Trivia for
Memoirs of a Geisha (2005) More at IMDbPro »

• Steven Spielberg, Brett Ratner, Spike Jonze and Kimberly Peirce all considered directing this film.
  
  
• Julyana Soelistyo was once considered for the role of Pumpkin.
  
  
• Maggie Cheung was once considered for the role of Mameha.
  
  
• It took a lot of negotiating to get Rob Marshall to direct this film. Since he directed the hit film Chicago (2002) for Miramax, he owed his next film to them. This is a DreamWorks film. It was only because Miramax and DreamWorks have a long history of borrowing talent from each other that they were able to work out a deal.
  
  
• The filmmakers decided that the Gion district of modern-day Kyoto (the Geisha district where Arthur Golden's novel is set) looked much too modern to evoke the 1920s and 30s. So, a large set of the Gion district was constructed outside of Los Angeles in Thousand Oaks, California. The detailed set had real cobblestone streets, bridges, a river, period buildings and antique props which evoked the period described in the novel.
  
  
• Yunjin Kim turned down a leading role.
  
  
• John Williams passed on scoring the fourth Harry Potter movie, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005) in favor of scoring this film.
  
  
• The rights to the novel were bought a month after the book came out in 1997 by husband-and-wife producers Douglas Wick and Lucy Fisher.
  
  
• The playwright Doug Wright stayed on set during the shoot to rewrite lines that actors found too difficult to pronounce. He also polished up the shooting script.
  
  
• The rickshaws used in this movie are from the The Last Samurai (2003). Ornamentation was added to make them look right for the period.
  
  
• The Sumo Wrestler who won the match is retired Sumo Wrestler Mainoumi who reached the rank of Komosubi (Junior Champion). He retired in November 1999 and is now a Sumo Announcer for NHK among other things.
  
  
• According to Colleen Atwood, the costume designer, 250 hand-tailored kimonos were made for the film. She also said that their prints, patterns and colors are bigger and bolder than traditional kimonos.
  
  
• The actresses had a six-week crash course on geisha culture.
  
  
• Mari Iijima auditioned for one of the roles in this movie during the first round of pre-production in 1998.
  
  
• The sumo wrestlers depicted in the film all had character and sumo names for the film. It was decided in the final credits to just call them sumo wrestlers.
  
  
• A huge silk screen was used to mask the sun during the shoot in California to create a more misty atmosphere.
  
  
• The film was banned in China because Chinese actresses play Japanese geisha. The national film board and the Office for the Administration of Radio, Film and Television claimed that it was banned because the storyline is "too sensitive".
  
  
• Ziyi Zhang was allergic to the contact lenses that she had to wear for her role as Sayuri.
  
  
• The film was heavily criticized by Asian critics for having Chinese actresses portraying the geishas. In reality, according to producer Lucy Fisher, the producers held an open day for audition for Japanese actresses to audition for those roles. None turned up and they had to turn to other Asian actresses for casting.
  
  
• The film's winter light effect was discovered incidentally days before production. With the silk rigged to prevent rain water from damaging the set, the rigging crew attempted to emulate daylight during night. Gaffer John Buckley threw 3/4 lights from top to bottom of the set through the silk. Thus was the result and it was what Dion Beebe got which he went on to win Best Cinematographer of 2005.
  
  
• Neither Li Gong nor Suzuka Ohgo could speak English at the time of filming.
  
  
• The rickshaws did not all come from The Last Samurai (2003). Several of them were rented from a film studio in Kyoto, Japan, and shipped, along with many of the other props in the movie, to Hollywood for use in the film. When the movie was completed, everything had to be shipped back to Japan.
  
  
• Because none of the Japanese rickshaws were large enough for the two women to be comfortably seated next to each other, the rickshaw used for the scenes in which Mameha and Sayuri travel together in one carriage was manufactured in California, using wheels and axles shipped in from Japan.
  
  

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