http://film.guardian.co.uk/interview/interviewpages/0,,394676,00.htmlThe 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.