Working as a filmmaker since the 1980s, Sion Sono has earned a reputation for being one of the most madcap inventors in the game. His highest-rated film on Letterboxd, 2008’s four-hour-long Love Exposure, currently sits in our Official Top 250 Narrative Feature Films, and is described by Ayush as “an ambitious, outrageously sprawling epic about love, lust, religion, cults, adolescent angst, identity, family, friendship, lies, boners, neglect, rebellion, trauma, and the art of up-skirt photography”.

This gives you an idea of what you may expect to see in a Sion Sono creation, although ultimately nothing can fully prepare you for the things which inhabit his mind. You simply have to see them for yourself.

After more than three decades of prolifically delivering his energetic oddities, occasionally even having multiple films released in the same year, 2021’s Prisoners of the Ghostland marks the first time the Japanese director has made a film in the English language. This isn’t for lack of trying. Sono-san was originally set to helm Lords of Chaos back in 2009 until that production eventually went in a different direction.

In Prisoners of the Ghostland you draw from an array of cinematic influences, from Spaghetti Westerns to samurai films to post-apocalyptic wastelands. Was it exciting to take these different areas and fuse them together into something totally unique?
There was a parity in this film when mashing up those East-meets-West elements. I wanted to take those unique areas and push them together into one box. The result was creating something in between those two worlds, and thus it became completely original, which was an idea I really liked to explore.

In of cinematic touchstones, one thing I found particularly interesting was the costuming choices. We see Nicolas Cage’s protagonist dressed in all-black leather, whereas Bill Moseley’s villain is wearing a nice, clean white suit with these striking red gloves. Was there an intentional subversiveness there?
That’s a great question. At the end of the day, the story of the film is quite simple. Because of that, I wanted to make a difference in of the details. Part of those details became using the costumes in a unique way. For instance, the film has samurai costumes, but also Western cowboy costumes. I had specific ideas for using bright, vivid colors so that it makes the film stand out visually. As you mentioned, that can be seen in The Governor and his clean white suit which really contrasts with the rest of the color palette in the film.

Another striking element of the film is the Ghostland itself, which is such a massive, complicated set. What was the process of putting that location together?
Along with wanting to use the costume design to make the film stand out when the story is rather simple, I was motivated to do the same thing with the production design. The Ghostland set took a tremendous amount of effort. I didn’t want to use any CGI for it. I would much rather make it all happen in a physical way. That became very difficult to figure out with all of the sets, including the Ghostland. I just wanted to make something super interesting.

You’ve mentioned how you incorporated Japanese history, such as the nuclear events in Fukushima and Hiroshima, into the fabric of the film and the construction of the Ghostland set. Could you tell me more about that?
There was a little bit of that element already in the original script. I was able to draw that out, to make it clearer and convey a larger idea regarding atomic energy. Since we were shooting in Japan, the idea of that became even more prevalent in my mind, when thinking about things like Hiroshima and Fukushima.

A great example of this is when you see the clocktower in the Ghostland, and the Ghostlanders are trying to keep the time, or the clock, from moving. They’re trying to hold onto time. The clock is set one minute before 8:15, which is the time that the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. In the Ghostland, the time is 8:14, and they are trying to stop it from moving because they think once it hits 8:15, then the explosion will happen.

I’d love to talk about Nicolas Cage for a bit. He’s an actor who at this point has an otherworldly, almost supernatural mythos to him. What was your experience like getting to know him, both as an actor, and as a human being?
When Nic Cage and I first met, he had already seen some of my films. Once he came on board the project, though, he went off and watched almost every single one of my films, to have a better understanding of me as a filmmaker. Before we shot the film, Nic went to Hiroshima in order to do some research for himself to try [to] understand the history of Japan. He did so much of his own research, including talking to many people to educate himself further on Japan, and on Japanese culture. That’s the kind of man Nic Cage is.

I just saw that for the first time this year and it blew me away.
Thank you very much.

Do you have a favorite Nicolas Cage film?
There are so many that I like, or love, but I would probably say Leaving Las Vegas is the one that is my favorite.

To wrap up, I’d love to know what film was the one which first made you realize you wanted to become a filmmaker?
There were a lot growing up, but when I was young I saw Steven Spielberg’s Jaws, and that was the film which really made me think that maybe I should be a filmmaker.