Hollywood's Faulty 'Memoirs'

Marshall, who directed "Chicago" to a best picture Oscar -- and, for good or ill, pioneered making movie musicals without serious dancers in the lead roles -- makes no apologies for his unorthodox approach in "Geisha." "It was never my intention to do a documentary version of the book," he says by phone on his way to Rome for the film's premiere there. "What was interesting was doing an impression of this world."

He says his research was extensive. "I could write a thesis about the geisha world in great detail." And armed with the facts, he felt free to break a few rules. As in, for example, Sayuri's solo dance.

"I serve the story," Marshall says. "That's my job. So dance needs to do more than it does in the book." Sayuri's solo "needed to be an emotional dance and reflect her pain at not being able to express her love. I needed to create a dance that will make us feel for her. That's how it works."

Choreographer John DeLuca, who worked with Marshall on "Chicago," says it was those precarious wooden shoes, worn by courtesans (already a detail sure to inflame geisha purists), that inspired the dance: "I thought, 'God, I've got to use those shoes.' " Though based on kabuki, the solo sprang largely from his imagination.

"We had our experts on the set applauding every step of the way," DeLuca says. "They knew what we were going for. We tried to honor their culture as best we could."

Shizumi was approached, in fact, to be one of those experts. She flew to California for an interview as a dance consultant, and was asked to audition for a dancing part. She wore her best summer-weight kimono to the audition and carried herself, she says, with the self-effacing grace that a true geisha might possess. But she was alarmed by the speeded-up tempo of the music and the Broadway-style movement demands. Can you throw the fan higher? she was asked.

"We Japanese don't do it that way," she replied. Welcome to Hollywood, she was told.

Eventually, she says, she was offered a part, but her mother fell ill and she felt she had to go to Japan.

Shizumi is not alone in thinking the film takes needless liberties. Los Angeles-based musician Masakazu Yoshizawa is a veteran of the movie industry, having worked on the soundtracks of dozens of films, including "The Last Samurai" and "Jurassic Park." Working on "Memoirs of a Geisha," he said, amounted to a series of arguments with Marshall, culminating in failed efforts to talk the director out of using aggressive, choppy music from northern Japan to set the tone for the cultured city of Kyoto, home of the most exclusive geisha.

But the film does not take place in Kyoto, Yoshizawa says Marshall told him.

This is not Kyoto? the musician asked.

This is an imaginary city, he says Marshall replied.