Quote

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.

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
Keep
Material
Need
Tools
Genres
Needs
Rules
Element
Work
Materials
Fresh
Elements
Genre
Choose
Decide
Break
Communicate
Audience
Otherwise

More quotes by Ang Lee

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I think that at heart I am an old-fashioned Chinese, really I am.
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I'm a big boy now, and I have to deliver.
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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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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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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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Thinking back to those earlier days, I felt I was weak when I wasn't making movies, and then when I was, I thought I was weak as a family member.
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My father's family were liquidated during the Cultural Revolution in China because they were landowners. He was the only one to escape. I was born and brought up in Taiwan. But you absorb the trauma. My parents had no sense of security.
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Sometimes, you have to get angry to get things done.
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I look at American movies, the big muscles, and try to apply that to Chinese film-making.
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There's a level of sophistication of filmmaking that's mind-boggling. Anything you need for your movie, there's an establishment that can make it happen really fast.
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We need storytelling. Otherwise life just goes on and on, like the number Pi.
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Summer blockbusters are very expensive to make. They have things that have to be expensive, such as 600 effects shots or CG characters that have to go a certain way, or a film design that is different but expensive.
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Making a martial arts film in English to me is the same as John Wayne speaking Chinese in a western.
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I think, if allowed, 3D is a new film language. I can have more adventure exploring a new media, that's very exciting. 2D we know most of it, things haven't changed for decades it's the same principles, so 3D's more exciting.
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3D is quite a lot more advanced in animated movies for live-action movies we're just taking baby steps, we're just in the beginning. So when I think of doing that I was very excited. It didn't go as far as I think it should, I'm still a novice, but I think it's fair to say it's a new cinematic medium, experience.
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I feel that everyone has a Hulk inside, and each of our Hulks is both scary and, potentially, pleasurable. That's the scariest thing about them.
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If you try to act, you're going to look like you're acting. So don't act.
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I think a lot of people do big movies not because they are talented artists but because they can function in the circumstances.
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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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Depending on the budget [whether to use 3D on future movies]. I think I prefer 3D to 2D now. Also, because of 3D I have to use a digital camera, which is the way it's going anyway. That still confuses me, a digital camera versus film.
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