What if you lived your life solely to create art? We spoke to documentarian Zach Heinzerling about the fascinating Shinoharas, the modern art world, and his film's stunning opening sequence.
Funny, honest and at times, heartbreaking, Cutie and The Boxer follows the complex and loving relationship between Ushio Sinohara, the 81 year old Japanese artist synonymous with the action art movement, and his wife, Noriko, who struggles to let her own artistic voice be heard. Filming over the span of several years, director Zach Heinzerling allows the couple to speak for themselves by employing an observational style that results in a completely immersive and moving experience for his audience.
Following its New York premiere at 2013 Tribeca Film Festival, Cutie and The Boxer hits select theaters this Friday in New York and LA. Heinzerling sat down with us to discuss the power of the camera, the importance of social media as a curative tool, and his incorporating Noriko's work into his own narrative process.
Tribeca: What is the first thing you noticed about Ushio and Noriko Shinohara? Have you already been interested in the art world?
Zach Heinzerling: I met them in 2008 through a friend of mine from college who's a photographer and a journalist. He thought they would make a good subject for a short film. I wasn't a Japanese art aficionado before this, and I'm still not. I went to school to study philosophy, but I took a lot of film classes and then started working in documentary. I always enjoyed Japanese culture, but that wasn't what drew me to them. They are such bizarre subjects just so authentic. Everything they do has so much personality in it.
You can easily juxtapose their two personalities: he is very brash and masculine, but also ageless, and she is very precise in everything she does. I'd been doing a lot of cinematography in documentaries, and for a photographer they were a beautiful couple to capture. Their personalities have so much fire and they are so dynamic that I didn't have to ask them questions. They asked each other questions, in a way. They interviewed each other and I just watched.
Tribeca: I was really struck by the film's opening sequence in which you follow the creation of one of Ushio's trademark action murals through one long shot. Did you always plan to open the documentary in that way?
ZH: Definitely not. That was actually the first thing we shot, though which is kind of amazing. I never planned to open with it. I just thought it might be cool. However, it almost explained everything about their relationship, in a way. Ushio's personality and dedication to art is apparent, but I love when Noriko enters the frame in the middle of the shot, taking pictures of him. There was this idea of putting everything out there. Even the way the canvas is shaped, it looks like a cinema frame. You start at one place in the artistic process, your life is just splattered on the canvas, and then it ends.
There's something magical about both of them being involved in a shot that shows Noriko in action as photographer and manager and kind-of-assistant. I think it means an immense amount that she's always been there for him. Whether she enjoys this role or not, she still does it. I mean, Ushio is now 81 years old and still maintains this pure connection between person and art. I think that connection is hard to see with a lot of artists, but with him it's very direct. There's something really nice and beautiful about that.
Tribeca: What choices did you make with the typography? Can you talk about the title design?
ZH: The opening colors the opening palate of the film consist of muted tones. You look around at these soft yellows and soft pinks and blues. There's something pastel-y about their world and their environment. The text is a little bit playful because it's off-centered: playful enough, but also kind of classic. That was the mood in some ways for the whole film. The music has a very whimsical quality but it's very classically based. It's a balance of being bold but also grounded in something that makes sense with the style of the film.
Tribeca: Cutie and the Boxer does not follow the typical structure of a documentary but rather unfolds like a narrative. When did you choose to incorporate Noriko's comic as animation to help drive/shape the story?
ZH: The idea for that was early on, but the execution was not until the edit. I always had this idea that the story of the comics would be this second layer, that it was a story that we would checkerboard throughout the film. With documentaries, you're actually writing the film in the edit, so I didn't know if it would work or not. It became a process.
Sometimes we had a lot more of the comic book in there, and we would cut out different scenes from the comic and move them to other parts of the film. We didn't animate them until we knew what those scenes would be. The idea really came from being transported into Noriko's brain. I asked, how does the audience see this through Noriko's eyes? I wanted to seamlessly connect for the audience the feel of the narrative with the feel of being transported into the other world of her mind. In her comics, she reconstructs her past in a way that's a little bit exaggerated and comical: that's how she sees things. Transitioning into a world that is subjective and animated makes the film less literal.
They don't really consider alternatives it's like art is everything and whether you think it is worthwhile or not is your own judgment.
Tribeca: I thought you struck a really nice balance between Ushio and Noriko's relationship and the pressures of the modern art world. It was heartbreaking to watch as the Guggenhiem exhibition fell through. Did Ushio hear an
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What if you lived your life solely to create art? We spoke to documentarian Zach Heinzerling about the fascinating Shinoharas, the modern art world, and his film's stunning opening sequence. 
