Five- Intresting facts about Spirited Away

No script

With a story that’s so rich and compelling, it may come as a surprise that Spirited Away originally began production without a script. In fact, most all of writer/director Hayao Miyazaki’s creations share this organic and unstructured work process in the beginning. “I don't have the story finished and ready when we start work on a film. I usually don't have the time,” Miyazaki remarked in a Midnight Eye interview. “We never know where the story will go but we just keeping working on the film as it develops

Three hours long

One of the biggest difficulties he encountered was finding a way to simplify all of his ideas. While creating the film, Miyazaki had intended for the movie to be over three hours long with his original plot, but subsequently decided to trim down the storyline. Instead of getting an epic Lord of the Rings version of the tale, the film was shortened to it’s run time of 125 min. When it comes to his creative process, Hayao Miyazaki said it best, “It's not me who makes the film. The film makes itself and I have no choice but to follow.”

Miyuzaki(author) didnt attend the oscar award ceremony

Spirited Away won an Oscar for Best Animated Feature Film in 2003, winning out over films like Ice Age, Lilo & Stitch, Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron and Treasure Planet. Although this might be common knowledge for most, Miyazaki didn’t actually attend the awards ceremony for undisclosed reasons. In 2009, he finally opened up during an interview at Comic Con. “The reason I wasn’t here for the Academy Award was because I didn’t want to visit a country that was bombing Iraq,” he said to The Times. “At the time, my producer shut me up and did not allow me to say that, but I don’t see him around today. By the way, my producer also shared in that feeling.”

Miyazaki’s films have often expressed pacifist themes, including Princess Mononoke, Laputa: Castle in the Sky and Howl’s Moving Castle. With the 2016 awards ceremony spurring the question of Why Are The #OscarsSoWhite This Year? and public boycotting from directors like Spike Lee, it seems like Miyazaki is certainly not alone in that department.

CLOSING SONG WAS SUPPOSED TO USED TO BE IN ANOTHER FILM

Fans of Spirited Away might not be able to imagine a version of the movie without its titular ending song, "Always With Me". However, the song was originally supposed to be used for a different film, Rin the Chimney Painter, which Hayao Miyazaki had wanted to work on in the past. Inspired by a children’s book called Kirino Mukouno Fushigina Machi (A Mysterious Town Over the Mist) by Sachiko Kasiwaba, Miyazaki intended on creating a film version of the novel. It was originally published in 1980, and he had toyed with the idea of making a movie adaptation before even working on Princess Mononoke.

Hayao wrote a short proposal to get things started, but it ended up getting rejected and the film was never released. “After that, I thought it would be better to have a more lively character, so I wrote a proposal called 'Rin and the Chimney Painter.' It was a contemporary story with a heroine who was a little bit older, but it was rejected as well. It ended up being a story with a scary old woman sitting on the bandai of a bath house. Looking back, all three stories had bath houses in them,” Miyazaki further explained in an interview.

Miyazaki played the song, “Always With Me” often while working on Spirited Away, and later added it to accompany the closing credits. The song was created by Yumi Kimura, a Japanese musician who wrote the song, provided the vocals and even played the lyre in the background of the song. Stirring and memorable, the song captures the whimsical theme of nostalgia found in Spirited Away.

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