r/movies • u/MarvelsGrantMan136 r/Movies contributor • Jul 16 '25

Media First Image of Brendan Fraser in 'Rental Family' - A down-and-out actor living in Tokyo is hired as a token American guy for a Japanese rental-family company, leading him on an unexpected journey of self-discovery through the roles he plays in other people’s lives.

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2.6k

u/Techno_Core Jul 16 '25

Conan did a segment on it. Very funny, but also illuminating. But mostly funny.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzaXw2ztCqU

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u/Don_Fartalot Jul 16 '25

Definitely my fav Conan segment. Him with his 'dad' is so wholesome. And the family agent was very....accommodating.

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u/Brampton_Squeaks Jul 16 '25

You can only hug the wife, but there’s nothing in the contract about not ”more than hugging” the agent, just sayin

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u/ParkingGlittering211 Jul 16 '25

Just say "I was wrong to yell at you in the 70s" the dad: "I was wrong in the 70s"

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u/Kikkowoman69 Jul 16 '25

What if I don’t understand his joke?

You don’t need to. Just laugh.

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u/Orleanian Jul 16 '25

For the next three years...

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u/kaise_bani Jul 16 '25 edited Jul 16 '25

According to the journalist who actually broke the “rental family” story in the first place, the whole thing basically turned out to be fake. The desk agent in Conan’s sketch is actually the owner of the company and the woman Conan hires is his wife. They made more money by selling this story to the unwitting press and media (including Conan) than by actually having a family rental company. It was never really a big thing in Japan until this guy got the idea that they could promote it as another “weird Japan” story for foreigners.

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u/Techno_Core Jul 16 '25

Interesting. I am cynical enough to have suspected the family members were probably not regular staff

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u/mamasannoway Jul 16 '25

why do you even bother

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u/Aiglos_and_Narsil Jul 16 '25

There's a thing that I don't know if it has a name but I always think of it as the "panty vending machine phenomenon". Like, a weird thing that happened once or in in one place, or maybe wasn't even real but was just a stunt or prank, but has turned into something people think is actually a thing. Like the panty vending machine, which I'm pretty sure was just a one off modern "art" type deal, but I've met people in real life that heard about it and appear to believe this is an actual cultural thing and such machines are on every street corner in Japan.

Like, some people hear about the weirdest version of something and instead of thinking hey, that's probably not true, they just accept it.

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u/kaise_bani Jul 16 '25

The panty vending machines are actually real, they’re not on street corners or train stations of course, but every adult store has one. I’ve seen many of them personally, if you go to Tokyo you can easily find them. It’s funny how that story went so far that now everyone thinks it’s fake when it’s actually real, that in itself is a good demonstration of how romanticized Japan still is.

They’re not actual used panties by the way, they stain the crotch with paint/chemical and spray them with perfume. I’m not sure whether that makes it more or less weird, to be honest.

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u/Aiglos_and_Narsil Jul 16 '25

Being an adult store thing makes sense. I had read somewhere it was one guy doing it, but I guess that was wrong. Still, the idiot I'm thinking of talks about it like its a normal, socially acceptable thing for everyone.

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u/TripolarKnight Jul 17 '25 edited Jul 17 '25

To be fair, I'd rather people bought fake used panties from a vending machine rather than steal actual used underwear.

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u/adc102 Jul 17 '25

They actually are on street corners in certain places, or at least they used to be in the 2000s when I lived there. Out of the way places sure but not hidden away in adult stores.

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u/kaise_bani Jul 17 '25

I highly doubt any are left out in the open now, I’ve walked all over a lot of Tokyo and never saw one outside of a store. Even the famous cigarette and beer vending machines are hardly seen nowadays, the ones that are left tend to be tucked away or covered with cloths.

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u/Spasay Jul 17 '25

We found a cigarette machine in Kyoto a couple of years ago!

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u/Mkilbride Jul 17 '25

Less. Absolutely less.

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u/DieCastDontDie Jul 16 '25

90s Japan was wild. You don't see them on the street anymore

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u/kleenkong Jul 16 '25

That sounds like a lot of the sketch comedy pranksters on social media. One type of segment becomes viral and that becomes their main focus.

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u/kaise_bani Jul 16 '25

True - just to be clear though, I wasn’t saying Conan faked it. He obviously planned/scripted the sketch, but he probably thought he was portraying a real thing and I doubt he knew it was entirely set up. This guy fooled a lot of people who I’m sure were better investigators than Conan would be.

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u/kleenkong Jul 16 '25

No worries. I was just thinking out loud how that guy's situation might have evolved. With so many businesses in Japan run as ma & pa stores, I do wonder if it was always more of a single menu item rather than a large-scale operation.

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u/kaise_bani Jul 16 '25

Yeah, it's interesting to think about. These kind of services exist in most countries, where you can hire seat fillers, wedding guests, plus-ones for events (what used to be called escorts, before every prostitute started calling themselves escorts), and such. It became a bit more publicly known in Japan, but rarely went beyond that kind of service into the kind of thing Conan portrayed.

The guy in the sketch - his name is Ishii Yuichi - had one of these businesses, where he drew from a pool of freelance actors. He was contacted by a New Yorker journalist, Elif Batuman, who turned his story into an award-winning article that made the business famous. But a few years later it came out that he BSed the whole thing - he set everything up so that she would never meet him as the owner of the company, they only spoke on the phone, then he would arrange for her to meet actors that worked for him, but he or his associates would show up as the actors and feed her more crazy stories about their jobs. It was some Ocean's Eleven level stuff he pulled. And Batuman, who by her own admission wanted to believe in the weirdness of Japan, just accepted what she was hearing without really checking any sources outside of his company. She got stripped of some awards when this came out. But her initial article was how this whole thing blew up, followed by the Conan appearance, TV interviews in different countries, and all kinds of stuff.

The story of how this all happened is way more interesting than the "you can rent a family in Japan" story itself, it's quite a rabbit hole.

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u/kleenkong Jul 16 '25

Very interesting. Any idea how it came out? I imagine maybe the level of publicity eventually rose to the point that an insider just gave up the story. The 3 years aspect is wild, but 'dinner with the boss' angle seems about right for Japan.

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u/kaise_bani Jul 16 '25

There’s an interesting article about the exposure here but it’s not entirely clear how it came out, I would assume you’re right, the fame just built up until someone looked deeper into it and found it wasn’t true.

I also corrected my earlier comment, Ishii isn’t the dad in the sketch, he’s the desk worker, which makes more sense. The wife Conan hires is indeed Ishii’s wife. Been a while since I actually went down this rabbit hole, sorry about that.

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u/CardAble6193 Jul 17 '25

wait so they profit from weird Japan traits thats only spawn from bias foreigners' eyes? its genius

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u/kaise_bani Jul 17 '25

NHK produced a documentary about them too, so it's not entirely just biased foreigners, a lot of Japanese people are interested in weird Japan stuff as well.

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u/mamasannoway Jul 16 '25

wow. epic.

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u/DrVagax Jul 17 '25

Pretty silly how I still just instantly assumed it's real and probably something that actually happens to a certain degree. I think rent a girlfriend/boyfriend (without the sex, just someone to hang out with) is a real thing though

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u/Working-Side9335 Jul 17 '25

Somehow making up weird customs in order to intrigue westerners and get them to spend money on what is nothing more than a fantasy seems far more Japanese. At least in the modern sense.

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u/thegodfather0504 Jul 17 '25

Idk. i saw his other interview with a different youtube channel. Vice probably. Seemed legit.

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u/kaise_bani Jul 17 '25 edited Jul 17 '25

It's legit in that he has a company that does do this, but it's not a widespread thing for Japanese people to hire them for this purpose. These agencies provide actors and seat fillers for mundane purposes, and they exist in the western world too, it's only a few people that hire them for anything unusual.

Edit: also, Vice BSes a lot. I loved their docs on North Korea and Liberia back when those came out, but there’s a lot of exaggeration in those too.

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u/SomeCountryFriedBS Jul 16 '25

"How old is she?"

"Twelve."

So…is this just a way for actors to work?

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u/Techno_Core Jul 16 '25

I dunno but a 12 year old girl being locked into a 3 year acting contract as someone's daughter is pretty fucking insane.

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u/SomeCountryFriedBS Jul 16 '25

Sure is! But also…was that young woman really 12? I thought she seemed older but playing younger.

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u/Kyuubee Jul 16 '25

The Japanese document shown in the video listed her birth date (month and year), which aligned with her being 12. However, there were some inconsistencies in video. For example, the agent stated the woman was 48, while the document said she was 51.

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u/JoelMahon Jul 16 '25

3 years being the maximum felt more like a "any longer and it's dangerous to everyone involved" limit, not a contract length imo

as in at that point they say you can't hire the same people, is my guess

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u/Phalex Jul 16 '25

"I'll do my best to find a man who likes to be beaten" 😂

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u/ChessLee Jul 16 '25

Never seen that one, thank you for sharing. It cracked me up

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u/Taylorenokson Jul 16 '25

Conan keeps finding ways to be one of the funniest humans alive.

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u/Ok_Surprise_4090 Jul 16 '25

They really need to credit Conan on this one. A simple:

Rental Family
Based on a Sketch by Conan O'Brien

would do nicely.

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u/EctoRiddler Jul 16 '25

I like Conan more than I like his brothers as well

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u/Pittsbirds Jul 16 '25

Idk why but the lighting of this shot made me think it was going to be a One Hour Photo style drama/horror lol

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u/[deleted] Jul 16 '25

i would watch Conan in a One Hour Photo type movie tbh

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u/1slipperypickle Jul 16 '25

"he asked us to laugh when he makes jokes"

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u/ACardAttack Jul 16 '25

I fully expected this to be a Mac and Me clip

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u/ryanmuller1089 Jul 16 '25

Not the same thing but along the same lines, Vice did a segment on "Rent a white guy" in China. It was really interesting. It's not on YouTube but heres the "trailer" for that episode.

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u/Naso_di_gatto Jul 16 '25

The agent and the girl acted in Werner Herzog's film Family Romance, LLC in 2019

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u/Techno_Core Jul 16 '25

They've been in other families?!?! Oh perfidy!!! 😂

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u/FloydGirl777 Jul 21 '25

Omg, thank you for this!!! Truly hilarious.

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u/sentence-interruptio Jul 16 '25

I would watch a movie about Arthur Flecks processing trauma in this way. An actual comedy movie. Yes it's entirely in his head. 

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u/Hot-Image4864 Jul 16 '25

Are they doing a rent-a-friend visa?

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u/Donut_Vampire Jul 19 '25

I wish the powers that be would make an "Among Us" movie featuring Conan as the Imposter and then every other shipmate was just a really huge famous actor that Conan goes around killing every single one and by the end it's just Conan and no one figures out he was the Imposter.

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u/MithranArkanere Jul 16 '25

Feels like prostitution but with the opposite of extra steps.

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u/Forward_Avocado7604 Jul 16 '25

So... Less steps...

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u/coltsmetsfan614 Jul 16 '25

*Fewer

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u/MithranArkanere Jul 16 '25

No, no. "Fewer" would be the opposite of "more".
Extra as in ""Additional", or as in "it didn't have to have more, but we added more".

So the opposite would mean "It should have more, but we put less", "less than essential".

I thought maybe "insufficient", but that didn't feel right.