I Grew Up Pretty Much Prevented From

Making A Martial Arts Film In English To Me Is The Same As John Wayne Speaking Chinese In A Western.

I See A Movie As A Way Of Learning About The World, About Myself, And Learning About My Relationship With People And Art.

The Thing We Call Critics Are Not Really Reviewers, They Are Not Really Critics. They Don't Have The Discipline To Write What We Would Term As Critique - It's Really Just Reviewers. They Have A Common Man Kind Of Taste. If You Watch Them Overall, They Are Not Different From The Box-office. That's My View.

When I Grew Up, In Taiwan, The Korean War Was Seen As A Good War, Where America Protected Asia. It Was Sort Of An Extension Of World War Ii. And It Was, Of Course, The Peak Of The Cold War. People In Taiwan Were Generally Proamerican. The Korean War Made Japan. And Then The Vietnam War Made Taiwan. There Is Some Truth To That.

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.