Tanigaki Kenji's column on Eiga Hiho magazine Sept. 2015 issue.
~translation~
No. 158 Professionals Will Give Everything They Have to the Silliest!
Full Blast RuroKen Spirit! Behind the Scene of ‘Nissin Cup Noodles’ CM!!
June !th
Somehow I have a lot of offers for CM this year. Today, I’m working on the sixth one already! When I’m always working on cinemas, I feel tempted to think, ‘I’d like to make a CM for a change …’ but I have to admit I’m getting bored. (lol) The shooting of a CM has a totally different atmosphere from that of a movie. In any case, the client and the actor comes the first. Even the director, who has a stern look during the test, welcomes the actor flatteringly when he arrives, and at the actual shooting, the director praises to the skies saying, ‘Oh, good! You’re the best!!’ as if he were thinking, ‘To hell with the policy or creativity!’ I won’t say all the CMs are like that, but I often hear something like that. On the part of the actors, though I guess they mean no harm, they show slightly different character from what they show at the movie shooting site, and I think it’s funny. An actor made such good friends with your action team that you start a friendly conversation with him when you see him again at the shooting of a CM, but he may take a rather stiff attitude (This is not my experience.)
The reason why I’m telling you such a thing is that the actor of the CM for Cup Noodles this time is Sato Takeru! We’ve worked on ‘Rurouni Kenshin Trilogy’ for quite a while, but this is the first time for us to work together for a CM. Well, I’m looking forward to seeing what an atmosphere he’s going to create!
Anyway, many of the Nissin’s CMs these days are quite aggressive, such as ‘Pe-peko! Chin!’ in Curry-meshi and Hashimoto Kanna’s ‘Baka-kkoii, I’ve thought, but this one is also terrific. Thrilled by eating Cup Noodle, saying, ‘This taste …!’ Sato Takeru gets his clothes ripped, jumps on the floating ground, unites with a robot, surfs on the wave of noodles, flies into the space, and arrives onto the stage of a live concert at a packed stadium!, saying, ‘Delicious!!’: this is the scenario… Nonsense!! It’s a thirty-second CM, but it has as many as thirty-five cuts! As for the ‘noodle ocean’, it took seven hours to take it, pouring the real noodles into a miniature set!!
And on the shooting day, Sato Takeru appeared. Takeru-kun, who appeared with short hair according to the ongoing drama, did not take a stiff attitude at all. (lol) Whew, what a relief! Anyway, he devotes all his energy to whatever he does as always. The director was so delighted that he added this and that, and Takeru-kun met all the requests appropriately. He’s really a professional. I can understand he does his best to play Kenshin, but I think his attitude to complete such a silly task decisively is wonderful. If you did a halfway job of this type, it would get lamer, you know.
He said he would start the shooting early in the morning tomorrow. I couldn’t ask him if this CM shooting was a refreshing change of pace or just a burden for him. (lol)