wasn't art unless it was somehow seen in a newspaper or witnessed by a photographer or filmed. Noriko, in most of these documentaries is seen sort of in the shadow of Ushio. She's always seen as an artist, but only in relation to her husband. Mostly her art was seen as copying her husband's and she was never really taken seriously in any of these documentaries. So when it became clear that I was interested in her work, she really jumped at that opportunity. So it became this collaboration where we were feeding off of each other's creative energy.
POV: So you've described three years in that it's almost as if the trajectory of what you were looking for changed. It sounds like Ushio was used to having artist profiles made about him and his artwork. How did he react to that shift, or when did he realize that things might be different?
Zachary Heinzerling: He's sort of a horse with blinders. And then when the film eventually came out, he was shocked to see that he had a less than an expected place in the film, initially, and then as the film began to be seen and talked about, he hopped on board with the idea that the film was more about Noriko and then began to talk about her work in a different way than he had to. And which Noriko would see through and tell him that it shouldn't have taken a film for you to realize that I'm doing something that's meaningful.
POV: And how would you articulate or describe the film stylistically? What were the aesthetic choices that you made?
Zachary Heinzerling: I've always been interested in Japanese culture, film, art, otherwise. I did study some in university and had the chance to go to Japan and so I think some of those films were influencing in the way that I decided to shoot the film. Most of the film is shot on a tripod. It's very framed. I think the other main stylistic choice was to evoke the spirit of Noriko's work in the filmmaking itself. When you're seeing the past, when you're referencing the past, it's seen through Noriko's slightly twisted version of it. And then when you kind of come back in to the present you're still in her head-space. And with the music, it really kind of has a little bit of a more of a whimsical quality than I otherwise probably would have chosen because they're kind of goofy. They're caricatures, the both of them you know, Cutie And The Boxer was kind of referencing Lady and The Tramp, Beauty and The Beast, or some of these other kind of classic fairy tales where you know there is that twinkle or that spark or the possibility of something other worldly interacting with it. So in a way I think it plays off of these slightly more observational, even verité style of filmmaking, but I wanted to push a sensibility that would also make that observational feeling not so stiff and imbue it with something that would make you question how honest certain scenes were.
POV: Was she a collaborator in the animation of her work?
Zachary Heinzerling: Yeah, she had told me at one point that she sometimes has dreams where her Cutie drawings are animated. And that was kind of the initial spark for the idea. But as far as Noriko's involvement in the animation--she had given me kind of the initial idea and then I went out and did some test renderings of some animation. And she really was excited by the idea. And so we ran with it. And we would show her things, but she was happy that we were doing smaller movements that it still felt like you could see the craftsmanship and the work and the personality of the drawings you know were still intact.
POV: So Cutie And The Boxer got the best director award at Sundance and the film was nominated for an Academy Award. Did you expect that level of recognition and how's the experience been?
Zachary Heinzerling: I definitely didn't expect the recognition it got. I originally thought of it more as an art film. But the reality is that their relationship plays off of these very universal themes and that what I thought as something very specific, these two you know expatriate Japanese immigrant artists living in DUMBO, became so much less specific and so much universal. And things like marriage or aging or passion in your creative pursuits which is essentially what the film became about, all of those things everyone can relate to. So in a way it became so much more of a populist movie than I had ever expected.
POV: You're talking about these universal themes, has your definition or understanding of these sort of broader concepts changed as a result of seeing this, I guess odd pairing that has been in a relationship, lasted in marriage for 40 years, has there been a shift in, in your conception of these things?
Zachary Heinzerling: I think in starting the film, I started the film when I was 23 years old and had a very naïve concept of what being in a relationship meant. I have a tendency to overanalyze in my own relationships. And project what the issues may or may not be. And while I think the Shinoharas could probably benefit from some psychotherapy, in a way, there was something beautiful about how they described their relationship in these kind of metaphorical ways, whether it was Noriko saying, we're like you know two flowers in the same pot or.... There's always some way that they're able to describe their romance where it was in an atypical construct that there was this meeting of opposites that there was a mutual beneficiality that to some reads as dependency which is kind of always a pejorative term used in relationships. But to them the dependency is what makes it work. You know Ushio in one of I think one of the most beautiful things he said about their relationship is that fundamentally what they really enjoy in life is art. And whether that's making art, or viewing it, they share that experience and they can talk about that experience. And when they go to museums and look at something that they both appreciate there's love in that mutual appreciation. Some of the greatest experiences you have in life you share with other people. And if you are not with someone that can share, can reach that experience or level of experience that you are and that moment isn't as powerful as a result.
POV: Is there any significance to having your film shown on public television on POV as opposed to other venues?
Zachary Heinzerling: Personally a lot of the documentaries that inspired me or made me think about documentary in a different way were shown on POV and public television. I think that it's especially important because these are artists who live in Brooklyn. They are New Yorkers. When Ushio talks about who his artwork is for he would say that it's for the people on the subway. If the subway could be his gallery he would prefer that. They could only be New York characters and when you go into their loft you feel it's a shrine to some heyday of New York that I think a lot of people when they see the film will hopefully get a sense of as well.