Written by Stephen Alpert who works for Studio Ghibli & Tokuma.
Lots of intersting info on Disney's handling of Mononoke. Dream Works also wanted to form there own alliance with Studio Ghibli.
January 27 (Tue) - Meeting with Harvey Weinstein in New York. In January we had our first meeting with Miramax since the decision was made for them to release MONONOKE HIME. Suzuki-san brought Harvey Weinstein a present from Japan. A Japanese sword (not a real one, but one that looked exactly like a real one, except the blade was not sharp). We had heard that Harvey Weinstein sometimes has a very bad temper, and we notices that the other Miramax staff in the room looked very worried as he took his present from its sheath and examined the blade).
Suzuki-san asked Harvey Weinstein to please accept the present, and remember: "MONONOKE HIME, no cut."
November 24 (Tues) -I had seen MONONOKE HIME in Japan in a movie theater about seven or eight times. I had seen the subtitled version of MONONOKE HIME in movie theaters in Japan and in the US about five times. But I wasn't prepared for this audience's reaction to "The Quest".
The audience was very noisy. People were talking loudly and making jokes. One person was throwing popcorn. One person was pointing a red laser-pointer beam at the screen. people were constantly moving around, getting up to get popcorn and sodas, getting up to go to the bathroom.
People laughed at places that weren't funny (Hiisama, the village wise woman, being carried in on someone's back to look at Ashitaka's wound). People laughed at places that were not supposed to be funny, but were funny (the actress' difficulty in pronouncing the English words in the scene where Hiisama reads Ashitaka's fate with stones; a youthful female voice coming from a bandaged up old man; Puff a rapper's voice coming out of the hulking samurai-like Gonza). I was amazed. I had never seen a more impolite, rowdy, disrespectful audience at a movie in my entire life.
After the film was over, the marketing researchers went around the theater gathering up the evaluation forms that each person in the audience was asked to fill out before leaving. Some people took their time and answered the questions carefully. Others rapidly checked boxes, threw down the questionnaires and left.
About 20 people who had been selected to form a focus group to review the film gathered at the front of the theater. The marketing team leader moderated a discussion on the film in which she tried to lead the group in the direction of answering a set of questions about the film. What did they think of the individual performances, the music, the dialogue, the fact that the film was dubbed and not subtitled, the length of the film, did they follow the story, did they like the film, would they pay to see it, would they tell their friends to see it, would they see it more than once, what was the point of the film, did it have a message, and did they think other people would like the film?
All of the people in the focus group were very good at expressing their feelings, remembered a surprising amount of detail from the film, and seemed mostly to have liked it. Their answers to the questions were thoughtful and showed that the film had interested them enough to think about
I didn't know Puff Daddy was the original English voice actor for Gonza.November 25 (Wed) -The most important categories that were looked at had to do with approval ratings and whether the audience would recommend the film to others. In those categories the film had scored about 85% in the "strong yes" (I would, and I definitely would). To me that seemed good, but I was told that for a successful release, the numbers had to be above 90%.
The results also showed that the test audience had very, very strongly approved of the voice performances of Gillian Anderson as MORO, Billy Crudup as ASHITAKA, Claire Danes as SAN, and Billy Bob Thornton as JIGO. the audience had very strongly disapproved of the voice performances of GONZA and HIISAMA.
The test audience also thought the film was too long, and that parts of the story were very hard to understand.
The result of the meeting was that it was clear that certain things had to be fixed. The Miramax consensus was that if Neil Gaiman were to re-write several parts of the dialogue, and the parts of GONZA and HIISAMA were re-voiced, the story would be easier to follow, livelier, and audiences would not feel that the film was long, the approval ratings would go up, and everyone would be happy.
I'm Glad they recasted the part.
