What You Don't Know about Ang Lee

The night before he was to fly off to Los Angeles for this year's Oscars, Ang Lee had somehow managed to take time off and was at his home in upstate New York cooking so his two children wouldn't go hungry when he and his wife were away.

Once, when work required his return to Taiwan, he first made over a hundred dumplings, freezing them so his wife and child could eat them over the course of his absence.

Honed during the six years he was shut up at home writing scripts, his cooking skills had gotten a little rusty these past few years while he was busy making movies. With the popularity of Pushing Hands and The Wedding Banquet, Ang Lee is now the hottest of ROC directors, and the contract offers haven't stopped coming. The Wedding Banquet is not only the first ROC movie to be nominated for an Oscar for best foreign-language film but also the first to win the Berlin Film Festival's Golden Bear. Now in the final stages of making his next film, Eat, Drink, Man, Woman, he has already sold international rights to it for US$1.8 million.

In 1990, Ang Lee's screenplays for Pushing Hands and The Wedding Banquet won first and second prize in a screenplay contest sponsored by the Government Information Office. When he returned to Taiwan for the awards ceremony, he obtained a contract for Pushing Hands. This lifted the dark fog of having had no work for six years after graduating from New York University.

Another Wu Tzu-hsu

Short on funds, he couldn't do anything the way he wanted to. Adding to his misery, his wife was very ill when they were preparing to shoot. Ang Lee felt despondent. "This isn't a low-budget movie," he once said. "This is a no-budget movie!" NT$13 million to shoot a film in New York provided for only 24 working days of shooting, and that was stretching it. There was no margin for error. They had to rehearse over and over again in order to prevent wasting shooting time and film.

Chou Hsu-wei, the assistant director of Pushing Hands, had met Ang Lee once in Taipei two months before she came to work with him in America. He gave her a start when she got to the States. He had "completely changed and gone half gray." It wasn't until they had finished shooting the movie that she told Ang Lee the story of Wu Tzu-hsu, who was able to avoid capture and sure death when his hair turned white and he could flee unrecognized.

"Ang Lee is interested in the human," Chou wrote in an essay, "and he doesn't like to show on technique. His films follow people. They are very dramatic and emphasize human warmth and helplessness. He's simple and straightforward in the way he deals with people. Among the ROC directors, he's one whose spirit is quite like an ancient Chinese scholar."

Jong Lin, the cinematographer for Pushing Hands, describes Ang Lee as a "new mainland director, because "although he studied and trained in America for so long, his work is so traditional, so Chinese." Ang Lee says that perhaps all those "healthy realist" films he saw as a youngster in Taiwan made a lasting imprint!

When chaos reigns on the set, you'll often see Ang Lee with his brow furrowed in thought, the cool eye in a storm of confusion. All of the difficulties encountered while shooting a movie, all of the emotions, he keeps to himself. Those around him seldom feel his spirits fall or soar. Terse and to the point, he rarely speaks unless it's necessary. He's like the father in The Wedding Banquet, who is able to express his emotions without speaking a word. Occasionally, the problem of how to deal with someone will bring wrinkles to his forehead or a bitter laugh to his mouth.

Stubborn

Towards his work, Ang Lee confines his focus to the matter at hand. Once he decides upon the right course to take, he pursues it stubbornly. It's especially so when shooting movies. He means what he says. When he says he wants "realism," that's what he's going to get.

In order to find someone to play a distinguished woman of good fortune aged about 80 for The Wedding Banquet, workers went to all of the retirement homes in Flushing and saw more than 100 old women, but none of them met his expectations. At Ang Lee's request, we mobilized all of our friends, making countless telephone calls. After much effort, we finally found someone we thought was pretty good and brought her for him to see. His wrinkled forehead told everyone that the search was still on. It was nearly time to start shooting, and we still hadn't found her. But Ang Lee just kept saying coolly, "No good. Keep looking!" Hearing that a Mrs. Kuan upstate was quite suitable, Lee's wife drove to pick her up and then drove her to the set. Finally he laughed and said, "Yes, that's her!" And everyone breathed a sigh of relief. In the movie Mrs. Kuan only appeared for several seconds in the bridal chamber.

Because the two main characters of Pushing Hands were played by two very experienced senior actors and this was the first time Lee was directing, he was "shy of stepping on their toes and wasn't comfortable telling them what to do." But with experience from making the first film, "I was louder with my requests and had more control" the next time around.

Loyal and tolerant

Although some say that Ang Lee doesn't know how to deal with people, the following few examples show otherwise. While shooting The Wedding Banquet in New York, Bride's World of Chinatown let us use their bridal wear and photo studio and just took a small fee for cleaning up afterwards. But then one day, its boss phoned asking Lee to serve as a judge of the Miss Chinatown Beauty Contest. At the time, he was just in the midst of pre-production and was very busy. But Ang Lee just said, "They were of such tremendous help, I'll find time to serve as judge no matter how busy I am." And so he took two days off to go to Atlantic City and judge a beauty contest.

Chris Wang, a film critic, studied in the film department of New York University after Ang Lee was there. When he was shooting his student film, he asked Lee to look over his script. The night Lee finished reading it, he specially boarded a train to New York to meet with Chris Wang face to face and offer his opinions. Wang was heartened by the passion of this alumnus. "Ang Lee is a great guy. He's truly good to his friends."

Ang Lee doesn't overindulge himself. But for others, as long as circumstances permit, he does all he can to make things convenient. During the early period of work on The Wedding Banquet, one member of the team wasn't working out as well as expected, and this was causing problems. When Ang Lee learned of this, he got someone to instruct her and strengthen her professional knowledge about film work and he gave her a job that better suited her. The result was that she did her work much more efficiently. "Although in some areas she lacked professional knowledge," he recalls, "in other respects she was very good. Making use of her strengths made sense. And she wanted to study. It was only right to give her a chance and help her to accomplish what she wanted."

（photo by Chris Wang）

His luck turns good

For a while, filming wasn't going as he had hoped. After several days of overtime, some important members of the production team wanted more pay, but the production unit, having no more money to spare, decided to hold them to their contracts and not give them a raise. Ang Lee knew how hard they were working, and so at a meeting he said, "I'll pay out of my own pocket!"

During a free period before The Wedding Banquet won the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival, Ang Lee was invited to Yale University for a showing of Pushing Hands and a seminar in which Ang Lee sincerely responded to questions.

Lee said that Old Chu and the American woman writer, who were shut up in an apartment together in Pushing Hands, were depictions of his own life for the few years after having just graduated. Of all the scripts in his possession, this was the one that was the least commercial and had the lowest artistic prospects, but it was one that was very close to his heart.

Ang Lee brought his inner world out for the public to see, attracting a very passionate discussion. Afterwards, the discussion wouldn't stop, as he ate and talked with a few professors and students until very late. When he drove back to New York, a fine snow was falling, and Ang Lee happily talked about how he felt participating in the seminar. He was a completely different person from the Ang Lee burdened with pressures while shooting a film.

One evening in early September of last year, Lee and I went to Greenwich Village to see how tickets to The Wedding Banquet were selling. There was a notice that tickets for three showings had sold out. We were thrilled. Because it was after 9:00 and the film would be over in 10 minutes, the ticket collector let us have a look.

A few members of the theater staff knew that Ang Lee had arrived and ran over to shake hands. When we opened the door to the screening hall, all we could hear was the sound of boisterous laughing. Ang Lee and I stood at the back, watching The Wedding Banquet and hearing the waves of laughter rolling through the audience. When it was over, they got up and left talking about the film. I saw a tear in the corner of Ang Lee's eye, and we happily left the theater amid the crowd. That night we continued working back at the dorm. Lee didn't drive home until five in the morning after we had sent 100 pages of script to Central Motion Picture.

Director vs. superdad

Though Ang Lee has had a lot of contact with audiences and the media, when he's shooting or editing, he focuses his full concentration on his work and doesn't like distractions. While in New York doing post-production work for Eat, Drink, Man, Woman, he was constantly getting invitations to lecture or attend seminars.

How sad Ang Lee would look, as he pleaded, "Can I thankfully decline? It's not that I don't want to go, it's that there's no way I can get away! I haven't finished editing Eat, Drink, Man, Woman. I still have to put a lot of energy into the post-production. Right now my work is still most important. After I finish the movie, then I'll go. O.K.?"

For the sake of work, Lee has sacrificed a lot of time with his wife and children. His oldest son Lee Han has complained, "Dad shot a movie. Big deal! Now he's always traveling somewhere and is never at home!" After The Wedding Banquet, Ang Lee's family probably grew accustomed to his absence. For a director, taking proper care of one's family is truly difficult, and this is particularly upsetting for a superdad like Lee. On December 23, 1992, Ang Lee completed The Wedding Banquet. When people all over America were hurrying home to spend Christmas with their families, Ang Lee had to pack his bags, say goodbye to his wife and kids, and return to Taiwan to cast Eat, Drink, Man, Woman. On Christmas day last year, Ang Lee was in Taiwan shooting. But the day after he finished filming, Ang Lee was on a plane to America, eager to pass New Year's with his family. Calling from overseas, with a cold and a hoarse voice, he said, "My plane lands at 8:00. Could you check the times of trains from New York to Washington?" His wife was with her sister in Washington and was returning in two days. Lee wanted to meet them in Washington and then return together. "Driving back for five hours by herself is too much of a strain. I want to drive for her. I won't rest easy, knowing that she is driving so far by herself." Then, because he was worried about his wife picking him up at the train station at two or three a.m., he decided to go home first and then meet his family the next day. And so when he landed at seven o'clock at night, he went straight home. Pulling up to his front yard, he saw that there were lights on inside his house. His wife and kids had rushed back to welcome Dad home!

Ang Lee's wife, and their son. The family is the topic of much of Ang Le e's work, and the source of his creative energy. （photo by Chris Wang）

Food on the stove

Because The Wedding Banquet has won prize after prize and has been an international box office smash, Ang Lee has become a famous international figure, but this hasn't changed the way he deals with people.

When The Wedding Banquet was first shown in New York's Long Island last July, the distributor wanted to provide Ang Lee with a stretch limo to take him to and from the theater. They called him beforehand, so they could ask him what booze should be put in the back. "We don't want any alcohol!" he said. And he told them that a regular Lincoln sedan would be good enough.

Ang Lee is normally a day-dreaming nonsmoker who shows up at movie sets without even a note pad but turns into chain-smoking bundle of nerves during breaks. The Wedding Banquet's success made him even more frenzied in giving birth to his next film, Eat, Drink, Man, Woman..

Right now Lee is in the middle of the post-production work for Eat, Drink, Man, Woman. Every day he rises early and takes a train to New York to work on editing. He uses his lunches for necessary meetings, and then he works until ten at night. He works six days a week and spends Sunday with his wife and children. His life is just as simple as it used to be.

Lee and his wife attended the Oscar Awards ceremony more for the "entertainment" than the "competition." He describes the trip as their second honeymoon.

Lee's only hobby is cooking, which he compares to making a movie. Selecting the ingredients is like the pre-production work and the filming, and actually cooking the food is like the editing. In Eat, Drink, Man, Woman, Ang Lee reveals 75 different famous Chinese dishes, and the last truly grand dish--pleasant to the eye, nose and tongue--was stir fried under his careful scrutiny.

Eat, Drink, Man, Woman

Old Chu is a chef of Chinese cuisine for a five star hotel. He lost his wife in middle age and has raised three daughters by himself. With a gourmet chef for a father, the three daughters have become picky gourmands. And this pickiness extends to their overall characters. About love and marriage, the three women stubbornly hold onto their own views and prejudices, and so their love lives have been rockier than most.

Having been raised in a family of perfectionists, when they confront marriage, they seem hypocritical, affectedly unconventional and lacking in sincerity and courage.

The oldest daughter, because of an early unfortunate relationship, has sworn off this food of romance altogether. Because of her work environment, rebellious nature and wish to hide her desire for a perfect marriage, the middle daughter adopts the most ridiculous methods for selecting a mate, appearing to take anything that's slapped on her plate. The much younger third daughter was always the quietest about the house, with a pure and optimistic character, and this allows her to truly savor the flavor of life. Old Chu occupies the most important position in his daughters' hearts, and they use him as an excuse to keep from getting married. In this arena, Old Chu turns out to have more guts than his daughters....

The Wedding Banquet

Kao Wei-tong's keen eye for good real estate investments has got him a green card and a house in an up-scale Manhattan neigh-borhood that he shares with his lover Simon. On the other side of the world his parents wonder why he hasn't married.

To take the pressures off Wei-tong, Simon designs a marriage of convenience between Wei-tong and Wei-wei, one of Wei-tong's tenants, a mainland artist perpetually late with her rent and desperately in need of a green card. To fool the immigration authorities, Wei-wei moves in.

His parents throw a monkey wrench in the works when they decide to come for the wedding, and a simple ceremony at city hall gives way to an elaborate wedding banquet. Amid the festive atmosphere, relationships begin to shift. Wei-wei starts to fall for Wei-tong. Simon, serving as cook and manservant, feels neglected. Stuck in the middle, Wei-tong's troubles are only multiplied. The wedding day ends with Wei-tong and Wei-wei lying dead drunk in the bed of their bridal suite.

When it turns out that Wei-wei has got pregnant, the mud really hits the fan. First, Simon thinks of leaving, and then Wei-tong's father has a slight stroke. In the hospital Wei-tong tells his mother everything. Personally horrified, she makes him swear not to let his father know of his relationship with Simon, for she is sure the father could never forgive the son. And then to top everything, Wei-wei resolves to abort the child and go back to mainland China.

Finally, the father, with knowledge he has been keeping to himself, finds a way to have Simon join the family.

Pushing Hands

A mainland taichi master Old Chu goes to America to be supported in his old age by his son, a successful engineer. But the father's presence results in all sorts of cultural conflict and misunderstandings between him and the son's wife, an American writer. Conscious of her weight, she eats salads, whereas he likes Chinese food. She needs a peaceful environment in which to write; he likes to watch Pei-king opera. Old Chu thinks American television is too violent; she has similar complaints about kungfu.

With different living habits and languages, and problems regarding the education of the third generation, life at home is tense. After the wife complains incessantly, the son resolves to discuss with his father about moving to a nursing home, but eventually the old man leaves on his own. Old Chu goes to Chinatown where he finds work washing dishes in a restaurant. When the boss goes back on his word and fires him for washing too slow, he uses his ch'i to hold his ground, and for a while neither his co-workers, nor the young punks his boss hires for the task, nor even the police can make him budge...

Director Ang Lee

1954

Ang Lee was born in Taipei on October 23.

1973

After taking the joint entrance exam, Ang Lee was admitted to his 108th choice, the National Taiwan Academy of Arts. (Ang Lee says that before he enrolled here, he was a well-behaved student, who neither studied nor partied particularly hard. If he were to make a film about his childhood, he is sure that the audience couldn't help but fall asleep.) He originally planned to take the joint entrance exam again the following year. But after experiencing acting for the first time, he decided to stay and study drama.

1974

He won the Golden Tripod Drama Award for the best acting performance among college and university students.

1975

He wrote and directed an eight millimeter film, A Lazy Saturday Afternoon, which he would submit with his application to the film department at New York University several years later. This year he graduated from the academy, and began his military service.

1978

While he was in the military, he had made a super-eight short film, A Day in the Life of Chen Ma-chuan, a documentary about one day when Chen, a fisherman, took a boat out to sea with his son. When Lee finished serving in the military, he enrolled in a director's program in the drama department of University of Illinois.

1980

He attained his BA from Illinois. He says his understanding of drama was gained during those two years, and his understanding of Western culture comes through drama. His three years at the National Taiwan Academy of Arts in addition to the two years at Illinois served to build the creative framework for his future movie making. After graduating from Illinois, he entered a graduate program in film at New York University. There he made his first 16 millimeter short film called The Runner. In his first year at NYU he also made I Love Chinese Food, a 16 millimeter film with a musical sound track, and Beat the Artist, a 16 millimeter dubbed film.

1982

His 16 millimeter film with sound called I Wish I Was by That Dim Lake, made in his second year at NYU, earned him a scholarship.

1983

I Wish I Was by That Dim Lake won an award from the Government Information Office for best dramatic short film.

1984

For his final film at NYU, he made Fine Line, a 43-minute drama with sound.

1985

At the end of February, as he was preparing to return to Taiwan, Fine Line won awards for best film and best director at the NYU Student Film Festival. After seeing the film, a major agent asked him to sign a contract and try to make a go of film making in the States. His reaction: Who wouldn't like to make movies in America? Considering also that his wife hadn't graduated yet, he stayed and remained for the next five or six years.

1987

Many months later he finally realized that no matter how good his student films or how much the film companies praised his talents, they wouldn't give a good script to a new director. Besides student films that revealed his abilities, a newcomer would need to write an appealing screenplay for a low-budget film with a good cast supplied by an agency. Only then would a film production company start taking him seriously. And so he spent most of these several years working on screenplays. Writing and revising a screenplay can take a year or two, and quitting half way would leave nothing to show for one's labor.

1988

Hsiao Yeh, the assistant manager for production at Central Motion Picture, described Lee as one of the second wave of new directors. Lee held talks with the studio about filming Cutting My Long Hair for You and The Wedding Banquet, but they didn't begin production.

1990

Lee wrote Pushing Hands for a scriptwriting contest sponsored by the Government Information Office and won the grand prize of NT$400,000.

1991

He made Pushing Hands for Central Motion Picture. The film garnered eight Golden Horse nominations, and he won three himself for best direction, best original screenplay, and best editing.

1992

Pushing Hands won best picture at the Asian-Pacific Film Festival. Lee began shooting The Wedding Banquet.

1993

The Wedding Banquet won the Golden Bear at the 43rd Berlin Film Festival, and picked up Golden Horses at the 30th Taipei festival for best dramatic film, best director, best original screenplay, best supporting actor and best supporting actress, as well as the audience vote for best film. It also took best film and best director honors at the Seattle Film Festival and the Blue Leopard at the Lugano Film Festival. This year Lee also began filming Eat, Drink, Man, Woman.

1994

The Wedding Banquet was nominated for a Golden Globe and an Oscar, both for best foreign language film, and it garnered 6 separate award nominations from the American Independent Film Makers' Association. It also won awards from homosexual groups in New York and Los Angeles. (Sources: Taipei Golden Horse International Film Festival Executive Committee; Central Motion Picture)

[Picture Caption]

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(photo by Diago Chiu)

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(photo by Chris Wang)

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Ang Lee's wife, and their son. The family is the topic of much of Ang Lee's work, and the source of his creative energy. (photo by Chris Wang)