A Quote by Ang Lee
Making movies is a way of understanding myself and the world.
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I've been making movies for a long time. The Japanese way of making movies has become second nature to me. To get away from that, I really try to surround myself with younger staff and approach making movies not like a veteran of the industry but always as a beginner and a rookie.
Pretty early on in making the first movie I realized that this is what I wanted to do. I felt like by that time I just found my niche, like this is what I was supposed to be doing. So I completely submerged myself into the world of watching movies, making my own movies, buying video cameras and lights. When I wasn't making a movie, I was making my own movies. When I wasn't making movies, I was watching movies. I was going back and studying film and looking back at guys that were perceived as great guys that I can identify with. It just became my life.
I believe in making movies very inexpensively; I think that way too much money is spent on making movies. Enough movies are being made, but not enough experimental ones.
There are a bunch of different movies I feel that way about. However, there is a debate because as you may know after MST3K ended there have been things like Cinematic Titanic that are the children and the grandchildren of this way of dissecting movies and making fun of them and in a way celebrating the absurdity of those movies as well. There are certain movies that sort of fit into the MST3K paradigm which is hidden gems, these weird horror/sci-fi/fantasy movies.
I've made a way to allow myself to do big films, small films, dramas, comedies, action films, horror films, or whatever interests me, as a movie-goer. I like watching myself in movies. I want to choose movies that allow me to enjoy myself, the way that I want to entertain myself.
I don't feel that way now. I don't want to make movies for the 10 people who feel exactly the same way about the world that I do. I want to make movies that many, many people see, and I want to say something that I believe is important in a way that people who don't agree with me can hear. And that involves making different kinds of choices, but it's not like a compromise that I'm making. It's that something else interests me, something else is appealing to me.
I think that the world of making movies and how movies get made has certainly changed and evolved over the years. So we're just trying to keep up with it and keep telling our stories in whatever way we can, by hook or by crook.
I had some great times doing competitions, but I have always been more into making movies because making movies is more about art and expressing yourself in a creative way.
One of the reasons I love making movies is because it's an opportunity to share with the world a different way of being or a different way of living or seeing the world. If it's something you've already seen before, if I have too many reference points for it, then it's not exciting for me to make.
It feels like there are two very different parts to making movies. There's the making of it and then there's the putting out of it - and I like the making of the movies a lot more than putting it out into the world.
I know if I wasn't making music and acting, I would be involved in the performing arts world in some way. I would be either writing and making music for other artists or producing movies.
[When making movies I] set out to be authentic to [myself] and to put it down the way [I] feel it and know it and interpret it. And then others sometimes key into it and get it.
I never saw myself as a director. It's certainly a second language but making movies for 40 years, you pick stuff up. However, this style of making movies, this documentary style, is easier for me because I gather a lot of material and with an editor, write it on screen. You try to write based on what you shot.
I constantly remind myself that there are terrible movies out there. I try to watch them, some of them, to give myself an understanding of what not to do.
I'm making movies about people as flawed as myself and the viewers. So if you just have a reptilian brain and live your life simply by reacting to things, my movies aren't going to work for you.
The best movies are made from a point of view of an understanding of human nature and an understanding of history and an understanding of what motivates people, of what makes a good movie from an emotional place.
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