From Taiwan to Tinseltown

STORM WARNING: "Some people [reviewers] were saying that I hate American people. They felt I was using the film to say something about Americans' bleakness, their coldness. But I think they're misreading the movie," says Ang Lee (left), the New York-based director whose latest film, The Ice Storm starring Kevin Kline and Sigourney Weaver (right), has generated lots of Oscar talk.

With The Ice Storm, Ang Lee directs a likely Oscar contender

BY ROBERT ITO

Ang Lee, by his own admission, did not have the most exciting childhood growing up in Taiwan. He didn't have any hobbies, didn't like sports, and wasn't really into many aspects of Taiwanese pop culture.

"My upbringing was very boring," Lee remembers. "Maybe that's why I wanted to be a filmmaker. Because I missed out on all the fun."

In the last few years, Lee has been doing his best to make up for lost time. He's already one of Hollywood's hottest directors, and has won critical acclaim for his quirky romantic comedies, inventive ensemble pieces that focus on bizarre family situations, and stories of families in flux. His latest film, The Ice Storm, has received rave reviews for its heartfelt, gut-wrenching look at the fallout of the sexual revolution of the 1970s, and Lee's name is once again being bandied about by critics making their early Oscar predictions.

Despite the critical acclaim, Lee has never been one to go looking for acceptance. His early directorial ambitions were at odds with the wishes of his family, who wanted Lee to find a real job, "something useful" that would guarantee a steady income.

"I had the typical Chinese parents," Lee says. "My father was the principal of my high school, a very good high school in Taiwan. Being a filmmaker was just not conceivable back then."

As the self-described "mutant in the family," Lee came to the U.S. in 1978 to pursue his filmmaking dreams. He received his bachelor's degree in theater from the University of Illinois and then earned a master's in film production at New York University (NYU), a school widely regarded as having one of the best film programs in the country. While Lee was at NYU, he received major kudos for a student film he made starring Chazz Palminteri that went on to receive Best Director and Best Film awards at the school's prestigious film festival.

What followed was six years of "development hell," a film industry term that refers to a period of time when stories, ideas, and projects are discussed, but no actual film--or money--gets made. But Lee persevered, striking critical gold in 1992 with Pushing Hands, the first in a series of films that examined the strained relationships between traditional Chinese fathers and their Westernized offspring.

His next two films, The Wedding Banquet and Eat Drink Man Woman, made Lee a hit on the art-house circuit, and garnered a string of Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations. In 1995, Lee made it into mall theaters and multiplexes with Sense and Sensibility, his inventive take on the Jane Austen classic that starred Emma Thompson and Hugh Grant. The critics once again heaped on their praises, and the film was nominated for seven Academy Awards, winning one for Thompson for Best Adapted Screenplay.

After these initial successes, Lee was itching for something with, in his words, "a little more edge." What he found was Rick Moody's The Ice Storm, a novel that has edginess in spades. But Moody's scathing look at the excesses of the 1970s--the drug abuse, family breakups, and sexual infidelities--was a bit too raw even for Lee's tastes.

"A lot of the sex, drugs, and masturbation had to go," Lee recalls with a laugh. "There was so much masturbation, if you actually filmed it the way it is in the book, it would be completely unwatchable."

Another concern for Lee was how to make the characters likable, particularly when they are involved in some fairly unsavory activities. "In the book, you have a lot more time for character development," Lee explains. "In the film, the characters had to be more sympathetic, because you don't have the luxury of reading the internal writings, the justifications of why they're doing what they're doing. So you make the characters nicer, so the audience will follow the movie."

While Lee's past successes have allowed him to pick and choose from some of Hollywood's top talents, he is more drawn to a great script than an A-list actor.

"I would never do a movie just for the actor," Lee asserts. "Except maybe Jackie Chan. Then I'd have to do it."

Would Lee actually pitch a story idea to Asia's top action-film star? "Sure, if the script was good."

Of course, with Lee's recent successes, he hasn't had to do a lot of pitching lately; now people pitch story ideas to him. All of which is fine with Lee, who admits to being a terrible salesman. "Before shooting, I do one pitch, and that's to the head of the studio. They spend the money, so they deserve to hear my pitch once."

But all of his success hasn't made Lee immune to the sting of bad reviews. Not that Lee gets many of them, but he admits that he reads them all. "If I'm going to bother to read the good reviews, then I should read the bad reviews, too," he reasons. "I figure it's a healthy attitude. Not that I agree with them, but it helps to know how my film affects people. ... But, you know, they're still always painful to read."

One of The Ice Storm's weirdest critical responses came from reviewers who were perhaps too quick to focus on Lee's immigrant status. "Some people were saying that I hate American people. They felt I was using the film to say something about Americans' bleakness, their coldness. But I think they're misreading the movie."

For now, Lee is busily promoting his latest film and trying to get a handle on how The Ice Storm fits into his body of earlier films about father and child relationships. Lee calls his first three feature films his "father knows best" trilogy, an ironic reference to the idealized vision of American fatherhood in the 1950s.

"I use the Western term, but actually the fathers in my films don't know what they're doing," he says. "Their children are Americanized, so they're unsure of what to do."

Lee used his father as a model for these earlier films, but in The Ice Storm, he pulled from his own experiences as a father of two young boys. "In this film, I am the father, and the boy is looking up to me for answers. That's a very scary feeling, and I was able to pull from my own emotions."

So how is Lee as a father? "All right," he answers sheepishly. "Not great. I don't really know what to do with the kids. They had a typical American education, so I couldn't use what I learned from my own father. They would come and ask me questions and I wouldn't have the answers. They would have homework and I wasn't much help.

"But I love them and spend a lot of time with them. My wife is a better parent. She knows what to do. I have two boys, ages 13 and 7, so it's like she has three sons. The older one is more mature than I am," he admits with a laugh. "So I'm like the second son."

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