Written by imouto, June 7, 2005

After I had read on Anime Bliss that Miyazaki Hayao would be making an appearance at the North American premiere of Howl's Moving Castle at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City I was quite eager to attend this event. I even mentioned it in my LJ that I would try to snag some tickets for the thing. It was after reading my LJ post that Anime Bliss staff member, Twilight, IMed me asking me if could write an article about the event for the site. I have to admit that I was a bit hesitant to do it since I'm not really all that fond of writing, and besides, I wasn't even sure if I would be able to get tickets. But after having gone to the event, I felt the need to write about it, or rather RANT about it. Why, you might ask. That's because the bloody event was SORELY DISAPPOINTING! The movie itself was also a bit disappointing but I’ll get to that later.

First off, let me tell you what I had to do to get these bloody tickets. I figured that if I knew about Miyazaki’s appearance, other anime fans must also know about it (I had even done a Google search the night before just to confirm that he was definitely going to be there and I found Disney’s official press release about the event mentioning that Miyazaki and some of the celebrity English voice actors and actresses would be attending), so I HAD to make sure I got there early the day of the event to try to score some tickets (I had already tried calling MoMA a few days earlier to see if they had any more advance tickets available. Those were sold out). Me, being a horrible night owl and all, didn’t get there quite as early as I had intended. I arrived at the museum at around 11:30 AM. I knew that MoMA starts selling tickets for weekday screenings at 1 o’clock. I asked the dude at the Info Booth about the movie tickets and he pointed me to the lovely line that was over in a corner near one of the entrances and told me to talk to the woman holding a clipboard. I talked to her and she asked me how many tickets I wanted. I said 4, which by the way was the maximum number of tickets each person could get. She gave me a slip of paper that said that I was number 39 on the line and requested 4 tickets. Then she escorted me outside the museum. That’s right; I was the first one on the line to be sent outside the museum. Here’s a shot of the line inside from my point of view. And here’s a closeup shot of that white sign in the photo.

The wait wasn’t too bad. The only bad thing was how hot it was outside. The museum actually started selling the tickets before 1 o’clock which was nice. So I scored my 4 tickets a little after 12 o’clock and had looooaaads of time to kill before the movie. I won’t bother boring you with what I did to kill time. I’ll just mention that the last place I went to before heading back to MoMA was the Donnell Library located right across the street from the museum. It was a good thing I went in there too because soon right after I stepped inside the library it started to thunderstorm. I was pleasantly surprised by the library’s selection of DVDs. I was able to borrow Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, Clerks, and volume 1 of Azumanga Daioh (watching Azumanga Daioh after the premiere ended up being the highlight of my night). ^_^

So since the library closes at 6, I headed on over to the museum a little before 6 to figure out where the theater was located so I could tell my friends where to meet me. There was already a small line of ticket holders waiting outside the entrance to the theater. Here’s the sign for the ticket holders’ line. While we were waiting, some Japanese press people arrived and took footage of us ticket holders. They also interviewed some of the people on the line. This one camera guy had an interesting, cute, little furry thing on top of his camera. Around 7 o’clock, some of the celebrity voice actresses started to arrive. I saw Blythe Danner (from Meet the Parents and Meet the Fockers, and also Gwyneth Paltrow’s mother) but didn’t take a shot of her. Lauren Bacall also arrived. Of course, all of us anime fans wanted to get a photo of the elusive Mr. Miyazaki. Man, is this guy hard to get a shot of! At around 8 o’clock, Miyazaki and Suzuki Toshio stepped outside for a few minutes. They completely had their backs turned to us!!! Not only were they backing us (as one of my friends called it) fans but they constantly had people around them blocking our view! Sorry folks, but the best I could do was this miserable shot of the back of their heads!!!

At around 8:15 PM, they let us all into the building. You won’t believe what they did when we got inside. They told all of us to take out our cameras and camera phones and give it to them! What the fuck!??! So basically there was no chance in hell you were going to be allowed to take a photo of Miyazaki or anything for that matter. They took our cameras and camera phones, placed them in Ziploc bags, and gave us a small piece of paper with the number of our Ziploc bag printed on it. I was NOT amused. -_- I mean I can understand their concern about people recording the movie and piracy and all that crap, but a camera phone? Come on! So the only thing I could take a photo of before they confiscated my digital camera was the wallpaper they had in the room where we had to give up our gadgets. Which totally freaking sucked because the next room you walk into to get to the theater had all these framed movie posters of Studio Ghibli films!!!! Aaaaarrrggghhh!!! NOW here is the WORST FUCKING PART about this whole bloody event. So we’re all seated in the theaters and waiting for the movie to start (which by the way started a half hour late!). Right before they are about to start the movie, in walks this lady that works for MoMA, Mr. Miyazaki, Mr. Suzuki, and some other woman that we all assumed was either their translator or some other Studio Ghibli employee. The MoMA chick said some gibberish about how honored they were to be showing this film, blah blah yadda yadda yadda (and I swear to god she sounded like she was just making shit up off the top of her head. I seriously wondered if she had ever seen ANY Studio Ghibli films.) Then she introduced Mr. Miyazaki and Mr. Suzuki. They nodded their heads when their names were mentioned. We all applauded and then they walked out of the theater. That’s right; you read correctly, they LEFT THE THEATER AND DIDN’T SAY A FUCKING THING TO US!!!!! None of the press or celebrities were in the theater we fans were in. I’m guessing that they had their own private screening in the other theater MoMA has. WHAT THE FUCK!?!?! Is that any way to treat fans???? They didn’t say a bloody thing!!! Hell, I wouldn’t have even minded if they just spoke Japanese to us. At least say something!! Not even a freaking “tanku”!!! >:O Any-freakin’-hoo… onto my thoughts about the movie itself…

First of all, let me just say that I haven’t really liked any of Miyazaki’s most recent films (Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away) compared to his earlier works. Out of the three that have come out so far, I only liked Princess Mononoke enough to purchase the DVD. I loved Porco Rosso, Kiki’s Delivery Service, Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, My Neighbor Totoro, etc. and just keep on hoping that his next film will be just as great as those. I also don’t usually watch English dubbed versions of foreign films if I can help it, but of course, since the English voice actors were going to be there, that was the version they screened. Ok, here’s a quick synopsis of the story taken straight from IMDB because I’m just too damn lazy to write one myself.

A young woman named Sophie is cursed by the Witch of the Waste, and turns into an old woman, and she is unable to tell anyone of her plight. Unable to continue her job at her mother's hat shop, she goes to the ambulatory castle of the notorious wizard Howl, and insinuates herself into his household. Sophie befriends Calcifer, the fire demon who powers the castle and who is bound to Howl by a contract, the terms of which Calcifer cannot reveal. They promise to help each other with their problems. Like Calcifer, Howl can also see through the Witch's spell, and he and Sophie fall in love. Sophie helps Howl confront his former teacher, and the Witch of the Wastes.

Now, let me start off with my thoughts on the voice acting. I don’t know if the characters were supposed to have accents, but a few of the main characters had British accents which made absolutely no sense since none of the minor characters had British accents! Another issue was the main character, Sophie, who was played by two different actresses. Young Sophie was played by Emily Mortimer and she did it WITH a British accent. But Old Sophie was played by Jean Simmons who did it WITHOUT a British accent. What the hell?!?! Christian Bale as Howl was not too bad. The best line in the movie was when Howl says something like, “I can’t live on if I can no longer be beautiful.” LOL. That got a good laugh out of the entire audience. One major thing about the film that my friends and I didn’t like was all the cheesy schmaltzy dialogue. We wanted to hurl with all the lovey-dovey crap dialogue. XP We all felt that if we were listening to the original Japanese track the dialogue probably wouldn’t have sounded as cheesy. We also had issues with all the unresolved parts in the film. Like, why the hell is Sophie the only one who can break Howl and Calcifer’s curse?? And why the bloody hell was that war started in the first place???

So all in all, this whole event was VERY DISAPPOINTING. I’ve attended at least 3 anime movie premieres in New York (Millennium Actress, Cowboy Bebop: the Movie, and Escaflowne the Movie) and before the screening the Japanese guests always said SOMETHING to the audience. Also, the press and the guests sat in the SAME THEATER with the fans. They also usually did a Q&A session with the audience right after the film ends. And although I will admit it is rude on our parts, there have been times us fans have been able to ask them for their autographs when we spot them alone.

All I have to say is this, the next time I hear that Miyazaki Hayao will be attending some sort of premiere event, I’m sleeping in folks. I would much rather watch his next film in a real movie theater (the MoMA theater didn’t even have a freaking concession stand and they wouldn’t even allow us to bring in food and beverages in the theater) and one that is showing the movie in the original Japanese language with English subtitles. There is no point in wasting time to see someone who can’t even say a simple “tanku”.