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Making a martial arts film in English to me is the same as John Wayne speaking Chinese in a western.

Ang Lee

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Ang Lee
Age: 70
Born: 1954
Born: October 23
Film Director
Film Producer
Screenwriter
Writer
Cháozhōu Zhèn
Lǐ Ān
English
Western
Making
Martial
Art
Wayne
Film
Arts
Chinese
Speaking
John

More quotes by Ang Lee

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After making several tragic movies in a row, I was looking to do a comedy, and one without cynicism.
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I think the American West really attracts me because it's romantic. The desert, the empty space, the drama.
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On a Chinese film you just give orders, no one questions you. Here, you have to convince people, you have to tell them why you want to do it a certain way, and they argue with you. Democracy.
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I'm not a master of films. I'm rather a slave.
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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.
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I guess in Hollywood you chart your life by Oscars. You say to each other, Remember when that movie won that year? It was 2006. Remember that?
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You can get rich or famous by doing the same thing.
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When I grew up, in Taiwan, the Korean War was seen as a good war, where America protected Asia. It was sort of an extension of World War II. And it was, of course, the peak of the Cold War. People in Taiwan were generally proAmerican. The Korean War made Japan. And then the Vietnam War made Taiwan. There is some truth to that.
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I'm a drifter and an outsider. There's not one single environment I can totally belong to.
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It's not a pleasure torturing actors, although some of them enjoy it.
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You have to know the rules, otherwise you have no tools to communicate to the audience, but to keep it fresh you have to break some. I don't choose genres as the element, but the material itself is the element, then I'll decide what genre I need. That's just how I work.
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Economically, it’s more expensive to make movies. I hope digital movies change that.
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If the movie is quiet I generally feel the audience is busy. That's when they're working.
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No matter how widely spread out the films are, how different, you still are you.
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My mother loves me and everything goes well. I have no conflict with her, so that's not dramatic.
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I have a lot of repression. So repression is what I make movies about.
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As artists, we like night more than day sometimes.
Ang Lee
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My hometown was one of the major U.S. Air Force bases.
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I had to find my way of translating the excitement you get when you're reading comic books to the big screen.
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Now I'm kind of established as a director, I much prefer directing to writing.
Ang Lee