This post is about the cast event of the movie "The Wandering Moon" (流浪の月), which
opened in Japan on May 13, 2022. On opening day, there was an event where the cast and director came on
stage to talk about the movie, with one session in the afternoon and
another in the evening, and I managed to attend the live broadcast of the evening session at a nearby cinema.
One of the main topics that kept being revisited during the event was that Matsuzaka Tori, who played the role of Fumi, had to go on a diet to maintain a frail and weak look throughout the entire filming period (plus before that). Director Lee Sang Il mentioned that after the filming, he wanted to give Matsuzaka Tori a treat and brought him to a restaurant. But Matsuzaka Tori had been on a diet for so long, he instead asked the restaurant, which specialized in Western cuisine, for something easy on the stomach. In the end, he gobbled down zosui, or Japanese rice soup, and Director Lee said this was the first time he saw someone eat zosui like this.
Matsuzaka Tori played the role of Fumi, who runs a cafe that serves only coffee and nuts, and he said that the filming set had a full set of equipment for making coffee. So he would make coffee for the staff to practise, since he himself can only drink that much coffee without becoming addicted to caffeine. He also mentioned that there was another staff member who made really good coffee, so he ended up trying to be better. To which Director Lee came in and pointed out that there wasn't really much to do since the coffee was made by the machine and they only needed to push a switch.
(Not sure how long the above video will be made available, though...)
There is also another related episode. Hirose Suzu also had to go on diet before the filming, but once filming start, she could just eat as she wanted, and so she would go with the rest of the staff for food and such. Once, she and Director Lee invited Matsuzaka Tori to eat with them... very much by mistake, because Matsuzaka Tori was still on a strict diet. She realized her mistake when he said, "Please go ahead." She said that in the end, she and Director Lee just went to buy bento from the convenience store for dinner because they felt so bad about tempting Matsuzaka Tori, who was working so hard to stick to that diet for the film. (And yes, Matsuzaka Tori was really really thin in the film.)
Tabe Mikako brought up that prior to the filming, since this was the first time she was working with Director Lee, she had been collecting information about the director to find out what kind of person he is. She would track down interviews of actors who worked with the director in the past and listen to them talk about their experiences working with the director. Wow... that's really some hardcore snooping...
The staff also organized a birthday surprise for Yokohama Ryusei. He was told that there would be an extra scene to be shot, where he was supposed to throw a rubbish bin at Sarasa and Fumi. "Action", he picked up the bin, looked inside, and found a birthday present instead. It was a surprise and he ended up with mixed feelings, because he was happy that the staff celebrated his birthday, but also a bit disappointed that there won't be an extra scene with him.
There were also other episodes mentioned, such as Uchida Yayako talking about her mother's experience working with Director Lee. Masuda Mio, who plays Anzai Mio (Sarasa's colleague's daughter), made an appearance at the end and presented flowers to the leads. She had worked with Hirose Suzu in another work (Natsuzora, a NHK morning drama series) and having Hirose Suzu around during filming was reassuring for the young child actor.
After the cast event, the live broadcast ended and the movie started. The movie is 150 minutes, and the event 40 minutes, so that's 190 minutes (more than 3 hours!) without a toilet break. I had thought they would have a short interval between the event and the screening of the movie, but I was wrong...
Anyway, I found the entire cast event on Youtube:
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