When two artists who admire each other’s work unexpectedly get to collaborate, it’s a wonderful thing. That’s exactly what happened when anime legend Shinichirō Watanabe and his team reached out to John Wick franchise director Chad Stahelski and his team. Watanabe was hoping someone at Stahelski’s boutique Hollywood action studio 87eleven would be able to give some pointers for the action design of his upcoming anime Lazarus. Stahelski’s response?
“Fuck that, I’ll do it,” he recalled to Polygon in a video interview.
This surprised Watanabe, who brought up that the show didn’t exactly have the budget to bring in a top-level Hollywood team for the action. But Stahelski told him not to worry about the cost, because of his longtime love of Watanabe’s work. Stahelski’s only condition: He wanted to be deeply immersed in the process. Watanabe’s Cowboy Bebop and Samurai Champloo are two of the most influential of the many building blocks that make up Stahelski’s style, and this was an opportunity to work closely with an artist he had many, many questions for.
The feeling was mutual: Stahelski says he and Watanabe spent a long time “geeking out” on a call, asking about each other’s work and approach, before embarking on a fruitful yearlong creative partnership that involved constant communication and collaboration. The result is the fluid action design of Lazarus, a stylish anime where the fight and chase scenes perfectly match Watanabe’s visual flair.
Polygon spoke with Stahelski about how the collaboration came together, the process of merging his style with Watanabe’s, and why Watanabe’s work is so important to him. You can read the first part of our interview, about Stahelski’s love for anime and his admiration of animators, here.
Polygon: What do you remember about that first call to ask about your interest in Lazarus?
Chad Stahelski: I had talked to Joseph Cho, who’s a producer on it. I’m very fascinated by animation. We’re trying to do one of our own right now as well. So we had been going back and forth with Joseph, who became a good friend, and knew my love of anime, and he just happened to be a producer on Lazarus. Every time somebody interviews me for John Wick, I always bring up anime and what I love about it, from Ghost in the Shell to one of my biggest influences, Cowboy Bebop, and obviously Samurai Champloo and stuff. And remember, I was watching anime before the internet, before cellphones, so it was like going to Odyssey Video and trying to get some old videotape.
Anyways, Joseph knew that, so he literally asked, “Hey, listen, would you like to do a Zoom with Watanabe-san?” And I was like, “You’re kidding, that’d be great.” So we got on the phone, and I still hadn’t completed filming on John Wick: Chapter 4. We had finished principal [photography], and I still had a portion left to shoot in Japan. So I said, “Hey, I love your work. Huge fan.” And it got past that like that, and it was right into “Why do you compose a certain way? Why do you…?” I had a thousand questions to ask one of my favorite directors, and I geeked out right off the bat, and he was asking about John Wick, because he was interested in live action, I’m interested in anime.
With your familiarity with Watanabe’s work and the animation style, how did you approach matching the action design to the visual look of the show?
That starts with Watanabe-san. He’s very good. He’s very, very creatively articulate. And I don’t mean just verbally, I mean at hitting key phrases or key ideas that lock it in. Fortunately, we’re all big fans of his. So the visual style is, I’d say, within his continuity of stylistics and reality, [since I] literally memorized everything of Cowboy Bebop and Samurai Champloo.
So we first ask things like “What are the parameters? What’s the world?” And obviously we keep changing. The more and more artwork he gives, the more and more we go. But again, every time I get asked these questions, it is all based on the assumption this is a linear process. It is not. There’s a blank piece of paper for him, and there’s a blank piece of paper for us. If I waited until he designed everything, then [did] our thing, it may not fit. So he does a little idea. I do a little idea. That idea makes that idea. It’s a nonstop back and forth that’s very, very circular, very revisiting.
You’ll give me a story, you’ll send it to me. I’m going to tweak your story, send it back to you. You’ll hate half, but you’ll love half. And next thing you know, three or four interviews back, the story’s changed. Now you’re talking about some other aspect of the character. That’s the way you have to always look at it. That’s why it’s so important to have continual meetings creatively to continually express and try and not just go, OK, Pete, this is it, man, you got 30 seconds and then you lock it. Is your best work ever going to come that way?
No.
Are you willing to bet that your best work came out in 30 fucking seconds and that’s it, it’ll never get better?
Probably not. No.
No, exactly. You haven’t hit your fucking apex shit. And that’s us, man. You’ve got to experiment. If it was just you and you’re an artist and you’re just singing a song or writing a song, it’s only you, that’s one thing. But it takes 300 fucking people to do a sequence for me. I’m not shitting you. That’s the bare minimum. It gets closer to a thousand when you get bigger sequences. So you think I’m going to get that right on the first go?
No, and I think what’s so cool about this collaboration is it feels like the kind of global collaboration that wouldn’t have really been possible 20, 30 years ago, without modern technology.
And communication, yeah. And again, you got to give those guys, both Joseph and Watanabe-san, a lot of credit, man, to be that open and to let us be lucky enough to partake in their little world. I mean, you’re dealing with a franchise and a brand that you don’t really want to fuck with, you don’t. That’s a fairly big name, a quality brand, and to invite us in and to trust us to be part of it, and to share their inner workings of how they create and what their ideas are, and to be absolutely fucking fearless with that. Even here, it’s very, very rare. A rare kind of creative, honestly.
Watanabe is a big name globally, but also a big name to you personally, and to your background as an artist.
There was a little stress. We didn’t want to fuck it up. But I don’t think you should take things that don’t scare the shit out of you a little bit. Otherwise you’re going to get bored.
New episodes of Lazarus air Sundays on Adult Swim, and are available the following day on Max.
The post John Wick’s director breaks down how he got to design action on Lazarus, ‘the funnest job’ he’s ever done appeared first on Polygon.
