How Tiger Ji’s ‘Death and Ramen’ Delivers Catharsis in a Noodle Bowl

Andy Crump: Death and Ramen occupies a small but wonderful niche—the ramen movie. Ramen Shop, Tompopo, and Ramen Heads come immediately to mind. I feel like there's something about ramen that makes it a focal point for movies in a way that many other dishes aren’t capable of.
Tiger Ji: It is such a distinctly cinematic dish, I think, because it's so simple. It's highbrow and lowbrow at the same time, in terms of how the cuisine mimics how a movie functions in the culture. It's at once comforting, but it can also be served in a Michelin-star restaurant. It could be this very deeply blue collar thing, but also a very avant garde thing, and I love that.

And then on a deeper level, for me specifically, I think I was looking for a very simple metaphor to talk about the antithesis of nihilism that pervades a lot of our culture right now. I wanted to create something very simple, which is what ramen is. Of course Tampopo was a huge reference.

There's also a deeply personalized aspect for me. I grew up eating ramen. My mother was very busy, but every Sunday, she would make sure to make time for me to make a bowl of noodles. I think just that idea of communicating, the otherwise difficult to communicate, showing of love, and articulating something that would be very hard to say straight up, especially in Asian culture. That’s all there, you know? So I think you're spot on saying how it's a very cinematic dish, and it's very layered in that way too—at once simple and complex.

AC: Yeah. I don't think I've ever seen a movie like, say, Death and Risotto. Risotto is great and I think could occupy the same sort of space, except it's not cinematic at all. What about noodles, to you, identifies so well as cinematic? Because I think you're right, there's something cinematic about it, just innately.
TJ: Well, just visually, there's every color in it. You get the scallions and you get the soup, and visually it just looks beautiful, versus risotto, which is just one color. But for me, in Chinese culture, on your birthday, instead of eating birthday cakes, there's this thing called cheung sau mien, which basically translates to “noodle of longevity.” You eat it on your birthday to guarantee a long wonderful life. The noodles are traditionally really long. I think that's cool, because on the flip side of this metaphor of Death and Ramen is the opposite of that, right? Death and suffering and nihilism and all that are an undeniable aspect of life, so you need to take the bitterness with the sweetness. I wanted to offer something that was both, that had both in it, and didn't look away from either side.

AC: I think the complexity of the story matches well with the experience of eating a good bowl of ramen. In that regard, I think casting is important, because you need somebody—two somebodies—who are both innately funny, but also capable of letting grief and existential awe breathe through the comedy. I couldn't think of two people who would be better together for that. I'm curious about Matt. I don't think he gets a lot of recognition or respect, but I think he's wonderful. What brought him into this?
TJ: Casting was very specific. It started off as just a fantasy baseball sort of thing. “Wouldn't it be cool if we had this guy or that guy?” It was entirely up in the air. I didn't really have a casting director. It was just cold reach outs. For me, with Matt, Badger was always my favorite part of Breaking Bad. He's introduced as this whimsical character who spins a sign on the side of the road, and then the payoff to the sign is that he spins Jesse Pinkman in a fight. That quote, “Helicopter, bitch!” [laughs]

I really love his presence. I think he's a really nonchalant, hilarious guy. And his voice is so distinct. It all goes back to, I would say, the ethos of the movie, which is subverting this cultural taboo of conversations surrounding mortality. So, the way he's presented, his character shows up at the doorstep, in a black hood, and carries [Lee’s character] off, and there's this intriguing yet terrifying undertone to it. And then he drops him, and he takes off the hood, and it's just Badger with a friendly face.

And that's my perspective. Once you actually confront this, which is my experience with me being in and out of life, confrontations with mortality, be it people close to me who passed away, or just on a theoretical level, it's just a very simple fact that when you see it for what it is, it provides you ambition to live a life that's most full. This idea of befriending Death is not like surrendering to nihilism, but more embracing that, yes, things are going to end, but by surrendering yourself, you're making yourself vulnerable to the ultimate fact that we try to hide ourselves from, right? Once you do that, in a way you're truly living.

AC: The way you describe death, I’m reminded of On a Pale Horse, by Piers Anthony, where the main character assumes the office of Death. He quotes Coleridge at the end: “Death came with friendly care.” That’s what Death does here. But besides that, other than Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey, I can't think of a movie that has portrayed Death as such a stumblebum. Matt is such a good pratfall guy.
TJ: Yeah. Initially, I thought, “What if we did the Bill and Ted thing?” Matt was resistant to that, I think in part just because he didn't want to get full face makeup for three hours every day for a short. On another level, he said, “Why do you want to heighten it like that? Why do you wanna make it this theatrical thing? You’re telling me, Tiger, that you want to subvert this idea? Wouldn't it be cooler if he was just a normal guy. What if it's just me?”

I said, “Well, can you shave?” And he said, “No, I won’t shave.” I was like, well, can you shave? He said, “No, I won’t shave.” [laughs]

AC: I respect that. I think that works, actually, because he’s not Death; he’s one Death. Matt mentioned heightening things. I think that makes sense because it gives Bobby more room to let Timmy breathe; obviously he’s about to die, but it gives more room for Timmy to be Timmy, and Bobby to put life into that character on the precipice of death. So I’m curious about your relationship with Bobby. With that anecdote with Matt, you strike me as a collaborative type. How did working with Bobby go in light of that?
TJ: I actually don't know if I'm by nature that way. Making Death and Ramen as a 22-year-old filmmaker working with Matt and Bobby, I was forced to be that way. I’m actually very specific and everything's very plotted. But in a way, I benefited from surrendering myself, and choosing my battles. Working with Bobby felt like, and in the best way possible, wrestling a hurricane. He's gonna say it the way he says it, you know? It’s not like he doesn't have the devices to take direction. It's just that you write it for him, and if you let him flourish, you just give him minimal notes. You can't really talk to him like a trained actor. You have to say, “Less of this, more of that.” It has to be under 10 words, which is not how I am, and not how I was trained as a director. I studied theater directing for a bit, so for me, dramaturgy, and scene work, and extended conversations about the psyche are important.

But with him, it was this very stripped back thing. There was no real set process. It was just me as a human being talking to Bobby as a human being, kind of like doing therapy, a little bit.

AC: You’re describing him as more of a primal force—not something to be directed, but something to be unleashed. Is that fair?
TJ: Yes. For someone like Bobby specifically, he's used to acting like the Mad TV sort of acting, the Judd Apatow kind of acting, where there are four cameras, and they’re just improvising the whole way through. They're funny naturally. That’s just what they do. And the more laughs they get from the crew, the better it is. But that's not this type of movie. I wanted to utilize that sense of humor, but ultimately, on top of being funny, to have something to say, or hopefully to have something to say. There was a lot of, “Okay, let's do a little less.” Naturally he's almost like an operatic force—the “yes, and” sort of thing. But he is wonderful. I think more than anything, working on Death of Ramen was a big learning experience for me in terms of working with talent and being as humble and grateful for the opportunity as possible, and retaining vision in spite of that.

AC: Now that you're on the verge of screening this, and it’s ready to be put out in the wild, it sounds like you’ve absorbed this as a developmental learning experience for you. You’ll certainly change and grow more as people start to see it, but in the course of having finished it and put the thing in the can, how do you feel like you have changed as a filmmaker?
TJ: I think I became a lot more playful. When I made my first short, Wuhan Driver, the conception that being the youngest person on set meant that, in order to be taken seriously, I had to know everything and be this infallible figure, distanced me from the rest of my crew. Doing Death and Ramen helped me see it myself as a part of this big family. It's not so much learning to compromise, but learning to open yourself up to that which you can't plan. Look, I'm a really serious planner. The whole movie was animated before it was made. I created an animated storyboard, with voice actors. If you watch it, it's pretty much one-to-one, which for someone like Bobby is a very interesting kind of process.

But I just feel like I'm interested in making dark comedies. I was studying with this filmmaker, Ruben Östlund, and he taught me a lot. He does like 50 takes for some of his shots.

AC: He’s a perfectionist.
TJ: Yeah, but not in a [David] Fincher way. The way he does it is playful. There’s a way to have both. You can have the cake and eat it. You can not compromise and still make friends. That's a really important thing for me to learn at this age, because there's a certain well that you can draw upon in the creative process that is dark and comes from your trauma and suffering. I think that a lot of artists who draw upon that well make great art, but it comes at a cost, and it also colors the art in a certain way. It becomes this very traumatic experience. I know a handful of people in their 20s who think that this is the only way to do it, whereby the act of creating is experiencing the trauma all over again.

I'll be honest with you: Death and Ramen was initially inspired by this incident when I was in high school, and I was 16 years old, and I was hospitalized for a suicide attempt. Making Death and Ramen took me to a very raw place, and yet opening it up to someone like Bobby, and opening it up to the scrutiny of the world meant that I had to give death a hug in the way that I hope that the movie communicates. It’s embracing the absolutely somber, and dark, and drab, and smiling in spite of it, and bringing levity and humor and heart to it as well. I think that that, to me, is what filmmaking is ultimately about: Grappling with real, honest, dark things, and never looking away, confronting it head on, eyes open, ready and afraid, and still never forgetting to fuck around, to make it funny and dark and interesting.