by Claudine Ko|
When I got off the elevator at the fancy Manhattan hotel where director Ang Lee
and action star Michelle Yeoh were participating in roundtable discussions for
their latest film, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, I shook hands with the
wrong publicist and nearly interviewed the Backstreet Boys. Ten million
screaming girls may want to get into the leather dancing pants of the unibrowed
singing puppets, but most of the members of the press were looking for the mellow
46-year-old family man who now lives in the suburbs of Upstate New York. |
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DEVELOPMENT HELL Despite his low-key, almost shy demeanor, Ang Lee has led the life of a rebel. His father, a high school principal, had hoped that his son would pursue a career in academia. Instead, the number-one son failed his native Taiwan's college entrance exams and, much to the horror of his parents, enrolled in art school to study drama. In 1978, Lee went abroad to study at the University of Illinois and later received his MFA in film production from NYU's film school. In the Big Apple, he did camerawork on Spike Lee's 1983 thesis, Joe's Bed-Stuy Barbershop: We Cut Heads. Lee later won Best Film and Best Director awards at the university's film festival for his own thesis, Fine Line. For the next several years, Lee toiled in "development hell," in which every project that came his way fell through. So he stayed home, released his frustrations by cooking and playing tennis, and took care of his kids while his microbiologist wife, Jane, paid the bills. It wasnıt until he got in touch with the Good Machine production company in 1991 that the desperate director came out of the slump. "If you donıt help me make this movie, Iıll die," he pleaded at the end of his pitch. As a result, Pushing Hands was made. But it was his second feature, 1993's The Wedding Banquet, that made Hollywood finally take notice. The movie, about a closeted gay Taiwanese guy who marries a Chinese illegal alien to appease his parents, received an Oscar nomination for best foreign film (a first for Taiwan) and grossed the highest investment return of any film that year--including Forrest Gump. With this recognition, Lee went on a roll, making critically acclaimed box office successes like Eat Drink Man Woman, The Ice Storm, and Sense and Sensibility. His last film, Ride with the Devil, blew but Crouching Tiger restores the faith and then some. CROUCHING TIGER In Crouching Tiger, Lee ditches the Western landscapes of his past three films and returns to the Chinese Motherland. The awesome cast includes an airborne Chow Yun-Fat, an invincible Michelle Yeoh, and 19-year-old drama student Zhang Ziyi--who can kick her boyfriend's ass--in the best martial arts films ever. This movie is so good, it will make you cry.  |