A Quote by Justin Lin
I've sat in so many meetings where they talk about converting movies to 3D just for the China market and just to make more money. I saw that people in China work long, long hours and that it's expensive to go to the movies, and you want to rip them off for even more money? I don't think that's right.
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One thing we haven't mentioned is something everyone should understand very clearly. Look at the budget that was invested in 'Avatar': who in China has that kind of money to spend on making a movie? So we as Chinese filmmakers should work together to make Chinese movies that can compete as best we can for Chinese audiences, not make lousy movies, but make the best we can for that audience. Concentrate the money, the talent we have on making good movies [for China].
I didn't want people to think I'm just in the movies, where you make money and wait around for 13 hours before you get to do 20 minutes of work.
In making a movie, you're part of a big machine. Even in a small movie there are still so many people involved in the process, and it costs so much money to make. There is so much more invested in it for a lot of different people, so much money is sunk into it that they usually want some guarantee or promise that it's going to be able to do something on a financial level. There's just a lot more messing with you in film. I love movies and I love to watch movies and being a part of the whole film experience.
It's too expensive, that's the thing nobody wants to talk about. It is too expensive to make movies. That's not true, it is too expensive to market movies. Making movies is not.
I am fortunate enough to have worked on, and continue to work on, evolutionary movies in all formats from just simple good story telling, which still matters most of all, to CG movies to tent-pole size 3D movies, and genre 3D movies like 'Piranha 3D.
When China sends over their people to negotiate, they pick their meanest, smartest, most vicious guy; and these guys, they don't play games. They don't laugh, they don't cry, they have no emotion. They just want to make money, and they just want to rip our country to shreds.
You cannot just depend on the market, because the market will say: China needs oil; China needs coal; China needs whatever, and Africa has got all these things in abundance. And we go there and get them, and the more we develop the Chinese economy, the larger the manufacturing is, the more we need global markets - sell it to the Africans which indeed might very well destroy whatever infant industries are trying to develop on the continent. That is what the market would do.
A really large percentage of kids from Duke go to work on Wall Street, and they make a lot of money, but they're almost slaves to their jobs, working crazy hours. Their job totally dominates their lives, and most of them aren't happy. So many of my friends are going down that path. I even thought about it for a second, like "Should I be doing that?" But I just pursued my dreams instead, and I always tell people to do that. Now I make more money than they do, and I'm doing what I love.
I never think about the numbers. I've never played tennis for the money, because as long as I enjoy it, and I can achieve anything, then the money will come. I know that things will start coming up, many more people will want to start getting involved. But I just want to keep my head cool, and I want to leave (business) to the people who take care of business. I just go out and I just play tennis.
Because movies have gotten so expensive, and they're so expensive to market, that means that for a movie to break even or to make its money back, everybody has to go see the movie, and if everybody has to go see the movie, then it can't be about anything.
I think certain movies are right for 3D. I think certain movies are not right for 3D. And I think the specialness of 3D will be worn off if every movie becomes 3D.
I'm very pessimistic about that, no matter how hard we may try. The Chinese market is huge, but out of last year's $2 billion box office, $1.8 billion was taken in by foreign movies, and just $200 million by our own movies, no matter how much we have learned of their techniques, or their good practices. The Hollywood movies imported into China are all good movies; does the U.S. make lousy movies? Yes, too many lousy movies, but the imports are good films, so how can they not be box office hits? They're all hits.
I'm happy to see the United States and China cooperating more and more with movies. The entertainment industry in China is developing very fast. I hope there can be a bridge for actors to work in both places.
There's so many movies, they're just like fast food you consume them and you can't even remember what you just ate. I don't want to make those kinds of movies. I want to make the slow food of movies.
I don't know how many more movies I'm going to get the opportunity to make and I don't want to look back and go: "Man, I just floated through that one." Or: "I did that one for the money." I want to be able to say that I worked as a hard as I could and I did the best work that I could do.
Anyone who has any kind of success in Hollywood wants to make more expensive movies and spend more money, be bigger. I think it's unusual to have success and want to stay small.
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