Based on a short story by Mieko Kawakami, art director/graphic designer Tetsuya Chihara directs his first film, “Ice Cream Fever,” which will be released on July 14. In addition to stars Riho Yoshioka and Serina Mottola, musicians such as Shiba of Wednesday’s Campanella and Kayoko Yoshizawa, who sings the film’s theme song, also appear in the film, with Hatori playing one of the key characters in the story.
Although he has appeared in music videos for Macaroni Empitsu, this is the first time he has appeared in a film. While he has been rolling along as a rock band for more than 10 years, Hattori, who just celebrated his 30th birthday on June 29, is now looking forward to what kind of expression he is going to pursue as an individual. We interviewed him about the behind-the-scenes of the photo shoot, in which he says he had a hard time in an environment different from that of his main battlefield, live performances, and about his current interests and expressions outside of music.
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Lily Franky’s advice that pushed Hattori. Would you be more comfortable if you were not yourself?
-This was your first time to act in a film. How interested were you in acting in the first place?
Hattori: I had a feeling that I wanted to try it, regardless of whether I could do it or not. When I had an interview with Lily Franky for a series of articles in a magazine (“MG”), he told me, “I think you will eventually be asked to be an actor, so you should jump in when that happens.
Hatori: The way Lily said that had a …… mysterious power that I could easily accept. I had always liked her very much, and for some reason I thought at the time, “If that’s what Lily-san said, then there must be no doubt about it. So when I heard about this project, I thought, “Let’s jump in.
-Lily, you are indeed like a prophecy (laughs).
Hattori: But when I think back, a friend of my father’s owned a theater company, and I vividly remember going to see plays when I was little. The teacher at the preschool I went to also did theater, and I was very familiar with “acting,” so perhaps I had an interest in it from an early age.
formed “Macaroni Empitsu” in 2012. He is the main songwriter, vocalist, and guitarist in the band. His emotional voice, catchy melodies, and unique world of lyrics have made him popular among people of all ages, and he has sung theme songs for numerous commercials, movies, and TV dramas. He won the Best New Artist Award at the “Japan Record Awards,” and the following year he won the Best Picture Award for the second year in a row! In addition to his band activities, he has participated as a narrator in NHK’s program “Words of the Great Archived by NHK” and published his first lyrics collection “Kotoba no Tane” (Seeds of Words), which has become a topic of conversation.
-I think it’s a little different from acting, but in a sense, you have been living a “life of becoming”. In another interview, he told us that he used to play as an anime character when he was a child. I thought there might be a connection between those qualities and the job of “acting.
Hattori: This may sound like another quote from Lily-san, but she once said something like, “It’s easier to be myself if I’m not myself. She said that it was more difficult when she was in writing mode, where she had to write about herself, and that it was easier when she was in acting mode, where she was playing someone other than herself. When you write a novel or an essay, you can’t lie and you have to reveal yourself.
I understand that feeling very well, and in my case, it is simply more enjoyable and exciting to aspire to something rather than to be myself. I think everyone’s life is a search for what they are, but if you are forbidden to admire or imitate someone else and continue searching for yourself, I think it would be very painful.
Hattori: It would be more enjoyable and less stressful for me if I had an object that I wanted to be like and spent time wondering how I could be like it or how I could get close to it. I think that may be what Lily means when she says, “It’s easier not to be myself.
–I guess you could say that being an actor is a profession where you find out who you are by becoming someone you are not.
Hattori: That may be so. You meet a new you when you play the role of someone who is not you. Well, for a very successful actor, he/she may not even have a chance to think about “Who am I? It must be very difficult for them, though. It would be a misnomer to say that it is …… “easy” to always be playing someone else or becoming something other than yourself, but I think that’s where the fun is.
