A Quote by Daniel Wu

For Mandarin scripts, there's software now where you can just insert the Chinese script, and it comes out all in pinyin. — © Daniel Wu
For Mandarin scripts, there's software now where you can just insert the Chinese script, and it comes out all in pinyin.
For Cantonese - because there's no standardized pinyin system - I have to have someone read it to me, and then I rewrite the whole script in my own Cantonese pinyin.
Language-wise, my mom and dad's dialect, they're pretty obscure. It's Chinese, but not your traditional Chinese, like Cantonese or Mandarin. It wasn't something that I got to use very much growing up. We eventually just spoke English around the house.
Until the age of five, my parents spoke to me in Chinese or a combination of Chinese and English, but they didn't force me to speak Mandarin. In retrospect, this was sad, because they believed that my chance of doing well in America hinged on my fluency in English. Later, as an adult, I wanted to learn Chinese.
When I was in New York, a lot of my friends were studying filmmaking and would bring their scripts to me, as I was a good script doctor. I would read their scripts and make corrections to them for $20 per script and was fascinated by films.
I went back to China and did a movie in Mandarin, and I don't speak Mandarin, so I learned it phonetically. Now, when I'm on set and somebody gives me English lines, I'm like, "Are you kidding? What's happening? This is amazing!"
I am Chinese. I speak fluent Mandarin. And I go, 'Man, it's about time a Chinese person could step up to a Hollywood screen, and international screen, and help save the world.'
Everything you look at now, the scripts that come in that you look at, the television scripts are way better than the movie script. The talent is going to television.
At MGM there was a script cage in the basement where they’d show rushes. And I thought to myself, “How do I get into the script cage and find out what my future is?” I climbed into the script cage one night and spent the whole night in there. I saw the bowels of MGM. I saw the studio scripts that the producers had seen; the writers had just handed them in. And I started thinking this is a chance to pick my own roles.
The one thing you know when you're shooting a script - and I've been on a lot of sets - is space is in a script, and the distance between the page and the stage is so enormous that it is unbelievable how even the brightest people can misread your intent or not see it altogether. Scripts have air in them. Scripts are supposed to leave things up to interpretation, but people can misread things enormously, so sometimes it's just a matter of wanting to put on the screen what you had in mind.
The truth is, there are probably eight more 'Snow White' scripts floating around out there. And once one 'Snow White' script got hot, other people started pulling out their 'Snow White' scripts.
The truth is, there are probably eight more Snow White scripts floating around out there. And once one Snow White script got hot, other people started pulling out their Snow White scripts.
Chairman Mao not only introduced Pinyin in China, but also simplified half the Chinese characters, believing that fewer strokes would enable more people to learn to write the characters.
When I started, the scripts weren't as good, and you'd have to have a huge burst of energy to go, "Sheesh, how am I going to? This stuff's no good." So you'd have to improvise something or create something or try to work with the ware and try to figure out, how do you make this visually and orally acceptable, entertaining? Nowadays, the scripts are just so much better, that you don't have to feel that way. You feel like the script's coming to you, you can just relax. You don't have to drive the boat.
The challenge for me, and for Asian models in general has been convincing editors, stylists and photographers that we can have mass appeal, but Asian, especially Chinese models have become a stronger presence. Just a season or two ago, there weren't many models for me to talk with backstage in my native Mandarin. Now I usually have no trouble finding someone at any show.
Transposons are just small pieces of DNA that randomly insert in the genetic code. And if they insert in the middle of the gene, they disrupt its function.
I am taking Chinese lessons and I practice speaking Mandarin almost every day.
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