Interview : Ang Lee

Hey kiddies! Dude here again, and boy have I been working the room to get you, dear readers, interviews with a lot of today's top talent. Well, actually, I just happen to always be in the right place at the right time. I'm like Forrest Gump without the mental retardation or enormous success. (Would Gump have a blog? It wouldn't change the fact that Shawshank deserved the Oscar that year).

Anyway, I was privy to attend the roundtable with Ang Lee to discuss his latest movie, the "gay cowboy" film Brokeback Mountain. Yes, that's how a lot of people are describing it. (If you read the comics, check out this week's Boondocks, where the grandfather decides to go see a manly movie about cowboys. It's pretty funny, because he has no clue what he's in for). So, this interview's not exactly the usual type questions that I would ask (I would have spent far more time on Hulk, because there are some things I need to know about that) but thems the breaks. In the meantime, enjoy this discussion of Brokeback Mountain, which opens in theaters this Friday.

Question: What was it about this story that made you want to make a film about it?

Ang Lee: Well, it’s a unique and very universal love story. It was something I had never seen before, so that makes it very attractive. It’s a great short story.

Q: Had you read it before?

Ang Lee.: Yes, like four years before. Not eight years before when it was first published. I liked the combination of true western as a movie western. The realist rural life America but it has a western aura combined with the repression gay subject matter. To me that work along with the western literature made it really juicy to me. And the writing was sparse but the prose is beautiful and invoking. Then it has a metaphorical attraction to me too. The idea of Brokeback Mountain to me is the illusion of love. It’s a confusion. When they’re inside they don’t know what happened and they spend twenty years trying to go back. Just the act itself was very interesting to me. And they’re chasing something when they got it, one character realizes the taste of love and that they passed it, they missed it. To me that’s just a great story. It’s very short, so I had to throw in a lot of imagination and guesses. That to me is always a good sign; it wrenched my heart for some reason. It wrenched my gut for some reason. I don’t know why, but I felt the urge to make the movie.

Q: Can you talk about the lead actors, Heath and Jake, and why each one.

Ang Lee.: I decided quite early on when I took on the project that I would go with younger actors and play towards older. I think I had a better chance to have something younger in a sense and to bank from it in the end of the story, than to have someone more sophisticated and try to be young, or even split the difference… because that innocence. So I decided to go with early twenties, and I think these guys are among the best actors. I love to work with good actors, so they were candidates because of that, and I met quite a few of them. Heath struck me as a good actor to carry the western, the brooding, memorable, fear, violence; a lot of those melancholy mysterious characteristics of the west. I think he was a good man to carry it. Then I had to find a counterpart, and that is Jake. I think he carries the romantic theme; the embrace of romance. More knowing, bright, positive; almost not cowboy look. The story is purely western when you read it, but as a movie the genre closes as a romantic love story, so I was more casting the romantic element.

Q. What draws you as a foreigner to these distinctly American stories like The Ice Storm or Ride With the Devil? What do you bring to the table that an American director, with his perspective, might not?

Ang Lee: Well if a written material strikes me as a very genuinely American writing, it is pivotal, but it is very often earlier that I have become attracted. Not that I want to set the record straight, not that I want to debunk American history, but they just appear to me authentic, and need to be done. That’s very attractive. It’s also, as a filmmaker, it’s very fresh. I know about America like a lot of people here; from Hollywood movies. From movies, television, city people. I did three movies in the west. We don’t know too much about it and it becomes very attractive. In one way very romantic, in the other way, distant. It was very fresh to me. The Ice Storm was a year I had never seen people make a movie about. It seems like a year people want to forget. That was very interesting to me. Ride the Devil was a great western where it started the globalization, where it essentially happens, but when you check how people teach history the Civil War is so blue and grey. It was really a massive situation. I think that’s very pivotal to American history. The story needed to be told. And I didn’t write those. They are great American writers. It’s just because of the habit of film industry and distribution, the way people watch movies, especially mainstream movies, they don’t pick it up. To me they are very attractive because they are fresh and they are genuine. Examining America is important, whether you are American or not. They have a global implication as a world citizen. I think it is very important and it needs to be done.

Q: Do you have any thoughts to how this is going to play within the current political situation in America, where one half seems to be more open than ever and the other half seems more fascist than ever?

Ang Lee: Well that‘s just the real life condition that I have to deal with. That has nothing to do with me doing the movie. I can not do the movie, dilute the movie, or intensify the movie because of the political situation. I cannot wait until the world is perfect. If I don’t, somebody will and I’ll be very jealous. So I didn’t really give too much thought.

Q: How bold do you think it is for an actor to take a role like this in this climate?

A.L.: I don’t know. That’s not really my problem. I didn’t really care. They’re good actors and they want to do good work. When they see a juicy part they get excited, they want to do it. These guys are like that. I remember shooting the first sex scene in the tent. I remember thinking they were brave because it was different than any lovemaking scene ever shot. It’s very hard to see private feelings that characters besides themselves see that, so I thought they were very brave, but in terms of taking the job it is good for them. They’re great parts so I don’t have a lot of sympathy.

Q: This is also your second movie about gay characters who, because of their culture, can’t really come out. Why do you find that interesting and how do you think you handled the subject manner differently than you did in The Wedding Banquet?

Ang Lee: Well this is more sexual.(laughs) More gay than the other. Not only was (The Wedding Banquet) a comedy of mannerism, but I made that for mainstream audiences in Taiwan. I didn’t know that it would hit an arthouse anywhere. That was a family drama. It’s a very traditional Asian genre; one of the main genres in the society, so once I delivered the first male/male kiss in Taiwanese market the gay power is done. In both material I liked the repression. I’m a nice guy, so I’m repressed. So I like to use repression as a movie element. I think that’s a way to check into humanity and to care about human conditions. So once I had done that kiss, it is really a family drama. It is an event that happened and is revealed in the course of the drama, and there are five characters examining how they respond to it. It’s more political and more into the Taiwan political situation or how they fit in history. It present a problem, but it is really a family drama. This I get into deeper. Sexuality, romance is at the core of the piece. For that subject matter this is a lot deeper.

Q: But you said that you made The Wedding Banquet for a mainstream family audience. So when you’re thinking about your audience for this film, are you thinking about those same people?

Ang Lee: No. Opposite. Well, Taiwanese mainstream audience because there’s only mainstream audience in Taiwan. There are no arthouse cinemas. The market doesn’t have the depth like the arthouse here that you can do a platform release. From a small art film to the biggest Hollywood film, they are all launched about the same way. So we make a Chinese film for mainstream. They don’t think much because I took money from a studio and the vibe of the film is family drama. I just hope that they can watch two guys kiss onscreen. But this I assume is arthouse because of the economics, and I was more deeply into my career. At the beginning of my career I wasn’t aware of many things that I know of today. But we make hundred of decisions each day trying to make a scene work. You cannot be aware of so many things. You struggle to make a scene work. So the way I make movies probably has a mainstream touch to it. That I cannot help. If you ask me commercially what the film will do, of course you are given so much money. Money is stringent. It’s a movie probably very limited audience will see, it’s a specialized movie. So that’s what I had in mind, but I still do the best that I can to make the best movie I can, the way I know how to make movies. So if that goes broader, so be it. That means I’d be more concerned with how people react. It is strictly arthouse film, I should be safer not everyone is concerned.

Q: But you are hoping that broader audiences see it?

Ang Lee: I hope that everyone sees the movie. And it’s a mixture. Even small towns, the conservative parts of the nation; when they see a love story they will discover these sensitive people. So I cannot say that in these small towns they are oblivious to human issues and feelings. That wouldn’t be fair. So, we’ll see how it plays out. So far it’s been very quiet. It hasn’t spread out, and I have some anxiety. It looks like it will go wider.

Q: Keeping in mind the audience you wanted to have, did that effect how you approached the sexual scenes?

Ang Lee: It’s the same way I make movies. Sometimes you want to adjust your filmmaking because you know it is broader. This is more specialized movies, so you have to go more artistic, more film-festival-like. The other has to be more broader, dumber, more whatever. The language there has to be more understandable so the movie can be a hit. But when I make a movie I can’t think of that. I just go with what I think is needed to make it work. Same thing with the sex scenes. I think if I did more I would make some audiences more happy, but I’d be exploiting my actors. But if I do less, it wouldn’t be convincing that the characters would want to go back to Brokeback.

Q: Because there are only three or four scenes where they do have intimate contact at all, do you think that people are making too much of the gay relationship, because the story didn’t have to be about gay characters. It’s just a story about two people who can’t work in a relationship.

Ang Lee: Well, because they are gay. In the end it’s about relationships, but just to get there, there are important steps. The audience hasn’t dealt with anything gay and their difficulties. That’s why I think if it was heterosexual we would know it. A lot of audiences have experienced it. You have a little suggestion and you’re there. You don’t need to see more. But with this you have to really show it to some degree. I think it’s important. I think being gay, especially the first quarter of the movie, both physical and psychological aspects… Particularly they don’t have vocabulary, those characters at that time, to understand what they experience. It is very private. How their body and emotions psychologically you establish that, is very important. So being gay is very important. I don’t mind calling it gay cowboy western except for marketing that’s like poison. People would think it is a comedy like a Blazing Saddles. That part I don’t like, but it would have to be very cowboy and very gay and then you transcend that to their family, to their relationship.

Q: What was the most difficult scene to shoot?

Ang Lee: Overall I think aging is the most difficult thing to shoot, but that’s every day work. The changes are subtle. Every time you see them it’s two or three years. Half of the job is hair and make-up. We did a lot of screen tests, every stage of their age. Every four or five years. We did camera tests and then we made charts to make sure we did the right thing. The other half of the job is acting, the way they carry themselves. The way they put their voices and how they put their voices, it has to be according to the chart. And every time you shoot a scene you have to be aware of which shots are the first moments when you get into the scene. You have to leave enough time, space and details for audiences to resituate themselves to get into the new time frame. So that’s actually the hardest. The one single scene, of course, the lovemaking scene. It was psychologically difficult, but it didn’t turn out to be difficult at all. Dealing with babies and sheep and the mountain. Dealing with weather, shadows and the weather condition and the sheep, technically were the most difficult. And there was one scary moment when we were shooting the rodeo. Anne Hathaway fell from the horse and there was a two thousand pound bull leaping over the fence and terrorize the whole crew.

Q: Can you talk about the influence of Larry McMurtry in this project and the kind of contemporary poetic voice.

Ang Lee: It’s a great influence and at some point it is a pressure having the grand master. Him and Annie Proulx are very much alike. So that’s a big shadow I had for a long time. I was afraid that they would not agree, but he was very generous and influential to me. It was very educational. I started out reading and then I went to visit him in Archer City. Besides the scriptwriting process, I went to visit Archer City where he is established and where they shot The Last Picture Show, which is probably the best references for this movie in terms of images. So he showed me around and talked to me about the whole western business, the cattle business, and how it becomes western and why has it gone, why it doesn’t make sense anymore. He went on about reading materials, sent me back to Wyoming to check mountains and business, towns, bars. He knew exactly…he knows everything. Where to check in, who to talk to…

Q: Is there a real Brokeback Mountain?

Ang Lee: No. Annie Proulx took me to where she thinks Brokeback is, which is Big Horn Mountain in the east corner of Wyoming.

Q: And have her, McMurtry and Diana all seen the film?

Ang Lee: Oh yeah. They love it. It’s a great relief. Larry had a different idea about where Brokeback was. It was more along Idaho, so he sent me there, and I found a place in between. It’s called Wind River. I found that was most like my Brokeback, and we had to shoot in Canada

Q: How refreshing do you actually find this experience of an intimate drama after venturing into the blockbuster arena with The Hulk?

Ang Lee: Very refreshing. There is no anxiety. People don’t really give you anxiety. If you are making The Hulk…I experienced the ultimate freedom, but the enormous size of the production can get to you. The anxiety when you release the film throughout the world with a big launch and all the toys and products, it has a big impact. So making a small movie like this was very refreshing to me. And because I have to be very selective about what I shoot. I’m not planning to cover everything, so I have to imagine in my mind. I have to be very precise and smart about what I select to shoot and where I spend time on it. And that, of course, naturally comes up to actors. So that was very refreshing and it was like a love affair between the crew and cast. So that was like a healing process for me. And I think when you start to make big movies you can always use the refreshment that you cause when your discipline is still there. I think it’s a great thing to me.