Here is a report in Taiwan News headline about Ang Lee. It is very interesting to see how he had go through in the movie business.
Please bear with my poor English, I tried my best to translate the article. Please ask any question if you got lost in any point.
Proud of Taiwan; but take a look at the movie making Journey of Ang Lee.Et-Today Entertain News
http://news.yam.com/ettoday/entertain/200601/20060118082065.htmlDirecting by Ang Lee (Brokeback Mountain), the biggest winner of Golden Globe award, won 4 awards including best movie in Drama and Directing. Golden Globe Award usually the forecasting of Oscar again recognized Ang Lee alone with most of the critic’s and Medias. Most of them now consider Brokeback Mountain as the front runner for Oscar. It was not an easy journey for Ang Lee to be who he is today, with his father strongly against him to get involved in Movie making Industry and more than 6 years without work. All he had was the strongly support from his wife and a dream.
Born in Ping Dong, Taiwan, in his early year against his father’s well to be a doctor. He went to US to study Movie. After graduated from NYU, he was in unemployment for more than 6 years could not find anything to do. Ang Lee never give up his dream about movie making, Lee said “No one was interesting in hiring me for any film making or producing and I did not want to do anything else. So I spent most of my time writing scripts no one was interesting.” The old pictures in his NY office of home in South of Taiwan shows the struggle of his idea of achieving his dream and how much he cares about the family value, his heart to the family members which become his significant character and reflects in his movies.
Ang Lee got recognized by “The Wedding Banquet”, (a gay Taiwanese story in New York City) which he won the Golden Bear Award in Berlin Film Fest in 1993. After that he got 7 Oscar nominations from British movie “Sense and Sensibility”, which he also won the Golden Bear Award from Berlin Film Fest. Because of that he earned his International reorganization as a Director. But two movies after that “Ice Storm” and “Riding with Devil” only got good critics but not doing too well in box office. He got his moment and swept the box office at year 2000 by “Crouching Tiger and Hidden Dragon” which he won the Best Director from Golden Globe Award but missed the Oscar’s Director Award. (P.S. “Eat, Drink, Men and Women” a Taiwanese movie was nominated for best Foreign Movie for Oscar in late 1990’s but did not win).
After “Crouching Tiger and Hidden Dragon” won the Best Foreign Movie from Oscar, Lee became a well known Director and started to attention from Hollywood. “Hulk” was produced due to his popularity as a wonderful Director but did not do well. Lee mentioned, he is only comfortable to make movies without any commercial pressures. He did not feel too comfortable for all the promotion issues for making that film.
After the failure of “Hulk” Ang Lee was getting tired and considered getting out of movie business. His father was in the hospital with the serious condition. His father encouraged Ang Lee the first time in his life “Stick with your dream” before he died. That was the force for Lee to pack up his patient again and dived into “Brokeback Mountain” production. After winning the Golden Lion Award from Vince Film Fest, Lee was releifed and said “Finally, there is something my father will be so proud of me”.
In 2003 Ang Lee published a book “10 Years Dream of Movie Making”, in the book he mentioned about all the joy and pain he went through in the movie business. With all the recognition of Awards from all over the world, our best wishes to Lee (the Bright Star of Taiwan) for getting to higher level of every films he is going to make.