Trivia / Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence

• All-Star Cast: Both David Bowie and Ryuichi Sakamoto were chosen for their status as well-known musicians in their own countries. The film also stars Takeshi Kitano as Sergeant Hara.
• California Doubling: Various scenes take place in Java and South Africa, while the film was shot on-location in New Zealand and the Cook Islands. Among other instances, Celliers' fake execution was filmed in the Auckland central railway station as it appeared in the early 1980s, while his flashback to his boarding school days in South Africa was filmed at King's College in Aukland.
• Creator Backlash: In a 2017 interview, Sakamoto mentioned that since this was his first film as an actor, he thought that his acting was "ugly" and "bad". Through a half-joking but half-serious explanation, the heavy use of sweeping music cues was his attempt to cover up his inexperience on camera. Tropes Are Tools.
• Dawson Casting: David Bowie, who was in his mid 30's at the time of filming, also plays Celliers as a teenager during Celliers' flashback sequence.
• Fake Brit:
  • Downplayed with Tom Conti, who is playing an Englishman but is a Scot of Italian and Irish descent.
  • Jack Thompson (Australian) as the British Group Captain Hicksley. Thompson tries an English accent but doesn't quite pull it off.
• Fake Nationality:
  • Celliers is South African, David Bowie was English.
  • Dutch prisoner Karel de Jong is played by Alistair Browning, a New Zealander.
• Friendship on the Set: David Bowie became fast friends with James Malcolm during location filming in Auckland, New Zealand. Bowie openly referred to Malcolm, who played his character's brother in the movie, as his "New Zealand brother," and when he revisited Auckland during the supporting tour for Let's Dance the following year, he invited him on-stage to release a peace dove together.
• Irony as She Is Cast: "I wish I could sing" and "I've had no romantic interludes of any real importance" from the mouth of David Bowie, whose divorce from his first wife Angela was still in relatively recent memory.
• Playing Against Type: Even back in early 80s Japan, Takeshi Kitano was better known as a comedian. This film was his first dramatic role. He wanted to be in the film because he wanted to be taken seriously as an actor. In several interviews, he mentioned that when he snuck into a screening, he was disappointed that the audience laughed at his presence on screen instead.
• Reality Subtext: Celliers' hunchbacked brother and his regret over the way he treated him heavily parallels David Bowie's own complicated relationship with his half-brother Terry Burns, who had schizophrenia and was institutionalized as a result of it; Burns would commit suicide two years after the film's release.
• Star-Making Role: The film's award-winning soundtrack catapulted Ryuichi Sakamoto into in-demand status as a scorer, a career he thrived in for the next 40 years.
• What Could Have Been: The film was originally intended to start with Lawrence visiting Yonoi's memorial shrine in Japan years after the war, narrating its significance and then flashing back to the story proper. The idea was ultimately rejected by co-writer Paul Mayersberg, who felt that giving away Yonoi's death that soon killed the film's suspense. According to Mayersberg, Nagisa Oshima jokingly described him as an evil spirit for changing his mind on the matter so effectively.
• Write What You Know: In the Making-Of film 'The Oshima Gang', it is mentioned that Laurens van der Post was also a prisoner of war and spoke Japanese. He based the book on his own experiences, making the character of John Lawrence an Author Avatar.

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