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"My philosophy in casting," says Marshall, "is that I cast for the role, period." (He notes that in Chicago he had Queen Latifah play a character that, in the 1920s, when the film is set, would not have been black.) So Zhang, Gong Li and Yeoh were chosen to lead Geisha's female cast. They are supported, and sometimes upstaged, by two seasoned Japanese actresses—Kaori Momoi, as Mother, the okiya proprietress, and Youki Kudoh, as Sayuri's friend and sometime antagonist Pumpkin—and one entrancing newcomer, Suzuka Ohgo, who plays Chiyo-Sayuri as a young girl. The main male roles were taken by Japanese actors: Watanabe, Koji Yakusho as his proud, disfigured friend Nobu and Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa as the manipulative Baron.
Lucy Fisher, one of the film's producers, was aware of grumbling about the casting of Chinese actresses as the most prominent geishas. Some of these barbs made it to the set. According to Fisher, Watanabe overheard one such comment. He turned around and stated, "There is no actress in the world who could play this part better than Zhang Ziyi." As Fisher recalls: "That was a happy day for everybody." Watanabe sees Geisha not as a documentary but as fiction woven by its director. "Although it is a period piece based in Japanese culture, what was most important was how Rob envisioned it. So I told myself not to be concerned about the details of the Japanese or geisha culture but try to help Rob create what he envisioned."
Whether the movie truly understands its milieu, or offers only an artful simulation of it, Japanese audiences will decide. But the film, like the novel, is an outsider's view of the geisha culture—even as the young Chiyo is ignorant of the okiya when she lands there. And since the source novel was written by a Harvard-educated fellow from Tennessee, why shouldn't the film be directed by a song-and-dance man from Pittsburgh?
The movie's narration begins, "A story like mine should never be told," and on screen it almost wasn't. Soon after the big Golden book became a sensation, Steven Spielberg signed on to direct, with Hong Kong's Maggie Cheung named to play Mameha. Five years and many scripts later, Spielberg bowed out, while staying on as a producer. Fisher jokes that her next choice was the great epic-maker David Lean, "but he wasn't available," having died in 1991. A few directors, including Spike Jonze (Being John Malkovich) and Kimberley Peirce (Boys Don't Cry), were mentioned, and still nothing jelled. Some directors insisted on shooting entirely in Japan, or in Japanese.
Then Fisher and her producing partner Douglas Wick saw Chicago and figured they had their man. "Geishas are trained much like dancers, and as a choreographer and a former dancer who understands disciplined training, Rob had a natural affinity for their life," says Wick. He and Fisher pursued the director as one would a geisha—sending him bottles of sake, antique prints. "I tried to put the gifts away," says Marshall, "but I couldn't. They hooked me."
Having made the first movie musical smash since Grease 24 years before, Marshall was ready to try something radically new. "As a director, you should choose a project that will educate you and enrich your life, because you're going to be doing it for two years. And I thought, 'This is that for me.' How exciting to spend that time learning about another culture, and a culture within a culture. The scariest part was being able to be educated enough about Japan and the world of geisha to be able to interpret it. But I didn't stop and say, 'Wait a minute, you're an American, why are you doing this?'"
He did ask: where? Marshall and production designer John Myhre went to Japan, visiting the key spots mentioned in the book: the Sea of Japan, the actual tea houses, the stream where Chiyo meets the Chairman. They filled out the permission forms, but eventually discovered that the authorities, too polite to say no, were also reluctant to say yes. By this time Marshall and the producers realized both that Kyoto would need a makeover—take down the telephone poles, blot out the modern traffic—and that to shoot there would cost a fortune they didn't have. They settled for a few choice exteriors, most of them in the early section of the film when the girl Chiyo meets the kindly Chairman: Kyoto's orange torii gates; a covered bridge on the grounds of a shrine (whose head monk balked until he saw Watanabe speak about the film on TV); and the temple where Chiyo makes an offering (the head monk there granted access because he was a fan of Chicago).
The hanamachi—the geisha quarter of Kyoto—was built on a ranch an hour north of Los Angeles in Ventura county, where more than half the film was shot. The cultural mélange was clear from the first day, when Watanabe said a traditional Buddhist prayer to bless the project. The translators and dialogue coaches worked overtime, since only Yeoh spoke English fluently. "It was amazing to hear them speaking English on set," she says, "but not be able to speak the language to them off set." Marshall had the same challenge directing his stars. "I'd be speaking and I'd hear a Japanese and a Chinese interpreter speaking at the same time," he recalls. "It sounds insane but it became natural."