New York Times and Sen to Chihiro

Bill Thompson siswt at CUVMC.AIS.COLUMBIA.EDU
Mon Jan 7 18:08:37 EST 2002


Kinejapan ---

The New York Times had an article on Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi/
Spirited Away, written by James Brooke, last Thursday.  It can be
found at:

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/03/movies/03JAPA.html

and access to the article is free for seven days from publication
(registration to the Times site is required, but that is also free).


Overall, this is a positive and upbeat article about the success
of the film in Japan and its response, containing very little
that has not appeared in Kinejapan.

For me, however, the interesting part appears near the end:

"With the film opening this winter in Asia and in France, Mr.
Miyazaki has talked vaguely about opening one day in the United
States.  "Princess Mononoke," his only film to open commercially
in the United States, bombed, drawing barely 2 percent of the $150
million in box office revenue it had earned in Japan.

"Not surprisingly, Studio Ghibli was in no rush to raise its
American profile.  For this article, a publicist declined to arrange
interviews with anyone from the studio  He would not provide
any background material on 'Chihiro,' subtitled video versions
of earlier films, or even a ticket to Mr. Miyazaki's new
studio museum.

"The publicist said, 'Other than my mother living in New York,
I am not interested in this article being written.'"


I realize that the American box office for Princess M may have been
over-discussed in Kinejapan, but let me add a few observations
(and these are simply my observations, with no facts
to back them up) about its New York run.

Princess Mononoke initially played as a special event as part
of the 1999 New York Film Festival in October 1999, then
opened a good month or so later, spaced to play well away
from the big Disney animation of the season.  Its distributor
also helped to coordinate a Miyazaki retrospective at the
Museum of Modern Art in late September that was well
attended and played in several other American and Canadian cities.

Many papers run features on forthcoming seasons (i.e., the films
that will play during the fall), and a couple included articles
on Miyazaki's films and/or Princess M in September.  In fact
they appeared to generate more interest then
than when the film actually opened.

The Times review during the NY Film Festival was favorable but
lukewarm, certainly nothing to appeal to an art house crowd.
I had trouble determining the desired audience from the ads
which appeared at that time:  the film was positioned not as
a young children's movie to keep the young Disney crowd
from being disappointed;  it also did not seek an art house crowd.
Instead, the ads implied that it was a kind of pure and basic
entertainment animation film for adults (??? a G-rated film for
adults?) that had something to do with ecology.  Perhaps this,
plus the Miyazaki name, is enough to sell a film in Japan,
but the US is not Japan.  A fair amount
of money spent on these ads in NY when the film opened, probably
more than the entire annual budgets for companies like Milestone
or Kino (companies that have successfully distributed Japanese
films in the US, albeit on small budgets).

Even though Princess Mononoke did not do well commercially,
its distributor did keep it in New York for a couple of extra
months, and it helped to close the Greenwich Theater in the
West Village (which I believe is now a construction site
for a new apartment complex).   Although it played in several
large cities around the US, when the distributor became
disillusioned with the box office results, it did not try
to open it more widely like a Milestone would have done.
The Disney/Miramax people never realized what they had nor
how to advertise it, and when throwing a bit of money at
it didn't seem to work, they just stopped.
Presumably because of this disappointment, other Miyazaki
films have been released on video, but not theatrically,
although titles like Kiki's Delivery Service have had
special screenings as children's matinees in places like
Lincoln Center.

I'm not going to provide any moral here.
I simply hope that I get to see Sen to Chihiro in New York
some day.


Bill Thompson


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