I Look At American Movies, The Big

My First Instinct Was To Cast As Close To The Short Story As Possible, But Then I Realized That I Needed Actors Who Could Go For It And That They Had To Function Well As A Couple In A Love Story.

I'm A Drifter And An Outsider. There's Not One Single Environment I Can Totally Belong To.

I Like To Do Drama, Something About Life That Could Be Disappointing.

Making This Movie As A Period Piece About A Period That Was Very Recent In People's Minds. I Was In Taiwan [during The 1970s], So I Hope I Did All Right. Otherwise, It Could Be The Biggest Embarrassment Of My Life. Also, The Story Is Not Linear, It's Patchy, Like A Cubist Painting, And There Is Always The Possibility It Will Not Hold Together, It Will Fall Apart. The Tone Is Part Satire, Part Serious Drama, Part Tragedy, All Mixed Together, And It Has To Hit An Emotional Core. That's Also Very Scary.

I Grew Up Pretty Much Prevented From Knowing Anything From Communist China Except That They Were The Bad Guys That Stole Our Country.