Ang Lee Quotes
-
Making a martial arts film in English to me is the same as John Wayne speaking Chinese in a western.
-
I grew up pretty much prevented from knowing anything from Communist China except that they were the bad guys that stole our country.
-
After making several tragic movies in a row, I was looking to do a comedy, and one without cynicism.
-
In the past I've made movies that were pretty universally liked. You can't really hate them. You can discard them, but you can't really hate them.
-
I grew up pretty peacefully, in that Eastern way. You easily solve problems, believe in harmony. Reduce conflicts, take orders until one day you give orders.
-
In Taiwan, I'd be like Michael Jordan walking down the street.
-
I like to go back to Chinese film-making from time to time. I don't think I can make Chinese films back to back; it's such a big effort. I'd have to take a very long break.
-
Even the favorite reviews, the audience response is the movie is too slow, deliberately slow. But for the Chinese audience, the biggest complaint is it happens too quick. I think the historical background that build into our genes is different. American people has never been occupied. The deep sadness and sentimentality, the cultural background that relates to melodrama that we relate to and grow up with, the propaganda, I didn't imagine the difference is so big. It's a very interesting cultural phenomenon.
-
So it [3D] is something I'm still learning, it's fresh, so if the budget allows I'll do it again and just see how far it goes because it's the frontier, it's more interesting. It's still expensive, the projection system can be annoying sometimes, it's not really regulated or perfected yet, so it's still expensive. If I do a lower budget I'll just do 2D, but if the budget allows I think I'll try 3D.
-
I'm a drifter and an outsider. There's not one single environment I can totally belong to.
-
Over the years Woodstock got glorified and romanticised and became the event that symbolised Utopia. It's the last page of our collective memory of the age of innocence. Then things turned ugly and would never be the same again.
-
My cultural roots are something illusive.
-
To me, Ennis stands for the conservative side of America. He's the biggest homophobe in the whole movie - culturally and psychologically - but by the time he admits his feelings, it's too late.
-
If the movie is quiet I generally feel the audience is busy. That's when they're working.
-
In my culture, there's a tradition that when you're in an overwhelming situation and you don't know what to do, you put yourself in a woman's shoes.
-
I wanted to shoot straight, mainstream, somehow off-beat. Not only realistic West, which is quite unfamiliar to the world's population - even to a lot of Americans.
-
Making movies is a way of understanding myself and the world.
-
When I started out, nobody gave me scripts, so I had to write...
-
I don't care about writing really.
-
Sometimes films ignore other points of view because it's simpler to tell the story that way, but the more genuine and sympathetic you are to different points of view and situations, the more real the story is.
-
When I see something I like, that's all that counts. What they use, how they get there, I never bother them.
-
I'm aware of what's missing from my life.
-
Making this movie as a period piece about a period that was very recent in people's minds. I was in Taiwan [during the 1970s], so I hope I did all right. Otherwise, it could be the biggest embarrassment of my life. Also, the story is not linear, it's patchy, like a cubist painting, and there is always the possibility it will not hold together, it will fall apart. The tone is part satire, part serious drama, part tragedy, all mixed together, and it has to hit an emotional core. That's also very scary.
-
You become the movie you are making.