Author Topic: Ang Ang Ang  (Read 25648 times)

Offline Ellemeno

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Ang Ang Ang
« on: October 03, 2007, 01:13:45 am »
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/movies/2003917358_lee02.html

Ang Lee and the power of performance
By Moira Macdonald
Seattle Times movie critic



ELLEN M. BANNER / THE SEATTLE TIMES
Film director Ang Lee brings "Lust, Caution," a short story by Eileen Chang, to the screen. Set in occupied Shanghai, the film follows a young woman's transformation from actress to spy.
Related
"Lust, Caution" trailer
Opening Friday

"Lust, Caution" with Tony Leung Chiu-wai, Wei Tang, Joan Chen. Opens Friday at the Egyptian.

Many years ago, long before Ang Lee became the acclaimed maker of films like "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" and "Brokeback Mountain," he was an 18-year-old kid falling in love with the art of acting. And those first tentative moments, on a student stage in Taiwan, are what directly led to his newest film: "Lust, Caution," set in 1940s occupied Shanghai, opening Friday at the Egyptian.

Lee discussed his inspirations for the movie in recent conversations at the Toronto International Film Festival and in Seattle, where he was honored at a Seattle International Film Festival tribute on Sunday. Based on a short story by Eileen Chang, "Lust, Caution" is the tale of a young woman whose life is transformed, dangerously and thrillingly, by performance. A student actor, she joins a group of radical students bent on assassinating a powerful political figure and changes her identity to infiltrate his world. Early in the film, we see her after her first stage performance, outside on a rainy night; she's breathless and dazzled by the new art she's mastering.

"I'm like that girl, basically," Lee said, in his soft voice. "She's awakening. She feels the power." He remembered his own walk in the night, in the drizzling rain, after a first performance. "There's something funny about acting — you become empowered," he said. He was "a repressed kid, never allowed to touch art, only academic work. I flunked the college examinations, and I went to art school to prepare for the next year. By chance, I was on stage. I realized the rest of my life. So, when I read that in the short story, I decided to do it."

Though Lee quickly learned, as a young adult, that he'd rather direct movies than act on stage (after moving to the U.S. in his 20s, he studied film production at New York University), his love for acting echoes through his work — Heath Ledger's previously unseen, powerful subtlety in "Brokeback Mountain"; Kate Winslet's exuberance bursting from the screen in "Sense and Sensibility." "I'm still zealous about performing art, except that I don't do it with my own body," he said. "I have to tear actors apart so they do it for me."

He does this through meticulous research, preparing for months before first meeting with actors. (One exception: "Sense and Sensibility," a work-for-hire project for which he was brought on fairly late in the process, still speaking little English. "It was very scary!" he remembered. "I was like 30 years behind everyone.") He gives the actors an "initial pitch," then rehearses to see what the actors give back. "The beginning of a rehearsal is almost like improvisation," he said. "I see what they give me and then I take over, take control."

For "Lust, Caution," his two leading actors came with very different backgrounds and required different kinds of direction. To play Mr. Yee, the subject of the planned assassination, Lee chose Tony Leung Chiu-wai, a veteran of Asian cinema perhaps best known to Western audiences for his love-struck work in "In the Mood for Love." Accustomed to playing the hero, he took on a much darker role.

"With Tony, you know he's going to go through a sophisticated process, so with him you should be more suggestive. I don't give him much information; he will digest himself, do something of his own."

In the role of the young actress turned spy, Tang Wei makes her feature-film debut. Lee's casting team looked at "over 10,000" young actresses before choosing her.

"When I met her, I just believed such a story would happen to someone like her," Lee said. "She feels to me like a fish out of water; she belonged to that era. Also, I see myself as the girl, and I very much identified with her." With Tang Wei, Lee gave advice more directly. "She believes in you when you pitch her an idea ... like a child actor, simple and very direct."

Lee, who tends to alternate English-language projects with Asian films, said he has a different process depending on what language he's working in. "English [-speaking] actors, they seem to have more ideas, it's part of the culture," he said. "When I speak in Chinese, I am more in command. I talk a lot, very demanding. [Chinese-speaking actors] have a more submissive kind of attitude to the director, that's just the culture."

The winner of the Golden Lion at the Venice International Film Festival, "Lust, Caution" recently had its Asian premiere in Taiwan, with Lee in attendance. "It was a very, very special experience in my life," he said. "I was so nervous that day. I'm something of a golden boy there, so emotionally I'm all attached, especially for something like this, a very personal film."

The film also opened in New York this past weekend, setting a quick box-office record for foreign-language films in exclusive runs.

Though he says making this film exhausted him (noting that recreating '40s Shanghai, mostly through sets, is much harder than Jane Austen's England), he's touched by the audience responses, seeing in them a trace of his own first thrill in connecting with an audience, long ago. And he looks forward to his next project, whatever it may be, keeping in touch with his first love. "As far as I'm concerned, I perform with cameras," he said. "I always see myself as performing."
« Last Edit: August 28, 2008, 08:00:25 am by Elle »

Offline Lynne

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Re: Do we have an Ang Ang Ang thread, or something equivalent?
« Reply #1 on: October 03, 2007, 01:28:24 am »
I don't believe we do - BBM-related Ang articles went into Brokeback Mountain Resources and articles related to his other works have gone in random other places like The Culture Tent or CT or various Movies threads.  Shall we rename this post to be 'Ang, Ang, Ang' and get one started?!  :)
"Laß sein. Laß sein."

Offline Ellemeno

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Re: Ang Ang Ang
« Reply #2 on: October 03, 2007, 02:12:31 am »
I don't believe we do - BBM-related Ang articles went into Brokeback Mountain Resources and articles related to his other works have gone in random other places like The Culture Tent or CT or various Movies threads.  Shall we rename this post to be 'Ang, Ang, Ang' and get one started?!  :)

Done!  And if it turns out there are other bits and pieces this can merge with, please do.  :)


Offline Lynne

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Re: Ang Ang Ang
« Reply #3 on: October 03, 2007, 09:54:05 am »
"Laß sein. Laß sein."

Offline Lynne

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Re: Ang Ang Ang
« Reply #4 on: October 03, 2007, 09:56:49 am »


At Venice 2007, accepting the Golden Lion for best film Lust, Caution
"Laß sein. Laß sein."

Offline ednbarby

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Re: Ang Ang Ang
« Reply #5 on: October 03, 2007, 11:36:56 pm »
He's sooooooooooooooooo cute.  God, I love him.  ;)

(Actually, seriously, he is and I do.)
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Offline Lynne

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Re: Ang Ang Ang
« Reply #6 on: October 04, 2007, 12:22:37 am »
I completely agree, Barb!!  :D :D

We were talking after Lust, Caution that he's such a mysterious, incongruous figure.

In every interview, he seems so humble, gentle, introspective, yet somewhere deep-down, he has this well of darkness and pain to draw upon.  The contradiction is fascinating to me.
"Laß sein. Laß sein."

Offline TOoP/Bruce

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Re: Ang Ang Ang
« Reply #7 on: October 06, 2007, 04:38:06 pm »
I just found this and thought others might be interested:

The Missing Link
By Brian Hu


In the first English-language book on celebrated director Ang Lee, Whitney Crothers Dilley provides a crash course on the filmmaker who rose to fame by transcending boundaries.

In his coverage of the Toronto Film Festival, Roger Ebert dared his readers to come up with the missing link amongst Ang Lee's films, which include pictures as disparate as the Victorian romance Sense and Sensibility, the wuxia film Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, the New England drama The Ice Storm, the comic book blockbuster The Hulk, and the "gay western" Brokeback Mountain. Readers didn't hesitate to step up to the challenge, posing such possibilities as: hidden passions, psychological and social repression, struggle with fears.

What's interesting about this exchange isn't whether the readers are right or not, but that Ang Lee is already an "auteur" in the minds of those readers, who have studied his films and begun to theorize what it means for a movie to be "Directed by Ang Lee."

It's fitting then that the time is right for Lee to be the subject of a new book, The Cinema of Ang Lee: The Other Side of the Screen, written by scholar Whitney Crothers Dilley and published by Wallflower Press as part of their impressive "Directors' Cuts" series. Dilley takes a standard approach to film authorship, going through each film title by title, and reading in them pieces of Lee's own biography.

The book comes in the wake of two other recent books that have featured chapters on Ang Lee. Michael Berry's Speaking in Images contains an interview with Lee that's very similar to Dilley's chronological, biographical approach, only it chooses to privilege the director's own voice, rather than the critic/scholar's.

The other is Emilie Yueh-yu Yeh and Darrell William Davis's Taiwan Film Directors: A Treasure Island, which includes a chapter on Ang Lee. Yeh/Davis's otherwise valuable book angered me when it made a special point to label Ang Lee a "Confucian director." Why is Lee called "Confucian"? Does Lee use this term to describe himself? Or are Yeh and Davis utilizing it simply because of Lee's ideologically/politically conservative family lineage? And calling Lee's introverted personality -- that is, his "efficiency, his friendship, and cooperation" -- "Confucian" risks depicting Chinese filmmakers as the "model minority" in an otherwise cutthroat Hollywood.

In other words, I objected to Yeh and Davis's generalizing of Lee, a Chinese/Taiwanese/American director who has radically expanded what is "Chinese," as the most emasculated, clichéd, and grossly essentialistic definition of "Chinese" available.

On the other hand, Dilley is more sensitive to the cultural openness in Lee's films; in fact, her sections on the English-language The Ice Storm, Ride with the Devil, Brokeback Mountain, and The Hulk go as far as to nearly eschew Lee's "Chineseness" altogether, having the sensitivity to call them what they are: American films. This is because, above all, Dilley reads the "primal moment" of Lee's career as not being his childhood in KMT Taiwan, but his decade living in the United States as an out-of-work aspiring director facing cultural, economic, and racial barriers in a merciless industry. For Dilley, these years are the root of Lee's interest in stories about outsiders who cling on to their passions despite the repressive pressures of society. She writes, "The extravagance of his success and failure comes from him being already inured to failure; he had nothing left to lose." It's a convincing approach to Ang Lee's films, for it acknowledges Lee's Chinese American identity, as well as his "Chinese" one. While in some ways this approach essentializes the Chinese American experience and perhaps overestimates his personal trauma, it at least allows for the possibility that biography is linked to artistic creation, an approach common in art history and musicology, but unpopular in post-structuralist film studies.



Dilley's distance from contemporary film studies is apparent in the tone of the book, as well as its structure and lack of depth. It doesn't take long before the reader realizes that this is in fact not a scholarly book, but a general critique of Lee's oeuvre that happens to have footnotes. There's nothing wrong with this; for the ordinary fan who may have seen his films once and would like to know more, Dilley's book provides an essential overview of the debates surrounding Ang Lee and his films. But for those seeking a sustained argument, this is not the place to look. What makes it even more frustrating is that Dilley is clearly trained as a scholar; she cites important theorists and introduces key concepts such as globalization. However, these observations are typically thrown in rather than integrated into a thesis. So the chapter on The Ice Storm will conclude with a statement about how Lee's skill working in English-language cinema proves he's a truly globalized filmmaker, even though that is hardly what she'd been writing about in the chapter. I also believe she overstates Lee's ties to the Taiwan New Cinema movement. Dilley shows how Ang Lee, like directors Hou Hsiao-hsien, Edward Yang, and Tsai Ming-liang, employs non-professional actors and uses long takes. But intent and affect cannot be reduced to pure style; neither can affiliation in a cinematic movement.

That said, Dilley does display some analytic strength, particularly in her exploration of the use of language throughout Lee's films. The clash of languages is an important narrative element of Lee's immigrant stories, Pushing Hands and The Wedding Banquet. In The Ice Storm, Ride with the Devil, and Brokeback Mountain, language is rightfully seen as one of the films' key sources of audience pleasure, so her analysis of their words, phrasings, and deliveries is most welcome. In Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, language is the site of cultural translation, given the film's unique writing and subtitling process.

 

Dilley's book also collects great insights into the production and reception of Lee's cross-cultural films. The discussion of the Taiwanese reception to the overly-"Western" Eat Drink Man Woman provides a nice antecedent to what would happen years later with Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon. And the section on Sense and Sensibility includes wonderful quotes and anecdotes by the film's British cast and crew about working with a "foreign" director. I only wish that in discussing reception and production, some consideration could have been given for not only Ang Lee the creative person, but for "Ang Lee" the brand and image. Dilley's approach is a traditional approach to the auteur, looking at biography and the director's body of work. But here is when the post-modern, Foucauldian approach to the auteur could have been useful. What does the name "Ang Lee" now mean in the American/Hollywood context? What does it mean in a Taiwanese context? Or in mainland China? Answering these questions would necessitate a very different approach to studying the auteur, and perhaps these questions can be posed in future studies.

Finally, Dilley's book was written before the release of Ang Lee's latest film, Lust, Caution. In many ways, Dilley's definition of an "Ang Lee film" carries into Lee's latest picture: repression and marginalization remain central themes, while the innovative use of dialogue and language continues to redefine the "Chinese" in Chinese cinema. But Lust, Caution draws attention to one important point on which, I believe, Dilley is quite wrong. Dilley argues that sexuality tends to be over-emphasized in discussions of Lee's films. For instance, the sexuality of Eat Drink Man Woman and Brokeback Mountain are largely the imagination of publicity and the media rather than the films themselves. Meanwhile, The Ice Storm is significantly less sexual than the novel it was based on. But the sexuality in Lust, Caution is no media creation, plus it's far more graphic than in the original short story. But to my mind, Lust, Caution is no anomaly. Lee's films have consistently contributed to the dialogue of sexuality in cinema, even when the sex isn't explicit. Think about The Wedding Banquet, The Ice Storm, and Brokeback Mountain, and the way they encouraged people to talk about sexuality. Lust, Caution has not been an exception. When it comes to sex, Ang Lee is, quite surely, no Confucian.

For more information on the book and Wallflower Press's "Directors' Cuts" series, click here. http://www.wallflowerpress.co.uk/publications/directors/ang_lee.html

 

Date Posted: 10/5/2007
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Offline MaineWriter

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Re: Ang Ang Ang
« Reply #8 on: October 07, 2007, 09:04:01 am »
And interesting interview from Newsweek International:

Interview: Ang Lee on Confronting Sex
By Andrew Huang
Newsweek International

Oct. 15, 2007 issue - From "The Wedding Banquet" (1993), about a gay Taiwanese man in New York who feigns marriage to satisfy his parents, to "Brokeback Mountain," Lee, 52, has never shied away from difficult themes or bold sexuality. "Lust, Caution" is no different; it earned a rare NC-17 rating from the Motion Picture Association of America for its explicit sex scenes. Lee spoke by telephone with NEWSWEEK's Andrew Huang. Excerpts:

HUANG: What appealed to you about Chang's story?

LEE: Very little Chinese literature describes sex. [Chang's story] is one of the few daring ones. It tells us what women get from sex. It scared me for quite a few years, but I decided to do it.

How was making "Brokeback Mountain" different from "Lust, Caution"?
The material of "Brokeback Mountain" is very far away from me. I mean, American gay cowboy, that's as far as you get from my personal experience. I was able to make art out of it. Physically I was very relaxed making it. But with "Lust, Caution," the materials, the characters and the textures are very close to me. It's very intense physically. It reminds me where my culture comes from.

What was the hardest part?
Well, obviously, the sex scenes. You can't just take it easy because people make pornographic films. It's very difficult physically and psychologically. People think you have the framework, and then you decide how deep you want to go with the sex scenes because they usually are functional. But to me how they landed decided how the movie would unfold. So I actually shot them relatively early. Then they served as the anchors to decide how to craft the second half of the story.

Philosophically, what is filmmaking to you?

It's the way I discover myself and understand the world.

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21162113/site/newsweek/
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Offline Ellemeno

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Re: Ang Ang Ang
« Reply #9 on: October 07, 2007, 10:10:22 am »
Wonderful contributions, everybody!!

:-*

Offline dot-matrix

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Re: Ang Ang Ang
« Reply #10 on: October 08, 2007, 12:51:39 pm »
This on the AP wire this morning

Ang Lee Says He's Extremely Shy, Struggles With Making Small Talk at Dinner Parties  
 
HONG KONG (Associated Press) --  Ang Lee has tackled English period drama, kung fu and gay cowboy romance. Just don't expect him to make small talk at a dinner party.

The Oscar-winning director says that despite his celebrity, he's extremely shy and struggles with social interaction.

"When I'm off the set, it's hard for me to carry a conversation. That's more difficult for me than making a movie," he said Saturday on CNN's "Talk Asia."

"Making a movie, I have plans in my head. Somehow one way or another I manage to roll the camera and get something in the can. But off the set, at the dining table ... it's still awkward for me," said Lee, a native of Taiwan.

He feels comfortable "momentarily" if the conversation turns to movies, the 52-year-old filmmaker said, but "that's kind of about it."

"It's hard for me to feel comfortable socially," he said. "I'm always shy, it's just part of my character."

Lee won an Oscar for "Brokeback Mountain." His Chinese-language spy thriller "Lust, Caution" won the top Golden Lion prize at this year's Venice Film Festival. His films also include "Hulk," "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" and "Sense and Sensibility."

He said being one of the most famous Chinese-speaking directors in the world is a tremendous burden.

"I'd rather be watching somebody else carry the torch," Lee said. "It's an incredible burden on my shoulder. But I'm passionate about making movies, so as far as I'm concerned, that's the duty I have."


Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. 
Life is not a dress rehearsal

Offline TOoP/Bruce

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Re: Ang Ang Ang
« Reply #11 on: October 09, 2007, 07:30:38 am »
http://www.darkhorizons.com/news05/brokeback2.php

Interview: Ang Lee
"Brokeback Mountain"
By Garth FranklinWednesday, December 7th 2005 3:38PM


A New York-based, Taiwan-born independent producer, director and screenwriter, Ang Lee gained international attention with his second feature, "The Wedding Banquet" (1993), whcih became a huge success and helped put Taiwanese cinema on the international map. His next, "Eat Drink Man Woman" (1994), which also picked up an Oscar nomination as Best Foreign-Language Film, opened to laudatory reviews and robust box office. A seemingly unlikely choice to film a classic British novel, Lee was then hired to direct an adaptation of Jane Austen's "Sense and Sensibility" (1995), his first English-language movie which went on to receive seven Oscar nominations. Subsequent films "The Ice Storm" (1997) and "Ride With the Devil" (1999) drew critical raves but only minor box-office. Then in 2000, Lee made his first Chinese-language project in years, "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon", which scored ten Academy Award nominations and the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film.

If his next film, the 2003 comic adaptation of "The Hulk" was largely viewed as a disappointment, Lee redeemed himself thoroughly with his next film, the haunting, sensitive drama "Brokeback Mountain". An adaptation and expansion of E. Annie Proulx's revered story (with a screenplay by Western master Larry McMurtry) which cast Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal as Ennis Del Mar and Jack Twist, respectively,a pair of rugged ranch hands who, while driving sheep through a mountain range in the 1960s, enter into a relationship and struggle through a painful, heart-wrenching gay love affair that spans several decades, hampered by Ennis' need to be closeted and their mutual heterosexual relationships with women. The soft spoken Lee sat down with press recently to talk about 'Brokeback' and the various issues it brings up:

Question: What was it about the short story and script that made you want to do this film?

Ang Lee: I don't know why it hit me so hard, I cried. I read the short story first and the script afterward. It's a great adaptation, a movie out of a thirty page short story. It was very unfamiliar to me. Usually when something hits you, you're caught off guard, I think that's why. I was thinking about, and possibly looking for repressive elements or outsiders. It was repression and a whole lot of things.

Question: You've been quoted as saying the movie is about the impossibility of love?

Ang Lee: I think the gay factors, after a while, maybe half the movie, the circumstances are set. They can live together. Ennis has a choice to make it work. That's why Jack complains later in the movie. All they got is Brokeback? That's bullshit. They're both gays, but one chooses to be more adventurous. The other has to go through self denial and only accepts it when it's too late, when he missed him. That is true. Eventually we surpass the obstacles and it's really a search for that obscure object of love.

Question: You get great performances from Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal. How did you cast them?

Ang Lee: I wanted younger actors in their early twenties to play older. I think they have a better chance to achieve the twenty years that time passed. I think they're among the best. They were suggested by casting director. There's not a lot to choose from. They're at the top. Heath, I like his disposition, he carries that western mood. I think he's the anchorman for that western theme. He's more macho and brooding, but provides the vulnerability, expressing his fear about violence. He also has that energetic power about him that carries the western literature, particularly at the turn of the last century. I think he's that man for me. Jake, I choose him because he carried the romantic edge. I think they're very different and compliment each other. I think they're a great couple. I think there was a little bit of psychological fear factor that we were doing a challenging movie. I think that also forced the best out of them. I think the performances, especially the sex scenes, were unusual. I've done quite a few movies now. The fear factor actually brings the genuineness. They have to try their best.

Question: Do actors normally agree to work for you without meeting you?

Ang Lee: I could image them playing that part. I wasn't reachable. I was in the mountains in China. I somehow have to show interest so they don't accept other offers. That was clear to the producers that I can't do my job right if I don't meet them. After I come back, I stop in LA and meet Heath. Jake I'd already met. Heath, I showed interest while I was traveling.

Question: When you were shooting, did you have a lot of pressure about the sex scenes?

Ang Lee: Yes, I have counsel from outside groups and inside groups too, what with the gay scenes. Was it enough or do they want to see more? At some point you stop thinking about it and see what has to be done.

Question: Is there more intimacy that wasn't used that may appear on DVD?

Ang Lee: No, it was precisely how I shoot. After I call action and before I call cut, it's pretty much there.

Question: Did it help that Heath fell in love with his wife on the set?

Ang Lee: That was before the set was built, when that started. I know it was love at first site. I think he was probably in love with her before they meet. He checked with me a couple times about when Michelle arrives. I think it was a process about breaking up with Naomi. I don't get into their private lives, but that is what I saw.

Question: There's an important scene near the end where Ennis is told what happened to Jack. It's a bit ambiguous. You're not sure what really happened. How do you see that?

Ang Lee: At that time, it's told from Ennis's point of view. You have no choice but to see his imagination. I think it's clear to me that his imagination resorted to his bad memory as a child. Why he goes there is helped by the wife's performance. Anne Hathaway, her performance, I think she's definitely angry and lying about the truth.

Question: Were you at all affected by what happened to Matthew Shepard?

Ang Lee: No, the book was written a year before that happened. There were similarities.

Question: What was the most difficult thing about making this film?

Ang Lee: Technically, it was aging, because it's a short epic story. It wants to be epic, but it's made of very short slices of life. It happens very quickly, but at some points it needs to be dramatic, like twenty years have passed. In order to do that as a filmmaker, in particular with aging, you need to have detail. So each time you see them, you can make up what's missing from the last time you see them two or three years ago. So filling in that gap with small things, enough detail in the acting, the way they carry themselves, the voices; technically, I think that's the hardest thing to do. But I think blending the macho western genre, western life, with a gay love story, I think in terms of tonality, that's hard to do as a director.

Question: With the Wedding Banquet and Brokeback Mountain, you're getting a reputation of a straight filmmaker who's making the best gay films...

Ang Lee: I don't know if that statement is true. Some would say that, some wouldn't, they would disagree. Everyone in the gay community doesn't think alike. I don't know if I make the best gay films.

Question: Do you see them as gay films?

Ang Lee: That's a hard question to answer. I do what's truthful to my feelings. I brought some universal feelings, whether you're gay or straight, about love, Chinese family drama, about romance. I think I brought a lot of universality that help the two communities. It's a good gay film for people because it's in the middle of the road. I don't squeeze the characters into gay cinema. I think that's what's good...or not so good. I always try my best when I do a film that feels genuine to me. I put myself in the middle to try to make cinema work.

Question: Did people assume you were a gay filmmaker?

Ang Lee: At the time, I thought they were gay movies. But why was it so widely accepted by everybody, it was the biggest hit in Taiwan. They had never seen men kiss before. That was the first one and you could hear the collective gasp from a thousand people, and then they settle down and watch the rest of the movie. They loved the movie. Because we won the Golden Bear in Berlin, it was rated PG, a family movie, but it was R-rated in the states. There was a lot of confusion where it belongs. It was definitely a mainstream movie. I don't know, it does feel gay but real to you.

Question: You spoke about making this movie in the middle of the road?

Ang Lee: That's not a conscious decision. I do what I think is best and usually that's the middle of the road.

Question: The setting plays an important role in your films. This film is an epic cowboy movie set in Wyoming. Was this another thing that sold you aside from the romance?

Ang Lee: Yes, I think that sold me and helped the romance. I think great romance needs great obstacles and textures. Romance and love are abstract ideas, an illusion. How do you make that? I think, most of the time, obstacles help build the romance. It helps to envision and make it feel real to you. I think that mixture is ultimately very interesting because they're very macho, but romance is usually soft. That strange mixture was very fresh and helped me to grope into what love is.

Question: Where does this film rank compared to your other films?

Ang Lee: The most relaxed. I was simply knocked out, wrecked by the previous two movies. Maybe it was the accumalation of my career, but by the time Hulk was released, I was wrecked, in terrible shape. I wasn't going to make a movie for a long time or retire. That was my mentality. I made this. It's a small budget film, very limited audience. To me it's a healing process. I was still making movies, so I didn't have any time to be depressed. What's most important was to make the performances and the idea of the story secure. That's pretty fundamental filmmaking that goes back to my first films. It was very refreshing. I was in the mood of love and everybody loved each other. It was a very loving set. I think that influenced the movie and how people see the movie. That was quite nurturing to me. I think I came back to life over the process. It was a very loving filmmaking process.

Question: You're very chameleon-like in your choices. What would you say is your essence as a filmmaker?

Ang Lee: I would have to say repression. (Laughs) I always use, but I try not to. I try to be a partygoer. But at some point I don't know why I'm doing it and fall back. I've been using repression, the struggle between behaving as a social animal. You're seeking to be honest with your free will, less conflict. I think that's an important subject with me. That's who I am, how I was brought up. I think I use that a lot. I mistrust everything I think. Things you think you can trust, believe in, or hang on to, changes. That's the essence of life. That's kind of Taoist. At a certain age, many Chinese think that way. When things change, we must adapt to it. That's our faith and belief.

Question: How relevant is Brokeback Mountain today?

Ang Lee: I hope nothing like that happens anymore. It could be in the west, in the east, New Jersey.

Question: Did the sheep give you any trouble?

Ang Lee: What do think? (Laughs) They're not the smartest animal. Nobody had wrangled that many for a movie. We all learned, the wranglers and us. What's the best way to shoot them, the most flattering. It takes a while, plus the weather and the mountains. It can be stressful.

Question: What are you planning to do next?

Ang Lee: Something Chinese.
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Re: Ang Ang Ang
« Reply #12 on: October 09, 2007, 07:36:22 am »
http://film.guardian.co.uk/interview/interviewpages/0,,394676,00.html

The Guardian/NFT interview
Ang Lee and James Schamus


Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon: Its development, its script, its casting | The process of adapting books for screen | Ang Lee's early work

Tuesday November 7, 2000
Guardian Unlimited

NN: Let's start with Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. This is based on the fourth of a five-part novel sequence, a sort of Chinese Pulp Fiction. At what stage did you see the possibility of a film within this?
AL: I read the book through a friend of mine who knew I was a fan of this particular writer in 1994. The fourth volume, which is the story of a young girl, Jen, struck me that there was a movie there. When there is a strong woman character in a story - that always grabs me. Especially in this very macho genre, which since boyhood I've wanted to do. It felt as if it took six movies for me to even begin to earn the right to make this kind of movie. Of course, I'm growing up, I'm an established film-maker, known for making family dramas about personal relationships, I cannot go all the way and make a purely genre film, I've got to throw everything I know into the movie - like a combination platter. The key is to keep the balance.

I think the book struck me in a few ways that I thought very interesting to pick it as my first martial arts film. It has a very strong female character and it was very abundant in classic Chinese textures. Usually these pulp fiction books are set aside from the lawful society - they create a world called Giang Hu, which is an entanglement, a relationship with the underworld, with swordsmanship - almost like a fairytale. But this one is not quite that way, it is very abundant in what I care about - and also to do with the process of Chinese history, which has been lost, classic Chinese textures, which I know from history, my parents, from movies. It gives the impression of China which is kind of like the hidden dragon in me, in some ways, and I feel I want to pursue it.
At the same time I was offered Sense and Sensibility - I couldn't refuse that job, it was just too good a job - so I made that. Meanwhile, the Ice Storm was still in development, And that was something I really wanted to do, and frankly I don't think I was ready to do a big production like this. Then I did another movie, Ride with the Devil, and then I thought I was ready. Going back after three major league productions, English-language films, including one somewhat action film, Ride with the Devil, I thought I was ready. I was, you know, tougher. And then James can tell you about the scripting process. There's the script and financing. Meanwhile, I went to Beijing and started to do location scouting. It's a process of two years. Five, six months of pre-production, then five months of shooting and five months of post-production and then seven or eight months in promotions.

NN: The remarkable thing about this being a Chinese production is that there are resonant myths with the west. For example, the Green Destiny sword can be compared to Excalibur in Arthurian legend. And there seem to be bits of Hamlet dotted all over the film. Was this embedded in the text itself, or was it something you drew out in order to make it more universal?

AL: I think people are universal. I took the name Green Destiny from - well there is such a sword called Green Destiny. It is green because you keep twisting it, it's an ancient skill, you keep twisting it and knocking it and twisting it until it is very elastic and light. Swoosh! It swings like that, you know?

Green Destiny is a name which is derived from the book, and I took the name and I go further with the Taoist philosophy. The jade fox - the old green, the murky green that's what the green really means. It is the ultimate yin-ness. Yin and yan where everything exists in and derives from. . . this is hard to explain. The most mysterious feminine factor, the existence that we men, we don't know. It's woman. It's feminine. That's what the sword is about. That's the symbolic meaning of the sword. Even in Chinese you probably don't get that. . . I don't know. But that's for me. Anything green is hidden dragon, desires and repression. . . something weird when you dig into the depth. I think there is something like that in Excalibur, for example. . .

We didn't exactly have that in mind for a western audience. For a western audience, I think between James and me, the bouncing passing forth between Chinese and English, I think it is a good exercise to make it reasonable for a worldwide audience - not just a western audience - a worldwide audience and to some degree a modern Chinese audience as well. Things and logic that we used to take for granted in the Orient might not be that logical today. It's a good exam - how to tell a story with a global sense. That means more layout of the texture of society, more explanation of rules of the games. For example, the first fight does not ensue until 15 minutes into the movie. To a Chinese audience it must feel like 30 minutes - 'Are we gonna see a fight or what?' Usually with this genre the first thing that happens is a good fight sequence to show that you're in good hands. So we broke that rule. I think a lot of that comes from the western audience.

I also I didn't want to make just a martial arts film, you know, there's drama in it. I think there is somewhat of a western three-act structure that lays things out. Starting with a crisis or an action, things like that, or verbalising a relationship.

NN: James, I know you've worked on all of Ang's scripts, aside from Sense and Sensibility, but you've worked on all of Ang's films. But never anything like this. What sort of a challenge was it for you to tackle the stunt aspect of the script?

JS: It was an amazing challenge, because in fact I didn't do it.

[Laughter]

On the first draft of the script I had a little preamble. As you go through the scenes and get to the fight scene, I remember exactly the language I used - 'They fight'. The preamble said, 'While I fail to explain the fight scenes, I can assure you that they will be the greatest fight scenes ever written in cinema history. Period.' And that was our pitch to the distributors we were selling the film to at that time. I knew two things. One was that Ang was going to insist on crafting fight sequences that were not simply the kind of western fight sequences where there's a bad guy who wants to kill the good guy, while the good guy doesn't really want to kill the bad guy - but in the fight the bad guy gets the upper hand, and it looks like the good guy's going to die, but at the last minute the good guy kills the bad guy. Only he doesn't kill the bad guy he just disables him, then the bad guy finally gets out of the tub with the knife and the good guy has to kill him.

[Laughter]

So I knew that they were going to be expressions of relationships and meaningful. Because in most of the fights in this movie, one person really doesn't want to fight. So it's a really interesting situation, having to make dramatic fight scenes when they are more or less than that. So I knew that Ang, and in particular our martial arts choreographer, Yuen Woo-Ping, would work all this stuff out on set in pre-production. It's one of those great ironies that when we mention Yuen Woo-Ping over here in the west it's always suffixed by 'of The Matrix fame'. Because he did do the choreography for The Matrix, which we loved, but of course we know him as the guy who created Jackie Chan's career and Jet Li's career. And it's amazing to see 30 years later, full circle, the cultures revolving, and so Yuen Woo-Ping returns to us as the guy who did The Matrix.

NN: As the film was being put together there were reports about the different castings. I gather that Jet Li was in fact considered for the main role and I understand that you were planning two language versions - one in English and one in Mandarin. Is that true?

AL: That was just a thought. Is it do-able? I don't know. Has anyone done it before? I don't know. It seemed to be a waste of time to shoot two versions. Am I going to direct them with equal intensity? All of the actors had better Chinese than English. Are they going to struggle with their English? Production-wise it doesn't make sense. Unless there were, like, 50 lines in the movie, then maybe I could manage to do that. But there are too many lines in the movie. So I decided not to do that and stick with Mandarin.

Yeah, Jet Li, the first thing you think about when doing a martial arts film is him. But at that time it was a much smaller project, I really intended to make the movie as Sense and Sensibility with martial arts [laughs]. . . a two woman story. . . So the men are just generally supporting roles, just a touch, just a vehicle for their romance and conflict. So Jet Li was invited . . . but it didn't work out. . .

Anyway, Chow Yun-Fat was the next big movie star. I don't see that as a Jackie Chan part.

[Laughter]

Chow Yun-Fat said he will never play a period piece. Will never shave his head and have a ponytail. He's never held a sword before. But I know he's a good actor, and drop-dead gorgeous and everything, so I show him the script and, at that stage, he is willing to take the job. So I was very moved. So he is not going to do tumbling and all kinds of fantastic Jet Li-styles of fighting, so the fighting gets reduced and his part gets really beefed-up. His relation with Michelle Yeoh really gets beefed up, and the part really becomes a romantic lead. I think, thinking back, we were lucky to have him. The movie is more a romantic drama.

NN: So the fact that you cast him changed the emotional weight of the movie?

AL: Yes. I always do that. Sometimes it happens in the writing, sometimes in the directing. Like Zhang Zi-Yi, the young girl, she didn't turn out to be the way I see the part, so I have to veer the movie towards her and make it work. I think I am the actors' tailor. As far as casting is concerned, until the last moment of the music is composed, the job is not done. The whole process is casting. You have to make them look like they're perfectly cast.

NN: Your last four films have been based on novels. Rick Moody's The Ice Storm, Austen's Sense and Sensibility and Daniel Woodrell's book Woe to Live On and now this. When you have a source material to work from, do you think in a different way when you approach the script? James?

JS: Oh, me?

NN: Well, both of you. . .

[Laughter]

AL: It's running out of things to write about. That's why I adapt. . .

JS: Well essentially it means I can get away with a first draft just by ripping off somebody else. . .

[Laughter]

Which is a great comfort. Because that first stage is just going through and underlining all the juicy bits and then trying to run them in some kind of order that makes sense cinematically. Then the hard part actually does take over, and you realise that novels don't simply translate into movies. Assuming that the world the novel created for you is the basis for the enjoyment of the script and the film is a deadly error. Because that world doesn't exist once you're dealing in cinematic terms - you have to create it every step of the way. It's like film production itself.

My partner Ted Hope, at Good Machine, who started as an assistant director, the guy who ran the set, used to say it's like a Phillip K Dick novel, if you don't think about the floor, it's not there and you fall through it. And to a certain extent it's the same adapting novels, you suddenly realise you've forgotten what you need to do to make it into a movie. So it's an interesting process, it's a good process for lazy people, because the first stage is so easy, and it's a good process for procrastinators, because you already have a draft before you even start thinking about making a movie.

NN: Does this mean that we're not going to have any more original Ang Lee scripts?

AL: There could be an original James Schamus script. . . I don't care about writing really. When I started out, nobody gave me scripts, so I had to write. . . That's why I wrote family drama - I'm a domestic person, it's all I know! Now I'm kind of established as a director, I much prefer directing to writing. Writing's lonely. Directing, I get all kinds of inspiration. It's working with people. It's a lot more fun. When I have a full schedule like that, I don't see myself sitting there for a couple of months, doing the research, going through a painful process, it's just not my thing anymore. I grab the life I have to direct as many movies as I can. [listen to the soundclip] (58 seconds)

NN: Let's look at that early stage, about 1985. You were at NYU film school, you had a couple of scripts, you were not being able to get films made. So you sent two scripts into a competition run by the Taiwanese government. These scripts were Pushing Hands, which won the first prize, and The Wedding Banquet, which won second prize. Not a bad way to start! That gave you the impetus to get a film made. Enter Good Machine, James's company. How did that meeting of minds come about?

AL: When I sent those scripts, that was the lowest point of my life. We'd just had our second son, and when I went to collect them from hospital, I went to the bank to try and get some money to buy some diapers, the screen showed I've got $26 left. Terrible. Anyway, my first Chinese script was The Wedding Banquet, it was written six years before it was made into a film. At that time making a Chinese-language film in America was inconceivable, no-one would give me money, no matter how small it was. And it was gay-related subject matter, so I couldn't raise the money in Taiwan either, so it just sat there.

Then at the end of 1989 a friend of mine saw an advert that that year they were expanding the script competition to off-sea Chinese. The top award was equivalent to $16,000 - good money. I had this idea of Pushing Hands and the old Tai-Chi master for a long time but I never wanted to write it. I felt like in that six years I was sitting there like an old Tai-Chi master at home, going nowhere.

[Laughter]

I never meant to make that movie, but I know that if I write that movie I can win the top prize from the Taiwanese government. So I wrote it for the sake of the competition. So I won it, and they sent me a ticket to receive the prize in Taiwan. So when I arrive they say, the studio, that they want to make three movies. It's related to the government, called Central Motion Pictures, and it had just changed management. They say they want to make three movies, one is going to be done by a new director, we know we're going to lose money so just do what you want.

[Laughter]

'The American wife in that part? Just don't choose anyone too ugly.'

[Laughter]

A third of the budget was funded by the government, a third is a video package deal they had, so there's only equivalent to $100,000 investment, so they said go ahead and do it. The story was set in New York, and I took the money, but I said, 'Give me a couple of days, I dunno if I want to do it.' I'd been waiting 10 years. . . I didn't want to make a flop. Anyway, I took the money and I was looking for a line producer, and through a friend of mine I knew Ted. And then there was Ted and James at the new-found Good Machine. They shared two tables with another company, I think. So I did my pitch. And they did their pitch. They told me that they were the kings of no-budget film-making in New York.

[Laughter]

James looked like a used-car salesman and a professor. . . And they said, 'Pay attention. We said 'no-budget' not 'low-budget'. Your money, about $400,000. . .

JS: 350

AL: '$350,000 is luxury for us.' They offered something very tempting to me. They said they were director-centered producers. They wanted to teach the directors how to make the movies that they can afford instead of spending time in development hell - and I'd just spent six years in there. . . so I know how that tastes. And over the years I'm just glad that these two guys, I'm just glad they're not crooks!

[Laughter]

And they did keep their promise. They did grow together with me and they still teach me how to make the movie I can afford. All the movies you see - small ones, bigger ones. . . they fumble along the way like I do. They're learning how to deal with bigger people and different situations, international money-raising and sales. The first movie, Pushing Hands, didn't make any money except in Taiwan, so James said, 'Let me help you with the script for the second one.' And that hit. The Wedding Banquet was international, and we were capable of doing one after another, Chinese, English. . . It is a very fruitful and nurturing relationship that we get to grow together. I now want them to teach me how to make Terminator 3. . .

NN: James, are you still a professor at Columbia?
JS: Yeah, I'm keeping the day job. . . I hooked up with Ted Hope - he dropped out of film school, or was kicked out, there's conflicting stories! . . But he worked his way up on set. I came out of the graduate programme in English Literature, I was a Miltonist, and then shifted into film theory at Berkeley and had no practical experience whatever. I realised that, when I came to New York, to be a producer you had to know how to use a phone and beg. That was a central ingredient to the package. And Ted brought the knowledge of how to make money once the begging had paid off. . . make the film I mean. So we had the wacky idea to get together, and in America, you know, more or less if you have a high-school equivalency diploma you can go and get a packet of business cards, and if you're Jo Schmo you're Jo Schmo Productions Inc. And that was us.

Ted made a list of directors who had all made great short films but were yet to make features. He said we should really go after these folks, it was a really interesting list, and on it was Ang's name. Ang had made, six years prior, this wonderful short film called Fineline. I watched the film on tape and fell in love immediately. It was also Chazz Palminteri's first film. Just a fantastic movie. So, we called Ang's then agents and said, 'Hi, we're Ted and James of Good Machine, and we're interested in finding out what's up with Ang Lee. It seems to be a long time since he dropped off the face of the Earth.'
[Laughter]

And they said, 'Oh, you no-budget guys.' (They'd read some article I'd written about no-budget-blah-blah-blah-bullshit.) And they said, "You can't touch Ang. he's got development deals at this studio and all that, go away.' And it was only by coincidence through a mutual friend of Ted's that Ang showed up at our office two weeks later. He said, 'You probably don't know who I am. I'm Ang Lee.' Needless to say, he doesn't have those agents anymore.

He gave his pitch. Of course, as you know, in Hollywood the pitch is a very rarified art form that usually takes between two and five minutes, usually involves the screenwriter getting up from his chair and doing some kind of interpretive dance and then the door opening at the right moment with the telegram from the stripper who says 'Ta-da!' You know, this kind of thing, and they have it all worked out. Ang's pitch lasted almost an hour.

[Laughter]

You can imagine it. And I was listening to this guy thinking, 'This guy will never, never get a job. It's not gonna happen.'

[Laughter]

But when he left, I turned to Ted and said, 'The weird thing about that pitch - aside from how boring it was - was the fact. . .

[Laughter]

'. . . was the fact that he didn't actually PITCH the movie. He DESCRIBED the movie.' He had already made the movie, and he was actually talking about a film. And we sat down together for about five minutes after Ang left, and we talked through how he actually talked about it, or at least that portion that we actually heard, and it was amazing that he was actually describing a film. This guy was actually a film-maker. It was one of these exciting moments, like in a bad 60s sitcom, where Ted goes and I go [does a double-thumbs-up with a broad grin]. And then we did the movie. [listen to the soundclip] (2 mins 28)

NN: There is a sense, Ang, that there is a sort of emotional arc to you movies. You start off light, with three comedies, and then move into something darker with Ice Storm. . .

JS: Just for the record, I wrote that as a comedy. . .

NN: But they were more ambiguous - Ride with the Devil and now this. I know that for you film-making is a major emotional investment. How does this reflect on the films you have made?

AL: I think partly because I have grown older, and part of it is because I just got saturated - I just couldn't take those movies anymore. I think being successful for four movies was something out of my nature, and not much skill was involved. After The Wedding Banquet I was thinking of a change. You can see that in Eat Drink Man Woman, it's not darker, but it's more melancholy than the first two. The ending's more ambiguous. But what I really wanted to do at the time was The Ice Storm. Something less linear. Something more patchy, more like cubism. Something just 'kerck' [twists the air with his hands]. . . you know, give it a kick [pretends to stamp on something].

[Laughter]

But then I got offered Sense and Sensibility. I read it and wondered why they had sent the script to me. It's all about British introductions, somebody is introduced to somebody else and then. . . eight pages later so-and-so bows. . . so what did that have to do with me? But I was the guy that did social satire and family drama - that was how they saw Jane Austen should be interpreted and I was offered the job. I felt as if I know the world. . . really at heart, I know the material, except I have to do it in English with an English touch. So the cultural barrier and the major-league production was really the challenge, and I was ready to take the challenge. Of course, working with Emma Thompson was irresistible, and the film was to be made in England, not Hollywood, so I figured that was good natured. I still didn't know if we should do a $15m movie - probably we should do The Ice Storm first, somewhere around $4-8m. But then that week we saw some Hollywood movie and we thought, 'If a schmuck like that can make a movie, what are we afraid of?' So I took the job. After the success of Sense and Sensibility I just couldn't take it anymore, you know, the same tone anymore. Get so saturated by it. I don't know why I'm embarrassed about success. I just want to do a movie that could be a flop, maybe. . .

I was very happy that I did that movie. In fact, I was very happy that I did all the movies I did. I was a very fortunate man. They are the movies. . . as long as I'm growing and working with these guys - they have a hard time, but I have a good time making those movies. And over the years they managed to pre-sell the film, so it reduces half the risk of the film. So I get to make those movies I want to make, with European territories as my backbones, and I can stretch the budget, and I could stretch the production value and the creative freedom and the kind of mass I can create. I enjoy it.

Maybe the next thing, I'll try to get out of this tragic movie. But I'm very glad that I did this movie, that I have a better way of doing the tragic. I have to be conceptive, have to conceal in something I deliver so I don't give these guys such a hard time selling the movie [laughs]. I don't know. I just couldn't do Sense and Sensibility again. At least not for a while. There will be a time when I will be less cynical and I come back to have some pure fun.

NN: The broader significance of Crouching Tiger is that it could be one of the first foreign language films to break through the box-office in the west. We've had Il Postino or Life is Beautiful, maybe, but at the moment there is a definite sense that the really exciting work is all coming from the east. There are Asian film-makers leading the way. You think of the first wave, John Woo and Jackie Chan, and then another wave which is Ang, and Wong Kar-Wai, and Chen Kaige. They are starting to form a bridgehead in the west. Do either of you have any ideas as to why this situation should be at this particular time?

[Ang and James look at each other, shrug and shake their heads]

AL: Maybe it's about time this happens. I'm just glad I'm part of the wave. I was born in a certain year. I waited six years, and it just happened. It also happened that our film industry took a dive. There was a time at the end of the 70s when no-one knew what to do anymore, so people got to make art films, which have to be personal to work in the first place, they have to be because they have no movie star, no big production value. Hong Kong is going through that change. . . Eventually it catches the eye of the art-house audience and, of course, the film festivals, and it becomes something filled with enthusiasm, the creative forces. . . we have a lot to say. It's not jaded yet. I think that's very. . . the reason you go to a movie is that you want to see something fresh. I think that's very exciting, creatively. These days you watch most mainstream American films and you see a beginning, a middle and an end. Some Chinese films, you still don't know what's going on at the end. . .

[Laughter]

It's very exciting. I think this year, film-makers have become more mature individually, and that's a good sign, it's not a trend that will come and go. I think it could be the beginning of a good development. In terms of subtitled movies, I'm just glad. . . I hope that this movie will break art-house ghettos, not that it doesn't have artistic values, but I hope that we break that barrier. I grew up with subtitles. To us, reading subtitles is the mainstream. I just hope that the cultural exchange can be more bilateral, more even. There's a big world out there. People, you know, they have a lot of stories to tell. Just read the Goddamn subtitles! Enjoy movies! Join the world!

Q: You appear to leap from genre to genre, do you programme those leaps into the development stage?
JS: Looking for some juicy new genre to attack? It hasn't necessarily been problematic, but I think there's two things that have happened as the years go by. One related to the nerd side of me, which is an engagement with the film's historical record and the traditions, and many of them are Hollywood traditions that Hollywood itself has just forgotten as the fads pile up. I think the engagement with that, those tasks, is very enriching for me personally. For Ang it's a different tack, but it's also quite similar, to rub up against those traditions, to continually test your craft, to treat yourself as a craftsperson as well as an artist. There's a certain luxury associated with that exercise. So I think that the generic imperative is going to continue, we don't necessarily have one that we're dying to do next. Although musicals have been bandied around a bit. . .


[Laughter]
But we haven't really decided yet.

AL: That's the beauty of working with James, I think, a film professor. You know, whenever I am tired of doing this one, abundant sources come my way. Swoosh! So writing the script is the least interesting thing to us. It's what film we're going to create, what fun we're going to have, what kind of angle are we going to put on it, what juice are we going to put in. That was the real fun, not genre or script writing - you know, craft, what fun we're going to have.

Q: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon seems to be a big leap of faith. What was the danger? The financial risk?

AL: Of course it was a big risk. A lot of stress. It was something I've wanted to do for a long time, but didn't really have the skill until I'd made six films. Then I was ready to take the challenge. I think the biggest challenge I had was doing a genre film that takes a lot of money to make, and on top of that I want to make A-grade drama, and see if I can keep a balance and have both of them benefit each other. On top of that, I want to do a big landscape in China. So all of that is very challenging. To me it is important after three English-language films that I go back to my cultural roots, to fulfill my boyhood dreams. But it also a new adventure, because that kind of film-making is low budget in America but is titanic in China. There are no rules. We get to make the rules. There's no producer to look over my shoulder. There is no set standard. Of course, I keep testing the limit.

James will tell you the story of how much each area would give for an Ang Lee film with Chow Yun-Fat and Michelle Yeoh. Then they would give us a number and we would come up with that budget. James can fill you in. It's a very interesting process, the financial process, and what's at stake. Once the money's raised, we're OK, we're making the movie. But for the investors, the movie has to make $60m to break even. No Chinese film has ever come close to that. It's a kind of mission impossible. But it's what we want to do. [listen to the soundclip] (1 min 45)

JS: Well, these were interesting circumstances to go asking for money in Hollywood for Ang for a Chinese-language film. Namely because after the 'blockbuster' success of The Ice Storm and the 'firestorm of praise and heaps of money' that showered upon us after Ride with the Devil. . . Basically, if this film didn't work, Ang would be directing segments for Fox TV's Scariest Animal Moments. . . so there was a little bit of iffyness involved. And the Taiwanese billionaire who pledged to put up all the money, I don't know, maybe it was a bad mahjong day or something. . .

AL: It was the Asian economic storm. . .

JS: The virus. Anyhow. So we had to pull numbers out of Europe, and particularly a lot of long-standing friends and the distribution community here, who still had faith in Ang, and prove with those numbers that this film could support a budget of X dollars. At that point we brought in Sony Pictures Classics in the States, another Sony - the Columbia Pictures, Asia and then the Sony entity of Columbia Pictures International in order to pick up the other territories, including the Asian territories and Latin America. There was this corporate family who came in to put the pieces together and help us make the film. But at that point it was also a corporate family whose cookie jar was empty. So we had to bank all these contracts, we had to find a bank that was crazy enough to do that, and that was in France. Then we had to get a bond company to insure the movie, because the bank wouldn't give us any money until we had an insurance policy that said we would deliver this wacky movie that was being shot all over China. So they were in Los Angeles. And then we had the Taiwanese production end. But in order to close the deals, for tax reasons (it's a complicated story), they had to set up a subsidiary in the British Virgin Islands. Our limited liability corporation, that we set up in the United States, had the sub-licence to English-language rights. So we ended up with literally thousands of pages of legal documentation, all of which had to be signed in a circular way - one of those things where the guy in Italy isn't going to sign until the guy in France has signed. Meanwhile they were in Beijing already, pre-producing the movie and more or less mortgaging Ang's house. So it was a little iffy.

NN: All of which could have been put at risk by one or two tiny accidents, like Michelle Yeoh messing up her knee quite early on in the shoot?

AL: Yes, second week of shooting, unfortunately. Doing a spinning flying-kick, something she did thousands of times. But she didn't pay attention and it was at the end of a night's shooting, and 'crack', she snapped her knee ligament and has to be sent away for surgery. For about 2 1/2 months we have to reschedule everything. It was a nightmare. The movie started out shooting in the Gobi desert - it was just a logistical nightmare - sandstorms, lost in the desert…and flood. In the desert. Two weeks of rain!

[Laughter]

JS: The locals went up to our producer, Bill Kong, who had been burning incense each day for good luck and getting none of it. They said, 'Thank you so much for burning that incense, because that's what we do when we want rain!'

AL: So the whole production was like that. Nothing worked. Every little detail I had to, like, kill myself, kill everybody, just to make it work. The whole production was like that. I thought I was dying sometimes. I don't know how I lived through that. When people ask me about a sequel. . .

[Laughter]

It's just insane.
Listen to the soundclip (1 min 37)

Q: Is the novel of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon available here?

JS: We're trying to arrange it. . . well, there was an abridged version of the novel published in Taiwan and they're trying to arrange a translation of that abridged version. Of course, that abridged version was copyright piracy. . . Oh yeah. .. So who knows if they'll cut through that.

Q: Are you both fans of the martial arts genre, and if so, which are your favourite directors in the genre?

AL: I grew up with it. I'm a big fan. When I was younger it's the storytelling that really grabbed me, the fantasy storytelling, about power, about personal transcendence, about romance. Morality tales. A secret joy we had when growing up. As I grew a little older, the Hong Kong choreographers took over the genre and made fantastic fight sequences. Of course, they don't really care what's in between the fights. So that film language really fascinated me as a young film student. So it really fascinated me in both ways. I really wanted to hit the high notes of the Hong Kong action standards, while I have the fantastic movie and the applause and everything else. So that's something I've always wanted to do.

Among those directors, King Hu is more of a director to look up to, and Chang Che is one of them. The recent ones, they don't really influence me except some of the really classic fighting sequences - the stories I didn't care for much.

JS: I saw a fair amount when we were researching the film. My current favourite is Chang Che, who was working in the 60s and 70s, and if you ever get the chance to score a tape of One-armed Swordsman. . . These are incredibly brutal, queer, kind of sadomasochistic fight movies, with all these greased-up guys chopping each other to bits. They're pretty fun!

[Laughter]

Q: I heard you were planning a prequel next year and also is it true that Chow Yun-Fat has declared that he is taking a break from film for the next year and a half?

JS: If I were Chow and had made this movie with this guy - I wouldn't work again.

AL: Not next year. I couldn't take it anymore. I'm so exhausted. I probably need to make one or two English-language films to recover from it. Physically I can't take it anymore.

JS: But don't worry, they'll be 20 other Chinese movies with the title Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon - the Prequel, coming out next year. . .

Q: You portray very interesting female characters in your movies. You don't see that very often in films, so where do you get your ideas from?

AL: From my wife, I suppose. Seriously. And my ex-girlfriend. Actually I was brought up in a very chauvinist, traditional Chinese male way, but at heart I guess I'm just not a macho guy. I'm not going to be John Woo. Strong women attract me in real life, and in dramatic context. A strong woman, when her heart is broken, it breaks my heart. It's something that speaks for me very well. When there are such characters in the text, I just tend to grab them. I don't know why. It's just chemistry find that I do a much better job with strong female characters than anything else.

Somehow in Asia, I notice, women make up 80 per cent of my audience. So you see women with crouching men sitting next to them [pulls the face of a very quiet, small man]…maybe at The Wedding Banquet you'll see a couple of guys.

I think it is also a refreshing angle to check into repressed male-dominated society. Particularly for this one, which is a very macho genre, it just gives a different angle. There is a deeper emotional depth because we are taking an emotional tour with the heroines. I just like that. It's the best thing I can offer, I suppose. [listen to the soundclip (2 mins 25)

Q: Could you speak about the fight sequence in the forest at the end of the movie - how long did it take?

AL: It took two weeks to shoot that scene. Most of it is on the editing floor. . . it was just a crazy idea that I had and everyone refused to do it for months. There is no shortage of swordfighting in bamboo forests, because bamboo provides a very romantic environment. In China, bamboo symbolises righteousness - it shoots straight up, it's elastic, like the swordsmanship. Also it provides a very interesting foreground. But normally no-one ever gets up there because it's undo-able. That's why I wanted to do it.

The colour of green is really the Hidden Dragon for me in the movie, against the colour of red in the desert flashback. The crouching one, the forbidden one to me is really green. The Green Destiny, Jade-eyed Fox. Anything green, with a little bit of white, is very sexy and taboo-ish for me. So I thought the bamboo choreographed sequence really, in an abstract way, is mesmerising. It's not really a fight. I thought it was a good place to do it. You know, we live in a place with gravity. I sort of underestimate that.

It's very painful for the actors and I worry about their safety. They were down in the bamboo forest in the southern part of China, in the valleys. It's hard to get a big construction crane in there. We managed to get four or five in there and hang the actors up. There's the valley and the creek, so they're really high up there, and we had to build platforms for the tighter shots. Once you cut the bamboo, the leaves dwindle. Only on drizzling days can you shoot for half an hour, then you have to change the bamboo again. It's really painful But it's a crazy idea.

Q: I wasn't really sure about the flashback scenes. Why did you spend so long in the desert when it didn't seem to be crucial to the film? And also, how does scriptwriting work in terms of there having to be a constant translation between English and Chinese?

JS: I can answer the first question about the flashback: It's a big mistake, we're sorry.

[Laughter]

It was a very big topic for us. In general, every time I see the movie, which is less and less (but he [Ang Lee] sits through it all the time!) I think, 'I can't believe we got away with this!' All of a sudden, for 20 minutes, they go back there. . . and it's completely unapologetic, it's like cut/back, cut/back. We're ready to take it on the chin a bit, hence my feistiness. But there are a lot of reasons why we love the flashback.

But I'll tell you a little about the scriptwriting process. It was extremely educational for me, and extremely painful for Ang. We started with a Chinese-language draft, and then Ang made a precis of the parts of the fourth volume that were most important to him. Then I wrote this completely entertaining swash-buckling romantic adventurous epic movie, that was a joke to the Chinese who reading it. I use the analogy that if a Chinese person wrote a John Wayne western, and he rides into town, gets off his horse, walks over to the sheriff, says 'Howdy' and then, like, kow-tows nine times. . .

[Laughter]

But the structure was there. I think if I was Chinese it would be a nightmare parody of my entire culture. But structurally, I think, it still ended up working. Then Ang and Hui-Ling Huang really took it over and from inside-out really transformed the film, and really got into a lot of the cultural references, indices - the soul, which I had misread. Even though I'd read a lot of Chinese stuff in English translation and seen a lot of movies, I misread almost every cue. So it was great that the process became six months of mutual torture through bad translation . . .can you imagine trying to write your script and have somebody who had been fired from the UN doing bad translation? . . . I always thought we were going to make a movie that was understandable to westerners, but still very Chinese, and I still think essentially it's a Chinese film. But in a way I also recognise that why the film has been so massively successful in Asia is not because it retained its Asian identity, but because of all these wonderful new things that came about in discourse with the west. Especially in regards to the female characters and the romance, which are very foreign to the genre. I think that one of the things I find people responding to here in the west is precisely the fact that you get to see a two-hour Taoist action movie. The Chinese-ness of it, even if it's not always entirely comprehensible because of the subtitles, I think that's what's so profoundly new about it. So in a way we ended up making an eastern movie for western audiences and in some ways a more western movie for eastern audiences. [listen to the soundclip] (2 mins 27)

AL: To me, James is the best writer I personally know of. Take this film, it has to hit Asia like a summer blockbuster, but at the same time it has to be in the art-house cinemas and the New York Film Festival. So from the New York Film Festival to Asian blockbuster is a big range to cover. James doesn't know Chinese, but the structure and the film logic and the sellability, marketability and the pure grade of how good the script is. I do need his help, that's just the bottom line. It's painful for me to say so, but Goddamn it, it's so true.

Q: I just have a comment, not a question. I found Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon exhilarating and profoundly moving. I want to say thank you.

NN: I've seen it twice and I think it's the most amazing film I've seen in a long time. Thank you James Schamus and Ang Lee.


Former IMDb Name: True Oracle of Phoenix / TOoP (I pronounce it "too - op") / " in fire forged,  from ash reborn" / Currently: GeorgeObliqueStrokeXR40

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Re: Ang Ang Ang
« Reply #13 on: October 09, 2007, 07:39:36 am »
http://www.filmmonthly.com/Profiles/Articles/AngLee/AngLee.html

Ang Lee Tackles The Hulk
by Paul Fischer

Ang Lee/The Hulk Interview.


Oscar winner Ang Lee is one of Hollywood's most unique visionaries. The Taiwanese director has managed to take Hulk and transform it into his own personal vision while partially conforming to what Hollywood expects. It's a fine balancing act, but one he pulls off. He talked to Paul Fischer.

Paul:  Will this movie be a challenge for the market?

Ang:  For the market or for me? I know it was for me.

Paul:  Do you think people will be surprised by this movie?

Ang:  Well, I think surprise is good, I don't really like 'summer' movies myself and because it's a big movie it has to be released in summer, it is the only was they launch it, summer or Christmas. There's a marketing side to it. As far as I'm concerned it's my chance to do a big movie, it's a franchise. I don't need a big movie star to open big, it's a lot of money to make, that's ambitious, and so you have to sell it.  To me I took advantage of the elements that are there, it can still be a filmmaker's vehicle and I grabbed the chance. It's like my new Hidden Dragon, you can mix the pulpy art which is a really guilty pleasure, it's hidden and you don't want to admit it, but it has a lot of juice in it and mix it with drama, which is always what I do and will probably always be what I do, with the human condition and psychology and I really like the back story. To me it's not a comic book super hero movie, it's a horror film.

Paul:  Was it hard to convince the studio not to go with a big name actor, a superstar?

Ang:  No, it wasn't an issue at all because with The Hulk the CG actor is the biggest star, he is more expensive than any star, so after that you have no money (laughs). And they, like me, prefer brand new faces, it's more exciting. So it was no problem, I wanted Eric.

Paul:  So there was no question in your mind that you would make The Hulk CGI?

Ang:  I didn't know how to do that in the beginning. Larry Franco the line producer was the one, he showed me how Jurassic Park was done, and he had just come off Jurassic Park 3. Shot by shot, this was how it looks; this is how long it takes, the ways and means, how much it costs. He went through that shot by shot with me. and then we visited make up companies, animatronics companies and I got educated along the way but it was pretty obvious that CGI was the best way to do it. From understanding what I wanted from the scene it had to be CGI.

Paul:  Were you a little anxious of working with the CGI?

Ang:  I didn't know enough to be frightened and then once I was frightened I was half way into it. ILM never said 'no' to me; they said they could do it (laughs). It's the producers and supervisors from our side that gave me the discipline. I found some things not satisfying, which is why I would jump in and do the Hulk myself (reference to pre production videos where the director acted out how he wanted the Hulk to behave). I didn't know how they used to do it, how they weren't directed or that animators would use their own faces looking in a mirror or a camera on themselves. And they are not performers. And often there's no reality in CGI characters, each time it looks like a different person so it has to be brought into some kind of continuity, starting with me performing it. It develops month by month, it's painstaking and a lot of craftsmanship, there's nothing fancy about it.  It is frightening but when I got into it I didn't know it was like that.

Paul:  When did you first hear about the Hulk?

Ang:  I was promoting Crouching Tiger. It had just been released here and was getting very positive reviews and then big movies were offered to me. They felt I could bring something special, I guess if I can make a Chinese language martial arts film which did that kind of business maybe I could do something with the genre. I think the Hong Kong style of filmmaking was particularly hip and this particular project was found by James Schamus my long time collaborator.

Paul:  What was your initial reaction?

Ang:  First of all I didn't know what it was. Then I remembered the TV series with Lou Ferrigno painted in green and getting angry in slow motion. And then I checked out the Marvel Comics so it didn't take long before it clicked. So It's like my new Hidden Dragon, it's like a larger way of doing Crouching Tiger in America. I like the psycho drama, I like the hidden aggression, it's kind of Americana but universal, I like the sub conscious having a physical manifestation and the layout of the back story is very much of a psycho drama.

Paul:  Did you read all the comics?

Ang:  Oh, a lot. Started with the Thesis, the Essential, and then I kept all the favourite parts near me.

Paul:  But this is very much an Ang Lee film as opposed to a more typical summer blockbuster?

Ang:  Oh yes. There was no doubt about that. I just had to prove that I could pull it off.

Paul:  Do you get involved in the marketing side of the film?

Ang:  No, that's not my department. It's a brand new experience. I don't want to partake in that. I'd go to the marketing meetings like twice, it's immense. But I told them that I wanted to draw the line. I just make the movie that's all I care about. I sell it the way I'm used to, talking to journalists and that's all I can do. I don't want to talk on the video game, I don't want to do anything to do with the merchandise, it's great they have to do that to sell a big summer movie, but I've no knowledge and don't know how to go about it.

Paul:  Do you see these kinds of stories as modern day myths?

Ang:  I see it as modern day myth. I took a lot from horror films, Frankenstein, King Kong, things like that, Jekyll and Hyde and a lot of Greek mythology and pseudo science, all sorts. It's kind of lowbrow art, it's very juicy, it's not delicate but it's definitely juicy, it depends what you make out of it.

Paul:  There are some very obviously comic book-styled visuals with the split screens you use at certain points. How much of that do you storyboard?

Ang:  It's all in the editing room. I start out wanting to do it. This is one of the reasons I found an excuse to do something I always wanted to do. Why do we always line them up in a linear way? Why can't we do like martial arts choreography? Choreograph images, having images like a comic book when you open a page, go to the most prominent design structure and it has a cause, your eyes go different places, they pick and choose, back and forth and it was ‘how can we do that in a movie?' To a certain extent. So I was always thinking about doing that and we explored those possibilities but by the time we were shooting we didn't know what we were doing (laughs). And the cinematographer was reluctant to give in to that because they want to expose as much as they can to get the best quality, if you leave some room for potential split screen maybe you don't use it and then a scene will look bad, you will have to crop it and it looks really bad. So at the end of the day I just shot the hell out of it with lots of cameras, every possibility, which is a headache for the sound guy because you might end up using a close up where his mike is right up there. It's very frustrating and you find out why people don't do that in the first place. But then in the editing room little by little it started to happen.

Paul:  What was it about Eric Bana that you liked so much for this role?

Ang:  I figured in the comic books nobody wanted to see Bruce Banner, they just wanted to see The Hulk come out. The guy is a loser, a wimp. But by simplified drawing you are able to project your own melancholy into him. But a movie is different. I was hoping to get something and have that melancholic demeanour and of course I always go for a good actor, which Eric is, and someone who could be sympathetic. I saw him in an Australian movie, Chopper, and that was Hulk for me. And Ridley Scott was kind enough to show me an early cut of Black Hawk Down and his scenes in that. In Black Hawk Down people complain they couldn't tell who is who, but I think you remember Eric. He was my choice and the studio really like him.

Paul:  Will you do Hulk 2?

Ang:  I have no idea. It's in development but I'm so drained by the first one I have no thoughts about the second one.

Paul:  But you've made a period costume drama, a film set in the American civil war and a martial arts film. What would you like to do next?

Ang:  I don't know. I would like to do something different. I like in New York with my wife and two boys and I will go home. I'm in the process of de-Hulking right now! (laughs) It's kind of painful, the adrenalin slows down, but I'm not thinking about the future yet.

Paul:  Is it true that you felt sick when you saw trees because they are green?

Ang:  I did get a little sick of the colour green (laughs). He is a CG character what am I supposed to do. But yeah for a long time I was really sick of the colour green.

Paul:  Will we get more CGI actors in the future?

Ang:  It's a lot cheaper to use real actors, believe me, even big stars.  lot easier and a lot cheaper, if you can get them to say the lines it's a lot easier with real actors.

Paul:  What was your childhood like back in Taiwan?

Ang:  Repressed I guess. Not much fun. That's why I've had a mid life crisis, I was looking for fun. My father was the principal of the High School of the best one in Taiwan, and he was my principal. and I was a very shy, docile kind of kid, I didn't go out or anything, I was very quiet. Private tutors go to school, study, sitting there all the time but my mind wasn't in a book, and it was somewhere else.

Paul:  One of the themes of the film is genetic engineering. What are your thoughts on that?

Ang:  We are at the point where we are facing a lot of fundamental questions about who we are, I think. I think we are at a crucial point.  There's always been a fear of science, ever since the industrial revolution. I think Frankenstein is an early example of that. We are afraid that we will build something that will turn on us, something that is out of control. Dramatically it interests me because the artificial brings out the innocence and the aggression, the real you, it has a physical manifestation and that's interesting. I'm not a scientist but we are now into genetic engineering to improve ourselves, to stretch ourselves, that's a big question, about who we are. Is that you or a little machine? I guess the only sense of yourself is memories and that's why the movie deals with memory a lot. With the collective memory of human beings. I think we face a lot of metaphysical and fundamental questions about who we are.

Paul:  Do you believe in God?

Ang:  I'm pretty much a student of the Chinese philosophies and we don't really talk about it, anything three feet above your head you have to show respect and not pretend you know or imagine that somebody like you that created it. We just don't talk about it. I put a lot in the movie actually. Big things, small things, there are just off balance with something. The big mushroom cloud caused by a bunch of atoms.

Paul:  Were you surprised by Nick Nolte's passion for science and his knowledge?

Ang:  Yeah, totally. I just envision him doing it. And because he is a respected actor who for 10, 12 years has turned away from Hollywood, he only wants to do small films, he had enough. And I had to go there and show respect and give him the pitch. I went to his house in Hollywood and it was the most gothic experience I ever had. It was this weird collection of stuff from all around the world. And I was sitting by the fireplace and after five minutes he said 'you must come up and see my blood.' And I went upstairs and there was a lab with hundreds of bottles of something and there's an electronic monitor. So he pricks his own finger and watches on this monitor his own (blood) cells and he went through that and I said something like can you make it colourful and he was impressed and we went downstairs and talked some more about science. So he was the role. He said 'oh I'm on my down time in between films, I can get in shape.' I had to bite my tongue because I just wanted to say 'oh no, just come as you are...' He knew the Hulk but he didn't know what role. I was talking about Greek tragedy and he was into it.

Paul:  You spent a lot of time exacting things for how the Hulk should be. How did that come about?

Ang:  It was out of necessity and desperation. I wanted to show them. Maybe there was a bit of my childhood, things I never fulfilled, coming out, too. I was just about the most spaced out child you could ever meet, people always tell me I am the most spaced out person they have ever met in their lives. I was like absent-minded. I couldn't help it because I had an attention span problem and I would be talking or reading and I would be somewhere else.

Paul:  You started as an actor, why did you switch?

Ang:  I couldn't speak English that's why. I came to the States and I couldn't get into the actor's programme, it was very frustrating to me.  It was a three year programme and they were the elite and then I didn't really want to be on stage because I couldn't really make it as an actor and I thought if I had to direct, I wanted to be a movie director, that's my performance. I always thought movies were my way of performing. After a long while I began to get comfortable behind the camera as a watcher, rather than being watched, gradually, over a long period of time, I switched positions. Until lately when the Hulk started to come out.

Paul:  Eric Bana said you were a philosophical director. What's your take on that?

Ang:  I don't know, maybe that's their take on me. It's a way to encourage them I guess, something abstract and then you nail them down in the actual act so they feel they are creating something interesting. I guess I like to do philosophical thoughts but in making movies you can only do so much and then you have throw it away and see how it plays, you have to level with everybody otherwise a concept is dead and philosophy can be pretentious. Sometimes I hate it called a film, I like the old name, movie. Like people are here you move them to there.  It's a movie.

Paul:  Do you want to make a small movie?

Ang:  Yeah. But when I make it now it will be more expensive now. People charge me more. There will be a lot more people aware of it. But yeah I would like different challenges, I would like the freedom not bound by budget, big or small. I do like to make a small movie sometime.

Paul:  Is Hitchcock an influence?

Ang:  Yeah I love him. He is one of my heroes that has done all the weird stuff disguised in popular films and he did it so well and I do admire him although when I do the same thing I have to update it.  Similar take on Freud and stuff can look too simple today. I like to have a different angle. But yeah, he is my hero.
Former IMDb Name: True Oracle of Phoenix / TOoP (I pronounce it "too - op") / " in fire forged,  from ash reborn" / Currently: GeorgeObliqueStrokeXR40

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Re: Ang Ang Ang
« Reply #14 on: October 09, 2007, 07:44:04 am »
http://www.greencine.com/central/anglee

Ang Lee: "I Like to Keep That Mystery"
Submitted by dwhudson on October 8, 2007 - 5:41am. International | Interviews


By Sean Axmaker

Critics (including myself) and pundits have already pointed out that there is more caution than lust in Ang Lee's Lust, Caution. But then what would you expect from a director whose career is defined by characters who either repress their true feelings out of cultural expectation or social shame, or mask their emotions with manners and rituals? There's more complexity to these tensions in this erotic espionage thriller, of course. The lust is so inextricably caught up, and in some ways compounded, by the caution that when Mr. Yee (Tony Leung Chiu Wai), a collaborator working for the Japanese in occupied Shanghai during World War II, finally consummates his affair with Wang Jiazhi (Tang Wei), a young actress turned agent for the resistance, the stillness of restraint snaps like a dry twig and he explodes like a wild animal. Sex is power in every way, at least when the pent up desire is unleashed, but it's also a force that overwhelms and confuses the emotional balance of the young woman.

Lust, Caution won the Golden Lion for Best film at the Venice Film Festival (Lee's second in three years; he won for Brokeback Mountain in 2005) and is currently in release in the United States. Lee stopped in Seattle on his promotional tour and I had the chance to sit down and talk with the Oscar-winning director about the film in some detail.

The opening scene of Lust, Caution is a game of Mahjong with the wives of powerful men and it seems all politeness and small talk, but underneath are games of dominance and shows of power and one-upmanship.

It's a battle. In their conversation, in their implicit looks to each other, also in the game, they're killing each other. It's like poker, you have to watch the countenance on the people and calculate what kind of tiles they have. So there's a lot of things are happening on many layers all at once, and all the servants are at ease.

It sets up the template for the movie: everything is going to be played under a façade of politeness and social manner. Games are going to be played under the social niceties.

I think so. I'm glad you caught that. Also, there's a war outside that we don't see, so I think it's a good implication of war.

It certainly suggests the tensions outside the mansion, and it introduces the society of collaborators and tension between them and the occupied population outside resisting the Japanese.

And jealousy. We don't know who has relations with Mr. Yee. There's a lot of it going on. And who is Mrs. Yee [Joan Chen]? Is she the leader of the pack? There's a lot of possibilities that play out on the Mahjong table. We call the Mahjong game a civil war, like a square-shaped civil war. You close up in four directions, you're beating each other inside. It's called civil war. That's in a way what the movie's about. There's this Japanese occupation, but the war you see is Chinese killing each other. They take sides in killing each other.

You are working again with cinematographer Rodrigo Prieto, who shot Brokeback Mountain. This film has a very lush, rich studio style. What did you and Prieto watch to prepare, what did you watch for your visual cues to build this look?

Old Cathay films, the pre-Shaw Brothers studio, because that's a good connection between the time period I'm portraying and today. So a lot of patriotic references and good drama from back then to get nuances, and a lot of Shanghai movies from the 30s. And film noirs. Old film noirs of the 40s, those black and whites, were helpful, even though we tried to do it in color and focus on a new way for doing film noir.

And a bunch of paintings. Which is not necessarily period Shanghai, because if you check out the old Shanghai movies, they're not that mature yet. It's the dawn of the Chinese film industry, they're trying to imitate Hollywood. But a lot of paintings. One special thing was the Northern Light paintings of the Scandinavian/Rotterdam school, that kind of painting with their northern light: the yellow haze, side light, low sunlight, that's our climactic look. When it gets to the darker period of the day, we have a glow of purplish pink - that's the diamond's color. That is a big burden for Rodrigo because that sequence is long, shot over a period of one week or eight days that he has to keep that light consistent for the whole street. That was pretty challenging for him.

In one scene, the characters walk past a poster for a Hitchcock film. Is it Notorious?

It's Suspicion. Notorious is very close to the plot of this movie, and I re-examined it and introduced to my actors. But yes, Suspicion. That was a big hit in Shanghai in 1942 so I put a poster there. The movie is somewhat Hitchcockian, so I think it's proper. I would have used film clips except that it's too on-the-nose for what we were doing with female anxiety.

There is another scene that reminds me of Hitchcock, and that's when Lee's bodyguard comes to the group to blackmail them and they try to kill him and he just won't die. It wasn't like the scene in Torn Curtain in any stylistic way, but it made me think of the film.

The main aspects of the movie that I think are Hitchcockian are the music and some set-ups. But that particular scene was like Bar Mitzvah for me. It's a coming of age for the boys. That's why I did it, not because of influence from Hitchcock movies. But there are other aspects in the movie that I took inspiration from Hitchcock.

What it reminded me of in Torn Curtain is that someone who has never killed a person before is suddenly faced with it and they find out how hard it is, physically and emotionally.

It's a disillusionment, the real deal. Because later on I'm going to show the real deal about sex. I think it's a good establishing scene to get into the second half of the film. The illusion is over, they're getting to the real deal, let's go to Shanghai. That's why I did it in that fashion. It has less to do with Hitchcock than other scenes in the movie.

Wang Jiazhi and her group of fairly outgoing theater students have their own sense of decorum where they don't let out their feelings for one another even when they are celebrating and relaxing in the comfort of their group. So when she becomes a spy and has to pretend to be in love with Mr. Yee, and then the sex becomes involved, I find that the physical contact and the chemical rush of sex overwhelms her emotional state. Because she has never had any experience, it's all new and overwhelming.

That's very much the story of her generation. Not only society, where you don't know what they're getting into, what sex is about, no discussion, no education. From literature you'd never know what women get from sex. It was very prohibited. Even though they are in their romanticism period of our history and the free association between boys and girls that was happening shortly before their era. It was new, it was very romantic to them, but the old teaching was still in them. They were pretty oblivious to sex. Even the boys, only one kind of bad boy had experience in the brothel house, but the rest of them, they're all virgins. They're college students; they're my parents' generation.

They won't even talk about it when she's in the middle of it. When she tries to tell the Kuang [Lee-Hom Wang] about what she's going through with Yee, he shuts her down, he won't listen to her.

No, they won't talk about it. The typical scene of that generation is when they are on the bus, on the tram. He says, "Thank you." She says, "For what?" And he bashfully sits back. He blushes. And she has that little hidden smile to herself. That's as far as it goes back then. That's the innocence of the era. That scene actually makes me cry. That scene makes me very emotional; it reminds me of my childhood. Of my age of innocence, so to speak.

After all the surface politeness and deference of the film, you hit the audience with a very explicit sex scene. Actually, the first scene isn't as explicit as it is violent.

Violence is part of the explicitness.

That first sex scene is about Yee's complete dominance over Jiazhi, like he's the conquering army and she's the spoils. And then you get into a very explicit sexual scene. So why did you make them so explicit, knowing that those scenes would be banned in China?

It's not banned; we just have to recut it to get a pass, to be able to release it, because they don't have a ratings system. I hope the movie is self-explanatory. I think most people who have seen it agree that it's an integral part of the movie, if not a crucial development of the plot. To say the least, I think it angers the emotion and the quality of the characters of the situation, of psychological weight. I think it does all that, and also it's a treasurable performance, an ultimate performance for me.

In a way, that's what the movie's about: How sincere they are, how much he wants to get the truth out of her, how she will perform and devote herself to the performance and therefore lose herself in the pleasure which he means as a sense of love. To deny it, no. It's part of the plot, the storytelling, that we did with body language, with their performance, with their look, with the touch of each other, with the thrust, so to speak, and everything. It's just that we're not used to performing with those elements. We don't strip down to do those things, for our culture, for decency, for the moral code. But we decided to dive into it and deliver the performance that way.

In the commentary for Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, James Shamus jokes, during a scene with Michelle Yeoh and Zhang Ziyi: "And now the exposition: Why are you doing this? I'm repressed and I'm in an Ang Lee movie."

[Laughs] That could be the subtitle for the subtext, so to speak.

The theme of personal desire suppressed in the face of social expectations runs through almost all your films. Why are you so interested in that as a theme?

I think I'm running out of things to make films about in my conscious world. It doesn't take many movies and then you start to reach out to the other side of yourself. Actually, I still hesitate to do that, but inevitably, if I want to move on, that's where I'm going. I think that starting from The Ice Storm, I started to go the other side. I think up to Sense and Sensibility, I did everything that I know of myself consciously, what I can do and what type of film I can do best. Then I had to move on to explore different potentials of myself and move to the other side. I haven't really come back to the old me. Maybe I could never do that anymore.

I wish I could still do like the first four movies I did, without cynicism, with more maturity I hope. But I began to get in to the layers of the subconscious as much as I can. It's kind of painful, I think. It's a stretch, therefore very stressful, but all the more interesting. The things I don't know about myself, so to speak. Something that called on me: Why am I attracted to an American gay cowboy? What does that have in common with what I know? Why did I cry at the end of reading that story? I cannot get analytical, because if I can tell why I need to make a movie, it becomes a cliché. But I like to keep that mystery and make movies about what I need to find out. And the process is very telling to me. I don't really find the answer but I make the movie. So that's the path I've been following since The Ice Storm, I think. But consciously I know that's what I'm doing since Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.



A lot critics say that this theme of personal desire suppressed in the face of social expectations is a distinctive quality of Chinese culture, of Asian culture, but you find it in 1970s New England in The Ice Storm, in 1960s Montana in Brokeback Mountain, and in 19th century England in Sense and Sensibility. So it seems to be a part of the human condition rather than a specific culture.

Yes, the human condition. I started making Asian films and I brought that to the repressed English society of the 19th century so naturally that, in some ways, I think I'm closer to that era than the English themselves, because that's how I was brought up. And then I moved on. I don't know, that's what I do. Even up to now I'm still doing it. I think that's the human condition, different ways of telling a story. My touches and my point of view are Eastern. That's just the way I was brought up, it's my character development. So that just comes naturally to me. I don't divide it: This is the Asian part of me, this is the American part of me. I just do whatever comes to my mind.

In almost every one of these films, the characters' very act of repressing themselves and their desires, has repercussions.

You can't let it out. It would be like a serial killer or something if you don't repress yourself. You could be a really horrible person if you let everything out.

But these people let so little out that it takes a toll on them, whether it's in metaphorical form - you can think of Hulk as a metaphorical explosion of Id - or dramatic form, like in Brokeback Mountain. Ennis represses himself so much and the people who suffer are his wife and children, who never get his emotion.

I grew up that way, it's a part of me, and I'm a nice guy, so I have more repression than a not-so-nice guy. I have that in me. I grew up with a lot of repression that I didn't know of. Before I made these movies, I didn't even know I had so much buried. I think also for cinema, for dramatic purpose, they are more interesting. That's something I could use, I could relate to, I could make the most out of. So it's a combination of my need to make cinema and my own character that I make those movies those ways.

Can I ask you about the length of the film? It's over 2½ hours. How do you see time - the time that an audience spends in a movie, the time that you spend with a character - as an element of your storytelling?

Because I have to. First of all, it's only a problem in the States. In the rest of the world, it's not a problem. It means fewer shows, business-wise, but in terms of appreciating a movie, I only see it as a problem in its release in the States. In Asia, where it's opened, nobody's talking about how long it is. They're talking about how fast the movie is, that they couldn't catch enough, how busy every frame is. They have to see it again just to catch up with what's been given. Nobody talks about the length. In Europe I don't hear that as much, either. A little bit, but certainly not in Asia.

As a matter of fact, for everyone who gets everything from the movie, culturally, like in Taiwan and Hong Kong, they think the movie's very busy, they couldn't catch everything. They know a lot of things are given; they are too busy trying to catch up, and the movie is very fast for them and they had to see it again just to absorb it. I actually underdeveloped some parts because I worried about the length. I don't know what to say. I didn't feel I deliberately made it long or slow-paced, as some critics have pointed out here. This is the shortest form I know how to tell the story. [Laughs]

What I mean to ask is, in aesthetic terms, how do length and time, the kind of breadth, have an effect on the viewer and a meaning in the film? I'm trying to get a sense of time as an aesthetic part of storytelling.

I think it's important. I think what you're getting at is a very good question, particularly in the Hollywood/American trend and the global audience at large. I think it's a pity we really don't spend time with films. What is an extra 15 minutes to your life if you want something good out of it? I mean, people watch golf, watch poker with patience. I don't know what's the hurry watching a movie. I think the trend to take a certain pace and offer a payoff in certain ways - if you don't do that, you're not watching a movie. They get very impatient.

You hear people say, "I love movies but after 90 minutes, I'm out of it." Why? [Laughs] Why are we so impatient? If the movie has something to offer, why not live with the character, live the movie, and take time to savor it, like a good meal in a good restaurant? Like, "Okay, I got the point. At one bite I got the point, let's move on to the next course." Why not enjoy a good meal for a whole night with your loved ones? Or the waiter tells you how they make the food, in a lavish description to whet your appetite. "Oh, I got it, just bring the food." Why? I have those questions, too.

Sometimes I just wish that audiences here can be more like the Indian audience. Like, if I don't see four hours of a movie, I don't get my money's worth, I should get a refund. [Laughs] Why not spend time in a movie? I wish. To tell the truth, from film school I know that film is faster than life, that you do need discipline as a filmmaker, but there are times when you do take time to absorb it into your system. I hope they join the other arts and take time, if it's good quality time.

And I believe my time is up. Thank you.

I'm glad you asked that time question, because it bothers me. Over the years, I constantly fight for it. They want more development and they want less time. So what am I supposed to do, split screen? I tried that once in Hulk. [Laughs]
Former IMDb Name: True Oracle of Phoenix / TOoP (I pronounce it "too - op") / " in fire forged,  from ash reborn" / Currently: GeorgeObliqueStrokeXR40

Offline Kd5000

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Re: Ang Ang Ang
« Reply #15 on: October 09, 2007, 10:40:45 am »
I had seen this in the Wall Street Journal at the end of September.  Since this is an Ang Lee thread, I thought I would share it.
Curiously I had just rented Double Indemnity for the first time a few days before this article.  It was quite enjoyable. He seems a big fan of film noir.


Hit List: Ang Lee
The Oscar-winning director on his favorite dark romances
By ANTHONY KAUFMAN
September 29, 2007; Page W2

 
Ang Lee has filmed love stories in a variety of genres, from the cowboy drama "Brokeback Mountain" to the period piece "Sense and Sensibility" to the martial-arts fantasy "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon." In his newest film, the NC-17-rated "Lust, Caution," the Taiwanese director offers a spy romance set in World War II-era Shanghai. According to Mr. Lee, the movie borrows much from America's film-noir tradition. Below, his favorite dark film romances.

'The Letter' (1940)

 
Based on a play by W. Somerset Maugham, this melodrama stars Bette Davis as a rubber-plantation owner's wife in Singapore who commits a deadly crime of passion. "It's not politically correct," says Mr. Lee, referring to the Asian stereotypes. "But sometimes you need exotic elements to get into that core of darkness."

'Laura' (1944)

 
In Otto Preminger's celebrated mystery, a police detective falls in love with the dead woman whose murder he's investigating. "You don't know where it's going and it's so less predictable than today's movies," says Mr. Lee. "And when you get to the end, it's not really about darkness, but about romance."

'Double Indemnity' (1944)

 
Nominated for seven Academy awards, this Billy Wilder film follows Fred MacMurray's insurance investigator as he falls for Barbara Stanwyck's femme fatale. "I just love the way they talk and the music and the use of shadows," says Mr. Lee. "Growing up in middle school in Taiwan, I was such a big fan of Billy Wilder."

'The Big Sleep' (1946)

 
Howard Hawks's legendary detective story stars Humphrey Bogart as the tough Raymond Chandler private eye Philip Marlowe, who is hired by a rich family under false pretenses, and Lauren Bacall as the heiress he can't resist. "It's great writing," says Mr. Lee. "I didn't realize 'dirty' could be used in such an effective way."

'Chinatown' (1974)

 
Though Roman Polanski's thriller was filmed in the 1970s, it played off the tropes of 1940s film noir, with Jack Nicholson as a troubled detective and Faye Dunaway as his abused paramour. "It's just a great movie," says Mr. Lee. "So well-written, so smart, and it deals with our mysterious innermost fears and desires."


Offline Meryl

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Re: Ang Ang Ang
« Reply #16 on: October 10, 2007, 12:00:49 am »
Thanks to John Gallagher for the link, and for giving me a reason to find this thread.  8)

http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1667513,00.html

Q & A with Ang Lee
by Rebecca Winters Keegan
for Time Magazine

Ang Lee has made a habit of teaching Hollywood how little it knows about audiences, proving broad crowds would embrace a gay Western (Brokeback Mountain) and show up for a subtitled martial arts flick (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon). With his new film, the NC-17-rated, Mandarin-language spy thriller Lust, Caution, the Oscar-winning director is once again ignoring the rules of commercial filmmaking.

TIME: You've said the three sex scenes in the film were harder to shoot than the martial arts scenes in Crouching Tiger. Why?

Lee: I'm a shy human being. I don't make pornos so I'd never done that before. To verbalize the feelings and lead the actors through those acts and witness how much they devote to it, it's very painful. Usually we don't go there. I don't intend to go there again. After half a day's shooting we had to stop, it was so exhausting. You're so hyper... emotionally, sexually, everything is so charged up.

Porn is plentiful, so why are scenes depicting sexuality with emotion so rare in films?

Most sex scenes are about covering things up, rather than exposing. It's very technical. It's a function you have to get over with so you can get on with the story. We give our best shot in digging into what the characters are going through. The sex scenes are pivotal parts of the story.

Did you ever consider altering your film to avoid the NC-17 rating?

When I was making it, I didn't really care. After the film was done, [Focus Features CEO] James Schamus explained to me what NC-17 means, the distribution, the advertisement, what you're gonna lose. He explained it and that was that. He never said anything else. Everybody at Focus got kind of excited about taking on the battle. They kept saying this year we have other films that will make money.

Is it possible people will go see this film because they're titillated by the rating?

There are people who know about me who will be curious. That's a plus, but the plus is 10 points and the minus is 80 points.

The film takes place in Shanghai during World War II. It's based on a short story by Eileen Chang which is much more subtle in describing the relationships between the characters. Why did you choose to be so explicit?

I'm not a translator of the author. I took a hint from her. To me the boldness of the story was unprecedented, particularly against the backdrop of the most macho, glorious, patriotic war against the Japanese. It was very daring.

This was your lead actress Tang Wei's first film. Were you concerned by the demands of the role?

Yes and no. The thrill actors get, the liberation, to reach the other side of themselves, it's very exciting, very liberating. They learn a lot about themselves. So often Tang Wei said to me when I asked her is she was OK, "What are you talking about?"

If making this movie was so emotionally taxing, why did you do it?

Because you're not supposed to. Truth can be painful and frightening. Lots of people, whether you're making a movie or doing a painting, you feel compelled to be honest. It's uncomfortable, but I feel compelled to communicate with other people.
Ich bin ein Brokie...

Offline TOoP/Bruce

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Re: Ang Ang Ang
« Reply #17 on: October 10, 2007, 07:19:49 am »
http://www.forbes.com/digitalentertainment/2007/02/02/cx_mf_0202varietyfilm2.html

Variety
Focus' Schamus Brings Back 'Game'
Michael Fleming and Diane Garrett 02.02.07, 6:00 PM ET

Focus Features Co-chair James Schamus has revived A Little Game--months after the project imploded--and brought in frequent collaborator Ang Lee to direct.
Project is expected to be Lee's next project after Lust, Caution, his World War II-era pic set in Shanghai. Game will mark his third straight pic for Focus after Brokeback Mountain and Lust, Caution.

Schamus is rewriting the romantic comedy, an adaptation of a French play called A Little Game of Consequence. It centers on a happily engaged Brooklyn couple who decide to play an experiment on their friends; when a rumor goes around that they have broken up, they play along to find out what their pals really think of their coupling.

WAM Films is producing the pic, with Alain Chabot and Stephanie Danan as producers and Bruno Pesery as exec producer. Jean Dell and Gerald Sibleyras penned the French play.

Jim Carrey and Cameron Diaz had been set to play the leads, but they abruptly exited the project weeks before it was set to begin lensing in early October amid concerns about the quality of the script.

Focus dismissed helmer Gabriele Muccino ( The Pursuit of Happyness), but Schamus remained committed to getting the project off the ground ( Daily Variety, Oct. 4).

Project reps the 11th collaboration between Lee and Schamus. Besides Brokeback and Lust, Caution, they worked on The Ice Storm, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Hulk.
Former IMDb Name: True Oracle of Phoenix / TOoP (I pronounce it "too - op") / " in fire forged,  from ash reborn" / Currently: GeorgeObliqueStrokeXR40

Offline Meryl

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Re: Ang Ang Ang
« Reply #18 on: October 10, 2007, 11:03:44 am »
Thanks, Bruce, that sounds interesting!  Reminds me of another Brooklyn couple who recently split up.  ;)

I'm glad Jim Carrey and Cameron Diaz left the project, since neither of them particularly appeal to me.  Let's hope it's another winner for Ang.  8)
Ich bin ein Brokie...

Offline Lynne

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Re: Ang Ang Ang
« Reply #19 on: October 10, 2007, 11:22:40 am »
Thanks, everyone, for posting so many interviews with Ang Lee.  There's so much insight into him, the man, if you read carefully.  Why haven't I seen The Hulk yet?
"Laß sein. Laß sein."

Offline Artiste

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Re: Ang Ang Ang
« Reply #20 on: August 21, 2008, 09:29:57 pm »
I want to know what he said in China, about the Brokeback Mountain movie!

Offline optom3

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Re: Ang Ang Ang
« Reply #21 on: August 22, 2008, 12:02:24 am »
I want to know what he said in China, about the Brokeback Mountain movie!

BBM was not shown in mainland China, although it was shown in Taiwan, the birthplace of Lee. So I would guess, Ang went nowhere near China, there was no reason for him to.
I am just glad it wa sshown as widely as it was.

Offline Artiste

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Re: Ang Ang Ang
« Reply #22 on: August 22, 2008, 11:53:18 am »
Merci optom!

It seems to me that he was interviewed in China!

I saw that decumantary film, and may I ask that you can maybe find it?

I have to go to create... as you know. Maybe, you would have found more so on that subject when I will read you later?

Take care,
au revoir,
hugs!  Note:  that that film, Ang laughs... and that is what I wonder about! He talks in Chinese!

Offline Lynne

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Re: Ang Ang Ang
« Reply #23 on: October 23, 2008, 07:22:18 pm »
Ahem...

Has it escaped our notice that today is Ang Lee's 54th birthday?!!!


"Laß sein. Laß sein."

Offline Lynne

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Re: Ang Ang Ang
« Reply #24 on: October 24, 2008, 12:35:30 am »
Does *everybody* have me on Ignore?!

:-)
"Laß sein. Laß sein."

Offline Penthesilea

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Re: Ang Ang Ang
« Reply #25 on: October 24, 2008, 01:11:50 am »
Does *everybody* have me on Ignore?!

:-)


It's barely 7am over here. During the nights I have the whole forum on ignore ;).
(and now I'm wondering if Ang's B-day was yesterday (like in Oct , 23rd) or today, which is for me already the 24th).


Anyway:


Happy Birthday Ang Lee!

Offline Lynne

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Re: Ang Ang Ang
« Reply #26 on: October 24, 2008, 01:18:46 am »
Yes, Chrissi, it was the 23rd!  We can celebrate a day late, doubt he will mind! :-)
"Laß sein. Laß sein."

Offline Penthesilea

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Re: Ang Ang Ang
« Reply #27 on: October 24, 2008, 02:05:42 am »
Yes, Chrissi, it was the 23rd!  We can celebrate a day late, doubt he will mind! :-)

Yep. Here we go...


A younger Ang


The maestro at work








With the first of many prizes for BBM


Hunh, who's this? Jack Lee? Ang Twist?  ;D ;)


Happy Birthday Mr. Lee!

Offline jstephens9

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Re: Ang Ang Ang
« Reply #28 on: November 23, 2008, 01:07:33 pm »
I heard Ang was going to be directing a new movie that sounded interesting, but now I cannot remember the new of it. Does anyone else know?

Offline Penthesilea

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Re: Ang Ang Ang
« Reply #29 on: November 23, 2008, 02:50:16 pm »
I heard Ang was going to be directing a new movie that sounded interesting, but now I cannot remember the new of it. Does anyone else know?


Heya Bud! *waves to Jack* :)

Title: A Little Game
Plot: A picture-perfect couple fake a break-up, only to learn their friends never thought their union was a good idea in the first place.
Genre:   Comedy | Drama | Romance | Thriller


That's the info IMDB offers for now. And that it's based on a play.
Here's the IMDB page: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0831367/


Offline Artiste

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Re: Ang Ang Ang
« Reply #30 on: November 23, 2008, 04:52:26 pm »
I still want to know what Ang said in China ! Does anyone know ?

Offline Artiste

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Re: Ang Ang Ang
« Reply #31 on: November 23, 2008, 05:47:03 pm »
I thought that we had member(s) from China or in China ??

Offline Ellemeno

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Re: Ang Ang Ang
« Reply #32 on: November 25, 2008, 01:53:38 am »
I heard Ang was going to be directing a new movie that sounded interesting, but now I cannot remember the new of it. Does anyone else know?

Or do you mean this one, currently in post-production?

Taking Woodstock
http://us.imdb.com/title/tt1127896/

Offline jstephens9

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Re: Ang Ang Ang
« Reply #33 on: November 29, 2008, 12:41:48 am »
Or do you mean this one, currently in post-production?

Taking Woodstock
http://us.imdb.com/title/tt1127896/


That's it "Taking Woodstock"  ;)

Offline Artiste

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Re: Ang Ang Ang
« Reply #34 on: November 29, 2008, 05:31:58 pm »
What did Ang say about Brokeback Mountain, the movie, when he was in China ?

Offline Mikaela

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Re: Ang Ang Ang
« Reply #35 on: January 07, 2009, 02:55:56 pm »
For one reason and another I never got around to watching Lust, Caution. I have the DVD though, and now I've got some time on my hands too... but I somehow fear to watch it. Is it very depressing? And/or unpleasantly violent?

(I guess part of my reticence is I know about those much-touted graphic sex scenes of course and I'm afraid I'll feel like I'm just kind of sitting there waiting for those to eventually happen while I watch the rest of the film. Which would be an embarrassing feeling.)

Offline Aloysius J. Gleek

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Re: Ang Ang Ang
« Reply #36 on: January 07, 2009, 04:37:19 pm »

Is it very depressing? And/or unpleasantly violent?

To be brief--yes.
"Tu doives entendre je t'aime."
(and you know who I am...)


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Offline Mikaela

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Re: Ang Ang Ang
« Reply #37 on: January 07, 2009, 04:49:09 pm »
Thank you, John. I guess I'll go for something else - for now.

Offline Front-Ranger

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Re: Ang Ang Ang
« Reply #38 on: September 14, 2016, 10:49:38 am »
Here's a review of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon that touches on Brokeback Mountain also and gives some insight into Ang's "obsessions" as they call it, including color symbolism.

https://thedissolve.com/features/movie-of-the-week/763-ang-lees-obsessions-help-decode-crouching-tiger-hi/
"chewing gum and duct tape"