Ang Lee Quotes

You have to really work with someone who you think is going to be a collaborator, who you think understands what you want to do with this movie and how you want to do it.

You never know when you read a script how it's going to turn out because so much depends on the collaboration between people. If I'd been in some of the movies I turned down, maybe they wouldn't have been a success.

Film is a collaborative medium, and I very much enjoy that.

Filmmaking is a very collaborative art. Unlike a painting that an artist paints sitting by himself, as a director, you have to work with a team.

We mystify the art of moviemaking, but it's not amystical science. You take a good screenplay, put a group togetherand you hammer it out.

I'm proud of 'Sinister' because Scott and Cargill did a great job on the movie, and I set up a framework for them to make what they wanted to make. They gave me the idea, and I figured out how to get it out into the world.

One of the most interesting aspects of the film project was collaborating with so many people - directors, filmmakers, and writers - over a five-year period. I learned that there are two components to this.

A great movie evolves when everybody has the same vision in their heads.

And I think one way or another it's evident to those who work with me that as a writer, a director, a friend, as somebody's there that's very anxious to get the movie made.

Making movies was a real weird kind of adult experience. In a way it was like MIT, in that it was a great education. The big lesson is, people are people. They're smart, funny, creative people, but they're people.

I'm just gonna make movies the best I can, do the festival thing or whatever can come. I plan on working with a lot of the same guys over and over again. I hope the majority of us can stick together.

Most of the great directors I've worked with - De Palma, Spike Lee - like rehearsals.

I depend on good editors and a good director.

I just love working with actors, and I love working with writers, working with designers. I feel that I am just a storyteller, and whether I am wearing the director hat or the playwright hat, it doesn't matter. And the rooms I tend to be in are pretty democratic, and the best idea wins.

Directing 'Fifty Shades of Grey' has been an intense and incredible journey for which I am hugely grateful. I have Universal to thank for that.

One of those things that I like about TV is that if you get a group of people you like, you can work with these people for months at a time, and you can discover their strengths and weaknesses, and you can use those in the direction where you take the characters.

Honestly, when you're making a movie, you never say, 'Oh, this one's going to suck and go straight to video.' When you're in it, you think you're doing the best work you can do. You're surrounded by people who are working hard. Everybody's hopeful.

The directors I respect are the ones who have a collaborative attitude, who collaborate with actors.

Working at Pixar you learn the really honest, hard way of making a great movie, which is to surround yourself with people who are much smarter than you, much more talented than you, and incite constructive criticism; you'll get a much better movie out of it.

We stayed there 24 hours a day. We lived and ate and slept that movie. We were enthusiastic, not just because of the movie, but because we had such a great collaborative team. We had a really good time. It was very much a family.

I would love to do more films. I really like the whole process of doing that. I like how close you become to everybody.

There is no sense in doing a wonderful script with somebody who can't direct because that is a disaster.

On my set, people have to respect the actor's process. I totally respect what actors do. I give them whatever time they need, and I never scream out directions from the camera. I take the time to walk up to them and talk to them personally.

What's great about making movies is the sort of additive process of bringing people together and having an idea and watching the idea be added to and at the end you have this thing.

Movies are very hard to make, to get it all to come together. So many people have their say in what the end product of films are.