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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.

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

More quotes by Ang Lee

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There's a certain time in the core of making a movie from pre-production to halfway through post-production I don't read any project, my agent will tell people that he's not reading. And then when I know how the movie's probably gonna work halfway into post-production, I'll come along.
Ang Lee
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Emotions serve characters' purposes. That is their motivation.
Ang Lee
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I just did a dramatic love story. Whether it's a cultural phenomenon is not for me to say.
Ang Lee
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I think each movie-making process is a very exhausting and satisfying and fulfilling experience for me.
Ang Lee
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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?
Ang Lee
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So I'm a one movie at a time person, I don't develop. Normally we do a movie then one thing leads to another. If something pops up that catches my attention, then I'll decide.
Ang Lee
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I am not particularly religious. But I think we do face the question of where God is, why we are created and where does life go, why we exist. That sort of thing. And it is very hard to talk about it these days, because it cannot be proven. It is hard to discuss it rationally.
Ang Lee
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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.
Ang Lee
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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.
Ang Lee
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I'm not a romantic. In life I didn't have much experience with romance.
Ang Lee
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I don't have a checklist. Whatever material excites me, they'll call for a certain genre or combination of genres. It'll come naturally and I'll be eager to learn how that thing works. I learn the rules, and I'll probably break some of them.
Ang Lee
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First we pre-visualized it [the flying fish scene in 'Life of Pi'] so the actors could act. It took a long time to get that to come to life and to design those coming out of the screen. We had great fun with that. It takes a long time, a year maybe.
Ang Lee
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I don't care about writing really.
Ang Lee
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I did a women's movie, and I'm not a woman. I did a gay movie, and I'm not gay. I learned as I went along.
Ang Lee
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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.
Ang Lee
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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.
Ang Lee
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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.
Ang Lee
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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.
Ang Lee
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When I started out, nobody gave me scripts, so I had to write...
Ang Lee
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My hometown was one of the major U.S. Air Force bases.
Ang Lee