The Contestant

As a documentary filmmaker, I’m especially aware of the veracity of the saying that the truth is stranger than fiction. But the idea of a man being left naked and alone in an apartment while attempting to survive on competition prizes was certainly the craziest true story I had ever come across. The fact that it was done purely for the sake of entertainment, and that the protagonist had become a national celebrity without even knowing it, was so incredible to me that I was instantly hooked on making a film about it. I was intrigued: I wanted to dig under the surface of this surreal tale of a man effectively trapped inside one of the first ever reality TV shows.

I was already a Japanophile before embarking on this project – but I didn’t speak the language and as Nasubi spoke very little English, it was an unlikely friendship that developed in making this film. Despite the origins of his fame being born from an outlandish TV show that he unwittingly auditioned for – he was an accidental star and to this day he is not a natural limelight seeker. But he does feel that now, after 20 years, it is the right time to tell his story. I am humbled that he has trusted me to do so.

I find people want to talk endlessly about Nasubi and his role in Denpa Shonen when they first hear about it. In trying to make sense of what happened and why, they project their own theories of what it is all about - whether it be consent, privacy, celebrity culture, the power of the media, ideas of authenticity or simply how we treat fellow human beings in the name of entertainment. I personally started making this film believing that it was a film about forgiveness and about the relationship between oppressor and oppressed.

And while it is of course all of these things, in addressing my own Western bias I came to realise it is also so much more than these things. It is about the universal basic need for human connection – and the importance of connecting with others as we try to navigate our way through life.

Nasubi begins his journey, emerging from a bullied childhood, in search of connection, which he looks for in the entertainment industry. If people are laughing at you – why not make them laugh with you? But he quickly finds himself an unwitting pawn in a TV social experiment.

It is uncanny that both Nasubi and Toshio Tsuchiya (the TV show’s producer) had such similar upbringings – both their fathers were police officers which, in Japan, means that as a family they would have moved every few years. This had a profound effect on them both. I too moved often as a child (my father was in the army) and can really relate to this experience and how it can shape your world view. I can identify with Nasubi’s need for connection as a result of his childhood – and can recognize how Tsuchiya has dealt with that too – albeit in different ways.

As a TV producer, Tsuchiya became obsessed with trying to capture and ‘bottle’ raw human emotion. And to an extent he really does capture something truly unique on screen that to do this day hasn’t been rivalled. But of course at what cost? To what ends? And did he really capture what he intended on screen?

We had numerous challenges in making this film. First, there were no rushes from the show that still existed. So we were working with the finished episodes which were only the edited highlights showing Nasubi ‘cheerful’ – and these were covered in Japanese voice over, canned laughter, commentary (in Japanese) and a cacophony of on screen graphics telling the viewer what was happening every few seconds. I really wanted a western audience to understand and experience the immediacy of this onslaught of sight and sound, just as the original Japanese audience would have. However, to have left the footage as it was with only subtitles to navigate it, would have been too much for any audience to handle. As such we came up with a method of manipulating the footage by translating the graphics and dubbing the voice over (Fred Armisen’s voice now replaces the original narrator) in such a way that I hope means we are being as truthful as possible to the original show in essence.

The Contestant is an extraordinary ‘stranger-than-fiction’ story of epic endurance in early reality TV. But I hope it is also an emotional and universal tale about the importance of human connection.