I started out as a “program picture” director, and program pictures are strictly entertainment. Therefore, the scripts I received from the studio weren’t artistic to begin with. So there was no hope of making an artistic film from the script. The only thing that I could hope to do was to make movies fun and entertaining. The critics say films have to have social commentary or a humanitarian point of view and that is that. But what I was aiming for was how to make a movie entertaining. So I tried a lot of different ideas and styles to accomplish that.

—Seijun Suzuki