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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
Making
Martial
Art
Wayne
Film
Arts
Chinese
Speaking
John
English
Western

More quotes by Ang Lee

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At times I can't help going for visual comfort. Sometimes a picture fills up your head, and you try to move the actors around to make that visual statement.
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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.
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Every movie is unknown.
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San Francisco is one of my favourite cities in the world...I would probably rank it at the top or near the top. It's small but photogenic and has layers...You never have problems finding great angles that people have never done.
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It's not a pleasure torturing actors, although some of them enjoy it.
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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.
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My first instinct was to cast as close to the short story as possible, but then I realized that I needed actors who could go for it and that they had to function well as a couple in a love story.
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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.
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You become the movie you are making.
Ang Lee
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The way I go about a lovemaking scene is that we will talk about it during the rehearsing time.
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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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I grew up pretty much prevented from knowing anything from Communist China except that they were the bad guys that stole our country.
Ang Lee
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My father was the center of the family, and everyone tried to please him.
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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.
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I'm aware of what's missing from my life.
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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.
Ang Lee
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I think doing period piece is easier, because after a certain distance, everybody is equal, I think. The relative contemporary is harder. I think that's the way it is.
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You can get rich or famous by doing the same thing.
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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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When I see something I like, that's all that counts. What they use, how they get there, I never bother them.
Ang Lee