Pink and Gray, the live-action adaptation of NEWS’ Shigeaki Kato’s first novel, was screened on October 28 as part of the Japan Now section of the 28th Tokyo International Film Festival. Director Isao Yukisada attended a Q & A session at Shinjuku Piccadilly, Tokyo.
Yukisada turned Kato’s controversial work which was written interwoven with truths and fiction about the entertainment world into a film. Popular actor, Rengo Shiraki dies suddenly and the world turns its attention on his childhood friend and unsuccessful actor, Daiki Kawata. However, Daiki struggles with his grief at having suddenly lost Rengo and for his false fame starts losing himself in the end.
Director Yukisada praised Yuto Nakajima from “Hey! Say! JUMP”, featuring in this film in his debut performance, saying “it really hits home to me during this film that idols are really amazing.” He states the reason for this as “in the film, you see a promotional video and in a mere 15 minutes of footage, Nakajima looked just the part and was almost perfect in every sense. Only the talented idols can appeal to the camera and reach out to the audience without seemingly embarrassed”, he said referring to how Nakajima looked straight into the camera then sang the praises. “he is a match for (co-star) Masaki Suda who is an outstanding actor-the most wanted in the Japanese film industry. They respected each other. Even at the Busan International Film Festival (to which the film was officially entered), they were hanging off each other so much that people would have thought that they were a gay couple and I think that this is one of the reasons that they have achieved a maximum chemistry between them in which that the real-life and film character’s relationships evolve.”
Yukisada and scriptwriter Ryuta Horai has developed a story that differs from the original work to a great extent. Apparently, Yukisada has “not yet heard” Kato’s reaction but “he also wanted to do more film acting, so I have thought from the start that he would understand the alterations.” Yukisada also commented that “when Kato read the screenplay, he found new elements added to the original story. He said ‘I can see how serious director Yukisada is’. About the film itself, I think he can understand that there is a way of method for recreating a film from the original one”, he revealed.
A monochrome image is inserted from a certain point in the film however, the title is “Pink and Gray”, so it’s not as though we were going to make it monochrome throughout the film. If you think about it like that, it’s a little different”, he said with a wry smile. Apparently, this was the first time he had tried to use monochrome and “I thought it would make it look alive. Because it wasn’t in color, in comparison, all you were seeing was the actors’ faces and there were nothing else to get in the way. It made me feel that I wanted to film in monochrome throughout the film.” he reflected.
Pink and Gray will be released nationwide on January 9, 2016.
The news provided by eiga.com 
