Dave Boyle talks fun challenges of shinobi family drama ‘House of Ninjas’
Director, co-executive producer and writer Dave Boyle sat down with The Panther to discuss the release of his new show “House of Ninjas,” available to stream on Netflix. Photo courtesy of Accolade Publicity & Consulting
After nearly two decades of writing and shooting independent films throughout the United States, Dave Boyle would take on his most ambitious challenge yet. The Los Angeles-based director found himself residing in the Kanto region of Japan for six months, helping answer the question: What if ninjas still walked among us?
As a writer, director and co-executive producer on Netflix’s new show “House of Ninjas,” Boyle was tasked with bringing the eight-episode series — originated by Kento Kaku, Yoshiaki Murao and Takafumi Imai — to life. Surrounded by three Japanese Academy Award-winning crew members, an all-star cast and the legendary Toho Studios, he could hardly believe the talent at his disposal, helping revitalize the image of ninjas on screen.
“I was really outmatched by the talent I was working with. It was really like, ‘Are you sure it’s okay to have a director like this, working with this team?’ It would basically be like if an unknown director from Japan came to (the United States) and had a staff with straight Academy Award winners, top to bottom. It was intimidating at first, but I felt totally welcomed, and by the end, we were all such a great, well-oiled team.”
On Feb. 19, The Panther spoke with Boyle about Netflix’s “House of Ninjas,” which premiered on Feb. 15. Boyle touched upon the differences between film sets in America and Japan, his introduction to Japanese culture at a young age and how he’s grown as a director since taking on the project.
The show centers on Haru Tawara (Kento Kaku) and his family of shinobis (ninjas), who left their life of fighting behind following a failed mission. But when a new enemy arises, threatening the social and political landscape of Japan, the Tawaras must leave behind their sake brewery and return to action. One problem still remains — Haru does not kill.
Hailing from a Mormon background, Boyle understood living under rigorous rules similar to those historically observed by ninjas. At 19, he was sent to Australia as a Japanese-speaking missionary, which sparked an interest in the language and culture. Once he became an independent filmmaker, Boyle’s films placed the Japanese stories and language at the forefront — including “Man from Reno,” “Daylight Savings” and “Big Dreams Little Tokyo.”
“My first couple of movies were sort of based on my experience. They were very consciously about Japanese culture from an outsider’s perspective and trying to examine it that way. I just felt like I was meeting all these wonderful, amazing actors. I became friends with them and collaborators with them and kept making independent films that had Japanese actors and Japanese dialogue. It was just this peculiar life coincidence that kind of took my life in another direction.”
Even with his fluency in Japanese, Boyle called filming in Japan with an all-Japanese crew “a fun challenge.” He noted some of the differences between working in the United States and Japan. For one, Boyle had to be careful about thinking out loud, which would sometimes be interpreted as a concrete decision. But aside from the occasional mix-up or misinterpretation, Boyle had to adapt to the difference in script formatting.
In Japan, scripts utilize half of the page, leaving the other half for directors like Boyle to draw their cuts and decide when the shot starts and stops.
“It was difficult learning how to do that and also making sure that I am adapting to the needs of a Japanese set, but I'm also getting my direction across and doing what I want to do. That was a really cool challenge,” Boyle said. “It’s just a different mode. There's no one-to-one translation. Honestly, it was just the most amazing and humbling and crazy experience I've ever had.”
Due to his independent filmmaking background, Boyle had been used to limited budgets and working within constraints. But with Netflix’s backing and the massive scope of the show, Boyle had to learn to ask for what he wanted instead of what he needed.
“I come from an indie film background where it’s all about making do with what you have in front of you. That’s great for what it is, but I think when you’re doing something where you have a world that you have to build, and you have a team that can basically make whatever you want, then you have to just be a little more selfish.”
The original concept of the series came from Kaku along with his collaborators Murao and Imai during the COVID-19 lockdown. After their pitch, Netflix reached out to Boyle to help develop the show. He read any English-language material on real-life ninjas that he could find in order to help give the show a solid foundation rooted in history. They even turned to Yuji Yamada, one of the leading authorities on ninjas and ninjutsu from Mie University, for consulting.
“A lot of what I learned from (Yamada) is that there's just so little that we actually know,” Boyle said. “Also in ninja history, the scope of it is just so wide that there was a good deal of freedom in terms of plausibility.”
One thing the crew knew for certain was that there would be an emphasis on precise, well-executed martial arts and action sequences. Actors worked with action director Keiya Tabuchi to accomplish many of their own stunts. Boyle praised Tabuchi’s ability to express the point of a scene through action.
He recalled Tabuchi and his team riding around in their stunt van like the Scooby-Doo gang and thinking every time they arrived on set, ‘‘Today's gonna be a great day.”
“The wonderful thing about (Tabuchi) is that he has such a great skill for finding ways in the action to express a character's basic qualities,” Boyle said. “I think the lead character being a ninja who can't kill is something that's very hard to express in terms of action. How do you make him look cool when he's not taking these guys down altogether? And also, how do you express that he's maybe ambivalent about his identity as a ninja? That was the whole thing about this show, is that we wanted to treat ninja-hood not as a job but as an identity.”
The show has earned a 100% score on the Rotten Tomatoes review aggregator and a 7.4 on IMDb. Referring to the possibility of a second season, Boyle's message was brief.
“We're doing well, so fingers crossed.”
All eight episodes of “House of Ninjas” are available to stream on Netflix.
“I think the lead character being a ninja who can’t kill is something that’s very hard to express in terms of action. How do you make him look cool when he’s not taking these guys down altogether? And also, how do you express that he’s maybe ambivalent about his identity as a ninja? That was the whole thing about this show, is that we wanted to treat ninja-hood not as a job but as an identity.”
